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Pacifism Backfire - TV Tropes
*"If [the number of pacifists] is large enough [to cripple the state as a belligerent], then you have handed over the state which does tolerate Pacifists to its totalitarian neighbour who does not. Pacifism of this kind is taking the straight road to a world in which there will be no Pacifists."*
A character insists on not exacting violence.... and they end up causing more violence in the long run than was at first avoided.
Perhaps they are an idealistic and forgiving person who just tells bad guys to go away after the baddie is stopped. Perhaps they are a Principles Zealot, believing that no end justifies the means of violence, including that of preventing worse violence. Perhaps s/he is a Horrible Judge of Character, not realizing that avoiding such a fight would cause more of it. Or maybe they are a Dirty Coward who just wants to wash their hands of the situation.
A downplayed variant of this is when someone who is willing to fight but unwilling to kill refuses to kill someone no matter how dangerous they are. That someone ends up causing more trouble later.
Indeed, the moral is that Violence Really Is the Answer. Not exactly a really idealistic moral but even
*Mahatma Gandhi* believed pacifism would sometimes backfire and that sometimes violence was acceptable and necessary, once stating "My non-violence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice."
A common (but not always) telltale of this trope is when someone says "I should've killed/stopped him when I had the chance/back then."
Naturally, this trope serves as a frequent deconstruction of trying to lay out a No-Harm Requirement. Often, the mandate, necessity, or even desire to resolve a situation without causing or allowing excessive (or even
*any*) harm just leads to things getting worse.
One of the many ways to Create Your Own Villain. May stem from Good Cannot Comprehend Evil. Compare Head-in-the-Sand Management, which sometimes overlaps with this, and The Farmer and the Viper (aka "Hospitality Backfire"). Compare also We Have Become Complacent when a community that has never experienced war for a long time is forced into a war situation and they are unable to fight back. See also No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, Suicidal Pacifism, and Neutrality Backlash. Surrender Backfire is similar, where one who willingly gives up to the enemy has worse results than fighting back.
Contrast Badass Pacifist when a pacifist manages to stop the conflict/help others using entirely non-violent means, and the Martial Pacifist, who's willing to get their hands dirty to avert this.
There may be real-life examples, but perhaps it's best if we don't go there. Even if it does mean that this page and our statement is a Self-Demonstrating Article.
## Examples:
-
*Digimon*:
- Just before the start of the Digimon World Tour, The digidestined are attacked by group known as the Daemon Corps. While they initially try to talk to them, thinking them as lost digimon similar to others, this notion is immediately dashed, with the opposing forces attacking the city with gleeful abandon. While Yolei and Cody still try to talk them down, the other digidestined realize that they have no choice but to put them down much the former's horror. Thus learning that sometimes lethal force is necessary.
- Henry Wong of
*Digimon Tamers* has his ardent refusal to have his partner Terriermon fight (caused by a traumatic event in their shared past where Henry's choices got Terriermon nearly fatally hurt) nearly get both of them plus Takato and Guilmon killed. And it *still* takes him a while to get comfortable with the idea of fighting sometimes being necessary. Episode 45 (The dub anyway) reveals that this is due to using his martial arts to hurt a neighborhood kid, it's never revealed whether it was justified or not, which scared him so much he decided that fighting at all was never good.
- Also in
*Tamers*, the group fights over whether or not to allow their partners to use their Cannibalism Superpower and absorb the data of defeated Digimon, eventually deciding not to in the hopes that the ones too violent to be spared would be reborn elsewhere. It's eventually revealed at the MudFrigimon village that this is *not* the case, and they've only weakened themselves for the battles ahead.
- In
*Digimon Ghost Game*, when Gammamon first awakens to his Superpowered Evil Side GulusGammamon he looks to his All-Loving Hero partner Hiro for the order to finish off the Knight of Cerebus, Sealsdramon. Hiro refuses, so GulusGammamon goes rogue and kills it himself before turning on the others over Hiro's weakness. Hiro and his friends are later called out for their tendency towards Suicidal Pacifism by several Digimon.
- Again in
*Ghost Game*, early on the group defeated the Virus-attribute Rookie Dracmon, who swore to undo the damage he caused and not cause any more trouble in exchange for his life. The Stinger revealed he was pulling an I Surrender, Suckers, ||and he returns over 20 episodes later as a mook for Myotismon||.
-
*Dragon Ball Z*:
- During the Saiyan Saga, Goku gives in to Raditz's pleas for mercy and lets go of his tail, only for Raditz to knock him down and mercilessly break his ribs all while openly mocking him for falling for such a trick. When he manages to restrain Raditz again for Piccolo to finish him, Raditz tries begging for mercy again, but Goku doesn't fall for the same trick twice.
- Much later, during the Frieza Saga, despite having every reason in the world to just kill Frieza and be done with it, he spares Frieza's life not once, but twice, and both times, Frieza just keeps trying to kill him when his back is turned. Of course, to be fair, Goku's attempts to spare him were more out of Cruel Mercy than pacifism, and he obliterates Freeza the
*second* he betrays his last chance.
- In the Cell Saga, Gohan refuses to fight Cell and insists on talking to him and trying to convince him to stand down. Cell refuses and though Gohan is eventually motivated to fight, his hesitation leads to everyone getting beaten up and Goku's death.
-
*Gunsmith Cats*: Bounty Hunter Rally Vincent doesn't like to shoot to kill unless there is absolutely no other choice, preferring to shoot to wound (which includes doing such things as *blowing people's thumbs off* to make them unable to handle a gun). This is a decision that has allowed a couple of Arc Villains to return later seeking revenge (and become even more psychotic in their tactics because of the rage at being maimed) and Rally herself implies once that explaining it to the police is a bureaucratic nightmare and has sometimes cut down on the amount of money the bounty rewards.
- Happens almost constantly in
*Naruto*
- Hashirama spares Madara, Madara becomes a villain.
- Sarutobi spares Orochimaru, many people die including Sarutobi himself. ||Subverted with Naruto sparing Orochimaru when he becomes Hokage. A few arcs of
*Boruto* revolve around Orochimaru's past sins coming back to haunt the village but the man himself has not done anything to break his HeelFace Turn||.
- Naruto lets Sasuke go, Sasuke ends up helping the Big Bad.
- Naruto and ||Minato spares Obito||, ||Madara|| gets revived.
-
*One Piece*:
- In Law's flashback, when Rocinante, after being beaten to near death, revealed his true nature to his boss and big brother Doflamingo that ||he's a Marine who's going to stop him||, the two pointed their guns at each other. Doflamingo pointed out that Rocinante is too kind to actually pull the trigger
note : played with in that, while Roci is known for being violent himself, he still views his big brother as special and then the former killed the latter. And then Doflamingo went on to conquer the island of Dressrosa (something that Roci wanted to prevent) and caused a reign of sugarcoated terror there.
- As revealed in a flashback, Arlong and Jimbei were once part of the same crew. When Jimbei became a member of the Shichibukai, Arlong saw it as an insult to Fisher Tiger's memory, accepting sanction from the people who orchestrated their former captain's demise. Arlong intended to become the "rage of the Fishmen" against humanity and explicitly told Jimbei that the only way he could stop him was to kill him. Jimbei beats Arlong senseless but ultimately couldn't bring himself to kill him; in doing so, Jimbei was indirectly responsible for, among other things, Arlong enslaving Nami's hometown and making her childhood a living hell. Jimbei is rightfully horrified when he discovers this.
- Princess Shirahoshi shocks everyone by revealing ||she has known for
*years* that Hody Jones masterminded her mother's assassination, but refrained from exposing him out of respect for her mother's pacifistic ideals. Unfortunately, Hody is a sociopathic Knight Templar racist and goes on to wreak a *horrific* amount of damage to the kingdom, nearly destroying it altogether. He even laughs in her face at her reveal, pointing out that she could have prevented everything he's done, but didn't.||
-
*Rurouni Kenshin* and *Grenadier*. The main character subscribes to a Thou Shalt Not Kill mentality backed up by impressive combat skills, and the Big Bad(s) sends outrageously powerful enemies that have absolutely no problem in killing anybody that gets in the way of their fight with the main character, and actually do so in order to unlock the full combat capability of the main character via Unstoppable Rage, while gloating that the pacifism and using non-lethal attacks (which require more finesse than simply slashing/shooting someone dead) has "made them weak".
- In
*Trigun*, Vash the Stampede will *not* kill his enemies... nor hurt them in any major way... and the show takes great pains to show that it's a noble calling, but possibly misguided considering the Crapsack World circumstances (Vash's body is a mass of scars, the sixty billion double dollar bounty (until it's removed) means that anybody with a gun and a desperate need of money (which is practically the whole planet) is out to get him, he's constantly arguing with his companions (or at least Wolfwood) about the usefulness/futility of his Thou Shalt Not Kill code, the Quirky Miniboss Squad and the Big Bad are out to make Vash suffer by any means possible, which usually involves killing everything that moves and going the extra mile with anybody that Vash so much as gave the time of the day to, increasing in cruelty/kill count up to Apocalypse How levels as the series goes on...)
- Depending on the Author, this is one of
*Batman*'s biggest problems, *especially* because his refusal to kill is one of the biggest reasons that Joker Immunity exists, and The Joker *loves* to commit atrocities for the sake of rubbing this in Batman's face where he points this out, and other characters will eventually commit some time to an Author Filibuster speech about this.
- In the
*Inhumans vs. X-Men* event, Storm doesn't destroy the Terrigen Clouds or let anyone else do so because the Cloud is so vital to Inhuman culture note : *not* life that destroying it could trigger war between their species. In the meantime, the Clouds continue to drift around Earth, gassing every mutant in their paths to death, and even after *months* of research, neither side has found a cure for the afflicted. Eventually, a splinter faction of X-Men get so sick of watching fellow mutants die that they disobey Storm's orders and destroy one of the clouds. So war breaks out anyway: all Storm's diplomacy "accomplished" was to enable the meaningless slaughter of hundreds of mutants and significantly weaken her side. To add additional insult to injury, in one following issue of *Deadpool and the Mercs for Money*, Deadpool travels to an Alternate Universe in which a mutant managed (at the cost of her life) to convert the Terigen Clouds back into Terigen crystals, with the Terigen in perfect condition and ready to be used by the Inhumans the way they have done for thousands of years with no muss and no fuss and hopefully no more M-Pox. So it looks like Just Eat Gilligan has been accomplished, right? Nope. The Inhumans got so outraged over this that they declared war on mutantkind *anyway*.
-
*New Gods*: Highfather of New Genesis has become so averted to violence that he is generally unwilling to do anything about Darkseid or evil in the universe in general unless New Genesis itself is directly threatened. This has backfired on him repeatedly. He does little to protect the universe from Darkseid terrorizing it and has been blind to threats besides Darkseid. This has allowed Darkseid to amass enough power or put plans in place that allow him to destroy New Genesis with ease whenever he wants.
-
*Saga*: Marko declares himself a pacifist in the opening issues of the series, though he backslides a few times. He and other protagonists occasionally argue about whether pacifism really is the best solution, pointing out how it has come back to bite them. It backfires particularly badly at the end of the first arc, in which ||The Will finally kills him, just after Marko showed him mercy||.
-
*Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW)*: Sonic is willing to let an amnesiac Eggman be free to do some good, and even reactivates Metal Sonic to offer a truce and let him go free. Both bite him in the ass when Eggman regains his memory thanks to Metal's return and goes back to his old tricks, leading directly to the Metal Virus outbreak. Both Shadow *and* Espio give Sonic a What the Hell, Hero? at different points, holding him responsible for the disaster, and come issue 23, Sonic outright kicks himself over it, bitterly remarking that he put his faith in the idea that Eggman had a tiny bit of good in his heart, and now the entire world is paying the price.
-
*Wonder Woman (1987)*: Artemis calls Diana out on this during "The Contest," saying she will regret her refusal to kill or use any more force than the bare necessity. Later Artemis comes to decide Diana's way is better outside of war. Of course they're Amazons so interdimensional monsters and gods are fair game regardless.
-
*A Frozen Flower*: Oprah consistently laments about how she should kill Orchid, as she's a lost cause, but she can't bring herself to do it because she's too kindhearted to kill anyone and she has Undying Loyalty for Odd Squad. Unfortunately for her, Orchid is very defiant and causes problems for not just her, but everyone around her as well, made even more so by the fact that Oprah is in denial of her working on using her powers appropriately and refuses to train her anymore. Never mind the fact that Orchid is a Person of Mass Destruction whose fate in life is to destroy the world if she is not killed first.
- This trope applies to Adrien Agreste in many
*Miraculous Ladybug* salt fics following the events of Chameleon, where he asks Marinette not to expose Lilas Blatant Lies of glamour and grandiose to their clueless classmates to avoid her getting akumatized. There are many different interpretations of his advice from fanfic writers. Some bitter fans use this ill-fated advice to write him off as a Dirty Coward who blatantly ignores the harm Lilas lies cause, even when he sees Marinette being bullied and ostracized by the class, and often have ended their stories with him being ostracized himself, stripped of his Miraculous, put back in homeschooling to be all alone, and/or rejected by Ladybug and all his other love interests except Lila. Other writers are kinder to Adrien, remembering other details in the episode and/or series, like how Adrien is emotionally abused by his father and how Marinette conveniently left out Lilas bullying threats to her when she found out Adrien knew of her lies as well. They write him finding out just how bad Lila is, perhaps through a balcony visit to Marinette as Chat Noir, where she gives him the full story she kept from Adrien. After that, Adrien has a My God, What Have I Done? moment and works harder to redeem himself, working to take down Lila, or at least trying his best to.
-
*A Northern Dragoness*: Baelor's particular interpretation of the Faith of the Seven has led him to refuse to appoint a Master Of Laws (despite the fact that the Father's domain includes justice), refuse to wage war for any reason, no matter how justified (despite the Warrior emphasizing strength in battle and protecting the innocent), and to apologize to Dorne and bribe them to make peace after they broke hospitality and killed his brother and several of his bannermen. This has undermined the already fragile Tagareyn authority and is threatening to plunge the realm back into civil war.
- Invoked in the
*One Piece* fanfic, *This Bites!*. Having seen how badly this went for Fishman Island in "canon", protagonist Jeremiah Cross uses his knowledge of how things *would* have been to coax Shirahoshi's pet shark to back up his revelation of Hody Jones' true role in the death of Queen Otohime. He even lampshades this trope, noting that whilst Otohime and Shirahoshi's goals were noble, their way of pursuing those goals was ridiculously *stupid*.
- Discussed in
*With This Ring* in relation to The Joker, whom Paul believes should have "fallen down some stairs" in custody years ago; he habitually escapes from prison and goes on another killing spree, and Paul believes that there comes a point where continuing to let him live means that Batman is responsible for the deaths. In the Renegade timeline, although Paul is still bound by Justice League rules of engagement and thus isn't allowed to kill him, he crushes the Joker's arms to stop it from happening again.
- In
*Batman: The Dark Knight Returns*, the mayor of Gotham insists on using pacifism and diplomacy in dealing with the Mutant Gang, to the point he tries to sit down with their leader and talk out a peaceful resolution. Courageous, but foolish: the Mutant Leader tears him apart with hands and teeth in mere seconds just for the hell of it. Batman then ends up disbanding the gang and dethroning its leader by beating the complete man-Jesus out of him in a mud-field.
- In the Mirror Universe of
*Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths*, the Justice League's Evil Doppelgänger the Crime Syndicate unofficially ran the world through bribes and intimidation and the public have been reduced to Apathetic Citizens who believe that if they just keep their heads down they'll be left alone, with the U.S. government using the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction to keep them in check. After Mirror Lex Luthor and Superman defeat Ultraman, President Slade Wilson has him released from prison, arguing that if the League won't kill them then it's pointless since nobody would be left alive to testify against them and the League obviously couldn't abandon their own world to protect them forever. Ultraman almost immediately flies to the White House, bitch-slaps President Wilson so hard he spits blood, and threatens to kill his daughter.
-
*The Lion King (1994)*: Simba decides not to execute Scar, because "I'm not like you," and banishes him instead. Scar uses it as an opportunity to ambush him and nearly kill him. Thankfully, it doesn't work.
- In
*The Cobbler*, the hero impersonates a mobster boss and saves another criminal from being killed. His kindness is not being repaid as later the mobster turns out to be an Ungrateful Bastard who kidnaps the hero (disguised as the mobster boss) in order to off him and pities him for his poor choice.
-
*Kingdom of Heaven*: Balian refuses to betray and kill his prospective liege, the warmongering Guy de Lusignan because of chivalric Honour Before Reason. Had he done so, he'd be free to marry his Love Interest, Guy's wife Sibylla and with her, they might've negotiated a peaceful settlement with the Saracens. Instead, Guy seizes power and declares war, leading to many more deaths at the disastrous Battle of Hattin and the following Siege of Jerusalem.
- In
*The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers*, King Théoden's first impulse upon being freed from Saruman's magical influence is to kill Gríma Wormtongue, the treacherous adviser responsible for Saruman's influence. Aragorn stays his hand, saying "Enough blood has been spilled on his account." But Wormtongue rejects the offer of absolution for his crimes and flees to Saruman. There, Wormtongue provides intelligence to Saruman (the path that the people of Rohan will take to reach Helm's Deep, and the weakest point of the walls at Helm's Deep), enabling Saruman's army to kill many more than they otherwise would have.
-
*Mars Attacks!*. The U.S. tries twice to make peaceful contact with the Martians. The first time, the Martian ambassador and his soldiers wipe out the U.S. Army forces at the meeting site. The second time the Martian ambassador asks to address Congress. While he's doing so he and his soldiers destroy everyone there. Later on, the French government tries the diplomatic approach: not surprisingly, it ends in a bloodbath.
- In
*Star Wars*, a thousand years before the events of the prequel trilogy The Republic underwent the Ruusan Reformation, in which they dissolved their military after seemingly destroying the Sith and basically forced the Jedi to dissolve theirs as well. As a result, they came to rely more heavily on The Order and local Planetary Security Forces (which were unfit for expeditionary warfare) for keeping peace in the galaxy. Because of their naivete, they're caught with their pants down when the Sith start the Clone Wars and Darth Sidious Running Both Sides allows him to completely topple the Republic.
-
*Animorphs*: Elfangor knocked out Alloran so that he wouldn't drain the Yeerk Pool into space. Knocking him out allowed Esplin to infest him.
- Similarly, when Cassie elects to sentence ||David|| to a filthy, maddening existence in a rat body instead of simply killing him, Ax notes grimly that "the Cassies of this world are infinitely more dangerous than the Rachels". This later comes back to threaten the team when ||David|| returns for revenge with the help of Crayak.
- In the
*Babylon 5* novel *Clark's Law*, the station security officers try and break up a fight between the Narns and the Tuchanq using stun guns. Unfortunately, the Tuchanq's brains are wired such that any interruption in consciousness causes them to lose all their long-term and short-term memory and revert to base survival instinct, essentially making them Ax-Crazy. Fixing this problem requires even more violence, and of course, one of the still-crazy ones gets loose and accidentally kills a human, which sets the real plot of the book in motion.
- The protagonists of
*The Daily Grind* are accustomed to killing strange dungeon Life, but reluctant to kill humans, so after they defeat ||Status Quo||, they let their prisoners go after destroying their base of operations. ||Several weeks later, the remnants of Status Quo have hired a group of mercenary assassins, and launch a devastating assault on the Order's headquarters, with many casualties.||
- In the Thomas Dixon novel
*Fall of a Nation*, a combined suffragette/pacifist movement not only keeps the United States out of World War I but also slashes its military. The war ends in a negotiated stalemate... and then the combined armies of Europe invade the United States! Mind you, this *is* the author of *The Clansman,* so Values Dissonance may apply.
-
*Harry Potter*: Harry refuses to allow Peter Pettigrew to be killed, resulting in ||the return of Lord Voldemort||. Downplayed because it is actually an act of Cruel Mercy and he expects Pettigrew to be put into Azkaban instead — plus, he needs him alive to prove ||his godfather is innocent of the crimes he is accused of||. Although Harry's mercy does get rewarded later, when Pettigrew ||remembers it and hesitates to attack Harry, giving Harry a crucial chance to escape|| — but that wouldn't have been needed if Peter were out of the picture to begin with.
-
*Honor Harrington:*
- The Conservative, Liberal, and Progressive parties of Manticore's Parliament. The first are opposed to anything that may threaten their precious privileges and ignored all signs that the People's Republic of Haven was gunning for Manticore. The second opposes any measure they believe may incite war with Haven. The latter think any military expenditure is wasted money that should have gone into something else. All three of them oppose the war with Haven from the beginning to the end, never mind that their country is pretty much fighting for its
*survival*. And pretty much all of their leaders hate Honor because she has proven them wrong again and again.
- Case in point: Liberal Reginald Houseman in
*The Honor of the Queen*. On the matter of the Grayson-Masada War - which has been going on for centuries, and where the latter is led by, and full of, ultra-fundamentalist He-Man Woman Hater jerkasses who would have no problem in nuking Grayson's cities to ruins - he thinks that putting an end to it should be as easy as getting both planetary governments together and cobble out trade agreements - pretty much Talking the Monster to Death in diplomatic form. And when he finds that Masada is going to attack and he is now the man in charge of the delegation, he attempts to order Honor to evacuate all Manticorans and leave Grayson to die. Is it any wonder that, when Honor lays a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech and an equally brutal punch, *no one* complains about it?
- An important theme in Robert Merle's novel
*The Island*, which is based on the story of the mutiny on the Bounty. British mutineers and Tahitians start a settlement on an island, but tensions quickly build up between them, because some of the British treat the Tahitians as inferior. The protagonist, Purcell doesn't allow his friends to kill the main troublemaker because of his pacifistic Christian beliefs. Eventually war breaks out, and all men on the island die, except for Purcell and a Tahitian. Purcell ends up blaming himself.
- In
*Island in the Sea of Time*, Pamela Lisketter and her followers aid William Walker's betrayal in the hopes that his plot will hobble the Republic of Nantucket so that it can't intervene in the Alban War. Unfortunately, their plan is incredibly stupid (amounting to kidnapping the Chief's wife and shooting Marian Alston, the de facto commander of the navy) and is executed incompetently (the bullet grazes Alston), and their getaway plan involved travelling down to Mexico and hoping that the locals are friendly. Not only do they fail to prevent the Republic from going to war, but they also manage to start a war between the Republic and the People of the Jaguar God. And on top of that, Lisketter and her followers all die, but not before spreading mumps throughout Mesoamerica. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, indeed.
- Harry Turtledove once wrote a short story ("The Last Article" so called because of a quote by Gandhi ("Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed")) about Gandhi attempting to use the same peaceful protest tactics that had won significant gains against the British on the invading forces of Nazi Germany. That ends in rather spectacular (and highly violent) failure, with Gandhi lamenting the fact (before his execution) that his tactics worked against the British because deep down only the most insanely virulently racist wouldn't feel bad about violating people's rights, while Nazis... well... what did you expect from people who believe in the employment of the Final Solution as a standard procedure?
note : Critics of this story have pointed out that Gandhi was a *lot* more wise than this in real life... although they are **also** ignoring the fact that Gandhi is on record saying that A: the Allies should have surrendered rather than fighting in WW2 in the first place, and B: the Jews should have either committed suicide, engaged in non-violent protest or just allowed themselves to be slaughtered rather than fighting back. And also that Hitler himself said that the best way to deal with Gandhi's protesting was to Just Shoot Him.
-
*The Lord of the Rings*: In the books (in contrast to the films), after the siege of ||Orthanc||, ||Saruman|| is permitted to go free. This allows him to make his way to ||the Shire|| and take it over. ||His *eventual* fate (murdered by Gríma) is still the same, though — he just causes a lot more damage first.||
-
*A Song of Ice and Fire*.
- Eddard Stark refused to arrest Queen Cersei and her illegitimate children because he didn't want them to get hurt. This decision is one of the main causes of the War of Five Kings (along with Eddard's own death).
- Daenerys in
*A Dance with Dragons* decides to build peace in Meereen by conciliating the Wise Maesters and the Yunkishmen so as to stave an oncoming war. But her efforts involve horrible compromises that amount to a near-reversal of Slave Liberation and the selling of slaves in front of her walls. By the end of the book, she states that her way is "Fire and Blood".
- In the second book of
*Tales of the Magic Land*, the heroes decide not to hunt down the traitor Ruf Bilan. In the next book, he very nearly causes a global war between the Emerald City and the Underground Kings.
- The lesser traitors are, too, all spared and given their positions and titles back. Guess what, in book four all of them turn their cloaks again.
- The same could arguably be said for the second book's Big Bad Urfin Jus, spared and released unharmed at the main heroine's insistence. But although he does come back with a fresh evil plan in the fourth book, in the fifth one he does a HeelFace Turn and his new invention saves the day.
- In the
*Babylon 5* episode "The Fall of Night", a representative of Earth's Ministry of Peace visits the station to finalize a non-aggression pact between Earth Alliance and the Centauri—right after the latter use illegal weapons of mass destruction (mass drivers) to bombard the Narn homeworld back to the stone age and show evidence of being on a dangerously aggressive footing in the galaxy. The minister even uses the phrase "peace in our time". Shortly thereafter, the Centauri begin conquests in the territories of many other races.
-
*Battlestar Galactica (1978)*. In the pilot episode, the Council of Twelve takes all of the Battlestars to a peace conference with the Cylons, leaving the Twelve Colonies completely undefended. Naturally the Cylons decide to use Aggressive Negotiations: they take the opportunity to ambush not only the Battlestars, destroying all but the *Galactica*, but almost entirely wiping out the colonies as well. In a later episode, it's stated that the colonies had planetary defenses, which were sabotaged by a confederate of Baltar's.
- In
*Breaking Bad*, this formed Mike's Start of Darkness. Back when he was a cop, there was one particular guy who he visited over and over on domestic violence calls. Eventually, he became so convinced that the guy was eventually going to murder his girlfriend that he kidnapped him to a deserted place to kill him. However, he backed out at the last minute, merely threatening the guy instead. Only a short time later, the guy did indeed beat his wife to death. He regretted his action ever since.
- In
*The Boys (2019)*, Naïve Newcomer Hughie ends up being promoted to The Leader after the Boys officially become government agents in Season 3. However, his distaste for violence leads to him and by extension the rest of the team being easily manipulated by the Mole in Charge and playing right into Vought's hands.
-
*Doctor Who*:
- If the Doctor had just killed the Daleks before they made off the planet Skaro when he had the chance he could have avoided the Time War and ||seemingly|| becoming The Last of His Kind.
- Had the Fifth Doctor aided the humans in defending themselves from the Silurians and Sea Devils in "Warriors of the Deep", he could have prevented all three sides being slaughtered. It's made clear he knew this was the only solution from the start, but put off making the decision in the hope he'd find another way, and didn't.
- The Tenth Doctor acknowledged this is a problem with him being a Technical Pacifist in "The End of Time". His attempts not to hurt anyone may not directly have
*him* going against his morals, but he "got clever" and has indirectly caused his friends and companions to fight pretty nasty battles for him or manipulated villains into killing themselves.
- Had the Doctor not toppled the regime of Harriet Jones as revenge for her blowing up alien invaders in "The Christmas Invasion", she would have been still been Prime Minister and the Master wouldn't have been able to rise to power as Prime Minister Harold Saxon and assassinate the U.S. president or cause worldwide devastation in The Year That Never Was. The
*Torchwood: Children of Earth* crisis would have also gone differently.
- In "The Woman Who Fell to Earth", the Thirteenth Doctor ||shows mercy to the villain, Tzim-Sha, by returning his recall device to teleport him back to his homeworld||. In "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos", this decision turns out to have been a mistake, as ||the Doctor accidentally corrupted the teleport, leading to "Tim Shaw" landing on the titular planet, where he could manipulate the naïve Ux, two
*very* powerful Reality Warpers, into doing his bidding.||
- The main characters of the first season of
*Jessica Jones (2015)* spend the entire first season trying to hunt down and capture Kilgrave — a mind-controlling rapist — in large part because he forced his most recent victim to murder her parents, and they want to bring him in and prove that she was mind-controlled. At one point they actually capture him, and keep him alive and imprisoned despite the urging of an ally that they just kill him. This ally feels strongly enough about it that he winds up going Axe-Crazy, and they have to take care of him before they can return their attention to Kilgrave, who, naturally, escapes and goes on a minor rampage. In the process, the girl they were trying to protect kills herself before they can make any progress in proving that she's not guilty. Which means by the time Jessica finally ||snaps his neck at the end of the season||, the only thing they did by sparing Kilgrave was to allow him to destroy even more lives. Plus, since Jessica had to ||kill him in public to save the crowd of people he was forcing to kill each other||, she gets arrested herself. ||Thankfully she's soon released when everything gets explained.||
- Parodied in the pilot of
*Jessie*. In the first scene we see with the kids, Emma and Luke are fighting, with Ravi pleading with them to stop note : which may be slightly reminiscent of Gandhi.
**Ravi:**
Luke, Emma, please! Violence is never the answer.
**Emma:** *[whacks Ravi with a pillow]* *[laughter]* **Ravi:**
To heck with the nonviolence! I am on you like stripes on a tiger!
*[attacks Emma]*
-
*Once Upon a Time* has a knack for this. In a show where the heroes prove they're the good guys by choosing not to kill their enemies, the villains manage to rub it in their faces and, as one villain said, "make them wish they *did* kill them when they had the chance". The heroes actually put one of the villains through a Secret Test of Character exploiting this trope. The failure resulted in them being unable to harm the main target or anyone related.
-
*Star Trek*
- In the original series episode "City on the Edge of Forever", McCoy accidentally gets sent back in time, and his actions cause the Federation to never have existed, so Kirk and Spock have to go back in time themselves to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. They discover that McCoy saved a social worker from being fatally hit by a car; this social worker turned out to be an extreme pacifist who would go on to lead a massive peace movement, and this movement's influence delayed the United States' entry into World War II, allowing Germany to develop the first atomic bomb and conquer the earth. As Spock points out, she ultimately had the right idea, but at exactly the wrong point in time.
- In the original series episode "The Galileo Seven", Spock tries to scare away the natives by firing a phaser barrage near but not directly at them. When they return and attack the shuttle, McCoy points out that the attempt to repel the creatures without harming them has only made them angry.
- In the Mirror Universe stories, started in the original series and continued in
*Deep Space Nine*, Kirk manages to convince Mirror-Spock to get the Terran Empire to eschew its warlike ways... and it promptly gets overthrown by the Klingons and Cardassians.
- In the
*Star Trek: The Next Generation* episode "The Survivors", the crew comes across a Douwd, a near Q-level race. He just wanted to live in peace with his human wife, so he retired to a small colony planet. A group of Husnock (another alien race) attacked but the Douwd are all pacifists so he didn't join the fight. The attacking Husnocks killed everyone else on the planet, including his wife, so in retaliation, he killed every member of the Husnock *everywhere in the universe*.
- In one episode of
*Supernatural*, the brothers find themselves trapped in a building with a small number of survivors and a huge number of demons trying to enter and kill them all. Ruby arrives and tells them about a spell that would save them all, but it requires a human sacrifice. Sam and Dean refuse to do it, insisting that they must find another way. However, while the two of them end up escaping just fine, after they leave, the demons return and all of the survivors, including the intended sacrifice, are killed. And they didn't die quickly...
- In
*The Whispers* they refuse to kill Drill because it will also kill a child. Drill ends up ||killing a woman, possesses and kills the president's daughter, makes a horde of zombie adults ready to do his bidding, and kidnaps thousands of children.||
- In
*Xena: Warrior Princess*, Gabrielle picks up the Idiot Ball more than a few times due to her commitment to not killing people.
- After her "innocence" is sacrificed by forcing her to stab a woman in self-defense (because apparently bashing in people's faces and throats doesn't count), she gives birth to a Fetus Terrible that grows to term in a matter of days, and then strangles the Knight Templar who was watching it within hours of being born. Gabrielle refuses to believe a baby could be evil and fakes out Xena to make her think it's dead.
- When Xena goes to assassinate a tyrant king, Gabrielle decides that this is somehow unacceptable. She goes to the king, warns him, gets Xena captured, imprisoned, and sentenced to death, all to find out that the king is a matricidal dictator.
-
*Starfire*, *Nexus* magazine #7 article "The Drolian Conquest". After Khanate of Orion warships attacked several Drolian ships, the Drolian "peaceful expansion" lobby prevented the Drolian government from expanding its space navy. Six months later the Khanate of Orion invaded in force and quickly conquered the Drolians. During the invasion, the "peaceful expansion" lobby was lynched by other Drolians.
-
*Warhammer 40,000*:
- Due to the Forever War nature of the setting, this is pretty much the status quo. Anytime a world is isolated enough from the current conflicts to be at peace just means it'll attract the attention of Ork and Eldar raiders (for the plunder), Chaos (for their souls), Necrons (for being alive), or the Tyranids (for the biomass), and unable to defend itself.
- In the backstory, the Emperor of Mankind could not bring himself to actually strike down Horus after the latter slew Sanguinius during the Heresy. Horus took advantage of his father's mercy and tore him apart. Even then, the Emperor refused to fight back. Actually witnessing Horus casually flay alive a soldier who tried to defend the Emperor — one that posed absolutely no threat to him — finally convinced the Emperor that Horus was beyond redemption and needed to be stopped. This rare moment of pacifism doomed the Emperor to waste away in the Golden Throne, helpless to do anything to prevent the gradual decay of the Imperium.
- Similarly in
*West Side Story's* inspiration, *Romeo and Juliet*, Mercutio is fatally stabbed when Romeo comes between him and Tybalt, trying to break up their fight because he wants to make peace with the Capulets because of his love for Juliet. Romeo's guilt over this directly or indirectly causes every single other death in the play.
- Tony suffers this in
*West Side Story*. He goes to the rumble to stop it from happening and tries to resist Bernardo's baiting, but it backfires horribly. The rumble, which was supposed to be a simple fistfight, turns into a knife battle between Bernardo and Riff. Tony ends up knifing Bernardo, who has stabbed Riff.
-
*Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood* shows that Ezio sparing Rodrigo Borgia (primarily due to to the fact that the real Alexander VI didn't die that year) at the end of *Assassin's Creed II* backfires horribly since the Borgia and the Templars are still in power and the game starts off with the other Borgias besieging his town and killing his uncle. As such, he not only vows to actually finish the job this time but the game is centered around pushing the Borgias out of power. This is actually a subversion to some extent, however, as Rodrigo actually wanted nothing more to do with the Assassins, but Cesare was much more aggressive.
-
*Batman: Arkham Origins* shows us that Bane caused Joker to fall down a skyscraper, only to be rescued by Batman. Just minutes later, he turns his own gun to his head and taunts Batman, only to be taken down and arrested. Had Batman allowed Joker to die in either of these moments, so many lives would have been spared, such as over 100 employees of Arkham Asylum and Jason Todd. On a more personal note, this moment caused the Joker (who until now had just been interested in causing mayhem and chaos *in general*) to develop an obsession with the man who saved his life after he'd done nothing but hurt people. All of the twisted, *personal* interest The Joker had for Batman came from this rescue.
- In
*Fallout 2*, the Brotherhood of Steel was well on its way to demilitarizing and becoming a simple research group when they got blindsided by the Enclave - technologically advanced remnants of the U.S government that were trying to kill *everything and everyone, everywhere,* nearly wiping them out and forcing them to take action or die. Ever since then, the Brotherhood has expanded its mandate to include aggressively destroying any advanced tech they think they can't control and in *Fallout 3* & *Fallout 4* they're not interested in taking prisoners.
-
*Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn*:
-
*Heroes of Might and Magic*: In the *Heroes Chronicles* addon missions, the barbarian warlord Tarnum is granted Complete Immortality by the Ancestors so he can atone for the horrible things he did in his life. In the eighth and final campaign, Tarnum is racing for the Sword of Frost to stop an end-of-the-world prophecy. As the final key in his redemption, he spares the life of Kilgor's wife Kija, proving that he will no longer commit murder to achieve his goals. Unfortunately, this allows Kija to reach the Sword of Frost first and leads to Kilgor and Gelu destroying the world.
- This is how Alan "Spam" Webster's mercenary career with A.I.M. ended in the
*Jagged Alliance* series. Coming from the UN peacekeeping forces background, his MO was to negotiate enemy surrender first and only shoot if that fails. One of such failures led to the death of fellow A.I.M. member Johnny "Snake" Edwards, leading to Spam's dishonorable discharge.
-
*Mega Man 7*. Perhaps justified in that he's still a Three Laws-Compliant robot, but still, in the end of the game, when Mega Man finally has Wily at his mercy, he points his Mega Buster at him and charges it, but he hesitates long enough for Bass to take Wily out of his castle. And of course, it leads to Wily being the Big Bad for the games after it.
- In
*Miitopia*, heroes with a Kind personality will sometimes attempt to persuade an enemy to leave the fight peacefully. Sometimes, this backfires by getting the hero attacked—since his or her guard is down, that strengthens the attack. It also results in annoyance from one of the other team members, and if it happens too often, it will cause them to dislike each other.
- In
*Pathfinder: Kingmaker*, some enemies, if you take the pacifist route and spare them, can be encountered later. Several of them have reformed, though some of them have not. In one particular instance, ||Ekun can be convinced to spare the children of a troll who killed his wife and family. If you do, the trolls will show up later, having joined Irovetti's army and killed more people in the process. Ekun will sourly note that he was right all along as you put them down.||
- In
*Spider-Man: Miles Morales*, Miles forcibly invokes Thou Shalt Not Kill and stops his Evil Former Friend the Tinkerer from killing Rhino (who by all accounts deserved it). Not only does this ruin their chance at gathering evidence against the Greater-Scope Villain Roxxon, but it worsens the Poor Communication Kills between them even further, causing her to hand Miles a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown before he can explain that her Evil Plan would destroy the city and forcing them into a final confrontation ||that ultimately gets her killed and forces Miles to live with the guilt of being unable to save her||.
- In
*Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic*, Cool Old Guy Jolee Bindo was a rebellious Jedi Padawan who in his youth married a Force-sensitive woman and trained her to be a Jedi himself against the Council's wishes. In what he regards as My Greatest Failure, she got caught up in Exar Kun's Sith propaganda and tried to kill Jolee for refusing to convert with her. Jolee couldn't bring himself to kill the woman he loved and let her go, upon which she killed many other Jedi in the war before being slain herself. The Council put Jolee on trial but decided that he had learned his lesson and even promoted him to Knight, but he couldn't forgive himself and left The Order.
- In
*Undertale*'s Genocide Route, Papyrus will attempt to get the Villain Protagonist to change using this trope, saying that they can become a better person if they just try. A battle with Papyrus starts in which Papyrus won't even attack the protagonist, allowing him to be spared instantly. If the player attacks, it's a One-Hit KO. Though in a Subversion of this trope, a lot of players attempting Genocide runs report stopping the genocide when made to mercilessly kill such a harmless, innocent Nice Guy like Papyrus. In a way, Papyrus was more effective at stopping the player's rampage than Undyne or ||Sans the skeleton||.
- In the
*World of Warcraft* tie-in novel Prince Anduin ends up saving Warchief Garrosh from a poisoning attempt while he's imprisoned awaiting trial. Anduin believes that he's convincing Garrosh to change, and according to the writers, he would have succeeded... if it wasn't for a rogue time-travelling dragon offering Garrosh a second chance at world domination and more importantly not having to face up to his crimes.
- There's a piece of Internet humor floating around where a Straw Feminist and a Straw Misogynist are partnered up for a school project and tasked with taking turns writing segments for a tandem story. The girl is focused on writing a bad, Purple Prose-laden Chick Flick, the boy on a cheesy, juvenile sci-fi action movie, and each segment of their "story" spitefully derails the previous one's plot. When the girl abruptly ends the boy's Alien Invasion plot with peace talks (and kills off his overly-macho Marty Stu in an undignified way), the boy retaliates by writing in a
*second* Alien Invasion that the now-demilitarized Earth is powerless to resist, ending the "story" as both sides degenerate into complaining and name-calling.
-
*Adventure Time*
- In the episode "His Hero", the great hero Billy inspires Finn and Jake to practice non-violence at every cost... and of course, everything goes wrong.
- In a later episode, "Crystals Have Power", Jake gets a flashback to when he was a kid, and his dad told him that he would hurt everybody if he got out of control. Jake vows to practice non-violence, which gets problematic when Finn gets kidnapped.
- In
*Avatar: The Last Airbender*, it was eventually shown that the good Avatar Roku and world-conquering Fire Lord Sozin had been best friends. Roku's spirit tells Aang that he was too easy on his friend when he discovered his ambitions and that his aversion to violence in the matter allowed for 100 years of war to reign. Made even worse because Roku had previously smashed into Sozin's castle and threatened to kill him if he continued his imperialist ambitions, but couldn't go through with it when Sozin did it anyway.
- This pops up, surprisingly enough, a couple of times in
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*:
- In
*One Bad Apple* the Cutie Mark Crusaders attempt this to deal with the bully Babs Seed, but she's just so hell-bent on spending every waking moment bullying them that it doesn't work. They decide Violence Really Is the Answer and that they're going to bait her into stealing a rigged parade float that will crash in the mud, and eventually learn they should have just gone to an adult for help instead.
- At the end of
*To Where And Back Again* Starlight attempts the same pacifist Easily Forgiven treatment she got from Twilight Sparkle on Queen Chrysalis. It's soundly rebuked and Chrysalis escapes, swearing to come back later for revenge (which she does).
- In
*To Change A Changeling*, Thorax as the new king of the changelings tries to invert their formerly antagonistic ways and live in peace but ends up taking it to Extreme Doormat levels. Under normal circumstances, it likely would have worked, but it's not a very hot plan when there's a gigantic apex predator actively hunting you. This along with Starlight's blundering would have led to the thing destroying their hive have had his brother Pharynx, the only changeling who preferred their old ways, been keen on using force instead and inadvertently inspires the entire hive to rise up and attack. In the end, they meet somewhere in the middle, with Pharynx learning to lighten up a little while everyone else learns they have to stand up and fight sometimes.
- This popped up in three "Treehouse of Horror" episodes of
*The Simpsons*.
- In
*Star Wars: The Clone Wars*, with the background of Mandalore's bloody past, Duke Adonai Kryze ushered Mandalore in an age of the New Mandalorians, who follow Actual Pacifist ideology (with exceptions such as self-defense). After his death in the recent civil war that took place over ten years before the present, his eldest daughter Duchess Satine continues his ideals by having Mandalore lead the neutral side of the Clone Wars, albeit struggles to do so with pressures from the war as well as internal pressures from nationalist-extremists who are upset over their loss of culture, which causes Mandalore to be stepped on by the Republic, the Separatists, and Death Watch on numerous occasions. This conflict eventually leads to another civil war that leaves Mandalore vulnerable, which ultimately ends with the planet being occupied by the Republic and later made into a colony for several decades after the Republic transitioned into the Galactic Empire. As some viewers have pointed out, this might've been less of a problem if Satine had chosen to let Mandalorian principles continue in some way while establishing other rules that could keep the troublemakers in check, instead of doing things like exiling anyone who wants to preserve the warrior culture.
- There's also the two part episode, "Defenders of Peace", which revolves around a society of Alien Lemurs who are nearly exterminated when the Separatists decide to test a new weapon on them and the refusal of their village elder to fight back even in self-defense because of his staunch pacifism.
- In early episodes of
*Time Squad* Otto tries to convince Tuddrussel throughout various missions that he'd have better luck getting historical figures to go back on the right path if he'd just show some patience, and use his words instead of violent beatings. While this worked some of the time, it backfired in most instances because some of the historical figures in question were just too stupid or stubborn for anything else but a punch to the face. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacifismBackfire |
Pacing Problems - TV Tropes
*"You keep sniping and bickering with each other and *
**interrupting** me, and what happens? An expository interlude that shouldn't have taken **more** than two pages is now going to have to be continued into the next issue! Don't you worry at **all** about losing readers who might **quit** from lack of swift story progression?"
—
**The Pathetic Fallacy**
,
*Jack of Fables*
Pacing is critical to a good story. The writers' decisions not only on what happens, but
*when* it happens and how quickly events transpire can determine whether your reader or viewer is going to make it to the end of the tale or give up in frustration.
An even pace throughout the whole story is rarely effective, unless you're writing a Slice of Life, where the steadiness and ambling nature of the pacing is an asset. In most other genres, though, that same steadiness kills any dramatic tension, so the writer will make decisions on when they speed up the action to further the plot, and when they slow down to give their audience a breather.
It can be tricky to get those choices right, however. Often, the audience will be faced with a glut of action (where they can't easily keep track of what's happening) or long stretches of time where it seems as though
*nothing's* happening. The results are Pacing Problems, where the general feeling is that more sentences here and fewer there could have improved the whole book.
However, Pacing Problems are generally one of the more forgivable issues a story can have. Very few of them will render a work automatically unwatchable or unreadable, unless the writer has
*really* screwed up their timing.
Exposition is closely tied to pacing. The audience needs to know what's going on and why, but explaining all this can make them bored or confused. Show, Don't Tell might help get more exposition across while avoiding pacing problems, but if
*everything* is shown through Flash Backs, that can be just as tiresome as hearing it all from Mr. Exposition.
Most people recommend at least getting through the beginning of a story before you give up on it, since perhaps the writer themselves was just getting into the swing of things...but a clumsy ending is much harder to stomach. Thus, Pacing Problems are split up into the points they occur in the timeline:
<!—index—>
**Beginning:**
- Intro Dump: Altogether too much information thrown at the reader at once in a big, ugly blob.
- Lost in Medias Res: The writer just can't wait to get started, so he throws the reader in at the deep end and expects them to figure things out on the way.
- Prolonged Prologue: When it takes too long just to get up to the first act.
- Slow-Paced Beginning: The start of the book, or just the prologue, is so slow and dense that the audience wonders if the story's started yet.
**Middle**:
- Arc Fatigue: When there's just that one subplot, arc, or story that just.
*won't*. , while all you want to do is get it over with and get back to the real plot. Often a case involving a Romantic Plot Tumor (characters would rather develop a romantic subplot than help save the world or stop the villain).
**end**
- Exponential Plot Delay: When the real plot moves briskly at the beginning before slowing to a crawl.
- Filler: When whole chapters/episodes contribute absolutely nothing to the main plot and are only there to make up the word count/screen time. Happens most often in television series rather than films or books, particularly adaptations of ongoing print media series that must be produced at a slower rate than their television counterpart.
- Padding: This is filler on a smaller level, and usually happens to books, songs, films, and individual episodes.
- Plot Detour: When the characters, against all logic, ignore the main plot to pursue something unimportant.
- Trapped by Mountain Lions: A subplot that defies all coherency of the main plot takes center focus, with most events having no correlation to the story.
**Ending:**
<!—/index—>
- Cosmic Deadline: When the reader is hit with a glut of action (usually with a helping of Deus ex Machina) right at the end of the tale. Any dangling plot threads are solved here or totally forgotten about.
- Ending Fatigue: Something of an effect more than a cause of Pacing Problems, this is when the reader loses interest before the end out of boredom, plot incoherence, or just plain disinterest, and outright stops reading. The story should end when it's over. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacingProblems |
Packaged as Other Medium - TV Tropes
*"Welcome to *
Dictionarium
*, the video game that's pretending to be a book!"*
A physical release or copy of something is designed to look like it's from another medium; for instance, a DVD case that looks like a comic book cover. Comic book covers and movie posters are especially popular subjects for this trope.
Sometimes it's a specific homage to something or other, but it's this trope if the image has the trappings of a typical cover for that other medium, such as credits at the bottom of a 'movie poster' cover for a game.
## Examples:
- The Japan-only 2009 reprint of
*Azumanga Daioh* is designed to resemble a set of school textbooks: the covers feature characters on a minimalist background with nothing else beyond the title and author's name, while the interiors feature a similarly standardized design style throughout.
- The English version of the manga
*[STONe]* has covers that present it as a movie poster, "presented in Mangascope", with the writer/artist getting a production credit and the characters listed as actors at the bottom.
- Funimation has a couple examples:
- Their release of
*Armitage III* has a sci-fi pulp inspired case, including blurbs for stories inside.
- Funimation's Blu-ray release of
*Pop Team Epic* indulges in the show's Kaufmanesque style of comedy with the disc art: the first disc is perfectly fine, but the second is designed to look like a homemade BD-R, complete with faux handwritten sharpie on the label. Time will tell if this results in another *Borat* situation among buyers.
- The covers of collected volumes of
*Btooom!* are based on Xbox 360 game cases.
- ADV's English release of the
*Kekko Kamen* OVAs has a cover based on your typical EC Comics *Vault of Horror* cover.
-
*My Hero Academia* occasionally makes its chapter title pages look like the cover to an American comic book.
- The original English DVDs of the
*Comic Party* anime has disc cases that look like manga, complete with the "You're reading the wrong way!" warnings.
- Various home media releases of
*Cowboy Bebop* style the front covers after '50s and '60s jazz albums, with the Blu-ray release further designing the disc labels to resemble vinyl records, tying in with the show's nature as a homage to the 1970s.
- The cover for Cheech & Chong's
*Big Bambú* is designed after the packaging for its namesake, a real-life brand of rolling papers. Accordingly, the original LP release comes packaged with a feely in the form of a 12" x 24" sheet of rolling paper, which gets incorporated into a skit on the album about encountering the biggest joint known to man.
-
*The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief*: The initial pressings were packaged with a real tie and handkerchief, implying the record was merely a free extra.
-
*Gen13* vol. #1 shipped with 13 different covers; of these, five fit this trope. Two were based on magazine covers (one *Rolling Stone*, the other *Heavy Metal*), one on a movie poster (that of *Pulp Fiction*, complete with a real live model), one on an ad for a TV show (namely *The Brady Bunch*), and the last one on a Victoria's Secret catalogue. Whew!
- Every issue of
*The Intimates* (except #6 and #12) has a cover made to look like that of a magazine for teen superheroes, with headlines either to that effect, or about characters or events in the comic.
- The short-lived
*Thunderbolts* revamp that ran from #76 to #81 featured covers styled after men's magazines like *Stuff*, *FHM*, and *Maxim*. For instance◊.
- The cover of
*X-Men Legacy* #10 looks like a pharmaceutical print ad or pamphlet promoting a mutant cure, as you can see◊.
- The covers of
*Fearless Defenders #2◊*, *Batman: Gotham Adventures #3◊*, and *Angel & Faith* #26◊ are all designed after action figure cards. The *Fearless Defenders* cover is the most dedicated to the illusion, as artist Mark Brooks wanted to make it look as real as possible.
- The cover of
*The Just #1* resembles the kind of celebrity-interest magazine sold at supermarket counters.
- Some variant covers for the IDW Publishing miniseries
*Revolution (2016)* are modeled after action figure cards, with two or three of the characters on it (using their toys if possible- all the characters are based on toys from Hasbro). IDW's also done this with *G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero*, which continues from the Marvel series and is an Alternate Continuity from the Hasbro Comic Universe.
- After Marvel regained the
*Star Wars* comic license, most of their output has received an action figure variant cover, making them appear to be toy packaging reminiscent of the original Kenner line.
- Marvel had many variants inspired by hip-hop album covers.
- The packaging for
*Borat* made it look like a cheap, foreign bootleg rather than a polished official DVD release. The disc itself looks like a blank disc that was recorded over, with the movie's title written on it in marker and the logotype & slogan parodying those of Memorex (i.e. "is live? No. Demorez," in place of "is it live or is it Memorex?"). The DVD menus also look like they have been whipped up in five minutes with no budget. It serves to highlight the film's Mockumentary status. This infamously resulted in a swath of confusion among consumers who weren't in on the joke, leading to retailers receiving a number of complains from buyers who thought they had purchased an actual bootleg.
- Like
*Borat*, *The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)* also styled its DVD release after a bootleg (to fit Lisbeth Salander's hacker background), but with official Sony iconography; this also led to confusion and complaints among buyers who mistakenly felt as if they were duped into buying a phony copy of the movie.
- The poster for
*Pulp Fiction*, and by extension the cover for its DVD and VHS releases, is designed to look like a worn pulp fiction book (including the 10¢ price).
- From The Criterion Collection:
- The essays and reading material for
*Ace in the Hole (1951)*, a film about news reporting, are designed to look like a newspaper.
- The disc case of
*The Celebration* made it look like it came straight out of a home CD burner, being nothing more than a blank transparent case with a printed plain-text sticky label on it - fitting for the first film of the minimalistic Dogme '95 movement.
- The essays and reading material for
*Dr. Strangelove* are packaged in a miniature envelope designed to look like the top secret documents seen in the film.
-
*Ghost World*'s disc art is made to look like the label on an old jazz vinyl record like the ones Steve Buscemi's character collects (notably with the "genre" written as "Angst, Teen").
- The disc art for
*The Grand Budapest Hotel* is designed to look like a drink coaster from the titular hotel.
- Fittingly for a movie focusing on The Beatles,
*I Wanna Hold Your Hand*'s disc is designed to look like a Capitol Records 7" record from the 1960s note : Artistic License History is involved here, as the song the film is named after was never released as a single in the United States until 1989, and as a mini CD to boot; the original 7" release was on Parlophone Records, which used a markedly different label design.
- The packaging for
*The Princess Bride* is designed to look like a hardcover storybook.
-
*Repo Man*'s disc art is designed to look like the generic labels used on background products in the film: a blue dotted line on white with a label that says "DISC".
- Similar to
*Ace in the Hole* above, *True Stories*'s reading material is printed on cheap pulp newspaper resembling the tabloids that served as inspiration for the film's setting, with a few of the actual tabloid stories from director David Byrne's collection mixed in.
- The reading material for
*Uncut Gems* is an in-universe catalogue for Howard Ratner's jewelry store, including photos of the jewelry Howard sells, photos of Adam Sandler in-character as Howard with his clientele and his family, an order form, and the requisite (out-of-universe) essays of a Criterion release.
- The disc case for the DVD and Blu-Ray of
*Videodrome* is designed to look like (and be the exact same size as) a Betamax tape, as a Mythology Gag.
-
*The Mitchells vs. the Machines* plays with this, as the film's Blu-ray menu is designed to look like a homemade version of The Criterion Collection's menus. The disc looks like the art was doodled on with a Sharpie by Katie Mitchell herself, and even comes with an essay written in character by her, who basically notes that "if Criterion won't release this, then I'll do it myself!"
- The DVD releases for
*The Lord of the Rings* Extended Editions were designed to look like aged books. The Middle-Earth Limited Collector's Edition included *The Hobbit* trilogy, which had the discs of each film in literal books that were grouped in a wooden bookshelf.
- The poster for
*Wave Twisters* is based on Atari 2600 game packaging, specifically *Pitfall!*'s.
- Frequently used by author Grady Hendrix:
-
*Horrorstör* is about a haunted Ikea knockoff built on the site of a horrific prison, and is thus packaged as a chichi furniture catalog.
-
*My Best Friend's Exorcism* looks like a yearbook in the hardcover edition (complete with signatures and messages on the inside covers) and like a VHS tape as a paperback and audiobook.
- In
*We Sold Our Souls*, the protagonist is a heavy metal guitarist, so it's packaged to look like a parody of *Rolling Stone* magazine, complete with headlines that hint at the plot of the book.
- Several editions of
*The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay* have cover art reminiscent of a battered old comic book, with the back cover resembling the ads.
- The original Swedish covers of the
*Millennium Series* are styled like a crime magazine.
- The limited edition DVD release of
*Stranger Things* is packaged like an old 80s VHS release, right down to the cover being artificially aged to look like vintage cardboard.
- Album and single covers that look like advertisement pages:
- Album and single covers that look like art objects, paintings that mimic a particular famous style, galleries, etc.:
- Albums covers that look like book covers:
- Some of Blackmore's Night's albums are made to look like books instead of CD cases.
- Joy Electric's
*The White Songbook*. Externally, it looks like a standard CD jewel case, but the liner notes were designed like an actual book—complete with a book-style page of copyright and printing information, and a table of contents.
- Elvis Costello and The Roots' collaborative album
*Wise Up Ghost* has cover art modeled after the cover of *Howl & Other Poems* by Allen Ginsberg, the fourth book in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series. And the Special Edition of *Wise Up Ghost* actually is a small paperback book, with the CD tucked into the back cover.
- Pearl Jam's
*Vitalogy* is styled after an old medical textbook.
- Radiohead's
*Amnesiac* is made to look like a forgotten old library book. The front and back covers are of the front and back of an actual book; the back cover and the back of the CD booklet both feature mock-checkout cards on them (complete with the back of the booklet having a "spine damaged" notice); the liner notes are made to look like pages of a book that have been torn up, scribbled on, and yellowed out; the second page is made to look like the title page to 18th-century writer and politician Edward Gibbon's *The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II*; and the last page features instructions for stripping the book. This is taken to an even greater extent in the special edition, which actually *is* the book pictured on the cover, complete with more faithful replications of library checkout cards.
- Billy Joel's
*The Nylon Curtain* looks like it could be the dust jacket for a circa 1982 "important" Lit Fic novel.
- While not exactly inspired by traditional books, Roxy Music made it a tradition to have every one of their album covers look like a fashion magazine, hence the bold logotypes and scantily-clad women. The practice was successfully kept up from their first album all the way up to their last, and continued to inform the direction of frontman Bryan Ferry's solo album covers as well.
- Album and single covers that look like they came from a comic book:
- Album and single covers that look like postcards:
- Album and single covers made to look as if they were a different musical genre or different musical artist:
-
*Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band* by The Beatles has a cover that makes them look like some kind of fanfare band.
-
*Meet the Residents* by The Residents is an exact replica of The Beatles' *Meet The Beatles* only with all kinds of doodles scribbled over it.
- The clean version of the cover of
*Beggars Banquet* by The Rolling Stones makes the album appear as a classy record, which it isn't.
-
*Omaha!* by Stan Freberg is done in the style of a Broadway musical album, but is in fact a parody of it.
-
*Another Monty Python Record* looks like it was originally a Classical Music album, with the title and images crossed out.
-
*The Miracle Of Sound And Motion* by Noise Rock band Steel Pole Bathtub is designed to look like a "demonstration record" from the 1960s - in other words, a record designed to demonstrate the capabilities of a high fidelity record player. They actually licensed an image that was originally used for one such record, titled *The Sound Of Sounds*.
- The layout of Elio e le Storie Tese's orchestral covers album
*Gattini* was identical to the covers of the Deutsche Grammophon records. It was hastily changed, probably in fear of a lawsuit.
-
*Cunning Stunts* by Noise Rock group Cows is designed to look like a jazz record, using design elements favored by jazz label Blue Note Records: Namely a blue-tinted photo of the lead musician, all-caps text, and a list of individual musicians on the front — the font choices and placement of the text specifically seem to be a nod to Eric Dolphy's *Out To Lunch!*. The fact that Shannon Selberg is depicted playing a trumpet adds to the jazz record concept, but actually is accurate to the album's contents: Selberg is primarily a vocalist, but also plays discordant trumpet on some songs.
-
*Sound Affects* by The Jam is made to look like one of the many records of sound effects released by the BBC: Such records tended to have an identical collage of stock photos for cover art, with only different colors and a volume number under the title to distinguish them. The Jam used different stock photos, but formatted them in a very similar way, rendered "JAM" in the BBC font, and put the text "No. 80" after the title, probably referencing the fact that it was released in 1980.
-
*20 Jazz Funk Greats* by Throbbing Gristle is made to resemble an easy-listening compilation, featuring an unassuming photo of the band in a green field (actually Beachy Head, a notorious suicide spot). According to Cosey Fanni Tutti, the idea was to make the album look like something from a bargain bin, so that unassuming buyers would grab a copy and get "decimated" by the harsh industrial material within. The compilation *Greatest Hits* takes on a similar concept, using retro 60s-style fonts and a tasteful pin-up style photo of Cosey in a bikini.
- Album and single covers that look like newspaper articles
- Album and single covers that look like 7" singles or, in the case of a CD, look like an LP:
- Mini LP CDs are CD reissues that exactly replicate the original pressboard LP packaging, shrunken down to CD size. A lot of them are made for the Japanese market, though they have risen to prominence in the west in recent years as a cheaper alternative to jewel cases and digipacks. Other releases will mimic the layout of an LP from the '60s or '70s for a Retraux effect but with a standard jewel case and booklet.
- Starflyer 59's album
*Gold* (specifically the original edition). The pages of the liner notes had fake gramophone record labels for every song on the album, as if they were all 45 rpm singles released by a variety of fictitious record labels.
- Diablo Swing Orchestra's
*Pandora's Piñata* was sold in a CD digipak which was meant to look like a record album. Every panel of the package had fake ring wear, and the inner panels resembled paper sleeves with fake record labels visible through center holes.
- Some
*really* esoteric examples can be seen here. Of particular note are the packages that look like a *concertina* and a *full size boom box*.
- The cover art of The Bee Gees album
*Their Greatest Hits: The Record* looks like an LP.◊ The same theme continues on the actual CD discs themselves.◊
- The cover for Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings'
*100 Days, 100 Nights* looks like it came out of The '60s. This could really be said for any of the band's albums — or anything from Daptone Records, for that matter.
- Similar to mini LP CD covers, some reissues of albums on CD from the vinyl era will replicate the LP label on the CD label from the original release. Some examples include remastered albums on Atlantic Records from Yes and Led Zeppelin, the reissues of The Doors on Elektra Records, and Parlophone Records' remasters of the David Bowie catalog up to
*Black Tie White Noise*.
- Album and single covers looking like common day objects:
- Spiritualized's
*Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space* was designed to resemble medicine. The packaging has a minimalist design of blue text against a white background. The liner notes list the musicians under the heading "Active Ingredients" and includes information about the intended dosage and possible side effects. Some of the Special Editions go a step further: the album is divided into 12 mini-CDs (one for each song) and each is in a medicine-style blister pack.
- The cover of Captain Beefheart's
*Strictly Personal* looks like a letter.
- Bob Marley's
*Catch a Fire* is designed to look like a lighter.
- The original LP cover of
*Sticky Fingers* by The Rolling Stones looks like a pair of pants, complete with a real zipper. Their cover for *Emotional Rescue* looks like a series of X-Ray images.
- Similarly, the banana on the original cover of Velvet Underground's breakthrough album can actually be peeled.
- Public Image Ltd.'s
*Metal Box* was originally packaged in a 16mm film canister; CD re-issues since the '90s manage to translate the original packaging to the significantly smaller disc size by using an identically designed 8mm canister.
- The initial copies of Body Count's debut album
*Body Count* were shipped out in black body bags.
- German pop punk band
*Die Ärzte*'s album *Jazz ist Anders* is styled like a (CD-sized) pizza box.
- Tying in with the song's lyrics about unhealthy living, the limited-edition UK single release of Dire Straits' "Heavy Fuel" came packaged in a foldout hamburger folder, with the mini CD's label being a photo of a tomato slice.
- Plastikman's
*Sheet One* had a perforated cover made to resemble a sheet of LSD tabs. This actually ended up getting a fan arrested — He was pulled over for speeding and the officer mistook the CD case in his car for the real thing.
- An unusual example occurs with the soundtrack album for
*The Flintstones*: the CD is packaged in a plastic clamshell, which would be more of a common-day object in the *Flintstones* universe than in the real world.
- Steve Taylor & The Danielson Foil's
*Wow to the Deadness EP* is available as a digital edition, pre-loaded on a USB stick. It's packaged inside a miniature coffin (made of real wood), and the USB stick itself is shaped like a flower.
- Primus' Greatest Hits Album
*They Can't All Be Zingers* is designed to look like a package of processed cheese slices. This extends to the track-listing and credits on the back, which are formatted to look like the "nutrition facts" on the back of food packaging, and the CD case comes wrapped in cellophane like a cheese package would be.
- All releases issued by digital-only electronic label Allergy Season run with the label name by using cover art in the style of over-the-counter medicine packaging. Some even go so far as to list what the "drug" should be administered for — for instance John Barera and Paul Morse's
*Pantheon* EP is "fast acting" and "numbs away pain", while the charity "protest compilation" *Physically Sick* is said to "alleviate symptoms of fascism, bigotry, violence, and demagoguery".
- The Rod Stewart compilation
*Sing It Again Rod* is designed to look like a glass of whiskey, complete with the sleeve being die-cut in the glass shape. It still included Rod's Face on the Cover - he's seen through the other side of the glass, as though the listener were seated across from him at a bar.
- The layout of Toy-Box's
*Fantastic* album is made to look◊ like a PlayStation game case.
- Juice WRLD's
*Death Race for Love* has a cover that resembles a PlayStation game.
- Soccer Mommy's
*Color Theory* is a downplayed example, but still goes for an early 90s video game console feel, which is further enhanced by the fact that the first part of the liner notes is styled like a console instruction manual.
- Blind Melon's
*Soup* is designed to look like a diner menu.
- The inner sleeve of Supertramp's
*Breakfast in America* is also laid out like a diner menu.
- The cover for the 7" release of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was designed to look like a tombstone. Infamously, this didn't become apparent to the cover designer, longtime collaborator Peter Saville, until
*after* frontman Ian Curtis killed himself.
- Flipper's
*Gone Fishin*' is laid out like a paper model of the band's tour bus— the record sleeve actually functioned as such, and packaging included a free mail-in offer of a second, empty cover; this way fans could cut up and fold together the tour bus model and still have a functional cover for the album.
- The cover of New Order's "Blue Monday" 12-inch single is designed to look like a 5.25-inch floppy disk, complete with die-cuts for the holes. Later,
*Brotherhood* and the single releases of "Bizarre Love Triangle" & "State of the Nation" would get covers designed after sheet metal.
- The artwork for David Byrne's
*Feelings* is designed to resemble a package for an action figure in the musician's likeness, right down to the back advertising the (nonexistent) toy's various features.
- The Small Faces'
*Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake* was originally packaged in a circular metal container like a very large tobacco tin. This proved Awesome, but Impractical as the tins tend to roll off shelves, and the packaging was changed to a circular cardboard gatefold sleeve. A limited number of the CD version was sold in metal tins.
- The album cover for Dr. Dre's
*The Chronic* is designed to resemble a box of rolling papers, accentuated by the giant pot leaf on the disc label.
- Future Bible Heroes'
*Memories of Love* looks like a children's activity book — this is down to the liner notes, which make the listener have to solve simple word puzzles to find out song lyrics, credits and even the album title and artist name.
-
*Steal This Album!* by System of a Down is styled after a CD-R, complete with a total lack of liner notes. Unlike the DVD releases of *Borat* and *The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo*, which were so accurate that buyers believed that they were actual bootlegs, the disc art for *Steal this Album!* made enough deviations from actual CD-R labels to ensure that consumers understood the joke.
- Pere Ubu's CD reissues on Rough Trade were styled to look like a classic Apple Macintosh program.
- The original release of
*Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits* is designed to resemble an amateur home recording. The cover art depicts a sketch of Strong Bad in blue pen on white college rule paper, and the disc label mimics a cheap CD-R, with the album title written at the bottom in Sharpie.
- Fitting with the game's late-nineties Internet pastiche,
*The Sounds of Hypnospace Audio Tour* — a bonus mini-CD packaged with *Hypnospace Outlaw* — is designed to resemble a free trial CD for an online service. It comes in a cardboard sleeve that advertises it as "year 2000 ready", and the disc art is printed directly onto the disc in monochrome, like older CD-ROMs.
- Fantasy Games Unlimited's (FGU) game
*Daredevils*. The covers of the game and its supplements were designed to look like old pulp adventure magazines. There were even fake price markers reading "NOT 10 Cents". Also, some supplements had wording like "Vol. 2 #3" as if they were magazines.
- Not exactly another medium, but the supplement on Kolat, secret society in Legend of the Five Rings was released under a title Merchant's Guide to Rokugan.
- Two box sets featuring Bumblebee from the
*Transformers Film Series* were packaged as "Retro Rock/Pop Highway Vol 1/2." These exclusives were packaged as giant cassette tapes, fitting the 80s setting of Bumblebee's solo film, the fact that each set came with two microcassette transformers, and the fact that both versions of Bumblebee were vintage automobiles.
- The
*Halo: Reach* Legendary Edition box is designed to emulate a metal UNSC crate.
-
*The House of the Dead: OVERKILL* has a cover meant to look like a movie poster. The whole game is presented as a movie, with each level having its own poster (complete with credits) and a "missing reel" in the final boss fight.
-
*Freedom Force* is an homage game to the golden age of superhero comics. This is plainly apparent from the comicbookesque cover, storytelling (complete with comic book boxes and narrative style) as well as the loading screens which portray the 'issue' of the next level, often in the misleading way of comic book cover gimmicks to boost sales.
- Meta-example: In the Live-Action Cutscene opening video of
*Brütal Legend*, Jack Black presents the game to the players as if it was on an old-school LP rather than DVD. That LP doubles as the game's main menu.
-
*Through the Looking Glass*, being inspired by the book of the same name, came packaged in a Book Safe.
- An alternate cover for
*BioShock Infinite* is designed to look like the cover of a cheap dime novel from the era. Unfortunately, the logo is identical, somewhat ruining the effect.
- The alternate cover on the DVD version of
*Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People* is designed in the style of an Atari 2600 game cartridge box.
-
*Sonic Mania Plus* has a reversible cover that mimics the packaging of a latter-era Sega Genesis or Mega Drive game (depending on region). *Sonic Origins Plus* has a similar reversible cover that mimics earlier Genesis and Mega Drive games, again varying depending on the region.
- Bandai Namco released a trailer and a printable alternative label for
*Dark Souls III* that makes it resemble a low-budget direct-to-VHS horror movie from The '80s.
- The PC versions for
*The Elder Scrolls* games (starting with *Morrowind*) each feature a symbolic emblem from the game in question and the title as though it were printed on the cover a leather-bound book. *The Elder Scrolls Anthology*, a Compilation Rerelease of the first five games in the series, also follows this pattern and even opens up like a book to reveal the disks within.
- While they're digital-only,
*The Jackbox Party Pack* had individual games in the first 3 packs appear as board game boxes in the main menu. However, they got more creative afterwards:
-
*Party Pack 4*: *Fibbage 3* is a 70s vinyl record cover, *Monster Seeking Monster* is a wooden coffin, *Survive the Internet* is a CD-Rom in its jewel case, *Civic Doodle* is a spray paint set, and *Bracketeering* is a Nintendo 64-esque game cartridge.
-
*Party Pack 5*: *Split the Room* is an old analogue TV, *Mad Verse City* is a toy robot package, *Patently Stupid* is a recruitment poster with stubs where the phone number goes and *Zeeple Dome* resembles the box of an Atari 2600 game from Activision. Averted with *You Don't Know Jack: Full Stream*, which is the Jack Head mascot in a Binjpipe-branded space helmet.
-
*Party Pack 6* does this on top of a bathroom theme: *Trivia Murder Party 2* is a bottle of pitch-black complimentary lotion from the Murder Hotel, *Dictionarium* is an actual dictionary with bat wings, *Push The Button* is a bathtub drain with alien tentacles slithering through, *Joke Boat* is a toy replica of the S.S. Sea Minus, and *Role Models* is an inflated rubber glove.
-
*Party Pack 7* changes it up by portraying the games with massive parade-style balloons resembling characters or themes from the games. *Quiplash 3* has the yellow three-haired avatar alongside the title, while *Champ'd Up* has the purple champ with the fish on his head and the title on his belt.
-
*Party Pack 8* does it differently again, presenting the games as different styles of cake. *Job Job* doesn't seem to follow this at first, looking like a regular briefcase, until you squint and realize that the metal casing is actually chocolate.
- Inverting the practice of album covers imitating other media, early Electronic Arts games used LP-style sleeves complete with gatefolds to stress that they considered their game designers like "rock stars."
-
*Bodycon Quest I* is an unlicensed action RPG game for the Famicom Disk System (an "erotic" *Dragon Quest* sort-of parody) whose packaging was shaped like a VHS tape case◊, probably imitating the style of hentai anime tapes of the era.
- In the years after The Great Video Game Crash of 1983, Nintendo and Sega attempted to reassure American consumers wary of consoles by taking design cues from home video of the era when launching in the US. The original Nintendo Entertainment System inserted cartridges like a front-loading VCR, while Sega Master System and Sega Genesis games came in plastic clamshell cases similar to those used for video tapes.
- While a freeware Fan Game,
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rescue Palooza* models its character select and unlocks screen after the back packagings of the original *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* toyline from 1988 to 1992, right down to the clipouts for the Pizza Point loyalty program.
- The packaging design for games in the
*Style Savvy* series are made to look like fashion magazines. For example, the first game's Japanese box art◊ and manual◊ both feature models surrounded by bold logotype and "headlines" advertising the game's content. This design style was carried over into the international localizations,◊ though more subtly.
-
*Kirby Super Star*: The Japanese box art is designed to resemble a traditional Paulownia wood box, which in Japan is typically used to package high-quality alcohol and silverware. The idea came from Shigesato Itoi, who felt that it would convey the game's "richness."
- The
*Dinosaur Comics* book *Your Entire Family Is Made of Meat* is meant to look like a package of fresh steaks, with the book title written on the fake price sticker.
- [adult swim] loves this trope.
- The DVD case of
*Titan Maximum* is based on a comic book cover, including top left corner inset. It seems specifically inspired by 1980s Marvel toy/TV cartoon tie-in comics.
- The second
*Sealab 2021* DVD's case is styled after a comic cover, in this case one in particular, *Uncanny X-Men #100*.
-
*The Venture Bros.* third season DVD is presented like an Atari 2600 game box. This extends to the DVD menus, which feature Atari graphics.
- The
*Robot Chicken* DC Comics special DVD has a cover in the style of a 1960s DC comic, complete with the checkered bar on top.
- The DVD cases for
*Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law* are all made to look like legal texts.
-
*Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1* doesn't do the "credits at the bottom" thing, but its DVD cover is non-specifically a movie poster.
- It's only natural that
*Minoriteam*, with its comic-inspired art style, would get a comic-style DVD case (at least in Australia), complete with a parody of The Comics Code approval stamp. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PackagedAsOtherMedium |
Odango Hair - TV Tropes
A particular hairstyle common to anime and manga heroines that involves styling one's hair into two buns worn at about 45-degree angles on the side of the head. This can make them look similar to Mickey Mouse ears depending on how simplified they're drawn. The buns themselves are often given cloth covers tied with ribbons.
It is particularly common with Anime Chinese Girls as it is a traditional Chinese hairstyle. Although in China, the style is called "ox horn" and it was gender neutral for children. In fact, the ox horns were a
*children's only* hairstyle — it was completely inappropriate to continue wearing it into adulthood (which a lot of Japanese media does not seem to get). During childhood it was acceptable to cut the hair and wear it loose, but after reaching adulthood, hair cutting was taboo and the hair would have to be fastened in some way. When a person in ancient China had their coming-of-age ceremony to represent their transition from child to adult, men would start to wear their hair in a topknot and women could wear all sorts of formal hairstyles (which varied throughout history).
There is also a less common variation of this style where the buns themselves have a triangular (or conical) shape, which can make someone look like a Cat Girl at first sight.
The style has spread into the real world among fans of the aforementioned heroines. Naoko Takeuchi used to wear her hair like
*Sailor Moon*'s before important exams during college, so she incorporated it into her heroine.
If the character isn't Chinese, expect them to be the really innocent, polite type, while the style with Twin Tails are mostly worn by Tsundere.
Does NOT count if the buns are over the character's ears. That's the Princess Leia. This style, with or without cloth covers, is different because it is used to signal maturity rather than cuteness. This is because the hairstyle covers the ears, and thus was seen as modest and chaste.
The style is named after the
*odango*, a sweet dumpling eaten on a skewer as a Japanese snack, traditionally served at *hanami* (cherry blossom and flower viewing festivals.) Compare Devilish Hair Horns and Prim and Proper Bun. This style can be wildly over-exaggerated. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OxHornHair |
Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat - TV Tropes
Commonly referred to as "Flop sweat", this is when a character will break out into an excessive sweat when either nervous or scared. Another term for it is "sweating bullets". Can be associated with a character who is a Nervous Wreck or a Butt-Monkey. May sometimes be accompanied with a Loud Gulp, or as part of an Oh, Crap! moment.
Truth in Television, especially for people with anxiety disorders.
Might be caused by Perp Sweating.
Contrast: Sweat Drop
See also: Briffits and Squeans (where sweat is referred to as "Plewds")
## Examples:
- In the first chapter / episode of
*Asteroid in Love*, Mira breaks into this, with at least 11 drops of sweat visible, when she finds out Ao, the "boy" she made The Promise with years ago, is actually a girl.
- This happens in
*Beastars* when Haru first tries to seduce Legosi. When she began to disrobe him, he starts sweating excessively, wondering if she was engaged in a ritual typical of small animals. It was only after she began to pull down his pants that he realized she wanted to have sex with him, and he grabbed his pants back up.
-
*Fabricant 100*: No 100 is easily embarrassed by Ashibi and sweats bullets every time he comments on her immature behavior, though he thinks it's just a tactic to reduce his stress.
-
*Full Metal Panic!*:
- On his first day in a normal Japanese high school, someone asks Sōsuke who his favorite musician is. Since he's never had any interest in such things, he stands there silently sweating trying to come up with an answer.
- When Kaname first meets Tessa, who is coming out of Sōsuke's shower, Sōsuke stands between the two of them with sweat literally raining off him.
- Izumi Sakurai from
*Nichijou* often has small drops of sweat flying off of her whenever she's nervous, which happens often due to her Shrinking Violet nature. In the anime, they even come with their own sound effects.
- In Episode 5 of
*Please Tell Me! Galko-chan*, Otako does it when Galko mentions her older sister, a college student, often borrows her school uniform. Combined with Galko discovering...something on her uniform in Episode 4, Otako soon ||realized that Galko's uniform was being used for fetish purposes||.
- In
*Prison School* Meiko Shiraki of the Underground Student Council has a metabolic condition that causes this for her at the drop of a hat, be it nerves or light exercise. When it's revealed that the plastic sword that the council president was picking her teeth with was found on the bathroom floor. Meiko gets flustered trying to excuse her mistake and sweats at least a gallon of fluid.
- In
*Sakura Gari*, Masataka breaks out in a nervous sweat when he is forced to have lunch with his rapist boss and the guy's yandere younger sister.
- Happens to Jon in the December 2011◊
*Garfield* strip (pictured above).
- In a 1994
*Dilbert* strip, Dilbert notices that the girl he just met, Liz, isn't wearing a ring. She tells him that she has a ring, but it's so big she needs to hire a team of eunuchs to carry it around. His response, visibly and audibly, is "Flop sweat time".
- On
*The Simpsons Movie*, Krusty is seen dumping a whole cistern tank of flop sweat into Lake Springfield.
-
*The Princess and the Frog* - Charlotte La Bouff, the titular princess's best friend, starts "sweatin' like a sinner in church" when she gets nervous and/or anxious about something (such as when it seemed like Prince Naveen wasn't going to show up to the party she and her dad were throwing at their estate).
- In
*Turning Red*, Mei flop sweats when she is trying to hide her journal from her nosy mother.
-
*Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country* during the climax when a group of conspirators are going to kill the Federation president, one of them, ||Admiral Cartright||, is shown with sweat soaking his face.
- In
*Star Trek (2009)*, Kirk gets what Bones refers to as a "flop sweat," but not because of nerves—it's because he's experiencing the side effects of Melvaran mud flea vaccine.
- In
*Total Recall (1990)*, when Rekall's President Dr. Edgemar meets Quaid to convince him that he is caught in his memories and should take a pill as a symbol of his desire to break out of it, Quaid puts the pill in his mouth and pretends to swallow it while watching Dr. Edgemar's reaction. When he sees a drop of sweat running down the doctor's face, he knows it's a trap and kills him. Or does he?
-
*Airplane!* plays this for laughs during the landing by having Striker's forehead gushing sweat.
- In
*American Psycho*, Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale) does this a lot when under pressure or when coming close to getting caught in a lie. According to Word of God, Bale was so talented an actor that when doing repeated takes of the famous business card scene, he was capable of *sweating on cue*.
- Invoked by Axel Foley in
*Beverly Hills Cop II* when he's pretending to deliver "sound seeking projectiles" to try to bluff his way into a gun club run by the Big Bad. He splashes water on his face making it look like he's sweating buckets.
-
*Big Bullet*: The rookie cop, Apple, sweats a lot whenever she's nervous, and in the climax of the movie with her trying to prevent a hijacked plane from taking off, she is practically drenched in her own sweat.
-
*Loaded Weapon 1*: When determining how long the detectives will have to solve the case via the chance wheel, repeated cuts to Da Chief show him sweating more and more profusely.
- In
*Broadcast News,* the first time Albert Brooks' character attempts to work in front of the camera, he breaks into a sweat so bad it soaks through his suit coat in minutes.
-
*The Barefoot Contessa*: Oscar, the pathetic Professional Butt-Kisser Hollywood publicist. When Oscar gives Maria the hard sell (re: signing a contract with Kirk), Maria is repulsed, describing Oscar to Harry as "the man with sweat on his face." Later Oscar has to wipe the flop sweat off of his face when he quits his job with Kirk.
- Svend from the
*The Green Butchers* has a habit of doing this whenever he is nervous and/or agitated, and seeing how he is at his core an incredibly neurotic person, it is quite often, which has earned him the ill-flattering nickname "Svend Sweat" by his Mean Boss, Holger.
-
*Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy* opens with British spy Jim Prideaux meeting a Hungarian general in a cafe. But when the waiter serves them coffee, he's sweating so much that it drips on the table. Jim then looks around and sees a number of people watching him, then quickly looking away when they see him looking in their direction. Realising he's walked into a trap, Jim suddenly gets to his feet and walks away, only for the waiter to rush out and shoot Jim in a panic much to the fury of the other secret policemen.
-
*Man of Iron*: Winkel the sad alcoholic failure is often shown to be very sweaty, especially when he's talking to his Communist bosses.
- Downplayed in
*Captain America: The Winter Soldier*. Among the signs that the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the elevator ||are about to ambush him|| that Steve sees, is that one of them is visibly sweating nervously.
-
*Ocean's Eleven*: Livingston Dell is a brilliant hacker but by far the most nervous of the Caper Crew and is usually seen with a sheen of sweat. At one point he has to go in person to hack into the security system of Terry Benedict's casino and is so sweaty he smudges the map drawn on his hand to help him find his way back out.
-
*The Concrete Blonde*: The POV comments more than once on how Belk, Bosch's fat attorney who is defending him in a civil suit, sweats a lot in court. Once the POV notes Belk's habit to "break out in flop sweat" every time the judge looks at him.
-
*Troubled Blood*: The narration describes Steve Douthwaite's "bloodshot eyes, his forehead sweaty" as he nervously denies knowing anything about the death of Margot Bamborough (a 40-year-old cold case). Later, "Patches of underarm sweat were visible through his thin turquoise T-shirt: Strike could literally smell his fear." It turns out that he's breaking out in flop sweat because he *does* know who killed Margot.
- One episode of
*Lois & Clark* had them talking to the accomplice of the episode's bad guy. Throughout it, he's very clearly nervous, and when Lois asks if he's sweating, he says yes, then tries to brush it off by saying he's wearing wool.
- There was a
*Saturday Night Live* skit, with Alex Karras as guest host, where Billy Crystal plays a guy at a soda company who sweats excessively at a board meeting.
-
*Chuck*: In "Chuck Versus the Cougars", an old high-school friend of Sarah's is sweating a lot while they're at dinner, ||because he's about to hand over government secrets to the Russian mob||.
- An episode of
*The Suite Life of Zack & Cody* has Maddie trying to hold down a date on a hot day and keeping her hair from frizzing up. It turns out that the date has his own problem, in which he, in London's words, "sweats like a donkey in a sauna."
- The sketch "Clear History" on
*Key & Peele* features a wife learning that her husband has been using their computer to watch porn. He starts to flop sweat when she starts to figure out in a roundabout way what kind of porn he's watching, to the point that his sweat is outright squirting out of him. ||Then when he says that at least she's thinking of him when they have sex, she immediately beings to flop sweat.||
- Vod (Zawe Ashton) unexpectedly falls in love with a handyman in a Series 2 episode of
*Fresh Meat*. She spends most of the episode behaving oddly and bathed in a nervous sweat.
-
*Daredevil (2015)*: Wilson Fisk realizes that Leland Owlsley is double-crossing him when he notices that despite the cold weather, Owlsley is sweating profusely and his hands are very shaky.
- On
*Succession*, Kendall is described as "a sweaty corpse" during his Addled Addict phase.
- Ted Buckland from
*Scrubs* is the epitome of this trope. It's taken into overdrive in the presence of Neena Broderick though, to the extent that when Ted puts his hand on the edge of a table, it slips due to the sweat and he slams his head into the table, knocking him out.
-
*The Americans*: In the second season episode "Arpanet", Charles, a Deep Cover Agent who has become an alcoholic, is pressed into service by Philip to break into a lab so he can plant a bug. Charles has written a code for Philip to use on his hand, but he's so nervous, he sweats, causing the ink to be smudged (similar to the example in *Ocean's Eleven* above). Fortunately, he remembers the code in time.
- In the video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Amish Paradise", Al is profusely sweating in several profile shots, directly parodying L.V.'s less outrageously visible sweat in similar shots in the original Coolio video.
- In
*Fire Emblem: Awakening* in the beach DLC, Chrom gives Stahl some encouragement which causes him to start sweating and hyperventilating, thinking he has to live up to Chrom's expectations.
- In
*Hollow Knight*, if you find ||Millibelle after she absconds with your banked money||, she'll recognize you and start sweating bullets.
-
*Ace Attorney*: A lot of characters sweat bullets when they see themselves trapped into a corner, attorneys, witnesses, or otherwise. Then the radio a certain witness is using to testify starts leaking acid instead.
-
*Homestuck*: After Rose embarks on her destructive fact-finding mission, the turtles who live in her Land are typically seen sweating nervous bullets as they watch her casually tear entire temples to pieces.
-
*Flander's Company*: Parodied with the villain wannabe "Transpire-Man" ("Sweaty-Man"). He does indeed sweat a lot when nervous... and by "a lot", we mean he can weaponize it by producing a blast of water from his armpits, strong enough to propel an opponent through a wall.
-
*American Dad!*: In "1600 Candles", Francine describes an incident from high school where some bullies beat her in the showers while naked, and Stan's reaction is heavy sweating coupled with laying his shirt over his crotch.
-
*The Critic*: In the episode "Lady Hawke", Jay and Marty attend a taping of the *SNL*-parody "Yesterday Night Live" featuring "Mr. Sweaty Guy", the living embodiment of this trope. Complete with cheesy intro theme:
*He's Mister Sweaty Guy!* *He sweats like a pig, oh my!* *When he gets nervous, he explodes!* *Sweat spurts out like a firehose!* *He's Mister Sweaty Guy!*
- At the end of the episode, Jay and Alice screen
*Quiz Show 2*, in which Mr. Sweaty Guy reappears as a contestant. When the host reads the questions to him, Mr. Sweaty Guy immediately fills his sound-proof booth with so much sweat that it threatens to *drown* him.
-
*Futurama*: In the episode "A Big Piece of Garbage", Prof. Farnsworth suffers this after his crude napkin drawing of the Smelloscope is jeered by the Society of Inventors. Made worse when he wipes his sweat away with the napkin, blotting out the drawing and leading to further derision.
- Goofy does this several times in "How to Play Baseball".
- Done very frequently on
*Mr. Bogus*.
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*: Spike is sweating abundantly throughout the episode "Triple Threat", either from his feverish imagination picturing the worse or from speaking to Thorax and Ember while trying to keep up the mascarade. Don't ask how/if a dragon can sweat at all, that's not the point here.
-
*The Simpsons*:
- "Weekend at Burnsies": Homer and Mr. Smithers are listening to Mr. Burns rehearse for a meeting. After a joke falls flat:
**Smithers:** *[whispering to Homer]* One of us has gotta start laughing. If Mr. Burns gets flop sweat, he'll die of dehydration. *[Burns gets a drop of sweat on his forehead and starts to feel giddy]* **Burns:** Oh, I'm drenched with sweat. *[pushes the droplet back into his head]*
- "Dumbbell Indemnity": Moe sweats so much that a person walking behind him
*trips on his puddle of sweat*.
- Invoked in "Lost Our Lisa" when Doctor Hibbert causes Bart to sweat to remove some comedy props he glued to his face by making him think Hibbert is going to require a painful injections with a scary looking machine (actually a shirt button applicator).
**Bart**: Couldn't you have just turned up the heat a little?
**Dr. Hibbert**: Do'h, heavens no. It had to be *terror sweat*!
-
*SpongeBob SquarePants*:
- Done by Mr. Krabs in the episode "Pickles".
- In the episode "Squirrel Jokes", SpongeBob does this when his jokes are falling flat in front of the audience.
-
*Tex Avery MGM Cartoons*: In the (later banned) short "Uncle Tom's Cabaña", Big Bad Simon Legree ties up Uncle Tom to a lit barrel of gunpowder. The fear of impending doom causes him to sweat many times his own volume, flooding the room enough to extinguish the fuse.
- The
*Turbo FAST* episode "Tur-Bros" has Tito doing this when he's rehearsing his speech for a racing convention, and he ends up soaking most of his shirt. He tries to overcome this by wearing a wetsuit under a white coat, but that just causes the sweat to build up.
- Sweating in a very common symptom of panic attacks, and is often a "cold sweat" similiar to if you had the flu.
- Waking up in a cold sweat is a pretty common example caused by stress to the body.
- This is common if you are healing from a surgery, in which case your body is working overtime to recover while you are asleep. Often, the person's sheets will be soaked in sweat by morning. This is also often accompanied by strange dreams. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverlyNervousFlopSweat |
Pacific Islanders in Media - TV Tropes
*"Finding Ohana follows two siblings, played by Kea Peahu and Alex Aiono, whose trip to an Oahu town becomes a treasure-hunt adventure that connects them to their Hawaiian heritage. According to The Nerds of Color, the actors were excited by the opportunity when they read the script. Peahu, who plays Pili, said she connected with her character through similar life experiences. Actors Lindsay Watson (Hana) and Alex Aiono (E), who play Hana and E, were both quick to realize the significance of having Hawaiian culture portrayed in such an authentic light and at such a large scale, reports The Nerds of Color."*
Works and media about the indigenous people of the Pacific Islands which encompass the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia (which includes Rapa Nui/Easter Island and French Polynesia).
Please make sure that the work being added is about Pacific Islander people, as in they center around them and their lives and experiences.
See also Creators of Pacific Islands Descent. Native Hawaiians would be featured in this index, for works centering on indgenous people in North America, see Native American and First Nations Media.
See also African-American Media, Arab-Americans in Media, Asian-American Media, and Latino-American Media.
<!—index—>
-
*Lilo & Stitch* franchise (original 20022006 continuity): The human protagonist and the Earth-born members of her family are Native Hawaiian.
-
*Moana*
- Numerous wrestlers inside and outside of the WWE have Pacific ancestry/nationality. Some have even incorporated it into their personas.
- The Bloodline (Roman Reigns and The Usos)
- Dakota Kai
- Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
- Guerrillas of Destiny (Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa)
- Haku
- Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka
- Nia Jax
- Rikishi
- Samoa Joe
- Tamina Snuka
- Umaga
- The Wild Samoans
- Yokozuna (although he played a Japanese character)
-
*Lilo & Stitch* video games
-
*Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire* takes place in a fictional archipelago based heavily off of Polynesia, and whose main story deals with its fantasy world's version of 19th century colonialism in the region.
-
*Pokémon Sun and Moon* takes place in the Alola region that's based on Hawaii. Some characters in the game and its sequel can be identified as Pacific Islanders.
-
*Rise of the Kasai*
-
*Sin With Me*: Malakai's route (Samoan-American love interest).
<!—/index—> | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacificIslandersInMedia |
Padded Sumo Gameplay - TV Tropes
Some games it's nearly impossible to inflict lasting damage, resulting in combat practically just being mutual Cherry Tapping minus the humiliation. Actual skill is most likely still involved, but it will be more about intelligence (Min-Maxing, planning ahead) than agility (Dodging, improvising).
This trope can happen due to various reasons: Higher defensive stats than offensive ones, an abundance of cheap healing supplies, useful healing/protection moves, combos or anything else capable of causing substantial damage being too unsafe to use, et cetera.
This trope doesn't
*have* to be a bad thing. Lengthy battles tend to feel more epic than short ones, and some gamers enjoy calculating the best possible tactics and perfecting them.
Compare Damage-Sponge Boss, usually referred to as "bullet sponges" in shooters. Also compare Healing Loop, where damage isn't low, but either party heals off most of the damage dealt, leading to fights just as drawn out. Contrast the inversion, Rocket-Tag Gameplay, which is a case of mutually ineffective defenses instead of mutually ineffective methods of attack as this trope.
## Examples:
- Exdeath mirror matches in
*Dissidia Final Fantasy* are an extreme example of this. Exdeath is a character built entirely around counter moves, but his non-counter moves are significantly weaker and slower. In the case of Exdeath vs. Exdeath, whoever throws out a move is much more likely to be at a *disadvantage*, and it turns into a game of doing random, barely damaging things until someone chokes enough times. Exdeath mirror matches aren't as agonizing in *Duodecim*, where it becomes more of a pure mindgame match of baiting out moves to cancel into a counter from each other.
- In
*Facebreaker*, stamina recovers incredibly fast, to the point where unless one side connects with a Facebreaker, the fight's almost always going to sudden death. A normal KO is next to impossible unless you absolutely walk all over your opponent.
-
*Sumotori Dreams*. It's impossible to harm the opponent in any other way but pushing him off the platform. Considering the way the game's Ragdoll Physics are rigged, much of the challenge is not falling off yourself while you're trying to do this.
- The later games in the
*Super Smash Bros.* series can be set up like this in custom fights: High-gravity, metal battles will typically result in everyone involved hitting several hundred damage at *least* before a KO is remotely feasible. This is also a lot of the fame and infamy behind maps like Hyrule Temple; the stage is so gigantic that even a Home-Run Bat isn't going to guarantee a KO unless used near the edge. The enclosed cave area near the bottom of the stage is *very* difficult to get knocked out of, leading to it being nicknamed "Hyrule Fight Club."
- Some stages in
*Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion* are set up for very defensive gameplay. Like with *Smash Bros.*, characters can only be knocked out by Ring Out. However, stages like Mung Daal's Kitchen are mostly enclosed, with a few small openings on the sides. Gameplay then becomes finding a way to line up an attack such that opponents are launched through these gaps while avoiding getting lined up by your opponents, with most such attempts failing.
-
*Street Fighter X Tekken* was pretty infamous for this at launch, to the point of receiving the derisive nickname *Street Fighter X Time Out*. Most combos did very little damage, most combos that did do good damage were much easier to stop than they were to execute, and fighters regained health extremely quickly when switched out. This resulted in a game where the most common strategy by far was to get a life lead on the opponent, then run out the clock.
-
*Halo*, by the standards of many FPS games. It takes several hits or prolonged fire from most infantry weapons to kill an opponent. And any opponent who isn't finished off can escape and take cover and their hitpoints will quickly be restored to maximum thanks to regenerating energy shields.
- The
*Borderlands* series: It takes several hits or prolonged fire from most infantry weapons to kill an opponent. And any opponent who isn't finished off can escape and take cover and their hitpoints will quickly be restored to maximum thanks to regenerating energy shields. Add in RPG Elements.
-
*PlanetSide 1* had enormously long time-to-kills on almost all its weapons; bar a point blank Jackhammer triple-blast, no infantry weapon could reliably kill a player in under a second. When combined with the game's awful netcode (where rapid strafing could cause Teleport Spam and desync), it wasn't uncommon for two soldiers with assault rifles to have to dump the majority of their magazine to kill the other. Vehicles were extremely durable - even the humble ATV could survive quite a lot of fire. The sequel, on the other hand, uses Rocket-Tag Gameplay.
-
*Guild Wars* was sometimes disparagingly referred to as "Heal Wars," as all classes had ways to heal themselves and PvP was often a matter of trying to out-DPS your opponent's heals. The alternative was "3, 2, 1, SPIKE!", where all the damage-dealers on a team would suddenly switch damage to a new, single target and try to burst them down before the enemy Monk could catch up. If you could actually burst down the *Monk* this way, usually the entire team would fold like damp cardboard without the heals propping them up.
-
*MapleStory* can have this, if you're trying to solo bosses at your level. It's usually expected that you would bring a party of about 20-30 levels above the recommended. If not, some bosses take minimal damage, and heal periodically, making battles drag on and on (if they're doable at all).
- The Boss tends to be the padded sumo wrestler. Player Characters usually require lots and lots of endgame potions and fast reflexes and/or a macro that somehow managed to escape the hack detection.
-
*World of Warcraft* has this in spades in one-on-one PvP. Every healer class in adequate PvP gear is capable of outhealing any damage dealt by a damage-dealing class in a matter of several seconds while their offensive abilities are rather unimpressive. Tanks have multiple abilities to absorb and negate damage, while damage-dealing classes have higher than average amount of escape abilities. Nearly all tanks and damage-dealers may regenerate their health to some extent, and may often stall matches by being efficient at running away or incapacitating the enemy while their health goes up. While one-on-one duels are not something the game is balanced around, duels occur often between sole survivors at the end of the arena match, making the winner typically the one who made the least mistakes. However, the expansion *Wrath of the Lich King* was well known for its Rocket-Tag Gameplay.
- Making this happen was at one point a popular strategy for players of
*Kingdom of Loathing*; it was called Plinking. Jack up the monster level as high as you can, and also increase your Moxie. You can only get hit with criticals, meanwhile you are slowly whittling down their health turn after turn. In the end, you win, and all of that monster level translates into huge stat boosts for you. This strategy became less feasible with the addition of thirty-turn time limits to fights; on the thirty-first turn, the fight automatically ends in a loss.
- In
*Oblivion* this becomes the norm for combat at the highest levels, as damage caps at a certain point but HP keeps getting higher and higher, which becomes more extreme if the potential 85% damage reduction from armor is brought in. Can be Subverted if you resort to one of a few Game Breakers, though.
- A good example of this is
*Baldur's Gate*, where (especially early on) it's common for opponents to stand around missing each other for round after round, the victor ultimately defeating their opponent after landing two or three hits.
-
*Fallout*:
- In the late game of
*Fallout* and *Fallout 2*, you will be very heavily armoured, and you will encounter opponents with power armor. Both of you will be almost incapable of doing even a single point of damage except in critical blows, so combat basically boils down to taking the Slayer (turn every melee attack into an automatic crit) or Sniper (give each ranged attack a chance to crit equal to 10 times your luck score) and make aimed shots at an opponent's eyes, groin, or other body part to blow through their armor and cripple them. Your only other option is to switch over to single-shot, high-powered energy weapons (and to a lesser degree rocket launchers), which would actually deal real damage through armor. It's likely for this reason that when *New Vegas* re-introduced damage threshold it also kept armor from reducing more than 4/5 of the damage an attack can do.
- While it is possible to use stealth or cover in
*Fallout 3*, the game's economy makes stimpak spamming a much easier tactic. In particular, many of the added enemies in the Downloadable Content have pointlessly high amounts of HP and qualify as Demonic Spiders for most of the game due to the fact that they get damage bonuses with the weapons they use and being as tough as nails coated with more nails, as part of a failed attempt to balance them towards end-game characters who are putting off replaying the finale to screw around in new locations rather than new characters who are check out the new content as they re-explore the original wasteland. By the time you hit the cap at level 30, they will not individually be threats to you, but they *will* take forever and a day to kill, even with your Infinity +1 Sword.
-
*The Legend of Dragoon* has this toward the end. The final boss fight can take HOURS, even if you're well prepared.
- In
*Skies of Arcadia*, due to the increasing health and defense of certain types of enemies, it can actually be faster to have your entire party charge up the spirit gauge in order to use the full party's ultimate attack, Prophecy (which drops a freaking moon on their heads) anytime you come across one such foe.
-
*Pokémon*
- Pretty easy to do with two stall-heavy Mons, or if the battle has been going on for a while and Mons only have Struggle as their move left. Reaches ridiculous levels in Wobbuffet vs. Wobbuffet battles, where due to a lack of actual attacks beyond counterattacks means that they can only hit with Struggle, and their high HP (and very, very low attack power) means that winning with that will take a long, long time. And heaven help you if you both have Leftovers attached, which will easily heal more HP than Struggle will hurt you for...
- The Struggle attack now deals 25% damage to its user (when it does connect). Thus, in a Wobbuffet vs. Wobbuffet battle, the winner is the last one to strike.
- The same generation also allowed mons with Shadow Tag to switch out against other mons with Shadow Tag, and switching into Wobbuffet is generally safe (Wobbuffet cannot damage you unless you hit it first), so a Wobbuffet vs. Wobbuffet matchup will quickly end with one or both Wobbuffets being withdrawn in favor of mons with much greater offenses.
- The "Ubers" metagame in Generation I, where Mewtwo and Mew are legal. One would likely be confused as to how a metagame where two of the most unbalanced Legendaries in the series are on every team could fit this trope—however, in Generation I, Psychic resisted itself and had no significant weaknesses, and about 2/3 of all teams are going to be dedicated to Psychics or mega-bulky types like Chansey and Snorlax. Additionally, both Mewtwo and Mew have access to great recovery moves in the form of Recover and Softboiled, so they can stall damage very easily. This means that battles typically come down to stalling until one Mewtwo runs out of PP or gets hit by a lucky freeze.
- The Generation II metagame has a reputation for looking like this, and not for no reason. Nearly all the top-ranked Pokémon are incredibly bulky, which is furthered by the stat system at the time allowing Pokémon to max out all their stats, the Leftovers item grants slow regeneration and sees nigh-universal use, the Rest/Sleep Talk combo is at its height, due to the fact that Sleep Talk can roll Rest to fully heal the user, and some of the biggest offensive tools of the prior generation (mainly critical hits and Hyper Beam) were nerfed. Though offensive play is certainly common, it's far slower-paced than in other generations, and it's quite telling that the most notable strategies for damage rely on using Self-Destruct or Explosion, as they're some of the few ways to quickly break an opponent's defenses. Part of the reason the famously powerful Snorlax remains legal is a belief that, were it not for Snorlax's presence and insane offensive potential, then the game would lose the one thing keeping it from being an eternal stallfest. This was significantly lessened with the third-generation games, which retooled the stat gain system to force Pokémon to specialize, added powerful offense-boosting items like the Choice Band or moves like Dragon Dance and Calm Mind, and nerfed some of the more annoying stall strategies (namely, Resttalk).
- Single battles in Pokémon games by high-level opponents can begin like this relative to the other types (double, triple, and rotation battles), because a lot of turns are spent switching to Pokémon who will resist the opponent's attacks. The opponent, in response, will switch to a Pokémon who will resist your attacks. Throw in moves that heal like Recover, Leech Seed, Drain Punch, and Wish; and moves meant to cause opponents to lose turns like Swagger (confusion), Thunder Wave (paralysis), Air Slash (flinch), and Spore (sleep), and turn after turn can happen with very little happening. It changes once enough Pokémon have been knocked out, however, as the players' options on switching become more limited.
- High-level play in
*Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!* finds itself in this category due to the very large boosts to HP, Defense, and Special Defense via the Candy mechanic. Some Pokémon take so little damage from attacks that they're weakened more by Toxic-based Poison and fixed-HP moves like Seismic Toss than regular attacks.
- The first of the Four Generals chapters in
*Sailor Moon: Another Story* is a *painful* example, where you play as a solo Sailor Mercury, a healer with only one incredibly weak attack, and fight a boss as weak as you are with gobs of HP. Unless you've searched the level *carefully* for some hidden equipment the fight is close to unwinnable, and even if you have it's still interminable.
-
*Final Fantasy XIII*'s Command Synergy Battle system revolves around subverting this trope. At base damage, normal attacks are the equivalent to chucking a grain of sand at a pyramid, even against normal encounter enemies. However, elemental attacks raise the enemy's chain gauge, which is a straight multiplier of how much damage you're dealing that starts at 100%. Raising the gauge high enough on most enemies will inflict Stagger, which gives the gauge an immediate +100% and allows half of your characters to knock them into the air for complete incapacitation. A Staggered enemy's chain gauge slowly decreases, and once it's about to expire a character in the right role can hit them for massive damage.
-
*Final Fantasy XIII-2*: A skillful player falls into this during Lightning's Story: Requiem of the Goddess at lower levels. The story consists of Lightning fighting against Caius, with a second fight against Chaos Bahamut if the player does well enough. Both of them are using a variation on the Paradigm system. Caius has access to Commando (powerful but telegraphed attacks), Ravager (long strings of weak hits), and Healer (HP restoration and buffing) stances. Lightning starts with access to Paladin (main damage-dealing), Shaman and Mage (chain-building), and Knight (passive damage reduction and an ability with which to No-Sell everything) roles. Thus, winning the battle and therefore maximizing your CP with which to level-up consists of switching to Knight whenever he starts attacking/gets ready to attack, minimizing your HP loss, maintaining/building his chain gauge at every scarce opportunity, and hoping he only switches to Healer infrequently. As you level up, the fight gradually drifts away from this trope, with Lightning acquiring the Conjurer (buffing) and Sorcerer (debuffing) roles; Chaos Bahamut, meanwhile, is a straight Damage-Sponge Boss, having much more HP but no healing and the power to nearly one-shot a low-level Lightning in any role but Knight.
-
*Epic Battle Fantasy 3* had this problem in the late-game. Your characters had enough defensive and healing abilities that getting wiped out was unlikely. But the bosses had so much HP...
- The FIRST boss of
*Bravely Default* can be this, especially in Hard Mode. You have only two party members and only the freelancer job, and - unless you ground your levels - probably only have the Freelancer's healing ability on one of them. The boss is a Dual Boss, and one of them is explicitly a healer. The fight can easily go back and forth as you attack and heal, though it does a good job of teaching you the importance of the Brave and Default system: Knowing to lessen the amount of healing you need to do by Defaulting and maximizing damage by Braving. If you try to Shoot the Medic First you need to have perfect timing of when to Brave otherwise it just goes back and forth with healing (The player's healing ability is no cost, and bosses have infinite MP). Trying to kill the muscle first can actually be easier because he has the tendency to blow himself up when his HP is low, but that does absolutely nothing about the healer's ability to heal themselves.
- Some games in the
*Tales Series* feature an item called the All-Divide, which halves both the damage the player takes and the damage the opponent takes. Since you can carry a massive supply of heal and TP restoring items into battle, it's quite effective for winning by attrition. You get very few All-Divides, and thus it's recommended you save them for certain superbosses—specifically, the ones that are difficult but *not* immune to its effect.
- In
*Endless Frontier,* attacks are Combo-based, being a string of 5 Spam Attacks that can do upwards of 5k damage per character. Each party member carries around very nearly enough dakka, except for Kaguya who uses an improbably large fantasy sword that launches a storm of Fuuma Shuriken on-command. Basic enemies in this game would be Damage Sponge Bosses anywhere else.
-
*Xenoblade Chronicles 2* has this in spades. Because auto-attacks deal so little damage, even normal enemies can take a ridiculous amount of punishment unless you min-max the hell out of your party and spam Arts like they're going out of style. On the player side of things, Having a properly set-up tank and healer will mean that you never even have to worry about your HP unless you're fighting an enemy that's a good few levels above you, or a boss who decides to pull out some ability that can hit the entire party For Massive Damage.
- Combat in
*YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG* uses double digit numbers at most and even after a dozen hours most of your attacks struggle to break past *20*, and the enemies hit you for just as much or less. The small numbers is compounded by the fact that every single attack is an Action Command, with some going as long as *half a minute*, and after every enemy attack is an Action Command to reduce damage as well. Each of those elements combined creates an incredibly slow turn-based combat system where a regular enemy encounter takes *several minutes* to complete.
-
*Mass Effect* turns into this at high levels, especially if you are playing Shepard as a Soldier. The Soldier's Fortification ability, when maxed out, gives an 80% boost to damage resistance and recharges in less time than the power lasts (meaning that you can have it on all the time). Combine this with the best end-game armors like the Colossus X and the passive bonuses that the Soldier class gets, and it is possible to build Shepard's durability and health regen up to the point where they are effectively immune to anything except for anti-tank rockets and plasma cannons. And even then, Shepard's health bar would barely budge. Meanwhile, Soldiers have few offensive powers so they typically simply blast away with their gun until they wear the target out.
-
*Little Town Hero* turns out to be like this due to the fact that both sides have to completely deplete the other side's possible moves before they start dealing direct damage (with a few rare exceptions). As a result, battles can take upwards of an hour as each side has just enough firepower to prevent taking damage but not enough to actually deal it.
- Various
*MechWarrior* games have had bits of this, but it's particularly noticeable in almost all games with light battlemech combat - while they aren't particularly well armored, they generally lack the firepower to kill each other quickly, leading to the light two mechs spinning around each other at 100+ kph firing their lasers repeatedly. *Mechwarrior 4* had this in spades, as most mechs carried copious amounts of armor, so much so that only some of the silly min-maxed custom loadouts could kill another mech (in the same class) in less than 30 seconds.
-
*World of Tanks* has this in spades when opponents are heavily armored, but don't have enough penetration to deal damage. It often devolves into a Scratch Damage race with HE rounds or maneuvering to try and get the first hit on an enemy's weakspot.
- This can occur in
*Archon* when a light-side The Phoenix goes up against a dark-side Shapeshifter. The Phoenix has high HP and a fire attack that makes it invincible when it's in attack mode, so if both Phoenixes attack each other at about the same time, each phoenix will suffer Scratch Damage. A Phoenix/Shapeshifter duel always leads to a war of attrition, where the winner is the one with the most patience and the fastest trigger finger.
- In the
*Roblox* game *Battle Buddies 2*, every unit has drastically lower attack power than HP, much more so than in other straight-line Tower Defense games. Due to this, ranged units and units with multi-hit attacks, like Prickly Pete, end up being the most effective, and cheap meatshields like Donnie can also survive for a surprising amount of time.
-
*Fire Emblem*:
- The early game of
*Fire Emblem Gaiden* plays out like this. Due to weapons not having any base damage, both the playable characters and enemies do very little damage to each other, and it'll be a while before anyone in Alm's starting party can reliably one-round enemies. Also, terrain bonuses provide rather hefty boosts to evasion, meaning there's a hefty miss chance on both sides. The other games avert this because early weapons have 5-8 base damage added to unit strength.
- In
*Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance*, enemies possess comparatively weak weapons but rather abnormal levels of bulk, to the point that even local Game-Breaker Titania can struggle with one-rounding before long, and are spammed relentlessly on high difficulties. Additionally, Weapon of X-Slaying-type equipment like Armorslayers have only x2 effectiveness rather than the usual x3, meaning that certain enemy types are harder to bring down, many enemies have access to ranged attacks, requiring the player to use weaker 1-2 range weapons, and mounted classes have the Canto skill to enable easy hit-and-run attacks. On the player's side of things, Defense growths are abnormally high (40% is around the average, when in previous games it was closer to 25%), and the more free support system makes it easy to develop hefty-sized boosts to evasion and defense, meaning that raised units can shrug off the combined attacks of whole squads on even the Japan-exclusive Maniac. It's often remarked on that in Maniac, a character is quite likely to run out of weapon uses long before they run out of HP.
-
*FTL: Faster Than Light*: dump all your money into upgrading your shields, but forget to upgrade weapons? You won't be able to get through an opponents shields and they won't be able to get through yours. Missile weapons help avoid these situations, as they pass right through shields, but you have a finite number, they can occasionally miss, and there are drones that can shoot them down.
-
*Nintendo Wars*: stalemates are a common occurrence. With bases, everyone can produce unlimited amounts of units. Capturing bases and winning the game depends on the survival of infantry, the slowest and most fragile unit type. It's usually suicidal to rush enemy bases too early, as they're quite easy to defend; thus, many battles become wars of attrition where all parties can only advance one step at a time, if at all. This is compounded by various factors, depending on the game:
- Maps that feature huge distances, long chokepoints, or split the field into "cells" enclosed by mountains or rivers, which most units can't pass through. Bounty River is a standout example - one long, winding, narrow path that takes boats many turns to reach the action. This map proved such a problem that almost every sequel had to try improving it.
- Maps that give enormous advantages to the AI to compensate for its lack of intelligence, including many times more units and bases, giving you a lot to chew through.
- (
*AW*- *AWDS*) Superpowers that are charged more from losing your own units than destroying others, giving a losing opponent the chance to undo the progress you made.
- The smarter, defensive AI used in games like
*Super Famicom Wars* and *Days of Ruin*. Due to its habit of massing up units just outside your attack range, it requires a lot of patience to break through its lines, or else fights can easily take over 50 turns.
- (Pre-
*AW*) There's no advantage to attacking first, because both sides hit each other simultaneously in combat, instead of the defender going second and having their counterattack weakened by the health they lost. This makes indirect units extremely valuable as they don't take counterattacks, but they're very slow to use and will dissuade the opponent from engaging you even more.
- (Pre-
*AW*) Only the properties near your HQ can produce units - ones farther away are just resupply points. Even when you're clearly winning, this can make pushing into the enemy base and actually finishing the game immensely difficult, as their reinforcements are right there, while yours are on the opposite side of the map.
- Endgame
*Rise of Nations* turns into this, due to the fact that the last part of the tech tree is laden with options that pretty much destroy the game's time and resource systems—building troops instantly, for instance. This basically turns the match into a contest of who can mash up their armies against each other the longest.
- In
*Sins of a Solar Empire*, by default, most units are capable of absorbing silly amounts of firepower, such as a colony ship brazenly flying through an enemy fleet and surviving. The "Shield Mitigation" mechanic is the main cause of this, and is present on all ships which possess shield systems, even when the shields are down (it acts as a Reinforce Field on the ship's armor instead). Shield Mitigation causes ships to flat-out ignore 15% of incoming damage when full, and become more effective as damage is taken - going up to 60% damage negation on lowly frigates, and 65-75% on capital ships and titans, depending on their level. Disabling mitigation in the pre-match setup significantly increases the speed of combat.
-
*Warcraft III* has this as a core philosophy, as unlike *Warcraft I & II* or *StarCraft I & II*, hitpoints are in much greater proportion to the damage values to promote a micromanagement playstyle. The Arbitrary Headcount Limit is also 100 instead of 200 supply units as in *Starcraft* and combat units usually require at least two supply units (with few exceptions) to make each unit a more significant presence in your army. This gets subverted in the endgame with units like Mighty Glacier fliers who can devastate heavy-armor units quickly in sufficient numbers with Magic damage, and how powerful some heroes can get with fully leveled nuke spells that can be combined with other heroes to melt through health bars.
- In vanilla
*XCOM 2*, many of your troops can one-shot most ADVENT forces, and be one-shot in turn if flanked or exposed. The "Beta Strike" modifier doubles the health of all XCOM and ADVENT units, but leaves damage untouched, so both last much longer in battle, making Area of Effect, status effects and other crowd control skills more important.
- "AI-versus-AI" matches in
*Civilization* will rarely last less than several hundred turns, due to the combination of Not Playing Fair With Resources on higher difficulties and Artificial Stupidity. Since it takes a lot less strategy to simply build up troops on your border than to organize an attack and both sides have functionally unlimited resources, this results in them endlessly massing armies and mashing them together.
- In
*Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts* it's possible, particularly early in the tech tree, to build a ship that's so well armored that contemporary guns are unable to meaningfully damage it except at absurdly close range. If that ship also has enough speed and maneuverability, it can also likely dodge any torpedoes sent its way and even avoid ramming attempts. This trope results when two such ships wind up trying to fight each other.
-
*Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition* combat was often called "Padded Sumo" by its detractors, as health outstrips damage, many powers focus on moving enemies around, and your more exotic powers are most effective if used at the start of a fight (reducing the rest of the fight to basic attacks). It is rather easy to run through all your powers only a few turns into combat, and then spend the rest of the fight spamming comparatively weak ones. This was particularly bad with solo monsters, which frequently boasted *outlandish* HP relative to when your characters were supposed to fight them. Notably, one of the bigger changes that came a few years into its lifespan was chopping large chunks off enemy HP.
- One criticism of
*Spirit of the Century* that led to later iterations of the Fate system being toned way down in that regard was that it lends itself easily to this. In conflicts, important characters (player and non-player both) will generally take multiple "stress" hits (strictly temporary damage on a track with 5+ boxes that are only filled in one hit at a time) before the risk of more serious consequences or being actually taken out even comes up. Since it's a pulp game, weapons and such don't actually provide damage bonuses — a fist, a knife, and a gun are all equally effective at taking somebody down. And anyone who sees the conflict turn against them always has the option to just throw in the towel and offer a concession, so unless both sides make a habit out of playing for keeps and refusing those, a character who's been in a serious fight minutes ago can potentially be already no worse off for the wear once he or she has had time to catch his or her breath.
- In
*BattleTech*, fights between two mechs can take a dozen turns to end, especially when the two mechs are both of the Assault class from the 3025 era. The tiny weapon max range, huge amounts of armor, weak armaments, and relatively slow mechs of that era can make fights very long, though through armor criticals, ammunition explosions, fusion reactor critical hits, and cockpit damage can bring a mech to its knees with one lucky shot. Later eras, like the 3060 Fedcom Civil War, play this trope less straight as most mechs now carry even more firepower, but often at the cost of a more easily damaged fusion reactor.
- In the first edition of
*Shadowrun*, body armor provided automatic successes to reduce incoming damage. It was fully possible, even common place, for someone to survive a hit from an assault cannon without taking any damage.
-
*Exalted*, at least in its second edition (pre-errata) suffers from this in spades. It's trivially easy to throw around one-hit kill attacks, sure, resulting in Rocket-Tag Gameplay if nothing is used to stop them... but it's also trivially easy to defend against any attack with a fixed-cost perfect defense. Once everyone is using an impossible-to-bypass suite of perfect defenses, the game changes from Rocket Tag to Padded Sumo Gameplay, with no attack ever doing more than making the opponent pay a tiny amount of essence, the game's equivalent to Magic Points. As a result, your essence pool is your *real* life meter, and victory is usually about making the enemy spend essence faster than you.
- However, the latest errata is intent on fixing this problem, reducing the lethality of combat in general and increasing the costs of Perfect Defenses so that the above-mentioned "paranoia combos" weigh on your Magic Points much more heavily.
- The first edition circumvented much of this padded sumo element with perfect defenses costing willpower, of which a character would normally only have ten at the absolute maximum. The third did the same by doing away with blanket "perfect defenses" entirely.
-
*Magic: The Gathering* gameplay can devolve into this in several situations, especially in a Mirror Match. Some deck styles (red and black in particular tend to exemplify these styles) are so aggressive that even a Mirror Match doesn't slow down gameplay, but when two players are playing a "White Weenie" deck (the objective of which is typically for the player to defend themselves and build up a large number of small creatures until they have enough creatures to overrun their opponent, or a "buff everything" spell that suddenly turns all those tiny creatures into powerhouses), a normally 20-to-30-minute match can easily stretch into an hour-long or longer Cold War.
- In the Commander format is designed this way. You have double the usual starting life, mass-destruction effects are encouraged due to the need to address multiple opponents, and games last an hour on average. The longer games create a place where normally Awesome, but Impractical cards get a place to flourish, though there's no written rules stopping players from putting together a deck that can put out very fast wins.
- "Goat Format" in
*Yu-Gi-Oh!*. All the major mass-destruction cards had hit the banlist, the primary cards of the format were Scapegoat (summons four defensive Tokens) and Thousand-Eyes Restrict (blocks everything from attacking except itself), Traps and Flip Effects saw a resurgence, and some of the most popular cards were based on flipping cards facedown. The result was one of the slowest-paced formats in the game's history - which, ironically, has made it one of the most widely-played legacy formats, since it contrasts so heavily with a meta notorious for Power Creep.
- Similarly to the Magic example,
*Hearthstone* has a meta based partially on this. "Aggro" decks are built around putting out as much damage as possible, and games with them rarely last too long, but "Control" decks are specifically designed around outlasting Aggro decks while building up their hand, minions, or game winning combos. Any two control decks can qualify, but the real winners here are a subset of control decks based around milling the opponents deck until they start taking fatigue damage while somehow returning cards to your own. A normal match is around 15 minutes, putting two control decks against each other might draw it out between 30 and an hour, and two Fatigue Warriors can last up to the *hard-coded 60-turn limit*.
- Though combat itself in
*Mutants & Masterminds* isn't particularly slow, it's designed to be *incredibly* difficult to kill someone when you don't intend to do so. Barring GM fiat, you first incapacitate them, then attack them again, at which they start dying, and *then* you can finish them off properly (or just wait for them to bleed out). It is a superhero game, after all; those mooks that Amazi-Girl punched with enough strength to smash through a brick wall are just fine.
-
*D20 Future* (an offshoot of *d20 Modern*) exaggerates this with the combat between capital ships: namely, capital ships typically have tens of thousands of Hit Points, whereas the most powerful ship weapons only do damage in the hundreds of points. Even worse: ships get a size penalty to attack rolls just like creatures do (-8 for colossal size, which all capital ships are), as a result, the ships typically have a really low attack bonus and miss a lot, dragging on the interminable fight even longer.
- Tic-Tac-Toe is probably the most famous game to deal with this: you can only win by getting three in a row, but your opponent can stop most attempts to do so in one move. Consequently, the game is notorious for ending in mutual draws if either player knows what they're doing; the only way to win is if your opponent makes a big mistake.
-
*DEATH BATTLE!*
- The Terminator vs. Robocop battle goes on for quite a bit before any of the two combatants display any noticeable damage. Downplayed in that they later do start bringing out their best (Robocop takes out explosive charges, and the Terminator wields a plasma rifle) which does result in some serious damage. ||Robocop emerges victorious as the hosts proved that he could survive the Terminator's weapons while at the same time the T-850 would take crippling damage from Robocop's futuristic weaponry.||
- Natsu Dragneel vs. Portgas D. Ace goes on for quite some time due to combatants' abilities; Natsu has the speed and strength advantage and is both immune to fire and eats it to restore his energy, while Ace has the durability and endurance advantage and is also immune to fire and can shift his body into flames to avoid most physical attacks, turning their battle into a stalemate. It ultimately comes down ||Natsu taking advantage of the fact Ace's fire form makes him extremely vulnerable to being eaten, forcing him to use his corporeal form more, and utilizing his lightning magic, which Ace has no immunity against||.
- Jotaro Kujo vs. Kenshiro. Jotaro's Stand, Star Platinum is incredibly tough and can No-Sell anything that isn't a Stand or Stand User. Since Kenshiro is neither, he can't do anything to Star Platinum. However, Kenshiro's durability far outclasses Star Platinum's strength, and he can use Muso Tensei to make himself impervious to all physical attacks, meaning Star Platinum couldn't do anything to Kenshiro, either. ||Kenshiro wins as while he couldn't harm Star Platinum, he could get around him and get to the much more vulnerable Jotaro, who is not immune to Kenshiro's techniques. Additionally, if a Stand User dies, so does their Stand,
note : As a general rule of thumb, at least; this does not include Posthumous Stands, which persist long after their user dies, and Bound Stands, which do not require a human user to operate, but as Star Platinum is neither that's a moot point for this fight thus when Kenshiro kills Jotaro, Star Platinum would go down with him.||
- Crash Bandicoot vs. Spyro the Dragon hits a bit of a stalemate since both combatants were capable of shrugging off millions of tons of force, however, they both lacked the offensive capability to land sufficient damage on each other. ||Spyro wins since his dark form had access to Aether Breath which could destroy Crash at the atomic level.||
- Carnage vs. Lucy overlaps this with Rocket-Tag Gameplay; the fight goes down to who would be the first to land a lethal hit due to Carnage's frankly ludicrous Healing Factor letting him tank all manner of damage short of complete bodily destruction and Lucy's unbelievably-fast and incredibly durable Vectors letting her block almost anything while one good shot from Carnage could easily kill her. ||Lucy is deemed the winner since the hosts show her Vectors can not only move much faster and reach farther than Carnage, but they can also hit with enough force and firepower (as in, nuclear explosion) to overcome Carnage's durability and Healing Factor while also exploiting his weakness to fire to kill him in one shot||.
- DIO vs. Alucard demonstrates both vampires are pretty much immovable objects. DIOs lies in his Stand, which is Invisible to Normals and can only be harmed by another Stand and his specific brand of vampirism, which gives him a Healing Factor able to survive any physical attacks short of sunlight-based attacks, on top of being able to stop time itself. Alucard, meanwhile, is a living Soul Jar and can use the literally
*millions* of souls of those hes slain to take lethal damage in his place or summon them as a gigantic army, and his true self is actually a Living Shadow which can shapeshift and turn intangible. ||Out of the two, Alucards means of outlasting his foe is truly finite, as DIO could burn through his reserves with his Super Speed and Super Strength eventually, and Stands can interact with ethereal opponents anyways.||
- Madara Uchiha vs. Sosuke Aizen had it noted that both combatants at the height of their power possess Healing Factors so potent neither of their world-rending brute force alone would be enough to put the other down and thus they would need to resort to more creative means to achieve victory. ||Madara comes out on top due to the fact his Truth-Seeking Balls not only possess Anti-Regeneration, but they're canonically capable of destroying spirits, meaning he had a hard counter against Aizen while his foe lacked a similar one against him.||
-
*Deadpool (2016)* has Colossus versus Angel Dust in the climactic fight. Colossus is unwilling to go all-out on a lady. Angel can hit hard enough to send him flying, but not enough to damage. The result is that the best they can do to one another is incapacitation until Negasonic Teenage Warhead gets in on it.
- In an early episode of
*The Simpsons*, Dr. Monroe gives our favorite family foam-padded poles to strike each other with as a means of venting. When Homer notices this trope is in effect, Bart responds by taking the padding off.
- After the Battle of Hampton Roads of The American Civil War, there was for a time serious concern that naval battles would turn into this, with the black-powder cannons that worked well enough on wooden-hulled warships no longer able to inflict serious damage on the up-and-coming "ironclads". Advances in gun technology made these concerns moot soon enough, but there
*was* a brief period during the late 19th century in which the possibility that the only way left to disable an enemy might be to actually ram them was earnestly considered and resulted in some correspondingly specialized ship designs. note : And one of Rudyard Kipling's funniest poems, the Ballad of the Clampherdown.
- In robot combat, like
*Robot Wars* and *BattleBots*, matches can become like this if every bot in the match has no weapons (this is not as ineffective as it sounds — because they can allocate everything towards speed, power, and durability, weaponless bots have been considered Game Breakers at times). The match becomes either the bots pushing each other or the operators trying to outmaneuver each other without letting them hit each other until time runs out. Because of the perception that such matches are uninteresting (but the truth is that it depends on the individual viewer), both organizations require every competing bot to have at least one prominent weapon.
- Star Wars:
- Starship combat in
*Star Wars Legends* is like this due to the sheer power of deflector shields, with those found on even smaller warships being capable of absorbing *thousands* of shots. Without shields, most ships won't survive more than a couple of shots from a turbolaser battery, but with them, evenly matched ships can expect to be firing at each other for hours before any progress is made.
- The Film series isn't that much shorter. For all the shooting that occurs between them, starships often may as well be terrain for the Space Fighters to dogfight around.
- The most extreme instance of this trope happening in the Ultimate Fighting Championship is the 1995 match between Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock, a grueling 35-minute match that mostly took place in a grappling position on the ground, Shamrock pinning Gracie to the ground and Gracie holding Shamrock down from being able to lift himself. Gracie kept kneeing Shamrock in the liver area, which would normally be a vulnerable spot, except that he lacked the leverage to deal any significant pain to Shamrock. Meanwhile, Shamrock headbutted and punched Gracie in the head with whatever leverage he was able to wrestle for, and despite landing some good shots, Gracie was able to nullify these blows long enough to hold out until the end of the match. In an unprecedented ruling, the match was extended into a five-minute overtime, and it
*still* ended in a draw; to add insult to injury, the fighters were separated when the match went into overtime, yet they were only on their feet for a few seconds before resuming the grappling position they had been in for the rest of the match. In spite of the outcome of the match, it was still considered a victory for Gracie, as he was able to disrupt Shamrock's perfect record with a draw.
-
*Log Horizon*: In the 11th volume, this is what the "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight between ||Elias and Leonardo|| turns into. The former has simply far too high defences for the latter to subdue him without resorting to lethal force, but his ||fairy eye curse|| ensures that he can't finish off his opponent either (sort of; it's a really complicated version of Your Mind Makes It Real). The result is a fight that lasts well over an hour, with the former chipping away *percentages of a single life point* at the time, and the other unsuccessfully trying to stop him.
-
*Black Panther (2018)*: During their Final Battle, both T'Challa and Killmonger are wearing vibranium Black Panther suits. Since the suits allow them to walk off a several-hundred foot fall, they're completely incapable of actually harming each other for most of the fight. ||Said several-hundred foot fall puts them on the rails of a train whose suppression system nullifies the absorption properties of their vibranium, causing the fight to bounce between this and Rocket-Tag Gameplay: they're still invulnerable between passes, but the first one to land a solid blow while the suits are suppressed will make that blow fatal.||
-
*Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.*: As the title says, main character Maple put all her stat points into defensive ability when she first created her character. This left her with the ability to tank practically everything the game threw at her, but her pitiful offensive ability meant that she couldn't do much to strike back herself. Eventually subverted as she learned new offensive abilities and started becoming more effective at attacking.
- The protagonist of
*With This Ring* reflects on his battle with ||a Sheeda Huntsman|| as this; he's unable to find an attack construct that will properly hurt his opponent, but his own wounds are rapidly regenerated by his ring. Stalling is two-edged as well; he'll eventually run out of ring charge, but the Sivana family are busily inventing a weapon in the background. ||The Sivanas win the race and implode the Huntsman.||
- Can happen in any real life sport when both teams have very good defense. Not uncommon in baseball to see several innings where no one can score a run (or even get on base) because the pitchers and/or fielders on both sides are doing a really good job.
- Trench warfare in World War I is often regarded as this, particularly on the Western Front. With the advancements to machine guns, artillery, and similar technologies, there was no easy way for soldiers to close the gap and earn a decisive victory, barring overwhelming numbers or total incompetence on the part of the enemy. Though technologies existed to try to break stalemates, such as tanks and planes, they were generally in too primitive a state to actually get far. What was more, most of the time, armies went for "defense in depth"—that being, a lightly defended first line which would be easy to take, but tie up the enemy long enough for the second line to pull together and smash them. Consequently, most battles came down to shelling the opponent at a distance with artillery, but both sides would typically be entrenched, minimizing the damage of that as well, resulting in slow grinding battles of attrition.
-
*The Death of Basketball* has this occur by way of flooding drafts with the worst possible players the game's systems allow. Once all the actual players have retired, you end up with a court full of minuscule weaklings who barely know the rules and behave as if they're suffering from catastrophic brain damage. While this results in terrible defense, offense is even worse, as these "doomsday players" can barely keep the ball going in a straight line, much less make a shot. The last recorded championship game, between the Denver Nuggets and the Orlando Magic, went on for twelve overtimes and ended at 0-3. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaddedSumoGameplay |
Overused Running Gag - TV Tropes
*"It's a running gag... well, it's limping a bit by now."*
When the writers openly acknowledge that a Running Gag has run its due course, even as they are hauling it out again gain gain gain
***WHACK***
There we go. Anyhow, the use of a Running Gag is generally constrained over the course of one episode. But there are some jokes that the writers thought are just so funny that they should be used in another episode, and another, and
*another* and *another*. Even if it isn't Once per Episode, it's still squeezed into the series wherever they see fit fit fit fit fit ***THUMP***
Okay. After a while, though, the writers will come to realize that the bit has started to peter out. Then one can be sure to start seeing plenty of Lampshade Hanging and heavy subversion in the effort to keep the joke fresh, or tolerated. Once
*that* wears thin, one can expect the bit to be dropped like a Christmas ham ham ham ham ham ***SMACK***
Okay, that joke's
*really* wearing thin. Before we continue, let's get that audio equipment fixed.
*One hour later....*
There, fixed. Anyhow, for this to be a trope, examples should
*not* be subjective. They should be based on whether the writers have reacted to its overuse (lampshaded or used it less), rather than just a feeling that the gag has been used too much.
The inevitable fate of many a comedy Catchphrase. Commonly confused with Overly-Long Gag, which is when a single gag is stretched out for an irritatingly long time. That said, for any joke, good or bad, enough repetition can make people decide it's an Overused Running Gag.
The next step after this is Running Gagged, where the joke is terminated with extreme prejudice, once and for all. Or until they bring it back.
Compare Didn't We Use This Joke Already?, when it's not a running gag, but still the writers are apologising for redoing the same joke. Also compare Discredited Meme, which this often leads to to to to to
***WHUMP***
Okay, if it does that again, that audio equipment is gonna get a dose of C-4.
**Note: This is for In-Universe Examples Only. Do not use this trope to Complain About Running Gags You Don't Like.**
## Examples of Acknowledged Overused Running Gags
- In a meta example,
*Bakuman。* featured the main characters working on a light-hearted comedy manga, but only a bit more than 10 chapters in, they're already making entire chapters based on the running gag of the main character saying "I dunno about that." This serves as one of the signs that this isn't the right sort of series for them.
- In
*CLANNAD*, Okazaki attempts to make Kotomi more social by bringing her to new people and telling her to introduce herself, at which point she always turns around and introduces herself to Okazaki. The third time this occurs, Okazaki remarks that that particular gag is getting old.
- In
*Case Closed*, Conan has to usually sedate someone then impersonate them using his voice changer to give his deduction at the end of almost every case. Kogoro (his most frequent target) almost catches on, that at one point when Conan speaks in his voice before Kogoro gets tranqed, the latter frantically feels himself around his face since he remarks that that should be around the time he feels a prick (the tranquilizer dart) in or around his neck; Conan shot him in the forehead instead. And Kogoro still comments on it before falling asleep, since he was also hit there before.
- In
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi* there was a running gag throughout the Mahorafest arc of Takane always getting stripped, four times in total, largely because she used magical clothing that stopped working if she was knocked unconscious. When she reappears in the Magic World arc she forces several girls to wear it as well because it increases defense, so ||when attacking the Cosmo Entelechia stronghold|| you can see the only one who knows about that and has to wear it herself nearly in tears. Contrary to all expectations, not one of them gets stripped this time.
-
*Pokémon: The Series*:
- Brock flirting with any older female he sees, before being hauled away by Misty/Max (by the ear), Bonsly (using Double-Edge) and Croagunk (getting Poison Jabbed in the ass). It's acknowledged in-universe by his companions (and even antagonists Team Rocket) occasionally getting annoyed at his antics. It was funny the first three times, then it just became old. For Croagunk's bit, it's a minor Running Gag in of itself for Dawn to get caught completely surprised whenever Brock makes an instant recovery.
- Making fun of Meowth's tendency for the bizarre Imagine Spots, mostly from the other members of Team Rocket.
- Mispronouncing Bill and Stafan...er, Team Rocket's Butch and Best Wishes' Stephan's names. Both characters frequently mention that they're going to change their names after several characters get them wrong.
- Nurse Joy, Officer Jenny, and Don George, of whom there's a seemingly infinite number of them in every town found, all going by the same name and all looking alike; frequently it was pointed out by the protagonists who found this just straight up bizarre in each of their earliest encounters, with Brock being the only one to spot any sort of difference among all the Joys or Jennys in his womanizing ways.
- For a gag that's been on for far much longer than Brock's flirting, the Team Rocket motto. To date it has been lampshaded, parodied, plagiarized, exploited, and made fun of not just by the Rockets' eternal prey the "twerps", but even some of the one-shot characters!
- Clemont and his inventions which, as his little sister Bonnie points out many times, have dumb names and tend to explode for no good reason.
- And then Bonnie pulls a gag similar to Brock's by asking older girls to "take care of" (i.e. marry) Clemont, leading him to scold her and drag her away.
- In
*Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei*, during an episode explaining many of the series' jokes to newer audiences, the audience member asks about the background running gags. "It's like something we do Once per Episode." "What's funny about that?"
- In the first two
*The Swan Princess* movies, Puffin says, "No Fear!", so many times, Jean-Bob finally grabs Puffin's beak shut and threatens to tear it off if he says it again.
- By the third movie
*Austin Powers in Goldmember*, the running gag of several witnesses likening a flying object to a naughty body part was called out by Ozzy Osbourne, watching it on TV with his family.
- Dave Barry often has Overused Running Gags in books which aren't merely recycled columns:
- "No! Sorry! That's
*it* for the Hawley-Smoot tariff, you have our word." ( *Dave Barry Slept Here*, which nevertheless references it in three subsequent chapters).
- "Do you think we've had enough Winston Churchill jokes? Explain." (also
*Dave Barry Slept Here*)
- "Do you think the author will eventually grow tired of the Buffalo Bob joke? Why not?" (
*Dave Barry Turns 50*)
- "If you think we're getting tired of the zucchini joke, you had best think again." (
*Dave Barry Hits Below The Beltway*)
- Robert Rankin often makes jokes about this, such as characters observing that something isn't going to become a running gag, or that it's not a particularly good one.
-
*The Mary Tyler Moore Show*: It had a running gag that Mary threw the worst parties. Every time she had a party something always happened to ruin it. Near the end of the series, they put together a flashback episode, the first and only time they used that gimmick, about Marys parties. The guests reminisced about past parties while waiting for guest of honor Johnny Carson to arrive. Marys building had a blackout. Johnny showed up. We heard him but never saw him, to great comedic effect.
-
*The Man Show* had a "Museum of Annoying Guys", and one of them was the Real Life version of this trope. "It's the beat a Catchphrase to death guy."
- The Rita Moreno episode (#5 of season 1) of
*The Muppet Show* features an old-style phone backstage. When it rings, Fozzie answers it, and something comes out of the receiver related to who's calling. At the fifth call, Kermit gets fed up and asks, "Is there no end to this Running Gag?"; then Animal comes in and puts an end to it (as well as to incoming calls, unless someone thinks to call the number for the phone on the desk).
- In the 2000
*The Invisible Man* TV series, Darien Fawkes would greet each worsening situation with "Oh, Crap!" in a resigned manner. Eventually, the *characters* find it annoying. By the second season, there are lampshades; for instance, it's *the only thing he remembers about himself* when he gets Laser-Guided Amnesia, forcing him to use it to tell who his friends are.
- Parodied in
*The State*. Under pressure to create more catchphrase-driven characters like *Saturday Night Live*, the writers created "Louie, the guy who says his catchphrase over and over again." The character would repeatedly ask for volunteers to present him with a substance and then loudly announce, "I wanna dip my balls in it!" while holding up two golf balls. The Only Sane Man in the sketch can't understand why the gag never gets old to any of the other characters. Ironically, the character proved popular and was brought back a few times.
-
*Hannah Montana*'s tendency towards zany schemes is noted, repeatedly, by Lilly, who eventually gets fed up at never being asked to just sit down and have breakfast but constantly being roped into Miley's schemes. On *Wizards of Waverly Place*, Harper tends to think similarly about Alex Russo. Same for *The Suite Life of Zack & Cody* and Zack roping Cody into schemes.
- Raven's schemes in
*That's So Raven* almost always involve costumes. In one episode, she learns Chelsea is doing something at school and plans to dress up as a janitor "with a mustache" to snoop around and find out why. Eddie points out that she can just *ask* Chelsea, and Raven gets offended that he doesn't understand her at all. Raven eventually decides to snoop around without the janitor disguise, but she still winds up wearing a mustache.
-
*iCarly*: T-Bo's food on stick gag (capsicums, chicken, doughnuts, etc) is put up with a couple of times, and now every time it's brought up he is forcefully rejected by the other characters.
- Everything Spencer touches catching on fire, no matter how hard he tries to avoid it. When it happens in the Grand Finale, Spencer just looks at the item with a bemused "Of course you burst into flames." expression on his face.
-
*Friends* had Ross's running joke "We were on a break!" Despite being called out on it, this saw usage right up until the very last episode. Additionally, Joey's Catchphrase "How *you* doin'?" saw a few lampshades.
-
*The IT Crowd* has Roy answer the phone almost every time with the line, "Hello IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?" However, early in the second season he interrupts his signature line with, "I'm sick of saying that. What do you want?" From that point on he never again utters that catchphrase ||until he brings it back in the fourth||.
- One episode has Jen bet him he cannot go an entire day without saying it. He loses.
- And in another episode, his phone is hooked up to a tape machine that plays a recording of him saying the catchphrase when someone calls.
- Of course, this is a joke about how this is often some of the first advice you'll be given if you're having trouble with your computer.
- In the film
*Escape 2000*, there is a scene at the beginning where the phrase "leave the Bronx" is repeated constantly. Mike and the Bots naturally turn this into a Running Gag, with Servo even singing the phrase repeatedly along to the music at the end credits. But when the movie is over and Mike tries to make the joke again, Crow tells him that it's not funny any more.
-
*Stargate SG-1* had a habit of making Who's on First? jokes using the Goa'uld System Lord Yu. When Elizabeth Weir tried to get in on it, she was stopped by Daniel.
**Daniel:** Don't. Every joke, every pun, done to death.
-
*My Wife and Kids* introduced Michael's catchphrase "Eh... No." in the second season, which he used to troll the kids by giving them hope he would say yes to them before ultimately rejecting them. It was used so often in the second season alone that he began finding increasingly idiotic ways to drag out the "Eh..." part of the catchphrase, such as running up & down the hallway several times whilst saying it before jumping back into the room & saying no, that it made no sense that his kids continued to get their hopes up that he'd say yes years later.
-
*Community*: The show had paintball episodes in the first & second seasons. The third season had the characters commenting on how played out paintball was at that point, and everyone agreed they shouldn't have another paintball game... Only for the fourth season to end on another paintball game. Abed even says that they "finally found a way to make paintball cool again."
- Monty Python's Flying Circus did this on a number of occasions
- One of their running gags was to cut from a sketch to stock footage of the Women's Institute applauding. In one sketch at the end of the second series, a judge in a sketch threatening to clear the court room if the stock footage was shown again.
- Another running gag was to end a sketch by having a policeman come in to arrest someone. In the third series a policeman came on and arrested the entire show for overusing this gag — and then he was arrested by another policeman for the same reason.
- Movie buff Cisco from
*The Flash (2014)* has time and again compared the odd things that he and the rest of Team Flash tackles to the movies he saw, making at least one Shout-Out per episode. Joe, usually the Only Sane Man of the team and just as versed in movies as Cisco was, eventually tires of it at one point.
"You and your movies."
- On
*Star Trek: The Original Series*, Dr. McCoy has expressed annoyance with Spock's Catchphrase "Fascinating".
**McCoy:** Please, Spock, do me a favor and *don't* say it's "fascinating". **Spock:** No, but it is...interesting. *(McCoy rolls his eyes)*
- Paul F. Tompkins' album
*Impersonal* contains a short routine ("Cherry Picking") that quickly turns from the concept of a "migrant farm worker fantasy camp" into a meta exercise in seeing how long the gag can play out.
**Randy:**
Thanks a lot, Mr. Guerrero. Hey, uh, quick question — what's up with your accent?
**Jesus Guerrero:**
Ho! It is not very good, is it? Not at all believable.
**Randy:**
No, it's kind of... kinda just sounds like you're a vampire or something.
**Jesus Guerrero:**
Oh, I know it sounds that way, but I am not! Please, Randy, do not worry that I'm going to feast on your blood to sustain my undead existence. I assure you, that is not going to happen. I am just a poorly drawn stereotype.
**Randy:**
You really are; you should probably stop.
**Jesus Guerrero:**
Oh, I
*know*
I should! And yet, I continue on, do I not? This should have ended a few minutes ago if you ask me, but I don't know — I just keep going until all the goodwill is exhausted by the crowd.
**Randy:**
I think we're probably there.
**Jesus Guerrero:**
Oh, I know, and yet
*here comes a few more minutes of this!*
Ho ho,
*boy!*
Believe me, Randy, no one is more aware than I that this has outworn its welcome.
**Randy:**
Why don't you just knock it off?
**Jesus Guerrero:**
Would that it were that easy, my friend. From your lips to God's ears, you know what I'm saying? Oh, Randy, the stories I could tell you of how long I have done this poor, borderline-offensive accent.
-
*El Goonish Shive* has used every possible permutation of the hammer and the demonic duck, and yet they just won't go away, even despite the author explicitly saying they will.
- They haven't been seen in a while, so maybe he kept his word. A whole arc was spent on some of the characters going to see why the hammers have
*stopped* working, which resulted in a canon explanation for why they're gone (and were there in the first place), and one character gaining the ability to use them as her personal magic spell (which she has yet to use). This was also the last time the Demonic Duck was seen. This was in 2010.
-
*Ctrl+Alt+Del* had the Running Gag where Ethan gets hit by an arrow from off panel (as a homage to *The Kentucky Fried Movie*). The author decided to end the gag after it became overused and played with its end by having the last arrow fired by Ethan and into the author himself as punishment for all the times he was hit.
- A strip of
*The Order of the Stick* has one person telling his teammates to stop screaming "SNEAK ATTACK"; after that, for the first time, someone *reacts* to them yelling and kills them before they can land the blow.
- For added strangeness, the one being criticized for calling his attacks is a fighter that shouts "Power Attack", while the dozens of rogues in the fight are shouting "Sneak Attack" with no commentary.
-
*PvP* had a panda that would randomly attack Brent. The reasons behind these attacks were eventually explained in a rather long arc, and the gag died down considerably after that.
- For a while, almost all the male characters in
*Sluggy Freelance* joked among themselves that "monkeys" was Gwynn's pet name for her breasts. Since Gwynn owns several *real* monkeys, this gag came up a lot when she made innocent remarks like "My monkeys! They're gone!" or "Be on the lookout for my monkeys and grab them if you see them. They could pop up anywhere." Eventually, Riff got tired enough of the joke to reprimand himself for using it again. And then ||the monkeys got killed off||.
- At least one running gag in
*Bob and George* (specifically, Wily getting overheard by someone standing just behind him) got this treatment. As early as the third iteration, it was acknowledged as an Overused Running Gag, and supposedly retired. And then it was brought out of retirement. And averted, inverted, inverted again, parodied (to the breaking point), double subverted, lampshaded, and...well, you get the idea.
-
*Schlock Mercenary*: In-Universe, this is what Tagon considers Shodan's continuing to bring up the accident during the Mall Cop Command arc where Tagon got a fork stuck in his eye.
-
*Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff* does this on purpose to go with the Stylistic Suck, outside the universe the fans reference SBAHJ endlessly and inside the *Homestuck* universe, where characters reference SBAHJ all too often.
- In
*Square Root of Minus Garfield*, this happened with the "Garfield (pun for Minus) Garfield" meme, also known as the "pudding pops" strips. Strip 268, "Garfield Linus Garfield", began this gag. Each strip in this gag editted *Garfield* strip 2001-11-28◊, by replacing the second panel's Garfield with Linus, Sinus, or anything that rhymes with "minus", or sounds a bit like "minus". Most of the strips kept a line about "pudding pops". Strip 478 lampshaded the gag but failed to stop the meme. Strip 518 provoked a forum thread that became strip 625, "Garfield Skynet Garfield: Judgement Day". This strip killed the Overused Running Gag; but the gag later returned to life, and now the admins limit new "pudding pops" strips to about one per month.
-
*Girl Genius* has what appears to be a running gag in the first couple of volumes, with multiple Jaegers all commenting on how good she smells to the point at which Agatha gets extremely angry at the next person who mentions a 'smell'.
- Except for the fact that this is
*not* just a running gag, but foreshadowing - all Jaegers have Undying Loyalty to the Heterodyne family, which comes along with a way of knowing who is and isn't a Heterodyne, including the voice, and the *smell*. Although the lower-ranked Jaegers just noticed the nice smell and didn't realise what it signified, the Generals and the detached Jaegers realised that Agatha was a Heterodyne *very* quickly.
-
*South Park*'s "Oh My God, They Killed Kenny!" It gets old, gets lampshaded, subverted and eventually cut down severely in the later seasons.
-
*Drawn Together* is yet another example of the "regurgitate the same jokes over and over, then acknowledge how they've stopped being funny and continue using the jokes over and over again" tactic.
- Find a Running Gag
*not* lampshaded, inverted, or subverted on *Phineas and Ferb*.
-
*Family Guy*
- The two vaudeville players Vern and Johnny, who appeared so often to fill the time before commercial breaks that Stewie
*killed them* to assure the audience that they would never appear again. (They *still* came back... as ghosts).
- Cleveland picked up a gag where Peter would destroy half his house while Cleveland was taking a bath, causing his tub to slide out of his (second-floor) bathroom and dump him in the yard. When Cleveland's first wife gets killed this way in
*The Cleveland Show*, Cleveland feels survivor's guilt because, in his own words, he'd fallen out of that same house "way more times than could possibly still be funny."
- "Believe it or Not, Joe's Walking on Air" pokes fun at itself for its constant use of a Cutaway Gag by having Cleveland complain about how he hates it when a show cuts away to some other bullcrap. Cue a Cutaway Gag showing Hitler riding a unicycle as he juggles fish. Later on, as the guys discover that Joe's new legs have turned him into a jerk and discuss "re-crippling" him, Peter says that "it's the right thing to do, like punching out Hitler." The show cuts back to the same gag as before, but Peter rushes in and punches out Hitler, saying "See? We had a plan for that all along."
- In a cutaway gag where Quagmire thinks he's the one getting the spinoff, he mentions the two of the show's more infamous running gags.
**Quagmire**
: See ya later, bitches! Have fun with your stupid goddamn giant chicken jokes and your Conway Twitty
Hey, why's there a moving truck outside Cleveland's house?
- In a later episode Peter meets God who gives him a message from Conway Twitty himself telling them to stop.
-
*The Simpsons*:
-
*Xiaolin Showdown*: Omi and his butchering of idioms. At one point Raimundo (usually the one who "translates") eventually asked Omi if he's been doing them on purpose. It got to the point that the myriad reactions of other characters (especially the villains) towards them has become a Running Gag itself.
**Wuya**
(Arc Villain
of Season 1): Can somebody PLEASE translate?!
-
*Jackie Chan Adventures*: The Once an Episode gag of Jackie telling Jade to not get involved with his missions, only for Jade to get involved anyway and Jackie to say something along the lines of "I told you to stay put!" Jade asked him on one occasion if he gets tired of saying that and Jackie himself sometimes questions why he even bothers.
-
*The Smurfs (1981)*:
- For most fans, the running gag where Brainy Smurf gets tossed out of the village for ruining a Smurf's day or simply speaking his mind is considered this. Season 9 made it clear the running gag was getting old and didn't make as much sense, with the Smurfs jumping to various time periods.
-
*SpongeBob SquarePants*:
- In-Universe, in "Ripped Pants," when everyone finds it hilarious that SpongeBob ripped his pants, he starts finding creative ways to rip his pants and make people laugh. After the first three times, however, people start to get tired of it, the final straw being when SpongeBob pretends to drown as a lead-in to yet another variation of it.
- The show now has its own version with Fred, the fish who says "My leg!" after an injury. He got A Day in the Limelight where whenever the words "My leg!", "Fred's leg!", or "Your leg" appear in conversation, they're screamed in the some way as the original gag; this happens no less than 40 times. A few episodes later, in "ChefBob", Fred shouts "My leg!" and Krabs just tells him to shut up. In "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout", Plankton forces Fred to say the line, which he does in a deadpan tone. Despite these lampshades, the joke is still used unironically in later episodes, even making it onto
*The Patrick Star Show*.
- Throughout the
*Ben 10* franchise, Ben Tennyson often suffers from Power Incontinence, where the Omnitrix would transform him into a different alien than the one he wanted. Sometimes there would be entire episodes where Ben would be given the wrong alien, and it happened enough for Ben to comment his annoyance at the watch seemingly never getting it right, at one point even saying "it's not even funny anymore". Though this was justified early on due to the Omnitrix malfunctioning or somehow being broken, by the time of *Ben 10: Omniverse* the Omnitrix has been perfected and Ben only has himself to blame for getting the wrong alien.
-
*The Fairly OddParents!*: Episodes focusing on Catman after season 5 have Timmy actively *dreading* seeing him again. "9 Lives!" has him try to put a stop to Catman's superhero antics by convincing him he only has one of his nine lives left, and episodes like "Cat N Mouse" have Timmy reacting with fear or exasperation whenever Catman shows up, just wanting him to go away.
The end end end end end
***BOOM*** | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverusedRunningGag |
Pacifist Run - TV Tropes
*"No matter the struggles or hardships you faced... you strived to do the right thing. You refused to hurt anyone. "*
—
**Judgement upon the Player during the True Pacifist run of ** *Undertale*
In games that give you a choice between using lethal or non-lethal force in order to overcome enemies, the former method is usually the most convenient. Some gamers like to play through such games while avoiding any killings that are not absolutely required, even if there is no real reward for doing so. In essence, the player is applying a No-Harm Requirement towards their entire playthrough.
Pacifist Runs can sometimes be a requirement for the Golden Ending, or the best ending for that scenario, as it ends
up with all of the cast surviving.
The inverse of this is the Genocide Run, in which the player's task is to kill everything that moves. This is only possible if enemies are limited in number and don't respawn, hardly meaningful if fighting every enemy is a practical or absolute requirement, and rarely acknowledged in games that meet both of these requirements.
Also see Thou Shalt Not Kill, a super-trope of sorts. Stealth Based Games and Stealth Based Missions often feature this trope alongside Stealth Run. When the game scolds you for not taking a more peaceful option, see What the Hell, Player? Can be related to Video Game Caring Potential. The Badass Pacifist and Technical Pacifist attempt this in real life.
## Examples where a game recognizes pacifist runs:
- The Culture, Diplomatic and (to a certain extent) Space Race victories in
*Civilization* can be achieved without a single battle (although the higher levels will manipulate you into conflicts with other Civs).
- In
*Civ 5* it is *theoretically* possible to win using a city-state to do your 'dirty work'. If another civ has wiped out the others apart from you and attacks a city-state you can supply the city with army units as gifts. If they manage to take the opposing civ's capital you would win. As mentioned above, it would have to be a low difficulty level. Also, since a city-state usually will only attack a nearby enemy city you'd have to be lucky that it was their capital as they'd sue for peace if they lost an ordinary city.
- A more literal version is "Always Peace", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. You shoot for one of the peaceful victories, but cannot go to war. In the first three installments this was a Self-Imposed Challenge, but since
*Civilization IV* its also an official game option.
- In a story now lost to the archives, someone once won a game of Civ 3 without building a single military unit. (This is a significantly more impressive achievement than just "never fight any battles" - the AI is able to recognise weakly defended targets and attack them opportunistically.) It was a diplomatic victory, if you're wondering.
-
*Endless Space* encourages this with an achievement that is rewarded for winning a game without ever placing a weapons module on a ship (bar the Starting Units). However, due to either an oversight or intentional exception, planetary invasion modules don't count as weapons, allowing Amoeba ships covered in defenses but with no "weapons" to invade and annex other empires' planets.
-
*Endless Legend* offers an achievement for winning the game as the Drakken (a faction which favors diplomacy) without ever being at war with another player.
-
*Stellaris* has the Pacifist and Fanatical Pacifist ethos. The first level locks you into liberation wars and defensive wars (You can only wage war to make your war-goal planets into a new nation that follows your ethos, stop atrocities like purges, humiliate the target empire, or to defend yourself). Fanatical Pacifists can only wage defensive wars, which means someone must declare war on them; they can't be the aggressor for *any* reason. In exchange for taking on this handicap, Pacifist empires can support a larger number of people without running into managerial issues and have a boost to the stability of their planets (because their people are more inclined to live peacefully with each other), and throw Peace Festivals to make their people happy.
-
*Infamous Second Son*: It is entirely possible to make it through almost the whole game without killing a single person yourself, relying entirely on subduing people. The exception being ||when Reggie dies. It's impossible to subdue anyone during that scene. Delsin is so enraged that he obliterates every trooper in his way.|| It can start to bleed into Technical Pacifist, though.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past* makes this easier than other games in the series because of two factors: The Magic Cape item, and the fact that the game doesn't require you to Kill Enemies to Open the way out as much as other games in the series.
- The Ghandi bonus in the first two games of the
*The Journeyman Project* series is awarded if you defeat your enemies with non-lethal force, which gives you extra points. It's possible to complete a game this way too.
- Players have found ways to complete certain
*Assassin's Creed* games with a minimum of blood on their hands. One standout example is *Assassin's Creed: Odyssey* where the player's kill score note : which normally reaches into the high thousands, if not above ten thousand per playthrough can be kept at near zero by letting the misthios' Animal Companion Ikaros do most of the necessary killing for them. In situations where this doesn't work, like in conquest battles, paralyzing arrows can be used to neutralize enemies nonlethally. Players on a New Game Plus run can also equip the legendary Pilgrim armor set to make themselves invisible indefinitely and just sneak past the majority of enemies in the game.
- It is possible to beat
*Metroid* and have the only enemy you defeat be Mother Brain. The main obstacle comes in the form of missile ammo: unlike later games, which have recharge stations for energy and ammunition, the NES original only gives you these through item drops from defeated enemies. Since missiles are absolutely required to get through the final part of the game and defeat Mother Brain, you will not only need to get pretty much every missile expansion in the game (as you no longer have access to the massive 75 missile upgrades that defeating Kraid and Ridley nets you), but you also can't afford to waste a single one before reaching Tourian. In addition, because some missile expansions are behind doors that require missiles themselves, you will have to use the (very simple to do) "door glitch" to enter those rooms.
- It is possible in
*Horizon Zero Dawn* to wear outfits optimized for stealth, and the varied landscape offers numerous opportunities to sneak around without alerting machines that lack the radar-sensing functionality (and even the ones with radar don't engage it all the time). As a result, once Aloy has the ability to override basic machines like Watchers and Striders, it is possible to combine stealth with the override ability to take advantage of the tendency of non-overridden machines to attack the overridden one. Consequently, aside from storyline-mandated fights against machines, it is possible to go through the entire game without killing more machines than necessary.
- Truly skilled (and crazy) runners will do this with Ninja Gaiden (NES) the game that is the epitomy of Nintendo Hard. Only the bosses are allowed to be killed and since most regular enemies die in one blow, a single errant button press will invalidate the run. If you want to see jaw dropping runs, check them out.
- In
*Pharaoh's Tomb*, you only have to kill two monsters in the first part. You do get a reward though: you have a maximum of 5 spears, and getting a 6th gives you a lot of points.
- In
*Teppoman*, if you run very fast and jump over enemies, you can freak out the AI, skip most enemies and rescue all hostages in the first part, but the second part is impossible to do, because the game treats destroying the turret as a kill. Pacifist run of Teppoman up to the "blue ending".
- In
*Quest for Glory*, the Thief can make it through the first three games only killing two Big Bads. The fourth game also requires you to kill two Eldritch Abominations, a wraith, and the Big Bad. The fifth game does not really allow for a pacifist run, shifting as it did to a more traditional hack-and-slash action game.
- Required in
*Open Sorcery* for the Golden Ending.
**@Decker:** You made friends with a virus.
**@Decker:** What are you doing, maintaining network security, or playing Undertale?
- There are three ways to gain AP in
*Ingress*: Building portal infrastructure such as resonators and portal links, hacking enemy portals, and attacking enemy portals with weapon items. It is possible to achieve Level 8 without ever using weapons, capturing a neutral portal, or hacking an enemy portal—making links between co-aligned portals and making triangles out of portal links to generate control fields yield large quantities of AP.
-
*Fatal Racing*. Surprisingly easy to do unconsciously before you learn how to play the crash/fatality system, surprisingly hard to do consciously after you do.
- In the classic arcade game
*Bump n' Jump*, where the objective was generally to run as many other cars off the road as you could without crashing yourself, you got *substantial* bonus points if you completed a level without running anyone off the road.
-
*Super Smash Bros.*:
- The original game has a bonus ("Pacifist") for clearing a stage without even attempting an attack. Given how many stages have level hazards, this isn't as difficult as it sounds to obtain.
- In the sequel,
*Super Smash Bros. Melee*, this bonus still exists, and is joined by another bonus called "Switzerland" which requires not being attacked as well (complete neutrality). Yet another bonus is called "Peaceful Warrior," which lets you attack an enemy but not KO them. And all of these are necessary for 100% Completion. There are some AI quirks in certain stages that help with getting these.
- Playing
*Postal 2* without ever killing anyone gives you the end-of-game rank "Thank you for playing, JESUS!" The game developers actually considered this a point of pride: the franchise was a big target of Moral Guardians, so in their view, the fact that the game *could* be finished nonlethally but players chose to murder half the populace anyway was probably a sign that people are just jerks.
- The same holds true of the expansion pack,
*Apocalypse Weekend*, but it's all theoretical since it's impossible to actually beat the game without killing anyone. It's more linear and combat-oriented than the original *Postal 2*, and there are several characters you have to kill to proceed. Even the *zombies* count as kills, and there are at least 2 different missions where you have to destroy a certain number of them to proceed forward.
-
*Deus Ex Universe*:
- Only two characters
*have* to be fought in order to complete the original *Deus Ex* (||Anna Navarre and Howard Strong||); neither have to be killed and both can be circumvented. The first can be injured to the point that they'll retreat and open the door they guard note : The game acts as if you killed the first character even if you circumvent them, due to the game's intent of railroading you into killing. However, given the nature of the game, one could always claim that they were killed by someone else for their failure and/or knowing too much after you escaped and were being framed for the killing., and the second can be knocked unconscious and is also quite willing to blow themselves up for you due to poor AI. The rest can be stunned or circumvented in various fashions. The game encourages pacifism in the first level by having characters react positively to you if you don't slaughter everything in sight, but after that, there's no longer any explicit encouragement, and it's strictly a matter of pride (although you *will* get bitched out for slaughtering civilians). Two of the endings, however, require the death of the Big Bad. One ending is explicit, as the ||player presses a button that causes him to blow up quite violently|| where as the other he dies as a result of the player ||blowing up the final level with everyone in it. In the third ending, he seemingly lives.||
-
*The Nameless Mod* lets you avoid all enemies, including bosses. With some endings, you can finish the game as an Actual Pacifist.
-
*2027* also allows this, however, you will not be able to complete the final ||Judician mission.||
-
*Deus Ex: Invisible War* picks this up, as even plot-critical deaths are optional. The benefits manifest differently depending on which faction wants them dead and how their death affects gameplay (keeping one person alive grants access to a weapon you won't seriously need till the end), but ultimately there are no required kills. A hidden bonus is that the wrap party has a lot more patrons the fewer people you kill. Only one of the game's four endings allow for a complete pacifist playthrough, as the other three require you to kill various faction leaders in the climax.
-
*Deus Ex: Human Revolution*, like its predecessors, can be played in a pacifist manner, by circumventing enemies or knocking them out with gas grenades, tasers, tranquilizers, and fists, except four forced boss battles. Unlike the first two games though, the bosses can't be circumvented so you have to fight and kill them (even in the Updated Re Release you can't actually prevent their deaths due to conventions). There is an achievement for doing a pacifist run (excepting the boss battles). Technically, three of the four bosses can be taken out with non-lethal weapons, but they still die in the following cutscene anyway. There were plans to allow the player to spare at least two of the bosses, but this was cut due to time constraints. The Director's Cut went one step further, making the pacifist fighting methods a little easier to use in the boss fights. The base game itself encourages the pacifist run by giving bonus EXP for non-lethal takedowns.
-
*Deus Ex: Mankind Divided*: Every enemy can be taken down non-lethally, particularly since the game features additional non-lethal offensive options as well as opportunities to talk down would-be enemies. The final and only boss of the game ||Viktor Marchenko|| can even be defeated non-lethally provided you can prevent him from activating Titan Armor.
-
*Team Fortress 2*:
- The Medic class achievement "First Do No Harm" entails reaching the top of the scoreboard in a game of six or more players on a team without killing anyone, instead relying mainly on assist kills while healing others, supplemented by the healing itself (1 point awarded per 600 Health healed) and Übercharging. Depending on the game mode, there are other means of earning points: capturing the Intelligence, capturing a Control Point, pushing the Payload Cart for 10 seconds, and reviving others (Mann Versus Machine). Given the fact that the entire enemy team would attempt tearing you a medically redundant new behind as Medics are high-priority targets, it's just as tough as it sounds. However, you can cheat by playing most of the round as another class, getting a high enough scoreboard position, switching to Medic, and then getting a single point without hurting anyone directly.
- The Scout has a similar achievement called "No Hitter", where you capture the intel and bring it back without firing a shot (the icon is even a dove holding an olive branch above an intel case). Not nearly as hard to do, as a lot of people with the intel forgo attacking to just flat-out run anyway.
- Under the rules of the
*Doom* speedrunning site Compet-n (adopted by other sites like the Doomed Speed Demos Archive,) one of the demo categories is UV "pacifist," where the player must complete a level on the "Ultra-Violence" (Hard) difficulty setting without harming any monsters. (Monster infighting and unintentional telefrags are allowed.)
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*Painkiller* sort of has this as one of the card conditions in *Battle Out of Hell*. The card condition for the Loony Park level is to finish with no more than 88 kills, meaning that the last section of the level has to be finished with minimal casualties. Fortunately, it's a rail shooter section to boot, so if the player has enough health, there's nothing stopping them from going and fetching another cup of coffee while the rail section plays out.
- In
*Perfect Dark*, the player has the ability to disarm opponents. Most enemies who get disarmed will give up, but some may pull out another gun, pick up the dropped weapon, or attempt to punch the player, in which case you can simply knock them unconscious with a punch or pistol whip.
- However, it's impossible to go the whole game doing this. Some enemies, including the Skedar and the guards threatening Dr. Carrol on the Escort Mission cannot be disarmed. In the case of the Skedar, even if you could do this, their claws and lunge attacks still render them a deadly opponent, and they are very hard (if not outright impossible) to knock unconscious. You can't really outrun them either as they have lethal firepower. Also, some objectives explicitly depend on a lethal outcome, such as counter-sniping snipers or defeating the final boss.
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*Soldier of Fortune*, despite its reputation for gorn, allows the player to pull this trope off by blowing weapons out of the enemies' hands, rendering them non-threatening. The ironic part? This is possible thanks to the GHOUL engine, the very same component responsible for the Ludicrous Gibs.
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*Metro 2033*:
- Two of the original game's achievements are awarded for relying on stealth instead of violence: Invisible Man (earned by completing "Frontline" without killing any Fourth Reich or Red Line soldiers) and "Merciful" (infiltrate "Black Station" without killing any of the Reich soldiers stationed in there
note : in Redux, knockouts aren't allowed either or raising an alarm). Notably, there's *another* achievement ("Hedge-Hopper") for doing the exact opposite in "Frontline", so you'll have to master both styles of play if you're going for 100% Completion. Avoiding killing human opponents also gives you hidden moral points, which counts towards the hidden/good ending.
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*Metro: Last Light* also has multiple achievements and morality points for a pacifist run or Stealth Run, or both at the same time. It's possible to go the entire game, barring the last level, without killing any human enemies or being detected, thanks to the ruthlessly efficient silent takedown that involves punching your schmuck of choice in the face or the back of the skull. You essentially have to do this to get the good ending.
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*PAYDAY: The Heist* has an achievement where you must complete the Counterfeit heist without killing a single cop or civilian. The special SWAT just got a whole lot harder since you can't kill them without ruining the shot of getting the achievement.
- Encouraged and possible, though insanely difficult to do thoroughly, in
*SWAT 3*. Suspects can be challenged (in fact, not challenging them before firing will give you severe penalties) and can be prodded with rubber bullets, flashbangs, and CS gas to make them drop their weapons and surrender. Taking a large portion of suspects alive will get you a massive bonus at the end of each mission. Taking *every* suspect alive, however, is very difficult, as rubber bullets can sometimes be lethal (like in real life) and some suspects are very uncooperative and aggressive. This is in no way helped by your trigger-happy squad members, so going for a complete pacifist run is very much a Luck-Based Mission.
- In
*SWAT 4*, this is even more encouraged, and in fact mandatory to some degree. Like in its predecessors you need to challenge suspects and prod them with less-lethal weapons in order to make them surrender. Taking every suspect alive is a must for a perfect score, and taking at least a fair portion alive is necessary to get a good enough score to even progress to the next mission. Going for a complete pacifist run is much, much easier this time around thanks to access of more less-lethal weaponry, no risk of suspects randomly dying from being hit by them, and less trigger-happy squad members.
- Although most of
*BioShock Infinite* requires guns blazing and kill-counts in the hundreds to complete the game, Episode 2 of the *Burial at Sea* DLC becomes a Stealth-Based Mission, especially at the beginning, as Elizabeth begins the level completely unequipped. With the right use of the Peeping Tom and Ironsides plasmids, it is possible to finish the DLC with no kills. Some dialogue in this section hints that Elizabeth's fate depends on whether she avoids killing, which may have been based on an idea for multiple endings to the DLC, but in practice, it's just for bragging rights. 1998 Mode removes guns and the Radar Range from the game, meaning Elizabeth can only eliminate enemies using non-lethal methods such as knocking them out with the Air Grabber or using the tranquilizer crossbow.
- It is entirely possible to win a round of
*Player Unknowns Battlegrounds* without killing anyone, or even attacking at all, by letting the other players kill each other off, with the last two opponents giving each other a Mutual Kill or the last opponent getting themselves killed (such as being in the out-of-bounds area).
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*Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts:* The Altai Mountains mission has an in-game Challenge to complete the level and only kill the main target. This gives you some extra money and skill points.
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*Cyberpunk 2077*: It is possible to go through the game without killing, if not necessarily without fighting, as the game offers multiple ways to neutralize enemies without killing them. Blunt weapons are categorized non-lethal and there are mods you can acquire that remove the lethality from your normal ordinance, meaning that weapons ranging from 4-gauge shotguns to frag grenades will become capable of putting down enemies without killing them. Any missions that require absolutely, definitely blowing up a few dozen people are entirely optional and, at worst, lock you out of select endings. The talking "Skippy" gun pokes fun at the choosing to fight nonlethally, as you're still brutalizing enemies pretty badly either way.
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*Anti-Idle: The Game*: The third challenge invokes this. You have to get level 3000 while having features that involve pain or fighting revoked (even the Battle Arena).
- In
*Virtua Cop*, shooting an enemy's weapon or hand disables them and awards you with a "Justice Shot" that is worth a lot more points than simply killing them. Bosses and vehicle-bound enemies still have to be killed though.
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*Confidential Mission*, another light gun game by Sega using many of the mechanics from *Virtua Cop* also featured "Justice Shots."
- In
*Dungeons & Dragons Online*, an experience bonus is awarded to the players if they can complete a quest with zero or otherwise minimal kills.
- There is one player in
*World of Warcraft* who has reached level 70 without killing anything.
- This also inspires a debate as to whether a player limiting themselves to "only" healing allies really counts; if the allies kill enemies you still get the rewards.
- With the release of
*Cataclysm*, pacifist levelling became much easier due to Herbalism and Mining now granting experience for picking plants and mining ores. This can lead to the rather amusing result of some random schmoe who picked a lot of herbs becoming *more powerful than an Old God*.
- A player successfully leveled a druid to level 90 in
*Mists of Pandaria* without killing anything, without getting any gear to replace his starting set, and having completed only one mandatory quest.
- There is in fact a guild of people who aim for zero kills called Peace Corps. While Cataclysm introduced a variety of ways to gain experience without killing things, it also introduced viewable statistics, so it's now possible to see exactly how many kills a character has. Since grouping with someone or even just healing someone who is fighting will credit you with their kill, it is by necessity a fairly solitary path. But gives you bragging rights that the most uber geared hardcore raider can never beat.
- On the notable pre-MMORPG text MMORPG
*GemStone* (now in its fourth iteration, as GemStone IV), it was extremely easy to get from level 0 to level 1 simply by visiting certain areas in the main town you started in, which gave you 1000-1500 experience of the 10,000 you needed simply by seeing them for the first time, as well as taking an interactive newbie tutorial which garnered you several thousand experience. However, after that, there were a couple of ways to gain experience without ever actually harming anyone. Anyone with sufficient lockpicking skill could gain experience by opening boxes that players found on dead enemies. One class, called empaths, could actually heal other people of their physical damage by transferring it to themselves, which also garnered experience points. Finally, if you really wanted, throwing trash away in trashcans gained you 1 point per item. So theoretically, you could throw away 10,000 things and level up.
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*Discworld MUD* has many ways of advancing character without killing, including exploration, quests, and using skills. This way is generally slower, but also requires less effort. There is even a special term for it, quoting official wiki, "Idlechasing, the art of getting as much experience as possible by using commands, usually without going on a killing rampage or moving much".
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*Epic Mickey* allows you to choose how you want to deal with the main enemies, the Blotlings. Paint will turn them into allies, and thinner will destroy them. If you always use paint to convert enemies to your side, you can play the game as a pacifist for the most part, though the robotic Beetleworx will either have to be dealt with lethally or simply ignored. Most of the bosses can be befriended as well.
- In
*Prince of Persia*, it was possible to get past any guard blocking your route without killing or even striking them with your sword. Careful use of parrying while moving forward *inside* their reach would see you suddenly swap places. At this point, it was possible to step back, sheathe your sword then quickly turn and run (to avoid a One-Hit Kill while unarmed) to reach the next platform or screen. This meant they were still there if you had to go back the way you came. The Final Boss was the only enemy you *had* to kill.
- Beating
*Mega Man 9* by only attacking bosses and mid-bosses is actually a bonus needed for 100% Completion.
- Some of the challenges in
*Contra 4* are pacifism challenges, which strip you of all weapons.
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*Mirror's Edge* gives you an unlockable achievement, "Test of Faith", if you finish the game without killing anyone with a firearm. Funnily enough, the achievement is only for not shooting anyone; you can throw as many cops off 100-story buildings as you like and still be considered to be the Buddha.
- It's actually one of the selling points of the game that you can finish the entire thing without shooting anyone, which is unique among first-person-perspective games (discounting medieval and fantasy games and the
*Myst* series and its clones).
- Doesn't stop you punching/kicking the snot out of the opposition, though it's not like you stop to break their necks, so they probably are really just unconscious. Apart from the poor guys that get kicked/thrown/punched off buildings. Besides, those blasted ||Pursuit Cops|| deserve it, they're like ninjas, but without the inverse law!
- For even more of a challenge, try to get the Test of Faith achievement/trophy on the hardest difficulty setting. It's very satisfying.
- The title character of adventure/platform shooter
*Iji* wakes up to find that aliens have invaded and scientists have implanted her with nanotechnology to combat them. Iji is uneasy with the idea of killing, even though the aliens have killed most of her family. The game is designed to give you a choice - you can go in guns blazing and kill hundreds as in so many other games, or you can deliberately avoid bloodshed. The ending is the same whether you kill one or fifty enemies, but there are some Easter Eggs as a reward for completely holding your fire.
- Doing a pacifist run sometimes adds new challenges to a stage. The third stage, for example, has a requirement of not coming into contact with any Tasen soldiers. Otherwise, you won't be able to skip ||Krotera||, and will be forced to kill them.
- From version 1.3 onwards, it is possible to have a perfect zero number of kills in all but the hardest difficulty (due one boss not being Skippable in that difficulty
explanation : Skipping Asha's boss fight requires researching a powerful weapon early and blowing up the objective you normally have to hack. Hardest difficulty disallows unlocking weapons.). ||Given that the boss is Asha, who either killed her brother or came close to, and called her being upset about it trivial, at least he's the most deserving example. Still, skipping him causes him to commit suicide out of shame at not beating you.||
- Version 1.6 also allows a "technically" pacifist game that can still have a high death toll, as reflecting enemy projectiles back at them no longer counts as a kill (this was reversed in 1.7 as the introduction of nonlethal weapons made this redundant). Also, the player can deliberately get hit by rockets so that nearby enemies get killed by friendly fire.
- The final version introduced another step of pacifism, allowing you to non-lethally get past a certain lategame boss without having to rely on Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work. ||Sparing Iosa can only end in tragedy, though, as she gains nothing from this and will assassinate Iji when she's vulnerable after the Final Boss.||
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*Trine* has a Steam achievement/PS3 Trophy where you have to complete a level without killing a single enemy.
- This is the point of the missions involving the Spirit of Kindness in
*Yoshi Topsy-Turvy*. The less enemies you kill, the better Happiness Medal you get.
- Brawl in the Family's
*Ode to Minions* inspired at least one person with a Youtube account to play *Super Mario World* without killing anything. And really, it would inspire anyone to. Just listen to it.
- Someone did this for
*Commander Keen 4* on hard mode without saving in level. Since the game was designed assuming the player saved constantly, it quickly becomes very difficult. It can be found here. A normal playthrough is a downplayed example, as the blaster merely stuns enemies.
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*Mark of the Ninja* equips you with enough items and abilities to complete the game without killing any enemies.
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*Sonic Generations* on the 3DS includes missions that require this. It's guaranteed to require multiple tries simply because of the homing attack.
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*Qwak* has the "Peacefully done" bonus for killing no enemies on a level.
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*New Super Mario Bros. U* has some challenges such as "Be Gentle To Giants" revolving around doing a level from the Story Mode without attacking any enemies.
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*Wario Land: Shake It!* has bonus missions for each level, and almost every level has "don't kill any enemies". Since very few of the enemies in this game are actually a threat, and stunning enemies to use as stepping stones is still considered okay, there isn't much of a need to destroy enemies on your way to the end of the level. The challenge comes when you reach the end and have to return to the starting point before time runs out - almost every level has a launcher that will send Wario running at full speed, destroying any enemy he touches. Therefore, the best way to avoid accidentally destroying any enemies is to avoid using the launcher at all - meaning time is now even tighter.
- In
*Cuphead*, all the side-scrolling levels can be beaten without killing a single enemy. Accomplishing this task earns you a P-rank for that stage and unlocks the color filter option for the game.
- One enterprising YouTuber attempted a pacifist-slash-Minimalist Run in
*Super Mario Odyssey* wherein he collected as many moons as possible and completed the story while making only the Cap-tures required to complete the game (of which there are 15 note : The spark pylon to get from the Cap Kingdom to the Cascade Kingdom, the Chain Chomp for the first moon, Madame Broode's Chain Chompykins 3 times, the Sherm to beat the Mechawiggler, the spark pylon to get to the Ruined Dragon boss, the six spark pylons to get to various areas of Bowser's Kingdom, a Pokio to scale the large wall in Bowser's Kingdom, and Bowser himself to escape the moon, and the number of moons he got without requiring Cap-tures is 450).
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*Super Mario Maker 2*: In this game where players can craft their own levels, some have created these runs. In levels made with the *Super Mario 3D World* game style, they seal off the path to the goal post or axe with a locked warp box. This will only activate when the player reaches it with a key. The builder then puts a key inside every single killable enemy in the board, from Goombas to Piranha Plants, and so on. The death of any enemy, sometimes even by neutral hazards, will give the player the key the enemy had, resulting in the player being warped away from the goal post to probable death.
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*Do It For Me*: The "Innocent Love" and "Awake" endings require you to go through the game without killing a single Wooffle.
- In
*Shadow Dancer* for the Mega Drive, you get a "peaceful bonus" for beating a stage without killing any enemy. note : That is, with shuriken or sword. The screen-clearing ninjutsu is still allowed. Easier said than done.
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*Gyossait* starts the player off with just a shield, which can reflect enemy attacks. It later gives access to a gun, which allows you to outright kill most creatures and makes the game much easier to get through. While the shield technically allows you to kill enemies by reflecting shots back at them, using only the shield and ignoring the gun gets you an achievement for taking the more peaceful path ||and leads to the good ending of the game.||
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*Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood* gives a huge incentive to take enemies down non-lethally, as Robin's reputation as a merciful person will net him better rewards and lead more companions to join his cause. You do have to kill two enemies in the game, though: Sir Longchamps and the Sheriff of Nottingham. Also, in several missions you have AI-controlled ally units which will attack enemies on sight, so you have to either scout ahead, take down and hide all the enemies before letting them through, or make do with a Technical Pacifist attitude (and kills made by allies still impact Robin's reward at the end of the level).
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*AirMech* has an achievement called "My Hands are Clean" that involves the player taking no part in the combat and only using units to defeat their opponent. While not pacifism per se, you're not joining the fight yourself.
- Unlike most music games, missing an enemy in
*Muse Dash* doesn't necessarily cause you to take damage; if you miss by simply dodging the enemy, you won't get hurt. Thus, on some charts, it's entirely possible to clear the chart with all of the notes missed, and it's even possible to combine this with a No-Damage Run if the chart is sparse enough.
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*Everhood*: The second half of the game tasks the player to kill everyone, but they can refuse to do this and earn a different ending. ||More specifically, one of the game's bad endings.||
- In
*NetHack*, 'pacifism' is one of the many voluntary conduct challenges that is tracked by the game (along with atheism, vegetarianism, breatharianism, illiteracy, etc). However, in *NetHack* 'pacifism' means that your *pets* do all the killing instead of you; you can attack the monsters all you want as long as it's not you that lands the killing blow. (You can also wear a ring of conflict to make the monsters kill each other, though then you have to make sure your (usually very powerful) pets don't kill *you*.) There actually isn't a single creature in the game who must die (as you can steal any important items instead - this applies to Quest Nemesis, Vlad, Rodney, and the High priest), but winning without you **or** your pets killing anything is impossible.
- There's also the 'never hit with a wielded weapon' conduct, which holds a bit closer to the spirit of the thing (though barehanded martial arts and magic are still permitted). It can also be combined with the above for extra masochism.
- If you want to complete your Baroque collection in
*Baroque*, you'll have to do at least one run through the Neuro Tower without ~~killing~~ purifying any Meta-Beings. This is made a bit tricky by the fact that certain Meta-Beings like to block your path, forcing you to hit them until they get out of your way.
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*DRL* enforces this behavior on players in the Angel of Pacifism challenge by simply disallowing any use of weapons. The player wins by running through all the levels and finally nuking the Spider Mastermind (the player gets the nuke at the start), and to ease things up (somewhat), the player gets a level-up after descending every third stair. This encourages players to enter certain special levels that have the entrance and exit close to each other, and any and all monsters killing themselves or others (through infighting, running through lava, or shooting barrels while standing next to them are credited to the player, with an according experience gain. On the other hand, there are extra challenges that take this concept to the extreme - the Archangel of Pacifism takes away the "level-up at every third floor" mechanic, and even worse, the Angelic Pacifist badge requires the player to win the game with exactly *one kill* (that one being the Mastermind) - if any monster is killed by other monster's attack, or even more unluckily, if a monster is generated on acid or lava, you can just kiss your run goodbye.
- This is enforced for one character in
*Crypt Of The Necrodancer*. The character Dove can only attack with a flower, and this doesn't even hurt enemies. It only stuns them (though they drop gold all the same). Attempting to bypass this by picking up a weapon or using a shrine of blood will instantly kill her thanks to "Cowardice". Thankfully, the exits for the levels (which are sealed by a Mini-Boss or Mook Maker) are automatically unlocked and all bosses are absent.
- In
*Liberal Crime Squad*, a pacifist run is actually considered *easier* than a run where you kill people, which isn't that surprising when your goal is to influence public opinion.
- In
*FTL: Faster Than Light*, one of the in-game achievements, titled "Coming in for my Pacifism run!", requires making it to Sector 5 without firing a shot, using an offensive drone, or teleporting.
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*Dice and the Tower of the Reanimator: Glorious Princess*: On a fist run, Bambooblade will knock out enemies rather than kill them. ||This causes the good ending to happen, since the Reanimator can't revive her minions as undead if they never died in the first place.||
- The first two
*Fallout* games are notable for the possibility of not needing to directly kill anyone, although this is more Technical Pacifist as the endgames for both require you to nuke the base of the main antagonists, knowingly killing hundreds of people. The Final Boss of *Fallout 2* Frank Horrigan must be killed but you can have companions or several defecting Enclave officers do it. It is even possible, though very difficult, to do an *Evil* Pacifist Run in both games.
- While difficult due to the more combat-oriented nature of the game, it is possible to complete the main quest and some sidequests in
*Fallout 3* without killing anything, with the exception of a single radroach during the tutorial. Though again this is very much an Exact Words Technical Pacifist cheat: several mission objectives, including at least one in the main story, *require* the deaths of all raiders/slavers/mutants/soldiers in a given area... you can just have a companion character do it instead of you. And it's flat-out impossible even with Exact Words in *Broken Steel* which requires you to kill dozens of Enclave troopers and nuke a base containing hundreds more; you can't tell your companion to do that.
- According to
*Fallout: New Vegas*'s project director, Josh Sawyer, being able to play through the game's main plot both by killing everyone and killing absolutely no one was intended as "initial design tenets". The AI is liable to get funky if you attempt it, but at no point during the main quest is the player character forced to kill an enemy in combat, regardless of which faction ending they go for. This can lean into Technical Pacifist territory, however, and both House and the Legion's endings involve wiping out one faction in one manner or another; the Legion even tasks you with an assassination, though you can botch it. NCR and Wild Card runs, though, can use diplomacy to avoid wiping out any of the game's minor factions.
- Notably, a full non-combat run through the game doesn't necessarily let the player finish with truly clean hands. Reaching any ending still forces some level of moral compromise on the player's part: the Omertas questline can be skipped but otherwise its Speech solution involves convincing Cachino to open fire for you; when siding against Mr. House you're given an alternative to directly killing the man, by disabling him from the computer interface that lets him interact with the world, but doing so is Cruel Mercy and is said to reduce him to a "year of life at most"
note : A note in the game files indicates that, in the NCR route, it would be possible to convince Mr. House to give up the sovereignty of the New Vegas Strip in exchange for NCR citizenship and amnesty, but is was scrapped for unknown reasons.; destroying the Brotherhood of Steel is mandatory for House and the Legion, and while this can be accomplished with stealth and setting their base to self-destruct, it still results in the death of anyone in there.
- In addition to using Speech and Sneak to talk, avoid, and pickpocket your way around people as in most
*Fallout* games, *New Vegas* has a few added tools to take advantage of. Disguises allow the player to avoid being shot on sight by factions they've irritated, though have limits. Weapons with fatigue damage exist, allowing players to temporarily ragdoll and stun enemies, though these do an amount of regular damage as well. Of course, as far as the Pip-boy stats go, kills by companions won't count as yours...
- Due to the nature of the game, a pacifist run is wholly impossible in
*Fallout Tactics.*
- While it's possible to have a pacifist run in
*Fallout 4* (in the sense that you "technically" didn't kill anyone since more than a few quests rely on murder), the game's tone wholly expects you to at least have a few kills by the end of the game, thus it becomes close to impossible for some missions to resolve peacefully and requires a Manipulative Bastard with a *really* good silver tongue and lots of patience to complete it, and even *then*, the game has the potential to break. Most missions don't even have the option to end peacefully.
- While Obsidian planned for nonlethal weapons to appear in
*The Outer Worlds*, they were eventually cut from the game. As a result, the finished product doesn't allow players to knock out their enemies, and while almost all players will inevitably kill a few aliens and destroy a few robots, it's possible to complete the game and its expansions without directly killing a single person. A high Sneak skill, coupled with incredibly high Persuade, Lie, and Intimidate skills will ensure that the player character can skulk through the game undetected, using their rhetorical gifts to stop potential fights from happening. However, don't expect everyone to acknowledge your pacifism. During certain conversations, some characters will infer and imply that you've killed people!
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*Mars: War Logs* allows you to spare the life of every NPC you fight.
- Feros in
*Mass Effect* has a mission where you can choose to simply knock out the colonists being controlled by the local Eldritch Abomination instead of killing them. While this makes the mission much more difficult, it is definitely worth it for a Paragon Shepard.
- In the majority of
*The Elder Scrolls* you can pass the game without killing or killing only the bosses.
- One player managed to do this in
*Might and Magic 7* as shown here.
- In
*Planescape: Torment*, you can get through the whole game having to fight only four (And the zombie at the beginning who has the key out of the starting room!) characters, and you don't necessarily have to *kill* any of them. You're forced to "kill" the first character you have to fight this way, but it's just a Non-Lethal K.O.. Then again, this should come as little surprise in a game where a major objective is to find out why *you* can't die.
- However, it's not possible to avoid ||dying and reviving a number of times. And every time you "die," someone else dies instead, making you somewhat responsible for their death.||
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*Ultima*:
-
*Ultima IV* encourages this somewhat, you still have to fight monsters to get Valor points, but letting them run away instead of killing them gives you Compassion points. Additionally, killing enemies that aren't evil (hungry or defensive animals and the like) will *decrease* your virtue points.
- In
*Ultima VI*, it's quite possible to complete the main quest without killing anybody. There are only a few monster-occupied areas that you must visit to advance the plot and it's possible to avoid combat in those by using invisibility rings and potions to slip by enemies unnoticed.
- In
*Ultima VII*, you only have to kill ||Hook, Elizabeth, and Abraham|| at the end.
- In the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter of
*Live A Live,* Oboromaru keeps a running mental tally of how many people he's killed (only humans; ghosts, demons, and machines don't count towards this total) over the course of the chapter. Somewhat overlapping with the Stealth Run, finishing the chapter with zero kills (which requires a good number of counterintuitive steps) nets you his Infinity Plus 0.5 Sword for use in the final chapter. It's possible to get an equivalent weapon by beating a rather difficult Optional Boss. This influenced *Undertale*'s morality theme below, and the remake returns the favor by making you feel like Oboromaru truly accomplished his mission if you went this road.
- A common and useful Game-Breaker in
*Final Fantasy VIII* is simply to junction 100 Break spells to your weapon's elemental attack and hit enemies with that when you otherwise just can't run away. Doing this keeps you from gaining experience and levels, which helps in the long run once you find decent spells to junction your physical stats.
- It's possible to get to the final boss of
*King's Field II* while only killing one monster: a red mushroom that you can't get past on a narrow path just past Lake Noel. You're still level 1.
- In
*Alpha Protocol*, it is possible to get through the entire game without ever using lethal force on any opponent, outside of a couple of armored vehicles and one cutscene-mandated kill (dropping al-Shaheed's bodyguard off the bridge). In fact, this method is quite viable, if Mike has specializations in pistols, stealth, martial arts, and toughness. Make use of tranquilizer darts, stealth with nonlethal takedowns, unarmed attacks, and nonlethal gadgets like shock traps and flashbangs, and Mike can potentially get through the whole game with no kills. The game even keeps track of kills (with the "Orphans Created" stat) and non-lethal takedowns ("medical expenses"), rewarding the player with perks that boost the effectiveness of his stealth and other nonlethal skills.
- It's not
*exactly* a pacifist run, but *Geneforge 4* occasionally mentions that a "great Shaper" can get through the game without ever lifting a hand in defense. This variously means sneaking past baddies, abusing the Leadership skill, and luring enemies to weapon-toting allies.
- A few missions in
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines* have optional objectives to leave no civilian casualties. As in the tabletop game, experience is awarded for overcoming challenges, not killing enemies.
- This article explains how it is possible to do this in
*Fantasy Life* by deliberately and completely eschewing the four combat professions (Soldier/Paladin, Mercenary, Hunter, and Wizard). You can still obtain experience points through completing quests, and through crafting and gathering if you have the tools to do so. The plot-driven encounters during each chapter can either be skipped (by having your butterfly companion step in and resolve things peacefully for you) or circumvented (by avoiding the possessed creatures that attack you during the end-of-chapter "boss battles" and instead attacking the source of the corruption).
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*Devil Survivor* *Overclocked* gives you this as an in-game option on Naoya's 8th Day. Now that you are the King Of Bel and are about to declare war on God and his army, the humans in the Yamanote Lockdown areas are pretty angry at you and want to kill you for causing demons to run free now. You are given the option to fight all battles against the army of angels *and* kill all humans who oppose you or you can choose to only fight the angels and leave all humans alive. Both options net you a title each and minor differences in dialogue and battles.
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*Undertale*:
- The original game heavily advertises the ability to SPARE enemies instead of fighting them, with the tagline "The Friendly RPG Where Nobody has to Die". A totally pacifist run without killing any enemies gets you the Golden Ending, which is by far the happiest ending. If you play a pacifist run, some of the characters will ridicule you for playing the game in this manner, while others will encourage you. Either way, you'll see the effects of your mercy as you progress through the game.
- Interestingly enough, in the Neutral Pacifist run, required for the True Pacifist Golden Ending,
*one* monster *has to die*: Asgore Dreemurr. And he does die, whether you're the one to strike the final blow, or you attempt to SPARE him and he's instead killed by Flowey. If he's the only monster that you kill, then all the other principals agree that you did what you had to do, and no one—not even Undyne, the Captain of the Royal Guard and one of Asgore's closest associates, if you befriended her—blames you for it. Going back for the True Pacifist ending undoes his death anyway, as it resumes from a point before that battle.
- Its successor,
*Deltarune*, has a similar mechanic where you can fight enemies either passively or forcibly (but nonlethally, outside of a special route beginning in Chapter 2). Much less actually changes about the flow of the game aside from a few slightly different lines of dialogue and a slightly different ending for each chapter to hammer home the point that your choices *don't* matter this time. For a while in the first chapter, you're even saddled with a party member who refuses to fight passively against a boss who *can't* be defeated violently, forcing you to *actively warn enemies* of her oncoming attacks to complete the pacifist run.
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*Pokémon*: Since you can't actually beat the game without winning at least a few fights, you have to go the Technical Pacifist approach by inflicting indirect damage through actively administering status effects or entry hazards. For extra challenge, you can limit yourself completely to moves that only buff and lower stats, and use Pokémon with passive status- or damage-inflicting abilities (like Poison Point or Rough Skin), forcing the opponent to do all the work of knocking itself out. note : Due to opponents not having PP and abilities not yet existing, this approach is impossible in the Gen I games.
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*Wasteland 3*: The "Battle of Steeltown" DLC has a "Perfect Pacifist" achievement for not killing any of the striking workers or members of the revolutionary "ghost gang" (instead subjecting them to Non-Lethal K.O.), though you are expected to kill the cruel foreman who is the cause of the strike in the first place.
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*EXTRAPOWER: Star Resistance*: The game throws tons of enemies on you with the expectation that you're going to make them all explode in waves of fireballs and/or green viscera. But for especially determined and patient players, you can pull off a no- or low-kills run to achieve the Holy Warrior rank. Easiest to perform as Valhalla, who gets a giant shield and the ability to prevent all damage for a limited time. A Challenge Run as increasing health is tied to number of kills, in the thousands, so you'd be completing difficult end game gauntlets and final bosses with 3 hits at most. 4 if you grab the secret at the end of Stage 5.
- In
*Star Wars Trilogy Arcade*, during the sequence on Endor on the speederbikes, you gain bonus points (called Bloodless) for shooting down the enemy's speederbikes instead of the enemy themselves. But considering they're speeding pretty fast in a forest full of trees, it probably would have been less painful to have been instantly shot to death.
- The original
*Star Wars* Vector Game gave a bonus if you 'used the force' and took no shots in the Death Star Trench except the single torpedo shot into the exhaust port, instead dodging the massive incoming fire.
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*Ikaruga*, by virtue of inheriting twenty years of evolution in the shooter genre, allows the player to complete the game without ever firing a single shot. Your reward is the rank of Dot Eater.
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*Star Fox 64* offered an interesting variant since bosses are worth more "kills" if they are defeated quickly, so players attempting this had to wait a while in those fights while dodging the attacks and (depending on the exact definition and route) protecting their teammates in those cases where they can actually get attacked by these bosses.
-
*R-Type Delta* and *Final* both feature bosses which are automatically destroyed after a certain time; late in the game, bosses will instead kill you if the time limit expires, so the Pacifist Run is to destroy only these bosses. Can be made even harder if combined with a *no-Force* run, which severely decreases the defensive abilities of the player's ship.
- Most
*Gradius* bosses — including the final bosses — self-destruct after a certain time, as well. Most of them don't fight back anyway. Some exceptions to self-destruction exist—the wall boss in Stage 7 of *Gradius V* will smash you against the left side of the screen if you time it out.
- As in other vertical shooters, this is a common type of run in the
*Touhou Project* series despite the fact that the games actively punish trying to do this. Most Final Bosses and Superbosses have their final spellcard become incredibly difficult if you take too long, but have long enough timers that the average player will never see this. And there'll generally be a few patterns that will just get worse with time, and the occasional wave of enemies that will exit through the bottom of the screen, where the player is, if not killed.
- Defied very hard in the fourth PC-98 game,
*Lotus Land Story*, where Gengetsu's final attack suddenly becomes virtually impossible to dodge because hundreds of projectiles are coming at you at the speed of "HOLY SHIT!" This attack is known among fans as "Gengetsu's Rape Time". This video is not sped up - that's the normal speed of the attack. The player, however, had to significantly slow down the game's flow to beat it, because otherwise it would be easier to go outside in a thunderstorm and try to dodge rain.
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*Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved* has an Achievement called *Pacifist*. To get it, you must not fire for the first 60 seconds of the game. Since the fast, homing square enemies spawn before that, it's a Nintendo Hard one to get.
- The sequel has a separate game mode called Pacifism, where the objective is to avoid the said square enemies as long as possible. While you may not fire, going through a gate causes a shockwave that kills nearby enemies. In addition, the King mode has an achievement called Treaty and the Wave mode has an achievement called Surf.
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*Afterburner Climax* with only 1 kill, possibly avoidable? Why not?
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*Night Striker* has a bonus called the Pacifist Bonus, where if you do not shoot at anything *and* not take damage either, you earn 2,000,000 points. This bonus stacks up per stage for six stages. (ST.1 - 2 mil, ST.2 - 4 mil, ST.3 - 6 mil, etc.) An example of this in action can be seen here
-
*NARC* allowed you to "bust" (handcuff) enemies instead of killing them. Doing so was worth MANY more points than killing them, making it easier to gain bonus lives (necessary!). Only about half of the enemies could be "busted" though.
- This is half of what it's like to try and be a benevolent god in
*Black & White*. The other half is being nice to your villagers.
-
*Yandere Simulator* is normally about blackmailing, manipulating, or straight-up murdering Yandere-chan's rivals for Senpai's affection, but it's possible to hook up your rivals with other boys instead, or to help them out with major problems, resulting in them agreeing to not pursue Senpai in thanks.
- In
*Spore*, it's entirely possible to get to the space stage without killing anything. You can play through the cell stage and only eat plant matter or scavenged meat, do the same in the creature stage and only level up by befriending other creatures, do the same in tribal stage and only level up by allying with other tribes, and choose to conquer other cities in the civilization stage only through economic or religious means. There's even an achievement, "Pacifist," that you can get by completing the cell stage without killing another creature.
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*Emergency!* rates your efficiency in dealing with emergencies (fires, crime, natural disasters...), and the number of wounded or dead people is a big factor of it; this includes the lives of criminals (as seen in the main quote on the game's page. Even if criminals are armed and dangerous (and possibly holding hostages) the game rewards the player with a higher efficiency score if they're stopped without lethal force (usually by having a police officer jump on them; incapacitating the criminal with tear gas greatly helps).
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*Metal Gear*:
- Aside from the bosses, it is possible to get through most games without ever killing anyone, though you are forced at one point to fight off a horde of enemies without access to nonlethal weaponry. In
*Metal Gear Solid*, this just earned the player a suitably passive animal codename after the end credits. In the later games, you are given rewards for keeping enemy fatalities to a minimum. This became considerably easier with tranquilizer weapons in later games, resulting in an even more difficult variation: No Tranquilizer Run.
- In
*Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty*, since you only kill (in-story) two of the bosses, no real difference is made whether you stamina-kill them or not (only that a stamina-kill doesn't show up on your score as a real kill). Interestingly, not-killing Fatman, one of the story-killed bosses, results in him passing out at the end of his dying speech instead of dying. When Ocelot remarks on Fatman's death later on, the line is the same, but the implication is that Ocelot killed him rather than you, which provides a neat clue as to Ocelot's real alignment.
- In
*Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater*, you can avoid killing the bosses. They have non-lethal hit bars, and you get a special bonus for defeating a boss with non-lethal force, but if they were supposed to die, they commit suicide in the following cutscene. However, there is one exception: ||Even if you defeat The Boss nonlethally, the game still forces you to kill her.|| Alternately, even using lethal force against bosses who survive the encounter either way (||Ocelot and Volgin||) doesn't count as a kill, allowing you to "kill" them and still perform a pacifist run (you just don't get their camouflage this way).
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*Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots* is the first game in the series to let you do a true no-kills run, not even story kills. The game even allows you to take out all of the bosses using non-lethal means. Unlike the other games, it actually affects the cutscene afterward. The difference is really subtle, leading to many players thinking Kojima was lying when he said you could save them.
- Even
*MGS4*'s online mode gets in on this, giving players the "Pigeon" ranking if they have a suitable ratio of kills to knockouts.
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*Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker* lets you do a pacifist run one step at a time. Each of its stages is mission-based, letting you do a perfect no-kills stealth run once you're properly prepared, even against a missile tank supported by thirty troops.
- The end-of-mission rankings in
*Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain* award more points for incapacitating enemy troops than for killing them. You can take over enemy outposts simply with stealth takedowns, just as you would if you went in guns blazing. A full game playthrough without any kills is impossible because there are a few mandatory objectives that necessitate killing, such as destroying occupied armored vehicles or ||killing soldiers with infectious parasites before they spread and cause a global plague||.
- In
*Splinter Cell*, it is possible to complete the game with only one overt kill, which is a required mission objective. This is usually accomplished with liberal use of the "sticky camera" pseudoweapon to knock enemies out.
- Three mandatory assassination mission objectives aside, in
*Chaos Theory* it is possible to complete the game without killing any enemies. Mission requirements aside (e.g. knocking out a guard so a helicopter will come) it is possible to complete the game without knocking out more than three enemies (Bathhouse boiler room), and perhaps fewer.
- In fact, it is entirely possible to get all zeros at the final score which equals to zero kills/KOs through the whole game. The bathhouse boiler room is indeed tricky as there are at least 4 guards that need to be distracted with sticky cameras.
- Sometimes enforced in
*Splinter Cell: Double Agent*:
- You're free to kill or spare the enemy, but killing them will lower the NSA's trust in you which, if it's low to begin with, might be something you can't afford. ||The Wii, GameCube, PS2 and Xbox versions forcibly avert this in the final mission where you're forced to kill certain JBA members where no matter what you do to them counts as a kill. Even grabbing and using the knockout button triggers his stab move instead.||
- While infiltrating JBA Headquarters, killing is
*strictly* forbidden: you are given a light and entirely non-lethal loadout, you can't perform a lethal takedown, and even *accidentally* getting a character killed via crossfire causes a Non Standard Game Over: Lambert explains that while the JBA will tolerate a few odd goings-on like finding a couple of members passed out or a few stories about someone slipping around in the shadows, a dead member would put them into high-gear paranoia mode lockdown which would put Sam under too much scrutiny to continue the mission.
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*Styx: Master of Shadows* and its sequel, *Styx: Shards of Darkness* give bonus skill points for each level for completing certain optional objectives. One objective that appears in every level, Mercy, requires the player to complete the level without killing any humanoids. Roabies, anyone who is killed by something that wasn't Styx's fault, and people whose death is a quest objective don't count against this though.
- Most missions in the various
*Hitman* games can be completed without killing anyone other than the mission's intended target(s). In *Hitman 2* and onward, doing so earns the player the rating "Silent Assassin" and usually comes with a reward of some sort. note : Which, ironically, always seem to be some sort of firearms.
- In the fourth game,
*Blood Money*, killing anyone other than the target(s) can make later missions more difficult as your notoriety will grow, especially if you leave witnesses and/or get caught on camera. However, you can obtain the surveillance tape if you get caught on camera before leaving the mission, and pay money to cover up the crime after the mission. Killing witnesses, however, can make things worse.
- Technically, a zero kill run of much of
*Blood Money* is possible, owing to the fact that "accidents" are counted separately from outright kills and (unless you kill a VIP) have no impact on your rating (even if you kill civilians).
- In the
*World of Assassination Trilogy*, killing non-targets incurs a slight score penalty, encouraging the player to minimize collateral damage if they're aiming for a high score. Several optional challenges also require you to only kill the main targets, on top of more specific critera.
- The
*Thief* games, on higher difficulties, often *require* you not to kill anyone in a mission. Ideally, you do so by just getting around without being noticed. If you must pop someone, though, you have a blackjack that can knock the unaware victim out in a single strike. You can play through the first two games without knocking out anyone or anything, let alone killing them. In rare missions, you may be restricted from even knocking out people, or from even being detected.
- Doesn't apply to the 2nd game, as ||one of the objectives is to kidnap a person. The only way to do that is to knock him out. Both games feature Big Bads in need of killing, though both times indirectly.|| However, beyond these exceptions, it's possible to complete the game without killing or knocking out anyone else.
- The 3rd and final game can also be completed without a single kill or knockout, which includes plot-kills since the Big Bad can't be killed anyway and isn't explicitly killed at the end either.
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*Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath*, being a Bounty Hunter themed game, allows you to choose between killing an enemy, or simply stunning them long enough for you to trap them in your bounty bag. Live enemies are worth more than dead enemies. Challenges could include bringing in all bounties alive, bringing in all outlaws alive, or bringing in all enemies in the game alive. Minor challenges could also include never attacking a non-hostile NPC for Moolah, or neglecting to collect two optional Moolah rewards that require robbing innocents. ||Due to a Genre Shift late in the game, this becomes more difficult. You are required to kill several enemies (including the Big Bad) during the final levels. In addition, the previously pacifistic Bounty Bag is replaced with a Bait Bag that is used to breed your living ammo. Guess what they eat?||
- In
*Tenchu: The Shadow Assassin* the player gets the highest rank S, Phantom, for finishing a level without killing *and* without being seen.
- And in
*Wrath of Heaven*, there is one level in which, at first, you can't kill any guard.
- Despite being focused on assassination,
*Dishonored* has an achievement for going through the entire game without killing anyone (not even the zombie-like plague victims) named "Clean Hands" (which the two DLC pieces focusing on the master assassin Daud up to "Cleaner Hands" and "Cleanest Hands", respectively). In fact, the game actively encourages players to attempt this, as not only does pacifism net you a better ending, it also makes the game somewhat easier, as there are fewer guards and weepers to circumnavigate (it also turns the final quest into something of an anti-climax, however). Even the high-profile targets you are ostensibly sent to assassinate can be neutralized in some other way, although this usually involves consigning them to a Fate Worse than Death.
- It is possible to complete a playthrough of
*Castle Wolfenstein* without killing a single guard. However, it is very tricky and mostly relies on the Randomly Generated Levels arranging themselves in your favor. It is also important to keep grenades handy for blowing up obstructing walls and to steal uniforms so that regular guards will leave you alone.
- The remake of
*Resident Evil* for the Nintendo GameCube has what is called "One Dangerous Zombie" mode, wherein a zombie completely strapped with explosives constantly follows you around through the game. Attack him even passively, and you get a game over. For the series proper, you obviously need to kill bosses in the main plotlines, but for standard Mooks and some of the minigames, you're free to try this challenge out. The bitch is it's not a selectable mode; it's automatically foisted on you during a New Game Plus whether you like it or not. The good news, as it were, is that said zombie disappears once you leave the mansion and go to the guardhouse.
- Players do this in
*Resident Evil 4*, but it's more a Minimal Kills run. While there are more enemies that can be circumvented than one might expect, there are still many, many enemies that *must* be killed to advance, starting with the first enemy in the game. There's also the Mine Cart section: Every passenger, besides Leon, dies at the end and the "kills" are credited to the player.
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*Silent Hill: Downpour*, going through the game without killing so much as a single enemy is ||mandatory to get the best ending in the game. You're allowed to incapacitate enemies (where they're downed but still twitching) and to knock over Tormented Souls to slow down The Void, but given how aggressive and persistent some enemies are and how tricky it can be to not accidentally kill them while defending yourself, this amounted to one massive Scrappy Mechanic.||
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*Second Sight* tracks your "morality" score for each level of the game, which starts at 100% and decreases with each enemy you kill. Players can avoid killing enemies by tranquilizing them, sneaking past, luring them into hazardous terrain features, allowing NPC allies to kill them, or tricking them into killing each other. It appears that only four enemies (not counting your involuntary initial manifestations of Psy-Attack, and improved telekinesis) actually have to be killed. ||They're clones of the main character||. Oddly, even without killing anyone else the big bad will still call you out for all the bodies you stepped over to reach him. The game also keeps track of how many km of "muddy feet" you walked per level i.e.: how far you walked with your shoes covered in blood from enemies you killed.
- In
*[PROTOTYPE]*, it is *impossible* to go through the game without killing civilians. The closest the player can get to a self-imposed pacifist challenge is to try to keep their civilian kill count as low as possible (difficult, since you can kill them by running into them). There is an achievement for eating only 10 or fewer civilians.
- Considering they're literally Too Dumb to Live, walking and driving around (and diving under the treads of that tank you just stole) in an active plague zone like nothing's wrong until an Infected runs up and decides to have a snack, you could simply stress it as a "no deliberate kills of civilians" run and ignore collateral damage. It's also nearly impossible to get through the game without wasting a few hundred soldiers in the course of the missions, but you could feasibly keep your Marine casualties to a minimum besides the required consume targets, only feasting on the Blackwatch goons and Infected.
- In
*Reservoir Dogs* there's a choice to go either "Psycho" or "Professional", the latter being if you concentrate on using hostages over shooting people. The issue is that hostages lose HP over time.
-
*Fire Emblem* doesn't normally lend itself to Pacifist Runs, since you need kills to level up. However, *Fire Emblem: Thracia 776* allows you to non-lethally KO enemies and capture them - in fact, you can steal their equipment and use it for yourself when you do! The only limitation is that, in order to capture a foe, the enemy's Build stat must be lower than that of the unit doing the capturing (Then again, Finn, who has *20* Build, is available from the start of the game), and when you use the Capture command, the capturing unit will have his stats reduced for the turn.
- In
*Jagged Alliance 2* you can finish the game without killing anyone except the queen and without liberating any towns just by cutting across country to the capital, sneaking past the soldiers there, and killing the queen before any of her guards arrive.
-
*Galactic Civilizations*: you don't get an achievement for it, but you can win by forming Alliances with all the other races, forming an Alliance with one race and having *them* crush your enemies, or by using heavily upgraded influence starbases to either culture-hug enemy worlds into defecting to your side or to mark most of the map as your territory (which brings with it the incidental bonus that you can ram through any result you want at the United Planets and nobody will have the voting power to stop you).
- Surprisingly possible in
*Eador*, TBS similar to *Heroes of Might and Magic*, *Master of Magic* and *Age of Wonders*. You can capture most provinces by bribing guards, making alliances with local population/thugs/baron. Even if you've started battle you haven't to kill opposition: most units can be frightened (usually by magic) so they simply run away and the battle is won. If your empire becomes powerful enough other Lords may just give up and you've won the scenario.
-
*Final Fantasy Tactics* has the Orator job class, which possesses a few abilities that allow you to recruit enemy units to join your army. With a maximum of five units to a given fight, this usually only comes in handy when (a) a unit has suffered permadeath and needs replacing or (b) there's a particular monster you want to turn on your enemies/poach for rewards. However, a semi-popular challenge run is to enlist an Orator as soon as is reasonably possible and get through the entire game with only the deaths absolutely necessary (which pretty much amounts to Eldritch Abominations and mastered Jerkasses).
- You can go through
*True Crime: Streets of LA* and *True Crime: New York City* without killing a single enemy, either by limiting yourself to non-lethal weapons or using precision aim to go for kneeshots.
-
*Red Dead Redemption*. You *can* minimize all killing in the game with your trusty lasso - aside from times you *must* kill, such as the gatling gun missions - but it's Nintendo Hard to do the *entire* game that way.
- It's possible to play through all the
*X-Universe* games without killing anyone *directly*, or without killing anyone at all (provided you don't do the plots). The goal is to keep your combat rank at "Harmless", which means you have zero kills. If you kill any enemy, the rank goes up and takes several real-time hours to go back down.
- Killing is kind of unavoidable in the
*Grand Theft Auto* series, but very few people have actually tried to not kill anyone as they go about the optional objectives - trying not to run over people on the sidewalk, etc. Doing their best to kill the absolute *minimum* number of people to finish the game.
- Completely possible in
*Grand Theft Auto 2*, where one can score points by performing stunts, taking cars to a crusher, or simply giving people rides in Taxis. Each level can also be finished by collecting hidden tokens scattered around the map, with each district having a bonus stage that can only be played after doing this.
- Youtuber DarkViperAU has made a truly herculean effort to do a pacifist run of
*Grand Theft Auto V*, though he's proven that it's impossible to proceed without a few mandatory kills here and there.
-
*Watch_Dogs 2* gives all the tools for a pacifist run. Hacked power conduits, shock gadgets, the stun gun, and melee attacks all non-lethally subdue enemies, and drones can often complete an objective without Marcus even being in the danger zone. However, this isn't directly incentivised by the game, perhaps because it plays like a Self-Imposed Challenge - not only do lethal explosives have a much wider radius, stunned enemies will wake up by themselves after a couple of minutes or when roused by a buddy, and not using steam pipe explosions in car chases removes the most effective way of disabling an enemy vehicle.
- Since
*The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* allows you to face Calamity Ganon right after the Great Plateau and there's no mandatory fight in the early sanctuaries, it's possible to complete the game by just defeating Ganon and his Blights without killing anything else.
- Many Tabletop RPGs enable you to avoid conflict through stealth, negotiation, or deception and may reward a nonviolent approach with additional Experience Points. Of course, there's no guarantee that your plans will survive contact with the dice, the gamemaster, or your fellow players.
- Slightly odd tabletop example: In
*Dungeons & Dragons*'s fourth edition, player characters who reduce an NPC enemy to zero or fewer hit points always have the option to decide then and there to only knock that enemy out instead of killing them. Stop to think about that for a moment: with this rule in force, any given scenario played through could fairly trivially *become* a pacifist run, the possibility is just something that doesn't seem to as much as occur to most players. Probably because the idea of ripping the target's life-force out or disintegrating them in a non-lethal manner is so counter-intuitive.
- Enforced in
*Shadowrun*. Any 'runner who regularly leaves behind a big pile of corpses on a given mission will soon be tagged, tracked, and brought down with extreme prejudice, *often by their own party*, not least because dead bodies leave their employers open to revenge plots. Bonuses are, in many scenarios, even given for not leaving a trace of one's activity.
-
*A Dearth of Choice*: At first, the best the dungeon can offer is the prospect of fighting only lesser monsters who will not seek to land mortal blows, in exchange for a binding promise not to harm the core. As he expands, however, he constructs extensive non-combat areas, which adventurers are free to visit, and they can even obtain rewards by helping the skeletal cooks and tailors and blacksmiths.
- The
*El Goonish Shive* NP strips have two storylines about Grace trying a pacifist run:
- Downplayed in
*I Woke Up As a Dungeon, Now What?*. While the parties delving into Taylor *have* to fight her minions for her to gain mana, she keeps it to sparring and takes care not to let her minions kill or seriously injure the adventurers. She also initially asks the adventurers to avoid killing her minions, but relaxes this rule once she gets access to spawners and confirms that minions linked to a spawner retain their memories and personalities when they come back to life.
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*Not a Villain*: The Game, the virtual reality game a few people play and almost everyone watches After the End, has different ways/alignments to play, one of them the pacifist Erbana. Erbanas use plants and are not allowed to hurt or much less kill others, lest they lose their powers. Best exemplified by Kleya in the Game Tutorial where she manages to resolve every encounter peacefully and gains a 100% Erbana-alignment rating.
-
*There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns*: Delta works hard to make her Dungeon into a place where people can just come and *be*. Test themselves, sure, but killing is strongly frowned upon, and will usually result in escalation. Such as her spider room, which someone could safely walk through blindfolded, or entirely avoid the webs for an extra prize, but if an adventurer starts killing off the spiders, a powerful "spidergeist" boss monster will emerge.
-
*Free Guy*: Blue Shirt Guy levels up by *not* attacking people, and he ends up going viral in the player community because he's the first person to attempt to play the game in a non violent, heroic way.
-
*Wreck-It Ralph*: In-universe example Ralph climbs the tower in Hero's Duty and grabs the medal while no-one's playing it so he wouldn't have to fight a single bug. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacifistRun |
Padding the Paper - TV Tropes
A student (from elementary school all the way up to college) has been given an assignment, or someone has to write a news report, or any other situation in which someone needs to write a document. Only trouble is, they don't spend a lot of time writing it. Maybe they can't—they might have been busy (whether with procrastination or genuinely important things), forgot until it was too late to do any research or the teacher just set a ridiculously high minimum length for something the student can't write that much about. Maybe they don't want to, because they're lazy or hate studying.
You said "four-page essay"? Hmmm...
Alternatively, they do try their best to say what needs to be said, but the assignment or whatever requires more words/paper to be used.
What's their solution? Padding the Paper, of course! This is any tactic used to make a short document longer. It could involve writing or typing in a very large font, drawing pictures (sometimes to exploit the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words"), or adding extra words, like adjectives, adverbs, and "very"s (if they repeat "very" many times, it overlaps with Department of Redundancy Department). Sometimes, they will even add the words "The End" to the end of their paper to up the word count to 100 (or whatever the target count is).
Usually, whoever receives the paper will be none too pleased, and if it's a teacher, they'll tend to give the student a C, D or even an F or an F--. Usually Played for Laughs. See also Loophole Abuse and Exact Words which this can cover, and In-Universe Factoid Failure for another way to fail at an essay. The paper in question might be a Last-Minute Project. Can overlap with Laborious Laziness if it takes so much time to pad it out that they could've actually studied, and it might be a Completely Off-Topic Report, and believe it or not, this is, in fact, Truth in Television, especially in college. Sometimes it works out surprisingly well. Other times...not so much.
## Examples
- The Dutch comedian Andre Van Duin had a sketch where he played a primary school kid who had to write a paper about "the cat" of at least 50 words. The majority of the text is "heeere kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty ..."
-
*Transmetropolitan*: Spider Jerusalem's column on The Beast's election comprised one word repeated 8,000 times. When he takes his job back in the first issue his new editor specifies the next column have 8,000 *printable* words.
-
*Calvin and Hobbes*: One story arc has Calvin doing an assignment about bats. When Hobbes points out all he has is one "fact" that he made up (claiming that bats are bugs), Calvin replies that once they add a few illustrations and a conclusion it will look like a graduate thesis. It... does not go well.
-
*Doonesbury* has Zonker Harris at Walden College furiously tapping away at a typewriter, explaining to Mark that he has a lot of papers due. Zonker bangs off two paragraphs of abstract musings, whereupon Mark asks which course this paper is for. The response? "Dunno, haven't decided yet."
- In one strip of
*FoxTrot*, Peter's three-page book report on *The Great Gatsby* consists entirely of " *The Great Gatsby* is about a guy named Gatsby" written in enormous font.
-
*The Outrageous World of Alex and Charlie*: In one strip, the gang is working on 1000-word book reports. Dazelle, who is doing hers on *Jacob Two-Two*, complains that she only has 532 words and already said it was "very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very good." Alex suggests that since Jacob Two-Two said everything twice, she could write the report twice. Dazelle appears to consider it. At the end of the strip, Alex reveals that she's drawn a picture for her report, since "a picture is worth a thousand words."
- In
*Peanuts*, Sally often does this in writing reports for school.
- A schoolboy is told to write a 1,000-word essay on pets. He writes, "I have a pet dog named Spot. Yesterday I took him to the park and let him off his leash. He ran away and I stood for hours shouting "Spot! Here boy! Here boy! Here boy! Here boy! Here boy! Here boy! Here boy! Here..."
- A joke in speech and debate is some variant of: "If you want to be a good speaker, you need to be able to convey as much information as possible in as few words a possible. It's easy, just think of what you do when writing a paper for English class, then do the exact opposite."
-
*Animorphs*:
- In the book
*Dave Barry in Cyberspace*, Dave describes how to write an essay when you know nothing about the topic and only have encyclopedia/dictionary/historical software available: give the dictionary definition of any word that's even slightly obscure, copy out brief biographical and historical pieces on everyone and every date mentioned, and detour into other tangentially related topics that also have passages in the software that you can copy.
- Dave Barry reflects in his column "The Gulf Between Father and Son Is Called 'Quantum Physics'" that, as an English major in college in the '60s, he had to solve problems like this:
"You are required to turn in a 15-page paper on
*The Brothers Karamazov*
. You have written a grand total of 311 words on this topic. How big do you have to make the margins to make these words stretch over 15 pages? Do you think the professor will notice that your 'paper' is a little anorexic worm of type running between margins wide enough to land an airplane on? Do you think that anybody in history has ever actually read all the way to the end of
*The Brothers Karamazov*
? Why?"
- In
*Harry Potter*, the trio talk about writing an essay, and Ron suggests they write in huge letters so they can fulfill the length (measured in feet of a scroll) requirement. Hermione is not amused.
- In one of the
*Horrible Harry* books, Ida ends an essay with a page and a half's worth of "very"s to describe how fun the subject matter was. The teacher gently explains to her that one "very" is enough.
-
*A.N.T. Farm*: In one episode, Cameron has to make a 1000-words essay about his father's job, so his father drives him with his police car. Cameron finds the job boring until his father catches a criminal, to which he exclaims "Wow, my dad is a hero!" Cameron thinks this sentence doesn't contain enough words for an essay, but his father says that a picture covers 1,000 words, so Cameron takes a picture of his father with the criminal for the essay.
- For
*The Muppet Alphabet Album* (and future compilations) Big Bird is going to sing a song about words that start with the letter V. He confesses up front that he doesn't know very many such words (he's still a small child, no matter how large physically he is), so he'll be sticking in a lot of "very"s as necessary.
- In
*Roseanne*, Dan helps Darlene write a history report on Betsy Ross. When they finish she brags about doing five full pages, and Dan quips, "Should be, you wrote big enough."
- In
*Two and a Half Men*, Jake has to read a report to the class. When he gets to the by-line, he lists his name, teacher's name, room number, the school's name and address, and so on, until the teacher tells him he isn't being graded by length. After she tells him that, Jake flips the paper over to the next page.
- In
*Weird Science*, Gary works to beef up his transcript in order to get into Paxton University, but he struggles with writing an essay about why he wants to attend (only able to come up with "College is neat"). Lisa tries to help by bringing out his inner poet, but this only results in "College is neat-o." Based on a scene transition, Gary is able to pad out his initial statement into a reasonable essay by lampshading how long he spent trying to write something and spinning that as an overwhelming desire to attend. At the end of the episode, we learn he was accepted, so this (along with the other work he did) clearly worked.
- In
*You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown*, Charlie Brown and his friends are assigned to do a 100 word book report on *The Tale of Peter Rabbit*. Two of them follow this trope in some way:
- Lucy pads the assignment by adding unnecessary information (such as that the rabbit was named Peter) and by listing all the vegetables in Mr. McGregor's garden. When she reaches the end and still has about five words to go, she just plugs the space with a number of "very"s between "the end."
- Schroeder has difficulty finding anything to say about
*Peter Rabbit* until he says the book reminded him of *Robin Hood*. At which point he goes on a very lengthy and enthusiastic tangent about *Robin Hood*, occasionally making a token effort to connect it back to *Peter Rabbit*. ("Away they ran... just like rabbits...")
-
*Strong Bad Email:* In "English paper", Kyle from Kansas asks for some help writing a school paper. Strong Bad obliges by writing some rambling paragraphs about "hustle and bustle", then applying "a little triple-space action" to make them take up the whole page. He also gets another page by adding random pictures of a guy eating batteries.
-
*Diary of a Wimpy Kid*: When Greg has to write an essay on chimpanzees, he doesn't know much about them, so he types in a large font, draws pictures, and at the end, he writes, "Well, it looks like I'm almost out of paper, so I guess this is—-" and then a giant "THE END". This scene is re-used in *The Last Straw*.
- In one arc of
*Help Desk*, a character is trying to write a short story for National Novel Writers Month, but ends up getting distracted by a new video game for a week. To get back on schedule once he returns to writing, he adds a time loop to the story, which allows him to repeat one chapter several times. When he finishes the story, he does a word count and finds he's six words short of the 40k word target goal, so he adds "And they lived happily ever after" to the end, despite having written a horror story with a downer ending.
-
*CollegeHumor* has some tips exactly for this, and suggests cranking the fonts, margins, spacing, etc, as well as using a picture.
-
*The Daily WTF*: In "Very, Very Well Documented", the flight simulator project must fulfill a requirement of "Eight meters of documentation" (implied to be the cumulative height of stacks of standard-sized printer paper).
- Inverted in
*Unnatural Selection*, where Penn laments that she's struggling to make everything she has to say about her project fit the required 50-page limit, so she's contemplating cutting some parts. Likol tells her to submit the paper unabridged anyway, because in the long run, having her name on an incomplete paper would be worse than being failed on a technicality by one examiner (and that's assuming they're enough of a jerk to do that in the first place).
**Penn:** I'm already at the minimum font size, too, and I've had English majors look over to try and reduce my word count. *(...)* What if he fails me? **Likol:** You can retake the class, but you can't unpublish a sub-par paper with your name on it.
- In the
*Brows Held High* review for *Rembrandt's J'Accuse*, he describes some of the film's more inane theories as just filler akin to a student padding out their essay.
- Jarvis Johnson parodies the confusing prose in animated story videos with a Cutaway Gag about a student trying too hard to pad out sentences in an assignment. "The dog is brown" becomes "The dog, and when I tell you what color it was I was both happy and sad at the same time, and you will be too once you hear my story... it is brown."
-
*American Dad!*:
- In the pilot episode, Hayley asks Roger to write one of her college essays on poli-sci so she can go out with her boyfriend. Roger admits that he has only a passing knowledge of the subject, but claims that he can stretch it out to six pages if she gets him some snacks.
- In "Black History Month", Steve tells Principal Lewis that he needs more time to work on his paper on George Washington Carver (having stumbled upon the beginnings of a mystery). The incredulous Lewis tells Steve to simply take the fact that Carver invented peanut butter and pad it out to three pages.
-
*Arthur*:
- In "Francine's Pilfered Paper", Buster has to write an essay. To make it take up more paper, he writes with huge letters.
- In "Buster's Growing Grudge", Buster forgets to study, so he writes a "report" that is about eggnog (he was meant to write about King Tut, but "eggnog" and "Egypt" were next to each other in the encyclopedia) and adds on a joke because he believes he will get a higher grade if he makes the teacher laugh. He tells Binky, who tells the joke, so Buster doesn't get to tell the joke and ends up getting a D, which he blames Binky for.
- In the episode "Escape to Beer Mountain: A Rope of Sand" of
*Clone High*, it's the principal who intends to "use a big font [and] futz with the margins." In Scudworth's defense, he has to write a report to demonstrate he understands teenagers to be left in charge of the clone project. Failure means death.
-
*The Simpsons*:
- In the episode "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner," Homer becomes a food critic for
*The Springfield Times* and has to write a proof-of-concept review that has to meet a minimum of 500 words. Hilarity Ensues as Homer struggles to write the review even with a little help from Lisa.
- In Season 14 "Special Edna", when Bart has to write a ten-page essay about World War I and he gets too distracted to finish it, his end result is his report containing only four pages of report and six pages of ads.
-
*SpongeBob SquarePants*: In "Procrastination", Spongebob is tasked with writing an 800-word essay on what not to do at a stoplight. A montage shows him ardently scribbling on a piece of paper and satisfiedly dropping a steaming pencil... only for the following shot to reveal that he has only written the word "the", in a ridiculously large and stylized font.◊
-
*Total Drama Island*: In "Basic Straining", Chef demands to be called "Master Chief" while he's hosting the show and makes all the contestants write a three hundred word essay about how much they love him. Duncan just writes, "I love Master Chief Hatchet because he is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very..." Duncan says he meets the exact word requirement, but this doesn't make Chef any less angry. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaddingThePaper |
Pædo Hunt - TV Tropes
*"People think it's open season on kids right now."*
Nothing better to whip up some outrage in your story than making the bad guy a child molester. More cynical works about this trope will often note that getting people whipped up into a mob-frenzy — over any subject, but particularly one as emotive and genuinely shocking as this — can be a very good way to distract and manipulate them.
## Examples:
-
*Hard Candy* starts off with a naive teenage girl having coffee with an older guy she met on the internet, but it's eventually revealed that ||she already had strong suspicions that he was a serial pedophile/murderer and had specifically targeted him. She purposely baits him to get into his house so she can find evidence of his crimes, then torture him, ruin his life, and coerce him to kill himself.||
- The bulk of
*The Hunt (2012)* is about a Close-Knit Community turning on a member they mistakenly believe to be a child molester.
- A short version is done in
*Pay It Forward*. Haley Joel Osment's character decides to run away from home. He's shown at a sleazy bus station counting loose change for a ticket. A man approaches him, talking rather creepily and reaching out to touch him. Then Kevin Spacey's character appears, drags the guy into the bathroom and beats the shit out of him.
- The original
*A Nightmare on Elm Street* was vague about the subject, but The Remake gives Freddy a clear element of paedophilia, and thus this trope plays into the parents hunting him down.
-
*Little Children* involves a convicted sex offender being released from prison and moving into a neighbourhood. This is soon followed by one of the other locals spreading warning posters, vandalizing his house and directly assaulting him.
- O-Ren Ishii in
*Kill Bill* kills the man responsible for the death of her parents at age eleven. Because he was a paedophile, she managed to get into his bedroom alone with him for the killing.
- The main antagonists of
*South Bronx Heroes* are a child pornography organization masquerading as a foster home.
- The
*Doctor Who* Expanded Universe novel *Goth Opera* features an in-text sort-of example from just before paedophilia became the media go-to moral panic; in it, the Doctor encounters a Christian evangelist leading a mob in hunt of 'Satanists' (actually vampires) who he claims molest and kill children in their ceremonies; the Doctor comments that most sexual molestation actually occurs at the hands of someone the child knows, such as a family member or friend. ||Later, the evangelist is forced as a result of mental control to admit that he actually molests his own daughter.||
- This is a recurring theme in the works of former Whitehouse member Peter Sotos.
-
*Acid Row* has the premise of a social worker is visiting the house of a convicted sex offender in a lower-class neighborhood when a child comes up missing. The actual offender is harmless and ineffectual, his father is the dangerous one, and an innocent neighbor is more or less torn apart by the mob.
- In
*Batman: The Ultimate Evil*, Bruce Wayne discovers that his mother had investigated child molesters and child pornography as a social worker. The book revolves around him going after the same group his mother had found out about, who are now organizing sex tourism to a thinly veiled Thailand stand-in.
- In
*Desperate Housewives*, Lynette causes the neighborhood to riot over a suspected pedophile, causing his invalid sister to die of a heart attack. At the end, he informs her that he had never acted on his tendencies because of his sister, and he was now "free" to do that. He may also have been screwing with Lynette's head for revenge. The ending is rather ambiguous about it.
- In the first episode of
*Blake's 7*, the titular hero Blake is slandered by the Federation, who accuse him of child molestation, in order to subvert any revolutionary support he might acquire.
-
*Criminal Minds* has this occur in the episode "A Shade of Gray" where, after prodding by the local sheriff, the team arrests a local known pedophile for the murder of the six year old victim. They later find out the sheriff planted evidence leading them to the man to cover up ||that the boy was killed by his ten year old brother|| to spare the parents some pain.
- Subverted (via some parodying of the Double Standard) in an episode of
*The George Lopez Show*; George's wife works the neighborhood into a frenzy over a convicted sex offender living in the neighborhood. When a neighborhood mob shows up on the offender's doorstep, they find out "he's" a "she" - a former teacher who had sex with an underage student, and had served time for it. The crowd (with the now-doubly indignant exception of the wife) disperses with basically an "Oh. Carry on, then."
-
*Saturday Night Live*:
- Played straight in skit in which a computer instructor leads a seminar about MySpace. One member of the class was a concerned mother and the rest were obvious pedophiles.
- In another skit, an adult goes trick-or-treating "as" a sex offender, bringing with him the papers for his neighbors to sign as part of his "costume". He, of course, insists that he's doing this for the realism while dancing around the question of whether or not he is an actual sex offender.
- In an episode of
*Being Human (UK)*, Mitchell mistakes one of his unlabeled discs of "vampire porn" for a *Laurel and Hardy* movie, and lends it out to one of the neighborhood boys. The result is a *massive* pedo hunt, complete with (misspelled) graffiti, eggings, angry mobs and being spat in the face.
-
*The Daily Show* mocked one of these Paedo Hunt specials by pointing out how, in the "dramatic re-enactments," the online predator *was typing with one hand*.
- In the series
*In the Heat of the Night* an older male school teacher (with one count of a past sexual offense, as was found out) was accused of molestation by a child, and despite the lack of evidence, and partially thanks to an overzealous-for-sensationalism reporter, it quickly got out of control as people harassed him and shot at his house. Eventually the guy was driven to the point of killing himself. It was found out that his previous sex offender charge was a trumped-up issue from him *mooning* someone as a teenage prank, and in the end the child had only accused him to cover up the molestation actually done by his *father*. Tragic stuff.
-
*CSI* episode "Harvest" used this trope. A 12-year old girl is reported missing and later found dead. There seems to be evidence implicating a convicted paedophile in the region. In reality, the girl's family were covering up her death, and they used an internet watchdog site that lists the locations of such people to look up the closest one to implicate.
- In
*Dexter* the titular Serial-Killer Killer makes an exception to his "only kill killers" rule in order to kill a paedophile who is targeting his step-daughter, Astor.
- A more literal application of the trope happens in one episode of
*Without a Trace*. A young-looking woman posing as underage bait; a fledging, wheelchair-using unofficial cop (an accident prevented him from getting a badge); and a cameraman (who was later revealed to have been raped during a home invasion when he was 12) set up a sting operation to catch paedophiles, a la *To Catch a Predator*. Unlike the Chris Hansen-manned operation, this version is more vigilante-based and not exactly foolproof to prevent people from escaping, which one guy managed to do. The cop goes after him and gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, which drove the pedophile to shoot himself with the cop's gun. To make things worse, when the cameraman realized the cop was about to tell the police what happened, the cameraman tried to kill the cop to shut him up, but was unsuccessful. By the episode's end, the cop survived the assault, but only by killing the cameraman.
- Invoked in a skit on
*The Whitest Kids U' Know*: Trevor sings a song to a group of children titled *Get a New Daddy*, teaching them that if their fathers annoy them, they can lie about him molesting them to send them away and get new ones.
- Insane Clown Posse has a song, "To Catch a Predator," concerning a man who uses the show's methods to lure pedophiles to his house, whereupon he kills him. As the chorus puts it:
I'm probably gonna burn for this
There's no lesson to learn from this
There's nothing I'mma earn
But it sure is fun! (To Catch a Predator)
- In the
*Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip* song, "Thou Shalt Always Kill", one of the commandments is:
Thou shalt not think that any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a paedophile. Some people are just nice.
- The Peter, Paul and Mary song "Talkin' Candy Bar Blues" is about a man caught up in a hunt after innocently offering a child a candy bar.
-
*The Perry Bible Fellowship* lampshades this trope with Kitty Photographer. A man lines up a photograph of his cat, but as he takes the picture, his toddler son runs across the shot while nude. When the film is developed, the developers are outraged and call the police, leading to the man's arrest and brutal beating by his cellmates.
- The in-game internet in
*Grand Theft Auto IV* includes a Schmuck Bait website titled "Little Lacy Surprise Pageant." Visiting it immediately grants the player a 5-star wanted level.
- In
*The Letters Of The Devil*, ||it is revealed that Chuck Castor had an affair with an underage intern and subsequently killed her when she revealed she was pregnant.||
- Satirized by the Paedofinder General character in
*Monkey Dust*. Remember: "Under the basic principles of English law, every man is innocent until speculated guilty!"
-
*South Park*:
- The kids accused their parents of being pedophiles to have them taken away, leading to the town being nothing but the kids.
- Played with in the episode "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy," where Ike's female kindergarten teacher Miss Stevenson has sexual relations with him. While Kyle is disgusted and reports it to the police, the police and many other townspeople simply congratulate Ike on "scoring". He turns to Cartman, the current hall monitor who's taken on a bounty hunter persona, to get Stevenson arrested for kidnapping Ike with the intention to run away with him (though Cartman's only mad that Miss Stevenson was kissing Ike in his hallways without a hall pass). Stevenson kills herself when she's cornered by the police, but Ike decides not to jump with her. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaedoHunt |
Pacifism Is Cowardice - TV Tropes
*"I thought the war was unjust, that Talax was fighting for reasons that weren't worth killing for. Or at least, that's what I told myself. But the real reason I didn't report was because I was a coward."*
Pacifism is about aversion to violence and love of peace. It often gets associated with cowardice because of the popular opinion that brave people won't hesitate to throw a punch. After all, Enemies Equals Greatness, meaning that if you aren't willing to fight, then you must not be great. This view features a lot in stories where the author wants to make the assertion that Violence Really Is the Answer for some situations (and it's worth noting that pacifists are not popular in any warlike society, or to those who subscribe to A Real Man Is a Killer).
Some of the forms this trope can take are:
-
**Cowardly Pacifist:** A character is a coward, and excuses their own cowardice by claiming to be a pacifist. They will be perfectly happy to let someone else fight on their behalf (a true pacifist will be opposed to violence period). They may freely admit that they are cowardly, in which case this is usually Played for Laughs, or they may deny it in order to look more moral and upright than they really are.
-
**Pacifists Are (Called) Cowards:** When pacifists, regardless of them being actually cowards or not, are mocked by other people for being cowards. (Note that this disregards whether *the work* thinks pacifism is bad or not.) Compare The So-Called Coward when they're revealed to be really brave.
In shows set in the Wild West, Mormons are often stereotyped like this: they don't fight back when taunted, so they must be cowards. In Japanese Media, this is often a position held by someone opposed to a Samurai or Shōnen protagonist. In Superhero media, it's often some kind of Moral Guardian who advocates for a Super Registration Act or even Mutant Draft Board (especially if they don't see supers as human).
Compare and contrast:
- Badass Pacifist: Being against violence is portrayed as very brave and awesome. Usually demonstrated by suffering for their beliefs or through nonviolent civil disobedience. Their strong stand on pacifism and ability to resolve problems without resorting to violence often earns them a really good reputation. Example: Mahatma Gandhi.
- Inspirational Martyr: The positive portrayal of Suicidal Pacifism sees the pacifist as a noble (and brave) man of principle. His sacrifice inspires others. Example: Jesus.
- Martial Pacifist: He's actually a well-trained fighter, but he believes in solving things the peaceful way first and then only resorted to violence when it's absolutely necessary.
- Obstructionist Pacifist: When the pacifist just gets in the way.
- Pacifism Backfire: The pacifist's efforts to avoid violence end up leading to even
*more* violence and the pacifist's pacifism is thus portrayed as completely futile, usually because the violent factions of the conflict decide the pacifist is an easy target.
- A Real Man Is a Killer: You're not manly unless you fight.
- Suicidal Pacifism: The pacifist won't resort to violence even in the face of people trying to murder them and others.
- Technical Pacifist: The pacifist
*claims* to be a pacifist but has no problem unleashing methods of retaliation that are potentially-but-nobody-got-hurt (or actually were but the pacifist wasn't actually the one who pulled the trigger) lethal. The pacifist, thus, is claimed to be a coward because he can't find the courage to admit he's violent or do his own dirty work.
- Turn the Other Cheek: People who return violence with kindness are portrayed as good (or sometimes, misguided).
- Virtue Is Weakness: With the virtue in question being pacifism, and of course the antagonists thinking that the "cowardice" can be exploited.
**No Real Life Examples, Please!**
## Examples:
-
*The A-Team*: This is referenced with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi. B.A. took a vow of nonviolence while in prison (the reasons aren't clear, but it involved reading a book about Gandhi), but Hannibal needs The Big Guy fully into their operation so he resorts to Quote-to-Quote Combat.
**B.A. Baracus**: "Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary."
**Hannibal Smith**
: Gandhi.
*(Beat)*
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence."
**B.A.**: Who said that?
**Hannibal**: Same guy. Gandhi wasn't afraid to fight for what he believed in.
-
*Ant-Man*:
**Scott**
: It wasn't a robbery, it was a burglary
. Robbery involves force, which I never use. I hate violence. I'm a cat burglar.
**Dave**: So you're a pussy.
**Scott**: Yeah.
-
*Aquaman*: Orm and Nereus both consider the Fisherman cowards because they don't believe that war with the surface is inevitable, and think that if they reveal themselves to the surface world it should be to educate them.
-
*The Big Lebowski*: This is how Walter, an Ax-Crazy Vietnam War veteran, feels about the Dude's easygoing nature.
"Pacifism is NOT something to hide behind!"
-
*Dogma*: Azrael was made a demon as a punishment for refusing to take part in the war between God and Lucifer. While he insists that it was because he was a pacifist, Serendipity accuses him of being a coward, insisting that even a pacifist should have taken up arms against the Devil.
"So you were an artist! Big deal! Elvis
was an artist. But that didn't stop him from joining the service in time of war. And that's why he's The King, and you're a schmuck."
-
*Hacksaw Ridge* is a Biopic about a conscientious objector who refuses to bear arms and becomes a combat medic. His drill sergeant brands him a coward and turns the rest of the squad against him, but he proves himself a Badass Pacifist who wins the Medal of Honor for saving over 75 of his comrades' lives.
**Sergeant Howell:** Private Doss does not believe in violence. Do not look to him to save you on the battlefield.
-
*Maverick*: In the film version, the eponymous hero tries to talk his way out of fights specifically BECAUSE he's a coward. This is Played for Laughs.
-
*The Patriot*: The film averts this. The main character initially opposes the rebellion that grows into the American Revolution, and specifically says, "I will not fight. And because I will not fight, I will not send another to fight in my place." However, he later winds up joining the war anyways to avenge his murdered son.
-
*They Call Me Trinity*: A man tries to run the Mormons off their land so he can graze his horses there. The villain considers the Mormons cowards for not trying to fight back and even Trinity believes that their determination to remain non-violent is Suicidal Pacifism. The Mormons, however, manage to convince the man to leave them be by talking to him, by treating a nasty boil the man had in his neck... and by Trinity making clear that he will fight for them if the man ever changes his mind.
-
*Anne of Green Gables*: *Rilla of Ingleside* is set during World War I. All men of appropriate age enlist right away except for Anne's son Walter who is a pacifist. He is harassed and publicly shamed as a coward until he enlists.
- C. S. Lewis wrote a non-fiction essay during World War II, on the subject of pacifism and conscientious objectors. He encouraged the pacifists to examine their own motives very carefully, to be certain that it was not cowardice that motivated them to denounce the war. Lewis was still sympathetic to the pacifists' position: having fought in World War One himself, his position was that war is a terrible thing, but it's not
*the most terrible thing*, so sometimes it's necessary.
-
*The Screwtape Letters*: Screwtape points out that patriotism and pacifism are neither righteous nor evil in and of themselves, but that it largely depends on the moral character of the "Patient". If the "Patient" had doubts about "serving in a just and legal war" that were not based in cowardice, then guiding him to Pacifism would do the demons little good. But it is also possible that a pro-war Patriot could be guided not by moral principle, but instead by hatred of their enemies. The trick, Screwtape advises his nephew Wormwood, is to make the "Patient" treat patriotism or pacifism as a part of his Christian faith, and then to have him treat it as the most important part.
-
*The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*: Eustace claims to be a pacifist to deter the annoyed Reepicheep after swinging him by his tail. Reepicheep gives him a caning with the flat of his blade instead.
-
*Babylon 5*: Ivanova's ending narration in the season 2 finale "The Fall of Night" expresses this belief.
"We came to this place because Babylon 5 was our last, best hope for peace. By the end of 2259, we knew that it had failed. But in so doing, it became something greater. As the war expanded, it became our last best hope... for victory. Because sometimes, peace is another word for surrender."
-
*Doctor Who*:
- In "The Daleks", Ian derides the pacifistic Thals (who have sworn off violence due to their world almost being devastated by war) as "cowards" for not wanting to help the Doctor's group against the Daleks.
- It is noted quite often by several characters (including the Doctor himself) that his methods (to use his wits instead of fists and guns to deal with the Monster of the Week) are cowardly. By the time of the Doctor's eleventh incarnation, he even had started to lament the fact that he preferred to guide his companions as agents to do the dirty work that he himself didn't have the guts to do (and this same self-belief is also the reason why he created ||the War Doctor|| as a "warrior" persona).
-
*Kung Fu (1972)*:
- Caine is sometimes accused of cowardice or hypocrisy for his pacifism. The first episode even has a railroad crew chief comment on the supposed Values Dissonance of a "man of peace who can fight like ten tigers."
- In one episode, Caine joins up with a band of Mormons with the Serial Numbers Filed Off. They don't fight back even when they're attacked on their own land.
-
*Dad's Army*: In "Branded", Private Godfrey discloses that he is a pacifist and was a conscientious objector in World War I, only for the platoon to turn on him as a coward. It's later revealed he was decorated for bravery under fire as a medic hauling the wounded out of no-mans-land, and there is appropriate reflection on the meaning of bravery.
-
*Madam Secretary*: "The Ninth Circle" seems to come to this conclusion. Jason McCord is expelled from a Quaker school after he breaks a school bully's nose for insulting his mother. He apologizes for lashing out physically but flatly refuses to apologize for defending Liz, and the dean doesn't consider this sufficient.
-
*M*A*S*H*: The series has a clear anti-war perspective and plays with this trope somewhat.
- If you accuse Captain Hawkeye Pierce of being a coward, he'll readily admit it.
- Frank Burns, in particular, was a straightforward patriot and took the United States' involvement in the Korean War conflict
*very* seriously to the point that he would often accuse any of his comrades with anti-war sentiment of being "bleedin' hearts" and give them rousing speeches about the disasters that would be heaped upon America if they were to just make peace with the enemy. On one such occasion, the 4077th is pinned down by a lone sniper, and Hawkeye and Trapper insist on surrendering in hopes that the sniper will cease fire so they can tend to their wounded; both Frank and Margaret are appalled at the idea and are more concerned about maintaining the integrity of their positions as U.S. Army personnel rather than trying to help any wounded that may come in and be under fire.
-
*Mork & Mindy*: Orkans are pacifists by nature and will hide when their planet is attacked by rival aliens. This is seen as cowardly by the rival aliens and one Orkan hero who was known for avoiding conflict ended up being nicknamed Squellman the Yellow (as in, yellow-bellied coward).
-
*Once Upon a Time*: Before he became the Dark One, Rumpelstiltskin was a wool-spinning peasant whose decision to leave the army in the midst of the ogre war had earned him the reputation of a coward.
-
*Star Trek: The Original Series*: In "Errand of Mercy", both Captain Kirk and Commander Kor frequently describe the natives of the planet Organia as cowardly and liken them to sheep (meaning "timid", not "conformist") because they don't want to fight the occupying Klingons. Subverted when the Organians reveal themselves as energy creatures who have the ability to stop both the Klingons and the Federation but chose not to interfere until matters escalated to all-out war.
-
*Star Trek: Voyager*: In "Jetrel", Neelix explains he went into hiding to avoid conscription during the Talaxian-Haakonian War. He tried to justify it to himself by saying that the war was immoral, but he admits to Kes that he was just afraid to die.
- Kenny Rogers:
*Coward Of The County* is about a young man constrained by a vow he made to his dying father to refrain from violence and fighting. This effectively makes him a target of local bullies until one day he snaps and goes postal.
-
*Futurama*: This is referenced in "When Aliens Attack"; Bender declares himself a "conscientious objector... you know, a coward." Then his patriotism chip is activated and he becomes gung-ho against his will. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacifismIsCowardice |
Pacifist - TV Tropes
*"We're against the bomb, Russian or American. Disarmament! Disarmament! Disarmament!"*
A pacifist, by definition, is a person who is opposed to the use of violence to resolve disputes or gain advantages. It's that simple.
Or is it?
No, it's not that simple. The opposition may be philosophical or pragmatic, it may be absolute or conditional. A philosophical pacifist holds the belief that violence is wrong, while a pragmatic pacifist objects to violence on the grounds that it's ineffective in the long run. An absolute pacifist believes that all violence is always to be avoided, a conditional pacifist believes that there are some situations in which it is acceptable (most often, in the protection of the life of another). Some people consider the definition of pacifism to be "not killing" rather than "not using violence."
As a trope, though, pacifists basically fall into several categories, arranged here from most strict to most lenient.
- The Actual Pacifist: This is the character who will not, under any circumstances, use any form of violence against another living being. Actual Pacifists are rare in real life and vanishingly rare in fiction. The Jain religion of India advocates Actual Pacifism — even insects are not to be killed, and face masks are often worn to reduce harm to airborne spores or passing bacteria.
- The Suicidal Pacifist: This is the above as depicted by an author committed to the Hard Truth Aesop that Violence Really Is the Answer. The Suicidal Pacifist will continue to preach absolute non-violence while a fascist dictator next door openly declares his people an inferior race who must be immediately exterminated, and do so right up until the point that the bad guys drive a tank over him and laugh while they clean bits of him out of the treads.
- The Badass Pacifist: While the Technical Pacifist and the Martial Pacifist are seen as cool because they are willing to use violence, but still keep themselves under control, the Badass Pacifist is respected
*because* of their strict anti-violence approach. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are both Real Life examples of this with their practices of *active* non-violent resistance in the face of brutal oppression and tyranny.
- The Martial Pacifist: Here is somebody who is
*extremely* good at fighting, but unlike the Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy, they use martial arts as a means of enhancing their life as opposed to destroying others. They are very big fans of discipline, and typically will only fight if there is absolutely no other option available. If you do manage to force one of them into fighting you, though, prepare to get owned. They *will* clean the floor with anybody foolish enough to corner them. Often overlaps with Old Master. Iroh is a Martial Pacifist, as is Dhalsim
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: This character recognizes that sometimes violence is necessary. He will try to avoid
*lethal* violence, but if the need is great enough, he will directly kill. He won't like it, and will almost always have some sort of emotional backlash from it, ranging from angst to wangst to a Heroic BSoD. If he is forced to kill someone, he will honestly say "I killed him." Superman is a classic example of a a character who believes Thou Shalt Not Kill. Slippery Jim DiGriz of *The Stainless Steel Rat* is another. The Doctor, who also Doesn't Like Guns, is, too.
- The Technical Pacifist: This is the character who is willing to use non-lethal forms of violence or to allow someone else to die directly because of his inaction or indirectly because of his actions, but will not kill them directly. He will almost always be able to rationalize that "
*I* didn't kill him." although it may be a very flimsy rationalization. Batman is a Technical Pacifist in *The Dark Knight Trilogy*: "I won't kill you, but *I don't have to save you.*"
- Doesn't Like Guns: Not necessarily a pacifist at all. This includes characters willing to use any form of violence that
*doesn't* involve guns, even if it's lethal or pointless, and may not even be a moral objection. In some cases, the definition of "gun" is rather conveniently narrow, excluding things like bazookas. Batman also Doesn't Like Guns. Many Retired Gunfighters also fall into this category.
- An Obstructionist Pacifist is usually too utterly swept up in their own need of being a pacifist or making sure that everyone/anyone else is pacifist. This goes on to the point where it slightly or completely prevents the hero/party/group in progressing to their goal or weighs them down immensely. If things go From Bad to Worse, It may lead to being Too Dumb to Live.
See also Pacifist Wind for when pacifism is associated with air and wind motifs. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Pacifist |
Packed Hero - TV Tropes
Ok, so the hero is trying to retrieve some object in a cereal factory, but something goes bad! Our hero falls onto the conveyor belt and is stuck! The packing machine is just ahead on the belt and if nobody does anything, it is going to hurt! Can his trusty partner save him in time? No!
Our lovable protagonist flies right into the machine! The machine shakes violently and makes strange sounds, but doesn't break from the strange input. Instead the packing machine now packs the hero into a package of Protagonist Cereal!
Usually, the package's design will change through the power of Rule of Funny to reflect the unexpected contents.
Compare Human Mail, where the character is (usually) voluntarily boxed up to be shipped to another location.
## Examples:
- Happens in
*Chicken Run*, with the protagonists temporarily getting trapped inside a pie.
- The Wallace & Gromit short film
*A Close Shave* has the villain intending to do this to the heroes, complete with Conveyor Belt o' Doom into a machine which produced canned dog food. ||In the end it is the villain who gets crushed up and delivered into the cans. Not as gruesome as it sounds, since the villain was really a robot.||
- Parodied in
*Monsters, Inc.* when Boo loses one of the "eyestalks" of her monster costume in a trash can. Sulley sees it and thinks she's in a pile of garbage, then watches that pile of garbage get swept into a cart, dropped down a chute, and put through an exceedingly brutal compactor. The audience saw her walk away from the garbage can, but Sulley faints at every step of the compactor. The sequence is an extended Shout-Out to the Chuck Jones short "Feed the Kitty".
- Cruella DeVil gets stuck in a giant cake in the climax of
*102 Dalmatians*.
- Threepio in
*Attack of the Clones*, except that instead of being packaged, he's sent out with the combat droids after having his head switched with one. Elsewhere in the factory, Anakin has a piece of machinery welded together around his arm and is unable to free himself for several minutes, then finds out it destroyed his lightsaber.
- In
*Ernest Scared Stupid*, Ernest manages to get himself stuck inside his garbage truck and compacted into a trash box.
- Happens to Cindy Lou Who in the 2000 version of
*How the Grinch Stole Christmas!*.
- Dramatic example in
*Minority Report*, where the hero and anti-villain are fighting on a Conveyor Belt of Doom carrying car chassis through an automated factory. The anti-villain jumps off the belt just before the internal components are mounted in place, and he watches as the hero struggles as the seats are bolted in, the dashboard snaps into place on top of him, the frame snaps on, the doors slam shut... surely he's been crushed? Then the wheels are bolted on, hero's head pops up inside, and drives the car away.
- In the French comedy
*The Wing or the Thigh* ( *L'Aile ou la cuisse*, 1975), the sidekick of Louis de Funès is baked into a big cake. Don't worry, he's OK.
-
*Rainbow Magic*: In *Pearl the Cloud Fairy*, the goblin who has stolen the Cloud Feather is hiding out inside a candy factory. He's defeated when he falls into a candy wrapping machine and gets wrapped with a sheet of silver paper and a silver ribbon.
-
*Breath of Fire IV*: in order for the heroes to get into an enemy territory, an "ally" smuggles them in this way. The crate in question *is* big, but when the one of the party members is a stout automaton, it's still really cramped.
-
*Final Fantasy IX*: Zidane, Garnet and Vivi fall into the black mage packing machine and get boxed up.
-
*Matchu*: One of Amber's giant ponytails get snagged onto a conveyor belt, pulling her onto it, which leads to her getting baked into a cake. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PackedHero |
Page Three Stunna - TV Tropes
*"*
Sun
* readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits."*
The practice of the gratuitous insertion of pictures of young, attractive, semi-naked women in a newspaper. The trope is named after British tabloid newspaper
*The Sun*, which had a long tradition of putting an attractive topless woman in page 3 of the paper.
While the trope can be seen in many newspapers in many countries around the world (some buried on page 5 or 7, others right on the cover), the
*Sun* is the Trope Codifier, and most references to the trope will be to the way the *Sun* did it. The *Sun* had a collection of "Page Three Girls", one of whom will pose topless on page 3 nearly every day note : The few exceptions are for particularly big or tragic events; on these days, she'll be moved to page 5 or perhaps even page 7, but she *will* be there. for no discernible reason. Sure, sometimes there will be an "excuse", but they tend to cover all the bases ( *e.g.* "it's hot out, let's beat the heat" contrasted with "it's cold out, she's here to warm you up") or even be mutually exclusive ( *e.g.* "England have won, let's celebrate" contrasted with "England have lost, she's here to cheer you up"). She's Always Female — there's no "Page Three Fella" (aside from a brief experiment on page 7 in The '80s). She's accompanied by a quote from her on the issue of the day, which is clearly not her own (and which, by extraordinary coincidence, will invariably agree with the *Sun*'s right-wing editorial stance) — they've evolved from the banal ( *e.g.* Alan Davies' "Jenny from Exeter thinks that war is bad") to the frankly absurd over the years.
Famous examples of Page Three Girls include Jordan
*a.k.a.* Katie Price (who was "retired" from Page Three for getting breast implants, which the *Sun* doesn't allow); Samantha Fox, from the early days (who sang a bit too and later came out as a lesbian); Marina Baker (former *Playboy* Playmate-turned-journalist-politician-environmental activist, practicing Wiccan, and author of several books on white magic), and Helen Flanagan (professional Ms. Fanservice and *Coronation Street* graduate, who posed once in 2013).
The girls are unfortunately not treated particularly well. They're obviously highly sexualised and somewhat dehumanized — they rarely even get the dignity of a last name ("Jenny from Exeter" again being how they're usually referred) unless they're particularly famous. Models used to be as young as 16 before laws were changed to raise the minimum age (and it wasn't unheard of for the paper to show a topless 16-year-old and elsewhere editorialize against a public figure for their sexual interest in teenagers). And it's basically a truism that
*no* model is over 29 — therefore, the girls tend to get booted out the minute they turn 30. note : The only real exception is Lucy Pinder, who was still the UK's most popular glamour model at age 35, but she was with rival tabloid *The Daily Star* (and left anyway once the paper decided her breasts were *too* big). "Aftercare" to former models is generally believed to be nonexistent; for example, longtime Page Three Girl Jane Warner — who was exceptionally attractive and graced Page Three for as long as she could, from ages 16 to 29 — couldn't handle life afterwards and descended into outright prostitution and drug abuse, but the *Sun* did nothing for her and outright used her plight as content for its own tabloid peddling.
Naturally, this sort of thing riles up a lot of people calling for it to be banned, with feminists at the forefront. One of the most famous anti-Page Three activists is MP Clare Short, who was so persistent that the
*Sun* tried to retaliate by getting a hold of her ex and trying to extract a topless picture of *her* (all they got was a picture of her in her nightie and a severe rap from the UK's Press Complaints Commission) and hiring a new 19-year-old Page Three model also named Clare Short.
In the end, the
*Sun* stopped the practice in 2015, not really because of the controversy surrounding it, but mostly because the Internet has provided voluminous (and free) competition for ogling women, and it just wasn't worth it anymore.
The phenomenon is, of course, not limited to the
*Sun*. Even (slightly) more "respectable" British Newspapers like *The Daily Mail* have done it, less often and with less exposure, and often of more "mainstream" celebrities, but with the same spurious reasoning (the *Mail* once did a spread on boots by featuring a model wearing *only* boots). On the other side of the spectrum is the *Sunday Sport* (or whatever they're calling it these days), which is famous for having at least one pair of boobs on every *page* and publishing a running "nipple count" in every issue.
In fact, although it's considered a British trope, there's a "Page Three" analogue in much of the rest of the world, although they don't do it exactly the same way. Continental Europe has the most, as they're probably the least shy about showing some skin. Austria and Denmark have "Page Nine Girls". Germany has "Page
*One* Girls", but the pictures are (mostly) placed below the fold. In Portugal, *Correio da Manhã* dispensed altogether with Page Three Stunnas but sometimes distributes free DVDs of hardcore porn. Almost every Brazilian tabloid has a half-naked woman on the cover. In contrast, North American tabloids are much stricter — only a few even have Stunnas, and even they keep the bikini tops. The U.S. and Canada have much more prevalent Moral Guardians (and their tabloids tend to be aimed at middle-aged housewives who often count themselves among said guardians) — but they do also have Victoria's Secret models, the more specialized men's magazines like *Maxim* and *Playboy*, and the much older tradition of World War II "pinup girls", whose pictures were distributed to GIs to... relieve tension.
## In fiction
- A subtle reference appears in
*Ultimate X-Men*. Jean boasts that she and Storm made pages one, two and *three* of Britain's biggest-selling paper, while holding up a copy of *The Sun*. Main Headline — "X-Babes Smash Real IRA Plot".
-
*George and Lynne*: In one strip, Lynne, while posing provocatively, says that people have told her she could have been a Page Three girl. George smugly remarks "Page Three's loss is my gain!" while cuddling with his wife.
- In
*Good Omens*, Newton Pulsifer, in his role as a witchfinder, has to count the nipples of each model to ensure they don't have too many.
-
*Discworld*: *Making Money* mentions that one of the interests of the Ankh-Morpork tabloid *The Tanty Bugle* is "young women without their vests on". *Unseen Academicals* suggests that a picture of a Goddess should be moved to "page three", because she's wearing half a toga.
- In
*Filth*, Bruce often takes a copy of the *Sun* to the bathroom for some alone time.
- Sugar Walls
*a.k.a.* Sharon LaHughes from *Gimme, Gimme, Gimme* is famous for being a celebrity who poses in her underwear and topless in newspapers (although not named, you can guess after reading this page what some of those newspapers were). Tom and Linda (secretly, her older sister) are disgusted by it and slut shame her behind her back.
-
*The Muppet Show*, while ostensibly an American program, was actually filmed in the UK and includes a subtle reference to this in the George Burns episode. As part of an "ambush interview", gossip columnist Fleet Scribbler mentions to Miss Piggy that his paper was thinking of doing a photo spread of her, "something for Page Three". Needless to say, that joke was probably lost on the American audience.
- One appears in
*Waterloo Road* as a former pupil of the school.
-
*Whatever It Takes* is an average ITV one-off drama about a trainee police officer who gets caught having sex with a footballer and becomes one of these, suffering the full effects of celebrity. She is "replaced" by another one, oddly enough played by an actress who had been in *Waterloo Road*.
- From
*A Bit of Fry and Laurie*:
- This song describes the life of a page 3 model, through to her marriage to a pop star.
- The Rupert Murdoch "Wonderful Life" sketch has Murdoch (who owns the
*Sun*) discover that in a world where he had never been born, Page Three is just more news. He decries that "you need tits to sell a newspaper."
- Keeley Jones from
*Ted Lasso* is introduced as a glamour model nearing the end of her career. Her character arc is kicked off by the revelation that her job and lifestyle are superficial and unfulfilling and her subsequent efforts to find more substantial challenges to pursue.
-
*Yes Prime Minister*:
- In "A Conflict of Interest", Hacker claims to know exactly who reads each British Newspaper (also the source of the page quote):
**Hacker:** The *Daily Mirror* is read by people who think they run the country; *The Guardian* is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country; *The Times* is read by people who actually *do* run the country; the *Daily Mail* is read by the *wives* of the people who run the country; the *Financial Times* is read by people who *own* the country; *The Morning Star* is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country; and *The Daily Telegraph* is read by people who think it *is*. **Humphrey:** Prime Minister, what about the people who read *The Sun*? **Bernard:** *Sun* readers don't care *who* runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
- Hacker's daughter has gotten worked up about endangered wildlife and is planning a nude protest. He laments that the stunt will get her onto the front page of the paper — "and probably page three as well".
- The
*The West Wing* episode "Enemies Foreign and Domestic" featured a Russian journalist at the White House asking Toby for press credentials because her work was brutally censored by the Russian government. This was true — but while Toby assumed it was because she dared to criticize an oppressive government, it was actually because she ran a newspaper that put naked women on every page (and also engaged in other putrid yellow journalism). Toby gives her the credentials but viciously lambastes her for wasting what little press freedom her country offers her on such trash.
- In
*The Vicar of Dibley*, Owen photographs Brenda the barmaid as a Stunna for the village newsletter. She's 65. Exaggerated Trope as he also includes a "Page Four girl" (her mother) and a "Page Five girl" (her aunt's mother, who has recently *died*).
- Australian comedy series
*Fast Forward* had a spoof where media mogul Rupert Murdoch takes over the *Daily Planet*, promising "Page Three girls on every page!"
- Lola Quinn, the victim in the London-set
*Elementary* episode "The Further Adventures", is a glamour model who mostly appears in tabloids like this. It's suggested the paper in which she appears is the last one in the UK to still have this feature ||because the owner is secretly Lola's mother and doesn't want to put her out of work||.
- In one episode of the satirical Brit Com
*Hot Metal*, an unscrupulous publisher tries to spice up Page Three by introducing "Wobblevision" - a variation on stereoscopic 3-d which involves the use of special glasses with movable tabs. When the tabs are slid back and forth while viewing Page Three, the models' breasts appear to wobble. Eventually the Ministry of Health bans Wobblevision on the grounds that it really *can* make you go blind.
-
*Bottom*: In "Parade", Richie attempts to chat up the new barmaid by comparing her beauty to that of a Page Three girl. Eddie is a little more blatant about it (to Richie's annoyance).
**Richie:**
Tell me, are you a Page Three girl? Because I'm sure if you wanted to, you could be.
**Eddie:**
Yeah, go on: take your top off, and we'll give you an honest opinion!
**Richie:**
Shut up, Eddie! (Punches Eddie in the groin)
- Being a parody of sensationalistic tabloid papers, the
*Weekly World News* featured a "Page Five Girl".
- Mentioned in the Tom Robinson Band song "(Sing If You're) Glad to be Gay":
*Pictures of naked young women are fun *Titbits
In
* and *Playboy *, Page Three of the *Sun * *Gay News
There's no nudes in
* or *One * magazine *
But they still find excuses to call it obscene
- The Beatles' "Polythene Pam", most likely:
*She's the kind of a girl that makes *The News of the World * *
Yes, you could say she was attractively built
- Fall Out Boy's "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs":
*I only think in form of crunching numbers *
In hotel rooms
Collecting Page Six lovers
- Referred to in Elvis Costello's "Welcome to the Working Week" from
*My Aim Is True*:
*Now that your picture's in the paper being rhythmically admired *
And you can have anyone that you ever desired
All you gotta tell me now is why why why why!
-
*Rock Star Ate My Hamster* has *The Stun*, whose in-game representation pictures a topless girl on the front page when the top story isn't about a rock star. Issues also occasionally advertise a contest to win a night out with a Page Three girl. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PageThreeStunna |
Page-Turn Surprise - TV Tropes
*"When we turn the page of a comic, new information is instantly communicated to us, and a good comic artist will use this to his advantage, either meeting our expectations or subverting them. This works entirely differently from the page turn of a written novel, which is without visuals, or the cut of a movie, because it's the reader who controls when it happens. And into that space created by control, a good horror writer can inject fear and unease, which of course Ito does masterfully. Right when something really bad is about to happen, he always gives us this little panel right at the bottom of the page of our character reacting to something unseen, and then it's up to us to turn the page and... oh, Christ, what the shit is that?"*
Often in book-based media at the point where the tension is about to climax, the author will make sure that a page turn will be necessary, as to avoid letting the audience accidentally glimpse a spoiler on the other side of a page. Often this technique is necessary for a big reveal or otherwise dramatic moment.
Most artists are taught to pay attention to this necessity of a technique when planning their comic book, and less commonly, authors need to worry about this situation as well. The only difference for prose novelists, however, is that in a 200-page book with font standardization, they can't exactly know when the typesetting will force the reader to turn the page in hardcover or paperback books.
It's so common that Scott McCloud cites it as one of the things comics creators need to re-learn if they move from page-based to Infinite Canvas comics.
If the media product resides in the horror genre, chances are the image/text on the next page is going to be shocking/horrifying as well as surprising.
In visual print media, this technique can come in several forms, some of which are included here:
- The scene is hinted at on the previous page, but you must turn the page for the entire effect.
- The surrounding characters get a glimpse at the sight before the audience, often allowing for a wide-eyed look of disgust or terror before the reveal.
See also Unconventional Formatting.
## Examples:
Anime & Manga
-
*Ayakashi Triangle*: Several inane things are comedically overplayed by having them appear on the first panel of a pair of pages.
- As Matsuri explains to Suzu that she's the only friend he's ever had, Suzu suddenly gets quiet. Matsuri continues that he shouldn't bother being friends with Lu or Yayo even if he's around them. Suddenly, the page ends with a dramatic closeup of his shocked reaction, and the first panel of the next page is Suzu shaking her head. She changes his mind.
- As Matsuri refuses to let Soga exorcise Shirogane, one page ends on Soga threatening to use force. The next starts with Soga getting flustered from looking straight up at Matsuri's skit.
- As Matsuri dismisses the need to befriend Yayo and Lu, the page ends on Matsuri turning in shock. The first panel of the next page is Suzu shaking her head with a very pouty face, which makes Matsuri reconsider.
- The first page of chapter 105 ends with Shadow Mei handing him a bell she implies he's meant to give to Suzu. On the next page, Matsuri's been turned into a cat in a puff of smoke.
-
*Azumanga Daioh*: In Volume 4 November Special, Sakaki is attacked by a horde of cats, when suddenly, a cat appears in the way! It isn't immediately identifiable yet, to those who didn't connect it to the foreshadowing and haven't seen the anime of it. We see a close-up of Sakaki's eyes... and turn the page to find a full page of Chiyo latched on to Sakaki, who's looking down at ||the Iriomote cat she met on the school trip||!
-
*Bakuman。*: This happens when Mashiro and Takagi first learn that Miyuki Haruno, the woman Moritaka Mashiro's uncle loved, is his girlfriend Miho's mother, One Hundred Millionth failing to get an award, and The World is All About Money and Intelligence only getting 3rd place in Akamaru Jump (in order to get serialized, it had to get first).
-
*Battle Royale*: In the manga version, this trope gets used frequently in order to shock the player when things look up, only for the next page to reveal that things were never that happy. Prominent examples are seeing an image of Hirono successfully reuniting with The Hero and smiling, with the next page showing ||that smile to actually be a deranged one as she's drowning in a well||. In a similar vein, showing a close-up of Yuko smiling in a photo with all her friends to then showing a tearfully smiling Yuko ||with a graphically broken neck||.
-
*Bokurano*: Near the end of the eighth volume, Kanji, ||having just fought and died||, wonders which of the three possible candidates will be next to pilot. He's fairly certain it can't be any of those three, but then is horrified as the realization hits him. On the next page, ||Kana Ushiro|| says "I've been called."
-
*Higurashi: When They Cry*: It has done this multiple times, and it has proved very effective as the key moments in the manga adaptation are often remembered as these.
-
*Ibitsu*: Ryo uses this for a good portion of the most intense and heart-pounding moments.
- Junji Ito is infamously fond of this technique. Often a panel at the end of a page would focus on a character's reaction to build anticipation before the next page reveals some horrific creature or situation. His first horror anthology relies heavily on this.
-
*Kaguya-sama: Love Is War*: The manga has used this on several occasions, particularly with really romantic moments like Shirogane finding Kaguya during the fireworks arc, ||their First Kiss, and Kaguya's Love Confession||.
-
*Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid*: In the first issue, after some hints about the research on "that", Vivio gets ready for her first Transformation Sequence. Then as the reader turns the page, they get a two-page spread showing ||the glorious return of Sankt Kaiser Vivio||.
-
*Muhyo and Roji*: In Chapter 128, everything seems to be going well when the Demon Carriage arrives, only for Ginji to reveal on the next page that ||Enchu has regained consciousness and now has the upper hand, with the rest of the heroes in the carriage tied up||.
-
*My Monster Secret*: The manga uses this often, both dramatically *and* as a visual punchline to a joke. Due to the series' heavy use of Mood Whiplash it's not always clear *which* it will be until you actually turn the page. Chapter 80 and 81 actually use very much the same page and panel structure, but page turns that were used dramatically in the former become comedic in the latter due to the different contexts.
-
*Naruto*:
- In the pilot, a new page coincides with Takashi revealing that Saburo stabbed Kuroda, and when ||Takashi gets shot by the person who came to steal "Proof"||.
- Several times, someone will talk for a little while to build up to revealing something, then hesitate for a panel or two to push The Reveal onto the next page, sometimes accompanied by a character asking "What?". Noteworthy examples include Naruto finding out that he is the host of the nine-tailed fox, Sasuke learning that ||Itachi was trying to protect him||, and Hinata ||confessing her love to Naruto||.
- During the Sasuke Retrieval arc, where you turn the page and find a gloriously awesome full page of Rock Lee roundhouse kicking the bad guy.
-
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi*: Setsuna revealing her wings is specifically kept on the very next page and hinted at earlier in the volume.
-
*One Piece*:
- In the Dressrosa Arc, Usopp's wild reaction to being force-fed a super-hot grape is revealed by turning the page and occupies up the whole thing.
- Enel's huge Jaw Drop.
- Not to mention the fantastic reveal of Ace's heritage during the Whitebeard War arc. It came completely out of the left field for everyone.
- At the start of the Sabaody Archipelago arc, it turns out that Duval, the leader of the gang the Straw Hats are fighting, has a grudge against one of the Straw Hats. What follows are two such surprises in rapid succession. The first is when Duval reveals that he has a grudge against Sanji, and the second is when Duval's mask is knocked off and he turns out to be ||a stranger who looks just like Sanji's poorly drawn "Wanted!" Poster||.
-
*Shuukan Shounen Hachi*: It largely keeps to this style. While the setting and tone aren't *quite* as zany, the Mood Whiplash and page turns are still used abundantly − a notable example being in chapter 3 when, after exposing which girls they find cute (after a moment of hesitation), the boys all admit that the first name that came to their minds was Mikeya, with the main character Hachi facepalming out of sympathy.
-
*Yuri is My Job!*
- At the end of Volume 1 is the series' First-Episode Twist. After Hime tells Mitsuki about a former friend who ruined Hime's reputation in elementary school, Mitsuki asks if Hime remembers the friend's name, and Hime says yes, she's Mitsuki Yano. On the final page of the volume before the extras, Mitsuki, having reached her Rage-Breaking Point, lays her student ID on the table and reveals that she is Mitsuki Yano.
- At the end of Chapter 45, a visitor arrives at the salon and Kanoko greets her. Similar to the Mitsuki twist above, on the final page of the chapter, the visitor produces ||an old visitor pass that says "Goeido-san,"|| revealing that the visitor is none other than ||Yoko Goeido, Nene's ex-girlfriend.||
Comic Books
-
*Immortal Hulk*: It's very common. For instance, one page of issue #8 ends with the Hulk's cut hand in a jar (the Jolly Green Giant had just been cut into pieces by scientists) snapping its finger to break the glass. The next page shows *all the pieces flying back together around a scientist, and fusing again onto him, and back into the Hulk's body.*
-
*New Avengers*: Doctor Strange/Zom annihilating friend and foe alike in the second annual issue. Double points for being a blood-red two-page spread interrupting what had formerly been a blue and purple night scene.
-
*Planetary: Night on Earth* has a downplayed version, with a Gilligan Cut being placed on a page-turn. The last panel of one page has The Drummer declaring that he's staying at the base where it's safe; the first panel of the next page shows him out in the field with the rest of the team, complaining loudly.
-
*Super Dinosaur*: The reveal of The Exile's identity and a double Oh, Crap! moment for Derek and SD are formatted like this.
-
*Ultimatum*: ||Wasp||'s violent, cannibalistic death.
Literature
-
*Captain Underpants*:
- Captain Underpants, George, and Harold jump out of the UFO in book 3. Captain Underpants believes that he can zipline with the toilet paper, but the narration then states that the toilet paper of course snapped and the three heroes were killed instantly. Then you turn the page and it says "Just kidding."
- Book 6 really builds up to Melvin's Bionic Booger Boy form, with the page before its debut being a straight up
*warning* that the reader must prepare themselves for the unfathomably disgusting thing they will witness once they turn the page.
- The end of Book 9 expresses some End-of-Series Awareness and says "There are no more Captain Underpants books..." The next page is nothing but ||a silent two-page spread of Scenery Gorn||. The page after
*that*, however, is a teaser for the actual final book, accompanied with the text, "...except for *this* one:"
-
*Cloud Atlas*: ||The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing|| is cut off mid-sentence in such a way that the sentence appears to run onto the next page, but the next page is blank, and the page after is the title page for the next story.
-
*The Decagon House Murders*: This Japanese mystery novel features one example famous in its home country, where The Reveal of the culprit's identity in a single sentence (totally innocuous in-universe, but a MASSIVE Wham Line to the reader) gets an entire page to itself.
-
*Gravity Falls: Journal 3*: After the author recounts the Interdimensional Portal test, the next two pages are nigh-covered with black-ink scrawling, drawings of eyes, and red text spelling out "MY MUSE WAS A MONSTER", "I WAS A PUPPET", and "F WAS RIGHT".
-
*Mr. Bean's Diary*:
- After turning the page on 14th February, the next few pages are completely blank; followed by "FOUND DIARY!!" in big letters. It is hinted at by the entry "Put out bin" just before the blank pages, and the diary is found in the bins.
- After Mr. Bean has fawned over Mr. Wilkinson, the last entry on the page is "Mr. Wilkinson borrowing car this afternoon", followed by "car due back". Then, over the page: "Where is Mr. Wilkinson???", it is revealed that Mr. Wilkinson is a con man who has stolen Mr. Bean's car.
-
*Reaper Man*:
- Pratchett puts one of these when Azrael answers. You turn the page only to find one big, huge "YES" covering the entire page. In the hardcover, this is on the left side of the page, so you see it when you turn (and Pratchett allegedly wrote an extra 200 words to make it so), but it ended up on the wrong side of the page in the paperback edition.
- Later paperback releases fixed this issue but ran into another, related problem —100pt block letters tend to show through thin pages.
-
*Red Dwarf Log No. 1996*: In this spin-off book featuring the crew's journals over one year, the entry for March 17 has Kryten explaining that he's set up a hydroponics pod and laced it with a chemical cocktail to promote rapid growth; he anticipates quick results. On the next page...
-
*A Series of Unfortunate Events*: There's a spread in *The Ersatz Elevator* that is meant to show the reader what the titular elevator's shaft looks like. Both pages of the spread are completely black.
-
*Harry Potter*: There is a page of stars in between every chapter, which means no matter what happens with fonts or translation you will always have to turn a page to get to the next chapter. This is sometimes used for dramatic pauses, such as in the first book when revealing who is in the room with the stone: ||It wasn't Snape. It wasn't even Voldemort. (chapter break) It was Quirrell.||.
-
*The Worst Witch*: In *A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch*, the reader gets a surprise on turning the page to see a huge picture of the face of Mildred's tabby cat, filling the whole page, when the cat is normally depicted as very tiny. This is to reflect how Mildred first sees the cat, when she has been turned into a frog.
-
*Struwwelpeter*:
- "The Story of the Inky Boys" tells the reader to turn the page, so they shall see how black the inky boys really are.
- A similar effect is used in "The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb". After Suck-a-Thumb's mother has warned him of the consequences of sucking his thumb, the page ends with "the thumb was in, alas, alack!". And turning the page reveals a gruesome Fingore picture, which is notorious for making the book really frightening.
Magazines
Western Animation | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PageTurnSurprise |
Cool Old Guy - TV Tropes
*"Anyway, I'm not a cliché, *
I hardly own any ties.
I may be old but at least I'm not
like all those other old guys."
The effectiveness of a cast member is often determined by his distance from the median age of the cast. Deviations up or down will always be coupled with a lack of effectiveness. The Cool Old Guy is an exception to this. At some point, if one character is much older he swings the meter
*back* to 'totally awesome'. In a lot of anime and video games, this makes him somewhere around middle age and the only non-clean shaven guy. Expect him to be greying, a loud voice, but in peak physical condition and unafraid of anything.
He usually won't have any special powers but that's only to marginally keep him from intruding on the others' limelight. He usually either has a dated and dramatic but lovable personality or is a complete no-nonsense hardass, depending on how the other characters act.
In Japan, this trope is called the Oyaji, written 親父 or オヤジ, which means "daddy". Can often stray into Even the Guys Want Him or Stupid Sexy Flanders territory. Wise Beyond Their Years is a younger version (usually no younger than late 20s at minimum) that has many of the same characteristics.
See also: Old Master, Older Sidekick, Eccentric Mentor, Mentor Archetype, Dirty Old Man, Silver Fox, Token Adult. See Cool Old Lady for the Distaff Counterpart. Contrast Aging Would Be Hipster, Grumpy Old Man, and Evil Old Folks (unless when Evil Is Cool).
## Example Subpages:
<!—index—>
<!—/index—>
## Other Examples:
- Uhm, Uncle Sam. You know, this guy.
- Fred the Baker from the Dunkin Donuts commercials, from 1981 to 1997. (As in "Time to make the donuts!") Originally portrayed as an atypical baker, a hard-working, average joe who always got up early so his product could be ready and fresh for his customers, Fred got progressively cooler as the years went on, doing such things as dressing up like a woman to investigate a supermarket bakery (to show their inferiority), waiting on modish 1980s customers while going into a black and white kitchen full of 1940s employees working to swing music (to show that quality has not changed throughout the years) or even creating his Halloween-themed mini donuts Mad Scientist-style.
- Colonel Sanders; whenever he appears in commercials, he's
*much* cooler than he was when he was alive. Some good ones here.
- Dave Thomas was one both in the Wendy's commercials and out of them, see for yourself.
- We only hear partial references and snippets of the kinds of things The Most Interesting Man in the World has experienced in his storied adventures, but one thing's for sure — if the first thing you heard about him is that he once parallel parked a train, you'd probably drop whatever you're doing just to listen. Even when Dos Equis retired him from their advertising campaign in 2016 he went out in style...by going on a one-way rocket trip to Mars.
- Ever since The '90s ended, the Cheetos brand has portrayed Chester Cheetah as this in advertisements. Originally being a Totally Radical Mascot with Attitude, the transition was surprisingly seamless. His image on the actual bags however still uses his 90s design.
- Chief Daisuke Aramaki, the Mission Control of the
*Ghost in the Shell* franchise.
- His brother, from what little we see of him, would also count.
- ||The Claw|| from
*GUN×SWORD*.
- For a heroic example, every member of the El Dora V.
-
*Gundam*:
- Bear from
*.hack//SIGN* was an older man comfortably pals with a teenage girl, Mimiru, through their shared love of virtual reality online gaming.
- Phyllo in
*Roots*. He sits on the bridge in Mac Anu all day, talking to anyone who's interested and becoming close with Haseo. In real life, he's an old man, widowed and with two cats. As he tells Haseo, he's just there to kill time, and ||dies of cancer at the end of the anime||.
- Walter C. Dornez, the butler of the
*Hellsing*.
- Family is also a prime example.
-
*Hunter × Hunter* features 2 super-powered old men, Isaac Netero and Zeno Zoldyck. The former is the Chairman of the Hunter Association, where tough fights and Nen are needed JUST to qualify, and was World's Strongest Man ||right until his death.|| The latter is the patriarch of the world's most dangerous assassin family, where the kids are trained from birth itself to be able to cope with the Nen-infused world. He almost managed to defeat the former, not without great damage. And yes, both of them are friendly and amusing to their peerage.
-
*Initial D* has three: Dr. Toshiya "God Hand" Joushima, Kozo "God Foot" Hoshino, and Bunta Fujiwara himself. All three are top-tier racers, and nobody has ever beaten Bunta. *Even when he's not serious*.
-
*JoJo's Bizarre Adventure*:
-
*Phantom Blood*: William Zeppeli's Hamon training masks his age, so he's actually much older than Jonathan is. It doesn't stop him from being an efficient mentor and fighter.
-
*Stardust Crusaders*: Old Joseph Joestar. Not only does he fight vampires and bad guys alongside the younger heroes, but he collects comic books and has a wickedly awesome sense of humor; the latter two are especially put into play in the final battle. ||After being killed by Dio and having his blood drained, Joseph is brought back to life with a blood transfusion from Dio's remains. He pretends to be possessed by the vengeful spirit of Dio as a prank on Jotaro, and barely saves his skin from his angry grandson by stating his personal interests. Namely, that he collects comic books, that he knows Bo Derek starred in *Tarzan, the Ape Man*, and that "Weird Al" Yankovic sang "Eat It". Jotaro relents, because "only he would know such stupid things"||.
-
*Diamond is Unbreakable*: Ryohei Higashikata is friendly, humorous, and all-around likable guy. He also loves and treats his illegitimate grandson, Josuke, like his blood family.
-
*Golden Wind*: Pericolo, a capo of Passione, appears as a very friendly man and Bucciarati holds him in great esteem telling his men to bow in respect when he first arrives.
-
*Steel Ball Run*: Norisuke Higashikata, who survives, let alone wins even a single stage in the country race at the age of 68 more than qualifies, not to mention the fact that he places fourth in the finals.
-
*JoJolion*: Norisuke is the Higashikata patriarch and a grandfather, but he's relaxed and amicable to Josuke. Norisuke has a deep love for his family and can be quite insular, he looks over all of them and loves them.
- Technically count, Shiba Hiroshi in the sequel
*Kotetsushin Jeeg*. While he is a cyborg and still looks like a normal adult, the sequel takes place 50 years after the original, and his girlfriend already has a grand-daughter as a reference of his age. His age doesn't affect his Badassery though.
-
*Kotoura-san*:
- Zenzou Kotoura, the protagonist's grandfather, is something of a Dirty Old Man, but he absolutely stands by Haruka through the series, to the point where he disowns his own daughter after she abandons Haruka. He pays for all Haruka's living expenses, is absolutely supportive of her friends in the ESP Research Society, and welcomes them into his home when they go looking for her in Episode 4 and during Summer Break.
- The old monk is played straight. When he first encounters Haruka, he promises to bring her mother back and starts a decade-long research into ESP. Why? He wants to help Kotoura any way possible. He also welcomes the ESP Research Society into his place when they have no where else to stay in Episode 4. It also helps he good friends with Zenzou.
-
*Legend of the Galactic Heroes* has Fleet Admirals Merkatz and Bucock from the Empire and Alliance respectively.
- Max Jenius in
*Macross 7*. He might be 52, but he can still pretty much wipe the floor with *everybody* in the show, both in cockpit and with his bare hands, and he's the heroine's dad. Ah, BTW, he's also the fleet military commander.
- Gil Graham of
*Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's*. A kindly old English gent who also happens to be one of the most experienced and powerful mages under the Space-Time Administration Bureau's employ. ||Though he turned out to be a Treacherous Advisor who was very reluctantly planning to seal the Book of Darkness together with Hayate once the book turns Omnicidal Maniac||, the cast didn't blame him too much for it considering the complicated circumstances.
-
*A Man and His Cat*: Kanda is a kind-hearted, caring, and talented pianist and music teacher with an adorable cat. More than one character remarks on how handsome he is, too.
- Dr. Juzo Kabuto from
*Mazinger Z*. When Dr. Hell sicced an army of Humongous Mecha on him and his colleagues, he managed to escape alive. Afterwards, he spent several years building the titular Humongous Mecha, an eighteen-meter-tall One-Man Army robot. When one of the henchmen of Hell blew up his mansion, he got half-buried under several metal rafts, but in spite of he was moribund and trapped in an underground basement, he managed to survive several hours until his grandsons showed up and he could hand Mazinger over to the eldest (Kouji Kabuto). Also, he ||saved his son's life by turning him into a cyborg after he nearly got killed because a lab experiment had gone wrong||.
- In
*Mon Colle Knights*, Prince Eccentro's mentor Tanaka.
- Zelik and Graham from
*Mother Keeper*, though they're only in their 50s.
- Professor Itsuki from
*Moyashimon*. He's rather laid back for a college professor, referring to nearly everyone with the informal honorific "-kun". Though he does get rather passionate about fermented foods and his research into bioremediation.
-
*Naruto*:
- Third Hokage is a very kind, very awesome old man who cared for the people in his village. Just watch the scene where he visits the Academy class to talk to them about the village and the people he cares about. Watch ||Naruto and his contemporaries' memories of him at the funeral. Everyone has a memory about something awesome he did for them||.
- The fact that Sarutobi Hiruzen was one in the
*real* Uchiha massacre, even if he wasn't happy about it, has caused many fans to adopt a very cynical view of him, even though he is probably the single biggest reason Konoha isn't insane like Mist or as cruel as Sand. The fact that he runs a society of professional murderers who start before they hit puberty is kind of a reality check problem when compared to the actual events of the show. Except that he'd gone through great lengths to try and prevent the Uchiha massacre from happening, and even Itachi pleaded with him that he protects Sasuke. Also, *every* village has been running a society of mercenaries before they hit puberty, possibly since around the time of the First Hokage himself.
- Jiraiya when he's not acting pervy.
- It's implied the Tsuchikage was less harsh in the past since Gaara's question seems to perturb him, and over the years he just grew more cynical with the shinobi world. With the world's constant militarization and the fact that every major village had at least one tailed beast or dealings with Akatsuki by the beginning of Shippuden, he became cynical to match the times. What with the Magnetic Hero and Gaara, his protege, he's softening again.
- There's also the original Ino-Shika-Chou trio, aka the fathers of Team 10, although they're all in their forties.
- Zelretch from the
*Nasuverse* ( *all* of the works). When he was younger, he beat down and killed the "ultimate" being, Crimson Moon Brunestud (and in the process *singlehandedly* stopping the moon from falling into the Earth), *only because of a minor dispute he had with it*. He's also one of only five "True Magic" users — his magic? *Operation of parallel worlds*, which lets him do pretty much anything involving alternate universes. He pops into the "main" universe every now and then to take apprentices and screw with them until they're near useless from shock and trauma. Or until they become badasses. Whatever comes first.
- Lord Yupa from
*Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind* has traveled widely, is one of the most knowledgeable members of the cast, and is universally recognized as the best swordsman around.
-
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi*:
- While about half of Nagi's group could potentially count, Takahata-sensei and Graf Wilhelm are likely two very good examples. Takahata counting as old mostly because almost 90% of the cast is between 9 and 17. While God knows how old Wilhelm actually is. Takahata's teacher Gatou likely is one too but we rarely see him do anything but smoke in flashbacks.
- Hell, almost
*every* old guy in the series could qualify, especially the (currently middle-aged) members of the Ala Rubra. *Especially* Jack Rakan.
-
*One Piece* has quite a few cool old guys, although probably the most notable is Silvers Rayleigh, First Mate of the former Pirate King — 76 at his debut and capable of knocking out an entire auction house of combatants with Conqueror's Haki before going toe-to-toe with an Admiral, one of the most powerful military forces in One Piece's world. Plus the fact that he *swam* from Sabaody to Amazon Lily, a journey which takes more than a week by boat and requires crossing a region of sea infested with massive sea monsters.
- Of course, there's also Whitebeard, in his seventies and still known as the World's Strongest Man, with the power to cause
*earthquakes.*
- Among the main cast, there's Brook, 88 at his introduction (making him more than 70 years older than main protagonist Luffy) and is both a skilled swordsman and, post-Time Skip, an international rock star.
- Bang from
*One-Punch Man* is a quintessential Old Master of his martial art Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist, who runs his own dojo on top of his dedication to what he considers the duties of an S-Class hero.
-
*The Prince of Tennis* has two: Ojii, the Rokkaku coach, and Banda Mikiya aka Banji from Yamabuki. Taro "Itte yosh" Sakaki of Hyoutei is still a bit young compared to them, but he's heading there.
- Just about any elderly person from
*Rave Master*, but especially Shiba.
- Hiko Seijuuro from
*Rurouni Kenshin* is in his forties when the main series takes place, but the man is easily in superhuman condition with strength light years beyond anyone.
- Subverted because Seijuuro looks significantly younger than his actual age; when Yahiko and Misao learn that he's 43, they're shocked and conclude that "Hiten Mitsurugi is the secret to
*eternal* youth!!"
- Ditto for Kenshin, who also looks significantly younger than his thirty, despite quite a turbulent life.
- Played somewhat straighter with Okina, who is old and LOOKS it. Upbeat and always ready with a bad joke, he's not afraid of chasin' some young skirts. He's also quite powerful in combat, being nearly a match for Aoshi...
- The highly skilled but aged and wearily bitter Shimada Kambei of
*Samurai 7*. Quite possibly the reason Kirara surprisingly fell for him. Alas, his hardass nature solidifies when he coldly rejects her feelings before she can even get them out.
- In
*Snow White with the Red Hair*, we have the heroine's father, who is ||the leader of the vigilante-ish mercenary group, the Lions of the Mountains||.
-
*Tenchi Muyo!*: Katsuhito Masaki/Yosho is a mustached old man who can still kick ass. In the original OVA, he's actually physically younger than he appears, but in the Tenchi Universe and Tenchi in Tokyo series, he's genuinely old and a straighter example of the trope. Nobuyuki Masaki is this at times too.
- Old man Ichiryu from
*Toriko* definitely counts. It's been determined that he was the apprentice of the creator of the current age, which was over five hundred years ago and he still looks like he's in his late 30's. He might also cross into Eccentric Mentor territory at times, but he can still throw fully powered Toriko around like a pizza. To top it all off he has a mustache that he can move at will.
-
*Vinland Saga* has a few examples, keeping in mind that in medieval Scandinavia making it to forty in certain high-risk professions (like being a professional warrior or a sailor) was impressively rare in and by itself.
- Leif "the Lucky" Eriksson is a side-character in the first arc (and promoted to further importance in the second and third arc), and is notably older than any other member of the cast (the Real Life version was born in 970, making him in his mid forties by the first arc and pushing fifty by the Baltic War arc). He has an Intergenerational Friendship both with Thors (young enough to be his son) and Thorfinn (young enough to be his grandson) and is greatly respected by the cast for his ability to have travelled the sea route from Vinland (modern-day Newfoundland) to Miklagard (Istanbul).
- Thorkell "The Tall" is another example, being the World's Strongest Man In-Universe even at his advanced age. While he looks a lot younger, the end of the first arc reveals he's fifty (meaning he is fifty-four by the Baltic War arc).
- Askeladd is a downplayed example: He is not based on any historical figure and his Vague Age and Mysterious Past means he's hard to date, but judging by his features he is likely in his forties by the end of the first arc.
- ||Oboe|| from
*Violinist of Hameln* manga is revealed to be this near the end. Whenever he decides to show his (really good-looking, despite the obvious signs of age) true form, an epic battle ensues.
- Grandpa Tanaka in
*Yandere Kanojo*. He smokes, drinks, speaks informally, and it's implied he sleeps around with younger women (though not too young - when asked to charm a high school girl he was highly reluctant to do so). He's also good natured and friendly to just about everybody and dispenses useful advice often. His grandson who lives with him, the protagonist and arch-stoic Manabu, has a huge inferiority complex about it though.
- Sugoroku Mutou in
*Yu-Gi-Oh!* (Solomon Muto in the dub), Yugi's grandfather, especially during the Grand Prix arc where he was Jonouchi's opponent during the first round.
- In
*Yu-Gi-Oh! GX*, there was Dr. Albert Zweinstein. (An expy of Albert Einstein, who would likely fit this Trope too.)
- Yanagi from
*Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds*. (But also a little loony.)
- Rokujuro Misawa in
*Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL* (called simply Roku in the dub), the franchise's answer to the Old Master Trope. Jinlon appeared to fit the Trope too, but as it turned out ||he was actually the spirit of Number 46: Dragluon in human form, still cool, but not an old guy.||
- Genkai from
*YuYu Hakusho*, although she is female, follows this trope better than Cool Old Lady. Oh, and also discounting the fact some of the teenage-appearing cast is Really 700 Years Old.
-
*Alpha Flight*: The short-lived revival features an elderly superhero called Centennial, a little old man in a sweater who came out of a coma thanks to *extremely* delayed Puberty Superpowers identical to Superman's. He is played mostly for laughs, but when the team needs someone to give them a good kick in the pants for motivation, he is always ready to provide.
-
*Marvel Universe* has Doctor Van Helsing, who features prominently in the *Apocalypse vs Dracula* miniseries. A normal human, an old man armed with nothing more than knowledge and a selection of anti-vampire gear, caught between two of Marvel's deadliest and most powerful villains, and what does he do? Spend the entire time repeatedly verbally taking Apocalypse down a peg for refusing to believe in vampires/that Dracula has control of the Clan Akkaba, and then sneak-attacks Dracula just as he's about to take down Apocalypse, giving the latter an opening, something for which Apocalypse grudgingly spares him. He even takes a moment to, at a glance, diagnose the other hero — Inspector Jack Starsmore — as an opium addict, pointing out that he *is* a Doctor, after all.
-
*Asterix*: Getafix the Druid, maker of the magic potion, speaker of Gothic, one of the calmest and most sensible inhabitants of the village, and badass with Magnificent Bastard tendencies. No wonder the Romans are after him.
-
*Batman*:
- Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred is pretty darn cool, a magnificent example of the Servile Snarker, and dangerous when pushed.
- Batman becomes this whenever the timeline allows for it (usually in Elseworlds). The most famous example being
*Batman: The Dark Knight Returns*. For an animated version, see *Batman Beyond* (and the Batman Beyond version of Old Bruce guest-stars in a time-travel episode of *Justice League Unlimited*...and proves to still be a downright scary interrogator, even *more* than his younger self!)
- Captain America, despite looking like a man in his mid-twenties, is a 90-year old WW2 vet who can take on much younger heroes such as Black Panther and Daredevil and fight Batman to a stand still.
- In
*Chassis*, Sky Fish is the oldest driver competing in the Aero-Run, and is generally regarded as the sport's elder statesman.
- Paulie in
*Circles* is kind and caring and treats those close to him like family.
-
*Cossacks*: Sachko is an old laid-back and freedom-loving Cossack warrior who's still a good shot with muskets, smokes a pipe, sees great potential in Karlis (The Protagonist) and takes him under his wing to provide exposition to him about the Cossack ways.
-
*Douwe Dabbert*, a comic book series revolving entirely around a very old man.
- In
*Druuna: Morbus Gravis*, Druuna runs into a loony old hermit who protects her from various dangers, being crazy wicked with a knife. In the last few albums, he returns to accompany Druuna in the form of an android.
-
*ElfQuest* has a few examples.
- Savah, one of the oldest living elves, who Sorrow's end centuries past and is its unofficial matriarch, with all the inhabitants being her descendants. Called the Mother of Memory by the Sun Folk, she preserves their history and gains knowledge through astral projection, along with being capable of other small spells. Her personality is unfalteringly serene, compassionate and wise.
- Likewise, after some initial misunderstandings have been cleared up, Lord Voll of the Gliders, who is even older, endears himself to the Wolfriders in much the same way. ||Unfortunately the trolls kill him.||
- Then there's Ekuar, the wizened old rock-shaper, who retains his charm and wit despite having survived centuries of mistreatment by the trolls.
- In
*Eight Billion Genies*, Will Williams is the proprietor of the Lampwick Bar and Grill who consistently serves as a voice of reason amidst the chaos. He's Crazy-Prepared and Properly Paranoid enough to have a bunker full of food and supplies in case of a major crisis and spent his wish to turn his bar into a safe haven for himself and anyone else from the wishes of others. His past is shrouded in mystery and at some point he learned to speak fluent Mandarin Chinese, acting as a translator for Wang and Lifeng.
- Marvel supervillain Grizzly. Despite being a veteran super-crook he's a pretty nice guy when you get to know him, possessing a surprisingly strong set of morals and always being willing to help/give advice to others. He's also a badass who's tangled with many superheroes, almost none of whom actively dislike him. Once he robbed a guy while desperate for cash and when he got back on his feet he tracked the man down and bought him a pizza in order to apologize.
- The
*Justice Society of America* is more or less built around this trope, along with that of the Legacy Character. Alan Scott, Jay Garrick, and Wildcat are pretty much the coolest old guys in the entire DC Universe.
- In fact, Jay Garrick is so cool that he's the guy Nightwing (the original Robin) wants to grow up to be.
- While not the Trope Namer, Garrick is referred to as "One cool old man." By Jack Knight in JSA #2.
- Wildcat slept with Wonder Woman's mom. That is all.
- Marvel also has Roger Aubrey (the Destroyer) and the Thin Man, and they did have Iron Cross, who was still active as a hero in the present day despite being old enough to have seen service in World War I, until he sacrificed himself to save the world.
- Detective Dan Turpin from the
*New Gods* and *Superman* comics certainly qualifies. A cop who's at least in his fifties, still built like a linebacker, and doesn't have much use for super-heroes because he'd rather just do the job himself.
- Nick Fury, who's been standing up to supervillains since World War II and whose only power is his longevity and is a badass in every sense of the word. He was born in
*1920*.
- The Punisher, depending on the writer. Mainstream writers tend to downplay his age, but people who write the more hard-edged MAX stories acknowledge that he's in his late fifties. He is still a bigger badass than anyone else he faces.
-
*Disney Ducks Comic Universe*: Scrooge McDuck — pick anywhere in the world, and he's been there. Pick any type of adventure, and he's done it.
- Billy Batson's mentor, the bearded old wizard Shazam!, is the most powerful sorcerer in the DCU and can go toe to toe with gods in a fight.
- Papa Smurf of
*The Smurfs*. 542 years old, and still as vital and healthy and able to do the things his little Smurfs can do.
-
*Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics)*: Uncle Chuck, who, despite being the one that built the roboticizer in the first place, still serves as a viable and reliable role model to his nephew.
- The Heat from
*Super Crooks*. While not a *good* guy, he's an elderly man who takes part in the fighting, uses a heat gun in conjunction with his fire powers, and mentored the others. They respect him enough to go along with the heist so they can bail him out of trouble (and get rich, of course).
-
*The Transformers (Marvel)*: Kup manages to yell at Optimus Prime and get away with it and is one of the few Autobots to survive the series' constant character-killing situations without so much as a scratch. He's also this in IDW's Transformers works ( *The Transformers Megaseries*, *The Transformers: All Hail Megatron*, *The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers*...). Prowl even notes this when ||he has Kup turned into a Manchurian Agent, since it means Optimus Prime will listen to what Prowl has programmed Kup to say||.
-
*X-Men*:
- Carles Francis Xavier.
- Wolverine, whose healing factor slows down his aging immensely. He was born in the
*late 1800s* but has looked like he's in his mid-to-late 30s since his introduction.
- Cable and Magneto also count, though Depending on the Artist means both are subject to suddenly being white-haired 20-year-olds.
- Magneto is actually physically in his 40s or so, having been de-aged and re-aged by one of his many experiments. And seeing as Quicksilver was born white-haired, it might just be genetic.
- Dick Tracy has gradually aged into being this. He was in his early twenties when the strip started, but in the 1980's he was declared to be in his fifties. For a while, Dick Locher even drew him with graying hair at the temples. The current writer and artist have pulled a soft retcon and declared him to only be in his forties, but he's still no kid any more.
- Mandrake the Magician's dad Theron, head of the College of Magic in the Himalayas, and probably the greatest magician on Earth.
-
*Abraxas (Hrodvitnon)*: Godzilla's personality evokes the mental image of this. He's something of an Old Soldier who's truly ancient and world-weary, though not without a sense of humor. It's also indicated that Godzilla used to be less mellow in his youth long ago than he is now in his ancient age, adding further to the trope.
-
*Old Man Henderson*: A Munchkin Loonie Lethal Joke Character created purely to derail an asshole Killer Game-Master's *Trail of Cthulhu* campaign. Old Man Henderson is a fifty-something, shotgun-toting fake Vietnam veteran who donated his large collection of lawn gnomes to charity one day, then went home and got high, forgot about donating his gnomes, and wrongfully blamed the local cult of Hastur (who he intitially thought were Mormons) for stealing them when he woke up the next morning and discovered the gnomes were missing. He is almost completely immune to SAN loss against cosmic horrors because his drug habit and schizophrenia means he hallucinates crazy shit all the time, so he assumes anything crazy he sees must be a hallucination too. His dyslexia also allows him to read Black Speech and not lose SAN from that either. After a long and epic session where Henderson near-singlehandedly slaughtered the cults of Hastur and Cthulhu, dropped a yacht from a helicopter onto a penthouse suite sparking an Enemy Civil War between the two aforementioned cults, gunned down shoggoths, *rolled a joint with a page of the Necronomicon and smoked it*, saved a few characters' lives, and got more than a few player characters killed, ||Henderson went out in a blaze of glory by rigging an entire ice rink with explosives, summoning Hastur into the middle of it, and then detonating the charges. Henderson didn't make it. Neither did Hastur.||
-
*The Tainted Grimoire*: Lezaford has a Thundrake, is skilled in magic, and provided a temporary place to stay for Clan Gully.
- Major-General Adiemus of the Holy Order of Juno, retired missionary and mercenary guild leader in
*Warriors of the World: Soldiers of Fortune*. Over sixty and still going strong.
- Master White-Beard the Grey, Mentor to the Great and Powerful Trixie in
*An Extended Performance*. He's gone now, but she reveres his memory, and he is one of the origins of Trixie's strange but very real code of honor.
-
*Kyoshi Rising* has Master Lau Dan, Kyoshi's Earthbending instructor ||and member of the White Lotus||.
-
*The Pieces Lie Where They Fell*:
- Blazen Sun, the oldest of the captains (he's over 130 years old and, in chapter 11 of the sequel
*Picking Up the Pieces*, mentions having needed to stop and help one of his great-granddaughters that morning).
- Mist Flight, a grizzled stallion who was lieutenant when Gentle Step began guard training and who steps in to lead the Royal Guard when she's unavailable.
-
*All Guardsmen Party*: The feisty elderly adept from *Heretic Purging,* who (among other things) gets the team and their weapons through a checkpoint by trying to seduce the guards.
-
*Ask the Famous 8!* has Toby. He is the oldest of the Famous 8, at 69 years old, and has no intention of retiring.
- 2 of
*9*. One hundred percent.
- Preston Whitmore from
*Atlantis: The Lost Empire*.
-
*The Incredibles*: Agent Rick Dicker is a fairly old government agent with a Seen It All attitude to the Supes he works with. He's a Reasonable Authority Figure who tries to help out the Supers he once worked with to the best of his ability.
- Master Oogway in
*Kung Fu Panda* was quite old when he beat one of the most dangerous known martial artists. Master Shifu probably could have replicated the success 20 years later if not for his sentimental attachment to said artist.
- Vitruvius from
*The LEGO Movie*. He's an extremely talented Master Builder, and is able to take on a small army of Lord Business's minions with nothing but a makeshift walker/nunchucks. He's also voiced by Morgan Freeman.
- Rafiki from
*The Lion King*.
- The Emperor of China from
*Mulan*. Doesn't lose his cool even in the face of Shan Yu, and delivers a wonderful Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving speech to Mulan. He also ships Mulan and Shang, all but telling Shang "Go after her, you *idiot*," after the former leaves.
- Sheriff Woody from the
*Toy Story* films. If he was made in the 1950s, then he's roughly 60 years old in *Toy Story 3*.
- In
*Turning Red*, Mr. Gao is an elderly shaman who likes listening to Tony Bennett. He also does his best to calm Mei's nerves before the red moon ritual.
- Carl Frederickson from
*Up* crosses into this territory near the end, even though he starts out in Grumpy Old Man territory.
- Both Old Fred and Lord Mayor from
*Yellow Submarine*.
-
*Small Town Santa* has two.
- Obviously, we have Santa Claus, who here is presented as the nicest guy you'll ever meet, knowing very intimate things about everyone around him, and helping reignite the spark of Rick's love for the holiday season.
- There's also Mr. Harold, the guy who knows everyone in town. When he gets word that Evan's dad lost his job, he hires him as the managers of one of his stores.
- ||Spock Prime|| from
*Star Trek (2009)*. Also Captain Pike.
- Practically all of the
*Enterprise* crew in *Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country*.
- Obi-Wan from
*Star Wars*. Make that all of the Mentors. Yoda is more of the Old Soldier/Old Master.
- Palpatine initially comes across as a Cool Old Guy to Anakin, even though we in the audience already know of his true personality.
- Count Dooku. He's evil, but he's
*awesome*. In Episode II, at least. Played by Christopher Lee, who was 85a *and* did around 80% of his own stunts. But not running.
"I couldn't do the running. I was eighty! I said to George Lucas
, I can do the sword fighting, but I can't run!"
- Han Solo has become this in
*The Force Awakens*.
- Luke has become this by the time of
*The Last Jedi.* He may start the movie badly depressed, but when he gets back in the fight, he saves the day and proves himself to be by far the most powerful Force user we've ever seen.
- The Wiseman/||Bus Driver|| from
*Sucker Punch*.
- Splinter, at the very end of the
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)* movie, proves not to be such a stiff by making a ~~funny~~ joke.
- Splinter in
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)*, if his speech about how family is the strongest power of all is anything to go by. If not that, then going up against ||the Shredder alone definitely makes him qualify, even if he does get beaten.||
-
*The Terminator*: The gun shop where the T-800 gets his ammunition is run by a guy in his 60s who seems to get along well with the T-800 during their meeting... up until the point that the T-800 turns his own stock on him.
- Howard (Walter Huston) in
*The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.* He can identify fool's gold, talk Spanish to the Mexican natives, save a child whose life is in limbo after nearly drowning, shoot a gun just as good as any younger man (and at bandits, at that), has been on several gold hunting quests in his heyday, and of course, he guided them into the Sierra mountain range. Made even better in the fact that Huston was the father of John Huston (the director) and won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role, alongside his son, who won for Best Director. This role was young Huston's gift to his father, who had asked him to, "find a good role for his old man."
- Basil from
*The World's End*.
- In
*Thor*, Odin.
- Virgil Earp, as portrayed by Sam Elliott in
*Tombstone*.
-
*Transformers Film Series*:
- Kevin Flynn in
*TRON: Legacy*, who despite being a Technical Pacifist, demonstrates that he's badass enough that all he needs to do is enter a room and he can shut down *everything* currently inside simply from his presence. Doesn't hurt that he's a Physical God in this world... after all, he *built* it.
- In the first
*TRON* film, Walter Gibbs and his digital counterpart Dumont fall into this territory. Gibbs was the guy who founded Encom, but was more interested in scientific development than money. He *invented* the laser that got it all started. He was also the only person on-screen who dared to tear Dillinger a new one to his face over the way things were run. His counterpart, Dumont, was the one who allowed Tron to get in contact with Alan via his tower and download the upgrade that eventually destroyed Master Control. Sark's forces eventually catch him, and he's remarkably snarky and sarcastic to them, even in the face of certain de-rez.
-
*Vamps*: Tepes, who avoids harming humans, provides good advice to the others, and has quite the impressive historical reputation.
- Another Sam Elliott portrayal is Sgt. Maj. Plumbley from
*We Were Soldiers*. The character tells a large group of young ruperts: "If anyone of you sumbitches calls me gram-paw... I'll kill ya!"
-
*Wild Wind* has the old farmer Kosta join the partisans in defiance of his drunkard son's Nazi sympathies.
-
*X-Men Film Series*:
- Professor Charles Xavier has an almost grandfatherly sort of relationship with his students during his older years.
- Wolverine. While he looks forty, he's over 170 in the original trilogy.
-
*X-Men: The Last Stand*: Beast is much older than Storm, Jean, and Cyclops, but as destructive as Wolverine.
- Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz from
*1632*: Over sixty years old but still besting swordsmen half his age, and winning the heart of a twentieth-century woman with wit and panache.
- In
*The Adventures of Caterpillar Jones*, Clarence and George are a retired pair of Adventurers who learned how to do the Flip and climb Ponder Rock without Traveling Thread, inspiring Sammy and C.J. to do the same at an even younger age. They keep up their adventurous ways after becoming butterflies and go Cloud Climbing together.
- Uncle Bud from
*After Dark, My Sweet* styles himself as one and frequently brings up the fact that he used to be a cop, but Fay is pretty quick to point out he's just trying to mask what a pathetic failure he actually is.
- Fraa Jad in Neal Stephenson's
*Anathem*. This avout of the millenarians is a master of pithy one-liners and has the ability to wander between parallel time tacks.
- In
*Arn: The Knight Templar*, this role falls to brother Guilbert de Beaune, a disgraced Templar and Arn's teacher. In the final book, he is invited to participate in Arn's stag night, an event which involves a contest of arms consisting of seven events. In spite of being three times the age of the other participants, not having touched a weapon in decades, never having practiced one event (spear throwing) and *never having seen* another (ax-throwing), he places second.
- Most of the disciples of Aldur in David Eddings'
*Belgariad* universe, but especially Belgarath and Beldin.
- P. G. Wodehouse's novels have Uncle Fred and the Honourable Galahad, who regularly helping their younger acquaintances out of trouble, often with rather impressive Zany Schemes. Uncle Fred gets extra points for knocking the hat off the pompous barrister Sir Beefy Bastable with a slingshotted Brazil nut.
-
*The Cat Who... Series*: Homer Tibbett, the nonagenarian expert on local history.
-
*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory* reveals that the Impossible Genius of confectionery Willy Wonka, who looks middle-aged, is actually this ("I'm an old man. I'm much older than you think."), a reason he turns out to be seeking an heir. He's *definitely* this in the 2013 West End stage musical, in which he has been a Reclusive Artist for *over 40 years* and was making sweets back when Mahatma Gandhi was alive. Also, Charlie's Grandpa Joe is a downplayed example — bedridden until Charlie finds his ticket, but always fun to be with — in most versions, and *definitely* an example in the 1971 film adaptation owing to his Deadpan Snarker tendencies ("If [Veruca Salt's] a lady then I'm a Vermicious Knid!").
- Li Kao from Barry Hughart's
*The Chronicles of Master Li* series falls under this.
- Khlit of the Curved Sword (aka Khlit the Wolf) from the
*Cossack* stories by Harold Lamb is already retirement age when he first appears in a story. He chooses not to accept mandatory retirement and goes on a walkabout through Asia instead, having many exciting adventures. Along the way, Khlit becomes both Kha Khan of the Tatars and Koschevoi Ataman of the Cossacks (but not at the same time). He's often underestimated by people who don't realize how tough a Cossack had to be to reach an advanced age. Even when Khlit relinquishes the protagonist role to his (adoptive) grandson Kirdy because he's no longer able to wield his famous sword effectively, Khlit remains a cunning fox, and quite capable of licking twice his weight in mooks.
- Noirtier from
*The Count of Monte Cristo*. When his granddaughter is facing an arranged marriage she doesn't want, he foils it by ||confessing to the murder of the prospective groom's father||.
- Giles Corey from
*The Crucible*.
- And from real life. The part about his death was true.
- Roland Deschain of
*The Dark Tower* series is not only is he several decades older than the rest of his ka-tet and the epitome of The Gunslinger, but he is also ||possibly several hundred millennia old, due to his having repeated his life over countless times after reaching the Tower||. He's totally unaware of that last fact, though.
- Cohen and his Silver Horde, of
*Discworld* fame. Not one cool old guy, but seven (eventually six, but in their most recent story they pick up a Cool Old Lady).
- Commander Samuel Vimes fits this in his most recent stories. After all, he's over 50! (When
*Night Watch* threw him thirty years into the past, the version of himself he met there seemed to be only in his late teens, and he describes a 51-year-old vampire as 'not a lot younger than him' in "Thud".)
- Vetinari. About as old as Vimes (if not older). Not only a political mastermind skilled at manipulating people to act in his favor but a former assassin of incredible skill.
- Ridcully, especially when he has a crossbow in his hand.
- One of his predecessors, Galder Weatherwax, was almost as good, but lost it, after going against fate by trying to capture Rincewind.
- And, Lu Tze the living embodiment of (if not inspiration for) Rule 1: "Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men." The one and only master of Deja Fu, with a reputation that makes men who know of him wet their pants (literally in at least one case) if they learn they have crossed him, and he kicked the ass of the new anthropomorphic personification of Time itself.
- Also Reg Shoe, he's not much older than Vimes, but he's 30 years
**dead** (dies at the end of Night Watch).
- Various other Zombies and Vampires would fit if 'cool' could be used to describe them.
- The old Count Bella de-Magpyr in
*Carpe Jugulum* is, as is Lady Margalotta.
- Alberto Malich, the Wizard who started UU. 87 years old when he blew himself into Death's Domain, and it's been almost 2,000 years since.
- Dios from
*Pyramids*. Okay, maybe not actually cool, but *old* can't be used to describe him, he's a freaking 7000-year-old stable time-loop.
- Abraham van Helsing from
*Dracula*.
-
*Dragon Bones* has Haverness, who is known for his loyalty and trustworthiness. He's also a very efficient fighter, men half his age are proud if he has to really work for his victory in a training fight against them. ||He has sworn allegiance to the high king and takes this very seriously, but when the high king refuses to send aid to his homeland, he starts a rebellion, reasoning that it was the high king who broke his oath first.||
-
*The Dresden Files*:
- Shiro from
*Death Masks* as a Japanese Knight of the Cross who, while looking like somebody's grandfather, manages to kick Fallen-Angel ass. Even Nicodemus, leader of the Denarians (the humans carrying said Fallen Angels), is afraid of this guy. Of course the Knights do have literal Divine Intervention on their side, and the RPG states that he has plot device levels of swordsmanship, which says it all really.
- Harry's mentor Ebenezer McCoy fits also, although he's a wizard and not a Badass Normal.
- The entire Senior Council. The Merlin held off an army of vampires and Eldritch Abominations with a single ward, and is pretty much based on Christopher Lee. Listens to Wind is a nice old medic and shaman who once alsoshapeshifted into a bear the size of a minibus to beat the crap out of an Eldritch Abomination /Physical God of fear. Simon Pietrovich had a death curse powerful enough to wipe out several Red Court nobility and their allies. With few exceptions, being on the Senior council generally means you are both very old, and a badass.
- Michael Carpenter in the latter half of the series. He may be ||half-crippled||, but he's a great dad and friend, all around amazing guy, and in "Skin Game" and "The Warrior" he shows he can still brawl when he has to.
- Professor Henry Armitage of H. P. Lovecraft's
*The Dunwich Horror*; a university scholar in his 70's who takes it upon himself (and a couple of other professors) to get bitch-slap the earthborn spawn of Yog-Sothoth.
- 'Ex-Heroes'': Jarvis has a graying beard and is one of the cooler members of the group. He shows Undying Loyalty to his superhero saviors (along with Billie, Dr. Connolly, Father Andy, and Lady Bee, he's one of the people most comfortable with casually chatting with them), gets Casual Danger Dialogue even when he feels certain he's going to die, and is one of the only people who both venture into the zombie-filled city for scavenging missions and takes guard shifts on the walls.
- In
*The Famous Five* book *Five go to Demon's Rocks*, Jeremiah Boogle, the great-grandfather of the village mechanic. He might be old but he is still hefty: he and Constable Sharp break through a locked door by shoving it.
- In
*Flawed*, Celestine's grandfather is supportive, brave, honest and intelligent, doing everything he can to support Celestine without concern for his own personal safety. He even steals a car for the two of them to use when going to ||Alpha's "counseling session" to create support for the Flawed||, joking about it without care.
- In Aaron Allston's
*Galatea in 2D*, the protagonist's father C. J. teaches them all how to use guns. He also does all the cooking.
- Subverted by "Grandad" in
*Going Postal*, who, in spite of being the oldest of the Tower 181 crew and (to the rest of them) a venerable old buffer who has been everywhere and knows everyone and everything and occasionally goes Papa Wolf on their behalf, is only *twenty-six*.
- Albus Dumbledore in
*Harry Potter*. And after ||he dies||, we get his brother, Aberforth, who is very nearly as cool as he is. Too bad their relationship was, well, rather troubled.
- There's Mad-Eye Moody, too. Leaving aside that much of the cool stuff we actually see him do is a Death Eater impersonating him rather well, he's annoying and insane but pretty cool.
-
*A Harvest of War* gives us Raghnall Bors and Tadhg.
- Miles Teg from
*Heretics of Dune* . Past retirement age in a time that sees humans living greatly lengthened lives due to the Spice (which he himself eschews), he is called back to duty by the Bene Gesserit and spends the rest of the book demonstrating why the Sisterhood still thought him highly valuable.
- About ninety percent of persons in the
*Honor Harrington* series. Honor herself is *65* in the most recent stories. Yes prolong makes everyone seem younger. But prolong has been around only about 2 generations so there are few people over 120 yet.
- Mia's grandpa from
*If I Stay*. He drives her to auditions and talks to her when she's in a coma.
- Nestor from Homer's
*Iliad* is one of these, he is the oldest man in the Greek army and was a young adventurer contemporary with the previous generation of heroes, including Hercules, Perseus, Theseus, and Achilles' father Peleus, he says that all of these previous heroes were stronger fighters than any of the Greeks attacking Troy, including Achilles. He is the frequent source of advice, counsel, and long monologues about the olden days. He is an old badass because he is still gearing up and fighting with the young men on foot and on chariot — and he is a better fighter than most of them! The fact that he survived to old age without being killed in Greek warrior society is taken as a testament to his great wisdom.
- Bodger the old bull terrier from
*The Incredible Journey*. He's a dogfighting veteran who spent his younger days terrorizing the local cats with his right-hand cat and best friend Tao the Siamese, and in his golden years is a loveable goof who simply wants and gets lots of love from humans.
- Saeter from the
*The Iron Teeth* free web serial is one of these. He is grey-haired and noticeably older than all the other bandits and yet still by far the best tracker and a dangerous warrior. He is a somewhat grumpy hardass though.
- The Mariner from the
*Keys to the Kingdom*. He has a magical harpoon so powerful it hurts others just to use it (he calls his 'friend'), and a ship that can sail through suns.
- Grandfather (not his actual name, but how he is known in history) from
*Lands of Ice and Mice*, who almost single-handedly brings about the first peaceful contact and cultural interchange between the Greenlander Norse and the Thule.
-
*Little Critter*: Little Critter's grandpa counts; he first appears in the 1983 book *Just Grandpa and Me* where he takes his grandson to the city to buy him a new suit. Little Critter's grandpa is seen throughout the book as a Sharp-Dressed Man in a suit, cane, spats and a derby. Later books show Grandpa lives on a farm, but still cool as both Little Critter and Little Sister enjoy visiting him.
- Gandalf of
*The Lord of the Rings*. His impressiveness isn't just because he's a wizard, but because most of the hobbits he's friends with usually describe him in grandfatherly terms.
- Also deserves a mention for The Movie, as he's played by Sir Ian McKellen. Old guys don't come much cooler than him. Except for Sir Christopher Lee, who played Saruman, and who was still badass despite being too old to walk up a flight of stairs smoothly.
- Most of the elves are pretty awesome, and some of them are older than the kingdom of Numenor. Legolas' age is never directly stated, but estimates range from 500 to about 3,000 years old. Book Legolas refers to
*the whole rest of the Fellowship,* except possibly Gandalf because he was still dead when the remark was made, as 'children.' Movie Legolas is referred to as 'lad' by Gimli, which may be due to their relative ages compared to expected life-spans. The rest of the Fellowship are either young or middle-aged according to their race, though special mention goes to Gimli at 140 and Aragorn at 88.
- Théoden — maybe not as badass as he was in his prime, but still amazingly so given that unlike most other examples in
*The Lord of the Rings*, he really is *just* an old man without a lot of years left in him. He's also very amiable, and strikes up a fast friendship with Merry, despite Théoden being a monarch and Merry being a foreigner of no rank.
- Woodrow Lowe, age 108, from James Thayer's
*Man of the Century*.
- Popsy in the eponymous story
*Nightmares & Dreamscapes* by Stephen King. ||He is the little vampire boy's grandfather and kills Sheridan for even trying to do so||.
- Santiago, the titular old man in Ernest Hemingway's
*The Old Man and the Sea*.
- In the
*Petaybee* books, Whittaker Fiske is not only cool but far more progressive than his son- he's completely open to the idea that Petaybee might be sentient when few off-worlders are.
- Lord Varano from Samuel Shellabarger's
*Prince of Foxes*, a historical novel of the Italian Renaissance. This upright old knight teaches cynical Guile Hero Andrea Orsini the meaning of honor. Lord Varano's scene, in which the folk of Città Del Monte elect to fight for him despite believing they are doomed to defeat by Cesare Borgia, is among the classic examples of both tropes.
-
*The Railway Series*: Edward, Toby, Skarloey, Rheneas, Duke. All of them but Toby were built in the nineteenth century, and all are still in active service. Skarloey and Rheneas would currently be 146 years old. Also applies to Sir Topham Hatt I and Sir Topham Hatt II during certain parts of the series' timeline. Out-of-universe, applies to the original author, the late Rev. Wilbert Awdry, and his son Christopher Awdry who is the current author.
-
*Raptor Red* brings us a Cool Old Dactyl in the form of... the white dactyl. Old even by dactyl standards, he has bowed out of the great play of reproduction and chick-rearing, choosing to instead spend his golden years dicking around with the other predators.
- Huang Zhong in
*Romance of the Three Kingdoms*, and *Dynasty Warriors* video game.
- Scholarly, eccentric, aristocratic Sixtus Claudius Julianus in
*Search the Seven Hills* is actually a retired Roman general and ex-governor of Antioch, one of the Empire's wretched hives of scum and villainy. He can even make Christians shut up with a stern look.
- Barrison Belamy from
*Skate the Thief* is a one-hundred-and-seven-year-old wizard ||lich|| who takes in a grubby thief child, has a pet monstrosity, maintains a stellar reputation among magical scholars, is a War Hero, and helps take on a powerful Thieves' Guild on behalf of a friend with no hesitation.
- Father Gus Saenz of
*Smaller & Smaller Circles* might be a priest, but he's a priest who wears his hair long ("rock star hair" according to Jerome), listens to rock music, and dresses very informally compared to the quieter and more conservative Father Jerome.
-
*Stargirl*: Archie is a retired paleontologist and college professor, as well as the best neighbor ever. Even though he's not officially a teacher anymore, it doesn't stop him, and he hosts "classes" at his home, where everyone, regardless of age or education level, can come and learn something. No grades, no attendance record, no tests, just learning. His classes are every Saturday, but the neighborhood kids are free to drop in any time — every kid at Mica High has visited at least once, and there's a small handful who show up every single week, and often come by after school, too. Note that they're not getting school credit for this or anything; kids show up 100% of their own volition because he's just *that good*. He's also the only character who even comes close to understanding Stargirl, and spends much of the novel giving Leo advice on how to handle his classmates.
- Abraham Setrakian of
*The Strain*, a Holocaust survivor that teaches two doctors, an exterminator, and a gaggle of gangsas how to slay some monstrous vampires.
- Socket from
*Super Minion*. He's an old tinker who supplies Hellion's Henchmen rather than personally taking the field. He's very gruff and to the point, but his advice is usually spot-on even for non-tinker matters, and he clearly cares about both the people in Hellion's turf and under her employ.
-
*Star Trek Novel Verse*:
- The
*Deep Space Nine Relaunch* novels introduce readers to the character of Elias Vaughn. Already 102 years old in 2376, he had spent the past eight decades working in Starfleet Intelligence. He had retained the rank of Commander in order to maintain a lower profile but was on a first name basis with many Admirals and even had a higher security clearance than some of them. Vaughn also worked in a cabal formed by Captain James T. Kirk dedicated to stopping and bringing down Section 31. A chance encounter with a Bajoran orb gave him a vision that encouraged him to transfer to command and take over the vacant first officer position on DS9. This is a guy who fought a Jem'Hadar to a standstill. Eventually promoted to Captain, Vaughn commanded DS9 and another starship all while being over 100 years old before being injured in combat against the Borg and dying of his injuries at 109. [[note]]Vaughn was introduced in the relaunch novels to show a human hitting the century mark while still being in excellent physical and mental health with ideally another 50 or 60 years of life left. Former Pocket Books editor Marco Palmieri once commented that having such a character "would add something new and interesting to Star Trek's exploration of the human condition."
- The
*The Left Hand of Destiny* novels expand further upon the character of Darok, who takes Martok's Ferengi friend Pharh under his wing. Darok inherited being a cool old guy from his father, who died in what Darok termed an "interesting place." Namely, a brothel that a starship crashed in to, crushing Darok's father. Darok goes on to mention that despite being crushed rescuerers were still able to make out a smile on the old man's face.
- Captain Flint from the
*Swallows and Amazons* series is the only adult the protagonists seem to take entirely seriously.
- Zedd in the
*Sword of Truth* saga.
- Though Nathan is even older and in most cases even cooler. Someone who can serve as estrogen brigade bait (in-universe, anyway) at nearly
*a thousand years old*, be one of the only existing prophets in the world, and be such a powerful wizard and (implied) swordsman to boot definitely deserves a mention here.
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*A Tale of Two Cities*: Mr. Lorry. He is a 75-years-old businessman, his business includes being a banker, hostage negotiator, and help refugees to flee the country.
- The short story "They Live Forever" has a subversion of this trope. The narrator becomes a Cool Old Guy at 25 when he is stranded on a planet where the natives have a life cycle of two years. He is proportionally so old by the end of the story that he realizes his age would be meaningless to them and claims to have forgotten. This mirrors the original immortal of the story who made the same claim about himself when questioned by the narrator.
- In John Buchan's thriller novels,
*The Thirty-Nine Steps*, *Greenmantle* and *Mr. Standfast*, Peter Pienaar is a generation older than the rest of the main cast. He taught the hero most of what he knows about disguise, spying, and veldtcraft, and can still do all of it himself. Will calmly walk into occupied Germany or across No Man's Land if necessary. Especially good at breaking out of prison, knocking you out with a well-aimed tea-tray, snuffing the lights in a public-house with a revolver, or rescuing your kidnapped Love Interest. Eventually discovers his life's calling as an elderly RAF air ace.
- Papa Jan from
*This Perfect Day*.
- In Robert A. Heinlein's
*Time Enough for Love*, this applies not to Lazarus Long himself, two-thousand years old though he may be, but to *his* grandfather, Ira Johnson. At seventy he was heartbroken not to be able to enlist in the army to fight in World War I, played a mean game of chess, and could kick ass nine ways from Sunday. He also raised his daughter Maureen on the principles of Eternal Sexual Freedom, which had major repercussions on the future of the human race, including Lazarus himself.
- Atticus Finch from
*To Kill a Mockingbird*. He's obviously also a Magnificent Bastard, minus the Bastard part. Hell, one of his responses to an argument is something along the lines of stating "You think you're about to win?", which he only said when he knew he would win an argument, or had a back-up plan for what they were about to say. He's the model of a father that every child wants.
-
*Trail of Lightning*: Tah is no blood relation to Maggie and old enough to be her father, but he's a valuable contact who connects her with her partner Kai.
-
*Welcome To Wonderland* has Walt Wilkie, P.T.'s grandfather, who founded the Wonderland hotel as Walt Wilkie's Wonder World in The '70s, and is always looking for new statues for it.
- Many characters in
*The Wheel of Time*. Thom Merrilin, Rhuarc, Gareth Bryne, Furyk Karede, Noal Charin, and the male Forsaken at least.
- Many musical artists from the 1960s and 1970s such as Fleetwood Mac; Chicago; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, and James Taylor are still going strong today. As are both of the surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. (Neil Young is
*definitely* considered a Cool Old Guy by the very young artists he's mentored, among them Jewel, Pearl Jam, and most recently Promise of the Real, led by Willie Nelson's son Lukas, who are young enough to be his grandchildren.
- Chuck Berry's music dates from the '50s and he was still going strong by the time he died.
- Ditto for Stevie Wonder; Earth, Wind & Fire; and Lionel Richie.
- Frank Sinatra was like this in the second half of his career. (In fact, he was probably even cooler than he was when he was younger.)
- Same goes for countless country artists, with George Strait being the most successful of the lot (currently, at least from a radio and album sales standpoint). Others are way too numerous to mention, although guys like Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, and Hank Williams Jr. immediately come to mind.
-
*And* for 1970s and early-1980s hard rock and metal musicians, who are past 60 (some of them even pushing 70) by now, like AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and the aforementioned Aerosmith.
- The Rolling Stones. Both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are in their seventies, and the band's been touring for more than 50 of those years. Do they seem like they're gonna stop any time soon? Very probably not.
- Bruce Springsteen is still playing concerts that run anywhere from two to four hours at 73.
- Jazz singer Tony Bennett. After his career tanked in The '60s, he staged an amazing comeback, keeping light bouncy jazz alive and kickin' beginning 1994 (and, until publicly announcing his diagnosis of Alzheimer's in 2021, had no intention of retiring, according to The Other Wiki).
- Little Jimmy Dickens continued to perform well into his 90s until he died in January 2015 at age 94, but that didn't stop him from making humorous cameos around Brad Paisley. At one time, he was brought out during an awards show to make a joke pertaining to Kanye West's interruption of Taylor Swift.
- Leonard Bernstein introduced kids in The '50s and The '60s to Classical Music through his TV specials, and also did a special on pop music in 1967.
- Nomeansno singer and bassist, Rob Wright, was pushing 30 when they put out their first album, which meant he was older than most punk musicians at the time and he turned middle-aged shortly after they developed their cult following. In fact, the cover art to their compilation album,
*The People's Choice*, depicts graffiti on a restroom stall that reads, "How fucken [sic] old are Nomeansno? Give it up, granddads." Drummer John Wright added and signed his own graffiti beneath this: "That's 'great granddads' to you, fucker!"
- Ed Cassidy, drummer for 1960s LA rock group Spirit. The guy was about 20 years older than the others and was the stepfather of guitarist Randy California, yet managed to take a genuine liking to the band's music. Plus, he was no slouch when he came to drumming.
- Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen. Their dedication to their fans is legendary.
- Carlos Santana, in his 70s, still plays guitar just as amazing as ever, creates some of the best rock albums in mainstream music, is dedicated to his beliefs and his fans, and still remains just as awesome as he did 40 years ago.
- Although he was never a legitimate example of one, Frank Zappa by age 50 was still recording, remastering and composing, despite suffering from cancer, which he died from at age 52.
- John Lee Hooker was still performing on stage in his eighties and released a best-selling album
*The Healer* when he was about 82 years old.
- Buena Vista Social Club: When they released their 1997 global best-selling album most musicians were veterans who were already in their seventies, eighties, and nineties. The oldest was Compay Segundo (1907-2003), who was 89 at time of recording the album. Special notice goes out to Rubén González, who suffered from arthritis, yet still managed to give away amazing performances!
- Michael McDonald. (02/12/1952 - present); 5-time Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter who has worked with Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers, as well as a successful solo career.
- French singer Henri Salvador, from the 1930s until his death in 2008 he was still performing and releasing new albums.
- Operette and cabaret singer Johannes Heesters (1903-2011) was over 100 years old and still sang and performed at the stage! Not only that but he only gave up smoking a half year before he died.
- Robert Pollard is 57, and he still puts out at least four albums every year.
- Jet Black, the drummer for The Stranglers, was nearly 40 when the band came to fame, making him far older than most of his contemporaries (and the rest of the band). He's still playing with them at the age of 76, despite serious health issues which mean he can't play a full set any more or tour outside of the UK.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic: He's been making parody songs since 1976 and shows no signs of slowing down.
- The Specials' trombonist Rico Rodriguez was a good twenty years older than the rest of the band when they started out and acted as a direct link to the Jamaican ska that they revived.
- Devo have been together since the early '70s, only broke up in the early '90s then reformed in the mid-to-late-90s, and have tried their best to prevent signs of slowing down.
- Lonnie Lynn, the father of acclaimed rapper Common. In addition to his history as a basketball player, he regularly did guest raps (actually, spoken-word poetry rather than straight-up rapping) at the end of Common's studio albums, dispensing not just wisdom and street knowledge but also praise for his family and for hip hop culture. His "raps" became one of the defining aspects of Common's studio recordings before his unfortunate passing in 2014.
-
*Rockin' And Rollin' With Granmaw* by Carson Robison is about old people rocking and rolling at a time when it was the hip thing. This is even more so emphasized considering Robison himself was 67 at the time (and sadly passed away less than a year later).
- Most members of Arrested Development were in their 20s at the peak of the group's popularity...and then there was Baba Oje, the group's "spiritual leader" who was in his late 50s-early 60s.
- Tom Lehrer wrote and performed most of his music as a young man, but at the age of 92, he decided to release all of his music into the public domain. Also, his response when 2 Chainz asked permisson to sample one of his songs cements his cool status:
"As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers
permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?"
- DJ Sumirock is a grandmother in her 80s who still works in her family's restaurant, but at night she's a dj in the Shibuya electronica scene where the vast majority of her fellow performers are in their 20s or early 30s.
- Episode three of
*Mystery Show* has two: Chef Rene and his old friend Hans Jordi.
- Brennen in
*The Once and Future Nerd*. A man of more than fifty years of age who is loyal to a fault and strong enough to ||beat two men to death using their own skulls as weapons by bashing their heads against each other until there is nothing left but red squishy stuff||.
- Episode 3 of
*Past Division* introduces the astral plane's battle master, a level twenty fighter named Thorn, who is in his late fifties but is capable of shrugging off a crossbow bolt to the shoulder.
- In Professional Wrestling,
*any* wrestler in his late 40s and beyond who can still *kick ass* and take a beating definitely counts. The most recent examples: Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, Shawn Michaels, and The Undertaker at *WrestleMania 25*. ''WOW. Three men over 40 (and in Steamboat's case, almost **60** and had been retired since suffering a career-ending back injury in a match against "Stunning" Steve Austin"- from a bump on the apron, not from something Austin did- back in August 1994) showed up practically everyone under 40. And throw in Jimmy Snuka, still wrestling at the age of **69**, and Mae Young, who was a WWE Diva practically until her death in 2014 at age 90, and was in .
**every decade of professional wrestling from the 1930s to the 2010s**
- This is pretty much what Rowdy Roddy Piper's last gimmick was all about. He was the awesome old-school guy who showed up every now and then when the young bucks got too big for their britches or forgot what wrestling was supposed to be about, and set them straight.
- Ric Flair will be fighting for and winning, the adoration of cheering crowds in the gladiator arenas of whatever civilization comes after ours. AJ Styles noted that Flair is 30 years older than him but acts ten years younger, he's got admitted alcoholic cardiomyopathy, and is still getting tossed out of bars, going to bed later than AJ, getting up earlier, doing the same stuff he was doing 30-40 years ago, and still finding time for the gym...while on the road.
- Bob Kingsley, at age 74 and still going strong as host of
*Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40*. He is best known for his 27-year stint helming *American Country Countdown*. Not counting the times he was substitute host of *ACC*, Kingsley has been a fixture on country radio for 35 years, introducing the biggest hits from George Jones and Tammy Wynette (in 1978, the year he started) to Blake Shelton and Taylor Swift (today's top singers).
- Casey Kasem, host of
*American Top 40* (and its spinoffs, *American Top 10* and *American Top 20*) was a weekly presence on radio for 39 years from his late 30s through late 70s! His voice had noticeably changed by the early 2000s, but it was still Casey, and it was cool to many to hear a 77-year-old radio host introduce artists such as Katy Perry, Lifehouse, Alicia Keys, Maroon 5, Pink, Fergie, and many other urban, contemporary pop and rock artists of the late 2000s decade. (And to think, many people half Kasem's age won't think of listening to any of the above-listed artists' music. Kasem old enough to be some of these artists' *great-grandfathers*, was still making their music cool.)
- Casey's rival Rick Dees, age 66, is still countin' 'em down internationally and over his website.
- Dick Clark, in addition to everything else he did, hosted countdowns such as
*The Dick Clark National Music Survey*, *Countdown America*, and *Dick Clark's U.S. Music Survey* up until his stroke.
- The original panel of
*I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue* all became this some time during the nineties. Special mention goes to the late host, Humphrey Lyttelton, who told some of the filthiest jokes on the radio well into his eighties.
- John Peel was this late in his 40-year radio career.
- The late Robert D. Raiford, resident social commentator on
*The John Boy and Billy Show*, had been involved in radio since he was a teenager, only leaving in August 2015 because of a stroke and died two years later a month shy of his 90th birthday. Outside of radio, Raiford was an avid motorcyclist and skydiver.
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*Fire Emblem On Forums*: With the wide variety of player characters, there are many examples:
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*Chains of Horai*: Hiroyuki Honda, the ||formerly|| Cursed Boar of the Zodiac, a highly-decorated soldier of the Imperial Army, renown as a legend among the populace and very capable on the battlefield, rivalling the Gnosis-wielding protagonists.
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*Death to Traitors*: Evra, a Living Legend who fought in the previous war and is well-known for her immense skill, who was taken as part of the crew to retrieve Joi Hart from Govitz. However, she definitely does not look the part, implied to be due to Vampiric Draining.
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*FEF2*: Miguel Cervantes, a senile old man who came out of retirement to kick ass and an Expy of Don Quixote. However, his badassery is not to be denied, and he is entirely capable of living up to his desire to be a Knight in Shining Armor.
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*Lost Lands*: Alwine Siekert, a veteran soldier Expy of Reinhardt who can curbstomp enemies with ease despite missing an eye.
- In
*The Gamer's Alliance*, there are several cool old guys such as Harrad, Josiah and Waldheim.
- Many strong Chess players continue to compete into their 60s, 70s and even 80s, such as Korchnoi, Smyslov or Lasker.
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*Dungeons & Dragons*:
-
*Eberron*: King Boranel of Breland. In a twist, Boranel is painfully aware of this trope — his coolness and the situation the country was in when he rose to the throne has made Breland unusually dependent on him... which wouldn't be so much of a problem if he had an equally cool heir or wasn't pushing it in years.
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*Forgotten Realms*: Elminster loves jokes and riddles. He's an accomplished dancer who loves ice cream and sliding down banisters. He's possibly the game's most powerful character, probably its most powerful wizard. (Actually, Elminster is the type who's Really 700 Years Old, but, for all intents and purposes, he fits the trope.)
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*In Nomine*: For different reasons, Archangel Michael and Archangel Yves. Michael is the classic version of the trope, the Archangel of War who's older than every being but Yves and could kick the ass of anything in creation. Yves is the quieter one, the pleasant old man whom everyone loves (except Michael) who *looks* like a harmless old man but as Archangel of Destiny possesses the secret knowledge of the universe and is feared by most of Hell because they don't understand him.
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*Mutant Chronicles*: Sebastian Crenshaw. Pushing sixty in a world where average life expectancy is forty. One of the solar system's best swordsmen, martial artists and assassins, still highly active in his profession, and a stern but fair mentor and father figure to many young trainee assassins. He is also a good-looking, distinguished gentleman, the life of every party and quite the ladies' man. Oh, also he's implied to be Scottish.
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*Pathfinder*: Although he's 42, Ezren is the oldest of the iconic player characters and a very cool guy.
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*Warhammer 40,000*: Logan Grimnar, Chapter Master of the Space Wolves.
- Any full-fledged space marine (they tend to take some decades training and proving themselves before they become a Devastator Marine and can later hope to graduate to Assault and then Tactical Marine, so any Tactical Marine is probably quite past a normal man's prime) Chaos Space Marine, Necron, Eldar, or Titan princeps. A
of cool old guys.
**universe**
- Aun'shi of the Tau. One of the few examples of this trope to be only about 38, due to the Tau getting shafted on life expectancy.
- Given the fact that human life expectancy, depending on planet, social status and wealth, can be hundreds of years, it would seem that in 40k, it's a little harder to qualify as a cool old guy. Most players will come up with someone from their own army who is cool and old. Abaddon, Vect and so on. Still, there is one cool old guy who every 40k player can admit to being the coolest old guy who ever cooled: Commissar Sebastian Yarrick - a man whose real glory got going
*after* he retired, being a linchpin leader for the defense of the Second War for Armageddon. In the war, a fight with an Ork Warboss took his right arm and left eye; he proceeded to cut off the Ork's Power Klaw-armed right arm in return, hold it over his head, and rallied his allies while the Orkz routed in terror. He's only gotten older since with his lifespan lengthened by rarely-available technology, but that does nothing to dismiss how he's nearly died repeatedly (and by all rights, should have - an even more terrifying theory suggests *he already has* and only Ork belief that he's an unstoppable killing machine is what's keeping him walking), and is currently helping a particular zealous chapter of space marines that apparently admit to themselves that this Badass Normal is their best chance for hunting down and killing an especially large Ork named Ghazghkull Thraka.
- Zig-zagged by Nurgle and his Demons. He's often called "Father Nurgle" or "Grandfather Nurgle", and
*demeanor*-wise, he is a Cool Old Guy who genuinely adores his worshippers, showering them with gifts and blessings. Problem is, he's the Chaos God of death, decay, pestilence and the likes, so while he may be a real Cool Old Guy for his followers, others who don't follow him might find him a lot less agreeable.
- Epcot has had two over the years: Dreamfinder from
*Journey into Imagination*, who flew around in a Cool Ship collecting thoughts and ideas to create all sorts of new things, and served as The Mentor to his creation Figment until the attraction was overhauled to remove him. Then there was the Sage of Time from the *Tapestry of Nations* parade, an aged immortal that tried promoting human unity through his Great Millennium Walk that involved lots of cool puppets and great music.
- Usami "Bear Sensei" Kyojin of
*Majikoi! Love Me Seriously!* is something of a parody. He's only 35 years old and yet is relentlessly mocked by his students for being an old man, and he himself frequently describes himself as middle-aged. What makes this even more ridiculous is that a large chunk of the cast is actually *older* than him, making all of the talk about his age even more ridiculous.
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*Phantom Thief Silver Cat*: Ginka's butler, who's responsible for all intelligence gathering.
- Ban from
*Spirit Hunter: NG* is around 40 and it's just starting to catch up with him, but he rankles when people call him 'old man' and he proves to be just as effective with investigations and fighting spirits as Akira's younger companions.
- The aged Shinto priest and Badass Long Robe Kamimura from
*Broken Saints*, who lost his family to the atomic bomb in World War II, making him at least twice as old as any of the other three protagonists.
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*Monsterbox*: The coolness of the old guy who runs the garden shop is that he lets the little girl pay him with candy wrappers in lieu of actual money.
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*The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History*: Captain Epic, who is much older than the rest of the cast and also one of the most laid-back in the trailer.
- While YouTube Poop is usually the domain of a younger generation (most poopers are in their teens or twenties), noisepuppet stands out as a Pooper who is in his 50s.
- Pretty much every over-fifty on
*Gaia Online* counts to some extent.
- Johnny K. Gambino, who started out in the plotline as a major villain.
- Edmund, who is BFFs with Gambino, chock full of Battle Butler charm, and suave enough to make perving on Vanessa look gentlemanly. Moonlights as a member of the superhero G-Team whenever the need arises.
- Old Man Logan, also a member of the G-Team and an obvious Wolverine expy.
- Uncle Kin in
*zOMG!*, second-in-command of a ninja clan and devoted relative to his Miko niece.
- And last, but definitely not least, the late Vladimir Von Helson, lord of Gaia's vampires, whose sparkly death scene was easily the best thing about MMVII (unfortunately, even sparklepires couldn't save MMVII).
- John Winterton, a.k.a. A Nonny Moose, of the Simtropolis forum for
*SimCity*. A member since 2003, he became a core pillar of the forum's community and attained the forum's highest post count. Born in 1937, he died in October 2016. He will be missed.
- Some
*Something Awful* Goons:
- GeneSplicer, 43 as of 2009 (that's old when you're among high school/college students) high school forensics teacher ("Who brought the maggots for the students to 'play' with? Me!"), who even has an avatar of the creepy old man from
*Family Guy* with the legend "Forums Senior Citizen". Has a wedding ring made of meteorite iron and collects (fake) skulls. Has a bookshelf full of sci-fi props, including one of those mind-eating bugs from *The Wrath of Khan* in a tank. Makes sock monsters in his spare time, which he gives to his students as prizes. Mrs. GeneSplicer also counts, since she got him some of the skulls as a birthday present.
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*Possibly* HellBastard, since he mentioned a TV show that GeneSplicer also saw as a kid.
- 50-Foot-Ant (presumably around 50), excellent writer and author of about two dozen
*Dungeons & Dragons* manuals and claims to have witnessed the Ramstein air show disaster and to have a supremely annoying Otherkin relative.
- Someone who claimed to be a World War II veteran who registered to praise Humper-Monkey (age unknown ||and possibly 50-Foot-Ant's creation||) during his tales of the haunted German-US Army Base that was once used by Nazis where problem recruits are ditched.
- Tokaii, who was a Chicago cop for a few years during The '60s. He wasn't a Corrupt Cop, but pretty much everyone else was which is why he left despite loving the job. He's also been on some form of internet since
*1982*.
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*Whateley Universe*:
- Sensei Ito at the Whateley Academy is a Crazy-Prepared Badass Normal who is a tiny old Japanese martial artist capable of taking down virtually every single superpowered student at Whateley. As he demonstrates at the start of every term, in aikido classes. He also has a bit of Magnificent Bastard in him.
- Whateley Academy is rife with Cool Old Guy characters, from sixty-ish Gunny Bardue who runs the ranges, to Security Chief Franklin Delarose, to a number of older teachers who you just
*know* used to be superheroes. Charles Xavier's school should be so lucky.
-
*Can You Spare a Quarter?*: Pony is a medicine man, a Scarily Competent Tracker and can carry a child with no difficulty whatsoever.
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*Britta Food4Dogs* is a German-Australian grandmother who started doing video gaming videos in her 80s and she's developed a large following among people who are a quarter of her age. In 2020, Britta and a few other senior citizen video game YouTubers have joined forces to create the Grand Dames community on YouTube.
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*The Common Man Show*: Babu is a much more laid back example of this trope, but he knows how to have fun - especially with music.
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*Gamer Grandma* is a Japanese grandmother in her 90s who similar to Britta Food4Dogs, does video game videos and is the Guiness World record holder for oldest video gaming YouTuber. Likewise to Britta, she's got a large following of youngsters who are amazed at how well her reflexes can stand up against games such as *Resident Evil Village*.
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*The Nostalgia Critic*'s grandfather. He might have been crazy, but he gets points for being the only family member who Critic has fond memories of.
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*Noob* is set in a MMORPG, so most of the cast seems to be in its twenties to early thirties and a recurring subject matter is the generational gap some players get into with their parents or other people of the older generations due to their prejudice about video games (an immature hobby at best, an anti-social serial killer maker at worst). However, one of the players from the Player Killing-oriented guild is a sweet old man who can pull his weight in battle in the comic and mentions he's not the only one playing in his retirement home in the web series.
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*Old Mr. B* is a British music reactor who started in his late 60s and got into reacting to music videos due to his exposure to Band-Maid during the pandemic. He's since become well known and a band favourite for many Japanese music acts such as Nemophila for his exuberance and even-handedness in showcasing music videos.
- Early Youtuber Les Loken, who recounted his experiences in World War II and the occupation of Japan in a series of videos posted by his daughter.
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*Amphibia*: Hop Pop is old, and barely taller than Sprig, but a lifetime of working the fields, especially in Amphibia, have left him with a surprising amount of strength and competence when his life's in danger.
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*Avatar: The Last Airbender*:
- Iroh practically embodies this trope. (Though he's not a Badass Normal.) The best part about Uncle Iroh is that you just know that if someone went down the list, and played the "Who Would Win" game,
*nobody* would win against Iroh, because ||he'd offer them all tea, and they'd end up calmly drinking tea and discussing old people stuff.|| Iroh was trained up to conquer the world. Although he must have had mixed feelings, given the thing with the dragons happened relatively early in his life, he was doing pretty well at that until his son died. His father died the next day. He suspended all his badass and sank into sleep mode, doing nothing while his little brother usurped him and then following his traumatized nephew around the world being as annoying as possible. Then, One-Man Army.
- And his group, the White Lotus Society, is a whole gang of cool old guys. Plus all 30 or so of them reconquer Ba Sing Se, and at least one of them doesn't even bend!
- Monk Gyatso, Aang's Airbending instructor; in his first flashback appearance, he and Aang pie a few of the other monks in order to improve Aang's accuracy, and ||his skeleton is seen surrounded by dead Fire Nation soldiers (soldiers who had been supercharged by Sozin's Comet), which is even more impressive as Airbending is the least lethal of the Bending Arts.||
- Technically, Aang is this too, since he is technically 112 years old on account of being frozen in an iceberg for most of that time.
- Bruce Wayne from
*Batman Beyond*. Makes sense, considering he used to BE Batman.
- Wildcat in
*Batman: The Brave and the Bold* and in *Justice League Unlimited*. Both are Badass Normal to boot, and don't even have *Batman*'s level of training or gadgets- just boxing.
- Grandpa Max from
*Ben 10*, *especially* after he's revealed to be a former Man in Black who remembers quite a bit from his old job and still has access to his old gear. Generally of the "dated but loveable personality" type, but swings into "no nonsense" when the situation calls for it... In a nutshell, he's a textbook case. He's the same guy who bosses Snake around, making him even more awesome.
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*City Island (2022)*: In "Retirement Home," Watt thinks that the retirement home is boring, but finds that his grandparents like doing fun things such as read comic books, dance to music, and play games.
- Scrooge McDuck in
*DuckTales (1987)*, serving as a faithful adaption to the comics' glory.
- Bentina Beakley and Emily Quackfaster have also become this in the 2017 reboot.
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*Futurama*:
- Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. For starters, he has a Thug Life tattoo on his back.
- Number One, the head honcho of the Central Bureaucracy. Yeah, the guy's an Obstructive Bureaucrat who encourages obstructive behavior, but he has
*a flying desk!* How cool is that?
- Felix The Cat from
*Felix the Cat*. being 99-years-old by 2018.
- Ol' Skool from
*Get Ed*, who uses actual old school gear, but can keep up with the kids he mentors, their enemies, and with Mr. Bedlam as well, much of the time.
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*Gravity Falls*: Grunkle Stan, of course. Despite being elderly and overweight, hes always ready to take on any anomaly that he and his family happen to come across, such as punching zombies and eagles with his bare hands. ||Ford|| as well, perhaps even more so, considering that ||he spent 30 years of his life traveling through other dimensions.||
- Mosey from
*Horseland* and to a somewhat lesser extent, Shep.
- Doc from
*Invasion America* fits the bill nicely, though that series was less plagued by Competence Zone than most.
-
*Invincible*: Cecil is the director of the GDA, he's calm, collected and quite mysterious. He shows off this coolness even further by straight up going in the field and stalling ||Omni-Man|| himself. He fully knows he can't win especially after seeing a good amount of his men killed but he still does it.
- Uncle from
*Jackie Chan Adventures*, not only is he the Old Master but he is seen kicking ass as it is needed and will bring pain to those who bring trouble, including the main protagonist.
- In
*The Legend of Korra*, Fire Lord Zuko, Iroh's nephew, is keeping the tradition alive. Despite the fact that hes 88 when he first shows up and a grandfather of two, he's an incredibly powerful bender, and shows no hesitation in hunting down the Red Lotus (Season 3's villains), mostly by himself. He was part of the group that saved Korra from them as a kid, despite the fact that he would've been 75 or so at that point. Oh, and he rides a dragon.
- Like his Real Life counterpart, Benjamin Franklin of
*Liberty's Kids*.
- Plato from
*The Little Flying Bears*.
- Cap'tain K'nuckles from
*The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack*. He beat 100 pirates alone, carried Bubby on his back and sailed in a storm during a fight against 8-Armed-Willy.
-
*Molly of Denali*: Molly's grandpa Nat is a fun-loving volcanologist who provides wisdom and Native stories to Molly throughout the series.
- From
*Ni Hao, Kai-Lan*, Kai-lan's grandfather Ye-ye.
-
*The Owl House*: Principal Bump, the principal of Hexside and can be rather sinister sometimes. He's also somewhat dismissive of the bullying, pain, and suffering his students go through, even occasionally by his hand like throwing "troublemakers" into a brainwashing detention pit.
- Detective Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov from Stuart M. Kaminsky's series set in Russia. Over fifty when the series started in the '80s, he is lame from a WWII injury involving a tank but is a champion weightlifter. He once defeated a thug just by holding him in the air, despite all the thug's attempts to get down. (Most of what Rostnikov does isn't brawn but brain, though.)
- Rick Sanchez from
*Rick and Morty* is one-quarter part drunk, one-quarter part Jerkass, one-quarter part Mad Scientist and one-quarter part this trope.
-
*Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat* has Yeh-Yeh and Nai-Nai.
-
*Secret Millionaires Club* has Warren Buffett (voiced by himself) as one who's hip to the four students he mentors that form the Club. He also knew Jay-Z and Shaquille O'Neal, and set the Club up to meet them and learn from their business abilities as well.
- Downplayed in
*The Simpsons* with "Grampa" Abe Simpson, who subverted a perceived trend toward this trope in the late 80s and early 90s, being a Grumpy Old Man who spends most of his time complaining and boring his family to death with his incoherent stories. However, Depending on the Writer he definitely has his moments, drawing on his military history to help his grandson Bart take down his bully Nelson Muntz in his very first appearance, besides outmaneuvering his former brother-in-arms Montgomery Burns in "Raging Abe Simpson and his Grumbling Grandson in 'The Curse of the Flying Hellfish.'"
- The
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* always have Master Splinter to come to for advice and for back-up. The *TMNT 2012* Splinter advocates Combat Pragmatism and teaches his sons that Honor Before Reason can get you killed. Being a good deal younger than his previous incarnations, this Splinter is much faster and more deadly than in the previous series. He even incorporates his mutation into his fighting style, dropping to all fours and fighting like a rat against especially powerful opponents.
- Much like the books they are based on, the older engines such as Edward, Toby and Skarloey usually play this straight in
*Thomas & Friends*, though the show's longer run has led to them having more flawed or vulnerable moments than in *The Railway Series*. Arguably Sir Topham Hatt (aka The Fat Controller) also counts.
-
*ThunderCats (2011)*
- Court Mage Jaga is the eldest of the titular Cats, but is fully capable of taking on a Walking Tank by his lonesome, mocking a Mook Lieutenant when held prisoner, and getting a few licks in against Big Bad and Sorcerous Overlord Mumm-Ra.
- Anet is the elder of a village of Forgetful Jones Elephant Monks. Wise and kind when focused, but constrained by a need to meditate on any decision, they seem largely useless when an invading army comes seeking a MacGuffin, until Anet leads his people in routing the army and defeating an enemy General
*barehanded.*
- In the original
*ThunderCats (1985)*, Lynx-O is the resident Cool Old Guy.
- Ito San from
*Tokyo Mater*, who is an old Japanese car who helps Mater race against the villain Kabuto after being rescued from a ditch and brought back to Japan.
- Jerry in
*Totally Spies!* — on the rare occasion that he's personally called into action, he consistently outclasses the Spies themselves.
- He only appears briefly, but there's a
*really* Cool Old Guy in the old *Looney Tunes* short "Porky the Fireman". Porky Pig, who is working as a — what else — fireman climbs a ladder at a burning tenement to save an old guy yelling for help, but the guy tells him, "Never mind me, go save Grandpa" then jumps to safety on his own, *using his beard as a parachute.*
- Most "old" characters in
*Transformers* tend to be cool old guys. Since they don't age like humans, the most common cause of death is war-related and anyone who survives to be really really old probably did so by being really really badass.
- Ratchet in
*Transformers: Animated* is definitely a badass, despite sporting a beer gut. He's also the team's medic, making comparisons to Bones McCoy even more impossible.
- Also Ultra Magnus, especially when he's got his hammer with him.
- Kup in
*Transformers: Generation 1* is definitely a cool old guy, like Animated Ratchet but much less grumpy. Also, in "All Hail Megatron" he gets a bitchin' robot cigar to chew on.
- Even Ratchet's G1 incarnation, who's not really intended to represent any extreme of age the way Kup is, tends to get a lot of this trope. His canon appearances as a competent medic and go-to guy paved the way for his interpretation by the fans. Fandom is especially fond of causing him to bludgeon insubordinate/uncooperative patients with wrenches and other tools, go all Doc McCoy even on
*Optimus Prime's* aft, and generally act in a lovably codger-y manner, even ascribing him Cool Old Guy traits such as extreme shrewdness and a wrathfully protective nature regarding his crewmates (the young twins Sunstreaker and Sideswipe tend to be at the receiving end of his lectures and fists, more often than not).
- G1 Ironhide was the franchise's original Cool Old Guy. His toy card specifically states how he's the oldest Autobot, the most likely to break down from outdated parts, but too stubborn and ornery to give up and quit fighting. The show just made it better by giving him a Southern grandpa accent to match.
- Vector Prime in
*Transformers: Cybertron* is both cool and so old *he's made of clockwork*.
- Scavenger in
*Transformers: Armada* was a mentor to Optimus Prime.
- The title character of
*Uncle Grandpa* is this mixed with Success Through Insanity. Anyone who rides a Giant Realistic Flying Tiger is automatically ten kinds of cool.
- Master Fung in
*Xiaolin Showdown* started out a mentor-type, but with the introduction of Mala Mala Jeong, proved he still has plenty of awesome fighting skills in him. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Oyaji |
Pages Needing Example Sorting / Administrivia - TV Tropes
We here at TV Tropes like to sort things, and it's not just because we are Obsessively Organized. It's because we like our articles to be easy-to-read and easy to navigate. Thus, when writing articles, it's considered good form to sort the examples given for a particular trope into media categories.
When a trope launches without a lot of examples, it may not get sorted right away. However, tropes grow, and when they do, a previously not-all-that-problematic block of examples can turn into an enormous thread mush of video games, TV shows, movies, commercials,
*Earthbound* sprite comics that tanked after 7 strips, and what have you. These articles have reached that state.
If you have some spare time and feel like doing a good deed, please go to these pages and sort their examples. There are 4 ways this is usually done. You can enter the media categories using the small caps font [[AC: (text)]], use !!Headings, make a new subpage, or you can create folders for the categories.
Simply cut and paste examples into their proper categories, and then cut out those category links with no examples. It keeps things looking tidy. If you can't do them all, even partial sorting is a start.
A note on headers: Folder titles no longer produce Wiki Words, even if they're used. Wiki Words in small caps headers are OK.
And, of course, if you find a completely or partially unsorted page, add it
**and its subpages!** **Note: Please don't remove an article from this list until it has been completely sorted. Every example needs to be in its category. If it is completely sorted, please remove it from the list. Thanks!** | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PagesNeedingExampleSorting |
Paddleball Shot - TV Tropes
**Kermit:**
So it's going to be a swell demonstration, and at no time will we be stooping to any cheap 3D tricks.
**Fozzie:**
Did someone say
*"cheap 3D tricks"*
?
*[Blows noisemaker at camera]*
A trope exclusive to 3D movies. When making a film specifically for a 3D release, many filmmakers like to play with the 3D effects by making people and objects appear to reach out from the screen at the audience. More often than not it's simply done for its own sake to show off the 3D effects, but this can also be used to invoke a sense of danger, such as throwing sharp objects or driving cars right at the camera. The effect is unfortunately lost, however, when the film is eventually released on DVD in 2D, leaving viewers wondering why these characters enjoy shoving stuff into the camera so much.
Depending on one's personal preference toward 3D movies, it can be seen as either using the medium to its full potential, or just adding a gimmick onto another gimmick.
## Examples:
- Parodied in
*Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)*: A poorly animated CGI reporter rendered in red/green 3d introduces herself as being from "3D In Your Face News" and is only shown getting uncomfortably close to the camera and shoving a microphone towards it.
-
*Monsters vs. Aliens*, the first DreamWorks Animation film to be released in 3D, makes a shout-out to the trope namer *House of Wax (1953)* in the opening sequence, with a man at a research station playing with a paddleball.
- DreamWorks Animation's 2010-2019 Vanity Plate, debuting in their second movie to be in 3D, makes significantly more use of depth than the old one, featuring such gimmicks as the boy swinging his fishing rod around such that the hook swings past the camera, and the letters that spell "Dreamworks" flying in from the foreground.
- The InTru 3D logo, used in Dreamworks Animation films from 2009-12, has the bouncing ball
*really* get into the audience's faces.
- The Minions from
*Despicable Me* deliberately do this in teasers for the film. The first one has them see who can reach out to the audience the farthest, and the second film's teaser involves a chorus of Minions singing a parody of "Barbara Ann" while blowing a noisemaker at the screen.
-
*Ice Age: Continental Drift* has several instances, especially in the scenes involving the pirates, where their weapons constantly being swung, thrown or thrust towards the audience.
- Matthew Callaghan's 3D Looney Tunes theatrical shorts
note : years 2010 and 2011 invariably indulge in these frequently. The first three Road Runner shorts and "I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat" have loads of them while "Daffy's Rhapsody" and "Flash in the Pain" use them somewhat less frequently.
*quite*
-
*The Polar Express*: The train's cow-catcher coming to a halt right in front of the camera lens, certain angles during the hot-cocoa set piece, and the Runaway Ticket sequence come to mind.
-
*The Lion King (1994)* has a reverse example at the start of the film where, if you watch it in 3D, Zazu, while flying *away* from the camera, appears to be soaring directly above the viewers as he flies to Pride Rock to present himself to Mufasa for the occasion of Simba's birth.
-
*Ralph Breaks the Internet*: Ralph throws a football a few times into the air, toward the camera, while lying down on the field next to Vanellope.
- Trope Namer comes from the famous scene from
*House of Wax (1953)* where a person playing with a paddleball turns toward the camera and bounces it right at the audience. Unlike most such shots, this one has a purpose; 3D films back then had to have an intermission, and it was strategically placed just after the intermission to make the viewers wake up and pay attention.
- This trope actually dates to 1935 and an eight-minute documentary short called
*Audioscopiks*. In this short film, 3-D technology is explained to the audience and then several short Paddleball Shots, including a baseball thrown at the camera and a woman on a swing, are used to show off the technology. MGM followed this short with a couple more 3-D shorts, but 3-D didn't really break out until the early 1950s.
- This was
*inverted* for the opening credits of the 2002 documentary *Space Station 3D*, which, with the aid of rear and side surround-sound channels, gave the impression of massive block-letters, not jumping towards you from the screen, but flying from **behind** you, going into the screen. Sadly, encoding for the 3D Blu-Ray release has a glitch that makes the image for both eyes identical for the first three and a half minutes, negating this effect.
- In the film itself, debris flies at the camera during a Soyuz rocket launch, and onboard the space station, an astronaut bounces an orange off the camera while floating in microgravity.
- Used very blatantly in
*Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over*, where things like frog tongues, cogs, fists, cars and all sorts of stuff get thrown straight at the viewer on every possible opportunity, which is VERY visible if you're watching the movie in 2D.
-
*TRON: Legacy* has a memorable moment in which a grappling hook is fired directly into the camera at high speed, scaring the crap out of most audiences due to a lack of such shots prior to that.
-
*Creature from the Black Lagoon* mostly goes for the "deep" style of 3-D where the environments appear to stretch far into the distance behind the screen, but there are a handful of moments that leap out towards the audience, such as the shot of the fossilized Gillman hand jutting out from the wall and the bat flying into the camera during the climax.
- The "flying fish" scene in
*Life of Pi* in which the aspect ratio inexplicably shifts to display black bars along the top and bottom during a quiet scene, until flying fish leap toward the viewer, extending out of the frame into the black bars.
- Amusingly, there are some really blatant 3D gags left in finished cut of
*Them!* despite the fact that, due to a 3D camera malfunction on the day filming began, they ended up filming in 2D. They apparently didn't alter the shots they had planned at all, which is why most of the climax revolves around long tunnels and flamethrowers being fired directly towards the camera.
-
*The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl* is guilty of doing this several times, some of which were achieved via cheap Jump Scares, and a particularly memorable example during the brain storm where Linus takes a brain and throws it onto the camera, causing it to slowly slide down, leaving a trail of... *something*.
-
*Jaws 3-D* wasn't at all subtle about its use of this trope, even going so far as to have fragments of the shark's titular jaws come flying out towards the audience when it's blown up.
-
*Mad Max: Fury Road* is a post-conversion job whose 3D effects are generally rather subtle, but the obligatory paddleball shot does show up during a particularly memorable car wreck when a skull-emblazoned steering wheel flies directly at the audience.
-
*Final Destination 4* uses this both in-universe and for the audience in a case of The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You. ||In the second premonition,|| Janet's death occurs at a movie theater showing a 3-D movie, in which a fire at a construction site behind the screen triggers an explosion that sends a fireball and all manner of sharp debris flying through the screen. The camera is positioned in the audience so that the (real-world) viewers watching the movie in 3-D get the full effect. For bonus points, it happens during an explosion in the movie that Janet's watching.
- Used to good dramatic effect in
*Dial M for Murder*, when Grace Kelly thrusts a hand straight at the camera while being strangled by a hired killer.
- The 1970s wuxia,
*Dynasty*, is one of the few non-Hollywood movies that utilizes this technique, notably in action scenes which extensively features darts and throwing knives being flung at the audience, and rendered in 3D. There's a Money-Making Shot featured in the trailer where an assassin jabs his blade from behind paper windows, right at his intended target (and the audience, of course).
- The remake of
*Fright Night (2011)* did this with a few shots, most notably when Jerry flicks a pebble at Peter Vincent during the climax. Astonishingly, the 2D DVD release approximates the 3D effect surprisingly well.
-
*Friday the 13th Part III* employs several, which includes Jason shooting a harpoon right at the camera while wearing his signature hockey mask for the first time.
- The 3D version of
*Ghostbusters: Answer the Call* was shown completely in letterbox, with the exception of one scene, and the 3D effects were achieved by having things pop out from the black bars.
- Early on in
*Gravity*, a nut drifts toward the camera in zero-g before Stone reaches out and grabs it.
- Taken to extremes with
*Comin' at Ya!*, a 1981 Western which devotes **at least one-third of its runtime** to these shots, giving the movie a Double-Meaning Title (it's a Revenge story of a gunslinger out to reclaim his kidnapped bride from vicious bandits). Among the items thrust, thrown, dangled into, etc. at the camera: items upon which the opening credits are printed, bodies, spurting blood, gold coins, gun barrels, bats, rats, snakes, spears, arrows, *burning* arrows, machetes, a yo-yo, and playing cards. The 3D Noir restoration adds a Credits Montage of various paddleball shots. Tropes Are Not Bad — the movie ended up a Sleeper Hit that singlehandedly launched the second wave of 3D films.
-
*Kiss Me, Kate* announces its 3D nature immediately as the title spins onto the screen word by word. While lower-key than most examples, from there scarves and dice are tossed at the camera on occasion and the opening scene of the Show Within a Show has a shower of sparkling confetti filling the screen. During the first rendition of "Why Can't You Behave?" there's a shot in which the sole of Bill's shoe seems to come dangerously close to the viewer's nose! An interesting variant on the trope has Harold deliver Petruchio's "kill a wife with kindness" monologue directly to the camera, with the framing suggesting a close-up, head-on view of an actual stage performance.
- Parodied in a sketch on
*The Lenny Henry Show* in which one of two doomed men in the opening scene of a spoof horror film keeps waving his fishing pole around. The other guy asks him what he's doing, and the first says he's making the most of the 3D effects (the sketch is not shot in 3D, although the pole behaves like a bad 3D effect).
- Parodied in the
*Monster Chiller Horror Theater* segments on *SCTV*, which ocassionally show fake 3-D films that consist of nothing but this - minus the 3-D. ("Have some pancakes!")
- On the
*Home Improvement* Three-Dimensional Episode, Tim and Al spend all of *Tool Time* shamelessly shoving things at the camera. A prime example of 3D effects looking ridiculous in 2D reruns, but at least given justification in-show as it was the characters playing around with a 3D camera for their Show Within a Show.
- Subverted in the Three-Dimensional Episode of
*The Drew Carey Show*. There's a scene in which Drew is about to throw up, but recovers at the last second. The caption which normally urges viewers to don their 3D glasses instead chastises viewers for wanting to see Drew throw up in 3D.
- In the late 90s, Nickelodeon did a week of programming called "3D Nogglevision." Some of the 3D shots did not necessarily rely on this, but one notable exception was
*The Secret World of Alex Mack*, which included two shots where a character shoots video game balls at the viewer, and another using the paddle ball.
-
*Animusic*: "Beyond the Walls" was originally made in stereoscopic 3D, and frequently moves things close to the camera. The first instrument blows bubbles at the camera, and the last shot has various instruments taking turns moving towards the camera.
- Parodied in "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Nature Trail To Hell" ("...See severed heads that almost fall right in your lap / See that bloody hatchet coming right at you....")
- The 1982 Disney theme park effort
*Magic Journeys* has several such shots. The most famous is one of a kite in flight — anecdotes of viewers reaching out to touch it are the stuff of Disney legend — but there's also a carousel's brass ring, a montage of spooky imagery highlighted by a Wicked Witch shooting lightning from her hands, drifting balloons, etc.
-
*Captain EO*, its replacement, has similar hijinks. Among them: a floating rock blown up by a laser in the opening shot, starship debris, the Supreme Leader's claws, and two extended bits in which Fuzzball floats out towards the audience.
-
*Shrek 4D* has many, *many* shots of objects and characters sticking out of the screen - a statue with a sword, Shrek's finger, Pinocchio's nose, and even Donkey's entire body at one point.
**Shrek**: Donkey!
**Donkey**: I just soared into another dimension!
**Shrek**: Oh for the love of pete!
-
*Muppet*Vision 3D* makes good use of this, which is lampshaded right near the beginning. Jim Henson said in an interview that a goal of this film was to top the *Magic Journeys* kite. So other examples of paddleball shots include the flying remote controlled pie and Waldo the Computer Graphic seeming to point his nose right at the viewer (joking that everyone else in the theater thinks he's personally addressing *them*). Even Sweetums gets in on the fun with an actual paddleball!
-
*Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon* at Universal Studios Florida features these throughout, to the point that Jimmy lampshades it.
**Jimmy**: What else is good in 3-D? Oh yeah, t-shirt cannons!
-
*Busch Gardens Williamsburg*:
-
*SpongeBob SquarePants 4-D* (also known as *SpongeBob SquarePants 4-D Ride*, *SpongeBob SquarePants: The Ride* or *SpongeBob SquarePants 3-D*) has several of these shots, such as the intro where Painty the Pirate reaches out of his painting to grab the audience and transport them to Bikini Bottom. The climax liberally thrusts several objects and tools right into the viewer's face, such as a buzzsaw, claw, and the traditional paddleball, most of which are from a robot Plankton made to attack the viewers.
- On the ride
*Star Tours: The Adventures Continue* at Disney Theme Parks, riders fly through 3-D vignettes in various Star Wars locations in a tourist shuttle. On Naboo, the shuttle crashes into a fighter ship, whose long pointed nose comes through the windshield at the riders' faces.
-
*Homestar Runner*: Parodied at the end of the *Strong Bad Email* "stunt double", where Strong Bad turns into an anaglypic 3D image ("Check out all my dimensions! I got height, width, and now, for a limited time only... depth!") and throws 3.5" diskettes at the camera.
- Also parodied in the promo for the 3D episode of Nate Craddock's
*Super Console Wars*, which shows Obi-Wan Shinobi playing with a paddleball. The actual episode lacks this. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaddleballShot |
Pedophile Priest - TV Tropes
*"Deep in prayer, my cross to bear *
I kneel upon the floor
Temptations of a Catholic priest
Aren't easy to ignore
But I cannot control myself
He rips my soul apart
For one small sheep among my flock
Has stolen the shepherd's heart"
Very simply, this is when a priest is depicted as or accused of being a pedophile or child molester — in short, a holy man with an entirely
*unholy* interest in children.
Given the implicit trust associated with the profession, this is typically portrayed as the ultimate betrayal of innocence and a Moral Event Horizon for everyone involved. Due to the cultural impact of the late-twentieth to early 21st-century child molestation scandals in the Catholic Church, Catholic priests are by far the most likely to be involved in a molestation accusation in modern media, although neither Protestant ministers nor the clergy of other religions are by any means immune, and, of course, in real life a pedophile also can be a parent or other relative, a teacher or caregiver, a babysitter, a neighbor, a family friend, or even a random person online, simply because as with murderers, rapists, or any other type of violent criminal pedophiles exist in every society. Some studies have argued that Catholic priests are no more likely to be pedophiles than any other person. The main reason why abuse cases in the Catholic Churches drew far more media attention than, for example, cases in schools was because the Catholic Church cases were systematically covered up. This cover-up was exacerbated because, when clergy abuse accusations started to become more common in the mid-to-late 20th Century, it was believed pederasty could be cured with therapy, which is where offending priests were sent (instead of informing the authorities).
Depending on the tone of the work and whether it regards the church as inherently good or evil, the initial accusation may be treated as the aberration of a single sick individual, or may lead to the uncovering of a corrupt or actively malevolent church hierarchy. Taken to the extreme, the church is nothing more than a Wretched Hive of child abusers using their religion as a shield. By contrast, in a comedic work, the trope may be Played for Laughs as a stock joke without exploring the Unfortunate Implications.
The accused need not even be guilty; the simple accusation of pedophilia/molestation is usually enough to set off a Pædo Hunt, which a villain may take full advantage of as a Red Herring to cover up or distract from their crimes (or to justify a crusade against the priest's entire religion). Another way this trope can be used on a non-villainous character is that he has joined the church not only to get an excuse to remain a bachelor but also as a way to fight against his urges and remain chaste.
note : It's been speculated that this is also a major reason in real life for the seemingly-disproportionate number of pedophiles in the priesthood, though there are *also* clear cases of pedophiles becoming priests specifically to be in a position of power that has access to young children.
Needless to say, the subject is
*extremely* controversial in Real Life. Therefore, **No Real Life Examples, Please!** Just let The Other Wiki provide the facts.
See also Dirty Old Monk, Corrupt Church, Religion of Evil, Sinister Minister, Pædo Hunt, and Rape as Drama.
## Examples:
- In the
*Black Butler* anime, the leader of the Pure Church is implied to be one, which is why they were getting Ciel cleaned up. ||Oddly enough, it may have been an Invoked Trope. The "leader" was actually assembled from the reanimated corpses of Ciel's parents acting as a puppet leader at Angela's behest. While it's unlikely to have had any independent sex drives, this *is* Angela we're talking about...||
- Invoked in
*The Five Star Stories* with Bishop Iller, whose Fatima partner, Ananda, is made to look like a young boy.
- Somewhat inverted in Osamu Tezuka's
*MW*. As a teenager, Garai sexually abuses the 9-year-old Yuuki Michio & later becomes a priest to atone for his sinful past.
- Adam Blade in
*NEEDLESS*. A Comedic Lolicon who never actually **does** anything with/to little girls and is played very much for laughs.
- Played for laughs with Garterbelt of
*Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt*, although he seems to be more pederast than pedophile. He's awfully fond of Brief and organizes a naked marathon for high schoolers for the sake of getting his jollies on. ||The Season Finale suggests that he was actually trying to keep an eye on Brief, whose dick happens to be the key to hell.|| We can even see him singing a song about his big and black sausage in the ninth episode, selling sausage on the beach.
- Subverted in the
*Fairy Tail* omake about the punishment game. Cana has Wendy try on a lot of skimpy and/or furtive clothing (like a wedding dress), and when Wendy worriedly asks why, Cana says that she'll take Wendy to an old priest who likes that sort of "stuff". Wendy understandably becomes terrified, but when they actually meet the priest, there is nothing pedophile about him. The only reason Cana wanted Wendy to wear those clothes was that she wanted Wendy to make a good first impression by wearing fashionable clothing, but since Cana has no idea what fashionable clothing is, she just chose the skimpiest clothes as she always wears a skimpy outfit herself.
- ||Nicchi|| of
*Otaku no Musume-san* is an unapologetic lolicon and becomes a priest in the ending. Characters still have to violently keep him away from young girls.
- Parodied in one of Mike Birbiglia's routines. He mentions that he was once an altar boy and, in the same breath, adds, "And before you ask, the answer is 'No'. I guess I looked like a talker."
- In one issue of
*Transmetropolitan*, Spider Jerusalem investigates one of the president's consultants and learns he is associated with a church that is being used as a meeting for predatory child molesters. He arrives at the said place just in time to save a girl from becoming another victim of the priest who runs it. The Church of Mary Vestal Slut, specifically. Which adds another disturbing layer to the whole shebang, considering the child molesters considered kids "pre-sexual human beings" and wanted to legalize pedophilia.
- The corrupt bishop from
*V for Vendetta*. As part of the government's attempt to hush him up, he is sent a different little girl every Sunday afternoon after the service. V intercepts his usual source and sends Evey, a 16-year-old, dressed as a preteen. When she first arrives, the priest expresses concern that she might be too *old* for him.
- One of the 15 Portraits of Despair in
*The Sandman: Endless Nights* is about a priest (not explicitly a Catholic priest) who gets booted out of the church, forcing him to start his life over, because he's accused of being one. He *isn't*, but it makes no difference to the outcome.
- If Garth Ennis happens to write in a priest in one of his stories, chances are that priest is gonna be one, as seen in
*The Boys*, *The Punisher Presents Barracuda*, and *Red Team*.
- In
*Requiem Chevalier Vampire*, pure holy water is said to be extremely hard to procure because the Vatican's holy water is extremely contaminated by the sins of its priests, especially their pedophilia.
-
*Viz* had a Jack Black strip where Jack teams up with the local priest to frame someone as a pedophile by planting the priest's supply of child porn on him.
- In
*Wacky Raceland*, Peter Perfect at one point mentions that he used to be an altar boy. Dick Dastardly proceeds to make fun of Peter by making a tasteless joke about him missing the touch of his pastor's hand as well as those hot, sweaty confessional sessions.
- Defied in
*Sailor Moon Abridged*, both in and out of universe. Molly considers taking a shot at the oneshot Catholic priest character but decides it would be too easy.
- Subverted in
*Anderson Quest: Killing Vampires and Werewolves and Leprechauns*, which uses the *Hellsing Abridged* interpretation. As Anderson lies dying, Alucard actually *apologizes* for the pedophile jokes, admitting they were uncalled for and got old fast.
- The
*Harvest Moon* oneshot *Satan's Bedroom* revolves around Carter's attraction towards a younger incarnation of Popuri. He has a less-than-chaste interest in her, but Popuri is oblivious to his lustful feelings.
- Discussed Trope A parish priest implies to it when Vernon went to pick up Harry from the church that he believes this is what he believes Vernon would "make allegations" when he was delving into Harry's abusive home life.
- A deleted scene of
*In Bruges* would have subverted this. Ray assumes that the priest he killed was a pedophile because his boss is protective of children. However, Ken says that he was just opposing their boss' land grab.
- The second
*X-Files* movie, *The X-Files: I Want to Believe*, has a character like this who was made into a psychic visionary, implied to be done by God to make him atone for his actions.
- In the sequel to
*Blood Feast*, John Waters plays one. As he puts it, "So in other words, typecasting."
-
*Le souffle au cur* ( *Murmur of the Heart*). Laurent, 14 and a half, is in confession when his priest and teacher make a pass at him. Laurent asks to go back to class. The priest, annoyed, gives him an excessive penance: thirty Hail Marys. The priest seems to have a reputation for making passes at the boys. However, during the private lessons, he later gives a convalescent Laurent nothing much, if anything, happens.
- In Lindsay Anderson's
*If*, a middle-aged chaplain and mathematics teacher at a boys' boarding school seems to take an interest in Jute, a pretty new boy in his class, probably 13 years old. The chaplain is skewered by Anderson's satire, as are most of the adults in the film.
-
*The Least of These* features Father Andre James (Isaiah Washington) being transferred to a small, out-of-the-way boarding school after the disappearance of a former priest. As the movie proceeds, much darker things are revealed in both the cases of the disappeared priest and his own past. * : Father Andre is not the Pedophile Priest himself. In fact, he actively discourages even light sexual shenanigans, as we see in one scene where he chooses to dine in the main hall with the boys instead of in the private dining room with the older priests; he also takes the opportunity to confiscate the dirty magazines one of the boys brings to dinner, dumping them right in the trash and calling out one of the boys who was looking at them, without even looking over his shoulder.
- In the Spike Lee film
*Red Hook Summer*, a young boy is sent to spend the summer in Brooklyn with his grandfather, a local minister. After several weeks of friction, he begins to respect his grandfather and enjoy his church services — until one day, a young man walks into the church and angrily confronts him over having molested him 20-something years ago. That said, there is never a single improper scene between the boy and the man, who insists that he deeply regrets his actions and has spent the past 20 years trying to redeem himself.
- In
*Airplane II: The Sequel*, a priest is seen reading "Altar Boy" magazine. Which has to be read sideways. Later in the movie, the stewardess has to say, "Between your own knees, Father," when instructing passengers to assume crash positions with heads between their knees.
-
*Nine Dead* is about nine people with apparently no connection to each other who are kidnapped, and told that one of them will die every 10 minutes unless they can tell their captor why they are all there. They all come to the conclusion that they all must have directly or indirectly screwed over their captor. One of the kidnapped people is a priest and is questioned over whether or not he molested the captor, which he vehemently denies. ||The priest is telling the truth and is one of the more sympathetic captives in the film.||
- In
*Storm of the Century*, Andre Linoge hints that the local village priest likes children a bit too much.
- Robert DeNiro's character in
*Sleepers* is an inversion. He is a friend and father figure to the four main characters as boys. When they tell him 16 years later about the sexual abuse they suffered in a juvenile correctional facility, he helps them punish the guards responsible.
-
*Manos: The Hands of Fate*: The Master is a cult leader who takes a six-year-old as one of his many brides.
-
*Spotlight* is all about how the *Boston Globe* went public with the story of how the local Catholic diocese had systematically covered up abuse, to the point of enabling further abuse by priests. Ronald Paquin blithely rationalizes his abuse of children, claiming he didn't get any personal gratification from it. The look on reporter Sacha Pfeiffer's face when he says that has to be seen to be believed. A bit of Artistic License was taken with this scene and the chronology, but Paquin's lines were almost word for word accurate.
- The German film,
*The Colony (2016)*, revolves around a young West German woman trying to rescue her boyfriend from *Colonia Dignidad,* a cult compound set up in a remote part of Chile, run by a German expatriate priest who routinely molests young boys, and preaches that the compound must be sexually segregated because love between a man and woman is wicked and sinful.
-
*Twist of Faith* is a documentary about a Toledo, Ohio firefighter who came out as a victim and pressed charges against the priest who abused him.
- In
*The Con is On*, Peter describes Sidney as a 'pederast priest', although from what is seen, his taste seems to run to (probably) legal teenage boys.
- In
*The Departed*, while discussing Billy Costigan's family background Sgt. Dignam notes that all of the men aside from Billy's father were criminals. Billy points out one of his uncles is a priest, but Dignam replies that he's currently "married to a 12-year-old boy, living on a beach in Thailand."
-
*V for Vendetta*: Bishop Lilliman apparently gets underage girls sent to him regularly. V has Evey pretend to be one so she can distract Lilliman while he kills him. She tries to warn Lilliman of this, but he thinks it's a game and Evey fends him off until V arrives to kill the guy once she's run away.
- The Black Brother in
*Shrooms* is heavily implied to be this. However, the Unreliable Narrator leaves some room for doubt.
-
*Miss Meadows*: One of Miss Meadows' victims is the town's Catholic priest, who sexually abuses one boy on-camera and, according to investigators after his death, has previously accumulated *dozens* of victims.
- Not an exact example, but in
*Primal Fear* the archbishop, who everyone in the neighborhood trusts and respects, turns out to have preyed on teenagers whom he had taken in off the streets and forced them to have sex with each other on camera. The question of whether or not this could be considered an example comes from the fact he waits until they are of age for them to perform the acts. However, it's treated the same way even if he's not a pedophile.
- In
*John Doe: Vigilante*, John Doe's first victim is a pedophile priest.
- In
*Juncture*, one of vigilante Anna's targets is a pedophile priest whom she attacks in the confessional.
- In
*Scary Movie 2*, a pedophile priest is asked to help exorcist a demonically possessed teen named Megan and he is all too eager to help take advantage of her in her situation. In *Scary Movie 3*, Cindy Campbell's nephew Cody is heavily implied to being molested by a pedophile priest Cindy hires as a babysitter, as he immediately hides when the priest arrives and the priest says in a creepy tone (once Cindy is out of the house) "Cody...".
-
*Sleepers*: Father Bobby is an inversion. He and the church serve as a heaven for the kids of Hell's Kitchen. Initially in the sense as a reprieve and a career alternative to crime, but later on, as a place to get (illegal) help and solace from sexual abuse.
- In
*Short Cuts*, Lois Kaiser tells her friend Honey Bush that she got a call on her phone sex line from the bishop of her church asking for an incest scenario involving a four-year-old girl. She tells Honey she was disgusted by the idea but went through with it anyway, reasoning that acting out the scenario over the phone made it less likely he would try the real thing.
-
*How NOT to Write a Novel* has a notice that characters should be careful not to touch young children in case they come off looking dodgy — "Priests shouldn't even touch a boy to rescue him from a burning building."
- Septon Utt from
*A Song of Ice and Fire*. The fact that he is the only member of the Brave Companions who is even close to sympathetic really says a lot — at least Utt feels guilt over what he does (even if it doesn't stop him) while the rest of the Brave Companions revel in their vileness.
- Padre Pederastia from the
*Illuminatus!* trilogy, at least by name. Not explicitly stated to be interested in *young* boys. The dialogue indicates that his main interests lie in late teens.
- Jewish example: Carol Matas, best known for her young-adult novels about the Holocaust, wrote
*The Primrose Path*, about a teenage girl sexually abused by her rabbi.
- Padre Damaso from Jose Rizal's
*Noli Me Tangere* can be considered as someone along this line. ||He is Maria Clara's biological father.||
- Father Ralph de Bricassart in
*The Thorn Birds* is a vague example of this. Although nothing happens between him and Meggie until she is in her mid-20s, it is strongly implied that he has had feelings for her since he met her, when he was 28, and she was *10*.
- Michael Cordy's novel
*The Miracle Strain* has a priest who rapes teenage girls. They're young enough that it counts as a sex crime all its own in the US, though maybe not in other countries.
- Subverted with Brother Nhumrod from
*Discworld*'s *Small Gods*. Though it's implied that by the strictly literal definition of pedophile he qualifies, after Om accuses him of being a pederast, it's mentioned that while he might occasionally have "disquieting thoughts" in his head, he makes sure they stay in his head rather than him acting on them "and he did not in any literal sense deserve to be called what the tortoise called him, which, had he heard it, he would have thought was something to do with feet". His name, after all, is on one level a reference to impotence...
- Henry de Montherlant's
*Les Garçons* has a priest in his 30s deep in unrequited love with a 14-year-old pupil at the boys' school where he works. The priest's attractions and emotions are directed at boys of around 12-15.
- Roger Peyrefitte's
*Les amitiés particulières* ( *Special Friendships*) is also set in a Jesuit school. One of the teacher-priests seems to fancy 14-year-olds Georges and Lucien, suggesting that they switch pyjamas and the like. Eventually ||he is caught entertaining one of the boys in his study at night and kicked out of the school||. Another of the priest-teachers loves 12-year-old Alexandre and has him sit on his lap.
- The Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels:
*Free Fall* has the Vigilantes take on a group of pedophiles, and one of them is a deacon, which is not exactly a priest, but pretty darn close. *Under the Radar* has the Vigilantes take on a polygamist (considered synonymous to "pedophile" in this story) sect in Utah, run by a Prophet named Harold Evanrod. While Harold is probably not supposed to be a priest, he might as well be.
- Alberto Moravia's 1951 novel,
*The Conformist* has Lino, a defrocked priest who attempts to molest 13-year-old Marcello near the beginning of the book.
- The Dresden Files makes mention of modern media's fascination with this trope in
*Ghost Story* when Father Forthill, a dependably and godly priest, asks a young man to crack any jokes relating to this trope so they can move on.
- Father Tom Novak in Rayona's story in
*A Yellow Raft in Blue Water*, who tries to molest her while on a camping trip at Bearpaw Lake State Park. There's some Foreshadowing that this was going to happen given how the Native Americans on the reservation talk about Father Tom and the girls he hangs around with. In Christine's story, he is apparently doing penance for this misdeed by providing Christine with a supply of Percocet pills for her terminal illness.
- In the furry erotic novel
*A Fox Tail*, it's stated that one of Vulpie's foster guardians when he was twelve was an assistant pastor named Vander Clishaw who had a side business as a drug dealer and liked to drug him up and invite some friends over to gang-bang him. Eventually one of Clishaw's rivals alerted Child Services and got him arrested, and after he got out of prison five years later his corpse was found with fourteen different stab wounds. Vulpie is suspected but it's never confirmed.
- Played around with in
*Skippy Dies*. The students assume that Father Green is this, and the fact that he teaches French which makes him "Père Vert" doesn't help. In the end, ||after his death, everyone agrees to blame him for Skippy's abuse, rather than the swimming coach who's actually responsible. Double Subverted in that Father Green actually *does* fantasize about molesting children but never acts on it.|| However, some of his inner monologue ||implies that he did molest children in Africa when he was there as a missionary.||
- Primate Annias from
*The Elenium* was posthumously revealed to be this. It was already known that he'd slept with Princess Arissa ||and had a child with her||, but a mind-reading of one of his associates some time after his death reveals that they first got together when she was only *twelve*.
- This is the secret of ||Father Mick Honan|| in Benjamin Black's
*Holy Orders,* who is attracted to both boys and girls.
- In Jodi Picoult's novel
*Perfect Match,* the main character's five-year-old son is molested by a Catholic priest.
-
*In The Kid*, the protagonist is molested by two of these at the catholic orphanage he lives in. It's implied the only reason he even ended up there is that one of them took a liking to him.
- Implied in
*Arrested Development*. George Michael's Fundamentalist girlfriend Ann holds a music burning party where the only adult is her pastor, who's shown encouraging two boys to feel his biceps.
-
*The Atheist Experience* (and *The Non-Prophets* podcast) regularly criticizes Catholic priests and Protestant ministers for this behavior.
-
*Blue Bloods*
- Referenced in an episode dealing with abuse of designer drugs by students at a Catholic school. After the headmaster stonewalls Danny and Jackie's request to search the school with drug-sniffing dogs, Frank goes to the bishop to get the headmaster overruled. Among Frank's lines in that scene is one that goes something like, "The Catholic Church cannot be seen covering up another scandal."
- Another episode has Danny trying to locate a priest who he suspects of this. When the parish finally decides to let him talk to the priest, he turns out to be an exorcist instead; the runaround is explained by the church not wanting to publicize the fact that they still do exorcisms. Danny apologizes.
- While not pedophilia, one episode features a similar scenario where a priest is accused by a woman of raping her. Though she has paranoid delusions and thus lacks credibility, they move him anyway to avoid more scandal along these lines.
- The subject of several
*Blue Heelers* episodes, to the point where if a newly introduced member of the church appears (outside regular characters like Brian Heggity and Grace Curtis), odds are they are either abused or abusers.
- One episode of
*Bones* features a priest who was killed because he was suspected of being one of these (he wasn't). The murderer was caught in the process of poisoning his successor at the pulpit (he's innocent too).
- A suspected one was the victim of a vigilante in the
*Criminal Minds* episode "A Real Rain".
- Subverted in an episode of
*CSI: Crime Scene Investigation*. When a girl goes missing after her parents' murder, suspicion falls on a criminal-turned-pastor with a video tape with the girl's name on it. The video turns out to be that of the pastor attempting to exorcise the delinquent girl. ||The girl was also responsible for her parents' deaths, and the pastor eventually kills her as a last resort to save her soul.||
-
*Dateline*'s most popular show back in the day, "To Catch a Predator", has had a number of pedophile priests and preachers among the predators that Chris Hansen has taken down.
-
*Dexter* kills one of these guys in the very first episode of the series, a pastor and choir conductor who raped and murdered three young boys.
-
*Father Ted*:
- Surprisingly, mostly averted in in this series. Still mentioned a few times, though. Father Jack once made a class of teenage girls in Catholic School do P.E. without their tracksuit tops, however. His horrific molester-face whilst this goes on is clearly meant to invoke this trope. He does shout "GIRLS!!", among other things, in his alcoholic fugues...
- Ted does address the issue at one point, to hilarious effect; "This whole pedophile priests thing is all out of proportion. If there are 200 million priests in the world and 5% are pedophiles......" *cue look of hilarious horror*
-
*Frontline* has had a few episodes about pedophiles in the clergy, among them the 1994 episode "Judge And Jury", which revolves around a young woman who accuses her parish priest of raping her. *Frontline* runs the story with a rebuttal from the priest, but edits it in such a way that it makes him look unreliable. The priest ends up killing himself offscreen, and when *Frontline* interviews the woman again, she quickly destroys her own credibility by claiming to have been abducted by aliens.
- Subverted on an episode of
*House*. The priest has been moved around frequently after a boy accused him of molesting him (causing the priest to lose his faith), but later the boy apologizes for falsely accusing him.
- One appears in Season 15 of
*It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia*. He's portrayed oddly sympathetically, in that he knows that acting on his urges is wrong, and specifically joined the church both to strengthen his will and to understand why God would make him this way. However, it's also implied that he keeps a rather illicit Porn Stash in a box in his room.
-
*Gotham*: The third person to be killed by "The Balloonman" was a man called Cardinal Quinn who was also known on the street as the "Diddling Priest" because of multiple accusations of sexual abuse.
-
*Interview with the Vampire (2022)*: Lampshaded by Lestat in the second episode when he says the two priests he had killed won't be missed because people will just assume they molested children.
**Lestat**: A couple of parish priests go missing, people say, "Fine, most likely kid-fiddlers."
- Surprisingly few episodes of
*Law & Order: Special Victims Unit*, but enough. Although, when it happens, it's usually of the "Church is lousy with pedophiles" variety. One episode features a priest who murdered a transgender hooker; it is quickly determined that he was molested by a priest. They find two pedophile priests in his church, and another victim molested by a different priest.
- The
*Law & Order* episode where Logan inspected rumors about his old priest after a fellow former parishioner killed himself. It's heavily implied that Logan himself was a victim of that priest; at the very least, according to what he tells Cragen, the priest made an attempt (the phrasing is a bit ambiguous). In the *Law & Order: UK* episode based on that episode, DS Matt Devlin (Logan's Expy) admits to several incidents that clearly made him uncomfortable—"He was always lurking around, watching me", but appears genuinely unsure if the guy ever touched him.
-
*Misfits* references this, and actually has one of the characters announce: "When I was growing up in Ireland, if the priests *weren't* fiddling with you, you were one of the ugly kids." Although said character is notoriously prone to making ridiculous, insensitive, and untrue statements, so it's probably best to take his words with a large grain of salt.
- A few months after the 2006 documentary film
*Deliver Us From Evil* was released, a reporter and camera crew from BBC documentary series *Panorama* caught up with the pedophile priest profiled in the movie. Following his deportation from the United States, he was shown trying to get close to children yet again, all without the knowledge of the locals of his previous conviction for child molestation. According to The Other Wiki, a few weeks after the episode ran, he slipped out of Ireland. He turned up in The Netherlands in 2010 volunteering at a local parish under a pseudonym. A few months after that, he was found in Ireland to have kiddie porn on his laptop and several storage devices. In 2012 he was sentenced to just three years in prison for it.
- Rampant pedophilia in the Catholic Church made Bobby Donnell of
*The Practice* turn his back on the Catholic faith.
- Grace's backstory in
*Saving Grace* features one of these.
- Father Ralph de Bricassart in
*The Thorn Birds* is a vague example of this, as mentioned in the Literature example above.
-
*Ultraviolet (1998)*. In the episode "Mea Culpa", a 12-year-old boy kills a priest and the team is sent to investigate if the killing is vampire-related. The priest in charge of the team, Pearse Harman, gets annoyed when ex-cop Michael Colefield thinks it's child abuse-related, Lampshading the pedophile Catholic priest cliché. Subverted at the end when it turns out the priest was innocent and vampires *were* involved, yet Harman cynically allows the public to believe the priest was a pedophile to maintain the Masquerade.
- An episode of the sitcom
*The War at Home* had the youngest son convinced that the local priest was a pedophile, so he attempts to seduce him so he can report him to the cops.
-
*Oz*
- Played straight in an early episode when a priest convicted for pedophilia is unable to find anyone who will put him up while on parole, so he has to return to prison. Father Ray Mukada at first doesn't want anything to do with him, but he ends up trying to get his church to help — they refuse for PR reasons. The ex-priest ends up being nailed to the floor by the Aryan Brotherhood. This priest also turned himself in to the police and confessed.
- Subverted when Ryan O'Reilly tells his Catholic priest cellmate that he was molested by a priest as a child. "There are some bad priests...", the priest starts, but O'Reilly interrupts him and tells him he was just messing with him.
- Long before the scandal broke, Irish comedian Dave Allen (a lifelong critic of the Church in Ireland) performed a sketch where he played a priest exorcising a young girl. Allen commands the demon to begone and to depart to a place more suited to it. The girl blinks and says "Father, it's gone! I'm free!" Then she looks up in horror as she realizes from the priest's satanic laughter and contorted facial expression that the demon indeed
*has* gone to a more suitable occupant — the priest. Who then reaches for the girl with this look on his face that tells us *exactly* what he wants to do to her. The sketch ends with him chasing the girl down the nave of the church...
-
*The Fall*: Spector spent time in a children's home run by one, but claims to have avoided being molested. The (now former) priest is completely unrepentant of his crimes when questioned.
-
*True Blood*: One mini-episode sees a creepy old pastor try to hit on Jessica Hamby. Of course, he constantly denigrates her by calling her a "whore". Jessica bares her fangs, makes him admit he's married, then tells him to go back to his wife and have sex with her like it's his first time. Finally, Jessica makes him leave the bar, but not before she makes him shout "I'M A BIG FUCKING PERVERT WITH A BIG BONER FOR JESUS!"
- On
*Supernatural*, Sam and Dean investigate a Demonic Possession report and encounter Crowley disguised as a Catholic priest investigating the same report (to see if it's one of the demons that serve him). When the Muggle who owns the house asks how they know each other, "Father" Crowley says that Dean used to be a "delicious" choir boy. He later implies that paedophilia is actually pretty tame compared to what some *actual* priests are into.
-
*Cold Case*:
- The Protestant variety shows up on the episode "That Woman". When a high school student confesses to her youth minister (the leader of her chastity club, ironically) that she's having sexual fantasies about him, he encourages her to sit and tell them to him, with her back turned to spare her embarrassment. His tone of voice as he listens to her makes it obvious that he's enjoying himself.
- The trope was both subverted and exploited in "Glued", when the team was investigating the death of an 8-year-old boy in a Catholic neighborhood and realized that the killer had confessed the murder to a priest. They brought the main suspect and the priest to headquarters and told the suspect that the priest had left the Church in protest of the pedophile cases and was no longer under the vow to keep silent. This made the suspect panic and confess himself.
- Inverted in
*Fleabag*. The Priest is not a paedophile, but his (non-Catholic) brother is.
"I'm aware of the irony."
- This is one of several red herrings in the
*Without a Trace* episode "Revelations" as the team searches for a missing priest. They learn that a parishioner had angrily told him to "stay away from my son!", but it turns out that she was having an affair with a fellow priest and that her distraught son had confided in him.
-
*Nip/Tuck* features one in a memorable role. Sean and Christian operate to remove a large birthmark from a patient's penis, with his excuse being that it made his fiancee uncomfortable. Later they see a news report, which shows a local Catholic priest (the patient, who'd been using a fake name and accent with the doctors) has been exonerated of molesting multiple boys at the church after an examination from the court showed no birthmark, which had been a key part of the boys' testimony. Horrified, the doctors attempt to report their work to the police, but cannot do so directly because of their own skeletons in the closet, and their anonymous tip falls through. Christian, who was sexually abused as a child, takes the revelation particularly hard and ends up cornering the priest in the confessional with a scalpel and threatening to murder him if he doesn't confess to the police. He does.
- In
*30 Rock* Reverend Gary, the leader of the Cult that Kenneth is part of, is obviously attracted to teenage boys.
-
*Peaky Blinders*: Michael Gray (son of the Shelby Brothers' Aunt Polly) was taken from his mother and put in a Catholic boys' home at the age of six. He was later taken in by an apparently loving or at least caring family in the countryside, but while that was pending one of the priests, Father Hughes, raped him. Nearly 20 years later, Father Hughes reappears in various dealings with the Shelby Company, leading to ||his death at Michaels hands in a company-approved hit (Tommy Shelby having business reasons to be rid of the creep).||
- "Priest", by Stephen Lynch, is a song of a priest barely trying to resist his urges toward one of the altar boys.
- Rammstein
- "Halleluja" in contrast to "Priest" above, is about a priest
*not* trying to resist his urges.
- "Rosenrot" may count too, at least the video. Well technically will be a hebephile as the girl is in her middle to late teens, but is still invoking the trope. The girl's actress, Cătălina Lavric, was 14 at the time which caused certain controversy then (as Rammstein videos
*normally* do).
- Tim Minchin:
- In the
*very* cuss-laden "Pope Song", Minchin takes aim at then-Pope Benedict XVI, who allegedly covered for priests that molested kids back when he was still a cardinal, and calls him no better than the priests in question because of this.
- "Come Home (Cardinal Pell)" is a direct appeal/accusation to one of the priests alleged to have covered up abuse to face a court in Australia. It references Gerald Risdale, Pell's former flatmate and one of the most prolific abusers. The money from the sale of that song was used to fly victims to Rome so they could be physically present when Pell gave his evidence via video link.
- Sinéad O'Connor has campaigned for years about exposing pedophilia in the Catholic Church and often incorporates the fight into her music and performances.
-
*Apocalyptica*'s I'm Not Jesus is an angry song from the perspective of an ex-victim of one of these.
*I thought you were a good man *
I thought you talked to God
You hypocritic, messianic, child-abusing turned satanic!
Do you remember me?
Do you remember me?
The kid I used to be?
- "God Has a Plan for Us All" by Angtoria.
- Crying For The Moon by Epica.
- "Devil in a Midnight Mass" by Canadian band Billy Talent was inspired by Fr. John Geoghan, a particularly infamous example. According to writer and frontman Ben Kowalewicz in a MuchMusic interview:
*[The song] came from a story I read about Boston priest John Geoghan who had been arrested for child abuse and the church kept moving him from parish to parish. The Supreme Court tried and convicted him of molesting 150 kids over a 30-year span and while he was serving his sentence another inmate broke into his cell and murdered him. I stumble upon these stories, they don't necessarily have to be directly personal but it's things like this that move me. I'm a big advocate for children's rights and this song looks at sexual abuse. It's not against the church or anything, it's more about that individual betrayal between adult and child. I don't have the answers but hopefully, if I sing about a certain issue it will get people talking about it.*
- Preacher Man by Inkubus Sukkubus.
- Pope on a Rope by The Meatmen (though only one verse refers to it).
- Bad Religion:
- "Sinister Rogue" contains a mention of this, among other attacks on the Catholic church.
- The first verse of "Victory": "The velveteen and oaken fixtures soothed the lonely child/The parents watched the escort take him while they stood outside/The priest was kind and gentle as he positioned his head/The pain was like brimstone but the kid hardly bled"
- In the Insane Clown Posse song "C.P.K's" (Crooked Preacha Killas), this is stated as one of many evil acts that the titular "Crooked Preachas" commit (including drug use, corruption of faith, and even Demonic Possession). This being the
*Hell's Pit* album, however, it is up to debate whether or not the preachers actually *did* anything they were accused of, or if it's just The Witch deceiving the Clowns into killing holy men in order to further damn them.
- Pope Rap by Trevor Moore (of
*The Whitest Kids U' Know*) mentions this among many, *many* of the alleged atrocities the Catholic Church has committed.
- Briefly referred to in The Pixies' "Bone Machine":
*I was talking to preachy-preach about kissy-kiss, *
He bought me a soda
He bought me a soda
He bought me a soda and he tried to molest me in the parking lot. Yup-yup-yup!
- Another Irish Drinking Song by Da Vinci's Notebook:
*And dear old Father Flanagan, who left the Lord's employ *
Drunk on sacramental wine, beneath the altar boy.
- The Slash & Myles Kennedy song The Unholy likewise deals with pedophile priests in its lyrics.
*The broken *
How they cry
They only gave you heart and mind
How can you justify?
They loved you
Oh father
Dont deny
You took them like a sacrifice
We finally know the truth about you
- Nekroi Theoi's "Simony of Hollow Christs" is about sexually predatory youth pastors using their positions to groom young churchgoers.
- In the music video for Eminem's "Role Model", Eminem plays a corrupt priest who invites a little boy into his bedroom.
- GWAR gives us Father Bohab: a big-headed, bible-thumping priest who chases after the band as much as he chases after kids.
- Given how Darker and Edgier White Wolf tends to be, this is surprisingly averted in
*Hunter: The Vigil* with the head of the Inquisition. He's outrageously corrupt in other ways, ||such as being addicted to vampire blood, and having a platonic relationship with Satan's daughter,|| and is in fact homosexual, but while he does like them young (being Really 700 Years Old, they have to be), he instead likes them legal, consenting, and... pitching.
- It was played straight in the
*Werewolf: The Apocalypse* supplements that mentioned the Seventh Generation, a conspiracy of child molesters and serial killers, and which explicitly included priests (as well as politicians and business leaders) among its members.
- The parody game
*Hol* has one as one of the game's pre-generated characters as part of its whole Vulgar Humor atmosphere.
- The Bishop of Basingstoke in
*Jekyll & Hyde* (who is Anglican rather than Catholic).
- The play
*Doubt* (and the movie adapted from it) centers on the efforts of an old-school nun to remove a progressive priest from the Catholic school she runs, on the grounds that he is (she believes) a pedophile. Although the final scenes imply that she was correct, she is now plagued with doubts about her own less-than-pure motives and methodology.
- Implied in
*Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood*. One of the town criers' announcements is a citywide ban of the song about "The Little Boy of Prussia" since minstrels singing it have caused "embarrassing physical juttings" for priests wandering through town who hear it.
- Father Paul Rawlings in
*Clive Barker's Jericho* is called this by SS-Commander Fräulein Hanne Lichthammer. This is never elaborated upon, but as a powerful psychic, Lichthammer has access to a person's darkest secrets (like Church's Rape as Backstory).
- Lampshaded in
*The Darkness II*, where Jackie begins to recount a story about a priest he knew as a kid and adding "I know what you're thinkin' and it ain't that kinda story."
- In
*Drakengard*, party member Leonard is a priest who survived the massacre of his "brothers" when he was off having some alone time in the woods to deal with his urges. This was heavily Bowdlerised for the English release, though Leonard still gulps nervously when the six-year-old Seere hugs him, and the sequel mentions the priest's "certain antisocial tendency." Despite this, Leonard remains one of the most heroic characters in the party... which isn't difficult when he's competing with the likes of Caim or Arioch, but still.
- In
*Outlast II,* exposure to the Morphogenic Engine slowly causes Blake's Repressed Memories of his dead childhood friend Jessica to bubble to the surface; he's spent his adult life believing that she killed herself due to living in a broken home, and relied on memories of her suicide note and hung body to back it up, but he eventually remembers that he witnessed her be ||pushed down a flight of stairs and unintentionally killed by their Catholic school's priest, who was sexually abusing her, and he forced Blake to keep quiet about it and go along with her staged suicide.||
- One of the villains in
*Maken X* is a thinly-veiled reference to the historical Gilles de Rais, a companion of Joan of Arc's who eventually descended into madness, complete with raping young boys and then sacrificing them to a demon he believed in. He's fought in the Vatican, which he had infiltrated and joined the upper echelons of the church. He's now immortal and looks positively angelic, complete with wings.
- Implied in
*Medieval II: Total War* when a Priest picks up the Choir Boy follower ("This boy's beautiful voice is a gift from God! One I must keep close by at all times..."). Such a character will gain a bonus to Piety, but a penalty to Purity.
-
*Operation: Pedopriest* by Molleindustria, a political Web Game inspired by *Sex Crimes and the Vatican*, that has the Villain Protagonist try to protect pedophile priests from the police and media.
- In the
*Reincarnation (2008)* game, *The Clergy of Unholy*, the demon protagonist, whose job it is to track down Reincarnies (those that have Escaped from Hell and reincarnated on earth) and send them back to Hell, takes on a Reincarny who turns out to be one of these. When the demon discovers a drugged-up altar boy in Saul's bedroom while searching through his church, it provides all the proof that the demon needs to send Saul back to Hell.
- Father Donald from
*Rides With Strangers* will freely admit that he rapes, tortures, and kills little boys if you ask him what the worst thing he ever did was. That doesn't stop him from presumably killing the protagonist if you lose, though.
- In
*South Park: The Fractured but Whole*, the protagonist is attacked by two of these while he enters a storage room at the church to meditate. They serve mostly as a tutorial for telegraphed attacks, as they have moves that cause heavy damage (and Grossed Out status) but take a turn to charge and are easy to dodge. Oh, and one of them uses a rosary that doubles as anal beads as a whip.
- In
*Varicella*, Pierre Bonflèche, the Christ Minister of Piedmont and one of Varicella's rivals for the position as Regent, turns out to regularly sexually abuse ||the five-year-old Prince Charles||. In order to get rid of him, you need to present evidence of his deeds to someone willing and able to put a stop to him.
- Rika's DLC of
*Mystic Messenger* reveals that when she was a child being raised in an oppressively devout Christian house, ||she was repeatedly sexually abused by her family's pastor.||
- Louis CK goes all-out with this trope.
- The website Apocalypse Cartoons features a NSFW animated web series titled
*Father Tucker*, which is about a priest who constantly molests children and hardly ever faces any punishment for it. He takes this to the extreme, raping not only children but also infants. One episode reveals that he is the most prolific pedophile in the history of mankind, with 6,473,210 counts of pedophilia.
-
*Shane Dawson*: Shanaynay's interview with Lucas Cruikshank gives us this:
**Lucas:** I never masturbate because I'm Catholic. **Shanaynay:** Oh so you only do it with... a priest, I gotchya'.
- In the
*Counter Monkey* episode "Shadowrun: The Code", Spoony describes a game of *Vampire: The Masquerade* he ran where he banned the Malkavians, the Chaotic Stupid vampire clan. One player who had wanted to play a Malkavian responded by making a vampire who was effectively this note : To be specific, the character worked for a Big Brothers-type youth outreach program and only fed on adolescent boys; Spoony told him to get the fuck out of his game, especially when the guy insisted that he really *did* want to play the character and wasn't just trying to be edgy.
-
*Hellsing Abridged*:
- The show makes jokes about the Catholic Church pedophile scandals, usually in the form of Alucard mockingly accusing members of Iscariot (primarily either Father Anderson or Bishop Maxwell) of pedophilia.
- When cornered by Anderson, Seras considers trying to seduce him but fears it won't work because she isn't a little boy.
- The episode 4 preview has Maxwell interrogating a member of the Vatican who has been selling information to Millennium. Maxwell assumes the priest was motivated by promises of immortality, as Millennium's other agents were, but it turns out that in addition to that, he was bribed with little boys to have his way with. The priest does not survive, having his brains blown out by Heinkel soon after the interrogation is over.
**Priest:** Oh, but I had no choice! They made it impossible to say no!
**Maxwell:** Oh, who could resist the temptation of immortality?
**Priest:** ...amongst other things...
**Maxwell:** Oh, they didn't. What, did they just drive a truck of them up to your house?!
**Priest:** [ *stammering wordlessly*]
- During the episode of
*Berserk Abridged* where it looked like they switched to doing Hellsing, Alucard makes a zing about this to the vampire holding Seras hostage. The two then debate if it was too much before Zodd showed up and began asking what happened to his usual show.
- Che Guevara uses this as a diss against Guy Fawkes in
*Epic Rap Battles of History*:
*[What I'm fighting for] sucks? Guy, you died for the Catholics *
A group with a bad touching little boys habit!
- In
*American Dad!*, Stan admits to being molested by a priest in summer camp, but then amends it to *him* seducing the priest, before confessing outright that he just molested the poor man, with the flashback showing a fearful pastor falling towards Stan's eager arms. Although he also mentions he didn't actually have sex with him.
-
*Daria* has a non-Catholic example with the minister at Erin's wedding, who spends most of the reception talking with teenage Quinn about how important "love" is. She doesn't seem to understand what he means; her escort does and tries to kick the minister's ass.
- Parodied in
*Drawn Together* when all characters were making an inscenization of what can happen if Xandir tells his parents about being gay. Wooldoor was playing a pedo priest.
**Wooldoor:** So, you want to be an altar boy?
**Boy:** No I don't! You took me from the playground!
**Wooldoor:** *GOD took you from the playground!!*
-
*Family Guy*:
-
*South Park*:
- The episode "Red Hot Catholic Love" shows local priest Father Maxi as just about the only non-pedophile priest in the entire Catholic Church. (He has been shown makin' it with at least one adult female parishioner though as well as Cartman's mom.) Then again, Father Maxi is in a different place on the corruption spectrum in pretty much every episode in which he appears.
- In "Hell on Earth 2006," all the Catholic priests are shown leading around naked boys on leashes. No one appears to notice or care even when they are in public.
- And then there's "A Boy And A Priest" wherein Father Maxi considers leaving the priesthood because of the residents' constant mockery, despite having never done such things. He eventually decides to stay because if he leaves, another
*actual* pedophile priest might take his place, since the church only moves the abusers around, as opposed to removing them entirely.
- Subverted for Black Comedy in the
*Xavier: Renegade Angel* episode "Vibracaust", where Xavier sees a priest walking with a boy and assumes that the priest has molested the boy. As soon as Xavier is beaten and chased away by the priest, it turns out that the boy is actually the one molesting the priest.
- One of the Paedofinder General segments in
*Monkey Dust* ends with a priest walking away while expressing relief that the Pedofinder General did not suspect him of being a paedophile. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaedophilePriest |
Paid-for Family - TV Tropes
**Jane:**
There's something you should know. My parents died when I was six. I'm an orphan.
**John:**
...then who was that lovely gentleman who gave you away at our wedding?
**Jane:**
Paid actor.
**John:**
I said, I
*said*
I saw your dad on
*Fantasy Island*
!
Something like The Paid-For Harem, this is when a character pays people to act as though they were his warm and loving family. A rather extreme form of I Just Want to Be Normal, if the character in question is incapable of founding a "normal" family, or a way to show said character's Freudian Excuse. Sometimes played for laughs, such as for keeping a I Want Grandkids parent at bay. See also The Beard, for when the character pays someone to act as his Love Interest.
## Examples:
- It's implied in
*Noir* that the couple Kirika was living with in Japan to prior to losing her memories were one of these, but the specifics, including who they actually were and who hired them, is left ambiguous and we only see them in a photograph that she finds in the house where she wakes up, but it's likely they were agents of the Ancient Conspiracy that has hands in the rest of the plot. It's also never established what became of her biological family (who were probably members of the conspiracy as well).
- In
*Hades Project Zeorymer*, Masato Akitsu's parents were paid by the International Electronic Brains group to raise him until he was 15. Masato had no idea of it, obviously, and is shocked when he's locked away by the firm and instead of bailing him out, the Akitsus collect their fee and leave him there.
-
*XIII*: In the comic, we learn more about the Mongoose's backstory, including that he pays prostitutes to act like women who want him to join their family for Christmas.
-
*Robin*: After Tim's father died Bruce offered to adopt him, only for a Jack's will to state his previously unheard of brother was Tim's godfather. It quickly turns out that this was all orchestrated by Tim, who paid an actor to act as his uncle so he could keep his freedom and because of his anger towards Bruce regarding Stephanie's death and final moments. When Batman finds out (of course he finds out, he's Batman), he tells Tim he's proud of him and shows him how to make the fake nature of his uncle even harder to uncover, because labyrinthine scheming is encouraged in that household over telling people who care about you what you really feel. note : This storyline was presumably inspired by the original early Batman story where Dick Grayson's real uncle turned up and sued for custody, but only so he could force Bruce to bribe him to give it up. This was back when Alfred was a humorously incompetent fat man, and he accidentally saved the day with one of the Penguin's old umbrellas.
-
*The Authority*: In a decidedly creepy variation, in one story that has The Authority replaced by Sociopathic Hero Captain Ersatz versions, the Engineer has all her nanomachines removed and is brainwashed, then placed in a "family" of evil children and an abusive husband (all actors), that she will be conditioned to never leave or go against despite the abuse they heap on her.
- An issue of
*Superman*, when they were trying to keep Post-Crisis continuity (so Lex Luthor's parents were killed when he was a boy) but also trying to mimic early *Smallville* as much as possible (so they needed a Lionel Luthor character), had Young Lex hire an actor with a striking resemblance to John Glover.
-
*The Flash*: Captain Boomerang in one appearance, pays two elderly con artists he knows to play his aged parents. They testify to Boomer's good character to deflect Barry Allen's suspicions.
- In the Steve Martin movie
*Housesitter*, Goldie Hawn's character uses a local homeless couple to act as her parents at a reception.
- The movie
*The Joneses* (as in "keeping up with the") features a slight variation: a marketing firm hires some professionals to move into a wealthy neighborhood pretending to be a family to promote products by inserting them in their daily routine and hoping people will decide to mimic them.
-
*Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)*: Mr. Smith learns his wife was an orphan, so when he asks about her parents at the wedding, she replies "Paid actor".
- In
*National Lampoon's Vacation*, Clark Griswold tells The Girl in the Ferrari (Christie Brinkley) that Ellen, Russ and Audrey are his brother's family and he borrows them to pose as his family when he wants to check out the hotels in his chain(s).
- Shows up a couple times in the Japanese horror film
*Noriko's Dinner Table*. The main character ends up working for a group that provides people to pretend to be family or even a lover or spouse. Sometimes, they're even killed as an act of revenge against the real family member.
-
*The Truman Show* contains an example where Truman himself isn't the one hiring the family, instead it's Christof, the director of the show Truman is unwittingly starring in hiring actors to play his family and loved ones. The actor playing Truman's father eventually quit and was "written out" by allegedly dying; this becomes awkward when he decides to come back later, and gets an in-universe Ass Pull of how he survived that only makes Truman more suspicious that his whole life is a lie.
- In
*We're the Millers*, a marijuana runner offers varying amounts of compensation for two of his neighbors and a teenage runaway to pose as his loving, stereotypical suburban wife and children so he'll arouse less suspicion trying to run drugs over the U.S.-Mexican border.
-
*The Count of Monte Cristo*: As part of his plan, the Count hires an old Italian major to play the role of estranged father to the escaped murderer ||and illegitimate son of Villefort note : the man who had Edmond thrown into jail for possibly knowing too much|| Benedetto and Benedetto the dutiful son, as prince Andrea Cavalcanti, son of the very rich Count Bartolomeo Cavalcanti. This in order to get Danglars note : the man who sent the letter to get Edmond arrested to get Andrea fianceed to his daughter (by breaking up with Morcerf's note : Edmond's former love rival son), ||expose Andrea as Benedetto on the day of the contract signing, and *then* expose Benedetto as Villefort's bastard.|| The Count takes his vengeance seriously.
- An odd version of it occurs in Charles Stross's
*Halting State* where ||Jack Reed|| is threatened with the kidnapping of the relatives whose communications he receives periodically, but he disregards the threat because ||they've been dead for years. The communications are courtesy of a service that helps him maintain the illusion that they're still alive||.
- In the
*30 Rock* episode "The Moms", *TGS* producer Pete hires a professional actor to play Tracy's mom on the Mother's Day special of the Show Within a Show since the whereabouts of Tracy's real mother are unknown.
- In an episode of
*Halfway Home* where the characters' families came to visit them, drug runner Carly's family is eventually revealed (to the viewer) to be actors - her real parents pretty much act as though she never existed.
- In an episode of
*How I Met Your Mother*, Barney pays a pair of actors (for several years) to play his wife and son... so that his mother will believe he's happy and has a family.
- One episode of
*JAG* has a marine refusing to testify in his own defense, because he believes it will dishonour the memory of a dead friend. Vic, his lawyer, brings in the dead friend's father, who reads a letter his son sent him about how the thing that killed him was an accident waiting to happen, which gives the marine courage to tell the truth about how his friend died. ||Both the father and the letter were fake— Vic hired an actor to encourage his client to take the stand.|| Of course, this action being morally suspect at best, the lawyer *does* get called on it by his superiors.
-
*Kenan & Kel*: Afraid it was to tell something bad the principal wanted to meet Kenan's parents, he hired a couple of (rather lousy) actors to pose as them. Kenan had to entertain the principal and his fake parents to dinner at his house and, obviously, it ended with Kenan's real parents appearing in the end.
- In
*The King of Queens*, Carrie Heffernan becomes mother to one of these, a "family" otherwise composed of actors which is used to present an illusion of cosy normality, employed to sell hard-to-shift houses. Carrie gets into this so much that she gets withdrawal symptoms when it ends, and the child actors playing her kids accuse her of being creepy and threaten to take out injunctions.
-
*Legends of Tomorrow*. The Reveal that Ava Sharpe is actually a clone is presaged by the Legends discovering her family are actors hired to pretend to be her parents whenever Ava would visit her "home", or when people would come asking about her.
-
*Midsomer Murders* has a very strange episode in which various women prostitute themselves, catering to various fetishes: one does domination S&M, another is a woman "caught" in a bear trap, waiting to be rescued by a passing hunter, and yet another is a smiling housewife awaiting her husband's return with a warm meal. The murder victim even tells her he'd want to marry her... for real.
-
*The Odd Couple (1970)*: When Oscar's rival for City Council shows up for an appearance with his family, campaign organizer Felix hires minority actors to play Oscar's loving family.
-
*Pushing Daisies* has an episode where the murder victim works for a company called "Frescorts" where people who have trouble making friends can hire "best friends" to hang out with them.
- This is the central premise of
*Sons Of Tucson*. The Gunderson boys hire Ron Snuffkin to pretend to be their dad.
-
*Magical Diary*: Damien later admits that his parents are really just a couple of his servants, ordered to raise him. It's unclear on whether or not he had a happy childhood or not, since the only information you have on the matter comes from Damien himself - and he is more than willing to twist the facts to make himself look sympathetic.
- Referenced in
*Questionable Content* - Hanners once admits that she's secretly worried that the rest of the cast are just skilled actors paid by her (ludicrously wealthy) parents to give her the illusion of a normal life. Faye's response: "Well, if we WERE, we wouldn't be allowed to admit it, so there's not much point in worrying about it, is there?".
- A strip in
*Mac Hall* has Ian accuse Micah of having character actors play the part of his parents, in order to deceive him from the fact that he may be an old man in disguise who has been stalking him all his life. Just another ordinary day at the college.
- An episode of
*Recess* had a parent/teacher conference where Spinelli was too embarrassed to have her family come so she paid a couple of people who did a really bad job. In an unusual variation on this trope, her real parents are the "normal," loving ones, but because they're Amazingly Embarrassing Parents she hires a pair of "cool" jerks instead.
-
*Invader Zim*: When Zim used his Irken technology to build a replica of a human house, it also built robotic replicas of a stereotypical Fifties-style "Mom" and "Dad." Usually, they're in the background, but when Zim has to modify them and bring them to Parent-Teacher Night at his school, Hilarity Ensues.
-
*Bob's Burgers*: "An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal" had the Belchers' landlord promise them several rent-free months if Linda, Tina, Gene, and Louise will pretend to be his family. Why? His old flame Shelby is coming to dinner and Mr. Fischoeder knows she will only be interested in him if she thinks he's taken. Hilarity Ensues.
- In the
*American Dad!* episode "Con Heir" we find out that for many years Stan had hired an actor to play his father. The truth comes out after the actor dies and Stan's real father shows up. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaidForFamily |
Paid Harem - TV Tropes
*"You know, I always loved how in the '60s Batman TV series, supervillainy was like the new rock and roll. Every supervillain had at least one hottie in their lair, as well as generic goons with their nicknames tagged on their sweaters. Where do supervillains go to get groupie chicks? Is there a bar somewhere?"*
Every sufficiently decadent Casanova, criminal and villain will have at least one scantily clad floozy to serve as eye candy, fetch drinks, and slink around seductively. If the villain is sufficiently well-funded, they may have an entire harem. This applies to female villains too, with bare chested male mooks at her beck and call.
The "sultan" in this harem also has a habit of dressing the floozies in a thematically appropriate manner that coincides with their job or even criminal theme. Not surprisingly, their employer doesn't have any real affection or attachment to the harem, and will disrespect or mistreat them; sometimes dumping them on the ground when hearing bad news, ordering the floozy out when he talks shop, or outright using them as human shields/distractions in a firefight.
And of course, the paid for harem will have only nominal loyalty to their "sultan", being either extremely frisky with the hero or disappearing at the drop of a hat. It's a rare floozy that "stands by her man." The exception is if their employer specifically hires opposite gender bodyguards or domestic servants who just happen to be gorgeous and has them pose as eye candy.
Might be found in the Den of Iniquity during off-duty hours. Compare Ignored Enamored Underling and Paid-for Family. Also compare Royal Harem, where the relationship is more institutional than paid. See also I Have You Now, My Pretty and Go-Go Enslavement, where the villain tries to press a heroic lady into the harem. A Gold Digger on the other hand may see this as a viable lifestyle choice, making the villain a Sugar Daddy.
Truth in Television, this is probably a Real Life trope that has been stylized in TV.
## Examples:
-
*Batman*
- The Riddler had Query and Echo, two Gun Bunnies he was somehow able to talk into working for him as muscle and arm candy. He recruited them when they tried robbing him after he robbed a convenience store.
- The Penguin often surrounds himself with a bevy of beautiful babes.
- Spider-Man's enemy the Chameleon has a group of likely-paid mistresses during his short campaign to replace the Kingpin as New York's crimelord. They are clearly afraid of him, and with good reason; he is abusive to one in one scene, hitting her simply for not peeling his grapes before bringing them to him.
- With a female villain, Kronk is a borderline example of this to Yzma in
*The Emperor's New Groove*. She seems to keep him around for his strength much more than his looks, but Kuzco still seems to get the idea:
**Kuzco:** So... Kronk seems, uh, nice. **Yzma:** Oh, he, um, he is. **Kuzco:** ...He's, what, in his... late twenties...?
- In
*300*, King Xerxes has one, and uses the promise of women and gold to successfully tempt Ephialtes — rejected by the Spartan army due to his deformity — into selling out his countrymen.
- Biff's buxom blondes from the alternate 1985, in
*Back to the Future Part II*.
-
*Batman*:
- Two-Face in
*Batman Forever* had Sugar and Spice, a pair of attractive women who represented either fluffy goodness note : Drew Barrymore or harsh evil note : Debi Mazar in very sexy ways. Although technically, they were both evil.
- Mr. Freeze in
*Batman & Robin* has Ms. B. Haven. note : Vivica A. Fox Given Freeze's obsession with his comatose wife, it's pretty clear she's only there because arm candy is the expected thing.
- Bruce Wayne in both
*Batman Begins* and *The Dark Knight* does this with glee to keep up his playboy image.
- In
*Clegg*, Francis Wildman has a mansion filled with identically dressed models who spend all of their time lasciviously licking identical lollipops.
-
*Colombiana*. The protagonist is sent to kill an embezzler — an overweight, middle-aged man who nevertheless has a harem of four gorgeous lingerie-clad women to share his bed.
- DC Extended Universe: In
*Justice League*, following his arrest in *Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice*, Lex Luthor has escaped from Arkham Asylum and is residing on a luxury yacht with the expected bevy of beautiful women. However there's no Male Gaze on the bikini girl in the swimming pool; instead there are several women dressed in Stripperiffic suits, with automatic weapons and serious expressions, guarding Luthor.
- In the campy 1975 film adaptation of
*Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze*, Captain Seas is accompanied by two paramours, Adriana and Karen. This turns into a Brick Joke when he undergoes Brainwashing for the Greater Good and is seen at the end of The Movie working as a Salvation Army bandleader, with the two girls looking rather bored while holding collection plates and singing along.
- Several James Bond villains have them.
- In
*Jesus Christ Superstar* (1973 version) Pilate always seems to have a few beautiful women in nice dresses hanging around him, not doing much of anything. King Herod is also surrounded by scantily dressed women... and men.
- Played for Laughs in
*Machete Kills*, though involving a Sleazy Politician instead of a Big Bad. The President of the United States gets a late night phone call from our hero. The phone is picked up by a sleepy yet hot female White House intern, who hands it to another female intern in the bed beside her, who hands it to *another* female intern, who hands the phone to the President.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: The stewardesses in Tony Stark's private jet double as pole dancers/strippers in
*Iron Man*.
- Sao Feng's Den of Iniquity in
*Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End* has bored-looking prostitutes decorating the entrance, various female drudges acting as bath attendants, and a set of twins called Lian and Park as his personal masseuses and bodyguards. When they're both killed by Mercer, he replaces them with two more women.
- Subverted in the opening of
*Polar*. A retired hitman is shown snorting coke and Eating the Eye Candy of the bathing beauty whose name he hasn't bothered to remember. Turns out she's a Honey Trap working with a professional hit team who kills him while he's Distracted by the Sexy.
- In
*Repo! The Genetic Opera* Rotti Largo has two floozies who double as bodyguards.
- Amber Sweet also has two male bodyguards in bondage gear.
- GeneCo seems to be staffed mostly by "genterns," female nurses in sexy outfits.
- Dr. Frank N Furter in
*The Rocky Horror Picture Show* has Magenta and Columbia play this, at first impression seemingly willingly. Later on it's revealed that Frank mainly has eyes for his creation Rocky, and while Columbia apparently was Frank's lover for some time, by the time of the movie she's just a groupie more interested in another of Frank's ex-flames, Eddie, and Magenta was more interested in Riff Raff.
- Honey Swanson is a gangster moll on the lam in
*A Song Is Born*.
-
*Spaceballs*: President Skroob has Marlene and Charlene, who he doesn't even bother trying to tell apart.
- The Octopus has Silken Floss in
*The Spirit*. Despite the implications, she's more of a Punch-Clock Villain who only works for him to pay for her PhD tuition.
-
*Star Wars*:
- Jabba The Hutt has a harem of humanoid extraterrestrials around his side. Try not to think about it too hard. As explained in the
*Star Wars: The Clone Wars* novelization:
It explained the Hutts' need to flaunt Twi'lek dancers and other glamorous humanoids, so radically, physically
*different* that no Hutt could possibly have found them attractive. They collected them because *humanoids* coveted them, and so it sent the message clearly: "I possess everything you lust after, so I have power over you."
- Alternately, the Expanded Universe mentions that the other Hutts consider this to be very weird, perverted, sexually deviant behavior, but don't say anything to him about it because he's politically powerful on Nal Hutta. It points out specifically that Jabba knows beauty in most races, and seeks it out.
- Lex Luthor in
*Superman IV: The Quest for Peace*. As well as in *Superman* itself. Miss Teschmacher clearly didn't stay with him out of love.
-
*Swashbuckler*: In his first scene, the Antagonistic Governor Lord Durant is taking a bath surrounded by a bevy of beautiful, scantily clad women that he shows no interest in. They do not reappear and seemingly serve no function. Presumably Durant has them because he believes it is the sort of thing an Evil Overlord is supposed to have.
- Dr. Loveless in
*Wild Wild West*; despite (or maybe because of) the fact that he can't have sex, having lost his genitals and the rest of his lower body in an accident, he has quite a few scantily-clad female henchmen. (All of them are skilled and cold-blooded assassins, however.) He also points out to the heroes that a Gadgeteer Genius like himself isn't necessarily all that hampered by lacking his original equipment.
- Subverted in the first
*Deathlands* novel "Pilgrimage to Hell". The Baron of Mocsin, Jordan Teague, has two girls by his side who don't change their bored expressions even when he uses them; not that Teague can do much as he's too fat and doped out to care.
- Deconstructed in the
*Myth Adventures* series with Bunny, a character initially foisted off on Skeeve as a moll by the Mob. Turns out she's hiding a phenomenal financial genius behind her Obfuscating Stupidity, and had thought quite a bit about the costs and benefits of embracing this trope beforehand.
- One of the characters in
*The Supervillainy Saga*, Cindy Wakowski a.k.a Red Riding Hood, is one of these and gets derisively referred to as a "henchwench." She joins the main protagonist, Merciless: The Supervillain Without Mercy TM, because he offers marginally more respectful treatment. ||They end up hooking up anyway.||
- In the Adam West
*Batman* show, if the villain of the week is male, he invariably has an attractive female henchman serving alongside the mooks. On rare occasions, they actually serve some purpose other than scenery.
- Season one of
*Homeland* features a woman who is in charge of an Arab prince's harem. Women are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a one-year term. Judging by the number of interviews the woman has to oversee, there are plenty of willing volunteers.
-
*Stargate SG-1*:
- In the episode "Seth" (Season 3, Episode 2), the heroes go undercover in a brainwashed cult to an Earth-bound Goa'uld. Major Samantha Carter becomes part of Seth's harem.
- Major Goa'uld have favored slaves (Lo'taur) tending to their every need, so naturally they'd include one or more sex slaves. Baal's favorite concubine fell in love with the Tok'ra Kanan while he was bonded to O'Neill, leading to Baal's ceaseless torture-resurrection-torture of the latter in "Abyss".
-
*Star Trek*:
-
*Star Trek: The Original Series* had minor character Harry Mudd, who technically does this in two appearances:
- When he first appears in "Mudd's Women", he's accompanied by a harem of three incredibly beautiful women. However, they're not actually
*his* women, he intends to make a fortune by selling their hands in marriage to wealthy miners.
- In "I, Mudd", some of his androids have been fashioned in this manner. Becomes a Cool and Unusual Punishment when they get replaced by 500 copies of his nagging shrew of an ex-wife.
-
*Star Trek: Deep Space Nine*:
- Used in the traditional fashion in the Mirror Universe episodes, and Quark's Dabo girls probably count too.
- Played more seriously in "Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night", when Gul Dukat is seen using Bajoran "comfort girls" for this purpose, including Kira's mother whom he manipulates into thinking he's one of the more nicer Cardassian occupiers. The most chilling thing about Gul Dukat is he actually
*is* one of the nicer Cardassian occupiers. That's not to say he is actually *nice*, he just isn't into random acts of meaningless brutality. He is into calculated acts of meaningful brutality (aimed directly at anyone who displeased him rather than any random bystander). Sisko even confirms this at one point... after he's beaten the somewhat unhinged Dukat unconscious. (Dukat goes on to become Sisko's opposite as the Pa'Wraith's Emissary and has his own harem of Bajoran cultists as well.)
-
*Star Trek: Voyager*. Mentioned though not seen in the holodeck program *The Adventures of Captain Proton!*, where Mad Scientist Dr. Chaotica has a harem of slave girls which the players are meant to liberate.
- In
*Starlight Express*, the electric locomotive Electra enjoys an equal-opportunity entourage. Although they never explicitly refer to themselves as his harem, their actions tend to imply it.
- In
*Final Fantasy XIV*, the extremely rich but quite irritating Gegeruju has his "dancing girls", a group of attractive women whose job consists of standing around in bikinis, fetching drinks, fanning him, and dancing for him and other guests at his beach resort. If you talk to them, they're quite open about only doing this because he pays. (He doesn't require sex, though. He's more of a Chivalrous Pervert than that.)
-
*Xenoblade Chronicles 2* Chairman Bana keeps a couple of scantily clad dancers around his office in Argentum, which is strange because Bana is a nopon and his dancers are both human.
- Averted with Dennis in
*Double Homework*. Not even his family money can get him any success with girls.
- Parodied in the early
*MS Paint Adventures* series *Bard Quest*, in which the king keeps a pair of attractive scantily-clad servants by his throne
||But the king is gay, so they're two shirtless muscular *men*.||
- In
*Strange Candy* the Evil Overlord has a harem which goes on strike because the metallic bikinis he requires them to wear are *really* uncomfortable. All of his subsequent actions are attempts to get a replacement harem.
-
*Batman*:
-
*Batman: The Animated Series*, particularly the *New Adventures*, does this a few times as well, including a villainess with Chippendale-esque henchmen and Mr. Freeze with women in stripperiffic *parkas*. When the Penguin became The Don (much like he currently is in the comic), he employed cocktail waitresses at his nightclub who were also his enforcers.
- The Penguin in
*The Batman* has two women dressed as kabuki-styled geishas following him around in his debut episode... who also happen to be ninjas with razor-sharp claws. They may also be robots. It's not exactly clear. Judging by their bizarre neck movements, being The Voiceless, never seeing an inch of exposed flesh, along with the Penguin being an expert bird-trainer, they may well be *giant trained birds.* Perhaps even *mutant* or genetically-engineered giant birds. Really, it's one of the series' most amusing Epileptic Trees.
- Thugnificent in
*The Boondocks* employs several beautiful women to lounge about his mansion, including one whose only job is to announce the presence of visitors by sultrily crooning, "ding... dong." He dubs her a "whorebell".
- Dr. Octopus from
*The Spectacular Spider-Man* had a pair in one episode, which is almost funny when one remembers how dorky he was before his FaceHeel Turn.
- In
*Phineas and Ferb* Doctor Doofenshmirtz is rarely if ever seen without a group of beautiful ladies who serve as back-up singers and dancers for his musical numbers. However, it's made abundantly clear in more than one episode that they're paid to do so, with one even remarking that her boyfriend is a lawyer and that she'll be sending him a bill for her shoes (Which were ruined by the ceramic Lawn Knome he built.)
- Prince Jefri of Brunei had one harem girl write a book titled
*Some Girls: My Life in a Harem* about the experience.
- Colonel Gaddafi of Libya had an all-female entourage called the Amazonian Guard. He believed that his would-be assassins would be hesitant to shoot a woman. Critics of the regime found his claim to be suspect, as his female bodyguards were required to take a vow of chastity. He was friends with Italy's Silvio Berlusconi for a reason: Berlusconi shipped Italian escort girls to Africa to bribe officials into appointing Gaddafi head of the African Union. When Gaddafi fell during the Arab Spring, it was revealed that the Amazonian Guard were less bodyguards and more a private harem mainly full of women who weren't there of their own free will — which might explain why none of them stayed around to protect him when things went south. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaidHarem |
Pacifist Dojo - TV Tropes
*"I know I said you have to let go of your anger and show forgiveness, but
when the fight comes to you, you have to be ready to fight back. And to do that, we'll need more students. Welcome to Miyagi-Do Karate."*
In any works that involve Rival Dojos, the Pacifist Dojo is the natural Foil — and by extension the Good Counterpart — for the Thug Dojo. Whatever their Way is, you can bet your bottom dollar (or yen) that nine out every ten of its students — along with their sensei — are Martial Pacifists (hence the term) and the other is a technical one (if not a Reluctant Warrior).
Not to say that no Deceptive Disciple ever gets past their system — after all, no process is foolproof. A Defector from Decadence, who probably began at the other place, might also take up training here and won't be that kind of sneak. But do not be fooled — like most Real Life eastern-martial-arts schools, they
*will* make it clear that its members are *not* to use their techniques outside of the school, unless it is an emergency (self-defence, defence of a third party, etc). Using the techniques anyway, for bullying, for example, *will* lead to your expulsion upon discovery. And make no mistake, one way or another, they *will* find out, and the violator *will* be Persona Non Grata.
In any proper competition or tournament, they will have been trained to follow the rules to the letter, especially between bouts, and be graceful losers regardless. Oh, they might be fine
*bending* the rules, if only to stop cold any opponent who has no problem with prohibited moves (and they probably have no problem with trash talking, either), but not beyond that point.
And just to drive home why you should Beware the Nice Ones, they
*can* fight if they absolutely need to — especially if they end up in a massive brawl where dirty blows are flying all around and the ante is constantly going up. When their sensei (or Old Master) gets into the act, *that's* the signal to watch out.
Compare Ninja School and Hero Academy.
There
*does not* have to be a competing dojo to qualify the school for this trope. Nor does it have to be "heroic" in any sense of The Hero. Nor does it even have to be *technically* a dojo. As long as it honors and strictly enforces its code of ethics as per the description, it counts.
## Examples
Anime and Manga
- The Kamiya dojo from
*Rurouni Kenshin* is one of these, with the Kamiya Kasshin-ryu style being a swords style used to protect people, not harm others.
- Not a dojo, but in the anime adaptation of
*Grenadier*, the Empress imparts in her personal traveling gunwomen not just the Improbable Aiming Skills but also the prime imperative to end any conflict without drawing their guns if at all possible.
Comic Books
- The Raul Lama's school teaches that violence should only be used when necessary and need be balanced with the healing arts and meditation which are also an aspect of the holistic discipline he teaches. The school itself does not have a Thou Shalt Not Kill aspect but Tim Drake, it's most well known student, certainly does even if he's slightly more flexible about whether or not his allies stick to that rule than his mentor.
Films — Live-Action
-
*Fist of Fury* had the Jing-Wu school, whose founder was recently poisoned to death. There is a lengthy lecture early on in the film that stresses what their founder was really aiming for; their current sensei does not take kindly to finding out that Chen decided to take matters into his own hands toward the Hon-Kyu school, at least, not until after he sees the results of their dojo's retaliation.
- Bruce Lee appears in another peaceful dojo in
*Enter the Dragon*, but is forced to fight a former student who perverted the master's teachings for evil.
- The Jedi in the
*Star Wars* universe are essentially an order of militant monks all of whom (if fully trained) are deadly warriors on the battlefield, but are taught to resolve conflicts without switching on their lightsabers.
Live-Action TV
-
*Cobra Kai*: In season 2, Daniel LaRusso opens up Miyagi-Do Karate, a martial arts dojo based out of Mr. Miyagi's old house, to counter the rising impact of Cobra Kai in the San Fernando Valley. His training of Robby and Sam — which involves almost all of the same tactics Mr. Miyagi used on him — indicates Miyagi-Do is set to follow this path. Unfortunately, tensions between various members of Miyagi-Do and members of Cobra Kai culminate in a karate war breaking out at school, leading to Sam being hospitalized in a skirmish with Tory Nichols, while Robby goes to jail after kicking Sam's ex-boyfriend Miguel Diaz over a railing. Daniel realizes that he has failed to pass on his sensei's lessons of deescalation and peace making and, on Amanda's ultimatum, elects to shut it down. In season 3, Sam chooses to reopen the dojo in her dad's absence when Cobra Kai continue picking on the Miyagi-Do kids at school, and after the hostilities between the dojos culminate in Demetri getting his arm broken in a gang fight, Daniel steps in to get the dojo back on course and properly instill the virtues of Miyagi-Do into his students.
- In the original
*Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers,* Jason ran such a class. In fact, he went on to lampshade it to Bulk: "Martial arts was not developed to hurt others."
-
*Kickin' It* has Bobby Wasabi Martial Arts Academy, whose staff and students have turned Good Is Not Soft into an art form in terms of conflict resolution. Most common in any situation where Jack catches a fist in his palm and calmly goes into his Pre Ass Kicking One Liner.
Video Games
- In the
*Street Fighter* Universe there's Gouken's Ansatsuki School, which teaches a non-lethal version of this martial art, Ryu and Ken being two of his most famous disciples.
Webcomics
- The Isabel's grandfather's dojo in
*Paranatural* teaches people how to manipulate Spectral energy to battle ghosts. Despite essentially being about teaching magic, it looks like a stereotypical martial arts dojo and frequently requires physical exercise.
- In
*El Goonish Shive*, the Anime Style Martial Arts Dojo used to be this ... until Sensei Greg decided to close it down. He did that partially because, given the potential of the techniques he taught, the risk a Deceptive Disciple could pose was too high.
Real Life
- Most martial arts schools, especially those training children, operate along these principles. They'll make it clear that the class is about discipline, self-control, fitness, healthy competition, etc. and that violence should otherwise be an absolute last resort in a self-defense situation. This is, in fact, what the Eastern arts always emphasized, though it may seem a little odd to modern Western audiences. There's also the fact that they are businesses, after all, and gaining a reputation as a Thug Dojo can have serious consequences. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacifistDojo |
Painfully Slow Projectile - TV Tropes
**thefinalcutter83:**
According to CNN.com: "An Iranian missile may be able to hit U.S. [in 10 years]."
**SpaceInvader455:**
That's one slow fuckin missile.
— Bash.Org, circa 2005
Offensive projectiles are fast. Most bullets are too fast to be seen with the naked eye as any more than a momentary blur, at best. Missiles and rockets streak towards their targets at several times the speed of sound. Even arrows, sling stones, and thrown knives travel at considerable speeds, especially since that's how they damage the target. Conservation of momentum and conversion into kinetic energy and all that. Even if you failed physics, it's fairly easy to see the faster things travel, the harder they hit if brought to a sudden stop through contact with an intervening body, like yours.
But that's reality. This is video games. And it's awfully hard to dodge things that travel faster than you can react. So they don't. Bullets? Arrows? RPG's? Sidestep, duck, jump over 'em all!
And heck, if that's too much work, just shoot them out of the air! Knives are big and slow, aren't they? You and your awesome gun can just deflect them with bullets! Oh, heck, why not blow up those rockets and grenades with your weapon before they even reach you?
Much of this comes down to the fact that, invariably, these slow-moving projectiles also tend to be very powerful, with the iconic example being rockets and grenades in shooter games. If these projectiles traveled at "realistic" speeds, then they would be difficult or impossible to dodge safely, and the game would devolve into Rocket-Tag Gameplay. Making them slow allows the game to have a variety of attacks (some nigh-instantaneous but weak, some slow but powerful, some in the middle). This can be observed in games that do not use this trope, where any projectile to be strong
*and* fast is likely to have other limitations (such as low ammo, a cumbersome reload, major-league splash damage, or being otherwise unwieldy in combat).
This is especially common in Light Gun Games, where all you have is a gun. Bullets will hit you, but missiles and grenades can be shot out of the air before they reach you. Knives, axes, and barrels can easily be deflected as they lazily swim through the air towards you at speeds that would make them trivially easy to dodge, and likely not all that harmful if they hit. Okay, maybe a giant crate could be easy to hit if one was sailing towards you, but you'd likely need a fairly large caliber weapon to deflect it. This is especially prevalent in Boss Fights, as they take a long time to kill, and can't be stopped with a single bullet like the average Mook.
Of course, certain Projectile Spells that travel at this speed are not without their merits; a 10-foot-wide energy sphere that travels
*very* slowly can certainly be a nightmare to play around, as well as give its user control of the battlefield, especially if they can knock you back into it. The arena control aspect is also exploited by many zoner characters in Fighting Games: if your fireball attack takes three seconds to cross the screen, that's three seconds your opponent has spend focusing on the projectile *and* you, which can open them up to more attack angles. It helps if your projectiles move at different speeds so you can keep the opponent on their toes while they try to close the distance.
For certain Arcade Games, this sort of projectile also served a purpose for the business side of game management. Aside from an arcade machine being straight up broken, there was little more frustrating than waiting in line on a player who
*wasn't actually playing*, and some games (typically platformers) would respond to this by spawning a slow, a One-Hit Kill projectile aimed at that player's character if it detected no input. This encourages the player to maintain their participation, and gives the game a means of resetting itself for the next challenger to keep the line moving and the quarters rolling in. For a few games, particularly Endless Games, dodging a homing instagib projectile as you play might even be an intended part of the challenge.
Related to Very High Velocity Rounds. Compare Projectile Spell and contrast Hitscan, which instantly determines whether the shot is a hit or miss. Commonly used in Bullet Hell games, in which the challenge is to dodge an
*absurd* number of painfully slow projectiles. Not to be confused with Outrun the Fireball, though the explosions in that trope would have to be much slower than in real life too. Projectile Platforms usually require this trope.
## Examples:
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*:
- The beams from Decayed Guardians or a Lynel's fire blasts can be avoided by just
*walking.* Vah Medoh's turrets are pretty terrible too, as well as inaccurate. You can avoid them by just canceling your glide, and sometimes the turret misses when you're *standing still.*
- The cryonis constructs fired by Vah Medoh and Waterblight Ganon are big and slow-moving. They make up for it with numbers.
-
*Ōkami* does this, but there's generally a reason for this — you have to deflect the projectiles with your Power Slash. That, and they aren't bullets, they're generally rocks or fruit being thrown at you. In any case, later projectiles are sped up considerably, with the idea that you need to use Mist to slow time down in order to be able to slash them — if you try to slash them without Mist, they either don't show up on the brush screen or they aren't affected by Mist.
- The slow but
*powerful* apples in *Spiritual Warfare*.
- In
*ZZT*, bullets travel at cycle one, which is a fancy way of saying "twice as fast as the player can move". They're destructible, too: when hit by another bullet, they annihilate each other. Stars are slow, but homing, indestructible, and change colors a lot.
- The NES action adventure/shoot 'em up hybrid
*The Guardian Legend* gave one of these to the player in the form of the Fireball subweapon. Its main advantage was that it had a high shot cancellation modifier, meaning it would basically destroy any enemy projectile that it touched. Leveling it up to its maximum power would result in a fireball larger than the player, and it was pretty much required to beat some of the more aggravating bosses. Having sufficient walking speed to keep pace with it is nearly a Game-Breaker strategy.
-
*Mission: Impossible (Konami)*: Enemy bullets tend to be quite slow, and can be maneuvered around, or even outran by your fastest agent. The molotov cocktails thrown by some enemies travel about as fast as them. Fortunately, your bullets travel a lot faster, though still slow enough to be visible.
- The old NES
*Ninja Gaiden* games not only featured slow bullets but slow rockets that could be detonated with your *sword* before they hit you.
- The Xbox 360 game ''Earth Defense Force 2017' has a line of missile launchers called, fittingly, the Air Tortoise. Once fired, you can run ahead of the missile and soften up the target with a machine gun while you wait for it to kill the thing five or ten seconds later. The only advantage to it is that later versions are really powerful and relentless in tracking a target.
- The rockets in the NES
*G.I. Joe* game can be punched, slashed, or shot before they hit you.
- Most projectiles in
*Silent Assault*, even the boss's attacks.
-
*Twisted Metal 2* has Ricochet Bombs which are large black bombs fired from the front of your car. If you are using the turbo when you launch one, you immediately run into it and blow yourself up. The game also has machine gun bullets that take about a second to travel five car lengths.
- In
*Duck Game*, one of the weapons is the Mooninite laser gun from *Aqua Teen Hunger Force*. As mentioned below under "Western Animation," it moves incredibly slowly, by far the game's slowest projectile. However, the projectiles are huge and you can fire as many of them as you want, so you can dart around shooting these things and turn the stage into a minefield.
-
*Rakion: Chaos Force*:
- The mage's special skill has the longest range out of all range skills, but is so slow and shows up on the radar that alert players can just sidestep once it's near to easily avoid it. They can also throw bombs mid-range but is still slow that there is enough time to dodge it.
- The Golem's long-ranged attack shows them throwing a rock at the target at a certain distance. Fortunately, even the slowest ranged attack can be cast and have time to move out of the way before the rock hits the player's previous location.
-
*Bounty of One*:
- The Big Bertha item allows you to fire a giant missile projectile every 30 shots. It's huge, deals 3x the damage, and has infinite piercing, but moves slower than all your standard shots.
- The Illithid enemies exploit this trope by firing energy balls that travel much slower than the standard mages', but at a faster rate than the mages. Individually, these are easy to avoid, but several Illithids firing at you can clog the screen with projectiles, giving the player far less room to dodge.
- The knives thrown at you in
*Kung Fu Master* are slow and easy to jump or duck, especially if you are walking away from them.
- In
*Viewtiful Joe*, using Slow-Mo against gun-toting enemies will cause their projectiles to move slow enough to be easily dodged or even redirected with a well-timed hit.
- The
*Street Fighter* series is the Trope Codifier for slow projectiles used for zoning.
- In
*Street Fighter II*, you could make your fireballs even slower by using lighter attack buttons, to the point that some fighters could *walk* faster than their Jab fireballs, allowing them to be used to pressure their opponents by physically following the attack.
- In
*Street Fighter III*, Sean's Hadou Burst is a Limit Break primarily because it doesn't do this.
- Dhalsim's Yoga Catastrophe in
*Street Fighter IV*. Along with its large size and Dhalsim's teleportation abilities, it is considered one of the best utility Ultra moves in the game.
- Decapre's Ultra Combo I in
*Ultra IV*, the Psycho Stream, is another such projectile (a ball of slow-moving Psycho Power that Decapre can rush in behind to keep her opponent locked down). Ed's V-Trigger in *Street Fighter V*, the Psycho Cannon, works similarly but with the added perk of being able to increase the projectile's speed by pressing forward when executing it. As Ed is a rushdown-focused fighter, having a tool that allows him to safely approach is of great benefit.
- Laura in
*Street Fighter V* has a slow projectile with about as much range as Dan's. But in this case, it's a mixup tool as Laura is a grappler.
-
*Dissidia Final Fantasy*:
- The Emperor's giant flare balls and bouncing mines. The slowest projectiles in the game, but if you accidentally dodge into one, then
*you* become the fastest projectile in the game.
- Kefka's projectiles are generally faster, but still slow enough and erratic enough that you will be using them to control the target's movement while you set up a better shot.
- Reptile's energy ball in
*Mortal Kombat*. Its slow movement makes it easy to misjudge, and if opponents do get out the way, clever players can knock them right back into it.
-
*Marvel vs. Capcom*:
- The reasons why Sentinel's Sentinel Force assist is one of the best in the game is because it's slow and covers a good half of the screen at any one time.
- Dormammu's Stalking Flare Hyper is a slow-moving fire orb that can be used to apply pressure to his opponents.
- Exploitable in
*Skullgirls* if you're using Peacock. One of her attacks is a bomb that slowly walks around the ground, which can be quickly used to support teammates by forcing the enemy to keep track of the bomb and the enemy fighter at the same time.
- The bullets from
*Samurai Gunn* act this way, so that with appropriate timing, they can be deflected back with a simple sword slash.
- In the
*Clayfighter* series, Bonker the Clown can create balloon animals, which scurry along the ground and inflict damage on opponents on contact.
- A number of characters in
* Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS/Wii U* have custom variants of their projectiles that move more slowly than their standard versions, but often pack a bigger punch. Samus in particular has both her Dense Charged Shot and Relentless Missile, which sacrifice speed for power and/or better homing capability.
- In
*Garou: Mark of the Wolves*, Kain has a variation where his projectile moves in a sine wave trajectory, allowing it to stay in an area for much longer.
- In
*The King of Fighters XIII*, Dark Ash's version of Thermidor stops in place after slowly moving forward.
- In the
*Marathon* series, the only enemy weapons which fire too quickly to be dodged are the assault rifles the troopers use and the rockets that the juggernauts fire. Everything else thrown at you you can dodge, and are essentially required to in order to survive.
-
*Doom*. The "light" weapons (on both sides) are hitscan, but rockets from the rocket launcher are fast, and bolts from the plasma gun are *very* fast, while imps' and cacodemons' fireballs move very slowly and the hell knight's and baron of hell's fireballs are still slower than a rocket (except on the Harder Than Hard "Nightmare!" difficulty, where all of the above enemy projectiles get a speed boost). This is compounded with the player moving very fast, allowing him to keep pace with a fired rocket and outrun nearly every other projectile in the game.
- In
*Heretic* on the same engine, virtually everything being fired at you by any monster can be dodged. The golem's skull projectiles will home in on you, but it's easy enough to get them to impact walls or even other monsters.
- The plasma cannon overcharge shot in
*Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine* is pretty slow, mostly because it kills *everything* within a thirty-foot radius of its point of impact.
-
*Halo*:
- The Needler. Its projectiles are homing... but this is of little use since they are so freaking slow you can outrun them by walking backward in the early games. From
*Halo 3* onward their speed was increased enough to make the Needler usable and sometimes even quite powerful, but they're still quite sluggish compared to other weapons.
- The Fuel Rod Gun fires a large neon-green projectile that can be easily dodged at medium to long ranges.
- Any and all plasma projectiles are pretty much this. High visibility and low velocity make them easy to dodge at any range beyond a couple of dozen meters (unless you're being pelted with enough to resemble Bullet Hell). Notably, this is canon: in-game cinematics and other media (like the live-action shorts) consistently portray them as that slow. Bungie gave official stats that indicated plasma weapons have projectile velocities in the range of 100 to 125 meters per second, about the speed of a crossbow bolt. Meanwhile, the Fuel Rod Gun has an official muzzle velocity of 70 m/s, and the Needler's is only 52 m/s, not much faster than the average professional pitcher throws a baseball.
- The Rocket Launcher, while usually faster than the Fuel Rod Gun, is still unrealistically slow enough that you can dodge it with a jump without even looking due to the fact you can easily
*hear it coming* about 1/2 a second before it hits.
- Guns in
*Borderlands* have a hidden "velocity" stat, which determines how fast the projectiles move. Normally it's fast enough to not matter, but with sniper rifles and missile launchers, it becomes important.
- In
*Borderlands 2*, Torgue brand guns fire slow mini-rockets instead of bullets, making them poorly suited for long-range combat.
- The "Sloth" sniper rifle, which you get in
*2* by giving huge quantities of booze to Mordecai, has an extremely slow muzzle velocity (hence the name).
- Zer0 and Maya can reduce the impact of slow bullets with their skills (Vel0city and Acceleration respectively). This, logically enough, increases damage.
- Most non-hitscan projectiles in
*Unreal* are surprisingly slow, but the biggest offenders have to be the boulders. When a Titan throws a rock, it does not "fly" through the air as much as slowly float its way toward the player. Of course, this is a good thing, as a hit from one of those boulders is usually a one-hit kill.
-
*Unreal Tournament* had the alternate fire mode for the Shock Rifle fire a very slow explosive ball, which was trivial to dodge. It wasn't really intended to be used on its own, but could instead be detonated into a much larger and stronger explosion by shooting it with the hitscan-using primary fire mode.
- In
*Team Fortress 2,* bullets travel instantaneously, even from across the map. Rockets, grenades, and arrows, however, will have a marked flight time, occasionally measurable in seconds. This is primarily a balancing issue, as the first two mentioned weapons have considerable splash damage (and the slow speed gives more fleet-footed class time to evade). Pyros have the option to play tennis with enemies and reflect the aforementioned projectiles back at the people who fired them.
- The pistol and nailgun in
*Quake IV*. The shotgun, machinegun, and a few others are hitscan, although still dodgeable.
- In the vehicle parts, some turrets fire homing missiles that are noticeably slower than your not-exceptionally-fast Hover Tank.
- The projectile of the H-AVR anti-tank rifle in
*Battlefield 2142* moves relatively slow compared to many other weapons in the game. Considering that anti-tank rifles destroy targets with a heavy flechette traveling at incredibly high velocities, it is kind of ridiculous to have to lead moving targets at less than 50 yards away. It is likely for a balancing reason, as being able to snipe tanks and aircraft would be a Game-Breaker.
-
*Superhot* is played in Bullet Time; time only moves when you do. However, this applies to your own bullets as well as the ones being fired at you, so you need to lead your shots a fair distance or fire head-on at your opponents to land a hit.
-
*ULTRAKILL*: The only Hitscan weapons are the pistol and the Electric and Malicious variants of the railcannon. Everything else moves much slower than you would expect for a shotgun blast or a rocket. This is actually to your *advantage* - if you're quick enough, you can get behind your own shot and punch it, radically increasing its speed and damage.
- In
*Diablo*, projectiles only really become dangerous when there are loads of them or they home. The Amazons in *Diablo 2* also have a spell that slows down any missile. The partial exception to this is the red lightning Diablo itself fires, which is very difficult to avoid completely. Unfortunately, the Amazon's arrows also qualify which is why she gets fancy multi-shot and machine-gunning skills to compensate.
-
*Diablo 3* gives the Wizard and several enemies a similar spell which slows missiles inside a dome centred on the character. Since the enemies who use it often don't move around much, this tends to result in them suddenly being hit by a large number of missiles when the spell ends, rendering it largely pointless.
- Some smaller Unmanned Gear in
*Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance* shoot missiles so slow that you can *outrun* them or cut them in half using Blade Mode.
-
*Path of Exile*:
- Several boss fights such as Innocence use the Bullet Hell version, as well as having a number of enemies that simply fire slow-moving projectiles that are rarely dangerous.
- The ball lightning spell moves very slowly because it shoots lightning at any enemy near it, so the slow speed effectively increases its longevity.
- Frostbolts are slow because they can be used as the target for a couple of spells that can normally only be cast centered on the player; if they moved too fast they might get out of range before the player can utilize them. That said there's an easy way to boost their speed once the player's cast speed is good enough to avoid this being a problem.
- Essence drain is slow but creates a damage over time effect that when combined with the contagion spell can be transferred to all nearby enemies, meaning that landing a single essence drain can potentially wipe out several packs of enemies.
-
*Virtua Cop* series:
-
*Virtua Cop*, in all its incarnations, feature grenades, rockets, and knives that can be shot out of the air. The first boss of the second game even throws a *van* at you, which is deflected with six bullets.
-
*Virtua Cop 3* features a Bullet Time ability where your Very High Velocity Rounds can be used to shoot enemy bullets out of the air. Repeat: Shoot enemy *bullets* out of the air!
-
*Zombie Raid*, aside from the usual fireballs, mixes in wooden stakes, (Which travel far too slowly to be of any real threat) mummy wrappings, and thrown beakers.
-
*Police 911* has bullets so slow you can easily follow their trajectories. The game's premise revolves around moving your body to dodge attacks, and if bullets moved at realistic speeds the game would be even more Nintendo Hard than it already is.
- The old shooting-gallery-style games
*Cheyenne* and *Crossbow* had this; you'd use your gun to defend the protagonist from bad guys, either by shooting them first or (when you fail) shooting their projectiles.
-
*House of the Dead* zombies don't just claw at you, they throw axes, barrels, and crates as well. Sure looks weird when they travel only slightly faster than the zombies beside them running at you. Some bosses also shoot fireballs that can be dispersed by... shooting them.
-
*Typing of the Dead: OVERKILL* only slows this down further to allow you to cancel what you're typing to deal with the thrown object...or just finish off typing because you've got a couple of seconds until it hits you.
-
*Lethal Enforcers* has the bosses use rocket launchers or blades. The second has cannons, barrels, and arrows, being in a wild west setting.
- In
*Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles* not only you can shoot zombie puke, but also some pretty slow falling rubble and rockets.
- Any non-bullet projectiles in
*Area 51* and *Maximum Force*.
- Knives and grenades in
*Operation Wolf*.
-
*Steel Battalion: Line of Contact* feels like this with pretty much every weapon, especially smoothbore cannons, due to how easily they can be dodged with the slidestep pedal. The High Velocity Missile Launcher (HVM-la) is faster than usual, but can still be dodged easily at longer ranges, and while the railgun can't be dodged after firing due to ludicrous projectile speed, the lead-up time required to fire it allows skilled pilots to slidestep just before it fires so it misses wide. Homing missiles like the AS-mis and PZ-mis can be thwarted with chaff and a slidestep as well.
- Throughout the
*Armored Core* series, there have been a variety of weapons that fall into this category. Most of them are missiles. Often, said slow projectile is the dreaded Large Missile, which actually tracks insanely well and hits like a truck. Often, the slow characteristic and heavy punch is employed specifically as a lethal distraction while dozens of other, faster firing weapons bombard the poor opponent who's occupied with dodging the slow but maneuverable missile and not paying attention to the slew of rifle rounds coming from the other direction. If the opponent happens to ignore the missile at their own peril, well, so much the better.
-
*Armored Core: For Answer* has the Arms Fort Spirit of Motherwill, which has a main cannon that can level a city block and bring your NEXT down in one or two direct hits. And unlike other Arms Forts (which have trouble consistently hitting *each other*, let alone a one-man mecha), Motherwill can hit accurately from several miles away even as your NEXT is moving at rocket-enhanced supersonic speeds. Your only advantage is that the projectile's travel time gives you about a half-second per shot to sidestep it completely if you're fast enough.
- The
*MechWarrior* series had this with PPCs, until they were turned into a sort of railgun-ish type of bolt from the third game onward. Before that, they fired slow-moving balls of energy that were trivially easy to dodge at anything beyond spitting distance (and if you shot at someone under that distance, the splash damage would also hurt you). The PPC is obviously meant as a Difficult, but Awesome weapon to master as it's the highest damaging gun that doesn't require ammunition, but against any target that doesn't have the decency to stay still leading the target becomes an exercise in frustration.
- This was especially jarring because the videogame - as the tabletop one from which it derived - tried to pass PPCs as long-range, which they were only good at against buildings and shut-down Mechs. The tendency of PPC bolts to not actually fire didn't improve things any.
- Many other guns shot bolts that were slower than logic would have dictated. Laser bolts and autocannons, in particular, were much faster than PPC bolts, but they still required considerable leading at long range, especially against fast targets.
-
*Contra* has enemies attack with bullets and missiles that travel at a shockingly slow pace across the screen. Their deadliness usually comes in waves, from the fact you're a One-Hit-Point Wonder, and from the fact that it's 2D so you can't just casually sidestep the shots. This is particularly WTF-inducing in *Contra 3*, where on lower difficulties, an enemy behind you fires a bullet at you traveling *slightly faster* than the character. Since the animation of your character makes it look like he's merely jogging, dodging the bullet would simply be a matter of him picking up the pace and literally *outrunning the bullet*. note : To *really* drive in the WTF factor, note that this means that if your character could sprint, you could jump out of the bullet's path, let it pass under you, and then, as it lazily floats away from you, run after it and **kill yourself by hitting it from behind**.
- Lampshaded in
*Metal Slug*. There's an enemy that's basically a big cannon on wheels note : officially called the Nop-03 Sarubia; it has a large barrel, and when it readies to fire it looks like it'll blast half the screen away. It then does a huge boom, and — plops down a sloooowly rolling projectile that acts as a moving landmine. Unlike the other examples on this page, its main purpose is to force the player to jump over them, making them easy pickings for other enemies.
- Played straight for anything else with a big gun. The huge tank on rails in the second episode requires the player to maneuver their own tank around the pattern of sssllooowwly flying blue cannonballs, and the battleship in the third
*can't* hit the player with its main gun if they keep moving right because the arcing projectiles are too slow to catch up.
-
*Mega Man* series:
- Mega Man's projectiles and heck, almost any projectiles in the game are usually slow.
- In
*Rockman 4 Minus Infinity*, the Minimum curse in Pharaoh Man's stage combines this with One Bullet at a Time. Needless to say, it gets *really* annoying.
-
*Mega Man X2* has the charged-up Magnet Mine, which fires out... a slow-moving black hole-like projectile. That does continuous damage as long as it is in contact with an enemy. In this case, being slow is a *good* thing, since it will be making contact with an enemy for a longer time.
- Becomes lethal in
*X5*/ *X6* when Zero uses his slow One-Hit Kill Sword Beam and dashes past it to lunge at you, and you can't jump because his beam covers nearly the entire screen (minus a gap below, which is blocked by Zero himself when he advances).
-
*Mega Man X: Corrupted*: This trope is *invoked* by Strike. He fires out very slow but somewhat large projectiles that can't be dashed under, which reduces the space for X or Zero to avoid his Weaponized Teleportation attacks since they stay on the screen for a good bit of time.
-
*Super Mario Bros.*: Every projectile not shot by a player. Every. Single. One. This gets to a truly ridiculous extent when the projectiles are LASERS.
- A noteworthy mention is the Bullet Bills, as well as other cannonballs. Not only can you outrun them easily (assuming you have space to run) but you can even jump on them.
- The Hammer Bros. and their variants are notable aversions. For example, the fireballs of a Fire Bro. move at the same speed as Mario's fireballs.
- In
*Pickory*, it is possible to shoot downwards while in mid-air and then fall onto your own bullet. Naturally, this kills you.
- In
*I Wanna Be the Guy*, one of the boss fights involves them launching a giant Bullet Bill (as a Shout-Out to the above *Super Mario Bros*) which moves slowly enough for you to either destroy it by shooting it numerous times or Double Jump over it.
- During the trench battle in the first
*Super Star Wars* game, the only way to survive is to shoot down the proton torpedos (which appear to be made of light) with your lasers (which are apparently *faster* light).
- The Hoverbomb Gun in
*Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando* fires a floating bomb that can be manually steered and detonated by the player. Unfortunately, it moves slower than Ratchet does, so while it packs a huge punch, the only time it's really useful is if you're facing a tough enemy that's limited to melee attacks and is on a different platform from Ratchet so they can't run up and smack him while the bomb slowly drifts toward them.
- In
*20XX*, a *Mega Man* homage, the Quint Laser has a huge projectile (and can be charged to have an even bigger one) but moves only slightly faster than you do. In the boss fight that's built around them, Kur keeps you on your toes by firing volleys of them that take up most of the screen. Despite being less than useful against nimble enemies, the Quint Laser is pretty nasty against most bosses, which tend not to move all that quickly, and Rollster Beta has a stage where he Turns Red and bounces around the boss arena, meaning he's really likely to crash into a QL projectile on his way. Outside of combat, the Quint Laser can also be charged up to knock over vending machines and get stuff out of them for free.
-
*Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest*: In "Web Woods", one of the Kannon enemies fires a cannonball that moves very slowly. Since you are playing as Squitter in this level, and Squitter is unable to pick up and throw barrels, Squitter needs to follow the cannonball so it can break through a wall that an arrow made of bananas points towards to unlock a bonus stage, which you'll need to complete if you're going for the 102% ending.
-
*Wipeout:*
- In
*Wipeout 2097*, the Quake Disruptor weapon creates a wave on the track that hits all opponents in front of you. At least that's what happens on slower race classes - on Phantom class, your own ship is about as fast as the wave, so instead of the expected destruction you get a large wall of tarmac in front of your nose that blocks your vision. The game mechanics were ported almost exactly to *Wipeout 64*; one of the very few changes was a speed buff to the Quake wave.
- While the Quake was fixed in later games, the Plasma Bolt has remained this in all of its appearances throughout the series to balance out its absurd damage output (and to make it that much more satisfying to land a hit — you have to be
*very* precise with it).
-
*The Settlers*: In Settlers II, a catapult may fire on an enemy building, only for that building to have been captured by the player by the time the boulder lands, resulting in loss of the building to friendly fire.
-
*Empire at War* and its expansion. Although usually, the targets are too slow to get out of the way, the proton torpedoes are, while devastating, painfully slow, so ships such as a Corellian Corvette with Power to Engines can simply outrun them. The concussion missiles are better, but can still be outrun.
- Arrows and siege ammo in the first two Age of Empires games could be dodged by any moving unit, at almost any distance, because no unit in either game is able to lead their shots without research.
- In the first game, one could easily see two groups of archers doing a little "dodge-dance" in-between shooting each other.
- To make matters even worse, firing on a unit lets the target
*immediately* see its attacker through the Fog of War - as soon as the shot is fired - so any AI-controlled unit is pretty much guaranteed to not only dodge a rock, but come and mess up the catapult behind it. You can actually achieve better results by *aiming at the ground under a unit* instead of targeting the unit directly, just so that they don't get the free warning.
- The cannonballs fired by Cannon Galleons in II are a particularly notable example, which makes them Awesome, but Impractical against anything but shoreline buildings. Unless you're the Spanish, in which case they benefit from the shot leading research mentioned above.
- Even shot-leading only makes them
*harder* to dodge, not impossible. With carefully timed direction changes, it's possible to throw "smart" projectiles even further off the mark than dumb ones.
-
*Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II: Retribution* has the Light Of Calderis, a plasma cannon whose drawback is stated as "projectile moves slower". This turns out to be quite an understatement, but the blast is too devastating for you to care.
- Similarly, any tier-four Global Powers. Whether it's artillery, orbital strikes, or a spell that's calling down demonic energies, the attacks come in so slowly and the units seem so aware of their approach, there's only three ways to ACTUALLY hit a target with them: cast it on a group that hasn't seen you yet, call it on a group pinned down by fire (which, given the way cover is spread around, drastically reduces the numbers you will hit), or call it down in the middle of a giant melee battle.
- In
*StarCraft 2*, the Raven's Seeker Missile is so slow that it can be outrun by most ground units. Speaking of which, why are ground units often faster than SPACECRAFT?
-
*Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon* has the Star Mortar and its heavier counterpart, the Nova Mortar. The Star Mortar bombs move incredibly slowly, to the point where they can take nearly a minute to land when fired at maximum range, however, they make up for this with their massive range, blast radius, and damage. The Nova Mortar fires a cluster of 5 Star Mortar bombs at once, but they move at the same incredibly slow velocity.
-
*Fallout 3* and *Fallout: New Vegas* feature these. In *FO3*, every bullet is a rather slow tracer (which actually seems to function as hitscan with the bullet itself only having a graphical effect). Missiles travel much slower than they ought to as well, though usually not enough to dodge unless they're fired over a very long range, with the same applying to New Vegas. The various Plasma weapons in *FO3* (and only some of them in Vegas) also suffer from very slow-moving projectiles as their primary disadvantage, as it makes them difficult to use over long ranges and against moving targets outside of VATS. The New Vegas plasma rifle even has a weapon mod that makes its projectiles go faster.
-
*The Elder Scrolls*:
-
*Morrowind*: Projectile weapons travel slowly enough that dodging them is a real possibility. Projectile spells travel even slower, to the point where battling an enemy mage is best done by dodging his attacks until he runs out of Magicka before closing in to kill him. Smarter enemies will also dodge *your* projectiles in this fashion.
-
*Oblivion* inherits these problems. Arrows move so slowly without mods (bordering on Bullet Time) that a bowman firing from even medium distance poses no threat unless the player's engaged in combat with someone or something else.
-
*Skyrim* has retained the slow arrows and now they cut both ways as enemies are slightly Crosshair Aware (unless you're hidden...but sometimes *even then*) and will strafe to avoid your shots. Fortunately, enemies are still completely unable to adjust for movement. Slow projectile spells also remain for the most part, though "Shock" spells are now instant.
-
*Kingdom Hearts*:
- The Devastator Heartless in
*Kingdom Hearts II* launches a sluggish homing sphere of energy at the end of a volley of quick projectiles. Touching it will launch you a distance inversely proportional to its speed.
- In
*Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]*, the Tatsu Steed's Bubble Mine attack is an even slower homing projectile, but causes high damage and stuns its victims to compensate. Thanks to Artificial Stupidity being in play, it becomes extremely effective when used by an ally, as your foes will readily charge into the projectiles, which you can use as a safe zone of sorts.
-
*Mass Effect* series:
- Although bullets in
*Mass Effect* hit instantly, all the heavier weapons move slowly enough to easily sidestep on foot or jump over in the Mako.
- Not so much in
*Mass Effect 2*: heavier weapons are still slower than normal weapons, but they can now home in on you. The ones you use, however, often miss the memo on that homing thing. Of particular note is the M-920 Cain, which in theory fires a slug at 5 km/s, but actually moves quite slowly. Of course, to dodge the Cain, you *reeeeeeally* gotta dodge.
- In
*Mass Effect 3*, like *Mass Effect 2*, the missiles home in on you. However, you can now dodge roll right before they hit you (and so can enemies), and it's even possible to shoot rockets out of the air. This is easiest done with adrenaline rush, the time-slowing mod for the sniper rifle, or by pouring bullets in the general direction of the rocket with the mounted machine gun.
-
*Star Trek Online* has various destructible torpedoes that move so slowly you often end up finishing the target off with your energy weapons before the torpedo gets there. Fortunately, they'll switch to another target if that happens.
- Remarkably, a ship with good engines and/or a speed boost ability can actually
*outrun the very torpedoes it fired.* Given that most of these slow, destructible projectiles are area effect weapons that can also damage the firer if they are too close to their target, this is somewhat annoying.
- Arrows and crossbow bolts in
*Dark Souls* and *Demon's Souls* are quite slow, so one can generally dodge them in time. Not that this means they aren't a threat. It looks pretty weird since their actual flight paths are fairly accurate, but their slow speed requires them to essentially defy gravity to continue on them.
- Bullets in
*Bloodborne* are about as fast as crossbow bolts in *Souls*, i.e. slower than a thrown baseball, allowing the player and enemy Hunters to side-step them pretty easily.
-
*Elden Ring* has much faster projectiles than *Souls* or *Bloodborne*, but generally continues the trend of making them much slower than they would be in reality to allow the player and bosses to easily dodge them. The basic soldiers' crossbows for example have velocities of around 20-25 m/s, which while faster than in prior games is still only about half as fast they should be. More noticeable this time around as projectiles with transferable real-world velocities now include not only bows, crossbows, and ballistae, but also cannon balls, sound waves, lightning bolts, and *meteorites impacting directly from space*. Hilariously, low speed is a *good* thing for Homing Projectiles because the AI only dodges when they're *launched*, even if that's much too early to actual avoid getting hit.
-
*Soulbringer* gets hit with this, oh so very hard. Arrows and bolts travel slow enough that, outside point-blank range, the barest lateral motion will dodge them. Add in the inability to aim manually, and ranged weapons are virtually useless unless the target is standing still or moving directly towards you. On the plus side, this all applies to the AI, as well.
- Various
*Mount & Blade* game mods and derivatives with firearms have the bullets travel so slow that they are plainly visible (and fairly arrow-like in shape).
- In
*Tales of Xillia*, Jude has the speedy but weak series staple projectile Demon Fist/Fang, but also has Sun Spark, an Energy Ball projectile unique to him that while powerful enough to blast its victims into the air moves so slowly that it's unlikely to connect with anything if it's not used at point-blank range or against something that's rushing towards him.
- In
*Tiger Heli*, tanks fire slow-moving shells that resemble quarters, which you can often dodge quickly, provided nothing is in your escape path. Your bullets, however, move as quickly as you can push the button.
- As mentioned above, this is a staple for most Bullet Hell games. A metric tonne of ordinance is put into the air at low speeds, restricting your movement to create flying mazes made of bullets. And while you're carefully navigating the curtain of oncoming fire, they'll throw a handful faster and aimed at your head. Yannow, to keep you on your toes.
- The shots fired by some anticapital guns in the
*X-Universe* series are so slow they can be outrun by a scoutship.
-
*Some* guns in *Vega Strike* shoot these, e.g. Crippler and Disruptors, though many others fire bolts at several km/s. Rlaan "Mini Grav Thumper" takes the prize: it's so slow that only capships can't easily dodge it, but it's also so expensive and hideously powerful that there's no point to hurl it at small craft in the first place. It's also got very high dissipation and short range, thus to kill a capship, you as likely as not had to enter the ship's explosion range — and since in VS you *cannot* Outrun the Fireball, it's wise to accelerate away immediately, so... it's not too bad that it's outrageously slow, after all?
- As noted on the Real Life section below, torpedoes in the
*Silent Hunter Series* take its time to reach their targets. The shells fired by the sub's deck gun are considerably faster but need seconds to reach their target.
- In
*Terminal Velocity (1995)*, it's possible to outrun with the afterburner the projectiles fired by your basic weapon. With a cheat that increases your afterburner speed, it's even possible to outrun *lasers* note : The third weapon type, that is described as a laser.
-
*TIE Fighter* has *space bombs*, which are the heaviest and most powerful warheads in the game, but, like all other missile weapons, they can be shot down, and they move so slowly that they are nearly useless unless dropped at point-blank range on a target.
- Many of the heavy warheads in the
*FreeSpace* games also move very slowly, like the Harbinger and Helios torpedoes, and are not difficult to shoot down, although dealing with many of them heading for a friendly capship at once can still be very hectic.
-
*Hitman 2: Silent Assassin*, especially with suppressed weapons.
- And the first game.
- In
*Hitman 2*, the newly-added briefcase items moved noticeably slow when thrown, and due to how the game was programmed, it wasn't uncommon to see a briefcase *curve around a corner* to hit the target if they move out of the way while it was moving. A later patch made them faster, but turned it into an Ascended Meme with the ICA Executive Briefcase Mk II, which is *even slower than before*.
- In
*Resident Evil 5*, the SMG and other guns are hitscan, while the huge Gatling gun you can unlock is not. Actually, it's the same Gatling gun the powerful vulcan ganado uses. This also makes the thing nearly useless considering the gun's horrible recoil. Most of the time your bullets fly right past the enemies. The hitscan SMG with infinite ammo makes for a much better weapon.
- Most projectiles the Majinni throw at you are pretty slow, by virtue of being arrows and lobbed objects. Slow enough to deflect with your knife.
- The very last phase of the boss fight against ||George||, ergo the Raincoat Killer in the present day, in
*Deadly Premonition* requires you to not merely dodge the infinite axes he throws but to shoot it out of the air. It is almost impossible not to dodge or hit said axes given just how slow they fly through the air.
-
*Gratuitous Space Battles* has two main types of weapons. Beams that hit instantly, and everything else. This leads to missiles that are so painfully slow that several volleys of fast-firing close range beam weapons can be fired between the time the missiles are launched and they hit. Furthermore, missile velocity is a known statistic with actual effects.
- Annoth the Firebreather Dragon in
*I of the Dragon* has access to the *Hound* spell which works like this... fortunately though, it does cast good damage and it is also a Homing Projectile.
- Howitzer cannons and artillery tanks in
*World of Tanks* tend to fire projectiles with noticeable travel time, which makes them best at close range where their slow shell speed is not a detriment. This is why artillery actually has a much higher skill ceiling than most players realize—a really good artillery player often has to guess where the target will be nearly ten seconds after they pull the trigger.
- In
*Star Trek Online*, while many torpedoes will go quite fast and strike quite easily, certain torpedoes modified with the Torpedo: High Yield skill will become this as they will grow bigger, move slowly, and become an easily-taken out target.
- In
*Final Fantasy XIV*, the Trial boss Byakko can fire rotating waves of energy bullets from the center of the room. These bullets move slowly enough that players can easily weave between them: the tricky part comes from doing this while also dodging his other attacks. Many of the Machine Lifeforms in the *YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse* crossover raids employ similar tactics.
- In
*Mutant Football League*, the Terror Bay Mutineers' home field has cannons that fire shots across the length of the field from the endzones. The cannonball is just slow enough that an attentive ballcarrier can avoid it, and it's always fired directly in front of the ballcarrier, so juking left and right is necessary to avoid taking what will usually be more than half a player's health. Less intelligent players on the roster aren't as likely to notice them coming.
## Non-Video Game Examples:
- In one commercial for the Seattle Mariners baseball team, pitcher Jamie Moyer's changeup was treated as being so slow that the catcher could take off his mask and carry on an extended conversation with the batter before it reached home plate.
-
*Bleach*: Don Kanonji has a spirit attack that launches a small and sluggish ball of light. Woe betide those that judge it by appearance, though; if it *does* hit, it packs quite a punch.
-
*A Certain Scientific Railgun* had a minor, unnamed villain with an ability he called "Equal Speed". This causes anything he throws to *never* lose momentum until he stops concentrating on it, making it an Unblockable Attack. He demonstrates by throwing a marble at a steel door. The marble flies through the air very slowly, then plows through the door.
- In
*The Demon Girl Next Door*, Yuko practices shooting things with Momo's Magic Wand, but can only manage to create a marble-sized ball of light that travels very slowly and turns around to attack her.
-
*Dragon Ball* has the ki attacks move quite slowly, especially over long distances. Fanon claims that the viewer is actually watching the action through the incredibly heightened reflexes of the main characters. There is evidence for and against this theory.
-
*Gundam*'s beam weapons are surprisingly easy to dodge for accelerated particle weapons in frictionless space—even the various Mecha-Mooks of the disparate series seem to have few problems in avoiding them, and the combination of High-Speed Missile Dodge and Ace Custom mobile suits means that named characters have an even easier time not getting shot down by beam weapons.
- This is actually reversed in the
*Mobile Suit Gundam* novel trilogy, where Char Aznable says that the only way to avoid getting struck with beam weaponry is to not be in its line of sight.
-
*One Piece*: In the Ice Hunter Filler Arc, the Big Bad had the power to heat himself up and create balls of "heat", however, they were extremely slow, even when the villain tried to mimic Luffy's Gatling attack; the balls were as slow but they were many of them.
-
*Slayers*: Sylphiel's version of Flare Arrow comes out like this due to her inexperience with attack spells. It's also pathetically weak and shaped like a carrot.
-
*Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie* contains a Lampshade Hanging: during the climactic battle, Eggman fires such a rocket, and it's shaped like a tortoise to boot. The other much faster rocket is shaped like a hare, and Eggman writes off the tortoise as a design failure. After the battle is over, Eggman gloats that he could make a better Metal Sonic, only for the tortoise, slow as ever, to come and steal the data disc necessary to remake Metal Sonic and explode.
-
*Zatch Bell!* features Zoboron, an iguana-like demon whose two known spells conjure massive and extremely powerful spheres of energy, the second of which is a homing attack, which *sloooowly* inch their way towards their target. But the real threat he presented is that when he appeared, he was teamed up with another demon, Purio, who had spells designed to immobilize the opponent.
- The first
*Iron Man* movie has the titular character (who doesn't have superhuman reflexes) dodging a tank shell after it left the barrel, a feat duplicated by no one else in the setting, even ones who explicitly have super speed. Luckily for him, the round moves considerably slower than a thrown baseball, instead of borderline-to-outright *hypersonic* like a real one.
-
*The Last Airbender*: The infamous "Pebble Dance", which involves *seven* Earthbenders going through a long and elaborate series of moves to levitate a rock roughly the size of a human head, which floats past the screen at two miles per hour.
-
*Runaway*: The villain Gene Simmons has a pistol that shoots homing bullets. From the bullets point of view they travel only slightly faster than their running targets.
-
*Harry Potter*: Avada Kedavra, the "Unstoppable Death Curse" is described as a projectile that can be stopped by solid objects; gravestones and statues, for example. Granted, one probably couldn't do Bullet Time or something if out in the open, but this is less than the inevitable doom it was cracked out to be.
-
*Septimus Heap*: Despite Etheldredda being very close to Jenna, Alice Nettles manages to jump into the way of the bullet shoot by Etheldredda just in time.
-
*Babylon 5*: PPGs are "phased plasma guns" that shoot relatively slow-moving blobs. This was done for dramatic reasons (so characters can dodge blasts of hot plasma) and also for in-universe reasons: PPGs are implied to be used mainly aboard spacecraft and space stations, due to concerns about regular kinetic weapons ripping a hole in the outer hull and killing everyone, including the shooter, by too-long exposure to vacuum (not to mention the paperwork ). Supplementary material states that ground forces typically use projectile weapons because exposure to the vacuum of space is not a concern in an Earth-like planetary environment (though one could reasonably imagine that plasma weapons would be more useful to oxygen-breathers on a planet with an atmosphere they couldn't breathe, for similar reasons as why they are used in space).
-
*Monty Python's Flying Circus*: The Terry Gilliam animation "Opera Singer being shot by a very slow cannon," which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. An opera singer sings while a cannon stationed a few feet away is shot at him. The cannonball takes about a minute to get to him.
-
*Star Trek: The Original Series*: The Romulan plasma torpedo is an absolute beast of a weapon, but it can be outrun by a suitably nimble ship until it dissipates.
-
*The Flash (2014)* is often guilty of making bullets extremely slow in the Bullet Time scenes to give the illusion of the protagonist running faster than he actually is. In this scene for example, the first shot fired still hasn't reached the target less than twenty feet away by the time Flash arrives, even though there's a more than *two second* gap between those events (in fact it's only covered about half the distance by then, putting the bullet's velocity at about a fit man's sprinting speed). Not only that but when the Flash's Bullet Time vision begins, the shooter visibly reacts with a head movement to him running by while the bullets appear frozen.
- The Fireball spell in the German tabletop RPG
*Midgard* is this — a fiery sphere manifests next to the caster and requires concentration to both maintain and move, the latter at the rather sedate pace of *one foot per second*. Once it finally does go off it is one of the most damaging area effect spells available to adventurers in a game that generally likes to emphasize how its spellcasters aren't simply D&D-style "magic artillery", but it's essentially only good against already-cornered enemies in tight quarters and outright stationary targets.
-
*The Complete History of America (abridged)* makes use of the Rule of Funny by having an enormous prop bullet carried on a stick.
-
*Dorkly Originals*: Spoofed in ''Bowser Wants a Gun, where Bowser chews out and kneecaps one of his henchmen for making such shoddily designed guns, pointing out how Mario was able to do get past all of them due to this.
-
*The Frollo Show*: Spoofed where Jafar fires one that is excessively slow even by regular Painfully Slow Projectile standards, but it doesn't even seem to cross Frollo's mind to avoid it.
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*Red vs. Blue: Revelation*: Done with a fist. The Meta is slowed down by his malfunctioning temporal distortion unit but keeps charging at Doc, who jokes about the Meta's attempt to very slowly kick his ass. Simmons notes that while the Meta is appearing to move slowly relative to them, he's still technically moving as fast as he was before, therefore his punch would have the same amount of force. Doc laughs... right up until the point the Meta *taps* him, which sends Doc flying into a wall.
-
*Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series*: Spoofed (what else?) in one episode. The opponents, based on the Mooninites below, have to actually tell Yugi and Kaiba "Just give it a minute". Kaiba is so bored by this that he screws the rules and tells Obelisk (the attack's target) to attack them both to win.
-
*Aqua Teen Hunger Force*:
- Played for Laughs with the Mooninites' laser cannons, whose pixelated bullets move sluggishly, especially in the case of the bigger Quad Laser, but packed enough punch to vaporize Carl (it didn't kill him; it just teleported him to the Moon).
- In a later episode, they use a variant called the Quad
*Glacier*, which moves four times the speed of a glacier.
- This and their "Jumping is useless" line actually made a bit more sense for the Mooninites' original origin, which was cut for time, of them being the spirit of hundreds of old video games buried underground - most of those games were entirely 2D, so a projectile too big to jump over would inevitably kill you no matter how slow it traveled.
- Bugs Bunny's "perplexing" slowball in "Baseball Bugs", which manages to singlehandedly strike out the side because no one can freaking hit it.
"One, two, threestrikesyou'reout! One, two, threestrikesyou'reout! One, two, threestrikesyou'reout!"
-
*The Cleveland Show*: When Raymond the Bear is made the baseball team's pitcher.
"It's as if
*the ball itself* is stoned."
- In the
*Droopy* cartoon "Sheep Wrecked", one gag involves a very slow seeker missile.
-
*Invader Zim* has "Walk for Your Lives" which is not technically a projectile; it's an explosion. It's caused when a time stasis prison malfunctions and explodes so that the explosion is under the time stasis and slowly expands. Resulting eventually in everyone panicking to escape but quickly realizing that they can leisurely walk away from it. Zim's plan to stop it was to undo the temporal flux, returning it to its normal speed, and thus the explosion would be over and done with instead of *slowly* threatening everyone. Of all people, it was GIR who pointed out the flawed logic.
**GIR:** But if the big 'splodey goes fast, won't it be baaaad?
- Similarly, several aliens are shown firing energy-based projectiles, none of which are the virtually-instant-hit devices you would expect from short-range laser and plasma blasts.
-
*Sonic Boom*: In the episode "New Year's Retribution", Eggman fires a laser that, due to him slowing time for everyone and everything around him (including Sonic, whose "slow motion" is everyone else's normal speed), travels slowly enough for Sonic to casually sidestep it.
-
*Woody Woodpecker*:
- In "Misguided Missile", a villain is chased by a guide missile originally meant for Woody but is now, thanks to Woody's tampering, aimed at him. Said missile crawls through the air at a snail's pace, alerting its victim with its Terrible Ticking.
- In "The Screwball", Woody throws an incredibly slow baseball that none of the players can hit.
- To a degree: Certain Roman-era barbarian tribes worked up a technique where their soldiers, armed with a javelin, a side-weapon such as a sword, and practically no armor, would throw the javelin and run forward while it was in flight so that both of them would reach the enemy at close to the same time. Not so much "painfully slow projectile" as "painfully fast soldier", though.
- Until the advent of gunpowder, a man on foot had a decent chance of dodging artillery projectiles by the virtue of the fact that the projectiles were not particularly fast and rather large. As long as he wasn't hindered by a tight-packed formation.
- Paintball. For safety reasons, markers are capped at a muzzle velocity of three hundred feet per second. Slow enough that it's possible (albeit difficult and does require good reflexes or long distance) to hear someone firing at you, see the paintball coming, and dive for cover.
- Nerf darts are fairly speedy at first, but not a patch on paintballs, and being foam they slow down a lot at range, making it not that difficult to dodge them. Discs and larger missiles tend to glide at even slower speeds, and can therefore be avoided very easily.
- Battleship shells are only painfully slow with respect to their range, which leads to an interesting scenario: a battleship firing at extreme range cannot hit a destroyer except through pure luck, as the destroyer moves several times its own length in the time it takes the shells to arrive, giving it plenty of options for dodging.
note : However, if the destroyer were to move close enough to engage the battleship with its main guns, this problem would no longer apply.
- Early guided missiles, particularly of the anti-armor type, flew relatively slowly so that they could be seen and controlled manually and could take upwards of 15-20 seconds to reach a target. These could easily be countered by the enemy looking for dust and/or smoke kicked up by a missile and shooting at the launch position to break the operator's concentration. In fact, this was the standard response for Americans in Vietnam (and Israelis in the Yom Kippur war) to being fired at by an AT3 Sagger (9K11 Malyutka for Russians). In its earlier version it took a lot of skill and concentration to get a hit, which is very hard when you have tank shells exploding near you- even 1 second of distraction can mean a miss. However, since then, new aiming systems have been created (look up SACLOS: Semi-Automatic-Command-to-Line-Of-Sight) in which the launcher does the hard work and the operator can get a hit just by keeping the crosshairs on the target (not needing to actively control the missile).
- Naval torpedoes are quite slow and a shallow-running torpedo can easily be seen. Rocket-powered supercavitating torpedoes create a drag-reducing air bubble and can travel 2-4 times faster than traditional units... at the cost of being short-ranged, not very maneuverable and extremely noisy. Only the Russians have ever managed to field a working example so far.
- Early models were so slow that the torpedo boats had to be careful not to overtake their torpedoes after launching them.
- In live-action roleplaying games, boffer arrows (i.e., "safe" arrows) are slow enough to be dodged or knocked out of the air by someone with quick reflexes.
- Of course, many systems (such as Belegarth) have explicit rules against hitting arrows in mid-air, as high-velocity splinters of fiberglass can cause quite serious damage.
- In the Russian live-action roleplaying system (where the arrows are
*the only* heavily bofferized weapons) there are people who train themselves to catch those arrows in mid-flight.
- Firing rounds from a gun with a very short barrel, such as the ever-popular .38 snub nose, can result in the bullet moving slowly enough to be easily visible in flight to the naked eye (this is
*very* slow by ballistic standards). This doesn't make trying to dodge them a good idea, of course.
- Anyone who's fired an M79 grenade launcher will witness the same effect. Trying to dodge these is an even worse idea.
- Similarly with paintpalls, airsoft pellets rarely go above around 300 ft (91 m)/sec. However, due to the projectile being really light, they lose velocity quickly to the point where the pellets are easily seen and can be dodged at not that far of a range. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainfullySlowProjectile |
Pacifist - TV Tropes
*"We're against the bomb, Russian or American. Disarmament! Disarmament! Disarmament!"*
A pacifist, by definition, is a person who is opposed to the use of violence to resolve disputes or gain advantages. It's that simple.
Or is it?
No, it's not that simple. The opposition may be philosophical or pragmatic, it may be absolute or conditional. A philosophical pacifist holds the belief that violence is wrong, while a pragmatic pacifist objects to violence on the grounds that it's ineffective in the long run. An absolute pacifist believes that all violence is always to be avoided, a conditional pacifist believes that there are some situations in which it is acceptable (most often, in the protection of the life of another). Some people consider the definition of pacifism to be "not killing" rather than "not using violence."
As a trope, though, pacifists basically fall into several categories, arranged here from most strict to most lenient.
- The Actual Pacifist: This is the character who will not, under any circumstances, use any form of violence against another living being. Actual Pacifists are rare in real life and vanishingly rare in fiction. The Jain religion of India advocates Actual Pacifism — even insects are not to be killed, and face masks are often worn to reduce harm to airborne spores or passing bacteria.
- The Suicidal Pacifist: This is the above as depicted by an author committed to the Hard Truth Aesop that Violence Really Is the Answer. The Suicidal Pacifist will continue to preach absolute non-violence while a fascist dictator next door openly declares his people an inferior race who must be immediately exterminated, and do so right up until the point that the bad guys drive a tank over him and laugh while they clean bits of him out of the treads.
- The Badass Pacifist: While the Technical Pacifist and the Martial Pacifist are seen as cool because they are willing to use violence, but still keep themselves under control, the Badass Pacifist is respected
*because* of their strict anti-violence approach. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are both Real Life examples of this with their practices of *active* non-violent resistance in the face of brutal oppression and tyranny.
- The Martial Pacifist: Here is somebody who is
*extremely* good at fighting, but unlike the Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy, they use martial arts as a means of enhancing their life as opposed to destroying others. They are very big fans of discipline, and typically will only fight if there is absolutely no other option available. If you do manage to force one of them into fighting you, though, prepare to get owned. They *will* clean the floor with anybody foolish enough to corner them. Often overlaps with Old Master. Iroh is a Martial Pacifist, as is Dhalsim
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: This character recognizes that sometimes violence is necessary. He will try to avoid
*lethal* violence, but if the need is great enough, he will directly kill. He won't like it, and will almost always have some sort of emotional backlash from it, ranging from angst to wangst to a Heroic BSoD. If he is forced to kill someone, he will honestly say "I killed him." Superman is a classic example of a a character who believes Thou Shalt Not Kill. Slippery Jim DiGriz of *The Stainless Steel Rat* is another. The Doctor, who also Doesn't Like Guns, is, too.
- The Technical Pacifist: This is the character who is willing to use non-lethal forms of violence or to allow someone else to die directly because of his inaction or indirectly because of his actions, but will not kill them directly. He will almost always be able to rationalize that "
*I* didn't kill him." although it may be a very flimsy rationalization. Batman is a Technical Pacifist in *The Dark Knight Trilogy*: "I won't kill you, but *I don't have to save you.*"
- Doesn't Like Guns: Not necessarily a pacifist at all. This includes characters willing to use any form of violence that
*doesn't* involve guns, even if it's lethal or pointless, and may not even be a moral objection. In some cases, the definition of "gun" is rather conveniently narrow, excluding things like bazookas. Batman also Doesn't Like Guns. Many Retired Gunfighters also fall into this category.
- An Obstructionist Pacifist is usually too utterly swept up in their own need of being a pacifist or making sure that everyone/anyone else is pacifist. This goes on to the point where it slightly or completely prevents the hero/party/group in progressing to their goal or weighs them down immensely. If things go From Bad to Worse, It may lead to being Too Dumb to Live.
See also Pacifist Wind for when pacifism is associated with air and wind motifs. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Pacifism |
Painful Persona - TV Tropes
Believe it or not, being yourself is hard. Whether it's the people around us, or just society in general, there are often times when we are forced to become someone we're not. Thus, as you would expect from this "pressure," there are more than a couple where we feel that it's hard to breathe. Luckily, with the proper "ventilation" people can easily switch back and forth between personalities with little to no issues.
Oh, if only it were that simple.
Subtrope of Beneath the Mask, the Painful Persona is when what a person has to
*pretend* to be in front of others is so disassociated with who they are and/or who they "want" to be that they end up feeling like they're either being buried alive or trapped in a room with no ventilation. And try as they might to subdue their fear, frustrations, and/or any other negative emotions they might be feeling, the fact that the people around them are constantly forcing them into an unwanted role means that their grief will rarely relent. There are even times when this problem is self-enforced, the character deciding to do things beyond their capabilities simply because they feel like that's what people want.
Their reasons for keeping up this agonizing facade can vary. Some people are just too kindhearted to ruin people's dreams. Others Desperately Craves Affection to the point that they'll do anything for attention. And hey, a Villain with Good Publicity has to maintain their image somehow. Whatever their reason though, you can expect at least a good half of them to be
*constantly* near the Rage-Breaking Point, while the other half is full of Stepford Smilers, at best.
This can also be a gender and/or sexuality-related trope. A person who is Closet Gay pretends to be heterosexual because they fear, rightly or wrongly, that they won't be accepted (or worse) if they're open about their sexual orientation. Trans Tribulations similarly can include (but are not limited to) a gender-nonconforming person having to conceal their gender preference and live as something they're not.
Do note that while Becoming the Mask is still possible in these cases, a HeelFace Turn will most likely result in a Reformed, but Not Tamed scenario, especially if the character no longer feels the need to hide their thoughts, and a FaceHeel Turn...well...they might be a little more cheerful than they were before. I mean, look at how much they're laughing while they hack away at everyone with a rusty axe. Hehehe...run...now.
Compare I Just Want to Be Normal, It Sucks to Be the Chosen One, Trapped in Villainy, and The Chains of Commanding. Contrast what is basically The Wannabe Index (minus the aforementioned
*normal* one), Boisterous Weakling, and Know-Nothing Know-It-All, where, for the most part, the characters actually *believe* they're something they're not. Also contrast The Poorly Chosen One and The Chosen Zero, where it's actually *other people* who wish the character didn't have the role they have. See also Slave to PR, where the character needs to simply maintain an image for the "general public" as opposed to practically everyone who knows them. Also see Loving a Shadow and Stop Worshipping Me. Can and *will* often overlap with Repression Never Ends Well. A character with this problem might end up going Against the Grain.
**Due to the nature of this trope, beware of unmarked spoilers and no real-life examples please.**
## Examples
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*Detroit Metal City*: Souchi Negishi is a laid-back Nice Guy who likes romantic music and dreams of joining a pop music band, but currently can't because he ended up joining the infamous Thrash Metal band Detroit Metal City taking on the name Demon King Johannes Krauser II. The series follows Souchi as he tries, and fails, to live the modest, easygoing life he wants while performing as the obscene Demon King who loves blood and gore and has a penchant for raping anyone or anything that catches his eye (despite the fact that Souchi himself is a virgin).
-
*The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.*: Downplayed and zigzagged in regards to Teruhashi. Being the World's Most Beautiful Woman, she always pretends to be a perfect lovable maiden when outside, when in truth she's a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing Attention Whore. That being said, she does take pride in her "perfect girl" persona and will go to great lengths to do what she feels is necessary to maintain it such as going to a poor, greasy noodle shop with her classmates, or forcing herself to memorize every single detail about all of her fans at school, regardless of how she actually feels about it. Ironically enough, it's actually this part of her personality alongside her later developed Jerk with a Heart of Gold tendencies that actually help earn her the respect of the titular psychic Saiki who, due to Power Incontinence, both knows her true personality and can't even perceive her beauty, who she just so happens to be in love with.
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*One-Punch Man*: King is one of the strongest heroes around, has killed multiple high-tier monsters, able to terrorize monsters into surrendering just by looking stoically at them or leaving them to hear the "DOOM DOOM DOOM" of his King Engine long enough. ||He's actually a perfectly mundane human, his stoic face is simply that he's too terrified to show any emotions, the King Engine is actually the abnormally-loud beating of his heart (again, in fear), and his victories were actually the result of his coincidentally being near Saitama's victims before Saitama registered as a hero||. All King wants to do is be left alone and play his eroges in peace, but keeps up the charade because it gave people such hope to think the monsters could be defeated. Fortunately, he ends up becoming friends with Saitama, greatly improving his chances of survival.
-
*Puella Magi Madoka Magica*: Akemi Homura is cold to the point of being insensitive to other's pain unless they are Madoka. She's reserved and The Stoic. Or so she pretends. As the plot progresses, it's slowly revealed that she represses her emotions so ruthlessly and never gives herself the opportunity to bond with anyone because of the sheer amount of trauma she has suffered as a Magical Girl in this Crapsack World. 'I Won't Rely On You Anymore', in particular, shows us that she used to be ||the opposite of her current self — emotional, shy, and very trusting||.
-
*Who Decided That Blues Had To Be Cool!?* is a yuri Magical Girl manga focused on the life of Blue Magical Knight Azurite (real name: Azusa Gunjou). As the "blue character" in the lineup, she is under the belief that she needs to be the cool level-headed mature type when she is actually a rather childish Otaku. Her partner Poryu tries to tell her that she can just Be Yourself, but she refuses due to being fully committed to what she believes is the general consensus.
-
*Transformers: All Hail Megatron*: In the aftermath of The Climax and subsequent revitalisation of Cybertron, Optimus Prime reveals that he's long gotten weary of having to put up a façade of stoic nobility but continued to do so because he was aware of how important to morale he was. With tensions between the Autobots and returning Neutrals at an all-time high, he offers to resign as Autobot leader and exile himself in exchange for de-escalation of hostilities. As he was seen as a living symbol of the just-concluded war, the Neutrals agree and Optimus departs, feeling lighter than he has in centuries thanks to finally being able to be *Orion Pax* again.
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*The Rigel Black Chronicles*: To cover up the differences between herself and the real Arcturus Black, Harry lets her friends and even Professor Snape believe that she's putting on a show for Sirius all the time she's at home, pretending to be a happy-go-lucky prankster like the Marauders (which is Archie's real personality) when she's actually an obsessive Potions nerd. The reality is that her life is a much more serious lie than that, pretending to be her pureblooded cousin all year so that she can attend Hogwarts (which would get her sent to Azkaban if found out), then spending the summer pretending to have been at school in America. She chose it and she still thinks it's worthwhile, but it does put a lot of emotional strain on her, to the point where her greatest fear as shown by a Boggart is ||the idea that she and everyone around her will forget who she really is||.
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*The Rise of Darth Vulcan*: Ted (who becomes the emponymous Evil Overlord) spent the years between starting high school and present pretending to be a stereotypical Jerk Jock, despite being as nerdy as they come. He lets this other side come out strictly on Halloween since it's "socially acceptable" to spend hundreds of dollars on a Halloween costume, but not cosplay. A single bad night ousts him as a nerd (and worse, everyone thinks he likes a certain little girl's cartoon), which sparks the plot.
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*Aladdin*: Aladdin spends most of his debut film pretending to be The Ace Prince Ali Ababwa in order to make himself appear a suitable husband for Princess Jasmine, but this drives him to lie repeatedly to those he loves, especially when he finds out that, since marrying her will make him the next Sultan, he has a ton of massive responsibilities that weigh him down, making him feel that in order to maintain the pretence of royalty, he has to break his promise to use his third wish for Freeing the Genie. Ultimately, after being exposed and stripped of all his masks by Jafar, Aladdin realizes his mistake in not being honest with Jasmine and the Sultan that he was a poor street urchin from the start, and finally keeps his promise to the Genie, even if he knows there's a good chance he won't be able to marry Jasmine anymore.
**Aladdin:** Jasmine, I love you, but... *I've gotta stop pretending to be something I'm not!*
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*The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride*: The main villain Zira indoctrinated her pride to believe that her son Kovu is Scar's heir. Kovu himself learns thanks to Kiara and the other animals of the Pride Lands that he's much more than the carbon copy of Simba's uncle and he eventually learns to become the opposite of him to the point that remarking about their alleged similarity becomes his Berserk Button.
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*Encanto*: Isabela Madrigal has a reputation as the "perfect golden child" of her family, possessing beauty, gracefulness, and a talent for creating beautiful flowers. Because of this, however, she gets the most pressure from her perfectionistic Control Freak of a grandmother to not do anything that would ruin her image, including feeling pressured into marrying someone she doesn't love, and not being allowed to grow any plants that aren't pretty flowers. By the end of the film, she feels a lot happier when she finally gets to live free from Alma's expectations.
**Mirabel:** Some of us have bigger problems, you selfish, entitled princess!
**Isabela:**
(Gasp!
)
*Selfish?!*
I've been stuck being "perfect" my whole entire life!
-
*Blonde*: The film is a biopic about Norma Jeane Mortenson, a lovely blonde girl who is catapulted into stardom, and given the stage name Marilyn Monroe. Though the cameras and the press see a happy Marilyn loving the spotlight, in quieter moments, Marilyn longs to return to being Norma Jeane: a simple girl living peacefully settled down with hearth and home. "Marilyn doesn't exist. When I come out of my dressing room, I'm Norma Jeane."
-
*Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.*: Mii usually plays the role of the strong-willed, charismatic leader of the Flame Emperors guild whenever she's playing *NewWorld Online*. When she's by herself however, she's quick to drop her deep voice and reveal a squeaky-voiced, almost timid girl who, while still capable of kicking ass, is a constant mess of insecurities.
-
*Ciaphas Cain*: Zigzagged. Cain (who has a reputation as a fearless Hero of the Imperium) *claims* to be a Dirty Coward who would book it on the first shuttle out of a warzone if it wasn't for all the witnesses around and the loss of status and reputation it would entail, but multiple times throughout the series he does the right thing even when there's no one to see it. It doesn't help that every single time he tries to worm his way out of a fight (such as inspecting an out-of-the-way post, staying at the headquarters instead of joining the front, exploring abandoned tunnels, etc.) he ends up thwarting an enemy ambush, foiling an assassination attempt, or stumbling upon awakening Necron forces. He also mentions not being averse to being in the spotlight or being a Large Ham, and even Inquisitor Vail doesn't know whether he's a genuine hero with Self-Deprecation issues or a lucky coward.
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*Classroom of the Elite*: A deconstructed example occurs courtesy of ||Kikyo Kushida||. Realizing in middle school that they weren't as good as they were praised to be, they decided to become the class gofer in a desperate attempt for attention. This ends up causing them a great deal of stress that they could only relieve by venting about it on an online blog, only for said blog to be discovered by their classmates. Feeling cornered, they decided to air their classmates' dirty laundry as well, effectively turning them against each other as well and causing the whole room to fall apart.
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*The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt (Hey, How About Treason?)*: Wein, the wise prince of Natra, is loved by his people for being a kind, benevolent leader, etc. Who is actually a lazy bum who would want nothing more than to sell his own "dirt poor" kingdom to the highest bidder he can find. Unfortunately, due to his position as the prince, he has to be careful about he goes about carrying out this plan, lest he causes an uprising. As such, while any situation he gets into usually ends up benefitting his kingdom, almost nothing happens to benefit him directly, leaving him stuck in a perpetual cycle.
- Damon Knight's short story "The Handler": A large, charismatic, Life of the Party actor named Pete is revealed to be a Mobile-Suit Human piloted by a tiny, unattractive man called Fred. Fred tries to interact with people, but it's obvious they don't particularly care for him, and eventually, he's outright told to get back in the suit before he can completely kill the mood.
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*Overlord (2012)*: Ainz Ooal Gown is an ancient and unfathomably powerful lich, whose intellect is matched only by his monstrous evil. Or rather, he's Satoru Suzuki's MMO character. When Satoru finds himself isekai'd into a world similar to the MMO with all his character's powers (but not his personality or intelligence), he finds himself trying his best to balance his responsibility to his underlings (formerly NPCs, now empowered with intelligence according to the backstories written for them) with his status as a Person of Mass Destruction, with no one to talk to or able to understand his situation.
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*Fire Emblem: Three Houses*: The lyrics to "Edge of Dawn", aka the main theme, imply that ||Edelgard|| does not enjoy their ||Flame Emperor|| persona and wishes they could live out their days at the academy with their friends in peace.
-
*Persona*:
-
*Project SEKAI*: Mafuyu Asahina, a seemingly kind, helpful, and responsible honor student who is actually something of an Extreme Doormat when it comes to accommodating the needs and wishes of those around her. However, this is a Stepford Smiler persona that hides her reality: she is an Empty Shell and a Broken Ace who hates having to be a "good girl" all the time and wishes she could disappear. When the mask slips, she speaks with a Creepy Monotone, has Dull Eyes of Unhappiness, and often gives her opinions with Brutal Honesty, which is a huge contrast from her nice girl persona.
-
*Star Wars: The Old Republic*: This is a twist at the end of the Imperial Agent storyline. Throughout, the agent has been hounded by a mysterious man known only as Hunter, who is introduced as being part of the Republic's SIS, the counterpart of Imperial Intelligence, though it quickly becomes apparent he works for another power, the mysterious Star Cabal. When the agent finally faces Hunter down, he deactivates a holographic disguise to reveal a woman, who had been forced to wear a different face and bear a false identity for most of her life to do the Cabal's bidding. The encounter ends with her death, either by suicide or execution, but just before that, she reveals her true feeling, either having fallen in love with a male agent or being jealous of a female agent, who retains her own identity, despite the many disguises she's taken in the past.
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*Futurama*: Slurm Cola spokesworm Slurms MacKenzie is an introvert, but since Slurm is marketed as a party drink, he is contractually obligated to party all day and all night, or else he gets fired. After forty years of this, he's so exhausted that his eyes are permanently bloodshot, and he ends up committing suicide by partying so hard that a tunnel collapses around him, crushing him.
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*: Princess Celestia, the God Empress of Ponyville, is revealed to be one of these in later seasons. As the Big Good of her world and a symbol of hope, she *constantly* feels pressure to be polite, diplomatic, and kind to everyone she meets, to the point where a single moment without smiling can lead to serious repercussions. The episode "A Royal Problem" explores the trope in depth when Celestia and her sister Luna, the Princess of the Night, swap places for one day; Luna learns all about Celestia's burdens and how perpetually frustrated she feels—especially at not being able to express those frustrations to anyone. Add in the fact that Celestia is also compelled to be Willfully Weak because she's terrified of the depths of her own strength and you have one miserable pony. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainfulPersona |
"Pachelbel's Canon" Progression
Eight notes. 27 repetitions. And that's just in the canon
.
*"Pachelbel's following me. It sounds paranoid but he's following you too, you hear him every day."*
—
**Rob Paravonian**
A Chord Progression made famous by the well-known Pachelbel's Canon in D major, which is the Trope Namer.
The progression is usually in a major key, and usually runs as follows: I-V-vi-iii-IV-I-IV-V (repeat). If in a minor key, it is usually: i-v-VI-III-iv-i-iv-V (repeat). Occasionally, II, ii or ii° may be substituted for the last IV/iv, and I or Ib (or i or ib)
note : The "b"'s in this case mean "first inversion", not "flatted". Second inversions use "c"'s. may be substituted for the iii or III. An example can be heard here.
Comedian Rob Paravonian famously ranted about the ubiquity of this progression, although most of his medley would be better placed in The Four Chords of Pop. He has a point, though... (Interestingly, substituting Ib for iii as stated above allows the two tropes to overlap.)
Often used to create the bittersweet, nostalgic kind of feeling the piece is so famous for.
See also Falling Bass, an alternate bass melody which nevertheless meshes well with the chords of the Pachelbel's Canon Progression, and may also have been its origin.
## Examples:
- Pachelbel's "Canon in D", and thus any songs based around a sample of it:
- Aerosmith - "Cryin'" (actually interpolates "Canon in D" in the bridge)
- Aphrodite's Child's "Rain And Tears", and by extension, "There's A Key" by 2 Brothers on the 4th Floor as it interpolates that song.
- The influence of the piece can be heard in many of Emilie Autumn's songs, since as a child she would mentally play the piece each night to suppress her auditory hallucinations (as quoted from The Other Wiki). A few bars of the melody are shoehorned into "Save You", and the first half of the ostinato is used in "Ancient Grounds" and "Let the Record Show".
- The chorus of "Be My Valentine" by Baby Gold, from the Hi-NRG Attack Eurobeat label/studio, substitutes II for the second IV chord. Ditto the verses of "Welcome Little Girl" by HRG United.
- The chorus of Bananarama's "Love in the First Degree".
- Belle and Sebastian - "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying", transposed into F# Major.
- "Lullaby" by the string quartet Bond is an adaptation of the work.
- "Canon Rock", a rock remix of the piece that quickly became popular on the Internet - to the point where newspapers took notice of it. The Other Wiki has an article.
- Caramell - "Allra Bästa Vänner" (chorus)
- Cascada's "Another You".
- COOL&CREATE - "Help Me, Erin!", a super happy fun dance/techno remix of a rock remix (of the same name) of a
*Touhou Project* track. This link starts at where that high melody comes in, which is where we get the progression, with ii substituting for the last IV.
- Coven - "One Tin Soldier"
- DragonForce - "Valley of the Damned" (chorus and instrumental part). This progression is popular in Melodic Power Metal in general, starting with Helloween's "Eagle Fly Free", arguably a one-song Trope Maker for the genre.
- "Hotel California" by the Eagles is based on a minor key variant.
- Brian Eno did three versions of the piece in his album
*Discreet Music*.
- Family - Dame estrellas o limones
- The Farm - "All Together Now"
- The chorus of "The Way" by Fastball is a variant: I-V-vi-III
7-IV-I-V. Their other song "Out of My Head" is also a variant: I-V-vi-I/I 7-IV-I-II 7-V 7. Thus, so is the sample in Machine Gun Kelly and Camilla Cabellos Bad Things.
- "Domain" by The Future Sound of London.
- The verses of "Superman" by Goldfinger
- Green Day - "Basket Case" omits the last IV chord (goes directly from I to V).
- If novelty songs from YouTube count, then a good example is Parry Gripp's "Raining Tacos"
- Don't Pull Your Love by Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds, mainly in the chorus.
- "Yatta!" by Happatai, used in the animutation "Irrational Exuberance".
- "Want You Back" by
*The Jackson 5* uses a slightly altered I-IV-vi-iii-IV-I-ii-V progression, but in terms of harmonic function it's an almost exact match.
- A much looser example in the main progression of Billy Joel's "Piano Man", which also implements Falling Bass: I-Vb-IVb-Ic-IV-Ib-II
7-V. However, the Canon's bass line can still overlap with it by raising the second-to-last note a half-step.
- "Jolly Old St. Nicholas".
- Kandystand - "Disco Queen" (chorus; verses use The Four Chords of Pop)
- "Are Your Eyes Still Blue" by Shane McAnally (intro)
- "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance.
- "Don't Look Back in Anger" and "Whatever" by Oasis both use variations of this.
- The Osmonds' "Love Me for a Reason", later covered by Boyzone.
-
*Pachelbel's Ganon,* an Overclocked Remix track by djpretzel that rearranges Zelda's Lullaby and *The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's* opening theme in an R&B style, with this as its backing track.
- Another version that went viral was "Pachelbel's Chicken," notable for being played entirely with
*rubber chickens.*
- The chorus of "I'll Be Your Everything" by Tommy Page. Especially evident in the final chorus.
- Pet Shop Boys: "Go West" (originally by the Village People, but the progression was purposely played up in the cover). The song's melody, meanwhile, is based on the Soviet national anthem! It's still a copy of "Give Thanks", a Christian worship song written by Henry Smith one year earlier. (YouTube) Which in turn is a copy of Ralph McTell's "Streets of London", released four years before that.
- The Piano Guys have their own version, Rockelbel's Canon. And prior to joining the group, member John Schmidt had his own version, Pachelbel Meets U2, which blends "Canon in D" with U2's "With or Without You."
- Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul, and Mary follows a similar chord progression: I-iii-IV-I-IV-I-vi-II
7-V.
- Peterpan's "Semua Tentang Kita"
note : "All About Us" substitutes the last IV chord with an vi and repeats the progression for the whole song, creating a melancholic mood fitting for a song about parting with closed ones.
- "People Change" by Rockapella, originally from their album "2."
- Scatman John's "ScatMan's World" uses the chord progression.
- Spiritualized's "Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space"
- The bridge of "On & On & On" by
*Streetlight Manifesto*
- Tokyo Ghetto Pussy - "I Kiss Your Lips"
- Trans-Siberian Orchestra has
*two* songs based on it: "Christmas Canon" from *The Christmas Attic*, and "Christmas Canon Rock" from *The Lost Christmas Eve*.
- Parts of the U.S.S.R. national anthem.
- "Step" by Vampire Weekend
- Tay Zonday's arrangement "Canon In Z."
- The Beatles has two songs that use the chord progression: "In My Life" and "Across the Universe".
- Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes" makes use of the chord progression in its verses.
- David Bowie's "Changes" uses a variant of the chord progression.
- Roger Waters' "The Bravery of Being out of Range" utilizes the chord progression in its verses.
Advertising
- There was a local commercial for a furniture store called Sprint, no relation to the phone company, which used a jazzy piano variation of "Canon in D" for the background music.
Anime
Asian Animation
Film
Live-Action TV
- Pachelbel's Canon is used during the "not-wedding" on
*Charmed* in Season 3.
-
*Hospital Playlist*: In a flashback to 1999, Seok-hyung demonstrates his proficiency on keyboards to the rest of the band by playing Pachelbel's Canon. Then, in a scene set 20 years later, the whole Five-Man Band plays Pachelbel's Canon together in an up-tempo rock arrangement.
- The bridge of "Above It All (I Love To Fly)" from
*Sesame Street* substitutes III for iii and II for the second IV.
Theatre
Video Games
- The first two games in the
*Atelier* series make use of it for their hardest to attain endings.
- A horribly distorted organ version appears in the creepiest part of
*BioShock Infinite*.
- Lilith's theme in
*Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!* uses a slight variation of this chord progression.
- The B-section of "Singing Mountain" from
*Chrono Trigger* uses a variation ending with ii-III instead of IV-V.
- Marian's Theme from
*Double Dragon Neon* uses Falling Bass followed by a variation of this progression: I-V-vi-iii-I-II-IV-V
- The theme played at Orlesian balls and parties in
*Dragon Age*. It seems to be the Thedosian analogue to the real-world piece in its form and in-universe function.
- It features in and is one of the themes of
*Kanon*, which names itself after the piece.
-
*Kirby*:
- "Gourmet Race" uses a variant in its final section: I-V-vi-iii-IV-I-iv
7b-V.
- "Kirby Rocket's Big Blastoff" from
*Kirby and the Rainbow Curse*.
- A variation appears in the ending theme of
*The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past*.
- The track "Lemming 1" from
*Lemmings* uses a variation: I-V-vi-iii-IV-V-I-V.
-
*Mario & Luigi: Dream Team*: The background pieces for Pi'illo Castle, Rose Broquet, and especially Mushrise Park all feature variations on this progression.
-
*Mega Man 4's* prologue uses this once.
- The bassline to the first half of the Eight Melodies theme from
*MOTHER* uses a slight variation: I-iib-vi-iii-IV-I-IV-V.
-
*Mother 3* uses it in the theme of the Magypsies.
- The A-section of Belle's Overture from
*Mystik Belle*.
-
*Pokémon* has several of these: the S.S. Anne from the first generation, Goldenrod City from the second generation, both Slateport City and (perhaps the most noticeable example, because of the arrangement) the marine science museum from the third generation, Mimikyu's theme from the 7th generation (which is very reminiscent of Vitamin C's Graduation Song), and the Tera Raid Battle theme from the 9th generation.
- "Canon D (Part of the Memories #1)", one of the tracks composed for the
*Pump It Up* series by Andamiro's in-house band BanYa, with a regular and full track version (a first for the game's original tunes). The song is highly popular with *Pump It Up* fans, not only for the song's Classical rock-style melody, but because of the anime-style video that accompanies it, for both having animation that's considered to be higher quality than most other BGAs in the franchise and for its narrative. The video is even the Trope page for the game! A later remix called Canon X.1 was later released, only it's not a follow up to the first story (despite the video officially being titled Canon-D Part of the Memories #1), and instead tells a separate story that's inspired by *Neon Genesis Evangelion*.
- Zanzibar - A Peaceful Village from
*Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time* omits the last IV chord and instead goes straight to V.
-
*Super Mario Bros.*:
- a snippet appears in Mika's theme from
*Under Night In-Birth*. Her weapon is even called Pachelbel Cannon.
- "Main Theme" from
*Xenoblade Chronicles 1* uses the minor variant of this progression at the start and end.
Web Original
Western Animation
-
*Alfred J. Kwak*: The main theme, sung in the original Dutch by Herman van Veen. The ending theme halfway does it, but mixes around the order of chords in the second half of the progression.
- The "Perfect Christmas" song from
*Arthur's Perfect Christmas* opens with Arthur playing it on the piano before transitioning to a more upbeat, livelier tune.
-
*My Little Pony*:
- The verses of "Mirai Start", the Japanese theme song of
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*.
- The franchise's signature "My little pony, my little pony," jingle also qualifies, although it's only long enough to make it through the progression's first half.
- The verses of "Come Home, Perry" from the
*Phineas and Ferb* episode "Oh, There You Are, Perry" are based on the canon.
-
*South Park* uses a Suspiciously Similar Song in the scene where Cartman has a tea party with his stuffed toys.
- In
*Tangled Ever After*, it's the background music for the opening narration.
- "I Can Be Your Friend" from the
*VeggieTales* story *Are You My Neighbor?*
- Comedian Rob Paravonian famously made a rant about the piece, noting how boring it is to play the bass line as the cellist in the ensemble, as well as the progression's ubiquity in popular music (although few of the examples given actually use the progression).
- A skit on
*John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme* portrayed Pachelbel himself as utterly sick of the Canon, being much more enthusiastic about his Fugue, his Sonata, or his Hexachordum Apollinis, eventually being forced to play it and singing about how much it annoyed him that this was all he was remembered for. ("All that it does is go dooby-dooby-dooby-dooby...")
- In
*Wolf 359*, Eiffel goes on a rant about this song, referring to it as "The Mind Eraser" because it is such an Ear Worm that it will push any and all troubling thoughts about being trapped aboard a space station as part of some poorly-explained mission sponsored by a boss that you're *pretty sure* is at least kind-of-evil from your head.
*When I find myself in times of trouble, *
Pachelbel's always following me!
I'll see you in hell, Pachelbel! | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PachelbelsCanonProgression |
Pie-Eyed - TV Tropes
*"What a woman! Eyes like pies..."*
During the 1920s and going into the 1930s, animated characters were sometimes drawn with eyes or pupils that were black and circular, but shaped like a pie that's had one slice removed from it, with the missing slice being an oversimplified representation of a radial light reflection. It is remembered today as one of the most iconic features of the Inkblot Cartoon Style. Pie-eyes were widespread until around the time color became the standard for most cartoons in the early 1940s, by which time the Inkblot Cartoon Style had fallen out of favor, and Western Animation as a whole had undergone significant Art Evolution. The style sometimes appeared in comics as well, particularly the Disney ones, and others based on characters that first appeared in animation.
When it shows up in modern media, it's usually as an homage or throwback. Parodies of the Inkblot Cartoon Style will almost always employ this along with Rubber-Hose Limbs and the like.
Another variation is Crescent Moon Pupils, where the characters are drawn with pupils shaped like crescent moons.
See also Black Bead Eyes, which were also employed in black and white cartoons; Sphere Eyes, which began to replace them both around the 1940s; and Sudden Eye Colour, which happens when a character who was once pie-eyed gets more "standard" looking eyes in redesigns. Not to be confused with a slang term for being drunk, or with the results of a Pie in the Face.
## Classic Examples:
- Mascot example: When the Cleveland Guardians were known as the Indians, their mascot was Chief Wahoo◊. His design underwent slight revisions from 1946-2018, but he had always been pie-eyed.
- Another Mascot example: Big Boy of the Big Boy Restaurants originally had black dot pupils, but a redesign in 1956 gave him pie eyes and he's had them ever since.
-
*Popeye* characters in the cartoon sometimes had them, usually only during close-ups.
- The Coachman's Nightmare Face from
*Pinocchio* has a variant— he has black pupils and green irises, but the white highlight is the pie style.
- Dr. Seuss uses the crescent pupil variation on his illustrations.
- Some non-human characters in John R. Neill's illustrations for the
*Land of Oz* book series had pie eyes,most notably the robotic Tik-Tok.
-
*Rocko The Christmas Bat*: Every character but the titular one has their eyes drawn this way.
## Modern Examples and Homages:
- The dancing flowers in the intro to
*Happy Family* have these.
- A
*Playmobil* set with two vampire figures features these on the female vampire.
- It was used in the
*2 Stupid Dogs* short "Hobo Hounds", which was made to look like an old silent cartoon.
-
*My Life as a Teenage Robot*, which uses a Retraux style, has most of the characters with a small "slice" taken out of their eye, though Jenny has eyes like slotted screws.
- Toot Braunstein from
*Drawn Together*, who is a parody of Betty Boop.
-
*SpongeBob SquarePants*: In "Truth or Square", Patchy shows a SpongeBob short in a 1920s style, where everything has this eye style.
- Also, SpongeBob is comically pie-eyed when he learns that he will be the cashier in "Squid's Day Off".
- In the first movie, King Neptune and his daughter Mindy are drawn with these. SpongeBob and Patrick also briefly gain them during an extreme close up.
- In
*The Powerpuff Girls (1998)* episode "Silent Treatment", the girls gain these when they get trapped inside a silent cartoon.
- Mostly everyone in the
*The Super Mario Bros. Super Show* cartoon has this feature, a rare modern usage not meant as a throwback.
- Mr. Hankey and his family from
*South Park*. Also, in the episode "Red Sleigh Down", proximity to Christmas presents caused children to briefly morph into old-fashioned pie-eyed cartoons.
- The
*Futurama* episode "Reincarnation," which parodies several animation styles, gave these to the cast◊ in the 1930s-style segment.
- Used in
*El Tigre* by almost every character.
- The rebooted
*Mickey Mouse* cartoons (2013-present) such as "No Service" have these eyes on everyone, with more consistency than the original black and white shorts.
- The characters' models in some seasons of
*Thomas & Friends* have these.
- In the first season of
*American Dragon: Jake Long*, nearly all the characters are drawn with these.
- Nearly all the characters in
*King of the Hill* are drawn with a subtle Crescent Moon variation, with the exceptions of Bill and Kahn having more standard looking rounded cartoon eyes, while Cotton and Boomhauer have Black Dot Eyes.
- Mr. Sparkle, the Japanese detergent mascot that happened to look like Homer in
*The Simpsons* episode "In Marge We Trust", had them.
- The characters from
*Max and Ruby* have pie-shaped pupils.
- Most
*Harvey Beaks* characters just have dots for pupils, but Piri Piri, her mother Hanzi, and Michelle have large pupils with notches in them. For the first two is emphasizes their New Aged outlook, while Michelle's is simply because she's a baby. The notches are a bit less triangular than classic examples, with a noticeable taper.
-
*DuckTales (2017)* characters have thin slices in their eyes as a nod to Carl Barks' style.
- Their version of Magica De Spell is an
*inversion*; her Hellish Pupils are triangular slits, representing the "missing slice."
- In various scenes,
*She-Ra and the Princesses of Power* has drawn characters with black eyes (like Bow and Scorpia) as either pie-eyed or with an explicit reflection.
- Spinel from
*Steven Universe* is pie-eyed as a default, as shown when she was hit with the Rejuvinator and reset to that state.
- Cat clocks with moving eyes often are pie-eyed. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacManEyes |
Pain Mistaken for Sex - TV Tropes
Some characters, when in situations of psychological or physical stress or pain, have the tendency to externalize their suffering by moaning, crying, or even screaming out loud. However, in this particular case, the noises made by the victim are mistaken for sounds of sexual pleasure by other characters. This trope is applied mostly to female characters, although it
*has* been used by male characters too, it's just rarer. If she really *is* enjoying it, she's Too Kinky to Torture or a Combat Sadomasochist. If both combatants are *(ahem)* doing it, it's Orgasmic Combat.
Can either overlap with either version of Abuse Mistake. See also "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization.
## Examples:
- This is what happens when Dirk Anger finally kills himself in
*Nextwave*. He accidentally hangs himself while shut in his room, which causes two Office Ladies, standing outside the room and listening to his strangled grunts, to think that he's looking at naughty websites.
- Inverted in
*The Last Wish*, where Dandelion hears Yennefer moaning among the ruins (that she caused) and worries she and Geralt must be terribly hurt. Turns out, they just couldn't wait to celebrate their Relationship Upgrade and are merrily having sex then and there.
-
*Tales of the Otori: Across the Nightingale Floor*: Kaede kills Iida Sadamu when he attempts to rape her. The narration notes that his screams of pain are indistinguishable from cries of pleasure which is presumably why the guards don't rush in to attack her.
- Lampshaded in the
*Angel* episode "Waiting in the Wings" when some of the heroes are searching a building and hear some noises.
**Gunn: **Hear that? Sounds like someone's in pain.
**Fred: **Either that or someone's in fun...
- The penultimate scene of
*The Horror of Party Beach* has an ...interesting moment when the heroine, who has injured her leg, is helped to a nearby car, leaving our good friends at MST3K only able to say, "Um... *wow*."
- In an episode of
*3rd Rock from the Sun*, Dick was Bound and Gagged (long story) and called Mary's office for help. Judith picks up the phone and responds thusly to Dick's muffled cries for help:
**Judith**: *[Deadpan voice]* Oh, yeah. *[Muffled cry for help]* Oh, baby. *[Muffled cry for help]* I'm hot now. *[Muffled cry for help]* Do me. *[Muffled cry for help]* Do me all night. *[Muffled cry for help]* I know it's you, Dick. *[Hangs up].*
- There was also a
*very* dark usage of this in *Jonathan Creek*, in which a videotape is found showing what appears to be a young woman having a screaming orgasm. Turns out ||the camera had tipped onto its side, and what everyone was seeing was her getting impaled against a tree by a large garden fork.||
-
*My Wife and Kids*: Inverted in "Michael's Garden". Kady hears Michael and Jay having sex and assumes her mother is in danger. This causes her to call the police much to Michael's amusement and Jay's embarrassment.
-
*The Punisher (2017)*: The first episode has Frank killing the last member of the Kitchen Irish involved in his family's murder by strangling him in an airport toilet stall. Two other guys outside of the stall hear the commotion and assume they are just two guys having sex.
- A
*Tales from the Darkside* episode, "Black Widows", involved a mother forbidding a suitor from marrying her daughter until he fattened up. On their wedding day, it's revealed that this is because they're spider people that prey on humans, and she wants her daughter to have a nice meal. The sounds of the bride, overcome by her instincts, devouring her screaming groom is overheard by a visiting priest in the living and is mistaken for a very loud consummation. He's half right, as she gives birth to a daughter afterwards.
- Played for Laughs in
*Get Smart*: While undercover, Smart has to pretend he is torturing a woman, but the first set of sound effects he plays in order to sell this is a bit too pornographic. (The second set sounds properly awful.)
-
*Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh*: When ||Therese|| is being murdered in the bathroom of the S&M club, a few of the other patrons hear her screams. They think she's having sex with someone so decide to ignore her, as she's apparently known to use the bathroom for hookups (having previously done so with the protagonist).
- Inverted with Amanda in one scene of
*Daughter for Dessert*. The protagonist picks the lock on her bedroom door because he thinks shes in pain (or some kind of distress). Shes actually masturbating.
- Inverted with Johanna in
*Double Homework*. The protagonist is passing by her room when he notices crying sounds coming from her room. If he chooses to investigate, he finds that shes actually moaning while pleasuring herself... while watching a clip of him skiing.
- Inverted in
*Sealab 2021* when Dr. Quinn is taken away for questioning by Bizarro Debbie. After the sounds of torture give way to sounds of obvious intercourse, Murphy loudly proclaims "Good lord, she's killing him!" | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainMistakenForSex |
Painless Death for a Price - TV Tropes
*"Now, I'm gonna make you a deal: you tell me what I need to know, one pro to another, and I will put a bullet in your brain. You don't, you jerk me around, and you will be begging me to before this night is up."*
Oh, no! The villain has the hero (or another victim) at their mercy. Staring death in the face, the hero grits their teeth as they anticipate a slow and agonizing end. But what's this? The villain is offering them a deal: a quick, clean, and (relatively) painless death in exchange for something the villain needs. Casually mentioning the long, drawn-out, torturous death they'll get instead if they refuse is optional.
This thing the villain wants is almost never a physical object, as there's no point in demanding something they could simply steal from their victim's cold, dead hands (and it's unlikely the victim would just happen to have that one specific thing with them at the moment of near-death, anyway). Most often, it is a crucial piece of information that can be easily and quickly stated by someone even if they are in their death throes, assuming they're still capable of speech. However, it can be the location of a MacGuffin, the life of another person, or anything else, if the victim has been marked for execution but is not critically wounded and dying at that very moment.
Rarely does the hero actually resign themselves to their fate and give the villain what they want, especially if the offer involves betraying a comrade or a loved one. It is more often that they make one final gesture of defiance, get saved by an ally at the last minute, or pull a Heroic Second Wind out of their ass and save themselves from imminent death. That said, if the hero/victim takes the villain up on their offer, they may
*really* end up regretting it in their last moments if the last thing they hear is a victorious cackle and the words "I Lied!"
To qualify for this trope, simply offering a Mercy Kill isn't enough. The would-be killer must make it clear to the other person that they won't give them a quick death unless they do what's asked of them first.
Due to the inherently dark nature of this trope, it is usually offered by a villain to a hero, but can also be offered by a particularly unscrupulous Anti-Hero to a villain or more commonly a low-level Mook.
Sub-trope of Mercy Kill and Sadistic Choice. Related to An Offer You Can't Refuse, Defiant to the End, and Last Breath Bullet. Compare The Easy Way or the Hard Way, and see also You Will Be Spared. A villain offering this choice is usually some flavor of Affably Evil. If both parties follow through with their agreement, it overlaps with I Gave My Word.
**This is a Death Trope, so all spoilers are off!**
## Examples:
-
*Chainsaw Man*: During his final duel with Denji, Katana Man has managed to slice off the chainsaws on Denji's arms and head, leaving him at his apparent mercy. Katana Man tells Denji that if he apologizes for killing his grandpa, he'll kill him quickly. Unfortunately for Katana Man, he didn't know Denji could also grow chainsaws on his *legs* and had already dealt him a finishing blow.
-
*JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind*: Risotto Nero's and Diavolo's/Doppio's fight is interrupted by Narancia's Stand, Aerosmith, suddenly appearing and shooting dozens of bullets at Risotto. As he lies dying, Diavolo offers to kill him quickly if Risotto returns all of the iron to his body that he used his Stand, Metallica, to steal during their fight. Risotto instead uses Metallica to take control of Aerosmith and fire at Diavolo (unsuccessfully) and expires without giving back an ounce of iron.
-
*Alix Senator*: After dispatching a band of assassins, Alix says he'll leave their gutstabbed leader to die a slow death in the desert if he doesn't reveal the name of his employer, but give him a quick death if he does.
- In
*Marvel 1602*, as Werner is being prepared to burn at the stake for being a witchbreed, he is offered the opportunity to confess and repent his sins in exchange for the stake being laid with wet wood and grass so that the smoke would asphyxiate him before he felt the fire consume him. Luckily for him, he is rescued by Scotius Summerisle and Robert Trefusis, fellow witchbreeds, who bring him back to their master.
-
*The Transformers (Marvel)*: When Autobot spy Scrounge is captured and brought before Decepticon leader Straxus, he is interrogated. Scrounge refuses to talk even when Straxus effortlessly rips off his arm and remains silent even when Straxus offers him either a quick death if he talks, or a slow, agonizing one in the Smelting Pits. Scrounge's friend Blaster finds him in the Pits, melted into little more than his head and torso, but Scrounge clings to life long enough to give him the info he'd learned: Optimus Prime is alive! This news reinvigorates the demoralised Autobot resistance.
-
*Calvin and Hobbes*: When Spaceman Spiff is captured and brought before the ruler of the Zorg aliens, he is offered a "rather painless" death in exchange for a summary of Lewis and Clark's expedition to the Pacific Northwest. The last panel cuts back to reality, where Calvin is refusing to answer a question in class from his teacher, Miss Wormwood.
-
*Dæmorphing*: In *Abel or Cain*, the Animorphs fake Tom's death so he can go live in the woods. They ask his Yeerk to let Tom go free in exchange for a quick death, and he accepts.
- In
*What Tomorrow Brings*, the Animorphs kidnap Temrash-in-Tom and tie him up in the woods. Tobias offers Temrash the choice between a quick death and freedom or a slow and painful one by kandrona starvation; Temrash chooses the former.
-
*Agent Carter*: When Chief Dooley needs to acquire secret information from an incarcerated Nazi a few days away from execution, he offers him a pill and goes into a graphic description of everything that could go wrong with a hanging. Thus, the Nazi spills his secrets in exchange for a speedy death by cyanide. Or so he thinks because shortly after it turns out Dooley just gave him a breath mint.
-
*Better Call Saul*: After Ignacio Varga is revealed as a mole who aided in the (supposed) assassination of Lalo Salamanca, he is captured and brought before The Cartel. Juan Bolsa offers him a "good death" in exchange for naming his co-conspirators, while the remaining Salamancas are aching to gruesomely torture him to death. Ignacio, who was acting under secret orders from Gustavo Fring, sticks to the agreed-upon story of a rival Peruvian cartel paying him off but chooses to go out on his own terms by shooting himself after taking Bolsa hostage.
-
*The Call of Warr*: During his flashback about murdering a soldier, Prince is threatening to make him "last forever" unless he tells him what he wants to know.
*Tell me what I need to know, and this all ends. You get a quiet ending, and I get what I need. Tell me, or I will make you last forever.*
-
*Castle*: While trying to learn the details of who killed Beckett's mother, Ryan and Esposito are taken hostage by a merc who was involved with the Big Bad behind it. He tells them that if they inform him of what the police know about the operation, he'll kill them quickly, a nice, fast headshot. But if they jerk him around, he promises to make them suffer to the point where they'll be begging for death. Ryan and Esposito firmly refuse to cooperate.
**Esposito:** I'm going to have to go with option B. **Ryan:** Yeah, we're definitely going to jerk you around.
-
*Once Upon a Time*: In a flashback scene of "Souls of the Departed", the Evil Queen questions a bunch of villagers about where Snow White is hiding. When one of them claims to know the answer but asks for a reward in return, the Evil Queen starts to telekinetically strangle him and tells him that if he talks she'll reward him by killing him quickly instead of slowly.
-
*Person of Interest*: John Reese, seeking revenge against Dirty Cop Simmons for the murder of Detective Joss Carter, seizes Simmons' boss Alonzo Quinn, the head of crime syndicate HR, from federal custody and demands to know Simmons' location. Quinn refuses to talk, saying HR was built on loyalty, but Reese — a former black ops assassin — tells him he can choose between a quick and painless death or a slow and agonizing one. Quinn promptly folds.
**Reese:** I'm not gonna threaten to kill you. I'm going to kill you... whether you tell me or not. No bargaining. In three minutes... you're dead. I've killed many people. Never bothered me much. That's why I was good at it. I didn't like them suffering, though. Took me years to figure out how to do it quickly, painlessly. But if you don't tell me, I'm gonna forget all of that. Understand? And I'll make the last three minutes of your life last forever.
- Subverted in
*Borderlands 2*. During "The Road to Sanctuary", at one point, Handsome Jack promises to the people of Sanctuary that their deaths will be quick if they turn themselves over... only for the man himself to go back on his promise and reassure the population that their deaths will be painful and he'll enjoy every second of it because he has a little secret.
-
*Halo: Combat Evolved*: Guilty Spark offers the heroes a half-hearted attempt at this, which they don't even bother to think about.
**Guilty Spark:** Why do you continue to fight us, Reclaimer? You cannot win! Give us the construct, and I will endeavor to make your death relatively painless, and— *(Guilty Spark's feed cuts off)*
**Cortana:** At least I still have control over the comm channels.
-
*Heroes of Might and Magic V*: The Demon Knight Agrael is ambushed by a rival demon, Erasial, but manages to defeat him and his army. He then demands to know why Erasial attacked him, offering a choice of a quick death if he complies or a slow painful one at the hands of his assistant, the succubus Biara if he refuses.
-
*Critical Role: Campaign One* has a dark heroic example. After capturing Delilah Briarwood, Percy—whose family was slaughtered by Delilah and her husband Sylas years before—attempts to interrogate her for information on the dark ritual the two were performing beneath Whitestone. Delilah, knowing Percy is going to kill her regardless and no longer valuing her own life after losing her husband, refuses to cooperate. Percy offers her this as an ultimatum: Cooperate, and be killed quickly via a bullet to the head. Refuse, and be tortured into insanity, with the ultimate goal of so thoroughly destroying Delilah's mind and soul that even her final hope of reuniting with Sylas in the afterlife will be made impossible. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainlessDeathForAPrice |
Pain-Powered Leap - TV Tropes
HOT-HOT-HOT-HOT-HOT-HOT-HOOOOOOOOOT!!!!
A common Amusing Injury in cartoons is for a character who receives an injury to the posterior to jump impossibly high into the air, usually accompanied by a drawn-out YEEEEEOOOOOWWWWW! Occasionally happens in live-action wacky comedy as well.
Though it was used in other cartoons,
*Looney Tunes* is the one that most people recognize as the source of the popularity of this trope, as well as the reason that perhaps its most common method of execution is needle pricks to the hindquarters.
A character just jumping away from the source of pain is not this trope - the leap has to be something he or she never could have achieved if not for the painful experience. Also, it doesn't have to involve needles or cactus spines or that sort of thing - it also often coincides with a Rump Roast or a Literal Ass-Kicking, or perhaps a Butt Biter. May cause secondary effects such as Right Out of My Clothes.
Contrast with Surprise Jump and Death Throws.
## Examples:
- In
*Naruto*, Team 7's bell test challenge against Kakashi involved the unveiling of his super secret technique, "One Thousand Years of Death". The move actually isn't what it sounds like - Kakashi simply kanchos Naruto (striking him in the rectum) propelling him several feet away into air (with much hollering from Naruto). It turns out later that the skill has a much more practical application beyond comedy. During his climactic battle with Gaara, Naruto realizes that the technique's goal is to target the blind spot of the user's opponent; Naruto decides to get behind Gaara, substitute exploding tags for his fingers, and Stuff Blowing Up ensues.
- Near the end of the
*Kirby: Right Back at Ya!* episode with the Dedede dolls in it, Tiff buries one of the said Dedede dolls in the ground to prevent it from menacing anyone, since the doll's movements are actually based on King Dedede's own movements. This results in King Dedede nosediving into the ground as well, but then a mole shows up and bites the doll, causing King Dedede to leap back out screaming in pain, and starts menacing other people one last time using the doll as a pawn. Kirby then stops the doll once and for all by swallowing it up, and this causes King Dedede to for some reason get shot up into space and orbit a planet shaped like him.
- In a deleted scene from the (later heavily toned-down) Hot Springs Episode of
*Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann*, Kamina is trying to look into the lady side of the bathhouse through the impossibly tall wall that separates both sides. While he tries to see while riding on Simon's shoulders, he asks Gimmy to "find a hole". Gimmy ends up finding Simon's..." personal hole" and sticks his finger in it, which causes Simon to jump in pain high enough to get a glimpse of the other side. When Kamina finds out what he managed, he asks Gimmy to poke him as well.
- Near the end of
*Jack and the Beanstalk (1974)*, Tulip the giant has caught Jack and prepares to smash him with his fist, at the last second Jack's dog Crosby pulls him out of Tulip's hand and replaces him with a tack, as he brings his fist down on the tack, he slowly reacts to the pain and leaps up into the air and disappears into the sky.
-
*Ultimate Muscle* in an episode when Wally Tusket was reluctant to fight Pumpinator Kid Muscle pokes him in the butt which causes him to leap into the ring.
- Happens occasionally in the
*Dragon Ball* franchise. A few such examples include during the Frieza fight in *Dragon Ball Z*, first when Goku falls into a volcano and burns his butt, and later when Goku bites Frieza's tail when he's trying to strangle him with it.
- Happens to Yuri from
*Dirty Pair* Project Eden when she gets shot in the butt with a laser.
- In Season 2 episode 50 of
*Happy Heroes*, Big M. hires a flying shark to help him in his evil plan. The shark bites him in the behind, causing him to do a cartoonishly exaggerated jump into space and hit a moon with his head, giving him amnesia.
- In
*Calvin and Hobbes*, Calvin does this moments after Hobbes assures him that there isn't a bee about to sting him—it's Opposite Day, and there was one.
- Basically, anytime a bee lands on Calvin's back, this results. There was another time when Hobbes reassured Calvin that a bee didn't land on his back... it was a hornet. Then there was the time Hobbes told Calvin not to imagine the bee very well crawling down his shirt and into his pants, with expected results.
- Hobbes was once on the receiving end of one of these - Calvin told him that a "big hairy caterpillar" was about to bite him, and then stomped on it for him. Given that the "caterpillar" was Hobbes's own tail, of course, the resulting leap isn't quite as extreme as the other examples in the strip.
- Another strip had Calvin jump up screaming in pain after a fish bit him on the bum. It's the page image for the Butt Biter trope.
- Disney Animated Canon: Multiple:
- In
*Beauty and the Beast*, when Lefou had Lumiere cornered and was about to murder him with a torch (due to his head being made of wax). Luckily, Cogsworth successfully comes to Lumieres rescue by sliding down the stair banister and jabs Lefou in the butt with a pair of scissors he was using like a sword, causing this to happen by making Lefou scream while painfully jumping in the air. Less than 20 seconds later, after being rescued by Cogsworth from Lefou, Lumiere rescues Fifi from having her feathers (skirt) plucked apart by one of Gastons four stooges by spewing a blast of fire from the top of his head at Toms butt, causing this to happen again (Tom also gets this abuse by being launched into the air while screaming in extreme pain, just like Lefou), allowing Lumiere to gracefully catch and scoop his cute Fifi, much to their delight.
-
*The Lion King*: Banzai jumps about 30 feet into the air after he is knocked into a bramble thicket by Shenzi and Ed.
- This happens to Captain Hook in
*Peter Pan* when Mr. Smee accidentally lets the water Hook is soaking his feet in get too hot while Hook is unconscious from Smee unwittingly knocking him out earlier and when the crocodile almost bit his left feet, causing him to loose his buckle shoe and long sock, during his battle with the Crocodile in Skull Rock.
- This is a plot point in the animated version of
*The Phantom Tollbooth*. King Azaz is asking if there are any volunteers to help Milo on his quest, and at first no one comes forth. However, the Spelling Bee sneaks up and stings the Humbug in the butt, causing the Humbug to stand up suddenly and making everyone think he was volunteering. Later on, in Milo's car Humbug exhibits a delayed reaction and finally leaps up in the air with a scream (and apparently lands right back in the car).
- In
*Who Framed Roger Rabbit*, Yosemite Sam jumps all the way from Toontown to LA when his butt is lit on fire.
-
*An American Tail: Fievel Goes West*:
- Cat R. Waul jumps straight through the ceiling after Fievel stabs him in the behind with a fork.
- Earlier, Fievel does this as well when he hugs a mirage of his parents, which turns out to be a cactus.
- In
*The Chipmunk Adventure* during the "Wooley Bully" musical number when the Native Chief dances around with torches to the song he accidentally sets his butt on fire, once he realizes he leaps up into the sky howling in pain.
- In
*Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Tiger Prowess*, Weslie and Wolffy are in the temple containing the totem they are looking for and are suddenly surrounded by flames. Weslie jumps up to a pole that is hanging on the ceiling, but Wolffy cannot reach it, so he grabs a cactus and jumps on it to boost the height of his jump.
-
*Officer Buckle And Gloria*: Gloria leaps three feet straight up into the air to illustrate the safety tip to not leave thumbtacks on sitting surfaces.
-
*Super Mario Bros.*:
- In the PC game
*Donald Duck: Goin' Qu@ckers*, Donald does this if he touches lava.
-
*The Legend of Zelda*: Link does this in *The Wind Waker*, *Skyward Sword*, and *A Link Between Worlds* when he lands in lava. In the latter game, he can inflict this on enemies with the Fire Rod.
- In
*Puyo Puyo Sun*, Draco Centauros does this in her ending when she gets sunburned on the rock she's laying on, complete with red-hot skin and her being launched into the air, with her yelling out "YEEEOOOOOOOW!!".
- In
*Battleblock Theater*, this is what happens if you step on lava blocks. Unusually, they don't actually harm you if you do this, and this feature is actually necessary to progress through the levels.
- In
*Mega Man & Bass*, Burner Man has spikes on either side of his room. If pushed in with the Ice Wall, Burner Man will fall in. Pain-Powered Leap ensues, draining even more of his stamina.
- In
*Sid & Al's Incredible Toons*, both Sid and Al will leap really high if they land on the pointy end of a pin.
- In
*Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time*, falling into lava will have Bugs leaping into the air as his carrot health drops.
- In
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time*, a turtle will leap if injured on the foot (such as by floating spikes in the sewer surfing level).
- In the
*Ratchet & Clank*, landing in any dangerous substance will get Ratchet leaping high twice, landing a third time will have him sinking in.
- The Egyptian-themed levels in
*Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped* feature spears erupting from the ground as a recurring trap. If Crash is standing above them at the wrong time, he'll get spiked on the behind and catapult straight up in true cartoon fashion, before nervously clinging to the ceiling. This technically doesn't kill him but is nonetheless counted as a death, sending you to the previous checkpoint.
-
*Shantae: Half-Genie Hero*: Outside of Hardcore Mode, the eponymous young heroine loses some health and bounces back onto stage if she falls off during the Magic Carpet Race, holding on to her hurting butt. Surprisingly enough, while all playable characters leap back onto the stage after falling off, only the female characters grab their butts in pain on the way back up.
- In
*A Hat in Time*, falling into lava, acid or (for some odd reason) the public at the parade, will cause Hat Kid to jump upwards, holding her butt in pain. This can be used to reach a safe platform if you time it right. Some mods even take this into account to make levels where you have to use said leap to reach a higher platform while at the same time having to monitor your remaining health.
-
*Team Fortress 2*: While blast jumping doesn't qualify since the explosion is what propels the character, the Scout's Boston Basher's self-damage when he misses causes the scout to propel himself upward, giving him effectively a potential third or even fourth jump.
-
*Hugo the TV Troll*: While the volcano level of *Hugo: Jungle Fever* has lava constantly rising under the player. If it catches up, Hugo will rocket out of the volcano, resulting in an instant Game Over regardless of extra lives.
-
*Sackboy: A Big Adventure*: Unlike the main *LittleBigPlanet* games, water is a hazard, dealing one hit of damage and bouncing SackBoy upwards.
-
*WarioWare: Touched!* has Wario perform one of these when he gets a toothache from eating too much sweets.
- Player character in
*Pizza Tower* jumps in the air when hit by floor-based environmental hazards such as lava.
- In one episode of
*Big City Greens*, while Beach Bury, Bill is threatened by a crab and when he cries to be let out, the crab buries its way to Bill's butt and pinches him, causing him to break out of the sand.
- Happens to
*Donald Duck* in his shorts with Spike the Bee.
- In "Window Cleaners", Donald gets himself tied up on the platform with his butt sticking out. Donald tries to blow the bee away, but he gets tired out. The bee manages to stick his stinger into Donald's rear, causing him to dive straight into the drainpipe and gets stuck at the bottom.
- In 1949's "Slide Donald Slide" Donald plays baseball and runs around the four bases, but as he slides for home, his butt gets poked by Spike's stinger and he jumps in pain as the radio announcer tells him he's out.
- In "Let's Stick Together", Donald gets angry at Spike the bee's girlfriend and searches for her. Spike then decides to dive right into his rear, causing Donald to literally jump out of the greenhouse screaming in pain.
- A common gag in
*Looney Tunes* cartoons. For example:
- In "To Beep or Not to Beep", the Road Runner's speed burst causes telephone poles and cactus plants beside the road to be uprooted and causes a bridge to contract just after he passes over it. When Wile E. falls through where said bridge used to be, one of the cacti falls as well. The standard top-down view of Wile E. falling is reversed with Wile E. coming back up all the way back up to the top of the cliff howling in pain.
- In "Tired and Feathered," the Coyote attaches a motor and propeller to his back to fly, but the propeller chops his tail and causes him to jump out of the shot.
- "Highway Runnery" has him standing behind a cactus as he prepares to dash off. Bonus: we get to hear a real coyote yowl.
- In yet another Wile E. cartoon, "Soup or Sonic", Wile E. sticks a firecracker into the center hole of a Frisbee (from the Freleng Manufacturing Co.) and throws it at his prey, but the firecracker drops out of the hole before he does so. The Coyote is left dazed after the inevitable explosion, but apparently unhurt. Wile E. then walks away; unfortunately for him, his tail is on fire. Only when he passes the horizon does he leap up with a yelp of pain.
- Daffy Duck as The Scarlet Pumpernickel scales a high wall by pinching himself with a needle in the butt.
- In the Looney Tunes short "A Tale Of Two Kitties", Babbitt gets his partner Catstello up a ladder by pricking him in the butt with a needle.
- "Napoleon Bunny-Parte" has a number of these. One such example is on the bannister Bugs slides down with Nappy in hot pursuit.
- Tweety And Sylvester? Try "Tweet Tweet Tweety."
- In "Hare Splitter" Bugs launches romantic rival Casbah a couple of times, first with a mousetrap to the fingers, then a well-aimed arrow to the butt.
- On the
*Andy Panda* cartoon "Fish Fry", a fish bites a cat on the finger, who reacts by jumping up hundreds of feet in the air.
- In
*Red Hot Riding Hood*, Wolfie sticks Grandma in the butt with a needle and she jumps through the roof of her penthouse, leaving an Impact Silhouette behind. The jab is implied; you just see Wolfie holding the needle and then it cuts straight to the jump.
- Many was the time in
*Tom and Jerry* when Tom would get his butt pricked with a pin by Jerry or have something heavy fall on his tail, always resulting in one of two hilarious Stock Screams.
- Happened in an episode of
*Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats* when Heathcliff jumps on a potted cactus placed by some mice. After he leaps off, the mice shove another cactus underneath where he lands, causing him the jump off again.
- In the
*What A Cartoon* short *Longhair and Dumbledome*, the latter falls off a cliff, and out of sight. He then promptly jumps *aaaaall* the way back up, and attributes the sudden burst of strength to a cactus that he landed on.
-
*Larry & Steve* (the short that eventually became *Family Guy*), this happens to Steve after sitting on his new bed; amusingly, not once does he yell in pain.
**Steve (after watching the TV and lamp break):** Well, at least the bed's okay
.
(spring pops out of the bed)
**Steve (calmly):**
Larry, we, uh, need to address this problem.
- Subverted in
*Adventure Time* in the episode "Up a Tree." The porcupine invokes this trope for Finn as a way of trying to get the latter's frisbee from the former's tree, but Finn doesn't think that would actually work. The porcupine does it anyway and fails, but it *does* provide Finn with convenient climbing tools in the form of the porcupine's spines.
-
*Mr. Bogus*:
- The second act of the episode "Bogus to the Rescue" combined this with an inversion of Agony of the Feet, when Bogus gets his foot smashed by a mallet that pops out from the back of a toy train.
- Bogus does this again near the end of the episode "Waterboy Bogus", due to the pain of getting his fingers smashed by the treasure chest lid, when Ratty closes up the treasure chest.
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*: In "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?", while combing her fur, Rarity accidentally stings Opalescence with the comb, making the kitty cat jump almost to the ceiling.
- In the
*3-2-1 Penguins!* episode "Practical Hoax", Midgel lets out a yelp of pain and leaps into the air the minute he fell for the old thumbtack on the chair prank.
-
*Kaeloo*: In "Let's Play Figurines", Mr. Cat does this after ||Stumpy uses a sharp object to poke a voodoo doll of him.||
-
*Samurai Jack*: In "Jack, the Woolies, and the Chritchellites", Jack deliberately invokes this trope to get the Woolie he's trying to free from slavery to jump to the top of the tower where the Magitek that controls the Woolies is so Jack can destroy it. The Woolie claimed he was too weak to make the climb after his mistreatment, at which point Jack cringes apologetically before poking the Woolie's haunch with his katana.
- In the 1962
*Noveltoons* short "The Sheepish Wolf", a wolf tries to pass himself off as a sheepdog and prepares a stewpot to cook sheep in. When the shepherd catches him in the act, the wolf claims that he's actually fixing up a bath for himself, so the shepherd decides to light a fire to warm up the water, causing the wolf to get Stewed Alive and blast off into the air. As the shepherd tries to shoot at the mid-air wolf, he says to the audience "The best way is to get them on the rise."
- '"SpongeBob SquarePants'': When it is Squidward's turn to get stung by a jellyfish in "Cephalopod Lodge", he ends up screaming in pain and leaping so high he can be seen from outside Jellyfish Fields.
- Some of the humor of medical students and professionals references this trope. The "ceiling sign" and "chandelier sign" are what you see when you poke a patient where it hurts and suddenly need to patch your ceiling or rehang a chandelier afterward.
- This is the source of the myth behind "jumping" cacti.
When the victim comes to earth, he may be some distance from the offending plant... and, invariably, he will swear that the piece sticking to him JUMPED across the intervening space to make the attack.
*What Kinda Cactus Izzat?*: | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainPoweredLeap |
Padding - TV Tropes
Captivating your audience, now with 20% more idle time.
*"Oh! We'll make you a movie *
That's long and immense,
Way-hey! Slow the plot down.
Just give us a script
That makes no friggin' sense —
We'll try so hard to slow the plot down!"
Padding is a moment in a story that could have easily been removed from the plot without affecting the story significantly.
Most works have to employ some level of this to get to the desired length/running time, but are usually either subtle about it or manage to make the padding itself enjoyable. In other cases, these scenes distract from the plot advancement, tainting the viewing experience for the viewer and leaving them annoyed as a result.
This is more easily identifiable in television shows than films, as those techniques are influenced by having to hit a specific runtime threshold that can be aired in a defined timeslot. This sometimes involves the use of Stock Footage, which allows the producers to pad multiple episodes with a scene they only have to pay to shoot once. In anime this can be easily identified in works adapted from a manga: if a scene wasn't in the original work, it's almost certainly padding. Shonen works especially like to extend existing fight sequences, or add entirely new ones with moves only used in that scene (which don't affect the outcome of the fight, of course, they have a manga to follow!). Digital-only shows such as
*Orange Is the New Black*, *The Boys (2019)* and *The Mandalorian* don't have to adhere to this threshold as much, so they can be as long as they want to be; Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ don't really care about per-episode runtime, and so these shows largely escape the issue.
In film, due to the time constraints of the medium, this can often be entirely a matter of opinion, rather than any obvious pattern to follow. For instance, many people wonder why the movie
*Fargo* wasted time showing the detective's husband fixing her breakfast when there was a compelling Reverse Whodunnit in the works, whereas the movie's most ardent fans feel that such scenes were the whole point. Padding is also easier to get away with in comedic works, where one can get away with adding extra, unnecessary scenes as long as they're funny enough. The Overly-Long Gag trope is frequently used as this, with an oft-referenced example being the rake scene in *The Simpsons*.
All the same, there are some unquestionable and painful moments of padding in films, especially from the 1950s. Roger Corman and Bert I. Gordon are often considered the kings of padding (both have even been credited with
*inventing* the device, though such claims are apocryphal), inserting gratuitous scenes of mountain climbing or characters stumbling around in the dark in order to pad a film to feature-length. They were not even above simply doubling individual frames to add a few extra seconds. *Mystery Science Theater 3000* treated this sort of time-filler as *the* most painful thing a movie could do (it was presented under the name "Deep Hurting" in *Hercules Against the Moon Men*, thanks to its drawn-out sandstorm sequence).
In comics, arcs that could be easily three or four issues long are usually padded out for the inevitable trade paperback collection. Usually, the default arc length is six issues, as that results in a $20 trade (the typical rate for such a book). This happens at both Marvel and DC, though the former was so notorious for it that it drove writers away from the company.
Games often send you on long fetch quests, sidequests, or just running back and forth and not progressing the story. This is commonly seen in Roleplaying Games and the more expansive of Action-Adventure games; although a lot of the content that is considered "padding" is optional, meaning unless a player is going for 100% Completion, the "padding" can be avoided. Forced Level-Grinding, however, isn't. For a First-Person Shooter game, you'll be required to go back and forth or repeat the same levels over and over again, without Chaos Architecture making it seem different or at least getting to go to new areas. In an adventure game, which naturally is much shorter than the average Roleplaying Game or most First-Person Shooter games (especially if you know what to do), they will pad it by making you go back and forth or making an overly-long puzzle or dialogue branch.
Other examples would include Pixel Hunting or sending you on a long series of errands/puzzles that merely give you one item to progress the story. And if they can't think of a way to do even that, they just might cause enemies to regenerate (in a first-person shooter) or keep endlessly entering the frame as clones of themselves (in a side-scroller) so that you have to eat up time just killing people!
Padding is often frequently present in music, too. It can range from parts without the main melody or sudden stop periods. Examples are quite subjective.
Compare with Filler, which is when whole episodes/issues/whatever else in a continuity-based serial applies this principle, rather than just individual scenes. See also Engaging Chevrons, Inaction Sequence, Leave the Camera Running, Overly-Long Gag, Purple Prose, Arc Fatigue.
Should not be confused with Padded Sumo Gameplay, but the video game version of Padding is Fake Longevity.
## Styles of padding:
- Montages can, ironically, be used to achieve this quite easily. Even though montages are designed to compress time, you can always reduce the compression an arbitrary amount, making the montage expand to fit whatever time it needs. Most of the time the viewers won't even realize that this compressed-time sequence is actually
*wasting* time. An A-Team Montage or Avengers Assemble is particularly likely to fall victim to this, since they often show *every* character, even if some of them don't have major roles in this episode (filling time and Mandatory Line requirements in one fell swoop).
- When done wrong, Contemplate Our Navels (and its logical extreme, Going Cosmic) is basically padding to make an episode last longer.
- Clips from the next episode.
- What's coming up later in
*this* episode.
- The host delivering inane jokes to camera.
- Exposition.
- Stock Footage.
- Engaging Chevrons.
- Purple Prose (common in writing).
- Viewers Are Goldfish: Hey, let's recap what you just saw 10 minutes ago.
- Commenting on the fight. (Fast-moving ninjas use up the animation budget, but slow-moving ninjas who stop to explain what they would be doing if they weren't standing there explaining what they're doing, or how the other side has no chance to win, or cutting away to some guys going "this is a really dangerous situation I hope the hero can win!" will help make that 2-minute fight last several episodes. Popular in anime, so they don't overtake the manga.)
- Fetch Quests (mostly for video games, although sending heroes on pointless tasks can actually explain
*why* they're going places that are out of their way).
- Continuity Porn
- Adding simulated sex scenes and nudity sequences for fanservice which don't advance the plot; if the characters are minor characters or extras, this is even more likely to be padding.
-
*Actual* porn (in an erotic thriller, or for that matter any film with an "adult" actor in a prominent role that isn't afraid of getting slapped with an "R" rating)
- A Big-Lipped Alligator Moment
- A Crowd Song, Villain Song, "I Want" Song, "I Am" Song, etc. in the middle of a story that doesn't have to be (and probably was originally not) a musical.
- An Overly-Long Gag of any kind.
- A Romantic Plot Tumor
- If the heroes have been captured, have them escape and get recaptured. Lots of action, no plot advancement. (
*Doctor Who* was infamous for this back in the day of four-part serials.)
- The Item Number or some other type of Dancing Bear.
- Album Filler
- Violating the Unspoken Plan Guarantee (characters shown executing a plan? Just add a scene earlier where they explain the plan to each other first!)
- An Out-of-Genre Experience.
- Scenery Porn
- A Framing Device
- A Clip Show
- A Recap of a previous episode, season, or arc.
- In video games, showing shots that require little processing power to disguise the system loading the next area without showing a loading screen.
## Example subpages:
<!—index—>
<!—/index—>
## Other examples:
- An unusual example comes from a car commercial, where two men are standing next to each other, staring at the car. One says "call her," the commercial then pauses in silence for a full three seconds, before he replies with "OK," and the commercial continues as normal.
-
*Simple Samosa* has its theme song written into a few episodes rather than played before the proper episode, since it uses an Extremely Short Intro Sequence. In some cases, they use the theme song to pad out the runtime of the episode, such as with the episodes "Comic Book" and "Kheer" which both play the full song at the end. If you're wondering, the full theme song is about two minutes and 30 seconds long.
- Jeff Dunham has a tendency to do this. In one show, Achmed spent like half an hour making gay jokes to the Guitar Guy before singing a song, and it took about
*as long* to get Peanut to read a letter. If you were to take a drink every time Peanut repeated the "Taste of-a-China" joke, you'd be dead drunk before the end of the routine. It's one thing if you're trying to build up the joke so it'll be funny, but when you've repeated the *same joke* multiple times, it stops being funny and is more annoying.
- Stewart Lee, to the aggravation of many, loves Overly Long Gags; so it's not unusual for him to spend 10 minutes on a subject and in one of his live shows he stood onstage for five minutes doing nothing but wearing one of his daughter's toys as a hat.
-
*All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder* suffers from this. One critic noted the book felt like Miller was spreading 4 issues of story across 20. To put it in perspective, Batman meets Dick Grayson in Issue 1. They arrive at the Batcave in Issue 4. The time in between (the entirety of Issues 2 and 3) is focused on either inner monologue which repeats itself or scenes focusing on other characters (despite this being a book about Batman and Robin). Black Canary's introductory scene takes up half of Issue 3, but all that happens is her getting harassed and her beating up a room full of people.
-
*Cerebus the Aardvark* is the longest work by a single artist in Western literature. Its creator, Dave Sim, set out to write the "longest sustained narrative in human history". In the end, it amounted to a massive 300-issue saga. Unfortunately, Sim only had plot for 200 issues.
- A huge amount of
*Countdown to Final Crisis* is this, with each issue jammed with snippets of several different storylines spread across the entire DC universe introducing plot points that are forgotten three issues later, with special mention to everything having to do with the Monitors. Also, many of the events happening in Countdown were completely unrelated to the series' plot lines themselves, and were instead random intersections with all the other stuff happening in the DC universe at the same time, reducing the event to a series of advertisements for plots in dozens of other comic titles.
- More than half of
*Holy Terror* is splash pages. Because of this, the pacing is so slow that the plot starts moving during the last third. To prove this, on page 93 The Fixer says the attack is still beginning.
- Averted in
*Nextwave*, which was based on the idea "if it doesn't fit in two explosion-heavy books, or it's sane, don't do it."
-
*Spider-Man* comics back in the mid-'90s were really bad at this. Among those were *Maximum Carnage* (which was 14 parts, compared to the 3 parts the creature's first appearance took) and *The Clone Saga*, which was meant to last 6 months and lasted *two years*. *Clone Saga*'s problem was due to Executive Meddling — the Marketing Department noticed how fans were gobbling up the stories and demanded more.
- Quite egregiously in old German translations of
*Spirou and Fantasio*. Since the editors had decided to use a 3x3 panel layout instead of the original 2x3 one, every row had to be expanded by 50%. And how were the additional 50% filled? With random stuff, most often by adding panels of their squirrel commenting on the scene, but sometimes by expanding the drawings (by someone who was very obviously not Franquin).
- The
*Future Shock* and *Terror Tales* strips in *2000 AD* are self-contained, one-shot strips inserted primarily to take up space when a regular strip ends before another is ready. They are often used to give unknown writers and artists a trial run without risking harm to established stories, and indeed such well-known writers as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison got started with *Future Shocks*. While recognizing the device, fans generally don't mind, as the stories are often entertaining in their own right, and there's something to be said for a strip you can enjoy without having to worry about continuity.
- Virtually anything written by Brian Michael Bendis prior to 2003. The concept of his breakthrough work
*Ultimate Spider-Man* was taking a story that Stan Lee told in 4 pages and turning it into a 6-issue arc. Naturalistic/Mamet-esque dialogue tics account for 40% of this.
- For much of
*Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics)* early run the backup stories would frequently be complete filler clearly only present to pad out issues. Frequently they would be totally disconnected from the current plot lines, consisted mainly of lame jokes, and were rarely, if ever, mentioned again. It wasn't until later on (around the "Endgame" arc onwards) that backup stories started getting consistently used for actually plot-relevant events.
-
*Superman*:
-
*Two for the Death of One* is an eight-issue-long storyline. Four of those issues have Superman fight villains unrelated to his plight, as well as cross over with the *Omega Men* and the *Teen Titans*, and do little to push the main plot forward. Most of it could be cut to fit the few relevant scenes in the remaining issues. It may come across as Marv Wolfman using Superman as a self-promoting vehicle since the Omega Men are his own creations and he was writing *New Teen Titans* back then.
-
*The Leper from Krypton*: Most of issue #365 could have been cut off without detriment to the story because, except for the first and last pages, it is largely a flashback chapter where Superman lies in his rocket as his life flashes before his eyes.
-
*Gasoline Alley* is guilty of often stretching storylines out much longer than necessary. The most notorious is a story about Skeezix returning a faulty DVD player that lasted for about three weeks.
-
*Garfield*: The Sunday comics, are sometimes guilty of this, featuring a gag that could just as easily be done in the usual 3 panels, with everything else just being there to stretch it out to 6 - 7 panels (this one being an example).
-
*Herb and Jamaal* is very guilty of this. Most strips consist of one joke needlessly stretched out over 2-3 panels with gratuitous ellipsis.
-
*Luann* dedicated a full 3 weeks to a story about Mr Fogarty retiring, though he's a minor character at best. Included in the strips were links to old "Fogarty Flashbacks" and old panels that had the unintentional effect of showing exactly how one-note he was (though the author has stated Fogarty was his personal favorite and was his first choice as main character of a comic strip). Contrast that with the 2 weeks given to Luann's prom.
- Done well by Peter O'Donnell in
*Modesty Blaise*. One newspaper he wrote for was published five days a week, the other six days a week. Therefore every sixth strip is padding, irrelevant to the main plot, but adding seamlessly to the story. Also when one newspaper was on strike he had to write a whole short story to publish in the non-striking newspapers, before getting back to the original story.
-
*9 Chickweed Lane:* The 2013-2015 Normandy flashback had a *lot* of "Bill and Martine wander the countryside, run into some of Those Wacky Nazis and kill them, then have sex and wander some more" scenes, repeated over and over again. This took place for months on end, with the characters getting no closer to reaching their destination.
- The ending musical number of
*Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation* lasts for six minutes, and has nothing to do with the plot.
- The Hungarian animated movie
*Cat City* has an expository Music Video (3 and a half minutes), a mouse performing a trumpet solo (3 minutes, though this one at least impacts the story), a cat lady singing (1 minute 40 seconds), and characters engaging in the mundane acts of walking slowly, sitting into cars and driving off, reading and turning pages, as well as stretching out almost every conversation to its maximum length, and making long, seemingly plot-relevant buildups to relatively weak throwaway gags or other kinds of disappointing payoffs. And though most of the film plays out at this excruciatingly slow, sleepy pace, the ending still feels downplayed and rushed. However, a lot of fans do consider the musical bits the movie's high points.
-
*Gummibär: The Yummy Gummy Search for Santa* contains many unnecessary scenes that could easily be cut and the plot would remain the same, like Gummy's Dream Intro, the scene where Gummy takes the elves for a ride, and the scene where Gummy and Santa are trying to catch a fish.
-
*The Lion King (2019)* is 30 minutes longer than the original. Given the story is downright the same, with few additions (many of which try to fix logic gaps the first movie had), this is accomplished by either doing extended pans of the beautifully rendered scenery or downright adding extraneous content to some scenes - the first scene after the title, where Scar gets a mouse in his den, is now preceded by the rodent wandering around the Pride Lands for some minutes; and Rafiki now discovers Simba is alive by finding a piece of his mane... whose "journey" to the mandrill is basically done in real time (the scene is so long it even cuts to black at one point).
- You could cut out 50% of
*Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa*, a 40-minute special, and still be left with the basic plot, which is about 10 minutes long.
- MAD parodied this with "Padded Magazine Articles", such as "Growing Prize-Winning Roses:"
*Albert J. Sorenson of Hamhank, Mich. is a very, very, very, very fine rose grower. He has won many, many, many, many prizes for his extremely lovely and beautiful blossoms including first prize in his division in the Wayne Country Fair, which is held annually each year in June near Detroit a large city in Michigan which is the best known for the manufacture of automobiles but also has other industries.*
- Wrestling is known for several hour-long shows that are more full of backstage sequences and storylines than matches. It is also common to pad shows out with references to upcoming matches and replay cameras. Usually these are done to advertise for bigger, more important shows like pay-per-views but on pay-per-views they have been known to have bands perform live as well. The complete absurdity of doing this sort of thing is part of the reason why WCW went down.
- There are times when even the matches will contain some padding. If a show is "running short," the wrestlers up next may be asked to drag out their match a little bit in order to cover more time. Additionally, in particularly long matches or matches where one/both of the wrestlers doesn't have the best stamina, the match will be padded with a lot of "rest holds" or instances where both men are knocked down so they can catch their breath. Given that it's supposed to be wrestling and submissions are a legit way to win, holds
*are* to be expected but when something fans don't perceive as painful or useful for pinning the opponent is used several times or for extending periods, complaints of "rest holds" may come up. When pro wrestling was a sport without predetermined endings, this was known as "stalling" and was akin to "clinching" in boxing.
- WWE has a habit of using their B shows to play recaps of the A show (RAW). Sometimes this just amounts to a minute's worth of highlights with new commentary but other times they will repeat entire matches or long segments consisting of nothing but talking. Occasionally they don't even try and they just stick in a random 'from the vault' match from years earlier. The less important shows leading up to a major event like Wrestlemania can end up as almost 100% padding.
- RAW has become a tragic victim of padding as well, ever since it was extended to three bloody hours. It has gotten to the point where they are "recapping" things that happened within the last 15 minutes, to say nothing of all the time wasting video packages masturbating themselves over their charitable works, video packages of former wrestlers, and segments featuring non-wrestling celebrities, or worse, Hulk Hogan, that add exactly zero to the show or entertainment value.
- At the time of its inception, Ring of Honor videos and DVDs were praised for trimming parts of the promos, brawls, entrances, and everything else that weren't wrestling matches. When ROH started doing Internet Pay Per View, Ring Of Honor was criticized for going too long with intermissions. The intermission's purpose, ironically, was to give the live audience time to catch their breath, use the bathroom, and or buy merchandise, more so than for stretching out the length of the show for the sake of it.
- Concerts or other musical acts are often inserted into live PPVs that are commercial-free. Those who aren't fans of the artist performing usually use this as a chance to take a bathroom break or go to the concession stand.
- Sable was not a trained wrestler, but placed in matches because of her popularity with fans. When she was playing a face, they could cover for her inexperience by having the heel dominate her and protect her while she hit only a few moves she'd learned off. When she was a heel on the other hand, and would therefore have to control a match before the face's comeback, she'd insert a lot of taunting and preening around the ring to draw heel heat. Maryse would do a similar thing during her 2009 reign as Divas' Champion, where she was competing with a knee injury and had to be protected until she could drop the belt.
-
*American Country Countdown*: Similar to *AT40*, except that the host rarely if ever gave an end-of-hour recap, instead relying on "extras" to pad things out. The show has its own version of the Long Distance Dedication and uses other features such as a top 3 listing of Mediabase's country downloads chart and the "Live Like You Were Dying" segment (where a listener shares his inspirational/beating the odds story).
-
*American Top 40*: In the early years when there was some time remaining at the end of an hour, Casey Kasem would either recap the previous hour (for instance, list which songs were new or which songs had fallen from the top 40) and/or preview the next hour. This was done to even out the number of chart songs per hour (13 to no more than 15 songs that were currently in the top 40 in a given hour) but — in the early years — to avoid having to cut songs unusually short or to cover up the fact that there wasn't enough "stretch stories" about some of the songs in the just-completed hour.
- In later years, the padding amounted to playing the album version of a currently charting song.
- Throughout the run, first in the early years and again once the show expanded to four hours, "extras" — songs not currently in the countdown (often but not always oldies), but always at least having an interesting fact to them — were played to stretch things out. The most famous "extras" were the Long Distance Dedications, of which two were played per show.
-
*The Goon Show* would occasionally make jokes about stuff being put in to make up the time. Minutes of footsteps or other mundane actions were very common. Especially Henry Crun and Minnie Bannister were used for this purpose, talking in circles between themselves for long stretches of time, usually, by the end of the conversation, several minutes later, being back at the exact point where they started, at which point the story continues. On occasion, one or the other would note that a man named Spike Milligan paid them to waste time here.
- One thing that cannot be blamed on padding, is the two musical interludes each episode, even if there was no dramatic need to have the musical interludes, although Ray Ellington and Max Geldray are good enough that it's not really a cause for complaint. They didn't really have a choice. BBC sketch shows were usually required to feature musical numbers, especially since they had to have an orchestra there to play the incidental music. Though with the amount of padding even with the two musical acts, Milligan probably thanked his lucky stars that he didn't have to try and fill out another 5-8 minutes every show.
-
*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978)* contains a lot of this due to its Writing by the Seat of Your Pants nature, especially towards the end of the Secondary Phase where the story pretty much derails into Random Events Plot as a result. For instance, the "'Hey, Roosta, I've Just Had This Really Hoopy Idea' Incident" sequence, in which Zaphod escapes the Frogstar Fighter taking him to the Total Perspective Vortex by going to a horrible robot discothéque, but it all turns out to be a mindgame his captors are playing with him and he ends up stuck on the ship where he started, is classic 'the characters attempt to escape but get captured again' move, especially since (due to Anachronic Order) we already know Zaphod ended up in the Total Perspective Vortex and somehow survived with his mind intact, a much more pressing concern. There's also the sequence where Zaphod calls a seance to fend off a missile, which is a borderline Big-Lipped Alligator Moment (not to mention an Out-of-Genre Experience from science fiction parody to horror parody). Then there's the Cutaway Gags with the Book Wiki Walking around the events to provide useless anecdotes, such as the scene with Veet Voojagig and his biro planet. Of course, because the series runs on Rule of Funny, and these sequences definitely are, most fans forgive them.
- Copious padding is pretty much the only way to hold on to the subject in
*Just a Minute*. Contestants will also tend to say any old rubbish to pad out the time if there's a second or two to go since the clock is sure to save them before anyone can make a challenge for deviation.
- In the era where virtually every radio station had network news at the top of the hour and was available only by live feed many stations used instrumental songs to fill time remaining between the end of the last song and when the network news began. Stations often had a library of a few dozen generic-sounding records (although some weren't generic but became hits in their own right), each sounding somewhat like the genre they played. These were used to fill out the remaining hour, often if there wasn't a current song or recurrent that was short enough to fit the remaining time without cutting it off early. The jockey sometimes read announcements or previewed the next hour, but if he chose not to talk, the song would allow the jockey to avoid broadcasting "dead air" (silence).
- Pretty similar to how the tune
*Sailing By* is used prior to the late-night shipping forecast on BBC Radio 4, which starts at 12:48am precisely. The unusual thing being that Radio 4 is a speech station, so it serves more as a function of continuity and as a tuning signal. (It's also pretty much an institution.)
- In
*You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown*, the class is assigned a book report on *Peter Rabbit* — which must be 100 words in length. Lucy's final sentence of her book report, and the final words of the associated song, reads, "'And they were very very very very very very happy to be home. The End' ... 95 ... 96 ... 97 ... 98 ... 99 ... 100 <whew>!" This is on top of other sentences in her report listing the exact vegetables found in Farmer Brown's garden.
-
*Macbeth* has a scene where a porter gets woken up by knocking at the gate and goes to answer, taking his own sweet time about it and sort of drunkenly narrating his actions. This is smack dab in the middle of one of the play's more suspenseful moments. There is much debate about whether this scene was a deliberate attempt to increase tension by putting off the discovery of the king's death and forcing the audience to watch this rather jarring comedy bit, or whether it's just padding put in so the theater's resident comedian can have a part worthy of his talents.
- French "grand operas" of the 19th century contain elaborate ballet sequences that usually have nothing to do with the plot.
*Die Fledermaus* also originally threw a ballet into the middle of its second act, but modern performances frequently replace it with cast members singing whichever arias they like.
- Most ballets have
*divertissements* which are extended dance sequences, usually featuring the entire company, after the plot of the actual ballet has been resolved.
- Older musicals typically would have several short scenes played in front of the curtain (typically a traveler curtain depicting a corridor or street between somewhere and somewhere else) so that the main sets could be changed efficiently. These scenes contained many plot-irrelevant comic relief opportunities for secondary characters or star comics (e.g. the "you're Chandler and I'm Spaulding" scene in
*Animal Crackers*).
- It probably reflects both improvements in stage technology and Oscar Hammerstein's more mature sense of pacing that the 1946 revival of
*Show Boat* eliminated the waterfront gambling saloon and Sherman House lobby scenes and heavily rewrote the scene showing Joe and Queenie after the Time Skip. All these were originally played in front of the curtain.
-
*Kiss Me, Kate* arguably parodies this when the two mobsters are trapped outside the curtain, unable to get back in, and are forced to improvise a song on how William Shakespeare is useful for seducin' the ladies - "Brush Up Your Shakespeare," which is probably the most famous song in the show.
- Similar comic relief episodes happen during scenery change in Pantomime. Usually involves a lot of audience participation. The one immediately before the finale often has the audience being split into teams and competing against the others for who can sing a song better.
- J.M. Barrie invented several front-cloth scenes to allow for set changes in his various rewrites of the play
*Peter Pan*: for example, a scene of Hook impersonating various actors and a scene after the final pirate battle in which Starkey and Smee are shown to have survived. Notably, the "Mermaid's Lagoon" segment was conceived as a similar transition scene but turned into a major plot point explaining why Tiger Lily becomes Peter's ally. (In earlier versions, Tiger Lily sides with Peter because she and her braves like to listen in on Wendy's stories.)
-
*Paint Your Wagon* filled up a lot of time with its Agnes de Mille ballets, but it also had a scene in the first act in front of Rumson's cabin which didn't even have a song cue but merely reiterated plot points established in other scenes.
- In
*Of Thee I Sing*, the even-numbered scenes of the second act are set in corridors in the Capitol and White House. A few minor points get buried in a lot of gossip and no musical numbers.
-
*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory* is a modern example — in the original West End production, each major room sequence was preceded by a front-of-curtain scene. The first doubled as the Act Two opener as Mr. Wonka formally greets each of the guests with the song "Strike That! Reverse It!", while the other four were shorter, song-free stretches all based around them proceeding from one room to another in various fashions (bucket-and-pulley elevator, boat ride, etc.). In the third front-of-curtain scene, Mr. Wonka leads the guests down a lengthy set of corridors to reach a room that's *right next to* the one they just left. Granted, *very* similar padding appears in the original novel (see Literature above). The Broadway/touring Retool actually made matters *worse* in this regard because 1) the sets are not nearly as elaborate, 2) the third transitional scene involving a maze Visible to Believers stretches on for a good **five minutes** and turns out to be something of a shaggy dog story when Grandpa Joe can't get through the exit door and everybody has to make their way back to where they started, and 3) one new song, "When Willy Met Oompa", is just a Backstory number that sublimates the plot-important transformation and demise of Violet Beauregarde (in the London version, "Juicy!", which foregrounded said disaster, had this spot).
-
*William Country* is pretty bad with this. Not only does it have *two* opening sequences (which state the exact same thing), and not only does the actual beginning feature a long bus ride of the campers getting to their site, but there are moments that are almost unnecessary to the plot. Like the strange "lives" system when Cody and Owen have been killed. Or a random cutaway to a *Guitar Hero* mock-up. Next to nothing happens in the challenges either. In fact, if you get rid of the details that don't really fit with the plot, you'll be able to make a summary a few sentences long out of what is a 90-minute Fan Film.
- The "yellow musk creeper" storyline from
*Goblins* didn't really accomplish anything except getting the heroes to second level.
-
*Looking for Group* is cutting down on the number of panels per page and including more overly long gags, with some pointless splash pages. Sohmer says one of his favourite book series is The Wheel of Time, so maybe being worried this will increase is a good thing.
-
*The Mansion of E* spends a lot of time exploring distant parts of the eponymous structure and its environs when it could be advancing the plot.
-
*Misfile* is getting better about this, but for a while there was an abundance of establishing panels for scenes that would last for two or three pages, to the point where some pages were just sky shots, leading to jokes in the forums about the sky being a main character.
-
*8-Bit Theater* has a lot of this. First, there are episodes with practically only dialogues (but being an RPG spoof, people talking too much was obligatory). Then, the webcomic is running since 2001, has over 1000 episodes, and only now is reaching the end of *Final Fantasy*, due to all the Padding (which included storylines not in the game and with no plot relevance). Fortunately, the padding is usually funny enough that it's not a problem.
- Spoofed in the All Just a Dream fake ending: "That dream was like 80% filler."
- The finale reveals that ||all of the comic from after the battle with the lich until Chaos shows up was essentially padding, just the characters going on pointless quests that in the end had no effect on the plot.||
- Scott McCloud demonstrates it in his story about Carl. How many panels do you need to tell the story of Carl who is warned by his mother not to drink while driving, still does it, and dies? Decide for yourself here. Subverted by the "Choose Your Own Adventure" version: ||many of his deaths have nothing to do with driving||, which makes those storylines not padding.
- Parodied in the Gofotron battle scene in
*Sluggy Freelance*. The page is several dozen panels long, but there are only 12 unique frames. Appropriate for an anime parody.
- The National Novel Writer Month arc of
*Helpdesk* had the guy trying to write a 40,000-word short story in 30 days catch up after falling behind schedule by adding a time loop to the story, which basically meant that he copy-pasted the same chapter into his story five times. And after his story with a Downer Ending was complete, he discovered that he only wrote 39,994 words, so he added "And they lived happily ever after" to the ending. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Padding |
Troper Types / Just For Fun - TV Tropes
Here we are, on the vast, bountiful plains of the TV Tropes wiki. Herds of tropers graze serenely on the Savannah of New Edits, while somewhere further south, in the rainforest jungles of the Trope Repair Shop, the shrill vocalisations of their fellows echo through the trees as they try to reach a consensus on a rename.
This is a fragile ecosystem, each species supporting the lush landscape of the wiki in its own special way. Each variety of troper has evolved to fill a particular niche, just as the finches of the Galapagos islands did. Some tropers form alliances and strive to make their habitat a utopia of literary and pop cultural knowledge. Others meander placidly around the wiki, neither contributing nor doing any harm. And, as with any species, some varieties of troper just have to discover how annoying you can be before mods with big sticks kick you off the wiki.
For further listings of species found across the oceans of the interweb, please peruse our Forum Speak page.
**This page is Just for Fun! Absolutely no flaming or naming of specific tropers!** If you want to 'fess up to being one of these, put it on your own page.
## The Main Branches of the Species
The mainstay of this multi-faceted terrain, the main contributors create, nurture and trim back tropes. Most engage in elaborate social rituals known as "discussion" and "forum posting," although some quieter members of the group prefer to restrict these rituals to the Trope Launch Pad.
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**Troper Policeman**:
- Habitat: Omnipresent, often the Recent Discussions list.
- Function: Making sure nobody kills one another. Mediates in disputes and/or puts their foot down to end them. May ban or discipline other types, and normally has an important, if not deciding, say in any discussions. Edits are fairly rare, and usually a result of discussion in the forums or the Trope Repair Shop. Seldom seen, rather rare, always nearby.
- Favourite Tropes: The ones that don't cause flame wars.
- Natural Enemies: The more negative troper types. This is invariably a one-sided battle, as
*Troperus Administerius* and *Troperus Mod* sit securely at the top of the Wiki food chain.
-
**Trope Creator**:
- Habitat: TLP and "Edit Page".
- Function: Writing tropes. Spends a lot of time debating in TLP before toddling off to put their discussions into action via the Launch button. Generally not detail oriented, more interested in new ideas - their spelling and grammar may suffer for this cavalier approach. May "babysit" their own tropes, keeping an eye on them via their Watchlist, chasing off trolls and occasionally doing cleanup (though not on the same scale as an Editor). If they're in the Repair Shop, they're normally rewriting, discussing or defending their "own" tropes with/from a Repairman.
- Favourite tropes: Creator tropes and their own "babies"
- Natural Enemies: The Cutlister. May occasionally butt heads with Repairmen. Should a Wiki Vandal or Troll appear on one of a Creator's tropes, they will attack with all the fury of a mother elephant defending her calf.
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**Trope Editor**:
- Habitat: "Edit Page".
- Function: The cleanup crew. Despising typos, Word Cruft, and bad information, they swoop in to correct bad grammar and factual inaccuracies. A large part of what makes Wiki Magic work, the Editor is detail-orientated and can spot a mistake from a mile away. When you look through a page history, you might not even notice an Editor's changes — but red text will vanish and spelling will appear to readjust itself.
- Natural Enemies: Tropers with bad grammar or lower editing standards, particularly the Kid Editor.
-
**Trope Repairman**:
- Habitat: Trope Repair Shop and "Edit Page".
- Function: They tidy up tropes, rename them and occasionally put the floundering ones out of their misery. Very detail-oriented and diligent, occasionally nitpicky, they do the legwork when a trope's name is changed, picking through the trope's Wicks to reflect the name change. Often involved elsewhere on the forum; they like discussion. Any tropes that they themselves create will normally spend a long time in TLP, to reduce the chance that their creations will end up in the repair shop.
- Favourite Tropes: Those that don't end up in the Trope Repair shop.
- Natural Enemies: The Sinkhole Pimp.
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**The Art Museum Curator**
- Habitat: Image Pickin' threads, Image Links tab.
- Function: To find the best images for a given page. They despise unclear images and are the commanding officers in the Just a Face and a Caption front of the War on Bad Troping. Captions are also their territory; making them witty if possible and clear at all times is a top priority for them.
- Favourite Tropes: Anything to do with imagery, and anything with an illustrative image.
- Natural Enemies: Anyone who posts images that are non-illustrative, especially images that are Just a Face and a Caption. Otherwise, none; this is a peaceable, herbivorous species that likes to co-operate with Creators and Editors.
-
**The Advertiser**
- Habitat: Works pages, ideally obscurer ones and tropes of the sort found in the works they enjoy.
- Function: A relative of the Entry Pimp, these are fans of one or more obscure shows (which they may happen to be a fan of or may actively seek out) who endeavour to spread Pot Holes to its page wherever they can. Many are also Trope Creators (first spotting tropes that appear in their favorite work) or Browsers/Casual Example Adders (adding entries for their favorite work whenever they realise the trope turns up). If said work doesn't have a page, they're likely to take it through TLP to get some help with it.
- Favourite Tropes: Popular ones with few examples, where it's likely that their favorite work won't have an entry.
-
**The Trope-Fu Master**
- Habitat: Trope Finder.
- Function: Scouring the site like a ninja to answer the plaintive cry of "Do we have a trope where..?"
- Favourite Tropes: The ones with the cleverest, least intuitive names.
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**The Index Maker (subspecies of Trope Creator)**
- Habitat: TLP.
- Function: finds related tropes to place into a new index.
- Favourite Tropes: Index pages and SuperTropes.
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**The Indexed Trope Adder (subspecies of Trope Editor)**
- Habitat: "Edit Page".
- Function: Adds new tropes to existing indices.
- Favourite Tropes: Index pages.
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**Wiki Feng Shui Master**
- Habitat: Main wiki, sometimes strays into Darth Wiki and Sugar Wiki.
- Function: A Trope Editor relation who prefers to focus on the visual aspects of a page rather than its content. Moves images into auspicious (right aligned) position, adds folders, and generally attempts to improve the visual flow of a page.
- Favourite Tropes: Well-organized tropes with nicely broken up descriptions and right-aligned images.
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**The Trailblazer**
- Habitat: Nomadic, but frequents Trope Finder, Index Pages, Supertropes, Edit Page, and Pages Needing Wicks.
- Function: Generally a peaceful nomadic explorer, seeking out obscure tropes to create new paths to and from. Builds well marked and intuitive trails of wicks. Acts as the inverse of the advertiser, seeking isolated pages to connect to large hubs. Also repairs potholes, sinkholes, red links, and detours sending the reader to incorrect tropes.
- Favorite Tropes: Overlapping tropes, contrasting tropes, index and supertrope pages with many well-described outgoing wicks to route traffic through.
- Natural Enemies: Occasionally conflicts with the Wiki Feng Shui Master when they pave over harmonious arrangements of potholes in the interest of facilitating navigation. Namespacers and Cutlisters occasionally disrupt the trailblazer's pathways by recategorizing or deleting favorite hub tropes. Has a Tsundere relationship with repairmen: dere when repairmen aid in trail creation and maintenance, tsun when a trope overhaul requires entire networks of links to be rerouted or fixes a perfectly good catch-all.
-
**Trope Browser**:
- Habitat: Everywhere, really, except "Edit Page".
- Function: A writer is nothing without a reader, and this is the reader. They observe, stay out of arguments, peruse the Launch and New Edit list, and follow their favourite shows. Sometimes too shy to jump in feet-first, sometimes simply happy to access the database. They may have a Troper account; they may not. A freewheeling troper type, usually unnoticed by those writing on the Wiki… but the largest group of all.
- Favourite Tropes: Any and all, especially new ones.
- Natural Enemies: None. They move unseen among feuding Americanizers and Britishers, and just don't notice the massive turf war between Lumpers and Splitters.
-
**Trope Dropper**:
- Habitat: "Edit Page" and TLP.
- Function: He writes an entire article or post from scratch, does it on Word, his own little wiki, or a clean pad site located far from your view. He'll spend hours polishing it, copy-pasting it here, but not submitting, just previewing it, marveling at it, and then, if tonight he's too tired, post it tomorrow. Or in a week. Or whenever he thinks it's ready, or just has time. This is the Trope Dropper. (Or Wiki Dropper, Forum Dropper, Fan Fic Dropper etc)
It doesn't just happen on TV Tropes, or wikis in general. It's rare on forums or such, however, because it's a fluid discussion and you might want to write your reply fast before the flames go too high or burn out, and you're staring at a screen telling you that you can't post on that thread and go to sleep crying because you couldn't post your precious... er-hem, ...Or So I Heard. Oh and you're expected to do this when posting Fan Fic.
This practice comes from the primordial time of the internet, when connections were short and expensive, and writing in a forum, or a mail, with your crappy "reliable" IE and the thing not being sent, would guarantee the loss of data and staring at a White Screen Of Despair. Or you'd write this and later go to a friend who had any internet whatsoever. Presently the need for this has diminished, as now we're led to believe a lot more people have cheap, reliable, fast internet connections and time on your hands, with the world becoming "smaller" and changes in any page in which you and a group who would contribute, becoming faster and sometimes sliding off track before you get to say your bit. Other needs have appeared however, such as posting through a proxy (it's hard to find a good one, and when you do, you want to make the best of it).
-
**Wiki Curator**
- Habitat: Articles pertaining to their interests.
- Function: A type of wiki contributor, a wiki curator acts in many of the same ways a museum curator does. Maintaining the artifacts (the articles), researching them, arranging them into interesting dioramas (the indexes), and so on.
There are generalist curators and specialist curators. Specialists have a deep interest in a specific medium or a specific genre and don't do much curating outside that interest. The interests of generalist curators are wider. Or perhaps they just wander. If a wiki isn't attracting curators of either type, it just isn't working.
How a curator works on TV Tropes is by tracking certain pages on their watchlist and looking out for things like bad examples and clumsy edits. The ultimate goal of the curator is to protect a page from eventual action in the Trope Repair Shop.
Since this is subject to Sturgeon's Law, you should also watch out for yourself, and how you approach this role. Be sure you're wearing the Curator hat in the wiki's interest rather than your own, and know when to exercise personal restraint in editing. Unfortunately, some wiki curators get the idea that just like in a museum, you aren't allowed to touch anything. In extreme cases, they may revert not just ostensible vandalism, but
*any* change to a page.
- Favourite Tropes: Any well maintained page relating to their interests.
- Natural Enemies: Wiki Vandals, especially when they target the Curator's pages of interest.
Do not discount the importance of the migratory types; the wiki may not dominate their Favourites menu the way it does for the Main contributors, but a Migratory troper is often a Jack of All Trades, or a valuable support to other troper types. Normally, their interest in TV Tropes is a tangent to their main interest, be it comic books, anime or the most popular new television series.
-
**The Eclectic Troper**
- Habitat: Migratory, and can appear anywhere.
- Function: Moving around the wiki searching for interesting nuggets of information and weird titles makes them a mixture of all sorts. They do a bit of repair, an occasional bit of pimping, example tweaking; can remain inactive for periods before their interest is sparked once more. May give a casual browse to the forums and TLP to see if anything momentous is happening, but generally ignores the troper-politics that happens there. Their wanderings across the tropesphere, however, has given them a good working knowledge of most tropes, and they rarely get confused as to which is which, their primary interest is the trope description itself after all.
- Favourite Tropes: None. The "random" button is their best friend.
-
**The Casual Example Adder**
- Habitat: Work and Trope Pages.
- Function: Adds tropes to work pages and examples to trope pages. While they play a vital role in making Wiki Magic work, they generally don't read the Trope Launch Pad and TRS forum. They sometimes don't bother to read the trope descriptions clearly to make sure that they are picking the best trope for their examples, which can be a headache for the Trope Repairman, the Trope Editor and the more detail-oriented Trope Creator. However, more often than not, they pick the right tropes.
- Favourite Tropes: Whatever sparks their interest.
-
**The TLP Midwife**
- Habitat: Trope Launch Pad.
- Function: Scrolling and refreshing the TLP, looking for interesting examples of possible new tropes, helping to clean up, avoid confusion, add new examples, and provide better names. They have a symbiotic relationship with Trope Creators: the Creator values the Midwife's input, and the Midwife likes to see a well-launched trope. Midwives are a benevolent species who like to help.
- Favourite Tropes: The newest, most interestingest ones. Lives to say, "Wait, we seriously don't have this already?"
- Natural Enemies: The Spoilsport, who tries to destroy the new tropes that the Midwife likes to assist with.
-
**The Namespacer**
- Habitat: Anywhere but the Main/ namespace.
- Function: These guys like adding alternative name space entries to existing trope pages. They're very useful at moving subjective tropes to the YMMV tab and similar maintenance, but also enjoy adding their favorite moments to the crowning moment tabs. There's also some overlap with other troper types, since they'll probably maintain and contribute to the larger namespaces (like Playing With Wiki or Haiku-Wiki) in the same way or make sure Headscratchers and Wild Mass Guessing pages don't get too out of hand.
- Favourite Tropes: Metatropes (all the better for use in the Playing With Wiki), Crowner tropes. Any trope without a Playing With Wiki entry.
-
**The Breaking News Editor**
- Habitat: Trope pages for active works.
- Function: To be the first to update the page after a plot twist, the appearance of a new trope, and similar—frequently within minutes of its appearance.
- Favourite Tropes: Any which have achieved Troper Critical Mass (
*Girl Genius*, *Doctor Who*, etc.)
-
**The Aspiring Writer**
- Habitat: Real-ish section of the Forum.
- Function: To plug their original stories and fanfiction whenever possible and assign tropes to their works.
- Favourite Tropes: Any that they find turning up in their stories.
-
**The Trope Truther**
- Habitat: Any sufficiently "realistic" trope.
- Function: These guys love the Real Life examples section. If someone's invented something or done something that resembles a trope they'll make their case for declaring it Truth In Television. They may or may not miss Troper Tales. The sight of a "no real life" tag instantly saddens them, and seeing their favorite sections torn out can ruin their entire day.
- Favourite Tropes: Any that seem plausible enough to actually happen.
-
**The Fetish Troper**
- Habitat: Sex Tropes, Fanservice Tropes, This Index Is Full Of Perverts.
- Purpose: To seek out any and all examples of their fetish du jour, and Entry Pimp the ones they know about.
- Favourite Tropes: Whatever gets their motor revving.
- Natural Enemies: The easily squicked; certain types of Troper Activists.
-
**The Entry Pimp**
- Habitat: Anywhere that has anything to do with a work they like.
- Purpose: To document a work they like as thoroughly as possible.
- Favorite Tropes: Ones that apply to the work they're acting as an Entry Pimp for.
-
**The Hedge Trimmer**
- Habitat: Any part of the wiki with length issues.
- Purpose: To trim wiki articles to increase readability.
- Natural Enemies: Anyone whose edits contain walls of text, natter, and/or Word Cruft.
-
**The Drive-By Voter**
- Habitat: Crowners, TLP.
- Purpose: To vote on crowner options and/or drop a hat/bomb on TLP drafts. They help build consensus but otherwise remain silent in the decision-making process.
- Favourite Tropes: Whatever sparks their interest.
For the most part, these are subspecies of the Main Contributors, with one important difference: a Berserk Button. While they usually exist harmoniously with the rest of the herd, the vaguest sniff of their chosen bugbear sends them on a rampage. They charge forward, sending hapless newbies flying and knocking aside Editors who were quietly minding their own business. May cause Troper Policemen some headaches, and they risk being banned should they prove more troublesome than helpful.
-
(genus)
**Single-Issue Wonk**
- Habitat: Omnipresent.
- Function: Removing or adding material to support their favourite issue.
- Favourite Tropes: Anything to do with their issue.
- Natural Enemy: Trolls, other Single Issue Wonks with opposing issues.
-
**The Americanizer**
- Habitat: "Edit Page" of tropes written by someone who uses British English.
- Function: Driven by a deep seated hatred of the letter "u", the firm belief that the goshdarned "s" is overrated, and a profound love for the letter "z" (pronounced "zee"), The Americanizer changes any British spelling to its American counterpart, regardless of the official etiquette of TV Tropes. They are detail oriented, but other tropers wonder who has that much time on their hands. Not that different from their British Spelling counterpart, though they'd die before admitting it.
- Favorite tropes: Xtreme Kool Letterz, Eagleland (in the latter's case, of the "America the Beautiful" variety).
- Natural Enemies: The Britishiser (see below), Samuel Johnson. They will edit and re-edit each other's pages until someone smacks them both over the head with something.
-
**The Britishiser**
- Habitat: "Edit Page" of tropes written by someone who uses American English.
- Function: Driven by their hatred of the letter "z" (pronounced "zed"), the belief that the letter "s" jolly well earned its place in the language, and a deep love for the letter "u", The Britishiser changes any American spelling to its British counterpart, regardless of the official etiquette of TV Tropes. They are detail oriented, but other tropers wonder who has that much time on their hands. Not that different from their American Spelling counterpart, though they'd die before admitting it.
- Favourite Tropes: British English, Useful Notes On (insert home country here).
- Natural Enemies: The Americanizer (see above), Noah Webster. They will edit and re-edit each other's pages until someone smacks them both over the head with something.
-
**The Rewriter**
- Habitat: Edit Page of the Trope Launch Pad.
- Function: A Trope Editor Variant. Rewords a trope description entirely. This is usually because of poor writing, and in such instances, the Rewriter is a major boon to the wiki, capable of making sense of the most muddled descriptions. However, occasionally they reword a perfectly coherent trope or works page simply to put it into their own words without going through the Repair Shop. While largely harmless, they may stand on the toes of whoever created the trope, especially if they offer no explanation of the rewrite.
- Favourite Tropes: Generally the Works pages of their favourite shows / books.
- Natural Enemies: None, really, unless they encounter a particularly vigilant or sensitive Trope Creator, or a fellow Editor who was tweaking the page before the Rewriter wiped it and started again.
-
**The Activist Troper** (a.k.a Troper with an Agenda)
- Habitat: Any trope with any potential to get political.
- Function: This troper is strongly eager to promote a cause. Whether it's Christianity, feminism, keeping politics out of TV Tropes or ensuring free ice cream for all, this troper will promote it in his or her editing if it is relevant to do so, and sometimes won't even reserve it for these occasions. They can be a highly positive contributor if they keep their heads and are respectful of other people's views, but the Activist Troper may have a negative impact if they start removing anything they don't agree with—or go on a Troper Filibuster right in the middle of a trope page.
- Favourite Tropes: Whatever tropes and works have anything to do with whatever issue they happen to support.
- Natural Enemy: Other Activist Tropers with opposing views.
-
**The Patriot**
- Habitat: Tropes connected to their country of origin, as well as Values Dissonance.
- Purpose: Defending their territory. Patriots are often found pottering around in the Useful Notes section, ensuring that the information on their particular country stays up to date. Sensible versions gently correct stereotypes and conduct discussions on the forums; less sensible types charge into the middle of any trope that mildly criticises their country with flaming torch and pitchfork at the ready. Neither is fond of sweeping generalisations about their country of birth, but the former takes a more tolerant view and is therefore more productive. The latter natters incessantly, and can quickly descend into true Single-Issue Wonk, if not outright Troll.
- Natural Enemy: Er… each other. Sensible Patriots don't think their more… zealous counterparts are doing anyone any favours. Said zealous counterparts think that the calmer version is a sellout and lacks commitment.
- Favourite Tropes: Ones connected to issues of nationality. The calmer type even likes those that are less than complimentary about their country (for example, Eagleland, British Stuffiness, Germanic Depressives) since they can get a giggle out of the stereotype. Expect them to put a disclaimer at the bottom of the trope though, if said trope doesn't make it clear that this is not the case in reality.
-
**The Splitter**
- Habitat: "Edit Page", Trope Repair Shop, and Trope Launch Pad.
- Function: Finds subtropes to split away from a more general concept.
- Favourite Tropes: The most specific of subtropes.
- Natural Enemy: The Lumper.
-
**The Lumper**
- Habitat: "Edit Page", Trope Repair Shop, and Trope Launch Pad.
- Function: Finds related ideas to combine into a central theme.
- Favourite Tropes: The broadest of supertropes.
- Natural Enemy: The Splitter.
-
**The Ultraconservative Troper**
- Habitat: Tropes of Legend.
- Function: This troper thinks TV Tropes was much better in the days of old, when everything was new and exciting, when trope names were bizarre and fantastic and no one screamed bloody murder when they saw a character trope namer or a "snowclone" (what a stupid derogatory term!). Ultraconservative tropers really miss everything that was cut from TV Tropes, including Troper Tales and "I Am Not Making This Up", but their nostalgia is mostly silent, as they do not desire to challenge the wiki administration. Some of these tropers emigrated to the Tropes Mirror Wiki, but not all: after all, there are still no IANMTU on Tropes Mirror! Has a lot in common with the Old Guard in the Forum Pecking Order, but with more discontent.
- Favourite Tropes: All Tropes of Legend and everything that no longer exists, such as I Am Not Making This Up, So Yeah, This Troper, etc.
- Natural Enemy: Trope Repairmen.
-
**The Defence Lawyer**
- Habitat: Usually confined to one or two show/book/game entries—they're fairly territorial.
- Function: Defending their favourite character (or, occasionally, creator) to the death. Milder versions are simply a bit picky about the objectivity of the edits concerning Character X, changing "Sadist Teacher" to "Stern Teacher" and "useless coward" to "ill-prepared for the horrors of war." A more zealous variant demands that any and all edits about Character X go through them, and will post screeds in the "reason for edit" box about just how another troper's edit failed to meet their standards. YMMV subpages like Tearjerker and Nightmare Fuel are not exempt—if the character scares the living daylights out of another troper, they will edit the entry, or add their own counterpoint as to why Character X is not scary and Troper Y is clearly overreacting. They're quite happy to elaborate on how their favourite character's Freudian Excuse mitigates their actions and just why the dog deserved to be kicked. Very rarely, some may cross the line and start insulting the editors rather than the edits. They spend more time altering other people's edits than creating their own, but unlike the Trope Repairman, they have niche priorities.
- Favourite Tropes: That of their favourite show/book/video game. Base-Breaking Character, however, probably describes their No.1 character. Some may be fond of Draco in Leather Pants, but it's not always a factor.
- Natural Enemy: Logically, the Prosecutor...but it's fairly rare to have these two opposites on one page, fighting over the same character. Their evolutionary niches keep them out of each other's way. It
*is* however, entirely possible for the same troper to be both Defence Lawyer and Prosecutor at the same time...
-
**The Prosecutor**
- Habitat: Usually confined to one or two show/book/game entries — as with their adversary, the Defence Lawyer, they guard their home turf.
- Function: Telling other tropers why Character X (or Creator X) is bad and wrong and you shouldn't like them. They edit entries that are even mildly favourable to their detested character, cutting any suggested justification for their actions and altering Passive Aggressive Combat to Manipulative Bastard. Zealous variants show a propensity for assuming the worst at all times; any positive actions Character X performs are ignored, and any mild flaw or bad decision will be held in evidence against them. Edits from other tropers will be cut or reworded, with a long justification on why the edit was biased and ill-informed. They will even venture into YMMV tropes, like Heartwarming Moments and Moment of Awesome to pontificate on exactly what what Character X did wasn't cute or awesome at all, but evidence of their inherent evil. Like the Defence Lawyer, it is entirely possible that they have a point...but, also like the defence lawyer, they tend to cause eye-rolling in other tropers when they see that their edit has been prosecuted, yet again.
- Favourite Tropes: In addition to the page of their show/book/game, they're a bit Complete Monster-happy, and may be guilty of Flanderization.
- Natural Enemy: Again, one would assume The Defence Lawyer, but they are rarely involved in edit wars with each other. It's far more likely that the same troper is both: for example, if they favour the Betty in a Betty and Veronica love triangle, they will be the Defence Lawyer for Betty and the Prosecutor for Veronica.
There is no malice in these species, they just tend to be a little...overenthusiastic. However, try telling that to the Editors and Repairmen left to sweep up the rubble. Not to worry - a quick read of the rules, familiarity with the wiki and a helping hand from one of the more helpful troper types will quickly promote them to another category. Approach this troper with kindness and assistance unless and until they prove contentious — they could become valuable Wiki allies, but too vicious a lambasting and they may become a Cynical or Destructive type instead.
-
**The Sinkhole Pimp**
- Habitat: They're everywhere!
- Function: Turns every other word into a Pot Hole or a Sink Hole. Rarely bothers to check if they are using the trope correctly. The mortal enemy of the Trope Repairman.
- Favourite Tropes: Pothole Magnets and Stock Phrases.
-
**The Nit-Natterer**
- Habitat: Anywhere.
- Function: love to argue, live to argue. They will not correct an entry, they'll put in a sub-entry beginning with, "Actually,..." or "Only if..."
- Favourite Tropes: Poorly defined or poorly named ones.
-
**The Trope-Namer Syndrome Carrier**
- Habitat: Trope Launch Pad and new trope pages.
- Function: To name everything after this favorite character, book, film, anime, etc. These names are often obscure enough that even other fans will scratch their head. Other tropers see these Trope Namers, think it's OK to name things willy-nilly after their favorite things, and become infected with the syndrome, spreading the illness as they begin to make up "Trope Namers" as well.
- Favorite Tropes: Anything they named.
-
**The Huge Fan**
- Habitat: Anything related to their fandom.
- Function: This is a superspecies of Troper dedicated rabidly to their fandom. They may proudly have tattoos or even shout that they are in the fandom "for life". They came to TV Tropes to set the record straight and/or share as much as they can about their favorite thing. Unfortunately, such rabid devotion can breed unrest amongst the Fan Dumb as Huge Fans clash over little details any casual observer would not care about. With time and guidance many Huge Fans adjust to the climate of TV Tropes and become helpful tropers. Those who do not adapt generally move on to fandom-only wikis where they can be with like-minded editors. A few specimens, however, become very frustrated instead of adapting and become Destructive Types.
- Favorite Tropes: Anything related to their fandom, typically something very nerdy and possibly obscure.
-
**The Furry**
- Habitat: Trope Launch Pad and any page that is remotely related furries.
- Function: A subspecies of Huge Fan, the furry is confused by the lack of furry related pages on TV Tropes. Due to basically every furry being an artist and/or writer and the rule of There Is no Such Thing as Notability they feel slighted and under-represented in this largely human oriented Wiki. Not knowing that Tropes Are Flexible, they may begin to make as many furry/animal specific pages as possible without regard for if other tropes/pages already cover them, sometimes without going through TLP first. Due to a mix of The Law of Fan Jackassery and Broken Base, furries can be some of the worst nitpickers of the Huge Fan species and they may readily fight anyone who tries to help them adjust, even if they are other already adjusted furries. Those who do not adjust typically move on to a furries only wiki like Wikifur or just go back to their favorite art site instead. Those who do adjust become indistinguishable from any of the Helpful Troper species.
- Favorite Tropes: Furry Fandom, Beast Man, Funny Animal, Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism...
-
**The Censor**
- Habitat: Wherever filth is found.
- Function: A subspecies of the Activist Troper, wants to clean up pages by removing smut, swears and anything else that offends them. May be a Bluenose Bowdlerizer. When done with care and consideration, its usually possible to keep the spirit of the page while removing the profanity. All too often though, editing is done without thought, or worst, by an automatic nanny-filter.
- Favorite Tropes: Tropes that used to be full of smut and dirty words that are now full of ***ing asterisks.
- Natural Enemies: The Fetish Troper, Trolls, Potty-mouths, Trope Police and Trope Repairmen who have to fix their messes.
-
**The Kid Editor**
- Habitat: Articles related to their favorite cartoon.
- Function: They tend to make and expand pages on cartoons they enjoy, often Characters/ pages and moments pages as well. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but their editing standards tend to be relatively low, with Zero-Context Examples and grammar errors being a common problem. This tends to happen because they have the physical/mental age of children and may not understand the wiki fully. Try to help them as they're very rarely malicious and report only once necessary.
- Favorite Tropes: Whatever shows up in their shows, usually simpler, Overdosed Tropes like Nice Guy, Big Bad, Jerk with a Heart of Gold, etc.
- Natural Enemies: Older Tropers who have to make pages up to higher standards, particularly the Trope Editor.
While nowhere near as chaotic or irritating as the Destructive groups, Cynical types
can be a headache to their fellow tropers. They may undermine the work of a Creator, make
*more*
work for an editor, or just scare off the newcomers.
-
**The Cutlister**
- Habitat: Cutlist, vulnerable tropes with a low number of wicks.
- Function: Euthanisation. Unlike the Repairman, who prefers to fix tropes, the Cutlister lives to destroy them. This is not just any troper who realises a trope is useless (those are generally Repairmen) — the Cutlister seems to take a certain amount of joy in consigning tropes to the scrapheap, even totally legitimate ones. Vigilant Trope Creators and Repairmen can generally put an end to any trope-murder-sprees, but often just ending up suggested for the Cut List makes any trope an endangered species. The Cutlister is usually also a Single-Issue Wonk, and targets tropes that hit their Berserk Button. If unchecked, they can direct the culture of TV tropes, since they believe that by repeating "This Type Of Trope Is Bad!" long enough, people will start to agree. Thankfully, Cutlisters are rare, and easily spotted by Troper Police.
- Favourite Tropes: It's hard to tell.
- Natural Enemy: Trope Creators. Creators and Cutlisters represent the alpha and omega of tropes, respectively.
-
**The Spoilsport (a.k.a The Saboteur)**
- Habitat: Trope Launch Pad.
- Function: Popping up in comments and informing the Trope Creator that their fledgling page is extremely similar to an existing trope that it, in actual fact, bears no resemblance to whatsoever. Not to be confused with people who know what they are talking about! Known by their trademark cry "We already have this!". Sometimes willing to spend days or even weeks arguing about it, often long after the trope has actually been launched.
- Favourite Tropes: Only those that are already in existence and well established.
There's no getting around it—some species just ruin the habitat for everyone.
-
**The Wiki Vandal**
-
**The Troll**
- Habitat: "Edit Page" and forums.
- Function: Posts questionable content intended to incite a Flame War. Will almost invariably drag other tropers down with them when the Troper Policemen come to break things up. Generally solitary carnivores, but some are known to hunt in packs. Avoid at all costs; this species enjoys torturing its prey.
- Favourite Tropes: N/A. They're here to harass the
*tropers*, not the tropes themselves.
- Favorite Prey: The Single Issue Wonk Brigade.
- Natural Enemy: Troper Policeman. They rarely survive long, but more always appear.
-
**The Spammer**
- Habitat: Anywhere, really.
- Function: Links to third party products unrelated to discussion at hand. Other tropers hate them for being left-fielders and possible vandalism.
- Favourite Tropes: Anything that isn't locked, or pages with regular tropes, but wrong namespaces (Like Characters/AtLeastIAdmitIt).
- Natural Enemy: Trope Policeman. They rarely survive long, but more always appear.
-
**The Corrector**
- Habitat: Anywhere with inaccuracies; places where Trope Editors may show up.
- Function: Demonstrating the superiority of their knowledge. They often Natter, and will violate Repair, Don't Respond.
- Favorite Prey: Anything with the slightest inaccuracy.
-
**The Edit Warrior**
- Habitat: Anywhere, really.
- Function: Asserting the rightness of their edits. Often uses Justifying Edits.
- Favorite Prey: Anything they've edited.
-
**The Justifier**
- Habitat: Their favorite works.
- Function: Making hollow rebuttals; justifying tropes that don't need it. Often forget that Tropes Are Tools.
-
**The Parabomber**
- Habitat: Anywhere that they can assault with parentheses.
- Function: The digression editor. They will spam parentheses, clauses brackets, and the like, containing mostly useless statements that are sometimes just their own thoughts on the matter.
-
**The Hyperboloid**
- Habitat: Work pages and trope pages.
- Function: The exaggeration editor. They often gather in packs and overwhelm unsuspecting tropers with hysterical shouting. Often creates Zero-Context Examples, as their examples are more about saying "Character X IS this trope" than saying WHY Character X is this trope. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PageCurator |
Pac-Man Fever - TV Tropes
*"You Win — Advance to Level 7"*
*For the 1982 novelty single and album by Buckner & Garcia, click here.*
For whatever reason, video games seen on TV never evolved past a very primitive state from classic 8-bit games (such as
*Pac-Man*).
If video game sounds are heard, it will be bleeping Arcade Sounds. Characters talking about video games will similarly seem out-of-touch. Characters will talk about "beating the level" or "getting the high score", which are elements tied more to arcades than home consoles. If a storyline is mentioned, it will only be as deep as "save the galaxy from aliens." It also seems that the only way to play these games is to mash all the buttons as fast as possible while flailing wildly on the control stick, with the player barely managing to stay in their seat.
In short, this is The Theme Park Version of video games.
This trope has several root causes. It was most prevalent in the early 2000s, and was a clear result of Two Decades Behind. Most screenwriters remembered video games as simplistic arcade games from The '80s or from the NES such as Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, and so that's what they continued to write into TV shows and films, long after video games had since moved on to more sophisticated gameplay and storytelling. If not "beat the level"-type games, expect Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000 for those writers who remembered
*Doom* or *Mortal Kombat* (both again from the early '90s). As newer and newer writers enter the industry to replace the old guard, they're looking back either on (relatively) newer games from their own childhoods or present-day games that they play themselves as a hobby, putting this trope on track to becoming a Discredited Trope.
Other reasons could include copyright. While it wouldn't be hard to toss in some footage and sound from a modern game, it may cost quite a bit to get the rights to do so. Thirdly, primitive game graphics can be a visual shorthand for "not real" in cartoons, which are already moving, simplified graphics; and, more generally, this can be done to avoid having the sounds and voices from a video game become confused with actual events onscreen, since modern real-world video games are designed to sound realistic.
If you're too young to remember what
*Pac-Man* was like on the Atari 2600, check this out. And this for good measure. And, this is *Donkey Kong* on the same system. These two games probably account for the vast, vast majority of Arcade Sounds used on TV. Very rarely, though, you'll hear a *Super Mario Bros.* sound effect, or one from *Sonic the Hedgehog* every once in a blue moon.
See also: Arcade Sounds, Beeping Computers, Fictional Video Game, Video Arcade, The Coconut Effect, Public Medium Ignorance, Two Decades Behind, and Hollywood Game Design. Compare Stock Footage. If pushed far enough, it can lead to Schizo Tech. Not to be confused with the Nintendo GameCube game of the same name or an obsession about a certain Filipino boxer. For the case of someone playing Pac-Man feverently, see Just One More Level!.
The Trope Namer is the 1982 novelty song "Pac Man Fever" by Buckner and Garcia.
## Examples:
- Countless advertisement images and banners have used stock photography of people playing video games using outdated controllers, most commonly from the Xbox and PlayStation families.
- The Acclaim Remote wireless NES gamepad ad shows a kid button-mashing furiously while playing
*WWF WrestleMania* and *Wizards & Warriors*, activating rapid fire on *Top Gun* with pew-pew-pew sounds, and doing flips and firing laser beams.
- An ad for
*Rad Racer* on the NES shows the player with the NES Advantage controller, who believes he is playing with a steering wheel controller on the arcade machine, holding down on the joystick like a gear stick, possibly due to muscle memory.
- An ad for
*Tetris* on the NES shows a player button-mashing, while the screen shows a piece being rotated once before being placed, which would mean one button press followed by holding down on the + Control Pad.
- An ad for Subway restaurants has a kid playing an Atari game where the Player Character eats burgers, hot dogs, and other junk foods, and then gets so fat he can't fit through a gap in the platforms to get at a gigantic sundae. The game's graphics are actually too
*advanced* for an Atari console to handle, and it comes complete with the requisite random jerking around of the joystick.
- An ad for batteries from around 2007 seems to advertise their potential for gaming, particularly handheld gaming, despite the fact that 1) you're unlikely to find a modern game about "space ninjas" where you go for a high score that isn't a parody or homage minigame, which shows how well they know their target demographic, and 2) starting with the Game Boy Advance SP (which came out in 2003), handhelds began to use proprietary rechargeable batteries rather than AAs. An egregious example as, unlike most of these, this ad was aimed at gamers.
- The makers of
*Fruit by the Foot* once struck a promotional deal with Nintendo to print gameplay tips for Nintendo 64 games on the snack's cellophane wrappers. The commercial showed two teenagers grown old, with one who's been waiting 62 years for his friend to finish playing. He's supposedly been using the snack's hints to keep from losing for all these years... but he's playing *Banjo-Kazooie*. If the tips are that useful, he should have beaten it by now. It's even worse for the next commercial, where he's playing *Mario Party 2* - which is specifically designed to be *a multiplayer game.*
- A Mexican ad for Mirinda promoting
*Pokémon* bottle caps starts with four kids yelling and button-mashing like savages... while playing *Pokémon Stadium* (not even the Mini Game section in which it would be at least a little believable; the screen clearly shows a battle between a Squirtle and a Meowth). Made worse a second later when they show the screen saying "GAME OVER", a phrase you will never see in multiplayer (nor in any main Pokemon game series, for that mater).
- During The '90s, in Mexico, there was a long run TV ads campaign, "Ojo, Mucho Ojo", which is translated as something around "Keep an Eye Out", which had the goal of teaching kids to stay away from adults who act suspisciously with them. One of them starts with a group of kids playing in an Arcade center. The look at the screen shows us that they're playing
*Killer Instinct*. The MC kid loses, asks for one more, but the others tell him that he should learn first, all while they were being carefully watched by a creepy guy behind them. The sounds you can hear are absolutely not from that game (one commenter says that the sounds are actually from NES *Tiny Toon Adventures*). Check it here.
- A Russian ad for Choco-Boy snacks says there is a contest to win a PSP Go and shows a kid playing it, but what we see on the screen is Choco-Boy running with a background taken right from the
*Super Mario All-Stars* version of *Super Mario Bros.*.
- Look no further than the box cover of the AK Rocker gamer chair for a prime example of this: A family of three (dad, son, daughter) are all on the eponymous chairs playing a game together... with an Xbox or PlayStation 2, Nintendo 64, and Xbox controller, respectively, and the dad appears to be holding the controller backwards. It also depicts another family playing games cosplaying as
*Vikings*, so take that as you will. Here's a pic.◊
- And then there's a commercial for becoming a game designer that's so bad Alta Colleges doesn't want you to see it. Parodied by
*Three Panel Soul* here.
- One advertisement for an online
*Mega Man X* game, seen on this very wiki, depicts a scene using sprites from *Mega Man 7*, where Mega Man fights Proto Man. The main problem with this is that neither Proto Man or the pictured version of Mega Man even appear in any game in the *Mega Man X* series. Also, both Proto Man and Mega Man are heroic characters, although they do engage in some friendly sparring every now and then.
- A print commercial for
*Crash: Mind Over Mutant* shows two kids playing the game with a Nintendo GameCube controller. When Radical Entertainment took over the *Crash* franchise ( *Mind over Mutant* being their third game), the GameCube was long dead. And the Wii version of said game does not support GameCube controls.
- Parodied in this commercial for Sci Fi Channel, wherein Lara Croft plays a version of
*Pong* with stock sound effects from the Atari 2600's version of *Donkey Kong*—whilst on a PlayStation.
- A commercial for a Racing Game called
*Juice* falls victim to this. Two gamers are sitting in their car, fooling around with the car customizing tool when they notice the changes they make in game affect a nearby woman's dress and body. Despite being in a customization screen, both gamers appear to be playing, and at the end they make her rotate in place while rapidly changing the color of her dress... by slamming the joysticks and mashing the buttons repeatedly. They proceed to shorten her skirt, increase the woman's bust size and strip the top off, whereas they then remove the dress completely, which by the commercial's own logic would require them to strip off the outside of their car.
- Gamer Grub is a semi-example. It doesn't depict games themselves in unrealistic ways, but it does bring up the strange idea that games aren't compatible with most snacks. Granted, the package can be tipped so the food can be eaten without being handled, but that hardly narrows the field.
- In Canada, a Tim Horton's ad is partially an aversion and partially (the part video game players will remember) a straight example. A guy is nearly caught playing video games at work (he gets away with it because his boss is too fascinated with the guy's Tim Horton's latte to notice what he's actually doing). We get a clear look at a screen of actual gameplay from
*Angry Birds*. Yet, the accompanying sounds are generic '80s bleeps, nothing like anything you'll hear actually playing that game.
- Verimark, a South African store selling assorted tat, advertises the "i-Play" games console, a little Game Boy-type gadget along the lines of the PSP with "60 built-in games!!!" and "High-resolution graphics!!!", among other gaming marketing buzzwords. A shame the device itself uses pretty basic graphics that at best approach SNES-era gaming.
- In an Australian ad for
*RACV* insurance, while inspecting the house, one of the insurance men grabs a generic PlayStation game box called "Zombie Attack!" from a shelf and exclaims that it is his favorite. Needless to say, there is no game called "Zombie Attack" on PlayStation.
- This ad depicting someone playing one of the Bowser sub-games from
*Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door*... with a PS3 controller.
- Neutrogena put out an ad in late 2011 which features a bottle of shampoo playing a game much like
*Space Invaders* against reappearing dandruff, complete with early-80's style sound effects. Then the bottle of Neutrogena scores a One-Hit Kill and triggers the A Winner Is You ending against dandruff.
- This commercial for Sonic the Hedgehog pasta by Franco-American has a boy playing
*Sonic and Knuckles* on a Sega Genesis (specifically the Mushroom Hill stage). Ordinarily, this example would avert this trope, except the music playing in the background is from the Chemical Plant stage from *Sonic the Hedgehog 2* and the kid's button presses don't match what Sonic is doing on-screen.
- Kellogg's has a Froot Loops commercial where a couple is sitting on a couch, and when the wife pulls out a box of Froot Loops, they end up a few seconds later enjoying a game of the
*Super Mario Bros*. attract mode. To their credit, this gaffe was later caught and fixed.
- A 2015 "You're not you when you're hungry" Snickers ad has bleeping arcade sounds and furious button-mashing from two players holding GameCube controllers. The problem isn't the use of the Game Cube (the console is still commonly played despite being outdated), but rather that it uses stock sound effects roughly 30 years out of date.
- The 2015 John Lewis Christmas Commercial, revolving around a girl and her telescope, has a shot of her brother sitting in the background tuning out his surroundings while playing a handheld game console, which is emitting the traditional old-fashioned bleeps.
- A 2017 product picture for a brand of charging cables◊ sold on Amazon depict a boy playing stock artwork of
*Mario Kart 8* on a PlayStation Vita (poorly airbrushed to remove the Sony branding, even though the prominent PlayStation logo on the Home button is still there) with a mirrored GameCube controller without looking at the screen.
- In
*Happy Heroes*, any time a video game the characters are playing is being shown on-screen, it utilizes previously-used 8-bit art shift footage and couples it with similarly retro-sounding music to fit. This show mostly takes place on a futuristic planet and one of the characters, Doctor H., invents a virtual reality headset in one of the early episodes.
- Done deliberately in
*Arcade Gamer Fubuki*. Fubuki's first opponent plays a joystick game while wearing boxing gloves.
- A fairly obscure example lies in the sole English-subbed episode of
*Kyō Kara Ore Wa!!*, where at one point the main character is waiting for someone and plays the early Game Boy shooter *Solar Striker*, complete with actual footage. However, the sounds are your generic random bleeps and bloops, as opposed to the actual (although still bleeping and blooping) soundtrack.
- In an early episode from the English dub of
*Cardcaptor Sakura*, Kero is seen playing an RPG that looks similar to *Shining Force*, but with sound effects from the Atari 2600 version of *Donkey Kong* in the background.
- In an episode of
*Ghost Stories* two characters are shown playing *Dark Cloud* together, using actual footage from the game. What's the problem? *Dark Cloud* is a single player game. And the console shown was a first-generation PlayStation while Dark Cloud was one of the launch title for PlayStation 2. The Gag Dub takes it a step further by adding Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000 on top of that, the characters talk about the game as if it were a violent Rated M for Money game along the lines of *Grand Theft Auto* and mention beating up hookers. Needless to say, none of that is in Dark Cloud, though it's likely played for the laughs.
-
*Nanana's Buried Treasure*'s anime adaptation has the titular character play *Terraria* with a wide screen TV, seemingly averting this trope... until it is shown that the controller is a 1st-generation Famicom controller.
-
*Ouran High School Host Club*. In a flashback, the twins Hikaru and Kaoru are playing (well, *one* of them is playing) a game on what is clearly a Game Boy Advance — but when we see the screen, the graphics are comically low-rez, looking more like an LCD Game & Watch (Maybe they were playing *Game & Watch Gallery 4*). Averted in a later flashback, where they've upgraded to a DS.
- In
*K-On!*, the game that Ritsu lost to Ui again on is being played on a So— er, *Pony* console (Slaystation 2, perhaps?), judging by the controllers... but Arcade Sounds is definitely in play here.
-
*Durarara!!*: Celty and Shinra play what appears, from Shinra's comments, to be a Mario Fighting Game, with the requisite Atari noises and PlayStation controllers. The game case is a PSX-style CD Jewel case, but the system clearly loads *carts*. (They don't appear to be playing it on any sort of TV either, but that's okay because Celty doesn't have a head.)
- Played with in
*SHUFFLE!*: Two characters can be seen playing a video game on a TV with bleeps and bloops. Cut to another angle, and it turns out they're playing Pong.
-
*Naruto* is shown playing a video game that looks 8-bit at least once. Makes some degree of sense, considering the Anachronism Stew in play elsewhere. By *Boruto*, gaming has advanced.
- One episode of
*Super Sonico* has her play what is clearly *BioShock 2* on a Sega Saturn. Played with in that this takes place in her dream.
- Subverted in
*Crossbone Gundam Skull Heart*: The "Satellite of the Apes" story has a Flash Back showing that Garma Zabi was inspired to test monkeys for Newtype potential after seeing one play *Pac-Man*, but a margin note from the author remarks that he just used it as a stand-in for whatever video games they'd have in the future.
-
*Sgt. Frog*: Averted. A recurring plot element involves the Keronians creating video games that are a bit TOO interactive.
-
*Chio's School Road*, the anime adaptation has a subplot where Chio trying to get a magazine (in an era where online media overtook traditional media, especially for niches) specifically caters to Western games but to her chagrin, it's discontinued. Then a narrator explains how Western games are unpopular because of its violence (true) and how Japanese language are usually sold as DLC (completely false except for that one and only instance where Japanese PC version of *Tomb Raider (2013)* was sold as a DLC).
- Inverted and played straight at the same time: In an issue of an Ultimate Marvel title, Wolverine is seen playing a full 3D game on a handheld system that looks exactly like a Game Boy. On one hand, the graphics look much more advanced than those of real handhelds of that time. On the other hand, the idea of a 3D console having the same number of buttons as a Game Boy is simply laughable — any gamer will tell you that two action buttons and a + Control Pad are nowhere near enough for most 3D games. Add to that the fact that the story was set some time after the Game Boy design had been abandoned, replaced by the Game Boy Advance design. (The GBA controversially also had only two face buttons backed up by two shoulder buttons and could manage some primitive 3D.)
- The shooter Loki plays in issue #4 of
*Loki: Agent of Asgard* looks positively retro (16-bit tops) despite the console looking current for the most part. But then again, it gave Loki an opportunity to shoot the All-Mother in the face, when they chose to manifest through it.
- Aboard the starship Entreprise-2601 in
*Pouvoirpoint* , on several occasions we see the characters playing a first-person video game in black and green wireframe, called *Death Race in a Non-Euclidean Environment* (visually inspired by the 1979 Commodore PET game Ratrun). To defeat the boss "Sly Lozenge", the player must find the "Power Polyhedron", which activates "Hyperbolic Crystals". This raises the specter of the "Rectangle of the Mountain'', who give the player "Symplectic Invincibility"... They also play an unnamed 8-bit fighting game, with a red fighter against a blue fighter. Lots of Button Mashing seems to be involved.
- An Italian Donald Duck comic features a villain by the name of "The Analog Knight" interrupting a videogame tournament by transforming modern gaming consoles into tabletop games. The scene shows two guys playing on a console styled after the Xbox 360, but the TV screen shows a scene that was clearly traced from a
*Final Fantasy XII* screenshot. Not only was *Final Fantasy XII* never released on a Microsoft console, it's not even a multiplayer game.
-
*MAD*'s "The Lighter Side Of" often features kids who are playing video games on consoles that vaguely resemble actual ones. However, one strip shows a girl eagerly grasping the controller while the disk door is open.
- Amazingly,
*Calvin & Hobbes: The Series* manages to play this trope straight. Andy plays a portable game by button-mashing, and the game is described as "a plumber trying to rescue a princess from a wizard and collect the power crystals", something found in mid-80's to early-90's video games. Said chapter couldn't have been released later than **2010.**
-
*Shorts* features a particularly bad example of this. Various characters in the film are often shown playing *Spore*. Normally this wouldn't be all that bad, but said characters are shown playing it multiplayer ( *Spore* is a single player game), on a PS3 ( *Spore* is PC exclusive), and while randomly mashing buttons all while showing the Creature Creator on screen. To top it all off, nothing is even happening on the screen while said button-mashing is happening (the creature is clearly in its idle animation), and several bleeps reminiscent of some kind of weapons fire are heard.
- In
*Charlie's Angels (2000)*, *two* boys are shown playing *Final Fantasy VIII* with two 3rd party PlayStation controllers and button-mashing unrealistically while out-of-place sound-effects play — though the sound effects are not particularly old-sounding and not from *Pac-Man*. The really bad part is that *Final Fantasy VIII* is not only a game for which button-mashing is counterproductive (unless you're charging up your GF summons), but that it's NOT a two-player game.
-
*Rumble in the Bronx* and *Airheads* feature cartridgeless Sega Game Gear consoles. *Rumble in the Bronx* is particularly amusing, as the wheel-chair bound kid exclaims while playing the cartridge- and *battery*-less Game Gear: "Thank you for the game, uncle Jackie!"
-
*Surf Ninjas* also features a cartridgeless Game Gear, though there it's a bit of a plot point.
- Intentionally played straight in
*The 40-Year-Old Virgin*, in which two characters play *Mortal Kombat: Deception* by flailing randomly on incorrect controllers and using a console it's not on. The filmmakers tried to get as many things wrong as possible (although the gameplay footage itself is accurate, even showing off some Fatalities).
- In
*Elephant (2003)*, one of the characters who shoots up his school plays a game in which he shoots several identical people in the desert. (The people seem to resemble the characters from *Gerry*, Gus Van Sant's previous film, about two guys who get lost in a desert.) The point of the game seems to be to shoot people who don't do anything but walk around.
-
*Live Free or Die Hard* has dozens of computers but no mice; at one point, the actor who plays the heroic hacker reaches for the area where a mouse should be. On the other hand, the intro to the movie quite clearly shows several of the hackers playing *Gears of War*, and one of Warlock's many screens has the same game paused on it.
-
*Jarhead* has a few lines of dialogue referring to levels in *Metroid*, and that if you reach the tenth level, nothing happens, you just start at the beginning again. Erm, no. *Metroid* is divided into geographic areas, not levels, and they're named, not numbered. It's also not an Endless Game, and shows a closing cutscene and rolls the credits when completed.
-
*Training Day*: A kid plays on a Dreamcast controller while stock 70s Arcade sound effects play in the background.
- In
*Return of the Living Dead 3*, a group of thugs are playing what's clearly *Street Fighter II* in a convenience store, yet it makes sounds like an early 1980s arcade game. In addition, the game is clearly in demo mode, as the *Street Fighter II* marquee keeps flashing up even though they're meant to be in the middle of a heated battle.
-
*Transformers Film Series*:
- In
*Transformers* (2007), Glen's cousin is playing *DanceDanceRevolution*; when Glen enters, he asks what level he's on, and the reply is "Six!" (Level 6 songs in *DDR* included ".59" and "Healing Vision" on Standard or "Max 300" on Light, prior to the expansion from 10 to 18 levels in *DDR X*.) Then Glen pauses the game and asks his cousin to leave the room, and the reply is "Well, save my game!" (Unlike *Amplitude*, *Guitar Hero*, and *Rock Band*, DDR doesn't have pause. It does, like those games, have auto-save.) Very likely he's actually playing *StepMania*, a DDR-alike that has similar graphics.
- In an early scene of
*Transformers: Rise of the Beasts*, Noah's little brother Kris is shown playing with a Game Boy and complains that he can't defeat Bowser, and the losing sound effect from *Super Mario Bros.* can be heard coming from the Game Boy. *Super Mario Bros.* wasn't playable on the original Game Boy (a porting/remake, titled *Super Mario Bros. Deluxe*, came out in 1999, but the movie is set in 1994), and no other *Mario* games on the first Game Boy had boss battles with Bowser.
-
*Inside Man* goes the opposite extreme. A kid plays an ersatz *Grand Theft Auto* PSP game. When we see clips, the game's graphics are too advanced for the PSP, especially since at the time Sony had the CPU speed slowed down to preserve battery life.
-
*La Maquina de Bailar* (" *The Dance Machine*") is a Spanish film where the plot involves a nobody winning a *DanceDanceRevolution* tournament in order to pay off a debt. Even with official endorsement from Konami, many "liberties" were taken with the game — mainly that each player's whacked-out dancing doesn't even attempt to correspond with the arrows onscreen (which, when shown, display a stepchart from another song... at the lowest difficulty... *and they're repeatedly missing steps*.) And the best way to train for a DDR tournament is, apparently, to take a ballet class (as opposed to playing the game instead.)
- The low-budget horror film
*How To Make A Monster* was obviously written by someone who had no knowledge of video game development. A triple-A title game is being created by three programmers and a producer. Now that's an efficient development system. The programmers are in charge of "AI", "Weapons" (?), and "Audio", and bafflingly, the CEO promises $1 million to the programmer who makes the game the "scariest", igniting a fierce rivalry between the trio. Yes, instead of encouraging teamwork, the CEO encourages rivalry between three development teams that worked on separate parts of the game. However, when the game is shown, it averts Pac-Man Fever, as it shows a contemporary first person hack and slash with the graphics and quality expected of the year.
-
*Grosse Pointe Blank* features a kid playing an arcade game in a convenience store, but the game he's playing is *Doom II*, which was never officially turned into an arcade game.
- In
*Beethoven*, there's a scene where the brother and older sister are playing *Super Mario Bros. 3* together. As in simultaneously mashing buttons on their controllers, even though the footage shown indicates that they're not playing one of the "versus games" that actually allows simultaneous play. Plus, the brother is wearing the Mattel Power Glove but uses his free hand on the "standard controller" button setup that's built into the glove.
-
*Meet Dave* has an extremely stupid example. The eponymous alien plays against a kid in what appears to be *Kinetica*, an *F-Zero*/ *Wipeout*-like racing game for a PlayStation 2. The kid seems to be playing correctly, but Dave just taps his fingers over the controller like a mad man, and kicks the kid's ass in the game. Granted, he's an alien unfamiliar with human video games, but there is no way that Button Mashing on crack could help you in any racing game at all, as they don't require combos. If it were a fighting game, this might've been funny, but in a racing game it looks stupid.
- In
*Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey*, the kids are playing *StarTropics* together and the stepdad asks who's winning. The actual game is single-player; the NES didn't have enough video memory for co-op RPGs.
- The horrific
*Police Academy: Mission to Moscow*. Not only do various characters in the movie sport cartridgeless Game Boys (of the black and white variety — the color models didn't come out until 4 years later), but videos of the game in action are blatantly shot on a PC monitor, in color!
- In the Hulk Hogan movie
*Suburban Commando*, there is a section where a kid and Hulk Hogan's character play *After Burner* all while randomly yelling nonsensical crap about some space alien and phasers despite briefly showing us some gameplay footage that depicts a very much Earth-based fighter jet. They're also playing it very wrong, but then, Hogan's character doesn't know it *is* a game (not that this stops The Hulkster from beating the game anyway — it even raises a white flag in surrender!).
- The brief scene supposedly parodying
*Grand Theft Auto* in *Meet The Spartans*: Leonidas starts running in very jerky motions as he steals a car, soundtracked by 8-bit-esque sound effects and music. Although this *is* Seltzer and Friedberg we're talking about here...
- The Lindsay Lohan movie
*Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen* has a scene in which Lohan's character plays *Dance Dance Revolution*, or a *DDR* ripoff, against the antagonist (played by Megan Fox). They both actually *dance in synchronous*, from the waist up and everything, never mind the way *DDR* actually works.
-
*Dead Babies*: *Perfect Dark* is played on an N64 with a PlayStation 2 controller.
-
*World's Greatest Dad* features technology contemporary to the year it was released, 2009, yet the teenage son announces that he's going to play *Doom*, a game older than he is. The character is portrayed as anything but a retro-gamer.
- In a scene in
*Big Daddy*, Julian is seen playing *Twisted Metal III* with sounds beeping like a generic '80s arcade game, not the actual sounds.
-
*Ferris Bueller's Day Off* has a *Karate Champ* arcade game with *Pac-Man* sound effects.
-
*Garrison's Flowers*: There is a PlayStation, though the film is set in 1991.
- One scene in
*Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars* shows a character playing a licensed video game — it's in 3D, but it's an unbelievably crappy-looking Sprite/Polygon Mix, and it comes complete with Button Mashing and Arcade Sounds.
-
*Life is Ruff*: A cartridgeless Nintendo 64 is being played.
-
*My Blue Heaven*: *The Goonies II* is played, overdubbed with sounds from the Atari 2600 *Pac-Man*.
- Almost averted in
*The Rocker*. There are a couple scenes where the main characters are playing *Rock Band* on Xbox 360. They use the actual game guitars, the music plays as normal and they don't mash the instruments like crazy, but when they stop playing (without pausing), the game is still being shown in background, with the notes still going on, and the notes being mysteriously still played, making it clear that it was just a video of the game being played.
- In the film
*Skinned Deep*, the younger brother starts playing a SNES. Without turning on the TV. Or putting a game in the console. You start to see why he was killed off early on.
- In
*Bring It On*, Kirsten Dunst's character's brother is seen playing *Twisted Metal III*, and he actually looks like he's playing it and not randomly smashing buttons, and the sound effects are typical of what you'd hear from that game. All goes well until he makes a smartass comment about her boyfriend, causing her to get mad and rip the controller out of the system so hard it pops open the console, revealing no game inside of it.
- No, not even films about video games are immune to this trope.
*The Wizard*, a film which could best be described as a 90-minute Nintendo commercial, featured genuine footage of *Super Mario Bros. 3* several months before its release. It *still* managed a number of inaccuracies, however:
- One of the main characters getting 50,000 points in
*Double Dragon* *by mashing buttons during the opening cutscene*. (The arcade machines playing NES games could be Playchoice-10 machines.)
- There's also the bit where someone comments on Jimmy getting so far in
*Ninja Gaiden* without taking a hit, when the screen we see shows a couple notches off his health bar. He even keeps playing after Haley sets a magazine down over 90% of the screen, though that could possibly be because he's "autistic".
- After the dad (Beau Bridges) gets hooked on
*Zelda II*, the older son (Christian Slater) snaps him out of it by unplugging the controller — which somehow shuts off not only the NES, but the TV he's playing on.
- And also the other scene when the dad mashing buttons like he's playing
*Double Dragon* when you can clearly hear the sounds from *Zelda II*.
- In the
*Super Mario Bros. 3* scene, Jimmy shoots into the lead by getting the Warp Whistle. However, it's a points race, and you don't get any points for that... The whole "points race" thing counts too, since even at the time, most gamers strove more for progress through the levels rather than points. Besides, in a points race, the Warp Whistle would actually be counter productive - it gets you to higher levels that have harder enemies and fewer opportunities for points, by outright skipping several other levels and all of *their* opportunities for points. In such a competition, barring a time limit or other rules imposed by the organizers, a smart gamer would never have left World 1-2 and its infinite Goomba pipes.
- To make the
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* scene even funnier, *Siskel & Ebert* admitted to not being big on the gaming scene then proceeded to point out flaws even they noticed. Ebert commented that he had in fact played *TMNT* and made it to level 2, thus making it very clear to him that despite claims of being on level 3, they were really still on level 1.
-
*Diary of a Wimpy Kid*:
- While in the book it's never shown, the movie adaptation shows the fictional
*Twisted Wizard* video game as *Superman 64* with dragons, multiplayer, and Pac-Man sound effects. On Wii. It's apparently played by just randomly tilting the Wii Remote back and forth without actually pressing any of the buttons.
-
*Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules* has a scene panning over a retirement home rec room, and shows how old the games are by having a shot of two seniors playing *Pong*... with Xbox controllers.
-
*Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days* shows them playing a medieval RPG with early 2000s graphics and... the HUD from *The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion*.
- In
*The Avengers (2012)*, Tony Stark points out that one of the Helicarrier's crewmen is playing *Galaga*. When he leaves, the crewman looks around and then goes back to his game. When he does, the sound of a tractor beam can be heard, but there aren't any on the screen.
- In
*Men, Women & Children*, one of the characters has their *Guild Wars 2* subscription fee cancelled by their parent (which becomes a fairly important plot point). The only problem is that game *has no subscription fees*. This is a particularly egregious example as the biggest selling point of the original *Guild Wars* was that it was the *first* big AAA MMO to not have a subscription fee, which its sequel obviously retained. One wonders why they didn't just use *World of Warcraft* instead, which is not only a better-known game than *Guild Wars 2* ( *the* best-known MMO in fact), but also one of the few remaining MMOs that *does* retain a subscription fee.
-
*Pixels*: It's a major plot point that one character uses cheat codes in old arcade games. The overwhelming majority of arcade games had no secret inputs for the player to enter, and the tiny handful that did never had effects that made the game easier to play; commands to actually make the game easier were done through "dip switch" settings that a player was very unlikely to have access to unless they owned the machine (and you could *never* secretly fool around with dip switches in a tournament with numerous people watching). Even less logical is these cheat codes somehow continue to work in real-life reenactments of the games, created by space aliens.
-
*Superman III* has the scene when the villains have successfully constructed their supercomputer and Supes is heading their way, they try to take him out with missiles, and the computer represents the battle with a rather nice Atari ST-esque render of Supes... Set to the sounds of Pac-Man from the Atari 2600.
- In
*The Truth About Jane*, an NES is played with a Master System controller.
- In the 2017 movie
*Bigger Fatter Liar*, the main character is supposed to be a teenage computer and video game genius, who supposedly comes up with an idea for an industry revolutionizing video game, and he gets his idea for it plagiarized by a video game developer. All throughout the movie the characters keep talking about how amazing and brilliant this game is and yet in the brief footage we see of it it appears to be a casual game in which your character runs around catching bombs thrown from a gorilla in the sky. The graphics for the video game are at least 15 years out of date and the actual game footage bears absolutely no relation to how the people in the movie describe it. This game is clearly not the sort that would revolutionize an industry, in spite of how much the characters gush about it. Even funnier is that a video game with a similar premise was already released decades prior in 1981: *Kaboom!* for the Atari 2600.
- In the 2006 film adaptation of
*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory* Mike Teavee is an addict to violent video games. During his introduction he is seen playing a First-Person Shooter game with graphics that are on par for the era, but the game is being played on an Atari 2600. Given the many other examples of bizarrely anachronistic technology in the movie it's almost certainly intentional.
- Almost averted in
*Haunter* where Robbie is shown playing the Atari version of *Pac-Man* with the correct controller, but with the arcade sounds.
-
*Back to the Future Part II*, in 2015, features a *Wild Gunman* arcade cabinet based on the NES game, which onlookers liken to a "baby's toy". In real life, the original arcade game was the Ur-Example of Full Motion Video, and the only NES-based version in arcades was on the PlayChoice-10 system, plus no version of the game put you up against every outlaw at once or awared a "Crack Shot !!" bonus. Furthermore, an actual *Pac-Man* machine is displayed as a "priceless artifact", while in real life, said machines are still relatively common (though expensive) several years after 2015.
- The main character of
*Dancing Ninja* spends some time early in the movie training his dancing skills on a *Pump It Up* machine that happens to be on the street for some reason. Despite using actual Pump footage (albeit with some girl superimposed on top), the dancing clearly has no relation with what's going on on screen. Also, for whatever reason they decided to replace the pads with a stage with flashing arrows (which are at least the correct icons), but there's only one set of arrows on the stage even when we see Double mode.
-
*Are We There Yet?* shows one of the kids playing *Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem* while sitting in the backseat of a minivan, which would have been a rare setup for the time of the film, but the game itself is also making primitive sound effects.
- Early in
*Mario (2018)*, Mario is shown playing a video game with a soundtrack of bleeps and bloops. Surprising, since later he and Leon play a 3D animated racing game with driving sound effects.
-
*Merry In-Laws* was made in 2012, but the video game that Max and Santa are playing looks and sounds like something from the 16-bit era.
-
*RoboCop 2*: The "The Real Ghostbusters" cabinet is actually a prototype or test unit of the unreleased game *Bandit* with the former name tacked on.
-
*Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief* has a character playing *Modern Warfare 2* on a PC, with an Xbox control scheme, using a PS3 controller, and plays by button-mashing and spraying bullets everywhere. And he "pauses" while playing online, presumably leaving the other players to kill him freely. With sound effects still in the background, no less.
-
*Diary of a Wimpy Kid*:
- Arcades are shown to be still culturally relevant in
*Dog Days* and *Cabin Fever* where Greg tries to get the high score in an arcade game and Greg trying to make a *Pac-Man* arcade cabinet for a holiday festival respectively.
- Greg is shown to own what resembles a Nintendo 64 in most books.
- Additionally, video games are depicted to be 80s style Shmups most of the time.
- In
*Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire*, Harry mentions that Dudley broke his PlayStation (and comments about Dudley playing Ultra Super Death Gorefest Chainsawer 3000 games). Given that he was writing that in the summer of 1994 and the system would not be available in Japan until that December, nor in Europe until September of the following year, J. K. Rowling admits she screwed up with the numbers. This was apparently going to be worse as, before her editor suggested using the PlayStation, Rowling was going to use an SNES.
- In
*School's Out -- Forever*, Ari goes shopping and finds a flash-new Game Boy display, then proceeds to steal one. The book was released in 2006 (and suggested to be set in the fall of 2005), by which time the DS would have long since replaced the Game Boy as the hot new thing in portable gaming.
- In
*Skeleton Key*, the third book in the *Alex Rider* series, Alex is given a Game Boy and a copy of a *The Legend of Zelda* game while traveling to Cuba, and he's relieved to get to "the fifth level" without the Game Boy exploding in his hands. None of the *Legend of Zelda* games are divided into levels; they're all open-world games that require the player to accomplish tasks, gradually unlocking more of the world as the game progresses. That said, *The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening* (possibly what the book meant) does explicitly refer to its dungeons as "levels" upon entry, so the writer could have been referring to the fifth *dungeon*.
- In
*Life, the Universe and Everything*, the entertainment systems on the *Heart of Gold*, the galaxy's most advanced starship, comprise "little blobs ... rush[ing] around the screen eating each other", while Zaphod says "Pow! Freeeoooo!", apparently having to make the Pac-Man noises himself. (In the same book, for reference, an incredibly lifelike VR system is used to watch a historical documentary). The radio adaptation replaces this game with *Grand Theft Cosmo*.
- In the
*Full House* episode "Stephanie's Wild Ride", someone plays a Fictional Video Game on a Super NES using an NES Max controller.
- In an episode of
*Judging Amy*, someone plays a cartridgeless N64.
-
*Law & Order: Special Victims Unit* created a game called *IntenCity*, an obvious *Grand Theft Auto* ripoff, to create a far-out story about games causing prostitute murder — Ripped from the Headlines, depending on who one asks. The game is 3D, but extremely lousy-looking. And short, for when the suspects are asked to play the game in order to measure their brain activity, the same 10 seconds of game footage is looped over and over, broken by close-ups of the suspect.
-
*SVU*, again, featured an episode centered around a fairly typical hack-and-slash dungeon crawler... and then subverted this trope like mad. The characters refer to the game having "levels", but use it to refer to levels of the game and the game hero's character level interchangeably, which does actually make way more sense than you'd expect. The sound effects correspond to the gameplay being shown — clashing swords, monster noises, and a triumphant horn chorus straight from *EverQuest* for leveling up — and it's Captain Cragen, the eldest cast member, who discovers a talent for the game and actually manages to beat it, and then uses their shared love of the game to talk to the main suspect, a kid who's obsessed with the game and has a bit of trouble telling fantasy from reality. Oh, and in one final subversion, ||the kid *didn't do it*. He was roleplaying the hero and tried to *save* the girl.||
- The second season premiere has a bad one, when Stabler and Benson question a person of interest outside of a convenience store while he's playing a light gun game. Said game cabinet isn't even on, and the two teens next to him are playing on another machine, which clearly says NFL Blitz 2000 on the side. But instead of football sounds, we just hear random arcade noises, as well as the two just randomly wiggling the sticks and pressing buttons, before they just up and leave in the middle of their game as soon as Stabler and Benson walk away.
-
*Married... with Children* has one episode with a nerd playing an original Game Boy, mashing the buttons while arcade noises sound. When the Game Boy is broken, he pulls a second one out of his pants, immediately playing it with the same sound effects.
- Minor example in one episode; after Bud borrows money from a loan shark to help Kelly and another classmate make a music video, the mobster sends a rather intimidating henchman to make sure the project goes smoothly. (Which it clearly does not, as Kelly and the other classmate can't cooperate with each other.) The henchman spends most of his time there looking up contacts for illegal organ donors on a laptop (what he hints he'll do to Bud if he can't pay up). In one throwaway joke, one of the backup dancers asks the guy if he has
*Mortal Kombat* on it. "You kidding?" he responds. "I got the highest score in the mob!" While funny, no game in the *Mortal Kombat* franchise had, at the time, been available on a PC, and competing with other players for highest score is rarely the objective.
- In the
*Everybody Loves Raymond* episode "Homework", Ray and Robert are playing a fictional generic zombie FPS on PlayStation 2 (mashing buttons and all). Interestingly, a few minutes later, Robert picks up the console and leaves, and we can clearly see that it was not even hooked up to the TV.
-
*House*:
- In one episode, House plays
*Metroid: Zero Mission* on his Game Boy Advance SP... however, despite going close-up on the GBA screen several times, you very pointedly hear *Pac-Man* bleeps and bloops. He also makes the same mistake as in *Jarhead* of referring to numbered levels in a Metroid Vania. Maybe people just associate 2D with levels. Beyond that, several hours of playing don't seem to advance House beyond the first 30 seconds of gameplay. The visuals feature an extremely specific form of "Wrong for the sake of accessibility"; in-game, main character Samus can roll into a ball and download maps from statues. However, the makers of the episode decided that the image of Samus being held in the claws of a big alien thing worked better as something recognizably negative (despite being something the player has to do to progress), complete with an "Oh, that's gotta hurt!" reaction shot from House.
- In another episode, House holds up a Nintendo DS to a patient's ear to see if he can hear it. While it is quite clearly playing the Morph Ball time trial from
*Metroid Prime Hunters* (without any input from a player, interestingly enough), we hear the stock sound effects. Maybe the writers are *Metroid* fans, but the sound effects guys think it's just *Pac-Man* with better graphics.
- During season 2, House is shown in his office playing
*MX vs. ATV* on his PSP, and apart from the fact he's just trying to crash into a wall instead of completing laps, the sound effects are the motor sounds from the game, the music is just cut.
- In another episode, this is done slightly less poorly: House is playing
*Ninja Gaiden II* on an Xbox 360 with realistic sounds and button inputs. The only problem is that House seems to think that his goal is to kill the protagonist Ryu. Admittedly, as antisocial as House is, one could see him play a game just to kill the main character. It'd help if he was using the left stick and not the + Control Pad, though.
- Another episode has the team treating a video game designer and trying out his virtual reality immersion equipment for the game. It has some very good graphics and FPS views. This specific example is an aversion, but a later episode shows Foreman and Taub bonding over playing Xbox together (mashing buttons and analog sticks) while the exact same game footage plays on the TV.
- In the
*Angel* episode "You're Welcome", Spike is playing a game that's implied to be the original *Donkey Kong*, making comments such as "Gorilla with barrels" and "Stupid plumber!", yet he is clearly holding an Xbox controller. And we doubt that Joss Whedon has heard of homebrew.
- The sound effects are right for
*Donkey Kong*, and Spike's comments make sense in the contexts of the sound effects (however, Mario was a carpenter in *Donkey Kong*, not a plumber).
- In "Power Play", Illyria and Drogyn are shown playing the same system while the rest of the heroes are away, and making bemused remarks to one another about the gameplay that clearly suggest they're playing a
*Crash Bandicoot* game. What sounds do we hear coming from the unseen television screen? Pac-Man beeps and whistles.
- In the first issue of the season nine comics of
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer*, Buffy's roommates are playing *Mass Effect*, which makes sense as Dark Horse Comics is behind both adaptations. The scene shown is an Asari fighting Collectors, Guns Akimbo, wearing what looks like Cerberus armor. They almost got it right with *Mass Effect 3* multiplayer, except for the armor and Dual Wielding.
- In one episode of
*ER*, Dr. Kovac buys a brand new console. This is not only treated as a ridiculous and silly indulgence for a grown man and a sign of his deteriorating moral character, but features him mashing buttons to the same stock bloop-bloop arcade sounds.
- The Australian soap opera
*Neighbours* became infamous among schoolkids of the 90s for frequently showing one of the children playing a Nintendo Game Boy *with no cartridge installed*. This wasn't possible until Nintendo introduced the Game Boy Advance in 2001, which could load a game into RAM from another GBA or a GameCube.
- This happened
*again* in 2008. The child in question is *still* playing an original Game Boy.
- Also in
*Neighbours*, well past 2000, whenever a character plays a computer game, the sound effects are the distinctive background music and projectile-launch sound effects of *Magic Carpet*, a game first released in 1994...
-
*Harry Enfield and Chums*'s "Kevin the teenager" sketch starts as a sweet kid who spontaneously turns into a stereotypical teenager. On his thirteenth birthday, he opens a present and pulls out a Game Boy. He exclaims that " *Mario Kart* is babyish!" Heaven knows why, as *Mario Kart* wasn't on the Game Boy until *Mario Kart Super Circuit* for Game Boy Advance. Even worse, he's clearly holding a copy of *Wario Land*.
- Done by Feedback on
*Who Wants to Be a Superhero?*. Despite his superhero identity getting his powers from video games, when asked to name his favorite game, he says *Pong*. However, he also mentions the *Prince of Persia* series, which is still going strong, so this may just be a nostalgia thing. (Or maybe he's just well aware of this trope.) Considering his official profile gets the details right note : He gains powers from video games; the example given is *Prince of Persia*, saying that the game would give him the Prince's acrobatic skills and limited control over time., Genre Savvy is more likely.
- Mike from
*Power Rangers Samurai* is apparently a video game enthusiast, but the arcade game he is shown playing in one of the earliest episodes displays crude graphics and sounds typical of games from the late 1980's/early 1990's. Contrast this with the source material ( *Samurai Sentai Shinkenger*), where, in the premiere episode, Chiaki is shown playing *Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion*. It helped that Namco-Bandai, publisher of *Tekken 6*, also sponsors the long-running *Super Sentai* series.
- In an online skit for
*Power Rangers Megaforce* about what the Rangers do in their spare time, Emma is seen delievering a pizza to a house where two kids are somehow *playing a trailer for the series' 3DS game on a Nintendo 64*.
- In two separate episodes of
*Roseanne*, a Super NES is clearly being played, complete with actual sounds and music from *Super Mario World* and using the SNES controller realistically. However, both times the games is misidentified. Mark states the game deals with "skulls and blood" while Roseanne makes a comment about saving a monkey princess, two things definitely not in *Super Mario World*. There are skull rafts and blood-red lava in the Vanilla Dome of *SMW*; this may have confused the producers of *Roseanne* as much as it confused Luigi in "Mama Luigi". To top it off, the music in at least one of these episodes is from the game's title screen, which never occurs anywhere else in the game.
-
*Scrubs* features Turk playing a game on the Xbox 360. The footage seen is from *Unreal Tournament III*, but the show doesn't seem to get its facts straight on anything, with the dialogue sounding more like they are playing *Halo*. Particularly hilarious is when Carla turns out to be the best player, but her actress obviously doesn't know how to hold the controller. Worst of all, the characters all explicitly mention that they are playing co-op mode on the same machine, but the screen clearly shows single-player mode in progress.
-
*Life* had an episode where the victim is tied to drug dealing, and the detectives figure out that he managed to store files pertaining to the crime on his Xbox. So they get the victim's sister, who they see making vaguely controller-like fiddly motions in the air for no good reason, to play through *Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones* until she gets to Level 10, which unlocks the files. Never minding the fact that the game itself doesn't *have* numbered levels, the people behind the show just decided to hack up footage from the game and randomly stick "level" screens between them to denote progress. To make matters worse, the player before the girl was brought in was shown dying a lot, even though one of the series' selling points is the ability to rewind time, and he claims the plot of the game is to, as he puts it, "Save the Princess, Farah", when Farah actually assists the player for a good portion of the game and doesn't need rescuing. (At least they got the *name* right.) To top it all off, there are plenty of easier, more accessible ways to hide files and easier, more accessible ways to get them back off the console. This, coupled with a lot of erroneous remarks involving game systems being "just hard drives with games on them", as well as a couple of rather nasty implications about gamers being losers, leads to a very grating episode.
- In one episode of
*Monk* Sharona's ex-husband comes back to mend fences, and in one scene plays *Kinetica* with Benji. It all looks pretty straight forward until his character dies from falling off the race track, where in the actual game it just resets the player. Benji states that he has "3 lives left." The ex-husband leaving the game also doesn't affect Benji's play. All of these inaccuracies make the game seem more similar to an old-fashioned arcade game.
- In an episode of some Disney TV show (
*Hannah Montana* or *That's So Raven*), two people are playing a video game together. One person has a GameCube controller, and the other has an Xbox 360 controller. True, a PC can use both 360 controllers and USB-adapted GCN controllers, but it's unlikely that was the case.
- In a 2001 episode of The BBC children's television program
*WATCH!*, two kids play *Super Smash Bros. Melee* (which had only just been released) on a *PlayStation* (actually a GameCube).
- A truly atrocious example appears in an episode of
*CSI: Miami*, where a group of killers is linked to a *GTA*-esque game. Apart from the usual errors regarding "points" and "levels", the detectives determine that the killers are basing their actions on the game's plot. They ask the (fortunately local) game developer for details of the plot. Said developer refuses to tell them the game's plot, citing it as a "trade secret", and states that they will have to play the game to learn the plot, which they do. Apparently, no one involved with the show has ever so much as walked into a video game store, with prominent shelves of strategy guides proclaiming "all secrets revealed!" Or heard of GameFAQs.
If that wasn't enough, at the beginning of the episode a group of kids rob a bank with machine pistols, and one of them is shot by Delko after he tries to rape a woman for "extra points". It's later revealed they specifically picked a bank with a cop present (again, for extra points), the PR guy (yes, there was only one) encouraged them (and provided the guns) to do it for advertising purposes, one of the suspects is found to have "gamed himself to death", and the token Girl Gamer apparently did it to get in with the highly elitist gamers.
-
*CSI*:
- In "Spark of Life", they manage to perform Pac-Man Fever with a cartoon. They show a small flat-screen TV playing a series of stock cartoon sound effects... with the opening of
*Aqua Teen Hunger Force*.
- Somewhat averted in an episode where the case revolves around the death of an MMO player. The game shown, terminology, rankings a a game-related TV show that sponsors a competition are a fairly realistic representation for what they show. The only problem? Someone forgot to let them know that there's a difference between a multiplayer, team-based shooter and an MMO.
-
*Dexter*:
- Episode 6 has his girlfriend's son pick up a PS2 controller and start playing what appears to be
*Doom* with *Pac-Man* sounds over the background music from *Space Invaders*.
- A Season 3 episode has the eponymous Anti-Villain playing
*Halo 3* on the PC (which it wasn't available for until *The Master Chief Collection* was ported to PC over 10 years later), with completely foreign sound effects (including gunfire right out of Atari and an enemy "death rattle" akin to sound effects from *TRON*), and using only the keyboard (which is likely *possible*, but would be much more difficult than using a mouse to aim).
- A
*Step by Step* episode has the family's stereotypically nerdy son becoming a "video game addict," complete with an ending where he goes to a support group and has a psychotic episode in which he angrily screams "I ALWAYS GET THE HIGHEST SCORE!!!" before breaking down and admitting he has a problem. The game which drives his addiction (indeed the only game he seems to have ever played) is a generic looking Galaga doppelganger which was outdated looking even for the show's time.
- There's a video poker machine in multiple episodes of
*Sliders* that produces *Pitfall!* sound effects. At least they're in alternate dimensions.
- One episode of
*Manhattan Love Story* has Peter playing *Killer Instinct* on the Xbox 360. Good enough... until he reveals he was talking to another player on the headset and refers to him as "Blue Team Leader," something a one-on-one fighting game absolutely wouldn't have.
- Played With in the Stargate-verse:
- In the episode "Avatar" of
*Stargate SG-1*, the graphical representation of Teal'c's virtual reality adventure was created using actual gameplay footage from *Stargate SG-1: The Alliance*, which was an FPS based on the show that was, sadly, cancelled without a release.
- In the
*Stargate Atlantis* season two episode "The Long Goodbye," John Sheppard is seen playing with a small handheld device while in the infirmary. According to the DVD commentary this was not intentional at all. Joe Flannigan (the actor) was playing video games between takes, and just kept playing when they decided to start filming. Nobody noticed until after the scene was shot, and they decided to keep it in. This became a Running Gag, and Sheppard would be seen playing with the same device throughout the series. What, exactly, he is playing is never revealed.
- In the season three episode of
*Stargate Atlantis* "The Return," Elizabeth Weir needs to distract Bill Lee, so she tries talking to him about *World of Warcraft*. She knows nothing about the game, but he doesn't notice; they both get so much wrong about it that it seems very likely, although this could be wishful thinking, that this instance was Stylistic Suck for the sake of Rule of Funny. Every term Weir and Lee used appears in *World of Warcraft*, and yet every single one is used incorrectly ("Mage" is referred to as a species, Bill refers to having a level 85 character before it was possible to do so, etc).
- A fifth season episode of
*Three's Company* begins with Jack and Janet playing what is apparently Atari Football. The bleeping sounds are exaggerated both in frequency and volume, but that could be excused as it sets up a quip from Mr. Furley. However, looking at the actual system... well, it's an authentic 2600, too bad the cartridge is laying behind it.
-
*Two and a Half Men*:
- Jake mentions that he wants to get the "new Final Fantasy game", and when he goes to a video store and gets the game, it turns out to be
*Final Fantasy X*. Not only was the game about three years old at the airing of the episode, it clearly has the red Greatest Hits logo. And when he gets home and starts to play it, the battle theme from *Final Fantasy II* can be heard.
- Another example is when Jake plays his DS with a high volume and Alan gets annoyed by the Pac Man sounds, he plugs the cable to Jake's headphones into the charge slot on the top rather than the standard headphone jack on the bottom. Alan must have been used to the GBA SP, which uses special headphones that plug into the charge slot. They also refer to that same DS as a 'Game Boy'.
-
*Malcolm in the Middle*:
-
*Mortal Kombat* is discussed, and is played on an actual console that had a version of *MK* on it. Although there aren't really levels in versus fighter games, just opponents that use harder AI later in a game. Also, Sub-Zero has never been a final boss, except momentarily as one of Shang Tsung's morphs in the first game. There's also a scene where Reese is playing an original Game Boy *without a cartridge.*
**Reese:**
No one believes I beat the last level of
*Mortal Kombat*
.
**Hal:**
Because that's just ridiculous. No one beats Sub-Zero!
- This could mean "no one has ever gotten past Sub-Zero to get to the final level/fight", though. In all likelihood, seeing Hal's role as The Ditz, he probably actually believes Sub-Zero is the end boss.
- In "Charity",
*Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones* is mistakenly referred to as *Double Dragon * (which wouldn't even **IV** *exist* until *2017*).
- Different episodes show Reese and Dewey playing a Game Boy that clearly had no game cartridge in it.
-
*Chappelle's Show*:
- The show went recursive, with the narrator calling out "You give me Pac-Man Fever!" He claims to know about gamers and the PlayStation 2, which he proves by doing a live-action GTA spoof with 8-bit sound effects.
- It's averted somewhat with the skit where Dave beats a kid with cancer in
*Street Hoops*. While there is a bit of button-mashing seen when they're playing, the skit features actual footage from the game.
- At the end of an episode of
*Murphy Brown*, Murphy mentions that she and Frank still haven't beaten *Mario 3*. The scene comes *so painfully close* to inverting this trope: they both pick up NES controllers and when the game starts up, neither of them hammer on the buttons. But alas, the music that plays is not of *Mario 3* at all, but instead that of *Super Mario World*.
- An episode of
*Cold Case* revolves around a fictional arcade game called *Defector III*. One of the detectives describes it as an RPG, then helpfully defines that as "Role Playing Game". When you see the game later, it is obviously a two-person fighter in the vein of *Mortal Kombat*.
- An episode of
*Big Time Rush* has a sequence where one tomboyish girl tries to avoid talking to a girly-girl she wants nothing to do with by hiding in the bathroom, playing video games. Sure enough, this is depicted as her randomly mashing buttons on a DS (that in all likelihood wasn't even turned on) as 8-bit music plays in the background.
- On one episode of
*Lost* Walt is playing a modern game (some overhead shooting game in a snowy setting or something) on a modern handheld system, and the sound effects are the classic *Pac-Man* ones.
- In
*Glee*, Finn can tell he's being affected by stress — he got killed on *level two!* Of, er, *Halo 3*, apparently.
- In an episode of the German crime show
*Polizeiruf 110*, a criminal smuggles pirated copies of a game called *Killman 4* into the country. When the police officers get a copy of the game and play it on their PC ("playing" here meaning doing nothing and staring at the screen) the sounds heard are an air raid siren, rifle shots and screaming children. Even worse, the cover of the game shows African child soldiers holding AK-47s.
-
*iCarly*'s creators have used a pretty good (for something created specifically for the show) *Guitar Hero* or *Rock Band*-styled music games on several occasions. One major difference is it including the *violin* as well as more regular instruments. They must be playing *The Corrs Rock Band* or something. The next time it shows up, Carly is just playing *Violin Hero* and it includes *bow power*. They made a mistake however, with the notes still being hit when Carly stops playing to talk to Freddie when he enters. As the episode was Re-Cut into an extended version shown a week later, they had actually fixed the error after it was pointed out to them after the original airing.
- There is one episode where Spencer gets addicted to a game called "Pac(k) Rat" which has 8-bit graphics and sounds, but this would be a Justified Trope — Spencer specifically said he got this game from the dumpster, it was mentioned several times that the game in question was rather old, and it's actually an arcade game. Bonus points as it is a parody of
*Pac-Man*. It even has a (very unpleasant) Easter Egg: ||a dead raccoon||.
- There is also
*Drake & Josh*. In one episode we see Helen's Groove Machine (a Bland-Name Product of *DanceDanceRevolution*) hooked directly up to her TV. Despite the fact that the screen shows displays for two players, Drake, Josh, and Helen are all shown dancing on a machine built for three people. Their dancing is also far more choreographed than usual for such a game and the icons moving on screen don't match up to their movements.
- In another episode Josh is shown playing games on TV with what is clearly a Nintendo Gamecube controller and quickly switching between that and a Gameboy Advance SP playing both while rapidly pushing buttons. We can hear some of the sound effects from both and they are the standard "bloopy" sound effects from older games.
- There is an episode where Drake is seen playing a new game system called the Game Sphere, first with an original Xbox controller, and the switching to what appears to be a wireless Nintendo 64 controller. In real life, no wireless controllers were ever made for the Nintendo 64.
- In another episode Megan pulls out her "Pintendo GS" and starts playing it by rapidly pushing buttons, without appearing to even turn it on. We hear generic laser-firing sounds for a few seconds.
- In fact, any Dan Schneider series is generally good about this, as they seemingly are set in a Shared Universe with the fictional Gamestation console.
- In
*2point4 Children*, both Ben and David are avid gamers, with Ben getting addicted to the Fictional Video Game *Ninja Badger*. Like many teenagers, David is obsessed with violent, gory games, often describing them in great detail. This is all well and good until one episode shows that he's playing *Final Fantasy VII* while talking about how "the torture master ripped out my spine again".
-
*Modern Family* plays it nice and simple with Luke using a DS, playing a game with '80s beeping noises and high scores. And it probably wasn't *Retro Game Challenge*.
-
*Law & Order: UK* has a teenager using his Xbox 360 as an alibi for not committing a crime. Subsequent investigation shows that he *was* online at the time the crime was committed (not ridiculous at all), that he made three saves at three specific times (okay, real-world time is saved for a lot of games), and that he *had* to be the one who made them because the saves were password protected, which on the face of it appears to be this trope, except that you don't have to automatically sign into an Xbox profile, meaning that the saves could have been protected because he was the only person who was able to sign into his profile to save the games in.
- While generally decent about video games,
*NCIS* flubbed several moments in Kill Screen. To begin with the episode name, they propose that somehow an online MMORPG has a scoring system that causes it to crash. This is talked about like a common occurrence. Kill Screens don't even exist in video games anymore. note : They happened when the processor on certain events rolled over from 255 to 0, which caused a fatal error. Modern gaming engines can process numbers into the billions now, far further than most programmers or gamers would venture for the express purpose of breaking an engine. Even if this did exist, the computer-savvy characters would more likely refer to it as simply a "crash."
- In the same episode, McGee states that a witness held the high scores in multiple MMORPGs, a genre largely devoid of easily-tracked scoring systems. And when they do have leaderboards of some kind, they are often topped by players who dedicate most of their waking hours to getting there, making it unfeasible to top even different types of leaderboards (such as both PVP and PVE) in a single MMO, much topping multiples. The witness is shown to be mostly just your usual tech enthusiast, not the kind of all-hours savant that it'd take to realistically get on multiple leaderboards. Also, people can apparently tell that she has a twelve-core by a brief glance at her monitor.
- In another episode, the kid of an army commander is shown playing a Nintendo DS, sound effects and all. The sound effects are indeed the ones heard when you turn on a DS; the one from the initial title screen, and the one from choosing a game to play. Unfortunately, that's ALL that is heard, as, for the next few minutes, the only sound effects are those two noises, looped ad nauseum.
- The Season 10 finale shows Abby complaining that while she hates violent video games (she actually plays them with McGee all the time), she has designed a homebrew game to vent her frustrations at the Department of Defense special prosecutor, who is targeting ||Gibbs||. The game involves shooting an effigy of him on her PC monitor with a NES "Zapper" Light Gun, which doesn't even run at the same frequency as a PC monitor.
- The episode "Child's Play" actually uses footage (complete with sound) from the second level of
*Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2* as a "combat simulation" children in the Sattler Institute play to train on.
-
*Clarissa Explains It All* goes the opposite direction. Once per Episode, Clarissa will slap together a video game that she can use to vent her frustrations from her current dilemma. These games are graphically far beyond what could be done at the time, often using high resolution photos of Ferguson or her parents that rotate without any artifacts. Amusingly, both this style of graphics and the speed with which she can put the games together would make much more sense about 15 years later in Adobe Flash.
-
*Dynasty Warriors 4* makes repeat appearances in *The O.C.*, yet the characters always play as Xiahou Dun and refer to the characters as "ninjas" (that's *Samurai Warriors*, people).
- An episode of
*Just Shoot Me!* has Maya buying Elliott a PlayStation for his birthday, and mentions buying several "cartridges" for it. (The use of CDs was arguably the most defining feature of the PlayStation against the Nintendo 64).
-
*Good Luck Charlie* is very bad about this, as you can often see characters mashing Xbox 360 controllers to ancient chiptunes, and appear to have figured out how to play *Wii Sports* on a VCR.
- Additionally, when Charlie's brothers bring a TV to their room, you can see two characters talking in a modern-esque game... with heavy metal rock and machine gun sound effects in the background.
-
*Breaking Bad*, for the most part, manages to avert this, but there was one instance of this trope partway through its fourth season. Jesse Pinkman is seen playing *Rage (2011)*, which doesn't seem that odd except 1) The game wasn't out yet at the time of the episode's airing 2) It's clear he's playing a developer walkthrough trailer and 3) He's playing it with a light gun instead of a controller, when neither *Rage* nor the Xbox 360 had light gun support. 4) There's no HUD, which is strange because rail shooters usually display information like the player's score, health, and ammo count. 5) While Rage DID have a rail shooter adaptation, it was for iOS devices, not for consoles.
-
*Ghost Whisperer*, in the episode "Ghost in the Machine", centers around what seems to be a *Second Life* clone. While the graphics for the game, as it is depicted, are pretty close to on par with *Second Life*, the "graphics" when she jumps into the game (i.e. a live representation), are closer in quality to what a modern game would have than the game depicted.
- A
*MADtv (1995)* skit has former US President George W. Bush being distracted by a Game Boy when being asked questions during a presidential debate. His response is "I have a question for you. Have you played *Super Mario Bros.*? I'm in the water level and I can't beat the Kooper Trooper." *Super Mario Bros.* was released on the Game Boy Color and the use of "Kooper Trooper" is to make fun of Bush's frequent malapropisms, so what's the problem? Koopa Troopas (nor Bowser, if that's who he's actually referring to) can't be found in water levels.
- In addition to that, Koopa Troopas aren't something you have to beat and this would be especially true in a water level. You just have to get past them. There are levels where jumping on them helps you get across gaps and that kills them but no one would describe those parts the way they did and a water level couldn't have a part like that.
-
*Frasier*
- In an episode where Frasier's son Frederick is visiting, Frederick is shown playing a Game Boy on the sofa,
*with no game cartridge in the system*.
- In another episode Frederick is shown playing a game with a knock-off looking Playstation controller, but it isn't named and the only sound effect is a high-pitched scream played when the character dies; coupled with Freddie's vague descriptions of gameplay and story going on (they're in a training level where they've escaped from some sort of prison cell), it might well be any number of real games.
- Some 90's sitcoms have the characters (pretending to) playing games using NES controllers (the NES was already fading in relevancy by the early 1990s), but the sounds are clearly from
*Donkey Kong* for the Atari 2600.
-
*Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles* has John playing *Gears of War* with somebody. That he plays it by randomly hitting buttons is justified, since he's never played an Xbox before and is given no instruction. The fact that the two players are shooting each other in what's clearly a co-op campaign, however...
- In the BBC3 series
*Coming of Age*, one of the characters says he reached Level 14 on *Final Fantasy XII*. It might be a joke though, as the character in question is frequently portrayed as being Too Dumb to Live and reaching Level 14 in a *Final Fantasy* game isn't particularly impressive.
- A scene in the US version of
*House of Cards* has the main character Frank Underwood sitting in his basement, playing an online deathmatch session in a *Call of Duty* game. Although *Call of Duty* is a franchise of first-person shooters, Frank isn't using the thumbsticks or any of the triggers much, but is mashing the face buttons like a madman. The in-game footage shown is used twice in the same scene.
- At one point in
*Heroes*, Claire's brother Lyle plays something on a PlayStation Portable, but the sounds are from the arcade game *Defender*.
- In episode 2 of
*In the Flesh* Dean is seen playing *Resident Evil: Deadly Silence* on a Nintendo DS... with Atari 2600-like sounds.
-
*The Middle* came close in "One Kid At A Time", where the family is seen playing *DanceDanceRevolution Extreme* on beginner mode on a real cabinet (with dubbed over music and actual in-game footage)... except it has a *DDR X2* marquee for some reason. (X2 was never released in the U.S. for "old" cabinets.)
-
*The Big Bang Theory*:
- One episode has the gang playing a
*Donkey Kong* version of Jenga, and they talk about DK having a son to whom he passes on his knowledge of "kidnapping princesses". The lady Donkey Kong kidnaps is **not** Princess Peach but Pauline, a regular woman who was once Mario's girlfriend. Peach wasn't even introduced until 4 years after the original *Donkey Kong* came out, and her usual kidnapper is Bowser, as anyone who's ever held a controller in their life could tell you. Additionally, *Donkey Kong Junior* is about Jr. saving his dad from Mario, with no damsels involved.
- It's played straight again in another episode, where Sheldon's mom sends him his Nintendo 64 and he pulls out his memory card. A
*PlayStation 2* memory card to be exact. And the N64 rarely used memory cards, it had Memory Paks instead.
- In another episode, they're playing
*Halo 3* and most of the things they describe actually sound like *Halo* but are slightly off note : in this instance, *Halo 3* had recently been released on the airdate and the episode written and filmed beforehand, which might justify some descrepencies. Penny says "It's raining you!" after killing Sheldon even though the game doesn't have dismemberment or even much blood (it was a grenade kill, so she might have described his character being launched in the air and falling to the ground). Also, when the guys play *Halo*, they do so with vigorous button-mashing, calling for help and reports on ammo usage despite the fact that *Halo* is a more precision tactical game and combat encounters versus another player lasts maybe 3 seconds. Also, many of the game sounds are wrong, most notably the plasma grenade.
- On the other hand, Sheldon mentions playing
*Super Mario 64* on an emulator on his laptop, and when he repeatedly pauses to talk to Penny, the actual pause jingle from the game is heard. An episode where Sheldon mentions his *World of Warcraft* account was hacked has him mention actual items in the game that were among the things stolen, though he also makes reference to a "battle ostritch" (likely a reference to tallstriders, and Sheldon was using a colloquial term for them).
- On
*My Name Is Earl*, Darnell is seen playing a *Pac-Man* game with a joystick, on a very old-looking TV. On the other hand, most of Camden is still stuck in the late 80's or early 90's.
- In
*Blue Heelers* Tess plans to get Hayley a Nintendo 64 and *Super Mario 64*, and they are seen already up to Tall Tall Mountain, meaning either she is either the best video game player in the world (which Tess promptly disproves) or the writers made a mistake in showing a level that late into the game.
- At one point in the Brit Com
*My Hero (2000)*, Ollie the Superbaby is seen playing a video game. His parents call over to him, and he tells them to be quiet because he's almost reached "Level 9". *As he says this*, there's a shot of the TV with footage of someone playing *Ratchet And Clank* on it (complete with appropriate sound effects), a game which doesn't use numbered levels. Even if it did, the level seen is actually Veldin, the *first* level. note : Or the last, but certainly not the ninth.
- Justified in
*Halt and Catch Fire*, which is set during the tech revolution of the 1980s. Unlike most examples of the trope, HCF's portrayal of video games, while not 100% spot on, is fairly accurate to the period.
-
*The Sopranos*: In "Meadowlands", the fourth episode of the first season, has Tony coming in to find A.J. playing *Mario Kart 64* and then joins him in the race. We get the correct sounds, there is a cartridge in the Nintendo 64 and they consistently stay on the same track (Luigi Raceway); A.J. does a bit of button-mashing, but not too egregious. A.J. does mention to Tony that he should "watch out for the ghosts" and, while ghosts are one of the weaker items (and a non-avoidable one), they do at least exist in the game. To really nitpick, they complete all three laps of Luigi Raceway in some 20 seconds (though the time shown on the screen shows a more realistic 2 minutes 27 seconds), and Tony holds the N64 controller one-handed, using the central grip, only moving the analog stick. All in all, though, a pretty faithful representation of *Mario Kart* on TV.
-
*White Rabbit Project*: In "The Granddad Gang" segment of the "Heists" episode, one part of the reenactment of the crime was animated in the style of a "8-bit video game" - with sound effects lifted from the notorious Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man.
- One episode of
*The Tyra Banks Show* features a married couple having a falling out because of the husband's *World of Warcraft* addiction. The "solution" to this? Have the husband take the *WoW* CD and put it through an extra-strength shredder! Except the CD only installs the game, and *World of Warcraft* runs on a monthly subscription system; to really cut himself off from the game he'd also have to uninstall it from his PC and cancel his subscription. And even if shredding the CD prevents him from reinstalling the game, nothing is stopping him from simply buying another one. Also a case of Technology Marches On, as the most common way of installing *WoW* nowadays is just downloading the game off of Blizzard's website.
- Zig-Zagged in
*Dark.* Bartosz invites Jonas to play video games with him, and the game shown is 1) actually suited for the system he's using (PS4) and 2) a real modern game that came out within a year of the show's debut. The problem? The game is *The Surge*, a game which is not a multiplayer and despite Bartosz' frantic cries of "triangle! triangle!" the triangle button would not have helped him at all.
-
*iZombie* episode 4 features two characters bonding over *Diablo 3* in a weird mix of this trope and Shown Their Work-but-still-don't-know-what-they're-talking-about. One character gushes over the other's level 70 Demon Hunter in comparison to his level 66 Wizard - which are realistic levels but *not really significant* in a game where gaining 4 levels is easily done in one evening, if not less; comparing Torment levels or Greater Rift ratings would be more likely. Similarly, the items they name are appropriate to their classes, but it doesn't make sense for a player to worry about how "badass" his Exalted Orbit Stones are when he's still leveling up. And it's *definitely* silly for either one to be quoting the Attacks Per Second of a Windforce, as it's one out of a dozen interrelated stats, all overshadowed by the Legendary ability of the bow, and thus an absurdly specific thing to even remember. It's hard to tell if someone just cluelessly googled a wiki page for the weapons and picked a random number to throw into dialogue, or deliberately went extra campy to play up the characters' nerdiness.
- In an episode of
*Last Man Standing*, a pinball machine gets delivered to Outdoor Man by mistake, and Mike and Chuck, two former pinball champions, challenge each other to see who's the best. When they finally start playing, both of them do little more than randomly flip away, with the ball bouncing all over the table while the score rockets up at practically impossible speeds. Anyone who's even remotely familiar with even amateur-level competitive pinball knows that this is *not* how it works. Competitive pinball is a very slow and calculated affair, since not only do the players have to know the ins and outs of each game like the back of their hand in order to maximize the amount of points earned per ball, but they need to ensure that each and every shot they make is as accurate as possible. In fact, the kind of wild bouncing around the ball does on the show is something a true pinhead seeks to *avoid* at all costs, since it all too often leads to a drain. This isn't even factoring in nudging, a pinball fundamental which neither Mike nor Chuck - again, both allegedly former unbeatable champions - does even once, making their pinball prowess come off like a major Informed Ability at best. To add insult to injury, you've got the typical chimes and bells coming out of a game that looks to have been made sometime in the late 70s to early 80s, a time period when electronic sound effects had long become the norm.
-
*Russian Doll* was made and is set in the late 2010s and has a computer programmer and game developer as main character (even if the series doesn't focus on her job). However, the only time we see one of the games made by the protagonist, it's a medieval fantasy 2D platformer full of Fake Difficulty, barely playable and looking like a lesser Newgrounds title, despite being apparently being commercially sold for a major game system.
-
*Machinae Supremacy* is built on enforcing this trope. They're making 2010 metal with help from the Commodore 64 SID chip.
- Herman Li, guitarist for DragonForce, often slips
*Pac-Man*-esque wails into his songs, referring to them in interviews as "video game sound effects". You can also see the trope in action in the band's music video for *Operation Ground and Pound*. Both guitarists are actually gamers, the sequence was their idea, and Li actually owns the TurboGrafx-16 seen in the video.
- Being a seasoned gamer and a lover of the classics, Lupe Fiasco purposely invokes the trope in his music video for "I Gotcha", in which he is briefly shown sitting on a couch playing Pong, 80s one-button joystick and all.
- In the song "Go Go Gadget Flow" : "All me, no ghost no 16-bit like Sega GENESIS."
- He mentions Atari a lot in his songs. Like in "Go Baby": But we go back like a set of Ataris...from baby fat til we skeletons, darling...me starring you is what it says on the marquee, so let's go give 'em a show!"
- In Chamillionaire's "Ridin'" video, the lyric goes, "Next to this new chic she like cola, next to the PlayStation controller." But the controller seen in the girl's hand is clearly an Xbox controller. See it here (at 0:50).
- LM.C's song John starts with various sound effects from Super Mario, e.g. the "Get coin" and "Become Big" effects.
- People Under The Stairs has a ton of effects, references, and the Konami Code in Gamin' on Ya.
- In the video of the song "Ti amo inutilmente" by Italian singer Antonello Venditti, there's a point in the video with a shot of popular Italian Youtuber Favij playing with his cellphone... except that the game shown is
*Super Smash Bros. for Wii U*.
- Yellow Magic Orchestra's debut album features an intro and interlude track both titled "Computer Game", which predates
*Pac-Man*, uses synthesizers to simulate the sound effects of early video games such as *Circus* and *Space Invaders*. The first of these two tracks was later combined with the album's cover of "Firecracker" for release as a single, simply titled "Computer Game".
- "Computer Games" by New Zealand new wave group Mi-Sex.
- The breakdown of BT's "Movement In Still Life" features sounds from
*Defender*, Galaga'', and others. The "Mutant firing" sound from the former also appears in "Mad Skills - Mic Chekka" from the same album.
- Information Society's cover version of "Praying to the Aliens" ends with a collage of arcade and Atari 2600 sound effects.
- Lily Allen's "Alfie" contains a line wondering how he'll get laid when all he does is stay in playing video games - which is followed by generic 80s-sounding sound effects.
- SiriusXM's "Decades" stations are each devoted to music from a specific decade, and the station identification bumpers are all designed to evoke a bit of popular culture from some point in that decade, be it a song, a movie, a TV show, or something else. One of these uses an 8-bit rendition of Koronbeiniki, which actually works fairly well as in between the various platforms (PC, Mac, NES/Famicom, Game Boy) and the staggered release schedule for different parts of the world (thanks, Cold War), nearly half of the years in The '80s saw at least one major Tetris release...or at least, it
*would* if they weren't using it on *The '90s* station.
Worth noting: that any appearance of this trope in actual video games can usually be assumed to be Stylistic Suck
, similar to Artistic License Film Production
.
-
*No More Heroes* is notable for being a video game that actually *uses* Pac-Man Fever; it mixes exaggeratedly vintage video game beeps, chimes, and graphics with the more modern stuff.
- Justified in
*Grand Theft Auto: Vice City* and *San Andreas*, which take place in the late eighties and early nineties respectively. However all of the games are extremely simple Endless Games although the "Degenatron" one (not playable in the game itself) is much more authentic in spirit of an Atari game at the time.
-
*Bully* averts this with more variety on the in game videogames you can play, including a 3D futuristic racer with contemporary graphics (which is a remake of an in universe top down racer that also exists in game).
- Complete
*Me and My Katamari*, and ||you'll be taken to an 8-bit minigame with a blooping version of "Katamari on the Rock", with the King commenting entertainingly on the graphics||.
-
*Doom³* uses this trope. Apparently 20 Minutes into the Future on Mars, one of the games available involve punching turkeys to death, using graphics from the original *Doom*. *Resurrection of Evil* instead provides other simple minigames, but are still primitive.
- The "Void Quest" dungeon in
*Persona 4* has wall textures, sound effects and a graphics style that appear as though is an NES era jRPG (even if it is in the same 3d as the rest of the game). Yosuke actually notes that it is "retro". The boss of the dungeon even attacks using the menu from the original Shin Megami Tensei
- Each of the main
*Pokémon* games feature Nintendo's current home console in the player's room. In the first generation, the main character has an SNES; although the N64 was out and going strong in 1998, this makes more sense for generation 1's original early 1996 release, especially since the Super Famicom stayed strong for far longer than its American counterpart. But what's bizarre is that *FireRed* and *LeafGreen* gives the hero(ine) an *NES* instead; remember that the games are set contemporary with *Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire*, where the protagonist has a GameCube. This is meant to promote the *Classic NES Series*, budget GBA Game Paks that ran an old NES game in an emulator.
- In some of the
*WarioWare* games, 9-Volt's and 18-Volt's stages take on an 8-bit look. When they do, they use only NES chiptune instruments in their background music. This is due to their being Nintendo fans, NES fans in particular, who also happen to be game designers.
- In
*Sonic Colors*, each set of stages in Game Land remixes music from the rest of the game to sound like they came out of an NES, though some actually more closely resemble the Sega Master System.
-
*Shenmue* allowed us to play on old games like *Space Harrier* either at the arcade (an aversion, since the cabinets are period-accurate) or the Sega Saturn.
-
*Conker's Bad Fur Day* featured one of Conker's idle animations as him pulling out a yellow Game Boy Color and playing the GB version of *Killer Instinct*, immediately recognizable for its world-famous theme music. It also played sometimes Sabrewulf's theme, and Jago's theme from KI2 for no apparent reason whatsoever. In the Xbox remake, *Conker: Live & Reloaded*, the themes of Cinder, Spinal, Riptor, and T.J. Combo are part of the theme rotation.
- This trope holds true even in life-simulation series
*The Sims*. Any time a Sims character plays a video or computer game, the machine will make comically simple racing sounds or PEW PEW noises while the player is cheering and flailing around their hands.
- Justified in
*Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time*, with regards to Arcade Zombie's arcade machine (a retro version of *Plants vs. Zombies*) and the 8-bit zombies it spawns during an 8-bit Jam. This is because he's fought in Neon Mixtape Tour, a world that takes place in The '80s where Arcade Machines were like that.
- Played with in
*TimeSplitters 2*. In some of the levels, you can find Atari-style game cartridges as Mini-Game Easter Eggs, including a *Snake*-style game, an *Asteroids*-style shoot-em-up, and a Racing Minigame (which, incidentally, is hard as diamonds to play, not because the game itself is tricky, but because it requires getting a ways through the game's hardest level on the hardest difficulty to even access it). Whether it falls into this trope or not varies due to the game's Time Travel theme. The first example is justified, since the level it's found in takes place in 1990, when cartridges were still mainstream. The second one is found in the Cyberpunk future of the year 2019, but is in the possession of criminal hacker types who might conceivably enjoy retro games. The third one, however, is found in a robot factory in the year 2315, making the game cartridge in question *over two centuries old*, at least. Quite the antique. And this is ignoring the mysterious ability of the Player Character to even play these things on their 25th-Century uplink gizmo.
- In
*Deus Ex: Human Revolution*, various Non-Player Characters play a beeping handheld game (or a smartphone game) when bored.
- A bizarre self inflicted case in
*Uncharted 4: A Thief's End*. There is an easter egg when Nate plays a *Crash Bandicoot* level on a old PlayStation, and it involves him trying to beat Elena's high score (with an secret trophy if the player manages it). There is no high score mechanic in the actual release of the game done in the way depicted in the scene (in fact, the score screen is lifted from the box total screen).
- In
*Fallout*, which features fusion-powered cars, hovering robots and synthetic humans indistinguishable from the real thing, apparently the paragon of video gaming after a century of development were greenscreen text adventures, *Space Invaders*, *Donkey Kong*, and *Missile Command*.
-
*Borderlands 3* has guns that sound increasingly 8-bit-like as you spend their magazines.
-
*Blue Archive* has a pair of characters with 8-bit themed attacks. Not only that, they made 8-bit games and live in a bedroom that wouldn't look out of place in a 1990s setting.
- The video game arcade scene in
*Daughter for Dessert* (where the protagonist can take either Heidi or Veronica if he makes the right decisions with either one) features only games from the 80s, while Amanda and the protagonist play a game in a bonus scene with what looks like a Super NES control.
-
*Sluggy Freelance* :
- Parodied in this strip. Kada refers to the game as "Super Graphical 3D Battle Area In 3D(tm)" and the game options offer everything from "battle smells" to "monkeys", but what we actually see on the holographic screen looks like crude black-and-white 8-bit graphics—specifically, arcade classic
*Berzerk*.
-
*Sluggy* normally averts this. Older strips made reference to real games and systems. Later on, he switched to using obvious Bland Name Products of current systems (The Playstashun and the SuWii). The game that comes up the most often is Fashion Rancher and various spinoffs, most likely a reference to the *Monster Rancher* series, and possibly a Take That! at the *Dead or Alive* volleyball games.
- In one
*lonelygirl15* video, the hopelessly geeky nerd is giving all the "regular" characters training. For the Playful Hacker who is the only one who finds him Beautiful All Along, it is revealed that her training is in... *Frogger* and *Centipede*. At first she's baffled as to why her training consists of video games, but as he's a Trickster Mentor, this is shown to be just what they needed to give them the edge. Playing is done by holding a Jakks Pacific TV Game, a self-contained AA battery-powered device with only composite inputs for televisions, up in front of a (shown from behind) laptop and saying "Look out for the ghost! Turn right! *Oh my god!*"
- The Irate Gamer shows a severe case of the fever. Any time he's shown using his controller he's Button Mashing or swinging it around like he's dancing. This is notably bad when he uses an NES controller for games that are obviously not NES titles. This is especially bad when he mashes buttons to games such as
*Mario Is Missing!* and *Tetris*.
- The Third Rate Gamer parodies this; in addition to Button Mashing, the controller is
*always* wrong (i.e. using a PS1 controller for a SNES game), and sometimes not even a controller at all (i.e. a pair of headphones or the case for the DS version of *Final Fantasy III*).
- At the beginning of the
*TGWTG Year One Brawl*, when The Nostalgia Critic notices The Angry Video Game Nerd, the Nerd is playing on a Nintendo DS, with background music from *Mario*, and sound effects from *Pac-Man* and *Sonic the Hedgehog*. Given that "he's the Angry Nintendo Nerd" and "the Angry Atari/Sega Nerd"...
- In The Nostalgia Critic's review of
*The Princess Diaries 2*, Hyper Fangirl distracts the Critic with a WWE game downloaded on the Playstation 3. The title screen shown is from the Game Boy Color version of *WWF Wrestlemania 2000* and the music and sound effects are from the arcade game *WWF Wrestlefest*.
- Invoked in a episode of ENN, where Jeremy Petter interviews a representative of Atari. When the rep shows him a commercial for
*The Witcher 2*, it shows Paul holding a keyboard like he's playing *Frets on Fire* while playing a RPG.
- In The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of
*Winter Games*, he outright mentions this trope. The controls were so frustrating and unresponsive that he says the only way to actually win is to just randomly push buttons and hope something good happens. He then jokes that any time you see characters in a movie mashing buttons and pretending to play a video game, they're not pretending, they're playing *Winter Games*.
- In the Australian web mini-series "#GameOn", "Star Warriors" is shown as a generic 3D space shooter, but when Joel turns off the PC he's playing it on, it shows a "SHIELD BEARER 9 HAS LEFT THE GAME" message over the game's background as opposed to simply turning the monitor off.
- Discussed and spoofed in this TikTok, claiming that occurrences of this trope in movies is the result of out of touch middle aged writers knowledge when it comes to video games.
-
*Glitch Techs*: Zig Zagging. The first game that the main characters are seen playing in the series is a VR action title which is played in a serious e-sports tournament, and the creatures they face as Glitch Techs run the gamut across all generations of gaming, from 8-bit sprites to 3D models. However, how much the actual gameplay makes sense ranges from "perfect homage" to somewhat nonsenscial Rule of Cool, while the show's soundtrack and sound effects are distinctly retro at all times, even when the characters are facing more modern foes.
-
*Kim Possible*:
- The series defines video gaming as a favorite pastime of several characters, but all the games depicted on-screen are extremely old-fashioned. The only exception is a sophisticated MMORPG called
*Everlot* (a reference to *EverQuest*), which is at the center of a whole episode's plot; scenes in the game are rendered in a different style but not a noticeably primitive one.
- In some episodes, video game sounds are clearly from
*Super Mario Bros.*
- In one episode, Ron and Felix discuss a game called
*Zombie Mayhem*, arguing which is the best out of two or three, which fits as *Resident Evil 4* was still a way from being released. Funnily, the second game didn't have flamethrowers. *Resident Evil 2* did, *Resident Evil 3* didn't. When Kim plays the game it appears to be more a hack'n'slash style than Survival Horror.
-
*American Dad!*:
- The episode "There Will Be Bad Blood" (aired in 2010) has Steve playing a very old-fashioned console.
- In "Morning Mimosa", Steve has what looks like a PlayStation with a wireless controller, but it sounds like something from the early 80s.
-
*Futurama* parodies this, with characters playing a dead ringer for the original Game Boy with Arcade Sounds... in the year 3000.
- The "Gender Neutral Pac-Person" arcade machine in "The Series Has Landed".
- In "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz", Fry and Zoidberg are playing video games at Penguins Unlimited HQ. The sound effects sound like
*Asteroids*.
-
*The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour*: Early in the first special, Timmy is seen playing a video game called *The Decimator*. It's in 3D and comes on a CD, but is played on a "Game Buddy", which resembles the Game Boy or Game Boy Color despite both of those devices being cartridge-based and completely incapable of such graphics. As for the gameplay itself, when Timmy downloads the game's files into Goddard, it turns him into a killer humanoid robot who blows things up to progress through levels (in both definitions, as he grows in size and consequently, takes on tougher subjects to a point where he indirectly menaces Retroville by targeting a factory).
-
*Danny Phantom* has the video game "Doomed", an MMORPG that's part *TRON* homage, part FPS, and uses a numbered level system. Most mind-bogglingly, not only is it possible to *win* the game despite being an MMO, but winning gives you the ability to... access to the entire Internet. The show never explains what this even means (either the game is an overly convoluted firewall or it grants you the ability to browse the web in-game), but the plot of the episode "Teacher Of The Year" hinges on the fact that a ghost villain has inserted himself into the game to accomplish this. Quite possibly the only part of "Doomed" that makes sense is Level Zero: a glitch level which isn't supposed to exist at all and is impossible to exit once entered, much like an actual Minus World.
- The arcade game in the
*Rugrats* episode "Diapers and Dragons" seems to be a sidescrolling platformer (from what's shown before we go into Deep-Immersion Gaming) with *Super Mario Bros.* style music (and the objective is to Save the Princess). A bit more advanced than the usual Pac-Man Fever, but the episode was released in 2003. (And the babies are able to play it quite well by hitting buttons at random, but if the babies *couldn't* achieve things babies normally can't by hitting things at random, it wouldn't be *Rugrats*.) But no one ever ages in the show anyway, so we might presume that it's *not* 2003, but rather 1991, when the show debuted. At best, that's the dawn of the 16-bit era. The second and third movie seems to signify the sliding timeline is in the mid-to-late 1990s by then, which makes their video games only a bit old by the 64 bit era but nothing too unknown.
- One egregious example appeared on an episode of
*The Secret Show*. Everyone was buzzing about the popular new game system, "The Hand." It was simply a vat of "nano-goo" that users dipped their hands into, causing the goo to harden around their hands and turn them into portable game systems and controllers. Despite the ludicrously advanced technology the system is based on, it makes references to linear levels and only seems to play one built-in game. Single-game consoles weren't even made between the '70s and 2001, when Jakks Pacific introduced Plug and Play TV Games.
-
*The Venture Bros.* season 1, episode 10 "Are You There God? It's Me, Dean" has Pete White playing what can be inferred to be *Grand Theft Auto III*, due to the graphics on screen, realistic sound effects and Pete making references to doing "a drive-by mission for the Yardies" and being able to see player stats by pressing the Start Button... on what looks like a Nintendo 64 controller.
-
*Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends* occasionally features Bloo playing a video game that looks and sounds exactly like the Atari game *Asteroids*, and trying to beat other people's high scores. Somewhat justified in that the world of Foster's clearly isn't the world we know, but then again, Frankie has a modern computer and they do have their own versions of eBay and YouTube.
- In an episode of
*Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog*, Robotnik is shown fiddling with some machine controls while sounds from *Super Mario Bros* are heard. Amusing considering the console war of that time.
- In the
*Gargoyles* episode "M.I.A.", Goliath and Griff see a British teenager walking down the street playing a portable game; the sound effects in it come from the NES game *The Adventures of Bayou Billy*. The trio are occasionally seen playing video games with rather primitive graphics, as well.
- Whenever videogames appear in
*The Brak Show*, they are always depicted in a very Atari-esque way.
- An episode of
*King of the Hill* plays with this, when a couple of school teachers make a *Grand Theft Auto*-clone themed around Hank to make fun of him, which also seems to have online functionality. Both of those could be easily explained as a *GTA* Game Mod, but it's doubtful whether the creators were aware of that. It does reach a humorous pitch when Hank is more upset about inaccuracies in how they portray his own work, such as the grills that make up the scenery having incorrect logos. The episode plays around the controversy as well - initially, Hank is upset about the violence present in the game but starts to enjoy it once he finds out that you can be a heroic vigilante instead of a ruthless criminal. In the end, Peggy breaks Hank's addiction to the game by having the programmers make her character invincible and giving her the power to self-destruct, ending the game forever.
- Justified in the Retro Universe of
*Regular Show*, where all games are pre-3D, generally being either Atari or Master System-style.
-
*Fanboy and Chum Chum*: the only games seen in the show so far were arcade games and a digital pet, even though the characters have mentioned the Internet on at least one occasion.
- In the "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?" episode of
*Batman: The Animated Series,* Edward Nygma has created a video game so popular that a *multi-billion dollar theme park attraction* is built based on it. When we see the actual game the graphics are only at Intellivision level. The gameplay is more akin to Interactive Fiction than a video game, and old school interactive fiction to boot. And this version of Gotham City is, if anything, 20 Minutes into the Future ... May have been intentional, since this would go with the anachronistic style of the show's take on Gotham City, where it's clearly the present day and modern tech abounds, but people dress like it's 1930 and TV is broadcast in black and white.
- In "Dan Vs. the Mechanic", Chris and Elise are shown playing a video game whose actual graphics are mostly off-screen. Later, when Chris is playing it by himself, he is clearly holding the controller upside-down.
-
*The Simpsons*:
- In "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Three Times", Milhouse wears a Power Glove that doesn't look quite like a Nintendo Power Glove.
- In "Waverly Hills, 9-0-2-1-D'oh", there is a Wii instead of the usual Zii. There is also
*Halo* on the Xbox, though the console has the form factor of an Xbox 360, and the game appears to have the HUD of *Halo 2*.
- In "Moaning Lisa" Bart and Homer play a boxing game with controllers like the Atari 2600, but the graphics are closer to the NES.
- Zig-Zagging Trope on
*Teen Titans (2003)*. The male characters frequently play video games in their downtime, which sport the same look as the animation in the show. In one episode, they're clearly playing *F-Zero*. On the other hand, one episode has Robin playing a *Galaga*-style shooter and flipping out because he beat Cyborg's high score. note : Although this isn't out of character for Robin at least, since he *is* dangerously super-competitive.
- Parodied in an episode of
*Strange Hill High*: Mitchell is shown playing with a portable console with 8-bit graphics and chiptune sounds. Later in the episode, that console is referred in dialogue as *a Play Station Vita*.
- One episode of
*The Powerpuff Girls (2016)* has the girls playing a game called "Dragon Wizard Skateboard Fighters". The console they play it on is a mishmash of the Xbox 360 and the Wii, and it doesn't have wireless controllers. Not much is shown of the game but it uses a point-system, the noises sound 8-bit, and the title screen is very 80s looking however the customizing scene is drawn in the series' normal style. During the climax scene multiple 8-bit noises are used in the fighting, combined with "combos" and "Game Over" graphics.
- In one episode of
*New Kids on the Block*, Biscuit plays a New Kids on the Block video game. The graphics are fine, but it sounds like something from the early 80's. The controller looks like an NES controller, but Biscuit holds it in his left hand and pokes it with his right hand.
- One episode of
*Red Caps* features the bad guy getting an amulet with the power of summoning videogame characters in real life. When he uses it against the heroes, the characters he summons are obvious parodies of Mario, Donkey Kong and a *Space Invaders* alien. And to add salt to the wound, the "Donkey Kong" parody is actually a pixellated Space Marine colored in brown.
- In
*The Crumpets*, Granny's laptop contains an assortment of primarily 8-bit (and bits of 16-bit) looking games with chiptune sounds and a digitized "Game over, you're dead" voice effect. Despite this, they can be played with wireless controllers. Lil-One and Granny's avatars are remarkably detailed, as in this game in "CrumStep".
-
*WordGirl*: Whenever the kids play video games, they're using old Atari controllers.
-
*The Loud House* plays with this from time to time. Examples include some of Lincoln's games including a Captain Ersatz of *Grand Theft Auto* on what appears to be an N64 cartridge and a survival horror game played on a pair of modern VR goggles that appears to have Intellivision-quality graphics.
- A good half of arcades in the US have little to nothing beyond the sixth generation of video games. (This also applies to games found in bars, pizza places, roller rinks, bowling alleys, kart speedways, minigolf places, and non-major-chain family entertainment centers; this is because arcades are primarily the side attraction to the venues, so it means less emphasis is put on the arcade games and more on the main attraction.) This may be because many 7th and 8th gen arcade games are extremely expensive 4D rides usually costing around $20,000 and being maintainance-heavy, whereas old games from the second through sixth gen have very few advanced features and usually cost $3,000.
- Hard to pull off a real life example, but:
*Penny Arcade's* stock promotional shot of the two creators deliberately invokes this trope, showing Krahulik and Holkins flailing around on a couch, pretending to play a game. Holkins is holding a PSP as if it's a controller and Krahulik is holding an Xbox 360 controller *upside down*.
- This news announcement about
*Grand Theft Auto IV*, on RAI (the Italian national broadcasting company), featuring a guy furiously mashing random buttons DURING THE TRAILER. Obviously, they're talking about the game in "Seduction of the innocents"-like terms, because GTA4 doesn't have RE4-style interactive cut scenes.
- Many Retraux-style games that target a retrogaming audience end up becoming this, because they deliberately attempt a retro-look, but cannot seem to get it quite right. Examples:
- Many games that aim for a late-90's PlayStation look tend to exaggerate pixelation and lowered polygon counts to where they look like parodies of a real PSOne game rather than deliberate emulations.
*Back in 1995*, to name one, looks categorically worse in every way than the *Resident Evil* and *Silent Hill*-flavor of Survival Horror games it purports to homage, even the ones that came out well before 1995 like *Alone in the Dark* and *Doctor Hauzer* (though given the main point of the game, it might not necessarily be a *loving* homage to begin with).
-
*Strafe* is a roguelike first-person shooter that came out in 2017 but purports to imitate the style of games as they looked in 1996. Unfortunately, the resolution of its textures and the detail of its models is way lower than the standard in 1996, which makes it look more like a 3D version of Atari 2600 games. Its official website, rather than imitating the style of professional websites in 1996, resembles the worst examples of personal homepages on Geocities, with clashing colors, multiple fonts, flashing text, distracting backgrounds and looping GIF animations. Finally, its levels are procedurally generated by assembling a number of preset rooms, which makes the amount of creativity in their design exactly zero.
-
*Phantom Fury* is a first-person shooter made in the style of games that came out around 2001, but its textures lack any kind of filtering and are instead visibly grainy and pixelated. This was unthinkable in 2001, because every game back then went for photorealism, using effects like bi- or trilinear filtering to mask the low resolution of the textures. Deliberately pixelated textures, instead, go directly against any attempt at photorealism and had been seen as unprofessional since October 7, 1996, when the first Voodoo Graphics card by 3DFX had come out.
-
*WRATH: Aeon of Ruin* is meant to be reminiscent of first-person shooters from 1997, but it has a system of limited saves (called soul tethers), similar to console games from the seventh generation. In 1997, every FPS offered unlimited saves from a menu, *plus* quicksaves.
-
*CULTIC* is advertised as a spiritual successor to *Blood*, but it lacks the limited palette, 256-color look of the original, and instead its graphics look like JPG pictures at maximum compression.
## Aversions
- A
*Dr. Mario* ad shows a game played with a two-player link cable, and some intense button-mashing, possible on a harder difficulty.
- There's a battery commercial that features a kid playing what looks to be a (fictional) Game Boy Advance fighting game against his grandpa, and defeating him over and over — until his batteries start dying on him, allowing his grandpa to turn the tables. The notably true-to-life moment comes when we see the grandpa's character continuing to land sorta-registered blows even as his opponent falls, which seems to indicate that
*someone* on the team, at least, was doing their homework.
- An ad for
*The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants* shows Bart playing the game, excitedly tossing around while moving around the gamepad. This may be possible. The gamepad, however, is closer to a Sega gamepad. Though the ad is for the NES version, the game is available on the Sega Genesis.
- In a painful to watch ad for
*The Legend of Zelda*, one player is alternating left and right on the + Control Pad while hitting A and B quickly. This is not unreasonable for the game.
- Episode 28 of
*Sgt. Frog* shows Natsumi playing a game that's obviously supposed to be the first *Dobutsu no Mori*, better known in the states as *Animal Crossing*. A much later episode shows kid Keroro playing what is clearly *Super Mario Bros.*, and few episodes after that, we get one about the characters entering a RPG that is very clearly a *Dragon Quest* parody. That first one got spoofed in the dub, where Fuyuki asks what she's playing because he's never seen that GameCube game before.
-
*Shigofumi* subverts this trop in episode 10, where a young girl, obsessed with playing a very accurate — though genericized — depiction of *Animal Crossing*, bonds with a thirty-something otaku, pondering the meaninglessness of his life after a cancer diagnosis, over the game ||which the otaku, in fact, designed and programmed most of||. The video game is shown to be a form of communication and a means to establish a friendship, rather than the hobby of pathetic shut-ins and socially maladjusted weirdoes.
-
*Genshiken* gets around this through judicious Product Placement: the characters play real video games spliced into the animation, most notably:
- The then-latest
*Guilty Gear* title, *Guilty Gear: Isuka*. Ohno, the resident Cosplay Otaku Girl, cosplays one of the characters. The opening sequence, in fact, features a clip of Sol Badguy performing a simple combo... and the music is timed to match the move. Be prepared to watch the exact same footage of Sol curb-stomping Jam over and over and over and over again, though.
- Saki and Kousaka also play a very realistically-depicted
*Puyo Puyo* match, complete with accurate in-game footage, as a plot point. Saki assumes from its colorful nature that it will be an easy-to-pick-up casual game, which it might be if played against an opponent of comparable skill level or a single-player mode with an intelligent difficulty progression. Instead, she plays against Kousaka, who has no concept of "going easy on the newbie" and destroys her with advanced strategies.
-
*Lucky Star*'s video games are often fairly accurate parodies of real games (unless you count Arcade Sounds half the time when the characters play any console games); unsurprising, since one of the main characters is a game otaku. The OVA goes one-up with an RPG Episode rendered in full 3D with lots of snarking about various game mechanics. For an idea of how convincing it is, just go count the number of YouTube commenters saying that they'd play it if it were real.
- Vaguely averted in
*Hayate the Combat Butler*, where the Lampshade Hanging is Nagi deliberately trying out an old *Dragon Quest* lookalike (which is probably older than she is) and lacks any nostalgia factor for the old game.
- In
*Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door* (which takes place in the future), the hacker Lee Sampson seems to spend a lot of time playing updated versions of old 1980s 8-bit games. However, this is explained by Lee, who voices contempt at modern games and idealizes the games from the early days of hacking.
- In a late Manga chapter of
*Ranma ½*, Ranma and his childlike teacher Hinako play what is obviously *Street Fighter II* on Hinako's Super Famicom, with Ranma's Ryu easily beating Hinako's Chun Li. This chapter was published circa 1994, during *Street Fighter II*'s heyday; amusingly, several *Ranma ½* fighting games were also released during this period.
-
*Kure-nai* has Murasaki playing on (and breaking) a DS, and the game is shown to be *Phantom Hourglass*.
- In one of the final chapters of
*My-HiME*, Nagi is shown playing a DS when the heroes confront him. He's even wearing headphones and using the stylus.
-
*Great Teacher Onizuka* is frequently seen playing a PlayStation (modern when it was made), and both made reference to *Wild ARMs* and showed footage of *Ape Escape*.
-
*Hanamaru Kindergarten* references *Dragon Quest* and *Final Fantasy* in the manga, and has Tsuchida-sensei playing a Nintendo DS. The anime (which has less leeway with copyrights) shows Tsuchida playing unnamed RPGs on a PlayStation-lookalike.
-
*Houkago Play* makes numerous references to the games the characters play even when the title is not mentioned or played off screen. Made even better when they make references to obscure things like soundtracks. You can actually figure out the titles if you follow the clues.
-
*A Channel* has a scene in the second episode where Run and Toru play an expy of *Mario Kart Wii* on two Wii Remotes. They appear to be using them accurately, even using the option to steer with motion controls. They also bother Yuuko by holding their remotes up to her head, but that's neither here nor there.
-
*Pokémon: The Original Series*: "The School of Hard Knocks" has Joe play a battle simulator that resembles the battle system in *Pokémon Red and Blue*, which was new at the time of the respective Japanese and American airdates.
-
*Bleach* has a character with videogame powers who plays with this Trope a bit. Though he plays really old-looking games and his powers usually activate as a bunch of pixels, he uses something that looks suspiciously like a PSP, and when challenged to do his best, he proves that he can, in fact, produce very detailed graphics and animation. It is also made abundantly clear that, to make his powers work, he actually has sophisticated knowledge of coding and computers.
- A few characters in
*Ano Hana* play a "Nokemon" game that's a clone of one of the first *Pokémon* games (which came out many years before this anime). They comment on how ridiculously old the game is, though, and are apparently playing it for the nostalgia. It's on the Game Boy Advance SP and seems to be parodying *FireRed and LeafGreen*.
- Early on in the beginning of the first episode Jinta plays what looks like to be
*Gears of War*.
-
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi*: In chapter 285, Evangeline is shown playing a video game. Said game is clearly *Solomon's Key*, and she's playing it on an accurately portrayed Famicom.
- Doi from
*Wandering Son* has a PSP if you look at certain panels. Anna and Maho are shown playing DS' and in an early issue Takatsuki has a PlayStation in her room.
-
*Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!* has an episode that opens with Nyaruko, Cuuko and Hasta playing what is clearly *Mario Kart 64*. The game itself is never shown, but the controllers, and their shouts of "Who threw that shell?!" and "The banana! The banana!" make it obvious. The cast's console of choice seems to be the PSPs; in one episode, Yoriko and Cuko are playing one of the *Monster Hunter* games (evidenced by Yoriko's remark about using a sound bomb) and in another, Nyarko and Cuko are apparently playing *Gundam vs. Gundam Next Plus* (since Cuko mentions "Endless Defense", a tactic from the Gundam Vs Series regarded as unfair).
-
*School-Live!* is very up to date with its video games, though everything is a Bland-Name Product. The characters are shown owning and playing games like *Mad Max (2015)* and *Splatoon*.
- Nate, Eddie, and Bear from
*Yo-Kai Watch* are fans of a series called "Yolo Watch", clearly parodying the franchise itself.
-
*Monster Musume* occasionally shows the girls (especially Papi) playing *Wii Sports*. Later on, a piece of bonus art depicts an octopus girl playing (appropriately enough) *Splatoon*.
- In
*Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid*, several of the characters are shown playing a *Dark Souls* esque game; apart from being able to pause the game, it looks like a legitimate PS3-era game.
- Inverted in
*Ultimate Nightmare*: Bobby is shown playing what looks like a current gen game on a regular old Game Boy.
- An issue of
*Teen Titans Go!* clearly has Robin and Raven playing a Nintendo 64 game. While not the newest of consoles it was just a few years old at the time
- Played with in the beginning of
*Toy Story 2*. While the graphics are every bit as advanced as the movie's animation (and intentionally so,) note : so much so that some Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games look slightly worse or merely *as good* a decade later, the "game over" screen puts retro sounding video game music with just the two words "GAME OVER". Also, the system being played is a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (albeit with the Super Famicom/European SNES controller), which *was* more-or-less current when writing began.
- Disney's
*Wreck-It Ralph* plays with this, given the setting. The main character is from a faux Donkey Kong-era game, and a lot of the sound effects are classic arcade bleep bloops, but the crux of the plot involves visiting a variety of different Video Game worlds, at least one of which is a Bland-Name Product of *Halo* as a light-gun rail shooter. Ralph is even horrified and amazed at how much games have evolved since his own day, and it's played for laughs. The word "retro" is mentioned, and is stated as "Old, but cool." The biggest difference between the movie's universe and the real world — aside from video game characters being secretly alive a la *Toy Story* — is that apparently arcades have never been displaced by home computers and consoles as the primary venue for gaming; hence, hot new titles continue to be released as increasingly high-tech cabinets. Arcade-only games even have their own TV commercials, which end with a plug for the nearest arcade that carries them.
- In
*Congo*, someone is playing *Doom* on the PC. They didn't mess it up or anything.
- Averted in
*Scott Pilgrim vs. The World*, which is expected since the film contains many Video Game Tropes. In an early scene, one of the characters can be seen playing a Nintendo DS, with music from the Game Boy Advance version of *The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past* faintly audible. *A Link to the Past* DID have a GBA remake (it was originally on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System) and the trivia track confirms that the actor was actually really playing the game during that scene, as opposed to just pretending to play it. Later on, we see a Fictional Video Game titled *Ninja Ninja Revolution*, which actually looks like a believable arcade game, and is played in a fairly realistic way.
- In Simon Pegg's
*Shaun of the Dead*, playing *TimeSplitters 2* (appropriately a UK-developed shooter game) on a PS2 is depicted accurately, aside from a "Player 2 has entered the game" voiceover narration added for the audience's benefit. Admittedly, Simon Pegg is a massive video game nerd, as any typical episode of *Spaced* will show you. Its also likely that the "Player 2" quote was probably added as a joke for an early scene:
*Player 2 has entered the game.*
**Ed:** Haven't you got work?
*Player 2 has left the game.*
-
*Tropic Thunder* had Matthew McConaughey playing Wii Sports.
-
*Reign Over Me* features *Shadow of the Colossus* extensively. The original plan was to go with this trope, but the film's editor insisted on the aforementioned game, for character reasons. They do refer to it as " *Shadows*' of the Colossus''," however.
- In
*Going the Distance*, the main character is playing an old *Centipede* arcade machine properly, even correctly using the classic 80s "put a quarter on the machine console to reserve my turn" arcade etiquette.
- The film version of
*Night Watch* had the Big Bad practicing for a coming battle by playing a fighting game with some sort of sword controller.
- The Mexican film
*Duck Season* is very accurate in depicting two 14-year-old boys playing *Halo*, with the TV even announcing "Slayer", the typical versus mode in the game, as they begin. The only unrealistic detail is the improbably frequent rate, based on the sounds, at which their characters seemed to die.
- The 2009 movie
*The Hurt Locker* shows Eldridge playing *Gears of War* while he talks to the platoon therapist, complete with the actual game sound effects and video. The only trouble is that while the movie is set in 2004, Gears was released in 2006.
- The 1996 movie
*Swingers*, featured the characters arguing over *NHL Hockey '94* on the Genesis. They even referred to the lack of fighting in that version of the game, but that's made up for by being able to make Wayne Gretzky's head bleed. Ironically the game they were playing was actually *NHLPA Hockey 93*.
- In
*Disturbia*, we see Shia LaBeouf play a bit of *G.R.A.W.*, complete with accurate graphics, sound, and on an Xbox 360, one of the systems this game was released on.
- This trope is still in play, since he's playing a mission from the single-player campaign, when he's depicted as playing on Xbox Live.
- The video game horror movie
*Stay Alive (2006)* was quite accurate in its name-dropping, likely because they hired Cliff Bleszinski as a consultant.
- Still, they managed to mix up two games, admittedly in the same series. Early in the movie the protagonist's boss is asking about beating the final boss in
*Silent Hill 4*, when he's actually describing the trick method of beating the final boss from the first game. This might have been done because such a trick only exists for the first game and the latest game in the series at the time was the fourth, so mostly this is nitpicking.
- While the game shown in the beginning of
*Big* was fictional, it was an extremely accurate representation of a common genre of game at the time the movie was made.
-
*Lost in Translation* has a scene set in an arcade game center in Japan; some of the games shown are *Taiko no Tatsujin* / *Taiko Master* and *Pop'n Music*; someone does a *freestyle routine* on the *Pop'n* machine.
- In
*Four Christmases*, a character is playing a game in one scene, and sounds from the classic *Donkey Kong* are heard... and then it is shown that he is playing with a Wii Classic Controller, meaning that he actually *is* playing *Donkey Kong* on the Virtual Console.
-
*The Score* has the main character (Robert De Niro) phone someone who is shown playing *Quake III: Arena*. At one point the kid pauses, so it's assumed that he's cursing bots, not humans (or the pausing would invoke this trope).
- The title video game in
*Spy Kids 3D: Game Over* uses levels and has no apparent storyline, but does at least *look* like a 21st century video game with 3D graphics and so forth. On the DVD Commentary, Robert Rodriguez says he had his sons play a lot of video games for him as research. Needless to say, this made them think he was the coolest dad ever.
-
*The King of Kong* is a documentary about *Donkey Kong* world records. There were embellishments and inaccuracies with the overall story, but the game itself was described well.
- Towards the beginning of
*Zathura*, the younger of the two brothers is shown playing *Jak 3*, not only with the relevant music and sound effects, but also showing him controlling it properly (i.e., he was actually playing the game). No surprise - *Zathura* was produced by Sony company Columbia Pictures, making this Product Placement as well.
- In
*3 Ninjas* one of the main characters is seen playing *Super Mario Bros. 3* on an NES in his room. More impressively, he's actually playing rather than button-mashing, and has made it to level 5-1 (whereas most examples of real-game footage shown in fiction tend to come from the first ten minutes of gameplay).
-
*Yes-Man*: Jim Carrey was actually taught to play *DDR* where his character plays *DDR*. For the more savvy players reading:
- You can see him pull off some crossovers at 13 seconds in.
- He's playing an actual DDR song, and a Konami original, to boot ("Hana Ranman," aka "Flowers").
- He's playing on Expert difficulty, and has at least a 100 combo going when the camera shows the screen.
- Surprisingly,
*TRON* doesn't have much screen time for actual games to outright invoke or avert this trope. Everyone at Flynn's Arcade seems to be using their controls properly, and *Pac-Man* sounds are justified, since the film takes place in 1982. *Space Paranoids* borders on invoking Pac-Man Fever, since it's pretty obvious Flynn isn't really playing it, but those graphics are more advanced than anything else in the arcade.
-
*Bringing Down the House*. George is seen holding a DualShock 2 controller and he's not mashing the buttons. Listen closely and you can hear sound effects from a certain game about an elf and his ottsel.
- Averted in
*Hitman*. When Agent 47 runs through the hotel, he enters the room where two kids play a modern console game. One of the games the movie is based upon, to be precise. Although played straight in that two kids are playing a single-player game.
- While there is an anachronistic 8-bit wrestling game in
*The Wrestler*, it's used to demonstrate how the main character is caught up in the past, not because the writers think that's how all games are. The kid he's talking to even mentions *Call of Duty*, and is clearly bored by the 80's fossil Randy keeps on playing. The game itself is fake, but not entirely: the director commissioned two programmers to create a playable NES game for use in the movie just to fully avoid Pac-Man Fever.
-
*Tormented (2009)* has the characters play *Gears of War 2* at a party.
-
*Zombieland*: When Columbus mentions that he'd spent the two days before the outbreak playing *World of Warcraft* in his apartment, the shot on his computer is distinctly the game in question. Specifically, his character's in the Silverwing Flag Room in Warsong Gulch.
- Strangely,
*Real Steel* has an inversion. Since this is set in the future, we see ads for the Xbox 720. However, all other advertisements we see in the movie have their current 2011 logos and slogans.
- In
*Abduction* we see Nathan playing *Modern Warfare 2*.
- In
*Cool as Ice*, we see Kathy's little brother playing *Super Mario Bros. 3* and various other NES games, none of which involve the usual wild controller-mashing.
- In
*Salmon Fishing in the Yemen*, we see the British PM's kids playing *Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time*. The footage is accurate, and you hear authentic Enemy Chatter from the game... except it's from Dr Nefarious's Mecha-Mooks, while in the area shown you're actually fighting Argorians. (Admittedly, Argorian Enemy Chatter would have probably upstaged any humor in the actual film.)
-
*Super 8*: Amidst the chaos of the air force taking over their town, when the boys break into the school, Cary wants to retrieve his confiscated Mattel Electronic Football game. Justified in that it's 1979 and the medium was still in its infancy.
-
*Joysticks*: All the games are real and portrayed as they actually existed at the time. *Super Pac-Man*, a not particularly well-known game in the *Pac-Man* series, is actually played at a tournament (which may confuse modern audiences not familiar with this particular variation) before its real-life release in arcades, and *Satan's Hollow* was also played. Both games were developed in the US by Midway ( *Pac-Man* itself was made in Japan by Namco, but Midway developed a few sequels of their own), who sponsored the movie.
-
*Showtime* had Eddie Murphy playing the light gun shooter Total Vice competently for the few seconds its on screen. Interestingly enough, the game itself is so rare that these few seconds were the only widely known footage of the game for nearly 15 years. (The game ran on the faulty sucessor to the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer and it was produced in limited quantites)
- Quicksilver plays
*Pong* extra fast in *X-Men: Days of Future Past*, and plays *Pac-Man* extra fast in *X-Men: Apocalypse*. The implication seems to be his super fast speed is making the games go faster, though it would make more sense if the hardware or software has been modified beforehand to run faster and Quicksilver is playing sped up versions of the games.
- An early scene in
*G.I. Joe: Retaliation* has Duke and Roadblock playing a modern FPS on an Xbox 360 on shore leave, and Roadblock even lampshades how much better Duke is in real combat than in the game. Later, during the nuclear disarmament summit, ||Zartan disguised as|| the president is shown playing *Angry Birds* on his cell phone with realistic movements and sound effects.
- In
*Stormbreaker*, Alex gets a modified Game Boy Color (a Nintendo DS in the film version) and cartridges that not only have the games themselves but also provide the modified GB Color with useful functions. Two of these games, *Nemesis* and *Bomber Boy* (aka *Atomic Punk* in the United States), are actual Game Boy titles. Sadly though, Alex never uses the game parts of the cartridges.
- In
*Skeleton Key*, he gets a Game Boy Advance with a *Rayman* game that doubles as a Geiger counter.
- Christopher Brookmyre regularly averts this trope, and several of his books not only mention various real life games, but also clan gaming, DS homebrew, and mods. His books also contain nods to a number of games, as well as more general consideration of video gaming tropes.
- In the second
*Darkest Powers* book (which was released in 2009), Rae is depicted playing *The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker* on a Nintendo Gamecube while at the facility. She complains that it is outdated and says the workers have told her they'll bring a Wii for her soon.
- Ironically, the Trope Namer
*Pac Man Fever* is an aversion, given the fact that 1) the sounds in question *are* from the video games in question, 2) they were, in fact, new at the time of the album's release and 3) the lyrics clearly show that at least one of the band members has intimate knowledge of them.
- Because Bill Amend is One of Us and a major gaming geek, this is often parodied or averted in
*FoxTrot* (it features a comic parodying webcomics like *xkcd*).
- In one strip, Andy (the mother) demands to see the video games that Jason and Peter play. Her first response is, "why is that monkey jumping on someone's head?"
- He even did a
*Penny Arcade* guest strip after PAX 2009.
- Early strips feature both Jason and Peter playing
*Super Mario Bros.*, Jason bringing a Game Boy on a family trip, and the release of the SNES.
- One sunday strip has Jason attempting to get a copy of
*Super Smash Bros. Brawl*, and he regularly plays *World of Warcraft* (or, rather, *WarQuest*).
- Jason provides a Long List of then-recent game releases (complete with Take That! at the then-still-Vapor Ware
*Duke Nukem Forever*) in one strip.
- Jason goes into denial about wanting to play
*Tomb Raider* because it featured a female heroine. (In the nightmare that follows, Lara Croft introduces him to *Ms. Pac-Man* who asks if he remembers her, causing Jason to nervously protest that he only played *that* game because it was the only one they had at a pizza parlor.)
- One comic is about
*Starcraft II*, which wouldn't be that remarkable... except it was published *the week it was set to come out*, and mentions its long release cycle and lampshades Comic-Book Time simultaneously. Jason says he'd been waiting eleven years to play *Starcraft II* - but because he's only ten years old, he started waiting while he was in the womb.
- Another one involves the Xbox 360's Kinect, demonstrates why you shouldn't play it with mosquito bites, and included a fake achievement in the game Jason was playing.
- In one strip, Jason pretends he's shooting portals at his sister in real life. The portal gun has the same orange/blue light that shows the last-fired portal in the game.
- However, another strip has the family computer going into "Sleep Mode" and having lascivious dreams about "Miss Tomb Raider", which stands out because as mentioned earlier Lara Croft had actually appeared in the strip. Either this was done for the benefit of readers who might not know "that big-breasted
*Tomb Raider* lady" by name, or the computer was dreaming about the *Tomb Raider* **program** itself and not Lara.
-
*Saints Row 2* invert this: You can play a zombie shooting survival minigame from a NES-like console in your crib; the minigame has the same controls and graphics as the game, although it has a desaturated filter to make the game feel like a horror game.
- Likewise, the "old" games in Rextro's arcade use the same graphic assets as
*Yooka-Laylee* itself.
-
*Shenmue* avert this, combined with Product Placement, by featuring period-appropriate *SEGA* games.
-
*Yakuza* series, the Spiritual Successor to *Shenmue*, also avert this, up to and including *Virtua Fighter 5* arcade version as a fully playable game in *Yakuza 6* and *Yakuza: Like a Dragon*.
- The video games that the protagonist of
*Double Homework* plays, the sounds that represent them, and the descriptions of whats going on in them point to video games from the 2010s.
-
*Digital Unrest* has had a couple of cracks at this trope: Here and here.
-
*MegaTokyo* makes lots of references to gaming technology that does not (yet?) exist in the real world, such as the PlayStation 4, Mosh Mosh Revolution ("Tohya, what's a mosh?") and a Robot Girl accessory for Dating Sim games.
- Early in the strip's run (2001) characters are seen wearing PlayStation 3 paraphernalia, including a jacket with the line "Live in your world, Die in mine." parodying a Sony ad campaign of the time. Said character has been updated to feature a PlayStation 4 jacket. Sony developers in both cases were talking about developing said sequel consoles right as the current consoles were about to be released.
- Lampshaded in this strip from
*The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!*. Bob just isn't a very "state-of-the-art" kind of guy.
-
*The Guild*, consisting largely of references to a game similar to *World of Warcraft* (by a writer who was addicted to it for several years) obviously averts this for the most part. It seems like it falls into this trope with Tinkerballa, who's constantly playing a Nintendo DS with old-school *Super Mario Bros.* sounds... but it's very likely she's playing *New Super Mario Bros.*, which makes heavy use of the classic 8-bit sounds.
- The Angry Video Game Nerd, where some shots show him using the controller while also showing the screen, usually to point out how delayed or confusing the controls are in a game.
- Also parodied in the
*Ninja Gaiden* episode, where the ninja can play well because he can press the buttons really fast, and never stops Button Mashing while playing the game. Although, this example seems to suggest that he's not *randomly* button-mashing, he's pressing the right button at the right time, it just *looks* that way because the game is so hard and requires reaction times that quick.
- The Nerd also parodies this in the "AVGN Games" episode, released in 2013, where he says he was first alerted to a game based on himself back in 2008. The reason it took him so long to finally review it was because that's how long it took to load on his Commodore 64 (though when another game crashes on him later, he's forced to admit that it's just a joke, and he's really playing on a modern Windows PC). He also plays a smartphone game where he is a Guest Fighter on an old rotary dial phone.
-
*Agents of Cracked*: Swaim mentions emulation and *Night Trap*, and is shown playing *Metal Slug*.
- JonTron parodies this in almost every review, frequently using the wrong controller to play the game, putting the cartridge in wrong (like putting the cartridge in sideways, throwing the cartridge at the console and missing, or standing the cartridge up and trying to plug the
*console* into it, etc) and whenever the console is shown, it's frequently a bizarre mish-mash of incompatible parts. The last part reaches its zenith in his *Minecraft* review, where he apparently plays the game on an SNES with a the box for *Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater* in the cartridge slot, and a Gamecube controller taped to the controller port.
- His review for
*DinoCity* starts off with him trying to figure out which console it's played with, trying to use it on a DS, a PS3, a PC's CD tray, a wireless router and a dishwasher (three times) before realizing it's supposed to go with the 'SMBS'. Then he plugs the cartridge in upside down.
- Also parodied by the Third Rate Gamer, where he's frequently using the wrong controller to button-mash his way through the game, and sometimes it's not even a controller, like when he starts playing
*Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers* with a pair of headphones.
-
*South Park*
- The episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" revolves around the real-life MMORPG
*World of Warcraft*, complete with plenty of gameplay footage (part of it was Machinima). Blizzard lent a lot of assistance to make the episode (they're apparently big *South Park* fans) The episode, however, has many intentional inconsistencies compared to the real game — although, in a reverse example, Blizzard actually put some of the content from the episode into the game after the episode aired. The fact that the gameplay footage is considerably more sophisticated than the *South Park* animation adds to the fun. And their teacher is trying to teach them about computers using a lesson plan from the '80s.
- Randy's explanation of his character sounds like it's deliberately full of stuff that doesn't make sense: "I just joined a big party of Night Elves, and we're going to explore the Tower of Azora together.
note : Why are characters of a race whose starting zone is on another continent coming to the human starting zone to explore a place with nothing in it? I'm a Hunter note : No human Hunters until the *Cataclysm* expansion way later, and besides, he's dressed and equipped like a Warrior, level 2 note : He's clearly been playing for some time, and yet he's still that low a level and wearing starting gear. The latter is probably to signify his noob status, but still. I've braved the Fargodeep Mine, defeated the bloodfish in Jerod's Landing... note : Again, he'd have more levels from just doing the mine, and Jerod's Landing certainly wasn't visitable at that level, being a level 10 Stealth-Based Mission. Also, there are no bloodfish there in-game"
- The
*Guitar Hero*-themed episode depicts Stan and Kyle as being the first ever to reach "one million points!" Viacom appears ashamed of this clip.
- Episode 1214, "The Ungroundable", had the kids playing the PC version of the recently released
*Call of Duty: World At War*. It also included a reference to the "Flak Jacket Glitch", where a player using the Flak Jacket perk, which normally reduces damage taken from explosives, could not be insta-killed with either the combat knife or bayonet.
- In "Whale Whores", the boys are seen playing Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" on
*Rock Band*. At the time, the song was not available as DLC. In March 2010, four Lady Gaga tracks were released: not only including Poker Face, but a version with Cartman on vocals for DLC.
- Played with in an episode of
*Arthur*. Near the end, Arthur and company are playing a video game that touts itself as one of the best ever — up to and until the actual gameplay. SEE! 16-bit graphics that would look primitive on the early SNES! HEAR! 8-bit early NES-style music! WITNESS! Gameplay that would make *Action 52* look fun! The general consensus among the characters is obviously along the lines of "what am I looking at?!"
- In the episode, "D.W's Stray Netkitten", D.W plays an online game which looks like a VERY accurate depiction of WebKins, complete with the real-life stuffed animal that you buy in order to take care of your pet online.
- Arthur in general is bad at this. It has many pop culture Shout Outs but the games never seem to get past the late 16-bit era at best.
- The depiction of games on
*The Simpsons* throughout the show's run have usually been *close* to current, although the show's long history means that the early seasons would appear to suffer from this trope if viewed today.
- The game played by Bart and Homer in "Moaning Lisa" (1990) is similar to
*Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!* (1987).
- "Bonestorm", as depicted in "Marge Be Not Proud" (1995), is named after
*BloodStorm* and parodies *Mortal Kombat*-style games. Mario and Sonic also appear in the episode.
- In "Yokel Chords," therapist Dr. Swanson attempts to gain Bart's interest with the popular video game "Death Kill City II: Death Kill Stories". Swanson and Bart button mash furiously, both swinging their controllers side to side, playing what is apparently a fighting game. A martial artist and cyborg fight each other, and both are dispatched by a sudden ninja attack. A missile then comes down and nukes the area. An announcer then says "You have destroyed all human life on Earth. Level 1 complete."
- The Movie goes the other way: Homer plays
*Grand Theft Walrus*, in a bar, *on an arcade machine*. *In Alaska.*
- Another episode had Lisa becoming addicted to "Dash Dingo", an obvious homage to
*Crash Bandicoot* which was released at the height of that series' popularity on what was clearly a PlayStation. Like in *Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back*, the hero is given instructions on gathering crystals via giant floating head.
- The RPG Episode, with many of the townsfolk playing it. There were plenty of jokes like how silly it is to accept quests from strangers, Bart being a kid in real life but really powerful in the game, Moe wondering why he is paying $15 a month for this, Marge complaining about how unrealistically buxom the default female avatar is, etc. Granted, there were also departures from realism, but they were not greater then the show's usual departures from realism of the "real" town in comparison to real life. Overall, the depiction was accurate and faithful, even complete with a HUD accurate for MMORPGs. What's strange though, is that people in real life knew who each other's avatar equivalents were, perhaps because their avatars were identical to their real-life selves and personalities (like Moe being the Butt-Monkey).
- The 2007 game,
*The Simpsons Game*, is an affectionate parody of several well-known IPs, and for the most part avoids The Problem with Licensed Games (fortunately).
- In "Million Dollar Maybe" Lisa buy a "Funtendo Zii" for the old people's home, which was a pretty accurate depiction of the actual console.
-
*The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy*
- In the "Chicken Ball Z" episode it is easy to recognize the game Billy was playing on his handheld by the sound effects — it's
*Wario Land II*, probably one of the later levels, based on the music. Billy calls it something different, though, and no visuals are shown.
- "Opposite Day," the first episode to air before Cartoon Network officially picked up the show, has Billy and Mandy play an expy of
*Mario Kart 64*. They seem to be using their controllers accurately, and the controllers resemble those found on a real Nintendo 64 (albeit with four prongs instead of three). Suffice to say, Grim is the only one that has trouble figuring it out.
-
*The Powerpuff Girls (1998)*
- In one episode the Mayor is playing what is clearly
*The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time*, or a near parody, (albeit so badly that he "accidentally" kills his own fairy), which was a fairly recent release at that point. He's also holding what is obviously the Nintendo 64's iconic controller. Although if he killed Navi, he may not be so bad at the game after all. In addition, the music playing during this scene is a slow, atmospheric piece using Nintendo 64-style MIDI and sounds like it could've actually been in an *Ocarina of Time* dungeon.
- Played straight in "The Powerpuff Girls' Best Rainy Day Adventure Ever", Blossom seeks out the other two after a long-since abandoned game of hide-and-seek and finds them using N64 controllers to play...
*Pitfall!*.
- In one scene a TV screen displayed a picture and played noise that was more or less pulled directly from one of the TV's in the GameCube release of
*Animal Crossing*.
- The opening of another episode saw Ace of the Gangrene Gang playing (and losing) a
*Powerpuff Girls* Fighting Game that, although fictional, was depicted in a fairly realistic manner.
- In
*ReBoot*, the games that periodically threaten the characters are generally believable and fairly current for the time, though they generally use No Celebrities Were Harmed versions.
-
*Fanboy and Chum Chum* does use Arcade Sounds, but surprisingly, it's justified; the only video games or other forms of interactive electronic entertainment seen in the series (so far) are a virtual pet and an arcade game. The latter's status as a homage to old-school *Donkey Kong* makes its use of Atari 2600 *Donkey Kong* sound effects even more appropriate.
-
*The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius* has an episode where Jimmy invents a machine that allows people to enter inside a game of their choice, so Sheen obviously goes inside an *Ultra Lord* game. While the episode takes some liberties for Rule of Cool, it actually manages to look like a real game of the time, including a start screen complete with "Start Game / Options", life bars which get special effects as the characters power up, and floating words pointing out P1 and P2.
- One episode of
*Doug* features Judy talking in an online avatar-based chatroom similar to IMVU, accurately predicting technology that *would not exist until many years later.* This probably was for the sake of Viewer-Friendly Interface, since it wouldn't be nearly as interesting to watch lines of text silently scrolling up the screen.
- Largely averted in
*Code Lyoko*. This is not surprising, since the relationship between kids and video games is a big inspiration for the series. The fictional video games discussed in the show are realistic for modern games (though rarely seen on-screen). The "penguin cup-and-ball" game played by Jean-Pierre Delmas does use *Pac-Man* music — but here it's more of a shout-out. One episode features Odd playing *Tetris* on what clearly looks like a Game Boy. It's even mentioned by name! It comes back later in the episode as an actual part of the plot.
- One episode of
*The Batman* showed Robin playing an online game that used the same animation as the show. Granted the game became part of Joker's plot, it also allowed an appearance of his future persona Nightwing, in his high collar costume.
-
*American Dad!*:
- One episode has Steve's X-Cube game system with these kind of graphics, but considering the system is supposed to be the expensive new thing, this is presumably a parody.
- Some of the featured games of the show (
*Beetman* notably) tend to have animations and graphics akin to the NES at best. However, one episode shows Steve and his friends (later Jeff and Haley too) playing a fantasy MMORPG. While the game isn't shown much in the "real world", the in-game scenes appear as a more stylized version of the rest of the show.
- There's an episode based around an
*Overwatch* tournament (that at one point references mobile app *Pokémon GO*).
- Averted in
*Family Guy*: the end of one episode had Peter accurately playing *Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2* on an Xbox 360. And he has no idea how to play, which is played for hilarity - he gets taken out by a sniper * : who, incidentally, appears to be a then-current member of Infinity Ward, judging by his in-game name while he is busy mashing the A button and hopping in place, and then he blows up a car, himself, and a few teammates with a grenade while trying to hide behind it.
- Older games have also been referenced accurately in the works of Seth MacFarlane, due to his Author Appeal for the age in which he grew up.
*Tetris*, *Super Mario Bros.* and the ColecoVision have been portrayed faithfully in his shows.
- When
*Robot Chicken* does a video game parody they usually do it correctly, only taking liberties for Rule of Funny. At times they can stretch it a little too far, but even then it's obvious that the creators have done the research.
- An episode of
*Sabrina: The Animated Series* had a game developed for Harvey to test where the graphics were so high-tech all the characters would look like people Harvey knew.
- Most of the video games on
*King of the Hill* are accurate for their time. In some episodes Bobby can be seen playing a Nintendo 64 or PlayStation; in one he is clearly playing one of the *Tomb Raider* games. The fictional in-universe video game *Pro-Pain!* (which Hank plays on a PC with an Xbox controller) appears to be a *Grand Theft Auto* modification.
-
*Dexter's Laboratory*:
- The episode "Game Over" has the eponymous character and his sister playing a spoof of
*Primal Rage* (which was only about two years old at the time). Later, when Dexter receives the Atari 2600-looking game *Master Computer*, he describes it as "a really *old* video game" that he'd already played and beaten years earlier, then proceeds to list the reasons why the games sucks to Dee Dee, citing stuff such as "No multiplayer, one mode of play note : Both of which are blatantly contradicted moments later, showing him playing against Deedee and the computer, indicating it has both singleplayer and multiplayer (He may have been referring to online multiplayer), vertex graphics, that the guys don't even bleed". When he gets transported into the game, it has several Shout Outs to *Tetris* and *Pac-Man*, with a bit of *TRON* thrown in there for good measure.
- A Season 3 episode has a short scene with college students playing what appears to be
*Mario Kart 64*, complete with one of them referring to another player as Yoshi.
- The
*Muppet Babies* episode "It's Only Pretendo" has the babies playing lots of different video games, they are done in a Deep-Immersion Gaming style, but they are all clear references to real NES games like *The Legend of Zelda*, *Frogger*, Nintendo Track and Field, and an Adventure Game.
-
*Adventure Time* zig-zags this with BMO, a sentient robot who doubles up as a games console. The games he plays are very primitive, but it's unclear how much of this is down to the post-apocalyptic setting or BMO himself (he strongly resembles an original Game Boy). He's shown playing *Super Hexagon* at one point, so the staff can't be *that* out of touch.
-
*Steven Universe* is renowned for its lovingly detailed depictions of real game consoles. One especially nice touch is when Peridot creates a laser gun controlled with a Nintendo 64 controller, and when Steven says he's having trouble using it (on moral grounds), she misunderstands him as having problems with the analog stick and says "Then use the D-pad."
- Steven himself owns a Gamecube (called a Dolphin in universe, the original codename for the system) and has some games based off real ones. This is an outdated console given the 2010s atmosphere of the series, but that's completely understandable given Steven's unique situation (being a gamer is not likely a part of his identity so he'd have no reason to upgrade hastily). The movie adds a Playstation 2 to his collection.
- Zig-zagged in the episode "Rose's Room" when Steven plays a 2-D, top-down RPG which heavily resembles the very first Pokemon games
note : and contains elements based on several other assorted games as well, albeit about mini golf instead of monster collecting, on what's clearly a Nintendo 64 (up until 2019, all main Pokemon games have been for handhelds). The same episode also *very accurately* depicts the real life experience of being in the middle of an un-pausable, plot-relevant cutscene, which you have never seen before, only for your family to walk in at the worst possible moment, talking loudly over the dialogue and (unwittingly) blocking the screen, all the while trying to talk to you. The latter helps set the episode's plot in motion, as the incident causes Steven to want to go somewhere private where he can play in peace.
- Sour Cream owns Game Boys, including the◊ Game Boy Advance. But in this case, he uses them as part of a DJ setup to play chiptune-style music. This is also Truth in Television: actual Chiptune artists very often use a bunch of retro consoles, including Game Boys, either hacked or equipped with independent softwares like LSDJ, when playing live sets in the same way Sour Cream does.
- Connie meanwhile seems to have modern 2010s games on her laptop like parodies of
*Civilization*, *Crusader Kings*, and *Age of Empires* with a program that resembles Steam.
- In the crossover episode "Say Uncle", Steven and Uncle Grandpa are at one point shown playing a game that resembles
*Super Smash Bros. Melee*, albeit with different characters.
-
*Gravity Falls* focused two whole episodes on retro videogames, and both times they made sure to do it right. For starters, both times they brought Australian animator Paul Robertson, best known on the internet for his elaborate, surreal animated pixel-art, to work on the game art. To further elaborate:
- The episode "Fight Fighters" is a homage to
*Street Fighter* and other old-school arcade games. The titular game is an Affectionate Parody of arcade fighting games, complete with a multi-national cast, an "American" martial artist protagonist called Rumble McSkirmish, and awkwardly translated dialogue ("DOCTOR KARATE, YOU KILLED MY FATHER AGAIN!"). It is played on an arcade cabinet, and it even has secret button combos (one of which brings playable characters into the real world). The episode itself is chock-full of retro video game references, like Rumble McSkirmish just needing to kneel in front of something to collect it, and a whole segment where the camera angle and Rumble's movement reference old side-scrolling Beat 'Em Ups like *Double Dragon*.
- In season 2, "Soos and the Real Girl" features an evil dating sim. It too features awkwardly-translated text ("when the cherry petals of magic romance academy are in bloom... anthyding can hadplen"), and the game's interface looks like it could easily belong to a real dating sim.
-
*The Amazing World of Gumball* had an episode that is an accurate Affectionate Parody of classic 16 bit JRPGs. Video games are generally depicted accurately in general, although like the rest of the technology in the series Anachronism Stew is at play.
- One episode of
*R.O.B. the Robot* has the kids enter a video game that looks like a real licensed game of the series that wouldn't look out of place on the Nintendo Wii or even the Nintendo Switch. The graphics are smooth and mesh with the show's usual artstyle, and there is a lives counter at the top of the screen which goes gray as the kids lose the one life they are given, one by one.
-
*Craig of the Creek* depicts video games fairly realistically. Retro titles are present, but are treated as such in-story. In the episode "Power Punchers", the titular fighting game is from 1997, and characters are seen playing it both on home console and on an emulator closely resembling MAME.
- Major arcade chains such as Dave and Busters, Main Event, and Round 1 tend to have much newer games than most independently run or side venue arcades. They tend to have 4D ride games that are from the 7th and 8th generation of video games as opposed to the older cabinets from the 2nd to 6th generation of video games that are common in most American arcades. Sometimes they even have exclusive games such as Dance Dance Revolution A and VR machines.
- As opposed to most arcades in the USA that have 2nd to 6th generation cabinets, arcades in Latin America (primarily Mexico) tend to have more up to date machines that run on Xbox 360 and Xbox One hardware. They are typically unoffical modded consoles that run Fighting such as The King of Fighters and sports games such as FIFA. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacManFever |
Troper Types / Just For Fun - TV Tropes
Here we are, on the vast, bountiful plains of the TV Tropes wiki. Herds of tropers graze serenely on the Savannah of New Edits, while somewhere further south, in the rainforest jungles of the Trope Repair Shop, the shrill vocalisations of their fellows echo through the trees as they try to reach a consensus on a rename.
This is a fragile ecosystem, each species supporting the lush landscape of the wiki in its own special way. Each variety of troper has evolved to fill a particular niche, just as the finches of the Galapagos islands did. Some tropers form alliances and strive to make their habitat a utopia of literary and pop cultural knowledge. Others meander placidly around the wiki, neither contributing nor doing any harm. And, as with any species, some varieties of troper just have to discover how annoying you can be before mods with big sticks kick you off the wiki.
For further listings of species found across the oceans of the interweb, please peruse our Forum Speak page.
**This page is Just for Fun! Absolutely no flaming or naming of specific tropers!** If you want to 'fess up to being one of these, put it on your own page.
## The Main Branches of the Species
The mainstay of this multi-faceted terrain, the main contributors create, nurture and trim back tropes. Most engage in elaborate social rituals known as "discussion" and "forum posting," although some quieter members of the group prefer to restrict these rituals to the Trope Launch Pad.
-
**Troper Policeman**:
- Habitat: Omnipresent, often the Recent Discussions list.
- Function: Making sure nobody kills one another. Mediates in disputes and/or puts their foot down to end them. May ban or discipline other types, and normally has an important, if not deciding, say in any discussions. Edits are fairly rare, and usually a result of discussion in the forums or the Trope Repair Shop. Seldom seen, rather rare, always nearby.
- Favourite Tropes: The ones that don't cause flame wars.
- Natural Enemies: The more negative troper types. This is invariably a one-sided battle, as
*Troperus Administerius* and *Troperus Mod* sit securely at the top of the Wiki food chain.
-
**Trope Creator**:
- Habitat: TLP and "Edit Page".
- Function: Writing tropes. Spends a lot of time debating in TLP before toddling off to put their discussions into action via the Launch button. Generally not detail oriented, more interested in new ideas - their spelling and grammar may suffer for this cavalier approach. May "babysit" their own tropes, keeping an eye on them via their Watchlist, chasing off trolls and occasionally doing cleanup (though not on the same scale as an Editor). If they're in the Repair Shop, they're normally rewriting, discussing or defending their "own" tropes with/from a Repairman.
- Favourite tropes: Creator tropes and their own "babies"
- Natural Enemies: The Cutlister. May occasionally butt heads with Repairmen. Should a Wiki Vandal or Troll appear on one of a Creator's tropes, they will attack with all the fury of a mother elephant defending her calf.
-
**Trope Editor**:
- Habitat: "Edit Page".
- Function: The cleanup crew. Despising typos, Word Cruft, and bad information, they swoop in to correct bad grammar and factual inaccuracies. A large part of what makes Wiki Magic work, the Editor is detail-orientated and can spot a mistake from a mile away. When you look through a page history, you might not even notice an Editor's changes — but red text will vanish and spelling will appear to readjust itself.
- Natural Enemies: Tropers with bad grammar or lower editing standards, particularly the Kid Editor.
-
**Trope Repairman**:
- Habitat: Trope Repair Shop and "Edit Page".
- Function: They tidy up tropes, rename them and occasionally put the floundering ones out of their misery. Very detail-oriented and diligent, occasionally nitpicky, they do the legwork when a trope's name is changed, picking through the trope's Wicks to reflect the name change. Often involved elsewhere on the forum; they like discussion. Any tropes that they themselves create will normally spend a long time in TLP, to reduce the chance that their creations will end up in the repair shop.
- Favourite Tropes: Those that don't end up in the Trope Repair shop.
- Natural Enemies: The Sinkhole Pimp.
-
**The Art Museum Curator**
- Habitat: Image Pickin' threads, Image Links tab.
- Function: To find the best images for a given page. They despise unclear images and are the commanding officers in the Just a Face and a Caption front of the War on Bad Troping. Captions are also their territory; making them witty if possible and clear at all times is a top priority for them.
- Favourite Tropes: Anything to do with imagery, and anything with an illustrative image.
- Natural Enemies: Anyone who posts images that are non-illustrative, especially images that are Just a Face and a Caption. Otherwise, none; this is a peaceable, herbivorous species that likes to co-operate with Creators and Editors.
-
**The Advertiser**
- Habitat: Works pages, ideally obscurer ones and tropes of the sort found in the works they enjoy.
- Function: A relative of the Entry Pimp, these are fans of one or more obscure shows (which they may happen to be a fan of or may actively seek out) who endeavour to spread Pot Holes to its page wherever they can. Many are also Trope Creators (first spotting tropes that appear in their favorite work) or Browsers/Casual Example Adders (adding entries for their favorite work whenever they realise the trope turns up). If said work doesn't have a page, they're likely to take it through TLP to get some help with it.
- Favourite Tropes: Popular ones with few examples, where it's likely that their favorite work won't have an entry.
-
**The Trope-Fu Master**
- Habitat: Trope Finder.
- Function: Scouring the site like a ninja to answer the plaintive cry of "Do we have a trope where..?"
- Favourite Tropes: The ones with the cleverest, least intuitive names.
-
**The Index Maker (subspecies of Trope Creator)**
- Habitat: TLP.
- Function: finds related tropes to place into a new index.
- Favourite Tropes: Index pages and SuperTropes.
-
**The Indexed Trope Adder (subspecies of Trope Editor)**
- Habitat: "Edit Page".
- Function: Adds new tropes to existing indices.
- Favourite Tropes: Index pages.
-
**Wiki Feng Shui Master**
- Habitat: Main wiki, sometimes strays into Darth Wiki and Sugar Wiki.
- Function: A Trope Editor relation who prefers to focus on the visual aspects of a page rather than its content. Moves images into auspicious (right aligned) position, adds folders, and generally attempts to improve the visual flow of a page.
- Favourite Tropes: Well-organized tropes with nicely broken up descriptions and right-aligned images.
-
**The Trailblazer**
- Habitat: Nomadic, but frequents Trope Finder, Index Pages, Supertropes, Edit Page, and Pages Needing Wicks.
- Function: Generally a peaceful nomadic explorer, seeking out obscure tropes to create new paths to and from. Builds well marked and intuitive trails of wicks. Acts as the inverse of the advertiser, seeking isolated pages to connect to large hubs. Also repairs potholes, sinkholes, red links, and detours sending the reader to incorrect tropes.
- Favorite Tropes: Overlapping tropes, contrasting tropes, index and supertrope pages with many well-described outgoing wicks to route traffic through.
- Natural Enemies: Occasionally conflicts with the Wiki Feng Shui Master when they pave over harmonious arrangements of potholes in the interest of facilitating navigation. Namespacers and Cutlisters occasionally disrupt the trailblazer's pathways by recategorizing or deleting favorite hub tropes. Has a Tsundere relationship with repairmen: dere when repairmen aid in trail creation and maintenance, tsun when a trope overhaul requires entire networks of links to be rerouted or fixes a perfectly good catch-all.
-
**Trope Browser**:
- Habitat: Everywhere, really, except "Edit Page".
- Function: A writer is nothing without a reader, and this is the reader. They observe, stay out of arguments, peruse the Launch and New Edit list, and follow their favourite shows. Sometimes too shy to jump in feet-first, sometimes simply happy to access the database. They may have a Troper account; they may not. A freewheeling troper type, usually unnoticed by those writing on the Wiki… but the largest group of all.
- Favourite Tropes: Any and all, especially new ones.
- Natural Enemies: None. They move unseen among feuding Americanizers and Britishers, and just don't notice the massive turf war between Lumpers and Splitters.
-
**Trope Dropper**:
- Habitat: "Edit Page" and TLP.
- Function: He writes an entire article or post from scratch, does it on Word, his own little wiki, or a clean pad site located far from your view. He'll spend hours polishing it, copy-pasting it here, but not submitting, just previewing it, marveling at it, and then, if tonight he's too tired, post it tomorrow. Or in a week. Or whenever he thinks it's ready, or just has time. This is the Trope Dropper. (Or Wiki Dropper, Forum Dropper, Fan Fic Dropper etc)
It doesn't just happen on TV Tropes, or wikis in general. It's rare on forums or such, however, because it's a fluid discussion and you might want to write your reply fast before the flames go too high or burn out, and you're staring at a screen telling you that you can't post on that thread and go to sleep crying because you couldn't post your precious... er-hem, ...Or So I Heard. Oh and you're expected to do this when posting Fan Fic.
This practice comes from the primordial time of the internet, when connections were short and expensive, and writing in a forum, or a mail, with your crappy "reliable" IE and the thing not being sent, would guarantee the loss of data and staring at a White Screen Of Despair. Or you'd write this and later go to a friend who had any internet whatsoever. Presently the need for this has diminished, as now we're led to believe a lot more people have cheap, reliable, fast internet connections and time on your hands, with the world becoming "smaller" and changes in any page in which you and a group who would contribute, becoming faster and sometimes sliding off track before you get to say your bit. Other needs have appeared however, such as posting through a proxy (it's hard to find a good one, and when you do, you want to make the best of it).
-
**Wiki Curator**
- Habitat: Articles pertaining to their interests.
- Function: A type of wiki contributor, a wiki curator acts in many of the same ways a museum curator does. Maintaining the artifacts (the articles), researching them, arranging them into interesting dioramas (the indexes), and so on.
There are generalist curators and specialist curators. Specialists have a deep interest in a specific medium or a specific genre and don't do much curating outside that interest. The interests of generalist curators are wider. Or perhaps they just wander. If a wiki isn't attracting curators of either type, it just isn't working.
How a curator works on TV Tropes is by tracking certain pages on their watchlist and looking out for things like bad examples and clumsy edits. The ultimate goal of the curator is to protect a page from eventual action in the Trope Repair Shop.
Since this is subject to Sturgeon's Law, you should also watch out for yourself, and how you approach this role. Be sure you're wearing the Curator hat in the wiki's interest rather than your own, and know when to exercise personal restraint in editing. Unfortunately, some wiki curators get the idea that just like in a museum, you aren't allowed to touch anything. In extreme cases, they may revert not just ostensible vandalism, but
*any* change to a page.
- Favourite Tropes: Any well maintained page relating to their interests.
- Natural Enemies: Wiki Vandals, especially when they target the Curator's pages of interest.
Do not discount the importance of the migratory types; the wiki may not dominate their Favourites menu the way it does for the Main contributors, but a Migratory troper is often a Jack of All Trades, or a valuable support to other troper types. Normally, their interest in TV Tropes is a tangent to their main interest, be it comic books, anime or the most popular new television series.
-
**The Eclectic Troper**
- Habitat: Migratory, and can appear anywhere.
- Function: Moving around the wiki searching for interesting nuggets of information and weird titles makes them a mixture of all sorts. They do a bit of repair, an occasional bit of pimping, example tweaking; can remain inactive for periods before their interest is sparked once more. May give a casual browse to the forums and TLP to see if anything momentous is happening, but generally ignores the troper-politics that happens there. Their wanderings across the tropesphere, however, has given them a good working knowledge of most tropes, and they rarely get confused as to which is which, their primary interest is the trope description itself after all.
- Favourite Tropes: None. The "random" button is their best friend.
-
**The Casual Example Adder**
- Habitat: Work and Trope Pages.
- Function: Adds tropes to work pages and examples to trope pages. While they play a vital role in making Wiki Magic work, they generally don't read the Trope Launch Pad and TRS forum. They sometimes don't bother to read the trope descriptions clearly to make sure that they are picking the best trope for their examples, which can be a headache for the Trope Repairman, the Trope Editor and the more detail-oriented Trope Creator. However, more often than not, they pick the right tropes.
- Favourite Tropes: Whatever sparks their interest.
-
**The TLP Midwife**
- Habitat: Trope Launch Pad.
- Function: Scrolling and refreshing the TLP, looking for interesting examples of possible new tropes, helping to clean up, avoid confusion, add new examples, and provide better names. They have a symbiotic relationship with Trope Creators: the Creator values the Midwife's input, and the Midwife likes to see a well-launched trope. Midwives are a benevolent species who like to help.
- Favourite Tropes: The newest, most interestingest ones. Lives to say, "Wait, we seriously don't have this already?"
- Natural Enemies: The Spoilsport, who tries to destroy the new tropes that the Midwife likes to assist with.
-
**The Namespacer**
- Habitat: Anywhere but the Main/ namespace.
- Function: These guys like adding alternative name space entries to existing trope pages. They're very useful at moving subjective tropes to the YMMV tab and similar maintenance, but also enjoy adding their favorite moments to the crowning moment tabs. There's also some overlap with other troper types, since they'll probably maintain and contribute to the larger namespaces (like Playing With Wiki or Haiku-Wiki) in the same way or make sure Headscratchers and Wild Mass Guessing pages don't get too out of hand.
- Favourite Tropes: Metatropes (all the better for use in the Playing With Wiki), Crowner tropes. Any trope without a Playing With Wiki entry.
-
**The Breaking News Editor**
- Habitat: Trope pages for active works.
- Function: To be the first to update the page after a plot twist, the appearance of a new trope, and similar—frequently within minutes of its appearance.
- Favourite Tropes: Any which have achieved Troper Critical Mass (
*Girl Genius*, *Doctor Who*, etc.)
-
**The Aspiring Writer**
- Habitat: Real-ish section of the Forum.
- Function: To plug their original stories and fanfiction whenever possible and assign tropes to their works.
- Favourite Tropes: Any that they find turning up in their stories.
-
**The Trope Truther**
- Habitat: Any sufficiently "realistic" trope.
- Function: These guys love the Real Life examples section. If someone's invented something or done something that resembles a trope they'll make their case for declaring it Truth In Television. They may or may not miss Troper Tales. The sight of a "no real life" tag instantly saddens them, and seeing their favorite sections torn out can ruin their entire day.
- Favourite Tropes: Any that seem plausible enough to actually happen.
-
**The Fetish Troper**
- Habitat: Sex Tropes, Fanservice Tropes, This Index Is Full Of Perverts.
- Purpose: To seek out any and all examples of their fetish du jour, and Entry Pimp the ones they know about.
- Favourite Tropes: Whatever gets their motor revving.
- Natural Enemies: The easily squicked; certain types of Troper Activists.
-
**The Entry Pimp**
- Habitat: Anywhere that has anything to do with a work they like.
- Purpose: To document a work they like as thoroughly as possible.
- Favorite Tropes: Ones that apply to the work they're acting as an Entry Pimp for.
-
**The Hedge Trimmer**
- Habitat: Any part of the wiki with length issues.
- Purpose: To trim wiki articles to increase readability.
- Natural Enemies: Anyone whose edits contain walls of text, natter, and/or Word Cruft.
-
**The Drive-By Voter**
- Habitat: Crowners, TLP.
- Purpose: To vote on crowner options and/or drop a hat/bomb on TLP drafts. They help build consensus but otherwise remain silent in the decision-making process.
- Favourite Tropes: Whatever sparks their interest.
For the most part, these are subspecies of the Main Contributors, with one important difference: a Berserk Button. While they usually exist harmoniously with the rest of the herd, the vaguest sniff of their chosen bugbear sends them on a rampage. They charge forward, sending hapless newbies flying and knocking aside Editors who were quietly minding their own business. May cause Troper Policemen some headaches, and they risk being banned should they prove more troublesome than helpful.
-
(genus)
**Single-Issue Wonk**
- Habitat: Omnipresent.
- Function: Removing or adding material to support their favourite issue.
- Favourite Tropes: Anything to do with their issue.
- Natural Enemy: Trolls, other Single Issue Wonks with opposing issues.
-
**The Americanizer**
- Habitat: "Edit Page" of tropes written by someone who uses British English.
- Function: Driven by a deep seated hatred of the letter "u", the firm belief that the goshdarned "s" is overrated, and a profound love for the letter "z" (pronounced "zee"), The Americanizer changes any British spelling to its American counterpart, regardless of the official etiquette of TV Tropes. They are detail oriented, but other tropers wonder who has that much time on their hands. Not that different from their British Spelling counterpart, though they'd die before admitting it.
- Favorite tropes: Xtreme Kool Letterz, Eagleland (in the latter's case, of the "America the Beautiful" variety).
- Natural Enemies: The Britishiser (see below), Samuel Johnson. They will edit and re-edit each other's pages until someone smacks them both over the head with something.
-
**The Britishiser**
- Habitat: "Edit Page" of tropes written by someone who uses American English.
- Function: Driven by their hatred of the letter "z" (pronounced "zed"), the belief that the letter "s" jolly well earned its place in the language, and a deep love for the letter "u", The Britishiser changes any American spelling to its British counterpart, regardless of the official etiquette of TV Tropes. They are detail oriented, but other tropers wonder who has that much time on their hands. Not that different from their American Spelling counterpart, though they'd die before admitting it.
- Favourite Tropes: British English, Useful Notes On (insert home country here).
- Natural Enemies: The Americanizer (see above), Noah Webster. They will edit and re-edit each other's pages until someone smacks them both over the head with something.
-
**The Rewriter**
- Habitat: Edit Page of the Trope Launch Pad.
- Function: A Trope Editor Variant. Rewords a trope description entirely. This is usually because of poor writing, and in such instances, the Rewriter is a major boon to the wiki, capable of making sense of the most muddled descriptions. However, occasionally they reword a perfectly coherent trope or works page simply to put it into their own words without going through the Repair Shop. While largely harmless, they may stand on the toes of whoever created the trope, especially if they offer no explanation of the rewrite.
- Favourite Tropes: Generally the Works pages of their favourite shows / books.
- Natural Enemies: None, really, unless they encounter a particularly vigilant or sensitive Trope Creator, or a fellow Editor who was tweaking the page before the Rewriter wiped it and started again.
-
**The Activist Troper** (a.k.a Troper with an Agenda)
- Habitat: Any trope with any potential to get political.
- Function: This troper is strongly eager to promote a cause. Whether it's Christianity, feminism, keeping politics out of TV Tropes or ensuring free ice cream for all, this troper will promote it in his or her editing if it is relevant to do so, and sometimes won't even reserve it for these occasions. They can be a highly positive contributor if they keep their heads and are respectful of other people's views, but the Activist Troper may have a negative impact if they start removing anything they don't agree with—or go on a Troper Filibuster right in the middle of a trope page.
- Favourite Tropes: Whatever tropes and works have anything to do with whatever issue they happen to support.
- Natural Enemy: Other Activist Tropers with opposing views.
-
**The Patriot**
- Habitat: Tropes connected to their country of origin, as well as Values Dissonance.
- Purpose: Defending their territory. Patriots are often found pottering around in the Useful Notes section, ensuring that the information on their particular country stays up to date. Sensible versions gently correct stereotypes and conduct discussions on the forums; less sensible types charge into the middle of any trope that mildly criticises their country with flaming torch and pitchfork at the ready. Neither is fond of sweeping generalisations about their country of birth, but the former takes a more tolerant view and is therefore more productive. The latter natters incessantly, and can quickly descend into true Single-Issue Wonk, if not outright Troll.
- Natural Enemy: Er… each other. Sensible Patriots don't think their more… zealous counterparts are doing anyone any favours. Said zealous counterparts think that the calmer version is a sellout and lacks commitment.
- Favourite Tropes: Ones connected to issues of nationality. The calmer type even likes those that are less than complimentary about their country (for example, Eagleland, British Stuffiness, Germanic Depressives) since they can get a giggle out of the stereotype. Expect them to put a disclaimer at the bottom of the trope though, if said trope doesn't make it clear that this is not the case in reality.
-
**The Splitter**
- Habitat: "Edit Page", Trope Repair Shop, and Trope Launch Pad.
- Function: Finds subtropes to split away from a more general concept.
- Favourite Tropes: The most specific of subtropes.
- Natural Enemy: The Lumper.
-
**The Lumper**
- Habitat: "Edit Page", Trope Repair Shop, and Trope Launch Pad.
- Function: Finds related ideas to combine into a central theme.
- Favourite Tropes: The broadest of supertropes.
- Natural Enemy: The Splitter.
-
**The Ultraconservative Troper**
- Habitat: Tropes of Legend.
- Function: This troper thinks TV Tropes was much better in the days of old, when everything was new and exciting, when trope names were bizarre and fantastic and no one screamed bloody murder when they saw a character trope namer or a "snowclone" (what a stupid derogatory term!). Ultraconservative tropers really miss everything that was cut from TV Tropes, including Troper Tales and "I Am Not Making This Up", but their nostalgia is mostly silent, as they do not desire to challenge the wiki administration. Some of these tropers emigrated to the Tropes Mirror Wiki, but not all: after all, there are still no IANMTU on Tropes Mirror! Has a lot in common with the Old Guard in the Forum Pecking Order, but with more discontent.
- Favourite Tropes: All Tropes of Legend and everything that no longer exists, such as I Am Not Making This Up, So Yeah, This Troper, etc.
- Natural Enemy: Trope Repairmen.
-
**The Defence Lawyer**
- Habitat: Usually confined to one or two show/book/game entries—they're fairly territorial.
- Function: Defending their favourite character (or, occasionally, creator) to the death. Milder versions are simply a bit picky about the objectivity of the edits concerning Character X, changing "Sadist Teacher" to "Stern Teacher" and "useless coward" to "ill-prepared for the horrors of war." A more zealous variant demands that any and all edits about Character X go through them, and will post screeds in the "reason for edit" box about just how another troper's edit failed to meet their standards. YMMV subpages like Tearjerker and Nightmare Fuel are not exempt—if the character scares the living daylights out of another troper, they will edit the entry, or add their own counterpoint as to why Character X is not scary and Troper Y is clearly overreacting. They're quite happy to elaborate on how their favourite character's Freudian Excuse mitigates their actions and just why the dog deserved to be kicked. Very rarely, some may cross the line and start insulting the editors rather than the edits. They spend more time altering other people's edits than creating their own, but unlike the Trope Repairman, they have niche priorities.
- Favourite Tropes: That of their favourite show/book/video game. Base-Breaking Character, however, probably describes their No.1 character. Some may be fond of Draco in Leather Pants, but it's not always a factor.
- Natural Enemy: Logically, the Prosecutor...but it's fairly rare to have these two opposites on one page, fighting over the same character. Their evolutionary niches keep them out of each other's way. It
*is* however, entirely possible for the same troper to be both Defence Lawyer and Prosecutor at the same time...
-
**The Prosecutor**
- Habitat: Usually confined to one or two show/book/game entries — as with their adversary, the Defence Lawyer, they guard their home turf.
- Function: Telling other tropers why Character X (or Creator X) is bad and wrong and you shouldn't like them. They edit entries that are even mildly favourable to their detested character, cutting any suggested justification for their actions and altering Passive Aggressive Combat to Manipulative Bastard. Zealous variants show a propensity for assuming the worst at all times; any positive actions Character X performs are ignored, and any mild flaw or bad decision will be held in evidence against them. Edits from other tropers will be cut or reworded, with a long justification on why the edit was biased and ill-informed. They will even venture into YMMV tropes, like Heartwarming Moments and Moment of Awesome to pontificate on exactly what what Character X did wasn't cute or awesome at all, but evidence of their inherent evil. Like the Defence Lawyer, it is entirely possible that they have a point...but, also like the defence lawyer, they tend to cause eye-rolling in other tropers when they see that their edit has been prosecuted, yet again.
- Favourite Tropes: In addition to the page of their show/book/game, they're a bit Complete Monster-happy, and may be guilty of Flanderization.
- Natural Enemy: Again, one would assume The Defence Lawyer, but they are rarely involved in edit wars with each other. It's far more likely that the same troper is both: for example, if they favour the Betty in a Betty and Veronica love triangle, they will be the Defence Lawyer for Betty and the Prosecutor for Veronica.
There is no malice in these species, they just tend to be a little...overenthusiastic. However, try telling that to the Editors and Repairmen left to sweep up the rubble. Not to worry - a quick read of the rules, familiarity with the wiki and a helping hand from one of the more helpful troper types will quickly promote them to another category. Approach this troper with kindness and assistance unless and until they prove contentious — they could become valuable Wiki allies, but too vicious a lambasting and they may become a Cynical or Destructive type instead.
-
**The Sinkhole Pimp**
- Habitat: They're everywhere!
- Function: Turns every other word into a Pot Hole or a Sink Hole. Rarely bothers to check if they are using the trope correctly. The mortal enemy of the Trope Repairman.
- Favourite Tropes: Pothole Magnets and Stock Phrases.
-
**The Nit-Natterer**
- Habitat: Anywhere.
- Function: love to argue, live to argue. They will not correct an entry, they'll put in a sub-entry beginning with, "Actually,..." or "Only if..."
- Favourite Tropes: Poorly defined or poorly named ones.
-
**The Trope-Namer Syndrome Carrier**
- Habitat: Trope Launch Pad and new trope pages.
- Function: To name everything after this favorite character, book, film, anime, etc. These names are often obscure enough that even other fans will scratch their head. Other tropers see these Trope Namers, think it's OK to name things willy-nilly after their favorite things, and become infected with the syndrome, spreading the illness as they begin to make up "Trope Namers" as well.
- Favorite Tropes: Anything they named.
-
**The Huge Fan**
- Habitat: Anything related to their fandom.
- Function: This is a superspecies of Troper dedicated rabidly to their fandom. They may proudly have tattoos or even shout that they are in the fandom "for life". They came to TV Tropes to set the record straight and/or share as much as they can about their favorite thing. Unfortunately, such rabid devotion can breed unrest amongst the Fan Dumb as Huge Fans clash over little details any casual observer would not care about. With time and guidance many Huge Fans adjust to the climate of TV Tropes and become helpful tropers. Those who do not adapt generally move on to fandom-only wikis where they can be with like-minded editors. A few specimens, however, become very frustrated instead of adapting and become Destructive Types.
- Favorite Tropes: Anything related to their fandom, typically something very nerdy and possibly obscure.
-
**The Furry**
- Habitat: Trope Launch Pad and any page that is remotely related furries.
- Function: A subspecies of Huge Fan, the furry is confused by the lack of furry related pages on TV Tropes. Due to basically every furry being an artist and/or writer and the rule of There Is no Such Thing as Notability they feel slighted and under-represented in this largely human oriented Wiki. Not knowing that Tropes Are Flexible, they may begin to make as many furry/animal specific pages as possible without regard for if other tropes/pages already cover them, sometimes without going through TLP first. Due to a mix of The Law of Fan Jackassery and Broken Base, furries can be some of the worst nitpickers of the Huge Fan species and they may readily fight anyone who tries to help them adjust, even if they are other already adjusted furries. Those who do not adjust typically move on to a furries only wiki like Wikifur or just go back to their favorite art site instead. Those who do adjust become indistinguishable from any of the Helpful Troper species.
- Favorite Tropes: Furry Fandom, Beast Man, Funny Animal, Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism...
-
**The Censor**
- Habitat: Wherever filth is found.
- Function: A subspecies of the Activist Troper, wants to clean up pages by removing smut, swears and anything else that offends them. May be a Bluenose Bowdlerizer. When done with care and consideration, its usually possible to keep the spirit of the page while removing the profanity. All too often though, editing is done without thought, or worst, by an automatic nanny-filter.
- Favorite Tropes: Tropes that used to be full of smut and dirty words that are now full of ***ing asterisks.
- Natural Enemies: The Fetish Troper, Trolls, Potty-mouths, Trope Police and Trope Repairmen who have to fix their messes.
-
**The Kid Editor**
- Habitat: Articles related to their favorite cartoon.
- Function: They tend to make and expand pages on cartoons they enjoy, often Characters/ pages and moments pages as well. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but their editing standards tend to be relatively low, with Zero-Context Examples and grammar errors being a common problem. This tends to happen because they have the physical/mental age of children and may not understand the wiki fully. Try to help them as they're very rarely malicious and report only once necessary.
- Favorite Tropes: Whatever shows up in their shows, usually simpler, Overdosed Tropes like Nice Guy, Big Bad, Jerk with a Heart of Gold, etc.
- Natural Enemies: Older Tropers who have to make pages up to higher standards, particularly the Trope Editor.
While nowhere near as chaotic or irritating as the Destructive groups, Cynical types
can be a headache to their fellow tropers. They may undermine the work of a Creator, make
*more*
work for an editor, or just scare off the newcomers.
-
**The Cutlister**
- Habitat: Cutlist, vulnerable tropes with a low number of wicks.
- Function: Euthanisation. Unlike the Repairman, who prefers to fix tropes, the Cutlister lives to destroy them. This is not just any troper who realises a trope is useless (those are generally Repairmen) — the Cutlister seems to take a certain amount of joy in consigning tropes to the scrapheap, even totally legitimate ones. Vigilant Trope Creators and Repairmen can generally put an end to any trope-murder-sprees, but often just ending up suggested for the Cut List makes any trope an endangered species. The Cutlister is usually also a Single-Issue Wonk, and targets tropes that hit their Berserk Button. If unchecked, they can direct the culture of TV tropes, since they believe that by repeating "This Type Of Trope Is Bad!" long enough, people will start to agree. Thankfully, Cutlisters are rare, and easily spotted by Troper Police.
- Favourite Tropes: It's hard to tell.
- Natural Enemy: Trope Creators. Creators and Cutlisters represent the alpha and omega of tropes, respectively.
-
**The Spoilsport (a.k.a The Saboteur)**
- Habitat: Trope Launch Pad.
- Function: Popping up in comments and informing the Trope Creator that their fledgling page is extremely similar to an existing trope that it, in actual fact, bears no resemblance to whatsoever. Not to be confused with people who know what they are talking about! Known by their trademark cry "We already have this!". Sometimes willing to spend days or even weeks arguing about it, often long after the trope has actually been launched.
- Favourite Tropes: Only those that are already in existence and well established.
There's no getting around it—some species just ruin the habitat for everyone.
-
**The Wiki Vandal**
-
**The Troll**
- Habitat: "Edit Page" and forums.
- Function: Posts questionable content intended to incite a Flame War. Will almost invariably drag other tropers down with them when the Troper Policemen come to break things up. Generally solitary carnivores, but some are known to hunt in packs. Avoid at all costs; this species enjoys torturing its prey.
- Favourite Tropes: N/A. They're here to harass the
*tropers*, not the tropes themselves.
- Favorite Prey: The Single Issue Wonk Brigade.
- Natural Enemy: Troper Policeman. They rarely survive long, but more always appear.
-
**The Spammer**
- Habitat: Anywhere, really.
- Function: Links to third party products unrelated to discussion at hand. Other tropers hate them for being left-fielders and possible vandalism.
- Favourite Tropes: Anything that isn't locked, or pages with regular tropes, but wrong namespaces (Like Characters/AtLeastIAdmitIt).
- Natural Enemy: Trope Policeman. They rarely survive long, but more always appear.
-
**The Corrector**
- Habitat: Anywhere with inaccuracies; places where Trope Editors may show up.
- Function: Demonstrating the superiority of their knowledge. They often Natter, and will violate Repair, Don't Respond.
- Favorite Prey: Anything with the slightest inaccuracy.
-
**The Edit Warrior**
- Habitat: Anywhere, really.
- Function: Asserting the rightness of their edits. Often uses Justifying Edits.
- Favorite Prey: Anything they've edited.
-
**The Justifier**
- Habitat: Their favorite works.
- Function: Making hollow rebuttals; justifying tropes that don't need it. Often forget that Tropes Are Tools.
-
**The Parabomber**
- Habitat: Anywhere that they can assault with parentheses.
- Function: The digression editor. They will spam parentheses, clauses brackets, and the like, containing mostly useless statements that are sometimes just their own thoughts on the matter.
-
**The Hyperboloid**
- Habitat: Work pages and trope pages.
- Function: The exaggeration editor. They often gather in packs and overwhelm unsuspecting tropers with hysterical shouting. Often creates Zero-Context Examples, as their examples are more about saying "Character X IS this trope" than saying WHY Character X is this trope. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PageGuardian |
Pain & Gain - TV Tropes
*"Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger."*
Have you ever heard anyone say, "No pain, no gain"? This trope is when that saying is taken literally.
Pain and Gain is when characters get power-ups from taking physical damage from others. Whether this is a raw power boost or having new effects or abilities activate, the more hurt these people are, the more dangerous they become. While most people would instinctively try to avoid taking damage in a fight, for these characters it is often a cornerstone of their strategy to soak up hits to dish out even more damage right back. Naturally, this also comes with the drawback of
*needing* to be hurt to access their full power, which can prove difficult if faced with attacks they can't withstand.
Given how badly this conflicts with most people's innate desire to minimize pain and harm to oneself, characters with these kinds of powers tend to be the Determinator, Made of Iron, a Combat Sadomasochist, The Berserker, or any other character who throws themselves into battle, without fear of taking a hit. When heroes use it, it's often to showcase their Heroic Resolve and willingness to suffer enormous punishment for the sake of others. Conversely, villains with this power present a unique challenge for the heroes, who have to try to either end the fight quickly to minimize the villain's powers or figure out a way to defeat them without letting them power up. Either may use a Deliberate Injury Gambit to get their opponent to hit them, especially if their opponent knows of their power and is trying to avoid activating it. Attack Backfire is a common outcome.
For when an attack brings power because of some sort of specific resistance or immunity, see Feed It with Fire and Elemental Absorption. When the power is absorbing incoming energy in general, see Energy Absorption. Compare Cast from Hit Points when the user must sacrifice Life Energy in some form as a requirement to use their powers and Attack Reflector, in which damage from an attack is partially or completely rebounded back at the opponent. For when the pain in question is less specific than just physical pain, see Power at a Price. Contrast Full Health Bonus, in which the character gains power from not taking damage at all.
See Critical Status Buff and Turns Red, video game tropes where characters and enemies respectively become more powerful at the verge of death.
## Examples:
-
*Bloody Battle*'s Jersey is a special item that gives the player a whole new set of moves, some moves requiring something called TP. It is usually obtained in one of two ways: inflicting pain on others, and getting hurt yourself. Your TP increases no matter how you're hurt, whether it be naturally like fall damage, or from another player.
-
*Super Smash Bros.*:
- Introduced in Brawl. Fighter Lucario takes some creative liberties with how aura is used in Pokemon. In Smash, Lucario becomes stronger the higher his percent is (or lower his HP is in stamina mode), becoming ludicrously powerful when he reaches the cap at 190%.
- Starting in
*Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U*, the rage mechanic gives a smaller version of the aura boost to every single character.
- In
*Fate/Grand Order*, Hijikata Toshizou's Noble Phantasm, Shinsengumi - Immortal Sincerity, scales in power based on how much HP he's missing. If he's at 1 HP, his Noble Phantasm will deal an additional 600% damage at minimum. Luckily, his Strengthening quest upgrades his Disengage skill to grant a Last Chance Hit Point effect that leaves him at 1 HP should he take otherwise lethal damage, letting him unleash his full damage potential.
-
*Granblue Fantasy*: The Enmity family of skills provide increased damage the lower the party's HP (e.g. Oblivion's Enmity provides "a big boost to dark allies ATK based on how low HP is", with each element having a similar description). While primarily granted via weapons, several characters also possess similar skills as well as skills to maximise their chances of survival while at low HP. Some examples include...
- Dark SSR Jeanne D'Arc has skills that allow her to survive with 1 HP as well as boost her damage.
- Dark SSR Kolulu similarly has skills that allow her to survive with 1HP as well as boost damage, and additionally a skill that allows her to fill her Charge Bar instantly allowing her to unleash a Charge Attack at once.
- Dark SSR Zooey not only gains benefits from low HP (her Resolution skill does more damage based on how low her HP is), but her Conjunction skill reduces the whole party's HP to one
*and* grants them DMG Immunity for one 1 turn, allowing a party to survive a single combat round. This is a high-risk high-reward strategy and part of the reason Dark SSR Zooey is considered a top tier character for an Enmity build no matter the element.
- Seox of the Eternals is a dark element melee character with multiple "dodge enemy attack" skills. As the Celeste Claw Omega is one of the earliest weapons a player can farm (and has the Mistfall Enmity skill that grants a small DMG boost the lower the HP), this means that he can dodge and counterattack to do huge damage in a Melee Weapon build. SSR Dark Predator has a similar setup.
- In the early
*Resident Evil* games one of the monsters the player would fight were the Tyrants, humanoid creatures created by the Umbrella corporation to serve as biological weapons. When a Tyrant is seriously injured, the T-virus would trigger a secondary mutation which would increase their strength and durability to the point that only heavy weaponry could reliably destroy them.
-
*Heroes of the Storm*:
- Zul'jin is all about being at low health to gain bonuses. His trait Berserker passively increases his attack speed the lower his health is, and one of his heroic abilities lets him throw a gigantic axe that deals damage based on how much health he's missing. This pairs nicely with the rest of his kit, which is all about spending his health to power himself up as well as several ways to heal himself or prevent himself from dying.
- Garrosh has a low health pool for a tank, but his trait Armor Up gives him 1 Armor for every 2% of his health that he's missing, which decreases the amount of damage he takes. Ideally, Garrosh wants to be at a medium amount of health so he can absorb high-damage abilities instead of his teammates, nullifying a lot of the damage in the process.
-
*League of Legends*:
- Dr. Mundo's
*Blunt Force Trauma* ability increases his attack damage for his next attack based on how much HP he's missing. *Maximum Dosage's* health boosting effect also scales based on how low his HP is, making him especially good at acting as Schmuck Bait for those expecting an easy kill on a weakened Mundo.
- Olaf's passive,
*Berserker Rage*, grants him bonus attack speed and life steal the lower his HP gets, capping once he loses 70% of his HP. The shield value of *Tough It Out* also increases as his health drops. This means he gets increasingly more dangerous to fight in close quarters the lower his health gets, as he can rapidly outsustain many melee fighters who can't burst him down.
- Sett's
*Haymaker* ability scales in power with how much HP he's lost in the last few seconds, allowing it to do colossal true damage in a line AOE if he isn't killed immediately. Conversely, the power of this skill is neutered if he's whittled down overtime instead.
- Tryndamere's
*Bloodlust* ability grants him increasing attack damage based on his missing health. When combined with his tendency to build large amounts of damage, life steal, and critical hit rate, this means he becomes increasingly lethal the lower his health gets. His ultimate *Undying Rage* also allows him to prevent his HP from dropping to 0 no matter how much punishment he takes, letting him attack with reckless abandon for a short time if not pinned down with crowd control.
- Warwick's passive,
*Eternal Hunger*, heals him for the damage the passive deals via his auto attacks while he's below 50% HP. This healing is increased by 250% while he's below 25% of his maximum health, allowing him to rapidly heal up if left unchecked.
-
*Final Fantasy*:
-
*Final Fantasy II*: The stat system works by improving the more you use it. Building up the HP and Defense stats requires you to take damage. A common tactic is to intentionally hit themselves in combat to abuse it.
- Auron from
*Final Fantasy X* has an ultimate weapon that works off this principle. While most of the group has ultimate weapons that are at their strongest when the members have fully charged hit points or Mana, Auron's becomes more powerful as Auron's health is depleted due to injuries. When he's wielding it, any monster or boss that hits him hard enough to cause damage quickly comes to regret it.
- In
*Mega Man Battle Network*, ShadowMan.EXE possesses the Muramasa Blade, a katana whose power is equal to the amount of HP he's lost. This makes him increasingly dangerous as his boss fight draws on, as he can potentially inflict massive damage on Mega Man with a single hit once Shadow Man is brought to low HP. This sword is also available to Mega Man in the form of the Muramasa battle chip. The weapon makes a reappearance in the sequel series, *Mega Man Star Force*, as an obtainable battle card.
-
*Octopath Traveler* series:
-
*Octopath Traveler*: The Apothecary skill "Last Stand" deals more damage the lower your HP is. The Warmaster support skill "Fortitude" increases the physical damage you deal to enemies the lower your HP is, and it synergizes very well with Last Stand.
-
*Octopath Traveler II*: Alpione's Amulet increases damage when the user's HP is low.
-
*Paper Mario 64* and *Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door*: When Mario is equipped with the Power Rush badge, his attack power increases by 2 if he's in danger (has 1-5 HP left). The Mega Rush badge will increase his attack power by 4 if he's in peril (has 1 HP left).
-
*Pokémon*:
-
*Pokémon Red and Blue*: The move Rage increases a Pokemon's attack power if they get hit while using it.
-
*Pokémon Gold and Silver*: The moves Flail and Reversal get more powerful the closer your HP is to 0, up to 200 base power.
-
*Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire*:
- The Guts ability will double the wielder's attack stat if they get afflicted with a status condition like poison or burning.
- The move Endeavor takes the attacking Pokemon's HP and sets the opponent's HP to the exact same level. This has prompted the famous FEAR strategy where a level 1 Pokemon that knows Endeavour can hold a Focus Sash to tank the first hit at 1 HP, use Endeavour to bring the offending mon's HP to 1 as well, and finish it off by going first with a greater priority move like Quick Attack.
-
*Pokémon Sun and Moon*:
- New to the Alola region is Mudsdale coming equipped with the ability "Stamina," which increases its defense stat every time it's hit with an attack.
- Upon collecting enough Zygarde cells, Zygarde will gain the ability Power Construct, which will transform it into it's Complete Form upon dropping below 50% Max HP.
-
*Shadows Over Loathing*: The Irritable trait some enemies have increases their stats every time they take damage.
-
*The Binding of Isaac*:
- Adrenaline gives you a damage boost for every empty heart container you have.
- Samson starts with the item Bloody Lust, which (from Rebirth forward) gives him a boost to his damage for the floor whenever he takes damage.
- One of Samson's unlockable items, Bloody Gust, functions identically to Bloody Lust, but for speed and tears instead of damage.
- Brittle Bones replaces your heart containers with bone hearts, and makes it so you get a permanent boost to your tears upon losing bone hearts.
- Cambion Conception tracks the damage you've taken since picking it up, granting you a demonic familiar upon reaching certain thresholds.
- "It Hurts" sews Isaac's mouth shut in exchange for giving him a tear ring burst and tears up upon taking damage.
- Lazarus, true to his biblical counterpart, is very good at dying. He has an extra life that resurrects him as Lazarus II, with far superior stats. He was reworked in Repentance to get an extra life every floor instead of one and done. He reverts upon descending to the next floor, but gets a permanent damage up for respawning. This effect also applies to other characters if they hold Lazarus' Rags.
- Marbles gives you a chance to swallow trinkets when taking damage, permanently infusing the effect into Isaac while freeing up your trinket slot for something else.
- The Red Patch trinket functions similarly to Bloody Lust, albeit for only one room and is luck based.
- Vengeful Spirit gives Isaac a red wisp orbital for the floor upon taking damage, up to 6 times.
-
*Dead Cells*: The Frantic Sword is an unlockable weapon that deals critical damage when The Beheaded is below half maximum health.
-
*Hades*:
- One of the bosses Zagreus can be forced to fight at the end of Tartarus is the fury Alecto. Her primary gimmick is that she has a constant rage meter that builds from the damage she takes, drastically increasing her attack and movement speed and giving her access to all of her attacks once it fills to max. She even enters "Perma-Rage" below 25% health.
- From Poseidon you can get the "Boiling Point" boon, which increases the charge rate on your God Gauge (allowing you to use your ultimate ability sooner/more often) in proportion to the amount of damage you take.
- The Ironclad from
*Slay the Spire* has a power card called Rupture, which increases his power when he loses HP from a card, like Hemokinesis, Brutality or Combust. Since some of these cards also provide powerful buffs at the cost of some HP at the start of a turn, they make very good synergies.
-
*Bunny Invasion 2* introduces the "Rage" mechanic, which is obtained via an upgrade purchase. It involves a gauge that fills up whenever the base takes damage, and once it's full, Mr. Frost gets angered, to which the player gets a temporary bonus in damage and fire rate. Further upgrades make the gauge fill faster and increase the extent of the bonus.
## Non-video game examples:
- In
*Bleach*, Ikkaku's Bankai, Ryūmon Hōzukimaru, is "sleeping" even when activating. But its power grows over the course of a fight as it slowly "wakes up". Any damage that Ikkaku receives or deals will help wake it up faster.
-
*Dragon Ball*:
- Part of Saiyan biology is the "Saiyan Power" (often erroneously referred to as "zenkai boost", after a line Goku said when referring to Vegeta's most recent energy boost in the Frieza saga) ability. Every time a Saiyan comes close to death, they will get stronger, and the closer they come to death without actually dying, the stronger the power increase will be. Plenty of characters have used the Zenkai boost to tactically gain a combat advantage. Vegeta introduces the concept, asking Krillin to mortally wound him because Dende is right there to heal him and give him the boost. Due to being partially made from Saiyan DNA, Cell also shares this power; it's what allows him to regenerate as his "Perfect" form after self-destructing in his "Semi-Perfect" form. Goku Black figures out the Zenkai intuitively, and applies it by stabbing his hand and pulling a ki scythe out of it.
- Vegeta develops a transformation based on this principal when he unlocks Ultra Ego.
-
*Kill la Kill*: Gamagori's life fiber uniform comes with a secondary mode, Scourge Regalia, that charges up an explosive blast from the damage he's received. He is also capable of charging it manually by striking himself with his whips. He really enjoys charging it himself.
-
*Champions*. The Absorption power allows the user to absorb Body damage done by attacks, change it into Character Points and add it to any of their powers or Characteristics. This allows the user to greatly improve their own abilities in combat. The more they're attacked, the stronger they get. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainAndGain |
Painted Tunnel, Real Train - TV Tropes
**Batman:**
I would paint a tunnel on the side of the cliff, because you'd run at the tunnel thinking it was a tunnel when it was actually a cliff and you hit a rock and it'd hurt really bad and you'd fall down unconscious.
**Flash:**
But what if I ran into the tunnel and it was an actual tunnel but when you tried to follow me it turned back into a cliff?
**Batman:**
... The simulations did warn me about that.
A lot of times, a predator is trying desperately to catch his prey but the prey proves to be much too quick. How do you stop a creature that never stops moving? Have it run into a wall, of course! How do you do that? Simple, draw a tunnel over it.
So the villain takes his brush and creates a realistic-looking tunnel in three seconds! The prey comes along and the villain hides behind a rock to see the creature stupidly run into the solid wall. The prey runs towards the tunnel and disappears into it. The villain may be baffled, but decides that he needs to go after his prey. He begins to run into the tunnel, and either crashes directly into the solid wall or
*gets run over by a train or bus that has somehow come through the tunnel*.
We usually never see where the prey ends up after entering the tunnel, nor is it ever made an issue.
Compare Portal Picture for when Applied Phlebotinum is involved and the characters are taken to Another Dimension. Also related to Art Initiates Life.
## Examples:
- A 2010 commercial in the United States for the Sour Patch Kids candy uses this as part of the "first they're sour, then they're sweet" campaign.
- A 2010 Coors Light commercial has an artist painting a tunnel onto a wall, then adding a little bit of light for an oncoming train...which turns into the "Silver Bullet", the ice-cold Coors Light train that automatically lowers the temperature of the air surrounding it to the ''perfect'' temperature for enjoying Coors Light.
- A commercial for Energizer batteries features who else but Wile E. Coyote himself paint a tunnel on the wall to try to catch the Energizer Bunny. Just like the Road Runner in the cartoons, the bunny goes through the tunnel, but when Wile E. tries to chase after him, he slams into the wall.
- In this McDonald's commercial, the Hamburglar paints a tunnel on the wall to get cheeseburgers from Ronald McDonald, who is riding a scooter. Ronald goes through the tunnel, but when the Hamburglar tries to chase after him, he slams into the wall. Feeling bad for the Hamburglar, Ronald gives him one cheeseburger from inside the tunnel.
-
*M&M's*: In "The Chase", Red and Yellow chase after the Minis in a rocket car. The Minis then form a landscape but fly away when the rocket car catches up to them, revealing a cliff that Red and Yellow fall off of.
- Variation in an early
*Sonic the Comic* strip, where Robotnik paints a tunnel on the wall in the hope Sonic will run into it and knock himself out. Sonic proceeds to run into the tunnel. A confused Robotnik attempts to follow and, of course, knocks himself out against the wall.
- In
*The Sandman (1989)*, Merv Pumpkinhead is charged with making alterations to Dream's palace. He does so by pasting up *posters of corridors on a blank wall*. Dream then walks out of the posters, which are now apparently as real as anything else in The Dreaming, just as Merv starts complaining about how his boss is a big stick-in-the mud. Fridge Brilliance when you realise that *any* corridor in a comic is just a picture.
- In a comic book story based on
*Wacky Races*, Dick Dastardly theorizes that the others can cross the painted tunnel because they don't know it's not real and, he and Muttley can cross it as well if they believe it's real. They test the theory and fail, prompting Dick to blame Muttley for not believing. As part of a new attempt, Dick has Muttley hypnotizing him into believing the tunnel is real and it fails because Muttley gave the wrong hypnotic command.
- The Sea of Holes in
*Yellow Submarine* is an example. The fact that Ringo picks up one of the holes and takes it with him ("I've got a hole in me pocket!") becomes a plot point later on.
- In the 2005 film version of
*Bewitched*, Michael Caine walks out of a series of stone arches to speak with Nicole Kidman; a moment later, as the camera pulls back, a pair of stagehands come by and pick up the large canvas flat on which the arches are painted.
- In a couple of his movies (
*The Playhouse*, *Steamboat Bill, Jr..*) Buster Keaton uses an old vaudeville gag in which a comedian performing against a backdrop painted to look like a body of water dives into it — he actually jumps through a horizontal slit in the canvas.
- Parodied and subverted in
*Looney Tunes: Back in Action*. Brendan Fraser's character is chasing Daffy Duck around Warner Bros studios. Daffy runs into a painted backdrop of a hallway, as if it were really there. Fraser follows, but because the picture is painted on canvas, he is able to tear right through instead of the traditional injuring himself. Daffy deems this cheating.
- The film
*The Villain* has this trope. While trying to trap Handsome Stranger and Charmin, the titular Cactus Jack Slade paints a rock formation with black paint. The heroes' carriage goes right into it, prompting the villain to try it himself, with predictable results. (Much of the film is essentially a live-action Roadrunner cartoon.)
- In
*Chitty Chitty Bang Bang*, a painted landscape is hung under a bridge in an attempt to trap the pirates.
-
*Farscape*, a (relatively) serious live-action show, spends an episode inside the subconscious of the main character John Crichton, which is apparently highly influenced by old Looney Tunes cartoons. Crichton and an animated version of the angry alien warrior D'Argo engage in a series of Coyote-and-Road Runner style chases, a few of which center on D'Argo painting wormholes onto the wall, which act as this type of tunnel.
- Taken to a truly
*maniac* extent in *The Goodies* episode "Movies": Characters jump in and out of the cinema screen, then in and out of the cinema screen which is on *another cinema screen*, then running off screen, appearing in the cinema screen inside the cinema screen, then jumping through all the cinema screens. The amazing thing is that they avoid Special Effect Failure despite the episode being from 1975, and *live-action television*.
- Done earlier in "Invasion Of The Moon Creatures", when Bill, dressed as a rabbit (It Makes Sense in Context, promise) runs next to a hole and jumps down the rabbit hole to get rid of Graeme, who is chasing him. Graeme attempts to jump in also but hits the ground. Confused, he touches the hole, and manages to
*pick it up* — it's just a piece of round, black paper. Frustrated, he throws the hole away as he stomps off-screen. When the hole lands, Bill crawls out of it again.
- Subverted in
*Community*, when Abed attempts to convince Troy that he's found a way to cartoon land by adding a cartoon visage of himself at the end of a tunnel painted on a wall and throwing his voice from behind a nearby trash can to make Troy think it's real. Troy comes *this close* to running through the "tunnel," before Abed pops up and stops him. You have to believe!
- Referenced on
*The Daily Show*, 10/17/2012, after the second Obama/Romney debate. When Romney is about to make his main argument, Obama answers, "Please proceed, Governor."
- In a sixth-season cast sketch on
*Sesame Street*, Bob and Luis are trying to figure out how to assemble a billboard picture of a railroad tunnel. No sooner do they assemble the picture properly than a train comes out.
-
*Toon* uses this trope as a stock example of the Cosmic Shift schtick: the prey running into the tunnel may just be Achievements in Ignorance, but Cosmic Shift allows the train/bus/etc. to come out of it.
-
*Rifts* had a spell or two one could use to create an illusory environment, one spell creating an illusory forest. Sometimes when you see that it's an illusion you won't see what it is hiding, and many an adventurer has wrapped his vehicle around a real tree hidden amongst the fakes.
-
*King's Quest VI*: One of the ways to sneak into the castle is to paint a door on the side with a magic paintbrush, then simply open it.
- In
*LEGO Star Wars*, you come across a solid wall. So you build a door into it, and then blow up the door to reveal a passageway.
-
*Cosmic Osmo* has a White Void Room with a magic pencil, which can be used to draw other areas of the game around you. Naturally, you're then actually standing in the location that you drew.
- In
*Sonic Robo Blast 2*, Arid Canyon Zone features, among many other tropes inspired by Looney Tunes, paintings of tunnels to deceive the player. One such painting explodes to reveal a real continuation of the road.
- In a
*Solid jj* short called "Batman's Contingency Plans", Batman ends up trying to use Looney Tunes traps, specifically those for Wile E. Coyote as his ways of trapping the Flash. When his first two attempts fail to impress the other Justice League members, it seems as if Batman is going to come up with a clever trap for Barry... only to reveal this very trope as his final plan for getting Barry which leads to the quote posted at the top of the page.
- At one point in
*Return of the Cartoon Man*'s climactic chase scene (an extended homage to Roadrunner Vs Coyote cartoons), Roy paints a picture of a tunnel that Simon can somehow run right into, but he himself cannot.
-
*Looney Tunes*:
- A tunnel painted on the side of a cliff face may act as a real tunnel when the Road Runner escapes into it, but for Wile E. Coyote it remains solid rock (as in their first cartoon, "Fast and Furry-ous"). Or it may injure the Coyote when a very real truck or train exits it and runs him over as he stands in front of it. Wile E. may also paint a fake bridge over a real canyon. That one is reversed in "Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z", where Wile E. puts a painting of a broken bridge in the middle of the road to get the Road Runner to stop. When the Road Runner just rips through the canvas, Wile E. goes after him,
*enters* the painting, and falls off the cliff therein.
- The 2020 short "Tunnel Vision" provides a new twist on the gag — this time, Wile E. actually enters the tunnel, and is even surprised by this. However, when he tries to get back out, he finds that he can't. Then the Road Runner uses a hose to wash the painting and Wile E. away.
- Wile E. eventually gets to use this trick against him in
*Space Jam: A New Legacy*, trapping the Road Runner in a painting to steal the ball during practice.
- Bugs Bunny tries this against Cecil Turtle in
*Rabbit Transit*, painting a tunnel onto a tree. Cecil runs through it, but it doesn't work for Bugs.
- In an early
*Pac-Mania* short, Pac-Man does the "painted cave entrance" trick to evade the pursuing Ghost Monsters.
- The exact same thing happened in an episode of
*Johnny Test* with a lot of Shout Outs to old Road Runner cartoons.
-
*Big City Greens*: Spoofed in "Chipwrecked" as the last entry in a montage of Chip Whistler's schemes to destroy the Green family shows him running into a wall after Tilly successfully went through the painted-on tunnel. Chip admits he might have hallucinated that particular one due to sleep deprivation.
- A
*U.S. Acres* segment on *Garfield and Friends* did the tunnel version of this gag with Booker and the Worm. According to Orson, this gag is required in every chase scene.
-
*Wacky Races* used quite a number of the original *Road Runner* gags, thanks to Mike Maltese, Road Runner's primary writer, having written a few *Wacky Races* episodes, and this gag was one of them.
- Dick Dastardly used a landscape painted on a piece of upright solid steel to try to wreck the other racers. Not only did they drive into it unharmed, but a
*bus* drove out of it and flattened him.
- One episode set in a desert had a variation of the gag, where Dick Dastardly finds a Jackass Genie, and tries to enlist his help. The first wish Dick uses is to make a mirage river to stop the other racers. Unfortunately, Peter Perfect sees through it and encourages the other racers to just imagine that theres a bridge, which they use to cross. When Dastardly attempts to cross, fully knowing that its just a mirage, he falls into the river instead.
- One episode of
*I Am Weasel* made fun of this. Weasel paints a tunnel on a cliff to escape Baboon in a Road Runner parody, but neither of them can go into the tunnel.
**Red Guy:** What kind of idiots are you guys, trying to run through a rock wall?
-
*The Fairly OddParents!* takes it a step further: In "Back to the Norm", Crocker paints a cliff so it appears to be Trixie Tang holding two ice cream cones and standing in front of a tunnel. As a cherry on top, on top of the cliff is a rock that would fall when someone hits the cliff. Timmy rides into it, but instead of crashing, "Trixie" hands him an ice cream cone and jumps on his bike as they ride through the tunnel. Crocker starts to chase after them as one would expect, but he stops just before he is about to hit the cliff the tunnel is painted on, because he realizes that the cliff will be solid again when he tries to run through the tunnel. But he then spazzes out and hits the cliff and the rock falls on him.
- Clyde Crashcup from
*The Alvin Show* "invents" by drawing things in midair.
- In the 1930s, there was a whole slew of
*Looney Tunes* and *Merrie Melodies* shorts in which the pictures on book and magazine covers, food labels, or billboards came to life.
- The
*Animaniacs* episode "Video Review" revives the concept, using the covers of VHS tapes in a video store.
- In one
*Pink Panther* short, Pink sees a picture of a sailboat hanging crooked, but when he straightens it, the water on the picture spills out of the frame.
-
*Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog*:
- Scratch and Grounder try this trick on Sonic. Of course, they botch it.
- Another episode inverts it, where Sonic finds the perfect place to paint a tunnel, only the tunnel's already there, so he simply paints over the tunnel, leaving Scratch and Grounder confused when they hear a train coming, but don't see where it could be coming from until they're hit by it.
- An episode of
*House of Mouse* involving Donald Duck and the Aracuan Bird featured a scene where the Aracuan can be seen drawing a door on the wall, then opening it to reveal a stampede of wildebeest who then trample Donald.
-
*Tex Avery MGM Cartoons*: In one Droopy cartoon, Spike paints a tennis court blue and installs a diving platform so that when Droopy tries to dive in, he would drop to his death instead. Droopy dives, but instead of splattering on solid concrete, he splashes into what is now real water. Spike then tries it himself... and shatters into a million pieces.
- Spike rolled with it in "Mutts About Racing". During a car race, when Droopy drove into a sign, he simply shoved said sign off a cliff. Droopy later came rolling out of a painting and kept going.
- Avery's "Jerky Turkey" does this as the screwball turkey runs right into the scenery painted onto a brick wall. The 4-F pilgrim trying to catch the turkey smashes right into the wall.
- In the
*Bonkers* episode "Basic Straining", passing through a painted tunnel is the only thing that saves Bonkers and Lucky from a villain's bulldozer. Lucky had difficulty passing through since he's not a toon. After they pass through, a train takes care of the villain.
**Bonkers:** Toon rule #9: Can't have a tunnel without a choo-choo!
- Spoofed in an episode of
*Turbo F.A.S.T.*, where Hardcase draws a road on a trampoline hoping to cause the snails to bounce off over a cliff. When they seem to go through it, he tries it himself and gets launched off instead. Pan to the snails who simply went around the painting instead of through.
**Smoove Move:** Did he really think we can't tell a road from a painting?
-
*Yogi Bear*: The original title sequence featured Yogi driving a jeep into a billboard for the sponsor (Kellogg's), then driving out of an adjacent billboard bearing the show's title.
- A
*Robot Chicken* sketch has one of Wile E. Coyote's tunnel paintings on display in a museum. When Road Runner runs through the tunnel, Wile E. tries chasing after him, but slams into the painting. This being *Robot Chicken*, Wile E. dies from his injuries.
- Another had Wile E. slamming into a painted tunnel followed by the Road Runner zipping up with a sign that says "fake tunnel." Wile E. holds up a sign that says "No shit."
- The
*Bunsen Is a Beast* episode "Hall of Justice" has Amanda Killman try to create a trap by painting a blank wall to look like a stairway leading to free tacos. Her assistant Beverly and the school's teacher Miss Flap manage to go down there and get tacos in spite of it just being a painted wall, but Amanda ends up hurting herself by running into a wall when she tries to go down the painted staircase herself.
-
*Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!*: During the chase sequence in "Don't Fool With a Phantom", Shaggy and Scooby paint a fake door on the wall before fleeing the room in another direction. When the Wax Phantom catches up to where they had been he opens the fake door... and promptly crashes into (and through) the very real brick wall behind it.
-
*Dennis the Menace*: In "Chitty Chitty Moon Walk", a pair of spies after Henry's solar-powered moon walker place a landscape over their van as part of their plan to steal the walker from Dennis and Joey. Dennis and Joey are chased by a pair of bikers who also want to steal the walker, and when the walker powers down due to a cloud hiding the sun, the bikers drive past it and end up getting caught by the spies instead.
-
*101 Dalmatians: The Series*: "The Making of..." has several shout-outs to other shows, movies, and cartoons. One of them is a scene parodying the *Wile E Coyote And The Roadrunner* cartoons, with Cruella in the role of Wile E. and Spot in the role of Road Runner. Cruella paints a tunnel on a wall and chases Spot toward it. Spot goes through the tunnel, but when Cruella tries to follow her, she slams her car into the wall. Then a train comes out of the tunnel and knocks her off a cliff. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintedTunnelRealTrain |
Pain Mistaken for Sex - TV Tropes
Some characters, when in situations of psychological or physical stress or pain, have the tendency to externalize their suffering by moaning, crying, or even screaming out loud. However, in this particular case, the noises made by the victim are mistaken for sounds of sexual pleasure by other characters. This trope is applied mostly to female characters, although it
*has* been used by male characters too, it's just rarer. If she really *is* enjoying it, she's Too Kinky to Torture or a Combat Sadomasochist. If both combatants are *(ahem)* doing it, it's Orgasmic Combat.
Can either overlap with either version of Abuse Mistake. See also "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization.
## Examples:
- This is what happens when Dirk Anger finally kills himself in
*Nextwave*. He accidentally hangs himself while shut in his room, which causes two Office Ladies, standing outside the room and listening to his strangled grunts, to think that he's looking at naughty websites.
- Inverted in
*The Last Wish*, where Dandelion hears Yennefer moaning among the ruins (that she caused) and worries she and Geralt must be terribly hurt. Turns out, they just couldn't wait to celebrate their Relationship Upgrade and are merrily having sex then and there.
-
*Tales of the Otori: Across the Nightingale Floor*: Kaede kills Iida Sadamu when he attempts to rape her. The narration notes that his screams of pain are indistinguishable from cries of pleasure which is presumably why the guards don't rush in to attack her.
- Lampshaded in the
*Angel* episode "Waiting in the Wings" when some of the heroes are searching a building and hear some noises.
**Gunn: **Hear that? Sounds like someone's in pain.
**Fred: **Either that or someone's in fun...
- The penultimate scene of
*The Horror of Party Beach* has an ...interesting moment when the heroine, who has injured her leg, is helped to a nearby car, leaving our good friends at MST3K only able to say, "Um... *wow*."
- In an episode of
*3rd Rock from the Sun*, Dick was Bound and Gagged (long story) and called Mary's office for help. Judith picks up the phone and responds thusly to Dick's muffled cries for help:
**Judith**: *[Deadpan voice]* Oh, yeah. *[Muffled cry for help]* Oh, baby. *[Muffled cry for help]* I'm hot now. *[Muffled cry for help]* Do me. *[Muffled cry for help]* Do me all night. *[Muffled cry for help]* I know it's you, Dick. *[Hangs up].*
- There was also a
*very* dark usage of this in *Jonathan Creek*, in which a videotape is found showing what appears to be a young woman having a screaming orgasm. Turns out ||the camera had tipped onto its side, and what everyone was seeing was her getting impaled against a tree by a large garden fork.||
-
*My Wife and Kids*: Inverted in "Michael's Garden". Kady hears Michael and Jay having sex and assumes her mother is in danger. This causes her to call the police much to Michael's amusement and Jay's embarrassment.
-
*The Punisher (2017)*: The first episode has Frank killing the last member of the Kitchen Irish involved in his family's murder by strangling him in an airport toilet stall. Two other guys outside of the stall hear the commotion and assume they are just two guys having sex.
- A
*Tales from the Darkside* episode, "Black Widows", involved a mother forbidding a suitor from marrying her daughter until he fattened up. On their wedding day, it's revealed that this is because they're spider people that prey on humans, and she wants her daughter to have a nice meal. The sounds of the bride, overcome by her instincts, devouring her screaming groom is overheard by a visiting priest in the living and is mistaken for a very loud consummation. He's half right, as she gives birth to a daughter afterwards.
- Played for Laughs in
*Get Smart*: While undercover, Smart has to pretend he is torturing a woman, but the first set of sound effects he plays in order to sell this is a bit too pornographic. (The second set sounds properly awful.)
-
*Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh*: When ||Therese|| is being murdered in the bathroom of the S&M club, a few of the other patrons hear her screams. They think she's having sex with someone so decide to ignore her, as she's apparently known to use the bathroom for hookups (having previously done so with the protagonist).
- Inverted with Amanda in one scene of
*Daughter for Dessert*. The protagonist picks the lock on her bedroom door because he thinks shes in pain (or some kind of distress). Shes actually masturbating.
- Inverted with Johanna in
*Double Homework*. The protagonist is passing by her room when he notices crying sounds coming from her room. If he chooses to investigate, he finds that shes actually moaning while pleasuring herself... while watching a clip of him skiing.
- Inverted in
*Sealab 2021* when Dr. Quinn is taken away for questioning by Bizarro Debbie. After the sounds of torture give way to sounds of obvious intercourse, Murphy loudly proclaims "Good lord, she's killing him!" | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainMistakenForOrgasm |
Page Three Stunna - TV Tropes
*"*
Sun
* readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits."*
The practice of the gratuitous insertion of pictures of young, attractive, semi-naked women in a newspaper. The trope is named after British tabloid newspaper
*The Sun*, which had a long tradition of putting an attractive topless woman in page 3 of the paper.
While the trope can be seen in many newspapers in many countries around the world (some buried on page 5 or 7, others right on the cover), the
*Sun* is the Trope Codifier, and most references to the trope will be to the way the *Sun* did it. The *Sun* had a collection of "Page Three Girls", one of whom will pose topless on page 3 nearly every day note : The few exceptions are for particularly big or tragic events; on these days, she'll be moved to page 5 or perhaps even page 7, but she *will* be there. for no discernible reason. Sure, sometimes there will be an "excuse", but they tend to cover all the bases ( *e.g.* "it's hot out, let's beat the heat" contrasted with "it's cold out, she's here to warm you up") or even be mutually exclusive ( *e.g.* "England have won, let's celebrate" contrasted with "England have lost, she's here to cheer you up"). She's Always Female — there's no "Page Three Fella" (aside from a brief experiment on page 7 in The '80s). She's accompanied by a quote from her on the issue of the day, which is clearly not her own (and which, by extraordinary coincidence, will invariably agree with the *Sun*'s right-wing editorial stance) — they've evolved from the banal ( *e.g.* Alan Davies' "Jenny from Exeter thinks that war is bad") to the frankly absurd over the years.
Famous examples of Page Three Girls include Jordan
*a.k.a.* Katie Price (who was "retired" from Page Three for getting breast implants, which the *Sun* doesn't allow); Samantha Fox, from the early days (who sang a bit too and later came out as a lesbian); Marina Baker (former *Playboy* Playmate-turned-journalist-politician-environmental activist, practicing Wiccan, and author of several books on white magic), and Helen Flanagan (professional Ms. Fanservice and *Coronation Street* graduate, who posed once in 2013).
The girls are unfortunately not treated particularly well. They're obviously highly sexualised and somewhat dehumanized — they rarely even get the dignity of a last name ("Jenny from Exeter" again being how they're usually referred) unless they're particularly famous. Models used to be as young as 16 before laws were changed to raise the minimum age (and it wasn't unheard of for the paper to show a topless 16-year-old and elsewhere editorialize against a public figure for their sexual interest in teenagers). And it's basically a truism that
*no* model is over 29 — therefore, the girls tend to get booted out the minute they turn 30. note : The only real exception is Lucy Pinder, who was still the UK's most popular glamour model at age 35, but she was with rival tabloid *The Daily Star* (and left anyway once the paper decided her breasts were *too* big). "Aftercare" to former models is generally believed to be nonexistent; for example, longtime Page Three Girl Jane Warner — who was exceptionally attractive and graced Page Three for as long as she could, from ages 16 to 29 — couldn't handle life afterwards and descended into outright prostitution and drug abuse, but the *Sun* did nothing for her and outright used her plight as content for its own tabloid peddling.
Naturally, this sort of thing riles up a lot of people calling for it to be banned, with feminists at the forefront. One of the most famous anti-Page Three activists is MP Clare Short, who was so persistent that the
*Sun* tried to retaliate by getting a hold of her ex and trying to extract a topless picture of *her* (all they got was a picture of her in her nightie and a severe rap from the UK's Press Complaints Commission) and hiring a new 19-year-old Page Three model also named Clare Short.
In the end, the
*Sun* stopped the practice in 2015, not really because of the controversy surrounding it, but mostly because the Internet has provided voluminous (and free) competition for ogling women, and it just wasn't worth it anymore.
The phenomenon is, of course, not limited to the
*Sun*. Even (slightly) more "respectable" British Newspapers like *The Daily Mail* have done it, less often and with less exposure, and often of more "mainstream" celebrities, but with the same spurious reasoning (the *Mail* once did a spread on boots by featuring a model wearing *only* boots). On the other side of the spectrum is the *Sunday Sport* (or whatever they're calling it these days), which is famous for having at least one pair of boobs on every *page* and publishing a running "nipple count" in every issue.
In fact, although it's considered a British trope, there's a "Page Three" analogue in much of the rest of the world, although they don't do it exactly the same way. Continental Europe has the most, as they're probably the least shy about showing some skin. Austria and Denmark have "Page Nine Girls". Germany has "Page
*One* Girls", but the pictures are (mostly) placed below the fold. In Portugal, *Correio da Manhã* dispensed altogether with Page Three Stunnas but sometimes distributes free DVDs of hardcore porn. Almost every Brazilian tabloid has a half-naked woman on the cover. In contrast, North American tabloids are much stricter — only a few even have Stunnas, and even they keep the bikini tops. The U.S. and Canada have much more prevalent Moral Guardians (and their tabloids tend to be aimed at middle-aged housewives who often count themselves among said guardians) — but they do also have Victoria's Secret models, the more specialized men's magazines like *Maxim* and *Playboy*, and the much older tradition of World War II "pinup girls", whose pictures were distributed to GIs to... relieve tension.
## In fiction
- A subtle reference appears in
*Ultimate X-Men*. Jean boasts that she and Storm made pages one, two and *three* of Britain's biggest-selling paper, while holding up a copy of *The Sun*. Main Headline — "X-Babes Smash Real IRA Plot".
-
*George and Lynne*: In one strip, Lynne, while posing provocatively, says that people have told her she could have been a Page Three girl. George smugly remarks "Page Three's loss is my gain!" while cuddling with his wife.
- In
*Good Omens*, Newton Pulsifer, in his role as a witchfinder, has to count the nipples of each model to ensure they don't have too many.
-
*Discworld*: *Making Money* mentions that one of the interests of the Ankh-Morpork tabloid *The Tanty Bugle* is "young women without their vests on". *Unseen Academicals* suggests that a picture of a Goddess should be moved to "page three", because she's wearing half a toga.
- In
*Filth*, Bruce often takes a copy of the *Sun* to the bathroom for some alone time.
- Sugar Walls
*a.k.a.* Sharon LaHughes from *Gimme, Gimme, Gimme* is famous for being a celebrity who poses in her underwear and topless in newspapers (although not named, you can guess after reading this page what some of those newspapers were). Tom and Linda (secretly, her older sister) are disgusted by it and slut shame her behind her back.
-
*The Muppet Show*, while ostensibly an American program, was actually filmed in the UK and includes a subtle reference to this in the George Burns episode. As part of an "ambush interview", gossip columnist Fleet Scribbler mentions to Miss Piggy that his paper was thinking of doing a photo spread of her, "something for Page Three". Needless to say, that joke was probably lost on the American audience.
- One appears in
*Waterloo Road* as a former pupil of the school.
-
*Whatever It Takes* is an average ITV one-off drama about a trainee police officer who gets caught having sex with a footballer and becomes one of these, suffering the full effects of celebrity. She is "replaced" by another one, oddly enough played by an actress who had been in *Waterloo Road*.
- From
*A Bit of Fry and Laurie*:
- This song describes the life of a page 3 model, through to her marriage to a pop star.
- The Rupert Murdoch "Wonderful Life" sketch has Murdoch (who owns the
*Sun*) discover that in a world where he had never been born, Page Three is just more news. He decries that "you need tits to sell a newspaper."
- Keeley Jones from
*Ted Lasso* is introduced as a glamour model nearing the end of her career. Her character arc is kicked off by the revelation that her job and lifestyle are superficial and unfulfilling and her subsequent efforts to find more substantial challenges to pursue.
-
*Yes Prime Minister*:
- In "A Conflict of Interest", Hacker claims to know exactly who reads each British Newspaper (also the source of the page quote):
**Hacker:** The *Daily Mirror* is read by people who think they run the country; *The Guardian* is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country; *The Times* is read by people who actually *do* run the country; the *Daily Mail* is read by the *wives* of the people who run the country; the *Financial Times* is read by people who *own* the country; *The Morning Star* is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country; and *The Daily Telegraph* is read by people who think it *is*. **Humphrey:** Prime Minister, what about the people who read *The Sun*? **Bernard:** *Sun* readers don't care *who* runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
- Hacker's daughter has gotten worked up about endangered wildlife and is planning a nude protest. He laments that the stunt will get her onto the front page of the paper — "and probably page three as well".
- The
*The West Wing* episode "Enemies Foreign and Domestic" featured a Russian journalist at the White House asking Toby for press credentials because her work was brutally censored by the Russian government. This was true — but while Toby assumed it was because she dared to criticize an oppressive government, it was actually because she ran a newspaper that put naked women on every page (and also engaged in other putrid yellow journalism). Toby gives her the credentials but viciously lambastes her for wasting what little press freedom her country offers her on such trash.
- In
*The Vicar of Dibley*, Owen photographs Brenda the barmaid as a Stunna for the village newsletter. She's 65. Exaggerated Trope as he also includes a "Page Four girl" (her mother) and a "Page Five girl" (her aunt's mother, who has recently *died*).
- Australian comedy series
*Fast Forward* had a spoof where media mogul Rupert Murdoch takes over the *Daily Planet*, promising "Page Three girls on every page!"
- Lola Quinn, the victim in the London-set
*Elementary* episode "The Further Adventures", is a glamour model who mostly appears in tabloids like this. It's suggested the paper in which she appears is the last one in the UK to still have this feature ||because the owner is secretly Lola's mother and doesn't want to put her out of work||.
- In one episode of the satirical Brit Com
*Hot Metal*, an unscrupulous publisher tries to spice up Page Three by introducing "Wobblevision" - a variation on stereoscopic 3-d which involves the use of special glasses with movable tabs. When the tabs are slid back and forth while viewing Page Three, the models' breasts appear to wobble. Eventually the Ministry of Health bans Wobblevision on the grounds that it really *can* make you go blind.
-
*Bottom*: In "Parade", Richie attempts to chat up the new barmaid by comparing her beauty to that of a Page Three girl. Eddie is a little more blatant about it (to Richie's annoyance).
**Richie:**
Tell me, are you a Page Three girl? Because I'm sure if you wanted to, you could be.
**Eddie:**
Yeah, go on: take your top off, and we'll give you an honest opinion!
**Richie:**
Shut up, Eddie! (Punches Eddie in the groin)
- Being a parody of sensationalistic tabloid papers, the
*Weekly World News* featured a "Page Five Girl".
- Mentioned in the Tom Robinson Band song "(Sing If You're) Glad to be Gay":
*Pictures of naked young women are fun *Titbits
In
* and *Playboy *, Page Three of the *Sun * *Gay News
There's no nudes in
* or *One * magazine *
But they still find excuses to call it obscene
- The Beatles' "Polythene Pam", most likely:
*She's the kind of a girl that makes *The News of the World * *
Yes, you could say she was attractively built
- Fall Out Boy's "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs":
*I only think in form of crunching numbers *
In hotel rooms
Collecting Page Six lovers
- Referred to in Elvis Costello's "Welcome to the Working Week" from
*My Aim Is True*:
*Now that your picture's in the paper being rhythmically admired *
And you can have anyone that you ever desired
All you gotta tell me now is why why why why!
-
*Rock Star Ate My Hamster* has *The Stun*, whose in-game representation pictures a topless girl on the front page when the top story isn't about a rock star. Issues also occasionally advertise a contest to win a night out with a Page Three girl. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PageThreeGirl |
Freud Was Right - TV Tropes
*"It may interest you to know, fräulein, that the carrot and the cucumber are both very powerful sexuality symbols. They represent the masculine phallic member. And you are vishing either to chop it up or to pickle it!"*
"Paging Dr. Freud..."
When characters in story think that any kind of long thin shape is a symbolic penis, or that any hole that is oval is a symbolic vagina, you've got Freud Was Right in play. Obsession with sex is one of the core aspects of this trope when it's lampshaded.
The truth is that All Men Are Perverts and All Women Are Lustful, but they are too ashamed of it. Thus, they express it in covert sexual symbolism and repressed desire everywhere, every time, with everybody. Not only is everyone Jesus in purgatory —
**everything is about sex**.
The Trope Namer is Dr. Sigmund Freud, a Viennese doctor who proposed a theory of human behavior and development based on the idea that all our behaviours are ultimately expressions of instinctual, biological desires. Like, for instance, sex.
Some say Freud was right about something else, too. Not to be confused with All Psychology Is Freudian and Everybody Has Lots of Sex.
Related to Freudian Slip, when someone inadvertently says something that reveals they have sex on their mind, and to Fauxdian Slip when they do it on purpose.
See also Compensating for Something, Erotic Eating, Lecherous Licking, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?, Perverted Sniffing, Phallic Weapon, and Visual Innuendo. Also compare Everyone Is Satan in Hell. When played for horror, it becomes Psychosexual Horror.
-
*Naruto*: Suigetsu Hozuki starts to say what we're all thinking about Sage Mode Kabuto's belly snake before Sasuke cuts him off.
-
*Yamanko!*: Invoked and parodied. Ogawa spots Nene's tail a couple times when it slips out and describes it as "big and black and fully erect" to Tanaka, who assumes Ogawa is feverish or sexually frustrated.
-
*Gate*: The "Men in Green" (Japanese soldiers) achieve worldwide (the world on the other side of the gate) fame when they use a man-portable rocket launcher to seriously wound a giant dragon, viewing it at some sort of Phallic Weapon activated by the magic phrase "Backblast... clear!". And then the S&M-themed dark elves get ahold of some...
-
*Shrek*: Shrek takes one look at Lord Faarquad's castle, which consists of an enormously tall keep, and says to Donkey "Do you think maybe he's Compensating for Something?"
-
*Annie Hall*: Discussed:
**Miss Reed:** *[after 6-year-old Alvy kisses a girl on the cheek]* You should be ashamed of yourself! **Adult Alvy:** Why? I was just expressing a healthy sexual curiosity. **Miss Reed:** Six-year-old boys don't have girls on their mind. **Adult Alvy:** I did! **Girl Classmate:** *[whom young Alvy kissed]* For God's sake, Alvy, even Freud speaks of a latency period! **Adult Alvy:** Well, I never had a latency period! I can't help it.
-
*Dear White People*: Kurt brings up Pastiches motto, metaphorically saying that comedy and criticism should not hold back and hit raw nerves: Sharpen thy sword. One of the members thinks its a euphemism for something else.
-
*Dr. Strangelove*:
- Invoked by the film itself. A central theme of the movie is the portrayal of sexual symbolism as more than symbolism; Kubrick transparently paraphrases Clausewitz as in "war is the continuation of sex by other means". Specific examples include:
- In the opening refueling scene, the bomber and the tanker are coupling.
- The madness of General Ripper is driven by not-even-veiled sexual references. He seems to be Compensating for Something with his stiff cigars and his long one-barreled machine gun.
- The film is rife with sexually Meaningful Names; the two warmongers (Turgidson) push against a peaceful and mild figure (Merkin Muffley).
- Buck Turgidson may be in a particularly bad mood because his summons to the War Room interrupted things going very well for him with a pretty, young, lady.
- Near the end, there is another Mood Dissonance when the characters are happily planning a postnuclear scenario where the male to female ratio would land them with their own harems to repopulate the world. The excitement over this allows Strangelove to
*stand up*.
-
*Freddy vs. Jason*: Kia decides to try this on Freddy by comparing his tiny knives to Jason's great big machete. ||A few seconds later, Kia meets said machete.||
- The
*Discworld* series:
-
*The League of Peoples Verse*: Discussed In-Universe example in *Expendable*. When explaining why the FTL drive is called a "sperm-tail generator", the narrator comments that, given sufficient time, soldiers will assign sexual references to every damn thing.
-
*Nineteen Eighty-Four*: Invoked. Julia theorizes that the Party keeps people in a state of warlike hysteria and power hunger by subjecting them to sexual deprivation. She even calls it "sex gone sour."
- One character in the Piers Anthony novel
*Tarot* insists that the old English folk song "The Riddle Song" (which begins with the line "I Gave My Love A Cherry") is about sex. It's not - the third verse of the actual song gives completely non-sexual answers to the riddles - but the characters in the novel seem unaware of this.
-
*Monty Python's Flying Circus*:invoked An actor playing Hamlet is depressed because he is bored with life and wants to become a private dick (detective), hoping to get fame, money, glamour, excitement, and sex; all the psychiatrists and other people around him jump on the "sex" part.
-
*Mystery Science Theater 3000*:
- "12 to the Moon": Invoked by Servo and averted by Crow
**Tom Servo:** I wonder what Freud would make of that sun hat!
**Crow:** Well, sometimes a sun hat is just a sun hat.
-
*Star Trek: The Next Generation*: invoked Inverted in "Phantasms", when Data recreates Dr. Freud in the holodeck with the hope of interpreting the disturbing images generated by his dream program. Freud, of course, proceeds to assume it's all about Data's issues with his mother and his sexuality, neither of which he has because he's an android. note : Hilariously, a later episode revealed that Data actually did have a mother figure in Dr. Soong's wife, but this does not make his objection to Freud's go-to ramblings any less true. He's also been sexually active, though with women only.
-
*Game of Thrones*. In "The Dragon and the Wolf", Bronn and Jaime don't see the point of the Unsullied army, made up of former slaves who have been castrated. If you're not fighting to impress women, or get the pay and loot to buy women, or protect your family (the making of which requires having sex with women), then why fight? They conclude that war is all about cocks after all.
- Referenced in an episode of
*Gilmore Girls,* when Rory's new boyfriend, Logan, is trying to bait her ex, Jess, into a Cock Fight by trying to make Jess sound less intelligent and sophisticated than he is. Jess is in town because he wrote a novella and wanted to show Rory. When this is mentioned to Logan, we get:
**Logan:** So, what are we talking here? Short novel? Kafka length or longer? Dos Passos, Tolstoy? Or longer? Robert Musil? Proust? I'm not throwing you with these names, am I?
**Jess:** You seem very obsessed with length.
-
*Fallen London*: ||In-Universe, Dr. Schlomo's the Trope Namer, so this comes as a natural consequence. He's not *always* right, mind - for instance, he may interpret your dreams of Death By Water as a suppressed desire to return to the womb - but even so, his descriptions of Parabola are quite informative.||
-
*Shadows of the Damned*: Invoked long and hard. Both Johnson and Fleming can barely go three minutes without making a penis innuendo, Fleming because he thinks it's intimidating and Johnson because he's the comic relief.
-
*Tales from the Borderlands*: Lampshaded by Vasquez, who pointed out that every spaceship in the universe looks like a penis. The really funny thing is that he's *wrong*: We haven't seen very many ships in this 'verse (escape/drop pods from Atlas and Jacobs, Sanctuary, a crashed Hyperion ship, some jet-looking things, a Dahl fleet is seen early in the *Pre-Sequel!*, but that's about it), and other than the Hyperion and Dahl ships being long and thin, they don't really look like penises unless you squint. Vasquez might be projecting a little.
-
*Virtual Shackles*: Invoked in the console wars, where apparently Sony's end-goal is the "Playstation: Giant Penis".
- In
*S.S.D.D.* Dr. Cook dismisses speculation that the Anarchists deliberately made their new superweapon phallus-shaped, only to cut to the Anarchists making penis references.
-
*Nerd³*: Invoked in his video on *Underground Mining Simulator*. He looks at a spiky, phallic-looking drill and comments that he's, "seen that on dodgy websites".
- Also in his video on
*Skate 2*:
**Dan:** *reading* "Air grab over the funbox." I remember that one from the Kama Sutra.
- Played straight in
*In The Little Cubed* episode 2-3:
**Martyn:** What was it you told me to do? Earlier on, you told me to "fiddle with my pink slot" or something, when I was trying to plug the microphone into the computer...
**Dan:** I went "Make sure you're putting it in the pink slot", which you decided was incredibly funny!
- The aptly named
*Freudian Nightmare* from this image◊; a 260 kilometer long Star Destroyer (100km larger than the Death Star!) who's huge list of flaws show that it exists for reasons other then actually combat usefulness.
- In an arguably original take on the
*Dark Souls* franchise, the *Wisecrack Edition* video "The Philosophy of Dark Souls" views the philosophical implications of *Dark Souls* (and by extension *Demon's Souls* and *Bloodborne*) through the lens of psychologist *Sigmund Freud*.
**Jared:** *Dark Souls*
is about wanting to climb back into your mom's womb, getting your dick cut off and being endlessly miserable. I am completely serious about this. I'm Jared and welcome to this Wisecrack Edition on the
*Dark Souls*
series.
- The beginning of
*Dark Souls* beginning with a symbolic birthing scene, plunging into a tonic-crevice deep within the Earth into a pit where "things" are born, but only a few (the Old Gods) developing names and identities via the Lord Souls. The beginning of *Dark Souls II* has the protagonist exit an underground labyrinth and breaching the surface through a yonic-shaped crevice.
- Themes of openings and other tonic imagery (symbolic of the mother) being blocked by a masculine figure with phallic weapons that seek to stop your progress (symbolic of the father). This also applies to the protagonist needing to enter through deep dark caves for both progress and fulfillment in the story, symbolic of the Freudian desire to return to the womb.
- Vagina Dentata symbolically represented in Chaos Witch Quelaag and Mytha, the Baneful Queen, attributing to themes of metaphorical castration.
- Kilns, thrones and the First Flame representing the womb, fighting metaphorical fathers as to return to this metaphorical womb and finally finding satisfaction. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PagingDoctorFreud |
Painful Transformation - TV Tropes
*"I didn't mean to call you a meatloaf, Jack!"* *"The first, and only, time I tried to become human, I passed out, and I nearly died. *
Nothing compares to the pain I felt that day, and since then, all other pain... is numb."
In order to shapeshift, every part of your body would have to twist and contort. Typically, its not acknowledged that would hurt...
*a lot.* In most media, shapeshifting is done quickly and without undue pain for the shifter.
But that isn't always the case. Sometimes, those who take on another form are
*really* going to feel it.
As the name implies, a Painful Transformation tends to be agonizing. While it probably won't leave permanent (physical) injuries, it's still not very pleasant.
There are generally two ways transforming can be painful:
-
*Physical* — The body is tortured during the transformation process. This is rather understandable, as one would imagine the bones and organs shifting around as having some sort of impact on the nerves.
-
*Mental/Spiritual* — The user's mind is overrun with horrid... whatever. We rarely get into a shapeshifter's head. Externally, it looks like they undergo a Freak Out every time they change shape. This may even be necessary to transform, in cases like that of *The Incredible Hulk*.
Expect a lot of Anatomy Agony tropes to come into play here. I.e., the character transforming might have their teeth fall out, their fingers twitching painfully, their feet stretching out, etc.
If "painful" doesn't
*begin* to describe the transformation, see Transformation Horror.
Usually not associated with Voluntary Shapeshifting, where the user generally knows enough to pick a quick and painless method of transformation. It's much more common with Involuntary Shapeshifters and Forced Transformations. That said, it can be great drama to have a shapeshifter know a transformation will be painful but chooses to do it anyway. Done properly, it is always Worth It.
## Examples:
<!—index—>
<!—/index—>
- This has become a problem for Jaime Reyes the Blue Beetle.
- After acquiring a book that governs the rules of magic in
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10*, Dracula has Xander write into it that "Dracula became the most powerful vampire of all". All right, Dracula, one incredibly agonizing transformation into ||the massive demon responsible for creating vampires in the first place||, coming right up.
- The Incredible Hulk transforms extremely painfully in most instances, which is probably why Banner's attempts to keep control tend not to work once it's actually started. In his case, the pain is mental as well, as he can feel his human intellect degenerating. Even in instances where Bruce remains in control, the transformation pains are suggested to be one of the reasons he still tends to have difficulty keeping his anger in check. Likewise, turning back from Hulk to Banner is equally unpleasant, and often leaves Bruce knocked for a loop.
-
*Morbius*:
- In his first solo series Morbius is able to turn back into a human for short amounts of time thanks to a serum derived from Spider-Man's blood. The change from vampire to human and back is very painful, with lots of screaming involved.
- In his third solo series an attempt to cure himself of his vampirism goes wrong and he starts turning into a monstrous bat. The change can be slowed or partially reversed by ingesting blood, leading to a lot of painful changing back and forth.
- In the
*Superman* comics in the late 80s and 90s, Matrix (the Supergirl of that time) was actually an artificial life-form. Shapeshifting, while being one of her primary abilities, was noted for being very painful for her.
-
*Ultimate X-Men*: Unlike the original Angel, Derek can retract his wings back into his body to "pass" as human. Considering his transformation also includes growing long talons, thickened skin, and glowing eyes, it is rather distressing to watch.
- In
*Werewolf by Night Volume 1*, Jack Russell's transformation into a werewolf gets more painful each time he goes through it, escalating to levels of unbearable agony by the time he's been one for less than two years. And it's not just physical, either: every time he changes it feels as if his soul is being torn apart. After ||he gains control of the change|| it becomes less painful to shift, but one is left to wonder what would have happened if he never had...
-
*Wonder Woman*: The way people react when being turned into Circe's Beastiamorphs indicates that it is a very painful and horrific experience. In *Wonder Woman (1942)*, Maj. Keith Griggs collapsing and screaming transformation when Circe nabs him is a good example of just how unpleasant being transformed into one of Circe's loyal mooks can be.
- In the climax of
*Atlantis: The Lost Empire*, Milo slashes the villain, ||Rourke||, across the arm with a piece of the magic Atlantean crystal, leaving a spot of pure crystal on his arm...which instantly starts spreading across his entire body in a painful process.
- The
*Beauty and the Beast* midquel *Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas* has a flashback to the night the Beast encountered the Enchantress and was cursed for his inhospitality. The Karmic Transformation leaves him roaring in rage.
- The six Toa mutating into half-beast Hordika in
*BIONICLE 3: Web of Shadows* is much more drawn-out and painful than in the concurrent toy commercials, where it was instantaneous and "cool". Their deformed bodies explode out of their cocoons and Vakama can barely manage to speak. The novelization on the other hand plays the scene more for drama and comedy, as the Toa talk freely.
-
*Frozen*: When Elsa accidentally freezes ||Anna's heart||, she starts to freeze from the inside out. She is shown multiple times to be in pain, as well as feeling cold even in front of a fire.
- Every time the title character of
*Howl's Moving Castle* transforms into and out of his bird form, the experience gets more painful and difficult.
-
*The Last Unicorn*: It's not so much the transformation but the form she transforms into: when the immortal, unaging unicorn is polymorphed into a mortal human woman, she screams that "I can feel this body dying around me!" She gets used to it.
- In Disney's
*The Little Mermaid*, Ariel's tail is literally torn in half as she is changed into a human. The facts that it occurs in silhouette and the two ragged halves become shapely legs almost instantly does little to ease the horror of the scene. And of course, Disney being what it is, this is actually *toned down* from the original fairy tale. Not only was the transformation excruciating, but afterwards she felt like she was walking on knives the entire time she was transformed.
-
*My Little Pony: Equestria Girls*:
- In the first movie, from the look of it, Sunset Shimmer's transformation into a demon isn't enjoyable. The moment she put the crown on, she looks worried, then starts crying and screaming as she rises into the air.
*Friendship Games* has Sunset admitting she was "overwhelmed" by the magic in the crown, so it's likely she was in pain as well.
-
*Legend of Everfree*: In human Twilight's mindscape during the climax, her slow transformation into Midnight Sparkle, with wings sprouting from her back and a horn coming out of her forehead, doesn't look like a pleasant experience *at all*.
-
*Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*: As the Evil Queen becomes an ugly witch, she clutches her throat, seemingly in pain, while wearing an expression of raw horror. She gets over that quickly, though.
- Some versions of legend about werewolves actually either invert or subvert this trope, saying that while the transformation may appear to be excruciatingly painful, in truth it turns out to be sinfully
**pleasurable** instead.
-
*Ruby Quest*: Ruby ||gaining her Third Eye|| is quite painful. It's explicitly said that "her head is killing her", and her head is bleeding afterwards.
-
*Dungeons & Dragons*:
- Normal shapechanging powers don't fall under this trope (in fact, the
*polymorph* spell, *metamorphosis* psionic power or Wild Shape ability will instead heal some damage). However, the *force shapechange* spell (originally from the *Oriental Adventures*), which forces shapeshifters to return to their true form, causes wracking pains — even if the victims actually resist it.
- 3rd Edition has a sourcebook which expands on the rules and abilities of wizards and sorcerers called
*Tome and Blood*. It gives the Prestige Class of "The Acolyte of the Skin", which is gained by summoning the essence of a fiend and binding it to your flesh. The illustration is not pretty.
The Ritual of Bonding is painful and not to be undertaken lightly. The ritual requires 10 rounds from initiation to completion, and once begun, nothing can halt its progress. The fiendish essence subsumes the caster's own skin, an agonizing process that deals 1d4 points of damage each round of the ritual — wise candidates keep some
*cure* potions handy.
- According to many sources about the Nine Hells of Baator, while
*any* type of promotion among devils is painful, the promotion to pit fiend (one of the leaders of the race) is the worst. For this to happen, a devil must spend 999 days in the Pit of Flame on the fourth layer of Baator. The Pit of Flame is usually used to *punish* devils, contains fire so hot that even *they* find it agonizing (devils are normally *immune* to fire), and is considered one of the worst punishments that an insubordinate can receive. In other words, surviving three years of it is the perfect test for one who wants to join the ruling class of Hell.
-
*Exalted*:
- Infernal Exalted have the Charm Inner Devils Unchained, which turns the target into a demon. Painfully.
- Then there's the process of becoming akuma, which throws in plenty of Mind Rape in addition to everything else.
-
*Mage: The Awakening* features a spell whereby one can force a person to transform by forcing their new form *to claw its way out of their normal body*.
- Naturally,
*Warhammer* and *Warhammer 40,000* have their own form of this trope with Chaos mutations, all of which are disgusting, irreversible, and excruciatingly painful.
- Parodied in
*Holy Musical B@man!* as Dick Grayson claims he can "feel his transformation beginning," as he doubles over and oddly wiggles his fingers to simulate feathers, but the "transformation" really just consists of him dramatically tearing his clothes off to reveal the Robin costume underneath.
-
*Jekyll & Hyde*: After Dr. Jekyll takes his formula for the first time during the song "Transformation", he experiences a maddening pain he describes in detail, wondering if he was going to die from it just before he finishes his transformation into Mr. Hyde.
- Ariel from
*Drowtales* has this as a natural limit on her hereditary shapeshifting power. It is strongly implied that changing her bodily structure too fast or too severely causes pain akin to a person with braces having their wires over-tightened, and she's specifically warned that if she's not careful she could shift a vital organ to the wrong place and potentially seriously injure or kill herself. She gets around the problem by primarily shapeshifting her hair, which of course has no nerve endings.
-
*El Goonish Shive*:
- This is a problem for chimera; it figures prominently in the character of Vlad, who could not change form with risking his life. Part of what makes Grace (Shade Tail) unique is that transforming doesn't hurt her as much as it does others (by design, she naturally releases painkillers when transforming). Vlad is eventually put into a human form via TFG (or the equivalent thereof), thereafter
*refusing* to try transforming again, both out of fear of this trope and that she will be unable to turn back since it wasn't possible on her own.
- Interestingly, the transformation gun doesn't have this effect, even on normal humans (though it is implied that it did before Tedd perfected it; when Elliot uses the transformation belt, which is based on an earlier version of the TFG, he is incapacitated for several minutes — and his later cat-hybrid transformations reflect this as well ||until they don't||). "OK, I need an aspirin, a ball of yarn, and thirty-seven pounds of catnip, stat!"
- In
*Girl Genius*, becoming a Jägermonster involves (voluntarily) consuming the Jägerdraught which triggers the transformation into monstrous fanged super-soldiers. However, it is said to be the most painful thing any of them have experienced and kills outright or drives to madness and suicide somewhere between seven to eight out of every ten of those who take it.
- In
*Latchkey Kingdom*, shapeshifting in general is no problem for those with the ability, but shapeshifting clothes specifically is revealed to be a rather painful process for those not used to it yet.
- Mina from
*Uncommon Animals* is not happy about changing.
- K.A.'s upgrade in
*We Are The Wyrecats* is visibly painful for her.
- Think regeneration is painful in
*Doctor Who*? In *Protectors of the Plot Continuum*, we have a human-turned-Gallifreyan with Borg implants. That first regeneration, his screams of pain and the shriek of his morphing musculoskeletal system combined into what had to be one hell of a hideous racket.
- The "My Metamorphosis Beigns" meme, where a stick figure brutaly melts into another being. However, usually the end results are very unexpected.
-
*SCP Foundation*: SCP-1575 ("Venus Statue"). When an animal drinks water that has passed through SCP-1575, it mutates into a human being. If it survives the process, the former animal describes it as being extremely painful. The water doesn't lose its potency after ingestion either; the Foundation has to check animals for internal and external parasites after there was a half-mutated flea and a human-faced tapeworm screaming as it burst out of a dog's belly.
- The characters in
*The Cartoon Man* feel no pain once they have transformed into human cartoons. The transformation itself however, seems rather painful.
- In the
*SMOSH* video about the bad parts of Heaven, in the sprouting wings segment, the angel wings come out rather bloody and painful looking.
-
*The VelociPastor*, in which a kind pastor transforms into a dinosaur, hands first, while writhing in pain and staring at himself in horror in his apartment mirror. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainfulTransformation |
Painful Rhyme - TV Tropes
Well, they are skunks; of course their rhyming skills stink too.
*"Nothing rhymes with that. What is he going to put there? *
Coachable?
* *
Poachable?
* No. No. He's either going to rhyme it with itself, or he's going to come up with this horrible forced rhyme that won't fit at all unless he twists the words beyond recognition."*
A Music Trope (or, in some cases, a Poetry Trope). It's when you hear a rhyme in a song, or read it in a poem, and you're compelled to cringe at how painfully it's forced in. Maybe the sentence was rearranged into grammatical nonsense to accommodate it, or the rhythm was broken, or maybe it verges on nonsensical. Maybe words had to be intentionally mispronounced to make it rhyme, or an unlikely metaphor invented. In any case, they were really better off not bothering to make it rhyme. Bonus points if it doesn't even quite rhyme, or if they're just repeating rather than rhyming. It's common for amateur poets to do this, since they often rigidly adhere to an "ABAB" rhyme scheme, forcing them to twist their verse into grotesque contortions. It doesn't seem to occur to them that there may be other rhyme schemes or that poems don't have to rhyme at all.
This is at least partially the fault of the English language itself, as it's generally harder to find rhymes in it than other languages. Also, sometimes the difference between accents may make a rhyme painful in America that isn't in Britain or Australia, and vice versa.
Here is a list of technical names for rhymes that may cause this trope (They're all legitimate, mind you.):
-
**oblique**: a rhyme with an imperfect match in sound. (one/thumb)
-
**assonance**: matching vowels. (shake/hate)
-
**consonance**: matching consonants. (rabies/robbers)
-
**half rhyme**: matching final consonants. (bent/ant, orange/porridge)
-
**eye rhyme**: words that look like they should rhyme perfectly, but don't (done/bone/gone, sword/word, touch/vouch). Sometimes these are paired directly in phrases like "good food" and "Sean Bean".
-
**identity**: rhyming a sound with itself or a homophone. (foul/fowl, grace/disgrace)
A common source of Painful Rhymes is the Stock Rhyme, such as girl/world, which is painful primarily because it's overused. An extreme case is the Mid Word Rhyme. Often a form of Lyrical Shoehorn. For the acronym version, see Shoehorned Acronym. May happen during an Awkward Poetry Reading.
Sublime Rhyme is an index of tropes with rhyming names and not the opposite of this trope, so don't get confused.
- Lampshaded at the end of a Best Buy Holiday 2013 commercial, where "triumph" is "rhymed" with "pie-umph."
- Lampshaded in
*Fables*: Frau Totenkinder's spell/Takes a normal message and turns it into doggerel.
- In the
*Animaniacs* parody of *Evita*, "Brainita", Pinky and the Brain note it two times:
**Brain**: *If I say it's low-fat\no one will care if it's ghast... -ly* **Pinky**: Oooh, that last rhyme really reeked, Brain. **Brain**: Work with me, Pinky.
**Two-tone**: *Don't worry your pretty little ankles\about the people. Let them eat cake-les.* **Brain**: *That rhymer Two-tone is a fake-le! "Ankles" doesn't rhyme with "cake-les"!* **Pinky**: *But gee Brain, it does sound yummy - just like frosted flake-les!*
-
*Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW):*
- Rough and Tumble like to try and introduce themselves with a rhyming catchphrase, but often they'll flub it. If Tails is around, he'll usually critique their attempt. One short story has the two split up when they start criticizing each other.
- The Tails 30th anniversary special has Classic Tails do much the same with the Witchcarter when she insists on speaking in rhyme every single sentence.
- In
*Mary Potter 2: the Heir of Slytherin* the Sorting Hat's song rhymes "idea" with "li-brar-Y-a," making half of the Ravenclaw table wince.
-
*The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World* is stuffed with these, and John complains about them Every. Single. Time. When told that the gods wrote them, he sneers, Well, now we know they ain't the gods of poetry.
-
*Halloweentown* invokes this when Marnie tries to magically open the gate to her Grandma Aggie's house:
-
*Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (2018)*: The song "My Year" plays with this during Eliza's introduction.
**Zed:** *Now, let me introduce you to my friend Eliza!* **Eliza:** *We'll never be accepted, zombies need to rise up!*
-
*The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe*: Mr Beaver recites the prophecy "When Adam's flesh and Adam's *bone* sits at Cair Paravel in *throne*, the evil times will be over and *done*". Susan points out that that doesn't really rhyme, which Mr Beaver concedes but says she's missing the point. (The poem was present in the original book, but as an eye rhyme it works better in print.)
-
*Monty Python and the Holy Grail*: The Knights of the Round Table's song. After previously rhyming *impecc-able* with *table* and *able*:
''We're Knights of the Round Table,
Our shows are formid-able,
But many times we're given rhymes
That are quite unsing-able.
-
*The Wizard of Oz*: the brilliant Yip Harburg makes this part of the film's whimsical style, via Refuge in Audacity. The Cowardly Lion in particular carries many of them. From "If I Only Had The Nerve":
*I could demonstrate my prowess, *mow-ess (i.e. "mouse").
Be a lion, not a
- In
*Zero Effect*, Zero stumbles upon a poem written by his client when he went to college, rhyming "Towards" with "Birds", which makes him rather angry.
- In
*The Sunshine Boys*, Willie Clark is reading *Variety* while his nephew visits, when he comes across an item about a songwriter who died.
**Willie:** Know what kind of songs he wrote? Shit. *Lady, lady, be my baby*? "Lady" he rhymes with "baby". No wonder he's dead.
- Lampshaded for a laugh in
*Saving Mr. Banks*. P.L. Travers is doing a script read of Walt Disney's adaptation of her books, and the Sherman Brothers are performing the music they've written for the movie. She listens to them sing a line from the opening number of the film—"Constable's responstable"—and stops the song, insisting that "responstable" isn't a word. The brothers explain that they've made it up, and she sternly tells them to " *un*-make it up." Richard Sherman then sheepishly hides another piece of music with the word "Supercalifraglis..."on top.
- Lampshaded and subverted in
*Who Framed Roger Rabbit*:
**Eddie Valiant:**
I'm through with taking falls
And bouncing off the walls
Without that gun, I'd have some fun
I'd kick you in the... (
*gets clobbered by a bottle*
)
**Roger Rabbit:**
Nose!
**Smart Ass:**
Nose? That don't rhyme with walls!
**Eddie Valiant:**
(
*having recovered and gotten up*
) No, but this does! (
*demonstrates the word in question*
)
-
*Cinderella (1997)* (starring Brandy and Whitney Houston) both featured and lampshaded this trope. When the Fairy Godmother (Houston) first appears, she sings in rhyme, and recites, "Fol-de-rol and fiddle-dee-dee, fiddley-faddley-foodle / All the dreamers in the world are...dizzy in the noodle!" Cinderella (Brandy) replies "That's horrible." The Fairy Godmother, thinking she's talking about the rhyming, defends herself, saying that it's difficult to come up with a spur-of-the-moment couplet. Cinderella was actually referring to the sentiment.
- In
*Scott Pilgrim vs. The World*, during Matthew Patel's inexplicable villain song as he fights Scott, he includes the lyric "Fireball, girls! Take this sucker *down!* / Let us show him what we're all *about!*", to which Scott quips to himself "That doesn't even *rhyme!*"
- In Peter S. Beagle's
*The Last Unicorn*, Lir's love poetry to "Amalthea" uses this as a form of Stylistic Suck (since his poetry is *supposed* to be terrible):
"It's certainly heartfelt", she said. "Can you really rhyme 'bloomed' with 'ruined?'"
-
*Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger* has at least four Stylistic Suck examples as Mrs. Jewels asks the kids to write poems about colors. These probably stand out the most:
**"Yellow" by Kathy**
I really don't feel well, oh.
I don't know who to tell, oh.
I'm sick and I smell, oh.
My barf is yellow.
**"Red" by Joe**
The fire truck is red!
It hurried!
The siren wailed!
The building burned!
The firemen saved
the baby who screamed.
- A passage from the English translation of Tove Jansson's
*Comet in Moominland*:
Then Snufkin said: "You could write a poem about this. What about:
Floating on this eerie water
Far away from bricks and mortar."
"Saw a mermaid— didn't caught her", suggested Sniff, blowing his nose.
"That's not true, not grammar, and it doesn't even rhyme properly", said Snufkin, and the subject dropped.
- In the P. G. Wodehouse book
*Uncle Fred in the Springtime* the Duke of Dunstable has a particular hatred for the song *The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond* because it attempts to rhyme "afore ye" with "Lomond" and he plans to toss eggs at the gardener who keeps whistling it under his window.
- Lampshaded in the
*Illuminatus!*-trilogy when it is revealed that dolphins are masterful poets; unfortunately as advanced as Hagbard Celine's supercomputer FUCKUP is, the best it can manage in translating their language belongs to this trope.
- In
*Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell* Strange's attempt to become a poet was derailed when, while writing his first poem, he failed to find an appropriate rhyme for "let love suffice"; coming up with "sunk in vice", "what's the price?", and "a pair of mice" he went for a ride to clear his head, then never looked at the poem again.
- In
*The Name of the Wind*, the main character mocks someone by pointing out how godawful it is. Many times. With FEELING.
- Protagonist Stile intentionally used assonance in his fight with the White Adept in
*Blue Adept.* Stile swapped out words in his spells ("Form a pyre/burn like fir") so that the spells would immediately fizzle out, roving what he could do to White if he really wanted to. Subverted in that full Adepts can't hurt each other, one-on-one (he didn't know this until White told him), so the full spells may have done less damage.
- In
*Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs*, Dave specifically calls out "Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers:
Oh where oh where can my baby be
The Lord took her away from me
She's gone to heaven so I got to be good
So I can see my baby when I leave this world
- Dave also says that "if I were the Supreme Being, I would have a rule that you could not get into heaven if you had ever deliberately rhymed 'good' with 'world'."
-
*The Devil's Dictionary* by Ambrose Bierce sarcastically defines "kiss" as "a word invented by the poets as a rhyme for 'bliss.'"
- The
*Star Trek: Deep Space Nine* novel *Fallen Heroes* features an alien race, the Lonat, who talk entirely in epic brilliant poetry ... which the Universal Translator converts into doggerel in order to retain the meaning. And for some reason, the more anxious they get, the worse the doggerel becomes.
**"Square Deal" Djonreal**
: You confuse me with Ferengi tricks, the ... bottom price is sixty-sixty
.
- Of course discussed in the German language-game children book "Die dampfenden Hälse der Pferde im Turm von Babel" by Franz Fühmann. In a kids game round: "There is no rhyme on 'Mensch'! That's scientifically proven!" Note since this was Socialist Germany, one could see this as a subtle jab against appeal to authority, and promptly one of the protagonists rhymes it on "Ranch". Cue a hail of nonsense follow-ups with this trope, and slight bodily harm, making it a literarily Painful Rhyme.
- Played for Laughs in a sketch of
*The Amanda Show* featuring a class of teens with superpowers. Josh Peck's character, Billy, has the gift of "super-rhyming"—"Yeah! I do it all the time...ing." As he's compelled to make a couplet out of whatever someone last said, the results are, well...
**Miss DeBoat**: Why are you all snickering?
**Billy**: At least we're not bickering!
**Lisa**: You're giving us a pop quiz?!
**Billy**: If you spill a soda, you have to...mop...fizz.
**Lisa**: Reggie's a super-burper.
**Billy**: When I kiss a girl, I slurp 'er!
-
*A Bit of Fry and Laurie*:
- Conversational Troping - In the
*Doctor Who* story "The Macra Terror", the Doctor - being dragged off to do forced labour in a Crapsaccharine World mining gang - feels this way about a musical announcement that rhymes 'Colony' with 'work':
Dreadful. Did you hear that rhyme? The man who wrote that ought to be sent to the Danger Gang, not us.
-
*Better Call Saul*: Jimmy sings the "99 Bottles of Beer" song but about cash money. He sings "take one dollar, pass it a..." before realizing there is no suitable word that rhymes with 'dollar'. After pausing for a bit, he finishes with "yollar".
-
*The Golden Girls*:
- In the episode "Big Daddy's Little Lady" has a number of examples of this in the "B" plot, which is about Rose Nylund (Betty White) and Dorothy Zbornak (Bea Arthur) writing a song about Miami for a songwriting competition. Their first attempt turns out like this:
**Dorothy:** *[singing]* Miami is nice/So I'll say it twice/Miami is nice/Miami is nice/Miami is- *[stops singing]* Wait a minute, wait a minute. You put in an extra "Miami is nice." **Rose:** I had to. It hurts the music if you don't put it in. **Dorothy:** But the lyrics don't make any sense! I mean, it goes, "Miami is nice/So I'll say it TWICE." **Rose:** Oh, I see your point. Well, what about this? "Miami is nice/So I'll say it thrice." **Dorothy:** "Thrice"?! Who the hell says "thrice"?! **Rose:** It's a word! **Dorothy:** So is "interuterine"! It does not belong in a song. **Rose:** *[singing]* Miami, you're cuter than/An interuterine!
- In their second attempt, they change "Miami" to "Miami Beach" because of the difficulty of finding a word to rhyme with "Miami," but Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan) notices the addition right away and points it out.
**Rose:** I *told* you not to add "Beach"! **Dorothy:** Fine, fine! YOU find something to rhyme with "Miami," hotshot! **Rose:** Mammy, whammy, clammy, Alabammy, hootenanny, salami... **Dorothy:** "Hootenanny" is marginal, and I refuse to accept "salami"!
- Earlier in the episode, Rose sings her high school's fight song to Dorothy as an example of her songwriting talents: "Onward St. Olaf, onward we go, onward and onward St. Olaf's go! Go go go, go go go..." This comes up again at the tail end of the second argument when Rose complains, "I never had this trouble when I was working
*alone*," and Dorothy retorts, "When you worked alone, the only word you could rhyme with 'go' was 'go.'"
- Very much Played for Laughs on an episode of
*I Love Lucy* where, due to financial constraints, Lucy ends up writing an operetta all by herself. There are plenty of other problems such as unnecessary detail about minor characters (that bloat the runtime) and songs that only have one or so lines of repetitive lyrics ("We like to drink, drink, drink ..."), but all other songs fall victim to this, with gems such as "when other girls go walking, on their arms they have a swell beau/but whenever I go walking, on my arm is just my elbow" and "I know a girl's supposed to wait for a prince to come and get her/the only prince I ever met is a neighbor's Irish Setter." Ricky also questions who wrote the script when his character Lancelot rhymes his name with "dance a lot."
- Also Played for Laughs in
*It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia* when Charlie and Dee, having bonded over their love of "def poetry", attempt to recreate a "def poetry slam" for an aggravated Dennis.
**Dee:** Speaks like Zeus...
**Charlie:** Smells like poops...
**Dee:** Rage all over from his head down to his shoe-s.
**Dennis:** Zeus, poops, and shoes? Guys, you suck at def poetry.
- A
*Jimmy Kimmel Live!* segment had the *Avengers: Endgame* cast reading a children's poem that summarized *Avengers: Infinity War*. When the poem tried rhyming "Groot" and "soot":
Don Cheadle
:
*Bucky and Scarlet Witch, Falcon and Groot * Scarlett Johansson
Suddenly began to turn into soot.
: "Groot." "Soot."
Cheadle: You can't find something that rhymes with "to turn into soot"? "To turn into..." I... I know it's soot, but his name isn't "Groot," so I wouldn't say to "Groot" and "soot."
*[bleep]* Chris Evans
: I mean, are we rhyming "Groot" and "soot"?
*[shakes head]*
- In series 6 of
*Knightmare*, Treguard's closing verse in series 6 required him to rhyme 'foul' with 'hour' every week. Earlier series also had a Previously on
delivered in verse, which usually had at least one painful forced rhyme. Lampshaded in one recap:
They perished, all: though what a pity
It does help rhyme this awful ditty.
- Intentionally in the closing credits of
*Murder Most Horrid*: "And you wake in the night, wipe the sweat from your forrid/Murder most horrid". The final season included variants, some of which were smoother ("And you wake in the night, your face flushed and florid") and some of which were *worse* ("And you wake in the night, wearing something you've borrid").
-
*Mystery Science Theater 3000*
- In "The Girl in Lover's Lane", Joel pronounces "magazines" to rhyme with "Circle Pines" during his verse of "The Train Song".
- Lampshaded in the "Werewolf" episode, during the song "Where Oh Werewolf":
**Mike:** My mother and pop, they disapprove
But no one can stop us, 'cause it's true loove.
**Bots:** Huh? "Loove"? **Mike:** Well, I had to rhyme the two words.
-
*Red Dwarf*:
- Played for laughs with Rimmer's Villain Song (each chorus line ends with 'Rimmer' or something which rhymes). The deleted final verse discusses how they've almost run out of rhymes to use.
- In another episode Lister says the problem with writing a love song to Kochanski is that there aren't many words that rhyme with her name. And he's already used "underpantski" twice.
-
*Star Trek* featured a Halloween Episode in which a triad of witches recited a prophecy of doom to Captain Kirk. When asked to comment on this development, Spock correctly pointed out that it was "very bad poetry."
-
*Sister, Sister*: Played for laughs in the Season 4 episode Sis-Boom-Bah, with both rhyming mishaps being delivered by Lisa:
- The first occurs when Lisa improvises a slogan to promote the sale of popcorn at her mall cart to bring in customers (a gimmick that later backfires when she spills hot oil over the popcorn machine, setting her cart ablaze):
**Lisa:** Fashions by Lisa/Free snacks to please-a. I gotta work on that.
- Later in the episode, Lisa improvises a cheer while trying to advise Tia and Tamera, whose twin gimmick fails to make up for the girls lack of coordination when they audition for Roosevelt Highs cheerleading squad and end up on the schools C-Squad
note : An alternate cheerleading team for students not good enough to make the varsity squad instead:
**Lisa:**
Tamera and Tia/Were really glad to see ya/If you give us a second chance/Youll have money in your
pants.
*(gives look of realization how her cheer came out)*
-
*Star Trek: The Next Generation* has Lore point out that Noonien Soong's nickname, Often Wrong, is meant to rhyme, but 'Soong' and 'Wrong' really don't.
- On
*Survivor*, the rhyming "tree-mails" announcing challenges are always chock full of forced rhymes and awful meter. You'd think after twenty seasons, the mail-writers would get pretty good at it, but apparently not.
-
*Wheel of Fortune* host Pat Sajak often criticizes the show's "Rhyme Time" category for this when it leads to bizarre puzzles such as BEES FLEAS AND MANATEES, often citing them as being worse than made-up examples of his such as DOGS FROGS AND WARTHOGS.
-
*Whose Line Is It Anyway?*:
- During a "Greatest Hits" game about doctors, Chip's attempt to fit a rhyme by cramming it in with a lengthy, rhythm-shattering sentence is so bad it causes Wayne to completely lose it:
Your headache's as big as the nation,
That's why I'm writing this prescription.
And I am just gonna give you these pills
So you won't have a predilection to take another one!
- Wayne's
*Let's Make A Date* competitor who was also a politician running for office and his love poem/campaign speech:
A woman like you is so first-rate
That's how I acquaint you to this beautiful state
I'd love to run my hands through your rich, lush foliage
And to be your man, it would be my priv-o-ledge.
- This trope is taken to the logical extreme in this clip when Drew cannot think of a line quickly and splutters something out for Ryan to deal with later.
- At one point, Colin has to come up with a rhyme for "fire extinguisher". His response? "Ding-a ding-a dingisher!"
- In one game Brad sings a song about a girl called "Niroshi". His attempts to rhyme with her name include "suntan loshi", "pacific oshi" and "we're so closey".
- Dave Barry, in a column which would lead to a massive amount of hate mail from Neil Diamond fans
*and* provide the seed for the famous Bad Songs Survey via readers who agreed with him, complained about the lameness of this line:
Is Neil telling us he's
*surprised* that the chair didn't hear him? Maybe he expected the chair to say, "Whoa, I heard THAT." My guess is that Neil was really desperate to come up with something to rhyme with "there", and he had already rejected "So I ate a pear", "Like Smokey the Bear", and "There were nits in my hair."
- According to Martin Pearson, Neil Diamond's "Play Me" contains the worst rhyme in the history of modern music:
The line comes later in the song; it goes "Songs she
*sang* to me, songs she *BRANG* to me.'" *Ugh*! It's " *brought*", you horrible little American!
- Word of God says LFO's "Summer Girls" was a joke song, not meant for public consumption, written to help the late singer Rich Cronin get over his disappointment with the music industry and think about his youth, and filled with inside humor. He said that if he knew it would be a commercial single, then the "Chinese food always makes me sick" part would not have been used.
Fell deep in love, but now we ain't speakin' Michael J. Fox
was Alex P. Keaton.
- Mitch Benn:
- One of the satirical songs on
*The Now Show* mocks the then-Poet Laureate Andrew Motion for claiming that nothing rhymes with "Wilkinson". As with the Lehrer examples, outrageous forced rhymes are used for comic effect:
Andrew Motion's changed his mind
He's far too busy milkin' son-
orous words and syllables to find
A rhyme for Jonny Wilkinson.
- Another one from the first series of
*Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music*:
Everybody knows ain't nothing rhymes with orange,
Doesn't matter how much imagination or inj-
-inuity you use even words thar are foreign, j-
-ust let it go, ain't nothing rhymes with orange.
- Lampshaded in Wu Tang Clan's "Shame On A N*** a":
*...I'm better *
Than my compedah
You mean competitor?
Whatever!
- Dethklok does this intentionally on "Birthday Dethday":
Now you're old and full of hatred
Take a pill to MASTURBATRED
Children point at you and scream
- "Fennario", a folk song about an army captain who falls "in love with a lady like a dove" sticks "-o" at the end of lines to make them scan right. Lampshaded by Bob Dylan in his recording of the song.
*I've been around this whole country, but I never yet found "Fennario".*
- Some of Adam Sandler's songs boil down to a succession of painful rhymes intentionally invoked for humor. A good example is "The Thanksgiving Song": In most of its couplets the first line is about Thanksgiving, but the second is usually a silly non sequitir that happens to rhyme.
Turkey for me, turkey for you
Let's eat the turkey in my big brown shoe
Love to eat turkey all night long
Fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong
(
*later*) Thanksgiving is a special night
Jimmie Walker used to say "Dy-no-mite!"
That's right!
- "Elenore" by The Turtles is deliberately written in this style; it's all part of the joke.
- Lampshaded in Ane Brun's "Where Friend Rhymes With End"
My friend, you left me in the end
... I can't believe I'm writing a song where "friend" rhymes with "end"
- Played for Laughs in "Stonehenge" by Ylvis:
How did they raise the stones so high
Completely without THE
technolo-gye
We have to-dye?
- Lampshaded in Alice Cooper's School's Out.
Well, we got no class
And we got no principals
And we got no innocence
We can't even think of a word that rhymes!
- Done intentionally and lampshaded
*twice* by John Gorka in "Wisheries":
Though I may not seem glamorous,
I have often been amorous,
Though I am an ignno
*ran*amous.
Ignoranamous, that's the word.
Through a window, she kissed my face,
She pushed me down, put me in my place,
The French would call that the coop de grace.
No, that's not my native tongue.
- Zladko "ZLAD!" Vladcik in "I Am the Anti-Pope" does unholy things to the English language to get "unanimous" and "instantaneous" to rhyme. Honorable mentions also go to "Jesus Christ" being matched with "cheeses sliced", and "crucifixed" with "six-six-sixth". This is all part of the song's
*very* deliberate Stylistic Suck.
- While Tom Lehrer makes a habit of painful rhymes in his in his songs, in "The Folk Song Army" on
*That Was the Year That Was* he actually lampshades it and offers an (insincere) apology:
*The tune don't have to be clever, *
And it don't matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line.
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English
And it don't even gotta rhyme... excuse me: rhyne!
- "Weird Al" Yankovic: Lampshaded in "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long", a parody of George Harrison's rendition of "Got My Mind Set on You":
...I know if I put my mind to it
I know I can find a good rhyme here
Oh, you gotta have
**a music**
You need really catchy music...
- Rodgers and Hart's "Manhattan" rhymes "spoil" with "girl" by mispronouncing the latter as "goil."
- Tocotronic have a true masterpiece on "Gesang des Tyrannen":
- A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie has a stanza in his hit "Look Back At It" in which he pronounces "chain" as "cheen" in order to rhyme "cheen" with "rings". He then goes on to "rhyme" them both with "me".
*Let me tell you something 'bout my life, And every single cheen, And my diamond rings, The way you walkin', the way you talkin' it's all because of me*
- "If I Die Young" by The Band Perry attempts to rhyme "dollar" with "goner":
A penny for my thoughts
Oh no, I'll sell them for a dollar
They're worth so much more after I'm a goner
- Eminem loves using this as part of his humorous style. Here's an example from "Kill You":
Know why I say these things?
'Cause ladies' screams keep creepin' in Shady's dreams.
The way things seem, I shouldn't have to pay these shrinks
these 80Gs a week to say the same things tweece -
- twice, whatever, I hate these things
- Tyler, the Creator's "Lone" rhymes "week" with "strength" by mispronouncing the latter as "streath".
- Ogden Nash objected to the poetic pronunciation of "wind" as "wined."
- In his satirical epic poem
*Don Juan*, Lord Byron often used rhymes for comedic effect, sometimes with Lampshade Hanging. At the start of the poem, he also took a swipe at his personal enemy, Robert Southey, who was the current Poet Laureate, by rhyming "Laureate" with "Iscariot". That one was so bad, he even expressed doubts about it in a footnote.
- Shel Silverstein's poem
*Pinocchio* does this intentionally with nearly every rhyme in it, by constantly appending "-io" to the ends of words. Such as:
Pinocchio, Pinocchio,
That little wooden bloke-io,
His nose, it grew an inch or two,
With every lie he spoke-io.
- Laura Elizabeth Richards also did this intentionally in several comic poems.
Antonio, Antonio
Was tired of living alonio.
He thought he would woo
Miss Lissamy Lu,
Miss Lissamy Lucy Molonio.
Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant-
No! No! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone-
- Lampshaded in
*Educating Rita*. Frank gives an example of assonance, with Yates rhyming "swan" with "stone".
**Rita:** It means getting the rhyme wrong.
- Lampshaded in "Camelot Song (Knights of the Round Table)" from
*Monty Python and the Holy Grail* and its theatrical version *Spamalot*:
We're Knights of the Round Table
Our shows are for-mi-dable
But many times
We're given rhymes
That are quite un-sing-able.
- In the song "Shall I Tell You What I Think Of You?" from
*The King and I*, Anna mispronounces "employee" to rhyme with "pay" and "libertine" to rhyme with "concubine"... and then corrects herself.
- Used intentionally in
*Heathers*, while faking a suicide note.
**J.D.:**
Just make it sound deep, like this.
*I had pain in my path... Sylvia Plath... my problems were myriad*
—
**Veronica:**
*imitating Heather*
*I was having my period.* *(Beat)* **Veronica:** Hahahahahahahahahaha.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ahahahahaha. Haha. Ha. Heh.
*(Beat)* **Veronica:**
*glances down at Heather's dead body*
**OH MY GOD!**
-
*The Phantom of the Opera* features this dialogue. Also comes with a case of Rhyming with Itself:
**Raoul**: Isn't this the letter you wrote?
**Firmin**: And what is it that we're meant to have wrote? *Beat* Written!
- Orlandos Stylistic Suck poetry for Rosalind in
*As You Like It*. His rhymes with Rosalind's name alternately demand that the last syllable be pronounced with a long and a short "i." Touchstone declares that he could come up with rhymes of the same caliber for "eight years" if necessary and proceeds to provide examples off the top of his head until Rosalind shuts him up.
- In
*The Curse of Monkey Island*, Guybrush purposely derails an overly-long-song by pitching the word orange into the rhymes. The singers are unable to come up with anything fitting besides "door-hinge".
-
*Fallen London* uses the concept for humor in the flavor text which indicates progress in writing a commissioned poem. It's an epic - four hundred stanzas. And it's about mushrooms. "The work advances. Are you actually going to rhyme 'mushroom' with 'room'? I mean *actually?*"
-
*Night in the Woods*: One of Fisherman Joe's poems has him awkwardly try to rhyme "storm" and "home". Mae mocks this by drawing a picture in her journal of a fish with a hat and briefcase saying "Honey, I'm horm."
- In-universe; in
*Violet*, if the protagonist tries to work to MC Dingo's music, they're distracted by his rhymes of 'casino'/'albino' and 'zebra'/'Deborah'.
**Narrator**: The workings can be heard of the animated people. And, I dunno apple.
-
*Zero Punctuation*:
- Homestar Runner:
-
*Ultra Fast Pony*. Spike writes a poem with an abundance of rhyming with who, then he forces here we go into this rhyme scheme by pronouncing it here we *goo*. He cringes slightly as he reads this part aloud.
- In Mondo's video "Back of the Line," we have Tim Cook trying to rap at the beginning, even though everyone wants the ghost of Steve Jobs to do it (who later shows up after this epic fail).
**Tim Cook:** Hey there Apple fans, it's your main man, Cook
Uh, saying rhymes, on... on time... uh... oh ho, books.
- ''I'm your best friend'' - a song from the
*Red vs. Blue* soundtrack - is an inversion of this trope if there ever was one. It contains barely any rhymes, even when there is an obvious way to introduce them. Instead of "friend - end" or "game - same" you get "friend - the part when it's over" and "game - the identical way". It's obviously Played for Laughs and perfectly fits a certain character in the show.
- In this
*Dinosaur Comics*, T-Rex tries to rap but his rhymes turn out painfully terrible.
- Elan's song in this
*Order of the Stick* strip is hilariously bad, even more so than usual. The worst rhymes are untilled/killed, wooden/pudding, and *grass'n/assassin*. It's lampshaded in the title, "You Try Rhyming 'Assassin'"
- "Super Stupor", a side feature of Randy Milholland's
*Something*Positive*, had a brief appearance by a bottom-rung villain named Crimer Rhymer, who normally spoke in very forced rhymes. ("I don't know what you mean / My record from errors is clean.")
-
*Least I Could Do*: Rayne often does "beat" poetry at the local coffeehouse. Also, this strip.
- During a
*Keiki* story in which the title character is officially proclaimed the smartest person in Hawaiʻi, Beefer challenges her to come up with a rhyme for "orange." She answers, "The rock guy screamed, 'more grunge!' as he ate an or-ange."
- There was once a man from a ruggery. He engaged in consensual heterosexual sex that was well within the confines of acceptable marital bedroom conduct...
**ery.**
- The Nostalgia Chick:
- Her review of
*He-Man & She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword* started with her critiquing the opening theme.
**Singer**: Somewhere out there someone needs me / I don't know how or where but believe me
**Chick**: That doesn't rhyme.
**Singer**: I walk the universe to find her / For better or for worse beside her
**Chick**: No.
**Singer**: A stranger walked into my world / And when he talked I really heard
**Chick**: ...?
- At the end of The Nostalgia Chick's video about
*The Worst Witch* film Doug Walker sings a song which is full of nonsensical forced rhymes with "Halloween", mirroring Tim Curry's musical number in the film.
Check out this effect on my green screen
If I had another name it would be Dean
- The Nostalgia Critic once berated a commercial for the Wuzzles which has a girl mispronounce "kangaroo" as "kanga-ree" just so it'll rhyme with the previous line. Critic complains that "roo" has to be one of the easiest words to rhyme, and to prove it, he sings, "I got a Wuzzle/I'm gonna snuggle/So much he can do..." After that, he lampshades this...
"I got a Wuzzle
"I'm gonna snuggle
"We don't care about rhyming
*(Beat)*
"Buy our shit!"
- In one of
*Smosh Games*' Game Bang episodes, Joven and Sohinki must face each other in a rap battle after getting the worst scores in the *Def Jam Rap Stars*. In the second round, Joven tries to rhyme "Army" with "Barbies", which is a borderline non-sequitur that flows poorly with his previous lines, but doesn't even rhyme that well.
**Ian:** "I don't know how that made sense."
- Todd in the Shadows had the Running Gag "Not a Rhyme" to denote those. And for a song-specific case, he said that the first verse of Flo Rida's "Club Can't Handle Me" features "the worst succession of non-rhymes I've heard since the second verse of Steve Miller's 'Take the Money and Run'":
Hey, I own the light and I don't need no help
Gotta be the feeling that Scarface
player
Stuntin' go wild can't handle this plan
Life of the club arrogant like yeah!
-
*Oxventure*: At one point the egotistical idiot Corazón de Ballena writes a Bragging Theme Tune about himself, which includes an attempt to make the word "horizon" rhyme with his first name.
*Corazón, oh Corazón* *Look to the horizón* *There you will see* *His ship on the sea*
- In the
*Unraveled* panel on "The Perfect Pokérap *, Brian criticizes how the original Pokérap from *Pokémon: The Series'' rhymed "Horsea" with "Weepinbel," calling it "a slant rhyme so terrible even Emily Dickinson would vomit."
- In the second episode of
*Don't Hug Me I'm Scared*, the singing teacher of the day (Tony the Talking Clock, who tries to teach the characters about time) is pretty lousy at rhyming, eventually resorting to rambling repeatedly about time. As the series goes on, successive teachers begin to become steadily worse and worse, foreshadowing the fact that ||the reality-manipulating machine generating them isn't working optimally.||
*"Let's go on a journey / a journey through all time / a time that's changing all the time / it's time to go to *
**TI-ME!!**"
-
*Animaniacs*.
**Yakko:** In dear old Anvilania, everyone's our friend!
**Dot:** We want to meet you all!
**Wakko:** And shake you by the hend! *[the other two glare at him]* Hend! *Hend!* It rhymes!
- In the "mix up the scripts" episode, the Warners have trouble finding a relevant rhyme for "brain"...
They're Mindy and The Brain
They're Mindy and The Brain
One's a small child
The other's...
(long pause)
The Brain!
-
*Arthur*: In "Whip. Mix. Blend.", the Tough Customers protest a chicken restaurant, with the slogan "Sticky Chicken makes you sicken!" Rattles is in disbelief.
**Rattles**: That's the best you could do? It's not even grammatically correct!
- This poem written by Sokka of
*Avatar: The Last Airbender*: " *My name is Sokka/ It's pronounced with an "-okka"/ Young ladies, I rock ya!*" He gets thrown out of the poetry club—not because of the bad rhyming, but because it's meant to be a haiku.
- The infamous
*Dexter's Laboratory* Christmas Episode "Dexter vs. Santa's Claws" had Dexter perform a rap number on how their dad dresses up as Santa on Christmas Eve to give the kids their presents, and being not such a great rapper he comes up with some fairly lousy attempts at rhyming lyrics...
Dad dresses up in a Santa getup,
And puts the car up on the rooftop
He makes the car look like a sleigh, here,
And mom dresses up just like a reindeer
She greases up Dad so he'll slide down the chimney
And put all our presents around the tree
Then Mom pulls him up, and by and by,
They drive down the roof and into the sky!
- In
*Ed, Edd n Eddy* when Eddy recites a slogan for their home repair business.
**Eddy**: No joke when it's broke - don't be blue, Let Ed's Quick Repair Service fix it and you won't sue!
- From the Musical Episode of
*The Emperor's New School*:
**Kuzco**: So please now, Malina
Won't you be my queen-a?
**Malina**: What?
-
*The Fairly OddParents!*:
- In "So Totally Spaced Out", when the Gigglepies' Mind Manipulation on Cosmo and Wanda begins to falter, their ability to rhyme is affected and one of them attempts to rhyme "ridiculous" with "trick-ulous", causing Wanda to come to her senses.
- In "Baby Face", Peppy Happy Betty finishes a string of forced rhymes with a very painful "distracted...-wackted!" She lampshades this with "I'm running out of rhymey-whymies."
- An episode of
*Fillmore!* has a character called Checkmatey who tries to rap every other sentence and creates some truly terrible rhymes in the process. Fillmore eventually gets tired of Checkmatey's grating personality and bad rapping, and as he calls out Checkmatey:
**Fillmore:** You just rhymed "bomb" with "wisdom"!
- The
*Futurama* episode "Fry and the Slurm Factory" parodies many aspects of *Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory*, including the way the Oompa-Loompas rely on nonsensical lyrics to create rhymes:
**Grunka-Lunkas:** *Grunka-lunka * **dunkity-dingredient**, you should not ask about the **secret ingredient!** **Leela:**
I was just curious because of the armed guards.
**Grunka-Lunkas:** *Grunka-lunka dunkity-* **darmed guards**... **Bender:** SHUT THE HELL UP!
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*: Intentionally invoked in the episode "The Show Stoppers." Scootaloo attempts to write a song for the upcoming talent show, but is only able to come up with lyrics like:
"With our cutie marks, we'll rock Equestria
We use our stomachs to digestia."
- Parodied in
*The Penguins of Madagascar*, when an evil device forces everyone to sing. As The Unintelligible, Rico's "lyrics" are all unintelligible grunts that end in a sound that rhymes.
-
*Phineas and Ferb*
- The
*VeggieTales* video *King George and the Ducky* has King George sing a rant that rhymes "longer," "stronger," and "wronger." King George's page tries to remind him to say "more wrong," instead. The king insists, "It had to rhyme! Don't question a king's grammar!"
- Danger Mouse reads a scroll with instructions on how to utilize the Mystic Inkwell of Merlin ("Where There's a Well, There's a Way") when he comes across a painful rhyme that Penfold lampshades:
- The debut episode of
*Freakazoid!* features an alternate theme to that of *Animaniacs*. When it gets to the final verse:
It's totally freaky,
Dexter's geeky,
The plots are reek-y,
We're up the creek-y,
It's sprung a leak-y,
Freakazoid and friends, now our song ends!
- Only Popeye could get away with this in his ending song tag after gifting Olive with a pearl necklace:
There's only one poil
That's me goil Olive Oyl
Sez Popeye the sailor man! (
*Toot toot*)
-
*The Spectacular Spiderman*: Spidey's Inner Monologue from the Cold Opening to the episode "The Uncertainty Principle":
*Twas the night before Halloween*
*And all through Manhattan*
*Not a criminal was stirring*
Man-hatt-an. Gob-lan. They sorta rhyme.
-
*The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!* episode "Bad Rap" has all of its dialogue performed in rhyme. Unfortunately, the title ends up being indicative of the rapping quality, given that the rhymes often include Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable, bizarre pauses in the middle of lines to make the meter fit ("This Koopa dude's...got to go!"), and strange non-sequiturs for tough words ("Wait, Mario, you forgot your spaghetti!").
-
*The Simpsons*: In "Mommie Beerest", Marge convinces Moe to renovate his bar through song. They come around to this idea of making it an old-timey British pub, and Moe likes the idea, but everyone wants him to agree in song. He starts, "My bar could be British, instead of arm-pittish, so why don't we all..." and then gives up.
- Monty Python's deliberately boring song "Traffic Lights" cuts off before finishing its last and worst rhyme:
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
Although my name's not Bamber.
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
But only when they're... (Oh, God.) | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainfulRhyme |
Pain to the Ass - TV Tropes
*"His mother [...] told him, before his little milk tusks had dropped out, that elephants who were afraid always got hurt. Kala Nag knew that that advice was good, for the first time that he saw a shell burst he backed, screaming, into a stand of piled rifles, and the bayonets pricked him in all his softest places."*
Even though it hurts, pain can be funny. Butts can also be funny. So combining the two is hilarious!
This trope is pretty straight forward. A character receives some sort of trauma to their backside. As mentioned above this trope often appears in slapstick or otherwise humorous context. This is because in addition to the fact that butts, particularly large ones, are often seen as inherently humorous and because butts are naturally padded, so if something or someone strikes it there's less likely to be any serious injury involved.
This tends to happen to plumper characters more often since their butts are naturally bigger targets.
Subtrope of Joke of the Butt. A super trope to Rump Roast, Butt Biter, Literal Ass-Kicking, Anal Probing, Thumbtack on the Chair, Shot in the Ass, Ass Shove, and Comedic Spanking. Compare Attack the Tail (where the target is even further beyond the rear end), contrast Butt Sticker and Ass Kicks You (where it's the butt that hurts someone else) and see also Flirtatious Smack on the Ass (where it's not meant to be painful so much as sexy).
## Examples:
- The page image is from Disney's
*Hercules*, where the introduction to Pain and Panic has the two bumbling henchmen tripping down a flight of stairs and Panic landing horns first onto Pain's butt.
- Lampshaded in Disney's
*Moana*. Maui is in the middle of a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Moana, while denying her the ability to sail the boat they are both on. Moana just takes it, but the Ocean intervenes by sticking a blowdart (from an earlier encounter) into Maui's backside, paralyzing him. Moana then takes control of the boat. (It makes way more sense in context.)
**Maui:** Blowdart. In my buttcheek. You are a bad, bad person.
- In
*Shrek*, after a fight with Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Shrek ends up with an arrow in his butt. He doesn't even notice it until Fiona points it out and removes it.
- In
*The Rescuers*, Luke uses his pitchfork to prod Madame Medusa in the butt.
- In
*The Lion King (1994)*, "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" ends with an elephant falling on an antelope's horns butt-first, eliciting a pain-induced Wild Take.
- When Shenzi, Banzai and Ed are chasing Simba, Banzai ends up falling in a thorny bush, and Shenzi even calls him "cactus butt".
- During the Training Montage of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" in
*Mulan*, Yao gets his buttock pierced by a burning arrow.
- In
*Cinderella*, Gus ties his tail to the spout of a teapot and tries to reach for the key to Cinderella's room, which Jaq is handing to him from the stepmother's pocket. However, the pot tips and a drop of piping hot tea drips onto Gus' bottom, causing both mice and the key to fall onto the villain's dress and slide safely onto the floor.
-
*Beauty and the Beast*: LeFou comes close to melting Lumiere with a torch. Cogsworth saves him by sliding down a bannister and jabbing a pair of scissors in LeFou's butt.
-
*The Sponge Bob Square Pants Movie*: While getting a lift back to Bikini Bottom on the back of David Hasselhoff, SpongeBob and Patrick are ambushed by Dennis, the hitman Plankton hired. When SpongeBob dodged one of Dennis' knife attacks, it struck the Hoff in his right buttcheek. Fortunately, because Dennis and his knife are quite tiny in comparison to Hasselhoff, it wasn't enough to stop his swimming, or even slow him down.
**David Hasselhoff**: Ooh! Take it easy back there, fellas.
- In the prologue of
*City Slickers*, the three main characters are in Spain for the Running of the Bulls. The segment concludes with Billy Crystal's character Mitch getting gored in the behind.
-
*Moonraker*: This is downplayed, as Bond tests his wrist dart gun in M's office by firing a dart into a painting of William III and his horse.
- In
*Smokin' Aces*, Jeeves Tremor is killed when Sir Ivy forces him to sit down on his running chainsaw.
-
*Space Jam*: During the Tune Squad's retaliation against the Monstars, Daffy Duck paints the ass of one of their members red, getting the attention of Toro the Bull, who is in the audience. He predictably skewers said Monstar in the behind.
-
*Home Alone 2: Lost in New York*: Kevin sets up a staple gun booby trap at Uncle Rob's townhouse. One of the staples punctures Marv's ass complete with a scream of "YEOW!"
-
*The Bold Caballero*: While trying to escape over the fence during the bullfight, the Commandante gets gored in the ass by the bull.
-
*Transylvania 6-5000*: While attempting to grab a rope in the stables, Lupi accidentally stabs the Frankenstein Monster in the butt with a pitchfork.
-
*Cocaine Bear*: Park Ranger Liz takes a serious wound to her rear end in the initial confrontation with the bear, forcing her to retreat to the welcome center to get help.
-
*The Parasol Protectorate*: Although details are somewhat lacking, the first meeting between Alexia Tarabotti and Lord Conall Maccon involved the latter accidentally sitting on a hedgehog, which Alexia insists she didn't deliberately leave on a chair.
- The Back Story of Bit Character Merrett Frey from
*A Song of Ice and Fire* includes being captured by an infamous outlaw band, (think a major deconstruction/Darker and Edgier version of Robin Hood and his Merry Men) and a female member of the outlaws branded him on the ass during his captivity.
- In
*Toomai of the Elephants*, a young Indian elephant jabs himself in the rear when he backs into a pile of bayonets.
-
*Roys Bedoys*: In What Does Mommy Want for Mothers Day, Roys Bedoys?, Roys accidentally sits on a lego piece, hurting himself.
- Hop On Pop'':
- One of the yellow creatures gets stung by a bee on its butt.
- Defied when the little yellow creature tells Pat not to sit on a cactus.
- Bubble Butt: The video has at least two examples:
- At the start, after Buttzilla lands next to a brownstone building, she summons bike pumps from her mouth that slither into an apartment inside and shove themselves up three women's butts and inflate their butts to ridiculous size.
- Later on, a female acrobat who is dancing on aerial silks starts twerking. As she twerks, her butt cheeks start rapidly swelling up, and she explodes ass-first into confetti that rains down on the other dancers.
- During an intergender match pitting Edge and Lita against John Cena and Maria, Lita was being portrayed as more experienced than Maria, as a way to mock Maria Lita would target Maria's butt throughout the time they were in the ring together. This included doing things like slapping it over and over again, kicking and even stomping on her ass.
- The Atomic Drop is this to the unfortunate opponent.
- As described by Jim Cornette, a common way for a face male to get revenge on a heel valet or other female assuming he doesn't have a face woman who would stand up for him would be a "butt bump". Usually this would be the face doing something that targets said female's butt such as the aforementioned Atomic Drop or other methods such as spanking. As the butt is a rather sensitive area and very little risk of injury of hitting the area (though the atomic drop notably targets the lower tailbone of the victim) it usually bypasses the audience sense of men shouldn't hit women and can be both satisfying and funny to the people watching.
- Two of the most notable examples of this was Hulk Hogan who gave a well deserved Atomic Drop to Sensational Sherri after she has been a thorn on his and many of his allies side for years. The audience ate it up, later when Miss Elizabeth in WCW turned evil herself her formally innocent butt wasn't safe from Hogan's knee either.
-
*Deadpool*: DP ends up finishing ||the clone of|| Mister Sinister with a sword into his anus.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom*: If horribilins are knocked down from a cave's ceiling via a headshot or Dazzle Fruit, they'll hit the ground butt-first while taking Fall Damage and spend a while howling in pain while clutching their behinds.
-
*Mario Party* loves this, when considering the sheer frequency in which even someone like Rosalina, can get her butt burned, stung or otherwise comically injured.
- There are several butt related injuries that
*Crash Bandicoot* (and later Coco) can suffer from in the series, such as burning their butts from falling in lava, having them stung by bees, poked by spikes, or an explosive blast from a land mine.
- In
*Tatsunoko vs. Capcom* every character can suffer a little butt pain at the hands of Roll thanks to Roll setting said butt on fire. Fortunately for them Roll also puts it out by sending a giant tidal wave of water to them.
- In the arcade game of
*Sailor Moon* some of the mooks do a kick attack that if it hits either Moon or Venus from behind both are shown tending to their sailor butts momentarily before being controllable again. Though in this case all senshi flinch but only said two tend to said area.
- Bass from the
*Dead or Alive* fighting games has access to an atomic drop where his opponents after landing on his muscular knee his opponent jumps up off his knee tending to their aching backsides. Bonus points to Marie Rose as seeing a hulking 6'5 346 monster drop a pint sized 4'10 86 girl with such force on her tailbone is quite amusing.
- Going into
*Street Fighter V*, Zangief lost his brutal looking forward throw for an even more brutal looking atomic drop. When the victim falls seated into his knee a loud "crunch" is heard. Seeing Zangief do this to the barely over 100 pound Ibuki makes one wonder how her spine didn't split in two upon impact.
- Due to being a fanservice game with (mostly) female characters,
*Rumble Roses* features many girls attacking each other in ways that hurt their butts, such as getting roughly thrown down onto the ring. Some damage animations have the victimized girl rubbing her behind in pain.
- Should Raffina get hit with a particularly powerful attack in
*Puyo Puyo*, an animation will play of her *getting struck in the backside with a Garbage Puyo*. How humiliating...
-
*Super Mario Galaxy 2*: Defeating Peewee Pirahna requires smashing open his egg diaper and then jumping onto his large exposed rump.
-
*Super Smash Bros.*
- Mega Man appears to lift his female opponents by their butts over his head in his throw. His pummel attack involves him squeezing the grabbed area very hard.◊
- Diddy Kong has access to the banana item as part of his natural kit. This can easily mean lots of hard rump landings.
- Princess Peach can do this to herself with her Peach Bomber. She thrust her princess butt forward and if she doesn't make contact when she lands on the floor one can see visible discomfort on her face when her butt◊ makes contact with the hard floor. This can't be good for Peach's long term spinal health.
- Spyro in
*Riptos Rage* and *Year of the Dragon* as well as the Reignited Trilogy versions of them, whenever he is hit by fire attacks or lands in lava, the little purple dragon jumps up into the air holding his painfully burnt butt with his front paws.
- Yoshi can be subject to this in the
*Yoshi's Island* series of games if he either touches spikes or falls in lava.
- This comedy mechanism has been discussed in the Big Cartoon Forum, here: [1]. Granted, it's all Western Animation stuff, but posteriors get poked nonetheless.
- Baysa gits a pin stuck into his butt via Peter in part 15 of
*Minecraft For Noobs*, after he teleports directly onto him attempting to do voodoo on Baysa. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainToTheAss |
Painful Body Waxing - TV Tropes
AAAAAHH! KELLY CLARKSON!
*"[The wax] actually feels kinda good. What's so bad about waxing?"*
Pain is funny. A lot of pain is funnier. Humiliating pain is the best of all.
So nothing can be funnier than watching a man getting his body hair waxed, especially if he screams, yells, or swears while the strips are pulled off. Though this trope can still work and be funny with both genders (say, a woman tolerating a leg waxing when she's not used to it), it's generally funnier with a man, especially if he Screams Like a Little Girl. For one, waxing Bob's bare chest or back can invoke Naked People Are Funny
*and* be shown entirely on screen (can't exactly do the same with Alice's bikini wax), plus it's amusing to think of a man going into hysterics over something that women endure without complaint.
Subtrope to Painful Adhesive Removal.
## Examples:
- There's a soda commercial with a fellow who enters the wrong room at the doctor's office because he sees an open fridge with a soda in it. He didn't look at the sign on the door, or he'd know it said "Bikini Wax." What happens next is given a discretion shot.
- Another ad implies that a man would submit to a chest wax for an original flavor Klondike bar, or to a bikini wax for a dark chocolate Klondike bar.
- One of several scenarios in adverts for Wowcher.co.uk is leg waxing. "W-OW!-cher!" says the woman as she gets her legs waxed, having apparently used a voucher to get it cheap via the website being advertised.
- In the
*Tintin* book *Flight 714*, the chief antagonist Rastapopoulos is tied up with duct tape over his mouth by the heroes. Rastapopoulos yells in pain when his henchman Allan peels off the tape, since the duct tape was stuck to his hair. The yells of pain also happen to tip off Tintin as to his whereabouts.
- The French comic
*Leo Loden* uses it as an interrogation method. On seeing a captive mafioso's Carpet of Virility, Leo's uncle grabs a big roll of masking tape, applies it to the mook's chest, and *shhhrrrkkktt*! They get the information not long after.
- Played for drama in
*Vow of Nudity*: In one flashback, Haara (an imperial slave) undergoes the apparently-standardized procedure of having all her body hair *plucked out with tweezers.* The process is mentioned to happen every three months until the slave's body hair stops growing back altogether.
- Happens in
*The 40-Year-Old Virgin*. Steve Carell's reaction was genuine, as he was actually having his chest hairs ripped out.
-
*The Hot Chick*, although technically it was a girl in a man's body.
- The screenplay and novelization for
*Home Alone 2* contained a scene in which Marv grabs a piece of cheesecloth to try to wipe the paint off his face, not knowing Kevin soaked the cloth in superglue; the cheesecloth sticks to Marv's face, and when he rips it off, he ends up tearing his beard and eyebrows off. (In the film the scene is replaced by the famous electrocution scene.)
- In
*Miss Congeniality* the sequence of Gracie being dolled up includes her screaming off screen and then limping into view. Victor then turns to the other FBI agents and explains "Bikini Wax" causing the two agents to wince.
- In
*Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs*, Scrat's acorn is stuck to his chest with tar. Enter Scratte, who pulls it off, along with a sizable chunk of his hair. Cue scream.
- Brazilian film
*Se Eu Fosse Você 2* has this for a woman-in-man's body (though the waxing was done using Chromakey). Particularly funny because the male lead, Tony Ramos, is known in Brazil for his dense body hair, to the point where his name became another term for "hairy male".
- In
*What Women Want* the main character uses a bunch of feminine products in an attempt to get into the minds of women. One of these is a wax strip that he uses on his leg. Afterwards, he says that women are insane.
- The main character in
*Persepolis* waxes her legs. Set to *Eye of the Tiger*.
- In
*Hitch*, Albert gets his back waxed, yelling in pain with each pull. Hitch, who is on the phone with Sara while this is happening, ends up pushing Albert's face down into the pillow to muffle his cries.
-
*The Hunger Games*: Katniss Everdeen's first experience of the Capitol is a decidedly un-funny version of this. Her prep team waxes her entire body, but keeping her promise to her mentor she never complains. This becomes something of a regular procedure as she continues her role and takes on new ones later in the series.
- While all Tributes are "beautified" before entering the Hunger Games Arena, Katniss notes that the boys apparently keep their body hair.
-
*Friends*, in the episode where Chandler, Joey, Monica and Phoebe are trapped in one of the bedrooms by Ross and Rachel's big argument. After Joey and Chandler are summoned across the hall by the sounds of Monica and Phoebe screaming, Joey is persuaded to wax the hair off his arms to prove his pain threshold. It is not as high as he had claimed, although he does just whimper rather than cry out as the girls did.
- In a later episode Joey is persuaded to get his eyebrows waxed for his new set of headshots. He goes to a salon and finds the first brow being waxed so painful he runs out before the waxer can finish. He confides in Chandler who reveals he learned how to perform body waxing in a painless way helping his Drag Queen father get ready for shows. Once Joey stops laughing he agrees to let Chandler even up his brows.
-
*America's Funniest Home Videos* once had a challenge to film men getting their chest waxed. One even got invited to the show to use one of the props to pull a patch off his chest.
- One video showed a girl waking up her dad with this.
- Host Adam Hills underwent a 'boyzilian' (a male Brazilian waxing) - and had it filmed for the programme - on
*Adam Hills In Gordon Street Tonight* after receiving a gift voucher for the procedure from an audience member as a 'show-warming gift' on the first episode. It was hilarious.
- In the Brazil episode of
*An Idiot Abroad*, Karl is led to a body waxing salon by a Rio de Janeiro local named Celso. Celso is able to get himself waxed without flinching, whereas Karl, who only ends up getting his lower back waxed, reacts in pain.
- Amy got one on
*The Big Bang Theory*. She's shown walking very wobbly afterwards, and it's heavily implied that she had a lot of hair down there before the waxing.
- Chest and nasal waxing were inflicted on Barsky in one episode of
*Dirty Jobs*.
- In an episode season 18 of
*The Amazing Race* where all the contestants were in Brazil, one of the tasks to get the next clue was to endure a 15-minute body waxing. Surprisingly, all the contestants actually took it relatively well (they at least took the pain pretty well)...except for Zev and Justin, who were the hairiest out of all the contestants in that season (and possibly the show itself). And yes, they screamed like little girls throughout the waxing (one of the guys even threatened to punch his waxer in the face).
- Steve O of
*Jack Ass* has had a full body wax for one episode.
- On
*MythBusters* they were retesting whether socks could be knocked off with enough force, and in order to see if leg hair had an effect Tory had one of his legs waxed so the Busters could compare them. Let's just say there's a reason the page quote is labeled Tempting Fate.
- In the
*Firefly* episode "Jaynestown" several characters find mercenary crewmate Jayne trying to smuggle a weapon into a settlement which forbids them by taping it to his stomach, with high-strength medical tape no less. When ordered by the captain to remove it, he complies. After about an inch of the tape is removed, he realises the flawed nature of his plan, and begins whimpering.
- Taken to extreme in an episode of
*1000 Ways to Die* where a woman tries homemade waxing to remove her pubic hair, only to rip off a piece of her skin, which triggers an infection that kills her a week later.
- The Spanish Game Show
*El gran juego de la oca* features this as one of the challenges. A contestant, always male, is asked five questions. For each one he gets right, one of his toenails is painted; for each incorrect answer, part of his leg hair is waxed off.
- In one episode of
*The Red Green Show*, Red does this to his nephew, Harold, as part of a demonstration on how to make a lady shaver. However, Red being Red, instead of using wax, he uses strips of duct tape. He places the tape on Harold's leg and then explains that one doesn't need sharp blades or cream or messy cleanup anymore. All one has to do with the duct tape is just stick it on and then snap it off — which Red does. Harold is clearly in pain but tries to deny it to his uncle, then starts screaming in pain once he walks off.
- In an episode of
*Ready or Not*, Amanda has Busy try waxing her leg. Amanda screams out in pain when Busy peels off the wax strip.
-
*CSI: NY*: "Point of No Return" opens with a scream coming from a cheap motel room. As the shot zooms, the viewer discovers that this is not a horrible crime but a group of women holding a bikini wax party. The actual murder takes place two rooms down.
- Abbi suffers through one at the beginning of the
*Broad City* episode "Fattest Asses."
- Anyone who's gotten any part of their body waxed can tell you that it is actually quite painful, especially if you take into consideration how, unlike shaving (which is just cutting off the top part of the hair), waxing is pulling the hair out by the root (which causes it to take longer to grow back).
- While waxing may be more painful (and more expensive) than shaving, it is ultimately more effective, especially since you don't have to wax as frequently as you would with shaving.
- A lot of charity stuff, especially common for charities events protesting deforestation.
- One example is the 'Shave For A Cure' event. Someone got one of their eyebrows waxed off. Ouch. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainfulBodyWaxing |
Painful Pointy Pufferfish - TV Tropes
Being on the business side of these quills must be quite hurtful.
Pufferfishes are fishes from the order Tetraodontiformes and family Tetraodontidae that are well-known for their ability to inflate their bodies by inhaling water, so they can scare off predators and defend themselves. The closely related porcupinefishes (family Diodontidae) have a groovy bonus feature: their bodies are covered with Spikes of Doom that can deal a world of hurt to the poor souls that try to swallow them. Other factors that have helped their induction into this trope are their quirky colour schemes, cute appearance, and their abundance in temperate and tropical waters, making them fit right in to almost any setting under the sea.
They are as such often seen in fiction stabbing other people with their spikes. Sometimes they spear others by their own accord, other times they are weaponized by another character. Painful Pointy Pufferfishes are notably common in Video Games in the Under the Sea levels. Particularly nasty variants are even capable of poisoning those who are poked by their spikes. Nastier yet, their flesh contains a fairly strong neurotoxin. Fish bites man is not news. Man bites fish is fatal...to the man. (Unless you prepare it specially, in which case it's a delicacy.)
Sub-Trope of Fiendish Fish and Spikes of Doom. Related to The Spiny. If wielded as a weapon by another character, it is a Sub-Trope of Shamu Fu. See also Sea Hurtchin for another spiny animal used in a similar way.
## Examples:
-
*Doraemon: Nobita's Great Battle of the Mermaid King* have a pufferfish-boy named Haribo who's feisty, rough, and enjoys using his head-spikes for stabbing people who annoys him in the ass.
- In
*One Piece*, member of the New Fish-men Pirates Harisenbon is a porcupinefish Fishman: normally lean and unassuming, he can bloat himself up and turn into a ball of sharp spikes before bodyslamming his enemies. He leads a patrol of Fish-men armed with spiked shells.
-
*Finding Nemo*: Bloat the pufferfish is a member of the Tank Gang, and often inflates himself when agitated (requiring one of the other fish to help deflate him).
- In
*Stormbreaker*, Jack wins a fight against Nadia Vole by impaling her hand with the pufferfish she had been painting before the quarrel.
- The mascot for the security-focused OpenBSD operating system is a pufferfish, evoking self-defence.
-
*Animal Crossing*: Implied through the series, as every quote the villager speaks when catching a pufferfish is an cry of pain instead of the puns the other fishes elicit.
-
*Awesomenauts*: One of the attacks that Spike, a jailbird pufferfish, can perform is the "Spike Dive", a diving tackle that launches his spikes out of his body for extra damage, with a new pair automatically growing back after.
-
*Banjo-Tooie* features blowfish baddies called Swellbellies that are expies of the Puftops enemies from *Donkey Kong 64*, only orange and lacking the ability to explode.
-
*Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped*: Pufferfish appear in the underwater levels. Bumping into one while it's inflated will somehow lead to Crash getting puffed up himself, losing a life.
-
*Cuphead*: The giant mermaid Cala Maria can summon some puffed-up pufferfishes that can damage the player.
-
*Donkey Kong*:
-
*Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest*: Porcufish-like baddies called Puftups are common aquatic enemies. Some Puftups explode after inflating, causing them to unleash spikes in four directions (which dire. Puftups can only be defeated by Enguarde.
-
*Donkey Kong 64*: Puftups make a reappearance in this game, where they act more like hazards than enemies, remaining stationary and exploding like aquatic mines if approached by a Kong. A King Mook specimen called Pufftoss appears as the boss of Gloomy Galleon.
-
*Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze*:
- The Pufftup enemies are porcupine fishes that randomly inflate and deflate. When inflated, they can only be defeated by Cranky Kong's cane, as their spikes prevent the Kongs from touching them without being hurt.
- Fugu is a giant yellow pufferfish that can inflate to
*ridiculous sizes* — its biggest form takes up more than two thirds of the screen and literally dwarfs the gorilla-sized Donkey Kong. It is covered in damaging quills except for its rear, which acts as its weak point.
- The Fish Poker Pops attack with a stick with a porcupine fish at both ends.
-
*Ecco the Dolphin* and *Ecco: The Tides of Time* have pufferfishes in many levels. In their un-puffed state, Ecco could eat them to regain health, like many other fish. But eating one would prompt the rest to puff up, and they'd injure Ecco if he tried to eat them in that state.
-
*For the King*: Puff Puffs and Poison Puffs are giant floating pufferfish that appear as Random Encounters in aquatic areas. They attack by running into you with their spines and pop like balloons when killed.
-
*Feeding Frenzy*: Pufferfishes regularly inflate their bodies to sting the fishes trying to eat them. Touching one in their inflated state will send a fish backward, and it's the only way the player can lose points in both games. A deflated pufferfish, however, can be eaten as normal.
-
*Golden Force* has pufferfishes as enemies in underwater environments, who hurts you on contact. That said, they're Stationary Enemy types who remains suspended where they are - piranhas tends to be a bigger problem in underwater areas.
-
*Kingdom of Loathing* has pufferfish as enemies in the ocean. Their initial turn has them scrape the player with their spines to poison them, which damages the player each turn of the battle and *doubles* each turn. They may also drop their spines upon defeat, which can be used on enemies to make them suffer similar poisoning.
-
*Kirby*:
-
*Kirby Mass Attack* has the Stickles, spiky fishes that dwell in the 7th level of the Dedede Resort. In the water, they are covered in vicious spikes that damage the Kirbys on contact, but as soon as they are on dry land, the spikes retract, leaving them open for attacks.
- The third boss of
*Kirby's Return to Dream Land* is called Fatty Puffer, and his main attack is inflating himself into a huge ball and rolling across the battlefield. He's significantly less pointy than most examples of the trope, but he makes up for that with all the stalactites he sends falling from the ceiling from the sheer force of his weight. Once he Turns Red, his fully inflated body takes up *three quarters of the arena*, and he can attack Kirby with a huge wave of Waterfall Puke.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword* has Froaks, airborne pufferfish-like creatures. They appear spikeless at first, but will puff up, revealing their harmful quills. They are also prone to exploding.
-
*The Legendary Starfy*:
- Fugush, the fourth boss of the fourth game, is a huge pufferfish which wear a diving mask and a snorkel and which will harm Starfy on contact with its quills. Fortunately, at some point, it will fire them to Starfy, and the short time without any spikes protecting it allows Starfy to damage it.
- Harisen-sans are a species of unbeatable pufferfish enemies which will inflate their bodies when startled, revealing sharp damaging needles.
- Piranyans are a weird hybrid between piranhas and pufferfishes, chasing Starfy at fast speeds while being protected by a barrier of spikes.
-
*The Legends of Owlia*: The pufferfish enemies in the game. If you look closely at their sprites when they're inflated, you'll see little spikes on them.
-
*Luigi's Mansion 3*: Before the boss fight with Kruller in a storage room, the ghost frantically searches for a weapon in a cardboard box, and one of the items he pulls out is a pufferfish. Cue Kruller screaming in pain while shaking the fish off.
-
*Mega Man Zero 4* has a robotic pufferfish enemy that appears in water areas. They inflate and deflate when Zero is close to shoot out spikes in multiple directions.
-
*Minecraft*:
- The Guardians and Elder Guardians, monsters found in the Ocean Monuments, resemble cyclopean fish with long tails and cubical bodies covered with large spikes that they can extend and retract. When their spikes are extended, striking them with a melee weapon will deal players a heart of damage.
- In the 1.13 update, mob versions of fish were added, including the pufferfish. It starts out small, but it inflates if a player gets near and will cause Collision Damage or inflict the Poison status if the player comes too close to them in this state.
-
*Monster Eye* have entire *swarms* of pufferfishes that inflates themselves to flock upon your player.
-
*Monster Sanctuary*: Thornish covered in spikes, has a vengeful and ruthless disposition, and almost all of its body contains the most poisonous substance in the world.
- In
*Mope.io*, the porcupinefishes can inflate themselves to damage the surrounding animals.
- In
*Octogeddon*, Spike the Pufferfish is one of the aquatic buddies Octogeddon can acquire. It can puff up to tremendous sizes, destroying every nearby enemy with its spikes.
- The Pokémon Qwilfish, debuting in
*Pokémon Gold and Silver*, is based on a pufferfish. Not only can it sting with its spikes (it learns many spike-related moves like Toxic Spikes, Fell Stinger, Spikes or Poison Sting), it can also *fire* them at its foes with the move Pin Missile. Further, it often has the ability Poison Point, which makes it so that when an opponent hits it with a physical attack, it has a 30% chance of being poisoned. You can throw fruit at it in *New Pokémon Snap* to make it inflate and even over-inflate. In *Pokémon Legends: Arceus* it received a part Dark-Type Regional Form that evolves into the even larger Overqwil, which has a savage temperament and resembles a sea mine.
-
*Sabrina: Spooked!*: Little pufferfish appear as enemies in the second world. They float slowly towards Sabrina and occasionally inflating themselves. Unlike most examples, they *don't* count as spinies even when they inflate. The player can bounce on top of them harmlessly while inflated, and destroying them while deflated. They tend to be placed in spots where the player is jumping, where you can jump into them by accident.
-
*Sonic The Hedgehog* has various robotic examples:
- In
*Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed*, the drop-behind-you-to-lay-a-trap item is a blowfish, which deploys with a balloon-like squeak. In the Japanese version however, it's replaced by a Garbage Puyo.
-
*Spore*: One of the microorganisms in the Cell stage, Puffish, is a slow, round, purple animal defended by an array of spines surrounding its body, which will harm any predator or rival attempting to engage it in melee.
-
*Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!*: The Mystic Marsh level contains all sorts of strange fusions of animals. One of them is a cross between a platypus and a pufferfish. When they're in their platypus form, they can be defeated without an issue, but trying to attack them while they're puffed up will hurt Spyro.
-
*Streetpass Mii Plaza*: The *Mii Force* game features the Battling Blowfish, a giant robotic pufferfish submarine with retractable spikes, as a boss. One of its numerous way to damage the heroes is ramming into them with with all its prongs out.
-
*Super Mario Bros.*:
-
*Super Mario World* introduces the Porcupuffer, a gigantic pufferfish-like Cheep Cheep that chases Mario around some levels. The spikes on its back prevent Mario from jumping on it, as they will damage the plumber (unless you use the Spin Jump or are riding Yoshi, in which case you'll repeatedly bounce off its spikes). After a long hiatus, they reappear commonly in later *Mario* games (including *Super Mario Maker 2*, where they're capable of eating the main characters, thus becoming Instakill Mooks).
-
*Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga* has the Puffer Cheeps. They first look like blue Cheep Cheeps, but when damaged by the plumbers, they puff up, revealing their spikes which damage and poison the Mario Brothers when jumped on. Harming them once more will deflate them.
- Spiny Cheep Cheeps are a purple variant of basic Cheep Cheeps with large spikes down their backs. While they damage Mario on contact, all Cheep Cheeps do so — their main danger comes from the fact that they will actively chase Mario around, which regular Cheep Cheeps don't do.
- Pufferfish occasionally appear as bosses in the
*Umihara Kawase* games, oftentimes floating around in the air and, depending on the game, firing needles at the player. Not surprisingly, bumping into one will hurt Kawase if she's not careful.
-
*WarioWare*: In *Mega Microgame$!*, the objective of the microgame "Rough Puff" is to have a pufferfish inflate at the right time to deflect an attack from another fish.
-
*Yoshi's Crafted World*: In the level "Many Fish in the Sea", Yoshi has to ride on a variety of papercraft fishes, which serve as platforms. Some of the fishes are pufferfishes, which Yoshi has to avoid unless he wants to get damaged.
-
*Happy Tree Friends*: In "Whose Line Is It Anyway?", Russell eats a pufferfish that inflates inside his throat, causing him to choke.
- In the
*We Bare Bears* episode "Fire", Grizzly has to save some aquarium fish from a restaurant on fire (which he inadvertently started due to paranoia). One of the fish is a pufferfish, which Grizz juggles due to its spines hurting his paws. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainfulPointyPufferfish |
Would Rather Suffer - TV Tropes
*"He'd rather have a buffalo take a diarrhea dump in his ear *
He'd rather eat the rotten asshole of a road-killed skunk and down it with beer"
You want me to describe another trope? I'd rather drink Brain Bleach!
A character expresses his displeasure with an idea by claiming a preferred alternative — except that alternative is clearly something the average person would find unthinkably undesirable, usually subjecting oneself to pain, death, or both.
When played for comedy, this trope derives humor from the exaggerated, ridiculous description of unusual torture and possibly from Cool and Unusual Punishment. Can be a type of Freudian Slip or Suspiciously Specific Denial if the audience knows the character would actually find the mentioned activity enjoyable (even though most people wouldn't). If used in this manner expect the character to be objecting to something rather trivial. Even if it's not this, in especially comedic works expect another character to accuse the objector of doing this.
Commonly used to respond to the advances of an Abhorrent Admirer or Casanova Wannabe. Also commonly used by Caustic Critics to describe the painful badness of what they're reviewing.
Compare I Need to Go Iron My Dog as more mundane excuses, and Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon given the outlandish things people often say they would rather experience. Contrast Fate Worse than Death as a more serious comparison. Anything but That! is another negative (over)reaction, though usually to threats. I'm Thinking It Over! is the related comedy trope where two lopsided alternatives are presented, and the character takes far too long to choose between them. If eventually forced into an undesirable situation, it might become Too Desperate to Be Picky.
## Examples:
-
*GG Bond*: In Season 12 episode 2, GG Bond demonstrates his singing skills, which turn out to be so awful that S-Daddy says that he would rather listen to cats screeching than hear GG Bond's singing.
- In episode 31 of
*Happy Heroes*, the "romantic date with Miss Peach" scenario the Supermen go through in Doctor H.'s virtual reality dream goggles proves too disappointing for them, and once they wake up they tell the Doctor they never want to dream again. note : The Supermen are robots and unable to dream normally like humans do. When the Doc tries to draw their attention to another scenario he made that he thinks they might enjoy, the Supermen stick to their word, with Smart S. commenting he'd rather die than have another dream.
-
*My Hero Academia*: Played for Drama near the end of Final Exams Arc where both Midoriya and Bakugou are paired up against All Might for their finals. Bakugou would rather fail the exam (i.e. if this was an actual life-and-death situation, he would rather die or suffer a gruesome fate) than accept help from Midoriya, at least until Midoriya knocks some sense into him.
- In an Advanced Generation-era
*Pokémon* episode, Team Rocket winds up staying with an old couple who nothing of their criminal behavior, and they assume Jessie is Jamess girlfriend and ask him whether he will marry her someday. His response? ID RATHER DIE!
-
*Tamagotchi*: Played for Drama. In episode 143, when ||Kizunatchi starts to fall to the ground after she's overwhelmed trying to fend off the eggification of Tamagotchi Planet||, Mametchi and his friends all express immense displeasure at this, and Mametchi says that he'd rather fall victim to the egg curse himself than ||see her die||. The other Tama-Friends all agree with his statement, exclaiming they'd also rather become eggs even at the cost of sacrificing their interests.
- Jeff Foxworthy has a bit about how people imagine southerners in white-collar professions, noting that the Southern accent is "not the world's most intelligent-sounding accent", including this doctor:
"A'right, now what we gonna do is, saw the top o'your head off, root around in there with a stick an' see if we can't find that dadburned clot."
"No, thanks, I'll just die, okay?"
- Before pairing up with Liz, Jon repeatedly had women tell him what horrible things they'd prefer to a date with him in
*Garfield*. It was a kind of Running Gag for a while.
- In one
*Peanuts* strip, Snoopy played a mixed doubles tennis match with his partner Molly Volley, a girl notorious for her Hair-Trigger Temper. In the final strip, he was invited to another match. His reply? "I've had distemper and I've played the mixed doubles. I'd rather have distemper." (Ironically, he *would* be her partner again, and it would be even worse, seeing as one of their opponents was "Crybaby Boobie", who complained about *everything*, literally.)
- In
*The Best Revenge* Snape needs to get a Christmas present for Charity.
He would rather stick needles in his eyes than set foot in some god-awful be-ruffled establishment full of witches' furbelows.
- In
*Extraordinary Summer* the Malfoys protest Harry's status as heir of the House of Black.
**Narcissa:** Draco really does have precedence. Both as the son of a Black rather than a grandson, and as Pollux Black's descendant, who was Dorea Black's *older* brother. *She* was the youngest of her generation. **Sirius:** You might have married sine manu, but your first child is a *Malfoy* by contract, not a Black. And even if he wasn't? I would rather be tormented in Tartarus than see the Black fortune go to Death Eaters.
- In
*The Golden Age* a number of supposed Muggleborn are informed they were the product of rape. One anonymous witch is extremely bitter about her parentage in her written reply.
It might have made all the difference when I was at Hogwarts, but now I would rather have hot needles stuck in my eyes than accept charity from Lucius Arsehole Malfoy.
-
*Harry Potter and the Order of Merlin*:
Severus Snape sipped a lovely beverage and watched.
Given a choice of tasks, he placed having unanesthetized oral surgery as something he would rather do than be in Black's company.
-
*Heat*: A Twi'lek stripper implies to Inalap'akis that she might be able to get the information she needs from the SiltShift Cantina bartender by seducing him.
**Inalap'akis:** Man at the bar says you know Andronikos Revel. **Dancer:** I hate to break it to you, sweetie, but Regg'd lie to his own grandmother. Him's the one that's been doing business with Andronikos. I never seen the guy in my life. But, for a *price*, I can tell you how to get old Regg to give up any information you want. **Inalap'akis:** What do you want me to do, kriff him? Forget it, I don't do that anymore. Certainly not with a Rodian — I'd sooner run into a heat storm naked.
- In
*High Heels and Hippogriffs* Cassie and Remus decide to visit the Ministry to see the Potter wills.
**Cassie:** Sure, you don't want to go? **Snape:** I'd rather gouge my eye out.
-
*I Don't Love You*:
**Harry:** Not enjoying the party? **Snape:** I'd sooner cut myself into little pieces in order to make it easier for Hagrid's mutt to eat me than go back into that hell.
-
*Knights of the Founders*:
And, of course, if he was given the choice, he'd much rather chew off his own arm than go and stay with Aunt Marge, Ripper, and her other bulldogs — all of whom, thanks to lots of reinforcement from Marge, hated Harry with a passion.
-
*Medium Rare*:
**Snape:** Firstly, Simon Fraser is my ex, and it was he whom the gossipmongers saw with me. He is also my former professor, and he came here in an effort to get me to come back, both to him and to the university. To teach, for pity's sake. And since I would rather jab a hot poker into my eyes than teach, you can imagine my response.
-
*Naru-Hina Chronicles*:
- Ino is annoyed by the fact that Shikamaru has kept his relationship with Temari a secret from her and Choji. She decides to punish Shikamaru by forcing him to pay for the barbecue meal and bringing Temari along so they would get to know her better. Shikamaru then complains that he would much rather let Temari meet his parents instead.
- After Sai tells a girl named Jirian that he picked her up as a date because he wanted to lose his virginity and she looked like she would be easy, she slaps him on the face and angrily yells "I WOULD RATHER SLEEP WITH A DOG THAN YOU, YOU PERVERTED CREEP!"
- In
*The Loud House* fanfiction *The Nightmare House*, Lincoln says he would rather suffer for ten years in a glass cage with no food but accompanied by his sisters than live with his fake sisters.
-
*Oil and Water*:
**Ron:** Why would you want to go anywhere with the ferret? **Harry:** Because he is my friend and he asked me to go is why. You're more than welcome to join us. **Ron:** No thanks I'd rather stick a fork in my eyes.
- In
*Old West*, Rattlesnake Jake tells Delilah Rangler not to accept a bribe from his rival Irvin Worst, and she doesn't need to be told twice.
**Delilah Rangler:** Please, sugar. I may be a murderous criminal, but I ain't stupid. Plus, takin' money from Irvin Worst would mean I'd have to suffer him staring at my tits. I'd rather screw an exhaust pipe.
-
*Our Time is Now*:
**Aunt Petunia:** Just put on this jumper. **Tristan:** I'd rather get stabbed repeatedly than wear *that* ugly thing.
- In
*Painted in the Worst Light* Snape is unable to eat porridge of any variety.
**Snape:** It's an intolerance. It's not an allergy, but I'd rather eat nails. It wouldn't feel any different.
- In
*Season of Change* a post-fifth year Harry would rather be subjected to the Cruciatus Curse than spend yet another summer with his relatives.
-
*True Potential*: After Anko sneezes in Chapter 66, Zabuza tells her to stay far away from him if she's sick, as he hates getting sick. He adds "I'd rather take a kunai to the back than catch a fucking cold."
-
*What doesn't kill you*:
**Luna:** No spacing out on me mister. Your first test is tomorrow, you need to eat as much as I'm sure your stomach doesn't want to. **Harry:** A test? I'd prefer a trip to the doctor for a colonoscopy. I'd prefer a root canal...
- In
*Brave*, during an explosive argument with her mother, Merida shouts "I'd rather die than be like you!"
-
*Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show* has a dramatic example when Edd and Eddy have a falling-out after one cruel joke too many.
**Edd:** I'd rather face my consequences, Ed, than wander aimlessly with a *so-called friend!*
- In the song "On the Open Road" from
*A Goofy Movie*, Max lists a number of things he'd prefer to having to take a parent/child-bonding road trip with his father.
*All in all, I'd rather have detention *
All in all, I'd rather eat a toad
And the old man drives like such a klutz
That I'm about to hurl my guts
Directly upon the open road
-
*Recess: School's Out*: Miss Finster would rather eat playground dirt than go back to be with Benedict.
- From
*Shrek the Third*, we have a pair of college girls having a conversation, with one of them saying, "And then I said, 'I'd rather get the black plague or get stuck in an iron maiden than go out with you!'"
- In
*Toy Story 3*, the toys try to escape the daycare by sneaking out through the garbage chute, but their path is blocked by Lotso and his henchmen, who threaten to throw them in the dumpster if they don't stay with them and be part of their "family". Jessie responds with: "This isn't a family! It's a prison! You're a liar and a bully! And I'd rather rot in this dumpster than join any family of yours!"
-
*The Cat in the Hat*: The cat says that there's two treatments to the siblings' attitude problems; one is "a series of painful shots injected into your abdomen and kneecap" (while holding an oversized syringe), the other involves a musical number. Sally immediately asks "How many shots?"
- In
*Ever After*, Marguerite and her mother make plans for her to wear a dress that belonged to Danielle's deceased mother to the masquerade ball. After walking in on Marguerite about to try on the dress, Danielle angrily declares "I would rather die a thousand deaths than to see my mother's dress on that spoiled, selfish cow!"
- In
*George of the Jungle*, Ursula's mother is trying to drive George away from Ursula.
**George:** So you no want Ursula to love George? **Mom:** I'd rather have my tongue nailed to this table every morning at breakfast.
- Played for Drama in
*Guyver: Dark Hero*. As Crane and Marcus are fighting as Zoanoids, Crane talks down to Marcus about his desire to protect his family over serving Cronos, ||which sadly ends in tragedy||:
- Happens in
*High School Musical* when Zeke tries to ask Sharpay out.
- In the aftermath of getting a dick ||farm|| branded on his ass on
*Jackass 2*, Bam Margera has this to say:
**Bam Margera:** I'd rather rip my dick off and throw it in the river than to do that again. God *damn*.
-
*Lockout*: The leading man, Snow, initially refuses the call to save the president's daughter with the line "I'd rather castrate myself with blunt rocks."
- Happens in
*Singin' in the Rain*, when Don kisses Lina while filming a love scene after learning that she got Kathy fired from her job because she knew he liked Kathy:
**Lina:** Oh Donny! You couldn't kiss me like that and not mean it just a teensy bit! **Don:** Meet the greatest actor in the world. I'd rather kiss a tarantula. **Lina:** You don't mean that. **Don:** I don't— Hey Joe, bring me a tarantula!
- A Played for Drama example in
*Star Trek*. When Nero's ship is caught up in the black hole created by the Red Matter, Kirk (against Spock's better wishes) offers a lifeline: to show that humans are decent enough to give an enemy a chance. Nero's reply?
**Nero:**
I would rather suffer the end of Romulus a thousand times. I would rather die in
*agony*
than accept assistance from you.
**Kirk:**
You got it.
*[to Sulu]*
Arm phasers. Fire everything we got.
-
*Star Wars*, *The Empire Strikes Back*:
- Leia pulls this on Han during their "excuse me princess" exchange, which starts when Han thinks Leia wants him to stay because of the way she feels about him:
**Leia:** Yes! You're a great help to us! You're a natural leader! **Han:** No! That's not it! Come on! Ah, come on! **Leia:** You're imagining things! **Han:** Am I? Then why are you following me? Afraid I was going to leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?! **Leia:** I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee! **Han:** I can arrange that! *[as he leaves]* YOU COULD USE A GOOD KISS!!
- A non-verbal example occurs later; Darth Vader tries to convince Luke to join him in ruling the galaxy. After a few minutes, Luke lets go of what he's holding, letting himself plummet into the abyss.
- In
*The Three Musketeers* (1993) the queen declares that "I would rather die" than be Richelieu's wife when he takes the throne. He screams, "THAT CAN BE ARRANGED!"
- A memorable one from
*Without a Paddle* comes when the protagonists are stranded in freezing rain, sans clothing:
**Dan:** The only chance we have to survive is to huddle together for warmth. **Jerry:** I, for one, choose death.
-
*Adrian Mole* "would rather eat *live toads*" than go to family therapy, and "would sooner have climbed into the bear pit at Whipsnade Zoo naked and covered in honey" than have an awkward conversation with his girlfriend's father.
- Early on in
*Captain Vorpatril's Alliance*, Tej Arqua is about to get arrested by Immigration, which would lead to her being deported straight into the hands of her house's enemies, who would use her to get at the rest of her family. Her only options for escaping that fate are either marrying Ivan Vorpatril or jumping out the window to her death. And she's giving the second option some serious consideration...
- In
*A Christmas Carol* Scrooge suggests that the indigent go to prisons or workhouses instead of him giving to charity. The person he's talking to says "Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
- Variant: In
*The Dresden Files: Summer Knight* Harry informs his literal Exposition Fairy Bob the Skull about how his latest client is Queen Mab of the Winter Court. Bob says something to the effect of "Here's where I ask you why you don't try a safer profession, like administering suppositories to rabid gorillas."
- In Tomi DePaolo's book
*Helga's Dowry*, the eponymous troll maiden comes back after earning her own dowry so she can afford to marry. However, in the process, she's learned that her intended doesn't love her and is only interested in marrying wealthy. She tells him she'd rather wander the world forever (the penalty for being an unmarried troll maiden) than marry him. (Fortunately, she winds up being able to Take a Third Option.)
-
*Red Dwarf:* Lister bluntly informs Rimmer he'd rather drink his own diarrhea, or anyone else's for that matter — every hour on the hour for the next fifty years — than spend the rest of his life having to put up with him.
-
*Roys Bedoys*: In Respect Peoples Opinions, Roys Bedoys!, Roys claims he would rather not wear shoes than wear Makers.
-
*The Addams Family*: Given how "creepy and kooky" the Addamses are, quite a lot of regular people would prefer just about anything to having to interact with them.
- In "Gomez the Politician", one of Hilliard's campaigners tries to convince him to welcome the Addamses to the campaign personally, saying that the family has enough money to make a large contribution and that the public likes contact with the candidate. Hilliard retorts that he'd prefer to lose, and the guy shoots back that he might without more funds. Lurch ends up dragging Hilliard over for a "strategy meeting" anyway.
- In "Halloween with the Addams Family", crooks Marty and Claude end up accepting Gomez's invitation to celebrate Halloween with them in a desperate attempt to hide from the cops. Over time, they get less and less satisfied with their hiding place. When the Addamses announce they're going to read a poem, Claude whispers to Marty that it would be better for them in jail. Marty hisses at him to be quiet.
- In "Morticia the Matchmaker", a young lawyer's boss tries to send him to talk business with Gomez, saying that he's ideally suited because he's met the family before. The lawyer says he'd rather interact with a scorpion nest.
-
*Angel*: Lorne the Host when he's told he has to travel from Earth back to his home dimension:
**Lorne:**
I'd rather have a hydrochloric acid facial. I'd rather invite a hive of wasps to nest in my throat. I'd rather sit through a junior high school production
of "Cats"!
You see where I'm going with this?
-
*The A-Team*: "Moving Targets" has a double example.
- When B.A. wakes up enraged about being put on a plane, Face says that he would rather sit near a king cobra without clothes on than let him out of his restraints.
- At the end, B.A. announces that he booked them passage on a freighter for the return trip and volunteered the other three to pay for it by helping around the ship (including repainting the whole thing). Hannibal wryly comments that he would have preferred it if B.A. had made him eat one of his cigars.
-
*Babylon 5*: At the end of the first season, faced with going into the council chamber and ceding all claim to a sector of space to the Narns, Londo comments, "I think I'll go stick my head in the station's fusion reactor; it would be less painful. And after a while, I might even come to enjoy it." note : This line has extra subtext to those who followed J. Michael Straczynski on Usenet. He complained about being admonished to Write What You Know; he used the same line (except that it was holding a drill to his ear and turning it on).
- In an episode of
*The Big Bang Theory*, Raj is about to lose his work Visa and is in danger of deportation, so Sheldon offers to let Raj work for him. (Not *with* him, **for** him.) Raj says he'd rather swim naked across the Ganges River with paper cuts on his nipples and die a slow agonizing death from infection than work with Sheldon. note : This is NOT a ridiculously exaggerated example. Do NOT go anywhere near the Ganges River if you have an open wound. It is gross. Then he says he'll take the job.
- This is just one of the many snide weapons in the vocal arsenal of
*Blackadder*, particularly in the fourth season.
*[George suggests he do a stage act after ripping on Music Hall]* **Blackadder:** Thanks, George, but if you don't mind, I'd rather have my tongue beaten wafer-thin by a steak tenderizer, and then stapled to the floor with a croquet hoop.
- Bottom:
- In "Smells", after Eddie asks a sex shop owner for "five quid's worth".
**Owner:**
Very droll, sir. I've never heard that one before.
**Eddie:**
Really? Shall I tell it again?
**Owner:**
No thank you, sir. I'd rather have a pineapple inserted violently into my rectum.
**Eddie:**
...You've been working here too long, mate.
- In "Holy", Eddie responds to Richie's offer of trying his "sprouts Mexicane" by saying that he would rather cut off his own penis with a rusty bread knife.
- In the third live show, Eddie's response to Richie's suggestion of playing "I, Spy" is to say that he would rather watch an entire episode of
*Telly Addicts*, with sellotape over his mouth so he would have to swallow his own vomit. He then amends this by saying he would rather be taped to Noel Edmonds himself, in the nude, without earplugs or a "beardguard".
-
*Burn Notice*: Andre Dekker, one of the Villains of the Week in "Unpaid Debts" and a black market courier, tells Michael he would sooner cut his own throat than allow anyone to interfere in his deliveries.
"Do you think I would hesitate to cut yours?"
-
*Cheers*: After Sam hits on her yet again, Rebecca clarifies the matter for him: She not only doesn't want to go out with him, she'd rather have her gall bladder removed.
- In the fifth season of
*Chuck*, Morgan, who's lost bits of his memory and is trying to regain them by watching his old favorite movies, in this case *Star Wars*, says he'd rather claw his eyeballs out than hear any more of Jar Jar Binks.
-
*The Cosby Show*: The regular actors ended up acting out a storybook scene from a story Rudy wrote, where an evil henchman makes romantic advances on the good song leader, and she rejects him:
-
*The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air*: Near the end of the episode "Day Damn One", Carlton advices Will to change his ways so he could fit in with his friends, but Will makes clear that he doesn't want Carlton's friends.
**Will:** If I woke up one morning and I had all of your friends and I was an Alligaroo and I wore those cute shirts with the little horses on them, I'd jump off the Empire State Building and hope to catch my eyelid on a nail.
- In the
*The Golden Girls* episode "Love for Sale", Dorothy tries to make her ex-husband Stan back down from continuing to bid on her in his Grand Romantic Gesture during a bachelorette auction by making a statement about what she'd rather do than go out with him. It does nothing to deter him, though Hilarity Ensues as a random man reacts to her statement with an Accidental Bid, which Stan proceeds to outbid anyway.
**Dorothy**
: Stanley, stop it. I'm not going out with you. I would rather be Bound and Gagged
and left on an ant hill, covered with honey.
**Random Guy**
: $400!
*[sits down after realizing what he just did and noticing eyes upon him]*
- In
*Happy Days*, Potsie asks a girl to do something romantic with him, and she retorts, "I'd rather catch diphtheria!"
-
*House of Anubis*:
-
*House of the Dragon*: In the finale of Season 1, when Ser Otto Hightower has the temerity to offer the fostering of both Princes Aegon the Younger and Viserys (squire and cupbearer, respectively) to King Aegon (The Usurper) as a reward of his terms (read: "hostages"), Daemon verbally eviscerates him.
**Prince Daemon Targaryen:**
I would rather feed my sons to the dragons than have them carry spears and cups for your drunken, usurper cunt
of a king.
-
*The Late Show with Stephen Colbert*: On June 15, 2018, Colbert mocks the deleterious work conditions at the White House and the difficulties of hiring staff. To the question "Interested in a job in the White House?", he jokes that the GMail app offered the auto-suggested responses, "No", "Hell no", and "I'd rather eat a muffin made of broken glass."
-
*Married... with Children*:
- Al once claimed he would rather "rip my nose off with a can opener, bob for apples in a sewer" and "have a catheter the size of a garden hose" than get a second job to support Peg's shopping.
- In "Buck Saves the Day", he claimed he'd "rather slam my nose in a car door. I'd rather have a proctologist named Dr. Hook. I would rather watch Roseanne Barr do a striptease than take these little booger machines camping."
- When Peg was pregnant and suggested that the baby sleep in their room, Al stated that he would "rather sleep in a bunk bed underneath Oprah. I would rather engage in a threesome with Roseanne and her really cool husband. I would rather play naked Twister with every one of The Golden Girls than to share a room with that little doody-geyser."
- In "Love Conquers Al", Peggy suggests that she and Al join her parents and the other couples in a marriage retreat.
**Al:** Peg, I'd rather go synchronized swimming with Angela Lansbury. I'd rather have my neck shaved by Ray Charles. I'd even rather have your picture tattooed on the inside of my eyelids than spend any more time with these clowns!
-
*Monk*: Monk's hang-ups often mean he'd rather do any number of horrible things than one thing most people would take in stride.
- "Mr. Monk and the Naked Man"
- Upon seeing all the nudity on a clothing-optional beach, Monk purposely stares into the sun, trying to make himself go blind.
- After Chance (the titular nudist) hugs him goodbye, Monk begins walking towards the ocean in a daze, seemingly attempting to commit Suicide by Sea rather than deal with all the issues the hug brought up.
- In "Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty", Monk tells Natalie he would rather be sucked out of an airplane than have jury duty.
- In "Happy Birthday, Mr. Monk", Monk and Natalie are being pursued by a stranger, which Stottlemeyer says relates to a bounty just put on Monk's head. At one point, they're faced with the choice of hiding in a dumpster or a port-a-potty. Monk initially declares that he prefers death. However, after a few seconds, he hides in the dumpster with Natalie.
- Other people have also made similar comments about varying things. In "Mr. Monk Goes to Mexico", a college boy on vacation propositions Sharona. She says she'd rather chew glass.
-
*Monty Python's Flying Circus*: In "The Piranha Brothers", Luigi Vercotti describes the prospect of having to meet Doug Piranha:
**Luigi:** Well, I was terrified. Everyone's terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was afraid of Doug.
- In the Musical Episode of
*Once Upon a Time*, Rumplestiltskin declares he'd rather poke his eyes out with a rusty fork than sing.
-
*The Orville*: Ed lampshades the Timey-Wimey Ball in "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" as follows: "You guys will *not* get me into a discussion of time travel logic. I'd rather chew broken glass."
-
*Power Rangers Ninja Steel*: In "Love Stings".
**Venoma:** Won't you be my Valentine, Blue Ranger? **Preston:** I'd rather have a tooth pulled!
-
*Red Dwarf:* Kryten is aghast that Lister and the Cat would rather face horrible (if prolonged) death at the hands of Simulants in the slim hope of looting their ship for food rather than live off Kryten's dandelion soup. The Cat states that if it was the option of a Simulant using their ribs as a xylophone, he'd hand them the sheet music.
-
*The Vampire Diaries*:
- Stefan and Damon are forced to visit their old girlfriend Katherine, who's trapped in a tomb by a spell. She asks them to join her, and Damon says he'd rather poke his eyes out.
- When Klaus is out hunting for werewolves to turn into hybrids, one of them says she'd rather die than become a vampire.
- In the
*Veep* episode "Signals", when Selina is told that Congressman Furlong wants to meet her, she responds: "Okay, well, let's see. I'd rather set fire to my vulva, so that's a no."
-
*Voyagers!*, "An Arrow Pointing East": When the Sheriff asks Maid Marian how she's enjoying their excursion through the woods, she compares it to eating live lizards.
- Stuart Campbell used this in some of his more negative
*Amiga Power* reviews:
- The review of
*International Rugby Challenge* featured a "scientific" comparison of the game with other "most-bad things." The Bosnian war, the Somalian famine, the Rodney King beating, and the depletion of the ozone layer were all judged to be not as bad as *International Rugby Challenge*, though "Having Electrodes Attached To Your Genitals And Being Flogged Senseless With A Knotted Rope" would probably be just as bad.
- The short review of the Porting Disaster of
*ThunderJaws* included the statement "I'd rather have my liver pierced with a rusty fork and undergo a particularly unpleasant series of rabies inoculations than have to play this quite disgracefully boring and incompetent production-line conversion job again."
- Perhaps the grand-daddy from popular music, "Blue Suede Shoes", where Carl Perkins sang that:
*You can burn my house, steal my car *
Drink my liquor from an old fruit-jar
Do anything that you want to do
But uh-uh baby, lay off of my shoes
- The closing lines of Tom Lehrer's "Oedipus Rex".
*You may end up just like Oedipus, *
I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus,
Then end up just like Oedipus Rex!
- The chorus of Luther Vandross' "I'd Rather" has a downplayed version of this trope, as the singer chooses to suffer while together with his true love rather than be by himself or someone else.
*I'd rather have bad times with you, than good times with someone else *
I'd rather be beside you in a storm, than safe and warm by myself
I'd rather have hard times together, than to have it easy apart
I'd rather have the one who holds my heart
- The song "Beg, Borrow, and Steal" by Ohio Express is all about how he'd rather do those three things for a living than go back to his Tsundere girlfriend.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's "One More Minute", singing about an ex.
*That's right, you ain't gonna see me crying *
I'm glad that you found somebody new
'Cause I'd rather spend eternity eating shards of broken glass
Than spend one more minute with you.
- Dave Barry once wrote in a column that he "would rather undergo vasectomy via Weed Whacker than attend an opera."
- Roger Ebert's review of
*Seven Days in Utopia* began, "I would rather eat a golf ball than see this movie again."
-
*Evil Dead: The Musical*: "Join Us" has Ash state, "I'd rather look like this moose" than join the Evil Dead. Unfortunately, said moose is also a Candarian demon, which bites his hand.
-
*My Fair Lady*: In "I'm An Ordinary Man", Higgins says that he'd "be equally as willing for a dentist to be drilling than to ever let a woman in my life," and, in the second verse, that he'd "prefer a repetition of the Spanish Inquisition."
-
*Much Ado About Nothing*: Benedick provides an epic example after he gets mad at Beatrice:
**Benedick:** Will your grace command me any service to the world's end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the furthest inch of Asia, bring you the length of Prester John's foot, fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard, do you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather than hold three words conference with this harpy!
-
*The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures* throws up a randomized message each time the Nerd dies, usually following the template: "I'D RATHER (colorful verb phrase) FROM A (animal's body part) THAN CONTINUE THIS (colorful adjective) GAME!!"
-
*Assassin's Creed: Valhalla:* A recording found has Loki telling his lover he'd rather suffer and die as the whole world burns to the ground rather than go begging to Odin for forgiveness.
- In a level early in
*Delicious 6: Emily's Childhood Memories* five-year-old Emily states that she'd rather be stung by bees than play with the boy next door.
- In
*Digimon Survive*, on the Moral route, you learn that ||The Master, the Big Bad of the story, is having human children kidnapped and sacrificed out of a belief that this is necessary to maintain the Kemonogami's world. After The Master explains this, Agumon rebukes him by saying that he'd rather have his world not exist if sacrificing children is the price of maintaining it.||
- In
*Genshin Impact*, Diluc hates the Fatui so much that if he was forced to choose between dealing with them or "eating a Cryo-Slime whole", he says he'd be better off getting crushed to death by a giant meteorite. Paimon immediately teases him for being so dramatic.
-
*Mass Effect*: Harkin mistakes a female Shepard for a stripper, and *very* crudely invites her to cit down and entertain him.
**Shepard:** I'd rather drink a cup full of acid after chewing on razor blades.
- During the part in
*Secret of Mana* where you get rescued from dying in the desert by the Tasnican Republic sandship and subsequently enslaved by the obnoxious bratty commander when the Boy and the Sprite find the Girl, the commander is trying to make her serve him, but she's not being very cooperative.
**Commander:** Massage my back! **Girl:** I'd sooner have my gums scraped.
-
*Star Wars: The Old Republic*: During the Smuggler's Tatooine arc, Vavarone Zare can try to convince them to side with her by offering "the pleasure of her company." While a Dark Smuggler can take her up on it, a Light Smuggler is repulsed.
**Smuggler:** I'd rather drink a hutt's bathwater. **Zare:** How revolting.
- This happens twice in
*Super Monkey Ball 2*. A constantly brought-up plot point is that the main antagonist of the Story Mode, Dr. Bad-Boon has a crush on Meemee, who doesn't reciprocate at all, and rather harshly states she doesn't like him. Bad-Boon tries to get Meemee to marry him so he'll give back all the bananas he stole in the opening. Both times, she says she'd rather starve to death and stay small note : Bad-Boon shrunk Aiai, Meemee, Baby & Gongon with a shrinker beam at this point in the game than marry him. He does not take those reactions well. note : He then proceeded to plant a bomb in Jungle Island's volcano in an attempt to sink it, and tried to eat Aiai, Baby & Gongon, which were foiled by Gongon muscling the bomb out of the volcano and Meemee going up Bad-Boon's nose, respectively.
- In
*Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair*, Raiko attends a Halloween party held by her friend Rie and rejects the cat costume her mother bought for her, finding it embarrassing. She remarks to Momoko that she'd rather kill herself than wear it, and Momoko calls her out on her making light of suicide.
-
*Batman: Wayne Family Adventures*: Red Hood ends up, along with the rest of the Batfamily, overhearing Batman's flirting with Catwoman. His response is to ask for someone to kill him again.
-
*Ctrl+Alt+Del*:
- Lucas once described customer service as "like chewing on broken glass, only 100 times less fun."
- Another comic has the Devil offer a choice to a damned person, between grinding their face-off with a power sander or doing
*something* with *League of Legends* (it's unclear to non-LoL-player readers what *solo queue* is or why it's bad).
- In
*Freefall*, a starship inspector is suspicious of how the *Savage Chicken* was refurbished for flight (by contractors that got paid!) and feels he should investigate Sam further...
**Inspector:** But that would mean spending more time with you than I absolutely have to. Frankly, I'd rather be dipped in bees. Goodbye.
-
*Nerf NOW!!* has Jo called out on his hyperbole when he tries to invoke it in regards to playing *Skullgirls*.
-
*The Order of the Stick*:
-
*Ozy and Millie* once had Millie wishing to have a normal family. After realizing how she'd phrased it, she added "Well, okay, I'd rather eat nuclear waste than be like everybody else, *but even so!*"
-
*Pet Foolery*: In "Rescue", an imprisoned adventurer hears a friend say she climbed up to get him out. Said friend warns him that she had to shape-shift into something he doesn't like (a spider) to reach the window. When the first giant legs come over the windowsill, he tells her to just leave him to die.
-
*Questionable Content*: When offered a job managing Marigold's finances as a suddenly-successful Virtual Streamer, May jokingly asks why she should accept this offer if she can just become a streamer herself. When Marigold takes this seriously and offers to help her get set up, she backtracks and admits she'd rather "balance [Marigold's] checkbook with an abacus" than actually start streaming herself.
-
*Terminal Lance*: Abe has better things to do than his Marine Corps Institution courses. Like nailing his penis to a table.
-
*xkcd*: The Alt Text of "Gen Z" quotes someone expressing a preference for an early death over a lifetime of eating yogurt.
Curdled milk, of a peculiar kind, made after a Bulgarian recipe and called "yaghurt," is now a Parisian fad and is believed to be a remedy against growing old. A correspondent who has tried it, says he would prefer to die young. (1905, The Elk Falls Journal)
-
*SF Debris*:
- From the
*Something Awful* review of the movie *The House That Screamed*: "I'm not saying I disliked the film, I'm just saying that I'd rather rip all of my teeth out with rusty pliers, make them into a comb, and use the comb made of my own teeth to scrape all of my skin off than watch it again."
-
*Cranky Steve's Haunted Whorehouse* (now hosted on *Something Awful*) includes a colorfully described "Pain Level" for each awful map reviewed.
- A regular occurrence with
*The Angry Video Game Nerd*, often in a profane matter. For example:
- In the first
*Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde* episode, he advises destroying the game instead of playing it, saying, "You'd rather super-glue your asshole shut than play that game. You'd rather drown in gasoline."
- The episode on
*Who Framed Roger Rabbit* for the NES includes two such lines that became part of the lyrics of the Theme Tune: "I'd rather have a fucking buffalo take a diarrhea dump in my ear than subject them to this horrendous garbage... I'd rather eat out the rotten asshole of a roadkill skunk than play this game, ever again."
-
*The Blockbuster Buster*: In his review of the 2003 adaptation of *The Cat in the Hat*, he says he would rather watch *The Room* while strapped to a chair with his eyes strapped open while Tommy Wiseau sits next to him and gives his own personal commentary.
- FishStickOnAStick, in his review of
*Blood Whistle*, concludes that the story is beyond salvaging because he "would rather get impaled by the Blood Whistle itself than have to read this story again."
-
*Joueur du Grenier*:
-
*The Nostalgia Critic*: During his review of *Pixels*, the elephant in the room said he'd rather rub his balls in a cheese grater than listen to Adam Sandler's annoying voice.
- Arkle, host of the YouTube show
*Shameless Cashgrab*, said that his at-the-time recent tooth canal was a less unpleasant experience than watching *My Mom's a Werewolf*.
- Nikki from
*6teen* tends to use this trope quite a bit:
- In "Employee of the Month", Nikki says that she would rather pull a watermelon out of her nose than be employee of the month at the Khaki Barn.
- In "Mr. Nice Guy", the girls are trying to teach Jonesy how to act nice in front of a date, and when Cailtin suggests that one of them should be a pretend date for Jonesy to practice on, Nikki says that she would rather watch someone eat her hand.
-
*The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius*: When Jimmy is faced with the offer of visiting Eustace's place after the former beat the latter in a kite battle, Jimmy says he'd rather gargle liquid nitrogen.
-
*The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3* has some:
- In the episode "The Ugly Mermaid", Mario, in his Frog Suit, flees from a (very ugly) mermaid princess who instantly falls in love with him and wants to marry him.
**Mario:** I'd rather face a thousand Koopas than one mermaid mackerel with marriage on her mind.
- In the episode "Crimes R Us", King Bowser Koopa abducts a crook named Crime Wave Clyde, who was sentenced to 12,423 years with no parole in jail, to teach his kids how to become criminals. The Koopa Kids drive Clyde crazy throughout the episode and later, under their father's orders, double-cross him. After Clyde switches over to the Mario Bros' side and even helps them defeat Koopa and the Koopalings, he happily returns to prison.
**Luigi:** Hey, well, thanks for the help, Clyde, but I've never seen anyone so happy to be back behind bars. **Clyde:** 12,423 years and no parole is a lot better than one more day with those Koopas.
-
*Animaniacs*:
- In one episode, a businessman sitting next to the Warners, who pester him and want him to be their "special friend", tells them that "I'd rather be stranded on an island and be eaten by cannibals than be your 'special friend'!" Which is exactly what happens to him at the end.
- In her debut cartoon "Meet Minerva Mink", Minerva listens to her phone messages, one of which is from a nervous Lawrence, asking, "I was wondering if you'd like to go out with me?" Minerva, Breaking the Fourth Wall, replies, "I'd rather chew aluminum."
- In the
*Arthur* episode "Arthur and the Square Dance", after Arthur spends the entire episode believing that he and Francine are in love, this exchange follows:
**Arthur:** You don't want to kiss me? **Francine:** Are you kidding?!? I'd rather get head lice!
-
*BoJack Horseman*: Near the end of "That Went Well", when Mr. Peanutbutter receives a visit from his ex-wife about a proposition she wants him to take up.
**Katrina:**
Listen, butt-sniffer, I work for a guy and we're looking for a guy. You're supposed to be this big hero now, so someone brought your name up in a meeting and now I have an opportunity for you.
**Mr. Peanutbutter:**
Oh, is it being married to you again? Because I'd rather get euthanized. Spoiler alert for
*Marley & Me*
.
**Katrina:**
It wasn't a spoiler until you said the name of the movie.
- In the
*Bonkers* episode "I Oughta Be in Toons", Bonkers mentions that former child star Babyface has an ego so obnoxious, that people have said that they would dance barefoot on the surface of the Sun rather than work with him again.
- In an episode of
*The Critic* where Jay reviews a *really* junky movie with Clint Eastwood returning as Dirty Harry in "Beverly Hills Robo K-9 Cop and a Half 2". Jay unveils a scale that measures the movie in terms of diseases he'd rather have than watch it, which goes past leprosy and "unidentified yellow substance" before settling on spastic colon.
-
*Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines*: In "Sky-Hi I.Q.", an efficiency expert assigns command of the Vulture Squadron to Muttley, prompting Dastardly to protest "It'll be a rainy day in May before I take orders from that mutt!" (And sure enough, a rain cloud emerges from Dastardly's phone and douses him.)
- In "Doug vs. the Klotzoid Zombies", Doug imagines what would happen if all of Quailman's friends avoided him. When Quailman asks Skeeter if he wants to hang out, Skeeter says he would rather kiss a moving train.
-
*DuckTales*:
-
*DuckTales* (1987):
-
*Darkwing Duck*: In "Star-Crossed Circuits", while D-2000 is trying to get Darkwing to take a romantic moonlight walk with it, it corners him against the edge of the tower and says he can either come along or dive into the bay. Darkwing thinks a moment and then takes the plunge. Unfortunately, it takes this as Playing Hard to Get.
-
*DuckTales* (2017): In "Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake!", Goldie recalls being trapped in another dimension where a million tiny imps would stab her with splinters and whisper all her worst failures in her ears. She says that her current situation, being locked in a Gilded Cage and forced to be Doofus's new "Gummeemama", is worse.
-
*Family Guy*
- In "Screwed the Pooch", Carter gives this response when Lois asks if Peter could join him in a poker game.
**Carter:**
Sorry, honey. I'd rather be stuck in an elevator with Nathan Lane
, Gilbert Gottfried
, Carrot Top, uh, Sean Hayes.... well, you get the picture.
- In "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven", once word gets around town that Brian is an atheist, Mayor West says he'd rather welcome a terrorist into Quahog because they'd at least believe in a god, "even if it's a smelly, brown god".
-
*Final Space*: In the episode "Hyper-Transdimensional Bridge Rising", Gary says that getting swallowed by his colon is preferable to trusting Clarence, who has previously betrayed him and his friends earlier in the show.
-
*Goof Troop*: In "Have Yourself a Goofy Little Christmas", Pete prepares his family for a vacation to Aspirin, Colorado. When P.J. suggests that the Goofs come with them, Pete retorts that he'd eat cat litter first.
-
*Johnny Bravo*: In one episode, Johnny tries asking out a reporter who responds that she'd rather be hit by a comet; then a comet appears out of nowhere and scoops her away.
-
*The Loud House*:
- In "Space Invader", Lincoln begs Lucy to make up with Lynn. Lucy's response: "I'd rather wear pink."
- In "Save the Date", Lincoln denies having feelings for Ronnie Anne, saying he'd "rather lick the bathroom floor" than kiss her. Somewhat amusingly, he rescinds this statement when taken up on the "offer".
- At the beginning of the
*Martin Mystery* episode, "Terror From the Sky," Martin is talking to a friend about how Jenny, a girl he has a crush on, told him that he was so sweet, he gave her a toothache. We then cut to Jenny talking to Diana, and she reveals that she actually told Martin that she would rather have all her teeth pulled than go out with him.
- On
*Metalocalypse* Murderface buys his grandma a new motorized scooter. She tells him that he's going to heaven for it, and Murderface flatly says that he'd rather die than go to heaven.
- In the season 2 finale of
*The Owl House*, when Kikimora brings Hunter (||actually Luz in disguise||) in, she offers to take his role as Belos's right hand. Belos, having no reason to play nice anymore, takes great glee in telling her that if she was his right hand, he'd rather cut off his whole arm.
-
*Samurai Jack*: In a Season 5 episode, when Jack saves Ashi from a crab creature and expects some gratitude for it.
**Jack:** *You're welcome.* **Ashi:** I'd be happier as this creature's excrement than be grateful to you!
-
*SpongeBob SquarePants*:
- In "Squidville", after SpongeBob and Patrick accidentally destroy Squidward's house, Squidward tells them "I would rather tear out my brain stem, carry it into the middle of the nearest four-way intersection, and skip rope with it than go on living
*where I do now*."
- In "Just One Bite", when SpongeBob asks Squidward if he'd like to try a Krabby Patty for the first time, he responds "If I were trapped at the bottom of a well for three years with nothing to eat but that Krabby Patty, I'd eat my own legs first!
*(beat)* And not just the extra ones."
- In "Keep Bikini Bottom Beautiful", when SpongeBob asks if he can help Squidward, Squidward tells him that "I would rather be beaten to a pulp."
-
*Star Trek: Lower Decks:* At the end of "Hear All, Trust Nothing", Quark makes it emphatically clear in a choice between being in prison for fraud or just poor which he'd choose.
**Captain Freeman:** Wouldn't you rather be poor than in prison? **Quark:** *Nooooo!*
- In the
*Star Trek: The Animated Series* episode "Albatross", after another fight with Spock, McCoy tells Kirk that if he lands in jail again, Kirk should leave him there rather than sending Spock to effect another jailbreak.
- In
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* episode "Rhino-Man", Shredder and Krang have Rocksteady and Bebop become superheroes so they could enter a superhero contest and receive a diamond they want.
**Shredder:** *[about Rocksteady and Bebop]* Oooh, those morons! I should've handled this hero business myself! But I'd rather eat brussels sprouts for a week than be a do-gooder.
- Montana Max's relationship with Elmyra from
*Tiny Toon Adventures* is like this. In the episode, "Prom-ise Her Anything", Monty tells Elmyra he'd rather get a lobotomy than be her date. In "It's a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special", he tells her he'd rather eat dog food than kiss her Under the Mistletoe. Both times, he doesn't just say this to her, he yells it to her, really loudly.
- Toby in
*Trollhunters* decides to ask every girl in school (except his best friend's crush) to the High-School Dance. He is universally turned down; the one rejection we see on screen is, "I'd rather choke to death."
- One episode of
*Wayside* had the plot kicked off by Todd claiming he'd rather eat Miss Mush's Mushroom Surprise than be Maurecia's boyfriend, and the class decides to call his bluff.
-
*What's New, Scooby-Doo?*: In "Lights, Camera, Mayhem!", the culprit, after being caught, says that he'd rather go to jail than become known for making the film. Velma, however, says that he shouldn't need to go to jail, because no one got hurt as a result of the "Scooby-Doo" Hoax.
- In
*Xiaolin Showdown*, after Raimundo pulls a FaceHeel Turn and joins Wuya, she makes the same offer to the now captive Clay and Kimiko; Kimikio's response is rather unsubtle, while Clay says he'd "rather kiss the rear end of a very ugly mule."
- Former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway has gone on record saying that, if offered the job of White House press secretary, would "Slit my wrists, bleed out, put Cement Shoes on, jump off the bridge, and then I'll take the job — are you kidding me?" Read the story here. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainLevelComparison |
Goddamned Boss - TV Tropes
Climb back up, and repeat
*ad nauseam*. **Pit:**
Why aren't my attacks doing more damage?!
**Palutena:**
Well, it
*is*
a boss...
**Pit:**
So annoying!
First, let us say that it is not That One Boss.
These bosses are not particularly difficult or dangerous, but an absolute pain in the neck to fight (one of the proposed titles for this trope was therefore "Pain In The Boss"). Sure, your character may be able to last all day against this boss's attacks, but your patience certainly cannot. Frustration leading to mistakes is the most common way that players end up getting killed by these bosses.
In short, Goddamned Boss is the boss equivalent of Goddamned Bats, while That One Boss is the boss equivalent of Demonic Spiders. Or phrased another way, it is actually not that difficult to beat once you've seen through the annoyance factor, deciphered its attack pattern and come up with an effective counter-strategy.
Common traits of the Goddamned Boss include:
- Attacks that cause an Interface Screw.
- Attacks that throw you to the other end of the arena or even out of it.
- A weak spot that's nigh-impossible to hit.
- Has a weak point protected by a shield, especially if the shield can be regenerated if taken down.
- Employs numerous Status Effects, especially ones such as Sleep or Confuse that impede your ability to control your character.
- Frequently runs or teleports out of attack range.
- Incredibly high Hit Points. Bonus points if it
*regenerates* said hit points. Extra bonus points if it heals at a rate just under how fast you can damage it.
- Can heal itself up back to full in an instant, incredibly high hit points or not.
- Taunts the player. Constantly.
- Uses Mana Burn, Mana Drain, or some other form of Power Nullifier.
- Is sandwiched between long, unskippable cutscenes or a drought of Save Points. The boss itself may not be much of a problem, but if you fail, then you have to wait for a while before you can try to beat it again. You can go watch YouTube while waiting for some of these, but the worst ones require constant controller input.
- Moves with very long animations, so even if the damage is minimal, you have to sit through the animation every time the boss uses it.
- Is a Flunky Boss, especially if the flunkies make it awkward to damage the boss itself without getting hit.
- The battle mechanics are painfully repetitive.
- Has access to That One Attack which heals the boss or makes it invincible for a while, making the length of the fight dependent on how the A.I. Roulette is feeling that day.
- A Tactical Suicide Boss that has an attack that lets you hurt it, and rarely uses it, at random.
- By extension, a Tennis Boss that can
*only* be damaged by its Tactical Suicide move and forces the player to wait before it's used.
- Extended cutscenes in the middle of the fight where you can't hurt them, especially if they're triggered by how much health is left instead of time.
- If it's an optional boss, it may qualify as one of those if it's a major pain in the ass to summon and/or find him at all.
- If you're running a New Game Plus, the boss can't simply be blazed through with your previous-run gear and items, while other bosses can be curb-stomped with comparatively little issue.
Sometimes overlaps with Marathon Boss. If this annoying yet easy boss occurs at a particularly plot-significant point, it may be seen as an Anti-Climax Boss. For bosses that are really frickin' hard
*beyond* an annoyance factor, see That One Boss.
## Example subpages:
By genre
<!—index—>
<!—/index—>
By game
<!—index—>
<!—/index—>
## Other examples:
- In
*God of War III*, there is truly one that is not difficult to kill (On easy or normal mode...), but hard to fight. The Cerberus/Satyr fight in the underworld. The monster dog does a number of things to simply drive you insane. First, it spawns smaller dogs that explode, up to three at a time. Sure, you can kick them back at the Cerberus if you are lucky. It has a three prong massive fire attack, which, while easy to avoid, is unblockable; last but not least, it uses its claws to swipe away your health, but this is easy to avoid. After you tear off one head is when things get interesting. Now a Satyr shows up to help. If you manage to kill it and tear off another dog head, TWO more of these things show up! So now you have serious problem. This boss is the Goddammed boss of the game when played on Titan mode or above. Apparently, you are supposed to use ' Boots to help with the battle according to YouTube, but locking on to the right enemy is far from easy; most of the time, you'll end up locking on to one of the exploding dogs instead, very frustrating. Satyrs being the series-long Demonic Spider doesn't help.
-
*Godzilla: Monster of Monsters!*:
- Gezora. It's not really hard to defeat, yet thanks to a bug it can trap you and constantly smack you with its tentacle, dealing no damage, but giving you less time to defeat it. Sometimes, it continues to smack you until the timer will run out, and then it would regenerate some of its lost health. In later worlds, it regenerates much more health, making Gezora one of the most annoying bosses (if not
*the* most annoying boss) in the game, and to make matters worse since its one of the first two bosses in the game you get to fight him on *every single world*.
- Baragon has the annoying trait of "often not possible to hit". You need to get in close and kick it in the face when it is on all fours, and when it stands on its hind legs to fire at you you can't hit it at all. It stands often. Even your beam won't touch it most of the time, with most of it going over Baragon's head on all fours, and it inexplicably missing when Baragon stands on its hind legs. Worse is that Baragon (and Varan) is one of two worst offenders of "retreat to the next field" tactic when the timer runs out, which can deprive you of leveling up and a much-deserved victory after duking it out with this annoying little bugger.
-
*Devil May Cry 4* has a terrible boss in the form of the first fight against Agnus (or rather, the glass window blocking him from you). Waves of Gladius fly out, and you're supposed to grab them and use them to break the glass. On lower difficulties, it's not too bad, but on higher ones, it's a nightmare. In theory, you're supposed to grab a Gladius before it attacks you or just shoot it and then grab another whilst dodging the ones you can't. In practice, your lock-on controls won't know which Gladius you want, they attack fast enough that you can only dodge so much, the floor constantly charges with electricity so you're limited by your dodging space, and it's entirely possible to be stun-locked and lose half of your health in one go.
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*Bayonetta* has the Final Boss Jubileus, especially on Hard or Non-Stop Infinite Climax. She's not difficult by the standards of the last boss in a Nintendo Hard game, many of her attacks are well telegraphed, and her "fire" and "ice areas" can both be cheesed with the Odette weapon. But she has five lifebars, is often curled up in the middle of her sphere and unreachable to most attacks, frequently summons flying heads that are tankier than they look and tend to mess with attacking her if left alone, she goes through multiple phrases that have unskippable cutscenes between each one, and towards the last legs she gains a One-Hit Kill move that can catch a player off guard. The icing on the cake is the minigame where the player steers her soul towards the sun. On Normal on lower, the minigame is easy and cathartic. On Hard or Non-Stop, the terrestrial planets become much harder to dodge, not helped by the camera being a little deceptive and making it *look* like the player is avoiding them when they are not. Failing this minigame means instant death, which requires starting the entire lengthy boss fight and the motorcycle ride before it all over again if the player does not want a major score penalty.
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*Streets of Rage 3*, the end boss of Stage 4: the mysterious samurai ninja robot(?) named Yamato. He splits into three separate entities (of which, chivalrously, only one will face you at a time), with *four life bars each.* His default behavior is to keep his distance and wait for the player to make a move (or throw flaming shuriken at a passive opponent). When you get too close, he'll either immediately make a flying leap to the other side of the arena or run you through with a lightning-fast sword dash. If you back him into a corner, he'll either Flash Step right behind you for another slash-dash or turn briefly invincible and run over anything between him and the opposing corner of the arena. He has some other tactics too, such as turning briefly invisible and throwing shuriken in triples or splitting into two unhittable mirror images that symmetrically dash through everything in the upper and lower edges of the area. However, with tons of practice, finding weaknesses, and goading him into doing just those things that leave openings for attack, he gets simple and he turns into a slightly more arduous Marathon Boss.
- Carrion from
*Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage* isn't particularly strong or durable, but is annoying due to his ability to levitate and turn intangible.
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*River City Ransom* has one of the really early bosses: Moose. The problem isn't him as the first boss, he's a pushover the real problem is his stage. If you don't watch your footing, before you beat him, you'll plunge into the huge pit that takes up most of the Construction Site and instantly die, and then have to run all the way back to the Construction Site, mop up all the mooks there, and finally fight Moose again.
- In
*StreetPass Mii Plaza*'s *Battleground Z*/ *StreetPass Zombies*, Bubba and Cleetus Rotts can't really harm you that much, but they use a combination of throwing you out into the far edges of their cornfield and sending endless numbers of fast-moving zombie dogs at you. If you don't yet know their attack patterns, you'll spend more time going back to the center of the cornfield, while fighting off their dogs, than actually fighting them.
- Shimano in chapter 3 of
*Yakuza Kiwami* is a Marathon Boss with a mountain of health and Super Armor on most of his attacks, meaning you have to chip away at his life bar a tiny amount at a time or risk getting hit back. The worst part, however, is that he occasionally stops and starts regenerating his life bars at an alarming rate. The trick you are meant to use for this fight is the remake's namesake Kiwami attacks, which interrupt the regeneration and deal a ton of damage, but the tutorial on them took place during A Taste of Power, so you might not understand why you can't interrupt the boss's healing (the game never clearly tells you that you need to unlock the Essence of Extreme Rush). If you didn't realize just how important the "Essence of Extreme X" skills were, you'll have no choice but to wear down the boss the long and boring way.
- Bloody Marie from
*Skullgirls*. Her attacks do good damage, but are blockable, and she isn't too over-powered, particularly her first two forms. Her third form is smaller and floats above the ground, which is highly annoying due to her attacking more than the first two forms and her tendency to run away, as well as being immune to most ground attacks.
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*Borderlands 2*:
- Wilhelm is this for many players. A giant robot with many hard to avoid attacks and can summon lesser robots to either annoy and distract you or to get his shield recharged unless you blast them quickly. Even with a strong corrosive weapon, Wilhelm has a ton of health. Don't let the boss catch you near the arena's cliff edge because he can push you over it and instantly kill you, causing his health and shield to be
*fully restored* because you died. The only way to avoid that is to play with other people, since boss characters cannot regain health unless the entire group is taken out in one swoop.
- Saturn manages to be even worse, being encountered in an area where pools of slag will make you vulnerable to damage if you step on them (and is very easy to do on accident) and while cover is available, he's so tall he can shoot over most of it anyway. It does get easier once you shoot out his many turrets, but then it just becomes an attrition fight of finding cover from his missile attack, dealing as much damage as possible, and dive back in.
- An optional Raid Boss, called "Terramorphous the Invincible" can be fought initially as a side mission after the end of the original campaign. As a Raid Boss, he is not that difficult if you are a few levels above him. However, he is made to be fought first in True Vault Hunter Mode with
*four* level 50 characters at the same time. Also he has a slapping attack which, if standing in the wrong place, can toss you out of the arena into a deep chasm. However, there is an area in the arena where most of his attacks can't reach. If the player can find that spot, the fight should be much easier.
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*Half-Life 2*:
- The Gunship battles are this if you don't understand how the rocket launcher works, which many players do not thanks to the only explanation being by Colonel Cubbage at a time when you might not even be anywhere near him.
- To a lesser extent, Striders, but they don't move as much and don't shoot down your rockets.
- The final boss of
*Opposing Force*. The pattern is simple: shoot out his eyes with the cannons, fire into the portal in his stomach, kill the Shock Trooper he spawns, then repeat. There's barely any challenge; by this stage of the game, one Shock Trooper is barely a threat, the boss's attacks are telegraphed way in advance, and there's a health pool in the other room, safe from anything the boss can throw at you. However, the collision detection for the portal in his stomach is very fiddly, and there's no way to tell if you're actually doing anything until the boss dies, which usually takes a while.
- The invading Striders at the end of Episode 2: the only quick way to defeat them is to either hit them with three rockets or latch a Magnusson Bomb to them and detonate it. You're given plenty of practice with this method beforehand and the base you have to protect has some decent rocket turrets and Vortigaunts which can hold off a couple if they slip through, but what makes it annoying is that every Strider is accompanied by at least 3 Hunters, which will shoot down rockets and bombs if you try to attack the Strider before dealing with them. You can also only carry a single bomb in your car, so if they shoot one down while you're far from a resupply point (or the one you're using gets destroyed) and you're out of rockets you need to backtrack all the way to another to get another shot at it.
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*Diablo II: Lord of Destruction*:
- Alpha Azieru in
*Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2*. It's not Devil Gundam-level difficult, but if you're in the wrong place, the goddamn funnels will hit you no matter where you try to move, sometimes three or four times in a row. It can shave off quite a bit of your health in the process.
- The Hydra in
*Warriors Orochi 3* isn't difficult. It can only be fought with the Yashio'ri cannon and its attacks are easy to avoid. What makes it such a drag is that you have to wait a ridiculously long amount of time for the main beam attack to recharge and the right moment to fire it. At best, it will only take three shots to destroy one head, but this still takes at least a minute. In one battle, you have to destroy *eight* heads.
- The Undead Pirate Captain in
*Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2* has many health points, can deliver average (but not excessive) damage, and resurrects his undead henchmen, meaning that you'll have to deal with them again. The only advantaged character is Alessia the cleric, who can use Turn Undead to wipe them out and destroy their corpses.
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*Hyrule Warriors*:
- Gohma. It's invulnerable except if hit with a specific attack when you see an opening (to be fair, an easily-identifiable one), and is under no obligation to use the attack that exposes the opening. The attacks that
*do* qualify do a large amount of damage and have a wide range. The attacks that *don't* do a large amount of damage and have a wide range. And the bastard's fast. *Do not* let it get a morale boost in Adventure Mode, or it will quickly rise to That One Boss.
- Manhandla. Like Gohma, it's impossible to damage unless you hit it when it exposes its weak point with a specific item.
*Unlike* Gohma, Manhandla has *four* heads that must all be taken out to reveal its weak point, it reveals its weak point more rarely (Gohma has an opening after nearly ever attack; Manhandla only has one after two specific attacks, one which only lets you take out the heads one at a time), and the weapon you have to use to make it vulnerable (the boomerang) has a relatively small range, forcing you to get close. What's worse, it has several wide-range attacks, making it very difficult to avoid taking some damage while you try to get close enough to attack it. ||There is some alleviation to this however. While most of the time it does require all four heads to be taken down, the player can occasionally catch a break and get the plant mass vulnerable by knocking out three or even just two. It seems to be luck based however, if not just a glitch entirely.||
- King Dodongo is by no means difficult to defeat- most characters are able to one-round his weak point, even if they are unable to against other bosses. The annoying bit is revealing this weak point: King Dodongo has a massive array of attacks that he can use regardless of health, and only
*one* will expose his weakpoint. For reference, most other bosses have two or three attacks that expose their weak points, and the attacks that don't tend to appear once the boss has lost some health. If you don't have a Focus Spirit to reveal Dodongo's weakpoint immediately and/or are using a warrior that isn't powerful enough to defeat him in one weak-point strike... prepare to take a while.
- The Imprisoned is easily the tankiest of the Giant Bosses and he just
*loves* to stall with tediously drawn out attacks, potentially costing you an A-rank by either shredding through your health or just wasting too much time. The Imprisoned is unique in that exposing his weak point isn't dependent on him using a specific attack, which sounds nice on paper but in practice requires you to spend much of the fight huddled around his vulnerable feet, practically begging to get stomped on or hit by a powerful shockwave attack if he's at low health. Not helping matters is his sheer size, which many maps just aren't able to comfortably accommodate without messing with the camera. The Imprisoned is even worse in the Wii U version where he will automatically stand up when his weak point gauge reaches half. No other boss, not even *Ganon*, is capable of doing this. The *Legends* and *Definitive* versions remove this trait, but fights with The Imprisoned are still unpleasant regardless.
- Crownslayer from
*Arknights* can be irritating. While her stats are just decent and she is a Warm-Up Boss, she can also use her "blink" ability to pass operators who try blocking her. It's more egregious under Crownslayer: Wolf's Fang contracts (which can only be selected for Pyrite Gorge); they buff her stats, prevent her from being silenced note : when an enemy is silenced, they cannot use their abilities, and increase her weight to make it harder to pull or push her.
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*Dawn of War II*:
- The game gives us the Avatar of Khaine, and the warboss, to an arguably lesser degree, both of them near-endgame bonus bosses with what feels like more HP than all other bosses in the game combined, a considerable repertoire of near instant kill attacks and 'spells,' as well as the ability to call in the most powerful units of their respective races as reinforcements. The only way to defeat these monstrosities tends to be a good twenty minutes of hit and run attacks with your ranged squads, and if you should lose focus only once, there is a good chance they will be swathed with a well placed area of effect spell, forcing you to repeat the entire process. Oh, and they do of course regenerate HP at a disturbing rate.
- The second sequel, Retribution, gave us a more straight example in Mad Meks, who you fight in the first Ork mission on the Space Hulk. He's armed with a Rokkit Launcher that will blow the crap out of vehicles but do pretty piss poor damage against heavily armored heroes, doubtlessly not enough to ever overwhelm the healing you can do with liberal applications of the items/abilities you have at your disposal. However, his armor has a chance to teleport anyone who melees a reasonable distance away from him. Thus, the majority of the fight will be spent telling your own units to run up and hit his face ad nauseam without ever being in any real danger of losing. The fact that he can immobilize everyone temporarily or take damage to his energy bar rather than his health doesn't help either...
- In the Protoss mini-campaign of
*Starcraft II*, the player fights Maar, a protoss-zerg hybrid and an extremely annoying boss. Every time he is brought down to zero health, he returns to his spawn point and regenerates before coming back for another round. To make matters worse, Maar keeps doing this until the end of the mission, and comes back stronger ever single time. What stops him from being That One Boss is the fact that he's not all that tough; because of his massive energy capacity, a single high templar can take out half his health with its disruption ability.
- Paladin Uther in the Undead campaign of
*Warcraft III*. You only have basic infantry to deal with him, whom Uther can one-shot with the same spell he can also heal his pose of knights with. Next, due to his trait, both he and the knights have ridiculously high armor. And finally, he can become invincible for 45 seconds, with no option for you but to wait it out. You can always run away and spawn more units, so **eventually** he will go down, but it's still a very long and tedious fight. Thank Nerzul, at least he cannot ressurect his knights if you kill them, or else keyboards would be broken.
- Frozen Throne makes things even harder. The final Undead mission has Arthas who is brought down to lvl 2 while up against Illidan, and his Naga and Blood Elf army, and the three opposing heroes are at lvl 10. Thankfully, Illidan's an idiot and you get the walking mass of murder that is Anub'Arak to babysit Arthas until he's back at level 10.
- Any high-level Blademaster is one by default, due to their "mirror image" ability. With any other enemy hero you at least know
*what* to attack. This bastard can spawn three dopplegangers, who look exactly like him, down to the HP and mana count. Yes, there're ways to tell: the copies cannot actually harm you, they take extra damage from attacks and super-extra damage from banishing spells, - but good luck using those in the heat of battle, and once you single out the real one, he just recasts the spell, and the fun starts anew!
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*Angband*:
- Smeagol. His attacks deal negligible damage, but he has high health, moves quickly, and can steal your money whenever he hits you. Even worse, he teleports whenever he steals from you and you couldn't get your money back until a recent update. Also, he's invisible (though warm-blooded, so you can see him with infravision if you're the right race and he's near) at a point when you usually can't yet See Invisible. At least he usually drops great items when killed (not anymore — over the last several versions, the chance that he'll drop a pittance of copper pieces has been steadily rising). It's a bit better if you have some manner of generating bright light, as he'll run away from it. Of course, this means you'll have to chase him around the level.
- Also, later bosses that can heal and teleport self. Can be close to impossible to kill if the "smart monsters" option is on — normally monster casting is a 1-in-X chance (it can be 1-in-2 or even 1-in-1), but in smart mode they
**are** able to choose (with a high probability) which spell to cast (for example, healing about 10 rounds worth of your damage).
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*Hades* has Theseus and Asterius, who alone aren't especially difficult but at the end of Elysium you have to fight them *together*. Asterius will also sometimes show up partway through the level as a miniboss, and in the final fight only have a small dent in his health. Theseus is especially frustrating because he can also call upon boons from the Olympian gods like you can, and also has a shield that blocks attacks from the front much like the hordes of Goddamned Bats that have been harrassing you throughout Elysium. What's even more annoying is that even once you start beating them regularly, they'll still use up enough of your Death Defiances to make it very hard to beat the actual Final Boss, ||Hades||, who otherwise isn't especially difficult. Oh, and there's also the fact that Theseus will spend the entire fight hurling insults at you.
- The bosses of
*Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban* are usually a letdown (even the final one) because of the absurdly over-powered Super Mode of the main characters. However Abra Kadabra, the fat sultan, is the only one that must be fought differently. He hovers on a Flying Carpet and can't be hit, not even with smart bombs - the only way to damage him is to hit the oil drums he rolls every now and then on the floor. Too bad that he uses fire magic that burns the player (including an annoying fire dragon that follows him) and is timed in a way that he usually drops the drums when the player is engulfed in flames and unable to hit them. It is a long and tedious fight as opposed to the ridiculously easy other ones.
- X-Bot from
*Heavy Weapon*. He forces you to move left and right to avoid his One-Hit Kill crushing attack. In the PC version, this makes it frustrating to aim at him while moving around, due to the fact that your tank moves with your cursor. Plus, when you manage to destroy the arms that block it's main weak point, you'll have to condone dodging his eye beams, which are not a one-hit kill but serves as a distraction and can screw the player badly.
- Glorious Symbol from
*Hellsinker* serves as the Segment 2 Behind boss and while he isn't particularly difficult by the standards of the game, he takes a somewhat long time to defeat, no thanks in part to the fact it likes to repeatedly move to the bottom of the screen. While the other bosses of Segments 1 through 3 can be killed quickly just by hitting their central components until they explode, Glorious Symbol requires you to repeatedly destroy its 4 cores multiple times until it finally explodes, something that can easily take over two minutes. Worse yet, you can't just skip him by playing Segment 2 Lead to fight Scarlet Queen on your first playthrough; to earn the privilege of playing the Lead stages, you have to complete Segments 1 through 4 on your first credit.
- In
*Natsuki Chronicles*, there's Alex and Margaret in Stage 7. You have to fight them in a large and extremely clumsy-to-control heavy assault ship, the same one that you fight in *Ginga Force* (as this game is a P.O.V. Sequel, and this stage is her perspective of her boss fight in Chapter 7 of that game), and you basically get pelted with their attacks the whole time therefore as you try capturing their ship with your special weapon. This would be That One Boss if not for the fact that Natsuki will lose the fight regardless and you have a lot of health with which to survive until the fight ends on its own, but you still have to inflict as much capture damage on them and reduce damage to yourself as much as possible to get a good grade on the stage. Thankfully you're not expected to no-damage it since you can take a few dozen hits and still get an S++, and this stage is excluded from Arcade Mode.
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*Touhou Project 13: Ten Desires* has the Stage 3 boss, Miyako Yoshika; her spellcards are in no way considered hard, but for her final spellcard, she surrounds herself with knifes and heals herself. Since the pathway to get around the knives is just as long as dodging them and going to stop Yoshika healing, fighting the battle either way is irritatingly long.
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*Naval Ops: Commander* has the Archaeopteryx, which is a big airplane. It is extremely fast, VERY hard to even hit and follows a "hit-and-run" tactic.
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*Metal Gear Solid* has three:
- The M1 Tank. It goes down in only a few hits and does
*much* less damage than you'd expect frigging *tank rounds* to do to a man in a sneaking suit but the problem is you have to engage it with grenades, the single most unused weapon in the game. Odds are you haven't even tried them out once by this point in the game, so expect to take a rather cruel beating from it until you get good enough with them to toss them through the hatch. The game also neglects to tell you that Claymore mines can damage the tank's treads and slow it down.
- The Hind D gets really
*really* annoying once it gets to around 2/3rds health and begins dipping down below the building. Once it does this it is completely untouchable and the battle basically just... pauses (even the boss music stops) and there's nothing you can do but stand there like a dope and spend the next solid half-minute or so watching it circle on the radar before it flies back into range. It does this *a lot*, between each successful hit even, making the otherwise not difficult battle very frustrating since more than half of it is spent standing around waiting for the battle to resume.
- The second Sniper Wolf battle, provided you don't cheat and use Nikita Missiles. Wolf has a rather huge area to hide in with lots of cover while you... don't. Odds are she'll spot and land a hit on you before you manage to even locate her, let alone zero her in your sights. When this happens your only choice is to run for cover and wait until she loses sight of you, and then try again.
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*Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater* has two:
- The Sniper Duel with The End. Even without the Konami Code cheat or simply waiting a week he's not exactly difficult, but the fight just drags on forever since the area is so massive and it can be tricky to line up a shot on him even when you know exactly where he is. Of course, some fans consider him to be one of the best bosses in the entire series, due to the long and patient cat-and-mouse game, and for those who don't, thank Kojima for the Anti-Frustration Features.
- The Ladder that you climb to reach Groznyj Grad. Yes, the fanbase actually considers it a boss. All you do is hold up to climb a ladder, with no enemies or conflicting obstacles whatsoever.
*For a solid two minutes.*
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*Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots* has the battle with the sniper Crying Wolf (It's just par for the course with sniper battles), who engages you in the same snowfield as Sniper Wolf but this time with an armored suit, a rail gun, and reinforcements. Your choice to fight her boils down to a rather patient game of cat and mouse in the snow, or just hiding under the truck for like 3 hours and landing a hit every time the opportunity presents itself.
- ||Grandfather/Lord Burroughs|| from
*Clock Tower 3*, while not *difficult* per se, is simply beyond annoying to face. His basic attack tethers you on the spot like your own bind move and, sure enough, if he lands three it's an instant loss (though one hell of a death scene). He also has about three olympic swimming pools worth of HP, gains access to a *second* binding move at 3/4 health, and if he gets close can grab you to drain HP and Turn Red for a while, making his already annoying attacks even worse. All the difficulty from what would otherwise be an easy fight comes from how long it drags and that the slightest slip-up practically guarantees an instant death.
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*Haunting Ground*: The final fight against Lorenzo isn't all that hard (especially if one saved loads of Magnesia), but Lorenzo's annoying tendency to suddenly stop and gloat, then proceed to troll Fiona by blowing up the floor at her heels to send her flying becomes plain annoying after the twentieth time it happens. His high health (which is invisible to the player, by the way), tendency to turn on Hewie, teleport *on top* of Fiona to push her into panic, the small size of the arena and his ability to one-hit Fiona at the most random times (panic mode or not, he doesn't care!) only makes it more frustrating. And God help you if you don't have any Health, Panic or Dog items left.
- The first true "boss" in
*Resident Evil*, the giant snake known as Yawn, pops up early enough in the game when you're likely to not entirely have a good grip on the tank-like controls, and in a small room where you can very easily get trapped by his long body. Making matters worse is that you don't actually have to fight him but simply make a break for the crest in the corner, but just getting there and out in one piece is easier said than done. The GameCube Remake made it possible to have Richard help you out which was even more of a double-edged sword: you were forced to take down the snake or else you'd miss out on the single most useful weapon in the game: the *assault shotgun*. This only applies to Jill's game, however; since Richard doesn't show up to assist in Chris' game, he can safely just grab the crest and book it.
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*Resident Evil Code: Veronica* has Alexia in her final form. It's not a hard fight, as all you have to do is hit her once with the linear launcher, but you only have minutes to do so, as wasting too much time results in the Antarctic base blowing up, and she flits around like a fly, spewing ichor at you which causes Chris to drop his aim. Add in the slow moving aiming and the only real way to hit her is to wait for her to cross the middle of the screen and shoot, or pray you saved enough ammo from the Damage Sponge form before it to riddle her with bullets and slow her down.
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*Resident Evil 6*:
- Since the final boss ||Derek Simmons|| of the Leon / Helena chapter feeds on the constant stream of respawning C-Virus Zombies to regenerate, you instead need to impale a zombie with a lightning rod, damage him, let him absorb the zombie, and wait for lightning to strike him to inflict lasting damage. Ironically it's probably the most Resident Evilish boss ever, but it also means the battle's majority consists of first figuring out that's what you're supposed to do, and then waiting patiently for him to grab the lightning rod. It's largely random which zombie he grabs, and lugging the rod around leaves you slow and vulnerable, meaning this fight can drag on for a
*very* long frustrating time if the Random Number God decides he's not going to grab the zombie you want him to.
- The chopper from the Chris / Piers chapter. You're forced to engage it and a swarm of respawning J'avo with nothing more than assault rifles and the almost entirely cosmetic "help" of Jake and Sherry who you're helping to protect from it. Expect the battle to take at least 20 minutes before you finally drive the god-forsaken thing away, and then minutes later you hear Chris say those chilling words "it's come back to finish
*us* off!" Cue second battle exactly like the first, except now you have a somewhat useful grenade launcher. The worst part about this boss is you get to face the exact same boss *again* during the Jake / Sherry, simply playing their part instead of Chris's.
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*Rule of Rose* has the Mermaid boss, which isn't necessarily *difficult*, but the fight can get so drawn-out and monotonous that you mess up out of frustration. Granted, bosses generally aren't the game's strongest suit....
- Scarlet from
*Silent Hill: Homecoming* is a literal *nightmare* to fight if you don't grab the very-easy-to-miss crowbar from Hell's Descent prior. Without it you're stuck engaging her with the Axe (which is too slow to connect) and the Pipe and Knife (which both do Scratch Damage at best). Have fun whittling both her forms down for the next hour and good luck dodging her One-Hit KO attack!
- Arch Azul from
*Dirge of Cerberus* had a real stupid gimmick. He's immune to projectiles. This includes Bullets. Dirge of Cerberus is a Third Person Shooter. The options you have available to you? Magic which does jack shit, and your melee attack with is Jack shit jack. The third option (the right way) is to transform into your monster form and fight back. This causes one of two things to happen, according to The Dark Id: Either you beat the crap out of him and his A.I. shits the bed, or you get stunlocked to death.
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*Gears of War 3* has the Lambent Zerker. She's actually a pretty climactic battle in campaign, where she shows up only once at the end of a frantic defense of fortress at Anvil Gate. Her appearance in Horde Mode is another matter entirely. She has the opportunity to show up every tenth wave, and is one option of five that can be selected at random (the others being a regular Berserker or two, a squad of Reavers, four or five Gunkers, a squad of Savage Corpsers, or a lone Brumak). The Lambent Zerker is easily the worst of the lot because of her staying power—she is vulnerable only when she opens her chest plate (which, if the mood strikes her, may be once every 60 seconds or more), and even then is a Damage Sponge of mythic proportions. She also has the tendency to charge willy-nilly around the map, casually smashing the fortifications you've spent the past nine waves saving up for. The worst part is that Gunkers and Brumaks are tougher enemies, while a regular Berzerker is a more strategic fight—the Lambent Zerker isn't very hard, just annoyingly durable.
- The Super Bean from
*Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2*. It's a Shielded Core Boss who has a forcefield that must be taken down in order to damage it, and it regenerates it after enough time passes. *Also*, it will liberally use Teleport Spam and Flash Step to avoid damage making it a pain to whittle its health. Super Bean's attacks are no slouch either, annoying hitscan Eye Beams, a cape spin, and a big, damaging laser it will use when near death. The good news is that you have four Super Brains assisting you in this fight, the bad news is that it can appear as a Degraded Boss in the Endless Flag mode.
- The original
*Star Fox* has its alternate final boss, ||the Slot Machine||. This box is a mixture of this, Puzzle Boss, Marathon Boss, and Luck-Based Mission. This boss does not have a health bar and is basically one-shotted. But... it's HOW you do it. ||You need to get Triple Sevens. This is EXTREMELY annoying to do, as the game DOES NOT SHOW ANY MERCY WITH THE REELS. You CAN heal if you get Cherries, but you get attacked if you get an Andross. And Andross overrides Cherry. Oh, and the ending you get? Yeah, you can only get out of it by resetting or dying to the enemies that come. And if you die? You do the level ALL OVER AGAIN, INCLUDING THE SLOT MACHINE||.
-
*Splatoon 2*:
- The main game has Octoshower. It isn't too bad the first time you fight it using the Charger, but fighting it again with different weapons is a major pain due to the fact that none of them have the range or damage of a Charger. This makes it incredibly time consuming to fight, since you
*will* waste a bunch of time riding the rails towards it only to not get *quite* close enough to do any damage. The fact that it constantly moves around the arena only magnifies the frustration.
- The
*Octo Expansion* DLC has the rematch with the Octo Samurai. He isn't particularly dangerous as long as you keep your distance, but he only way to damage him is to get in close and detonate the Baller, which does surprisingly little damage. Therefore, the battle has a tendency to drag out as you repeatedly have to charge him to get in one or two hits only to run away before he can knock you out of the arena.
-
*Warframe*:
- Alad V could certainly count. Interface screw? Check. Weak point that's hard to hit? A dog robot that leaps around acrobatically counts. Frequently runs out of range? See the aforementioned dog robot. Incredibly high HP? Check. Taunts the player? Yes. Repetitive mechanics? You bet your ass. Not to mention that he is the ONLY remotely reliable way to farm Neural Sensors, a resource needed to craft three especially important and valuable items (Catalysts, Forma, and certain helmets) that you will probably need several dozen of.
- His Mutalist form manages to be even more annoying. In this case, he is only vulnerable when he uses his collar to control one of the other Tenno in your group, which he rarely does. At this point, while you're trying to damage him, you also have to avoid another Tenno trying to kill you, which depending on the Tenno being controlled can be really difficult.
- Tyl Regor isn't much better. All of his melee attacks have a high chance of stunlocking, and his shields recharge almost instantly. This wouldn't be a problem if he didn't have Flash Step Teleport Spam. He's no match for Purposefully Overpowered weapons, but if you don't have any prepare for a grueling fight.
-
*Fire Emblem*:
- Any boss with the Great Shield/Pavise skill is likely to qualify, which gives them a percentage chance to either halve the damage from an attack (in newer games) or shut it down entirely (in older games). When you add in the fact that said bosses are invariably in some variant of the General class, which is the designated Mighty Glacier and therefore isn't likely to take a lot of damage to begin with, you get fights that can drag out for an irritatingly long time if the boss keeps getting lucky. Probably the most infamous case of this, though, is Boldor from
*Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War*, because there's a time-sensitive objective (namely, a village with a valuable item that *will* be destroyed if you don't get to it quickly) that can only be reached after beating him. He also has a Barrier Ring to mitigate his Achilles heel of being weak to magic, and he's a considerable distance from the player's starting point, meaning that only the mounted units (which have only one healer among them and, barring Sigurd, have generally inferior offense) are likely to reach him in time. The only real option is to hurl all your units at him and *hope* he doesn't trigger Great Shield more than once.
-
*Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade*:
- In Chapter 23 (the Lloyd version), Lloyd Reed goes from a borderline Anti-Climax Boss in Eliwood's path to this kind in Hector's. If you don't find out beforehand that ||not only has he moved to the middle of the map amongst hordes of other mooks, but that
**he also moves when approached**||, you're very likely to pay for it with a dead ally. And the chapter objective is to defeat Lloyd, so if this happens too soon, it's either restart or miss out on the rest of the goodies in the chapter. Also, all this occurs in Fog of War.
**Fun.**
- Kishuna the Magic Seal. He's incapable of harming anyone, but he has an absurdly high evasion rate so beating him is mostly a matter of luck, and if you don't defeat him in one turn, he warps away. Defeating him in his first appearance is required to unlock a Sidequest chapter on Hector's route that's full of massive plot reveals, but you'll probably need many resets to do it.
- The Incubi in the tactical strategy
*Odium*. They are pretty weak and their attack cannot really harm you (they launch exploding spheres which explode after a few turns, so if you keep your men away from them nobody will ever get hurt.) But their animations are horribly slow (and they attack twice per turn), and they happen to have a movement rate just a *lil' bit* faster than all of your men, which means that most of the fight will consist of you chasing them down and trying to get them into range of your weapons so that you can just *barely* scratch them while waiting through the horribly slow enemy turns. (Oh, and each sphere explodes individually at the beginning of the enemy turn, further bogging it down.)
-
*Super Robot Wars: Original Generation* has the R-Gun Rivale. Comes near the end of the level when your characters are all fatigued out, regenerates energy and life, has a force field, and has an attack with very high range. You may use a strategy that sucks up all his energy and hence can not use his ultimate attack (for a time, at least, since he regenerates energy), but he has a backup in the form of Gundam's funnel-like weapons. He has 50 uses/durability for it, though. Do not play on an empty stomach. This branch of the SRW series seems to specialize in such bosses, often prompting tactics that end up gamebreaking in other games (where bosses aren't such insane damage sponges)
- Half of the boss battle against Gary in
*Bully* involves chasing him on a scaffolding whilst he dumps wheelbarrows full of bricks on you from above. whilst bragging about how awesome he is and how much Jimmy sucks. the second half involves punching him whilst he makes NO effort to hurt you. Which makes perfect sense. Gary's a Manipulative Bastard who hid behind others for the entire game. Of course he wouldn't stand a chance in a fistfight against the scrap-happy Jimmy.
- The General from
*Saints Row 2* is very much one. More so then Maero or Kazuo-Maero just had a huge truck and Kazuo had an easy to figure out gimmick (although, considering the timing you had to pull off, Kazuo could count too). The General is worse because he drives around a mall in a huge SUV while an army of Samedi gangsters attack you. While his fleeing never results in a game over, and his SUV can be taken out quickly if you were smart enough to bring an RPG, you may originally be left with no option then to attack him with a dinky SMG on a dinkier ATV while being bombarded with enemy gunfire. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainInTheBoss |
Paintball Episode - TV Tropes
They play; it doesn't mean they're good at it.
*"I can't shoot my own mother. Not with paint, anyway."*
One difficulty for training soldiers is to try recreating the conditions of a battlefield, because you don't want people to go into shock once they hear things whizzing past their head. You also don't want to be using live ammo to get them used to that sensation. So playing paintball is one of the few ways to recreate a battlefield scenario without all the messy carnage involved.
In fiction this scenario is often used for those same purposes, creating a battlefield situation without the genuine worry of a character being killed. There are many different stories this situation can create:
- A paintball reveal, where Unwinnable Training Simulation is finally shown as merely a training exercise.
- The characters go expecting to be doing a training exercise but something happens as a Training "Accident", maybe an unknown switch to live ammo.
- Several comedy scenarios including a recreation of battlefield chaos, a Shell-Shocked Veteran and someone falling down as though they were shot for real. Eventually someone might take it as Serious Business and start laying down traps, taking hostages or doing an Unnecessary Combat Roll.
- Characters deal with personal issues or live out fantasies by going up against rivals or bullies. Possibly, if the characters are usually Book Dumb, they'll prove that they actually have the brains and acumen to fight in battle.
- A full-episode parody (or several pastiches, spoof scenes, and references) of different action genres including war, crime, police and political thriller, with movies like
*The Deer Hunter*, *Apocalypse Now* and *Die Hard* popular targets.
- A situation where the bad guys attack and the characters lack access to their signature gear, forcing them to make do with only their wits and whatever they can scavenge from the field (including the paintball weaponry).
- Tropes Are Flexible, and a Paintball Episode may be applicable to other types of situations including combat maneuvers, crisis simulations and general war games. Compare Martial Arts and Crafts.
As with many things, those who are familiar with the game will likely be frustrated by the inaccuracies done, sometimes just in the name of Rule of Cool. Among these include:
- Characters taking their visors off, even assuming they are full face masks or even wearing anything to begin with, which is the number one piece of safety gear
note : Paintballs are nonlethal in principle, but that doesn't mean that they don't hit with a fair amount of impact - 45-90 pounds of force at 15 feet. There are reports of concussions even with a helmet, and a direct hit on your eye would blind you in that eye, and possibly even *kill*, if it went straight through the eye into the brain. For the reasons why, compare In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face and Helmets Are Hardly Heroic.
- The lack of any visible marshals or playing in public areas not properly partitioned off.
- Personal conduct rules are ignored, such as minimum distance between firing (no point-blank shots), viciously shooting people ten or more times in sensitive areas for comedic effect, and so on.
Mistakes are more excusable when it's not a regulation game (i.e. a bunch of dudes just throwing everything together for shits and giggles). While not as widely known in fiction much of the same format can be applied to airsoft, which is the use of small plastic BB's as ammo with both gun and ammunition being generally cheaper for an avid player. In even more extreme cases, typically played for laughs entirely, laser tag may also be used for the same purpose.
This is Truth in Television, as military and law enforcement use special "Simunition" rounds for training that are fired from an actual gun, while still being relatively safe to use. A number of paintball guns are designed to look, feel and have the same heft as a regular firearm. In any case, skills and tactics used in paintball (regardless of equipment including the gun and headgear) translate rather well to an actual combat engagement.
## Examples:
-
*Bubblegum Crisis* has a brief sequence showing the Knight Sabers doing this in their off hours, presumably for tactical training. The usual "no masks on" rule applies, though the girls are otherwise wearing clothes that'd pass muster, especially considering they fight killer robots on a nightly basis. A welt or two'd probably not even be noticed. Of course, all inaccuracies were overshadowed by Sylia winning the match with a paint *landmine* (those are real; just expensive).
-
*Great Teacher Onizuka*: The second half of Chapter 76 shows a four-way paintball battle in the school between Onizuka and Murai (who use Wallpaper Camouflage), Fujiyoshi and Kusano, Kikuchi and Urumi (who use Night-Vision Goggles and Fast-Roping), and Yoshikawa and Tomoko. ||Tomoko and Yoshikawa win thanks to paint bombs.||
-
*School Rumble* had its class 2-C engage in a massive multi-way paintball battle to determine what their activity would be for the School Festival. Played for the maximum in epic.
- The paintballs switched with live ammo scenario kicks off the plot of the
*Mobile Suit Gundam*/ *Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam* midquel *Mobile Suit Gundam École du Ciel*.
- One episode of
*You're Under Arrest!* featured a paintball match between Yoriko and some of the other Bokuto officers on one team and Chie Sagami-Ono leading the other team. ||Sagami-Ono won the match, but Yoriko arrested some robbers who were hiding nearby and mistook the paintballs for real bullets.|| Another episode featured the Bokuto officers on their day off visiting an amusement park with a paintball arena and competing against the amusement park employees, who wear monster costumes (thereby triggering Miyuki's phobia). (This latter storyline was adapted from a manga chapter; in the manga version, it was a laser tag arena instead.)
- In
*Sound of the Sky*'s first DVD extra episode, the crew has a mock battle with water guns. Being Unsuspectingly Soused at the time, Hilarity Ensues.
- Likewise a DVD extra episode for
*Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid* has Tessa and Melissa engage in a mock Arm-slave battle using paintball ammunition.
-
*Macross*:
- During the evaluation trials in
*Macross Plus*, Guld and Isamu do combat simulations using mech-scaled paintballs. Given their rivalry, it devolves into physical melee, and then the clip of live ammo gets loaded and fired.
- We also see mech-scaled paintballs used for training in
*Macross Frontier* and *Macross Delta*.
- Chapters 142-149 of
*Assassination Classroom* (Season 2 Episode 17-18 of the anime) has the entire class engage in a paintball civil war ||to settle the dispute on whether they want to kill or save Koro-sensei||.
- In the
*Moriarty the Patriot* novels, William James Moriarty's crew has a paintball fight as combat training.
- Episode 24 of
*Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons* is about Sparky training the other goats for a paintball war between them and Wolffy's team, consisting of Master Paopao and Brother Tai.
- The
*Knights of the Dinner Table* special "Last Man Standing" was completely devoted to a game using paintball guns. Hardly anyone wore face protection of any kind - and every character who wore glasses got hit at least once in them. (Even many of those who did not were glasses were hit in the face, but those were "off screen".) Not to mention "firefights" with participants being hit sometimes dozens of times (how do they even know who won?), called shots to the groin, and even one character fighting while carrying an unprotected baby!
- IDW's
*G.I. Joe* series has the training exercise variation. A group of Joes armed only with paintball weapons have to attempt to infiltrate the Pit. A pair of Cobra commandos kill most of the team (who mistake them for their opponents), leaving three essentially unarmed Joes (Cover Girl, Downtown and Tripwire) to take on the Cobra soldiers.
- One of the stories in a
*Punisher Summer Special* had Frank tracking down a gang of killers who disguised themselves as paintball players while equipping their weapons with live rounds.
- In one issue of
*Champions (2016)*, the team bonds/practices their battle strategies over a round of paintball. Vision even drives the team to a paintball arena in a van.
- In the
*Basalt City Chronicles*, a brother of one of the main characters is in the PaNoTer armed forces. He tells his family over a dinner about a time when he and his squad wish to have a practice battle on a paintball field. Several smilodonian youths are there for the same purpose, and the two sides decide to go against each other. The soldiers see no reason to go easy on the youths (all of whom have received some military instruction). Needless to say, the youths lose SPECTACULARLY.
- A scene in preparation for the
*Discworld* and *The Big Bang Theory* crossover *The Many Worlds Interpretation* by A.A. Pessimal has the Caltech gang inviting their Discworld counterparts for a pleasant afternoon of paintballing. They have failed to take into account that Johanna Smith-Rhodes is a trained Assassin. And, in her cover identity as a visiting teaching academic at Caltech, is obliged to turn out for a different team. Zoology note : populated by academics who know all about stealthy inobtrusive movement in order to track and observe animals in the wild without spooking them therefore treat Physics to a Curb-Stomp Battle.
- When training for combat, witch-pilots of the Air Watch use "cold fire" - simulated fireballs which have none of the destructive fiery qualities, effectively blank rounds - to "tag" each other as simulated kills when rehearsing air-combat and engaging in mock dogfights.
- In the training exercise at the beginning of
*The Living Daylights*, the guards shot the infiltrating spies with paintballs (at least that was the intention) despite their lack of face protection.
- During the gun battle exercise in the film version of
*Get Smart*, the agents involved used military simunition instead of real bullets. While they wore protective body armor and goggles, none of them wore facemasks or helmets. Partially justified with the fact that since these were CONTROL field agents, they would have excellent marksmanship.
-
*Man of the Year* has Robin Williams taking his staff paintballing for a team building exercise.
- The Film of the Series
*S.W.A.T. (2003)* has them doing a training scenario using realistic paintball firing guns.
- The lovely but little-known film
*Prom Wars* ends the titular wars with a paintball fight.
-
*Jarhead* uses it almost realistically during its characters' training time. One grunt asks the stupid question-"Them paintball bullets...they hurt?" Cut to the answer.
- In
*Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives*, Jason Voorhees stumbles upon a group office workers playing paintball. They weren't in the film very long.
- The paintball match in
*Severance (2006)* ended prematurely due to a character getting caught in a Bear Trap.
- The campers seemed properly equipped in
*Return to Sleepaway Camp*, except for Alan. Since everyone (including most of the counselors and other employees) hate him, all the players surrounded him and shoot him a bajillion times.
- Taken to ludicrous extremes in
*Aces: Iron Eagle III*. While performing in airshows, the heroes use paint rounds for mock **dogfights**. ||Nearly results in a Training "Accident" when one pilot's guns are secretly loaded with live rounds.||
- In
*Die Hard*, when Hans Gruber is caught by John McClane, he tries to bluff his way out, acting like one of the hostages. When McClane says to stick with him to live, he asks Gruber if he's ever fired a gun. Gruber lies that he spent a weekend at a "Combat Ranch" whose guns shoot bullets of red paint.
- The opening chapter of
*The Science of Discworld II* has Ridcully attempt a team building exercise by taking the wizards into the woods with their staffs set to paint spells. Unfortunately, wizards don't do team building:
**Senior Wrangler**: I'm on *your* side! **Dean**: But you made such a good target!
- Bigmac in the
*Johnny Maxwell Trilogy* is banned from paintball. He reckons they're just jealous because no-one came up with the idea of a paintball grenade before.
**Wobbler**: It was a *tin of paint*. You might have loosened the lid, at least.
- In
*Good Omens*, a group of corporate executives take part in a "team-building" paintball battle. Crowley the demon changes the weapons to real guns. Hilarity Ensues.
- A sci-fi version appears in the
*X-Wing Series*, with low power lasers and dummy missiles sometimes used for starfighter training alongside more conventional flight simulators. Becomes a plot point on multiple occasions:
- In
*Rogue Squadron*, Tycho Celchu flies a Z-95 Headhunter equipped with such weapons on gunnery training missions that are otherwise live fire, a result of his status as a ||falsely|| suspected Manchurian Agent.
-
*Starfighters of Adumar* sees Wedge and company introduce the concept to the Adumari, a planet obsessed with starfighter combat... and with gaining "honor" via deadly bouts of aerial combat. Most Adumari are unreceptive to the idea, but those who do take up Wedge's challenge to mock combat quickly learn its value - with no one turned into a smoking crater at the end of the fight, everyone is able to learn from their mistakes and apply them to future battles.
-
*Primeval* Season 2 Full face masks, but they're removed by the minor characters and one guy, mask semi-removed, shoots the girls multiple times. He then takes his mask off again in an empty clearing. He is soon killed by a saber-tooth tiger.
-
*Spaced* used goggles instead of full face masks, and a total absence of marshals. This allows some acknowledged dangerous shots to occur, mostly Tim firing at Dwayne's crotch. Several times (admittedly causing a severe injury)
**Tim:** No hard feelings eh?
**Duane:** You shot me in the bollocks, Tim.
**Tim:** Yeah, well like I said... *no hard feelings...*
- There was an episode of
*Jake20* with a paintball match. Jake's enjoyment is ruined by someone trying to kill him ||who turned out to be a hallucination||.
-
*South of Nowhere* has an episode where the Carlins and others go paintballing. Especially egregious in that Madison shows up in a *Cheerleading outfit*, just so she can act like a psycho bitch when the cheer squad removes her from the lineup.
-
*Coronation Street*. Tony's stag party pulled most of the common mistakes with masks being lifted up willy-nilly and no sign of marshalls. They did have full-face masks though.
-
*Just Shoot Me!* has an episode with paintballing.
-
*CSI* has an episode where a trio of the main cast visits a paintball course to bring in a suspect. The main members enter the field in the middle of an active game without any protective gear, and the suspect removes his mask while still on the field even though viewers can clearly see people still shooting each other in the background.
-
*MythBusters* will normally break out the full face masks when paintball guns are in use, but during one segment of the "Ultimate MythBuster" episode Adam and Jamie were firing at each other with no body armor other than groin cups and face masks. Of course, the point of that challenge was to see who had the greatest pain tolerance... (Huge surprise, Jamie won.)
- A later episode testing whether a "Slap in the Face" can get you out of a hysterical fit and back to dealing with a stressful situation had them testing cognitive awareness using simunition rounds at a gun range. They used paintball ammo largely because they had to simulate mental fatigue
*and* give that person a gun.
- They tested whether first person shooter games were accurate either when picking up one weapon and discarding another or keeping all the weapons in a live action version of the games with paintball guns.
-
*iCarly*: In "iSaved Your Life", the trio and Spencer play a game called *Assassin* using only blow tube guns. Carly and Freddie were "eliminated" early on, leaving behind extreme mind games between Sam and Spencer. No safety equipment is used at all, although the relatively low speed nature of blow-guns reduces the risk of injury and it was meant to be played in a home.
- The pilot of
*Glee* had the other football players shooting Finn with paintball guns at point-blank range. Not on a paintball range. With *nobody* wearing any gear. And somehow it was all okay because they weren't aiming at his head. So much wrong with this scenario...
-
*The Big Bang Theory*:
- One episode has the cast (minus Penny) walking into their complex, in full paintball uniforms, absolutely covered in blue spots, except for Sheldon, who has a noticeable orange blotch on his back protector (He kept yelling, "Get the kid in the yarmulke!" in a firefight against a Bar mitzvah party). This set up is quickly dumped by the wayside when they run into Penny on the way up, and she invites them to her Halloween party. As they were just walking up the stairs their masks pulled up they were the proper type, later episodes showing them at the course with slightly smaller visors that didn't cover the lower part of the face.
- Another episode begins and ends with them hiding in a building on the course, apparently there are regular paintball games pitting different university teams against each other. This time it includes an Unnecessary Combat Roll, some discussion on their mortality and removing their masks during the game (they were in cover, but the rules still apply). Later in the episode Sheldon vindictively shot Penny in revenge for earlier parts of the episode, and Leonard shot him in return, all of which was done with helmets raised.
- The fifth season premiere had the group at the paintball range again, although personal issues flared up to where they were ready to call it quits. Sheldon decided he was a poor captain and thus committed himself to death by walking out unarmed and insulting the geology department, being promptly shot over a dozen times and ending with an epic Crucified Hero Shot. To their surprise, his sacrifice inspired his team to retake the battle and win the game for the first time. They make the mistake of taking their masks off on the field several times. Notably, they point out the absurdity of the sci-fi style body armor but it isn't entirely unrealistic as players do appreciate some extra padding.
- The last season also has one last paintball episode, "The Paintball Scattering." In this one it's Leonard, Sheldon, & Howard fighting alongside their respective wives Penny, Amy, and Bernadette. Raj accompanies his newly arranged fiancée Anu. And Stuart gets to participate along with his own lady friend & co-worker Denise. The plotlines are mostly just personal issues amongst the pairs interfering with the game. Leonard did actually try to spare Penny from a point-blank shot, acknowledging it's painful and the rule exists.
-
*Malcolm in the Middle*, Malcolm's friend Dabney was being shot repeatedly by a bunch of bullies at point blank range while he was on the floor. When he snapped, he not only returned the favor to one of them, he also was shoving paintballs up the guy's nose.
-
*The King of Queens* had a paintball episode where all the characters had goggles but wore them like headbands, instead of over their eyes where, you know, they could actually do some good.
- Episode of
*Danger Bay*, in which two characters break the pre-established rules about, respectively, taking one's face mask off during the exercise and aiming for the face, with the result that the guy who took his mask off takes a paintball between the eyes and is effectively blinded for most of the rest of the episode.
-
*Six Feet Under* has an episode where paintballing errors show up most egregiously. David and Keith go paintballing with a couple other gay guys. They don't wear protective clothing, they take their googles off and even close-range hits don't elicit any reaction from the characters. It mostly follows the Rule of Funny and aims to illustrate the difference between Keith's Hard Gay friends and David's Camp Gay friends.
- An episode of
*L.A. Law* had some of the attorneys going on a weekend paintball excursion as the team of a client. Stuart Markowitz becomes very good and very ruthless at it. Even more remarkable since Markowitz was coming off a heart attack.
-
*Byker Grove* showed the dangers of this when PJ lost his sight after he removed his mask mid-game and got hit in the face by a paintball.
-
*Greg the Bunny* featured a paintball team building trip. When Gil neglects to invite the women, they get irate and vow to crush him.
-
*Community*
- The first paintball episode has the whole campus engage in a paintball war and the last one standing gets first choice of classes the next semester. The episode includes homages to tons of action movies.
- Season two has a two-parter, half based on westerns, half on Star Wars. The participants wear no protective gear at all (except for whatever they could scavenge).
- Season 6 has another, which occurs when paintball goes underground. It is a homage to the action espionage genre a la
*Mission: Impossible*. There is no safety equipment used at all, and includes one person who isn't even playing getting shot in the head near his eye at close range.
- Near the end of season 4 of
*The Wire*, one episode starts with Michael running away from Chris and Snoop; all three of them armed. He hides, ambushes them, and then we realize that they're actually all using paintball guns.
-
*MacGyver* has Mac and Pete in a Phoenix versus other agencies Paintball match as one of the cold openings. Mac's "no guns" rule applies even to Paintball. And yet, Phoenix was winning, because of Mac.
-
*Ace of Cakes* started an episode like this when the team was asked to make a cake for Splatter Mountain paintball and was invited to play. The first few minutes of the show are about the team sneaking up and assassinating each other before they get to cake-making.
- On
*The Suite Life on Deck*, they had an episode where Cody and Bailey were taught to have fun by Mrs. Tutweiler ( they had come into to class on senior skip day and Mrs. T had had it with their interrupting her reading of a romance novel). Of course, this being the 3rd season, Cody and Bailey took it as an opportunity to hurt each, then their teacher, and finally after the game, they analyzed the science behind it.
-
*Drop the Dead Donkey* featured one episode where Dave and Helen got together during the game and ended up having sex, convincing Helen that she was, after all ||a lesbian||. The cast mostly behaved according to their characters - Sally had her photo taken and went back to the hotel, Damian wore a Rambo style ammunition belt and bandanna - but from what happened off-screen, George apparently had a Heroic BSoD moment - ending up pistol-whipping Gus and giving Henry a black eye, which meant he lost badly-needed money from not being in a fit state to make a TV series independently of Globelink.
-
*Little Mosque on the Prairie*: Amaar's bachelor party involves a paintball game. Unfortunately, Amaar doesn't think the teams through ("everyone on this side of me on my team") and ends up unintentionally making the game Muslims versus (white) non-Muslims - which, besides the lampshaded Unfortunate Implications, means that he's saddled with a whole team who've never handled a gun in their lives, half of whom immediately shoot their own teammates by mistake.
- One episode of
*Top Shot* allowed members of the two teams to finally shoot at members of the opposing team with paintball markers While the target marksmen were running from one protected firing point to the next.
-
*Stargate SG-1* has the intar: a device developed by the Goa'uld for use in training Jaffa, that stuns people shot with it, instead of killing them. It is first seen being used by a group of Jaffa being trained to fight using human weapons, and tactics, and is later adopted by the SGC for use in training exercises for its recruits.
- A Season 3 episode of
*Hell's Kitchen* had Chef Ramsay reward the winning team with a trip to the paintball range, where Gordon took on all three by himself - and he still won. Because this is also a Real Life example, all the proper rules were obeyed.
- One episode of
*CSI: NY* had two paintballers staging a match in alley. One is murdered when he stumbles on to a drug deal, while the other is abducted by a mentally unstable woman who thinks he is an alien. The paintballers were, at least, wearing full protective gear. The gear, combined with the luminous green paint she thought was blood, was why the woman mistook him for an alien.
-
*The Piglet Files*, a 1990's British sitcom, has the MI-5 protagonists doing a paintball training exercise, including a parody of the Taking the Bullet cliché. The doofus of the group is praised for having no paintball marks on him, only to reveal as he walks away that he's been shot In the Back numerous times. No-one wears protective equipment as we're initially supposed to believe they're actually in combat.
- While
*House* did not have an official paintball episode, the one-hour retrospective which aired before the series finale ended with Robert Sean Leonard and Hugh Laurie having a paintball match in the defunct set of the Princeton Plainsboro hospital.
-
*How I Met Your Mother* has Barney's utter devotion to laser tag from the very first episode, and is sometimes revisited throughout the series and playing up the "mock battlefield" scenario. In one episode he gets too aggressive against the kids that were playing and the manager had Barney turn in his membership card in a style very similar to a Cowboy Cop being asked to resign.
-
*Peep Show*: The second half of "The Love Bunker" takes place during a paintball match.
-
*Las Vegas* has the owner, Casey, taking the gang over to do paintball. Most of them were not wearing the proper gear.
- In the
*Space: Above and Beyond* episode "Ray Butts", the titular Lt. Col. Butts puts the squadron through a training exercise with paintball pistols. In the best traditions of this trope, no one is seen wearing any eye protection or other padding.
- One episode of
*Sledge Hammer!* had the titular detective investigate a murder on a paintball field. Near the end, he takes on the suspects in a paintball match.
-
*Brooklyn Nine-Nine*:
- The show first gets one with the episode "Tactical Village". Fairly realistic in that it's a training scenario for a group of cops (they're using training rounds in what looks like real guns) but nobody seems to be wearing more protection than goggles. And they get shot in the chest at a couple of feet!
- Appears again in "Windbreaker City", in which the cops are invited to a terrorism training exercise for federal agencies only to be looked down on by everyone else present and discover that they're assigned to be the hostages. They eventually end up rebelling and freeing themselves, only to
*then* decide to take revenge on the condescending feds by taking over the role of the terrorists.
-
*SEAL Team* occasionally features Bravo training using simunition rounds (made clear by the use of blue magazines and blue suppressors). In one episode, Bravo and Green Team have to engage in multiple rounds of a simulated assault, resulting in everyone involved getting covered in paint marks.
-
*Ugly Betty*: "Bananas for Betty" has Alexis and Daniel try to settle their rivalry (and decide control of a multimillion-dollar company) with a paintball contest.
-
*St. Elsewhere*: Drs. Chandler, Erlich, and Morrison take part in a tournament against a group of accountants. It's mild-mannered Jack Morrison, working through some serious PTSD, who winds up going mercenary against the rival team.
- The Military Channel series
*Special Ops Missions* features former United States Army Ranger and Air Force Pararescueman Wil Willis going up against groups of opposing-force operatives, which consist of regular and special operations veterans, in simulated wargame missions. They use simunition paintball rounds in their M-4 carbines and M-16 rifles, which the show frequently mentions as non-lethal but still quite painful to be hit by.
- In one
*Dilbert* strip, the Pointy-Haired Boss signed the team up for a paintball course as a "team building exercise", but instead of them going out to a paintballing field, he interpreted it as hunting them in the office with a paintball gun, without them being aware of it.
-
*Brawl Stars* did this with their Deep Sea Brawl season, overlapping with Under the Sea, including a street artist brawler, skins of Colt, Fang and Belle with sea vibes, paintball amo and half their faces covered and a whole new aquatic enviornment.
-
*LittleBigPlanet* has the *Metal Gear Solid* DLC level pack, which comes with the Paintinator, a paintball gun for shooting down ID-tagged weaponry and ||Metal Gear REX||.
-
*Mario Party*:
-
*Mario Party 8*: The minigame Paint Misbehavin' has two pairs of characters (or, alternatively, only two individual characters) operate train-like paint cannons across rails to shoot paintballs at Goombas. One pair or solo character shoots pink paintballs while the other shoots blue ones. If a Goomba is painted with either color, it's still possible to change its color by shooting painting from the other. If a pair or character gets hit by a rival paintball, they'll be stunned for a short while. After 30 seconds, whichever pair or character has more Goombas painted with their color wins; but if the number of painted Goombas is the same for both colors, the minigame ends in a tie.
-
*Mario Party 9*: The minigame Flinger Painting places the players in front of a giant blank canvas, and arms them with paintball guns. The goal is to cover more of the canvas with your color than any other player by firing paintballs at it. The paintball guns can be charged by holding the fire button down for a second before releasing, resulting in a larger shot. Players can cover paint left by their opponents, adding extra strategy. The player with the most paint coverage when the time limit expires wins the minigame.
-
*Mario Party 10*: Paintball Battle is a minigame where players run around a small maze carrying paintball guns, and the objective is to defeat all of their rivals by shooting them. Each player's paintballs match their player color, and when they hit an opponent, that player will get covered in paint of that color.
-
*Mario Party: Star Rush*: Splat a Stamp sees each player using a slingshot to fire paintballs onto a giant stamp of an enemy character such as a Shy Guy or Bullet Bill, with the goal of covering as much of the stamp with their color as possible. The game is similar to Flinger Painting from *Mario Party 9*, but instead of covering a blank canvas, in this game, only paint that lands on the parts of the stamp that make up the character shape will count toward the players' scores.
- In the webcomic
*Life of Riley* the BOBs are able to gain an early lead over the forces of darkness in their "Paintbrawl" specifically because the bad guys don't understand the rules.
-
*PvP* did a paintball arc in early 2008 that was very careful about getting the details right, with proper masks and realistic paintball guns and terminology and rules. The one exception was Francis using a *HALO* helmet instead of a regular paintball mask, though in this case the marshals at least discussed it. Up to the point where Brent got a dislocated *nipple* (maybe Scott Kurtz was afraid the strips weren't zany enough). Then the cast snuck onto the course at night with no marshal and did all the things they weren't supposed to do, but at least then it was justified (and they even pointed it out later). That sequence features a cameo from "Doc", who runs a paintball shop in Alaska and draws *The Whiteboard*, a paintball-themed Web Comic, as well as a human version of the owner of the paintball field from that comic, "Red". This may have contributed to the accuracy.
-
*The Whiteboard*: The author makes markers for the game and can get a little annoyed by people disregarding the rules.
-
*Sluggy Freelance*'s "Sistine Shrapnel" arc, complete with Torg being a wuss about getting hit and Riff illegally modifying his marker.
-
*Schlock Mercenary* has a few incidents where the mercs, equipped with "goober rounds", i.e. big wads of glue that can stick people to the floor, decide to have an impromptu practice session amongst themselves. Schlock's teams tend to win these. Also, Captain Kaff Tagon and his dad the General go up against a number of the crew in an offscreen laser-tag match and beat them all handily (they cheated).
-
*King of the Hill* had a particularly egregious episode where a teenage bully torments Bobby on the paintball field and Hank and his buddies end up sucked into a paintball match with him. Not only does no one ever wear face masks in this episode, but the bully frequently engages in activities that would get you immediately thrown off the range (such as lining up a losing team against a fence for a "firing squad" shot) and of course, nary a marshal or range master is seen. Hank and his friends then turn the tables, shooting at point blank range themselves, bringing outside unsanctioned equipment and changing clothes on the field.
- The
*Daria* episode "The Daria Hunter," in which the cast plays paintball. Quinn shoots Sandi because she doesn't recognize her with her goggles on; Sandi angrily points out that it's against the rules not to wear them, whereupon the Fashion Club says "Some rules are meant to be broken. Like wearing red lipstick with an orange sweater."
-
*Total Drama* had a paintball episode where the teens had to hunt each other with paintball guns. Other than the camera crew and the host, there are no marshals to keep an eye on the contestants. The contestants wear goggles but no facemasks, and otherwise wear no protective clothing at all, just their normal street clothes. It doesn't help that some of the girls are pretty much half-naked. Finally, during the event briefing, the host literally shoots a contestant point blank for comedic effect. Of course, *Total Drama Island* is very big on Amusing Injuries, and the hosts make no effort to hide the fact they are complete jerkasses.
-
*Family Guy*: "Petarded". Spooner street game night includes a "paintball" fight in the Griffin house with goggles and body armor but no masks. Only Brian forgot the paintball guns so they use Joe's box-o-guns from work. Refuge in Audacity indeed.
- The
*American Dad!* paintball episode must've been the first of its kind to use a *brush* in a parody of movies about The Vietnam War. Complete with American GI and Viet Cong outfits, paintball guns that resemble AK-47's and M-16's, Sharpie pens used like knives, Steve even using a paint sprayer like a flamethrower, and golf carts used for many different things like Huey helicopters, River Patrol Boats, and POW Cages.
- A
*Dilbert* episode had Alice use this as an ice breaker party game. INSIDE Dilbert's house! It gets worse from there.
-
*Futurama* plays their paintball online, literally.
- The
*Jimmy Two-Shoes* episode *Dance Jimmy Dance* has the three main characters playing "Savage Bunny Paintball", which has them firing paintball guns at rabbits.
- If it counts,
*The Swan Princess* has a paintball *segment*; Derek and Bromley practice archery by tipping their arrows with bags of paint.
-
*The Amazing World of Gumball* episode "The Fridge" is set off by Nicole winning a company paintball game off-screen (every other contestant was hospitalized) and ends with the Watterson family having a free-for-all game of capture the flag. There is no supervision, people get shot at very close range or after already losing, players either take off their mask (Anais) or wearing only goggles (everyone else), and some extra equipment includes paint grenades and paint balloons dropped by trip-wire.
Humorously, besides the forest course shown the poster◊ for the place claims it has one course in a junkyard and another
*in outer space.* And are available for all kinds of parties, including stag parties (bachelor parties) and hen parties (bachelorette parties).
- The episode of
*The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants* The Cunning Combat of the Covert Camoflush centers around the kids playing a game of paintball with ||Mr. Ree's younger brother, Major Messy||, only to end up having to follow more rules than you can shake a stick at. George and Harold make him a comic to remind him that paintball's really about fun, resulting in him letting the kids go on a rule-free paintball game, and him ultimately turning into the Monster of the Week.
- Many military forces and law enforcement agencies use Simunition, effectively live ammo which fires paint balls instead of lead bullets; they are significantly smaller, harder, and faster than regular paint balls. They're basically a blue wax dye tip, with a plastic buffer and a small metal sabot on the base. This way soldiers and cops can get the feel of dealing with live ammo, complete with projectiles whizzing around. Since they're mostly used at ranges deep within a normal "safety kill" range in paintball, they can, will, and do break skin. On the flipside, users tend to be wearing Kevlar armor at the time and may hardly feel getting shot in the armor.
- It is also extremely inaccurate compared to bullets just as regular paint balls are due to the fact that the paint projectile is too small to take advantage of the rifling effect.
- There was an odd movement in Detroit that amounted to this as an alternative to gangs using real guns. It was called Paintballs Up Guns Down. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintballEpisode |
Painful Adhesive Removal - TV Tropes
Painful, but once you're done, you're done!
Adhesives are everywhere in the world, from the natural to the manufactured. Tree sap, tar, duct tape, bandages, superglue...
They have one job. To stick to things. But sometimes they do the job a little too well. Especially when what they stick to is a person, and the adhesive has to be removed. This is typically painful.
Frequently shows up in modern Bound and Gagged situations. Especially using things like duct tape as a quick and efficient way of silencing someone (Silence is Golden. Duct Tape is silver).
Of course, adhesives can end up in places other than one's mouth, and if there's body hair involved, it can be just as, or even more painful to remove. Basically, if it's sticky and it hurts to peel it off of you, it goes here, unless it's the subtrope of Painful Body Waxing.
Compare/Contrast Duct Tape for Everything.
## Examples
-
*Crayon Shin-chan*:
- One volume of the manga has Misae forgetting to keep a roll of duct tape after using it, and Shin Chan, being curious as usual, tries playing with it like sticking strands of tape on his skin and pulling it off. He finds the mildly painful sensation giddy and exciting but goes a bit too far when he sticks and pulls off a wad of tape over his balls.
- Shin sees Misae applying heat pads to her back and decides to try them on as well. Intrigued by the warm sensation, he gets carried away and sticks the patches all over his body, including his nipples and crotch. He soon comes to regret it, as the pads firmly adhere to his skin, leaving a painful bruise when he tries ripping them off.
-
*Tintin*: In "Flight 714", Tintin and Captain Haddock are keeping Dr. Krospell and Rastapopolos as adhesive tape-muffled hostages as they hide from Rastapopoulos' henchmen (they also keep Carreidas muffled because the latter was drugged and can put them in danger). Rastapopoulos eventually manages to escape and be found. Moments later, Tintin and Haddock hear a string of bloodcurdling shrieks in the woods, with Tintin commenting that "It's enough to make your hair stand on end." It's Rastapopoulos, having the tapes "carefully" peeled off by Alan, his incompetent right arm.
-
*Big Hero 6*: To demonstrate his robot Baymax, Tadashi puts a bit of duct tape on his brother Hiro's arm then rips it off, causing Hiro to yelp in pain - which in turn activates/alerts Baymax, a robotic nurse, and leads to Baymax treating the injury.
-
*Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs*: Scrat gets stuck to the trunk of a tree and with the nut stuck to his chest when Scratte shows up. She smiles seductively at him, then yanks the nut off his chest and his fur with it, like she was waxing him. He screams, of course.
-
*The LEGO Movie*: Lampshaded. One of Lord Business' keepsakes is a cloak apparently belonging to a great leader, which is actually a band-aid. He claims that it hurts a lot to take off.
-
*The Breakfast Club*: Discussed as the reason Andrew is in detention with the others; he hazed one of his wrestling teammates by taping the poor bastard's ass shut. He thought it was a harmless prank but removing the tape took off some of the guy's *skin and hair* with it. All Andrew can think about is what it must have felt like to tell his parents about it.
-
*Cats & Dogs*: Calico delivers a message from Mr. Tinkles to the dogs and carries it by having it duct taped to his back. He tells them not to pull too hard on the tape, but they do, which causes him to scream in pain.
- In
*Dunston Checks In*, young Kyle simply exclaims "Ow!" when Dunston removes his gag after he is tied up by Lord Rutledge.
-
*The Green Mile*: Brutus Howell, as they go to untie Jerkass Percy Whetmore, advises that his mother said that if you remove the tape quickly it won't hurt as much. He notes that his Mother was wrong as Percy yelps in pain as they rip the duct tape off.
-
*Gummo*: exploited. Two sisters are shown applying duct tape to their breasts and stripping it off, apparently attempting to make their nipples look bigger by irritating them. It makes about as much sense in context as the rest of the movie.
- In
*Kingsman: The Secret Service*, Professor Arnold is introduced having a duct tape gag slowly removed from his mouth, cringing in discomfort as it goes. For good measure, Arnold can be heard irritably grumbling for the kidnappers to just rip the tape off as quickly as possible, but their employer doesn't want him hurt, so he has to suffer through having the tape slowly peeled off his face *and* beard.
-
*Layer Cake*: XXXX is kidnapped by Eddie Temple's men and gagged with tape. As soon as one of them pulls the tape off, he lets out a pained and angry "FUCK!"
-
*The Transporter*: An implied case. After spending a sizable portion of the early portions of the movie Bound and Gagged, the first thing Lai does once Frank finally cuts loose the ropes binding her while she's at his house is to rip off the duct tape that had been used to gag her. From there, she has just enough time to briefly ask Frank where he's going before she winces, makes a silent 'ow', and places her hand over her mouth to indicate that the removal of her tape gag was fairly painful.
-
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze*: Raph gets Bound and Gagged and used as bait for the rest of the turtles. When the fighting starts, Donnie removes the adhesive gag and Raph complains about almost getting his lips ripped off, prompting Donnie to put the gag back while he undoes the ropes.
-
*Police Academy 3: Back in Training*. As a prank, Mahoney blindfolds Commandant Mauser with adhesive tape, ostensibly for a blind taste test. Aware of this trope, Mauser tells his minion Proctor to rip off the tape quickly so it won't hurt. As a result, Mauser's Big Ol' Eyebrows get torn off with it.
-
*The Corps*: A Lieutenant has a wound on his leg, which is heavily bandaged. When he goes in to have the dressing changed, the Corpsman rips the bandage off without any warning, causing the Lieutenant to cuss him out. The Corpsman casually replies that it hurt him less doing it quickly.
-
*Matilda*: Matilda gets revenge on her father by putting super glue in his favorite porkpie hat, which he doesn't realize until he's already put it on his head. It ends up being too painful for his wife to remove right away, forcing him to sleep in his hat before they cut it off the next day (which leaves him with a horrible haircut).
-
*The Big Bang Theory*: Trying to increase their productivity and remove distractions, the guys put strips of duct tape on their arms, with painfully ripping them off being a penalty for distraction or going off-topic. It quickly devolves into vindictive tape-pulling by all parties involved.
-
*Castle*: Castle actually goes Bound and Gagged himself, with his daughter Alexis's help, because he's trying to figure out how a character in one of his books would escape. Alexis also rips off her Dad's wallet, justifying it by saying that he wouldn't respect her if she didn't, to which he nods agreement. After his mother and daughter leave, Castle works on getting himself unbound, which he's actually fairly good at, but the removal of the duct tape is clearly painful, though he is still triumphant about it.
-
*CSI: Miami*: Episode 3.23, "Vengence" does not play this for laughs. After a Jerk Jock is murdered at a 15-year high school reunion, it's learned he cocooned a boy in duct tape and left him overnight back when they were in school. Removing the tape left the victim with horrific, disfiguring scars over his whole body, causing him to drop out of school.
-
*Drake & Josh*: One episode has Walter, Drake and Josh's father, getting Bound and Gagged himself by the latter after they feared the criminals in the house would badly hurt Walter. Drake and Josh got caught in the middle of the criminal gang after the formed were "arrested" as part of a Scared Straight program after they had gotten in trouble. But one of the criminals attacked the cop, resulting in the boys being mixed in with the criminal gang. Drake and Josh drag Walter into the closet where they try to figure out how to run the criminals off. Walter demands to know what's going on through the duct tape on his mouth. Drake and Josh briefly rip the tape off Walter's mouth, making him scream and demanding answers before they put the tape back over his mouth.
-
*Home Improvement*: One episode has Tim getting his head stuck to a table via superglue during a segment on *Tool Time*. Later on, he returns back home, with the piece of the table still stuck on his head. Shortly after, he rips the piece of table right from his head. His wife said that had to hurt. But Tim says otherwise right before he starts screaming in pain as he walks away.
-
*Kirby Buckets*: In one episode, Kirby gets his face covered in Dawn's leg hair so it looks like a mustache. He uses tape to remove it and screams in pain during the process.
-
*A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017)*: After she and Babs are captured in "The Hostile Hospital: Part 2", Violet attempts to find a way for them both to escape. Since Babs was Bound and Gagged with duct tape, Violet takes the duct tape off, and Babs screams in response (although this was more likely because Babs is a Nervous Wreck rather than her being in any pain). To prevent either of them from being captured, Violet ends up reapplying the tape and asking Babs to stay quiet.
-
*SuctionCupMan*: In the fourth episode, "Business or Pleasure", after being banned from using suction cups, he tries climbing Business Guy's tower through other methods, one being applying glue to his hands. The end result is him being forced to apply bandages to his hands after (very painfully) losing the skin from his hands.
-
*Gill And Gilbert*: In episode 10, "Super Meat Boy and Self Care" the boys find that peeling off adhesive pore strips can be somewhat unpleasant. The irony that what was supposed to be a self-care stream turned into yet another episode of making themselves uncomfortable note : previous efforts involved drinking diluted soy sauce and eating too many cookies was not lost.
- During The Spoony Experiment's review of
*Tekken: The Motion Picture*, Spoony mocks the ridiculously oversized eyebrows of Heihachi and Kazuya Mishima by wearing increasingly massive sets of cardboard eyebrows over his own... until he gets bored with Heihachi's overly-long climactic Motive Rant and simply removes the now antler-sized pair of eyebrows, yelping in pain as the taped-on cardboard peels away. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainfulAdhesiveRemoval |
Painted-On Pants - TV Tropes
*"She danced by me in painted-on jeans..."*
—
**Billy Ocean**, "Caribbean Queen"
If you're looking for something comfortable, sexy, aerodynamic, sexy, chic, and sexy for your characters to fight in, party in or just walk around in, look no further than skin-tight pants, preferably spandex or leather so that they can be shiny too.
*Unless* they're spandex, the "fight" part doesn't really work. Seriously. Female characters with nice legs and buttocks almost always feature a fanservice-heavy fighting style with lots of high kicks. Ask your local taekwondo coach to teach you some high kicks. Now put on some skin-tight leather or denim pants. Now do your high kicks. See the problem? That problem arises only if we're assuming our superwoman hasn't broken an ankle running about in stiletto heels or thrown herself to the ground from her own forward momentum, of course.
These are gold mines for having fanservice without looking too blatant and seeming hip at the same time: they're tight and shiny, which means that they show off every curve and contour of the wearer's body, and, in games, allow for heavy Jiggle Physics. Extra points if the wearer is wearing a top made out of the same material, covering all the fanservice bases.
These really became popular in the Seventies and Eighties. See also Most Common Superpower, as clothes like this are used to emphasize that.
See also Superheroes Wear Tights.
**Note:** Full skintight bodysuits are a different trope altogether, as are cases when the outfit really is painted on. Form-Fitting Wardrobe is for when clothing clings like this but is made of materials that shouldn't.
## Examples:
-
*Death Note* gives us a rare male example in the form of Mello.
- The standard women's uniform in
*Heroic Age* could not possibly get more form-fitting.
-
*Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple*: Miu's outfit is so skin-tight that she is accused of wearing body-paint a couple of times (by jealous girls).
-
*The Legend of Thunder* the *Pokemon* sub-mini series took the Tomboy Kris and girled her up quite a bit and changed her name to Marina. As she served as the series's eye candy in a kid's show her shorts don't hug her Johto butt but do outline◊ what one can expect to see under her shorts quite accurately.
- Funnily enough, despite the prominence of females in
*Lyrical Nanoha*, the first one to get the skintight leather pants treatment is Tohma, the male protagonist of *Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force*, while he's using the Black Knight form. Females tend to get skintight bodysuits instead.
-
*Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind* has the titular princess in form-fitting white leggings, but they aren't really played for fanservice. However, the film did once have a reputation for having viewers think that Nausicaä was flying around pantsless and underwear free due to old VHS fansubs where the footage had degraded so much through multiple copying that they looked more skin-toned in colour.
- In
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi*, Chachamaru occasionally wears stuff like this. Not to mention that she has thigh high stockings literally built into her synthetic skin.
-
*Saiyuki* contains a male example.
- Marvel and DC is all over this; Basically, any superheroine who isn't wearing a full bodysuit has this, and every other female character after that. If not, it's a Leotard of Power.
- Male comic characters also frequently appear to have been drawn naked but with Barbie Doll Anatomy, and then colored like a Captain America suit, to the point of details like belly buttons showing. Really, clothes hanging like actual clothes is the exception, not the rule.
- In
*Barracuda*, the Governor wears black leather pants that cling to her extremely shapely legs and ass like a second skin. It's a miracle that she can walk at all.
- Rare non-fanservice (at least intentional) example: when stealing the title character of
*Diabolik* wears a full-body suit that covers everything but the eyes and makes him look like (in the words of a caricaturist) "a naked man completely painted black". Justified: when studying martial arts in East Asia, trainees at his school had to wear a ninja suit and *never* show their face, and after a training accident in which his face was exposed he came up with the suit because it's much harder to grab. Where he keeps his knives when wearing that suit remains a mystery whose solution he's not willing to share.
- Poor
*Empowered*'s super suit is canonically thinner than a soap bubble and so revealing it took her six months to work up enough nerve to wear it in public.
- Several Bronze Age Supergirl's costumes included form-fitting blue pants.
- Storm wore skin-tight black pants during her "punk" phase back in The '80s.
-
*Street Fighter* has Ibuki's otherwise rather loose ninja outfit take the shape of her rear end◊ in some scenes.
-
*W.I.T.C.H.* offers us Will Vandom from the New Power saga onwards.
- Wonder Woman has occasionally swapped her usual leotard or culottes for tight white pants.
-
*The Alchemist* by Ken Goddard. A female undercover cop finds herself Saying Too Much when describing her supposed criminal partners (also cops) and mentions the very tight jeans one likes to wear. Fortunately the cop concerned is not listening to the bug at the time. His partner who is on surveillance duty just bursts out laughing and says he better wear "those tight-ass jeans of yours" when going to meet the crooks.
-
*Cry Wolf*, by Wilbur Smith. Sara Sigud wears tight-fitting embroidered breeches and explains that her grandfather decreed that the Ethiopian women had to wear them so they'd be difficult to remove for immoral purposes. Sara then goes on to explain that in practice they're not that difficult to remove, but are difficult to get back on in a hurry.
- Superskin, a bodystocking that fits like a second skin in Robert A. Heinlein's
*Friday*.
- Skinsuits, the standard issue airtight, skintight spacesuits in Honor Harrington need to be custom fitted for each person. Later in the series, even Nimitz the treecat gets one. In-text, they are described as being akin to a diving wet suit. Oddly enough, in official artwork, they're shown inevitably as spacesuits of a rather more ordinary make, a bit less bulgy than a standard spacesuit but still recognizably a spacesuit.
- Aretha Franklin. From the song
*Freeway Of Love*:
*Knew you were a vision in white* *How'd ya get your pants so tight?* *Don't know what ya doin', but ya must be livin' right*
- Any picture taken of Bon Scott is certain to draw one's gaze to the "area".
-
*Jon Bon Jovi*
- Jim Morrison
- Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin wore
*very* tight jeans. Along with his bare chest and blond hair, it became something of an iconic look.
- Plant himself, in an interview, noted that people only called him a "sex symbol" because "You can see my cock through my trousers. I don't have an instrument in front of mine."
- Quite a few Punk Rock and Heavy Metal musicians in The '70s and The '80s, too. Megadeth in 1988 and in 1990, for example.
- Visual Kei musicians from The '80s onward. BUCK-TICK's Atsushi Sakurai and Yoshiki, Toshi, Taiji Sawada, and Heath of X Japan are/were very famous for wearing these quite often. Among many, many others.
- Dolly Parton's "Why'd You Come In Here Lookin' Like That":
Why'd you come in here lookin' like that,
in your cowboy boots and your painted-on jeans?
- Steve Perry of Journey wears these in the "Just The Same Way" music video.
- The early Rutles are best remembered for their tight pants.
- The line from Billy Ocean's "Caribbean Queen."
She danced by me, in painted on jeans.
- The unnamed Thunder God of
*Flash* wears nothing but a pair of painted-on green spandex pants.
- In
*The Party Zone*, Captain B. Zarr's assorted female followers are fond of wearing painted-on pants with either solid colors or animal stripes.
- Popular in Professional Wrestling, for both male and female wrestlers. This occasionally comes up for characters who are homages to wrestlers as well (such as Hugo from
*Street Fighter*).
- Gretchen wore tight skinny jeans in the Off-Broadway performance of
*Jasper in Deadland*.
- Mimi's famous blue "Out Tonight" pants in
*RENT*. Note that the actress wears them while dancing *on a railing*.
- In
*The Rose Tattoo*, Serafina examines her daughter's sailor boyfriend from the front and back and asks him why they make Navy pants so tight. "That's a question you'll have to ask the Navy," he tells her.
- Fiyero's famous white pants in
*Wicked*.
- This was often used in earlier 3D games due to technical limitations. You don't need to render creases and ruffles for something that literally looks painted on.
-
*Bravely Default* gives us Edea. This is normally only noticeable when she's wearing her Freelancer outfit, but... HOT DAMN.
-
*City of Heroes*, saying as how it's of the superhero genre, has a multitude of shiny tight pants options, from spandex to leather to metal.
-
*Disgaea 3*: Clothes are decorations.
- Fenris of
*Dragon Age II* has very, very tight pants. One wonders what they're made of, given that his low-tech world is unlikely to have spandex; his outfit is given no more in-game description than the mystifying "Grafted Spirit Hide." (How does a spirit have hide?) Rule of Sexy probably applies.
-
*Dynasty Warriors*: Wang Yi's armored leggings are really rather close-cut.
-
*Final Fantasy XI* uses this for some equipment, notably Elvaan starter gear, both male and female.
-
*Fire Emblem: Three Houses*: Ingrid wears tightly fitted riding breeches with thigh-high boots in her default Falcon Knight outfit, in a break from the traditional Minidress of Power (leggings optional) look of the Pegasus Knights in the series.
-
*Genshin Impact*
- Jean is one of the very few female characters that wears pants instead of the shorts or skirts that most of them have. They're basically leggings, so they show her legs' every curve, and her introduction cutscene starts with a few seconds focused on those legs.
- Kaeya rocks the look himself and likewise his pants leave very little to the imagination. To put equality in the fanservice his introduction also pans up his legs letting everyone admire their tightness.
- Yelan wears skintight black leggings, being the second playable female who wears pants. Like Jean before her, the fabric's tightness accentuate her legs.
-
*Love of Magic*: Katie and Kitsune's default outfits. MC comments that Katie couldn't hide a credit card in her pants, and later explicitly says Kitsune's pants must be painted on.
- Miranda Lawson from
*Mass Effect 2* certainly lives up to this trope. Her second outfit that you can unlock by completing her loyalty mission makes her look as if she dips herself in a bath of liquid black latex every morning. Most pants in the series are examples, male or female; at one point in 3 a robot infiltrator that *literally* has her clothes painted on passes without comment in a top-secret military base.
- Name a Snake from the
*Metal Gear* series (including Raiden), they're in painted-on pants.
-
*Mortal Kombat* Sonya Blade alternated between this and less tight pants, although she stopped wearing these in the later games.
- Sonya's daughter, Cassie Cage, follows in her mother's footsteps with her Endurance costume in
*MKX* and Klassic costume in *11*. In *11*, her pants are so tight on her that she has very noticeable visible pantylines.
-
*Overwatch*:
- Tracer, as part of her "topshot pilot" aesthetic. She even has a taunt pose that is identical to a historical air force fanservice poster where she shows off her, ahem, assets rather prominently.
- Mercy and Mei also wear leggings that hug their bodies very tightly, but their outfits keep their assets better-covered most of the time.
-
*Overwatch 2* newcomer Kiriko has curve hugging leggings. While they are covered by her miko uniform usually, her aptly named Athleisurewear skin shows them off nicely.
- Princess Zelda in
*The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* wears tight pants that don't leave much room for imagination.
- Common among custom clothing for
*The Sims 2*, because it's easier - you can simply paste the pants textures directly onto the shape of a naked Sim.
-
*Soul Series*
- In
*Soulcalibur III* and *IV*, given the setting, no character wears this except, arguably, Xiangua, but in the character creator (where they have everything from eighties clothes to *skintight chainmail*) you can set female characters to wear these. In *IV*, with its constant Clothing Damage, it usually comes down to either these or underwear/bikinis.
- Taki's
*entire outfit* seems painted on. She's basically modelled as though she were naked but coloured red (blue in III).
-
*Street Fighter* Quite a bit:
- While historically safe from this Ibuki gained a sporty outfit with shorts that allow her to show the results of years super jumping and working out◊. Not hard to figure out what is underneath those shorts.
- Chun-Li's alpha costume has always shown why her first lady of Street Fighter butt◊ is one of the best in the game. In fact it is so good Ling Xiaoyu tried to replicate it◊
- Being newer on the franchise Juri decided she needed a change going into
*V* and it was quite a benefit to her butt.◊
- Newcomer Falke has a butt◊ that comes in swinging and she doesn't hide it.
- Not even a family friendly new and free all characters free outfit will be enough to cover Kolin's icey cold butt◊.
- In
*VI* Cammy gets a new outfit with a pair of curve hugging pants. In fact they hug her curves so much the textures might very well be repainted from her classic costume.
- The
*Super Smash Bros.* games avert this in their own way. All of them wear tights/pantyhose depending on the version under their dresses that are about as tight as *BOTW* Zelda's pants. But their rear ends are so small and hips so narrow that there isn't much to 'ride up' so said clothing doesn't take any shape because of their inadequate anatomy.
-
*Velvet Assassin*: A few missions in Violet abandons her bomber jacket and jeans in favor of something a bit more... flattering to her figure, but still tasteful and functional. The tight leather pants seem like they were molded into the perfect shape of her butt.
-
*World of Warcraft* uses these for most equipment, using different pieces attached to the base model to make it unique. It gets a bit ridiculous for some equipment, for instance, skin-tight plate mail or skin-tight tuxedos.
- Saya Kho◊ on the back cover of
*X3: Gold Edition*. And only the back cover: other than that you only see her from the shoulders up over comms.
-
*Ménage à 3* is definitely not averse to imposing this style on any of its female characters, if only by way of Fanservice.
- In
*Sticky Dilly Buns*, Dillon takes Ruby clothes shopping (in his best Gay Best Friend style) and buys her a pair of designer jeans as a gift. It then turns out that he has his own reasons for this...
- In
*Terinu* this is Space Pirate Mavra Chan's default wear.
- It also occurred
*accidentally* when the internist uniform Leeza once wore to rescue Teri lacked wrinkles when drawn by Peta Hewitt, resulting in double takes from some readers.
-
*Prequel* has this when Katia, for lack of clothing, uses permanent paint to paint on a bikini and panties. A hundred strips later, the paint has not disappeared a bit.
- In fashion fetishism, they have the concept of a second skin, where a fabric usurps the sexual role played by bare skin.
- "Skinny jeans" are all the rage, and for good reason—when it comes to attracting the desired gaze,
*they work*. Leggings are even more so. Now there's even faux denim leggings ("jeggings"), complete with false pockets.
- An urban legend tells of how a vain person sat in a hot tub with jeans on in order to shrink them into skintight-ness, unfortunately, the jeans shrank so much that it ended up killing the person from loss of circulation. The Mythbusters once tested this and busted it when even after hours of sitting in cold water Grant's circulation was not seriously affected.
- English riding breeches. On purpose.
- Running tights. For that matter, a lot of athletic clothes are skin tight. It reduces chafing, helps wick sweat away, and if you're an athlete, shows off that body you've been working so hard on.
- Cycling shorts are so tight, racing designs tend to shy away from white because they can be a little too revealing.
- Swimsuits for professional swimmers are getting nearer and nearer to this trope...so much so that the international swimming federation is starting to crack down on suits that are
*too* painted on...(this is justified, however, in that the less loose fabric, the less water resistance)
- A properly-fitting wetsuit tends to be like this. And you think tight jeans are hard to take on and off, try ones made of what basically amounts to a body-shaped non-slip mat.
- Spandex in bike tights, et cetera. Spandex hadn't been invented when they first drew Superman, and George Reeves' costume in The Adventures of Superman is almost baggy by comparison with Spandex.
- Some yoga pants ride up to such a degree that if you're in them, you're just going to have to get used to the sensation of a flying atomic wedgie.
- Zentai suits are this, covering
*everything* including the eyes in a one piece spandex outfit, usually either in one solid color or wild patterns such as leopard spots or zebra stripes.
- In figure skating, male skaters are allowed to wear tight-fitting pants (for aerodynamic reasons), as long as they don't resemble leggings. This is circumvented by making everything else tight and the cuffs flare out a little. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintedOnPants |
Painting the Medium - TV Tropes
A circus barker speaking in a circus poster's typeface
.
Painting the Medium is modifying the presentation of a story in order to convey information about the story. A comic book might give a character special-looking Speech Bubbles that reflect on their personality. A TV show might change to black-and-white or sepia-tone during flashbacks. A video game might change its GUI to show a change in the player character or the setting.
By Painting the Medium, a creator turns a transparent tool—meant to show the work behind it—into a part of the work.
**This is typically done for one of several reasons:**
Some of the most popular variants have become so conventional that we stop noticing them completely—for example, dialogue written in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS is shouted. Heck, even we do it (check the entries in Self-Demonstrating Article why not?)
See also Rule of Perception. Unless the characters themselves remark or interact with the audio or visual effects, then it can't be concluded they occur within the setting, so they must only be presented to the audience's side of the fourth wall. The characters who do remark on these tropes may be uncommonly Medium Aware, or they may know that their particular universe is governed by metafictional laws, in which case the 'paint' isn't just on the medium, it's integrated into the text.
Please note: This trope is
**not** 'Character interacts with the pages of the book/panels of the comic/film camera/suitable alternative for their story'—that trope is Medium Awareness. This trope is 'The setup, layout or presentation of the book/comic/film/whatever is changed to reflect a change in the characters' situation'. Please don't put incorrect examples on pages they shouldn't be on, thank you. Splatter on the camera lens may be acceptable as a way of showing just how much rain/blood/liquid is flying around the scene at that point.
## Sub-tropes:
<!—index—>
<!—/index—>
## Examples:
<!—index—>
<!—/index—>
- At one point during the video of Bo Burnham's live show
*what.*, he starts to make an insulting joke about video editors, only to be suddenly cut off by a mysterious Jump Cut.
- In the vinyl album version of the
*Monty Python* sketch *The Piranha Brothers*, the voice-over announcer for the skit is being menaced by one of Dinsdale's thugs, and told that the sketch has gone on too long. When he protests, the thug "scratches the record", ending the bit. We fade out to: "Aw! Sorry, squire! I've scratched the record —orry, squire! I've scratched the record! —" over and over. *Infinitely*, as this part ran on an actual loop on the LP.
- Cheech & Chong's self-titled first album features Tommy Chong attempting to put a vinyl record (supposedly the very one this skit is on) on the phonograph and failing miserably, the skit (and this side) ending in a fluster of wild record needle scratching.
- The first of Stan Freberg's
*Dragnet* affectionate parodies, *St. George and the Dragonet*, opens with this disclaimer: "The legend you are about to hear is true. Only the needle should be changed to protect the record."
- In Robin Williams's
*Weapons of Self Destruction* special, he tells a story about Dock Ellis's no-hitter game while on LSD. While he tells it, the camera blurs the screen and adds motion trails and other hazy effects.
- Here's a really meta one: the early Disney
*Winnie the Pooh* shorts were played out as readings of the books, down to the animated characters being able to walk on the text, a hurried page-turning at one point to keep Pooh from flying out of the book, and so forth. Thus it played with the concept that it was a book, when in fact it *wasn't*. All this in a cartoon for children.
- At the end of
*The Thief and the Cobbler*, the Thief comes out and takes the letters from the THE END title. Then he goes and takes the *very film he is on* out of the projector as it is rolling, rolls it up and runs off into the now blank screen. Gives new meaning to the term "scene stealer".
- In Disney's
*Brother Bear*, when Kenai is transformed, the movie changes its aspect ratio to subtly tell the viewer that he's seeing through different eyes now.
- In
*The Emperor's New Groove*, Kuzco-the-narrator freezes the frame and literally paints on the screen to bring the story back to himself. He then continues to interrupt the story so it focuses on himself. Later on in the story, Kuzco-the-character yells at Kuzco-the-narrator to stop talking and leave him alone. From then on, the movie is un-narrated.
- Ralph Bakshi's animated
*The Lord of the Rings* also has blood splattering the camera during battles.
- In
*Tangled*, Rapunzel *literally* paints the fourth wall.
- In one scene,
*Ratatouille* uses splashes of color to convey the indescribable qualities of tastes that harmonize well, and the differences in taste perception by Rémy and his brother.
- In
*Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders*, Batman ||gets drugged by Catwoman to turn him evil||. As his disposition gets harsher, his Hit Flash onomatopoeia shifts to words like "BLUDGEON" and "FRACTURE" to reflect the fact that he is delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown rather than merely subduing his foes as usual.
- The Eraser Bombs in The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie! essentially undo the process of animation. They first render objects to sketches, then the objects disintegrate, leaving a blank white space where they used to be.
- In
*Turning Red*, when Mei spots the posters Tyler has put up the camera's screen cracks.
- Autotune was first used to correct errors in pitch. Many modern musicians use it to deliberately distort their voice so it's obvious that they're using Autotune, as well as for aesthetic effect, even when they're fully capable of singing themselves. Some people have expressed their distaste.
- The Dresden Dolls use some quirky, but meaningful, production techniques in the song "Coin-Operated Boy", which is about the superiority of vibrators to real boyfriends. The mix begins monophonic, but it abruptly widens to stereo during the line "I turn him on / And he comes to life". The performers imitate a Broken Record over the line "And I'll never be alone", signifying that this is the narrator's false repetition to herself. The end of the bridge features an intense
*rallentando* to evoke the tapering end of an orgasm, a battery-powered device running out of juice, or more likely both.
- The music video for Kanye West's "Love Lockdown," if watched on a standard-definition TV or Youtube, is letterboxed. At about one minute in, a character in the video races towards the camera, then actually jumps
*out* of the letterbox.
- "The TV Show"'s central conceit it that it's showing us a series of TV shows being viewed by two guys in a control booth. Then one falls asleep on a console, and elements from some of the shows start interacting with each other, the camera, and the producers. Hilarity Ensues.
- "Madvillain All Caps." It's an animated comic book—literally.
- The video for Justice's remix of Lenny Kravitz's "Let Love Rule" feature the end of a fictitious movie and its credits sequence. Early on, the lead character's sleeve gets caught on one line of the credits. At first, things are fun, but then the video deconstructs the idea of having a credits sequence be a physical part of the world.
- In Arnold Schoenberg's opera
*Moses und Aron*, the composer illustrates the two lead characters' differences by a radical break with the basic convention of opera:
- The tongue-tied Moses, whose direct contact with the God of Israel has shown him the inadequacy of human words to describe Him,
*never sings a note*. Instead, he speaks in ordinary non-musical prose throughout.
- By contrast, Moses' brother and spokesman—the plausible, tactful, crowd-pleasing Aaron—sings in a gorgeous tenor.
- The literary journal
*Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern* is as much a vehicle for editor Dave Eggers to play with the magazine format as a collection of fiction. The format changes with each issue, from paperback to hardcover to a collection of smaller booklets containing individual stories. One of the more elaborate issues (#17) was published as a bundle of misdelivered mail, containing some stories in individual envelopes and some in the fictitious magazines that the fictitious intended recipient subscribed to. Sometimes stories take advantage of the flexibility of the format: "Heart Suit", in issue 16, was printed on a deck of oversized playing cards and readable in any shuffled order. On a smaller scale, Eggers will sometimes put long rambling asides in the copyright notice and other bits of paratext.
- In the book
*Color: A Natural History of the Palette*, author Victoria Finley describes an *ukiyo-e* print (likely this one◊) that shows the famous kabuki actor Onoe Kikugoro V portraying a ghost. The brown spot on the ghost's head was once green malachite pigment; Finley theorizes that the artist deliberately used the corrosive mineral to illustrate the ghost's supernatural power and malevolence as it literally burned through the canvas.
- A humorous poem appearing in a 1924 edition of the Feather River Bulletin reads:
*When her mother is in the parlor we sit*
*LIKE.................THIS*
*But after mother retires we always sit*
*LIKETHIS*
*And sometimes (don't be shocked) we sit*
*LIKE*
*THIS*
- Several Self Demonstrating Articles:
- This site (and other wikis, for that matter) itself when it comes to links. Normal links show up in blue, discussion links or links to certain pages are in orange, disambiguation pages are in green, and links to nonexistent articles are in red. Checking out the new edits gives even
*more* colors.
-
**ADBOT SAYS HELLO.**
- On many websites, including this wiki, some posters seem use spoiler tags for hiding words that should not be said, written, or seen for some superstitious reason, such as the Tetragrammaton, or the name of The Scottish Play, or less seriously, a potentially Flame War fueling forum post, as if the whiteness would make them partially unwritten.
- Many
*very* old-timer tropers will be able to recount when the various YMMV tropes were helpfully highlighted with a solid red bullet. This was removed during one of the first revamps to the site, though this functionality still lives on, with tropes instead displaying their proper symbol next to them if not in their proper namespace.
- There are two main functions of the AC font: AI dialogue to show their synthesised voicebox, and giving proper gravitas to the words 'In SPACE!'.
- Universal Studios' The Incredible Hulk Coaster suddenly hurls the passengers forward during the climb up the first hill, right when the audio says the experiment they're listening to goes wrong. The engineer says this represents the sudden surge of uncontrollable power experienced by Bruce Banner upon turning into the Hulk. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintingTheMedium |
Pair the Smart Ones - TV Tropes
**Pierce**
: Hey, I was thinkin', we might die here. Anything y'all want to get off your chest?
**The Boss**
: Come on, Pierce; don't go talking like that.
**Oleg**
: No, he's right. Were Kinzie here, I would pour out my heart.
**The Boss**
: WHAT?!
**Oleg**
: It is rare that I find an intellectual equal.
If a show features two highly intelligent characters of similar age and compatible sexual orientation, chances are they'll end up together. Works particularly well if they're Teen Geniuses. An in-universe invocation of the Geeky Turn-On.
It's common for such relationships to start cleanly and quickly, avoiding Will They or Won't They? altogether, and proceed somewhat more smoothly than whatever other characters may be in a relationship, thus often turning them into a Beta Couple. Apparently, love
*doesn't* make you dumb if you're a genius. There's some Truth in Television in this - Commonality Connection often makes relationships run more smoothly.
If the writers don't do it, the shippers will.
Subtrope of Birds of a Feather. Contrast Pair the Dumb Ones. See also Genius Breeding Act, which is where a government tries to force or motivate this.
## Examples
-
*Bakuman。*: Averted. Takagi is made to choose between two girls who had been vying for his attention. He rejects Iwase (who had a one-sided academic rivalry with him and is one of the top students at their school) due to the fact she wouldn't let him continue to write manga and instead picks Miyoshi (who doesn't get very good grades) because she promises to support him, even if it meant he'd have less time to spend with her. There is, however, a point in which Miyoshi *thinks* this is happening, when she discovers a copy of Iwase's book with a letter from Iwase to Takagi (which he didn't know about). She then thinks of how Iwase is smarter and more talented in other regards than she is, and becomes very depressed until things are cleared up.
-
*Digimon Data Squad*:
-
*Doraemon*:
- Averted with the Shizuka and Dekisugi Ship Tease. It's implied many times they like each other and could have been a good couple, but in the future, Shizuka chooses to marry Nobita over Dekisugi.
- Played straight (or at least it's implied) with Dekisugi and his future wife, since they are seen working on the same space project on the moon.
-
*K*: Izumo Kusanagi and Seri Awashima. Really, all of Scepter 4 could be considered the "smart one," but Seri is notably more cool-headed than the rest. Also, they're both their respective clans' Number Two, and within their clans, they fill The Smart Guy role vs. the more hot-headed thirds (who are also Ship Tease'd).
-
*Naruto*: Shikamaru and Temari are commonly shipped (with significant Ship Tease in their scenes together, including a literal case in the anime with Temari's subordinates teasing her about it); Shikamaru has an IQ of 200, making him the smartest of the Rookie Nine and one of the smartest characters in the series (if not *the* smartest), and Temari is noted in-story and in the databooks to be very intelligent. Even In-story potential love interest and local Cute Bookworm Shiho (who has a crush on Shikamaru, who may or may not be oblivious to it) is a member of the Konoha cryptanalysis team. ||In the epilogue, Shikamaru and Temari *are* married and even have a son.||
- Shirogane and Kaguya from
*Kaguya-sama: Love Is War* are the two highest-scoring second-year students and are hopelessly in love with each other (even if they both deny it). However, their intelligence is not what attracts them to each other. All the other romantic relationships in the series avert this, with Maki and Kashiwagi (the third and seventh smartest students in their grade respectively) in love with a boy of average intelligence, Miko (the smartest first-year student) ends up falling in love with Ishigami (who ranks near the bottom of the first year), Ishigami has a crush on Tsubame (eighth among the seniors), and Osaragi (just above Ishigami) dated Kazeno (fourth among the seniors) for a short period of time.
-
*Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove it* has this as its central premise. Two Spocks realize their mutual attraction and immediately start conducting experiments to scientifically answer the question What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?
- In
*Pocket God*, Gadgeteer Geniuses Klik and Teela start spending a lot of time together after they rescue Teela's tribe.
- In the IDW comic adaptation of the rebooted
*Star Trek* alternate reality, the main reason Spock was attracted to Uhura aside from her beauty was her intelligence and ability to keep up with him when she was his teaching assistant. The feeling is mutual from her side because *she* asked him out on a date first.
-
*Justice League of America (Rebirth)*: Fourth-year physics student Ryan Choi, aka The Atom, is paired with fellow young scientist Caitlin Snow, otherwise known as (Killer) Frost. He's impressed with her knowledge of engineering- suggesting that her intelligence is part of what he finds attractive about her.
- In
*Discworld* fic *Nature Studies*, this happens to the academically minded educators and researchers Ponder Stibbons and Johanna Smith-Rhodes. He is a Professor of Magic. She attains a Doctorate in Zoological Science. A few years later they get a daughter who is at least equally bright.
- In Raven Child's
*The Smurfette Village*, Brainy and Brainette are obviously paired together as they become the leaders of a new Smurf Village later on in life.
- It used to be common for
*Phineas and Ferb* fanfic writers to pair Ferb with Gretchen, the brainy, bespectacled Fireside Girl, seemingly on this basis. Many hoped that the show would follow suit, seeing as Ferb's Precocious Crush on 16-year-old Vanessa didn't seem likely to make official status, but Ferb and Gretchen barely interacted, and Ferb maintained his crush on Vanessa, ||eventually making Official Couple with her in the flash-forward episode "Act Your Age"||.
-
*Code Geass: The Prepared Rebellion* has this as one of the reasons Lelouch and C.C. get together. Lelouch outright says C.C.'s brain is one of her best features, and intelligence is one of the traits C.C. finds most attractive in a man.
-
*Our Miss Brooks*: Miss Brooks and Mr. Boynton. ||They get engaged and marry at the end of The Movie Grand Finale.||
- In
*Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus*, Pairing the Smart Ones is actually the driving force behind the epiphany on how to lure two massive sea monsters into going where the humans want them to.
- This is the most commonly accepted reason that Spock and Uhura are a couple in
*Star Trek (2009)* films. Both characters are intelligent and extremely good at their jobs, and Kirk trusts both of them to help him while on an away mission. Uhura was also Spock's teaching assistant, so she had to be smart as hell to keep up with him.
- A variation occurs in
*Idiocracy*. At the beginning of the film, when The Narrator explains that due to a lack of predators and other natural hazards, humanity's survival is awarded not to the strongest or smartest.
- Case in point: a yuppie intellectual couple spends several decades debating whether or not to have a child until the husband dies without impregnating his wife. Meanwhile, a dimwitted redneck has a bunch of kids with his wife, and a bunch of random women at the trailer park. His son, after winning a football game tells a group of cheerleaders, "Ima' fuck all y'all!" When the redneck suffers a groin injury, the surgeon operating on him states that his genitals will become fully functional again, which allows the Redneck to make more babies.
- The main story revolves around Joe, a U.S. Army Private, and Rita, a prostitute, chosen for a cryogenics experiment on account of how average they are. They were supposed to be frozen for a year, but after a scandal surrounding the head scientist of the project broke out, they were forgotten, and woke up 500 years later, when the world's population is incredibly moronic. In the end, Joe and Rita, whose intelligence was only average in the 21st Century, end up together as the 26th Century's most intelligent couple and have the three smartest kids in the world.
-
*Beauty and the Beast (2017)*: at the backdrop of the villagers' anti-intellectualism, Belle and the Beast bond over their shared love of reading.
- In the
*Star Wars Expanded Universe* novel *Death Star*, we learn that part of the reason why Grand Moff Tarkin loves Admiral Daala is that he's always wanted someone smart and ruthless and efficient enough to keep apace with him. Whether or not this is actually shown in the books is another matter.
- Tarkin does, of course, overestimate his own intelligence. And the novel
*Death Star* reveals that virtually all of Daala's appearances have come after she suffered severe brain damage.
- Otto and Laura of the
*H.I.V.E. Series* are this. Both are hackers of the highest caliber the school has ever seen. ||The Big Damn Kiss occurs in the school library.||
-
*Artemis Fowl* toys with the idea—Minerva, a blatant female replica (and rival) of Artemis, has some vague Ship Tease with him. But she only lasts for one book, inexplicably vanishing for the rest of the series.
- In
*A Wrinkle in Time* (and its sequels) Mr. and Mrs. Murray are both extremely intelligent scientists in different fields. Local gossips suggested this meant Charles Wallace was retarded before he started talking.
- In
*It Can't Happen Here*, Doremus and Lorinda have been having an ongoing affair. Lorinda is shown to be much more of an intellectual and spiritual equal for Doremus than his wife, Emma.
- One of the reasons Alaric falls for Laeshana in
*The Quest of the Unaligned* is that she's the only one with whom he can have an intelligent (or even intelligible) conversation.
-
*A Mage's Power*: Eric and Annala, two school nerds, quickly become friends and later Twice Shy. ||This is engineered by Tasio, who knew he would fawn over a "cute and sweet nerd".||
-
*Don't Call Me Ishmael!* has Scobie and Prudence. They are both (nearly) geniuses and wear glasses. The first time they meet, Prue is impressed by Scobie's debating.
- In
*Born Wicked*, clever and level-headed Cate falls for Finn, the smart son of a bookstore owner.
- Rose and Connor in
*Addicted* are both geniuses, and end up married after a decade of rivalry in their teens and early twenties.
- Played with in
*Anne of Green Gables*: when Anne and Gilbert come top of the class tied in the first place, their names written next to each other on the board, the narrator comments that its practically the same as announcing theyre an Official Couple. Gilbert is very happy, Anne
not so much.
-
*A Memoir By Lady Trent*: Isabella chose her first husband partially because he was also a dragon lover, like her, and supported her in her scientific pursuits. ||After he dies, her second husband is also a scholar, though this time he's a Cunning Linguist.||
-
*The 100*: Season 2 has genius mechanic Raven hooking up with genius engineer Wick; they actually have their first almost-kiss in the excitement of solving a technical problem.
-
*Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.*: Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons are the smartest people on Coulson's team, and Fitz was in love with Simmons from the beginning of the show. It takes Simmons a little over two seasons to figure out her own feelings, but they finally hook up in Season Three.
-
*Angel*: Aversion on the usual formula with Wesley and Fred as it was less than smooth and took multiple seasons ||and lasted exactly one episode||.
-
*Babylon 5*: John Sheridan and Delenn, both of whom are incredible strategic minds with immense curiosity about and respect for other races. All through the series, the two's feelings for each other are never shown to waver, in fact only growing deeper and stronger with time. There's never much doubt that They Will - it's just a matter of a) how long it will take and b) whether or not they'll ever get a chance to, considering those pesky wars they're always fighting. However, they overcome all that and ||wind up Happily Married and team-running the galaxy by the show's end||.
-
*Beverly Hills, 90210*: Averted with the Andrea and Brandon Ship Tease. They are best friends and she has a big crush on him in early seasons, but nothing ever happened between them.
-
*The Big Bang Theory*:
- All of the main characters are smart (except Penny), but Sheldon is the most intelligent and is paired up with Amy, who matches his level the most and is introduced as the most similar to him personalty-wise.
- The other guys also had relationships like this throughout the show. Examples include Howard/Bernadette, Leonard/Leslie, Howard/Leslie, Leonard/Stephanie, Leonard/Priya, etc. Leonard is mainly paired up with well-educated, smart girls in order to make them foils to Penny during her Will They or Won't They? with Leonard in the early years.
-
*Bones*:
- Played straight with ||Daisy and Sweets|| considering one is smart enough to ||be one of Bones' grad students, who are all supposed to be highly intelligent|| and the other ||was already working as an FBI profiler/psychologist and has multiple doctorates, and won a fulbright and a Rhodes, all before he was 23||. Still, with the number of geniuses on that show, it was fairly inevitable that this trope would have to happen at least once over the course of the show.
- Subverted on an early episode. Bones' old professor comes back and they slide into their previous relationship... which ends remarkably poorly. In general, Bones is fairly good at averting this trope, considering the number of geniuses in the lab. Between Brennan, Jack, Zach, and Cam, not to mention all the interns, there have been surprisingly few hookups between geniuses.
- Jack Hodgins has
*three* PhDs. His love interest and eventual wife, Angela Montenegro designed, custom-built, and patented a 3D holographic projector and the computer mainframe that runs it, sometime prior to 2005.
- Cam and Arastoo count. Shes a forensic pathologist and boss of the lab and hes a forensic anthropologist once he gets his doctorate. Both are fairly smart.
-
*Boy Meets World*:
- Subverted in the original series. Minkus
*thought* this would happen between him and Topanga during his one-season stint. However, Topanga was destined for Cory instead.
- Played entirely straight in the sequel series,
*Girl Meets World*, with Minkus's son Farkle and his lady love, Isadora Smackle.
-
*CSI*: Grissom and Sara although it takes six seasons of Will They or Won't They? before they actually get together.
-
*Doctor Who*: Rattigan explains his master plan for a new world to the other Teen Geniuses he'd collected, and mentions that he's written up a breeding program. They are appropriately appalled.
-
*Dollhouse*: Topher and Bennett, with their Dating Catwoman and Slap-Slap-Kiss. ||And then Bennett is hit with the HeelFace Door-Slam and shot in the head.||
-
*Drake & Josh*: Josh eventually starts dating his academic rival, Mindy.
-
*Eureka*: Almost every couple naturally as the whole town is populated by geniuses.
-
*Family Matters*: Steve Urkel is a Teen Genius and this trope applies to both his important relationships. While not smart as Steve, first love Laura and Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Myra are both brilliant girls in their own right (although Myra is much more similar to Steve, personality-wise). He eventually ends up with Laura.
-
*Firefly*: genius doctor Simon and the genius mechanic Kaylee. Though they won't... until The Movie, that is (the epilogue of the movie, no less).
-
*Friends*: Ross's girlfriends include Asian and Nerdy Julie in season 2 and scientist Charlie in season 9 and 10. However, despite the Birds of a Feather thing being lampshaded, he eventually breaks up with both of them.
-
*Gilmore Girls*:
- One of the reasons that Rory Gilmore and Jess Mariano were such a popular couple among the fans was that they were both incredibly intelligent and much too smart for the small town of Stars Hollow. Despite their compatibility, Jess's personal issues drove them apart.
- To a lesser extent, Logan and Rory. Interestingly enough, Logan and Jess seem to be the two sides of the same Brilliant, but Lazy coin.
- All of the relationships Paris was involved in qualify - she seems to have a thing for the intellectual type. Except for her early crush on Tristan, which was more All Girls Want Bad Boys.
-
*Gossip Girl*: Dan and Blair.
**Blair:** Dan and Blair. Individual entities. Two proper nouns separated by a conjunction. **Dan:** Or a comma, if mentioned in a list. **Blair:** Which is rare. Since we have nothing in common and are in fact, opposites. **Dan:** The kind of opposites who do not attract. **Blair:** Most definitely not. **Dan:** No. **Blair:** The world just wasn't ready for a Humphrey-Waldorf friendship. It's been nice not being friends with you. **Dan:** Let's not do it again some time.
-
*Home and Away*: Dexter Walker and April Scott.
-
*Knight Rider 2008*: Lampshaded and Subverted in the first post-movie episode.
**Billy:** Listen! Zoe! I have advanced degrees in Applied Physics, Quantum Physics Electrical *and* Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry, as well as Discrete and Applied Mathematics. **Zoe:** And I speak 9 languages! We should make a baby. **Billy:** Really? **Zoe:** No.
-
*Luther*: A darker take on this, as Nietzsche Wannabe and Self-Made Orphan Alice Morgan is attracted to the titular detective because he is one of the few people in the world smart enough to deal with her.
-
*The Naked Brothers Band*: Cooper Pillot and Patty Scoggins. Though they still call each other by their last names, they stand as a bastion of stability amidst the show's romantic chaos.
-
*NCIS*: Abby and McGee exhibit some elements of this, particularly in the early seasons. The facts that they aren't quite an official couple, that in general Abby is fairly affectionate towards all her colleagues, and that Duckie is arguably at least as smart as either of them does water the trope down a bit. ||McGee eventually marries someone else and Abby eventually leaves the team.||
-
*Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide*: Subverted. It would seem things are going that way for Cookie/Evelyn in season 3, but they end up with different people.
-
*Noah's Arc*: College professor Chance paired with clever, strategic businessman Eddie.
-
*The O.C.*:
- Nerds Seth and Anna briefly date in season 1. It didn't last and they both agreed they were Too Much Alike and Better as Friends.
- Averted in season 3 with the Taylor and Seth Ship Tease. Nothing really happens between them, and in season 4 she gets over her crush on Seth and she is paired with her total opposite, Ryan.
-
*Our Miss Brooks*: Miss Brooks and Mr. Boynton. ||They get engaged and marry at the end of The Movie Grand Finale||
-
*Smallville*: A very humorous (but oddly cute) version appears in "Fortune", wherein two very different kinds of genius wind up alone together and very drunk. The result? ||Tess Mercer and Emil Hamilton making a Home Porn Movie||. Both are suitably embarrassed afterwards; whether the relationship continued was undisclosed.
-
*Stargate SG-1* and *Stargate Atlantis*: Averted with Samantha Carter and Rodney McKay. The two are Earth's smartest persons, The Smart Guy of their respective show and McKay is attracted to her, but nothing beyond that. In fact, Carter is as annoyed by McKay as most people are, while McKay gets into a relationship with Dr. Keller later. Though Carter does visit one Alternate Universe where she learns that she had married (and divorced) McKay.
-
*The Suite Life on Deck*: The studious twin Cody is paired with Bailey who is just as smart and nerdy as he is.
-
*Teen Wolf*: Lydia, a practically-certified genius, ends up with Stiles, a straight-A student with a talent for research and detective work.
**Lydia:** You don't need the instructions. When was the last time you've ever used instructions, am I right? You don't need them because you are too smart to waste your time with them, okay? You can figure it out. Stiles, you're the one who always figures it out. So you can do it. Figure. It. Out.
-
*Veronica Mars*: Mac got two of these relationships, with Beaver (season 2) and Max (season 3).
- Subverted in Yuri Vizbors "To Dmitry Sukharyov" ("She tells me clearly
"). The academic heroine rejects the narrator and says her standard of men is based on Mikhail Lomonosov and her heart is only open to science. The narrator promptly tries to excel in physics and hopes to live "like Curie with his Marie", only to be rejected again and learn that the heroine is dating a mediocre D-student called Mishka Lomonosov.
- In the introduction to
*Thrill Me*, Stephen Dolginoff reminds the reader—who is likely directing or performing in it—that Richard and Nathan are intellectual equals. This is quite likely the reason they're as close as they are: they'd both graduated college by 19, and it's all but outright stated that no one else could keep up with them. It's a sign of how much Richard cares when he goes from saying, "I'm a superman," to, "We are supermen."
-
*Steins;Gate* pairs eccentric would-be Mad Scientist Okabe Rintarou with Teen Genius neuroscientist Makise Kurisu - a pair so nerdy and obsessed with science that their Big Damn Kiss was followed by a discussion of the hippocampus's role in it.
- Three of the paths in
*Katawa Shoujo* have the bookworm male lead, Hisao Nakai, being paired up with very book-smart girls:
- Lilly Satou: She wants to be a Cool Teacher and is Class Representative for her class, meaning she has the highest scores there.
- Hanako Ikezawa: She seems able to keep up with the class despite her bad attendance record, although Mutou suggests she isn't a "star student," and she and Hisao find a shared interest in their mutual love of reading.
- Shizune Hakamichi: One of the criteria for being named a Class Representative in a Japanese high school is to have the highest test scores from the year before, and there's the fact that she and Misha are usually the first people in 3-3 to finish Mutou's assignments.
- If the player wants to make the protagonist of
*True Love Junai Monogatari* score with either Student Council President Remi or local artist Miyuki, he/she better work on rising the PC's Scholarship (smarts) or Art. ||In fact, if the MC doesn't max out his smarts *and* get the highest scores in the tests, he won't be able to hook up with Remi.||
-
*Eerie Cuties*: The het part of the fandom ships Ace with Brooke, since both are mature for their age note : they were 14 before the timeskip and are 15 as of this writing and share the Only Sane Man position in the comic. As such, it was the closest its ever had to a normal, stable couple before the comic went into indefinite hiatus.
-
*Freefall*: Florence and Winston are easily the smartest characters, and they've shown strong attraction for each other since their first meeting, culminating so far in several kisses.
-
*Girl Genius*: Subverted with Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and Agatha Heterodyne. They looked like they were going this way, and then things got — complicated. It would have been so much simpler if Agatha hadn't been a Heterodyne. Not that Gil isn't smitten, and Agatha isn't interested, but circumstances have interfered. They're still the Alpha Couple of the story, despite not being a couple. ||There is evidence they will be together in the future.|| This is frequently lampshaded by everyone (including her *castle*) commenting on how well they would fit together, much to their annoyance.
- Aradia and Sollux were paired before (if that concept makes any sense in the context) the events of
*Homestuck*. Well, sort of.
- Matt and Kiley of
*Ménage à 3* may be fumbling their way towards a somewhat serious relationship, despite their shared Selective Obliviousness to the fact. This may be related to the fact that they are among the few characters in the comic with some level of social intelligence, and an interest in and willingness to *talk* to other people (and listen to what the other person says). However, that relationship also has some serious problems.
- Eventually, Helen and Dave of
*Narbonic* (though Dave isn't as much of a genius as Helen... ||he's even *more* brilliant||).
- For a while in
*Sluggy Freelance*, Mad Scientist Riff was dating occasional-mad-tinkerer Sasha. It wasn't a huge part of her character, but she *was* able to build her own Dimensional Flux Agitator.
-
*The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius*: Jimmy and his Love Interest Cindy, the second smartest kid in class after him. Since they are in competition because of this trope, there's a lot of Belligerent Sexual Tension involved for a long time.
-
*Alvin and the Chipmunks*: Simon is an honors student and the most sensible of the brothers. When the Chipettes entered the picture, years later, he was eventually paired with Jeanette, who was his Distaff Counterpart. They provide the page image.
- Jeremie and Aelita from
*Code Lyoko*. They fit the Beta Couple mold, contrasting the complicated Sissi/Ulrich/Yumi/William love square. They're also the only pairing in the show confirmed by Word of God.
-
*Daria*:
- In later seasons, Teen Genius Daria is paired with her intellectual equal, Tom Sloane. There was also Ted, another brainy kid and one of her very rare crushes. (Meanwhile, her longstanding infatuation with Trent failed in good part because he
*didn't* fit this trope.)
- Jodie Landon and Mack Mackenzie are the Token Minority Couple and two of the smartest and most well-adjusted characters in the series. The former is the Go-Getter Girl overachiever, the latter is the only smart guy in the football team (in contrast to the other Dumb Jocks football players).
- Xanatos of
*Gargoyles* gives this as one of the reasons why he wants to marry Fox, though he initially frames it in a way reminiscent of a Darwinist Desire.
- Subverted in
*Gravity Falls*—one of the later episodes had Candy develop a crush on Dipper (possibly as a Fandom Nod, since they were a popular pairing already). However, he's not interested, and she gets over it by the end of the episode.
-
*Hey Arnold!*: A downplayed example, but there's some Ship Tease between Gerald and Phoebe, and they are both rather intelligent.
-
*Kim Possible*: Kim and her genius brothers are the result of a union between a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon.
-
*Total Drama*:
-
*Winx Club*: Tecna and Timmy, the tech-fairy and the tech expert of the Specialists respectively.
- Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his wife Kwa Geok Choo were two of the top students at Raffles, and had a friendly rivalry where they would compete for first place on exams (the loser usually got the second-highest grade in class). | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PairTheSmartOnes |
Paint It Black - TV Tropes
**Jyrras:**
Remember that time you thought Alexsi went evil because she wore a black dress?
**Dan:**
Oh come on! I was twelve!
**Jyrras:**
The other time.
**Dan:**
Hey! I was very drunk!
**Jyrras:**
No, Dan. The other time.
A specific form of Evil Costume Switch, one that requires no effort whatsoever on the part of the newly evil party.
See, your Transformation Trinket, your Empathic Weapon, and your costume aren't too happy with your FaceHeel Turn. Being inanimate objects, though, the only way they can express their disapproval is to turn black and evil-looking — goodbye Frills of Justice, hello Spikes of Villainy. The transformation usually, if not always, happens right before your eyes and those of your astonished friends, just for dramatic flair.
A possible variant is when a character happens to be split between good or evil or gain an Enemy Without (sometimes just for a Mirror Match); the Evil Twin (or both) might immediately get Color-Coded for Your Convenience in the process. In visual media, it naturally helps the viewer telling apart the good guy and the bad guy.
A Sub-Trope of Convenient Color Change and Evil Makeover.
Compare Evil Wears Black.
This trope is named for The Rolling Stones song "Paint It Black", although the song itself is completely unrelated to the trope, being about grieving a loved one's death. For the Nancy A. Collins novel (also named after the song), see
*Sonja Blue*. It is also unrelated to Ron the Death Eater, formerly known as the *other* thing named after the same song ("Paint the Hero Black"), which involves more than a costume change.
**Important Note:** Please read the trope description before adding any new example. It is NOT about characters getting a new black (or even darker) outfit. It's about a costume/color change being *spontaneous*. Unfitting examples will be removed.
## Examples:
- In Season 5 of
*Happy Heroes*, Doctor H. is brainwashed into helping antagonists Big M. and Little M. with their schemes to take over Planet Xing. When Doctor H. is in his evil form, his typical yellow and purple suit and helmet change to black and gray, with the suit in particular having one feature — a vest — that Doctor H.'s normal clothing doesn't have.
- In
*11eyes*, ||when Lisette becomes Liselotte, her Elegant Gothic Lolita outfit changes from white to black.||
- Inverted in
*Bleach* — Ichigo's normal outfit is black and his Enemy Within is a completely white version of himself with black sclera. While Ichigo's Super Mode turns his sword black, Hollow Ichigo's version turns it white. Justified in that white is the color most associated with death in Japan.
- The Devil Suit in
*Corrector Yui* is an insta-corrupted Angel Suit.
-
*Digimon*:
- ShineGreymon Ruin Mode (a berserk, corrupt power-up), in
*Digimon Data Squad*, is a darker, duller palette swap of ShineGreymon Burst Mode (the true power-up), though, in this case, the dark version occurs first.
- Also, in
*Digimon Adventure 02*, Ken forces Agumon to become Metal Greymon when under the control of a Mind-Control Device, and when he does, he's gray instead of his usual orange (if you take the card game as canon, this means he's a Virus type instead of a Vaccine type now — think of it as Digimon's version of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors), though his Agumon form remains unchanged.
- In
*Fate/Apocrypha*, ||Atalanta's|| clothes turn black (and Stripperific) and her hair turns grey after activating her second Noble Phantasm, ||Agrius Metamorphosis||. She normally hates using this, since it drives her insane, but the events of the War take a toll on her psyche...
- In
*Fate/Zero*, an unwilling ||Irisviel|| has this, ||when her mind gets absorbed by all the Evils in the World — Angra Mainyu.||
- ||Trisha Elric|| in
*Fullmetal Alchemist* has brown hair, but in the 2003 anime version, when she is ||"resurrected" as a homunculus|| named Sloth, her hair is jet black. Black hair and paler skin seem to be a general effect on the homunculi of the anime. Lust's human form was Ishvalan, and they're all mostly middle-eastern in appearance.
- In
*Hellsing*, after Seras finally drains a human to death and unlocks her full power as a vampire of Alucard's line, her yellow Hellsing uniform turns red. Or maybe that had to do with the scenes both before and after her transformation, where it liberally soaked in blood.
-
*Holoearth Chronicles Side:E ~Yamato Phantasia~*: A subtle case whenever humans are corrupted by especially powerful Stigma, with them gaining a black aura and black Tainted Veins that appear to only be visible to Kami. A much more blatant case is when an Ayakashi becomes stigmatized, if the squirrel Ayakashi fought by Fubuki is any indication.
- Inverted in
*Kill la Kill*: the Quirky Miniboss Squad's uniforms changing color from white to black indicates that they've joined the good guys.
-
*Sailor Moon*:
- Brainwashed Tuxedo Mask fights by throwing black roses. In some "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight scenes in the anime, the rose in his hand is flickering between red and black.
- The normally black-clad antagonist Sailor Tin Nyanko only gets partially purified by Sailor Moon, resulting in a half-black and half-white costume.
- Sailor Galaxia was evil to begin with, but once Chaos completely overtakes her, her golden fuku turns pitch black, along with her hair going bright red and her skin greyish-white.
-
*Saint Seiya*:
- Pretty much a staple of any Gemini Saint who has a case of Split Personality: Saga, Aspros, Paradox...
- In
*Saint Seiya Omega*, Gemini Paradox's light blue hair turns black when her more violent personality takes over. Her lipstick also goes from coral to dark purple.
- In
*Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas*, Alone, The Protagonist Tenma's best friend, normally has blond hair, but when Hades' corruption on him starts showing up, his hair turns black. ||After Hades' soul is expelled from him, his hair turns back to blond.||
- In
*Transformers: Kiss Players*, when Starscream possesses Atari Hitotonari, her uniform turns black.
-
*Shazam!*: Mary Marvel's white costume switched to black when she received Black Adam's powers in *Countdown to Final Crisis* — which had the side effect of turning her evil.
-
*The Smurfs*: Smurfette originally had black hair, as she was a creation of Gargamel, but when Papa Smurf changed her into a real Smurf, her hair became blonde. In the cartoon show episode "Smurfette Unmade", the spell that Gargamel casts on her to undo the spell that made her into a real Smurf causes her hair to turn black as she reverts to her "un-Smurfy self". In *The Smurfs 2*, Smurfette's skin also changes to pale grey as she turns back into a Naughty, although this only occurs in a dream sequence.
-
*Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics)*: Evil Sonic (a.k.a. Scourge) eventually goes green and vile-looking when he absorbs enough energy from the Master Emerald, which also helps drive him a bit mad and he becomes even more evil when Sonic points out their similarities. In the end, this leads to his using his super form, a bizarre inverse of his usual color scheme with purple hair, black eyes with red pupils and even a slight outfit change, with the red and green parts becoming purple and blue. It's a surprisingly creepy looking form, fitting for how crazy he's become.
-
*Supergirl*:
- In
*Girl Power*, Supergirl was exposed to black kryptonite and she was split into her normal self and an evil (and oversexed) alternate personality that wore a black-and-silver version of her normal costume. The black costume returned in a later *Justice League of America* storyline where a battle with the Omega Man accidentally reawakened the Dark Supergirl persona within her.
- This was based on an earlier story,
*The Condemned Legionnaires*, in which Kara was exposed to a piece of *red* kryptonite that created Satan Girl, who likewise wore a black outfit. Her version had a cowl and no S-symbol, because her identity was originally a mystery.
-
*Teen Titans*: Inverted by Raven, who usually switches from her dark-blue to a white outfit when her demon father Trigon's influence becomes too great.
-
*X-Men*:
- Jean Grey/Phoenix. When she first becomes Phoenix, the new suit is just there, and when she becomes Dark Phoenix, it turns red. Later in the original Phoenix arc, she can tell how close she is to losing control by what she sees her costume is doing. In the
*Endsong* storyline, she frequently changes from green to red as her personality shifts between "Jean with Phoenix powers" and "cosmic destroyer". When her issues are finally resolved, it becomes *white*. (The white suit has its own meaning, which, like all things Phoenix, is needlessly complicated.) note : When Jean reassembles all of the lost pieces of the Phoenix Force, her costume is white and gold and she becomes the White Phoenix of the Crown, the most complete Force/Host combination. However, we'd seen the outfit once before — in a flashback sequence to her after her Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the original Phoenix story. Depending on the Writer, she was, at the time, either Phoenix with a bit of Jean's soul, Phoenix impersonating Jean but *absolutely completely not her,* or Jean with some of the Phoenix Force in her. So...enjoy the pretty new suit and don't think too hard on it. Trust us on this one.
- Another Phoenix example is when Emma Frost briefly possesses the Phoenix Force during
*Endsong*, her normally white costume becomes black and gold and more slutty. Yes, it's possible.
- Every Phoenix host seems to get a new Phoenix-ified version of their outfit. Even Spider-Man, ||though he wasn't
*actually* a Phoenix host at the time, so where'd the outfit come from?||
- Inverted in
*Aladdin* where Jafar's outfit turns white after he uses his first wish to become Sultan. Then again, he was already evil in the first place, and the white outfit seems like the traditional color for male Agrabah royalty.
- In
*My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Friendship Games*, Human Twilight absorbing all the magic stored in her device grants her an instant Evil Makeover as Midnight Sparkle, with ominous black wings, a sexy Dark Magical Girl outfit, a glowing horn and magical emanation around her eyes, as well as her skin taking a darker purple hue.
-
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer*:
- As Willow powers up for her homicidal Freak Out, the phlebotinum involved turns her hair and eyes black in front of an astonished Anya.
- Also inverted in the finale, where Willow's good use of magic turns her hair white and makes her glow. That only lasts for a few seconds, though, and she goes right back to being a redhead afterwards.
-
*Doctor Who*: At the end of "The Keeper of Traken", kind, generous, good Counsel Tremas, with his white beard, hair, and robes, sees an odd-looking grandfather clock in the middle of the room. He goes over to touch it. Oh, Crap!. Bad plan. It's The Master's TARDIS, and out comes the Master, cackling "A new body, at last!" Tremas de-ages, his hair and beard shortening and turning black, and gets a spiffy new black outfit. Why hello there, new Master.
-
*Kamen Rider*:
- In
*Kamen Rider Dragon Knight*, it was first played straight in dreams: first, Kit is attacked by a black-clad version of himself, and in another one, Kit dreams of taking Xaviax's Deal with the Devil and going through a *second* Transformation Sequence, transforming into the black suit, before hunting down and taking out his teammates. He was, needless to say, not too enthusiastic when first presented with a real-life version of the black armor.
- In
*Kamen Rider Kuuga*, Yuusuke Godai's black Super Mode originally comes from a serious mad-on and threatens to make him a Destructive Savior. However, when powered by his sense of justice, "Ultimate Kuuga" is... still black, but the eyepieces go from black to their usual red. In *Kamen Rider Decade,* the black-and-gold but *much* more evil-looking Rising Ultimate Kuuga form, with Spikes of Villainy, is bestowed upon Yuusuke *Onodera* by the Legion of Doom when they brainwash him. You get the black eyes until he gets de-brainwashed, and again, they become their normal red.
- Inverted in
*The Umbrella Academy*: when ||Viktor|| goes on a rampage and starts building up telekinetic energy, his outfit and ||violin|| turn completely white from the power.
- The gold parts of Takanuva's armour turn black when his light is partially drained in
*BIONICLE*.
-
*Transformers*:
- It's very common for Hasbro and Takara to re-release an existing toy model with a black repaint. This business model is common enough that it has its own page at the Transformers Wiki which explains these changes as "Spontaneous Recoloration".
*Shortpacked!* frequently takes shots at this. Often, though, the change isn't good/evil, but a powerup that leaves the character's personality alone.
- There's also the Black Repaint page at TFWiki, which covers when toys are specifically recolored black. In a great many cases, the recolors are issued as Evil Twins, especially if it's a version of Optimus Prime (although some black Optimus Primes are simply cases of Optimus Prime wearing black). Again, though, if the recolored toy represents the same character as the original version, it generally doesn't affect the character's personality.
-
*BlazBlue*:
- In
*Bowser's Fury*, the eponymous Fury Bowser has turned jet-black with Flaming Hair and Glowing Eyes of Doom, and with this appearance comes a change of personality. No longer is he the Large Ham Boisterous Bruiser he was before, but now he's a feral rage-fueled monster who'll lash out against everyone, even his own son. ||Turns out this trope is played literally, as his change in attitude was caused by a prank gone awry from Bowser Junior.||
-
*Dragon Age II* players expected the worst when, in the game's third act, Anders' robe turned black. They were right.
- In several
*Dragon Ball Z* fighting games, if Vegeta is wearing one of his armored outfits when he is transformed into Majin Vegeta rather than the blue jumpsuit like he was in canon, the armor turns black.
- The various machina enemies in
*Freedom Planet 2* turn black and green when infected with Code Black, effectively placing them under Serpentine and Syntax's control.
- Aya, the poster girl of the Japanese fan-made fighting game
*Hinokakera*, undergoes a radical transformation when the mental blocks on her massive psychic powers are shattered. In addition to a personality change from timidity to a berserk aggressiveness, she gains a new black outfit that is much less conservative than her usual attire.
- In
*inFAMOUS*, Cole gets more scars on his body and red lightning the more evil deeds he does. Also, it's possible to get black lightning by going full evil and making a turn to good at the last moments of *inFAMOUS 2*.
- In the
*Knights of the Old Republic* games, characters' appearances change when falling to the Dark Side, include their underwear inexplicably darkening to black and switching from normal brown Jedi robes to grey-black Sith robes. Also, the Handmaiden in the second game switches from red lipstick to black lipstick while on the dark side.
- The Unbreakable Darkness of
*Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny*, whose clothes go from white and pink to red and black whenever she loses control of her powers.
- In
*Mega Man Legends*, committing enough cruel acts (which is difficult) turns your armor black.
-
*Metroid*:
-
*Metroid Prime*: Although it's not evil, Samus' Phazon Suit is her normal Varia Suit mixed with deadly blue stuff, turning it black and gray with bits of red.
-
*Metroid Prime 2: Echoes*: EVERY Ing-possessed enemy. Be they bugs, bad guys, or even robots, if an Ing's in charge, expect black-and-purple enemies, maybe with Spikes of Villainy.
-
*Metroid Prime 3: Corruption*: Samus' suit changes if you get corrupted. It's implied the suit has a psychic and biological link to Samus.
-
*Metroid Fusion* Inverted with the SA-X. It looks no different from Samus' original appearance, while the real Samus sports a mangled and scrawny blue suit which resulted when the federation *surgically removed her infected power armor*. Said armor *became* the SA-X, by the way.
- When ||Aribeth|| renounces Tyr and swears fealty to Morag in
*Neverwinter Nights*, her armor immediately turns darker in colour. (The model doesn't change, but apparently the spikes on it become villainous by default.)
- In Wii's
*Punch-Out!!*, both Don Flamenco and Mr. Sandman change from rather vibrant colors to predominantly black outfits in Title Defense mode. Both lost their titles to Little Mac and were *furious* about it.
- In
*Puyo Puyo 7*, ||while Arle is possessed by Ecolo,|| her outfit has a dark color scheme. When Ringo and her gang ||drives Ecolo out of her body, her clothes turn back to normal. Though some fans were shocked when she was not wearing her usual blue.||
- In
*Shadow of the Colossus*, Wander's hair becomes darker and his skin becomes paler as you progress through the game, and then at the end, ||you become the new embodiment of Dormin, which kind of explains everything.||
-
*Street Fighter*'s Evil Ryu takes his standard white karate gi and turns it a dark shade of gray.
- Oleander the Unicorn in
*Them's Fightin' Herds* once had a pure white coat, just like other unicorns. But after reading a certain number of pages from the Book of Undying Misery, a "mark" was left on her by the book's Black Magic, turning her coat and mane black.
-
*Fate/stay night*: ||Saber Alter||. And even more notable, her master: ||Dark Sakura||. ||Berserker|| gets the same treatment, becoming a vaguely human-shaped cloud of black tendrils.
-
*Marco and the Galaxy Dragon*: ||El Skeleton||s body and clothes turn black after he is made "heartless" by Ulginos. He reverts back to his original colour scheme once Haqua breaks through his brainwashing.
-
*Beast Wars*:
- when Starscream possesses Waspinator, his Predacon emblem changes to the Deception emblem.
- When Rhinox is reprogrammed as a Predacon, his normally-brownish hide gains a purplish hue, and his gold accents become silver. Once he's restored as a Maximal, he returns to his original colors.
-
*Code Lyoko*:
- When a Polymorphic Clone takes Ulrich's appearance in episode "Revelation", it has gray skin and a black samurai outfit with orange highlights. This is solely for the viewer's benefit of telling it apart from the true Ulrich during the following Mirror Match, since, before, the Clone had been identical to Odd, up to the color.
- William goes through a full Evil Costume Switch in "Final Round", but this is more XANA altering his avatar than a spontaneous change.
- In the
*Kim Possible* episode "Bad Boy", in which Ron accidentally stole Drakken's "evil energies", you could tell what the balance of good and evil in Ron and Drakken was with their skin color. Drakken's grew to be a disturbing pinkish tone and Ron's became Drakken's usual evil shade.
-
*The Looney Tunes Show*: In "Rebel Without a Glove", Bugs Bunny loses his signature white gloves, which turns him into a Nervous Wreck because he feels they define his personality. As a last-ditch replacement, he purchases some black leather gloves, which causes his personality to transform into that of a '90s Anti-Hero, resulting in him being a Jerkass to everyone around him.
- While she's first introduced in the evil persona, this is the case for Princess Luna/Nightmare Moon in
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.* As the good Princess Luna, she has a dark blue coat and a lighter blue mane. As the evil Nightmare Moon, her coat is black and her mane becomes darker and even more nebulous than usual (when she first transforms back, her mane is light blue and looks more like hair, but in her subsequent appearances, it's darker and flows more like Celestia's).
- In
*The Spectacular Spider-Man*, after being gaining the symbiote, Peter's costume is changed to how it looked in the third movie — a black-and-silver version of its regular appearance. Then as the symbiote exerts more control over Peter's behavior, the suit gradually transforms into its design from the comics, with the webbing fading away and the spider insignia becoming larger.
- Happens in reverse for
*Teen Titans*' Raven: normally, she's under her father's influence but in control of herself, and her costume is dark blue, but when she's in a very good mood or completely free of her father's control, her outfit turns white.
-
*Wakfu*: Falling under demonic possession causes Goultard's skin to turn black and his hair white.
- In the right conditions, some species of harmless grasshoppers can metamorphose into dangerous locusts. In addition to developing stronger wings and becoming much hungrier, breedier and swarmier, this also causes their normally-green bodies to turn black.
- Chameleons puff up their crests, open their mouths, lift up their tails and turn black when they're angry or distressed, in order to show themselves bigger (and therefore more dangerous)
- Similarly to chameleons, octopuses also turn themselves black and get an intimidating posture when they're angry or distressed.
- Exploited in both cases, since none of those color changes actually make the animals more dangerous or evil, but only helps them look like it. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintItBlack |
Draco in Leather Pants - TV Tropes
Were they playing the same game?
*"I guarantee you Satan's going to have no problems on this planet because all the women are gonna go 'What a cute butt!' He's Satan! 'You don't know him like I do.' He's the prince of darkness! 'I can change him.'"*
Where Ron the Death Eater is taking a good character and making them evil, Draco in Leather Pants is when a fandom takes a controversial or downright villainous character and downplays their flaws, often turning them into an object of desire and/or a victim in the process. This can cause conflicts if the writers are not willing to retool the character to fit this demand.
In fanfiction, they are frequently the love object of the local Author Avatar, who uses the power of love to redeem the character. "I can fix him" is a commonly expressed sentiment among fans of Dracos in Leather Pants. In extreme cases, the affection these characters receive from fans can lead them to forget that
*they're actually still supposed to be villains*. Or, on the flip side, even the worst crossings of the Moral Event Horizon can be rationalized, while any insult from the hero towards the villain is cast as deplorably mean. The writer's attempt to make the villain more "sympathetic" will likely cause them to remove everything that made the character so cool/well-liked in the first place.
Common reasons for this include the character being wicked in a classy or cool way. A physically attractive villain is much more likely to be subject to this trope than a physically ugly one. Beauty Equals Goodness often subconsciously applies even when the character's beauty only extends to their physical appearance. All Girls Want Bad Boys may be a factor with male villains getting a female fandom that views them through this lens. A badass villain will naturally be preferred by many of these over meeker heroic characters at times, as well. Though these aren't the only reasons why fans could do this.
Some villain archetypes, such as the Smug Snake (because of their off-puttingly arrogant personality), female villains (because it's mostly Fangirls who invoke this trope) and the Complete Monster (because of the severity of their evil deeds and absence of redeemability) are rarely susceptible to this, but it can still happen.
Jerkass Dissonance usually plays a part in this trope. It is much easier for fans to forgive and overlook the negative qualities and stress the Freudian Excuses that form a villain's sympathetic back-story even if they would run screaming from such a person in real life. After all, the actions of a fictional character have no real-world effect.
Expect also for fans to make excuses for the character not getting any comeuppance for their sins, and, for bonus points, gloat if one of their hated and/or villainized characters gets the short stick instead, especially if the latter is the victim of the former. Double with Ensemble Dark Horse if it was a minor vilain who gets this treatment. If the character is a leader of any sort, expect their fans to declare that The Extremist Was Right.
Named for a term in the
*Harry Potter* fandom, for the most sympathetic Fanfic portrayals of Draco Malfoy, who, in Canon, is a petty, smug, elitist Spoiled Brat. (The term originated in Hurt/Comfort Fics, where Draco was the comforter and Ron was the abuser, usually with Hermione being the victim. Note the term was also used by fans of such scenarios as a completely self-aware guilty pleasure.)
Disturbingly, sometimes Truth in Television but we won't go into that. For literal antagonists in leather pants, see Hell-Bent for Leather.
**Related Tropes:**
- Affably Evil: Because despite their villainous intentions, they have a reasonably pleasant or nice personality.
- Aloof Big Brother: Although they may be cold towards their younger siblings, they may be justified in doing so.
- Anti-Villain: If the "anti" part is emphasized more than the "villain".
- Awesome Ego: May have a big ego and maybe narcissistic, but have a cool personality at the same time.
- Beauty Is Bad: Might be a villain, but they are just so darn attractive and appealing.
- Bishōnen villains: Male villains can be forgiven if they are pretty.
- Creepy Awesome characters (if evil)
- Cry for the Devil: If the fans feel so sorry for them that they forget that they're still supposed to be evil.
- Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Because being a crime boss is glamorous.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Because it totally justifies any of their villainous actions.
- Dark Messiah: If the fans agree with their messianic philosophies.
- Designated Villain: The audience is meant to see a certain character as scum, but due to either bad writing or the hero being worse, it can be difficult to register.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: If they are nice to the people they love, fans forgive them for their evil acts towards everyone else.
- Everybody Loves Zeus: Because the Top God has to be a good guy, never mind anything else.
- Evil All Along/FaceHeel Turn: If the fans continue to insist that they are a good guy.
- Evil Is Cool: They may be wicked, but they pull it off so well.
- Evil Is Hammy: If the "hammy" part is viewed as "good acting" or Narm Charm.
- Evil Is Sexy: Fans are too busy fantasizing about them to hate them.
- Evil Versus Evil: If the opposition goes far enough into Eviler than Thou, fans may forget that the first party is actually still evil too. This also can extend to tropes like Enemy Mine or Pay Evil unto Evil.
- Evil Versus Oblivion: Similar to the reason above, but the villain is more likely to be humanized and beloved when they're the one to take the stand to stop an even more monstrous threat than themselves.
- Evil Virtues: Being a bad guy doesn't always mean that a character has no redeeming qualities, after all.
- Females Are More Innocent: If the fans agree that a woman, no matter what she does, can't be evil at heart.
- Fetishized Abuser by design, since these types are
*supposed* to induce Perverse Sexual Lust.
- Freudian Excuse: When fans tend to ignore the fact that the excuse doesn't really justify the character's actions and shift the blame to another character for the individual's actions.
- Friendly Enemy: If they're evil.
- Harmless Villain: If they are harmless in an endearing way.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Because they are just that bad at being bad.
- Jerkass Woobie, if the "Woobie" part is used to automatically excuse the 'Jerkass' part no matter how out of proportion (or unrelated) the one is to the other.
- Knight Templar, if the fans agree with them.
- Alternatively, characters or factions dedicated to opposing or destroying the Draco are often seen by fans as this trope, even if they've got plenty of good reasons for wanting to do so.
- Laughably Evil, if funny enough.
- Magnificent Bastard: Depending on whether you place too much emphasis on the Magnificent part over the Bastard.
- No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Because obviously inviting the hero to dinner, even if it's against their will, means you actually like and care about them.
- Offstage Villainy: The Show, Don't Tell rule of storytelling counts for a lot and spending more time talking about a villain's wicked deeds than showing them can mess with a reader's perceptions.
- Progressively Prettier: Fans love the Bishōnen Line.
- Punch-Clock Villain: The character is in many respects a normal person that just happens to be on the side of the villains. It can make a character come across as either more sympathetic or less so depending on the viewer's point of view (if it's the former, then you have this trope).
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: When this trope crops up in a work, the invoker of Even Evil Has Standards will often get this treatment. Or, disturbingly, a handful of fans may feel that "rape is love."
- Rooting for the Empire: If fans know they're evil, but want them to win anyway.
- Self-Fanservice often accompanies this trope.
- Sissy Villain: Villains of this stripe can be attractive to some people.
- Too Funny to Be Evil: They make you laugh, make you cry and
What? They've actually made people die?
- Troubled, but Cute or Broken Bird if they are evil.
- Ugly Cute if evil.
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: For the instances of this trope that have a bit more justification.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: All things truly wicked start with an innocence, after all, and fans of a leather pantsed character can end up clinging to a character's sweet kid phase (whether it's canon or merely something possible but at no point confirmed) because of the inherent tragedy of it all.
- Villain Has a Point: The evil character is right about one thing, leading to cries of "___ did nothing wrong!"
- Villainous Valor: If fans start Rooting for the Empire.
- Villain with Good Publicity: If the fans agree that the villain deserves their good public image.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: If the fans agree with their extremist views; this generally means that they will categorize the character under The Extremist Was Right as well.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Not all white-haired characters are evil, of course, but many evil characters that are targets of this trope have white hair and are often seen as attractive (for instance, Trope Codifier Sephiroth).
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Like Jerkass Woobie, when the "Woobie" is used to ignore the "Destroyer of Worlds" part.
- If the audience seems to have a fairly good reason for preferring the bad guy over the good guy, you may have Unintentionally Sympathetic (and/or Unintentionally Unsympathetic in the possible case of the hero they're against).
- When the audience embraces or admires a villain more because of their chutzpah, badassery, and/or Break the Haughty potential than out of actual admiration, and are still perfectly fine with them receiving their ultimate defeat in the end, then it's Love to Hate.
- Rooting for the Empire is doing this while acknowledging that the villains are evil.
- Jerk Sue is when a character is perfect and can do no wrong from the
*story's* perspective, but is actually a horrible person when viewed more objectively.
- An Unpopular Popular Character is a character who everybody among the main cast thinks is a complete jerk, complete loser, or both, but fans can't get enough of; applies to
*any* type of character, not necessarily a villain. (Unlike a Draco in Leather Pants, this is often the writer's intent.)
# Examples:
<!—index—>
<!—/index—> | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintTheVillainWhite |
Painters - TV Tropes
Artists who use traditional paint media in their work. This includes users of oils, watercolors, opaque, acrylics and other mediums.
See also Album Cover Designers, Author Illustrators, Cartoonists, Comic Book Creators, Illustrators, Mangaka, Photographers, Production Design, Sculptors and Webcomic Creators.
<!—index—> | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Painters |
Pair the Suitors - TV Tropes
They've both picked scissors. Original by Komik Grontol.
In which a Love Triangle results in the two suitors, who had previously been competing over the same person, developing romantic feelings for each other instead. Might happen in a Harem Genre romance, if two of the leftover suitors end up together.
At least one character in the love triangle needs to be gay or bisexual for this to work. For that reason, it's most commonly seen in works with lots of LGBT characters, such as Fanfiction, New Media, and the yaoi/yuri genre.
## Examples:
- In
*Cardcaptor Sakura*, one of the initial sources of Syaoran's rivalry toward Sakura is that they both have crushes on Yukito. Once Syaoran realizes that ||he's more attracted to Yukito's moon-based magic than Yukito himself||, he starts crushing on Sakura instead, and they end the series as the Official Couple.
- The Twist Ending of an arc of
*School Mermaid*. Two girls go into the school at the same time to try to use the mermaid flesh to make the same boy fall for them. When dawn falls the only mermaid they killed has the wrong name, forcing both of them to cast the spell on each other instead. They instantly transform from hated enemies into a lovey-dovey couple.
- Implied in
*My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected*, in which both Yui Yuigahama and Yukino Yukinoshita are (secretly) in love with Hachiman Hikigaya, but the former has a close friendship with Yukino... too close for many of their close ones, at the point Hachiman once mistook (with a purpose) her last name for "Yurigahama." Sybverted when ||Hachiman and Yukino become a couple.||
- In
*×××HOLiC*, Doumeki and Kohane are two of the many people interested in Watanuki. They're shown to be married after a Time Skip, ||although it's implied that they got together not out of love but to have children who could continue Doumeki's family legacy and protect the now-immortal Watanuki||.
- In
*I'm In Love With the Villainess*, when Rei is reincarnated as the protagonist of her favorite otome game, she rejects pursuing the game's intended male love interests in favor of Claire who's supposed to be the "rival" character competing with her for the males' affections.
-
*Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami*: Desk Lady and the girl from the bus are both interested in Dark but then have sex with each other. ||Subverted when the girl from the bus ends up with Dark in the end||.
- Inverted in
*My Immortal*: Vampire and Draco used to be a couple, but broke up and are now both in love with Ebony.
- In the
*Harry Potter* fanfic *The Red Knight*, it's revealed that Violet Potter (fem!Harry) used to date Ron, who also had an affair with Hermione. After he ||betrayed them, leading to their deaths||, they ||went back in time|| and became a lesbian couple.
-
*Marigami Stories*: If the title didn't give it away, the fic is about Marinette and Kagami as a couple. In the canon show, both were competing for Adrien's affection. In fact, Kagami at one point calls Adrien a fool for not recognizing and reciprocating Marinette's affections.
- The premise of
*Plan B*: Bruno plans to steal back his ex-girlfriend Laura by seducing her bisexual new boyfriend Pablo. He intends for his seduction to be faked, but it doesn't end that way.
-
*When in Rome*: Beth ends up with an Unwanted Harem as a result of a love spell gone wrong. After the spell is broken, two of her suitors are last seen flirting during Beth's wedding.
- At the start of
*Carry On*, Simon is dating Agatha and has a passionate hatred of his roommate/nemesis Baz who has his eye on Agatha too. However, it turns out that Simon's passionate hatred of Baz is actually passionate Belligerent Sexual Tension and Baz has really been in love with Simon all along and only pretended to be interested in Agatha to push Simon's buttons. By the time the novel starts, Agatha is fed up with magical adventures and is glad to put distance between herself and them, leaving them to fall for each other.
- Exaggerated in
*Iron Widow*. The love triangle between Zetian, Shimin, and Yizhi is resolved when ||all three of them enter a loving, happy polyamorous relationship together.||
- In
*The Love Interest*, Caden and Dylan are two teens groomed from birth by a secret organization to become the perfect love interest for a girl destined to become famous someday. They're expected to compete for the girl's affections in a classic "Nice Guy vs. Bad Boy" battle with the loser being killed off, but they fall in love with each other instead and choose to defy the organization so that they can be together.
- At the beginning of Anthony Horowitz's James Bond novel,
*Trigger Mortis*, Bond finds himself in a relationship with Pussy Galore when he is introduced to Logan Fairfax, who is to teach him the finer points of automobile racing in preparation for his next assignment. He ends up with neither woman, who instead pair up and leave for America together at the end of the first act. Somewhat of a downplayed example; it's clear James' and Pussy's relationship has nearly run its course, and while there is certainly some mutual attraction between Logan and James, she is extremely hesitant to pursue a relationship with him. Consequently, the degree to which either woman could really be considered James Bond's "suitor" is up for debate.
-
*Hannibal* has a double version— in season two, Hannibal and Alana Bloom are a couple. Will has some mutual interest with Alana, but has sex with Margot. ||Both couples split up, and in season three, Alana and Margot become a couple, while Will and Hannibal have a romance. Slightly subverted, in that it's strongly implied Hannibal always liked Will, and only had sex with Alana to make Will jealous. ||
- Spoofed in the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's "Period Drama" sketch. Two Regency rakes fight over the same woman until she dies in a tragic accident. One of them notes that as Regency rakes they're obligated to seduce
*somebody*, and since there are no other characters in the sketch, they start making out with each other.
-
*The Merry Wives of Windsor* ends with (among other things) Miss Anne Page giving her two parentally-approved but comically inept suitors the slip and running away with a much more charming (and younger) man. The 21st-century remake *The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa,* set just after Iowa's legalization of gay marriage, has young Miss Anne Page coming out as straight and marrying a young man...leaving behind her two (still older, and not quite as inept) lesbian suitors, who seem quite happy with each other.
- Gay love triangle version in
*Boy Meets Boy*: Skids loves Mikhael, Tybalt tries to seduce Mikhael, and eventually Skids and Tybalt end up together.
- Attempted in
*Friendly Hostility*: After his much-older girlfriend dumps him, Paolo hits on her ex-husband, Leslie, but Leslie turns him down, saying Paolo is just confused about what he wants.
-
*Homestuck* has Dave and Karkat both competing for the attention of Terezi, with the subtext between them mostly Played for Laughs. After John's ||Cosmic Retcon||, however, neither seem particularly interested in getting with Terezi and instead spend most of the story's later arcs growing closer to each other. ||By the end, they are very heavily implied to have become an item.||
-
*Ménage à 3*:
- While "romantic" is a bit of a stretch, after Yuki and Sonya's disastrous competition for Gary's affection and after they also served as rivals for Zii, the two of them realize that they have more fun with their rivalry and have a long period where they just keep egging each other on for hate-sex.
- Also used as a quick gag later on. Two opposite-sex coworkers compete over who can take Peggy to bed, which ends when Peggy declares that she wants a threesome. Unfortunately, the second they get into bed the coworkers realize that they loved each other all along and promptly forget about the frustrated Peggy.
-
*Questionable Content*: Elliot and Clinton first meet each other as rivals for Brun's affection. While Elliot becomes aware of his attraction to Clinton early on, he doesn't reveal his feelings until Brun turns them both down. Clinton eventually decides he reciprocates, and they end up together.
- In Korean yuri webcomic
*Wish You Were Gone*, the protagonist Guk-Hwa finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her, and dumps him, only to end up in a romance with the other woman.
- The first season of
*The Legend of Korra* features a love triangle between Korra, Asami, and their mutual love interest Mako. Both girls date, and later break up with him at different points in the show. The series finale ends with Korra and Asami becoming a couple.
- Scientists found a rare left-coiling snail they named Jeremy. Because its shell coiled counterclockwise, the opposite direction of typical snails, its sex organs could not align with others. Two other left-coiling snails were found but they proceeded to mate with each other instead of Jeremy.
- Somewhat blurring the lines between this and Live-Action TV, two contestants from the Australian version of
*The Bachelor* fell in love. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PairTheSuitors |
Pajama-Clad Hero - TV Tropes
There's nothing more inconvenient than a Call to Adventure
in the middle of the night.
*"Not bad for a man in his jim-jams. Very Arthur Dent. Now*
there's
*a nice man."*
If there's one thing worse than the advancing hordes of evil turning up on your doorstep and forcing you onto a long quest to save the world, it's when it happens before you've even had your coffee. You finally got a chance to catch some sleep, and got rudely awoken by The Call in the middle of the night, telling you to rush out of the house without so much as a chance to get dressed. Or even put on your shoes (though maybe you prefer it).
Some heroes spend virtually their
*entire adventure* wearing nothing but their jimmy-jams. On the plus side, they're comfy and warm, and a stylish dressing-gown can lend a touch of the Badass Longcoat. But you do tend to look a tad ridiculous, and a dressing-gown over a long nightshirt may be confused with Sword and Sandal wear, the Middle Eastern traditional costume descended from it, or wizard robes.
The implications of this may vary. In some cases it may simply mean that the hero was caught off guard and didn't have time to get properly dressed. In others, it may be used as a not-so-subtle indication that none of what's happening is real.
# Examples:
## Always pajama-clad
- Technically, Near from
*Death Note* is always in pajamas.
- Averted in
*The Adventures of Peter Pan*. The Darling siblings are almost always depicted as this, but in this particular adaptation they manage to get their normal clothes before being whisked away by Peter.
-
*Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle*: Since most every chapter either ends with her falling asleep or starts with her waking up, the Princess spends most of her time in her (admittedly extra-fancy) pajamas.
-
*Cardcaptor Sakura* has the titular Sakura get thrown into action while still in her pajamas on quite a few occasions.
-
*Little Nemo* is the most iconic Pajama-Clad Hero.
- Mickey "The Yellow Kid" Dugan at first wore a blue nightgown handed down from an older sister until he switched to his trademark yellow nightshirt.
-
*Coraline*: In The Film of the Book, Coraline Jones wears pajamas for maybe over half the film.
-
*How to Catch a Cold*: The protagonist spends the entire short in his pyjamas, because he's just woken up and has to stay in bed from his cold.
- Boo from
*Monsters, Inc.* appears to be wearing a pink nightshirt, lavender stockings, and white socks throught the entire film (except when she is wearing a makeshift costume Sulley and Mike made to hide her identity).
- Wendy, Michael and John in Disney's
*Peter Pan* are in their pajamas for the entire film.
- The kids in
*The Polar Express*.
- In the second half of
*Rise of the Guardians*, the kids are outside in winter in their pajamas. Jamie and Sophie are noticeably barefoot, Jamie was even standing on a frozen lake. Considering they are with *Jack Frost* perhaps he did something to make sure they'd be okay.
- Edmund from
*Rock-A-Doodle*, but only when he's a live-action human. He wears doll clothes after being turned into a cartoon cat by the evil owl.
- The titular character in the BBC computer-animated movie
*The Tale of Jack Frost* based on the children's book of the same name. He wears only his pajama pants, and is shirtless and barefoot in the snow.
- In the
*Altraterra* series by Yvonne Pioch, Anne spends the first quarter of the book (the ride to Academy) only in her nightshirt as she had to flee with others in haste. Given that she has to ride in it for days without change or a chance to wash it, it created a huge discomfort to her, especially when she arrived to the academy. Imagine being led before the ruling body (which resides in academy) wearing nothing but a ragged, partially ripped, smelly nightshirt...
- Scrooge in
*A Christmas Carol* is haunted by the spirits during the night before Christmas, so he travels through time wearing his dressing gown.
- In J. K. Rowling's
*The Christmas Pig,* the title character actually suggests that Jack change into normal clothes before starting their adventure, but he declines. He's also barefoot, in part because his slippers had come to life. In the Land of the Lost he claims to be an action figure named Pajama Boy, "with the power of sleep and dreams." He has his own cartoon.
- Sarah from
*Greystone Valley* is in tattered blue pajamas up until the very final act.
-
*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy*: Arthur Dent hitchhikes the galaxy in his pajamas and bathrobe. He finally gets a change of clothes in *So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish*. In the radio series, the first book and *The Restaurant at the End of the Universe*, Douglas Adams wasn't entirely clear what Arthur was wearing; he wrote a scene for the TV series in which the *Heart of Gold* provides him with new clothes, but this was vetoed by the director, on the grounds that it was funnier for him to be in his pajamas. Since Adams then wrote Arthur as still in his (increasingly tattered) dressing gown in *Life, the Universe and Everything*, he presumably agreed.
- Bilbo, from
*The Hobbit* by J. R. R. Tolkien, forgets his handkerchief and money in addition to starting his adventure in his dressing-gown. Subverted when Dwalin lets Bilbo use his hood and cloak.
- In the
*Mabel Jones* series, the heroine, Mabel, never takes off her pyjamas while in the Noo World, despite wearing the pyjamas for weeks without changing them. This is taken to ridiculous levels during the only time she DID take them off - dressing a skeleton in her pyjamas as a distraction- only to immediately change back into her pyjamas when the danger was over despite them just being on a, well, skeleton. She must really like wearing her pyjamas.
- Delphie in the first book of the
*Magic Ballerina* series, "Delphie and the Magic Ballet Shoes", spends her first trip to Enchantia wearing her pajamas.
- Georgina in
*The Magic Light* by Gabrielle Alioth. She is transferred onto a magic island from her bedroom, pajama-clad and barefoot. At some point she lampshades this by saying that if she knew she would go on an adventure, she would be dressed more appropriately.
- The eponymous character of Jodi Lynn Anderson's
*May Bird* series spends the entire 3rd book in pajamas and a bathing suit.
- As mentioned above, the Darling children in
*Peter Pan*. Possibly the Trope Codifiers.
- In 'Tom's Midnight Garden' by Philippa Pearce, Tom spends most of his visits to the garden in pajamas, and one slipper (he used the other slipper to prop open a door, before travelling to the garden).
- The titular realm in
*Unimaa* is a Dream Land, so it makes sense that every child there would be in pajamas. ||In fact, for the members of the secret society within, this is one of the things that makes them realize the place was turned into a Lotus-Eater Machine after having been there for *years* without waking up or aging at all, because their leader tricked them into giving her their souls.||
-
*Bananas in Pyjamas*: The bananas always wear their pajamas, hence their name. As they themselves admit, this is entirely by choice, since they love wearing their pajamas which they say are really comfortable. The only time they had to take them off was because they needed to wash the pajamas and they wasted no time putting their pajamas back on the first chance they got.
-
*The Pajanimals* is a children's series about four anthropomorphic animals who sing songs related to getting ready to bed in the original shorts and in the full version series travel off to magical lands at nighttime to deal with various issues. As the name implies, they are almost always show in their pajamas, though they are very rarely depicted with them off for bathtime and it's implied that they still do stuff like go to school and don't wear them when they do that; we just don't ever see it.
- Clara/Marie from
*The Nutcracker* spends most of the show in her nightie, since the whole thing is a dream sequence.
- The Darling children in
*Peter Pan* are almost always shown in their pajamas.
- In
*Among the Sleep*, you play as a two-year-old boy in his pajamas exploring the house at night, staying with your Teddy, and trying to make sense of the perceived "monsters" you encounter.
- In
*Little Nemo: The Dream Master*, the titular hero is a little boy journeying to Slumberland in his onesie pajamas.
- As a consequence of being awoken in the middle of the night, the titular protagonist of
*Lumen* adventures around in her pajamas. One benefit of this is that it's decorated with blueish stars that become red when a hostile entity is nearby.
-
*Pajama Sam*, the eponymous hero of the children's adventure game series, is never seen outside his footie pajamas. The premise of the game is that Sam deals with things that frighten him after he goes to bed, so his "Pajama Sam" superhero persona makes sense. Of course, his hero persona is based on his in-universe favorite comic, Pajama Man, who also embodies this trope.
- Ruff and Tumble, the male and female protagonists in the Playstation game
*40 Winks* wear blue and pink pajamas throughout the duration of their adventure, respectively.
- Patchoulli Knowledge from
*Touhou Project*. Even when she's out solving incidents in the fighting games, she's still wearing her pajamas. ZUN says that "It's like how foreigners sleep in their jeans, and go shopping with them too."
- You in
*Fable III*, if you decide saving the world should be done in your sleeping clothes.
-
*Super Mario Galaxy*: Rosalina's dress actually resembles a nightgown, which appropriately fits the fact that she lives far out in space, where it is constantly night out (unless she is orbiting a Sun).
- Vincent from
*Catherine* spends most of the action sequences wearing polka-dot boxers. Not that the ladies are complaining.
- Phillip of
*Space Funeral* is always dressed in his yellow and black striped pajamas.
- Johnny Dash, the hero of
*Monster Bash*.
- The entire premise of
*Knock-Knock* features the Lodger wandering around his house in the early hours of the day wearing his dressing gown and slippers while avoiding ghosts.
-
*The Sand Man*: Since Sophie was just trying to get some rest before the whole mess unfolded, she sets off to find out what happened while dressed in her pink sleepwear.
-
*Neverending Nightmares*: Thomas, the player character, explores his dreams wearing his pajamas. This actually factors into gameplay, as he doesn't have space to put an inventory, and, being a horror game, the fact that he ||isn't wearing shoes|| comes back to bite him more than once.
- Averted in
*Yume Nikki*: despite the entire game taking place in Madotsuki's bedroom and dreams, she wears a shirt and skirt instead.
-
*Nightmare Ned* spends the duration of his adventure through the Nightmare World in his pajamas.
- Plutia from
*Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory* onwards. Probably helps, since she's known to be quite the Sleepyhead.
- Ellie in
*Monster Tale* is technically in her nightgown in the game, though it *does* resemble a regular if very plain short dress. However, the ending cinematic makes it clear that it's not her regular clothes.
- In
*The Secret World*, Inbeda of the House In Exile spends most of his time lounging around the bathhouse in a tiger-print bathrobe and slippers, refusing to change out of it even when faced by the final battle.
-
*Mr. Hopp's Playhouse*:
- In the first game, you play as Ruby in her pajamas who goes looking for her parents at night, all while trying to evade her demonic stuffed rabbit.
- In the second game, this also applies to her late grandmother, Esther when she was a kid like Ruby, where she also wear pyjamas and revealed to be the original owner of said demonic stuffed rabbit.
-
*Milon's Secret Castle*: Milon is either wearing pajamas or overalls. The hat he's wearing looks like a night cap, so it's hard to tell.
- The player protagonist in
*Sacra Terra Angelic Night* wanders around a dilapidated mental hospital in nothing but a hospital gown. He doesn't even wear shoes despite having to deal with brambles, rotten wood and *broken glass.*
- In
*Nekomew's Potty Trouble* and *Nekomew's Nightmares*, you play as the titular character himself; a 4-year-old kitten who is dressed in a dark blue nightcap and nightshirt and trying to face off against the many monsters he encounters along the way.
- Sul spends the entirity of
*Kiss Wood* in his pajamas, though he does find a coat early on (he loses it eventually).
- Hero in
*The Property of Hate* spends her adventure in her yellow pajamas and wellies. She does initially have a coat ||but then ends up discarding it after an incident involving doubts, causing her coat to be somewhat... gelatinous.||
- Lucy from
*64 Zoo Lane* is only ever seen wearing her light blue pajamas. At the start of every episode, she's seen tucked in bed until Georgina the Giraffe tells her to come down.
- Alvin, Simon, and Theodore of
*Alvin and the Chipmunks* wear what are essentially color-coded nightshirts most of the time. Though they could just be large sweaters. They change into *different* pajama separates for bed.
- Professor Farnsworth from
*Futurama* is always in his pajamas. However, this includes a lab coat, so maybe it's better to say he sleeps fully dressed. His catchphrase was going to be "Well I am already in my pajamas!" but was quickly dropped.
-
*PJ Masks*: The title superheroes' costumes are made from their pajamas, hence why they can only transform at night and when wearing their pajamas. The fact that their costumes are essentially their pajamas has been mockingly lampshaded a few times by the various villains.
- Hugh Hefner made most of his public appearances in his iconic pajamas and a smoking jacket.
## Pajama-clad for one adventure, but usually dressed otherwise
- Negi Springfield of
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi* spent the entirety of the Library Island arc in his jammies.
- After she recovered from having seen what makes the Simoun tick in
*Simoun*, we see Dominura waltzing about the ship in a slinky nightgown for an episode or two. Bonus points for also having bed-head.
- Etsuko from
*Domu* spends the last half of the manga in her pajamas, being bed-ridden in the hospital after trauma. She also has the superpowered psychic fight of her life wearing them.
-
*Cardcaptor Sakura*: Sakura is in her pajamas when she catchest her first card, the Fly. In subsequent episodes, her friend Tomoyo provides costumes.
- In episode 52 of
*Sonic X*, Tails gets woken up in the middle of the night by Eggman. He hops in the Tornado in his pajamas, though they're only there for a scene or two. Which is odd, because he usually doesn't wear clothes of any kind, not counting shoes and gloves.
- An odd example, but an early episode of
*HeartCatch Pretty Cure!* had Tsubomi, who had stayed home ill after learning the cute Student Council President was actually a girl, race to save her in her pajamas. After saving the day, she doesn't realize she was still in these clothes until said President questions why she was in school in her pajamas.
- Episode 4 of
*Kill la Kill* had the heroine Ryuko Matoi in bunny pajamas because she's forced to go to school at 4 in the morning while Senketsu's being washed.
-
*Blue Exorcist* has Rin in his pajamas during the Kyoto/Impure King arc on the second day - due to getting dragged away to train and other circumstances, Rin ends up *defeating* the Eldritch Abomination that threatens Kyoto while not only in his pajamas, but in bare feet.
- In Episode 34 of
*Powerpuff Girls Z* the girls have a sleepover at Miyako/Bubbles' house and spend most of the episode in their pajamas while trying to escape. Once they finish cleaning the house, their stuck pajama-clad and barefoot for the remainder of the episode (with the exception of one moment when they transform).
- In the
*Inuyasha* Episode "Terror of the Ancient Noh Mask", Kagome and her brother Sota are attacked at their house by the Noh Mask, who is trying to steal the Sacred Jewel Fragments. They escape, but they are rushed outside so fast that they aren't given time to change out of their pajamas or put on shoes. At the end of the episode, the sun rises, and Kagome suddenly remembers that she's still in her pajamas. When she does, she rushes off to go change for school, not wanting to be late.
- In episode 5 of the
*3×3 Eyes* OVA, Pai and several other characters are stuck pajama-clad and barefoot.
- In the classic
*Sailor Moon* episode "Naru's Tears: Nephrite Dies for Love" Naru/Molly is kidnapped at night while she was sleeping. For the remainder of the episode, she is stuck in her pajamas and barefoot. Once she is rescued by Nephrite, she notices his arm is injured. To help him, she rips off part of her pajama shirt and ties it around his arm.
-
*Digimon Adventure*:
- On their first encounter with Devimon, the kids get ambushed while in bed at an abandoned, but fully equipped inn after a nice bath and dinner. Then Devimon reveals that, save for the floor and beds, everything was an illusion, including the sleepwear they put on, leaving everyone in their underwear. They only put their clothes back on after being sent away in different directions.
- Mimi spends episodes 35 till 37 in her pajamas because Myotismon launches his attack on Tokyo while she was in bed, and she is unable to return home and change clothes during the events that follow.
- The prequel short movie had Tai and Kari in their pajamas for most of the film, including the climactic fight.
-
*The Incredible Hulk*: The Hulk, believe it not was this, complete with bunny slippers while strapped to the brim with ammo and a BFG, no less.
-
*Power Pack* in their first adventure where they gained their powers and rescued their parents from the Snarks. Justified since the Snark attacked them in the middle of the night and the kids got dragged into the fight without a chance to get dressed first.
- Though not exactly a hero, in the
*Death Note* fic *Welcome To The Family* when Near and Matt barge into his room in the middle of the night, they find Light Yagami with messy hair and wearing fuzzy, black and white skull and cross bone pajamas, though Light claims it's not his usual choice in pajamas either but that his jailers have a bad sense of humor. Ultimately subverted since Light insists on getting dressed before doing anything though Near (who is a straight example of this trope) can't imagine *why* and uses his wanting to get dressed first like a normal person as yet another excuse to accuse him again of being Kira.
- In A.A. Pessimal's
*Discworld*/ *The Big Bang Theory* crossover *The Many Worlds Interpretation*, Discworld Assassin Johanna Smith-Rhodes, responding quickly to an emergency need to guard Sheldon Cooper against a peril they have brought from the Disc with them, reasons that good weapons are more vital in a fight than getting dressed. Thus she pulls her weapons-belt on over very minimal nightwear. This provokes a certain jealousy from Howard and Raj the next morning, who bemoan the fact that hot chicks always get naked in front of a man it's *wasted* on.
-
*X-Men: First Class* fic *For Protection from Monsters* has the Brotherhood attack the school at night. They never actually leave home, but Storm and Cyclops end up fighting in their pajamas.
-
*Oversaturated World*: *One Day I Found a Multiverse in My Pajamas*, where Ditzy Doo ||finds out about the multiverse, while|| in her pajamas.
-
*The Mate of the KuvaH'magh SoS*. B'Elanna Torres dresses in her blood-red Klingon Battle Pyjamas for a confrontation with Seven of Nine.
- In the
*King Kong (2005)* fanfic *More Than a Monster*, Anthony Darrow (male Ann Darrow) was wearing a thin undershirt and plaid pajama pants when the natives of Skull Island kidnapped him to offer him to Kong, and was barefoot through the whole ordeal.
-
*1066 and All That*:
On the death of William IV, Queen Victoria, though asleep at the time and thus in her nightdress, showed great devotion to duty by immediately ascending the throne. In this bold act she was assisted by Lord Melbourne and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who were both properly dressed.
- James Herriot from the
*All Creatures Great And Small* books was a country vet. This meant that he (as well as Seigfried and Tristan) spent a few stories in his pajamas being called out for a late night calving. This once caused poor James to try and purchase some coffee on the way home only to realize his wallet and his pants were not with him...
- In the
*Bolo* short story *The Murphosensor Bomb*, the focus character and her commanding officer were so focused on tracking down and eliminating the virus that had infected Bolos across the sector that neither of them paid any attention to 1: Said focus character had gone straight from her bed to her workstation to work on this problem, and 2: She slept in the nude. Shortly after the problem was solved, she tracked down a bathrobe.
-
*Chrestomanci* frequently appears in one fabulous dressing gown or another. This is because he's particularly vulnerable to Inconvenient Summons, and decided that if he's going to be called away in his pajamas, they're going to at least be nice ones.
- Sam Vimes of
*Discworld* has been in this position a couple of times.
- In
*Guards! Guards!* he sticks his feet in Lady Sybil's bunny slippers to deal with an armed mob, and his dignity is only just saved by a dragon's timely belch.
- In
*Thud!*, he's woken from a deep sleep to attend a police emergency. At some point, someone (presumably Sybil) had put a ducky blanket from his son's nursery around his shoulders... he Death Glares the officers in the parlor, daring them to say one word about it.
- A non-Vimes
*Discworld* example: In *The Light Fantastic*, the Lemony Narrator says that Archancellor Galder Weatherwax manages to look impressive even in a red nightshirt and a nightcap with a bobble on the end, but the fluffy pompom slippers push it too far.
- The incident that convinced Karigan G'lahdeon that she could no longer refuse the call to be a
*Green Rider* was an incident where she found that she had sleepwalked to her horse and ridden it several miles towards the capital in her nightgown before waking up.
- This happened to
*Psmith* so much that it was practically a Running Gag. Fortunately he managed to keep the Sharp-Dressed Man act up even then (on one occasion he went and found a carnation and put it in his buttonhole).
-
*Vorkosigan Saga*: In *A Civil Campaign*, Miles Vorkosigan's senior bodyguard apparently prefers to sleep in his boxer shorts, which causes him some embarrassment when there's a security incident in the middle of the night. The ladies of the household are rather pleased though.
-
*Whateley Universe*: One of the popular nicknames for Team Kimba in-universe is the Negligee Nightingales, referring to their first fight with the Yama Dojo Ninjas.
-
*Literature/Spellman Files*: Isabel Spellman is barefoot in her pajamas at night, when she she sees something she wants to trail, so she jumps in her car and follows. She winds up arrested and in a police station, which is uncomfortable.
-
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer*. In "Goodbye Iowa" Buffy is giving a Badass Boast about how she's going to track down and kill the Big Bad, then admits "that probably would've sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas."
-
*Doctor Who*:
- "The Christmas Invasion": The Tenth Doctor spends a good deal of time running around in his jim-jams after regenerating, even engaging in a swordfight before changing into his dayclothes. He even references his Arthur Dent look. Given that Douglas Adams was a scriptwriter for
*Doctor Who*, this is either a Shout-Out, a Mythology Gag or both.
- Amy Pond in "The Beast Below". The fact that it's a while before she can change into normal clothes makes her wonder if the Doctor has another agenda, not that she objects to that.
- The Twelfth Doctor walks around in London wearing a Victorian nightshirt for a portion of "Deep Breath".
- Clara runs around in a nightie in "Last Christmas". ||This is a sign that she's dreaming, but after she wakes up at the end, she doesn't hesitate to run off on another adventure with the Doctor without changing.||
-
*Double Dare (1986)*: In the *Super Sloppy Double Dare* "Salute to breakfast" episode, Marc Summers and Harvey wear pajamas the entire time.
-
*Wingin' It*: Carl Montclaire wears pajamas in "All Lizards Go to Heaven", Part 2.
- Omar Little from
*The Wire* goes for a walk to get Cheerios in his turquoise pyjamas. Everyone who sees him flees.
- In the
*Commander Keen* game *Keen Dreams*, Keen goes through the entire adventure in pajamas and pink bunny slippers.
-
*Earth Bound*: Ness wears pajamas at the start of the game, and during his trip to Magicant in the American version. In the Japanese release, when Ness woke up in Magicant, he was in the buff and stayed that way save for his Signature Headgear.
-
*Ever Forward* is an indie game where you play as a young girl named Maya, lost in Dream Land where you spend the entire game in the nightgown you slept in and barefoot whilst exploring assorted dream universes.
- Pajamas are an alternate costume for pillow-packing Sleepyhead Meitenkun in
*The King of Fighters XIV*.
- At the beginning of
*The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker*, Link starts out in his crayfish pajamas, until his grandmother gives him his clothes and signature hat. In a New Game Plus, the clothes are invisible, as only the honest can see them. Thus, he has nothing but his pajamas to go adventuring in.
- In
*The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge*, the easiest unlockable costume for Jack to get is Pajama Jack (and bonus: they're different and more colorful than the plain off-white ones from the movie, and they've even got little Jack 'O Lantern slippers).
- Naruto in
*Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm* has a downloadable costume where he can fight in his pajamas. Save his special/Ougi, all his animations are intact, including tightening his headband that's not even there.
-
*Pyjamarama*, in which Wally Week wanders around the house in his pajamas searching for the alarm clock to wake himself up.
- Using the Dream Suite in
*Animal Crossing: New Leaf* requires your character to change into pajamas, in which he or she stays for the length of their visit to a dream town.
- In
*Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare*, the first playable section of the game has main character John Marston dressed in longjohns because a zombie has shown up and attacked his farm right after he woke up and didn't have time to change. After this sequence, he automatically dresses himself in his default outfit from the main game, but the player can change his outfit back to his pajamas if they want. The outfit is only available in *Undead Nightmare*, setting this option apart from vanilla *Red Dead Redemption*.
-
*Red Dead Redemption II*: ||During Chapter 3, when Arthur Morgan is captured by the O'Driscolls and stripped to his union suit (which kinda looks like pajamas), he can cut himself free and cauterize the gunshot wound; he can then use this to his advantage by killing the O'Driscolls who attacked him and getting his weapons back before escaping... all while still in his union suit.||
- The hero of
*Altered Destiny* spends his whole odyssey to an alien planet in his pj's. Ironic, as that's his name: PJ.
- A minor example in
*Valis III*, in the first level, Yuko's sword is stolen forcing her to run into the streets of Tokyo in her cute, pink pajamas, until she recovers her sword and transforms into her armor, which is a suit of Stripperiffic bikini armor that covers a lot less then the pajamas did.
- In episode 18 of
*Critical Role*, Percy ends up fighting off an orc ambush in the middle of the night in his pyjamas.
**Taliesin Jaffe**
: I'm wearing the pyjamas with the butt-flap, and the butt-flap is down. The butt-flap is DOWN!
- In
*The Snowman*, James is dressed in the daytime scenes at the beginning, but spends most of the story in his pajamas and bathrobe, since all his time with the Snowman takes place after midnight.
- In the episode "The Good, The Bad, and the Eggly" of the
*VeggieTales* spinoff series, *LarryBoy: The Cartoon Adventures*, LarryBoy and Dark Crow end up wearing footie pajamas and paper bags as costumes after their real ones get turned into over-easy eggs. The book adaptation of the episode gives extra details to the pajamas, turning them even *more* embarrassing, with patterns that prove they were meant for children.
- In
*Adventure Time*'s "Pajama Wars" episode, Finn and Princess Bubblegum both walk around in their pajamas the entire time, and on top of that, the latter is also barefoot throughout the episode.
- In
*Avatar: The Last Airbender*, Toph Bei Fong spends most of her debut episode in her night clothes, and gets kidnapped before beating up several grown men while so dressed. She's a 12-year-old girl.
- In one episode of
*Codename: Kids Next Door*, Numbuh Three's Rainbow Monkey toys mysteriously went missing in the night, so the team decided on the spot to search for them, not stopping to change out of their pajamas.
- The
*DuckTales (2017)* episode "The Split Sword of Swanstantine!" has Lena and Violet in their pajamas the whole episode due to being inadvertently dragged along for an adventure while on a sleep-over.
- In
*The Little Rascals* episode "The Zero Hero", Alfalfa as Alpha-Man wears his pajamas in public, along with a towel cape and a mask which does not hide his eyes.
- In
*American Dragon: Jake Long* episode "Adventures in Troll-Sitting", Jake wears his pajamas from morning to evening as he was trying to hide the troll and get rid of the living troll furballs. He's also barefoot.
- In
*Steven Universe*, a few episodes have Steven almost entirely dressed in his pajamas. While one episode is about a slumber party which justifies his clothing, another time he decides to not fall asleep for two nights, yet still dresses into his pajamas, ending with him ||following a weird creature and almost freezing to death in the warp||.
- On
*Llama Llama*, the story "Lucky Pajamas" is specifically about him being in his pajamas all day because he believes them to have become lucky after Mama Llama sewed them. The original book *Llama Llama Red Pajama*, of course, has Llama Llama in his pajamas and is set at bedtime. The story was adapted for the animated series as well, but he's only clad towards the end of the story because most of it is actually set during daytime.
- In
*Chaotic*, the main character Tom had his first battle in Perim in his pajamas. His opponent remarked that being in pajamas is a typical sign of a newcomer.
-
*Star vs. the Forces of Evil*: In the episode "Crystal Clear", Star is dragged off by Rhombulus to his lair in the middle of the night while in her nightgown. She also loses her socks at one point.
- In "Total Eclipsa the Moon", Eclipsa doesn't bother to get dressed before going to the Royal Archives with Moon to ||find out what happened to her half-monster daughter, Meteora||.
-
*Code Lyoko*: Some of XANA's attack happens at night, and the heroes don't always have the time to get dressed before dealing with the emergency. Notably in the episode "Is Anybody Out There?", where they have to trek to the factory in their nighties. It doesn't matter so much once they reach the scanners, though, since their Lyoko avatars are always fully equipped.
-
*Miraculous Ladybug*: In "Gorizilla", Marinette spends so much time swooning over Adrien's new ad that she misses her appointment with Alya and her other friends to hang out at the pool. She runs out, forgetting her new swimsuit and the fact that she's still in her pajamas. Before she can go back to change, she runs into Adrien who is currently on the run from his fans and his bodyguard, having snuck out to see an old movie ||which his Missing Mom starred in||. The end result is that she spends most of the day with him, still in her pajamas. She is understandably embarassed once this sinks in at the end of the episode.
-
*Amphibia*: The episode "The Sleepover to End All Sleepovers" has Anne, Marcy and Sprig in their pajamas throughout the whole episode. The only exception is Polly, since she doesn't wear clothes.
-
*Gravity Falls*: Dipper and Mabel spend the entirely of the first Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained short (Candy Monster) in their sleeping outfits.
-
*Kaijudo*: In the episode "Night Moves", Allie hosts a Slumber Party with Portia, Maribel and Lucy, hoping that they former two can get along with the latter. Unfortunately, things go from bad to worse when they are attacked by Gorgeon, Shadow of Gluttony, and the girls are forced to escape it while still in their pajamas and barefoot. Lucy is the only one in her regular clothes, although she does lose her shoes later.
- On
*Blue's Clues & You!*, both host Josh and Blue are in their pajamas throughout "Pajama Party with Blue", naturally.
-
*South Park*: At the beginning of "A Very Crappy Christmas", Kyle is worried for Mr. Hankey because the latter didn't show up at his house. The former calls his friends and they all go into the sewers to look for Mr. Hankey, their coats and jackets thrown haphazardly over pajamas. Noticeably, Kenny is wearing his trademark face-covering parka—but no trousers. Wading through rivers of hip-deep rancid feces, no less.
-
*The Owl House*: In the episode "Hunting Palismen", Luz spends the majority of the episode in her new pajamas. She does wear her Hexside uniform in a few scenes, though.
- In
*The Amazing World of Gumball*, there are two episodes where Gumball and Darwin spend the entirety of the runtime in their sleepwear. "The Castle" has the two realize that it's Saturday and that Richard is in charge of the house, where there are no rules and are allowed to spend the day in their pajamas along with their little sister Anais. "The Vegging" has Gumball and Darwin spend an entire day doing nothing but slacking off on the couch in their pajamas. A lot of things happen around them, but they were too lazy to simply care or notice.
- The
*Betty Boop* short "Red Hot Mamma" has Betty wandering through hell in her night gown. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PajamaCladHero |
Pair the Spares - TV Tropes
Well, they have
*this* much in common...
Charlie has an unrequited crush on Alice; meanwhile, Doris has been desperately trying to win over Bob's affections. However, Alice and Bob are the ones who ultimately end up getting together.
When Alice and Bob finally go from Unresolved Sexual Tension to Official Couple, Charlie and Doris are left in the cold. Still, both of them have experienced the pain of heartbreak and unrequited love — so why not hook them up together? They may not have any initial attraction to each other, but they can always hang out and reminisce about their similar failed romances, and somewhere along the way, they might just find mutual love with each other like their former partners have.
While it's nice to see Charlie and Doris get a happy ending of their own, this device can very easily reek of red string puppetry and make viewers suspect that the creator just paired them off to permanently get them out of the main couple's way.
Differs from No Loves Intersect in that the leftover pairings are not immediately obvious and the involved people are initially just part of the Love Dodecahedron. Results from Conservation of Detail, since many viewers (and some writers) simply wouldn't "buy" the spares getting over it by, say, dating outside the closed social circle of the cast to get away from the drama.
See Ship Mates for when the fandom does this in Fan Fic. Compare Sexual Karma, Lonely Together, Beta Couple, Everyone Must Be Paired (where the majority of the cast ends up with a love interest, whether or not they had been involved in the Love Dodecahedron). If the 'spares' were originally after the same love interest, see Pair the Suitors.
## Examples:
- The
*Angelic Layer* manga pairs up Tamayo and Oujirou, who had previously shown slight interest in Koutarou and Misaki, respectively. (The anime, on the other hand, *flips* the pairings, putting Tamayo with Koutarou and Oujirou with Misaki anyway.)
- At the end of
*The Anthem of the Heart* ||Natsuki and Takumi|| mutually desire to rekindle their relationship, leaving Jun as the Romantic Runner-Up for his affections. At the end, ||Daiki confesses his feelings for her, but it's unknown whether anything comes out of it||.
-
*Dad, the Beard Gorilla and I* hints a possibility of romance between ||Hino and Yukari|| after Soichi marries ||Tsukasa||, although they don't officially hook up. It helps that the "spares" already have plenty of Ship Tease moments even before the Official Couple does.
- In
*Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba,* this is implied to be the case with ||Inosuke and Aoi||, whereas the pairings of ||Tanjiro/Kanao and Zenitsu/Nezuko|| are more directly confirmed. The epilogue is set in modern day japan featuring what looked like to be the descendants of the main cast and the reincarnations of the dead cast. One of them is ||Aoba Hashibira,|| and while he's a splitting image of Inosuke, he does bear ||Aoi's name in a similar vein to Kanata Kamado, Tanjiro and Kanao's heavily implied descendant.|| And the previous chapter also had them being teased with Inosuke showing an interest in the girl. ||The final volume's extra drawings confirm that he's their descendant.||
- Satoshi and Risa in
*D.N.Angel*. Its beginning as anime-only hints in the end (that exchange of looks and smile can't be platonic, really), and become a popular Ship Mates ever since. The existence of the pairing is acknowledged by the manga (sort of) with them having a lot of screentime together and a truckload of romantic vibes and chemistry (though *D.N.Angel* as a whole tend to tease everyone x everyone so whether they end up with each other in the end is still questionable).
-
*FAKE*. In the epilogue, having reached the realization that Dee is never going to choose him over Ryo, JJ very unexpectedly hooks up with Drake, despite their relationship not having been romantic previously and (perhaps because) Drake conveniently having just been dumped by yet another girlfriend.
- Hiro and Ayaka from
*Gravitation*. Initially, Ayaka was Yuki's arranged fiancée and Hiro was Shuichi's implicitly bisexual childhood friend; both of them push their partners to be with one another, and began dating each other.
- Chapter 84 of
*Horimiya* had a case of pairing the spares of the spares when it starts teasing Yanagi and Sakura. The two of them were originally interested in Yuki and Tooru, who in turn were originally interested in Miyamura and Hori. This is ultimately subverted, as while Yanagi *does* get legitimate ship tease, it's Yuki's older sister in both here and in *Hori-san and Miyamura-kun*, while Sakura ends up with nobody.
-
*Itazura Na Kiss* is guilty of this with ||Chris and Kinnosuke||.
-
*Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple*: ||Takeda expressed being interested in Miu several times (though he didn't make many direct advances on her), while Freya was shown to be attracted to Ukita. The epilogue confirms that Miu married Kenichi and Ukita went to the same university as Kisara and the two started dating, while Takeda often brings Freya for training with his master, who suggests they're dating. While they bashfully deny being in a relationship, it's strongly implied that, if they're not together now, they eventually will be||.
-
*Macademi Wasshoi* has one of the weirder versions of this. At the end of the series, we have Takuto's harem still after him, though with Metallis being a huge supporter of Suzuka. Metallis' former sidekick George has been paired up with Macho Camp angel Hapshiel. It's a healthy, if somewhat bizarre, relationship.
- The
*Mahoromatic* epilogue reveals that ||Kawahara and Miyuki|| married in the future.
- Ginta and Arimi find love in
*Marmalade Boy* in just this way. After chasing Miki and Yuu, they give up simultaneously on them and then fall in love with each other.
- The same thing also happens to the American cast, more or less. In that case, no one ends up with the person they originally wanted (or appeared to want).
- In the
*Natsu e no Tobira* manga by Keiko Takemiya, it's stated at the end that ||Jacques and Ledania|| hooked up. The anime, however, shows that ||Ledania hasn't replied to Jacques' marriage proposal.||
- Lampshaded in
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi*. Natsumi reasons that she can't make a pactio (it requires kissing, but not necessarily coupledom) with Negi, because he's the protagonist and she's just "a side character". She then reasons that she could only do it with "the one guy who's in the same 'side-character' position as me" (Kotaro), with whom she has quite a bit of Will They or Won't They? subtext. ||They do, and they end up getting married.||
- In the last chapter of
*No Bra*, it's revealed that Masato's friend Hideki and Yuki's cousin Mizuki are a couple.
-
*Rizelmine*'s entire Love Dodecahedron gets resolved this way, down to one girl getting paired off with a dog that had molested her in an earlier episode.
- Conversed and defied in
*The Story Between a Dumb Prefect and a High School Girl with an Inappropriate Skirt Length*. In Chapter 38, Tsukishima and Tasaki (the only main characters without love interests) start hanging out discussing manga, and the conversation gets to talking about the tendency of manga writers to pair the spares...to which they both say in unison "I absolutely hate it when the leftover characters start dating each other!" Just to finish off any lingering doubt, the narration then clarifies that both characters would never consider dating each other *because* they are too alike.
-
*Wandering Son* has a Maybe Ever After between ||Saori|| and *Doi*. ||Saori|| had never once shown interest in Doi's one-sided crush on her. Unusually, ||Saori|| isn't technically a "spare" since she is dating someone, however her boyfriend is treated rather like a disposable fling.
- Another case appears to have happened in
*xxxHOLiC*, when it's revealed that despite the unsubtle Ship Teasing that has occurred between Watanuki and Doumeki *from even before the latter was formally introduced in the series*, Doumeki ends up married to ||Kohane|| who *also* is in love with Watanuki.
- The comic continuation of
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer* pairs up ||Xander and Dawn|| who happen to be the last Scoobies who are single and heterosexual.
- In
*Invincible*, after Mark (the title character) starts dating Amber, his best friend William starts dating Mark's ally/secret crush Atom Eve. It sort of makes sense because they both know Mark's identity, but when Eve realizes how immature William is, they break up after a few issues. Mark and Eve eventually end up together while William later comes out as gay.
- The spin-off comic
*Life With Archie: The Married Life* presents two alternate scenarios in which Archie Andrews marries either Betty Cooper or Veronica Lodge. In either scenario, the woman Archie didn't pick ends up dating Reggie Mantle.
- In Archie's
*Sonic the Hedgehog* comic, in the "Mobius 20 Years Later" timeline, the future version of Tails ends up married to the future version of Mina Mongoose, who was Sonic's ex-girlfriend. This caught many fans off-guard since the present versions of the characters barely interacted with each other. Writer Ken Penders admitted to putting the two together because he thought they made for a cute couple and because he didn't want to establish that Tails grew up to be a lonely bachelor after a storyline where Fiona Fox, a girl he liked, broke his heart.
- A December 1993
*FoxTrot* storyline had Peter in conflict over whether or not he should take new character Mindy, who has a crush on him, to the Christmas dance, thus hurting the feelings of his girlfriend Denise (who's taking a vacation to her grandmother's). In the end, though, Peter's problem is solved when Mindy falls in love with his friend Steve (and then mysteriously vanishes from the strip afterwards).
- The LDD-fanfiction,
*Bridge to Terabithia 2: The Last Time* does the usual requisite plot of retconning Leslie Burke's supposed death so that she can be with Jess Aarons, but causes problems because the story is set in a high-school setting where Jess at this point has his own girlfriend, the OC Sonia Taylors, which he ends up dumping because of Sonia's clingy jealous attitude and manipulative nature. But it all works out in the end, because in the Distant Epilogue more than two decades later it's revealed that ||Sonia eventually let go of her grudge and ends up marrying Scott Hoager, Jess' former bully from the 2007 movie adaptation, which Jess and Leslie found out from their daughter who had a crush on Scott and Sonia's son||. Small world?
-
*Supergirl* fanfic *Hellsister Trilogy* first breaks up the Kara Zor-El x Brainiac 5 traditional canon romance and then it has Kara fall in love with Kryptonian fellow Dev-Em, and Brainy end up with Laurel Kent.
- The possibility of Aqualad and Ferris dating has been hinted at in
*Life Ore Death*, but is at least averted in the first season of the story. Specifically, the early additions of Ferris and Zatanna to the Team have evened out the gender ratio as early as mid-September, with the members gravitating toward canon's Dick-and-Zatanna, Wally-and-Artemis, and Conner-and-M'gann pairings. Kaldur'ahm and Renka are both single, both older than their teammates, both members of minority populations, and they both enhance their melee combat with magic. Renka/Ferris has also shown a deep interest in Atlantis, and she and Kaldur have bonded on her visits there. They haven't really thought about dating though, less for Twice Shy reasons than because they both currently prefer a Celibate Hero lifestyle.
- In
*Love Worth Waiting For*, this is how matchmaking works in China. At age fifteen, a matchmaker registers your soulmark and looks for the person that matches it. If they can't find that person, you're married off to another un-matched person at age thirty. Mulan narrowly avoided this because she eventually found out her soulmate lives in a completely different country.
- In the
*Maribat AU*, if Adrien isn't getting hit with Ron the Death Eater, then he usually steps aside so that Marinette can date Damian and ends up with another character, usually either Jon or Kagami.
-
*Naru-Hina Chronicles*: Invoked. Many female OCs are introduced with the main purpose of serving as a love interest to some of the Konoha 12 boys, namely Kiba, Lee, Sai, and Shino. Though some of them, such as Mina (Kiba's love interest) or Kei (Sai's love interest) have enough personality, background, and their own character arcs to avoid being Satellite Love Interests. Also, with the exception of Mina, all of them were created by fellow DeviantArt artists who allowed mattwilson83 (the creator of *NHC*) to use them.
- In
*Ranma ½* fanfiction, this happens very often, mostly with Ship Mates type pairings. These writers mainly get their basis from the presence of Ship Tease for gags/storylines and short-lived moments of in-series Shipper on Deck: most of the characters in the Love Dodecahedron know that if their rival falls in love with somebody else, then whoever they want is sure to fall into their arms. This is why Ukyo promotes Ryoga with Akane, why Mousse promotes Ranma and Akane (and probably would support Ranma with Ukyo or Ryoga and Akane, if the ideas ever arose), and why Akane is quite willing to promote the idea of Ukyo and Ryoga or Shampoo and Mousse. Nabiki and Kuno are a popular fan couple due to a combination of some Ship Tease (a manga Filler story has them temporarily become enchanted with each other after being caught by a Love Potion version of the Umbrella of Togetherness, while an anime one has Kuno mistakenly being predicted as destined to marry Nabiki), though this invariably ends with Ship Sinking, and the fact that Kuno is Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense and Nabiki's Money Fetish makes her easy to picture her hooking up with Kuno for his money.
-
*Ranma the Second time Around* takes it in a different direction - Ranma and Akane end up together, as do Kasumi and Dr. Tofu. Ryouga, meanwhile, ends up with Shampoo (due to accidentally marrying her), while Mousse and Kodachi fall in love with each other. Uyko marries Konatsu, and Kuno ends up with Akari. Nabiki, meanwhile, becomes engaged to Sota Higurashi.
- In
*After the Fall of Giants*, Akari and Konatsu end up together after Ryouga and Ukyo, their former love interests, fall in love with each other.
- TheSavageMan100's
*Fairy Tail* Disney adaptations does this for the adaptations of *Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World* and *The Hunchback Of Notre Dame*. Sting (in the role of John Smith) *Erzahontas II* and Zeref (in the role of Quasimodo) in *The Black Wizard of Notre Dame* had feelings for Erza (playing the roles of Pocahontas and Esmeralda respectively), though in both stories she gets together with Jellal (who plays the roles of John Rolfe and Captain Phoebus respectively). Unlike their Disney counterparts, Sting and Zeref get to find their own Second Love in the epilogues, with Sting getting together with fellow Fiorian Yukino and Zeref getting together with the Gypsy Queen Mavis note : In an interesting application of this trope, Mavis is Zeref's canon Love Interest in the manga.
-
*Vacation from the Norm*, while Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable are very much together ||later joined by Shego in a One True Threesome situation||, and Bonnie hooks up with Senor Senor Jr. as per canon, several other unusual pairs emerge including; Joss Possible and Felix Renton, Vivian Porter and Drakken, Yori and Motor Ed and (in volume 2) Betty Director and Will Du.
-
*What If Goku Married Bulma?* has Chi-Chi hook up with Yamcha after Goku marries Bulma instead of her.
- In the ||wedding|| scene for
*Despicable Me 2*, Silas Ramsbottom (Lucy's boss) and Natalie (Gru's "bad" date) are shown dancing together and actually enjoying each others' company.
- Averted in
*Frozen (2013)*. One would assume that, since Anna and Kristoff are falling in love that Hans would suddenly become Elsa's love interest, especially since he earns her trust while she's in the dungeon. ||However, it turns out he's trying to seize the throne of Arendelle from its heirs and is sent back to his country a criminal||. This doesn't stop fanfiction from pairing the two.
- In
*Gnomeo & Juliet,* Juliet's father tries to set her up with Paris. Unlike in the play, he survives and winds up falling for Nanette, Juliet's friend (roughly equivalent to the Nurse).
-
*Inside Out* has an odd example: throughout the movie, there's a small Running Gag about Riley's mom fantasizing about her old boyfriend, an attractive Brazilian helicopter pilot, whenever the dad annoys her. During the Creative Closing Credits, we find out that Riley's teacher is apparently involved with him now.
- At the end of
*Tom Sawyer*, Tom and Becky become a couple while Tom's formerly resentful ex-girlfriend Amy falls for Huck.
- At the end of
*Toy Story 2*, we already know that Woody would be with Bo Peep, so it left out his sidekick Jessie. But of course, there's the perfectly available Buzz right there, and *Toy Story 3* expands on their relationship considerably.
-
*27 Dresses*: The ending has Jane's best friend Casey meet one of Kevin's co-workers at Kevin and Jane's wedding, with the implication that they're going to hook up.
- Basically the plot of the 1997 Meg Ryan/Matthew Broderick vehicle
*Addicted to Love*.
- Done for laughs at the end of
*Baseketball*. Coop ends up with his love interest Jenna, and Squeak embraces the possible transsexual he has been sharing looks with. Remer, on the other hand, looks despondent until he meets gazes with Yvette, a character he has had no interaction with throughout the movie. They immediately begin making out.
-
*The Baxter* skewers this trope. It tells the story of a hapless man who is cursed to be the spare in *every* one of his relationships. If he makes it as far as the altar, an old flame of his bride *inevitably* shows up at the last minute, accompanied by swelling romantic music, and convinces her that *he* is the one she really loves.
-
*Big Trouble in Little China*: Jack attempts this by telling Margo that Eddie has a crush on her. It's mostly a ploy to keep both of them out of the way while he and Wang are Storming the Castle, but Eddie gives Margo a look that implies Jack isn't wrong. Near the end of the movie, Margo suggestively asks Eddie to come over to her place later and help her choose the title of her planned book.
- Taken to its logical extreme in
*Billy Madison*, which ends with just about every character who got at least one line sharing passionate kisses (including an imaginary penguin), only one pairing of which was set up prior to the ending.
-
*A Cinderella Story*: the closing narration reveals that Carter, the protagonist's best friend, winds up with Astrid, the snarky school announcer, with whom he had never really interacted before this.
-
*Coming to America*: After ||Akeem marries Lisa||, Imani, Akeem's arranged wife, seems to end up with Semmi, Akeem's friend. Meanwhile, Lisa's ex Darryl appears to end up with Lisa's sister Patrice, who has had the hots for him for a long time.
-
*Enchanted*: Leftovers ||Edward and Nancy|| get together after an uncertain amount of time passes. Since the two travel to Andalasia to get married (rather than in the "real" world), where the fairytale nature of the realm can make spontaneous love work it's the sequel *Disenchanted* reveals that by 15 years later they are still literally living happily ever after. note : The *do* have to live through a potentially world threatening situation but their relationship is still solid Although in a Deleted Scene, ||Nancy|| gets some extra character development that foreshadows this quite nicely.
-
*Gorgeous* has a rather hilarious example. Protagonist Ah Bu (Shu Qi) traveled all the way from Taiwan to Hong Kong to seek her true love, Albert, only to find out Albert is gay. She ends up with CN Chan (Jackie Chan), oblivious that her crush and Secret Admirer, Long Yi, had tailed her all the way from Taiwan, but eventually it turns out Long Yi had no problems having relationship with *men*, so leftovers Albert and Long Yi gets paired into a gay couple.
- Subverted in
*A Knight's Tale* (slightly in the movie and expanded in a deleted scene). Will and Jocelyn get together, Chaucer has his wife, and Roland and Christiana hook up. Kate and Wat are left standing there rather awkwardly and Wat holds his hand out. Instead of her hand, she gives him a pastry and walks off. Wat is fine with this.
-
*Licence to Kill*: In the end, James chooses Pam Bouvier over Lupe Lamora and suggests that she hook up with El Presidente instead of him. This basically comes out of nowhere, as Lupe and El Presidente have shared literally zero scenes beforehand.
-
*The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King*: Although in the novel the pairing *was* actually set up quite nicely and built up pretty well in the background of everything else that was going on, the *movie* version makes Faramir and Éowyn seem like a version of this trope. Éowyn loses out on Aragorn and gets his "slightly inferior replacement" of sorts, and the whole implied romance comes and goes in the space of a single reaction shot. The Extended Edition does remedy this a bit with a 50-second scene of them comforting each other at the Houses of Healing. Miranda Otto had posted a photo of herself and David Wenham in their characters' beautiful wedding outfits from a Deleted Scene that still hasn't been released.
-
*Love in the Villa*: Cassie and Brandon get dumped by Charlie and Julie, respectively. They get a drink together in the end, obviously charmed by each other.
- Parodied, then played straight with a little justification in
*Mean Girls*. The remainder of the trio (one a gay guy, the other probably not a lesbian) have an Almost Kiss at the final dance, before being mutually disgusted and breaking apart. Then another minor character, who's actually shown an interest in the girl previously, finally gets his chance.
-
*Mr Malcolm's List*: ||Julia (who was rejected by Jeremy) and Henry (who bows out after understanding he doesn't have a chance with Selina and realizing he has feelings for Julia) get together around the same time Jeremy and Selina do.||
- One film adaptation of
*The Count of Monte Cristo* puts Franz and Haydée together offscreen, mentioned offhand by another character as the former falling madly in love with the latter. Thus allowing Edmond to get back with Mercedes, but more importantly avoiding the Values Dissonance of the original ending that looks disturbingly like Wife Husbandry to a modern audience (in fact it was utterly unintentional on Edmond's part, he took Haydée in as part of his years-long plot to discredit Fernand, and she fell in love with him over time).
- By the end of
*Night of the Comet* everyone in the world is dead except for Sam, her big sister Reggie, the hunky stranger Hector who Reggie has hooked up with, and a pair of cute kids who Hector and Reggie have taken under their wing. So we have a newly-formed nuclear family, and one teenage girl who is still upset that her big sister has once again taken the boy she had her eye on, in this case the last man in the world. Reggie tells the kids to wait for the light to change before crossing the street. Sam thinks this is ridiculous under the circumstances, so she crosses the street - only to be ||almost run over by a cute guy we've never seen before. He invites her to take a ride with him and they drive away, and as we do we see from his license plate he has the initials of the arcade game player whose high score Reggie was trying to beat at the beginning of the movie.||
- Happens in
*Old School* with Frank the Tank and Heidi (Luke Wilson's swinger girlfriend from the beginning of the film). Granted, Frank and Heidi would probably be a pretty good couple.
-
*The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement*: The garden party makes it quite clear that not only are Mia and Nicholas the Official Couple of the film, Mia's fiance Andrew is quite taken with Lady Elyssa, Nicholas' date. Mia ends the film dating Nicholas, and the final scene implies that Andrew and Elyssa did indeed get together.
-
*Saving Silverman* parodies this; the protagonist marries his childhood sweetheart, and the evil Disposable Fiancé is paired off with his best friend, but then Jack Black's character (who has mentioned he might be gay) marries R. Lee Ermey's character.
- In
*She's the Man*, the main characters' mean exes wind up together.
- In the Disney Channel Original Movie
*Stepsister from Planet Weird*, Megan's parents are divorced, and her mother is dating a weird new neighbor named Cosmo Cola. In fact, Cosmo and his daughter Ariel are Starfish Aliens, who escaped from their planet's tyrannical emperor. Ariel's mother was killed during the escape, but she can't bring herself to accept that. So, when Megan's mother and Ariel's father start dating, both girls are determined to drive them apart. Megan also wants her parents to get back together. They invite their parents to dinner, and Ariel invites Serena Soo, a strange woman who believes in Reincarnation, thinking that she is a better match for her father. Fast-forward to the end of the film, and the girls have given up their attempt, Cosmo marries Megan's mother, the girls exchange boyfriends (sort of, Ariel ends up hooking up with Megan's high school crush, but Megan starts liking Ariel's ex-boyfriend Fanul, the Emperor's son), and Megan's dad starts dating Serena.
- Order-inverted in
*When Harry Met Sally...*. The title characters (Just Friends at the time) unintentionally cause the Beta Couple to form, from a cross-pairing in a Double Date. This leaves *themselves* as the "spares" (and after much drama, as the Alpha Couple at the end).
-
*Wild Mountain Thyme* heavily implies that Rosemary's Romantic False Lead Adam ended up together with the girl he met on the plane flight to Ireland; when Anthony and Rosemary get together and forget to pick him up at the airport, the girl offers him a ride, and in the "Everyone Comes Back" Fantasy Party Ending, Adam is shown sitting with her.
- An early script for
*You've Got Mail* has Kathleen (Meg Ryan) and Joe (Tom Hanks) trading partners by the end of the film. This was dropped by the time filming was done.
- Nicely averted in Jennifer Crusie's
*Bet Me*. Despite the main couple and many of the side characters hooking up, ||Liza|| remains with temporary boyfriends by the end of the book.
- Lampshaded at the end of
*The Enemy* by Desmond Bagley, where the first-person protagonist mentions how the Hero Gets the Girl and his offsider gets the second-best girl. While the latter is true, the protagonist has less than a year to live thanks to an infection he caught, so the hero at least Did Not Get the Girl.
-
*The Fionavar Tapestry* series of books begins with five protagonists transported from Canada to the magical world of Fionavar: over the course of the trilogy, two die and one decides to stay in Fionavar after hooking up with a local woman. The remaining two decide to return to Canada, and on the last page, they decide to go on a date, with no particular buildup to this in the preceding 700+ pages.
- An unusual example: the
*Grace Harlowe* series follows the eponymous heroine and a rotating cast of friends (all female, although some of them have male counterparts and some of these couples eventually marry) through high school, college, and World War I, after which Grace (whose husband is conveniently missing in the Amazon) and some of the young women join up with the young men from the previously separate Pony Rider Boys series in a new series, Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders. On the last page of the final book, everyone who was not already in a couple is paired up. In the final two cases the paired characters had evinced absolutely no previous interest in each other, to the point that when the first of the two unattached women announces her engagement, her friends think she is marrying the other single man, and are relieved when the final spares announce that they are also engaged.
- Author J.K. Rowling of
*Harry Potter* fame said in an interview that although she left open the possibility of a relationship between many characters such as ||Neville and Luna (the last pair of The Team)||, she didn't explicitly state one in the wrap-up because it "felt too neat." That was also the main reason both of them ended up marrying ||a background character (Neville and Hannah Abbott) and a character that *never appeared in any of the books* (Luna and Rolf Scamander)||.
- Inversion in OotP: the spares hook up a whole book before the Official Couple (|| Cho Chang and Michael Corner and Harry and Ginny respectively.||).
- In
*The Belgariad*, this ends up happening to many of the supporting characters, such as ||Silk with Velvet||, ||Zakath with Cyradis||, and ||even Beldin with Vella||. In fact, several of these characters aren't even mentioned until the second quintet, which suggests that the characters were created specifically for this trope.
- Justified in that The Destiny is a huge Shipper on Deck. Polgara remarks that people who aid Destiny will be rewarded by finding happy love. At no point does anyone entertain the notion of being happy alone.
- Beldin is quite happy alone. Belgarath also spend lots of time wandering the earth or doing research in his tower with little to no interaction with the outside world and liked it this way. But they are happier when Destiny-shipped.
- In Agatha Christie's
*Hercule Poirot* novel *Appointment with Death*, Jefferson Cope gets paired up with ||Carol Boynton|| in the epilogue after spending the entire book pining after the married Nadine. This probably isn't all that unlikely, but it comes out of nowhere nevertheless.
- Throughout Rachel Hawkins'
*Hex Hall* series, Sophie has a Love Triangle going on with Archer Cross and Cal. Further complicating things is the fact that ||the ghost of|| Archer's ex-girlfriend Elodie is magically bound to Sophie. ||In the final book, *Spell Bound*, Cal decides to sacrifice his life in order for Sophie to live, knowing she is in love with Archer. Afterwards, Elodie's ghost asks Sophie to unbind them so that she can stay with Cal's ghost.||
- The Gareth/Gaheris/Lynette/Lionesse pairings are lampshaded in
*The King's Damosel* by Vera Chapman, in which Lynette marries Gaheris but is in love with Gareth (since they've, you know, actually spent time together). Luckily, Gaheris is as uninterested in the marriage as she is (possibly more so).
- In
*The Lightning Conductor*, Molly is dodging the attentions of Jimmy and Jack is dodging his mother's attempts to set him up with Sybil. After Molly and Jack fall in love, Jimmy and Sybil hook up with each other.
- In
*The Lord of the Rings,* author J.R.R. Tolkien originally wrote Éowyn as the love-interest for Aragorn, before he revised the story to include Arwen; therefore after he did so, Éowyn becomes rather hastily paired with Faramir, and a chapter is dedicated to their growing relationship.
- It works better than most examples of this trope, because Faramir is similar in personality to Aragorn in many ways, while being much closer to Éowyn's age and from a culture that's a bit less foreign than the Elvish-raised Aragorn. Hence, this relationship is more likely to actually last and work. Also because Éowyn's crush on Aragorn was mostly motivated by the fact that he isn't a creep like Wormtongue and takes her more seriously than the other men in her life (excepting her brother). Her own uncle doesn't even consider her for the position of regent while he rides off to Helm's Deep, until her brother's lieutenant Háma speaks up for her. The way it comes off in the book is less that Éowyn is shunted to the side in favor of Arwen, and more that there are
*plenty* of guys who will treat her the way she deserves so she doesn't need to settle for the jerks just because Aragorn is taken.
- In Jane Austen's
*Love and Freindship*, Augusta and Graham — perhaps because they both have some sense.
- Played with via time travel in the short story "Needle in a Timestack" by Robert Silverberg. In the initial timeline, the protagonist Nick Mikkelson is married to Janine Mikkelson nee Carter, and Janine's ex Tommy Hambleton is trying to use time travel to negate Janine having broken up with him as he considered her The One That Got Away. When one of Tommy's efforts succeeds, Nick goes back to a time before Tommy and Janine met and impersonates his past self to break up with his then-girlfriend Yvonne and set her up with Tommy. Upon returning to the future, Nick finds Tommy and Yvonne happily married, and they set him up with their other single friend Janine Carter.
- Swedish writer Simona Ahrnstedt does this in her debut novel
*Överenskommelser*, when ||Lily and Alexandre|| suddenly hook up.
- Generally subverted in P. G. Wodehouse's books (Blandings Castle, Jeeves and Wooster, etc), in which a typical plot might go as follows: A loves B, and C loves D. But just before the book starts, A and B break up over something, and A, seeking to show he's not heartbroken (though he is) proposes to D, who is temporarily convinced that C is a complete bastard. Then everything gets disentangled. Subverted in that the eventual pairings are set up quite early on in the book. This formula is then livened up by wonderfully eccentric characters, hilarious plot twists, and fabulously funny writing.
- William Collins' and Charlotte Lucas' marriage in
*Pride and Prejudice*, though it takes place well before the end, has overtones of this- he being rejected by Lizzie Bennet and she being pretty much an Old Maid already, by contemporary standards.
- Also humorously Discussed at the end by Mr Bennett, after Jane and Lizzie have become engaged in quick succession: "If any young men come for Kitty or Mary, send them in, for I am quite at leisure."
- Conspicuously averted in
*The Quest of the Unaligned*. ||Not only does the story end with the Alpha Couple (Alaric and Laeshana) formally getting engaged, Word of God reveals that Gratelle later got engaged to a ruahk noble somewhere in the south and Nahruahn is too young to get married for another few years.||
- Parodied in
*Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers*. After The Hero and the girl get together at the end of the novel, the two remaining male characters suddenly realise they're gay and do the same.
- From
*The Wheel of Time*, from all indications, ||Berelain and Galad||.
- The season one finale of
*Agatha Raisin* ends with it looking like Gemma and Bill are getting together.
- Downplayed example in
*Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.*. Fitz/Simmons became canon during season 3, and season 4's opener gave us Mack and Elena, leaving... Coulson and May to be next in line. Downplayed in that they *were* extremely close beforehand, but it can still feel a bit sudden.
- Worth noting Mack and Elena could
*also* be seen as pair sparing, as while Mack was the main person she talked to throughout season 3, their relationship got upgraded during season 4's beginnings, seemingly out of nowhere.
-
*Bob Hearts Abishola*: Once Abishola decides to date Bob exclusively, Chukwuemeka is paired with her friend Kemi, who is widowed.
- Some
*Castle* fans view the Espositio/Lanie pairing this way since Castle/Beckett is the Official Couple and Detective Ryan is engaged. However, if you watch closely to first and second season episodes, Esposito is flirting with Lanie.
- The spares to
*Crash Landing on You*'s main couple Jeong-hyuk and Se-ri, Seung-joon (Se-ri's rejected suitor) and Dan (Jeong-hyuk's arranged fiancee, whose feelings he has never reciprocated) have a nebulously flirtatious relationship after Jeong-hyuk and Se-ri affirm their feelings. ||Seung-joon dies at the end, so not much can come of it.||
- Fans of
*Degrassi: The Next Generation* are fond of this, pairing (for instance) Emma with Jay so as not to interfere with Ellie/Sean. (Emma is paired with Sean. Ellie is *not* paired with Jay.) Similarly, practically all Spinner/Manny shipping is to stop anything from happening between Craig and Manny. Craig/Manny shippers are conversely fond of Jimmy/Ashley and Sean/Ashley, while Emma/Sean shippers are fond of Craig/Ellie.
- In series example. At the end of Season 9, long-standing couple Jay/Manny had their best friends (Spinner and Emma) get married. Some fans were not pleased by this. In that it ruined the chances of Emma/Sean and broke up fairly long-lasting Spinner/Jane.
- A better example would be Jimmy/Hazel. Spinner and Jay aren't exactly best buds. It's just that Jimmy was angry at Spinner for the whole paint and feathers incident.
note : Immediately afterward, Rick went home, brought a gun to school, and the rest is history. With Rick dead, Jimmy blamed Spinner. At the same time, Sean had lost his mind after killing Rick.
-
*Doctor Who*:
- A non-romantic example is likely the tendency in both the Classic and New eras to partner Sarah Jane Smith with K-9 (see
*K-9 and Company* and *The Sarah Jane Adventures*). Sarah left the Doctor a good deal before he picked up K-9 and they never had anything to do with each other in any Fourth Doctor stories, but they're the two most beloved Fourth Doctor companions, so apparently belong together.
- "Doomsday": In the main universe, Pete had died some years ago (visited in "Father's Day"), leaving Jackie widowed. In an alternative universe, Pete had survived, Rose was never born and Jackie was killed in "The Age of Steel". The surviving Jackie and Pete are naturally paired together.
- "The End of Time" shows Martha Jones and Mickey Smith being married, even though Martha was previously (supposedly happily) engaged to someone else and their interaction during the show was minimal. Word of God states that her honeymoon mentioned in
*Torchwood* was actually to Mickey, and both characters were initially intended to appear before Noel Clarke and Freema Agyeman were unavailable.
- The final season of
*Downton Abbey* works with this trope to a hilarious extent. First there are the people who really do get married—Mary to her mechanic, Edith to her marquis, Isobel to Lord Merton, Carson and Mrs Hughes to each other—to say nothing of Rose, who married and went to America at the end of the previous season. Then there are all the hinted-at future pairings: Moseley with Baxter, Mrs Patmore the cook with Mr Mason, Daisy the under-cook with the latest footman, Tom with Ediths new editor. By the end of the series, poor Thomas is the only one left without a soulmate (||until the film||).
-
*Drake & Josh*, "Playing The Field": When Drake and Tori get back together, Drake hooks her date up with his Operation: Jealousy date.
- Exaggerated in
*Friends*. Rosss doppelganger Russ, newly dumped by Rachel, is saying goodbye to the gang. Julie, the woman Ross broke up with to be with Rachel, turns up. Russ and Julie look into each other's eyes, and in mere seconds are completely in love.
- Also Played With and eventually Subverted in the case of ||Joey and Phoebe. It seems like they're going to get together at many points during the series, but nothing ever really comes of it.||
- Averted on
*General Hospital* after Jason and Brenda are dumped by Karen and Jagger, respectively. They share one kiss, but quickly realize that they're still too raw from their recent breakups and equally quickly realize that they're still in love with their exes—indeed, Brenda turns her efforts to getting Jagger back. They ultimately remain nothing more than very good friends.
-
*Glee* pairs Brittany and Artie as well as Sam and Mercedes for seemingly no other reason than this trope.
- Lampshaded on
*Home Improvement*: Tim points out Jill's attempts to pair the spares, and Jill responds, in an angry tone, "Because I want everyone to be as happy as we are."
-
*House of Anubis*: At the end of season 3, Fabian and Mara were the only two students still in Anubis House who weren't dating anybody, due to Nina leaving and Jerome ending up with Joy. They shared a moment in the finale, and come Touchstone of Ra, they spent the time having some minor Belligerent Sexual Tension before kissing at the end. This is a particularly controversial pairing because the two of them had barely interacted in the show before they were paired together.
- The last episode of the first season of
*The IT Crowd* ends with three Bedmate Reveals. The first two are already the inverse of what we might expect, and the third involves the only other two recurring characters, Richmond and Denholm.
- By the final season of
*The Leftovers*, Laurie and Kevin have gotten divorced between Season 1 and 2 and John and Erica have gotten divorced between Season 2 and 3. Come Season 3, Laurie and John (two characters who have shared no scenes together to this point, and showed no interest in each other) are married and working together.
-
*Lost*: Jack and Kate get off the Island and hook up (for a while), leaving behind Kate's other love interest, Sawyer, and Jack's other love interest, Juliet. Sawyer and Juliet eventually get together, but it's a testament to the acting ability of Josh Holloway and Elizabeth Mitchell that the Sawyer/Juliet relationship comes out of nowhere (unless you'd been brushing up on this trope) *and yet* many viewers felt they were more convincing, more dramatic and way less annoying than the Jack/Kate relationship, which had been around from the pilot episode.
- In the final season of
*The Nanny*, Niles (the Snarky Butler) and C.C. (the Evil Would-Be Love Interest) end years of antagonism by getting married.
-
*Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide*: While Ned and Moze officially hook up, Ned's ex-girlfriend, Susie, and one of Moze's fanboys, Loomer, get back together.
- In
*Our Day Out*, two students of opposite sexes each have a crush on one-half of a teacher couple. One of the teacher couple encourages the students to get together, and they do.
-
*Padre Coraje*, being a soap opera, ends up with most characters either paired up or dead, but the most egregious example is ||Mercedes and Horacio||, who hook up in the very end of the last episode, and it is even mentioned that what brought them together was having spent their lives obsessing over half of the main couple. The funniest thing is, being Unlucky Childhood Friend and Bad Guy Jr., they'd had lots of interaction, and it was never romantic.
- Enforced and exaggerated on a Netflix Relationship Reality Show, "Perfect Match." The elimination / competition aspect is that each of the contestants has to explicitly declare (or have someone declare for them) a "match" with another contestant, or else they're sent home. While certain couples (as of the first season, Joey and Kariselle
note : pronounced "carousel") remain stable, the other eight contestants typically have to fumble to find something reliable.
- In
*Scrubs*, after J.D. and Elliot get together for good, their exes Kim and Shaun also become a couple.
- Earlier, Season 3's finale played with this by having Sean drive Danni (JD's girl of the season) home.
- In
*Smallville*, after Clark Kent and Lois Lane finally admit their romantic feelings and Unresolved Sexual Tension for one another, and after Zod and Tess start exploring their mutual attraction ||which later evolves into Dating Catwoman||, and because a large contingent of Chloe fans had been calling for Chloe/Ollie since Season 6 (often saying "Chloe deserves to have her own superhero" or "Chloe deserves to have her own billionaire" in comparison to the previous Clana, Lexana, and Lollie relationships) the producers finally acquiesced to the fan campaigns, and put Oliver and Chloe together as Friends with Benefits, and then later as a Battle Couple.
- In one episode of
*Stargate Universe* a failed attempt to get back to Earth leaves the characters stranded on an unpopulated planet centuries in the past. With no way back to Earth or their time, the characters resign themselves to spending the rest of their lives on the planet and quickly start pairing off and getting married. After all the obvious couples are paired up, the leftover characters start pairing up amongst themselves which results in some Crack Pairings. This is justified by the situation since the relationship pool is very small and the only alternative for most of them is to spend the rest of their lives alone. In contrast, an alternate version of the characters who avoided being stranded in the past, avoids this trope because most of them still have a hope of returning home and thus do not see the need to jump into relationships.
-
*War and Peace (2007)*: Sonya ends the novel as the maiden caretaker to Nikolai's children, but this adaptation pairs her with Denisov.
- Parodied on an episode of the sitcom
*Working (1997)*, where after a ban on inter-office relationships is lifted, everyone quickly pairs off in order to release the sexual tension that had been building. The Butt-Monkey is too slow, and the only one left is a Little Old Lady.
- In
*The X-Files*, Dogget and Reyes, the two agents that replace Mulder and Scully, are romantically involved during their one season onscreen. It would have been interesting to see where that relationship had gone, had the show's ratings not been so low and the show cancelled.
- It was obvious from the onset that Reyes was meant to be Doggett's love interest. Chris Carter said that Doggett was not meant to replace Mulder or be a love interest for Scully. So it seems Reyes, while mostly being brought on to replace Scully on
*The X-Files*, also had the added bonus of placating outraged MSR shippers.
- Depending on which version of Arthurian Legend you read, Sir Gareth either marries his Damsel in Distress Lyonesse or his Damsel Errant Lynette (Lyonesse's sister). Either way, his brother Sir Gaheris marries the other one.
- Greek mythology is a giant clusterfuck (in both senses), and so it wasn't very surprising that the fact that Demeter is a) the fertility goddess and b) the only of the 12 Olympian unmarried and not having vowed for chastity, irritated the Greeks somewhat. So in later development, she usually got paired with Poseidon, who is c) even more of a horndog than Zeus, d) who cares for his official wife Amphitrite who you probably know from crosswords, maximally (and already has "trite" in her name), and e) showed his affections for her by raping her when she mourned for her daughter Persephone.
note : For Values Dissonance, the latter got retconned into "somewhat consential"; at least it would explain why Demeter changed, of all, into a mare when fleeing from Poseidon, when the horse is his avatar. Athena and Hermes also got this trope to a certain degree limited by the aforementioned chastity vow, probably they are happily enjoying a daily chess match or so.
- In
*Anything Goes*, broke heiress Hope and stick broker Billy met and knew they were a perfect match before the play opens, but Hope is pushed into an engagement to a hapless and awkward English lord named Evelyn by her gold digger mother and Billy is propositioned by his longtime friend, a sassy nightclub evangelist named Reno. In the end, Evelyn is revealed to have gypsy ancestry and be hiding a spontaneous wild side. He marries Reno, Billy marries Hope, and Billy's boss marries Hope's mother.
- In Kander and Ebb's Musical,
*Curtains*, after Bobby finds his love, Georgia, is back with her ex-husband, he starts a romance with Bambi, the last single female role.
- Gilbert and Sullivan:
- Convincing a character that Pair the Spares really is the way to go and she'll be a lot happier that way is the basis of the entire finale of
*The Mikado*, including the immortal lyric: "You've a very good bargain in me." Katisha (Nanki-Poo's Abhorrent Admirer) finally agrees to marry Ko-Ko (Yum-Yum's ditto), leaving Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum free to marry each other.
-
*Ruddigore*: The first act finale approaches this, where Rose decides to marry Richard for no better reason than that he's "the only one that's left". At the end, it's done straight, when Rose goes back to Robin, so Richard decides to marry one of the bridesmaids instead.
-
*The Yeomen of the Guard*: Subverted. After Elsie and Fairfax get together, the spares are Phoebe (who had pursued Fairfax) and Jack Point (who had pursued Elsie). They don't pair up; Phoebe marries someone else — not for love, but to protect Fairfax — and Jack Point doesn't marry anybody, but drops dead on the spot.
-
*The Grand Duke*: At the end, the protagonists marry their respective love interests and the Grand Duke marries one of his two fiancées, the Princess of Monte Carlo, leaving the other, the Baroness von Krakenfeldt, out in the cold. She hooks up with the Princess's father for his money.
- In Oscar Wilde's
*The Importance of Being Earnest*, all the crazy hijinks due to all the "Bunburying" get sorted out and the young people are satisfied by the end. So of course, the PRIEST and the NANNY embrace passionately too. (He's an Anglican priest, though—not Catholic—so he's allowed to marry. And they *had* been flirting all through act II, though without much success.)
- Not really part of the story itself, but in adapting
*La Bohème* into *RENT*, this is done. In *Boheme*, the musician Schaunard and the philosopher Colline are happily single secondary characters (and make plenty of wry comments about their friends Rodolfo and Marcello, and their relationships). Their analogues in *RENT*, Angel Schunard and Collins, *are* a couple.
-
*Oklahoma!* has Gertie Cummings, who flirts with Curly in the first scene, and Ali Hakim, the threat to the Beta Couple of Will and Ado Annie, married before the final scene by means of a Shotgun Wedding.
- Subverted in Sheridan's
*The Rivals*, in which all the major characters but two are already paired by the end as part of the story. This leads another character to suggest that spares Sir Lucius O'Trigger and Mrs. Malaprop pair up, but Sir Lucius responds with disdain.
- Directly invoked in the lyrics of the Act II Finale of
*Spamalot*, where the male and female chorus members pair off for a big group wedding.
- In
*Wicked*, Galinda's attempt to pair off her Stalker with a Crush Boq with Nessa, Elphaba's unbalanced sister, proves one of the most disastrous on fictional record.
- Even William Shakespeare got into the act on occasion.
**Rosalind:** No sooner met, but they looked; no sooner looked, but they loved; no sooner loved, but they sighed; no sooner sighed, but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy.
- Also, to a lesser extent, in
*Measure for Measure*. ||Vincentio|| and Isabella are paired off together, though Isabella had intentions of becoming a nun and he's obviously way too old for her. There is also Lucio and Random Prostitute A.
- In
*The Winter's Tale*, after the young lovers Perdita and Florizel get together and King Leontes is reunited with his lost love Hermione, Leontes rewards the widow Paulina for her part in ensuring the happy ending by marrying her off to the lord Camillo, who up until this point has barely interacted with her.
- In
*Black Closet*, two of your Student Council minions, Althea and Vonne, will wind up together if you aren't romancing either of them. They're together at graduation, but there's no word on how long the relationship lasts.
-
*Dragon Age*:
- If you don't romance Fenris or Isabela in
*Dragon Age II*, they end up in a fling together.
- Iron Bull and Dorian pair up in
*Dragon Age: Inquisition* if neither is romanced. Blackwall and Josephine have a mutual attraction, but Blackwall knows his position is well beneath Josephine's. Sera and Dagna will also hook up post-game, as confirmed in the *Trespasser* DLC.
-
*Fire Emblem: Genealogy of Holy War* has Badass Bookworm Azel trying to woo over White Magician Girl Edin, while his childhood friend and Rebellious Princess Tiltyu chases after the Priest Claude. Depending on the players' actions, they may succeed their wooing. But should they fail... both of them can hook up together. And they're actually *predestined*, meaning they can be hooked up *very* easily due to game mechanics.
- Since the first half of the game revolves around making sure that all your female characters are paired up with a husband, the gamer can actively engage in this trope if he/she realizes that they did not pair up somebody yet and all the "normal" options are taken.
- Likewise, in
*Awakening* and *Fates*, pairing up your units will net you ||powerful new child units||, so unless your forward planning is super in-depth, most players will end up with at least one or two couples that are paired up just because there are no more available options. note : There are two more men than women in *Awakening*, discounting Robin, meaning at least one of them can't be paired unless one is killed off. Additionally, there's an even amount of men and women who can be paired with one another in *Fates*, discounting Corrin, meaning someone *will* end up alone if you don't marry the PC with a Corrinsexual or second-generation character.
-
*Harvest Moon*:
- Some of the games (especially the Mineral Town ones) fall into this trope. After you've chosen your bride, your romantic rivals will often end up marrying their crushes (e.g. if you decide not to pursue Elli, then the Doctor gets her, and if you don't flirt with Ann, then she winds up with Cliff) a few weeks after you have your ceremony.
- Subverted: If you don't choose Cliff for a certain event, he will leave for good, and Ann will remain single. And if you don't see their 2nd heart event before that event they still remain single (but Cliff doesn't leave).
- In
*Rune Factory 2*, if you marry anyone other than Yue, Mana and Alicia, their canon partner will be paired off with Yue. This is Justified: the second part of the game takes place after a Time Skip and features the children of the original characters, so this ensures that a canon couple's child will still be born. Mana and Alicia will remain unmarried.
- In
*Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals*, Maxim's Unlucky Childhood Friend Tia gets together with Dekar immediately after Maxim and Selan's wedding.
-
*Mass Effect*:
- If you show no interest in the human love interest (Ashley if you're male, Kaidan if you're female) in
*Mass Effect*, they will show hints of mutual attraction ||until you have to leave one to die.||
- In
*Mass Effect 3*, if you did not romance either ||Tali or Garrus|| over the course of the game, they will have dialogue between one another that sounds increasingly flirty. Eventually ||you'll catch them at Garrus' station embracing one another. Apparently BioWare decided the dextro-squaddies/two fan favourites of the franchise might as well date each other at the end given the option. Don't worry Talimancers and Garrus fangirls (or fanboys), if either of them is already in a relationship with Shepard, they'll just remain good friends.||
- In the
*Citadel DLC* for *3*, providing Ashley is still alive, she can potentially hook up with Vega.
- Also in
*Citadel*, Shepard can suggest that Jack and Miranda pair off. They are not amused.
- Yet again from
*Citadel*, Zaeed's attempts to do this with Samara are soundly shut down.
-
*Star Wars: The Old Republic*: In the Bounty Hunter story, if neither Mako nor Torian is romanced and the player encourages them, they will become a couple. It doesnt work out, sadly.
-
*Super Mario Bros.*:
- Daisy being paired with Luigi in spin-offs is an example of this as well, as Daisy was originally a damsel for Mario to save in
*Super Mario Land*. But of course, Mario and Princess Peach are the closest thing the series has to an Official Couple, so it was only natural for Luigi and Daisy to be paired up instead.
- Several spinoffs ship Yoshi and Birdo together simply because they're similar-looking creatures of opposite genders, and there aren't many others to ship Yoshi with.
- Sort of done in
*ToeJam & Earl: Panic on Funkotron* in the Golden Ending. At the end of the game, Leshawna hooks up with either Toejam or Earl depending on who the player is controlling when they finish the game. If it's ended in 2-player co-op mode, then she gets together with Toejam, while Earl is introduced to Leshawna's never-before-seen identical twin sister.
- In
*Until Dawn*, there are eight main characters who arrive at the lodge. Four of them are already coupled and two seem headed that way. Samantha and Josh are the only two not to be paired. But given the flirting between them, it seems natural to pair them as a couple. ||If Sam survives the night she even indicates she felt she made a connection with Josh during her police interview. But the ship clearly sinks due to Josh's actions||. Because of the Butterfly effect and its changing of canon, fans can always wonder What If?.
- A non-romantic variation occurs with ||Jessica and Matt||, two characters who are the most likely to die first due to how hard it is to keep them alive. If they manage to survive, they wind up meeting each other in the mines as a plot-convenient way to tie up loose ends, since they don't interact with the other characters who presumed they are dead.
- The
*Danganronpa* franchise doesn't have an awful lot of romance and relies a lot on Ship Tease. Doesn't stop it from dividing up most of its characters into pairs based on relationships, making this a partial example.
- Mostly nonromantic example - in
*Hatoful Boyfriend*, at the end of the Bad Boys' Love route, the characters who were most significant in each others' plotlines are shown talking to each other - ||brothers Sakuya and Yuuya, couple Kazuaki and Shuu (who have a relationship to which "attempting to apply ethical guidelines is completely futile"), and Victorious Childhood Friend Ryouta with Hiyoko||. San and Anghel, who barely interact, are shown together too, simply because they're both the two characters too weird to coexist happily with anyone else (Anghel is either Longing for Fictionland to the point of madness, a Reality Warper who can't perceive the same reality as anyone else, or a full-blown Talkative Loon with extremely vivid Hallucinations depending on interpretation; San is a throwback to before birds were fully uplifted and thus is The Ditz). The ending portrays them as getting along due to Anghel being too crazy to notice San's stupidity and San being too stupid to notice that Anghel is crazy.
- Most of the cast of
*Kindred Spirits on the Roof* get together with someone else if they aren't already a couple, with only two exceptions- ||Yuna's friend Fuji Ano and Nena Miyama, who's Ano's friend and the "third wheel" to her friends Umi Ichiki and Sasa Futano's relationship||. While the two are friends, they never get together, making this an aversion.
- In
*Boy Meets Boy*, Skids vents his frustration about his unrequited feelings for Harley out on Tybalt, the ex-boyfriend of Mikhael, Harley's current boyfriend. To make things even more complicated, Tybalt has also tried to seduce Harley and initially views Skids' lingering attraction to him as an obstacle. Long story short, the two become close friends and share a kiss near the end of the strip's run.
- In
*El Goonish Shive*, Elliot has a lucid dream in which he considers pairing Susan and Justin after finishing pairing the other main characters.
- In
*Erstwhile*'s take on "Sweetheart Roland," Roland's Disposable Fiancée gets a Maybe Ever After with the shepherd who was in love with the protagonist.
- Toward the end of
*Fans!* Book 5 (the strip's original Grand Finale, before it was revived), Tim ends up married to Julia. In a conversation between Guthrie and Meighan, it is more or less revealed that Meighan had hired Julia (an old friend of hers from college) for the express purpose of setting her up with Tim.
- In-story example, from
*Girl Genius*: As the Heterodyne Boys have been Shrouded in Myth since Bill married Lucrezia shortly before their disappearance, his brother Barry was given the stock character of The High Priestess for a love interest in most present-day dramatizations of their adventures.
- In
*I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!!!*, the artist parodies this by setting Alice and Dr. Wendy up on a date and ||having Dr. Wendy tell Alice she doesn't want to go on a second date as they are better just being friends||.
- The goal in the "Serious Business" story arc in the
*Insecticomics* is to pair the spares. *All* of them, even the ones who weren't unpaired to begin with, and in as many combinations as possible.
-
*Khaos Komix* has an interesting aversion in which Mark and Amber, while dating one another, get their best friends to go on a double date with them. The twist is that Mark and Amber break up that very night to be with their respective 'spares' in the end.
- Played with in
*The Order of the Stick*, where in the second book, the only two main characters without a romantic arc are Belkar and Vaarsuvius. A drunken Belkar tries to pair the spares by kissing V (bear in mind that these characters *hate* each other, and V's gender and orientation are ambiguous). V does not take it well.
-
*Sonichu* takes this to a major extreme. At first, the only pairing was the titular character and Rosechu. However, by issue 9, Episode 19, Chris has paired just about every one of his creations with a girl and remedies the last one, Magi-Chan, in the next episode. He... just doesn't like anyone being alone.
- This is more or less described in The True Love List, the Love Interest's counterpart to the Evil Overlord List. Rule #32 as follows:
There is a fifty-fifty chance that the Hero's Sidekick is in love with me. I'll find him a spunky, moderately-attractive tomboy type about his height, and steer them towards each other. If they quarrel, they're in love; if they hit it off, she loves him, but he's secretly unhappy with her and still loves me, and the Hero will need to send them off on a mission together.
-
*Gameboys*: The final episode of Season 1 hints at a possible hook-up between Terrence and Wesley, both of whom have been pining after separate halves of the main couple (Gavreel and Cairo, respectively).
-
*Code Lyoko*:
- While they don't hook up, Yumi's and Ulrich's Romantic False Leads, Sissi and William, have a heart-to-heart chat at the pool commiserating about their unrequited crushes, realizing they both desperately want the same thing: for these Just Friends to get over each other.
- Sissi and Odd unknowingly dated online. Perfect plot wasted.
-
*Daria*'s finale movie somewhat randomly had Upchuck get together with minor character / Ensemble Dark Horse Andrea. The "Future Alter Egos," though not firmly canon, go even farther by pairing Allison with Lindy. Sort of a Theme Pairing for morally ambiguous characters who showed up in the respective movies?
- Bebe developed a crush on Skeeter at some point during
*Doug*. This may have been requited.
-
*Futurama* uses this to resolve ||the season six episode "Rebirth", in which a robot Fry and robot Leela are created as Replacement Goldfish for the real Fry and Leela||.
-
*Kim Possible*: After the Kim and Ron hookup in The Movie, they started pairing spares. Bonnie got matched with Señor Senior Junior in a late Season 4 episode, and in the Graduation Grand Finale episode they paired Felix (and his cool wheelchair) with Zita Flores (who hadn't been seen for about 70 episodes), Drakken and Shego were implied during that finale and Word of God confirmed them as hooking up. A stand-alone episode involving nerdy Cousin Larry also had an implication that he was going to get involved with a friend of his. This basically left only Monique and Wade as unattached, and probably only because of their age difference.
- In
*ReBoot*, Mouse was first brought in as a former flame to Bob, making Dot jealous. In Season 3, during their travels, Matrix and AndrAIa encounter Ray, who the former instantly pegs as a rival for her affections. Naturally, the two end up together.
- In
*Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated*, Velma and Shaggy are secretly a couple for the first half of season one.
-
*The Simpsons*:
- The end of the episode parodying the Big Brothers mentorship program is a non-romantic example. Homer's Little Brother and Bart's Big Brother seem to be left out in the cold... until Bart points out that they would both do well together.
- Before Bart matches them up, they actually spend a few moments bemoaning their situation in a way that, if they were actually paying attention, would indicate that they were perfect for each other — and then cheerfully bid each other farewell.
- Parodied in the episode "The Canine Mutiny", in which Bart obtains an extremely well-trained rough collie named Laddie, and gives up Santa's Little Helper, who ends up living with a lonely blind man. In the end, when Bart manages to get SLH back, Laddie shows up (now working as a police dog) and appears to take an instant liking to the blind man, making it look like we're in for a heartwarming "Pair The Spares" conclusion. Turns out, Laddie is merely fulfilling his duties as a drug-sniffing dog...
- A later episode depicts Marge and Homer five years in the past, almost cheating on each other at the same time at the same motel. When they run into each other each tries to hide this fact, and Homer's almost-mistress winds up locked in a box with Marge's almost-lover. Back in the present, the two are happily married with a daughter.
- In
*Tiny Toon Adventures*, Hamton J. Pig and Fifi la Fume occasionally had romantic interests with each other. Mostly because they're both the third persons in their 3-man teams, with Buster/Babs and Plucky/Shirley, and the simple fact that there was never a *Tiny Toons* counterpart for Petunia Pig. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PairingTheSpares |
Painted-On Pants - TV Tropes
*"She danced by me in painted-on jeans..."*
—
**Billy Ocean**, "Caribbean Queen"
If you're looking for something comfortable, sexy, aerodynamic, sexy, chic, and sexy for your characters to fight in, party in or just walk around in, look no further than skin-tight pants, preferably spandex or leather so that they can be shiny too.
*Unless* they're spandex, the "fight" part doesn't really work. Seriously. Female characters with nice legs and buttocks almost always feature a fanservice-heavy fighting style with lots of high kicks. Ask your local taekwondo coach to teach you some high kicks. Now put on some skin-tight leather or denim pants. Now do your high kicks. See the problem? That problem arises only if we're assuming our superwoman hasn't broken an ankle running about in stiletto heels or thrown herself to the ground from her own forward momentum, of course.
These are gold mines for having fanservice without looking too blatant and seeming hip at the same time: they're tight and shiny, which means that they show off every curve and contour of the wearer's body, and, in games, allow for heavy Jiggle Physics. Extra points if the wearer is wearing a top made out of the same material, covering all the fanservice bases.
These really became popular in the Seventies and Eighties. See also Most Common Superpower, as clothes like this are used to emphasize that.
See also Superheroes Wear Tights.
**Note:** Full skintight bodysuits are a different trope altogether, as are cases when the outfit really is painted on. Form-Fitting Wardrobe is for when clothing clings like this but is made of materials that shouldn't.
## Examples:
-
*Death Note* gives us a rare male example in the form of Mello.
- The standard women's uniform in
*Heroic Age* could not possibly get more form-fitting.
-
*Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple*: Miu's outfit is so skin-tight that she is accused of wearing body-paint a couple of times (by jealous girls).
-
*The Legend of Thunder* the *Pokemon* sub-mini series took the Tomboy Kris and girled her up quite a bit and changed her name to Marina. As she served as the series's eye candy in a kid's show her shorts don't hug her Johto butt but do outline◊ what one can expect to see under her shorts quite accurately.
- Funnily enough, despite the prominence of females in
*Lyrical Nanoha*, the first one to get the skintight leather pants treatment is Tohma, the male protagonist of *Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force*, while he's using the Black Knight form. Females tend to get skintight bodysuits instead.
-
*Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind* has the titular princess in form-fitting white leggings, but they aren't really played for fanservice. However, the film did once have a reputation for having viewers think that Nausicaä was flying around pantsless and underwear free due to old VHS fansubs where the footage had degraded so much through multiple copying that they looked more skin-toned in colour.
- In
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi*, Chachamaru occasionally wears stuff like this. Not to mention that she has thigh high stockings literally built into her synthetic skin.
-
*Saiyuki* contains a male example.
- Marvel and DC is all over this; Basically, any superheroine who isn't wearing a full bodysuit has this, and every other female character after that. If not, it's a Leotard of Power.
- Male comic characters also frequently appear to have been drawn naked but with Barbie Doll Anatomy, and then colored like a Captain America suit, to the point of details like belly buttons showing. Really, clothes hanging like actual clothes is the exception, not the rule.
- In
*Barracuda*, the Governor wears black leather pants that cling to her extremely shapely legs and ass like a second skin. It's a miracle that she can walk at all.
- Rare non-fanservice (at least intentional) example: when stealing the title character of
*Diabolik* wears a full-body suit that covers everything but the eyes and makes him look like (in the words of a caricaturist) "a naked man completely painted black". Justified: when studying martial arts in East Asia, trainees at his school had to wear a ninja suit and *never* show their face, and after a training accident in which his face was exposed he came up with the suit because it's much harder to grab. Where he keeps his knives when wearing that suit remains a mystery whose solution he's not willing to share.
- Poor
*Empowered*'s super suit is canonically thinner than a soap bubble and so revealing it took her six months to work up enough nerve to wear it in public.
- Several Bronze Age Supergirl's costumes included form-fitting blue pants.
- Storm wore skin-tight black pants during her "punk" phase back in The '80s.
-
*Street Fighter* has Ibuki's otherwise rather loose ninja outfit take the shape of her rear end◊ in some scenes.
-
*W.I.T.C.H.* offers us Will Vandom from the New Power saga onwards.
- Wonder Woman has occasionally swapped her usual leotard or culottes for tight white pants.
-
*The Alchemist* by Ken Goddard. A female undercover cop finds herself Saying Too Much when describing her supposed criminal partners (also cops) and mentions the very tight jeans one likes to wear. Fortunately the cop concerned is not listening to the bug at the time. His partner who is on surveillance duty just bursts out laughing and says he better wear "those tight-ass jeans of yours" when going to meet the crooks.
-
*Cry Wolf*, by Wilbur Smith. Sara Sigud wears tight-fitting embroidered breeches and explains that her grandfather decreed that the Ethiopian women had to wear them so they'd be difficult to remove for immoral purposes. Sara then goes on to explain that in practice they're not that difficult to remove, but are difficult to get back on in a hurry.
- Superskin, a bodystocking that fits like a second skin in Robert A. Heinlein's
*Friday*.
- Skinsuits, the standard issue airtight, skintight spacesuits in Honor Harrington need to be custom fitted for each person. Later in the series, even Nimitz the treecat gets one. In-text, they are described as being akin to a diving wet suit. Oddly enough, in official artwork, they're shown inevitably as spacesuits of a rather more ordinary make, a bit less bulgy than a standard spacesuit but still recognizably a spacesuit.
- Aretha Franklin. From the song
*Freeway Of Love*:
*Knew you were a vision in white* *How'd ya get your pants so tight?* *Don't know what ya doin', but ya must be livin' right*
- Any picture taken of Bon Scott is certain to draw one's gaze to the "area".
-
*Jon Bon Jovi*
- Jim Morrison
- Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin wore
*very* tight jeans. Along with his bare chest and blond hair, it became something of an iconic look.
- Plant himself, in an interview, noted that people only called him a "sex symbol" because "You can see my cock through my trousers. I don't have an instrument in front of mine."
- Quite a few Punk Rock and Heavy Metal musicians in The '70s and The '80s, too. Megadeth in 1988 and in 1990, for example.
- Visual Kei musicians from The '80s onward. BUCK-TICK's Atsushi Sakurai and Yoshiki, Toshi, Taiji Sawada, and Heath of X Japan are/were very famous for wearing these quite often. Among many, many others.
- Dolly Parton's "Why'd You Come In Here Lookin' Like That":
Why'd you come in here lookin' like that,
in your cowboy boots and your painted-on jeans?
- Steve Perry of Journey wears these in the "Just The Same Way" music video.
- The early Rutles are best remembered for their tight pants.
- The line from Billy Ocean's "Caribbean Queen."
She danced by me, in painted on jeans.
- The unnamed Thunder God of
*Flash* wears nothing but a pair of painted-on green spandex pants.
- In
*The Party Zone*, Captain B. Zarr's assorted female followers are fond of wearing painted-on pants with either solid colors or animal stripes.
- Popular in Professional Wrestling, for both male and female wrestlers. This occasionally comes up for characters who are homages to wrestlers as well (such as Hugo from
*Street Fighter*).
- Gretchen wore tight skinny jeans in the Off-Broadway performance of
*Jasper in Deadland*.
- Mimi's famous blue "Out Tonight" pants in
*RENT*. Note that the actress wears them while dancing *on a railing*.
- In
*The Rose Tattoo*, Serafina examines her daughter's sailor boyfriend from the front and back and asks him why they make Navy pants so tight. "That's a question you'll have to ask the Navy," he tells her.
- Fiyero's famous white pants in
*Wicked*.
- This was often used in earlier 3D games due to technical limitations. You don't need to render creases and ruffles for something that literally looks painted on.
-
*Bravely Default* gives us Edea. This is normally only noticeable when she's wearing her Freelancer outfit, but... HOT DAMN.
-
*City of Heroes*, saying as how it's of the superhero genre, has a multitude of shiny tight pants options, from spandex to leather to metal.
-
*Disgaea 3*: Clothes are decorations.
- Fenris of
*Dragon Age II* has very, very tight pants. One wonders what they're made of, given that his low-tech world is unlikely to have spandex; his outfit is given no more in-game description than the mystifying "Grafted Spirit Hide." (How does a spirit have hide?) Rule of Sexy probably applies.
-
*Dynasty Warriors*: Wang Yi's armored leggings are really rather close-cut.
-
*Final Fantasy XI* uses this for some equipment, notably Elvaan starter gear, both male and female.
-
*Fire Emblem: Three Houses*: Ingrid wears tightly fitted riding breeches with thigh-high boots in her default Falcon Knight outfit, in a break from the traditional Minidress of Power (leggings optional) look of the Pegasus Knights in the series.
-
*Genshin Impact*
- Jean is one of the very few female characters that wears pants instead of the shorts or skirts that most of them have. They're basically leggings, so they show her legs' every curve, and her introduction cutscene starts with a few seconds focused on those legs.
- Kaeya rocks the look himself and likewise his pants leave very little to the imagination. To put equality in the fanservice his introduction also pans up his legs letting everyone admire their tightness.
- Yelan wears skintight black leggings, being the second playable female who wears pants. Like Jean before her, the fabric's tightness accentuate her legs.
-
*Love of Magic*: Katie and Kitsune's default outfits. MC comments that Katie couldn't hide a credit card in her pants, and later explicitly says Kitsune's pants must be painted on.
- Miranda Lawson from
*Mass Effect 2* certainly lives up to this trope. Her second outfit that you can unlock by completing her loyalty mission makes her look as if she dips herself in a bath of liquid black latex every morning. Most pants in the series are examples, male or female; at one point in 3 a robot infiltrator that *literally* has her clothes painted on passes without comment in a top-secret military base.
- Name a Snake from the
*Metal Gear* series (including Raiden), they're in painted-on pants.
-
*Mortal Kombat* Sonya Blade alternated between this and less tight pants, although she stopped wearing these in the later games.
- Sonya's daughter, Cassie Cage, follows in her mother's footsteps with her Endurance costume in
*MKX* and Klassic costume in *11*. In *11*, her pants are so tight on her that she has very noticeable visible pantylines.
-
*Overwatch*:
- Tracer, as part of her "topshot pilot" aesthetic. She even has a taunt pose that is identical to a historical air force fanservice poster where she shows off her, ahem, assets rather prominently.
- Mercy and Mei also wear leggings that hug their bodies very tightly, but their outfits keep their assets better-covered most of the time.
-
*Overwatch 2* newcomer Kiriko has curve hugging leggings. While they are covered by her miko uniform usually, her aptly named Athleisurewear skin shows them off nicely.
- Princess Zelda in
*The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* wears tight pants that don't leave much room for imagination.
- Common among custom clothing for
*The Sims 2*, because it's easier - you can simply paste the pants textures directly onto the shape of a naked Sim.
-
*Soul Series*
- In
*Soulcalibur III* and *IV*, given the setting, no character wears this except, arguably, Xiangua, but in the character creator (where they have everything from eighties clothes to *skintight chainmail*) you can set female characters to wear these. In *IV*, with its constant Clothing Damage, it usually comes down to either these or underwear/bikinis.
- Taki's
*entire outfit* seems painted on. She's basically modelled as though she were naked but coloured red (blue in III).
-
*Street Fighter* Quite a bit:
- While historically safe from this Ibuki gained a sporty outfit with shorts that allow her to show the results of years super jumping and working out◊. Not hard to figure out what is underneath those shorts.
- Chun-Li's alpha costume has always shown why her first lady of Street Fighter butt◊ is one of the best in the game. In fact it is so good Ling Xiaoyu tried to replicate it◊
- Being newer on the franchise Juri decided she needed a change going into
*V* and it was quite a benefit to her butt.◊
- Newcomer Falke has a butt◊ that comes in swinging and she doesn't hide it.
- Not even a family friendly new and free all characters free outfit will be enough to cover Kolin's icey cold butt◊.
- In
*VI* Cammy gets a new outfit with a pair of curve hugging pants. In fact they hug her curves so much the textures might very well be repainted from her classic costume.
- The
*Super Smash Bros.* games avert this in their own way. All of them wear tights/pantyhose depending on the version under their dresses that are about as tight as *BOTW* Zelda's pants. But their rear ends are so small and hips so narrow that there isn't much to 'ride up' so said clothing doesn't take any shape because of their inadequate anatomy.
-
*Velvet Assassin*: A few missions in Violet abandons her bomber jacket and jeans in favor of something a bit more... flattering to her figure, but still tasteful and functional. The tight leather pants seem like they were molded into the perfect shape of her butt.
-
*World of Warcraft* uses these for most equipment, using different pieces attached to the base model to make it unique. It gets a bit ridiculous for some equipment, for instance, skin-tight plate mail or skin-tight tuxedos.
- Saya Kho◊ on the back cover of
*X3: Gold Edition*. And only the back cover: other than that you only see her from the shoulders up over comms.
-
*Ménage à 3* is definitely not averse to imposing this style on any of its female characters, if only by way of Fanservice.
- In
*Sticky Dilly Buns*, Dillon takes Ruby clothes shopping (in his best Gay Best Friend style) and buys her a pair of designer jeans as a gift. It then turns out that he has his own reasons for this...
- In
*Terinu* this is Space Pirate Mavra Chan's default wear.
- It also occurred
*accidentally* when the internist uniform Leeza once wore to rescue Teri lacked wrinkles when drawn by Peta Hewitt, resulting in double takes from some readers.
-
*Prequel* has this when Katia, for lack of clothing, uses permanent paint to paint on a bikini and panties. A hundred strips later, the paint has not disappeared a bit.
- In fashion fetishism, they have the concept of a second skin, where a fabric usurps the sexual role played by bare skin.
- "Skinny jeans" are all the rage, and for good reason—when it comes to attracting the desired gaze,
*they work*. Leggings are even more so. Now there's even faux denim leggings ("jeggings"), complete with false pockets.
- An urban legend tells of how a vain person sat in a hot tub with jeans on in order to shrink them into skintight-ness, unfortunately, the jeans shrank so much that it ended up killing the person from loss of circulation. The Mythbusters once tested this and busted it when even after hours of sitting in cold water Grant's circulation was not seriously affected.
- English riding breeches. On purpose.
- Running tights. For that matter, a lot of athletic clothes are skin tight. It reduces chafing, helps wick sweat away, and if you're an athlete, shows off that body you've been working so hard on.
- Cycling shorts are so tight, racing designs tend to shy away from white because they can be a little too revealing.
- Swimsuits for professional swimmers are getting nearer and nearer to this trope...so much so that the international swimming federation is starting to crack down on suits that are
*too* painted on...(this is justified, however, in that the less loose fabric, the less water resistance)
- A properly-fitting wetsuit tends to be like this. And you think tight jeans are hard to take on and off, try ones made of what basically amounts to a body-shaped non-slip mat.
- Spandex in bike tights, et cetera. Spandex hadn't been invented when they first drew Superman, and George Reeves' costume in The Adventures of Superman is almost baggy by comparison with Spandex.
- Some yoga pants ride up to such a degree that if you're in them, you're just going to have to get used to the sensation of a flying atomic wedgie.
- Zentai suits are this, covering
*everything* including the eyes in a one piece spandex outfit, usually either in one solid color or wild patterns such as leopard spots or zebra stripes.
- In figure skating, male skaters are allowed to wear tight-fitting pants (for aerodynamic reasons), as long as they don't resemble leggings. This is circumvented by making everything else tight and the cuffs flare out a little. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintedOnClothes |
Painting the Medium - TV Tropes
A circus barker speaking in a circus poster's typeface
.
Painting the Medium is modifying the presentation of a story in order to convey information about the story. A comic book might give a character special-looking Speech Bubbles that reflect on their personality. A TV show might change to black-and-white or sepia-tone during flashbacks. A video game might change its GUI to show a change in the player character or the setting.
By Painting the Medium, a creator turns a transparent tool—meant to show the work behind it—into a part of the work.
**This is typically done for one of several reasons:**
Some of the most popular variants have become so conventional that we stop noticing them completely—for example, dialogue written in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS is shouted. Heck, even we do it (check the entries in Self-Demonstrating Article why not?)
See also Rule of Perception. Unless the characters themselves remark or interact with the audio or visual effects, then it can't be concluded they occur within the setting, so they must only be presented to the audience's side of the fourth wall. The characters who do remark on these tropes may be uncommonly Medium Aware, or they may know that their particular universe is governed by metafictional laws, in which case the 'paint' isn't just on the medium, it's integrated into the text.
Please note: This trope is
**not** 'Character interacts with the pages of the book/panels of the comic/film camera/suitable alternative for their story'—that trope is Medium Awareness. This trope is 'The setup, layout or presentation of the book/comic/film/whatever is changed to reflect a change in the characters' situation'. Please don't put incorrect examples on pages they shouldn't be on, thank you. Splatter on the camera lens may be acceptable as a way of showing just how much rain/blood/liquid is flying around the scene at that point.
## Sub-tropes:
<!—index—>
<!—/index—>
## Examples:
<!—index—>
<!—/index—>
- At one point during the video of Bo Burnham's live show
*what.*, he starts to make an insulting joke about video editors, only to be suddenly cut off by a mysterious Jump Cut.
- In the vinyl album version of the
*Monty Python* sketch *The Piranha Brothers*, the voice-over announcer for the skit is being menaced by one of Dinsdale's thugs, and told that the sketch has gone on too long. When he protests, the thug "scratches the record", ending the bit. We fade out to: "Aw! Sorry, squire! I've scratched the record —orry, squire! I've scratched the record! —" over and over. *Infinitely*, as this part ran on an actual loop on the LP.
- Cheech & Chong's self-titled first album features Tommy Chong attempting to put a vinyl record (supposedly the very one this skit is on) on the phonograph and failing miserably, the skit (and this side) ending in a fluster of wild record needle scratching.
- The first of Stan Freberg's
*Dragnet* affectionate parodies, *St. George and the Dragonet*, opens with this disclaimer: "The legend you are about to hear is true. Only the needle should be changed to protect the record."
- In Robin Williams's
*Weapons of Self Destruction* special, he tells a story about Dock Ellis's no-hitter game while on LSD. While he tells it, the camera blurs the screen and adds motion trails and other hazy effects.
- Here's a really meta one: the early Disney
*Winnie the Pooh* shorts were played out as readings of the books, down to the animated characters being able to walk on the text, a hurried page-turning at one point to keep Pooh from flying out of the book, and so forth. Thus it played with the concept that it was a book, when in fact it *wasn't*. All this in a cartoon for children.
- At the end of
*The Thief and the Cobbler*, the Thief comes out and takes the letters from the THE END title. Then he goes and takes the *very film he is on* out of the projector as it is rolling, rolls it up and runs off into the now blank screen. Gives new meaning to the term "scene stealer".
- In Disney's
*Brother Bear*, when Kenai is transformed, the movie changes its aspect ratio to subtly tell the viewer that he's seeing through different eyes now.
- In
*The Emperor's New Groove*, Kuzco-the-narrator freezes the frame and literally paints on the screen to bring the story back to himself. He then continues to interrupt the story so it focuses on himself. Later on in the story, Kuzco-the-character yells at Kuzco-the-narrator to stop talking and leave him alone. From then on, the movie is un-narrated.
- Ralph Bakshi's animated
*The Lord of the Rings* also has blood splattering the camera during battles.
- In
*Tangled*, Rapunzel *literally* paints the fourth wall.
- In one scene,
*Ratatouille* uses splashes of color to convey the indescribable qualities of tastes that harmonize well, and the differences in taste perception by Rémy and his brother.
- In
*Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders*, Batman ||gets drugged by Catwoman to turn him evil||. As his disposition gets harsher, his Hit Flash onomatopoeia shifts to words like "BLUDGEON" and "FRACTURE" to reflect the fact that he is delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown rather than merely subduing his foes as usual.
- The Eraser Bombs in The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie! essentially undo the process of animation. They first render objects to sketches, then the objects disintegrate, leaving a blank white space where they used to be.
- In
*Turning Red*, when Mei spots the posters Tyler has put up the camera's screen cracks.
- Autotune was first used to correct errors in pitch. Many modern musicians use it to deliberately distort their voice so it's obvious that they're using Autotune, as well as for aesthetic effect, even when they're fully capable of singing themselves. Some people have expressed their distaste.
- The Dresden Dolls use some quirky, but meaningful, production techniques in the song "Coin-Operated Boy", which is about the superiority of vibrators to real boyfriends. The mix begins monophonic, but it abruptly widens to stereo during the line "I turn him on / And he comes to life". The performers imitate a Broken Record over the line "And I'll never be alone", signifying that this is the narrator's false repetition to herself. The end of the bridge features an intense
*rallentando* to evoke the tapering end of an orgasm, a battery-powered device running out of juice, or more likely both.
- The music video for Kanye West's "Love Lockdown," if watched on a standard-definition TV or Youtube, is letterboxed. At about one minute in, a character in the video races towards the camera, then actually jumps
*out* of the letterbox.
- "The TV Show"'s central conceit it that it's showing us a series of TV shows being viewed by two guys in a control booth. Then one falls asleep on a console, and elements from some of the shows start interacting with each other, the camera, and the producers. Hilarity Ensues.
- "Madvillain All Caps." It's an animated comic book—literally.
- The video for Justice's remix of Lenny Kravitz's "Let Love Rule" feature the end of a fictitious movie and its credits sequence. Early on, the lead character's sleeve gets caught on one line of the credits. At first, things are fun, but then the video deconstructs the idea of having a credits sequence be a physical part of the world.
- In Arnold Schoenberg's opera
*Moses und Aron*, the composer illustrates the two lead characters' differences by a radical break with the basic convention of opera:
- The tongue-tied Moses, whose direct contact with the God of Israel has shown him the inadequacy of human words to describe Him,
*never sings a note*. Instead, he speaks in ordinary non-musical prose throughout.
- By contrast, Moses' brother and spokesman—the plausible, tactful, crowd-pleasing Aaron—sings in a gorgeous tenor.
- The literary journal
*Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern* is as much a vehicle for editor Dave Eggers to play with the magazine format as a collection of fiction. The format changes with each issue, from paperback to hardcover to a collection of smaller booklets containing individual stories. One of the more elaborate issues (#17) was published as a bundle of misdelivered mail, containing some stories in individual envelopes and some in the fictitious magazines that the fictitious intended recipient subscribed to. Sometimes stories take advantage of the flexibility of the format: "Heart Suit", in issue 16, was printed on a deck of oversized playing cards and readable in any shuffled order. On a smaller scale, Eggers will sometimes put long rambling asides in the copyright notice and other bits of paratext.
- In the book
*Color: A Natural History of the Palette*, author Victoria Finley describes an *ukiyo-e* print (likely this one◊) that shows the famous kabuki actor Onoe Kikugoro V portraying a ghost. The brown spot on the ghost's head was once green malachite pigment; Finley theorizes that the artist deliberately used the corrosive mineral to illustrate the ghost's supernatural power and malevolence as it literally burned through the canvas.
- A humorous poem appearing in a 1924 edition of the Feather River Bulletin reads:
*When her mother is in the parlor we sit*
*LIKE.................THIS*
*But after mother retires we always sit*
*LIKETHIS*
*And sometimes (don't be shocked) we sit*
*LIKE*
*THIS*
- Several Self Demonstrating Articles:
- This site (and other wikis, for that matter) itself when it comes to links. Normal links show up in blue, discussion links or links to certain pages are in orange, disambiguation pages are in green, and links to nonexistent articles are in red. Checking out the new edits gives even
*more* colors.
-
**ADBOT SAYS HELLO.**
- On many websites, including this wiki, some posters seem use spoiler tags for hiding words that should not be said, written, or seen for some superstitious reason, such as the Tetragrammaton, or the name of The Scottish Play, or less seriously, a potentially Flame War fueling forum post, as if the whiteness would make them partially unwritten.
- Many
*very* old-timer tropers will be able to recount when the various YMMV tropes were helpfully highlighted with a solid red bullet. This was removed during one of the first revamps to the site, though this functionality still lives on, with tropes instead displaying their proper symbol next to them if not in their proper namespace.
- There are two main functions of the AC font: AI dialogue to show their synthesised voicebox, and giving proper gravitas to the words 'In SPACE!'.
- Universal Studios' The Incredible Hulk Coaster suddenly hurls the passengers forward during the climb up the first hill, right when the audio says the experiment they're listening to goes wrong. The engineer says this represents the sudden surge of uncontrollable power experienced by Bruce Banner upon turning into the Hulk. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintingTheFourthWall |
The Paladin - TV Tropes
"I shall fear no evil."
*My good blade carves the casques of men, *
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
What's a Paladin?
Paladins are warriors dedicated to furthering the cause of all that is good. Holy crusaders, they combat the forces of evil wherever they are found, and defend the helpless as much as possible. Above all else, paladins are
*good*. An evil paladin is a literal contradiction of terms; a paladin that turns evil ceases to be a paladin. note : Though in settings with Grey-and-Gray Morality, antagonistic paladins may still exist. As holy warriors, they're almost always associated with The Order, which is usually religious, or at least spiritual, in nature. While their Order may be tied to a specific church worshiping a God of Good, they are just as often dedicated to a more general power (frequently The Light). As such, paladins are frequently Church Militants and may have aspects of the Warrior Monk. Paladins are often The Chosen Many, with new paladins just beginning to learn about their powers being found and taught by older, more experienced paladins. When not part of The Order (or if their order is disbanded), a paladin will usually be a Knight Errant instead. Their weapon of choice will typically be a long sword (usually with shield) or a hammer (maybe two handed).
Paladins tend to fall in the middle of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. They certainly believe that Humans Are Good, but they tend to deal with most evil by killing it rather than trying to redeem it. The archetypal paladin is a Lawful Good Knight in Shining Armor for whom Right Makes Might, but this isn't always the case. Though always good, paladins are not always nice. (And even when they are nice people, underestimating their capacity for violence is still a potentially lethal mistake.) They may even be a Knight in Sour Armor — but never a Well-Intentioned Extremist or a Knight Templar. When faced with a To Be Lawful or Good dilemma, a paladin's best option is to choose to do Good. If their order were to lapse from virtue, a
*true* Paladin would leave, but continue to follow the rules of the uncorrupted order, even if they have to consider themselves the very last member.
Some games skirt the whole "Paladins must be good" requirement by defining them as
*any* Magic Knight devoted to a specific religion or deity, in which case the Paladin identifies with the alignment and ideals of that religion. This is often used to explain Dark Paladins following a Religion or God of Evil, though other options exist as well.
A popular Character Class in both digital and tabletop Role-Playing Games, Paladins tend to be Magic Knight variants who focus more on White Magic and defense compared to the Magic Knight's offensive spell-slinging (but can do offense as well with Holy Hand Grenade magic). As such, they usually fill the role of the tank in groups, though they may be able to function as a Combat Medic as well; when not working with a party, they're usually a Mighty Glacier. Paladins in games are usually very effective against evil enemies, particularly The Legions of Hell and The Undead — they almost always have the ability to use Detect Evil and Smite Evil against such foes.
Compare Magic Knight (the more generalized and/or offensively-oriented counterpart to this trope), Combat Medic (who has healing as first priority and combat second), The Paragon (who seeks for others to be as courageous), Good Shepherd (a priest who has the traits of this trope), and The Cape (a superhero who has many of the traits of this trope). Contrast with the Black Knight, who may be this character's Evil Counterpart.
Not related to C. J. Cherryh's stand-alone book
*The Paladin*, nor to the black-clad hero of the Western *Have Gun Will Travel*. This trope does have thematic relations to the video game *Paladins* (see below for its entry). Also has no relation to the *Paladin's Quest* game.
**Just because something is NAMED a paladin doesn't automatically make it an example of this trope.**
## Examples:
- The Royal Knights of the wider
*Digimon* canon are this, an order of immensely powerful knight Digimon convened to serve the god of the Digital World (whoever that may be in that particular universe); the order was founded by, appropriately enough, Imperialdramon Paladin Mode. All members of the Royal Knights are very different from each other and have very different sets of powers, so they fit the related powers tendency only to varying degrees. The most prominent members of the order include Omegamon, Magnamon, Dukemon, Dynasmon, and LordKnightmon.
-
*Hellsing*:
- Father Alexander Anderson of the Vatican's Iscariot Section XIII is almost always referred to as
*Paladin* Anderson or somesuch variant. Interestingly, he's a rare Hero Antagonist variant, as the actual protagonist is both an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight Protestant-enslaved vampire and a Sociopathic Hero. Not that they're all that different in that respect.
- Also interesting is Section XIII's Badass Creed, which we hear when they show up in force. In it, they self-identify as God's
*assassins*, violating all of the Church's Commandments in the name of Judas Iscariot in the hope both of furthering the Church's cause and damning their souls as a way of passing on to and *invading* Hell. They're still probably paladins in comparison to the rest of the Church's militant orders... which says something about those.
-
*The Ghent Altarpiece*: The figures in the "Knights of Christ" panel are clearly intended to represent the ideal warrior who fights for the Christian God.
- Priam Agrivar from DC's
*Advanced Dungeons & Dragons* and *Forgotten Realms* titles back in the 80s, one of the better fleshed-out examples of the classic D&D-style (AD&D 2nd Edition in particular) paladin — complete with all-too-human failings (like lingering alcoholism) and doubts but ultimately the determination to prove himself worthy as well. Interestingly, he seems to owe formal allegiance to no specific faith or other organization, or if he does, it's never shown; he always appears as essentially his own man trying to do good as best he understands it, and his powers seem to work well enough regardless. note : His character write-up in the *Dragon* article "Rogues Gallery: The Crew of the *Realms Master*" says he's a paladin of Torm, god of duty, although other sources say he follows Tyr, god of justice. Which just proves the point that it never came up in the comics.
-
*Black Moon Chronicles*: Lord Parsifal, the Grand Master of the Knights of Justice, is a completely devout and heroic warrior who fights on the emperor's side in various wars, though he specifies that he serves God alone. His counterpart Frater Sinister of the Knights of Light is both corrupt and ambitious.
-
*Pathfinder*: As a scimitar-wielding cleric of the sun goddess Sarenrae, Kyra is about as close to a paladin as you can get without actually having levels in the tabletop class. She readily joins in slaying monsters and single-handedly defeats a ghoul ambush of the party via Turn Undead, but though demanding of people's moral standards, she's also a capable and gentle healer with a soft side.
- Balian of Ibelin in the
*Chance Encounter* series pretty much is this trope. Considering one of his nicknames is "The Perfect Knight" and he goes down to hell to fight the Devil for the soul of his dead wife (while he does get smashed around by Satan with ease, he is assisted by the ||recently-canonized-by-the-Archangel-Gabriel Prince Hector of Troy||. Yes, it is very strange.), this is hardly surprising. He is also something of a Woobie, as it is pretty much guaranteed that he will be maimed at least once every 4-6 chapters. As well as being ||possessed by a dark version of himself||.
- In the fanfic
*Harry Potter and the Knight of the Radiant Heart* by Raven 3182, the paladin Keldorn Firecam from *Baldur's Gate II* is inserted into the *Harry Potter* story. ||He goes on to train Harry to be a paladin as well.||
- In
*The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World*, a line in the mysterious poem the four find when they first return to C'hou mentions "the Paladins, rightfully so." John hopes the line doesn't refer to themselves. (It turns out to refer to the Guardians.)
- Sloane from
*The Tale of Solaron* is a paladin of Pelor and plays it straight, being honorable and brave in the face of danger, though it often blinds him to subtleties and complicated motivations.
- In Allronix's
*Tin Man* fanfic, the Tin Men themselves are of this trope, created by Empress Dorothy to honor the original Tin Man, Nick Chopper, sworn to serve and protect the citizens of Oz "from the greatest monarch to the smallest insect."
- Something similar to this exists in Russian
*byliny* about the *druzhina* of Prince Vladimir of Kiev, who defend Holy Russia against the pagan Tatars. The most famous member of these *bogaryri* is Ilya Muromets.
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*Adventure Hunters*: Artorius used to be one of these, but was branded with the Sigil of Disgrace for a mysterious reason. Now he works as a treasure hunter.
- In
*The Balanced Sword*, some of the gods of Zarathan have dedicated holy warriors who are granted enhanced abilities by their patron god; the trilogy features the Justiciars, dedicated to Myrionar, God of Justice and Vengeance. A major plot driver is the revelation that the Justiciars have become corrupt and now secretly serve and gain their powers from a demonic patron (who is also apparently managing to fool Myrionar Itself, or at least prevent It from denouncing them and/or smiting them where they stand).
- The
*matière de Bretagne* centering on King Arthur for a long time evolved in competition with the *matière de France* note : Arthurian works were often written for or sponsored by supporters of the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England, who were seen as Arthur's successors, while their French Capetian rivals were descended from Charlemagne., so many scholars believe that the Knights of the Round Table were an attempt to outdo the Twelve Peers. They certainly soon did this as far as their numbers were concerned; not being bound by the Paladins' Rule of Twelve, the number of active Knights of the Round Table at one point rose to 1600 (in the 13th century *Brut* by Layamon).
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*The Crimson Shadow*: A paladin is sent by King Greensparrow against Luthien. He fights honorably, giving Luthien a fair chance to beat him. After learning Greensparrow is really an evil sorcerer who's in league with demons, the knight immediately switches sides and goes down fighting a demon that attacks Luthien.
- In
*The Death Mage Who Doesn't Want a Fourth Time*, the adventurer Heinz is framed as one, seeking to uphold justice in the name of his patron god. Unfortunately for the Hero Antagonist, his god is Alada, who calls entire races "evil" for daring to exist without his permission, even if Alda himself states that they are no morally different, or less capable of being morally upright. Heinz himself has a a concept of "justice" that is heavily biased in favor of the "human" races, seeing the humans as "innocent until proven guilty" and the races Alda hates as "guilty until proven innocent" but by the time their innocence is proven, he's either already killed them, or delivered them to those that did. When he's challenged on it, he gets defensive and goes full-tilt Never My Fault.
- The main character of
*The Deed of Paksenarrion* eventually becomes one. The author's intention behind that character was to be Lawful Good without being Lawful Stupid.
- The Knights of Solomnia are the closest equivalent in
*Dragonlance*, and their Dungeons and Dragons tie-ins provide rules that essentially make this character a paladin equivalent (though there are different orders with different emphases in terms up fighting skill, leadership, and divine power).
- The three Knights of the Cross in
*The Dresden Files* are paladins, complete with holy swords, each of which has had a nail from the crucifixion of Jesus incorporated into it and respectively reflects the ideals of Faith, Hope, and Love. Taking up one of the Swords of the Cross means accepting a Mission from God to go where they are most needed and help those who need to be saved. The Mission isn't always a lifetime commitment. Many Knights are one-offs. They are the Right Person in the Right Place at the Right Time and are able to wield the Sword to its full power. note : One temporary Knight was a mother who is also a monster. In the past when trying to grab the Sword of Faith so it didn't fall away from the hero, despite her good intentions, she was shocked by the Sword, leaving her arm numb for a month. Later, when on a quest to save her daughter, the Sword of Love permits her touching it after she swears to use it only this time and not hurt innocents.Michael Carpenter, the most often-seen Knight in the series, even wears plate armor specifically because it fits the classic paladin style (though his armor is reinforced with kevlar). They're also notable for being one of the most positive portrayals of paladins in all of fiction, being good, honest, kind-hearted people who don't force their beliefs on others and help anyone who truly needs it note : In fact, Michael is the only devout Christian of the three; Sanya is a Flat-Earth Atheist, while Shiro was converted because he thought the offer to "meet the King" meant a chance to meet Elvis Presley, and the latest Knight is Jewish. In fact, they're even more idealistic than the trope description would suggest — their primary mission is dealing with a group of Fallen Angels possessing humans — to *redeem* them, not destroy them. Despite that being on paper an Impossible Task, it has been successful at times, at least once to the point where one of the *current knights* got his start via HeelFace Turn.
- The Church Knights from
*The Elenium* by David Eddings are Paladins, though it can be hard to see through their worldly tarnish on the Pandion, Genidian, and Alcione knights. Cyrinic Knights are closest to the ideal, being the most religious and having shiny armour to boot. The manner of their ||Preceptor Abriel's death — charging a 300+ foot monster —|| is very Paladin.
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*The Faraway Paladin*: Its right there in the title. William G. Maryblood is absolutely a Paladin in the Dungeons & Dragons mold. A Holy warrior-priest sworn to upload the cycle of life and death in opposion to a god of the undead, always seeking to see and act on the good in others, and inspiring others to be better than they are.
- In
*Forging Divinity*, ||Lydia is|| secretly a Paladin of Sytira, a goddess of knowledge.
- The eponymous Heralds of the
*Heralds of Valdemar* series are essentially paladins without the religious aspects. They're The Order of The Chosen Many, with Functional Magic and/or Psychic Powers and 100% guaranteed Incorruptible Pure Pureness due to their Companions — Cool Horses with human-level intelligence that share a psychic link with the Heralds they've Chosen — and they *never* Choose anyone who is less than heroic.
- The hero of
*Knights of Doom* is a heroic knight and paladin serving the kingdom of Ruddlestone, under the Order of the Templar Knights of Telak.
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*Overlord (2012)*: Paladin is a class in the fantasy setting of the New World with its RPG mechanics.
- The Paladin Order of the Holy Kingdom is entirely made up of paladins. It was led by the Lawful Stupid Remedios Custodio although most other Paladins are much more level-headed than her.
- Goblin Paladin-Knight Squad is a squad of paladins entirely made of Goblins that is part of Enri's Goblin army. They were summoned by Enri using her Horn of the Goblin General and has the second strongest paladin in the entire new world.
- Played with in
*Ruin of Angels*. The nation of Camlaan has an order of knights who are nominally these, but it's kind of an open secret that underneath the inspiring gloss of honor and heroism, they're just a tool of the crown's (often exploitative and corrupt) power. One of the protagonists is a Camlaander Knight who genuinely believes in the professed values of her order and is deeply committed to doing her patriotic duty even though she's *very* aware of the organization's dark underbelly.
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*Saint George and the Dragon*: The Red Cross Knight is one, a heroic warrior on a quest to slay an evil dragon, having the eponymous symbol on his tabard and shield which denotes that he's a specifically Christian hero (being the future Saint George).
- The Trope Namer is, of course, the Paladins or "Twelve Peers", the foremost Christian warriors of the court of Charlemagne. They were first described in
*The Song of Roland*, and the eponymous Roland note : Roland was loosely based on Ruotland, a count in charge of the Breton March (i. e. the Frankish province bordering on Brittany) who was killed in the battle of Roncevalles. was said to have eventually become the leader of the Paladins. As the number of Paladins was fixed at twelve (possibly in analogy to the Twelve Apostles or the Twelve Tribes of Israel), their names tend to vary from work to work within the *matière de France* as different authors would obviously want to include their pet character in the number.
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*So This Is Ever After*: Rion is a righteous knight and strictly abides by his oath to aid Arek, who admits he's the most moral person among his companions.
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*Spells, Swords, & Stealth*:
- Tim starts out playing a paladin at the start of
*NPCs*, but is forced to roll a more mundane warrior by the other players so he wouldn't get in the way of their being murderous bastards. Tim gets to play a paladin again in *Split the Party* and is a natural at it.
- Thistle finds himself given the offer to become a paladin for his god, Grumble. Thistle is reluctant, given the limitations and requirements that come with the position, but ultimately agrees to save his friends' lives.
- Over the course of
*Split the Party*, ||Timuscor, the knight Tim had played during *NPCs*|| expresses a desire to be a paladin but is disheartened to find he lacks the kind of devotion the job requires since the gods only make paladins of their followers. Before going into the climax of the story, he says a prayer offering himself as a paladin to any god who will take him, and this desire also ||spurs his Heroic Sacrifice near the end of the book||. The third and fourth books suggest that there is an alternate way to become a paladin, one that existed before the gods started handing out the position: offering an oath of pure devotion to the greater good and becoming a "free" paladin. In the climax of the fourth, ||Timuscor finally realizes this, makes his oath, and gains all the powers of a paladin while being beholden to no god||.
- The Knights Radiant of
*The Stormlight Archive* are powerful Magic Knight warriors who literally get their powers by behaving with various flavors of honor (protecting the helpless, being truthful, etc). The Knights as a whole are a Badass Army, but they're divided into ten separate Orders (explicitly called such in-universe), which swear different oaths and gain different powers. They disbanded and disappeared thousands of years before the story begins, but those with the power of the Radiants seem to be appearing again, which seems likely to lead to the reformation of the Knights.
The Recreance, the event where the previous orders of the Radiants abandoned their oaths, their Blades, and their Plate, was ultimately caused by ||the Radiants learning that their powers had
*destroyed* the world humanity originally came from||. In order to avoid the same fate befalling the world, they abandoned their oaths and powers and refused to explain why (lest someone else follow in their wake), condemning them to being named traitors and villains by subsequent generations.
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*Sword Art Online*:
- Heathcliff is known as The Paladin. His skills are light based and he leads the campaign to free the trapped players from the game. ||Subverted; his true identity is none other than Kayaba Akihiko himself, and he plans to betray the players and become the final boss at a dramatically-appropriate moment.||
- In
*Alicization*, the Integrity Knights are described as Holy Warriors summoned from the heavens to defend the Human Empire. While their backstory is ultimately revealed to be a lie and they unwittingly served a Corrupt Church, their values and purpose still remain the same and are firmly on the side of good.
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*That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime*: The paladins of the Western Saints Church and the Holy Empire of Ruberios fit this to a tee, being humans trained in warfare and blessed by both the power/contract with spirits and wield Holy Magic derived from their faith in the god Luminous. Their duty is to spread Luminous' faith through their deeds and protect humans wherever they might be from evil and especially monsters. This is something of a concern to our protagonist, who is not only a slime but finds himself the head of a rapidly expanding nation of varied and powerful monsters with hope of establishing peaceful cooperation with humanity, which leads him to fear their Church doctrine could lead to a horrible ideological clash. ||The irony is that it's only known to the highest members of the Church and Empire (including the head paladin Hinata Sakaguchi) that their "god" is in fact the True Demon Lord Luminous Valentine, whose motives are the selfish but helpful intent of preserving human and vampire lives and comforts for mutual benefit.||
- Holger Carlson, who travels into the Matter of France and becomes one of Charlemagne's paladins, Olgier the Dane, in Poul Anderson's
*Three Hearts and Three Lions*, was an inspiration for the D&D character class.
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*Villains by Necessity*: Sir Pryce was a heroic knight, one of the Six Heroes, who is now the exemplar for all paladins. Later another is introduced, Sir Reginald. According to what's shown, they fight by a Code of Honor, such as letting an opponent take up their weapon again when disarmed instead of simply killing them while helpless. ||Blackmail it turns out is Sir Pryce, so truly heroic he abandoned the forces of Good after they turned Knight Templar, to save the world from his former comrade Mizzamir.||
- The various holy Champions in
*The War Gods* series by David Weber take upon various aspects of this archetype, including the Church Militant, Lawful Good (for the protagonist and his fellows), and even the classic Healing Hands.
- Surprisingly, Devils from
*Demon: The Fallen* would probably be the closest to the Paladin equivalent in Old World of Darkness. When they aren't Evil Overlords out to conquer the universe, they tend to be literally shining warriors of honor and virtue, if a touch jaded. Even when they *do* go bad they still usually retain their sense of honor and duty. That duty just tends not to be to help humanity anymore.
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*Dungeons & Dragons*: The paladin class is the Trope Codifier of the standard paladin (and the Trope Namer for its signature attacks, Detect Evil and Smite Evil before it was renamed to Holy Hand Grenade). As such, *D&D* has a ton of paladins, paladin variants, and not-quite-paladins. Generally speaking, paladins are aligned with specific deities and act as a mix of holy crusaders and unorthodox priests on their behalf— the Church Militant to clerics' Saintly Church, in a sense. In the core rules paladins are presented as drawing power from the raw forces of Law and Good via their nature as The Fettered, and gravitate strongly towards organised religion but aren't strictly required to belong to one in the sense clerics are; however multiple settings change this to them instead being champions directly appointed by a god.
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*Exalted*: Dawn and Zenith caste Solar Exalted tend to put on a lot of the trappings of this trope, such as holy light and golden armour. As for how well they actually embody it, that's a matter of individual choice and the nature of one's Limit Break.
- In the
*In Nomine* universe, the Malakim are angels that behave as Heaven's own paladins. They sense honor in others. They all must take at least four vows, two of which are common to all of them: they may not allow evil to live unless specifically told to show mercy, and they cannot surrender to Hell. Unique among angels, they cannot Fall and become demons.
- Basilean elites in
*Kings of War* include the Paladin Knights (also including Paladin Infantry) and the High Paladin hero unit, who goes so far as to have healing magic, although given his Crushing Strength and Thunderous Charge rules, you may not actually get to use it. Basileans are very much a Good-aligned human army.
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*Magic: The Gathering* frequently uses "paladin" to name several knight cards. Depending on the setting they can be fairly accurate descriptors to simply knights called paladin for some reason. A notable example are the Legion of Dusk paladins, which are decidedly on the Light Is Not Good side of this trope since while they are faith powered knights they are also vampire conquistadores. Also of note are the cycle of cards (Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern paladins); while not much is known about these characters, apparently being a paladin required all of them to lose an eye.
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*Pathfinder*:
- As a continuation of the d20 System
*D&D* line, this game also has the classic paladins. They're a bit beefed-up compared to what they were in 3.5. Optional rules give them different versions of the paladin code depending on what god they follow.
- Speaking of gods, Golarion has an actual paladin deity: The goddess Iomedae was formerly a high-level paladin herself who was so Lawful Good in life, she became one of only three mortals to pass the Test of the Starstone and ascend to godhood as a divine patron of all paladins and other lawful good warriors.
- A character in
*Pendragon* can aspire to be a Religious Knight by raising the traits associated with his particular religion to famous levels. That nets him some subtle advantages from divine favour, as well as a nice bit of extra Glory per year.
- The Champion calling in
*Princess: The Hopeful* is designed to fit this trope perfectly. Their Duty as a Noble is to help the helpless and protect the innocent, their oaths bind them to never abandon those who need their help and to always use their strength for good, and they have an affinity for Charms that can be used in combat or to boost themselves or others.
- In
*Rifts*, there are a lot of people that *seem* like paladins, but the real deal comes from the Wormwood supplement in the form of the Apok, whose literal class description is incorruptibility. They get absolute immunity to all manner of effects, but in classic *Rifts* style, they look like demon hobos. Also interesting because they are required to have been evil and truly repented, rather than being good from the start.
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*Rocket Age*'s Order of the Sacred Hamaxe, a Martian crusading order, might be the most heroic faction in the setting, protecting innocents, fighting dangerous animals, and stopping evil organizations at every turn. They have a strong code of honour and welcome any Martian caste into their order, an amazing thing to do on Mars.
- The Holy Knight from
*Urban Arcana* is basically what happens when you take a Paladin, give him/her a motorbike, a Forced Entry armor, a Riot Shield, and a shock baton, and remove their need to be Lawful.
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*Warhammer 40,000*:
- Either Deconstructed or Darker and Edgier with the Grey Knights chapter of Space Marines. They have loads of powers, skills, and tools to fight daemons, and are completely incorruptible. However, they are ruthlessly pragmatic in their mission to protect the Imperium, enough that they've crossed well into Knight Templar territory. They have a habit of killing innocent witnesses "for their own protection". Given the Grimdark Crapsack World that
*40k* is, where a Fate Worse than Death could be in store just for *seeing* Chaos, they still manage to remain somewhat sympathetic.
- The Space Marines in general arguably have this flavour if seen sympathetically, with their existence being militaristic and fighting in the most important warzones where needed, and generally their devotion to the cause of the Emperor and the Imperium (and by that extent, humanity in general) is encouraged to border on religious fanaticism (though also generally
*just* off the mark from religion). Played dead straight by the Salamanders chapter, who are especially protective of Imperium citizens whenever the Salamanders see them, have their own chapter-personal cult which extols the values of self-reliance, loyalty, and self-sacrifice, and mostly utilize flame weapons and Thunder Hammers — fire and hammers being fairly common iconography of The Paladin.
- As the military arm of the Ecclesiarchy (the Imperial state church), the Sisters Of Battle also fit this role, being fanatically zealous and relentless in stamping out heresy and the enemies of the Emperor.
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*Warhammer Fantasy*: Bretonnian Grail Knights. Having drunk from the Holy Grail, each Grail Knight represents the flower of Bretonnian Chivalry and have been judged, body and soul, to be a paragon of virtue true to the ideals of Gilles le Breton and his original Companions and will fight for the preservation of honour and humanity to the last breath... Just don't necessarily expect them to treat the peasantry as "human".
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*Anima: Beyond Fantasy*: While paladins and dark paladins there are just archetypes based on *Final Fantasy* ones, the former good at tanking and leadership and the latter at attacking and coertion, and nothing stops someone of playing a paladin who behaves in the opposite way to the standard one and viceversa, the game's setting features several paladinesque characters most notably Khaine D'elacreu, Lilian Virgil, and even the Empress herself -the three having "Paladin" as character class-.
- Paladins in
*Age of Empires II* are merely upgraded Heavy Cavalry, the next step up after Knights and Cavaliers.
- Artix von Krieger from
*AdventureQuest*, *DragonFable*, and other games of the same company subverts the concept. He has a *compulsive* need to smite any undead creatures he comes across, and *AdventureQuest Worlds* reveals that ||Artix is the Champion of Darkness, and as such cannot use the light-based magic of a Paladin. Instead, he was trained in the ways of the Undead Slayer, whose power and purpose is to free the souls of those enslaved by undeath||. Paladin is also an available class in pretty much any Artix Entertainment fantasy game, though at least one version is member-only.
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*Baldur's Gate*:
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*Baldur's Gate*:
- You can take Ajantis into your party, but given the game's limited NPC interactions, he doesn't have anything to say except typical Paladins words about doing good, serving his God or deciding that X reeks of evil (and WOULD strike out against evil party members unprovoked).
- Similar to Mazzy, Caelar, the Antagonist of
*Siege of Dragonspear*, cannot be a paladin because she's an aasimar, and only humans can be paladins. But she is one in all but name, and unlike Mazzy where this was a plot point, here the narrative outright ignore this and she is given a backstory being an apprentice Paladin and She can even fall and become a Black Guard.
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*Baldur's Gate II*:
- There's Keldorn and the Order of the Radiant Heart. For the most part, Keldorn is much calmer and reined in terms of smiting evil, but if he has enough proofs of evilness, he will strike out with extreme prejudice against evil. (Also, he's
*not* very pleased with Drows no matter what, that's the only race that could make him attack an allied one without too much provocation.)
- The squire Anomen (who is technically a fighter/cleric dual-class, but aspires towards the paladin's role and attitude).
- There's a group of fallen paladins who got kicked out of the order and are now common criminals.
- Mazzy Fentan can't be a paladin because the second edition rules didn't allow it for halflings yet...
*but* she's a Lawful Good, knightly servant of her deity who gives her special powers, so basically it's just a matter of terminology and minor differences in special abilities, and of her being bothered that she's not official.
- The Player Character can also be one, with the option to join The Order after successfully completing a series of quests. S/he and Keldorn are the only two playable characters who can wield Carsomyr, the Holy Avenger. Comes in four distinct flavors: the standard paladin (with Turn Undead, Detect Evil, saving throw bonuses, and the ability to wield any weapon); the Cavalier (no ranged weapons, but has special resistances and bonuses against demons and dragons); the Inquisitor (trades in standard features for powerful Anti-Magic), and the Undead Hunter (special bonuses against undead). Of course, those bonuses are conditional upon maintaining a decent Reputation and upholding Never Hurt an Innocent.
- The Paladins of
*Battle for Wesnoth* are Warrior Monk types who, like the White Mages of the setting, serve the philosophy of good itself, with no religious connotations. They start out as regular Horsemen who later level-up to Knights, and can then choose to either maximize their combat power by becoming Grand Knights or to acquire basic healing skills and Smite Evil abilities to become Paladins. While they are not as strong in melee as the Grand Knights, and not as good healers as White Mages, they are fast, can still hit very hard with their lance charges, and have "arcane" anti-magic damage and resistances that make them very good at fighting the undead.
- The Golden Paladin that leads the Brotherhood against Dracula in the Action Prologue of
*Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2*. He's a badass holy warrior who wears winged golden armor that gives him an angelic appearance. It's too bad that ||Gabriel is still God's chosen champion, so the Paladin's holy powers are useless against him||.
- The
*Civilization IV* mod *Fall from Heaven* has paladins. The player must be good to use them. Given the Crapsack World the game is, Good is Not Nice.
- The Paladin tank of
*Command & Conquer: Generals* has the personality (no surprise considering that the USA faction is Lawful Good in this game) and has the ability to tank missile shots with a defensive laser.
- Crusaders in
*Darkest Dungeon* are religious knights with a particular knack for killing undead and inspiring their allies (they're one of the few classes with a reliable stress heal, even if it isn't on par with the Jester's, and their healing spells aren't anywhere close to the Vestal's).
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*Dark Souls*:
- There are two covenants in the game: Way of White and Sunlight Warriors, which have this vibe to them. Generally any player who uses a Faith Build with suitably fancy armor will invoke the classic Paladin image.
- Paladin Leeroy, a character in the game who is a member of the aforementioned Way of White and wears a suit of gold armor actually called Paladin Armor.
- Solaire of Astora, probably the most iconic character of the franchise, is a Paladin through and through. He leads the Warrior of Sunlight covenant, wears classic templar armor, is summonable as an ally in boss fights, uses light-based miracles such as "Sunlight Spear", and ||if he lives to the end, he will sacrifice himself in his own reality, throwing his soul on the First Flame to continue the Age of Fire.||
- Guardians in
*Destiny* are resurrected, Light-empowered individuals who were brought back to life by a mysterious benevolent entity that defends humanity from alien threats as well as the Eldritch Abomination that is responsible for nearly destroying humans and is revered/worshiped by some of the aliens.
- "The Order" in
*Devil May Cry 4*, who, unusual for this trope, actually venerate a demon (specifically, the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda). 'tis a shame that ||their commanding officers are all either trying to take over the world to vanquish all the demons, or humans-turned-demons themselves||.
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*Diablo* series:
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*Diablo II* has the Paladin as one of the selectable classes. He left the Corrupt Church of Zakarum and seeks to destroy the demons responsible for its corruption. **III** makes it clear that there are many Paladins of Zakarum that remain with the church and have become far more in-name-only individuals.
- The Templars of the Templar order from
*Diablo III* also qualify as paladins, but they take a more Knight Templar-ish stance because of their ||brainwashing by the order||. Kormac, the Templar who accompanies you, is quite fervent about protecting the innocent, but he's not forgiving of betrayers of the order ||and even less forgiving about betrayal by the order itself||.
- The Crusaders of the
*Reaper of Souls* expansion, who seek to purify and restore the Zakarum faith to its former glory. The conceptual similarities between the Crusaders and Blizzard's paladins of *Warcraft* led to them making the Crusader character Johanna riff on Uther (the Warcraft Paladin) in *Heroes of the Storm*.
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*Dota 2*: Purist Thunderwrath the Omniknight is modeled after hammer-wielding Paladins in many medieval stories. He's a pious warrior monk who utilizes the power of light to heal and buff allies, debuff and harm enemies and generally protects his team from foul magic, actually using more of the light than his own hammer. He serves the all-seeing 'Omniscience' as his deity of choice and generally is one of the most virtuous heroes in the game, acting as a guardian support for his allies.
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*Dragon Age*:
- The Grey Wardens, who are very paladin-like in flavor, but mostly in the backstory. Wardens aren't locked into any given mechanical build or into any moral alignment, as long as they are willing to fight the darkspawn. It's impossible to be cast down, though: once you're a Warden, you're In It for Life.
Grey Wardens are actually quite similar to Gray Guards, one of the Prestige Classes in
*D&D*. A Gray Guard is a Paladin who swears an oath that allows him to make minor violations of the Paladin's Code as long as it's in the service of Good and their deity. As such, they're able to take more drastic and morally dubious measures than regular paladins, which is pretty much the Grey Wardens' MO in a nutshell.
- More fitting the classic Paladin role are the Templars, who hunt down demons and errant, usually evil, mages, and are associated with the Chantry. However, Templars are rather un-paladin-y in that they're sadly prone to becoming Knight Templars and running into Light Is Not Good, and often invoke Good is Not Nice due to the game's Crapsack World.
- Alistair, being both a Grey Warden and an ex-Templar with tank combat abilities, anti-magic, and (eventually) Smite Evil, is
*Dragon Age: Origins*' best example of the trope; he manages to combine Light, Good, and (mostly) Nice, though he's certainly willing to Shoot the Dog if you harden his heart during his personal sub-quest.
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*Dragon Age: Inquisition* has Cassandra Pentaghast as a playable party member. She's a sword'n'board Warrior class, later gets the Templar specialization, was formerly a Seeker for the Chantry, held to the group's ideals when the rest succumbed to dogmatism in the Mage/Templar War, and ||(initially) unknowingly is communed with a Spirit of Faith||.
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*Dragon Nest* has The Paladin role filled by... the Paladin class. Although he's more of a white mage tank than a white mage DPSer.
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*Dragon Quest*:
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*Dragon Quest II*: In the GBC version, The Prince of Cannock's Class is Paladin. He has decent attack power and learns curative and fire spells.
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*Dragon Quest VI*: The Paladin class is unlocked after max ranks in Priest and Martial Artist. They have a chance to deal instant death with normal attacks, and learn the usual blocking spells like Selflessness and Forbearance, along with the awesome Thin Air, a 0 MP hit-everything high damage skill that is That One Attack when used by enemies.
- The Paladin class in
*Dragon Quest IX* plays like a typical paladin would: high defense, healing magic, and abilities that focus on protecting the innocent. Fully upgrade a Paladin and get their shield level to 40, and you have an unstoppable attack-blocking machine.
- In
*Drancia*, the Paladin is a blonde girl with a Hime Cut. Her class focuses on offense at the risk of being a Glass Cannon, she gets two fairies escorting her once she's maxed up her melee skills, and she has a single-use spread shot per stage (rechargeable via level up).
-
*Elden Ring*:
- The Confessor, one of the starting classes, is a darker take on this trope: they are armed warriors with knowledge of Faith-based incantations and work under the orders of the church of the Two Fingers; however, instead of being righteous knights, they are sneaky assassins who use their magic to strike the enemies of the church unaware.
- D, Hunter of the Dead, is a fanatical undead-slayer who is covered from head to toe in a heavy gold-and-silver armor and his weapon deals Holy damage. He can also teach you Incantations meant specifically to slay the undead, though they require both Faith and Intelligence.
- The Cleanrot Knights are tall, valorous knights clad in blessed golden armor, have spells that allow them to send out golden holy rings or cause light spears to come out from the ground, and are under the employ of a Demigod. They are also completely rotting from the inside due to the Scarlet Rot and their blessed armor is meant to slow down the process; one of their less glamorous attacks has them vomit on you and infect you with the Rot.
-
*The Elder Scrolls*:
- Until the series did away with classes, Paladin (sometimes called "Crusader") was one of the standard pre-made classes, with a focus on knightly combat (heavy armor, swords, blunt weapons, shields) and Restoration magic.
-
*Daggerfall* splits the difference between the spiritual and the questing-knight sides of paladinhood. It has separate Templar Knightly Orders you can join instead of the corresponding Temple, but it only caters more to paladinhood than simply joining their Temple by the name of the faction explanation : As implemented, the Templar Orders have the same ranking system, desired skills, quest-givers and quests as the associated Temple, and rank in a Templar Order gave every right and privilege as holding the same rank in the Temple in question. *Daggerfall* also has regional knightly orders, with a suitable set of desired skills for a paladin absent magic, quests that are almost all about confronting evil and doing good, and the title of paladin as the top rank.
-
*Morrowind* not only has the Crusader class but allows you to join both the Tribunal Temple and Imperial Cult in order to serve a religious institution. One of the most damaging weapons in the game is Chrysamere, a massive BFS which is actually referred to as "The Paladin's Blade". In addition to dealing immense damage, it provides its wielder with defensive bonuses including health restoration and Reflect Magic.
- The
*Knights of the Nine* expansion to *Oblivion* is all about being a paladin, complete with recreating a lost order of knights dedicated to the Divines, and including the Relics of the Crusader, an equipment set that significantly buffs paladin-style skills (defense, healing, and melee combat) and cannot be used if the player has two or more infamy points.
-
*Skyrim*:
- The Vigil of Stendarr can be seen as this or as knights templar, depending on one's point of view. They serve Stendarr, the Aedric Divine of Mercy and Justice, and selflessly protect mortal life from the Daedra and other supernatural threats, like vampires and werewolves.
- Champions of Meridia, one of the more benevolent Daedric Princes, also tend toward a paladin outlook — Meridia's quest will give you the unique weapon "Dawnbreaker", which lights undead on fire and has a chance to cause a short-range explosion that sets
*other* undead on fire, which gives paladin-y players a useful Smite Evil-type weapon.
- From the series's backstory comes Pelinal Whitestrake, the legendary 1st Era hero of mankind/racist berserker. He
*technically* qualifies, having been on a mission from the Divines and wore full plate armor blessed by them. However, as you may guess from that whole "racist berserker" statement, he was *not* inherently good. Believed to have been a Shezarrine, physical incarnations of the spirit of the "dead" creator god Lorkhan (known to the Imperials as "Shezarr"), Pelinal came to St. Alessia to serve as her divine champion in the war against the Ayleids. Pelinal would fly into fits of Unstoppable Rage ( *mostly* directed at the Ayleids) during which he would be stained with their blood and left so much carnage in his wake that Kyne, one of the Divines, would have to send in her rain to cleanse Ayleid forts and village before they could be used by Alessia's forces. He is remembered as a great champion of mankind, though the nastier parts of his legacy are glossed over, if mentioned at all, in modern times.
- The
*Etrian Odyssey* series:
-
*Etrian Odyssey*: The Protector class (actually called Paladins in the Japanese version). They can equip the heaviest armor and most of their abilities revolve around protecting the rest of their party from harm. Their offensive power is decent at best compared to other classes, being bolstered by a Shield Bash skill, and they possess some basic healing abilities.
-
*Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan*: The Fortress class focuses on defending the other members of their guild by receiving enemy damage in their place, though they also have more offensive versatility than the Protector from previous games.
- The Brotherhood of Steel in
*Fallout* has a rank called Paladin. Depending upon whether you're talking about the West Coast Brotherhood, the Midwestern Brotherhood, or the Eastern Brotherhood, a paladin may or may not act out this trope.
-
*Fantasy Life* has the paladin as a Life that the player can use. They're a combat class focusing on defense — they get bonus vitality and equip a one-handed sword with a shield — and in story terms, the paladins are the City Guards for Castele and follow the Knight in Shining Armor ideal... though in reality, with the exception of named characters, the average paladin is well-meaning and loyal, but none-to-bright and somewhat easily frightened.
-
*Final Fantasy*:
- The Fighter/Knight class in the original
*Final Fantasy* plays closer to a paladin than a true knight, as once the Fighter class is upgraded to a Knight they have the ability to use low-level White Magic. The Knight can be seen as the prototype for the later Paladin class that would be codified by Cecil.
- Cecil in
*Final Fantasy IV*, once he casts off his Dark Knight mantle, loses his Cast from Hit Points offensive magic and becomes a Paladin Lightning Bruiser with healing magic. The DS remake makes him even more of a tank, with the (passive!) ability to draw attacks to him and counter. Unusually for the archetype, he can also equip bows.
- Beatrix from
*Final Fantasy IX*. Each character in the game represents a class from the previous games and Beatrix, while she is never outright called one, can use White Magic and the equipment of a paladin. She actually starts out as a villain in the game and a Hopeless Boss Fight, but over the course of the game ||she begins to have doubts about her queen and eventually joins the heroes' side as an ally||.
- While in
*Final Fantasy X*, all the "warriors" (Tidus, Wakka, Auron, Kimarhi) are capable of going down this route depending on how you use the sphere grid, Tidus is the most oriented to becoming a Paladin. His sphere grid intersects with Yuna's early on, allowing him to learn healing and holy magic. He's got a bunch of support magic on his own Sphere Grid. Give him a weapon with Piercing and he can hit like a ton of bricks on just about any non-magical mook in the game.
- Paladins in
*Final Fantasy XI* are an advanced job class designed to be the designated tank. They also have limited access to healing, protective, and holy spells, along with abilities that specifically weaken the undead. The order was founded by the Elvaan, the setting's most religious race.
-
*Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings* gave Basch protective spells and Light-themed attacks. The mission that unlocks his Limit Break forces him to face a hoard of undead.
-
*Final Fantasy XIII* has a non-traditional version in Snow Villiers. Gameplay-wise, he excels as a Sentinel, the role that draws enemy attacks and protects party members from damage. In terms of character, he's a freedom fighter opposing the military forces of Cocoon, who vows to Nora Estheim to get her son home as her Last Request, and throws himself off of a building to catch someone mid-fall and shelter them from the impact with his own body, ||even after said person tried to *kill* him||. One of his coat emblems shares its name with the Job, and his Infinity +1 emblem is named after the series' iconic Paladin weapon, the Save the Queen.
- Paladins in
*Final Fantasy XIV* are a specialized upgrade to the Gladiator class. They are once again a designated tank class with limited access to healing magic. In terms of lore, they originated as the personal bodyguard of the sultan of Ul'dah, hence their alternate title of Sultansworn.
- Paladins exist in
*Final Fantasy Tactics*, though not by name. They include Agrias Oaks (Holy Knight), Meliadoul Tengille (Templar Knight), and of course, Cidolfus "Thunder God Cid" Orlandeau (Sword Saint). In a twist, all of the abilities they gain from being Holy Knights are purely offensive in nature, though you can reclass them as White Mages to pick up the defensive side of this trope as a secondary skillset; Agrias has already started to do so when she joins.
- The Paladin class is used by human units in
*Final Fantasy Tactics Advance* and *Final Fantasy Tactics A2*. The class has two abilities that dish out Holy damage to enemies, but the rest of the skills involve healing allies of injuries and ailments, protecting them from enemy attacks, and convincing enemies to leave the battle. It is worth noting that the title "Paladin" only seems to describe the general *skillset* of the class, and not the *personality*, as there are at least a couple of missions in *Final Fantasy Tactics Advance* in which you fight a bad guy whose job is Paladin.
- Played as straight as possible with Optional Party Member Frimelda Lotice in
*Final Fantasy Tactics A2*. Not even ||dying and being revived as a zombie|| can stop her from being good.
- In the
*Fire Emblem* series:
- The Paladin class is more similar to the classical meaning of the term than normally seen. These paladins have nothing to do with holy warriors and cannot use any sort of magic beyond that afforded by magic weapons. Members of the class (allied ones, anyway) are generally upstanding, moral, and loyal knights, but are not holy by any means. The exceptions are
*Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War* and its midquel *Fire Emblem: Thracia 776*, wherein the female variant of Paladins can wield healing staves.
- In
*Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones*, L'Arachel, who is absolutely not the undercover princess of Rausten, certainly fancies herself the part, having made it her mission to travel across Magvel smiting evil and dispensing justice in the name of the gods. However, her hamminess, poor judgement, and general oddity tend to make her come off more as a parody than anything. As a Troubadour she also starts with no combat ability whatsoever, though thanks to Magikarp Power she can become a rather potent Glass Cannon once she promotes and learns light magic.
- While not explicitly spelled out as one, "Marth" from
*Fire Emblem: Awakening* fits the trope rather well on inspection. Parallel Falchion can even be used to heal.
-
*Fire Emblem: Three Houses*
- The Holy Knight is the best example of the trope, combining skill in white magic with a nasty lance arm. Rodrigue and ||Daphnel|| both bear the class, while Marianne's proficiencies make her well-suited for it.
- Near the end of the first act, Byleth gains the unique Enlightened One class, which most closely fits the literal trope definition. It is granted to Byleth by the setting's Top God and provides boons to the Sword and Faith skills, while Byleth's personal spell list includes a strong healing spell and a strong offensive Light spell.
- In
*For Honor*, while they don't necessarily possess magical abilities, the Lawbringer and Warden classes reflect the ideals of the usual paladin, particularly with their oaths to defend and protect the weak and to bring justice to wherever they are traveling.
- In
*Gems of War*, the Paladin is one of Whitehelm's units, fitting that region's piety-and-honour theme. However, they appear as opponents in the Whitehelm questline, being sent to arrest (and really, kill) Sapphira. In fact, they're under malign influence.
-
*Grim Dawn:* Oathkeepers are essentially paladins, carving their way through the post-apocalypse and its otherworldly menaces in the name of the deities they serve. It bears mentioning that, while many follow the good god Empyrion and his light and protection, many others serve the much more morally-ambiguous Witch Gods, and nothing stops the player character from dipping into both their services and gifts. It's also explicitly mentioned some of them follow more malevolent divine figures.
- In
*Ground Control*, Paladin is a title given to any Order of the New Dawn general who is permitted to act with autonomy. The Paladin Magnus is one, and despite not having any divine personal powers, he does have an arsenal of Order troops, aerodynes, and hoverdynes at his disposal, and has the personality of a paladin, always choosing the "good" option over the lawful.
-
*Guild Wars 2* introduced into the Guild Wars universe the class known as the Guardian, which is the spiritual successor to the Paragon and the Monk and which has elements of the Ritualist, as it is a white magic-wielding warrior who can, if using the appropriate abilities, summon spiritual weapons to do his bidding. Unlike many Paladins, however, he does not draw his powers from the divine, as the Nay-Theist Charr can use the class.
-
*Heroes of the Storm*, starring characters drawn from each Blizzard universe, has characters who fill the archetype. Uther the Lightbringer, the first paladin in the *Warcraft* series, is a tanky Support hero who keeps his team alive while standing as a bulwark himself.
-
*Journey On*: If the Holy Sword is obtained, Selena gains the Holy Warrior class, which gives her a bigger MP bar than Shirley and gives her several holy spells that cover offense, defense, and healing. These spells are meant to give her an advantage against Darkness-aligned enemies, ||and she'll need it, since this path will result in Selena fighting the Avatar of Darkness and her minions alone.||
-
*Kindergarten* has the Monstermon card Holy Knight. He used to be a priest before he found out those weren't allowed to court women.
- Mickey Mouse in
*Kingdom Hearts* has every aspect of this trope but the title.
-
*Knights of the Old Republic*: Being a Star Wars game, it has a lot of Jedi, which are pretty much Space Paladins. ||Poster girl Jedi Bastila will fall to the Dark Side, but can be saved.|| Of course, *Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords* thoroughly deconstructs this vision of the Jedi along with everything else about the *Star Wars* universe. The trend is continued with the Jedi Knight class in *Star Wars: The Old Republic*. The other Jedi class is more like a priest with magic powers than a Paladin.
-
*League of Legends*:
- The game's universe features an unusually secular take on the archetype with The Sentinels, an ancestral order of heroes committed to protecting the world from the undeath of the Shadow Isles, and does so using magical guns made of stones on handles that fire blasts of light. While the Sentinels are considered a major faction, they don't own any sovereign territory, and are instead spread around bases across Runeterra, with each nation having a base and several Sentinels appointed to keep the peace. Several playable Sentinels include Lucian, Senna, Akshan, and Vayne.
- Illaoi is the "Truth Bearer" of the Buhru, an islander culture that worships the sea god Nagakabouros. The Buhru above all value motion and the pursuit of desire, meaning Illaoi's job is to ensure life can go on at all costs and people can continue to live and die pursuing passion. In combat, she channels the powers of Nagakabouros to summon spectral tentacles to attack. They can also heal her by damaging enemies and, as shown in
*Ruined King*, cleanse and heal bystanders too.
- Leona is the sword and shield-wielding paragon of a monastic order known as The Solari,
*and* an embodiment of The Aspect of the Sun. In gameplay, she's a very powerful tank/support champion who acts as a wall between her opponents and allies, and can call down The Power of the Sun to lead her team into the fray. Leona is also a bit of a Reconstruction of the trope as she discovers that the Solari are a militant, somewhat corrupt order, but her morals in wanting to achieve peace through understanding are genuine, and knowing her order's corruption motivates her to reform it from the inside.
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*The Legend of Zelda*: Official Nintendo artwork shows Link kneeling before a crucifix of Jesus Christ. The first two games in the Legend of Zelda franchise directly portray Hyrule as a Christian land, and Link as a Christian warrior. He has both an obvious crucifix emblazoned on his shield◊, and a Bible in his inventory (which was localized in the West as a "Book of Magic"). Later games changed Hylian religion to an utterly fanciful one with multiple *goddesses*, but the overtones remain: Link is a warrior who was chosen by the goddesses to reincarnate continually to protect the Kingdom of Hyrule from the ongoing curse of an evil demon. He is utterly pure of heart, and wields the Master Sword: a holy weapon specifically forged by the goddesses to destroy evil.
-
*Lunar: Eternal Blue*: Leo, who's basically a cop. Once he joins your party, he proves himself to be an irregular paladin due to his propensity for Earth-based magic.
- In
*Majesty*, Paladins become available if you build a Temple to Dauros, God of law and justice. They're Always Female, strong against undead, and have some defensive magic.
-
*Master of the Monster Lair*: Owen. He's not involved with any church, but he does hold true to the trope of combining physical combat with healing and anti-evil magic.
-
*MARDEK* has Vehrn, a Paladin of YALORT note : The god who created Belfan (Mardek's home), Anshar (Rohoph's home), and several other planets.. He is *devastating* against the undead, but is insufferable if you allow him to get on the subject of Yalortism.
-
*Mass Effect*:
- The asari have a rough equivalent to the paladin in the form of Justicars. They are Warrior Monk asari who devote their entire lives to living by an unbending - but Crazy-Prepared - code of honor that demands they behave like paladins: protecting the innocent and striking down the unjust. The code is also very ruthless: for example, offering her a bribe obligates the Justicar to kill the one trying to bribe her. Opposing a Justicar or obstructing her from completing her task are also grounds for her to respond with violence. The Justicars are also unique in that they stick heavily to asari-controlled space because asari culture and norms are heavily weighted in their favor; no asari
*ever* questions a Justicar-sanctioned killing because, in their culture, Justicars are above reproach. The harshness of their life and the unbending nature of their code tends to root out anyone within their order who would abuse their power.
-
*Mass Effect 3* has the multi-player class N7 Paladin, who is arguably the most versatile class in the game. Capable of setting and detonating any tech power in the game, restoring shields with energy drain, and placing a shield that can negate Turret fire, the Paladin often inspires others who know what this class can do, especially against the Geth.
- Some of the
*Might and Magic* games have a Paladin class. *VII* is a bit interesting in that the sign of being a proper Paladin as this trope defines it is *not* being called a Paladin — the Paladin class (and its first promotion, the Crusader class) is morally undefined, and is simply a merging of Knight and Cleric. It is only at the final promotion that the class is defined as dedicated to good and gains some Light Magic (or, if you aligned with the Dark, evil and Dark Magic) when you become a Hero (or, for the anti-Paladin, Villain).
- The protagonists of the
*Mother* series (Ness of *EarthBound (1994)* and Lucas of *Mother 3*) embody this trope. Despite looking like ordinary American kids from the suburbs, both of them serve as their party's resident combat powerhouse (they have the highest offensive stats of any character in their party), most of their psionic and psychokinetic abilities are focused on healing other party members, and they both have a special attack ability called "PK Flash" that unleashes a blast of light. To really hammer it home, Lucas' name is derived from the Latin word *"luce"*, meaning "light".
- The
*Neverwinter Nights* series:
-
*Neverwinter Nights*: Aribeth is one of the major NPCs in the game. ||And becomes an Anti-Paladin halfway through the story.||
-
*Neverwinter Nights 2*: Casavir stands out from most paladins by placing a much higher emphasis on Good instead of Order. When his superiors and fellow knights were unwilling to take action, he left and became the leader of a guerrilla vigilante band that fights marauding orcs.
-
*A Dance with Rogues*, a *NWN* mod, deconstructs paladinhood with the character of Christiano: a paladin by class, he is a Jerkass who adheres to the *letter* of the Lawful Good Code of Honour, but not its spirit. He would never, for example, actually force himself onto a woman, but will gladly pressure her into having sex as long as she does not say "No" loud and clear—and it doesn't hinder him in the slightest that he is already in a relationship with another woman, as long as the latter is too insecure about herself to actually call him out on cheating. Towards the end of the game, ||a possible reconstruction occurs: Christiano finally gets what he had coming and goes to hell *in a woman's body* to be abused and raped for the rest of his/her existence (if you leave him there)||.
- Half of all Angels in
*Nexus Clash* are Paladins. They get magic armor, an arsenal of Holy Hand Grenades (figuratively or literally depending on one's build), and the power to Smite Evil, but they can lose it all if they don't keep up their moral standing. Given what the god in charge of judging morality is like in this universe, the easiest way to do this is through Knight Templar tendencies.
- The
*Ogre Battle* series of games commonly have Paladins as a class. Then tend to be among the strongest Melee fighters, with minor healing magic. They promote from Knight class and generally require high Alignment score so they do have to keep up doing 'good' to be eligible as a Paladin in the first place, showing their moral fibers to become worthy.
- In
*Tactics Ogre*, Paladin is the special class belonging only for Lanselot Hamilton (who appeared in the game above). It's basically a souped up Knight while being able to Heal, but you don't see him much, as he's only appearing for the first two maps (a grislier fate prevents him to appear more often). In the PSP remake, normal Knights also gain access of healing magic, making them mini-Paladins, and if certain actions are taken post-game, you can bring Lanselot to your party and his Paladin class remain the same as a souped up knight with healing magic.
-
*Overwatch* has a sci-fi variant in the form of Brigitte, an armored knight who acts as a support/off-tank hybrid for the team, whacking away enemies with her rocket-powered flail and shield, while also tossing armor packs for her allies before rallying them together for powerful advances. In a bit of cross-company referencing, her design directly references Blizzard's own *Diablo*, visually and mechanically resembling a Crusader from *Diablo III* in specific.
- In
*Paladins*, you play as a "Champion" of the realm, with their allegiances varying. Champions are either part of the Resistance, the Magistrate, or are not part of either faction. One seeks to allow magical crystals to be used by all, while the other seeks to keep order and ban crystals due to their destructive consequences. All of the champions are explicitly magical in some way or another, with some unique skill that they bring to the battlefield. Interestingly, the champion Furia is the only character who fits the traditional description of a paladin, being a holy knight who uses divine magic to harm and heal.
- In
*Pillars of Eternity*, Paladins are individuals that are devoted to causes and are not necessarily dedicated to gods. There are a number of known paladin orders that emphasize certain virtues and personality traits in their paladins. For example, the Goldpact Knights are stoic and rational professional soldier-for-hire types, the Kind Wayfarers are a paladin sect dedicated to protecting travellers and caravans out in the wilds and generally well-liked by commoners for their kindness and compassion, and by contrast, the Bleak Walkers are dreaded crusaders known for their single-minded aggression and take-no-prisoners policy. As for specific examples:
- The resident paladin companion is Pallegina, an Avian godlike who belongs to the Brotherhood of the Five Suns order (not available to a Player Character paladin), which serves more or less as an elite enforcer arm of the Vailian Republics' ducal council, so her duties are mostly political, diplomatic, and commercial in nature.
- Demonstrating how wildly Eoran paladins can deviate from the typical "Knight in Shining Armor" model, Captain Furrante maintains a reputation as a Noble Demon Pirate who sails the Deadfire, charming even the merchants he robs and pointedly avoiding bloodshed when he is given the "tariffs" he so politely demands. ||He is also willing to work with slavers, a crime that goes against one of the few rules the Principi follow.||
- The Paladins in
*Quest for Glory* are the standard version trope; the Paladin mentor Rakeesh even steps away from his rank and tradition to uphold a greater law and his personal code of honor (as the tradition was narrow-minded and would only cause a needless war). The Paladin class is unlocked at the end of *Quest for Glory II* if you finish the game with high enough Honor and is effectively a Fighter with nice bonuses like Healing Hands, protection from evil, and a danger sense, plus some optional quests that go above and beyond the main plot. In *Quest for Glory III* he becomes an outright Magic Knight when unlocking the Heal ability adds the Magic skill note : *Quest for Glory IV* takes it a step further thanks to a programming oversight: because Paladins have points in the Magic skill, the game hands them **all** of the spells a Wizard would have at that point in the game.
- In
*Rift*, a paladin is a warrior "defensive soul" with some White Magic abilities. While Amardis Mathos (the original in-universe paladin) certainly fits the usual profile, it's implied that not every paladin does.
- The
*Soul Series*:
-
*Sword of Paladin*: The twelve Paladins are a group of knights with light elemental powers who helped the Hero King, Charlemagne, save the world from Demon King Sandraham. Unlike most fantasy Paladins, they all have unique powers that don't necessarily involve healing, defense, or light elemental damage. Their souls can be used to replicate their unique abilities, but only another Paladin can bring out the full power of another's soul. In the present, the role of the Paladin is changed so that there's only one, who acts as Asgard's commander-in-chief to protect the world from evil. The protagonist, Nade, passes the Paladin trial and becomes the current Paladin, but needs to find the souls of his predecessors to unlock his true potential.
- This is a tier 3 upgrade for militia classes in
*Symphony Of War*. In terms of a personality associated with this archetype, Diana is devoted to enforcing true justice even if it goes against an unjust law of the Empire.
-
*Tales of the Drunken Paladin* has Anebriate, who is the titular paladin. Unlike most paladins, he uses lightning-based attacks, heals via junk food summoning spells, and starts the game as a Punch-Clock Hero and a Hedonist. After some Character Development, he's still not the ideal paladin, but he's more willing to do good for its own sake regardless of rewards.
- The
*Tales Series*:
-
*Tales of the Abyss*:
- Van Grants is a downplayed example. He's got the skills for it, (being a Magic Knight capable of healing as a seventh fonist) and is in service to the Order of Lorelei as the Commandant (read: as the head of their military). However, as noted below, he's not a true example, ||mostly because he's the Big Bad and he wants to
*kill* the one venerated by the Order, not to mention take down the Score, which is key to the beliefs and tenants of the Order of Lorelei||.
- A better example from the same game would be Natalia, the final party member you get. While not a Church Militant, her powerset (healing and buffing magic mixed with incredible bowmanship she can augment) matches a Paladin's to a T, and she's easily one of the purest characters in the game, especially once every party member's backstory starts getting revealed. ||Natalia, Luke, and Tear are the only people who haven't done or have been planning to do something horrible and self-centered, and of the three, Luke's devotion to Van kills thousands of people, and Tear's refusal to so much as spell things out for Luke exacerbates the problem. Natalia is as honest as she can be to the party and helps shoulder their burdens, all while remaining a beacon for her people. She's so loved and such a symbol of goodness that the people of Kimlasca nearly throw a rebellion when the King tries to kill her when it's revealed she was adopted, and it becomes clear when Natalia comes back from exile that if King Ingobert tried to get her killed again no one would listen to him anyway.||
- Flynn in
*Tales of Vesperia* (especially the PS3 version) is the first true paladin-style character in the series, due to his light elemental artes, healing artes, sword skills, and goal of reforming his corrupt country. His Paladin qualities are even lampshaded by the rest of the cast.
- Paladins are one of the 4 classes in
*Tibia* and originally introduced as the games designated Ranged class, but was later also given access to class exclusive Holy magic. Allowing them to also act as [1] healers and spellcasters to some extent.
- The
*Ultima* series:
- There is a Paladin class (at least until the later games where it gets merged into Fighter), which is the class associated with the virtue of Honor.
- The Avatar himself also fits most of the criteria for the Paladin trope and is the page image. Though in the context of the game it's from, the image is ||actually a Kick the Dog moment for the Avatar||.
- Dupre the paladin is one of the Avatar's companions. ||He makes the Heroic Sacrifice to restore the Chaos Serpent in
*Ultima VII Part II: Serpent Isle*, but is brought back to life in *Ultima IX*.||
-
*Vampyr*: ||William Marshal|| is revealed to be this trope in the game's epilogue, *in spite* of being a vampire. He was actually a noble Monster Knight devoted to do good, protect the innocent, and perceived his gifts to be divine in origin. In fact, his faith was so strong he could actually wear a crucifix around his neck without being harmed (unlike most vampires in the setting, who are paralyzed when confronted with cross).
-
*Warcraft*:
- Paladins in the first game are the Trope Codifier for good but not Lawful Good paladins that follow "the Light" instead of a specific deity. They also tend to retain their powers as long as
*they* think they're doing good, which can lead to some unpleasant things. Originally, they were members of The Knights of the Silver Hand until said order got decimated after the fall of Lordaeron. They later served the Argent Crusade, and their respective factions, the Alliance or Horde in general.
- The
*Warcraft III* paladins are defensive/supportive hero units that supported their allies through healing, and armor-boosting aura, and a mass resurrection ability. They also had the ability to personally become completely invincible for short periods of time and their healing spell could heavily damage enemy undead units and most demons.
- The
*World of Warcraft* Paladin is a melee class with healing and auras, with specs that allow them to be a dedicated shield-bearing guardian type (Protection), a Combat Medic (Holy), or a more light-focused Magic Knight (Retribution). One of the signature abilities of the Paladin class is Divine Shield, which makes the paladin totally immune to all damage for 6 seconds. note : Ironically, Divine Shield also allows the paladin to be a craven coward if he so chooses. Normally, a character cannot use his Hearthstone to teleport out of combat because it has a 10-second casting time, and any damage taken while casting the Hearthstone interrupts it. But a paladin with the *Glyph of the Righteous Retreat* can cast his Hearthstone in 5 seconds while Divine Shield — which prevents the Hearthstone from being interrupted — is active. Since the visual effect for Divine Shield resembles a bubble around the paladin, this maneuver is known as "Bubble Hearth". The class is available to humans, dwarves, blood elves, Zandalari trolls and — as of *Cataclysm* — any race with hooves and a tail (Draenei and Tauren). Since the game's launch, it has played around a lot with the concept of paladins and how they achieve their powers.
- First there was the Scarlet Crusade, a group of highly racist and paranoid human paladins who thought any non-human race was infected by the undead taint, along with any human who wasn't a member of their ranks. Despite being insane and clearly not doing the Light's work, they maintained their power because they
*believed* they were, as mentioned above.
- There is also Sir Zeliek, an Undead paladin and one of the Four Horsemen who in spite of being undead continues to wield the power of the Light due to his undying faith.
- In
*The Burning Crusade*, the Blood Elves developed their own sect of paladins called the Blood Knights. Unlike any of the above-mentioned paladins, the Blood Knights stole their power directly from a powerful being of Light called a Naaru. Their attitude was initially haughty and self-important, taking pride in their ability to bend the Light to their will, with some Blood Knights even saying they were "true" paladins compared to the Alliance paladins. However, the Blood Knights eventually had the source of their power taken away from them, and they turned to the Naaru of Shattrath for help. They pledged themselves to help the Naaru during the assault on the Sunwell, and after it was re-invigorated by the holy energies of the very same Naaru they had originally captured, they started drawing their power from the Sunwell itself. It has been implied that they are since heading down a path of Light worship much more akin to traditional Alliance paladins.
- In
*Cataclysm*, Tauren began their own sect of paladins called Sunwalkers, who draw their power from the sun god An'she in the same way the night elves draw power from the moon goddess Elune. Despite being granted similar powers to paladins, however, it's implied that the source of their power isn't drawn from the Light in the same way it is for other paladins and are seen more akin to Druids. Rather, the Sunwalkers embody the power of the sun and represent a kind of exemplar of their people, much like how human paladins embody the power of the Light and are exemplars of their own.
- Similarly, the Zandalari Trolls have their own sect of paladins in the form of Prelates, who draw their power from their veneration of Rezan, the Loa of Kings (or any loa in general, seeing as they continue to exist after ||Rezan's death, though it did cause some of them to lose their powers||).
- In
*Warlords of Draenor*, the raid boss Tyrant Velhari was designed as a Shadow Archetype to the paladin player class, drawing her power from the fel magic of the Burning Legion and employing several debuffs which absorb or prevent healing as well as auras which harm the party. Each of her three phases is patterned after one of the three paladin specs.
- Zig-Zagged Trope with Anduin Wrynn. He originally started out as a priest, but as of
*Battle for Azeroth* (when he began wearing a full suit of armor and wielding his fathe's sword(s)) he matches the archetypical appearance of the fantasy paladin being a knight who wields Holy magic, in spite of Blizzard going back and forth over whether or not he is now as a paladin or is still a priest (as seen in his *Heroes of the Storm* portrayal where despite being based off his *Battle for Azeroth* appearance he wears less armor and has Priest abilities). It is worth stating that he would still qualify as a paladin in-universe as the original Knights of the Silver Hand were either knights who were taught Holy magic or priests who were given armor and weapons, of which he is the latter.
-
*RWBY*: Jaune Arc is one of the few shield-wielding and armor-wearing characters in the setting, which complimented by his strong Aura lets him tank hits for his allies. His Semblance allows him to boost his allies' Aura, boosting their own Semblances as well as serving as Healing Hands.
-
*Unforgotten Realms*: Roamin, the Crime-Solving Rank 11 Paladin.
-
*Drowtales* has the Kyorl'solenurn Clan, whose modus operandi revolves around exterminating the Demonic Taint from Drow Society. The problem is that a good chunk of the population is tainted thanks to the efforts of one group who has infiltrated nearly every clan, including the ruling one, and the local Wizarding School, where they encourage people to undergo the procedure. So they have their work cut out for them.
-
*Goblins* has paladins of various roles. Most of them tend toward Lawful Good or Lawful Stupid, but one of them, the infamous dwarven paladin Kore, is one of the most evil characters of the series, despite having the full range of paladin powers available to him. Big-Ears is a straight example of the trope; he chose his class to defend the weak and is prone to Tender Tears.
- Syranon Glaed in
*Heart Core*, the beloved beastman Paladin from New Ayers who has become a celebrity amongst the people due to his battles against demons.
-
*The Order of the Stick* has a city teeming with paladins, Azure City. They give us the whole range of paladins, from the Lawful Stupid Knight Templar Miko to the more balanced Hinjo, who, while still a bit of a stickler for the rules, is willing to hear both sides and try to be as fair as possible, all the way to resident Memetic Badass O-Chul, who exemplifies "always take the *good* option."
-
*The Players Guide To SISU* features Veitsi, a Paladin who leans toward the warrior side.
- Dame Madeline Goodlaw of
*Rusty and Co.*. She's not the smartest (a Running Gag has her believing that a variety of gardening implements are actually powerful magic weapons), but she's a complete sweetheart... who is also one of the most dangerous characters in the comic (if you're evil).
- Sydney Treuno of
*Sombulus* introduces herself as a Paladin of the Order of Kansen on a god-given mission to defend the Myriad Worlds from evil. With her armor, blade, and parkour-esque skills, she is zealously devoted to her god Madir and his angelic followers, the Kanites.
-
*The Water Phoenix King* has Commander Corva, who fits this trope very well. She's not Lawful Stupid by any means, and though often The Quiet One, a Deadpan Snarker when she does say anything — fitting, as her deity is a storm god who likes to make bad electricity-related puns.
-
*Nodwick* features them occasionally, generally blond, square-jawed dudes in gleaming white armour. The most notable example is Sir Pervical, who Piffany got to join the group as a good example to the guys, and who proved to have absolutely no concept of "sneaking" or "hopelessly outnumbered", resulting in them all nearly being killed several times before they finally faced Count Repugsive. ||Who, being an anti-paladin, mutually annihilated with Pervical they touched each other.||
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic* has its own paladin in the form of Shining Armor. The captain of the royal guard, and the protector of Canterlot with a giant shield bubble powered by his faith in... love, apparently?
- Every incarnation of Optimus Prime is this type of character (the exception being
*Transformers: Shattered Glass*, which has Megatron instead), but this has never been more obvious in his characterization than in *Transformers: Prime*. He even slays a robotic demon (Unicron) in the Season 1 finale.
- The pilots of Voltron in
*Voltron: Legendary Defender* are referred to here as "Paladins"- the Lions themselves are Magitek, and they choose who pilots them. They also come equipped with bayards, which provide each Paladin with a personalized weapon, and can activate additional functions when Voltron is formed.
- The word "Paladin" comes from the Palatine Hill in Rome
note : also the source of the word "palace", which in ancient times was where the Emperor and his highest officials officiated. Being a *palatinus* was about official authority, not about skill as a warrior or devotion to righteousness. The origin of the term, as well as the root of its eventual association with martial prowess and Christian faith, can be found during the realm of Constantine the Great: with the reorganization of the armies, *Palatini* became a term used for the elite units of the new army, with a variation of the term used by the replacement of the Praetorian guard, the *Scholae Palatinae*, who were used by the Christian Emperors through Late Antiquity and survived in the East until the rise of Alexios Komnenos; as the years passed and Late Antiquity gave way to the Early Middle Ages, the term *palatinus* became "paladin" note : although words like "Palatine" and "Palatinate" continued to be used, and in chivalric epic poems became applied to Twelve Paladins or Twelve Peers of Emperor Charlemagne. In the cycle of epics known as the *matière de la France* ("matter of France"), which includes the French *The Song of Roland*, the German *Willehalm* by Wolfram of Eschenbach, and the Italian *Orlando Furioso*, where the paladins became idealized symbols of courage and purity.
- The word "paladin" is sometimes used to refer to the top tier of advisors and officials of a ruler. As an example you can look at this 1871 magazine illustration depicting
*The Three Paladins of the German Emperor◊* at the victory parade after the Franco-German War: minister of war Albrecht von Roon, chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and chief of the general staff Helmuth von Moltke riding ahead of Emperor Wilhelm I. Of course in the real world there is less likelihood of people agreeing on whom to see as an embodiment of chivalry and good; a contemporary Frenchman would have been much more likely to describe the three as a Dragon, an Evil Chancellor, and a Dragon-in-Chief.
- At least on a conceptual level, the Sant Sipahi ("Saint-Soldier") are the equivalent of paladins in Sikhism as a group of holy warriors who were meant to not only defend the faith, but also fight against tyranny and religious persecution (which also included persecutions of religions who are not Sikh, such as the Hindus who were persecuted under the Muslim Moghul Empire rule.) On a technical level,
*all* Sikhs are holy fighters and the religious uniform includes the Kirpan, a sword/dagger, meant to symbolize the Sikh's willingness to use it to defend the innocent. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Paladin |
Pair the Dumb Ones - TV Tropes
*You are a firm believer in the inherent eroticism of being stupid together.*
If a show features two dumb or ditzy characters, there are high chances they will be paired together in a romantic relationship, often for comedic reasons or because Strange Minds Think Alike.
Sometimes it happens because the token dumb character needs a love interest, so why not introduce a possible love interest who is just as dumb or even dumber than him? Very often, the two token idiots are minor characters who are just there to form a funny Beta Couple. Sometimes it may happen that they break up very soon because they are Too Much Alike.
Sub-Trope of Birds of a Feather. The obvious inversion is Pair the Smart Ones.
## Examples:
-
*Daria*: Kevin, the Dumb Jock, and Brittany, the Dumb Blonde cheerleader. Even if they often cheat on each other, they are in a relationship from the beginning to the end of the show.
-
*Ed, Edd n Eddy*: A one-sided example: May (the dumbest of the Kankers) has a crush on Ed (the dumbest of the Eds) and in the Eds/Kankers interactions, she's usually paired with him.
- Shockingly, though, the trope was subverted in "Hanky Panky Hullabaloo," the Valentine's Day two-parter. There, she was paired with the ultra-brainy Edd instead. It makes more sense if you think about it, though: Double D is also the most
*compassionate* of the Eds, and May is similarly the kindest of her sisters (in fact, their interest in each other starts when Double D, seeing May brokenhearted over Ed ignoring her, offers her a valentine to cheer her up). The writers also helped by giving May some Hidden Depths; it turns out she has surprising skill in chemistry, which she attributes to the various homemade beauty products she's created.
-
*The Fairly OddParents!*: Timmy's parents are both dimwitted and clueless, with the mom being only slightly smarter.
-
*Futurama*: One episode focuses on Fry dating the ditzy Amy, and how easily they bond because of their similarities. They break up later in the same episode, although they remain Amicable Exes and still occasionally bond over their foolishness.
-
*The Loud House*: Leni is pretty dumb and has a crush on a boy named Chaz, who, while not as dumb as her, is still not the sharpest tool in the shed. However, this does not seem to have worked out, as Leni has been shown later on in the series to like other boys.
-
*King of the Hill*: Dumb Blonde Luanne eventually marries Lucky, a typical redneck with no education and no common sense.
-
*The Powerpuff Girls (1998)*: Another one-sided example: Bubbles (The Ditz of the Powerpuff Girls) has some Ship Tease with Boomer (the dumbest of the The Rowdyruff Boys) and thinks he's cute.
-
*Total Drama*: Tyler, a klutzy Dumb Jock, is paired with Lindsay, a Brainless Beauty and Dumb Blonde. They are also the only couple from the first season who have not broken up at any single point in the series or faced any serious threats to their relationship (despite the fact Lindsay was unable to remember who Tyler was for almost two seasons). | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PairTheDumbOnes |
Paintings - TV Tropes
Works of Art that use traditional paint mediums. This applies to mediums like oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, and watercolors, and paintings done on canvas and fresco.
For the individuals that made the works of art, see Painters.
Do not confuse with the trope Tableau, which is when motion-picture works have their characters stand still for a while, as if they were the subjects of a painting. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Paintings |
Palette-Swapped Alien Food - TV Tropes
"Alien Fast Food" by David Evans
**Martin Lloyd:**
This is for scene 23? You think they have apples on an alien planet?
**Prop Master:**
Why not? They speak English.
**Martin Lloyd:**
Look, get some kiwis, and spray-paint them red.
**Prop Master:**
(
*pulls out script*
) OK, so now it'll go "Nick walks into a garden of kiwi trees, says 'How like Eden this planet is,' and bites into a painted kiwi."
The culinary equivalent of Rubber-Forehead Aliens. Alien cuisine has a suspicious tendency to look like Earth food ripped from its terrestrial context and subjected to food colouring — leading to things like green egg yolks, glow-in-the-dark yellow sauces, obsidian berries, and blue meat.
This rises from production considerations, of course. It takes time and energy to think up genuinely alien foodstuffs, and money to fabricate them — and in the end, the viewer might not even realize it's supposed to be food. By keeping the forms the same, creators can make it clear that a pudding is the ambassador's dinner and not, say, his wife; by shifting the palette, they retain a sense of otherworldliness.
The more humanoid the aliens in question, the more plausible this trope becomes. Green-skinned people who are shaped just like humans might very well share a biome with red-skinned vegetables that are shaped just like asparagus. A Metal Muncher may munch on meals that have a metallic color, sometimes with visible seams and rivets to further emphasize that they are metal.
Compare Weird World, Weird Food, for when the food is as bizarre as the setting it comes from.
## Examples
-
*Lilo & Stitch*: Jumba and Pleakley attempt to bait Stitch with what appears to be an ordinary chicken drumstick... which is also bright green, and covered in purple spots.
-
*Star Trek* is fond of this:
- Romulan Ale is blue.
- TNG gave us the Klingon specialities
*Gagh* and *Bloodwine*
- Parodied in MAD's spoof of
*The Wrath of Khan*, which mentions "green wine" and "brown wine".
- One episode in the original series featured the drinking of something that (when one of the characters drinking it was prompted) was identified as "Well, it's... uh... it's green." Of course, this was after several bottles of alcohol — presumably it has an actual name.
- TNG has a Call-Back to this line when Data can find no better descriptor for an unknown alcoholic drink from Guinan's stash, later identified by Picard as Aldebaran whiskey. Presumably not the same drink as above, as Scotty, who consumed both, did not recognize the second. (That, or he was too drunk the last time to remember.)
- Shows up on occasion in
*Stargate SG-1*. Lampshaded in the parody episode "Wormhole X-Treme!": "You think they have *apples* on an alien planet?... Look, get some kiwis, and spray-paint them red." Subverted by the little Food Pills the Asgard eat. The gag in "Wormhole X-Treme!" is a self reference, as in an earlier episode of the show a character really *did* eat a red kiwi.
-
*Babylon 5* has mostly normal food, but sometimes shows off alien food as well... and has at least one of the characters fail spectacularly in preparing it for another alien. This was justified in that the two species have only slightly different senses of taste, so when he spiced it to his own taste it tasted horrible to them.
- A memorable inversion occurs when G'Kar serves a fellow Narn Swedish meatballs because it resembles and tastes like a native dish called breen. G'Kar then mentions that every alien species has inexplicably invented a dish resembling Swedish meatballs. On some planets their version is a delicacy (like the Narns) for others it's some mundane everyday food (Earth's Swedish meatballs), but
*every* race has a dish exactly like it (not just "resembling": another Narn he serves some too observes that the taste, smell, and texture are indistinguishable from their version).
- Showed up a lot in
*Farscape* and also included non-human-looking utensils. According to the commentaries, sometimes they just used Asian foods that would look alien to the intended American audience.
- Hagro biscuit in
*The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy 1981* looks like a blue panini topped with guacamole.
- Some genera of food plants have a relatively broad range of phenotype worldwide, but one particular form is dominant in a given region. And food preparation can vary in unexpected ways as well. So traveling to a different country, or just eating with people of a different ethnicity, may seem like this.
- Probably the most famous case of this is the carrot, which originally came in a variety of colors ranging from white to red to purple. Orange carrots only became widespread after Dutch farmers during and after The Eighty Years' War bred their carrots that way to proclaim their support for the House of Orange (and thus Dutch nationalism). For whatever reason, the color spread and stuck.
- It is hardly unheard-of for chicken eggs to have moderately dark, greenish yolks, though commercially produced eggs in some countries tend to a brighter yellow (with differences in preferred shade; Germans for example prefer a saturated, slightly dark yellow, while the Polish prefer a faint, bright yellow instead). There are also breeds of chicken that consistently lay eggs with green shells. There are also blue, pink, gray, and probably others.
- Century eggs in general are just a Palette Swap of the colors most typically associated with eggs.
- Various traditional preservation methods and processing techniques leave food looking, smelling and sometimes even tasting distinctly inedible because food only had to
*last*. This is in contrast with modern food technology, which aims to modify taste and shelf life with as little cosmetic change as possible even if artificial means must be used. Corning beef will turn it an unappetizing gray color, but saltpetre can be added to the brine to preserve its reddish-pink color. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaletteSwappedAlienFood |
Paint the Index Red - TV Tropes
Red sky at morning, xenos
take warning.
*Untitled (Space Fantasy)* by Dennis Ray Blalock note : Free to use under CC BY-SA 4.0 *"Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it's on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you've got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration."*
There's just something about the color
**red** in the human psyche. It's the lowest visible color on the human color spectrum. It's the color of blood and therefore danger, warnings, and anger. But it is also the color we associate with fire, and therefore power, warmth, love and passion (and sometimes evil), and is a popular color in flags and heraldry. Much unlike pink, red can be seen as a very masculine color, if not more than blue. However, it's also a common color for mature, seductive ladies. If a language has only three primary color terms, they will invariably be black, white, and red.
Therefore, this is an index of tropes involving the color red.
Despite their names, Red Herring (a purposefully misleading clue) and Red Sock Ruins the Laundry (when single-colored fabric stains a whole wash, regardless of the color) don't go on this index.
## Tropes
<!—index—>
<!—/index—>
- Albinos Are Freaks (of the red-eyed variety): Discrimination against albinos.
- Bad Moon Rising (a red moon): A blood-red celestial body that wasn't there yesterday, without exception, means things are about to take a nasty turn.
- Big Red Button: Activating something important to the plot with a big camera-friendly red button.
- Big Red Devil: The standard depiction of Satan and demons, in general: Large, red-skinned humanoids with horns. Satyr legs and wings optional.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: A trio consisting of a blonde, a dark-haired, and a red-haired character.
- Bring My Red Jacket: When someone clad in red is about to get hurt badly.
- Bull Seeing Red: When the mere sight of the color red drives a bull into a frenzy.
- Dramatic Red Samurai Background: A duel or a killing stroke emphasized by a blood red backdrop.
- Evil Redhead: Redheads depicted as malicious.
- Fiery Redhead: A redhead with a personality as fiery as their hair.
- Fire Is Red: Fire or flames portrayed as red in color.
- Heroes Want Redheads: When the redhead has the best chance of entering a romantic relationship with The Protagonist.
- High-Pressure Emotion: When strong emotions make a character's head act like a teakettle.
- Hihi'irokane: A legendary Japanese metal said to shine brightly in a way that resembles flames.
- Lady in Red: A seductress wearing a red dress.
- Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Lava depicted as a simplistic red liquid having little more viscosity than regular water.
- Little Dead Riding Hood: When a girl in red lies dead or is in danger.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: When red and black are used as an indicator of evil.
- Red-and-White Comedy Poster: A film poster with big red letters on a white background.
- Red Armband of Leadership: When the leader of a group has a red armband on their upper arm.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: When red eyes mean that a character is evil or, at least dangerous.
- Red Filter of Doom: When a red filter is used to facilitate a general air of animosity.
- Red-Headed Stepchild: When the token red-head is ripe for abuse.
- Redheads Are Uncool: The tendency for social outcasts to have red hair.
- Red Hot Masculinity: The color red is associated with masculinity.
- Red Is Heroic: The color red associated with heroes.
- Red Is Violent: The color red associated with violent, murderous and blood-hungry characters.
- Red Live Lobster: Live crustaceans in cartoons inaccurately colored red.
- Red Ones Go Faster: Red characters or objects moving more quickly.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Two characters, one wearing red and the other wearing blue, have different personalities. The one wearing red is usually the more upbeat of the two.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: Red clouds or a red sky indicating impending disaster or doom.
- Rustproof Blood (in that blood stays red): When blood that's out in the open stays red no matter how long you leave it.
- Sickness Equals Redness: When illnesses (primarily colds) give their victims red cheeks/noses.
- Stock Light-Novel Calamity Princess: A Light Novel heroine with prestigious beauty and destructive magic, often using flame magic or sporting a red motif.
- White and Red and Eerie All Over: White with red accents as a creepy or uncanny color scheme. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintTheIndexRed |
Rei Ayanami Expy - TV Tropes
The Rei Ayanami Expy is a character archetype common in Japanese Media, started, or at least codified, by Rei Ayanami from
*Neon Genesis Evangelion*.
Common characteristics of the archetype include:
- Love Interest (usually female).
- Mysterious and/or otherworldly origins.
- Dark and Troubled Past
- Age 10-20.
- Pale skin.
- Short, usually bobbed hair.
- Unnatural hair color, often in cold tones like blue, purple, green, silver, grey or white (also occasionally pink).
- Unnatural eye color, often red, blue, yellow, or even purple, usually in a Tsurime Eyes style.
- Appears emotionless, quiet, stoic, or otherwise odd.
- A tendency towards talking in Spock Speak, Monotone, Robo Speak, or a combination thereof.
- Is not quite human, such as an Artificial Human, Transhuman, clone, alien or robot, explaining their odd behavior.
- Suffers a major injury or illness, or at least is frequently hospitalized.
- Occasionally has a strong connection to a parental figure, boss and/or antagonist, and may even display Undying Loyalty to them.
- Eventually becomes more emotional, such as by Becoming A Real Girl or turning out to have a Sugar-and-Ice Personality.
Rei Ayanami herself exhibits every characteristic, and many other characters have been created as variations on her. However, the popularity of this archetype has also led many of the variations to spawn Expies of their own.
A Sub-Trope of Fountain of Expies and Shy Blue-Haired Girl. Compare to Phlebotinum Girl and Char Clone. See also Sugar-and-Ice Personality, Emotionless Girl and Stoic Woobie.
# Examples:
- Rei Ayanami from
*Neon Genesis Evangelion*, the Trope Namer, Trope Maker, and a Deconstruction of the archetype itself (making this an Unbuilt Trope). Rei is an emotionally unexpressive 14 year old girl with pale skin, blue hair and red eyes who serves as one of the protagonist's Love Interests; however, before he gets closer to her, she only relates to his father, who also happens to be a weird and somewhat disturbing father figure for her. After being heavily injured during a battle at the start of the series, Rei slowly becomes more intimate with the protagonist as her stunted social skills improve. Her Angelic heritage and superpowers are first hinted at in episode 19 and explicitly displayed in episode 24. This eventually leads the main character, Shinji, to learn ||Rei is one of multiple clones made to house the soul of an Eldritch Abomination that's the key to a planned Assimilation Plot...and is also partially made from the DNA of his dead mother.||
-
*.hack//SIGN*:
- Subaru. She has short, bright blue hair, brown eyes (close enough to red), is quiet and very soft spoken as well as showing signs of being shy in RL. Also In real life, she is in a wheel chair from a terrible accident she keeps secret, and is a Meganekko. The series shared a character designer with
*Evangelion*, so it's plausible it was a deliberate reference between the two characters.
- Tsukasa shows traits of this, as well, mostly being emotionless (though it's more an angry sort of apathy).
- Kanade "Angel" Tachibana from
*Angel Beats!*. She's presumed to be an angel working under God to oversee the afterlife. She's also seemingly emotionless, to the point where the other characters weren't even sure if she was sentient at first. ||She's actually a human just like the rest of them. Her powers come from a computer program, and she seems blank because she'd given up on forming attachments to anyone. She displays some subtle humanity when Otonashi is getting to know her, and by the finale she's dropped the facade entirely.||
- Maia Tsukigane from
*Aquarion Logos*. She's an overly serious girl with short white hair and No Social Skills who was trained by the Big Bad ever since childhood in order to be his perfect enforcer. She's sent as an undercover spy to keep an eye on the main character, eventually falling in love with him.
-
*Arpeggio of Blue Steel*:
- I-401, better known as Iona especially in the
*Ars Nova* anime. Being a silver-blue-haired stoic robotic girl who finds that Humanity Is Infectious, and develops an affection with her Captain, Gunzou Chihaya. Oh, and while Rei was named after a warship, Iona sees Rei's bet and raises it by *being* a warship.
- Iona's sisters, I-400 and I-402, arguably count as well, especially in the manga, where I-402 also finds that Humanity Is Infectious.
- Of all characters,
*Azumanga Daioh*'s Sakaki is a subversion. She's directly based on Rei — more specifically, Rei as she was depicted in the author's *Neon Genesis Evangelion* doujinshi, which were much Denser and Wackier. One of these comics has her winning an award from her adoring fanbase, to which she responds with confusion and disinterest. While Sakaki doesn't have much of a physical resemblance to Rei (other than her Tsurime Eyes), she does have the "stoic and monotone" aspect down to a T, and she's constantly bandaged up in her pursuit of cats. Sakaki also gradually diverges from Rei over time as it's revealed she's simply a Shrinking Violet rather than emotionless or inhuman, and later volumes show her as something of a Comically Serious Cloudcuckoolander when she opens up to her friends.
- R. Dorothy Waynewright from
*The Big O* fits the archetype to a T. She's a mysterious, emotionless android meant to replace her creator's deceased daughter. Her haircut is even similar to Rei's, although it's not blue.
- In her human form, Nero from
*Black Clover* has bobbed hair that's dark blue in the anime, pale skin, red eyes, and a calm, emotionless demeanor. It's revealed that she's a loyal servant of the first Wizard King, and for 500 years she has been trapped in an anti-bird form and watching over Asta's grimoire all this time. She's also no longer human after using Forbidden Magic.
- Jo of
*Burst Angel*. Dead ringer, aside from a rougher appearance and personality and having a slight tan, making her a bit of a Dante expy as well.. She's even referred to as an angel of death. Plus, they both pilot giant mechs. ||And they are both Artificial Humans.|| Plus, Jo hangs around with Meg, who is a bit of an Asuka Langley Soryu Expy.
- Tao from
*Carole & Tuesday* is a rare male example, though downplayed - his eyes and hair are normal colours and he's in his mid-twenties. He is, however, extremely cold and laconic, *very* pale-skinned, is crushed on by Deuteragonist Angela, has links to Valerie's backer Schwartz, and ||is one of two genetically-altered Designer Babies made by a disgraced scientist||.
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*Code Geass*:
- Tsubame Otorii from
*Cyber Team in Akihabara*. She's even being voiced by Megumi Hayashibara, Rei's seiyuu.
- Yin from
*Darker than Black*. Her emotionless state is due to her being one of the setting's Dolls.
- Due to their awkward habits, stoic natures, pale skin, and lack of proper people skills, L and ||his eventual successor|| Near from
*Death Note* are rare male examples. This probably goes even moreso to Near due to his hair color and rivalry with Mello, who is a bit of an Asuka Langley Soryu Expy.
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*Death Parade* give us a rare male Deconstruction in Decim, the main character. As an Arbiter, hes part of a species that cant feel human emotions. However, while all the other Arbiters have at least one defining character trait, Decims defining characteristic is his virtual lack of personality. Its only from working alongside his ||human|| assistant that he eventually begins to display any sort of emotion, and even then, its very subtle. He is shown to be extremely confused and distraught when it comes to dealing with the more negative feelings that humans experience, and when he finally learns how to ||understand and empathize with Chiyuki, he breaks down screaming and crying out of guilt and sorrow||. Even though he returns to work, its heavily implied that the experience will ultimately ruin him.
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*Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure* has the character D, who pretty much is a straight up expy of Rei (this show has been described as *Evangelion* meets *Tenchi Muyo*), being a bio andriod who acts like a robotic Emotionless Girl. She does however lack Rei's appearance, (which is probably because of legal issues).
- Ren from
*Elemental Gelade* (her name is even one letter apart from Rei) has waist length blue hair, green eyes and speaks in a monotone voice. Not only is she an Edel Raid (girls who can bind their soul with their Pledger and turn into a weapon) but is a Shichiko-hoji, one of the most powerful Edel Raids. Of course this means that everyone wants their hands on her. In the beginning of the show she's an Emotionless Girl who hates Coud because he's a human, but later starts developing feelings for him and they become a couple at the end.
- Lucy from
*Elfen Lied* could be considered an extremely *dark* take on the archetype. She has pale skin, unnatural hair and (in the anime) eye color, indeterminate origins, isn't entirely human, has a very cold demeanor (even after defrosting) unless she's killing someone, serves as a Love Interest to the main male lead Kouta, and is single-mindedly devoted to him. However, her single-minded devotion to Kouta has lead to deadly consequences for everyone involved. She also suffers a significant injury by getting shot in the head in the beginning, is the key to the Big Bad's plans, and, closer to the original take, ||serves as an Apocalypse Maiden in the climax||. Will all of those facts, she's one of the few examples who actually stays true to the original character's Unbuilt Trope nature.
- Hyatt from
*Excel♡Saga* is more of a Rei Ayanami parody. She's got the blue hair and soft spoken demeanor, but her propensity for getting sick or injured is exaggerated to the point where she dies or passes out at least once an episode.
- Eureka from
*Eureka Seven*. Very light turquoise hair, a Human Alien, very attached to her boss at first and is a sick and Emotionless Girl as a result of her upbringing, prior to a traumatic event that would trigger her Character Development, which then was accelerated much further by meeting her Love Interest. ||Specifically, she was used by the government as a Tyke Bomb, and trained to kill almost remorselessly, until one day, when she was checking a pile of corpses looking for wounded people to finish off, she found three orphans, had a huge epiphany, and decided then and there to adopt them and defect from the military||. Realistically enough, she could still slip back into emotionless behavior on occasion. The occasions presented themselves.
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*Fairy Tail*:
- Merudy, a young girl with short-cut pastel-coloured hair and a petite body, is very stoic and her voice in the anime is very soft. She even calmly starts to dispatch Erza and Juvia, claiming with a cold expression that it's her mission to do so. She's also fiercely devoted to her parental figure, Ultear, going as far as to wanting kill Gray, the person she hates for killing Ultear's mother. After the timeskip, her personality has completely changed and now is very cheerful.
- Yukino Aguria, a shy, obedient girl with short silver/light blue hair.
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*Fullmetal Alchemist:*'
- Riza Hawkeye is an older, subtle example. She's a very disciplined soldier who's extremely proficient with guns, has a reserved strict stoic demeanor but "a gentle heart" shown with how she cares for her fellow soldiers, the Elric brothers and her dog Black Hayate, and shows Undying Loyalty to Colonel Roy Mustang to the point of promising to
*kill* him along with herself if he strays too far down the path of darkness. Along with the PTSD she has from committing war crimes in Ishval, she also has a Dark and Troubled Past with an abusive neglectful father who ||tattooed the secrets of flame alchemy onto her back||, and when Roy betrays her trust by using flame alchemy to commit mass genocide, Riza chooses to take the blame by ||having him burn her back.|| Appearance wise, Riza has the large Tsurime Eyes which are reddish in the first anime, and had short hair while in Ishval.
- Lan Fan is another Action Girl who has a Bodyguard Crush dynamic with Ling very similar to that of Riza and Roy, becomes furious whenever anyone remotely insults him and shows her undying loyalty during their fight with King Bradley when she ||cuts off her own arm and ties it to a dog|| in order to distract him. She's shown to be very shy and withdrawn without her mask and bashful around Ling.
- In
*Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)*, the homunculus Sloth has traits of this, having the emotionless demeanor, devotion to the antagonist and identity issues down. The most notable similarity she has to Rei is ||being a "clone" of the protagonists' mother (she's the result of Ed and Al's attempt to resurrect Trisha.)||
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*Futago no Teikoku* has Fa. She has short, blueish hair, is very reserved and stoic, has a strong attachment to Gaw, and has a magical curse placed on her.
- Ledo from
*Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet*, although a male example. White hair, pale skin, purple eyes, otherworldly origins, No Social Skills, stoic, and even a mecha pilot to boot.
- Inori Yuzuriha from
*Guilty Crown* shares many traits with Rei, in both personality and situation. Stoic, seemingly emotionless? Check. Red eyes? Check. Deeply devoted to her boss, and, later, the main character? Check. ||Artificial Human based on one of the protagonist's family members who nevertheless has boatloads of UST with him? Um...check.|| The only way for Inori to be a more thorough example would be if she had blue hair instead of pink and piloted one of the show's mecha.
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*Gundam* finally provides its first in-franchise example with Mikazuki Augus from *Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans*. He's emotionless, short in stature, has short hair, is a Child Soldier, has significant injuries, No Social Skills, Undying Loyalty to Orga, and to top it off, a mecha pilot. As an added bonus, his name means "Crescent Moon", which has connotations with the cold (like Yuki and Rei), and was an Imperial Japanese warship. Unlike other examples, though, he rarely becomes more humanly expressive, and this lack of development is played for drama.
- Ayuki from
*Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl* matches to a degree. She's a slender Meganekko with a bob. While not exactly stoic, she's a quiet Deadpan Snarker who prefers science and learning over romance.
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*Key the Metal Idol* has one in the form of its titular protagonist, Tokiko "Key" Mima, a shy, emotionally constricted Ridiculously Human Robot prone to fits of otherwordly rage, who seeks to become human before her battery runs out. Considering that the work was made before *Evangelion* came out, she could be considered a proto-example of this.
- Ria Iwamura from
*King's Game* is a 10-20 something, pale skin, red eyed, and white bobbed haired girl with a Dark and Troubled Past and a calm and emotionless demeanor. She also gets *immolated* and she doesn't even bat an eye.
- Lan from
*Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne* is a different take on the archetype. She has all of the characteristics that place her firmly in the category; blue hair, pale skin, purple eyes, The Stoic, strange behavior, an alien, and co-starring in a Humongous Mecha series. She's different in that her stoicism doesn't work as well as she tries to and it soon becomes clear she's Not So Stoic. *Really* Not So Stoic. She defrosts into more of an average emotional girl sooner than expected. Also, her odd greeting is the result of her being *lied to* about Earth culture.
- Minami Iwasaki from
*Lucky Star* is a subversion, and she can also be seen as a parody. She's a teenage girl with short, mint green hair who's very quiet and reserved, and this makes most people view her as creepy. It turns out that she's really just a regular Shrinking Violet, and the most angst she has is over her flat chest. She's also a normal human, being from a mundane Slice of Life series.
- There's Fate Testarossa from
*Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha*. A red-eyed stoic, the faithful servant of the Big Bad, her mother Precia, ||is viciously flogged by said mother, and eventually turns out to be an Artificial Human created to replace her *real* daughter, Alicia, who died in a tragic accident||. Averted from the second season onward, after Nanoha does her thing.
- Ruri Hoshino of
*Martian Successor Nadesico.* Blue-grey hair, yellow eyes, odd origins, very stoic. Coming in 1997, she was the very *first* Expy of Rei Ayanami, and thus doesn't exactly mirror Rei in personality, being Little Miss Snarker instead.
- The titular Miss Monochrome. She is a white-haired, blue-eyed android aspiring to become an idol. She's pretty emotionless and so socially inept that her servant easily tricks her into giving her all her fortune and she can't tell the difference between a store manager and an idol manager.
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*Naruto*:
- Not the most obvious but Sai has shades of being an expy of Rei. He's a pale teenager with No Social Skills and a Mysterious Past, and is The Stoic.
- A straighter example is Konan, the only female member of the Akatsuki. She is a blue-haired, orange-eyed woman who speaks little, but is loyal to the leader, Pain, with whom she shared a tragic life, including the death of a man she loved. Despite her cold exterior, she eventually lets emotions get the better of her, going down in an epic Last Stand against the Big Bad himself all so she can prevent him from dooming the entire world.
- Fate from
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi* is a male example of the trope. White-haired, emotionless, Artificial Human created by the Big Bad.
- Kirika Yuumura, from
*Noir* is another brunette with similarities - Initially emotionless, although she does cry in episode one (although she's crying because she can't feel regret, not because of the dozen men she just killed), soft-spoken and created as a weapon. Her eyes are at the red end of brown, getting redder whenever there's an open fire around - used to great effect when her 'true self' comes out towards the end of the series. The series ends with her choosing between being human, or being a weapon.
- Lala Ru from
*Now and Then, Here and There*. A mysterious blue-haired, blue-eyed girl with special water powers who claims to be thousands of years old. Due to her long and disillusioned experience with humans, she feels little to no emotions with them. Her relationship with Shu changes her to be more protective and open.
- Echo from
*PandoraHearts*. She's a white-haired girl with a stoic personality who serves as the minion of the Yandere brother of one of the main characters. She also has a dangerous Split Personality named Noise. Eventually, the protagonist Oz befriends her and it's usually implied Echo might have feelings for him.
- Isla from
*Plastic Memories* is a Giftia with silver hair and red eyes. She is highly serious and emotionally distant, due to being a Shell-Shocked Veteran of a job that involves retrieving and terminating her own kind. Yet she's very cute, dorky and eccentric. As the series progresses, she becomes more open thanks to her love interest. She is also in a decaying physical condition, since her 9-year lifespan is nearing its end.
- Mytho from
*Princess Tutu* is a male example. He's a white-haired, magical prince from a fairy tale. The shards of his heart, his emotions, were shattered throughout the land. As a result, Mytho is an emotionless shell and Duck spends much of the first season working to restore his emotions.
- Anthy from
*Revolutionary Girl Utena*, right down to ||being a goddess stabbed by the villains to contain her power (remember, Rei has Lilith's soul.)|| Given *Utena's* original air date, she's probably the Ur-Example, as well as one of the few to stay true to Rei's Unbuilt Trope nature.
- By the mangaka's own admition; Tomoe Yukishiro from
*Rurouni Kenshin* was designed after Rei. She may have dark hair, but personality-wise she fits surprisingly well: she's quiet, apparently cold yet kind-hearted, becomes Kenshin's love interest as she defrosts ||and dies to protect him||
- Sailor Saturn from
*Sailor Moon* is another Ur-Example, given that she debuted in 1994, just one year before *Evangelion*. She's an Apocalypse Maiden with short, dark purple hair, is Delicate and Sickly, and in the manga, ||is a cyborg||.
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*Saint Seiya Omega* has the tiny, quiet, blue-haired Aria. Demure and shy? Check. Blue hair and eyes? Check. Mysterious Waif with a Dark and Troubled Past? Check. Learns to express her emotions better through contact with the main character? Check. Has great and mysterious powers? Check. ||Not entirely of human origin?|| Check. ||Gets killed off||? Check...
- A rare male expy in the anime adaptation of the yaoi manga
*Sensitive Pornograph* as the Extreme Doormat character Aki. He has her hair, dark reddish brown eyes and even has his arm and right eye bandaged similarly by the end of it.
- Lain from
*Serial Experiments Lain* fits everything here. She has short hair, is emotionless, has a mysterious past, and turns out to be ||a computer program||. Except she has brown hair. Notably, the creators of *Lain* have said they didn't even watch *Evangelion* until they finished the fourth episode of *Lain*.
- Gowther from
*The Seven Deadly Sins*, also another male example but fits the bill perfectly. Golden eyes, No Social Skills, completely emotionless, wants to become more human-like, and to top it off, a doll.
- Mamiko Kuri from
*Shadow Star*. A mysterious girl with pale skin and cold eyes whom Sudo took under his wing when he found out she had a shadow dragon. She tends to be rather quiet, and often considers the people around her to be inferior. It's later revealed that ||Mamiko's shadow dragon is the earth itself and she is one of those who must judge this world and make the choice of what kind of world it will become. At the end of the manga, Mamiko destroys everyone and everything in the world except Shiina and herself. They begin the world over again, with Mamiko's son as the new Adam of the reborn world.||
- In
*Shirobako*, the fictional series being worked on *3rd Aerial Girls' Squadron* has one in the protagonist, Aria. Tragic past. Emotionless Girl. Bob Haircut (in pink).
- Noël from
*Sound of the Sky*. White-haired, pale skinned pilot and mechanic of the crew's Spider Tank that hardly speaks, when she does she uses a monotone and has a Dark and Troubled Past coming back from when she was a Child Prodigy. More lively when drunk.
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*Vandread* has Meia Gisborn, who sports short blue hair and pale skin, who starts off mostly stoic and silent, though she does open up over the course of the series.
- Cheza from
*Wolf's Rain*. She looks like Rei Ayanami with pink hair. Being half-plant qualifies her as not fully human. She's also quite emotionless, although she does perk up quite a bit in the presence of wolves.
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*The World God Only Knows*: Dokuro, the girl who Keima meets in his time travel ||and the past self of his teacher Yuri Nikaido||, has many characteristics of this trope. She's a powerful Artificial Human ||and some kind of clone of the original Dokuro Skull||, has bobbed hair and purple eyes. When she's introduced, she's an Emotionless Girl, but thanks to the main character she warms up and becomes very upbeat.
- Chronicler from
*Citadel of the Heart* is a rare male example of this trope. Lack of knowledge of the social norm, bluish black hair, eyes with silver pupils and red irises, generally mysterious with an other-worldly origin, 18 years old at the time of his official introduction, pale skin, an entire past of being abused by those who had some degree of power and or authority over him, he's a Half-Human Hybrid so he's definitely Not Quite Human, and he's also a Love Interest for Suguha. It's also worth noting that his skin becomes more of a peach color later on, but it doesn't mesh with either his mother who has more traditional dark skin, or his father, who while having pale skin, has so due to an unnatural genetic disorder as opposed to having any sort of natural paleness to his skin tone.
- Tsukuyomi from
*Infinity*. Artificial, stoic, keeps her emotions suppressed, exceedingly polite, intelligent and deadpan Cloudcuckoolander whose honesty extends to discussing her tactics with her enemies and openly considering herself expendable. Like the rest of her siblings, she also has blue hair.
- Krieger Female Model 68b #6345 from
*Love and Krieg*. She is an emotionless, highly indoctrinated cloned soldier (with short hair, although it's blond), and she does rarely enough express emotions, like affection towards her normal civilian boyfriend. It's surprisingly cute.
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*Pacific Rim* gives us Mako Mori. While being older, having a rather more well-adjusted and sociable personality, and with nothing artificial about her origin, she's the only Japanese character in the film, is stoic and reserved, fiercely loyal to her adoptive father figure, and sports Rei's haircut as said above. It's even colored blue, though only at the tips. She also happens to be a Humongous Mecha pilot. Popular fan consensus is that it's supposed to say, "We took *some* inspiration from *Evangelion* but didn't try to ape it." Explicitly invoked in the Japanese dub: instead of having Rinko Kikuchi dub her own lines over in Japanese (which she would be perfectly capable of doing), Mako is voiced by the same person responsible for Rei — Megumi Hayashibara. You can't get to be a bigger Expy than that!
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*Shin Godzilla* has Hiromi Ogashira, a quiet, polite, stoic, introverted, perpetually frowning civil servant/government scientist with a bob haircut not unlike Rei's (albeit with a natural color) who is portrayed as the non-romantic Betty to Kayoko Ann Patterson's more bombastic Veronica. No points for guessing that Hideaki Anno himself wrote and directed the film.
- Julie Sigtuna from
*Absolute Duo*. Silvery-white hair, red eyes, pale skin, petite, mysterious and troubled past, not a normal human, stoic and weird behaviour, eventually reveals a sweet and emotional side to her love interest.
- Isuzu Sento from
*Amagi Brilliant Park*, with her upbringing as a soldier leaving her stunted in the social department, unemotive demeanor, otherworldy origins, and not being entirely human, as well as being the love interest to the main character. The only thing that separates her from the other examples is that she's taller than average, has long hair, normal hair, eye and skin color, and is quite endowed.
- Mei Misaki, from the
*Another* horror/mystery novel series most certainly qualifies. An Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette with emphasis on eerie, dark short hair, skin so pale it is in a shade of grey, red eyes, an eye-patch resembling Rei's usual bandages, a deeply stoic demeanor and the overall feeling of creepy cuteness/cute creepiness exhaled. Visually, she is basically Rei with pitch black hair.
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*The Asterisk War* has Saya Sasamiya, a blue-haired, red-eyed teenage gunslinger. She's emotionally repressed and prone to oversleeping and getting lost, and is devoted to both her father, an eccentric Lux-maker derided by the professional community, and her childhood friend Ayato Amagiri (the main protagonist). She has an Asuka counterpart in Julis-Alexia von Riessfeld, a (literally) Fiery Redhead who is the other major competitor in Ayato's Battle Harem.
- Sen Yarizui, "the Ice Witch", from
*Ben-To*, though she's more of a very laid-back Cloudcuckoolander as opposed to being shy and emotionally repressed.
- Felli Loss from
*Chrome Shelled Regios* is a silver-haired psychokinetic whose powers make her unable to express emotions the same way as others, but is slowly warming up to the protagonist.
- Origami Tobiichi in
*Date A Live*. She has short white hair, is The Stoic, and even has the Child Soldier who drives Mecha vs Person of Mass Destruction thing going. Unusually for the trope, though, she's also a Stalker with a Crush and one of the few characters listed who is a bit of a jerk at first.
- Sf from
*The Ending Chronicle*. A silver-haired automaton created using technology from another world. She's the personal maid of the supervisor of Team Leviathan. She lacks emotions, but shows an extreme amount of loyalty and devotion for her master.
- Aika from the Western novel
*Escapist Dream* is pretty much dressed up to be like this. Weirdly enough, she acts so much like Rei Ayanami that Jim suspects that she's not human, ||which proved to be true since she's just an AI waifu created by Kaichou||.
- Tabitha from
*The Familiar of Zero*. Bobbed light blue hair, very fair skin, quiet and deeply stoic demeanor, and speaks in strangely truncated, sentences with barely enough to get her point across, often single-word ones.
- Lelei La Lalena from
*Gate*. A 15-year-old genius sorceress with short light blue hair and eyes. She's stoic and quiet, but a nice girl. She also forms part of the Unwanted Harem of the main character.
- Yuki Nagato from
*Haruhi Suzumiya*, to the point where her name is a pun on Rei's—Rei can be read as "ice", Yuki as "snow", and both Nagato and Ayanami were Imperial Japanese naval warships. Curiously, Yuki is described in the novels as having black hair (since in the Haruhi universe people have normal hair colors) but in the anime and even in the novels' art, it appears of a purplish blue similar to Rei's (but much more pale). Her characterization, however, has some variance: She is a Love Interest only briefly, if that (though she is one in the spin-off where she's a normal human Shrinking Violet); she neither is a Mysterious Waif nor does she have a Dark and Troubled Past (if anything, she becomes more interesting the more we know her); and the becoming more emotional part is downplayed, in that her affect remains as flat as ever, but she seems to undergo significant Character Development and emotional development under the surface (despite the fact she states her affect will always be flat, she nevertheless seems to become more expressive and animate in her own way as the series progresses).
- Hazuki from
*Haruka Nogizaka's Secret*, though she doesn't have any dramatic plotline related to it, she is just weird.
- Koneko from
*High School D×D*. Pale skin, short silver hair, golden eyes, petite, is not human, appears cold and soft-spoken and eventually warms up to the main character.
- In
*Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere*, there's an amnesiac, emotionless automaton with silver hair and blue eyes known as P-01s. It's later revealed that she's Horizon Ariadust, a human girl who died in an accident years ago. After her death, her father put her soul in an android body and used her emotions to create Weapons of Mass Destruction that will give her the power to save the world from an apocalypse. Horizon also serves as the love interest of the main character Toori Aoi.
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*Infinite Stratos*:
- Laura Bodewig. A white haired, a red eyed and yellow eyed, genetically-engineered Artificial Human raised as a Super Soldier, and educated with just enough social skills to be able to function as a soldier, which left her with no idea of how to act like a normal girl and socialize normally. Initially, she hates the main character, but she later falls in love with him and chooses him as her "wife". Unlike most examples though, she has long hair, a short stature and Hair-Trigger Temper.
- Kanzashi Sarashiki. Red eyes, short aquamarine hair, shy and quiet personality, eventually warms up to the main character and falls in love with him.
- Eucliwood Hellscythe from
* Is This A Zombie?*. Light hair, pale skin, mysterious abilities and origins and a deeply quiet and stoic demeanor that makes her come across as emotionless, but still has a hidden caring side.
- Nozomi from
*Mayoi Neko Overrun!*. A mysterious girl with blue hair and red eyes. She normally tends to be indifferent and emotionless, and also seems to be a little airheaded.
- Furano Yukihira from
*My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering with My School Romantic Comedy*. Short white hair, red eyes, pale skin, overly serious and quiet, a little weird, has trouble expressing her feelings for her love interest.
- Shiro from
*No Game No Life*. A young girl with light blue hair and red eyes. She's a Hikikomori Neet, but she's actually a genius with an almost supernatural intelligence. She also only shows emotion around her older brother Sora.
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*The Pet Girl of Sakurasou*: Mashiro is a strange girl with virtually No Social Skills, doesn't understand the concept of emotions and nudity too well and has light hair, fairer skin than the rest of the cast and reddish eyes.
- Fremy Speeddraw from
*Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers*. A stoic, cold young girl with white hair, pale skin, blue eyes and an eyepatch. Fremy is the first and only half human/half kyouma in the world and she was once the Six Flower Killer, an assassin who killed potential future heroes of the Six Flowers. She was chosen as a Brave after she was betrayed by the Kyouma who raised her, her own mother among them. At first, she doesn't want to trust anyone ever again, but Adlet gains her trust and she falls in love with him.
- Hecate from
*Shakugan no Shana*. "The Priestess" of Bal Masqué, she has the appearance of a small blue-haired girl with blue eyes. A quiet and emotionless character.
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*Sword Art Online*:
- Shino Asada/Sinon She has short hair, fair skin, a Dark and Troubled Past, and an emotionally-distant demeanor that defrosts thanks to the main character. Her MMORPG counterpart Sinon even has the blue hair and eyes to go with it.
- Alice is an even more quintessential example than Shino Asada/Sinon. While she lacks the outlandish hair coloring (at least in-game) and pale skin, she's also much more stoic than her (even after defrosting), is incredibly socially-inept outside of UW, and was an AI that got a robot body. She even gets an Asuka-esque counterpart with Asuna (who's not only spelled but look similary to her). Being also an expy of Saber (who herself is one) probably helped.
- Elena Arshavina from
*World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman* is a stoic, silver-haired girl with a bobcut set up as one of the protagonist's love interests. She's also a child soldier that was raised and mentally abused to be effective on the field.
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*Kamen Rider*:
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*Kamen Rider Zero-One*: Naki is the first non-binary example of the trope note : due to their actor, Satsuki Nakayama, is in fact asexual; expressing their desire not to be defined as either male or female.. Naki is introduced as a rather aloof and emotionless Humagear who initially worked for Gai Amatsu before the events of the second arc; who eventually gets shot for questioning his methods. Their eventual HeelFace Turn allowed them to reach Singularity, which makes Humagears feel emotions like humans, thanks to their connection with Isamu Fuwa, ||when it was revealed that their AI chip being embedded in Fuwa's neural implants||.
- Raven/Rachel Roth from
*Titans (2018)* hits most of important points of this archetype. She is a Half-Human Hybrid, acts like an Emo Teen with a very moody disposition, has bobbed dark bluish hair and blue eyes, is quite pale and was created by her evil father to become an Apocalypse Maiden.
- Isabella/Catleia from
*Advance Wars: Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict*. She is a young girl, with blue-white hair and pale skin who is rescued from a building by the main character, Will/Ed, and becomes his love interest. She has no memory of who she is, though somehow knows detailed military information. Eventually, the heroes learn who she is: ||one of the cloned children of Dr. Caulder/Stolos.||
- Atlus LOVES Evangelion, so within many Evangelion references in their games, of course there's several Rei Ayanami Expies. So far, there's six of them. That's already more than half of the number of Rei expies used to create the page image. Maybe the day where we can make the page image using Rei expies from Atlus only will come. Maybe.
- Gender flipped with Serph from
*Digital Devil Saga*: an initially completely emotionless pale-skinned gray-haired almost totally silent male lead who's ||a digital clone of a sociopath scientist who nearly destroyed the entire world||, and is completely devoted to female love-interest Sera.
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*Devil Survivor*'s Amane Kuzuryu, a blue haired, blue eyed Emotionless Girl ||that serves as the host to both an angel *and* a demon.|| In her route, she reveals the reason for her behavior and wishes that she had been able to lead a more normal life.
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*Persona*:
- In
*Persona 3*, we have two! First is the Protagonist himself, who possesses blue hair and eyes that are either blue or silverish, and also appears emotionless but gradually becomes more human as he forms bonds. (His characterization in the first animated movie adaption mirrors Rei's in the first Rebuild movie, complete with a When She Smiles moment!) Second is Aigis, with her robotic nature and exotic looks, but isn't quite as emotionless so much as initially single-minded. Her role only settles in when Ryoji, the Kaworu Expy, enters the story and she immediately becomes suspicious of him.
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*Persona 4* has Naoto Shirogane, who has blue-bobbed hair and silver (or blue) eyes, and usually has a calm personality with a mysterious vibe to boot. When first introduced, Naoto acts more aloof and apathetic towards the others, but warms up to them after joining their group.
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*Devil Survivor 2* has Miyako. She just appeared in Record Breaker, but it's no doubt that Miyako is a Rei expy too. She has short hair and eyes in color shade similar to Rei's hair. Okay, initially she is not that emotionless, but she does eventually become more emotional, later becomes one of the protagonists' main love interest, ||isn't exactly human. Rei is the soul vessel for Lilith and Yui clone, when Miyako is the mix of Fourth Triangulum and Yamato clone, later fight against her own kin other than human.||. Also, she is noticeably less polite and wary of Alcor, the Kaworu expy in said game.
-
*Blazblue*
- The Murakumo Units, a series of Magitek cyborgs. There are three playable Murakumos and each of them have some of Rei's traits. As a whole, Murakumos are young women with light hair and skin, draw power from an Eldritch Location, were created by an abusive Mad Scientist father, are varying flavors of The Woobie and are clones of Ragna's (the protagonist) long lost sister. Lambda-11 is curious, innocent, developing emotions, has red eyes and is forced into battle by her boss and sort of mother figure Kokonoe because there's just no other choice. Noel, aka Mu-12, didn't know she was a Murakumo for years and developed a proper (but meek) personality, initially serving the local State Sec to support her family but eventually breaking away from that to help save the world. Nu-13 has red eyes, silvery blue hair and pale skin and seems to be sick, and switches from being utterly emotionless to the definition of Yandere whenever Ragna shows up.
- Their genetic template, Saya, was pretty similar to Noel before becoming the Imperator ||and being made a vessel for Izanami, the Goddess of Death.|| When Ragna meets an adult Saya for the first time, her appearance and personality took a huge change. She is absolutely devoid of emotion, ruthless, nihilistic and hateful towards the world. Her golden locks have become purple, and her previously jade eyes are now crimson. ||All of this can be attributed to her being possessed by Izanami, and Saya's consciousness apparently struggles for control, resulting in the Imperator showing some sympathy towards Ragna and despising Terumi.||
-
*Code Vein*: Io. She not only has the pale skin, bobcut, and is a stoic Mysterious Waif Artificial Human (among many clones) to boot, but over the course of the story, Io develops feelings for the beyond obeying the orders of the Successors. She was created by Cruz only to absorb the relics (pieces of Cruz's body) similar to how Rei was created from Lilith's DNA. Her fate in the three endings also reference The End of Evangelion as well: In *To Eternity* her body is petrified, in *Heirs* she disintegrates and crumbles, and in *Dwellers in the Dark* she absorbs legendary relics to form a sacred tree and Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, though she maintains a presence to the protagonist. For bonus points, she shares an English voice actress with Rei from the Rebuild of Evangelion continuity as well.
- Eva from
*Crush Crush* has green hair and gold eyes, but otherwise is a very clear expy of Rei as a mecha pilot you save from dying who's an emotionless, Spock-like Mysterious Waif until you gradually teach her how to smile. She even mentions wearing bandages to a party at one point and says that Cassie, another girl in the game, reminds her of one of her colleagues.
- Orchis/Orchid from the shared universe games of
*Cygames* such as *Rage of Bahamut*, *Granblue Fantasy* and *Shadowverse*. Among these games, *Granblue* gave her an extended backstory, a Meaningful Rename (Orchid, as she was named Orchis in *Bahamut*) and is tied to the main plot. She is blue-haired, red-eyed, terse, monotone speaking, very mysterious and displaying little emotion to those around her. ||She also turns into a Golem, whose limbs are attached using ball joints, just like a doll. Lastly, she is very loyal to the Black Knight, but gradually opens up to her other friends as the story progresses.||
- Amara Minakushi from
*De:vadasy*, a franchise already strongly inspired by *Eva*, is a stoic, green-haired artificial human girl who strikes a mysterious bond with the male protagonist.
-
*Fire Emblem*:
-
*Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War* has Deirdre and her daughter ||by Arvis||, Julia for the first and second generations. While they don't fit every trope, they do fit quite a few — Deirdre is Sigurd's wife, and Julia acts as a bait and switch love interest for Seliph, who turns out to be her half-brother through Deirdre's relationship with Sigurd. They have silvery hair, and oddly light colored eyes. They have very stoic demeanors due to their respective childhood situations of how they were raised. While they are human, they are the only ones with major Naga holy blood, which makes them unique among the other humans and instrumental to the plot.
- Thea, the middle sister of the Pegasus Knights from
*Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade*. She looks the part and has the Sugar-and-Ice Personality down pat.
- The dancer Ninian from
*Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade*. Though she lacks the short hair, it *is* blue (a shade of teal, to be exact), and she has red eyes, an unusual color even for *Fire Emblem* standards, as well as pale skin, and is pretty frail both in cutscenes and in combat. She's also notably shy and reserved but can open up to all three of her support options (one of which is a possible love interest), and hides a dark secret; ||she's a half-dragon born from a human father. Her tragic family history is revealed in Hector's story, in which the player learns that her father is the main antagonist, Nergal, who sent her and her brother through the Dragon's Gate for their own protection during the Scouring, a massive human/dragon war. Their mother, Aenir, was killed, and Nergal, seeking to reunite with his children after the war was over, began experimenting with unscrupulous dark magic that warped his mind and made him forget his original purpose. Centuries later, in an ironic twist of fate, he manages to call his children back through the Gate, but they don't remember him, and he doesn't remember he had children in the first place, only wanting to use the siblings to further his own goals of obtaining power.|| Worst of all, ||he actually laughs when Eliwood accidentally kills her.||
- Katarina of
*Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem*. Hard to spot early in the game, but she fits the trope as her backstory gets revealed. Physically she's got light purple hair in a bobcut, is extremely shy, jumpy and reserved, and even confesses to being an orphan and suffering a lot of abuse in her childhood. ||She shows an Undying Loyalty towards her caretaker, Eremiya, for giving her a home, even though she's fully aware of being raised to become a Tyke Bomb to kill Marth. While she's fully human, over the story she's constantly compared to a puppet, and she sees herself as such. Her time with the 7th Platoon and especially her developing feelings for Kris cause her to become conflicted, to the point she prefers to die to atone for her sins until Kris and Marth talk her out of it.||
- Vanilla H from
*Galaxy Angel*, a red-eyed, pale-skinned young girl who controls nanomachines by suppressing her emotions. She's otherwise a normal human, but her stoic persona actually makes a character mistake her for a robot once.
- Ramlethal Valentine from
*Guilty Gear*, albeit a dark-skinned blonde case note : Though her dark skin could be the result of originating from the Backyard, but otherwise plays this to a T. Emotionless though she warms up later, platinum blonde hair, not human, and was created by ||St. Maximus Ariels||.
- Bronya Zaychik from
*Honkai Impact 3rd* was initially a child soldier trained as a Cold Sniper, before being picked up in an orphanage by a woman named Cocolia, where she could finally live a semblance of a normal life and make friends. However, said orphanage also used children that had special properties in dangerous experiments; after Bronya's friend Seele became trapped in another dimension because of one such experiment, Bronya proposed herself to take part in it. As the experiment failed, she largely lost the ability to feel emotions, as well as the use of her legs. This is notably marked by her becoming a Third-Person Person; as a playable character, her speech is always formal and technical. Her silver hair doubles as a Phenotype Stereotype, since she was born in Siberia. The cherry on the cake? In version 4.5s Crossover event with Evangelion, Bronya *literally* plays the role of Rei in a recreation of Evas story set in the Honkai verse.
-
*Horizon Forbidden West*: ||Beta does meet a *lot* of the requirements. Namely, pale skin, short bobbed hair, unnatural existence (clone), young age, often needs to rescued, Dark and Troubled Past and connection with the protagonist ("sister" to Aloy), antagonists (creation of Far Zenith) *and* figure from the lore ( *daughter* to Elisabet). She also undergoes Character Development where she becomes more emotional and well-adjusted. However, she is not anyone's Love Interest and if anything is a overemotional Motor Mouth instead of stoic or robotic.||
- Ryūsei Haruna from
*La Corda d'Oro Starlight Orchestra* is a high-school first-year (15-16 yrs) Bishōnen with short, sleek cyan hair, robotic stoicism and a frightening level of Blind Obedience.
- Fie Claussell from
*The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel* fits the archetype to a T. She's a quiet, stoic 15-year-old with exceptional combat capabilities who is eventually revealed to be ||a former Jaeger from the Zephyr Jaeger Corps and adoptive daughter of the corps's boss, The Jaeger King.||
- Stern the Destructor of the
*Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable* games. She's an ancient, alien, Magitek program that copied Nanoha's appearance, with a few changes such as her hair being cropped short and her eyes being an unnaturally light color of blue. As the Material of Wisdom, she has little to no emotions and is completely logical. However, she starts gaining some emotions after she met and lost to Nanoha, even gaining her own personal desire to improve herself in the hopes of one day beating Nanoha in a Lighthearted Rematch.
- The eroge game
*Makai Tenshi Djibril* :
- The New Angelic Gaia Interface is a wholesale expy of Rei Ayanami, from the fact she's got blue hair and pale features, she's also a artificial angel, of the holy kind, whose whole purpose is to go into battle and get maimed, and she does in fact shrug off a lost arm at least once.
- Also, the mark of a transformed Devil Angel when working for Heaven was, for the first three games, that their hair took on a pale color, as close to light blue as possible.
- Mega Man:
- Sera in
*Mega Man Legends 2*. Appearance-wise she fits the trope to a T, with the sole exception of having dark skin as opposed to pale. After she's awakened, she spends the game guiding the protagonists to uncover the mystery of the Mother Lode, only to reveal that she's planning to activate the Elysium's Carbon Reinitialization Program, which would wipe out the populace on earth.
- Pandora from
*Mega Man ZX*. An Emotionless, green-haired, red-eyed Reploid. She and her brother Prometheus act as Co-Dragons for the Big Bad and their origins remain a mystery until their Dark and Troubled Past is revealed late in *ZX Advent*.
- Samus Aran became this trope in
*Metroid: Other M*, with characteristics from both Rei and Shinji. She speaks in a stoic monotone, seems to suffer from low self-esteem like Shinji, and lots of emphasis is placed on her loyalty to Adam (much like Rei's loyalty to Gendo) and her Dark and Troubled Past, both of which are the cause of most of her emotional breakdowns throughout the game (such emotional breakdowns were a staple of *Evangelion*). A flashback scene even gives her a bobbed haircut similar to Rei's.
- Kagura from
*Onmyōji* is a stoic little girl who's painfully loyal to her caretaker, has immense powers and ||is an Artificial Human with the fragment of a god embedded in her.||
- Melphonshina from
*Phantasy Star Online 2* more or less falls straight into this trope, minus being a Love Interest. Her Dark and Troubled Past being that ||she was envious of the relationship between Gettemhult and his partner, and wished to be in her place||. After she's ||used by Gettemhult to release Dark Falz Elder||, she gets seriously injured. ||After Dark Falz Elder sacrifices himself two Episodes later,|| she breaks out of this to a degree.
- Courtney from
*Pokémon Ruby* is re-imagined along those lines in the remake, *OmegaRuby*, with robotic mostly short speech patterns (though she does speak full sentences at certain points, though with William Shatner levels of pauses), violet hair and eyes. Ironically, different traits, such as short hair and an attraction to a protagonist are only apparent in the *Ruby and Sapphire* chapters of *Pokémon Adventures* which is based on the original games and thus is not an Emotionless Girl there (or in the original games for that matter). In both cases she does have a connection to the antagonist, being a member of Team Magma and one of its Co-Dragons.
-
*Puyo Puyo* gives us a child-friendly version in Sig. He's the closest the series has to an official love interest for anyone (Amitie is confirmed to have a crush on him, and unlike with every other display of such feelings in the series he doesn't seem bothered by it), he's a mysterious transfer student with inhuman body parts and powers even he doesn't understand, has cyan hair in a bobbed style, Technicolor Eyes, speaks in a Creepy Monotone because he can't express emotions well, has demonic blood and a demon soul to match, is undyingly loyal to his friends, and slowly becomes more aware of his own wants as the series goes on.
-
*Samurai Shodown*
- Shiki is older than the average, but otherwise fits the bill nicely (the whole Technicolor Eyes thing being derived from Demonic Possession, but she has heterochromia meaning she's not
*completely* being controlled).
- Her daughter Mikoto from
*Samurai Shodown: Warriors Rage* not just has the same personality as her mother (but less cold than her), her age (19yo) and her hair and eyes colors (a light-violet tone and red eyes) fits this trope to a T. And not to mention she has ||an inner fight with her good and evil sides, being the latter the new incarnation of the Demon "Yuga the Destroyer", the Big Bad from *64* series.||
-
*Sonic the Hedgehog*
- Blaze the Cat is a sort of anthropomorphic interpretation of this type of character, down to the same general color scheme and hairdo. Because her role as the dedicated guardian of the Sol Emeralds is of tantamount importance in her dimension, she initially distrusts strong emotions and social attachments, which she sees as distractions. She later embraces both to a degree.
- E-102 Gamma from the same series also fits this character type, justified by being an actual robot. He starts off as a mere Elite Mook for Dr. Robotnik forced to watch his master's callous treatment of his brethren, but learns compassion from Amy Rose and rewrites his own programming to rescue the animals trapped within them. Like Rei, he's very emotionally unreactive (at least on the outside) to otherwise traumatizing events, such as watching one of his brothers undergo a painful upgrade, or ||acknowledging that completing his mission means he himself has to die as well.||
- Sage from
*Sonic Frontiers* fits this trope much better. While she may not have blue hair, she ticks most of the boxes, even having the same Japanese and English voice actresses as Rei.
- sora Has Nath, the boss of stage 5 and playable character in
*Acceleration Of Suguri 2* and *100% Orange Juice!*, and she exhibits most of the traits. She lost her arms at the hands of the military to become a Not Quite Human part-machine with no free will, and has the bobbed light blue hair, blue Tsurime Eyes, and quiet, monotone voice acting.
- The Kritya from
*Tales of Vesperia* are an entire *race* of strange, blue-haired nonhumans who... don't quite have it all together. The party's Big Girl, Judith, is considered weird by their standards for being a flirtatious Blood Knight who will offer to show off even *more* skin than she usually does and devise battle strategies that involve *being eaten alive by monsters and then ripping them open from the inside* in the same emotionless tone of voice that everyone on this page has.
-
*Touhou Project* has Hata no Kokoro, a pink-haired tsukumogami based on a set of 66 noh theater masks with a close connection to an antagonist from the previous game in the series. Kokoro is simultaneously a Large Ham, Mood-Swinger and Emotionless Girl, "The Expressive Poker Face" who expresses herself through her Floating Masks, but after some character development she learns to handle and display her feelings more naturally.
- Honebami Toushirou from
*Touken Ranbu* who fits *every* criteria except Love Interest and age (though he appears as a teenager): He has white bobbed hair and purple eyes; is not human, but a tsukumogami personification of a centuries-old weapon; has a tragic past from battles and suffering from a fire that damaged the blade, caused him to have to be reforged and left him with amnesia which he can't get over; is aloof, shy and Hates Being Touched; takes orders from and is loyal to the saniwa; after Kiwame, heads towards the Defrosting Ice King path after he realizes being loved by his family and master is more important than being preoccupied with his past.
- Vastista from
*Under Night In-Birth* qualifies. Has the hair, skin tone, aloofness, obligations, and relationship with a boy.
- The Character KOS-MOS in the
*Xenosaga* Series is a female blue haired, red eyed Emotionless Robot which becomes more humane/defrosting. ||Like Rei, she and her successor Model "T-elos" have got something to do with the plan of the antagonist/government organisation.|| Amusingly, an Alternate Universe version of KOS-MOS appears in *Xenoblade Chronicles 2*, which introduces a fairly blatant Asuka expy in Mythra who has a few moments that play off her.
- Kuu Dere from
*Yandere Simulator* and *Kuu Dere Simulator* is based on Rei Ayanami and has the standard short blue hair and red eyes. Her bio in-game states that no student has ever seen her show emotion, something which is an Informed Ability currently because she'll run away in terror like anyone else if she sees Yandere-Chan commit murder and will threaten her to tell anyone what she has done if she tries to speak to her the following days, as well as damage her reputation. However, in the future she'll have the "Apathetic" persona, which will literally show no emotion.
- Kyoko Kirigiri of
*Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc *. Purplish white hair, purple eyes, stoic and mysterious (even her talent is just listed as "???"), unnervingly calm interacting with corpses (||including doing Crotch-Grab Sex Check on a dead body||), she ||is the estranged daughter of the school headmaster and was also secretly amnesic the whole time||, wears gloves ||to hide her horrifically burned hands (best described as looking like bacon)||. She also gradually warms up to the main character, ||becomes one of the main three characters out of the six survivors, and becomes the implicit love interest|| in *Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School*.
- Saber from
*Fate/stay night*. Fair hair and skin, not completely human even when she was alive, and an emotionally cold demeanor that comes to defrost thanks to the protagonist's actions.
- Mash Kyrielight from
*Fate/Grand Order* is perhaps an even more quintessential example in the Nasuverse than even Saber herself, if you look at the checklist.
- Mio Nishizono from
*Little Busters!* has short blue hair and amber eyes and is stoic.
- Haqua Jormungandr from
*Marco and the Galaxy Dragon* is a soft-spoken, pale-skinned waif with short white hair and golden eyes. She rarely raises her voice and rarely shows any emotion beyond a mild frown, though she is *not* an Emotionless Girl and her stoicism begins to crack toward the end of the game. Her behaviour has less to do with being an alien and more to do with the fact that her father, Astaroth, is a cruel despot who thinks emotions are a weakness and is grooming her to rule the galaxy one day.
- Kei Ayamine from
*Muv-Luv*, a short-haired purple eyed kuudere. Bonus points for her name. The only thing that sets her apart from other examples is that she's also quite The Gadfly.
- Ein from
*Phantom of Inferno*, including the haircut (but not the hair color.) She even winds up laying impassively under The Hero by the end of the first episode of 2009 anime adaptation.
- Primula of
*SHUFFLE!*. A young Emotionless Girl with very light purple hair and pale skin. In the anime, emotions cause her magical powers to go haywire. In the visual novel they're hoping she can gain emotions to show the program she's part of is a success, putting her into a human environment is part of the program, her magic has little to do with it. In both she is an artificial lifeform.
- Es, from
*XBlaze*, has shades of this as well. She's emotionless (granted, she's a robot, so it's understandable); has no functioning concept of decency norms; and, once she becomes human, has a similar scene to Rei where she floats naked in a tube of fluid.
- Kanna Hatano from
*YU-NO* is a prime example - not surprising as the game was released within the same year as *Neon Genesis Evangelion* finished airing. Let's see: She's a teenage student, acts emotionally detached and tends to speak bluntly and distantly if you do manage to get a word out of her, has blue hair complete with a Hime Cut (although the remake and 2019 anime altered her hairstyle), has some odd behaviour such as not being bothered being seen naked, is one of the romanceable girls and opens up more during her route, actually is ||a descendant of a race from a different dimension and is really about 50 years old||, constantly suffers from feverish fits and must be tended to, ||has a Dark and Troubled Past where her mother died and she lived decades alone with money gained via prostitution||, and has an attachment both to her mother and the protagonist's father.
- Otonashi Ayana from
*Wonderful Everyday: Down the Rabbit-Hole*, has the pale skin, short bobbed hair in an unnatural tone, quiet and odd personality, ||isn't quite human, and has otherworldly origins||. Her name is "Ayana," one syllable away from *Ayanami*.
- Iriana Estchell from
*Ilivais X*, offering nearly every aspect. The one place she differs is that she's trying to AVOID becoming more humanly expressive.
- Lampshaded in
*Evangelion Abridged*:
**Rei:** I am the result of Hideaki Anno failing to make my character unsettling, and instead my very archetype copied repeatedly. Rei Ayanami. Salutations. **Shinji:** Well, I would say its more inspired
**Rei:** Copied... Copied
I dont even think they were trying with this one.
- Despite being quite outgoing and sociable, the titular character of
*Get Ed* bears many hallmarks of this trope, from eyes which glow red when he is angered, the blue color scheme of his suit and the fact that he was ||genetically engineered by Ol'Skool from an ancient artifact||. He is also plagued by 'visions', a lack of knowledge of the outside world and strong desire to know about his past. Sadly, due to the creator of the series passing away we never fully see the resolution to this.
-
*Neo Yokio*: Helena, a monotone and aloof woman with purplish-blue hair and purple eyes. After ||being possessed by a demon and falling down a flight of stairs||, Helena dons a hospital gown and head bandage for most of the series. Giving up her former life as a fashionista, Helena becomes reclusive and rarely shows any emotion besides her annoyance towards Kaz. She even ||steals and pilots Charles the mech-butler to escape Neo Yokio at the end of episode 6.||
-
*The Owl House*: Hunter/The Golden Guard is a downplayed male example. ||Similar to Rei, Hunter is the latest in a line of red-eyed clones of the Omnicidal Maniac Big Bad's deceased loved one.||
- Blue Pearl from
*Steven Universe* has pale (blue) skin, is definitely not human, has never been heard to speak above a near-whisper, and sports short pastel blue hair cut into the bangs frequently seen on members of Blue Diamond's court. In a platonic variation on the usual protagonist relationship, being around Steven allows her to open up more as he encourages her and all gems to express their true interests and talents, letting her display her aptitude for drawing.
- The version of Raven in the Animesque
*Teen Titans* cartoon is modeled after the archetype. They even change her black hair from the comics to blue-purple. However, even before her character development comes into play, Raven is notably snarkier than most examples. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaleStrangeEmotionlessGirl |
Painted CGI - TV Tropes
A form of hybrid 2D/3D animation which uses CGI animated models as a base, and adds stylized effects in 2D on top of it, generally with the idea of making the animation look more like traditional art. Often used to mimic specific traditional styles, such as anime, comic books, or paintings.
Done by computer and in
*style*
!
This can take several forms:
- Adding outlines to characters, making them look more like drawings
- Flat colors or Cel Shading, common in Animesque versions
- Shading techniques that resemble brush strokes, giving the idea of a moving painting
- Flat special effects such as motion lines or Written Sound Effects
- Stylized coloring choices, like Blush Stickers or crosshatching
- A lower frame rate; 3D animated films and shows are usually animated on 1s (i.e., a new "drawing" every frame), but a lot of these works will have character movement and other elements animated on 2s (new drawing every two frames) to make it feel more similar to traditional 2D animation (the money saved by doing this is a nice bonus)
This is in contrast to more conventional All CGI Cartoons, which generally attempt to mimic real-life shading, lighting and camerawork, making the animation look like a real camera filming animated people. Compare the inverse, 2D Visuals, 3D Effects. Compare Cel Shading, a Sub-Trope of this, and Rotoscoping, drawing over a live-action base. Related to Medium Blending and Painting the Medium.
## Examples:
-
*Beastars*'s animation style consists of flat colors with outlines drawn over CGI models. It also incorporates other hand-drawn special effects, such as trailing colors, smoke, and painted-looking objects.
- A very strange example from
*EX-ARM*. The main characters and backgrounds are in Cel Shaded CGI with outlines drawn on, while minor characters are traditionally 2D animated. Many special effects are flat GIFs or drawn on after the fact, though the animation is so disjointed that it's hard to tell if this is a style or a Special Effects Failure.
-
*JoJo's Bizarre Adventure*: The opening credits in the first three and sixth parts of the series are done in cel-shaded low-framerate CGI with some 2D effects. Mostly averted as most of the actual anime is done in 2D with some 3D visual effects.
-
*Land of the Lustrous* uses flat colors, outlines and cel shading over 3D models, intended to look more like traditionally animated 2D anime. However, all the jewels and gem-like aspects are given fully rendered lighting and shine effects, which makes them stand out and look a bit more otherworldly.
-
*Pretty Cure*: The *All-Stars* movies starting from *Spring Carnival* used stylized cel-shaded 3D models and rendered outlines to mimic the coloring of the show it spins off from. The anime had used animation of this style in some of the regular series' ending sequences, leading to it fully being embraced for the films.
- In most Studio Ghibli films, 3D CGI assets are usually given hand-painted textures to better blend in with the 2D backgrounds. Said textures are usually not painted digitally and were painted on paper before being scanned on computers to be mapped as textures for 3D models.
-
*HYPERLINK*, a *Deltarune* fan-animation of the fight against the Chapter 2 Superboss ||Spamton NEO||, utilizes a low framerate, hand-drawn elements, and a diverse colour palette to make its 3D models seem like 2D drawings. The video also uses subtle tricks to sell 2D illusions that would be difficult to pull off in 3D, like ensuring that the sway of the boss's hair always faces the screen or hiding the characters' eyes in shadow to replicate the look of their in-game sprites.
-
*The Bad Guys* also uses a similar 3D style with outlines drawn on top, as well as flat effects such as motion lines hand-drawn into scenes.
- The real-world sequences of
*Bolt* are designed to have a painterly feel to the backgrounds, though the characters are rendered more conventionally. This effect would be used in more extensively in later Walt Disney Animation Studios films such as *Tangled* and *Frozen*.
-
*Klaus* is a bit of an inversion. The film is a 2D animated film, with CGI lighting and shading effects to achieve the effect.
- Using a similar technique, the wildebeest stampede in
*The Lion King (1994)* was animated using Pixar's Renderman computer graphics technology, but colored by hand with Pixar's CAPS technology, which was used by the rest of the film.
-
*The Mitchells vs. the Machines* has painterly textures and outlines applied to the CGI models to make the human world more imperfect when compared to the sleekly designed machines. The filmmakers' goal was to make the final film look as much like the concept art as possible. Some scenes also have animated versions of Katie's doodles superimposed on top (dubbed "Katievision") to show her state of mind.
- Used briefly during the song
*Shiny* in *Moana*, when Tamatoa turns bioluminescent.
-
*Nimona (2023)*: As its trailer demonstrates, the film has a cel-shaded look to it.
-
*The Peanuts Movie*: In trying to translate the *Peanuts* characters into CG, the filmmakers found that fully three-dimensional models couldn't match the look of Schultz's drawings exactly, so they settled for using models with Cheated Angles. They also animated the figures on twos to match the animation of the classic TV specials, along with hand-drawn effects and linework on the models.
-
*Puss in Boots: The Last Wish*: The shading is done in a "painting-like" style, including sometimes visible brushstrokes, and many of the effects such as fire and magic have blocks of flat colors in them. Especially prominent in scenes with the Wolf, which are also animated on twos.
-
*Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse* is credited for popularizing this trope for theatrical film. In order to look more like a comic book, shading often uses effects such as screentone or stippling, and the 3D models have hand-drawn outlines to them to give a comic book feel, as well as the use of 2D effects and textures. This trope extends into its sequel, *Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse*, naturally, with a wider range of visual styles and influences applied to the individual worlds and their characters.
- The tree surfing scenes (and most other 3D backgrounds) in
*Tarzan* are 3D with a painterly style. Possibly the Ur-Example, as the film was released in 1999 and said effect was intended to blend into the otherwise 2D-styled animation. Later films such as *Atlantis: The Lost Empire* and *Treasure Planet* would later use this effect much more extensively.
- Even before
*Tarzan*, Disney already experimented with doing such an effect with implementing early CGI effects in their last few xerox films such as *The Black Cauldron*, *The Great Mouse Detective*, *Oliver & Company*, and *The Little Mermaid (1989)*. The process involved tracing the CGI to paper by a computer, before being xeroxed into cels and then painted in by hand.
-
*Wish (2023)* fully embraces this style. As the trailer shows, the backgrounds feature a painterly look while the character models have faint outlines.
-
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem*: The first look footage shows off the film's deliberately sketchy style, inspired by notebook doodling.
-
*Turning Red*: 2D style graphic window streaks were applied to nearly every piece of glass in the film. Artists introduced color pooling to the character designs that mimic the look of paint that would settle along edges and in crevices of a newly painted object that was wiped with a cloth. It can be seen along with characters noses, for example, as well as on garments where stitching shows.
-
*Babylon 5: The Road Home*: The film's art style combines this style with an Animesque look, utilizing a lower framerate in some scenes, while some backdrops, such as spacecraft and planets, are entirely CGI.
- Discussed in
*Look Both Ways (2022)* when aspiring artist Natalie applies for an assistant job at an animation studio. She mentions that she studied both 2D and 3D animation to help her chances at employment. Though her dream is to become an illustrator, she notes that working with 3D isn't devoid of that and cites *Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse* and *Paperman* as examples.
- The works of Arc System Works, despite being 3D, invoke the feeling of hand-drawn animation due to the various stylistic choices; cel-shaded materials, lowered frame rate, all objects having outlines, VFX being hand-drawn, etc.
-
*Bendy and the Ink Machine* has sketched outlines on all of the models to give them a "classic cartoon" look.
- The
*Borderlands* series: *Borderlands* used black outlines and textures with penciled-in lines to give the game a stylized Comic Book-esque look, but the lighting and shading were done realistically. *Borderlands 2*, however, used a combination of real-time filter and specially crafted textures to give the in-game world and characters the Comic Book-esque look, but had the lighting and shading exempted from the filter — this allows the characters to look comic book-esque, but keep lighting and shadows realistic, at the cost of high GPU load [1]. Gamers have found that turning off the filter (by tweaking the .ini file) reduced the comic book-esque effect to almost nonexistent, but it does make the game run smoother on lower-end GPU hardware.
-
*Heroes of the Storm*: The trailer for the MechaStorm event depicts an impressively animated high-octane fight scene as Mecha Tyrael and Mecha Rehgar square off against Xenotech Abathur. Unlike the game's other trailers (which use either in-game models or traditional 2D animation), the MechaStorm trailer uses cel-shaded models animated in a low framerate, combined with dynamic camerawork and a plethora of hand-drawn effects to replicate the look of a 2D anime.
- Following the
*Street Fighter IV* trend, SNK did the same with the 2019 return of *Samurai Shodown* as a Soft Reboot, also adding ink effects to hits and outlines to characters that makes the sensation that they were drawn instead of being 3D models.
-
*Street Fighter IV* has a sort of inkbrush look but does not use actual cel-shading.
-
*Super Smash Bros.* was an early pioneer of this technique, mainly through the character Mr. Game & Watch. Game & Watch is a 3D model that is completely flattened on its Z-axis, has a prominent outline, and is mostly unaffected by lighting. Combined with his deliberately primitive animations (being around *one frame per second*), it looks identical to a sprite from his own games.
-
*Tiny and Big* has a visual style made to resemble comic books, and makes use of thick outlines for that purpose. The lighting itself is rendered as normal before being overlaid with a set of hand-drawn shadow textures that take the place of traditional color-based shadows. The developers call their solution the "hatch shader," and explain the rendering process in greater detail here and here.
- Many games running on the Unreal Engine use outlined models, such as Trendy's
*Dungeon Defenders*, SUDA51's *Lollipop Chainsaw* and *Borderlands*. The models may be outlined, but the shading is realistic (more so on Borderlands — *Lollipop Chainsaw*, uses a more stylish shading technique.)
-
*Life Is Strange* has realistic 3D models combined with hand-painted textures and sketch-like UI overlay, which makes it feel somewhat cartoony.
-
*Dinosauria*: The animation is heavily cel-shaded 3D CGI, with a limited color palette, giving the series a distinct, stylised, painting-like visual style instead of photorealism.
-
*Tales of Runeterra* uses a painted style, with visible brushstrokes and block colors, plus select flat effects, such as smoke and explosion flashes being drawn as solid colors.
-
*Arcane* is shaded to look like the characters are painted, and almost every background and special effect you see is likely to be hand-painted. Many stills from the show could be mistaken for a digital painting.
-
*The Dragon Prince*: The show blends together 3d models with painted textures and backgrounds. The first season utilised slower frame-rates to help with the effect but it was nixed for the following seasons due to it coming across as "choppy" to a number of viewers.
-
*Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai*: The character models hair and eyes have a painterly aesthetic to them, and certain effects such as magic are rendered in 2D.
-
*He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021)*: Despite primarily being a 3DCG cartoon, effects like smoke and energy beams are hand drawn 2D animation that blends with the poppy visuals. This is best seen in the intro, which also adds 2D impact frames.
-
*Olive, the Other Reindeer* is CGI that is stylized as if it was a paper pop-up card. Released in 1999, it's one of the earliest examples of this style.
- The Disney short
*Paperman* looks almost as if it were cel-shaded but noticeably different; the animation looks traditional, but it is also akin to a CG film. The animators actually drew lines by hand on top of the CG models to achieve this look.
-
*Star Wars*:
-
*Transformers Earthspark*: A lot of background is shaded in a paint-like fashion. Also, certain effects like explosions, electricity, energy blasts, fire, water, smoke and dust are depicted using 2D animation.
-
*TRON: Uprising*: This was an early example of an entire CGI show that "looks" 2D, but isn't, disguising the 3D nature of it with a dark colour palette, a strong cel-shading system, heavy usage of shadows, and a low framerate. The only thing that really gives it away are the faces, and even those tend to be obfuscated in shadow to keep up the look.
-
*What If
? (2021)*: The art style for the series includes cel-shaded characters and environments with a painted feel to give the show a look resembling that of the works of early American painters.
-
*The Wingfeather Saga*: The art style invokes this to make it look like a painting with impressionist elements. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintedCGI |
Paint the Town Red - TV Tropes
*"C'mon, team. Let's go paint the undefended town a nice shade of 'BLAM'."*
In the course of a Cruel and Unusual Death or even when it's just that Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting, things get messy. And the things that suffer most are the buildings (inside and out) in town that get covered in everyone's blood. It's usually also the sign of a particularly violent person walking around just doing what they do best. Someone may help the job along by leaving a Bloody Handprint. High-Pressure Blood could also do the trick, as well as a victim dealing with a gaping head wound. Particularly shown when a director takes creative liberties on death scenes.
If a hero comes running back home only to find their family and friends used this way, it may lead to a Heroic BSoD.
Usually goes well with Gorn with a side of Ludicrous Gibs for in-your-face action. Contrast Bloodless Carnage.
Not to be confused with Paint the Index Red.
## Examples:
- Anywhere Ladd and Claire go in
*Baccano!*, this is standard.
- In the
*Blood: The Last Vampire* movie, Saya wasn't afraid of doing this, even ||in front of a nurse who didn't have the foggiest idea of what was going on.||
- Commonplace in
*Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan*, often played for laughs.
- In
*Fullmetal Alchemist*, this is Scar's calling card. And it later becomes commonplace for ||Wrath/King Bradley||.
- In
*Hellsing*, this is Alucard's favorite activity. ||Seras|| invokes this trope once, smearing her opponent all over a wall. Likewise, when Anderson goes berserk on a group of Nazi vampires, his Axe-Crazy hacking leaves a giant swastika of blood on the walls... and then he splatters it with even more blood and ruins the effect.
- Which then leads us to the villainous example of Rip Van Winkle, who
*also* paints a Nazi swastika on a captured aircraft carrier of the British Navy. Sadly, she ran out of paint and had to improvise...
- Happens quite frequently in
*Highschool of the Dead*, thanks to the zombies.
- This is the signature of the titular
*Ichi the Killer*. The comic and film open with a crew cleaning up his mess.
- Often used to imply or enhance the amount of incredible violence that the Angels and EVAs are capable of in
*Neon Genesis Evangelion*, most memorably when ||Gendo orders the autopilot to take over and destroy the EVA being piloted by Touji after an Angel hijacks it||.
- In the second
*Rebuild of Evangelion* movie, Sahaquiel's death is changed so that the Angel explodes into a gigantic wave of blood, which then washes over Tokyo-3. One must wonder how long it took to clean all that up.
- Zoro from
*One Piece* revels in this trope. His enemies don't spill much blood but he himself loses a hell of a lot of the stuff in almost every major fight.
- The bridge of the
*Event Horizon* combines this with Meat Moss. The ship's previous crew apparently tore each other apart quite gruesomely after the ship came back from its FTL jump and it's implied that's what's left.
-
*The Gamers* had a rather spectacular example from the Ludicrous Gibs side of this trope, after Nimble decides to backstab Hunk. With a ballista.
**Gamemaster:** Well, that's 264 points of damage. You splatter Hunk all over the common room. The patrons shriek in horror and run out of the inn, occasionally slipping on blood and entrails. You're now alone in a room that looks like a vat of beef stroganoff exploded in it.
- Literal example in Clint Eastwood's
*High Plains Drifter*. When the protagonist takes over the duties of sheriff, he has the town painted red and renamed Hell *before* the shooting starts.
- The elevator scene in
*The Shining*.
- In
*Watchmen*, Doctor Manhattan is shown once using his powers to turn a bunch of thugs into chunky, red paint. Restaurant patrons weren't happy.
- Averted in many fights in
*The Dresden Files* series thanks to the fact that creatures from the Nevernever have auto-cleanup on destruction.
- On a few occasions in The General series by David Drake, this occurs. A Discussed Trope - Raj notes that it's the first (or one of the few) times he's literally seen streets run red, and this is because an army got massacred on each occasion. (One of them was about forty thousand or so troops disembarking off their ships to discover that Raj's men are waiting in ambush - with rifles and field guns. They take casualties of something like 50% before they manage to surrender.)
- This is promised as part of the Apocalypse in Revelation, the last book of The Bible. We are assured that in the End Times, the battle of Armageddon will happen and the battlefield will be flooded with blood to the height of a horse's shoulder.
note : Given the Real Life note below about the destruction of Jerusalem in Crusade times, it is possible that from the point of view of a man living in that bit of the Middle East, this has already happened.
-
*Alien Shooter*. At any given time, you will be deluged with dozens upon dozens of monsters, each of which leaves a big puddle of blood, limbs, and guts when it dies.
-
*Blood*: Caleb actually says "I'm gonna paint the town red" at the beginning of one level. He stays true to his statement.
- Popular Game Mod
*Brutal Doom* runs mostly on this trope and Ludicrous Gibs. Examples include painting several walls and ceilings with a minigun and a double-barreled shotgun spreading people across a field. As blood confetti.
-
*Crimsonland* isn't just a fancy title for the game. All enemies, be it the zombies or Giant Spiders all leave a red blood patch upon death, and the ground soon gets covered with their blood to create a crimson land.
- Inevitably happens in the
*Decision* series, since zombies tend to cluster up and their dead (for good) bodies and also be destroyed by Ao E weapons. It's most prominent near defensive towers, where the zombies all head for a single point and the tower can have up to three explosive weapons installed on it.
-
*Dwarf Fortress.* Especially in the latest version, where bathing is a bit broken so attempts by dwarves to wash all that blood and vomit from battles off results in a giant puddle of blood all over the floor...
- Our very own Succession Game,
*Waterburned*, has so much blood it *lags the game*.
- In some evil areas of user-generated worlds, blood can rain from the sky.
- From
*The Elder Scrolls* series' backstory comes Pelinal Whitestrake, the legendary 1st Era hero of mankind/racist berserker. Believed to have been a Shezarrine, physical incarnations of the spirit of the "dead" creator god Lorkhan (known to the Imperials as "Shezarr"), Pelinal came to St. Alessia to serve as her divine champion in the war against the Ayleids. Pelinal would fly into fits of Unstoppable Rage ( *mostly* directed at the Ayleids) during which he would be stained with their blood and left so much *bloody carnage* in his wake that Kyne, one of the Divines, would have to send in her rain to cleanse Ayleid forts and village before they could be used by Alessia's forces.
-
*Hatred* is all about a very angry man going on a rampage with the goal of killing as many people as possible.
-
*Hotline Miami* by default is very bloody, but equipping the Jones mask makes blood puddles triple in size and adds some guts in them too. This seems to be the default setting in the sequel.
- Used to great effect in
*Madworld*. All the game environments are entirely black and white when you first enter them. You proceed to kill your enemies and the game's intense Gorn will ensure that this trope occurs.
-
*Ninja Gaiden II* (2008) makes you able to cover the places you go through with blood from your enemies.
-
*Paint the Town Red*, which revolves entirely around brawls in various settings like a biker bar, a disco and a prison. Enemies that get hit will have blood gushing from their wounds, and all that blood splatters on the floor and walls, so it's possible to have every floor and wall in the area turned red by the end of a fight.
-
*Presentable Liberty* never shows the state of the city on screen (as the player is imprisoned indoors for the duration of the game), but Charlotte and Salvadore send the player letters detailing ||the spread of The Virus and the bloody mess its victims leave behind. It's implied that the entire city is covered in blood and guts by the time Salvadore arrives.||
-
*[PROTOTYPE]* and it's sequel have you playing as a superpowered invidual, who can rip through almost anything in mere seconds. That includes humans. And almost nothing can stop you from turning everyone you see into fine red paste.
- Late-game raids in
*Rimworld* will bring a large number of attackers to your colony, and killing all of them will paint the ground red. This is not very good, because things like pools of blood or corpses decrease the beauty rating and give bad feelings to your colonists.
- In
*The Saboteur*, while you can't actually do this in the game, there is a perk named "Paint the Town Red".
- In
*Skullgirls*, the character Peacock mentions the trope by name in her battle introduction. However, this doesn't actually happen in-game.
- Variant in
*Splatoon*: Splatting an opponent causes them to explode in your team's ink color, so combine that with the need to ink territory as an objective or even just a mobility aid, and you can literally paint the town red (or whatever color your team is).
-
*Team Fortress 2* allows you to turn the walls and floor red with the blood of any enemies you've attacked near them. Most of the time you'll mostly end up seeing blood trails from body parts rolling around, but some mods bring this to the point of Bloody Hilarious Black Comedy.
-
*Carmilla the Series*: Mattie, Carmilla's loving vampire sister, invites her out to "paint the town red" exactly as one would expect her to-with enthusiasm. What's a girl to do with a reunion after decades but party?
-
*Chakona Space*: In a recent story set in Neal Foster's more distant past, he doesn't paint the town so much as the ceilings of a starship's bridge and sickbay.
- A suicide bomber rushed a tank. This happened. The tank suffered no damage.
- A number of dead baby jokes go along these lines:
*How many dead babies does it take to paint a wall? Depends how hard you throw them.*
- At the end of the First Crusade, the Crusaders, driven by hunger and thirst into a truly epic frenzy, slaughtered everything in sight when they entered Jerusalem in 1099, such that the streets were running with blood up to the horses' fetlocks, and bloodstains could be found everywhere in the city.
- Note that this wasn't the first time that staining carnage had struck Jerusalem; during the interminable wars between the Eastern Roman and Persian Empires in the 5th-7th centuries CE, Jerusalem changed hands several times. The Eastern Romans were Christian and the Persians, while Zoroastrians, counted the Jews as their allies. Each time the city switched, the Persians would purge the city of Christians and repopulate it with Jews, and vice-versa...one imagines that quite a few stains came out of that.
- Non-Lethal example: Ever sneeze towards a wall with a bad nosebleed?
- This was said to have happened during The French Revolution, during the executions at the Place de la Concorde.
- Blood stains still remain on walls and floors at Tuol Sleng prison, where many prisoners were held, tortured, interrogated, and executed by the Khmer Rouge. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintTheTownRed |
Palmtree Panic - TV Tropes
The video game level version of Beach Episode—a level on the beach.
These levels are not entirely Under the Sea, but feature the edge of land and water. This can be an easy, fun and relaxing level in the style of a Beach Episode, but not always, since the beach can be dramatic. Expect palm trees, sand, fun Caribbean-style music and jetskis. Be wary of Stalactite Spite from falling coconuts, and possibly the occasional Threatening Shark and Giant Enemy Crab. May overlap with Gangplank Galleon and/or Under the Sea, or located near a Port Town.
Musically, the beach area almost always has background music with steel pans, pedal steel guitars, or ukuleles. Instrumentation stereotypical to tropical islands. Occasionally, it may invoke sailing with accordions.
Compare the just-as-tranquil Green Hill Zone, which is more grassland or inland than Palmtree Panic and will usually be one of the starting levels. There is considerable overlap between the two.
## Examples:
-
*The Legend of Zelda*:
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening*: At the start of the game you must return to the beach you washed up on and search for your lost sword. This can actually be a remarkably difficult area for first-time players, as, well, *you have no sword*, and the use of the shield to push enemies is neither obvious nor explained.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask*: The game has Great Bay and some of its associated locations (Pinnacle Rock, Zora Cape and Zora Hall). Due to the curse placed on the Great Bay Temple by the Skull Kid, only the closest portion of the ocean's water is safe to swim, as going any further will cause the murky water to take the swimmer back to the beach.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker*: A good deal of the overworld has this, since the Great Sea originated from the Great Flood that sank Hyrule to prevent Ganondorf from taking over it by force.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes* has the second world, the Riverside.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* has the south, southeast and east coasts. Enemies have camps in these areas, including a large wooden construction in the beach of the Faron region. The Sand Boots come in handy, too. The largest destinations in them are Lurelin Village and Eventide Island (the latter doubles as a No-Gear Level, as it features a Shrine Quest where Link has to complete a task without any of his weapons or equipment save the Sheikah Slate).
-
*Metroid Dread*: Artaria is an unusual example. It has sandy environments, water-filled caves, and enemies resembling sea life such as crabs and mantas, giving it a strong beachlike vibe. But its predominantly grey color palette and lack of plantlife, combined with typical *Metroid* elements like high-tech corridors and Starfish Aliens, give it a more otherworldly feel than usual.
-
*Shantae* and its sequel start on the outskirts of the seaside village of Scuttle Town.
-
*Star Fox Adventures* has Cape Claw, located past the LightFoot Village. It is home of a friendly HighTop dinosaur who asks you to retrieve his missing gold bars, and various unfriendly SharpClaws who hold a CloudRunner captive. This place is also home to the Ocean Force Point Temple, where the two Ocean Spellstones (located elsewhere) have to to brought back.
- The beach stage of
*Ninja: Shadow of Darkness* have your titular character landing on the coast of a beach, littered with palm trees. Said trees can hurt you by dropping cocunuts as you pass.
-
*Streets of Rage 2*: The first part of stage 6, which appropriately follows a Ship Level.
-
*Rival Schools: United By Fate* has the Gorin High Training Camp stage, which takes place on a sunny beach (complete with an ice-selling shack on the background).
-
*Street Fighter V* has the Kanzuki Beach stage, a private beach owned by the character Karin and her family.
-
*Super Smash Bros.*: Starting from *Super Smash Bros. Melee*, there has been at least one battle stage set in a coast, namely one from a represented video game franchise: Great Bay from *The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask* in *Melee*, Delfino Plaza from *Super Mario Sunshine* in *Brawl* and the Wii U version of *4*, Tortimer Island from *Animal Crossing: New Leaf* in the 3DS version of *4*, and all of those in *Ultimate*. Starting from *Brawl*, characters can swim on the water for a brief period of time before sinking (in *Melee*, water is just a Bottomless Pit).
- The
*Tekken* series has a few. There's a secret beach stage in *2* when you meet the criteria in Arcade mode to fight Alex, *3* has the beach in the Tekken Ball minigame, *4* has the very big beach stage, and *Tag 2* has two: the "Eternal Paradise" stage, which is a beach resort, and "Coastline Sunset" located in the Philippines where the combatants fight on a road next to a bay/beach-y area.
- The Beach in
*Water Warfare*, where the copious damaging water and obstructions make the map difficult to navigate.
- The second level of
*Command & Conquer: Renegade* takes place in a beach assault that GDI is staging on Nod.
- The penultimate mission of
*Ghost Recon: Island Thunder*, letting you enjoy both a long walk on the beach and the wrath of an automatic grenade launcher.
-
*No More Heroes*: The Rank 6 stage takes Travis to the beaches of Santa Destroy, filled with explosive mines buried beneath the sands. There's a Side Job minigame that is set here as well, and the objective is to remove the mines to bring safety to the tourists.
- Reynard Beach and Zaylope Beach are two such examples in
*Ace Online*, although the palm trees have probably been long vaporised by the ongoing war between Arlington and Bygeniou.
-
*Wonderland Online* makes use of this trope in the starting areas.
-
*MapleStory* has the Florina Beach area, filled with monkeys, crabs, and turtles.
- In
*Dungeons & Dragons Online*, newly created (or reincarnated) level 1 (non-Iconic, which start in different areas and advance to level 15 when first created) characters start washed up on the beach of Korthos Island, the sole survivor of a dragon attack.
-
*Ragnarok Online* has Kokomo Beach, a beach area on the lower left of Midgard continent map, that's so secluded, most players (and NPCs!) don't go there. Another beach is in Comodo, a small piece of land that appears to be perpetually stuck in night time. Some oceanside maps also have small sections that counts as beach, although they went unnamed because they are attached to the mostly grassy/rocky land which takes up a huge portion of the map, and thus have the map named after the land instead.
-
*Mario Party*:
-
*Mario Party*: Yoshi's Tropical Island is a board set in two exotic islands: A sandy one in the west and a grassy one (with sand borders) in the east. Several giant fruits, such as bananas, pineapples and watermelos grow here; the palm trees have a unique multi-colored pattern in their leaves (green, yellow, red). The bridges that connect both islands are guarded by Thwomps, who won't let anyone pass unless they pay a price (the player can choose how much to pay, but the payment must be at least one coin higher than that of the previous character). The board returns in *Mario Party Superstars* as a Nostalgia Level.
-
*Mario Party 2*: Pirate Land is a board that goes through three islands: Two sandy and one rocky (with some grass). Players roleplay as ship captains (and are accordingly dressed as such); they can get a ride from a Sushi (shark) if they land next to a pier, being taken to another. If they land on an Event Space, they'll be forcefully launched back from a nearby pirate ship's cannon to the board's starter spot.
-
*Mario Party 3*: Waluigi's Island is a Hailfire Peaks mix between this setting and Eternal Engine. This combination of settings derives from the island having an industrial motif: Several Piranha Plants can be seen working on the making of an amusement park in the northeast, as well as *Mario Party* board spaces in the northwest and an artificial island made of ribbons tied with large screws in the west and southwest. The mini-island in the south has a large pile of orange dynamite sticks controlled by a countdown poster; when a player lands on a surrounding Event Space, the countdown (which starts at 5) will go down by 1. When it reaches zero (namely when these Event Spaces have been landed on a combined total of five times), the island will explode and all surrounding players will lose all their coins. At the center of the board is an advanced gear that serves as a randomly-operating junction; when a player is in front of it, they must time carefully when to jump onto it as the arrow lights are spinning clockwise, and the direction the player will take will be determined by the lit arrow when they land onto the gear. Lastly, the northwest mini-island is connected to the ones bordering it with two metallic drawbridges, one of which lies down and the other is erected; when a player lands onto an Event Space next to either of them, they'll switch states: The open drawbridge will rise up and the other one will lower..
-
*Mario Party 4*:
- Koopa's Seaside Soiree. Its Koopa host built the board to fulfill his dream of running a resort so his friends and visitors can have fun and relax. It takes place in a paradisial beach with palmtress in the coast, as well as treasure chests sunken in the lush, crystalline waters of the sea. Across the paths of the board placed above the water, there are three pairs of docks marked each with a distinct engraving: A barrel's cap, a watermelon and a pineapple. When a player stands on an Event Space in front of a dock, they can ride a dolphin to another dock with the same engraving. At the north lies a wide wooden floor where a Koopa is building a resort known as Koopa Cabana; whoever passes by has to pay money to contribute to its construction; if a player lands onto any of the nearby Event Spaces, they're asked to pay money to reserve a week-long stay in the resort. But as soon as the payment is done, a tidal wave destroys the building, forcing the Koopa to restart the construction from scratch.
- The minigame Pair-a-sailing has the characters form pairings to race in a sunny sea with small palmtree islands. In each duo, one character drives a boat while dodging wooden crates, while the other is gliding with a parachute tied to the boat and tries to grab the coins suspended in the air.
-
*Mario Party 6*: The board Castaway Bay takes place in a sunny archipelago that consists of three islands: One at the west with a grassy coast and a pier that extends to the southwest (in fact, that pier marks the starting point for the players), one at the north that is a rocky mountain with a big green faucet serving as the source of water for its river, and one at the east that is a wide grassland with some stone ruins and a lighthouse. The maritime area at the center has a small islet that is being surrounded by a riverboat run by DK and a battleship run by Bowser. Once a player travels through the three islands, they have to reach the Star Space in a pier that is west of the third island, and here come the big twist of the board: If DK has his riverboat docked in the pier, the gorilla will sell the player a Star for 20 coins, and take them back to the start of the board to repeat the cycle. If it's Bowser's battleship that is docked, then the evil Koopa King will give them a Ztar (which reduces the Star count by one) or take away 20 coins if the player has no Stars to begin with.
-
*Mario Party 8*: Goomba's Booty Boardwalk is a linear board that starts within a grassy island with several houses, goes across a sandy island with some palm trees, then across a slender island with concrete floor and some assorted features like bushy areas and a cave, and finally reaches a volcanic island with a treasure chest where Captain Goomba gives whoever gets there a Star for free. Once a character finishes the stroll, they're taken back to the start to begin a new one. During the stroll, a character can pay a fee to dolphins to these take them to a spot closer to the volcanic island; the catch is that the exact fee will depend on the character's current position, with the first-placed one paying the most and the last-placed one paying the least. The islands are chained one after another thanks to wooden bridges, which are also part of the board's playable path.
-
*Mario Party 9*: Blooper Beach takes the players on a boat ride through a series of tropical islands in the ocean. Along the way, they will encounter sea creatures like Dolphins and Sushies, but they must also watch out for the pirate ship controlled by the Huckit Crabs, which will cause the Mini-Stars on the board to turn into Mini-Ztars if someone lands on an Event space.
-
*Mario Party: Star Rush*: The World 1 boards take place on a series of tropical islands. 1-1 is three small islands with a wooden bridge connecting them all, 1-2 is a single large island in the shape of a star, and 1-3 has a series of wooden boardwalks the players can navigate.
-
*Mario Party: The Top 100*: The Beach Fun Pack contains minigames that all take place on a tropical coast, or out in the ocean.
-
*Super Mario Party*:
- The board Megafruit Paradise takes place on a series of tropical islands. Some of these islands happen to be giant fruit, thus overlapping with Level Ate and (and also giving the board a major reminiscence of Yoshi's Tropical Island from the very first
*Mario Party* game).
- Worlds 3 and 5 of Challenge Road have the map set on a tropical beach. In the background, different characters can be seen having fun in the sun in different ways, and various aquatic enemies can be seen, such as Cheep Cheeps and Huckit Crabs.
- Emerald Coast, the first board in
*Sonic Shuffle* combines this with Slippy-Slidey Ice World, due to Void's magic freezing half the board.
-
*Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy*: There are many areas located in the coastal geography of the game's setting, such as Sandover Village (a peaceful sandy town where Jak and his friends live), Geyser Rock (a small island not too far from Sandover which doubles as Noob Cave) and Rock Village (a less pretty landscape whose waters are inhabited by Lurker Sharks, thus making them unsafe for swimming). However, the most conventional example is Sentinel Beach, a wide-open perimeter west of Sandover Village with some grassy hills, abandoned huts, and mechanisms that harvest green Eco energy which have been blocked (Jak can fix them so green Eco can flow again).
-
*Sonic the Hedgehog*:
- The Trope Namer comes from
*Sonic the Hedgehog CD*, where it served as Green Hill Zone. Sea Gate in *Sonic Heroes* and the tutorial of *Sonic Rush Adventure* count as well.
- The titular level from Sonic CD features beautiful scenery full of palm trees, flowing water, and tropical vibes throughout it's time zones (Except for one).
- The Present is the resident Green Hill Zone for Little Planet, featuring a similar art style to Green Hill Zone with Palmtrees, a lake/sea in the background with some hills, and the familiar tunnels and loops, but a few differences to distinguish itself from Green Hill Zone.
- The Past puts somewhat of a Prehistoric twist on the present. The colors of the sky, water, and grass look faded as if you were looking at an old color photograph, and the music is a more laid back version of the present's music. There is also a noticeable lack of some of the machinery from the other time periods (save for Robotnik's machine and the Metal Sonic projector), an abundance of wild foliage, and the presence of some plant life that does not exist in the Present or the Futures.
- The Bad Future is a darker, and more industrialized version of this tropical paradise, if you can call it such. Thanks to all the pollution, the lush green foliage is now rotten brown, the once lush palm trees are now either rotting and decrepit, or transformed into metallic versions of their former selves, the water is much murkier, the skies are now dark and smoggy, and Robotnik's pollution plants and pipelines scatter across the landscape carrying a never ending stream of pollution.
- The Good Future may be a palette swapped version of the Bad Future, but the stage uses almost the same colors of the Present on the future landscape (Even the theme uses the same melody from the Present, with a few notes from the Past and Bad Future tracks). The pipelines now carry water for the plants and palm trees instead of harmful pollution from the Bad Future, and the Bad Future's pollution plants are now water treatment plants for the flourishing plant life.
- Even the original Green Hill Zone and its successors (Emerald Hill Zone and Sunset Hill Zone) have a coastline and palm trees in the background.
- Emerald Coast Zone from
*Sonic Adventure*, which serves as Sonic's first action stage, E-102 Gamma's second, and Big the Cat's third. In Sonic's section, Sonic searches for Tails after he crashes his plane, and at one point gets chased across the dock by an orca as it starts ripping it apart. In Gamma's, he seeks out Froggy, Big's pet frog, in the first part of Sonic's section, and in Big's, he fishes for Froggy near the Lighthouse Point that leads to the second part of Sonic's section.
-
*Sonic 3*'s Angel Island Zone also counts.
- Wave Ocean from
*Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)*.
- Adabat from
*Sonic Unleashed* is a cross between this trope, Jungle Japes and Temple of Doom.
- There is also Neo Green Hill Zone in
*Sonic Advance*, and Resort Island in *Sonic R*. The list just never stops growing.
- Tropical Resort Zone from
*Sonic Colors*. The dirt even has the same texture as the ground in Palmtree Panic.
- Seaside Hill and Ocean Palace from
*Sonic Heroes*, which also appear in the PS3/Xbox 360/PC version of *Sonic Generations*.
- Tropical Coast from
*Sonic Lost World*. 2 of the Zone's levels involve fruit.
- Seaside Island from
*Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice*.
- The
*Super Mario Bros.* series has plenty of these levels.
-
*Super Mario Bros. 3*: The non-Under the Sea levels of World 3 hint at this, featuring shallow water where Cheep Cheeps and the man-eating Boss Bass swim, and the world map gives off the theme with relaxing beach music, palmtrees and a canoe.
-
*Super Mario Land*: Muda Kingdom, the second world. The first two levels take place in the coast, while the third goes Under the Sea (Mario uses the Marine Pop there).
-
*Super Mario 64*: Though the original game averts the trope, the Nintendo DS remake introduces the bonus level Sunshine Isles, in which Mario and his friends look for Silver Stars that make up for a Power Star; the music is a remix of Delfino Plaza from *Super Mario Sunshine*.
-
*Super Mario Sunshine*: Gelato and Sirena Beaches and the beach outside of Pinna Park, albeit the latter two to a much lesser extent than the former. Gelato Beach includes small plants that, when fed with water, suddenly pop up large sandy dunes of varying shapes; the flagship mooks are the Cataquacks, but only the red ones are harmful. The beach outside Pinna Park is overrun by Snooza Koopas (which prevent the growth of sunflowers) and a Monty Mole operating a cannon. The outdoor area of Sirena Beach is invaded by Phantamanta, a large Mini-Boss with the form of a ghostly electric manta ray that leaves an electrified painting (colored yellow and blue) along its way.
-
*New Super Mario Bros.*: World 3 in *New Super Mario Bros.*, *New Super Mario Bros. 2* (a combination of this and Jungle Japes) and *New Super Mario Bros. U* (and by extension *New Super Luigi U*). *New Super Mario Bros. Wii* has it a bit later by using the setting in World 4 instead. Features include Huckits (red crabs which throw rocks at Mario and his friends), large-sized Urchins, and thick water geysers. The fan-made *Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii* has Yoshi's Island, the *first* world.
-
*Super Mario Galaxy* combines several of its water levels with a beach filled with a recurring cast of penguins in a swimming class (Beach Bowl Galaxy, Sea Slide Galaxy, Drip Drop Galaxy, and to a lesser extent Deep Dark Galaxy).
-
*Super Mario Galaxy 2*: The game has one in World 4, namely the Starshine Beach Galaxy, which is inhabited by Piantas. The large amount of water makes the collection of the Silver Stars (used to assemble a golded Power Star) difficult, but Yoshi's powerups make it easier.
-
*Super Mario 3D Land*: 6-1, S1-4, and S4-3 are coastal levels modeled after rocky capes with underwater areas.
-
*Super Mario 3D World*: The map of World 5, and the levels Plessie's Plunging Falls, Pipeline Lagoon and Sunshine Seaside. The former one has Mario and company riding alongside Plessie across a tropical river with cascades. The second one leans towards Under the Sea, and has a part where Mario and his friends can witness a beautiful underwater landscape with sunken ships as they travel across a Clear Pipe. The last one is set on a wide, open-ended beach with sandy statues, and continues with a subterranean river traversed with the help of Plessie.
-
*Super Mario Odyssey*: The Seaside Kingdom is a French Mediterranean-style beach with carbonated water. It is home to the snail-like Bubblainians, but also overrun by the squid-like Gushens and their King Mook Mollusque-Lanceur.
-
*Yoshi's Island DS*: Island of Peril, the third level of World 3, begins during afternoon in a rocky coast with palm trees occupied by Pirate Guys, and is followed by a pirate ship like that from the preceding level, a rocky island with vines that can be climbed with Baby DK, and ends with another pirate ship during nighttime.
-
*Wario Land*:
-
*Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3*: Rice Beach, which also serves as the first world of the game, is a coastal region located west of Kitchen Island with a Gangplank Galleon motif. There are boxes and barrels with Jolly Roger symbols across the sandy beach, caves with ephemeral platforms and lava pits, and Pouncers that must be avoided due to their deadly spikes.
- Palm Tree Paradise from
*Wario Land 4*, a breezy, straightforward walk that serves to introduce the last few major recurring elements to throw at the player.
-
*Cool Spot* begins with a beach level and ends with one.
-
*Jett Rocket* begins in one of these, called the Atoll. Strangely, the second level of the Atoll is a Death Mountain instead.
-
*Donkey Kong Country*:
-
*Donkey Kong 64*: The Hub Level DK Isles is this type of setting as a backseat in all islands except K Rool's (as it's purely mechanical, thus being Eternal Engine instead).
-
*Donkey Kong Country Returns*: The second world, simply named "Beach", is set on DK Isle's tropical beach amid the wrecks of numerous ships (overlapping with Gangplank Galleon). Crabs and squid abound, as does a very large squid monster that harasses the Kongs in one level. There's also a level with turbulent tides that can only be avoided by taking shelter in rocky spots, as touching the tides spells instant death.
-
*Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze* features this for its first world, though in a unique twist the predominant plants are not palm trees, but giant mangroves. Most of the (few) non-underwater parts of the fourth world, Sea Breeze Cove play it straight by having actual palmtress. Finally, ||the revisited Beach area in DK Island|| in World 6 is a frozen variant, where the water is so cold it's harmful for the Kongs.
-
*Ape Escape* gives us the whole Oceana level set, with Crabby Beach, Coral Cave, and Dexter's Island (where the level takes place primarily inside a dinosaur).
- The first planet of
*Blender Bros* is Oasis, a seaside planet. However, it's slightly different in that it's a heavily populated futuristic planet, so it's an urban port city.
-
*The Flintstones*: In the Licensed Game of the same name for the Sega Genesis, the first level, Leaf Rock, takes place on a beach. At one point, Fred runs off a cliff and is about to fall in the water, but lands on a shark, who takes him to dry land, which the shark immediately starts ripping apart. The boss of the stage is a dinosaur riding a giant eggbeater, who has stolen Wilma's necklace.
- In
*McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure*, the first half of the third world, Magical Sea, takes place on a beach.
-
*Napple Tale* contains an oceanfront-themed level called Once Summer. The later half of it follows the seabed, but the ocean magically parts to form a passage, allowing the heroine to proceed on dry land. It's for the best, since she has Super Drowning Skills.
-
*Kuru Kuru Kururin*: The levels in World 2 (Ocean) go through a beautiful, pristine ocean in which marine animals like sea turtles, fish and crabs can be seen. The levels' paths have a curvier layout compared to those of the first world, but aren't particularly challenging; however, they do introduce the wall springs, which invert the rotating orientation of Kururin's ship, which comes in handy to traverse curves or corner that are impossible to go through if the ship isn't rotating with the right orientation.
-
*Riven: The Sequel to Myst* has the titular world of Riven, a cataclysmic tropical world where you're tasked with capturing the tyrant Gehn and rescuing the residents before the world collapses.
-
*Banjo-Pilot*:
- Treasure Trove Cove, which serves as the first track of the Jiggy Cup.
- Jolly Roger's Lagoon, which serves as the fourth and final track of the Beehive Cup.
- Breegull Beach, which serves as the second track of the Feather Cup.
- The Big Blue stages in
*F-Zero GX*.
-
*Hydro Thunder* has the Lost Island, which is a racecourse through the rivers of an island in the Pacific with stock tropical setpieces along the sides of the track.
-
*Iggy's Reckin' Balls* has Soft Sun Bay, set on a sunny beach with a lot of beach-goers. Unlike most examples of this trope, however, it's in the mid-game, not the early game. Courses set in Soft Sun Bay do show up right from near the start, but the game does not actually feature it until World 4.
- Every
*Mario Kart* game has had at least one original beach course. Most of them are placed near the beginning as far as difficulty goes, but there are a few outliers: exceptions occured, the following tracks are in the Mushroom Cup while Port Town tracks can be found on the dedicated article. This is the list of beach-themed courses over the *Mario Kart* series, with some of them reappearing as retro tracks:
-
*Super Mario Kart* - Star Cup has Koopa Beach 1 while Special Cup has Koopa Beach 2;
-
*Mario Kart 64* has Koopa Troopa Beach;
-
*Mario Kart: Super Circuit* has Shy Guy Beach, Lightning Cup has Cheep Cheep Island, Extra Lightning Cup has Koopa Beach 1 and Extra Special Cup has Koopa Beach 2;
-
*Mario Kart: Double Dash!!* has Peach Beach, which takes the drivers through a sandy coast inhabited by Cataquacks;
-
*Mario Kart DS* - Mushroom Cup has Cheep Cheep Beach while Leaf Cup has SNES Koopa Beach 2 and the Battle Mode stage Palm Shore is on small tropical islands occasionally submerged by water;
-
*Mario Kart Wii* - Star Cup has Koopa Cape, Shell Cup has GCN Peach Beach and Banana Cup has GBA Shy Guy Beach, while the Battle Mode stage Delfino Pier, while closer to a docking zone than a beach level, still qualifies because of the raising water;
-
*Mario Kart 7* has Cheep Cheep Lagoon, Star Cup's Maka Wuhu starts and ends on a beach, Banana Cup has N64 Koopa Troopa Beach, Lightning Cup has Wii Koopa Cape, and DS Palm Shore comes back in Battle Mode;
-
*Mario Kart 8* - Star Cup has Dolphin Shoals while Shell Cup has DS Cheep Cheep Beach and Crossing Cup Animal Crossing track has a small beach section;
- ''Mario Kart Tour - One of the variants of Los Angeles Laps goes through the beach of the eponymous US city, in races celebrated during early afternoon (a few other city tracks take place near beaches or lakes as well, but the areas in question serve mostly as background scenery with next-to-nil impact in gameplay).
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*Mario Kart Arcade GP* and *Mario Kart Arcade GP 2* - Mario Cup has Mario Highway and Mario Beach;
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*Mario Kart Arcade GP DX* - Mario Cup has Splash Circuit and Tropical Coast.
-
*ModNation Racers*' track editor can let you make tracks in a beach area if you chose to go with a Seaside Setting.
-
*Pokémon Dash* is set within a series of islands, so of course there is plenty of coastline.
- There are a few of these (such as Baroo Coast) in
*Star Wars Episode I: Racer*. They're a real pain, because sand noticeably slows you down and water just stops you outright.
-
*Pikmin* has the Distant Spring in the first game, Perplexing Pool (which is a revisited form of Distant Spring) in the second, and Tropical Wilds in the third, all areas themed around sandy beaches with multiple pools and other areas of shallow water. Due to the abundance of water, the areas are explored more easily with the Blue Pikmin. Enemies are often aquatic or amphibious and, in the Tropical Wilds, the boss is a Sand Worm fought on the beachside proper.
- Due to the emphasis on water units many maps in
*Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3* take place in locations like this. This applies to both campaign and skirmish maps.
-
*Kingdom Hearts* has one of these both at the beginning and the end of the game in the form of Destiny Islands and a destroyed version of the islands' main area respectively. The latter returns in *Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage-* as the site of the final boss battle against a massive swarm of Heartless.
-
*Final Fantasy*:
-
*Final Fantasy VII* has Costa Del Sol.
-
*Final Fantasy XI* has Bibiki Bay, Valkurm Dunes, and Buburimu Peninsula.
- The first third or so of
*Final Fantasy X* once you get out of Zanarkand is Palmtree Panic, comprising Besaid and Kilika Islands.
-
*Final Fantasy XII* has Phon Coast near Arcadia. One of the few instances of the characters relaxing and acting juvenile.
- There's also Sunset Beach in Bodhum from
*Final Fantasy XIII*, which subverts it by only being part of an interactive flashback sequence. It was originally planned to have been a proper level, but it never made it into the final game.
-
*EarthBound (1994)* has Summers, a beach resort town about midway through the game. It's quite a bit more relaxed in pace than the previous areas, though not safe - overzealous cops, muscled beach jocks, taxis and street signs are still out to get you, albeit at a low encounter rate. Also references overinflated prices at tourist resorts by jacking up the price on everything at shops.
-
*Wizardry 8* has Bayjin, a tropical-themed area inhabited by Rynjin.
-
*Mass Effect*: Virmire. A beautiful beach area, completely unlike the desolate or otherwise depressing locations in the other main-quest missions up to that point, yet it's also one of the most dramatic locations in the game.
-
*Xenosaga* gives us Pedea Island in the beginning of the third game, which really contrasts with the whole futuristic outerspace setting of the series.
- The Beach Stretch of Gal Da Val in
*Phantasy Star Online* Episode II.
-
*Mario & Luigi*:
- Bloo Bay Beach in
*Paper Mario: Color Splash*. The entire level is on a tropical beach resort and features fish-like Cheep Cheeps leaping out of the water to attack. Its story involves a beach contest that turns out to be rigged and saving a Toad that was shipwrecked.
- Isle Galados, one of worlds in
*Miitopia*.
- Most
*Pokémon* games have at least one beach area. There aren't any wild Pokemon on the beaches themselves, but go surfing and you'll run into plenty of Tentacool/Tentacruel and Wingull/Pelipper, plus things like Goldeen/Seaking and Mantyke from time to time. (Frillish/Jellicent in Gen V). The Swimmer, Tuber and Sailor trainer classes are often found here. Plenty of other water Pokémon are found by fishing with various rods. *Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire* and Emerald seem to have the most individual beach areas, due to Hoenn being a warm, tropical region with lots of coastline, but there's plenty of coast in the first five gens. *Pokémon Sun and Moon* also has plenty of beach areas due to being based on Hawaiʻi. The spinoff game *Pokémon Snap* has the Beach stage.
-
*Dark Chronicle*: "Goodbye, Shingala", Chapter 4, is set at the beachside village of Veniccio. The action segments take place in the Ocean's Roar Cave dug into the nearby cliff.
-
*Endless Ocean* and its sequel are made of this,since your base is a tropical island.
- Tortuga archipelgo in
*Fantasy Life*, complete with actual palmtree-based enemies.
-
*Romancing Saga 3*: Great Arch. The main point of interest on this beach resort town are the treasure maps sold by the locals. Herman is found and can be recruited here as well and he plays a pivotal role in the sidequest involving the dolphin statue from Vanguard.
-
*Monster Hunter*:
-
*Monster Hunter (2004)*: The Old Jungle leads into coastal areas with palm trees and sandy shores, here you will most commonly confront monsters such as Plesioth.
-
*Monster Hunter 2 (dos)*: The new Jungle has many of its western areas bordered by a coast. One of them even leads to a small island where certain large monsters come to rest when they're about to be defeated.
-
*Monster Hunter Frontier*: In addition to featuring the new Jungle from *Dos*, the game also has the Tide Island, where you fight monsters in a tropical island landscape.
-
*Monster Hunter 4*: One of the villages, Cheeko Sands, is located in a coast southeast of Val Habar and far east of Harth. From there, you can access Sunsnug Isle, which houses a Fishing Minigame as well as the Meownster Hunter quests. The trope is averted with the village's associated hunting area (Primel Forest), as while you can see the coast from a distance in its first numbered zone, the area as a whole is located deeper into the dense swamp that geographically borders with the Everwood.
- Both
*Divinity: Original Sin* games have their first Act set along a lovely beach.
- Blastnya in
*Heavy Weapon* combines this with Remilitarized Zone. Amusingly, you can see sunbathers relaxing on the beach even when it's raining bombs.
- The entirety of
*Island Wars* takes place on small islands in the sea, and the Palm Trees on the island serve as a player's Video-Game Lives. Depending on the mode, you're either trying to bomb the heck out of another player's trees while defending your own, or both players are desperately trying to protect their trees from an invading enemy force.
- Summer Star in
*Space Invaders '95: Attack of the Lunar Loonies!* has its first three stages set on a beach, with enemies taking cover behind sand dunes and palm trees.
-
*RollerCoaster Tycoon* had a few: Bumbly Beach, Big/Paradise Pier (1 & 2), Haunted Harbor and Dragon Cove.
-
*Backyard Baseball* has the Boardwalk.
-
*Golf Story* has Bermuda Islands as its beach area. The golf courses have plenty of sand with fewer greens, but considering balls tend to bounce on greens into the water, the sands are actually a blessing in disguise.
- Vice City in the
*Grand Theft Auto* series.
- Vespucci Beach, Del Perro and Chumash in
*Grand Theft Auto V*.
- The Island in
*Stacklands* is where your villagers can gather resources that can't be found on the Mainland such as glass and gold. It can be reached by boat, and villagers can go fishing to cook seafood products. However, food will eventually spoil if left out for too long and will turn into goop. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PalmtreePanic |
Pakistani Media - TV Tropes
A list of media originating from Pakistan or by Pakistani creators.
Actors
Animation
Film
Literature
Music
Live-Action TV | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PakistaniMedia |
Palette Swap - TV Tropes
Wait till ya meet Reptile, Smoke, Noob Saibot, Ermac, Rain, Chameleon...
*"It's just like the old days, reusing the boss, changing its color and pretending it is completely new."*
In 2D game development, the creation of sprites is labor-intensive. One cost-effective method for increasing the variety of game characters is to reuse the same sprite, but using a different color palette.
This is seen in some platformers, but it most often appears in Role Playing Games and Fighting Games. In fighting games, this is commonly used to differentiate players using the same character, but it is also employed to create "new" characters. In the 8- and 16-bit era RPGs, it was pervasive: because of console limitations, disk and screen space were serious concerns. Palette Swapping was used to create a large variety of different enemies, often using different colors for various power levels. The most famous group of these are probably the Slimes, topped by the powerful Metal Slime, of
*Dragon Quest* fame.
A more elaborate variation found in 3D games is the Texture Swap, where the textures on the character's uniform are changed, but the actual model used remains the same. While the concept is a little different, these are often called Palette Swaps anyway as they're still easier for developers to make than a full-fledged alternate costume or character. The Head Swap is another tried-and-true technique for making more out of less.
Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs) are often set in a very large world that must be populated by monsters. Palette Swap to the rescue! By changing the size and textures used on the same model, the designers can make many types of monsters from only a few basic meshes. Sometimes even bosses are simply re-textured and are huge versions of weaker monsters.
Some fans of fighting games use the term to refer to characters that use the same animations and move sets, even if the characters look very different. Such characters are also known as "clones". Individual characters may also have a choice of several different colors or costumes (or both).
Caution: Tropes Are Tools. Palette swapping may be a shortcut, but it does allow designers to create enemies that keep pace with the player's progress while still hinting that the enemies will follow a familiar pattern. This is especially important when a given area is intended to be fast-paced or lead up to a climax, and the designers don't want the player stopping constantly to study "new" enemies. Also, can be used for worldbuilding: using palette-swapped monsters can hint at connections between otherwise disparate locations. In the case of bosses it can be used to hint at relationships between creatures that might not otherwise be apparent to the player.
One of the best ways developers found to make this trope smarter and loved by the audience, is use it as references, usually to other aspects of a franchise, when videogames have sequels, characters can have their original clothes from previous games back, superheroes in videogames can have multiple uniforms from their history in comics, TV shows and movies, characters who were completely redesigned over the years or with reboots can get reverted to their original designs, characters who appeared or debuted in the early days of 3D graphics like the PlayStation 1 or the Nintendo 64 can get turned into their low-poly models from those times, and even pallete swaps that are just alternate colors can work as references, this trope can also be used to reference other unrelated works.
Palette Swaps are also used in Sprite Comics, where they're known as recolors. They are frequently looked down upon. Outside of videogames, nearly all toylines will reuse parts with some colors changed, as much of the cost of a new toy comes from making the steel injection mold used to create parts. This can sometimes result in most of the line effectively being the same character with a different head and accessories, and is a major reason for the prevalence of the Environment-Specific Action Figure.
For a similar time-saving technique, see Ambidextrous Sprite. See also Colour-Coded for Your Convenience. Often associated with Moveset Clone in fighting games. Separate, but Identical is this trope for strategy games, which can also be Palette Swaps. For the level/world equivalent, see Remixed Level and Hard Mode Filler.
Palette swaps can be used to make Underground Monkeys, different colors to show different elemental affinities with Color-Coded Elements, Palette-Swapped Alien Food, or just a different variant.
## Examples:
- The Sheredyn of
*Endless Space* were original a clone of the United Empire, albeit with gold/red/black ships rather than gunmetal gray, and were exclusive to the Emperor Edition of the game. Following the release of the *Disharmony* Expansion Pack, all owners of the base game were upgraded to the Emperor Edition, and the Sheredyn received a unique Affinity and bonuses separate (but similar) to the United Empire, though their ships remain as palette swap.
-
*Endless Legend* continues the tradition with the Mezari, exclusive to owners of the Founder Pack for an entirely different spinoff game. They have a unique leader in the diplomacy screen and alternate texture layouts for their units, but are otherwise identical to the Vaulters.
-
*Anodyne 2: Return to Dust*: Played for Drama. ||Zera, Nova's Replacement Goldfish looks exactly like Nova except their skin is darker, their visor is gold, and their skirt is red instead of green.||
- In
*Blaster Master*, the Stage 6 and 7 bosses are palette swaps of the Stage 2 and 4 bosses, respectively. The palette-swapped versions were very hard to beat.
- The
*Blaster Master Zero* games get this pretty bad; every boss in the second game is fought at least twice, and they still bring some of them back for the third!
-
*Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King*: True to the early Zelda games it's paying tribute to, most later enemies are simply recolored versions of earlier ones, with maybe a few more hit points or a new attribute.
-
*Castlevania*: The handheld games since *Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance* have been accused of palette swapping (some point out the Saturn Port of *Castlevania: Symphony of the Night* had Maria's spells being copied out of *Gradius* games, showing that this practice has been around much longer then most initially suspected). The palette swapping of the Metroidvania games shares a common source point: *Castlevania: Rondo of Blood*. Almost everything else is from *Castlevania: Symphony of the Night* instead. This is literally sprite reuse going from 1993 to about now. Harmony was worst about this though: many enemies had level 2 and even level 3 versions.
-
*Cave Story*:
-
*Earth Defense Force 2025*: The game and the first DLC make extensive use of larger palette swapped elite enemies.
- In
*Golden Axe Warrior*, most enemies appear in at least two of the three basic colors: green, blue and red.
-
*The Hobbit (2003)*: Several of the dwarves look the same except for their hoods. The book doesn't give them any more traits than that either.
-
*Island Saver*:
- The Golden Eggs share the same sprite as the Nest Eggs, only golden-coloured. Similarly, there are two different kinds of Fishberry in the game that can be distinguished by the tail colour - green tailed berries are for the turtles on Sandy Island and purple-tailed berries are for the Pteranodon on Dinosaur Island.
- This can be done intentionally with bankimals by shooting paintballs purchased from Pigby's store at them.
-
*Keith Courage in Alpha Zones*: The Final Boss is a gold-colored version of the Area 4 boss accompanied by an invincible purple walker drone.
-
*Legacy of the Wizard*: Many of the game's colorful dungeons use a specific color scheme for similar background sprites.
-
*The Legend of Spyro*:
- Apes are recolored to fit the various levels they are found in, without affecting their strength or abilities. In the first game there are gray, unadorned Apes in the Swamp, frosty white ones in fur coats in Dante's Freezer, red ones in Mayincatec costumes in the Tall Plains, golden-furred ones in iron armor in the Munitions Forge, and white ones with spiky purple armor in Concurrent Skies. The second has Apes in ninja clothes during the Dragon Temple attack and purple-furred and -armored ones in the Mountain Fortress.
- The Apes' dreadwing mounts similarly appear in regionally-appropriate palettes, with blue-grey ones with tan manes in Dante's Freezer, blue ones with orange wings and manes in the Tall Plains, dark purple ones with lighter, more reddish wings and manes in the Munitions Forge, and gray ones with cyan manes and pink wings in Concurrent Skies.
- A number of minibosses — the Ice King, Electric King, Executioner and Elemental Spirits — use the same base model of a giant armored warrior, just with different colorations and elemental effects.
-
*The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night*: The Elemental Dragon is a recolor of Cynder's giant form from *A New Beginning*, minus her jewelry and plus a translucent effect. In-universe, this is specifically because it takes the form of its foes' greatest fears and, at the time, Spyro's is the thought of Cynder returning to evil.
-
*The Legend of Zelda*:
- It's common to palette swap even
*Link* for his different tunics or mails. Same style and cut, different color. Like the fire-proof tunic (red), and the inexplicable *water-breathing tunic* (blue). It wasn't until *The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess* that the different tunics actually looked different beyond their colors.
-
*The Legend of Zelda*: Most monsters come in red and blue, with one color (usually blue) being tougher than the other.
-
*Zelda II: The Adventure of Link*: Orange is added for weaker variants of enemies, with red being stronger than orange and blue being stronger than red, though with armed enemies the weapons often change with the color (such as the orange variant of the Daira enemy in Death Mountain swinging its axe at Link and the red variant *throwing* axes at him).
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask* has two elemental versions of Wizzrobe (ice and fire). The ice version is the Mini-Boss of Snowhead Temple, while the fire version appears as a miniboss in Ikana Castle and is degraded to an enemy in Stone Tower Temple.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks*: There are two forms of Geozard, green and red. The red one is stronger, to the point that it's a Mini-Boss.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword*:
- The first few enemies Link faces in Lanayru Mine and Lanayru Desert are electric versions of monsters he met in Faron Woods and/or Eldin Volcano: Electro Spume, Thunder Keese, Yellow ChuChu, Technoblin. Afterwards, he finds more unique enemies.
- The primary bestiary in the sixth dungeon, Fire Sanctuary, consists of dark-purple versions of enemies (Cursed Spume, Dark Keese, Dark Lizalfos), while the boss Ghirahim (first fought in Skyview Temple) takes a form that has some parts of his body turned black. Notably, the dungeon is still fire-themed. There's also the Cursed Bokoblin, but it only appears in the Ancient Cistern.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*:
- The monsters come in red (green for the Lizalfos), blue, black, and silver (with the DLC adding gold) and get progressively stronger along that spectrum, with their eyes also getting progressively redder.
- Pebblits and Taluses come in purely aesthetic color variants depending on where they're found — most are the same light grey as most common rocks, but others are dark gray, sandstone-red, or mossy green, and one Talus found in the Zora's Domain area is blue like the local rocks.
- Most of the dogs found around stables are colored like border collies, but a few are a uniform dark grey or light tan instead.
- Most of the small ambient critters, such as pigeons, sparrows, lizards and various insects, have several recolors each found in different areas of Hyrule.
-
*Hyrule Warriors*: Fiery Aeralfos are flaming red-versions of Aeralfos. Icy Big Poes are icy blue-versions of Big Poes.
-
*Tomb Raider III* has Sophia Leigh, one of the artifact holders, whose face texture looks exactly like Lara's although Sophia has makeup.
- Three of the bosses in
*Wonder Boy in Monster Land* have their sprites reused later in the game, Death becomes the Poor God, who steals your gold coins, the Giant Kong is palette-swapped as the Snow Kong, who summons ice cube-throwing Mini-Kongs instead of throwing rocks, and the Red Knight has Blue and Silver variations.
- The
*Bomberman* series generally gives the combatants their color based on their player slot (Player 1 is white, Player 2 is black, Player 3 is red, etc.) A notable variation of this is the Fan Game *Power Bomberman*, where the palette swaps give a few characters such as Hige Hige Combatant new outfits, and others like Land Bomberman change their design entirely.
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*The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle* (a port of a Famicom Disk System game starring Roger Rabbit-don't ask) has differently-colored enemies of the same type that behave slightly differently.
- The
*Special Edition* of *Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening* plays this perfectly straight. When playing as Vergil and you come to the boss battles against Vergil (the game is usually played as Dante, with the Vergil playability a feature of the Special Edition), the Vergil you fight is dressed in red instead of his usual blue. Apparently it's to give the impression that you're fighting Dante, but the only difference between the two versions is the colour; the boss' moveset remains the same.
-
*Devil May Cry 4*:
-
*Devil May Cry 5*:
- The "mirage" versions of Goliath, Artemis, and Cavaliere Angelo are completely recolored in a ghostly pale white to differentiate them from their original counterparts.
- Alternate "EX" costumes don't modify much detail apart from changing the color palette, although there are subtle exceptions. Most of these costumes are just palette swaps of pre-existing color themes from the previous games; EX Dante has
*DmC* Dante's colors, EX Nero has Credo's colors from *DMC4*, EX Trish has Gloria's colors when she was disguised in *DMC4*, EX Lady simply references Trish's default colors, and EX Vergil references his color palette from *DMC3*.
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*Rengoku*: The boss of ||HEAVEN-66|| is just Gryphus but blue instead of red.
- In the
*Rolling Thunder* series, the attack patterns and hit points of the Maskers can be determined by the colors of their clothes and hoods.
- Steve's jacket in
*Shatterhand* turns from green to red when he buys the double strength Power-Up.
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*Captain Commando*: Plenty to go around. For example, three of the bosses, Shtrom, Shtrom Jr, and Druk, are all the same body with different colors- purple, yellow, and pink respectively.
-
**Exaggerated** in *Cosmo Police Galivan*. The game has mooks in each stage, but appearance-wise (excluding bosses) there's actually only **4** enemy designs - the skinny "Shade" foes (ninja-like mooks with Wolverine Claws), the caveman-like "Oger", the robotic "Borg" and perhaps the only one that's remotely unique, the Starfish Aliens-esque "Grader". The entirety of the game have you fighting recoloured, palette-swapped incarnations of these four, over and over again, for around eight levels (or at least 40 minutes of gameplay). What's more baffling is that it's not like the game suffers from graphic limitations - the backgrounds have plenty of scary-looking foes, like those reptilian horse-creatures in the amusement park stage, the flying oversized piranhas, the skull-headed giants armed with gigantic swords and Snake People creatures, but in the context of the game itself, these are either background objects the players couldn't interact with or statues meant to fill up space.
-
*Cyborg Justice*: The player character can choose torso, weapon and legs which are interchangeable and used by virtually every other cyborg in every level at some point including bosses. The only unique enemy in the entire game is the end boss who is a giant brain. If you play with two players, then player 1 is primary gold and player 2 is primarily purple.
- The arcade version of
*Double Dragon*, in addition to the two player characters (Billy and Jimmy Lee), has a set of three enemy mooks (Williams, Rowper and Abobo) that it uses for every stage, but with a different palette each time, along with the occasional black variants. The two bosses, who are themselves head swaps of other characters, reappear in the final two stages as well (in particular, the third boss is the first boss with green skin). The only enemies who don't have palette swapped variants are Linda (who wears the same purple outfit in all of her appearances) and Machine Gun Willy (the final boss).
-
*Fairy Bloom*: V3.03 has red versions of the protagonist as the enemy horde's components.
- The character designs in
*Fear Is Vigilance* are basically limited to three: male, female, and Marcy in disguise. Everything else is palette swapping.
-
*Final Fight* mostly averts this by making variants of the same enemy head swaps as well, but there are a few notable exception:
- Roxy is just Poison with orange hair and everyone in the Andore clan are identical except for the colors of their clothing (lavender for the standard Andore, red for Junior, gold for Father, black for Uncle and blue for Grandpa). There are also red-clothed variants of Holly Wood who carries Molotov cocktails instead of his usual knives.
-
*Final Fight 2* for the SNES has a cheat code that allows both players to use the same character if selected, distinguishing the second player with a different palette.
- The GBA version of the original game,
*Final Fight One*, also allowed two players to choose the same character after defeating a certain number of enemies.
- Some of the enemies from
*The Gladiator* are just modified sprites of each other, notably the bandit legions which are The Goomba - brown for foot soldiers, reds are sergeants, greens have ranged attacks, etc. For the heroes, the Shang-guan sisters, Shang-Guan Jin and Shang-Guan Xue, are palette-swapped as well, though there's an in-universe justification that they're twin sisters (on different sides).
-
*Golden Axe* has a huge amount of palette-swapped characters, from the mooks to the bosses to the Bizzarians to the energy-replenishing elves.
- Some of the enemies from
*Jitsu Squad* are recolored versions of existing sprites. Notably, the green-clad goomba-variety ninja gets recoloured as brown versions armed with Wolverine Claws and blue versions who uses bombs. There's also the recurring red Oni enemy, and their green brethren in the final stage, using the same sprites.
-
*Legionnaire* have numerous enemies which are recoloured versions of existing sprites. In particular, the Dual Boss, Dragon and Tiger, uses the same body but wear different-coloured robes (one wears blue with magenta markings, one wears magenta with blue markings, no we can't tell which is which).
-
*Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers* for the SNES did this. While the unmorphed rangers are distinct from each other, when they morph, the suit they wear is basically Jason's (Red Ranger) suit colored five different colors. You can tell because of how the helmet looks, how buff the less physical rangers get, and the fact that Kimberly (Pink Ranger) doesn't have her skirt.
- Negative Mazinger from
*Mazin Saga: Mutant Fighter* is a clone of your titular character, recoloured white instead of blue, but otherwise using your own sprite all the way. You also face a Boss Rush late into the game, where the revived bosses are just recoloured sprites of the bosses' previous forms.
- In
*Ninja Combat* for the Neo Geo, the main characters, Joe and Hayabusa, are red and blue palette swaps of each other. This Lazy Artist technique is painfully obvious in the cutscenes, which have obviously the same renderings of these characters being horizontally flipped and palette-swapped between shots.
- The arcade version of
*Ninja Gaiden* (aka *Shadow Warriors*) features six stages, the same four staple adversaries, a few novelties here and there, three distinct end of stage bosses, one final boss, and a different palette for each stage. There are also ninja mooks who are just palette swaps of the player characters (who are already themselves palette swaps of each other).
-
*River City Ransom* recycles the same enemy gang of nine members by changing the colors of their t-shirts, as well as modifying their stats and attack patterns.
-
*Karate Blazers* recycles the sprites for it's mooks. Notably, there's an unnamed dreadlocked enemy (which gamers call "Jamaican thugs") which uses the same head three◊ times◊ over◊.
- In
*Robo Army*, while the player characters' humanoid forms are Head Swaps, their Super Buggy forms are identical except in color. One enemy is a green version of the second player character.
-
*Shui Hu Feng Yun Zhuan*, an unofficial Chinese remake of *Knights of the Round* (based on The Water Margin), blatantly plagiarizes sprites from various games as their enemies and bosses, to laughable levels (and nicking some musical scores here and there too). There's notably bald axe-wielding mooks lifted from *Golden Axe*, spear-wielding enemies taken from *Knights of the Round*, and shielded soldiers from *The King of Dragons*, with some minor edits here and there. Even without prior context of the plagiarism, something still feels a bit off in the game, since it's set in Ancient China, yet enemy soldiers are wearing Medieval armor that looks more fitting for the Authurian Era, holding long lances fitting for European knights, or viking-like shields and armours, because they're practically transplanted from a bunch of unrelated games set in Europe.
- The
*Streets of Rage* series used palette swaps for enemies very often
- In the "Dueling" mode featured in the sequels, the second player is assigned a different palette if he chooses the same character as the first player.
- In the first game, Onihime and Yasha (aka Mona and Lisa), the twin bosses in Round 5, were both palette swaps of Blaze but with a green outfit instead of red. In Round 8, they appear one more time with a dark purple outfit. When the twins returned in
*Streets of Rage 3*, they were given a unique design.
- In the third game, the boss of Round 3 was a robot copy of Axel, only difference was his gloves were purple instead of red so that players who played in co-op wouldn't attack each other by mistake if one of them was playing as Axel.
- Also in the third game, Shiva and Roo (plus Ash in the Japanese version) change palettes when they become player characters.
-
*The Super Spy*, owing to it being an *old* arcade title, will constantly reuse sprites for enemies. The recurring balaclava-clad mooks, for example, are faceless goons in black, blue, purple, white armor, and sometimes a mix of colours.
- The Foot Clan ninjas in
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game* and *Turtles in Time* come in numerous colors in addition to the standard purple variant from the 1980s animated series. The Foot Soldiers are color coded to indicate their weapons of choice. For example, the white Foot Soldiers attack with katanas, while the orange ones wield boomerangs.
- In
*Disney's Math Quest with Aladdin*, the Wizard Pharaoh Very Ankh-Amman appears as a ghostly mummy head with a different color scheme each time you meet him.
-
*BioShock* only had a few distinct Splicer models, with palette swapping used (mostly on their clothes) to make them slightly less identical. Of all the characters in the first game, only Sander Cohen, Andrew Ryan, and Frank Fontaine in his final boss form have a unique model. This would be largely averted in the sequel, where most of the game's principal characters have their own model.
-
*Blood*:
- The only visual difference between various types of cultists is the color of their robes: regular cultists wear brown robes, fanatics wear black robes, acolytes wear green robes, zealots wear blue robes and the priest wears red robes.
- Stone gargoyles look exactly like regular gargoyles, except that they have a different texture and are bigger in size.
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*Borderlands*:
- Visually, this is the only difference between gun brands. Each manufacturer has a palette with a few variations.
Atlas: White with black contrasts.
Dahl: Military camo (shades of green, bluish-grey, or brown with dark brown).
Hyperion: Bright red or crimson, sometimes with grey details.
Jakobs: Reddish-orange or brown, like wood.
Maliwan: Blue of varying hues.
S&S: Yellow, sometimes faded orange with pale yellow contrasts.
Tediore: Light grey of slightly varying hues.
Torgue: Grey to jet, like raw iron and steel.
Vladof: Bright orange with steel-grey or white highlights.
- In a more general sense that goes beyond the first game, there are bright lines or accessories with colors that denote the element the weapon fires. Fire elemental guns have them in red, electric ones get them in vibrant blue, corrosives are green, explosives were yellow (before Torgue took the element for itself from
*Borderlands 2* and on), slag is purple, and ice is light blue.
- In
*Conduit 2*, the models of the soldiers are all the same, but the armor they wear is chosen randomly.
-
*Doom*:
-
*Doom*: The game uses palette swaps mostly for changing the uniform color of different players in multiplayer mode (the green armor becomes indigo, brown and red for players 2, 3 and 4); however a variant of palette swap is used for one of the monsters: the Spectre is a Demon whose sprite's shape is replaced by a zone of transparent static.
-
*Doom II*: A palette swap was used to create the Hell Knight from the Baron of Hell; however, both sets of sprites are present in the game's data and the two are treated by the game as totally separate enemy types, other than being hard-coded against the usual rules for taking and responding to friendly fire. Doom RPG, however, has "classes" of enemies that change palettes according to their type and subsequent difficulty.
- BUILD Engine games, such as
*Duke Nukem 3D* and *Shadow Warrior*, make use of palette changes on sprites and surfaces for a number of uses.
- A number of surfaces which basically look the same, but have something a different colour (such as a row of tiles on a wall) use an internal palette change to provide more graphical variety without needing to include more textures.
- Coloured lighting uses a palette change over the whole palette of anything in the area in question.
- The ever-common alien Troopers and Captains in
*Duke Nukem 3D* use the same sprites, but different internal palettes. The base sprites use blue for the uniform, but the Troopers use a palette that replaces it with green and the captains use one that replaces it with red.
- On a similar note, the different colours of the trousers on the player sprites in multiplayer games are the result of palette swaps.
- Putting the same palette used for blue light onto a sprite such as a weapon or switch in the level editor will (at least for
*Duke Nukem 3D*) make that sprite only appear in deathmatch games.
- Different palettes on special sprites which control level functionality can have various effects, ranging from simply changing the colour of a light to making a teleporter that doesn't show the usual teleporter effects, to determining what kind of enemy teleports in.
- Palette swaps combined with translucency are also used to give the enemies shadows. Squash a copy of the sprite vertically, put it on the ground, put an all-black palette on it, then make it translucent. Some levels also use all-black translucent palette swaps of sprites to add nice shadows to certain areas.
- Then there are user-made levels which give oddly-coloured enemies via palette swaps just for the fun of it. Some sadistic authors put the all-black palette on the enemies and make them transparent. Great, now you're fighting almost-invisible aliens.
-
*Half-Life 2*: The Overwatch transhuman infantry serving guard duty in Nova Prospekt prison have a unique uniform; while the standard Overwatch soldiers have a navy blue camo pattern and blue optics, Nova Prospekt prison guards have yellow optics, a dark ultramarine-ish color with blue stripe and a Nova Prospekt insignia. This is also the case with Shotgun Soldiers, whom have orange optics and dark reddish-brown uniforms, but otherwise behave identically to standard Overwatch soldiers with shotguns (and in fact replaced those following the update that added them in).
- The original
*Halo* trilogy does this with almost all of its Covenant enemies, with you being able to tell how powerful they are simply by the color of their armor/shields. The in-game explanation is that their armor is color-coded by rank. *Halo 3* started to move away from this by giving each Brute rank a different set of armor (though each rank was also split into different colored sub-ranks), and games from *Halo: Reach* onward have extended this to basically every Covenant species (with Elite Mooks getting the fanciest suits, obviously).
-
*Halo 5: Guardians*'s Warzone has a lot of boss enemies, but most of them are just palette-swapped versions of regular foes.
- Ebitan, one of the zombies in
*House of the Dead 2*, comes in three different colours; green, brown and black. Kageo also has multiple skins.
-
*Left 4 Dead 2*:
- The laser sights and special ammo using the same world model, but with different textures.
- The common infected use similar models, but have different skin/clothes colors. The original game only did this with their shirts.
- The
*Marathon* series used palette swapping extensively. An alien's uniform color denoted its rank, while a human's denoted his department.
- Several of the enemies in
*Overload* have super variants, characterized by a red glow, increased armor and considerably stronger weaponry.
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*PAYDAY: The Heist*:
- The game has the Clown mask model recycled for other masks and use different textures, namely the Golden and Secret masks.
- Dallas' Vyse mask is also the Clown mask retextured while Hoxton's Vyse mask is a different textured version of his Beeef mask. Chain's Vyse mask is the same model as the Moderator and Overkill/Dev mask and those two masks are palette swaps of each other. The Alienware masks are a single model with different textures as well.
-
*Perfect Dark* for the N64 had Joanna (the main character) and her head-swap Velvet (controlled by Player 2 during Co-Op Mode). Since they were both Carrington Institute agents, they both wore the same uniform.
-
*Team Fortress 2*:
- Not only are the classes identical save their team colour, at least three levels contain what are basically palette swapped bases, with changed materials and propaganda posters. Not only that, but the September 30, 2010 update allows players to paint their hats.
- Player-created maps are sometimes guilty of this as well. There are several variations of 2fort with the exactly same layout, but one is at nighttime, etc.
- Every Capture the Flag map is just two bases that are exactly the same except they're mirrored and palette-swapped, with a few paths in between that connect them.
- There was actually a contest to "dress up" a Valve-designed map that only had basic geometry. The winners of which were later used for the Mann Manor Halloween update.
- Several other maps also had Halloween versions.
- Referenced in the Developer's Commentary. They noted that, for balance's sake and outside of Attack/Defend maps, they had to make both the RED and BLU bases identical, as otherwise it would offer a tactical advantage to one team over another. To help players not get lost however, they had a strict set of materials, colors and styles they could use for each side; Red was wooden, red (obviously), and used sheet metal and hay. Blu, on the other hand, used concrete and industrial pressed metal, as well as having an overall blue tone. Red was also suppose to be more rustic while blu was more industrial design-wise.
-
*Turok 2: Seeds of Evil* has a few of these; the Cave Worm is a giant version of the Swamp Worm, the Fireborn is a fiery version of the Endtrail, the Blind One Sentinels are a palette swap of the Flesh Eater Sentinels, and the Trooper is a palette swap of the Mantid Soldier.
-
*Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus*:
-
*Wolfstone 3D*, the Nazis' parody of *Wolfenstein 3-D*, borrows a lot of the Palette Swapped versions of the original *Wolf 3D* characters. Examples include:
- Elite Hans = B.J. Blazkowicz
- U.S. Army soldier = Guard
- Russian soldier = Schutzstaffel
- Naval officer = Officer
- Set Roth = Dr. Schabbs, with a beard and a white lab coat
- Fake B.J. = Fake Hitler
- B.J. "Terror-Billy" Blazkowicz = Adolf Hitler, though more like Staatmeister
- Bombate = Otto Giftmacher
- Caroline Becker = Gretel Grosse
- Anya Oliwa = Gretel Grosse, but with the weapons of General Fettgesicht
- In
*Burly Men At Sea*, the three Beard brothers are distinguished only by the different colours of their huge beards and co-ordinated boots.
-
*DRL* has "nightmare" demons, imps, cacodemons, arachnotrons and even arch-viles on higher difficulties and in deeper levels. They are dark blue, faster and tougher, they deal a lot more damage, and worst of all, they're silent.
- The Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and the Super Game Boy (for the SNES) allowed users to palette-swap original Game Boy games entirely (at least the ones that weren't designed to take advantage of the color features of the devices).
- Some old games palette swap
*everything* after each level to give the player a sense of progress. *Desert Falcon* for the Atari 2600 looped between about eight colors as enemies moved slightly faster, so even field below changed from yellow to green to pink. Even the NES version of *Tetris* does this as the game's level increases.
- The
*Diablo* series is infamous for this, frequently featuring the same enemy 3-5 times by recoloring and renaming it.
-
*Dynasty Warriors* and its spinoffs use this frequently. Most generic units and officers are recolors of each other, and several games give each playable character a second color palette to use. The DLC maps for *Hyrule Warriors* and its subsequent releases turned this into an art form, adding over a hundred unlockable recolors for most of the cast, most of which reference different characters from across the Zelda franchise.
- In
*Crush Crush*, ||the Dark One|| looks like a goth reskin of Mio which she lampshades in her introduction cutscene by saying that her appearing almost identical to another game character is most definitely not the game devs being lazy or making an in-joke.
- One of the first games to use Palette Swaps was
*Pac-Man*. Also Colour-Coded for Your Convenience as each ghost had a different way of chasing the player. note : Namely: Blinky (the red ghost) actively chases you, Pinky (the pink one) tries to maneuver around you and then cut off your path in an ambush, Inky (the light blue one) takes an erratic pattern that involves both where Pac-Man is going to be and Blinky's location, and Clyde (the orange one) acts like Blinky but runs for the bottom-left area if he gets too close.
- Being the second game Luigi ever showed up in,
*Wrecking Crew* once again has him as a recolored Mario.
-
*City of Heroes* makes frequent use of Palette Swapping in uniformed enemy groups such as Arachnos, where different ranks (and sometimes entirely different classes!) of enemies share the same uniform with a modified color scheme. I.E. Psychic Fortunatas wear red versions of the normal Night and Blood Widow uniforms. Arbiters (who are the highest ranking members of Arachnos, said to be above even the four Archvillains in terms of authority) wear shiny versions of the Wolf Spider uniform.
Also interestingly enough, a player using the Mission Architect can actually palette swap preexisting enemies! Even AVs! And, of course, due to the game's customization system, the vast majority of models use one of three basic animation sets anyway.
-
*Dynasty Warriors Online*. Given that all mooks on different sides are simply palette swaps of each other, but the custom outfits can also be. You can individually "dye" each item so that they change color, There are three different dyes that give you a unique color for each one. the Weapons also change color when you add an innate element to it. They will take on a basic color for the element, but other colors on more complex looking weapons will change to fit the theme of the main color (like gold might change to silver). You have ice (blue and silver), fire (red and gold), wind (green and silver), Lightning (yellow and bronze), vorpal (purple and bronze).
- Faction ship models in
*EVE Online* are their base ships with different color schemes. This is true of their pirate counterparts as well.
-
*zOMG!* is a prime offender.
- Most fluffs are recolors and/or upscales of one another with minor details changed.
- Kat's Kokeshi Doll and the Kokeshi Collectibles are palette swaps of normal Kokeshi Dolls.
- Gift Boxes from the 2008 Christmas event were Christmas-themed recolors of Flying Giftboxes.
- Lightning Bugs, Shockroaches, and Deathroaches share the same base model.
- Landstriders are green and black versions of the Walker.
- Outlaw Wolves are green Outlaw Pups.
-
*Granblue Fantasy*: Enemy mobs sometimes have color-coded variants of the same model that appear in other quests:
- The brown, silver, and gold slimes in the "Slimy Search" quest lines.
- The crabs, "Elemental Sprites", and the "-Gyre" type enemies whose color varies depending on their element. These are common in the Rotating Trial quests.
- The Mimics, whose color theme varies depending on the type of treasure that it drops when defeated.
-
*Marvel Heroes* had the concept of "Enhanced Costumes," which could be used to turn your character into another Marvel hero or villain with similar abilities and the same moves and stats. These included Spider-Gwen for Spider-Man, Shuri for Black Panther, Beta Ray Bill and Jane Foster for Thor, Sam Alexander for Nova, Captain Mar-Vell for Captain Marvel and Kate Bishop for Hawkeye.
-
*Phantasy Star Online* plays this straight for their non-unique weapons. All basic weapons only differentiate in color and name to denote how powerful they are (from weakest to strongest, the colors are green, blue, purple, red, and yellow.)
-
*Phantasy Star Universe* takes this a step further. In addition to non-unique weapons differentiating in color, both non-unique and rare weapons have a bland-looking "Kubara" version that usually has worse stats, but offers larger grind bonuses.
-
*RuneScape Classic* used this trope: the game environment was 3d but the enemies were 2D sprites, so enemies such as "thief" "man" and "farmer" were often simply palette swaps of one another. Also, the customizable player character models could be considered this as well.
-
*SD Gundam Capsule Fighter* has the "-U" rank units, "User-Created" special units from the Korea server who color certain units (all but one being a C-Rank) and are granted different skills and stats, usually having the skills make up for the weaker stats.
-
*Temtem*: Every Temtem has a rare alternate colour scheme with a glowing effect, known as Lumas. Ones encountered in the wild are guaranteed to have three perfect stats.
-
*World of Warcraft*:
- The first expansion,
*The Burning Crusade*, introduced armor sets that used the same models as Vanilla WoW's Tier 2 raid armor sets. For example, here's Vestments of Transcendence, the priest set, and here's an assortment of cloth armor pieces from TBC dungeons.
- There are thousands of different types of "mobs" (monsters) a player can encounter, but only a couple hundred different animated models. Most of the variety comes from putting differently-colored skins on the same model. For example, the grizzly bears in Elwynn Forest or Dun Morogh use the same models as the polar bears in Icecrown and the disease-raveged bears in the Western Plaguelands, and the same animations. They just use different-colored skins and, in some cases, enlarge or shrink the base model.
- Mounts are this way. For instance there are several drake mounts obtainable in
*Wrath of the Lich King*, however the all use the same drake model with different colors or patterns - from the free bronze drake you get from "Culling of Stratholme" heroic to the black drake you get from finishing Sartharian with three drakes up.
-
*Blinx: The Time Sweeper* does this with at least two pairs of bosses. In one, the first monster is yellow; later, you face an identical red counterpart.
- The main characters in the arcade versions of
*Contra* and *Super C* used different sprites for Bill and Lance (Bill wore a white tank top, while Lance was shirtless). Due to hardware limitations of the NES, their versions of both games used the same sprite for Bill and Lance, changing only the color of their pants, making Bill the "blue guy" and Lance the "red guy". Oddly enough, *Contra III: The Alien Wars* for the SNES followed this convention as well. In *Super C* and *Contra III*, the red colored enemy soldiers are usually the ones who actually shoot their guns. Also, the four main characters in *Contra 4* (Bill and Lance, and their "counterparts", Mad Dog and Scorpion) are all palette swaps of the same sprite, with no real playing differences between them. This was due to a 4-Players Mode that was Dummied Out from the final version of the game. The extra characters (Probotector, Sheena, Lucia, Jimbo/Sully) all happen to have four selectable color palettes each as well.
- Played for laughs in
*Distorted Travesty*, with the Sentinel and the Palette Swap Sentinel, the latter of which is slightly tougher. Jerry and Jeremy declare their opinions about how cheap and uncreative this is.
-
*Donkey Kong Country*:
- Lampshaded by Cranky Kong in the Game Boy Advance version of
*Donkey Kong Country*, after a boss battle with "Really Gnawty", a recolored version of the first boss, "Very Gnawty", which is itself a big version of a normal enemy called "Gnawty". The quote at the top of the page appears after defeating Master Necky Sr., a palette swap of Master Necky Jr.
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*Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!*:
- In the SNES version, there is a hidden code to give Kiddy and Dixie Kong different colored clothing. It doesn't affect the game, but the alternate colors look cooler than the regular colors.
- Koindozers are similar to Klobbers from the second game, but are a palette swap of Koin (a Kremling that uses a DK Coin as a shield). The rest of
*Donkey Kong Country* follows suit with different coloured Kremlings and other mooks, this gives away whether or not some are Demonic Spiders (the grey Klobbers that rob you of lives) or Invincible Minor Minions (Red Zingers and Nigh Invulnerable Green Zingers). Red Zingers can only be killed with Squitter's webs (unreliable because Squitter is only in a few levels), while Green Zingers can be killed with barrels as well.
- This is used heavily in the TurboGrafx-16 game
*Dragon's Curse*, where eventually you will run into three colors—red, green, and blue—of *every enemy in the game*.
- Name-dropped in
*Gamer 2*, when Kevin enters the game as Player 2. Hailey asks why he looks like a blue-furred version of herself, and he laments that such a feature is hard-coded into the machine.
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*Kero Blaster*:
- Kaeru's color changes depending on the game mode. In Normal Mode, he's green, in Zangyou Mode, he's blue, and in Omake Mode, he's yellow.
- In the first six of Zangyou mode's seven levels, the bosses are heavily based on their normal mode counterparts. Visually, some (but not all) of these are just simple recolors.
- In the train station level, the NPCs at the shop, and also at the hospital you end up at if you run out of lives, use a weird inverted color palette.
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*Kid Icarus* both does and doesn't rely on this trope. The first game had multiple sprites for several monsters that otherwise varied only numerically. Given the wildly different descriptions in the game manual, it can be quite a disappointment to realize that you've just run into yet another version of Monoeye. Some of these enemies *also* come in palette swaps, with three sprites for Kobil, each in two colors, for a total of *six*.
- The two teams in
*Killer Queen* consist of the same sprites with gold or blue color schemes. Four of the characters on each team also look identical to each other except for the patterns on their shirts.
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*Kirby*:
- In
*Kirby & the Amazing Mirror*, you get three palette-swapped helpers and the ability to change your color. You can change colors in *Kirby: Squeak Squad* as well. Many of Kirby's hats for his copy abilities are palette swaps of each other, including bandannas, backwards baseball caps, and crowns.
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*Kirby Super Star* uses different palettes for the Helpers and their enemy counterparts (with the exception of Wheelie). Of note is that the Helpers' colors are in fact their standard palettes as Mooks in *other* Kirby games. *Milky Way Wishes* adds a third palette to most (all?) enemies, and the *Helper to Hero* mode in *Kirby Super Star Ultra* adds a *fourth* to their playable versions. Several of the bosses reappear under different palettes, as well, though they aren't acknowledged as different bosses.
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*Ultra* did begin the trend of subgames with difficult versions of main game bosses, differentiated by the pallete and the additional moniker to their name. *Ultra* had the *Revenge of the King* subgame with its "Revenge" bosses. *Kirby's Return to Dream Land* had the "EX" bosses. *Kirby: Triple Deluxe* had the "DX" bosses. *Kirby: Planet Robobot* had the "2.0" bosses fitting the game's technology theme. *Kirby Star Allies* broke this trend, as the main campaign did have two boss fights that were consided of harder, pallete swapped versions of earlier ones, with completely different names, and didn't have distinguished set of difficult bosses until the *Heroes in Another Dimension* subgame was added via an online update, where it had "Parallel" bosses.
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*Ultra* also began the trend of having "Soul" versions of final bosses, which are basically pallete swapped harder versions, usually only available through the more difficult level of the Boss Rush mode.
- Mega Man's Variable Weapon System allows him to adopt enemies' powers along with a new color scheme.
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*Metroid*:
- Several games have enemies who are palette swaps of each other, though
*Super Metroid* mixes it up by making some common enemies larger instead.
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*Metroid*:
- Activating missiles turns Samus's arm cannon blue when in her armor. The Varia Suit upgrade turns her armor white (pink/purple when missiles are activated), without the shoulder pads introduced in the (monochrome)
*Metroid II: Return of Samus*. Unarmored, the Varia Suit turns Samus's hair and gun from brown to green (and adds some green pixels to her boots).
- A few enemies are also palette swapped, usually appearing together in the same area (typically, one variant takes twice as many shots to kill as the other) while other enemies with the same function get different sprites in other areas. Particularly, red/brown Metroids are slow but more likely to come after Samus while green Metroids are fast but likely to lie in wait (or get caught on bits of scenery).
- Fake Kraid is physically distinct from Kraid by being brown with blue hair and not yellow with green hair.
- The
*Metroid Prime Trilogy* uses this fairly often. For example, the Phaz-Ing in *Metroid Prime 3: Corruption* are reskins of the Inglets in *Metroid Prime 2: Echoes*, the Mechlopses in *Echoes* are reskins of the Triclopses in *Metroid Prime*, *Echoes* uses reskins to create "Dark" versions of many enemies, and so on. In a somewhat odd aversion, the Bombus from *Prime* were reused as Luminoth drones in *Echoes* with no changes to appearance and only the most minor alterations to activity. Even the weapons get this; the Ice Beam and Plasma Beam in *Prime* show up in *Echoes* slightly reskinned as the Dark Beam and Light Beam, respectively. The scan for the Metroids in *Echoes* even mentions that they're vulnerable to the "freezing effects" of the Dark Beam.
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*Mickey Mousecapade* has a seasonal-themed level where you walk through the woods in all four seasons, with only color changes to represent the seasons. Purple leaves for the trees in spring, green leaves for summer, brown leaves for fall, and white leaves along with white "grass" and "ice" replacing the path for winter.
- In
*Mystic Defender*, Round 6 recycles the background tiles from Round 3, recolored green this time.
- In the original
*Prince of Persia* most of the guards only differ by clothes colors. Shadow sprites are created from Prince sprites by XOR operation (selective inversion), at least on Apple ][ and some earlier ports.
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*Purple* reuses enemy sprites with different colours and gives them different behaviour.
- The very first Rayman game had the very first boss and second/third (depending on player's choice) one being palette swaps of each other - originally. However later editions of the game infamously removed the palette change partially or completely, leading many players to believe they were fighting the same character again - which absolutely did not make any sense in context.
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*Sonic the Hedgehog*:
- The character running sprite from the
*Sonic the Hedgehog 2* Special Stage is the same no matter if you're playing as Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles when locked-on to *Sonic & Knuckles*. Only the head (and Tails' titular appendages) is changed - the body is palette swapped.
- The Shadow Androids from the Multiplayer Mode of
*Shadow the Hedgehog* are palette swaps of one another. There's a gold-striped Shadow that's a palette swap of the regular Shadow, and the "Metal Shadow" models are also palette swaps.
- Mephiles from
*Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)* is a demonic creature that has taken the likeness of Shadow. The only difference between them is that - unlike Shadow - Mephiles lacks a mouth and while Shadow has red stripes and cufflinks, Mephiles has green-ish grey ones.
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*SOS*: You'll encounter many dead passengers on the ceiling (now the floor) who look the same except for the color of their hair and clothes. Sometimes even passengers in your group will exhibit this.
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*Spyro the Dragon* provides a 3D example. About midway through the game, Spyro encounters wizard enemies that shoot lightning bolts and wear green robes. Later on in the game, he encounters the same exact enemy model, except these wizards have blue robes and the additional ability to animate suits of armor. Also shows up in *Spyro: A Hero's Tail* with Ember and Flame who use the same basic model of Spyro but slightly changed and when you unlock them as costumes no new voice clips for Ember the girl.
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*Super Mario Bros.*:
- Mario's brother Luigi began life as no more than a palette swap, but he later evolved into the taller, thinner look that he is known for when the Japanese game
*Doki Doki Panic* was ported to the west as *Super Mario Bros. 2*. This differentiation between Mario and Luigi has stuck ever since, as did the alteration of their shirt and overall colours (switching in SMB2 from red/green overalls and blue shirts to the more natural blue overalls and red/green shirts). This was parodied in *Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door*: Mario could change his shirt and hat color to green by wearing the L Emblem badge. Despite this being the only change, the *president of the Luigi Fan Club* can be fooled when Mario uses this badge. In fact, this is how you solve one of the troubles.
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*Super Mario Bros.*: Red Koopa Troopas are smart enough to turn around when they come to a ledge, while Green ones walk right off, even into a Bottomless Pit. Water and lava used the same sprite with different colors, as did the clouds and bushes. Fire Mario is a palette swap, and star power switches through palettes rapidly.
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*Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels*: The Poison Mushroom is black with brown stains, almost an inverse to the normal mushroom (brown with red stains). It gained a more distinct appearance in later versions of the game to make the game slightly less frustrating. The game also introduces red-colored Piranha Plants, which unlike the green ones will always pop up from the pipes even if Mario is standing above them.
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*Super Mario Bros. 2*: There are actually two colors of Shy Guy, although the two colors are closer. The difference is exactly the same: Shy Guys in pink turn around when they hit edges; Shy Guys in red walk right off. The three kinds of Birdo have more strikingly different colors, and they indicate what they spit: eggs only, fireballs only, or both. Snifits come in even more colors with a wider variety of behavior, from walking off of cliffs to turning back to spontaneously changing directions to jumping and firing more rapidly. Also, the flicker of damaged enemies or things about to explode changes based on what character you're using. This is because all sprites on an NES screen note : Actually, on a horizontal line, but SMB2 can't actually take advantage of that since the throwing things play mechanic means sprites could end up ANYWHERE. can only make use of one of four sets of three colours (chosen from a palette of 53). In most games, the player character gets one of these sets, and in SMB2, each player character uses a unique colour set. But since you don't want enemies changing colour based on which character you're playing, that only leaves 3 sets left for every single other sprite, which includes vegetables and anything else that has to move around the screen. note : Though note that it's moving around the screen that matters here: tiles — the other type of object used in NES games — get their own four colour sets, and can be animated by flicking through a series of tiles, but they have to fit into the grid, and the NES can only have a limited number of tiles ready to use at the same time. You can't change the colour scheme assigned to the enemy without changing all other enemies and whatnots using that colour choice, but you can switch that particular enemy's sprite to one of the other colour sets, and the player character's colour set is about the only one that's at all predictable. note : By the way, this restriction actually determines what vegetables are used in a level. The new vegetables seen in the battle against Wart use his (or his bubbles') colour scheme, for example.
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*Super Mario Bros. 3* has brown Paragoombas that hop along the ground, and tan Paragoombas that actually fly around, dropping Mugger Micro-Goombas. The game also introduces the Fire and Boomerang Bros., the latter one being actually more frequent than the Hammer Bros. (though it's not an issue since their boomerangs are easier to dodge than the hammers or the fireballs). Gold Cheep-Cheeps (which later debuted in *New Super Mario Bros. Wii*) and green Parabeetles were among the Dummied Out enemies.
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*Super Mario World* expands on this by having *four* colors of Koopa. Yoshi gains different powers by swallowing shells of different colours, and Yoshis other than green ones add the corresponding shell color's power as long as they have shells in their mouths, so you could actually have two powers at once. A Koopa that climbed into a Yellow Shell would become invincible and chase you down, and a Koopa stomped out of a Blue Shell would become a shell-kicker.
- This happens less frequently in the 3D games, but notably these few cases have included
*bosses*: Dino Piranha and Fiery Dino Piranha in *Super Mario Galaxy*, Gobblegut and Fiery Gobblegut in *Super Mario Galaxy 2*, and King and Queen Hisstocrat (the latter, too, having a Playing with Fire affinity) in *Super Mario 3D World*. There's also the Venus Fire Plant in *3D World*, a black Piranha Plant with red dots which shoots fire (since the normal Piranha Plant doesn't).
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*Paper Mario* has different colors of Shy Guys seemingly just for variety; however, most color changes in enemies do indicate an increase in difficulty. Red and Blue Goomba, the minibosses for the Prologue, have slightly different HP, for example.
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*Mario Party 6*: Since the white Boo is playable in this game (and became so since the previous one), Pink Boo appears to play the former's role as the stealer of coins and Stars.
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*Mario Party: Star Rush*: The main playable characters in Toad Scramble are four Toads, who are only distinguishable based on their color.
- In
*Theta vs Pi 7* this is the whole idea of the Delta Guards. One attacks you then as soon as it's defeated a new one comes out in a different colur.
- amiibo support in
*Yoshi's Woolly World* allows you to play as a Yoshi texture-swapped to look like that character. Characters such as Mario, Ness and Sonic are supported. The *Pokémon* amiibo, though, just give you a Yoshi with an amiibo logo.
- Some lower level monsters in
*Elemental Story* are just recolors with slightly different designs.
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*Merge Dragons*: Each dragon breeds have two tiers, with the second tier being just a recolor of the first.
- Several of the monsters in the
*New Yankee in King Arthur's Court* series, such as ice wraiths, gorgons, and sand spirits, are this. They're the exact same sprite with identical design, movesets, and noises; they just come in different colors.
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*This Starry Midnight We Make*: Some of the stars, since their names are just color swapped; for example, the Contrary Stars, which come in Blue, Red, Yellow, White and Black.
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*Uncle Albert's Adventures*:
- The fast snail looks like the other snails, except its shell is red instead of yellow.
- The seven statuettes from
*Uncle Albert's Magical Album* all look the same except for their eye color. Notably, the white-eyed statuette is just the black-eyed statuette with a negative filter applied on the eyes, meaning the eyes' shading is inverted compared to that of the other six statuettes.
- The blue scorpion looks like a regular (yellow-ish brown) scorpion recolored in blue.
- The yellow ladybug is like the regular red ladybug with black dots, except its elytra is yellow and the dots are blue and connected by lines.
- The spotted stag beetle is like the regular stag beetle, except that instead of having a brown back, it's red with black dots, like a ladybug.
- The frogen is a dragon/frog hybrid. Aside from the dragon wings and tail, it looks like a frog recolored in orange.
- In the original trilogy, the toad uses the same model as the frog, but with a brown texture instead of the frog's green color.
- The blue beetle and the golden beetle are recolors of each other.
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*Uncle Albert's Fabulous Voyage* has a potion which changes an animal's colors for a few seconds.
- The Robosector uses the same models as the insecto-robot, except it's completely golden.
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*Excite*: In *Truck* and *Bots*, vehicles have several color variants to choose between. In *Truck*, all colors are unlocked by default. However, in *Bots*, each vehicle comes with a unique color, plus default red, blue, and yellow, with other options, including special costumes, as unlockable content.
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*Forza Motorsport* uses a bit of this with its cars; some manufacturers have what is essentially two cars that are exactly the same sold under different brands. The standard Acura NSX and Honda NSX are prime examples, being identical except for the badges, default colors, and which side the steering wheel is mounted on. Purpose built racing cars by the same manufacturer hit this as well, as many of them are based on the same car, with the same internals, but with the livery and maybe the default tuning setup (such as suspension height) changed; once the player adds his own livery, the difference between them is almost nonexistent. Some cars also have performance versions, which are generally the same thing but with slightly different bodywork and some more power (such as the standard Lamborghini Murciélago and the Murciélago LP640).
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*Gran Turismo 5*:
- Famous for having around 40 versions of the Nissan GT-R / Skyline, though many are separate generations (and thus, have different bodywork and internals).
- The Vauxhall and Opel car list
*are the same car list, the difference being the brand.* The reason is that *Gran Turismo 5* ownard, all region-exclusive cars are in every region game.
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*Mario Kart*:
- In
*Mario Kart 8* and its Updated Re Release, certain drivers are given alternate colors, some of which affect the colors of some of the vehicles they are driving.
- If the player preorders the Zelda/Animal Crossing DLC for
*8* they get access to all the Yoshi *and* Shy Guy color variations. In *8 Deluxe*, Yoshi and Shy Guy's color variations are unlocked by default. This also applies to Birdo when she was introduced as part of Wave 4 of the Booster Course Pass.
- In
*8*, the male Villager can be switched into the other gender, but this is more of a subversion as the female Villager has different stats compared to the male Villager. *8 Deluxe* averts this by giving the female Villager her own slot.
- Both genders of Inkling each have three palette swaps. The color chosen also affects the color of the ink that is shot out from the
*Splatoon* themed ATVs when getting a boost.
- Completing every course on 200cc unlocks Golden Mario, who is a palette swap of Metal Mario.
- A later update to
*8 Deluxe* allowed Link to be swapped between his typical green tunic and his appearance in *Breath of the Wild*.
- Upon making her return as a DLC character available in the '8 Deluxe' Booster Course Pass, Birdo also gets a set of color variations in a similar vein to Yoshi and Shy Guy.
- Most of the Palette Swaps in
*Mario Kart Arcade GP DX* are only obtainable via DLC. The only exception to this is Tanooki Mario, who can be unlocked as costume for Mario.
- Yoshi and Toad can resemble other color variations (red and black for the former and blue for the latter).
- Mario and Luigi have colors that resemble their appearances when picking up a fire and ice flower, respectively.
- Dry Bowser and Gold Mario are Palette Swaps for Bowser and Metal Mario, respectively.
- Don-chan is given Strawberry and Hero costumes.
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*Uphill Rush 1* opponents look like you with a different coat of paint, for instance the quad opponent has a purple helmet and quad as well as a green shirt for differentiation purposes.
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*Pikmin*:
- The whole series does this with some members of the Bulborb subspecies. There's red, white, black (Bulbear), and orange. Others, like the Whiptongue Bulborb or any of the Bulblaxes, have more unique features.
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*Pikmin 2*: Most members of the Dweevil family only seen in the game are identical aside from color, which corresponds to their element. The Fiery variety is red, the Munge variety is magenta, the Anode variety is yellow, and the Caustic variety is blue. The Volatile (orange and black) and Titan (black when armored, tan when not) varieties downplay this, as they also have bombs carried on them and a much larger size, respectively.
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*Sacrifice* has five sides with 9 unique units each. A few of these 'unique' units are palette swaps. The manual explains all of them: Some are the same creatures that defected to the other side, and were granted different powers by their new god. Or were killed by Charnel and raised as The Undead.
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*Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption* example: Grand Admiral Thrawn's flagship, the *Admonitor*, is a blue version of the *Accuser*, Captain Piett's ship from the original *Empire at War*, but with a different special (all Star Destroyers have a tractor beam special).
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*Warcraft* does this a lot.
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*World of Warcraft* is notorious for reusing character models and animations. Although it's understandable why a polar bear would share the same model as a grizzly bear, it's slightly jarring when you encounter a boss like Murmur who is clearly a copy of Ragnaros with only minor changes. Even in the RTS games, some units share the same model as another one. Like how a tinted Acolyte model was used for a "Fallen Priest" and "Heretic" in the Orc campaign for *Reign of Chaos*. But some are more subtle like how Harpies use a modified Gargoyle model.
- If you lacked 3D rendering skills, this was what you were reduced to doing for custom maps with custom creeps in Warcraft 3's World Editor. The game itself gave you some flexibility in changing their sizes and tinting them different colors, but apart from that you had to work with what was shipped.
- In the original game (Orcs and Humans), the Acolyte, Warlock and Medivh all used the same recoloured sprite.
- A common example of palette swaps in Real-Time Strategy games is the team color of units.
- In
*Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun* and *Red Alert 2*, the 3D models of each units used a palette with some "remap" colors, which were assigned to the team colors. The rest of the palette didn't change. In fact, the entire franchise does that, and the first two games had unit sprites in common: The first two games made no attempt at a distinction between the basic infantry and some of the buildings. This even carried over games, as the Soviets had the same tanks and infantry as GDI, except they were red as opposed to yellow. The Allies and Nod had some tiny variations, since they changed the sizes of some of the tanks to differentiate them, but otherwise the Allies was a palette swap of Nod.
- This eventually carried over to
*Command & Conquer: Generals* and the later 3D games, which had proper 3D models for everything as well as every faction having a completely unique military, by virtue of keeping the "house color" visible as stripes, blocks or other parts on the units and structures to some degree to tell the various players apart even if they play the same faction, but most of the skin of any given object would remain the same. Using changed skins for units with the otherwise same model is popular with Game Mods, however.
- In the
*StarCraft* campaign, special units were often assigned a different team color so the player could tell them apart from their normal counterparts. Only Kerrigan in her Zerg form had a completely unique character model.
- Incidentally, the way this was done (put the "hero" unit on another team and set that team/unit to "rescuable" status, meaning that you gain control of it when you get close enough to it, then put it right next to your starting units) also led to the unit's appearance being accompanied by a short audio jingle, as if to say, "I'm important, so don't go getting me killed, kthx".
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*StarCraft II* averts this with differently modeled sprites for heroes and mercenary units. In the Protoss mini-campaign in *Wings of Liberty*, enemy protoss were given a rare full model palette swap of Dark Grey/Black and Green. In *Heart of the Swarm*, the developers got a little lazy as certain NPC units in wildly varying contexts were given similar, if not nearly identical, sprite models. *Legacy of the Void* merges palette swap and model change in several cases, particularly the army building component.
- In
*Rome: Total War*, the Lombardi and Burgundi factions are otherwise identical Palette Swaps of each over in every way possible. The same holds true for Sarmatian and Roxolani units, being colourcoded yellow and blue, respectively.
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*Total War* has many of its factions having the same units, but with different aesthetics and availabilities. In the *Rome* games, the Romans have a wide range of infantry units, but have a few average cavalry. Nomadic factions have many types cavalry units but only a few melee and missile units. The Greek factions possess formidable spear men, but have very little cavalry.
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*DanceDanceRevolution* character dancer's outfits are palette swaps of each other. In Hottest Party 1, and each new character introduced in Hottest Party 2-3, gets 1 outfit in four colors: http://www.konami.jp/bemani/ddr/jp/gs/hp/basic/chara.html#
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*Friday Night Funkin'*: Not in the official game, but there exist many Game Mod's that recolor the whole cast with the addition of denser remixes, all kickstarted by one of the earliest reskins/overhaul mods *Friday Night Funkin': B-Sides*. See here and here for a comparison.
- Most characters in
*pop'n music* have palette swaps that can be selected by pressing a yellow button on the character select screen. Sometimes the character's palette-swapped form takes on a different name (i.e. Vic Viper's swap is called Lord British), and sometimes you'll get a different character altogether.
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*The Binding of Isaac*:
- Most Champion varieties enemies take the appearance of the enemy and layer a color over it.
*Afterbirth* adds size swap Champions and Champions that fade in and out of certain colors, and *Afterbirth+* adds two Champion types that have no color difference, and instead have an icon hovering over them.
- Sloth is a green recolor of the Globin enemies, and Super Sloth is a larger, green recolor of the Gazing Globin enemies. This is a meta-joke about the sin of sloth — the other Seven Deadly Sins and their Super Sins have unique sprites, but Sloth is an intentionally
*lazy* recolor of a basic enemy.
- Super Envy's "whole" appearance is different from Envy's, but when he takes enough damage and splits, his "segments" have the same sprites as the "segments" of Envy's, just blue-violet instead of gray.
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*Dwarf Fortress* is one of the few roguelikes to use Windows-1252, sometimes known as "ANSI" instead, which has 255 characters to standard ASCII's 128. It keeps the 16-colour limit for tradition's sake, despite requiring modern (future?) hardware.
- Roguelike games such as
*NetHack* use standard ASCII characters in place of actual graphics, so using different colors is the only way to have a large number of distinguishable objects or creatures. Roguelikes can usually only support 16 colours due to graphics rendering limitations in early hardware, giving a potential maximum of 2040 unique enemy symbols.
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*Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book*:
- Minor NPCs in the town — a few models with different coloured clothes.
- Used a lot for monsters. The different colours do not represent different strengths though: for example the weakest Puni is blue, the weakest Ghost is white (with a blue hat), and the weakest Beast is brown and black.
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*Baldur's Gate*:
- Players can choose various races or classes, both male and female, but each combination has basically one repeated model with only colors (and obviously gear) customizable. Some classes don't even have their own paperdoll but share the model of another one (i.e. bards and thieves). Before the
*Enhanced Edition*, the first game even had female models only for humans and elves: female dwarves, halflings or gnomes were the same as their male counterparts.
- The same for various weapons and armors of the same types.
- Some joining characters became iconic and immediately recognizable from other characters with the same class also thanks to their colors: i.e. Imoen is the trumpery fuchsia (BG1) or violet (BG2) hooded thief, Quayle the fuchsia shortie, Aerie is yellow and orange, Keldorn the paladin in orange armor (unless you change it), Nalia is sky blue and brown, Shar-Teel is bright red, Minsc has white hair (despite his portrait shows a bald head).
- The cowled tutor monks in Candlekeep have the same texture, available in red (Tethoril, Ulraunt), yellow (Parda, Feldane, Piato), pink (Shistal), orange (Jessup), grey (Bendalis) and green (Karan) variants.
- Civilians have very few models (from commoners to nobles) and a huge variety of color palettes.
- Flinds are just stronger blue gnolls.
- Gauths are just smaller green beholders.
- Ogre berserkers are just sturdier pink ogres.
- Dryads, nymphs, sirines and succubi. They visually differ just by skin, clothes and hair color. Sirines and nereids are of some shades of blue or pale blueish-gray, thus are easily distinguishable. Succubi usually have dark or orange skin and white hair (except Kirinhale who has human-like colors). Dryads and Nymphs both have pale or human-like skin, various colors for hair (from white to yellow, black, bright green etc.) and clothes (usually green, light blue or brown).
- Firkraag, Draconis and Abazigal are the same red dragon model, but the latter is palette-swapped in blue for the purpose of representing a blue dragon (Draconis in green).
- Stone, clay, iron and adamantite golems are the same model with different colors and sizes.
- Magic golems instead are fire elementals with purple flames.
- The four warders in Durlag's Tower are dwarves assigned to the golem class, with the same clothes except Pride. Love is red, Fear is grey, Avarice is light blue.
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*Brave Story: New Traveler* not only plays this straight, but takes it a step further by having palette swaps within the *same species* of monster. Taken to a ridiculous extreme when one particular event has you fight two sets of triplets; three Cat Girl sisters and three Lizard Folk brothers. Each of the siblings look exactly the same, with the colors of their hair/skin being the only difference.
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*Chrono Trigger* was brutally honest about its use of palette swapped enemies. The imps that you fight early in the game are named "Blue Imp" and "Green Imp" respectively. The bestiary in the DS version differentiates between the two versions of the "Hench" monster by designating them (Blue) and (Purple), and does similarly for the green and purple versions of the Reptite mooks. Other palette swapped enemies are given unique names, however.
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*Chrono Cross*, unlike Chrono Trigger, had a wide variety of diverse enemies with little palette swaps, mostly the human soldier grunts were recolors and dwarf enemies having different names.
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*Cthulhu Saves the World* switches palettes on several early goons to be used again later. The trope is called out sarcastically in one monster's description, "Not just palette-swapped. Honest!".
- Most wizard enemies in
*Dink Smallwood* mods are darker recolors of Martridge, the wizard from the original game. Occasionally one of the other characters or monsters gets color-swapped, such as the ice-blue pillbugs in *Dink Smallwood's Christmas*.
- In
*.hack//G.U.*:
- Atoli and Shino are palette swaps. Of course, this is easier to understand when you remember that this takes place in an MMORPG; that, and the fact that they look the same is a major plot point. Also, all the NPCs running around "The World" consist of palette swaps.
- A number of characters from
*.hack//SIGN* and the first PS2 game series are palette swaps of each other, including Bear and Orca, Mimiru and BlackRose, and Tsukasa and Elk. This is Played for Laughs in the *.hack//Gift* OVA, where one of the Blademasters (Bear and Orca's class) is killed in-game, and because dead characters are grayed out, nobody can tell which one of them it is.
- In
*Dragon Quest*:
- Palette swaps are used extensively throughout the series as a whole.
*Dragon Quest I* had palette swaps of every single monster save the final boss.
- In later games many of the early boss monsters would eventually show up later with a palette swap as a Degraded Boss.
- The Uderfrykte Matron in
*The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion* is just an extra-strong troll with a blurry shader applied to it.
- In
*Epic Battle Fantasy 1*: There are different colored versions of enemies:
- In the
*Etrian Odyssey* series, palette swaps of regular enemies are common, and each successive version that appears is more difficult to defeat than the previous one(s). *Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan* has a notable example with the Lion: While all of them are asleep by the first turn, the attack power of each new version is higher; and by the time you meet the *Red* Lion in the Bonus Dungeon, expect to deal with an attack so strong (Biting Flurry) that will likely instantly kill many or all of your party members if their defense isn't high enough.
- The
*Fallout* series uses palette swaps for certain subtypes of non-human creatures, as well as giving some the Underground Monkey treatment with different models and abilities.
- The
*Final Fantasy* games feature a lot of these, including Underground Monkeys. Perhaps the most noticeable example is *Final Fantasy X*'s Monster Arena, where all the bonus monsters (save for Neslug) are simply previous enemies and bosses (often not even colored differently).
-
*Final Fantasy VIII* is just about the only game that does not use palette swaps in copious quantities, and even that game has Ultima/Omega Weapon and Elnoyle/Elvoret as swaps (the Japanese names of the latter, Aile Noire and Aile Violette, even lampshade this as they mean Black Wing and Violet Wing respectively). This was because the monsters leveled up with you. The other games had to make palette swaps from necessity.
-
*Final Fantasy IX* had just about as little of it as possible too. The only palette monsters are the friendly monsters, the Black Waltzes and the crystal versions of the four chaos bosses. Mind you, while the -enemies- were almost all unique, the NPCs could be another story (though they too were often more varied than expected).
- Alongside the aforementioned example,
*Final Fantasy X* had an extremely odd example. The (unusually strange and unsettling) enemy Mimic uses a somewhat unique 'floating debris' model, but the real kicker is that instead of reusing previous enemy palettes/textures, they reuse their *animations*, giving the floating pile of rubble a 'body' used by a random fiend (or machina).
-
*Final Fantasy X-2* at least tries some mild deviation, by making its palette swapped baddies progressively *bigger.* Although the game still suffered this trope for a few enemies, *including the Final Boss*; the final boss is basically a copy of the main character from *Final Fantasy X* in different clothes and uses the exact same battle animations, right down to his critical HP and KO animations! This fact is what kickstarts the entire plot.
-
*Final Fantasy XII* still uses Palette Swaps, but rely on them a lot less than the past games did. For example, dragons and wolves will still come in different colors, but will also have other features added to make them different from their weaker counterparts, such as spikes on the skull, sport flaming eyes, being larger than the previous monsters, etc. However, the animations are still recycled for all monsters that are in the same family tree. There are mentions of migration and evolution of creatures occasionally in the lore, though, which explains a good few examples... but not why the wolves' basic attack is an uppercut performed with their snouts note : since they use the same animations as the Hyenas, which have a sharp horn on their muzzles that the wolves lack.
-
*Final Fantasy XI* has similar explanations for why monsters of the same family had such bizarre separations across environments. On the other hand, FFXI barely even uses palette swaps; including many 'Bosses' (rare monsters referred to as NM, although mostly not storyline related) using the same sprites as the regular mobs that surround them (although occasionally with an inflated size). This was particularly bad where, for quite awhile after they were introduced, five of *the most powerful monsters in the game* (at the time of their release) used the same models as far more mundane creatures. They've since been reskinned, but still use the same base models.
- In
*Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings*, all the regular summons (bar the ones like Levianthan, Ifrit, and so on), are palette swaps of each other, so that like the above example the player can tell them apart.
-
*Dissidia Final Fantasy* works this into the plot by having most of the enemies be Manikins, which are player character models with a coloured crystal texture all over and Glowing Eyes. Most of Cloud's animations are also recycled from Zack's in *Crisis Core*, which was developed just a little earlier - although this makes sense due to Cloud's powers being copied from Zack.
-
*Final Fantasy Mystic Quest* has palette swaps for virtually every enemy besides the Final Boss. There are two or three different palette swaps of each normal enemy type, each mini-boss comes back as a Degraded Boss enemy(for example, Medusa, the boss of the Volcano, comes back as Stheno in the Lava Dome), and each of the four major bosses returns with a palette swap as bosses of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
- The
*Geneforge* series uses recolors for the second tier of each creation type, and extra enemy exclusive variants are usually colored accordingly. During character creation, the player can choose between 4 colors and a darker shade for each of those colors.
- The vast majority of enemies in
*Golden Sun* have three recolors throughout the game. The few that don't generally have a Dummied Out third color. Even about half of the bosses are derived from this.
- In
*Jade Cocoon 2*, some Divine Beasts come in multiple elemental varieties. For example, Mau Divine Beasts come in Fire, Wind and Earth varieties, each with their own stats and attacks, but not Water because it is the opposite to the Mau family's main element, Fire.
-
*Kingdom Hearts*:
- The standard editions of the games mostly avoid this (surprising for a Square Enix game), only using palette swaps to denote the elemental affinity of the mage-type Heartless; however, the Final Mix editions of both games use palette swaps in interesting ways. First of all, nearly all of the standard Mooks in the Final Mix games have had their colors changed from the original game's colors—for example, the first game's purple and pink Wyverns became blue and gold in the original Final Mix, and the second game's blue Hook Bats became red in Final Mix+. Some enemies, such as the black Shadows, remained the same in all editions, and though there was a rumor that the palette-swapped standard enemies had their stats tweaked, they really are the same enemies. The Final Mix editions of the game also included extra monsters; of these, many of them are palette swaps of standard enemies with slight changes in the mesh, high stats, and a host of annoying special abilities.
- This isn't the case in
*358/2 Days*. Most of the bosses are larger palette swaps of average heartless you fight normally, with a few other minor aesthetic alterations. Also, some of the Keyblades are palette swaps of each other, and when ||you equip the Zero Gear, the Kingdom Key+ is just the Kingdom Key with higher stats||.
- Also from
*Days*: ||Xion|| is a palette swap of Roxas ||minus the dual-wielding||.
- The dream eaters in
*Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]* are perhaps the most notable examples of this in the series, with the friendly Spirits having bright colors, the Nightmares having dark colors, and the rare Nightmares using a blueish-white as their primary body color instead of whatever the normal versions used. The only differences they possess aside from color are the shapes of their eyes; the Nightmares all possess circular red eyes, whereas the Spirits have four different shapes per variety that change based on their disposition.
-
*Kingdom of Paradise*'s field enemies consist merely of differently-colored versions of a few models (archer, swordsman, golem). The color of the uniform lets the player know which clan they're from.
-
*Knight Bewitched*: All the dragons living in Dragon Rock look like recolors of Typhus the Younger, down to using the same face portrait.
- The
*Of Pen and Paper* series:
- All drell characters in
*Mass Effect 2* look exactly identical save for skin colour. Multiplayer characters in *Mass Effect 3* are palette swaps of various *Mooks* and player's armor suits. This is also true for the case of the Earth DLC's N7 kits as only players who are very familiar with various armor sets are likely to recognize that: The Fury is Kasumi with a metal mask; The Destroyer's skin is based on the Terminus armor; The Demolisher has reskinned Cerberus Ajax armor; The Paladin has Inferno armor; The Shadow has a skin similar to a Phantom; and The Slayer is Kai Leng with an Alliance fighter pilot's helmet.
- The pre-"Extended Cut" ending to
*Mass Effect 3* was a rather infamous example of this. While there were some minor differences between each of the Multiple Endings, the difference between the vast majority of the footage was a matter of the color of the particle effects.
-
*Mega Man Battle Network*:
- While there are numerous viruses over the six games, each has three to six different palette swaps, e.g. Mettaur, Mettaur2, Mettaur3, and MettaurOmega, just to name one set. Third-level and Omega viruses often have slightly changed attacks, but for the most part, the only difference is increased HP, speed, and damage output.
- The Omega versions of the bosses in the fourth game also receive a palette swap, perhaps to help indicate that they're on a completely different level from the previous versions strength wise.
- The same is true of
*Mega Man Star Force*. Met viruses, for example go yellow -> red -> blue, with their health, damage, and the speed at which their attacks move increasing; the later ones are also more likely to retreat into their helmets. *Star Force 2* also has different colours of Mu wave soldier, denoting elemental alignment rather than power.
-
*Might and Magic VI* and *VIII* used this, along with size differences, to help differentiate the members of many of the creature sets. *VII*, having prioritised its limited development time differently than *VIII* would, used it more sparingly... as it resorted to *re-tinting* for many monsters.
-
*Monster Hunter* uses Palette Swaps to differentiate standard wyverns from their Subspecies upgrades. For example, a low level Rathalos is Red, a medium powered one is Azure (dark blue), and a high level one is Silver. While many of the Subspecies that debuted in the first generation are simply harder versions of their original versions, over the course of the years the series has added Subspecies that are more unique and easily distinguishable: Their elemental attacks may be different, their attacks may be the same but done in different patterns or ways, and they may be found in very different habitats from those of the main species. There are also Variants (regular monsters that are going under abnormal conditions) and Deviants (monsters that have mutated into more aggressive versions), which are present as palette swaps as well.
-
*Mother*:
-
*EarthBound Beginnings* gave most enemy types multiple palette swaps, but had the decency to occasionally add subtle changes to their swapped sprites (a dog-collar on the wolf sprite to make a 'stray dog', rust marks on the robot sprite to make the 'scrapper'...)
-
*EarthBound* parodied this by giving the palette swaps goofy names "Plain crocodile," (to suggest more varieties are to come) "Manly Fish's Brother," "Starman Deluxe," etc.
-
*The Other: Rosie's Road of Love*: Apples and Tomatoes are both foods that restore 20 HP.
- The
*Persona* games make use of this. All enemies in *3* and *4*, even bosses, save for the plot related ones, are palette swaps of their base-type, although some enemy types have slight differences (for example, the Fuzz enemies wear different type of police uniforms depending on their strength).
- The various
*Phantasy Star* games have used this. The first *Phantasy Star* had one notable (for an ancient 8-bit game) detail: the skeleton-type enemies had a different shield design for all three of their swaps.
-
*Pokémon*:
- The series generally avoids doing this too much with their own Mons. That being said, a few species like Plusle and Minun are purposely designed to look very similar to each other. Later species may have differences between individuals of the same species. These can vary from being purely cosmetic (such as male and female Hippopotas or East Sea and West Sea Shellos) to working differently in battle (Meowstic's moveset varies between the male and the female and Gourgiest's various sizes differ in base stats).
- Backlash ensued when in Gen V, the Kami trio turned out to mostly be this (there are some minor differences, such as the number of horns and the shape of their tails). It's alleviated a bit in
*Black and White 2*, however, as the Kami trio are all given alternate "beast" forms that are *very* different from each other (being a bird, a dragon and a tiger, respectively).
-
*Pokémon X and Y* use this often for overworld NPCs. For example, Ace Trainers, Veterans, Rising Stars, Sky Trainers, and Psychics all use the same two models (one male and one female) with different skins.
- However, the most popular examples of palette swaps in the series are Shiny Pokémon, an extremely rare variant from the Pokémon's normal colors. The colors themselves range from being only slightly lighter or slightly darker than the original, such as normal Gengar's purple to shiny Gengar's dark indigo, to very dramatic examples such as regular Eevee's brown to shiny Eevee's stark white, but due to the fact that they're incredibly rare (roughly a 1 in 8192 chance without modifications, 1 in 4096 from the sixth generation and onwards, and increased by repeating certain tasks enough,) they're highly prized by collectors. Even so, they're functionally no different then regularly colored Pokemon. Can also function as a Metal Slime if the shiny is one that gives tons of EXP when caught or killed, such as Audino or Chansey. As of the eighth generation, there are palette swaps OF the palette swaps in the form of Diamond Shinies, which emit square sparkles as opposed to the standard stars. Set overworld encounters, Max Raid Bosses, and Eggs have a 15/16 chance of being standard and 1/16 chance of being Diamond, while grass and spawned encounters are the inverse.
-
*Pokémon Sun and Moon* introduced regional variants of existing Pokémon. While some variants have distinctly different body shapes, others just have a different coloring.
-
*Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure* has palette-swapped *dungeons*, among other things.
- In
*Secret of Mana*, most enemies have at least a few palette swap variants, and the vast majority of the bosses return with a palette swap later in the game- for example, the Mantis Ant, the first boss, returns as the Metal Mantis midway through the game. A few late-game bosses have unique models, though.
- The
*Shining Series*:
- The various enemies in
*Shining in the Darkness*.
-
*Shining the Holy Ark* was really bad with this, to the point where simliar looking enemies would reappear in the dungeon after the next. It was probably because they were all heavily animated (for the time) so the game couldn't physically have as many enemies.
-
*Shining Wisdom* is split into two areas, east and west. Most of the enemies in the east (the latter part of the game) are just the same enemies with a different colour scheme and new attacks.
- The earlier
*Shin Megami Tensei* games loved to do this. The most notorious example? The three seraphs' sprite when they are in your party is the same as the archangel's: the second demon of the "divine" clan.
- This even happens in newer games. Tam Lin looks like a palette swap of of Cu Chulainn, and Chorozon looks like a blue Legion without the tentacles.
-
*Shin Megami Tensei IV* does this with the four DLC demons that you don't fight. Asterius is based on the Minotaur, Oread is based on Napaea, Plasma is based on Chemtrail, and Aeshma is based on Asmodeus. These are actually pretty clever examples - each of these pairs are connected in some way. For example, Plasma and Chemtrail are both demons based off of deadly conspiracy theories that put humans at fault while Asterius is an alternate name for the Minotaur.
-
*Skies of Arcadia* had the Looper enemies - as Arcadia has six colored moons, a different colored Looper is founds depending on what region you're in note : They are:red Loopers in Nasr, green Loopers in Ixa'taka, blue Loopers in Yafutoma, purple Loopers in the Lands of Ice, yellow Loopers in Valua, and white/silver Loopers in the mostly empty region under the Silver Moon. There is also a far-reaching area in the world where you can find all six varieties of Looper, in addition to a giant orange Looper that you must fight with your ship. Finally, a superboss, Elcian, is a black Looper that is found in the Dark Rift.
-
*Sweet Home (1989)* has several enemies with more powerful recolours in later portions of the game. (Wisp and Bane, Hound and Wolf, etc.) One interesting variation is Ghoul, in which the more powerful version is not only slightly redrawn (Missing an arm) but is also flipped upside down. (Indicating that it's dropping down/hanging from the ceiling.)
-
*Sword of Vermilion* was a heavy offender from the 16-bit era. All the common enemies came in six different colors (in order of ascending power: green, blue, red, black, silver, gold). Also, only the Final Boss was truly unique, all other bosses were palette swaps of four different models (dragon, giant, fire demon and necromancer).
-
*Tales of Legendia* is a big offender. The same twelve enemies appear constantly throughout the game, sometimes twice in the same dungeon, with only their palettes swapped out. This gets ridiculous within the first ten hours of the game, but in a seventy hour game, it begins to feel incredibly monotonous.
- In
*Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land*:
- A number of enemies are recolored for stronger versions. Most apparent in the enemies based on the playable classes like the sorcerer or ninja as there are many versions of them that show up.
- There are only a handful of base bodies which were recolored and given slightly different features such as a different weapon and a different face. It is done well enough that until a conversation that shows a number of them back to back happens you may not even realize that this is the case.
-
*The World Ends with You* does this with the Noise. There are sometimes cosmetic differences between the various versions of each Noise species, and the boss versions of a few of the more powerful versions often have tattoos all over their bodies in addition to more threatening characteristics (bigger horns/tusks), but overall most Noise are palette swaps of about fifteen or sixteen different species. ||Unlike all of the other bosses, who except for the two bat bosses and boss versions of normal Noise all have unique sprites, the superboss Panthera Cantus is a palette swap as well, of two of the bosses, one on each screen.||
-
*Xenoblade Chronicles X*: Nearly all the different indigen species have a counterpart that looks and acts very similar to them. For example, Liceors are swaps of Saltats, Caros are swaps of Grexes, Viragoes are swaps of Vigents, and Jaculs are swaps of Auravis. Usually, the two species live on different continents (Liceors are only found in Sylvalum, for example, while Saltats are everywhere else), but there is some occasional cross-over.
-
*The 7th Saga* has the Bounty Hunter Pison, who, after begin defeated the first time, shows up unexpectedly later in the quest and proudly announces that he is now *Red*-Pison. Turns out to be Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and you immediately fight a stronger version of the original enemy, now palette-swapped to red. He even does this *again* even later on, becoming Metal-Pison and getting a gunmetal gray recolor.
- Roughly half of the Yo-kai in
*Yo-Kai Watch* are palette swaps of each other. In most cases, the game does at least give them different abilities and strengths from the original variation. For example, white and blue Komasan uses fire magic, while brown Komajiro uses thunder magic. Only a few are properly characterized, like Komajiro and Damona. Also, there are also over *200* variations of series mascot Jibanyan, and only a handful of them can be obtained in regular gameplay, with the others all from bonus quests from the toy Yo-Kai Medals, that were either in the blind packs (so good luck finding those) or included in other products, and in one case another game by Level-5.
- Harold and Benny Balacera from
*Balacera Brothers* uses the same model, with the difference being the colour of their outfits and Benny wearing a cap. They *could* be twin brothers though, justifying the trope.
- The different enemy factions in
*BLOODCRUSHER II* are just reskins of the same basic enemies.
- The old
*Bullet* uses the *same* sprite for all the bosses (except the last one, which is a Cyber Cyclops), recoloured again and again.
- One of the final bosses in
*Darius Gaiden* is a palette swap of the **first** boss, making for a nasty trick for any unprepared player.
-
*Galaxian* was the first game to have palette-swapped enemies where sprites were multi-colored. In fact, this is the oldest game to have multi-colored sprites.
- Hardcore fans of the
*Gradius* series were disappointed to discover that in *Gradius V*, the Player 2 ship was not Lord British (the red, single-nosed 2P ship of *Life Force*), but just a red-colored Vic Viper.
-
*The Guardian Legend* does this with bosses Fleepa, Optomon, Bombarder, and Clawbot, each of which recurs in different colors, and the last of which reuses the top half of the Bombarder sprite.
- Raizing's "Bat" series of shmups does this differently. Pressing certain buttons or button combos not only changes the palette of player ships, but also gives them different abilities, such as enhanced speed, bomb, shot and option firepower, and in some cases, a smaller hitbox.
-
*Ninja Commando* allows both players to choose the same character, where their only difference will be their clothing. For instance, both players selecting Joe Tiger will have two Joes onscreen wearing red (P1) and blue (P2).
-
*Super Spy Hunter* has you fight upgraded palette swaps of the second and fourth bosses prior to the final boss.
- Done with an
*attack* of all things in the *Touhou Project* series. In Double Dealing Character and Hidden Star in Four Seasons, due to the circumstances surrounding the incident in each case, Marisa's signature Love Sign "Master Spark" gets a Palette Swap in each (In the former, she Bewitched Weapon "Dark Spark" due to her Mini-Hakkero being possessed, and in the latter, she gets Love Sign "Master Spark Frozen" due to being infused with the power of winter).
-
*Yars' Revenge* does this quite oddly. The Qotile constantly palette swaps as part of its normal function, going through a rainbow of the colors that the 2600 could produce. When it turns red, it becomes a Swirl and tries to kill you. After the player has scored 70,000 points, the shield around the Qotile turns blue, and the Qotile will turn into Swirls when it turns blue and yellow as well. Of course, the original red Swirl is faster and usually trickier to avoid/kill. The shield goes through two other palette swaps as well - at 150,000 points, it turns grey, the Qotile's transforming frequency turns back to normal, but the Swirl can now turn in flight to home in on the Yar; and at 230,000 points, the shield turns pink, and the Qotile now has triple-frequency *and* homing ability.
- In
*Descent* and *Descent II*, some enemy robots would have textures that looked like textures found within the games' walls or floors. Although some were for camouflage, some 'bots had their textures changed to denote different behavior (such as dropping bombs, instead of firing laser or missiles or what-have-you). Red Medium Hulks are three times tougher than Brown Medium Hulks, and use homing missiles, in barrages, nonetheless. Class 2 Platforms have a green Demonic Spider variation that shoots rapid-fire concussion missiles. In *Descent II*, the goddamned Red Hornets later have a more demonic green variant, the Spawns.
-
*Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar*: While the other games will use palette swaps for minor characters and other insignificant things (items, animals, etc.), a lot of the major townspeople in *Grand Bazaar* share sprites with at least one other villager. The two main character choices (a male and a female) are just swaps of each other. Claire shares the same sprite with Nellie, and Isaac with Wilbur; Cindy with Lauren, along with every other young girl (including your daughter); Kevin with all other young boys (including your son); Ethel with Joan; and Raul with Diego and Enrique (they're all brothers). They at least get somewhat different Character Portraits, but because of this they wear really similar clothing in their artwork.
-
*Idol Manager*: Idol portraits are a mix and match of a large, but still limited, pool of poses, faces, hairstyles and outfit designs.
-
*I Was a Teenage Exocolonist*: The career endcards display the trope on two levels:
- Each individual endcard adapts to Sol's gender presentation, but only via changing their hairstyle.
- Several pairs and trios of endcards are clearly using identical or nearly identical poses for Sol, while changing some combination of Sol's clothing and what they are holding. The background is always more heavily modified by comparison. For example, both the botanist and lawyer ending show Sol sitting at a desk from the same angle with their left arm raised, but the botanist is holding a plant, while the lawyer is touching a larger holoscreen.
- Every animal in
*Let's Build a Zoo* has 10 variants. While some of them have slightly different base sprites, most of them are recolours of the default. Averted in the *Dinosaur Island* DLC, though, where every prehistoric species only has one variant each.
- In
*Viva Piñata*, every pinata species has multiple colour variants that can be obtained by feeding them certain items. The Flutterscotch variants have different models in the Xbox 360 games, but they're just palette swaps in *Pocket Paradise*.
- In the SNES ports of
*Wing Commander* and *Wing Commander: The Secret Missions*, the Jalthi was a color-swapped version of the Salthi model, due to storage limitations of the cartridge. However, the Jalthi retains its hard-hitting armament of six guns, making it easier to dismiss the heavy fighter as one of the disposable mook fighters with only two lasers until it's too late.
-
*Wings of Dawn*: Lampshaded in-universe with a direct reference to the trope namer with the Sweeper and Astray, two Fura'ngle fighters that look identical save for their colorations.
- In
*Backyard Skateboarding*, ||Old School Andy|| is a palette swap of Andy MacDonald.
-
*Punch-Out!!*: In the earlier games, many boxers have each a swapped counterpart with a different face:
- The first arcade game has Glass Joe and Kid Quick, Piston Hurricane and Pizza Pasta, and Bald Bull and Mr. Sandman.
- The second arcade game (
*Super Punch-Out!!*) actually has the first two of five fighters, Bear Hugger and Dragon Chan, have their own distinct palettes. Vodka Drunkenski and Super Macho Man share similar bodies. Great Tiger is Piston Hurricane with a turban and slightly longer mustache.
- The NES version has Glass Joe and Don Flamenco, Von Kaiser and Great Tiger, Bald Bull and Mr. Sandman (returning from the arcade game), Vodka Drunkenski / Soda Popinski and Super Macho Man (returning from the arcade sequel
*Super Punch-Out*), and Piston Honda and Mike Tyson / Mr. Dream. The only character with a unique model is King Hippo.
-
*Super Punch Out* for SNES has Gabby Jay and Bob Charlie, Bear Hugger and Mad Clown, Piston Hurricane and Aran Ryan, Bald Bull and Mr. Sandman (again), Dragon Chan and Heike Kagero, Masked Muscle and Super Macho Man, and the two Bruiser Brothers (sharing their own model). The only original palettes are Narcis Prince and Hoy Quarlow.
- The Wii game gave all of the characters distinct character models, although they still have similar appearances, indirectly referencing this trope.
- In
*Mutant Football League*, there are five player races: 'Human'/Superhuman, Troll, Alien, Skeleton, and Robot. Robots are actually palette-swapped Skeleton sprites with the ribcages, arms, and legs "filled out"; the only team with robots, the all-robot Turbo Techies, is thus essentially a palette swap of the all-skeleton teams, the Deathskin Razors and the Sixty Whiners.
-
*Mutant League Hockey*:
- There are just three races in this one (Skeleton, Troll, and Robot), with robots now having completely unique sprites. The Deathskin Razors and Turbo Techies are again guilty of this, but not relative to each other — they have swaps in the form of the Dead Things and Chilly Liars (Razors) and the Bruiser Bots (Techies)
- Of the coaches, only Bricka of the Mutant Monsters and Doc Whizz of the Bruiser Bots have unique portraits and quotes (though Doc Whizz shares his player evaluations with the Robot coaches). The rest are palette swaps of one of the following "molds" — the Robot, the Troll, the Barbarian, the Wimp, or the Hellspawn.
-
*Dead by Daylight*:
- To tie in with the
*Silent Hill* DLC, Behaviour made available some skins that allow series protagonist and *DBD* Survivor Cheryl Mason to instead become NPCs Lisa Garland and Cybil Bennett, with a later update adding James Sunderland.
- Instead of making entirely new Killer slots, they introduced crossover content with Crypt TV by making unique skins available to purchase for existing Killers. Specifically, the Hag can become the Birch-Witch, the Doctor can become the Look-See, and the Huntress can become the Mordeo.
- The
*Resident Evil* chapter came with two Survivors, Leon S. Kennedy and Jill Valentine, who in turn can be skinned up as the Redfield siblings, Chris and Claire. Another chapter based on *Resident Evil* was released later on, which gave Leon and Jill skins of Carlos Oliviera and Sheva Alomar. The second chapter also introduced a skin for The Legion that turns them into HUNK.
- While the Octarians are the main enemies of all three
*Splatoon* games, *Octo Expansion* colors them a blue-to-neon-yellow gradient to signify how they've been "sanitized" by whatever's running the Deep Sea Metro, while *Splatoon 3* gives them all fur to fit with the "Return of the Mammalians" theme.
-
*Dragon Wars* has a lot of this with its dragons. Kinnara and Garuda, Kastor and Borg, and probably others, are palette swaps of each other.
-
*Age of Wonders*, very few fabric units (Larva-Maggot, Gold-Black Dragon) and most modded units.
- Almost all of the non-plot-related enemies and characters in
*Disgaea* have higher class ranks that are palette swaps of their base class, each with slightly better stats than the last.
-
*Disgaea 3* introduces a service that allows one to change a unit's color to that of any of their other creatable ranks for a fee, and 4 expands on it by introducing unique colors that aren't used by any of a class' ranks, and extends the palette swapping privileges to unique characters.
- Also in 3, various Palette swaps of Mao are important to the plot as "Inner Mao"s, such as the orange-colored "Saucy Maos" representing his love of hot sauce, and the green-colored "Maos who Say Dad", representing ||Mao's repressed trauma of accidentally getting his father killed.|| Another green-colored one acts as "Mao's True Heart", portraying a much more mature version of him.
- A similar effect is seen in most other Nippon Ichi titles, including
*La Pucelle* and *Makai Kingdom*. *Phantom Brave* did it with the titles attached to characters instead of classes.
- In
*Disgaea 4* Des X is a palette swap of Desco. This being Disgaea, is pointed out and lampshaded.
- Etna turns Blue for a chapter in
*Disgaea Dimension 2*. This is a plot point, as Etna herself points out, she looks like she's "Player 2". All of her alternate unit palettes are also swapped.
- Most of the named plot characters in D2 - such as Laharl, Etna, Sicily and Flonne - have unique sprites. Lanzarote, on the other hand, is an Archer recolour. Given that Lanzarote is plot-relevant for one chapter and is then basically only notable because you probably won't have a caster of aggressive buffs before then, this was probably done just to save time.
-
*Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance* took this to a whole new level: every character can have their entire palette changed how you want it to look. This applies twice over to any character that has a transformation-style Overload skill, allowing you to custom color their alternate form.
-
*Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny*: In the game's final chapter, Zed has to contend with a version of himself from a differing timeline where ||he ended up giving in to his destructive impulses and resumed being the God of Destruction he once was.|| Zed even complains of how the other one is merely a palette-swap of him.
-
*Final Fantasy Tactics*:
- Nono from
*Final Fantasy Tactics Advance* wears a green version of his job class, the Gadgeteer's clothes.
- All generic units, enemy and ally, in the series are color swaps of each other so players can identify units from each other. Example, a Nu Mou Black Mage is generally clothed in blue while an enemy one has red clothing. This makes things moderately confusing when you have to fight Blue Mages dressed in red and Red Mages dressed in blue. In
*Tactics A2* this becomes funny. The red king is dressed in blue, the blue king is dressed in red, the black king is dressed in red, and the green king is dressed in purple. Not only that, but they aren't masters of their namesake magic, they use other types more often. So apparently magic types can get palette swapped as well.
- The
*Fire Emblem* series plays this in several different ways:
- There is usually just one or two (if both genders are possible) character models per class; everyone in a particular class is a palette swap of that model. Generic units are coloured by affiliation, while playable, boss and other important characters have their own unique colour scheme. Some characters have their own individual class (e.g. Lord) and thus look unique.
*Radiant Dawn* alleviates this to some extent by giving every player and important character a unique skin to their model which reflects their actual appearance, but the model's animations do not change at all. That is why the fans clamor for the official character art—these portraits tend to add a touch of personalization that the in-game models often do not portray. Several exceptions exist to this tendency, particularly in the GBA era. *The Sacred Stones* introduced three apprentice classes; there is only one character each that as such looks rather unique... until he/she promotes into a proper class. *Blazing Sword*'s Hawkeye - comparatively not that important a character - has his own completely unique Berserker sprite which differs significantly from the normal in its movement, whereas all other Berserkers use the generic sprite. Weird.
- Boss portraits are perhaps the more obvious example of this trope in the series, as after the NES era it wasn't really an acceptable break from reality based on technical constraints, unlike everyone's battle sprites being identical. The older the game, the more likely you'll run into a lookalike boss with a random palette. The Jugdral duology is most notorious for this since it was done with semi-important villains, though the original game was even worse. After
*The Binding Blade*, which memorably had six palette swaps of the same boss character all as the bosses of the same chapter, the practice waned through the following handheld games before finally ending for good in *Path of Radiance*.
-
*Fire Emblem: Awakening*: All of your allies' outfits for their classes tend to either be blue or have blue lining. There are a few exceptions, however:
- In the true tradition of the red/green cavalier duo, Sully and Stahl, have red and green cavalier outfits, respectively, and the red and green lining is used for their paladin and great knight uniforms.
- Kellam, an armor knight, has orange lining on his uniform. Like Sully and Stahl, he keeps that color for his great knight outfit; ditto goes for Sully's future daughter Kjelle, only with light purple instead.
- Lissa has a yellow dress for her cleric and war cleric classes, and she gets a green and yellow sage robe - it's actually identical to her sister Emmeryn's outfit. Lissa's future son Owain also gets a dark yellow colored myrmidon/swordmaster outfit.
- Both Miriel (first generation) and Brady (Maribelle's son) get unique-looking sage's robes (Miriel's is black with a thin gold collar, while Brady's is dark purple with the same Roman Numeral collar as Lissa's), and Brady also gets a black and purple war monk outfit.
- Cordelia and her daughter Severa have red lining for their Pegasus knight and mercenary/hero outfits. Flavia's hero uniform also has red linings.
- Nowi, Nah, and Tiki are green, red, and bright yellow-colored dragons, respectively.
note : A female Morgan, if any of these women are her mother, can also become a dragon, but will always have Nowi's coloring
- Both Anna and ||Gangrel|| have red and yellow/black colored Trickster outfits, respectively.
- Finally, Say'ri has a light purple swordmaster outfit.
- There's also an odd variant for the second-generation playable characters: palette swapping their hair colors depending who their parents are.
-
*Fire Emblem Fates* retains the unique color palette for each character's base class model as well as their "canon" promotion. (For instance, Kaze and Saizo wear green and red as Ninjas and Master Ninjas, respectively.) It also keeps *Awakening*'s use of palette swapping the second generation characters' hair based on their parent's color.
-
*Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia* takes this to its logical extreme, with each character getting their own unique palette regardless of what class they're currently in. So, Gray and Tobin will always be wearing green and yellow versions of their classes' uniforms, respectively.
- In
*Fossil Fighters: Champions*:
- All of the Super Evolvers are palette swaps, except for Kaishin and Buldor. They also include similar attack sets.
- Strangely enough, Teffla and Papygon are palette swaps of each other, despite evolving from completely different vivosaurs.
-
*Heroes of Might and Magic* suffers from a bad case of palette swapping when units upgrade. Granted, some bells and whistles are usually added, but it's painfully obvious the models were built from the same sprite.
- Surprisingly for a game of its complexity,
*Jagged Alliance 2* has this. All enemies, mercs and militia are basically the same 3 models (Big Male, Regular Male, and Female) with a different palette for each. Mercs have the most diversity, as each has a different clothing color combination, and of course there are all sorts of combinations for hair color and skin color for everyone in the game.
-
*Luminous Arc* and its sequel are horrible about this. There are probably less than ten different monster sprites that are recolored to make all the generic enemies you face.
- The economic edutainment game
*M.U.L.E.* does this with the players' characters if any of them are the same species, but since they only share the screen during auctions, it's not really a problem.
- The Koubu mecha in the first
*Sakura Wars* game are identical aside from color and weapons. The second game added another set of sprites for the two characters with European designed mecha. Once the games entered 3D with the third game, each character's mecha became more individualized with unique emblems, animations, and weapon models.
-
*Shining Force III* does a pretty good job of averting this, until around half way when you notice the earliest monsters reappearing but with a different colour. The humble bat, one of the earliest enemies, reappears in Chapter 4 as the Vampire Bat which is bright red.
- In
*Super Robot Wars V*, 2 units reused from Z3 had their sprites' colors changed, in the process turning them from Char's Counterattack units to Unicorn units: the Earth Federation's Jegan mobile suits (more or less becoming the Jegan Type A2 without changing the name) and Neo-Zeon's Musaka-class ships.
- Despite
*Unicorn* not being in the *Super Robot Wars X* cast, the Neo-Zeon mobile suits Gaza-D and Zssa are still reused from *V*, only changed to their original coloring from *ZZ*.
- In
*Telepath RPG*, shadowlings get different color palettes to show how old they are. In the original, every shadowling is red except for Festus, who is blue, and Nala, who is green. (Tastidian and Nelis are different colors too, but they get unique models instead of just a palette swap.) In later games, blue shadowlings are always psy healers, probably as a Call-Back to Festus.
- In
*Telepath Tactics*, every class has a colored uniform of some kind that changes color depending on what side they're on. (In the campaign, Emma's army is blue, her enemies are red, and neutrals are a variety of colors, usually green.) In a departure from previous games, shadowling color is no longer tied to age — they don't have a uniform, so they have to change the color of their eyes and hands instead.
-
*Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories* does this in a way to mitigate the infamous ped clumping issue that has plagued sixth-generation installments of the franchise due to artistic and hardware constraints.
- Pedestrian models in
*Mafia II* utilise a variation of *Mortal Kombat*'s palette swap scheme, where a single model is used for a pedestrian type, with certain parts of the character's texture recoloured on the fly. It works somewhat, though players may still notice clones of the same model being clumped together on-screen at points.
-
*Minecraft*:
- Cave Spiders are smaller, blue versions of the regular Spider enemy, and are able to inflict poison with their attacks. Unlike the regular spider, which spawns in any dark condition, the cave spiders only appear from spawners inside abandoned mineshafts.
- The first five ores added to the game were originally all palette-swaps of one-another, having the texture for stone but with bits of the material in it. Black for coal, beige for iron, yellow for gold, red for redstone, and cyan for diamond. This has since been changed in future updates, which differentiated the ore shapes more.
- Horses come in thirty-five varieties (five patterns and seven colors), while Tropical Fish come in over three thousand (two body shapes, six patterns per shape, sixteen colors for the main body, and sixteen colors for the pattern).
- Unlike horses, donkeys and mules each only come in one possible colour, however mules use the same models as donkeys, only coloured dark brown instead of light grey (they are also functionally the same, with the exception that you cannot breed mules).
- Axolotls come in five different colors, pink, white, brown, yellow, and blue. The first four spawn in the wild and represent the different colour morphs that axolotls can take in real life, the last one is a Pokémon reference that has a 1/1200 chance of appearing when breeding two axolotls.
- Cows have a rare variant which spawns on mushroom islands known as mooshrooms, which are bright-red, have red mushrooms growing out of their back, and dark pits instead of eyes. These have their own sub-variant known as brown mooshrooms, which are the same except they are brown and have brown mushrooms growing on them.
- The common zombie has two variants known as husks (basically desert zombies, or mummies) and drowned (basically water zombies). Their models are the same, but the variants are strong, as husks do not burn in daylight and inflict hunger with each hit, and drowned can swim and can wield throwable tridents.
- Skeletons have two variants, the snowy-dwelling husks and the Nether-dwelling Wither skeletons. Their behaviour is the same, but the husks are draped in rags and inflict slowness with their arrows, while the Wither skeletons are much bigger, black in colour, wield swords instead of bows, and inflict the Wither effect with each hit.
- Cats, frogs, parrots, and rabbits can all spawn in a variety of different set colours. The cats and rabbit reference the different natural breeds (although the tuxedo cat is also based on a cat owned by the lead developer), while parrots and frogs reference different parrot and frog species.
- Pandas have a rare brown variant, which looks the same except its black markings are brown, and references a very rare and real subspecies of panda known as the Qinling panda that looks like that.
- Foxes can spawn as a red fox in taiga biomes, or as a white arctic fox in tundra biomes.
- Piglins have a variant known as piglin brutes, which use the same model, except dressed in black clothing with a one-armed gold gauntlet, instead of brown clothing, wield axes instead of a sword or a crossbow, and have a scar over one eye. They only spawn in bastions, and are
*much* tougher than the basic piglin, and *always* hostile.
- Guardians have a mini-boss variant known as elder guardians, which look the same except much bigger and pale-coloured. It attacks and defends itself the same way as a regular guardian, but it also inflicts Mining Fatigue, and is both stronger and
*much* tougher than its smaller relative. However, they do not respawn once killed.
- Squids have a bioluminescent cave-dwelling equivalent known as glow squids (which originated from the spin-off game
*Minecraft Earth*). Interestingly, their textures are more cartoony than the regular squid, with mismatched eyes that don't line up.
-
*[PROTOTYPE]* has both lighter-colored USMC and darker-colored Blackwatch palettes of military vehicles, the ones you can actually hijack. Blackwatch ground vehicles are tougher to kill while their aircraft carry more ammunition(and are also slightly tougher), than their Marine counterparts. They can also be easily identified with their respective logos too.
Also the civilian populace, where any given civilian model has a few color themes affecting attire and skin.
- In
*Saints Row: The Third*, you can unlock new skins for your gang members (like hookers, cops, mascots, National Guard soldiers, and even rival gang members) by completing story missions and minigames. If you actually apply these skins to your gang, it quickly becomes obvious that they are simply palette swapped versions of the originals, right down to the ones modeled on rival gangsters continuing to make disparaging remarks about the Saints during battle.
-
*Terraria*:
- There are seven different versions of the basic Slime monster.
- There's also two versions of the basic Skeleton monster, two of the Skeleton caster, two of the Bat, two of the Man eater (a jungle-based killer plant), and many of the Zombie.
- In 1.2, Lead, Tin, Tungsten, Platinum, Palladium, Orichalcum and Titanium are practically alternate (and slightly better) materials of Iron, Copper, Silver, Gold, Cobalt, Mythril and Adamantite respectively, that can be generated in a world in the place of the latter materials. The weapons, bricks and furnishings made from them are appropriately different-colored as well, while the 'alternate' Hardmode Metal armor suits have unique properties that the Cobalt, Mythril, and Adamantite armor suits lack.
- Wood can be found in different forms depending on the biome, including Shadewood (Crimson), Ebonwood (Corruption), Pearlwood (Hallow), Boreal (Snow), Palm (Beach/Sand), and Rich Mahogany (Jungle).
- Most of the console-exclusive content, including enemies and equipment, were reskinned or recolored versions of existing content. The 1.2 patch to console Terraria changed this, giving the content in question actual unique graphics.
- Gemstones all originally had the same elliptical shape while changing only in color before 1.2 update gave them all different cuts.
- The character sprites in alpha were rather blatantly based off of
*Final Fantasy V* combat sprites, but they were changed for the game's release on Steam.
-
*Red Dead Redemption*:
- In
*I*, adult Jack Marston is just John with a different head and voice.
- ||1907 John in
*II* zig-zags this. He has a slimmer build than Arthur and his own animations for movement, but examining the model shows his body is just Arthur's but scaled down, and he reuses a ton of animations with him - in some circumstances his animations actually revert back to Arthur's note : Such as the ranch and while walking in Heartland Overflow's water His hair is also Arthur's but recolored, and he reuses Arthur's vomiting sounds if he eats a poisonous plant.||
-
*Subnautica* uses this trope on several occasions, including the Spinefish note : a skeletal-patterned variant of the Hoopfish, found in deep-water biomes, the Magmarang note : a variant of the Boomerang adapted to volcanic environments, the Lava Eyeye note : Ditto, for the Eyeye and the Crimson Ray note : Ditto again, for the Ghostray. The Oculus may seem at first glance to be this to the Peeper, but in reality, its model is slightly different, having no beak and a row of tentacles instead of tail fins.
- The majority of the Space Pirate fighters in
*X3: Reunion* and later games are standard faction fighters (mostly Argon and Teladi), but with sweet Nose Art. They retain the turrets and most of the stats of the base ship, though they often can carry a more varied loadout, at the cost of being inferior to the standard ship. *X3: Terran Conflict* introduced several Ace Custom pirate ships with unique models, and proper Pirate capital ships.
## Non-video game examples:
- Every year people get ads in their newspapers showing collectibles for the big local pro or college sports team. Ceramic villages with the team logo on it, Santa wearing the jersey, etc. What you don't really see until you go online to their website is almost every city got the same ad for the same village and often the only thing different in the picture is the team logo and colors.
- USC and UCLA have a particularly intense rivalry to where any merchandise deal one university gets is soon followed by the same deal with the other. They turn to the same manufacturer most of the time, and as a result, the products are exactly the same, only with different packaging and images printed on them.
- Proto, the mascot of Protegent, is a palette swap of Whyatt from
*Super Why!*.
-
*[C] - The Money and Soul of Possibility* has several facets of one◊ basic◊ design.◊
- The Tendou sisters in
*Day Break Illusion* are triplets, which sort of justifies them often being literally copy-pasted and colour-tweaked. Also, Etia and Ariel's outfits are identical except for colour and the pattern on their circle-things.
- Devilman has Akira Fudo, and Ryo Asuka, when they both appear, Ryo is literally a blond Akira, luckily, other adaptations give them different haircuts... Most of the time.
- Common throughout the
*Digimon* franchise; though it has well over one thousand mons, it is slightly padded with palette swaps:
- Perhaps the most understandable examples are the Evil Counterpart palette swaps, darker versions of certain heroic Digimon. The most prominent example, both in the anime and otherwise, is
*Digimon Adventure 02*'s BlackWarGreymon, whose contrast with the actual WarGreymon was played up for all it was worth.
- Sometimes, the difference in color is used to denote a variant of a different level, attribute type, or associated with different elements/powers. For example, Otamamon's has water powers and is of the Virus attribute, while Otamamon Red is associated with fire and is of the Data attribute. Both are of the Child level. On the other hand, sometimes there are less reasonable instances: there's Monochromon, an Adult, and Vermillimon, a red Monochromon of the Perfect level. There are many more examples.
-
*Digimon World* is *horrible* about doing this to differentiate random enemy Digimon from recruitable ones. You can *recruit* Betamon and Drimogemon (frog and drill-nosed mole, basically). You *fight* ModokiBetamon and NiseDrimogemon. (Modoki means 'seems like' or 'looks like;' Nise means 'false.') The only difference at all between them is that ModokiBetamon is a *slightly different shade of green* and NiseDrimogemon *has a mustache instead of whiskers.*
- If they're bad, Soulmon is worse. The only difference between him and Bakemon would be a pointy sorcerer's hat.
- Not as bad as Gottsumon, a Child-level golem Digimon who has two palette swaps, Icemon and Insekimon. At least Icemon (Adult-level) is clearly white as opposed to Gottsumon's grey so you can easily tell them apart, but Insekimon is distinguished from Gottsumon and Icemon solely by being
*a slightly lighter shade of grey with a green tinge*, and what really takes the cake is that he is a Perfect. You heard correctly, a Perfect is a palette swap of a Child. This was lampshaded neatly in *Digimon Data Squad* - when Gottsumon evolves to Insekimon, Yoshino comments that all that seems to have changed is his colour.
- Gururumon has to be Bandai poking fun at themselves over this practice. The difference between Garurumon and Gururumon is that Gururumon's blue stripes are
*slightly more purplish in hue*; I *dare* you to tell them apart if you don't have their pictures/trading cards side by side. Many are the fans who thought that "Gururumon" was just a typo.
- There's also ClearAgumon, which is basically a transparent ToyAgumon! Incidentally, they also have an Evil Counterpart palette swap.
- Vegimon has two palette swaps: Zassoumon and RedVegimon. RedVegimon, at least, has the decency to differ in design somewhat insofar as having large clubs at the end of its tentacles instead, but otherwise it just looks like a Vegimon that is blue.
-
*Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time* marks the debut of such a palette swap as a main character in the anime - Ryouma Mogami's partner is Psychemon, a rather garish palette swap of a particularly famous former main character, Gabumon.
-
*Digimon Adventure tri.* has a mysterious villain who drives much of the series' plot and normally looks like ||an evil version of Gennai wearing a black version of his outfit||. While disguised as ||the Digimon Emperor||, he summons a purple version of Imperaldramon to cover his escape while kidnapping Meicoomon.
- The third kind is random recolourings which serve no purpose at all, are given little to no context, are not differentiated from the main Digimon at all, and seem to be there for the hell of it. Like in
*Digimon World 3*. The *entire* Amaterasu Server (before you free it) is a Dark World-themed palette swap of the Asuka Server, and most of the Digimon in it are palette swaps of the ones from Asuka.
- The
*Future Card Buddyfight* anime does this whenever more than one of the same monster appears in a single match. With Drum, at least, it's at least explained as him being part of an entire clan of dragons that all look the same aside from differently-colored hair and armor. Gemclone also generally appears as a blue, crystalline copy of the monster whose Super Mode they are copying at the time.
-
*Kaze no Stigma*: ||Ryuuya Kazamaki|| is this for main protagonist Kazuma Yagami.
- Shion, the heroine of the Non-Serial Movie
*Naruto Shippuden: The Movie*, is aside from hair and eye color identical to Hinata Hyuga, one of the supporting characters of the main series. They even both have pupil-less magical eyes.
- The "Rose Bride dress" of
*Revolutionary Girl Utena*: The original dress is red and worn by Anthy during the duels. In the first ending sequence ||and in episode 38||, Utena wears a light pink version of the dress, and in the third story arc, Kozue and Shiori gain dresses that match their hair colors (indigo and purple, respectively).
-
*Sgt. Frog*: It's used a lot in the anime for background Keronians, which generally share a few sets of generic designs (eyes with small irises, star emblems, hats similar to Keroro's or Kururu's, headphones included.
- Later episodes also use it for random background aliens.
- During
*Yu-Gi-Oh!*'s DOMA Arc, Jonouchi / Joey adds the Blue Flame Swordsman to his arsenal. This is, unsurprisingly, Exactly What It Says on the Tin—a blue Palette Swap of his already existing card, Flame Swordsman, with the exact same stat (ATK: 1800, DEF: 1600, Level: 5). On the plus side it does have a useful ability that the original card does not possess—when it's sent to the Graveyard it allows Joey to summon a regular Flame Swordsman to take its place.
-
*Noonbory and the Super 7*:
- All of the Dotoris look identical, with only their hats being different colours.
- The Builder Borys all have the same character model, just with different skin and clothing colours (one is pink-skinned wearing red, one is yellow-skinned wearing orange, and one is cream-skinned wearing pink).
-
*Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf*:
- Wolffy's grandfather Yellow Wolf looks
*exactly* like Wolffy, but colored yellow. Identical Grandson indeed.
- The Rainbow Beans from the season
*Flying Island: The Sky Adventure* are all literally the same character, right down to their cephalothorax-like designs. The only thing that distinguishes them is their color schemes, with each one made to match the colors of the rainbow.
- The Hobgoblin is effectively a palette swap of the Green Goblin, albeit with a hooded cape. There is an in-story reason, as the person behind the Hobgoblin mask intentionally dyed it a different color.
- In
*Ultimate Comics: Avengers*, Gregory Stark is introduced as Tony's twin brother. He has blond hair and wears white suits.
- In the short lived Continuity Reboot
*Wonder Woman: Odyssey* Artemis's costume and build are identical to Diana's in all but coloration, to reflect her former status as Diana's rival.
-
*Calvin & Hobbes: The Series* has Thunderstorm, who is described as his brother Brainstorm with a black lab coat and jet-black hair.
- In
*Contractual Obligations* Harry and Tom wear green and silver bonding robes with the colors reversed.
- In
*Expelled* Harry wears a gold robe with red trim for his marriage to Hermione, while her father has a red robe with gold trim.
- In
*Finding Heather* Padma and Parvati wear pink/orange and orange/pink dresses at the Yule Ball.
- In
*Harry Hadrian Snape and the Sorcerer's Stone* when Harry and Draco go to Diagon Alley for first-year school supplies, Draco is wearing a silver robe with green accents, while Harry's is green with silver accents.
- In
*Let's Try Again* Fred and George's Animagus forms are red foxes with black tips on their ears and tails, while Hadrian's is a black fox with red tips on its ears and tail.
-
*My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic*: According to the author's vids and artwork, many of the characters greatly look like each other with the only differences being colour and hairstyles. In the stories themselves, characters are often described by their similarities to others, such as Cerise Wonder being someone "whom greatly resembled princess Cadance same color, same mane style, even same voice but Cerise had a golden horn like Lightning had."
-
*Ojamajo Doremi: Rise of the Shadows*: The Shadows all look *exactly* like their Light Halves, except for color; most of them just have darker colors than their Light Halves. Black Queen and Evil Rin take this a step further; the former replaces all the white on the Queen's garb with black while the latter is black, gray, and silver.
-
*SuperSaiyanKirby Adventures* has Anti-SuperSaiyanKirby, who's literally the main character with some changed colors.
- That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's also Mattboo Sux, Sidney, Casy, "Evil Pac-man 64 clone", etc.
- That may be explained by the fact that the original character designs were made in MS paint.
- In
*Veiled Threat* Harry's Animagus form is a black phoenix with red wingtips and Ginny's is a red phoenix with black wingtips.
-
*The Matrix* homemade pinball machine was made by altering a *Johnny Mnemonic* machine in this way, and a *Genie*'s theme was repurposed into that of *The Ramones*. This is the preferred method for aspiring creators who don't have enough technical knowledge or money to build one from scratch and no intention to sell.
- Barbie movies:
- Several of the princesses in
*Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses* are palette swaps of each other, most noticeably twins Hadley and Isla, and triplets Janessa, Kathleen, and Lacey.
- In
*Barbie in A Christmas Carol*, the time and space vortexes the Ghosts of Christmas use are identical effects, just yellow for past, green for present, and red for future. Also, the twins wears identical Pimped Out Dresses, save for different colors, such as having feather headdresses, one pink and the other blue.
- Little John from
*Robin Hood (1973)* is basically Baloo from *The Jungle Book (1967)* but with brown fur (instead of gray) and wearing clothing. Not only that, but they also share the same voice actor.
- The character model for Queen Iduna from
*Frozen* bears a striking resemblance to Elsa, such as her wearing her hair in a crown-twist bun (only with brunette hair instead of platinum blonde).
- Word of God for
*Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse* revealed that the silhouette of the Lizard from Spider-Gwen's flashback was made by *heavily* modifying the character model for the Green Goblin (helped by this incarnation of Goblin being a hulking and brutish monster based on the *Ultimate Spider-Man* version).
- Rapunzel's wedding dress in
*Tangled Ever After* is actually her homecoming celebration dress colored white instead of pink.
- The villain in
*Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo* summoned several Palette Swapped copies of previously created villains for the final battle.
- Andy's birthday guests in
*Toy Story* are recolors of his model with the occasional baseball cap. Given how Pixar was struggling with humanoid models at the time, this was to be expected.
- In
*Turning Red*, each of the members of 4*Town wear white versions of their usual clothes when performing at the SkyDome.
-
*Wreck-It Ralph* used this for several of the background *Sugar Rush* racers. Both meta and in-game. Of course, when you have a racing game featuring tons of characters, and especially one from 1997, this is to be expected.
-
*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory* - The machine guns (which are black) in the Exploding Candy scene in the elevator show up in the *very next sequence* in white as the cameras in the Television Chocolate room.
-
*Children's Party at the Palace* has Mary Poppins, who first appears wearing a black coat when she chastises the Baddies for their attempted sabotage. Later during the "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" performance, her coat is blue instead.
-
*Grandma's Boy (2006)*, which is about video game designers, references this tendency when one tester recommends differentiating between two types of enemies by changing the colors of one of them.
-
*The Lost World: Jurassic Park*:
- The
*Mamenchisaurus* that briefly appear during the stampede scene were made by stretching out the *Brachiosaurus* model from the first movie.
- The male and female
*Tyrannosaurus* are slightly recoloured versions of the same animatronics and CG models, which is a notable change from the novel, which states how the male is smaller and scrawnier.
- Brad and Janet's guest rooms in
*The Rocky Horror Picture Show*. Lampshaded by an audience callback ("same room, different lighting, cheap movie!")
- The Starfleet uniforms seen in
*Star Trek: First Contact* are an inversion of the uniforms worn on *Star Trek: Deep Space Nine* and *Star Trek: Voyager*, being predominantly black with grey shoulders and colored shirts, unlike DS9/Voyager's uniforms which had gray shirts and colored shoulders. The DS9 crew would shortly switch to these uniforms for the rest of the series, whereas Voyager's crew, stuck in the Delta Quadrant, stuck with their uniforms till the end, though subsequent episodes involving the Federation at home featured these uniforms.
-
*X-Men: Days of Future Past*:
- Magneto always had some red and/or purple colour on his outfit, but in 2023 his uniform is completely black and grey, signifying that he's now part of the X-Men.
- Costume designer Louise Mingenbach described Past Xavier's switch from his brown-and-pink casual wear to his more formal blues and greys that is typically associated with the character in the other movies.
"At the beginning of the film, Charles is medicating, and very possibly on hallucinogens, so we had that come through in his shirt. As he pulls himself together, he wears a nice blue oxford like all good, put-together mena progression from that psychedelic Cat Stevens-wear."
- Many multicolored candies, such as gummy bears, are this. Though some will swear otherwise, many colored candies all have the same flavor unless explicitly advertised otherwise.
- Novelty cake pans in special shapes (of the sort often used to make childrens birthday cakes) often come with a little insert suggesting how the pan can be used to create numerous different cake designs. Given the bakers creativity will be somewhat limited by the shape of the pan, these alternative design suggestions are inevitably just palette swaps of whatever the main cake design is. So for example, if the pan is shaped like a truck, the alternative suggestions may be an army truck in camouflage colors or an ambulance which is just the truck in white with a red cross on it.
-
*The Fold* explores the possibility of duplicates from an alternate dimension, several of which are palette swapped for clarity and convenience.
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*The Barrier*: In a presentation including photos of children who were taken away from their parents by the government under false pretenses, some photos are altered to change the color of the subject's eyes and/or hair. One boy has very light blond hair in the presentation despite his real hair being significantly darker, while a girl with relatively light hair has it much darker on her presentation photo.
- This is the difference in the
*Community* episode "Physical Education" between ||Abed|| and his Identical Stranger, Joey. ||Or, in other words, Brown Joey and White Abed.||
- In
*Denji Sentai Megaranger*, the suits, which often have some sort of variety per season, are rather homogenous this time around save color. Perhaps a moment of Fridge Brilliance, since this season was about video games, particularly ones made in the mid-90s.
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*Dinosaur Planet*: The show heavily reused the CG models of the animals for different species in each episode to cut down on cost, and only with slight colour changes. *Allodaposuchus* and *Notosuchus*, *Aucasaurus* and *Tarascosaurus*, *Saltasaurus* and the unnamed titanosaurs in "Pod's Travels", *Alvarezsaurus* and *Shuvuuia*, *Troodon* and the unnamed troodontids in "Pod's Travels'' to name some.
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*Kamen Rider* frequently recycles its rubber suits, since these costumes are expensive and repainting them is cheap. At times this is the suits used for each Monster of the Week, but more commonly the components of a Rider suit that has become obsoleted by the story, such as a Mid-Season Upgrade form, will be recycled for a new form. With the advent of direct-to-DVD movies giving secondary Riders a day in the limelight, this trend became much more prominent, as each movie often only has the budget for a single brand-new costume per film while everyone else who gets a new outfit will use repainted or slightly retooled parts of old costumes.
- Gold Drive from
*Kamen Rider Drive* is a very literal Evil Knockoff of the title hero created by the Big Bad stealing Belt-san's tech (a recurring theme with him).
-
*Kamen Rider Ex-Aid* has Kamen Rider Genm, a palette-swapped Super Prototype of the title character, as part of its videogame theme. Multiple crossovers feature Genm being mistaken for Ex-Aid or vice-versa.
- In the
*Psych* episode "We'd like to thank the academy", Shawn shoots two civilian cardboard cutouts in a training exercise. His justifications:
"The first woman with the groceries was exiting a library that doesn't allow snacks. I know this because we've tried on several occasions. And the second woman was simply a replica of the first woman, but they painted her face brown, which is both offensive and suspicious."
- By the time of
*Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger*, it's has become quite obvious that *Super Sentai* not longer has the budget to create unique monster suits so all we've got are the same body suits with a different head and/or weapon. Even so, there's still plenty of palette swaps like Milk World being a dairy themed repaint of Bullfighting World or Carrot World being an orange version of Daikon World.
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*Planet Dinosaur* is a rather heavy offender in this category: *Rugops* and *Skorpiovenator*; *Saurornithoides*, *Troodon*, and *Bradycneme*; *Sinornithosaurus* and *Rahonavis*; *Jeholosaurus* and the small ornithopods in "The New Giants" (likely *Gasparinisaura*); all of the generic pterosaurs, with the exception of *Hatzegopteryx*; *Allosaurus* and *Saurophaganax* (this one is at least justified, as *Saurophaganax* might just be a giant *Allosaurus* species).
-
*Prehistoric Park* did this with the *same species*; the adult *Tyrannosaurus* uses the same body of the juveniles, only with a different head, because they did not have the budget to make two *Tyrannosaurus* models. This results in the adults looking too slim and lanky compared to the real animal. They also recoloured the *T. rex* orange to make the *Albertosaurus* in the later episode.
- In
*Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger* and *Power Rangers S.P.D.,* Make My Monster Grow mostly took the year off, in favor of each alien criminal of the week having his or her own Humongous Mecha. While the monster suits each looked original, the mecha started to repeat themselves, with minor details, and yes, colors, changed. (A few times, there wasn't even a repaint!)) *Two* once-used monster suits per week was just not gonna happen.
- The Trickster in
*The Sarah Jane Adventures* actually invokes this in ''The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith,'' appearing in white instead of his usual black to ||Peter Dalton|| as an angel. Lampshaded by the Doctor.
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*Star Trek: The Next Generation* introduced Starfleet Academy cadet uniforms that were largely a partial palette swap of the standard Starfleet uniform, moving the department color from the upper body and sleeves to the shoulder yoke and leaving the rest of the uniform black, while adding large pockets on the pant legs. When it came time for *Star Trek: Deep Space Nine* to send Nog off to the Academy, the cadet uniform's primary color was swapped from black to gray, in order to contrast against DS9's black jumpsuits. Following the introduction of the *First Contact* uniforms on DS9, new cadet uniforms were introduced; the outer uniform was a gray version on the movie version, with quilted shoulders and divisional stripes on the sleeve cuffs, but with the department colors on the shoulders and the gray undershirts of the original DS9 uniform.
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*Walking with Dinosaurs* was guilty of this. Similar looking animals (like *Utahraptor* and *Dromaeosaurus*, as well as *Dryosaurus*, *Leaellynasaura*, and the small ornithopods in "Death of a Dynasty") were just these. Certain animals (like large theropods and ornithopods) only got new heads. You can tell, because many creatures have the exact same folds and blood vessels on their skin. Then, there is *Plesiopleurodon*, which is just Stock Footage of *Liopleurodon* from the previous episode, only tinted lighter. *Quetzalcoatlus* is the worst offender, as in its case it's obvious that the animators didn't have much time; it's just the *Ornithocheirus* from "Giant of the Skies" with a few minor tweaks. They didn't even edit out the teeth!
- The MAD Magazine comic
*Spy vs. Spy* features the titular black and white spies, palette swaps of one another.
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*Pin*Bot* was repurposed nine years later into *Jack*Bot*. It uses the same characters as *Pin*Bot* and *The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot*, as well as the same layout, but reskins it into a casino theme and changes the rules substantially, as well as updated electronic parts. It also swaps out *Pin*Bot*'s alphanumeric display with a dot-matrix display, allowing it to show pictures and animations instead of just numbers and simple phrases.
- The
*Shrek* pinball machine has a layout, parts, and rules identical to *Family Guy*, the only differences being artwork and sounds. That being said, it was not a careless adaptation: *Shrek* has hundreds of new lines of dialogue written specifically for the pinball machine, the new art fits the theme perfectly, and the *Family Guy* rules are retrofitted to be as faithful to the movies as possible. The idea is that *Family Guy* did not meet sales expectations, and operators requested a more family-friendly theme, so *Shrek* was conceived to be quickly put together to meet operators' demands.
- Some home-made pinball machines consist of taking an existing machine and replacing the artwork and changing the rules, but the machine is physically unchanged. See Fan Works for examples.
- WWE started doing this big time with their belts since 2016. With the exception of Raw's Womens title (which was originally intended to make the Women's division more on par with the men), these new designs were brought out during the revival of the brand extension and made to be Colour-Coded for Your Convenience (Raw's belts being red-based and SmackDown being blue-based).
- Three of their new belts are palette swaps of the WWE World Title which has black leather and a black background behind the front plate. The Raw Women's title is on white leather with a red background, the Universal title is on red leather with a red background (the WWE logo on the front plate also features a unique black underline) and the SmackDown Women's title is on white leather with a blue background.
- SmackDown's Tag Team titles are also a palette swap of Raw's Tag Team Titles, replacing the black leather and bronze plates with blue leather and silver plates. And then an updated design of the Raw Tag Team Titles became a palette swap of SmackDown's, with a red leather and silver plates.
- A number of Muppets are actually the same puppet with different clothes, hair, and other accessories. The Creature Shop calls them "Anything Muppets."
*Sesame Street* fans reading this will probably not be surprised to learn that the characters Prairie Dawn and Betty Lou, for example, are the same puppet, plus Zoe and Rosita.
- The same thing happens quite frequently in
*Dinosaurs*. Every single puppet not used for a protagonist was used as countless different characters, made male or female simply by changing the clothes.
- A number of competitive racing series have contestants racing in nigh-identical vehicles in order to level the playing field, so that teams without millions to throw at aerodynamics research can stay competitive, though most allow
*minor* modifications. NASCAR is the most prominent example, with each racing having dozens of completely identical vehicles painted in different colors with some token customized front fascias (See, this 1000+ horsepower RWD monster is totally an ecoboost Ford Fusion!). BK Racing's two cars (Toyota #83 and #93) are literal palette swaps; one is red, one is blue.
- Averted by Formula One. Each team is allowed only 2 cars and outside of the driver number both cars must carry identical liveries. This can be confusing for fans at the track (meaning palette swaps would actually be welcome in this case), though these days it's mostly mitigated by phone apps that will give you the running order. In addition, F1 is definitely
*not* a spec series, and while the two cars used by each team are in theory identical to each other every team custom builds their cars from the chassis on up and has a choice of four different engine manufacturers note : Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, and Honda for the 2022 season, couple that with pretty loose regulations that have plenty of loopholes and you end up with 10 pairs of dramatically different (though visually very similar) cars, some of which are much, much faster than others note : Case in point: the last time the World Driver's Championship was won by someone not driving for either Mercedes or Red Bull was in 2009. To Braun GP, which became the Mercedes-Petronas team (as in the guys that have Lewis Hamilton) the very next season. This is pretty common throughout the history of F1, there's rarely more than 3 teams that are really competing for the title.
- Miniatures wargames will often have this. The players will actually play the same army by the same rules, but represent in-universe alignments by paint scheme. For example, one player may represent the WWII 10th Mountain Division and another may represent a US Ranger Battalion by using the same miniatures and rule set, but simply paint the 10th in snow and the Rangers in drab greens. This is especially prevalent in
*Warhammer* and *Warhammer 40,000* where many in universe armies might follow the same rule set. In the case of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 a number of factions started out life as simple palette swaps, but have developed over the years to get their own models and/or rules. The Space Marine chapters are a good example - originally Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Ultramarines and Space Wolves were just red, dark green, blue and grey versions of the same thing, but now they have their own distinct stylings and rules. Other factions, such as Eldar Craftworlds and Ork Clans, are still just different colour schemes, though each can be characterised somewhat by choice of units taken as well as the livery.
- The fourth edition of
*Dungeons & Dragons* and its player base have been noted for actively embracing the concept of "reskinning" powers, monsters, and potentially even entire character classes to allow for more variety in play — that is, basically taking one mechanic, stat block or the like and simply reusing it as-is (with perhaps some minor tweaks along the way) to represent something potentially *described* entirely differently from the original.
- The early days of
*Yu-Gi-Oh!* was very fond of recycling monster designs, with a lot of random monsters having at least one counterpart. The localization had a habit of changing their names to be variants of "[monster name] #1" and "[same name] #2." Curiously, while the designs were identical bar colors, the *artwork* was always completely redrawn, depicting them in different poses or from different angles, and barring that artwork, the monsters usually had nothing in common. (Videogame adaptations that used 3D models tended to use them as more conventional palette swaps.)
- About two-thirds of the original
*Masters of the Universe* toyline reused parts from the original He-Man and Skeletor toys. This is a big reason for the World of Muscle Men look of the franchise; just about every male character has the exact same bulging biceps.
- The
*Marvel Legends* and *DC Universe* lines and their permutations tend to have a number of "generic" bodies (slim but muscular man, fairly muscular man, beefcake man) that they reuse for any character whose design can be boiled down to "buff guy in spandex." Swap out the head, add some accessories, change the paint and plastic colors, and suddenly a lot of characters look the same.
- Many themed Merkur sets (such as the Army, Safari, and Farm sets) are the same parts painted a different colour.
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*G.I. Joe* has several 'covered head to toe' enemy characters. Each meant to be a different mook an identical uniform. Swaps come as ideas do. The 'Python Patrol' was, storywise, a way to make characters invisible to sensor equipment. The heroes had, for example, 'Tiger Force', which swapped the usual uniform colors with yellow, brown and red. Nameless Joe Greenshirts (think 'redshirts') got this, though their heads were clearly seen. Some were logical (light skin and a tanned one could mean a sibling was in the sun) but others were different races, same facial features.
- Palette swaps and parts sharing created the original wave of twelve male Joes in 1982. Grunt (who, although established as a unique character, served as the basis for the Greenshirts) has the most common components of the wave, save for his head (which is only shared with Grand Slam and Zap; the most common head is shared between Flash, Hawk, Short-Fuze, and Steeler), and all of the shared pieces are recolored in one way or another on at least one of the figures - with the exception of Flash and Grand Slam, who aside from their heads are identical. Grand Slam did get his own palette swap when he was reissued with a different vehicle in 1983, though, and a few other 1982 figures received palette swaps when reissued with new vehicles.
- Hot Wheels at least acknowledges its recolors for different model years are the same cars, but one can pinpoint which model year a certain car comes from by the paint job.
- The Jack Russell terriers Bennett and Yank, who are pet dogs of Molly McIntire and Emily Bennett of the American Girls Collection respectively, are palette swaps of each other, bearing the same coat pattern with the colors inverted.
- Nearly every LEGO minifigure ever, if for fairly understandable reasons. It's only within the past few years that they've started implementing unique body, limb and head designs for non-human characters.
- In
*BIONICLE*, the act of palette swapping represented a very disliked trend throughout the line's early run. The most infamous case is that of the Bohrok and Bohrok-Kal lines: 12 sets that, beyond their weapons (and usually their collectibles), are exactly the same model, just in different colors. The same could be said for most of the Matoran sets, which only differed in their colors and/or mask designs. Yet narrowly avoided by most of the original Rahi two-packs which had two almost identical models, but each had at least one tiny detail that differentiated it from its partner (the exception being the Nui-Jaga scorpions). Outside of the toys, story material also had its share of these, but not many were truly canon. The green Vortixx from the comic *Shadow Play* was colored that way so that the readers could tell him apart from the black Roodaka. On the other hand, Tuma's green colored Rock Steed from *Rise and Fall of the Skrall* is canon. As a result, most background extras in the animated films were just recolors of the same handful of models. Even the Vahki soldiers used the same model, despite that their toys at least came with unique weapons. And in the third movie, the Muaka tiger was a mere palette swap of the ash bear from the first, with a slightly retooled head — it looked *nothing* like the actual Muaka toy, so they explained that it was really a mutant.
- At the beginning,
*Hero Factory* somewhat dipped back into the practice for its Heroes (the villains still avoided it). They were built in a factory as variations of the same basic design rather than individual and unique life-forms. The first wave Heroes were recognizable solely by their different helmets, weapons torso armour designs (the three rookies had the same one, however). The 2.0 and 3.0 waves, thanks to the new building style, added subtle differences that made each Hero unique: limbs length, shoulder width, armour size and orientation, colour schemes. By the Breakout arc, though Heroes are still all built off the largely same basic frame, Hero designs are even more varied in height, designs, colour schemes, armour and other elements.
- LEGO Trains did this several times:
- Passenger coach 7818 is the same design as the two coaches in 7710, but coloured blue and red rather than yellow and blue.
- The 1996 train station 2150 is a reissue of the 1991 design 4554, in red rather than yellow.
- The "My Own Train" range sold locomotives of the same design in a choice of five different colours.
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*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*:
- Not only do the line of figurines resemble more toward pre-G4 versions, but various background characters (sometimes not even existing in the series) are palette swaps of the main characters, if their packaging graphic is anything to go by. For instance, look up Dewdrop Dazzle
note : of Twilight Sparkle, Feathermay note : of Rainbow Dash, Flitterheart note : of Fluttershy on her brushable packaging and collector's card, but her blind bag figure is based on Rainbow Dash, Lulu Luck note : of Rarity, Plumsweet note : of Pinkie Pie, Snowcatcher note : of Rarity also, Diamond Rose note : of Fluttershy again, and Twinkleshine note : of Rarity yet again, if you're already familiar with the main G4 cast. Some other examples show attempt to differentiate however, such as "Cupcake" being a wingless version of Fluttershy, or "Sunny Daze" being a non-unicorn Sweetie Belle, or even "Minty" as an Applejack mold sans the hat.
- The "blind bag" minifigures even went so far as to have Fluttershy -
*one of the Mane Six!* - as a Pallete Swap of Rainbow Dash. (Which is somewhat amusing after the events of the third season episode "Magic Duel"...) She finally got her own unique mold in a set released in mid-2013 note : but her collector's card still has her as a RD palette swap as of Wave 11. Several other characters who've appeared on the show, though, are still recolors at the blindbag scale, such as Cheerilee note : of Pinkie Pie, Trixie Lulamoon note : of Rarity in wave 4, then of Twilight Sparkle in later issues, Lyra Heartstrings note : of Twilight in the blind bags, but Rarity in the Groovin' Hooves◊ set, Bon Bon(Sweetie Drops) note : of Applejack, Daisy(Flower Wishes) note : Pinkie Pie again, Blossomforth and Helia note : both of Rainbow Dash, Strawberry Sunrise note : of Derpy, and Peachy Pie note : also of Pinkie Pie, ironically.
- The Wave 11 blind bags have the stallion Neon Lights as a redeco of DJ PON-3. This wave's palette swaps also include Sunset Shimmer
note : of Rarity yet again, Suri Polomare (Buttonbelle) note : of Pinkie Pie again, Flash Sentry note : of Thunderlane, Big Wig note : of Mrs. Cake, Candy Apples note : of Applejack again, Purple Wave note : of Lyrica Lilac, Wensley note : of Big McIntosh, Cloud Chaser note : of Thunderlane again, Royal Pin note : of Shining Armor, etc., with Fluttershy and Cheese Sandwich being the only unique molds.
- There is also Forsythia
note : Rarity, and also appears in the mobile game as a minor charcter and Fizzy Pop[[note]]Pinkie Pie, and seems to be based on the same g3 pony who inspired the colors and real name of the movies villain[[/note]
- Nerf blasters are often released in recolored versions as store exclusives, notably the Sonic Series from Toys R Us, the Clear Series from Target, and the legendary Red Strike series from Walmart, which was only for sale for one Black Friday and is now one of the most sought after and expensive repaints ever in Nerf history.
- The toyline for
*Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves* reused parts from both an Ewok playset and the *Super Powers* line. This resulted in Robin Hood himself having a conspicuous G-shaped belt buckle.
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*Transformers*: The franchise, being what it is frequently redecos (puts different colors and painted designs on an old mold) and/or retools (puts new parts on old models) the same model several times to get better return on their toys. This can vary from a new paint scheme on a character to making a completely different character.
- Starscream, in particular, has an entire group of palette swaps known as the Seekers, starting with the originals, Thundercracker and Skywarp. Move some things around (retool) and you get the 'coneheads,' Thrust, Dirge, and Ramjet. Background characters from the cartoon who were meant as generics would also eventually gain names, backstories, and toys of their own as they appeared in stories. There are even female Seekers now, starting with
*Animateds* Slipstream. Rest assured, if a new Starscream toy is made than at least one of the Seekers is soon to follow, regardless if they actually appear in the associated media or not.
- Other famous or reoccurring redecos include Optimus Prime into both Nemesis Prime and Ultra Magnus (under the armor, Ultra Magnus is a white Prime), Bumblebee into Cliffjumper, Megatron into Galvatron (particularly popularized by the
*Unicron Trilogy* shows), Soundwave into Blaster, Rumble and Frenzy, Ironhide and Ratchet, and Lazerbeak and Buzzsaw.
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*Trasformers Generation 2* consisted in large part of palette swaps of G1 toys. There were some exceptions, like Optimus Prime remained in his classic red and blue and Megatron got an entirely new vehicle mode as a tank instead of a handgun, but mostly the figures were simply the same toys in different colors (and spring-fired weapons the originals didn't have).
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*Transformers: Cybertron* interestingly avoids this, for the most part (okay, not in the toyline), with Thundercracker having a standard Seeker body... but Starscream himself is a *completely* different design, with only the head looking particularly Starscreamy. (It's actually based on Screamer's pre-Earth design from the Dreamwave *War Within* comics.) The exception is Galvatron. After upgrading to Galvatron, visually, Megatron is Palette Swapped to G1 Megatron's colors. Major Homage, bordering on non-sexual fanservice.
-
*Transformers: Prime*:
- Skyquake and Dreadwing are twins with two halves of the same spark, explaining why they look essentially the same, just with different colors. Fowler even lampshades, multiple times, how he essentially gave the same alt-mode to two different robots (he was piloting the same jet when facing each of the brothers).
- The Jet Vehicon mooks and the more elite Seekers, who are basically silver and grey versions of the regular Jet Vehicons (in-universe, their colouring is in homage to their commander Starscream).
- In
*Transformers: Animated*, they were explained as having the same "body type" in-fiction. Oddly, though, only a handful of toys *actually* got recolored, namely Starscream as his clones and a couple of BotCon exclusives. More recolors came out in Japan or were cancelled before release. This has been done so often in both the official toyline and the shows, that it's considered a fairly acceptable method of inventing an Original Character (that one plans to create art of).
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*Transformers: BotBots* manages to change alt modes for characters simply via recolors, thanks to the characters transforming into mundane objects rather than specific vehicles. For example, Angry Cheese, who transforms into a grilled cheese sandwich, has PB Junior as a recolor, who turns into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead. Because their faces are printed on instead of molded on, the recolors will often have different faces to differentiate them further.
- The Transformers fandom actually differentiates between recolors (which are the same figure with different colours, often to represent a brand-new character) like Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp and retools (the figure is slightly modified, such as new wings, arms and so on) such as the Coneheads (Starscream molds with new heads and wings), or Bumblebee and Cliffjumper in many toylines. In the original toyline, Bumblebee was a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, while Cliffjumper was a red Porsche 924, but as their toys had Super-Deformed
*Choro-Q/Penny Racers* proportions, they had identical transformations and were otherwise very similar in appearance. It also didn't help that Hasbro released red Bumblebees and yellow Cliffjumpers, or that they somehow managed to release the *Micro Change* Mazda Familia figure (which also had the same transformation) in yellow on Cliffjumper (and possibly Bumblebee) cardbacks. It also probably didn't help that Cliffjupmer was retooled into Hubcap in 1986, or that Pretender Classics Bumblebee's robot head from 1989 was modeled after Cliffjumper's. By the time Hasbro and Takara started making new toys of the G1 characters in the 2000s, they just started making Cliffjumper a palette swap of Bumblebee, sometimes with a new head, sometimes not.
- Hasbro also has a habit of doing this with their superhero properties, especially with the Marvel Legends line. For instance, the Marvel Legends Captain America figures they released for
*Avengers: Age of Ultron* and *Captain America: Civil War* were just repaints of the Marvel Legends Captain America figure that was released for *Captain America: The Winter Soldier*.
- Toy Biz once released an Elektra figure that was just a repaint of an old Psylocke figure. They even gave her Psylocke's trademark psi-blade, even though Elektra doesn't have any superpowers in the comics.
- Toy Biz did the same thing with their
*X-Men: Mutant Armor* and *Spider-Man: Techno Wars* lines. If you're wondering why Spider-Man and the X-Men would need to wear suits of Powered Armor despite already having superpowers, it's because the toys were actually unreleased Iron Man figures from his cancelled TV show. So for instance, with only a new head sculpt and paint job, the Magnetic Iron Man figure became a "Battle Armor Wolverine" figure, Radiation Iron Man became "Radioactive Spider Armor Spider-Man," Living Laser (who was itself a retooled version of an unreleased U.S. Agent figure) became "Astral Plane Professor X," and so on.
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*Dino-Riders* features this in both the cartoon and toy line. In the cartoon, most of the Mooks are Palette Swaps of the main "Generals", and go unnamed. For the toys, numerous mini-figures of the humanoid characters were created, with the same molds being used frequently (there are seven "Ant-Men" based off of the base Antor figure, for example; others simple use the same name but a different color scheme). Many dinosaurs share molds- the *Torosaurus/Triceratops*, numerous small *Ceratopsians* (the three toys all have different heads), and both sides have a *Deinonychus*, with only their stripes being different colors. Only the armor is different on most of them. Both sides also had a *Quetzalcoatlus*, though the second was only released in a limited area, making it quite valuable now.
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*Flick-to-Stick Bungees*, being made by the same people who made the below-mentioned *Gogo's Crazy Bones*, takes a note from that toy series and gives each of its characters two color schemes, complete with a different name and stats (e.g. the green Lojo and the yellow Luji are just the same character in different colors). This is in the case of the European version; the American version mostly averts this, but it does have two characters made specifically for it named Samos and Peltast who are just the same character in different colors.
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*Flush Force* gives each character mold two different color schemes. Unlike other blind bagged toys, each different color is considered its own character, rather than the same in two different colors.
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*Gogo's Crazy Bones* figures came in different colors, usually about two to five in the reboot series depending on the set. The sets in the classic series, however, did not have any restrictions on what colors characters could come in, allowing them to be available in literally any color. In addition to all this, certain characters from the reboot series use the same mold as another character, for example Miro-K uses the same mold as Ayu from the Megatrip set, but the use of recycled molds is exaggerated in the Evolution set, which consists of Gogos that use all of the molds from the previous set, Series 1.
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*Jurassic Park* has this in spades. Almost every line has at least one or two toys that are repaints of sculpts from previous lines, and the *Jurassic World* era toys get repeated repaints of the same sculpt. The worst is probably the *Velociraptor* molds, but almost every figure released gets a repaint release at some point. Sometimes it's seen as okay, if it's a nicely made model, but when the sculpt wasn't that great to begin with, or when theres already a bunch out, it can irritate fans. You can see the list of older ones here.
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*The Trash Pack*, *Shopkins*, and *The Grossery Gang*, all blind bag toys by Moose Toys, gives each character more than one color scheme, treating them like an extra figure to collect. *The Trash Pack* has three minimum color palettes, while the other two have a minimum of two. Some special packages gives existing figures exclusive colors that can only be found in those packages.
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*30 Minutes Missions*: The EXAMACS units and Option Armor parts are available in various different colors, allowing you to mix-and-match the color palettes if you have multiple kits with different colors.
- Higher end figure companies like Papo and Rebor are known to do this with their figures. Multiple color variants of dinosaur figures are often released together. Papo in particular has repainted movie inspired figures like their
*Velociraptor* and *T.Rex* several times. Papo has done the same with some of their non-dinosaur figures, as an Unicorn offered with mane and tail either yellow or silver and characters as princesses, who differ at least in the coloration of their dresses.
- In
*Aventure Dennis*, the protagonist fights Shadow Dennis, a palette-swapped version of himself.
- The world of
*Adventurers!* apparently suffers from a severe case of this. The characters get to fight monsters like dark blue spectres and navy blue spectres, each requiring different tactics to defeat.
It was also lampshaded in a discussion between the Big Bad and his minion, where the Big Bad complains he has no time because he has to create new monsters to send after the protagonists, and the minion points out he usually just takes an existing monster and puts 'Ice' in front of it's name.
-
*Akuma's Comics*: Original characters introduced early on used to be recolors of other sprites, with Akuma himself starting as a Super Sonic colorized like the Street Fighter character of the same name. Over time they became distinct from their base sprites and no longer fit this trope.
- In
*Bob and George*, many of the characters were recolors. Indeed, this might be the first recolor ever. And this the first intentional one. Lampshaded on a regular basis, such as when half the cast and most authors ended up stuck in "devious recolour traps".
-
*Books of Adam*: Parodied in "Palette Swapping". The protagonist complains that this practice is a symptom of Lazy Artist, before being confronted by a tanner and blonder version of him.
- In Dragon City, Natasha was a brown version of Erin, but she was later discovered to be an alternate universe version of Erin, so it doesn't really count.
-
*El Goonish Shive*: When Elliot needs to become female (to burn off magic energy), the easiest way not to look just like his Opposite-Sex Clone Ellen is to change hair and eye color.
-
*Homestuck*:
- The Underlings of Sburb are all the same basic few monster species given countless different colours themed after grist types, and all bearing some combination of the attributes of the players' prototypings. Given that it's an ersatz RPG in webcomic form, it's probably a homage to the palette-swapping practice in general.
- The frogs used only three distinct models — the basic one, a modified version that leans forward more, and a larger one that croaks with its mouth open and without inflating its throat — which are recolored in every shade of the rainbow when large shots need to be populated.
- This also happens when you make SBURB Unwinnable by trying to play it with only one person. The Prospit carapaces will wear black and the Derse carapaces will wear white. But if that happens, you've got bigger problems.
-
*Manly Guys Doing Manly Things*: As noted early on, pallet swapping Commander Badass ends up making him resemble the artist's father. She promptly turned him into recurring character, Canadian Guy. The in-universe explanation is that ||Canadian Guy is an unsanctioned regional bootleg of the Commander||.
-
*The Non-Adventures of Wonderella*: The mirror-universe versions of Wonderella and Wonderita wear costumes with the colors reversed.
-
*Philler Space*: Ephil looks just like Philler except for their palettes.
-
*Sheldon The Tiny Dinosaur*: The titular character is a green dino. A "bootleg" version of him exists, but it's coloured blue, and wears a peanut shell instead of an acorn cap.
- In
*Yokoka's Quest*, Mao and Yokoka are basically palette-swaps of each other in cat form, and would be this normally if not for hair length and clothing differences. A Q&A strip explains the colour differences as Yokoka having a type of albinism.
- In the sixth, final episode of
*Don't Hug Me I'm Scared*, ||we get a blue Red Guy, a green Yellow Guy, and a red Duck; which also happen to be their favourite colours, as described in episode one||.
-
*DSBT InsaniT*: This is what Bill's second and third forms are. His second form turns his hair a lighter shade of blue, and his third form turns his hair and clothes black with a yellow shirt.
- GoAnimate has Daillou (sometimes others) as a palette swap for Caillou.
- Parodied by Pikasprey with "Donny Rage", an Original Character who is nothing more than an all-red Johnny Cage sprite.
- The characters in
*Red vs. Blue* look identical except for their unique colors. This is due more to the nature of the work (Machinima using the *Halo* Color-Coded Multiplayer mode) than a stylistic choice.
- In later seasons, when the current game in the series allowed for customized pieces of armor, this cleared up a bit.
- Being one of the web's most potent Fountain of Expies characters, there are a massive number of recolored Sonic the Hedgehog lookalikes on sites like
*DeviantArt*. The least modified are simply Sonic with a new color scheme or some clothes on.
- On user-created-adoptable site Squiby it's common for users to take a single format for a creature and use creative colorfills to make multiple versions. Some popular lines that use this formula include Mites, Tencats, Shika and Coons.
- SMG4: Most characters in his early videos were just Mario recolors, including SMG4 itself and his old friends.
- In the
*Batman Beyond* episode "Heroes," the character of Magma is a simple recoloring of Clayface from the previous series.
- Invoked in
*Ben 10: Alien Force* with Albedo, the Insufferable Genius and former apprentice of Azmuth made an improved version of the omnitrix and began to masquerade as Ben to trash his reputation. At the end of the episode, Azmuth appears and breaks his version, getting him stuck in a Shape Shifter Mode Lock of Ben, except with white hair, a red jacket, and red eyes.
- In
*The Crumpets*, the recurring Weather Girl is usually blonde and wears a pinkish dress. In "Pity The Prize", the Weather Girl in that episode is colored like Cassandra (black/bluish hair, cyan shirt, dark blue skirt, brown belt), not to mention a different voice. This Palette Swap lets Cassandra disguise as the Weather Girl with few changes (as well as imitating her voice) so she can try preventing her love interest Pfff from attaching to the real Weather Girl.
- In
*Dinosaur Train*, similarly to *Walking with Dinosaurs*, prehistoric creatures that are related or look similar have the same generic body shape and only differ through their colour schemes and diverse display structures (horns for the ceratopsians, crests for the hadrosaurs, plates for the stegosaurs etc). The large theropods always have the same shape of the body and skull, no matter how closely related they are. For instance, aside from their colours, the *Allosaurus* and *Giganotosaurus* can only be told apart from a *T. rex* by their different number of fingers, the former's brow horns and the latter's osteoderms running down its spine. The *Daspletosaurus* looks exactly like *T. rex* (since they are related), but coloured differently.
- In the
*Donkey Kong Country* CGI cartoon, the character model for Eddie the Mean Old Yeti is the same as Donkey Kong's, but with white fur and a cap instead of a necktie.
- Huey, Dewey, and Louie tend to dress identically but for color in
*DuckTales (1987)* and various Donald Duck shorts. They vary it up a bit more in *Quack Pack*, though their preferred colors stay.
-
*Family Guy*:
- Lois' sister, Carol, is basically another Lois with different hair and clothes. They sport the same exact face and body shape.
- Stewie's evil clone from "The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair" has the colors of Stewie's yellow shirt and red overalls switched.
- Retep is Peter with a green shirt and white pants. And he is evil.
- In the
*Futurama* episode "The Farnsworth Parabox", the crew of Planet Express goes to a Parallel Universe where coin flips and other random events having the opposite outcomes from their own and where they meet palette-swapped versions of themselves (Fry has black hair and a green jacket, Bender is gold-plated instead of gray, etc.), otherwise nearly identical in personality. This is a literal example in Bender's case, as when Bender originally came off the assembly line he flipped a coin to decide if he was going to have himself painted with a gunmetal gray finish or a golden one, making the two Benders ones that chose different palettes for the same physical model.
- In
*Gargoyles*, Owen and Vogel. They say nobody's ever said they look alike. ||Turns out it's because Puck based his Owen identity on Vogel, the trickster enjoying the irony of playing The Comically Serious.|| Further, one of the consequences of rapid growing a Gargoyle clone is a change in coloration, which was probably done to avoid the usual narrative consequences thereof.
- Hanna-Barbera became infamous for this in the 60s and 70s, one example being Mumbly who was somewhat derived from Muttley of
*Wacky Races*. Mumbly would later be partnered with The Dread Baron in *Laff-A-Lympics* as stand-ins for Muttley and Dick Dastardly, likely due to rights issues with Heatter-Quigley Productions who co-produced *Wacky Races*.
- One somewhat bizarre non-Video Game example are Wile E. Coyote and Ralph Wolf. They were basically identical, except Ralph had a red nose and Wile E had a black one, and they lived in different areas.
-
*Miraculous Ladybug* tends to re-use characters with different colors during crowd shots to save budget. This◊ class photo is one of the more obvious examples; pretty much all of the students are recolors of each other except for Aurore and Mireille (the blonde girl with pigtails and the dark-haired girl with the aqua sweater, respectively).
-
*Mixels* has various background filler Mixels that share the same character models, with the only difference being swapped colors to represent the elements of the tribe they're from.
- In
*The Mr. Men Show*, Mr. Bounce looks like a yellow Mr. Tickle with a pink hat instead of a blue one.
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*:
- Due to the show's use of Flash animation, the easiest way to fill out crowd scenes is to reuse the same Flash models multiple times, in addition to mixing and matching mane, tail and cutie mark designs and adding or removing wings or a horn, to make new background ponies. The result is that most background characters tend to be recolored versions of a relatively small handful of basic models, and sometimes even major characters are palette-swapped to make background ponies.
- Daring Do◊ has the same appearance as Rainbow Dash, just with a monochrome mane and a tan rather than blue coat. Her explorer clothes help differentiate her. In her original appearance it was because Dash was imagining what she read in a book... and then when she appeared in person she still looked like that.
- Photo Finish is a recolor of Twilight Sparkle, only with a shorter mane to make her look a little more like Anna Wintour. There are a few frames that lampshade this with her cutie mark, which is the same as Twilight's but with a camera added.
- While most of the Woodland Creatures associated with Fluttershy only appear in one palette and the songbirds have different models for each color scheme, some are given extra variety by means of recolors of the same base model. The most extreme case are the rabbits, which have white, light or dark gray, tan, brown, and black recolors, with the addition of a pair of antlers making jackalopes.
- "Swarm of the Century": The individual bugs in the multicolored parasprite swarm all share the same character design.
- "Owl's Well That Ends Well": The green dragon is a palette swap of the red dragon in "Dragonshy" earlier in the season. This dragon's character design is used once again multiple times in "Dragon Quest", colored red, green, light blue or black. In addition, the dragons flying in the actual migration all use one of two character models, identical save that one has a slender snout and a long spike on its head and the other has a heavy jaw, an underbite and two short horns, both recolored in a rainbow of hues.
- "Over a Barrel": The buffalo (besides Chief Thunderhooves and Little Strongheart, who have important enough roles to get their own models) all use the same Flash model as each other, recolored to have either brown, russet or tan fur to make scenes with their tribe less visually monotonous.
- "The Return of Harmony, Part 1": The Keepers of the Grove of Truth are physically perfect copies of each other, their only differences being that one is dark red, one is orange-red, and one is green.
- "Luna Eclipsed": The band that performs on stage are actually palette swaps of the band from "The Best Night Ever" but are wearing scarecrow costumes. Fiddly Faddle, the Octavia palette swap, also appears in "Apple Family Reunion".
- "Magic Duel": The various versions of Applejack and Rarity that Twilight makes during the titular duel look like palette swaps of their younger sisters and various other members of the apple family. This is because ||they really are palette swaps, as Twilight is not strong enough to actually cast those spells, so the Apple Family and Sweetie Belle disguised themselves with paint and hair dyes instead||. Likewise, Fluttershy is painted in Rainbow Dash's colors for the duplication illusion.
- "Apple Family Reunion": The fruit bats are a particularly extreme example of this. Only the red ones are given detailed models, while all other bats are just outlines filled in with all the colors of the rainbow.
- "Bats!": The same Flash model is used for all the vampire fruit bats, recolored brown, gray or slate blue to give them some variety.
- "Amending Fences": Moondancer, a friend first mentioned in the first episode of the series but who does not appear properly until here in season 5, is partly a recolor of Twilight, emphasizing her role as a foil. When they're young, they're complete palette swaps aside from their Cutie Marks (and both are antisocial bookworms). At the time of the episode, Moondancer has acquired Big Ol' Eyebrows, Nerd Glasses, a sweater and a messier "I don't care what I look like" version of the hairstyle, though it's still a modification of the same one with a hair bobble. (And she's become even more antisocial whereas Twilight has learnt to appreciate friendship.) We also see that before Twilight's rejection traumatised her and she decided to isolate herself, she had the eyebrows and glasses but was still otherwise a palette swap. (This doesn't so much seem to have symbolic significance as to be a needed halfway point between the two other looks.)
-
*The New Scooby-Doo Movies*: One episode reuses a character model of a villain from the original series, and just recolors him white to make a 'new' villain.
-
*PAW Patrol*: One episode features a one-off pup named Sylvia, who is a palette swap of Chase with blue fur and purple eyes rather than brown fur and orange eyes.
-
*Ready Jet Go!*:
- Moonbeam is a light blue version of Sunspot.
- Carrot and Celery's boss from "Back to Bortron 7" is just a huge green Sunspot, but with a mustache obscuring his mouth.
- Face 9001 is an orange recolor of Face 9000.
-
*Shimmer and Shine:* Dottie, the polka-dotted elephant from "My Secret Genies", is practically the elephant from "Abraca-Genie" with polka dots and a different color pattern.
- Homer and Krusty the Clown in
*The Simpsons* have the exact body shape and face with the obvious difference being Krusty is in clown shoes and makeup. Originally, Homer was supposed to have been a clown as a hidden job that Bart wouldn't know about, but the idea got scrapped and Homer's clown design was made into a separate character.
- Fairly common in
*South Park* for background classmates at the boys' school, or for adults in other crowd scenes. Although the animators have put together more distinct character models for extras in later seasons, palette swaps can still occur when they don't feel up to making even more new ones.
- Many extras on
*SpongeBob SquarePants* are Palette Swaps of each other. For example, the "My Leg!" and "Deaugh!" fishes.
-
*Star Wars Rebels*: Minister Maketh Tua is a palette-swapped generic citizen. Which led to confusion ||after her death in "The Siege of Lothal", because on at least two occasions afterward ("The Future of the Force", "Legacy") extras with that character model have been seen. Especially notable in "Legacy", where the extra in question gets a distinctive reaction shot||.
-
*Totally Spies!* has a Shout-Out example with the girls' predecessors, Pam, Alice, and Crimson. The women look almost *exactly* like Hitomi, Ai, and Rui from *Cat's Eye*, just with different hair and eye colors.
-
*Transformers* has some In-Universe examples of characters performing Palette Swaps on themselves, though:
- In the original series, Optimus Prime received one as a side effect of being coated with Dr. Morgan's impervious alloy in "The Return of Optimus Prime, Part 2". He's back to his original colors by the end of the episode, but it's never mentioned if it's because the alloy coating was removed, or if his colors were repainted over the alloy, and neither the American nor Japanese continuations make further mention of the alloy. Amusingly, the "impervious" Optimus Prime ends up looking like Ultra Magnus' cab robot mode (albeit the toy variant without the blue paint highlights on his head), which is likely why they put him back in his normal colors as soon as the story no longer had the need for the alloy.
- In
*Transformers: Animated*, Bumblebee, Wasp, and ||Longarm Prime/Shockwave|| demonstrate palette-swapping abilities via "electronic paint job".
- Lampshaded in the third season of
*Transformers: Prime*. When the Autobots went underground, Bumblebee reversed his colors, from being a yellow car with black stripes to a black car with yellow stripes. Arcee (who is blue with a few pink accents) notes that if she were to do that, she'd end up mostly pink.
-
*The Triplets*: While it's justified due to them being identical triplets, Anna, Helena, and Teresa look exactly the same other than different-colored shirts and hair bows.
- Any product that is mass produced can also be made with different colors. Cars and electronics are a big example of this.
- Nintendo is very fond of making their consoles and accessories in different colors. The Nintendo 64 had controllers of various colors, ranging from red, blue, green, purple, etc. The console itself would also be produced in colors beyond black late in its life. When the Gamecube was launched, it came in either black or purple, along with its controllers. Later on, there would be a silver/platinum version and for a short time, there was orange, but that color was used only for the controller. The Wii initially released only in white, but it was also produced in black years later and there were controllers in black as well, along with pink, blue, and a limited edition of gold. The Wii-U and its controllers only ever came in either black or white. The Switch console is only produced in black, although the attachable Joy-Con come in gray, as well as several neon colors such as blue, red, yellow, green and pink. A set of limited edition
*Super Mario Odyssey* red Joy-Con also exist. The standard wireless Pro Controller is black, although a *Splatoon 2* Pro Controller with green and pink grips came out to coincide with the release of the game. There are several other cheaper Pro Controller variants, but they lack several features found only in their more expensive brethren.
- Nintendo's handhelds are an even bigger example of palette swapping, having huge amounts of colors consumers could pick from and some of them were limited edition colors (such as gold) and a few of those were never released outside of their regions. There's a
*ton* of colors that were used throughout each handheld iteration and they can be found here for the Game Boy line and for the DS line.
- Badge engineering.
- Basically any cheap self-promotional item handed out by a hotel, real estate agent, car dealer, etc, was almost certainly ordered from some generic wholesaler, meaning the pen, notepad, fidget spinner, etc, you got from them is probably completely identical to many other free pens/notepads/fidget spinners floating around out there except the color and logo is different. Companies in China specialise in this, where they offer "original design manufacturer" (ODM) services to interested clients through sites such as Alibaba — one would place a miminal order of about a hundred or so units and have them rebadged to suit the client's needs. This accounts for why you can see a cheap Android smartphone or MP3 player being sold by unrelated companies but share the same design and internals. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaletteSwap |
Painting the Frost on Windows - TV Tropes
**Phoenix:**
What's her problem, Twilight? She can't honestly think someone can control weather. It's ludicrous!
**Trixie:**
You have to be the biggest imbecile Trixie has ever laid eyes on!
**Judge:**
Mr. Wright... That's a Pegasus's job here in Equestria. It's... sort of what they do.
**Phoenix:**
Mmmph... uh... what...?
Ever wonder why the leaves turn color in fall, or why frost appears on the window during the wintertime? It's not due to any sort of natural process.
Usually appearing in mythology or children's entertainment, this is a character who is responsible for the beautiful colors and patterns we see in nature. The leaves? There's some guy going around and painting them one by one. The frost? Someone such as Jack Frost draws it on people's windows. A character of this trope is usually depicted as an artist; their medium just happens to be nature.
Can be a subset of The Fair Folk, Odd Job Gods, Magical Underpinnings of Reality, or Anthropomorphic Personification. For similar abilities without the responsibility see Power of the Storm and Green Thumb. Compare Peeve Goblins, which are responsible for annoyances or ills rather than changes in nature.
See also "Just So" Story.
## Examples:
- All the fairies from
*A Little Snow Fairy Sugar* create the weather by playing their instruments. Turmeric in particular seems to fit the artist type, not being satisfied with anything less than the perfect cloud.
- Multiple characters in
*Anpanman*. Some include the citizens of the Flower Kingdom (each have a separate flower they're designed after, and each of them tend to that certain flower), Princess Nakayubi (a harvest princess, she helps fruits and vegetables grow in autumn), and Onsen-kun (has the ability to create hot springs).
-
*Heaven's Design Team* is a tongue-in-cheek edutainment manga that teaches about animals and zoology by featuring a team of divine "designers" who create beings on behalf of God.
- In the
*Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf* season *Flying Island: The Sky Adventure*, Weslie and Paddi both wind up in a factory that produces different kinds of weather by shooting weather fruits out of a cannon (or large weather fruits, anyway; the small and medium ones are used for different purposes).
- One of the strips in
*Asterix and the Class Act* featured the sprite responsible for Spring who went around pushing up the plants, etc.
-
*The Sandman (1989)* has a variety of servants who work to keep the dream world in order. It's implied that the beautiful scenery people dream about takes some effort to create. Of course, being The Dreaming, such effort varies. Adding a new wing to the library is as simple as pasting up wallpaper containing a picture of the new wing, like a portable hole.
- Some of the
*Fables*, such as Santa Claus and North Wind, appear to have these roles.
- This trope is parodied in one
*The Far Side* comic that reveals that the door dings that car get in parking lots are not caused by people hitting other cars with their doors, but are actually the work of gnomes.
-
*Fallout: Equestria*: After the war, weather got weird, since ponies weren't managing it anymore. The pegasi have retreated to above the cloud layer and keep the sky constantly covered in clouds; weather in the Wasteland below is pretty much just always generically terrible, with little variance. Furthermore, since Celestia and Luna are gone, the sun and the moon have "gone wild." Ponies on the ground don't notice because of the cloud layer, but occasionally the moon doesn't set before the sun rises, something that never happened when Celestia and Luna were in charge. Calamity also describes a solar eclipse, which is a blasphemous concept, as Celestia and Luna would have never allowed such a thing to happen. Littlepip has nightmares about it and she never even saw it.
- Zig-zagged, if not outright averted, in
*Ponies After People*. Weather on Earth remains as it originally was unless magic interferes with it, and it will reassert itself unless that magic is maintained. The magic to permanently take control of the weather does not currently exist in all of Earth's pegasi and unicorns combined; much greater numbers and training would be required for this to happen. Changing the weather locally, even in an area as wide as a small town, might still be possible for a determined team of pegasi, but worldwide things are going the way they always have been.
-
*Through The Well Of Pirene*: Besides the ponies' managing of nature from the show, the goblins in the Everfree do weather work of their own, making rainbows out of crushed gemstones and manticore oil, clouds with water and huge fans, and lightning with jars of static and electrically charged thunderstones.
- In Walt Disney's
*Fantasia* during "The Nutcracker Suite" segment, fairies are shown using their magic wands to spread dew among flowers and spiderwebs, change the colour of leaves, and start the first frost (by figure skating across a pond).
- A segment of
*Fantasia 2000* has a Mother Nature type spirit who causes plant life to spring forth following a devastating volcanic eruption.
- In
*Hans Christian Andersen's Thumbelina*, the fairies are responsible for changing the seasons, and so, while searching for the eponymous heroine, Prince Cornelius asks his parents to delay the winter frost for as long as they can.
- In
*Rock-A-Doodle* (also by Don Bluth), Chanticleer the rooster's crowing is the real reason why the Sun rises every morning. But one day, thanks to Chanticleer being distracted by one of the Big Bad's flunkies, the Sun started to rise without him...
- Averted with Jack Frost in
*Rise of the Guardians*, who causes snow, ice, and frost wherever he goes. However, cold and ice didn't wait for him to exist. He sure has power over it, but only at his range, winter doesn't require his intervention. Played straight with North; the Aurora Borealis is his method of summoning the other Guardians.
- The
*Tinkerbell* movies posit that it's the Neverland fairies that bring nature to the Main Land in much this way: painting leaves in the Fall, carrying droplets of water to spiderwebs, even painting spots on ladybugs.
- In
*Nocturna*, there's a whole range of different jobs in order to make the night - meowing cats make children sleep, there's an *orchestra* for the various nocturnal sounds, dreams are written down and read to sleeping kids, and there are even people who have to mess up hair and another who makes ||kids wet the bed||.
- The characters in the Pixar Short
*La Luna* are in charge of sweeping stars along the surface of the moon, thus creating the moon's phases.
-
*Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus*: The Cloud Kingdom's princesses have the job of painting the sunrises and sunsets.
-
*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)* featured something like this. During the scene wherein Slartibartfast shows Arthur around the Earth MK.II, we see several engineers hard at work "setting the Earth up" to look like Arthur remembers it. One of them is painting Uluru orange, whereas some others are filling in the oceans using fire hoses.
- The big reveal in
*The Thirteenth Floor* is when the characters ||head out to a place they would never go and see it hasn't been built, proving they live in a virtual reality. Broad Strokes Truth in Television because that is what CGI environments look like when viewed from an unintended angle.||
- Played with in
*Thor* and *Thor: The Dark World*. At the very least, Asgardian tech *evokes* this effect: hammers that summon thunder and lightning, a teleport bridge that produces a definite "Aurora borealis" effect, grenades that explode into "black holes".
- In
*Get Santa,* the Northern Lights are created by Santa Claus and the Christmas Elves, since the "flying" reindeer actually run on them. One elf mentions some "misinformation from the science community" that keeps people from questioning things.
- There's a common joke/urban legend in Russia that in the Soviet army soldiers had to use lawn paint to make the grass look nicer before the top-brass inspections, and form snowbanks in accurate cubic shapes, and pluck dandelions. Idle hands are the devil's workshop and all that.
- A lot of these show up in Terry Pratchett's
*Discworld*. Note that in Discworld, human belief can create supernatural beings, so this raises a chicken-or-egg question.
- In
*Hogfather*, a number of these beings show up as a result of the Hogfather's disappearance creating a lot of loss belief that "grounds" itself by creating various odd-job personifications, including the Verruca Gnome, who goes around distributing verrucas out of a bag. Jack Frost also shows up, literally painting frost on windows. Apparently, he's really fond of doing ferns until the Verruca Gnome convinces him to branch out, resulting in pictures like three puppies poking out of a boot appearing in the frost on people's windows.
- And the title character of
*Wintersmith*, and his counterpart the Summer Lady, who bring and end the seasons.
- Some of them, like the Wintersmith or Death, aren't necessarily obligated to do every last little detail personally; as anthropomorphic personifications, they just have to exist and do the trade equivalent of checking to make sure the factory production is up to snuff. They
*can*, if they have a particular aim in mind (see again the Wintersmith), but by and large, the books compare it to a monarchy; the king exists and makes the rules, but he doesn't personally show up at your home telling you what kind of tea to have on your break.
- Death makes a point of putting in as many personal appearances as he can manage, however, because he believes in the value of human life and thinks we deserve the best customer service he can give.
-
*The Stranger* by Chris van Allsburg: the eponymous stranger is never explicitly identified, but he's essentially Jack Frost or the personification of autumn.
- In
*The Phantom Tollbooth*, the symphony orchestra led by Chroma the Great plays all the colors in the world, including every sunset and sunrise.
- In the Swedish picture book
*Olles skidfärd* (app. "Olle's skiing trip") the boy Olle gets to meet King Bore, the ruler of winter. The King has an antagonistic relationship with Old Woman Thaw (an old hag with a bucket and broom), not because he minds her mistress Princess Spring taking over each year, but because Old Woman Thaw can't keep the time if her life depended on it, and will invariably be either too early or too late.
- Shel Silverstein wrote a short poem about the man who paints the colours and markings onto the animals and notes, "Jack Frost, he's just a part-time workin' fellah/Touching up the leaves and trees and things/He's famouser than me/But I'm happier than he/For I paint the things that runs, and flies, and sings!"
- "The Sandman (1816)" by E. T. A. Hoffmann subverts this: the sandman gouges out the eyes of children who stay up late ||and provides their eyes to the builders of automatons, killing the ones who won't give up the creation||.
- In
*Santa and the King of Starless Nights*, Jack Frost is a good friend of Santa and the Tooth Fairy, and personally applies all the winter frost.
- In some of L. Frank Baum's stories, fairylike beings called Ryls are responsible for painting the flowers.
- In
*Little House in the Big Woods* Laura's father tells her that Jack Frost comes to put frost on the windows. This results in Laura attempting to 'catch' Jack Frost in the act.
- In
*The Magician's Nephew*, Aslan sings Narnia into being.
- In
*The Silver Chair*, the Earthmen discard the husks of gems when they've drunk the juices, and are puzzled by the notion that surface-dwellers consider the rock-hard, drained rinds to be worth digging up from where they're left scattered underground.
- As a pre-teen in the early 1890s, Helen Keller wrote—or thought she wrote—a perfect fairy tale about melted jewels staining autumn leaves with brilliant colors. It turned out to be a paraphrase from a story that had been read to her. The story's author went on record that Helen's version was better. However, the resulting accusations of dishonesty left Helen emotionally shattered and, though she was eventually cleared of any deliberate wrong-doing, she became fearful that anything else she wrote might also turn out to be the product of someone else's mind.
- Daniel Curley,
*Ann's Spring*. Mother Nature has her hands full one year with tornadoes and hurricanes, so she asks her daughter Ann to start spring for her. Ann begins the complex task, assisted by her baby brother Bob. The pair handle various snags and beginners' glitches, but things seem to be going okay—until some neighborhood pranksters lock them in an old truck. Then it starts snowing...
- In the
*Rainbow Magic* series, the Rainbow Fairies are responsible for color, and the Weather Fairies for weather.
- The
*Malazan Book of the Fallen* has the sleeping goddess Burn. Since she dreams existence into reality, *Burn's Pain* is supposedly the source of earthquakes, when the sleep of the goddess is disturbed or she is in pain.
-
*James and the Giant Peach*: As James and the insects fly over the Atlantic Ocean, they encounter the Cloud-Men, a civilization of ghostly humanoids who make the weather, sculpting hailstones, crafting and painting rainbows and producing blizzards.
-
*Under the Pendulum Sun*: In the Land of Faerie, there are fae whose job it is to draw hoarfrost with quill pens, sew up snowstorms, and wither flowers with a paintbrush since it's an Eldritch Location where such things don't happen naturally.
- This is the entire premise of
*The Seems* series. The titular realm creates every natural process in the World, from Sleep to Weather.
- The Swedish summer song
*Idas Sommarvisa* (lyrics by Astrid Lindgren) is all about this trope.
- There is also (again in Swedish)
*Vem tar hand om hösten?* which reveals who takes care of the various seasons when it ''isn't" autumn, winter, etc., in case you ever wondered. ||The Hare watches over Autumn, Tomten (the Swedish Santa Claus) over Winter, the Lark over Spring, and the Shepherd herds Summer with his sheep.||
- Originates, of course, in mythology and folklore — every tradition (at least in Europe and other parts of the world with major seasonal variations) probably has at least a few. Other depictions may borrow these, or just use generic fairies or nature spirits.
- In
*Exalted*, the functions of Creation are run by Elemental spirits. So Elementals of Air drive the winds, Elementals of Earth cause avalanches and raise mountains, Elementals of Wood determine how and where plants will grow, and so on.
-
*Nobilis*: One of the chief differences between Mythic and Prosaic Reality is that when you go Mythic, things like this become the default.
-
*World Tree (RPG)*: The World Tree's natural systems are anything but natural, and to ensure that they'll keep working the gods created vast numbers of elementals to oversee them. Between the universe's weird shape and weirder physics, for example, habitable weather wouldn't naturally arise on it. The reason it does anyway is due to the endless armies of the air elementals, who constantly work to push clouds around, squeeze them for rain, make the winds blow, keep the air clear, arrange the seasons, and the like.
- The Fourth Circle of Elder Gods in
*Lusternia* is the circle of artists, responsible for moulding flowers, painting sunrises, birdsong, and other miscellaneous facets of natural beauty.
-
*Touhou Project*:
- Aki Shizuha is the local goddess of turning leaves. She turns leaves red by painting them by hand, which is why the leaves have different hues of colors, and she makes leaves fall from trees by kicking the tree and getting the leaves to scatter.
- And now we have Kyouko Kasodani, who is responsible for creating echoes. Except that she found herself more and more out of a job as (quoted straight from the game's manual) "these days, superstition like 'echo is just a reflection of sound waves coming back to you-' is a common belief", so much that she entered Buddhist discipline.
- The second
*Pajama Sam* game, *Thunder and Lightning Aren't So Frightening*, takes place in the World Wide Weather facility in the clouds, housing a factory that produces various weather phenomena, from bottling rainwater to canning sunshine. The plot gets kicked off when Sam accidentally causes the factory's machines to malfunction, screwing up weather all around the world as a result, and the goal is to find the machines' missing pieces to fix them.
-
*Dwarf Fortress* is a meta-example: It uses Procedural Generation to simulate weather, erosion, placement of lakes and rivers in extremely complex detail. Software engineers who work on aerodynamics simulations of the sort that run on *Cray supercomputers* are impressed by this game. Your mundane computer's processors, on the other hand... The game won't melt your PC, but the playerbase still recommends that anyone playing on a PC with a processor from before The New '10s or on a laptop should start worldgen, then go fix themselves a snack.
- In
*Jerry Boy*, one of the angels flying around Fluffy Cloud Heaven is pouring rain out of a watering can.
- This is apparently the sort of thing
*Gunnerkrigg Court*'s Regional Fairies do. This bonus page demonstrates one of them making metal rusty.
- A mundane scientific version shows up in
*Freefall*. Winston's specialty as a veterinarian is actually not larger animals like Florence, but the unpleasant-but-necessary microfauna of Planet Jean's freshly-terraformed ecosystem — things like parasites and vermin.
-
*Empires SMP* Season 2: Played for Laughs. Apparently, thunder is caused by Joel, the resident sky god, clapping his "cheeks". Take from that what you will.
- The short story "Night Falls" by Jeffrey Wells is about the fairies of rot and decay because Jeff felt that far too many versions of this trope portray such things as an outside enemy, rather than an essential part of the whole process.
- In an episode of
*The Fairly OddParents!*, when Timmy wishes that no one needs to sleep, they see little elves brushing dew onto the grass so it can be nice and soggy in the morning.
- In the
*Ed, Edd n Eddy* episode "Out with the Old... in with the Ed", Eddy fools everyone (sans Double D) into thinking it's summer by heating the cul-de-sac with air conditioning, painting all the orange leaves green, and changing all the calenders. This works until the fall weather starts kicking in at full force, making everyone realize that school is starting the next day.
- The stop motion movie
*The Year Without a Santa Claus* features Heat Miser (who is responsible for Summer's heat) and Snow Miser (who is responsible for winter). When they get into an argument, the heroes go find their mother (Mother Nature) and ask her to step in.
- In the 2003 special
*Spring for Strawberry Shortcake*, Spring Is Late, so Strawberry and her friends go off to investigate and not only meet Old Man Winter, but the young girl Spring, who thinks winter is more fun than spring, and thus hasn't bothered to make the snow melt. Eventually she comes around, and even gets a song about how she works her magic: "I Put the Zing in Spring."
- A 1936 MGM cartoon "To Spring" is built around the trope of little elves/gnomes who put the springtime colors into the plants, by operating various gnome-powered machinery and a color pipe-organ. They battle an Old Man Winter character who is determined to hang around a while longer.
- There is also "Jack Frost", an Ub Iwerks "Comicolor" short from a year or two previous.
- In the "Mr. Plow" episode of
*The Simpsons* Grandpa played "Old Man Winter" in the Commercial Within A Show for Homer's plowing business.
-
*Rainbow Brite* has a number of multi-colored friends responsible for spreading color to the land. Her first mission involved freeing them to restore the balance.
-
*My Little Pony*:
-
*My Little Pony 'n Friends*: "Mish Mash Melee" has the Dell Dwellers, who make the rocks, trees, and other features of the forests around Dream Valley in an underground factory.
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*: Equestria has ponies caring for "wild" animals, stomping clouds for rain, scheduling weather patterns down to shaking the autumn leaves off of trees with organized stampedes and manually (ungually?) crafting snowflakes, and completely controlling the movements of the sun and moon themselves. In fact, this trope is played so straight that the Everfree Forest, a place where weather and wildlife are self-sufficient, is considered an Eldritch Location.
- Oddball variant from Tex Avery: In
*The House of Tomorrow* (1949) there is an improved refrigerator that lets you see if the light stays on or off after you close the door. Turns out a cute little gnome that lives in the fridge shuts it off.
- The Rankin/Bass version of
*Jack Frost* has the title character working with a bunch of other characters to bring winter.
- Jack Frost also appears in the 1976 animated Christmas television special
*Frosty's Winter Wonderland.*
-
*The 7D*: In the land of Jollywood, winter is ended by Jollywood Joe, the Spring Chicken, perching on the castle and clucking.
-
*Rupert*: Rupert Bear is on a first-name basis with a lot of these beings around his hometown.
-
*Kaeloo*: The characters live on Planet Smileyland, where they can control whether it is day or night, or summer or winter, by pulling ropes.
-
*Herself the Elf* follows forest elves who are all in charge of nature and have various duties related to shaping its colors, sounds, and seasons.
- The jellies in
*Jellabies* operate a machine called the Jellyscope that can create rainbows for any location after they've had a rainstorm.
- A minor variant in
*Mixels* comes from the Electroids. Thanks to their electrical abilities, combined with their electricity-harvesting mountaintop habitat, they have the job of turning the sun on and off. In the case of the Mixels, the sun is a giant light bulb in the sky.
- The world of
*The Smurfs* has various personified forces whose responsibility is controlling the environment in some manner. For instance, Father Time can manipulate time, Mother Nature is responsible for maintaining the seasons, the Man in the Moon changes the moon's phases, Spectra is a sprite who handles the colors in the world...
- Modellers that work on CGI movies can attest to the amount of work it takes to make an environment. But instead of fairies, we have coders and programs to make things like snow and sand.
- For that matter, any sort of digital media such as video games. One of the major skills designers (of any sort) tend to learn quickly if they want to maintain their sanity is the difference between needing/wanting/having a realistic environment and a believable one. In the former, you do this trope. In the latter, you only do as much of this trope as needed to fool the viewer.
- In Moscow, it's customary to disperse rain clouds prior to major festivals by spraying them with silver-based reagents from jet planes. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaintingTheFrostOnWindows |
Palate Propping - TV Tropes
The monster with More Teeth than the Osmond Family is about to chomp on The Hero, who has only a stick/bone/pole for a weapon. What to do? Why, shove it into the roof of the oncoming mouth to prop those slavering jaws open! If the hero's really lucky, this might jab its palate hard enough to fatally penetrate the skull; at worst, it'll leave it gagging for a moment, then piss it off even more.
Especially unlucky protagonists (particularly in Western Animation) may have no poles on hand, and will have to resort to using their own bodies to keep the beast's jaws open, often by pulling off wince-inducing splits. Considering the jaw power of most monsters and real life alligators, this is definitely a case of Super Strength.
A common subversion is for the monster or animal to have jaw muscles that are powerful enough to snap bones or wooden planks in half, allowing it to break the item lodged between its jaws with ease.
This trope can also be applied to a Bear Trap, Clam Trap, or similar snap-closing booby traps, despite their lack of a palate.
## Examples:
- In a holiday-season commercial for Planters Peanuts, Mr. Peanut uses his cane to prop open the jaws of a nutcracker that tries to chomp on him.
- In the Korean animated movie
*Super Kid*, Gokdari jams his magic staff between the jaws of an alien to keep it from eating him, and then *expands* the staff until the alien's jaws are stretched so far apart that its teeth shatter when it tries to close its mouth again.
-
*Attack on Titan*: In a moment of Heroic Resolve, Eren saves ||Armin by yanking him out of a titans mouth all the while propping it open with his own arm.||
-
*Bleach* anime:
- Episode 10. While Ichigo is fighting the frog Hollow, Don Kanonji saves him from being bitten by using his staff to prop open the Hollow's mouth.
- Episode 312. While Lieutenant Omaeda is fighting a Hollow, he stuffs the ball of his flail (his zanpakuto Gegetsuburi in its shikai form) into the mouth of an attacking Hollow to prevent it from eating him.
-
*Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.*: This tends to happen to giant monsters that try to eat Maple.
- In the
*Gold/Silver/Crystal* arc of *Pokémon Adventures*, Gold manages to lock Lugia's mouth open with his *pool cue*. One that's *built* to collapse down for storage, no less.
-
*The☆Ultraman* has the monster, Gamiba, whose Volumetric Mouth can devour anything, resulting in Ultraman Joneus using *himself* to prop the monster's jaws open for a short while so that Joneus can fire his Planium Beam into Gamiba's throat.
- Early on in
*YuYu Hakusho*, Yuusuke uses a piece of wood to hold open the villain Gouki's mouth so he can Attack Its Weak Point.
- "Jawbreaker◊", a piece of promotional art for Frank Cho's
*Jungle Girl*, depicts the title character using her body to prop open the jaws of a hungry dinosaur.
-
*Rahan*: The title character once manages this while bound hands and feet, when offered in sacrifice to a big prehistoric crocodile. He catches a branch between his feet and wedges it between the croc's jaws, who then swims away rather miffed.
- In
*Tintin in the Congo*, Tintin uses his rifle to prop open a crocodile's mouth when out of bullets.
-
*Abraxas (Hrodvitnon)*: During the Yonaguni battle in Chapter 13, the Many's Mind Hive forms a gigantic flytrap-like set of jaws on itself which Monster X is forced to hold open with its hands to avoid getting caught in it — Monster X relents and ||temporarily loses an arm to the jaws||. Later, this trope is inverted when Methuselah locks ||Keizer Ghidorah's right head||'s jaws shut by impaling his horn upward through the head's jaw and skull; forcing the head to eventually tear its own jawbone getting free.
-
*Gone Batty*: In addition to the instance from the *Silverwing* cartoon canon, Goth does this to Throbb *again* when the Vampyrum and their captives end up spending the night in a cave in a deviation from the show's course of events, until Melody removes the stick in an act of kindness.
-
*Chicken Run*: While trying to escape the massive pie machine, Ginger props open the descending oven door with a wrench to save Rocky.
-
*Ferdinand*: Valiente uses a metal post to prop apart the giant crushing plates of the slaughterhouse assembly line.
-
*Ice Age: The Meltdown*: Occurs when the prehistoric crocodilian creature known as Cretaceous leaps at Manny and gets its jaws caught around his tusks, before being thrown back into the water.
-
*The Land Before Time VI: The Secret of Saurus Rock*: Littlefoot uses a stick to prop up a ||seemingly-dead|| *Allosaurus's* mouth, but abandons the effort when ||it starts breathing||.
-
*Meet the Robinsons*: Lewis uses a shovel to prop open the tyrannosaur's jaws.
-
*Moana*: Maui performs the "full body" version of this, standing on Tamatoa's lower teeth with his hands on the upper jaw in a desperate attempt to avoid being eaten.
-
*Scooby-Doo: Camp Scare*: Fred tries this trope on the fish-monster, propping its crocodile-like maw open with the net gun. It hinders the creature's snapping jaws, but only for a matter of seconds until it breaks the prop.
-
*The Sword in the Stone*: Wart (in fish form) does this to the pike in the moat with a broken-off piece of spear. Merlin compliments him for using his head.
-
*Wallace & Gromit*: In the short "A Matter of Loaf and Death", Gromit props open a crocodile's mouth with a French baguette.
-
*Yellow Submarine*. When the giant Glove is about to bite down on John Lennon, he sticks the word "Nothing" into its mouth, forcing its mouth open.
- In
*Aquaman*, Arthur uses the Trident of Atlan to prop open the jaws of Orm's tylosaur steed when Orm chases him to the surface for their final duel.
- In the animated Framing Device for
*Creepshow 2*, the leader of the bullies manages to hold open the maw of the giant Venus flytrap that's attempting to devour him. But only for a short while.
- Subverted in the
*Doom* movie: when one of the monsters gets its Palate Propped by a metal rod, it just clamps its jaws so hard that the rod pierces its muzzle and is forced out the roof of its maw, freeing it to go on attacking.
- In
*Dragonheart*, this trope leads to a Mexican Standoff, with the dragonslayer Bowen literally crouched inside Draco's mouth, his sword's point braced against the dragon's palate. Neither can make the finishing move without killing themself, so Snark-to-Snark Combat occurs instead, especially after Bowen finds the remains of a previous dragonslayer stuck between Draco's teeth.
**Bowen:** Good Lord! Sir Egglemore!
**Draco:** Oh, thank you very much, that's been stuck down there for months. Could you get your buttocks off my tongue?
**Bowen:** Why should *you* be comfortable? My armor is rusting in your drool and your breath is absolutely foul.
**Draco:** Well, what did you expect with an old knight rotting between my molars?
-
*Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves*: Edgin tries to hinder the animated drake statue by using Holga's axe to wedge it inside its maw. Unfortunately the axe's haft is collapsible and so it only works for a few seconds.
- The heroine of
*Jurassic Galaxy* holds off a raptor attack by holding two stone daggers, points facing oppositely, in her clenched fists and bracing the creature's jaws open with them. As with the *Dragonheart* example above, it's more the potential for self-injury than the sturdiness of the prop that discourages it from snapping its maw shut on her wrists.
- In
*Men in Black 3*, a fish-creature tries to bite J's legs off, but J sticks a metal tray between his thighs and it can't close its jaws far enough.
- In
*Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb*, Larry props open the mouth of an animated snake-demon statue with his trusty flashlight when it tries to eat his hand. Less effective than most examples, as the snake-demon in question has plenty of *other* hungry heads.
-
*Seeding of a Ghost*: As the demon fetus gains a One-Winged Angel form resembling a giant skinless crocodile and goes on a rampage, it is temporarily stopped when Dr. Wang shoves a barbell vertically into its mouth just as it's about to chomp on a woman. This also allows a few moments of vulnerability, for the fetus' sole weakness is its head, hidden inside *its throat*, so propping its mouth open allows Wong to grab a nearby shotgun and blast it dead.
-
*Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over*: Upon seeing Carmen about to get eaten by a giant robot monkey, Gary flies in between its jaws, catches its teeth as they come down, and forces the mouth to open until the jaw dislocates.
-
*Star Wars*: In *Return of the Jedi*, Luke braces the Rancor's jaws open with a large bone from the floor of its pit. This buys him a few seconds, but not much, as the Rancor's bite is powerful enough to snap it in two.
- During
*Dinoverse*, Mr. London manages to balk a Microvenator this way. The Microvenator gets the stick out on its own and has bits of wood in its mouth after, but this did buy time.
-
*Discworld*:
- The first time Rincewind takes something out of the Luggage, in
*The Colour of Magic*, he uses a piece of wood to prop its lid open. Once he's removed some food and water bottles, the Luggage very slowly closes its lid anyway, grinding the wood to splinters, just to show it's able to subvert this trope any time it likes.
- In
*The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents*, Sardines does a hat-and-stick dance and then dashes into a rat hole, only to run into a trap. There's a loud snap, and then he's heard calling for help, because the stick he's braced the trap open with is starting to give way.
- Happens in
*The Cormyr Saga* of *Forgotten Realms* during the duel of Iliphar Nelnueve and Thauglorimorgorus ( *the* "Purple Dragon" who ends up as Cormyr's symbol), with a twist. ||Dragon breath easily removes the obstacle, but the destruction of a magic staff almost gets his head blown off||.
- A variant in
*How the Whale Got His Throat*, one of Rudyard Kipling's *Just So Stories*: the protagonist stops the whale from devouring pretty much *everything* by turning his raft into a grate and sticking it in the whale's throat.
-
*Lord Darcy*: Recognizing that Laird Duncan's luggage is magically booby-trapped, Lord Darcy's aide Master Sean places a heavy stone doorstop on its rim to serve this purpose before reaching into it. The trap is triggered and the trunk's lid swings down as if to sever Sean's hand at the wrist, but is blocked by the doorstop.
- In
*Neverwhere*, Hunter recalls having used this tactic when she fought a giant weasel beneath Bangkok, shoving her leather shield in its open mouth to deflect its attack while she struck it with a war club.
- The
*Sherlock Holmes* story "The Musgrave Ritual" uses this as the murder method: A butler finds a secret vault under a cellar flagstone, propping it up with a piece of wood with the help of his ex-mistress. He goes down into the vault, hands her the contents of a chest he found inside, and the ex- part comes in when she kicks the prop away, leaving him to die of suffocation. Or so Holmes works out, as the girl is never found, having dumped the treasure in a lake before disappearing.
-
*The Surprising Adventures, Great and Imminent Dangers, Miraculous Escapes, and Wonderful Travels of Baron Munchausen* tells of the Baron getting swallowed by a giant whale along with his ship. During the council of all the people the whale ever swallowed on how to get out, Munchausen relates: "I was chosen chairman, and the first thing I did was to propose splicing two main-masts together, and the next time he opened his mouth to be ready to wedge them in, so as to prevent his shutting it." After they get out, they leave the masts there to prevent the whale from swallowing more ships.
- In the 2001 TV miniseries adaptation of
*The Lost World*, this is done to a rampaging *Allosaurus*. It only incommodes it for a few moments, though, before it snaps the piece of wood between its jaws.
- Used against at least one snappy prehistoric beast on
*Primeval*.
-
*Dungeons & Dragons*:
-
*The Hole Delver's Catalog*. One of the many items in the catalog is the Wonder Widget, which looks a lot like a crowbar. When one of the characters is fighting an alligator, he puts the Wonder Widget inside its mouth to prop it open, thus saving his life.
- One possible tactic for foiling the attack of the tunnelmouth dweller, a monster from
*Dragon* magazine #267, is to prop its gaping maw open with a polearm or 10' pole.
-
*Dungeon* magazine #58 adventure "Challenge of Champions". One way to defeat the purple worm in scenario 2 is to wedge a spear into the worm's mouth to keep the mouth open. The fighter can then enter the worm's stomach and get the medallion which is the object of the scenario.
-
*Bayonetta*, who loves to interrupt her enemies' speeches violently, interrupts the oceanic angel Sapientia this way, throwing an airplane's mast right into the angel's mouth to stop his blather for a few seconds, after which Sapientia just crushes the mast in annoyance.
- In
*Botanica*, propping a snapdragon-like plant's mobile blossom open with a stick allows you to collect its seeds. Downplayed in that the bloom in question isn't dangerous, just uncooperative.
- A variant form in
*Hidden Expedition: The Uncharted Islands* (casual computer game/IHOG) — the gator has an item you need in its mouth, you need to find a jack to hold its mouth open long enough for you to grab the item.
- In
*Kingdom Hearts II*, a reaction command lets Sora jam open Cerberus' mouth with his Keyblade. Of course, Cerberus has *two other heads*, so he has to move quickly.
- In the first
*Simon the Sorcerer*, Simon uses a stick to jam the jaws of a slavering Chest Monster.
- Used
*twice* in the casual game *League of Light: Wicked Harvest*: once with a large statue of a head with a snapping mouth, and again with the snaggle-toothed skull of a dragon-like creature. In the latter case, it's also inverted, as the skull's jaws are used to crack the ice encasing a needed item when the prop is removed.
-
*Sunless Sea* has one of the most massive examples in fiction in the underwater city of Nook, founded inside the mouth of a beast big enough to swallow an actual city. To keep the monster's maw open, the founders installed gigantic Heartmetal girders inside, and they've held out for quite a long time despite its attempts at slamming its mouth shut with every inhabitant inside it.
-
*The Wolf Among Us*: During the final fight with ||Bloody Mary and her duplicates Bigby (who is in his true form) goes after one of the copies who then places a metal pipe in his jaws, which only troubles him for two seconds before he closes his jaws and crushes it then he smashes the Mary clone with his teeth.||
-
*Zniw Adventure*: The sleeping *Deinosuchus* has a chunk of meat in its teeth that Zniw needs. In order to get it, she can try propping its mouth open with a stick or a large log. However, it doesn't work, and the *Deinosuchus* just spits out the stick or log before going back to sleep. ||Using the stick, log, and "croc-away" on the *Deinosuchus* gets you an achievement||.
- This trope is actually averted (unless you have a
*really* sturdy prop) for the crocodile, which has extremely powerful muscles for biting down, which can exert as much as 5000 pounds of force. Inversely, a crocodile has extremely weak muscles for *opening* its mouth, which means that once a crocodile has bit down, its mouth can be held shut with a hug (Not recommended since they can throw you off) or duct tape.
- There's a version of this that's used for giving anesthetic to an animal. A round tube with a hole is used to prop open the jaws and allow passage of the breathing tube down into the airway. The prop is sometimes removed once the tube is in place — just pass it backward off of the tube. Alternately, it may be left in and the jaw secured from the outside, just in case the animal happens to start to come around at any time, so it can't sever the tube.
- There are form-fitted oral braces used for dental surgery, which prevent a patient's jaws from moving by reflex in mid-operation.
- There exist photographs of dead predators with their mouths propped open, usually to show the detail of the animal's jaws. A particularly interesting example would be this photo◊ of the so-called "Moscow Monster" (which later turned out to be the severely decomposed corpse of a beluga whale and inspired SCP-682).
- The Goitacás, a (now extinct) native Brazilian tribe, regularly did this to sharks, specially as part of a coming-of-age ceremony: young Goitacá males would jump in the water and wait until a shark came near or tried to bite them, at which point they'd place any stick-like object in the shark's mouth to prevent it from closing, jam their arm down the shark's throat and pull out their organs, turning them inside out; they'd then make necklaces out of their teeth, as proof of completion. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PalatePropping |
Palatial Sandcastle - TV Tropes
Its only fear: the rising tide.
Be it on a beach or in a sandbox, be it a sculpted "castle" or a simple hill with holes in it, most of us have probably made
*something* out of sand at least once in our lives. However, we're pretty willing to bet that said castle probably didn't extend above your knees.
*Fictional* sandcastles, however, don't have pesky things like drying out or the loose structural integrity of sand to worry about, so they are often the size of *actual* castles — or at least small cottages. If they're not simply for show, people may often go inside them and actually hang out inside the sandcastle with total disregard for the risk of it simply *collapsing* on top of them: people tend to forget that sand is *heavy* and ending up buried beneath the remains of a giant sandcastle would most certainly suffocate them...
In video games, these castles often pop up in Palm Tree Panic. In other media, they tend to show up during a Beach Episode. Compare to Ice Palace for another kind of castle built out of unlikely material.
## Examples:
-
*Adventures of the Little Koala*: One of the beach episodes featured Roobear and his crew competing in a sandcastle building contest. Roo and Laura were able to build a rather impressive multi-level sandcastle that was actually big enough for their sugar glider friend Mingle to go inside (in fact, that was the secret as he helped fix any structural problems on the inside while they worked outside). Mingle was actually so taken with the place that he decided to make it his beach house complete with sand furniture inside, up until the tide came in and destroyed the castle itself.
-
*Assassination Classroom*: When Mr. Karasuma puts Koro-sensei in "time-out" in a sandbox, he uses his Super Speed to build a perfect replica of Osaka Castle out of sand.
-
*Carnival Phantasm*: In the Beach Episode, while almost everyone else is playing volleyball, Len is left alone as she builds a sand castle. By the time the game ends, the sand castle ends up *life-sized*.
-
*Yuki Yuna is a Hero*: While having a relaxing time at the beach, Mimori makes a miniature sand-model of Japan's Takamatsu Castle.
-
*Fates Collide*: Nora Valkyrie and Frankenstein end up building a sand castle that is over 15 feet tall.
- The
*Pokédex* entry of Palossand (which is already mentioned somewhere below in the Video Games section) states that these ghostly Pokemon were once used as actual fortified castles during the Alolan wars. Their walls were as sturdy as the walls of actual castles and their turrets were big enough so that defenders could be stationed within them and fire long-ranged weapons at invaders.
- The
*Eyewitness* episode "Seashore" features shots of a somewhat ordinary-looking sandcastle throughout its runtime, but in the end sequence, we get to travel through the castle's gate and see that it actually contains many twisting passageways that extend below the water level and ultimately lead to a room full of buried treasures. (The "Making Of" feature for the episode shows that the "castle" was really multiple sets, not one structure.)
- Used twice in the
*Banjo-Kazooie* series:
- In the original game, there is a sandcastle in a pool of water that one has to drain to enter (while it's accessible with the water present, it's of no use in that case). Inside it is a letter grid drawn in the floor that is used for a spelling puzzle needed to earn a Plot Coupon and, more famously, to input the game's cheat codes.
-
*Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge* includes one on the beach in Spiller's Harbor. Only Mouse Banjo can go inside, but it contains a maze and a series of switch puzzles.
-
*Bug Fables* has the Ancient Castle, a sandcastle made by the Roaches in the Lost Sands (which is a sandbox). It serves as the main dungeon of Chapter 4 and is inhabited by various Roach Constructs and possesses magic crystals that create an aura of ice magic around when activated.
- In
*Kingdom of Loathing*, you can build one of these for yourself.
-
*Lemmings 2 The Tribes* has the Beachbum Lemmings. Not only is the goal a sandcastle twice the Lemmings' height which they'll enter, but there are some levels with sandcastles that could easily fit hundreds of Lemmings judging from their size.
-
*Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse* has the Sand Castle. The first half of the level has Build Like an Egyptian elements, and the second half takes place in a half-sunken temple, where a Giant Enemy Crab serves as the level's boss. When Mickey defeats it, it is revealed to be Donald Duck under the Phantom's spell.
- One of the dream worlds in
*Obsidian* has this, on a beach where the player can use a machine to find oil that can transform part of the castle into a real building. The goal of the level is to find enough oil that can change the entire castle.
- The dirt gates in
*Pikmin 3* look a lot like sandcastles, with crenelled turrets at both sides. Also, the Bingo Mode arena "Sandbox Kingdom" takes place in a sandbox in which a sandcastle was build. Since the protagonist are very, **very** small, it looks incredibly big compared to them.
- The Pokemon Palossand introduced in
*Pokémon Sun and Moon* is a living, soul-sucking sandcastle which can grow to tremendous sizes thanks to its ability to amass more and more sand to add to its body. It has the unique ability, Water Compaction, where if it is hit by a water type attack, its defense is increased, referencing sandcastles needing some water to keep their shape. The anime actually showed a Palossand that grew big enough to engulf Professor Kukui's cottage whole.
- The Goo Lagoon Sand Castle from
*SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom* combines this with Rise to the Challenge, as SpongeBob or Patrick must race to the top while avoiding the rising goo.
-
*Super Mario Bros.*:
-
*Super Mario Sunshine* has a massive sand-gate act as a portal to one of the Shine Sprites. As might be expected, though, it will collapse quickly if you don't hurry through it.
-
*Mario Party DS*: The goal of the minigame Roller Coaster is to be the first to reach a sandcastle built at the end of a sandbox. It's actually a normal-sized sandcastle, but it looks big and imposing for the playable characters due to their reduced size.
-
*Vexx* has one, which is a pseudo-Palette Swap of an earlier area called the Waterfall Castle. It's implied that the Sand Castle might not actually be that big; Vexx might just have gotten smaller.
-
*Bronze Skin Inc.*: The Sand King in Chapter 6 has built a giant sand castle and is about to unveil it when a giantess accidentally steps on it. As revenge, he builds another one around her, trapping the Bronze Skin team inside it as well.
-
*Adventure Time*: In "Loyalty to the King", the shaven Ice King builds himself a sand palace in a playground to serve as his base of operations.
-
*The Ant and the Aardvark*: In the short "Dune Bug", the ant builds a sandcastle on the beach and moves into it. Of course, this is just a normal-sized sandcastle, but an ant is very small, so...
-
*Codename: Kids Next Door*: In the episode *Operation: B.E.A.C.H.* features King Sandy, a boy who kidnaps Numbuh Three and takes her to his palace, an enormous sandcastle.
-
*Dinosaucers*: In the episode *Beach Blanket Bonehead*, the title team and their human friends, the Secret Scouts, help a young boy build an absolutely immense sand castle. However, it's based on Reptilonian architecture, so it looks like a bunch of rock outcroppings stacked on top of each other with doors, windows and interconnecting roads.
-
*The Fairly OddParents!*: In one episode, Timmy makes one big enough to impress Trixie. He had help from his fairy godparents.
-
*Lilo & Stitch: The Series*: Stitch rapidly builds a sand castle tower taller than Gantu as an improvised fortress in one episode and accidentally wins a sand sculpture contest.
-
*The Looney Tunes Show*: In one episode, Bugs and Daffy build sandcastles to impress a girl. Daffy builds an ordinary castle. Bugs builds one of *these,* complete with a drawbridge.
-
*SpongeBob SquarePants*: In the episode *Sand Castles in the Sand*, Sponge and Patrick get into a dispute while building sandcastles. As the dispute escalates, their castles become much, *much* bigger to the point they end up as big as actual fortresses.
-
*Total Drama*: Zig-zagged in an episode of the spin-off series *The Ridonculous Race*. While not all entries are "palatial" in size, contestants must build a sand replica of the Palace of Versailles to complete part of the challenge.
-
*We Bare Bears*: In *Sandcastle*, the Baby Bears build one of these and decide to live in it for a while, believing it to be indestructible... until the first wave comes in and destroys it.
-
*What's New, Scooby-Doo?*: One episode featured a sandcastle building contest full of these. Shaggy is incredibly adept at them; his entry is Camelot as a seafood restaurant with a drive-through.
- Several ephemeral sand
*hotels* were created the past few years, such as Kurrawa Beach's Sand Hostel in Australia and Nederland's Zand Hotel. The latter even had electricity! Note their walls were reinforced so they would not collapse on guests. The Sand Hostel's bedrooms also did not have a sand roof, and its communal rooms didn't have any roof at all for the same reason. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PalatialSandcastle |
Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette - TV Tropes
"
*Hair black like night, skin white as snow...*
"
The Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette is a character not just with mere brown hair and light skin, but hair as black as midnight and skin pale as a ghost — possibly because they
*are* a ghost, though it's not required. This black and white complexion contrasts visually and is interesting to look at, serving as a cue to a high contrast or even duality about the character and setting them apart from their peers. And it's dirt common among villains, creepy characters (especially vampires), and Goths.
The reason is that pale is sickly, tanned is healthy. The paleness wouldn't be as visible without dark hair as a contrast. It's enough to suggest a tanning bed to would-be world conquerors. Who knows? Maybe regular trips to the beach might dissuade the Omnicidal Maniac from his schemes?
Sometimes justified by Victorian Novel Disease, which practically codified the trope, hence its popularity in Gothic fiction.
That said, this is still something of an alignment neutral trope. On the Dark Is Not Evil side of the equation, there's the Goth, Trickster, and Anti-Hero. Still, some of the more memorable examples of this trope are the likes of The Vamp, Blood Knight, and Wicked Witch. Oddly enough, the Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette is hardly ever The Big Guy or a bruiser, as most villains with this complexion complement it with haggard, sleep deprived eyes and near starved frames, perhaps to send the message that evil takes a physical as well as moral toll. If they
*are* on the side of good, though, they'll usually be of The Lancer or The Smart Guy type.
This is somewhat ironic, as Once Upon a Time, pale skin symbolized wealth and education, as the privileged could afford to work indoors rather than in the fields. (Also, it's very easy to tell if a pale person is sick; with a "healthy tan," one can hide it more easily.) While a Discredited Trope for quite some time, the increased popularity of the "natural beauty" and "1950's pin-up" in modeling means that the attraction to pale skin and dark hair is lately coming back into fashion.
One thing worth noting is that, since only albinos can have
*pure* white skin in Real Life (if you want to get really technical, they can't either, since the blood under their skin will tint it very slightly), having a character whose skin is literally milk white may land them in the Unintentional Uncanny Valley unless it's part of a highly stylised art style. Comics and cartoons have also been known to tint characters' skin tones pale *green,* violet, blue, or grey, as a variation on this aesthetic. Even in live action, a yellowish, or "sallow," tinge is not unknown.
Very common among vampires. Often, these people look like Cesare, especially if they apply Excessive Evil Eyeshadow or have natural Creepy Shadowed Undereyes, and wear similarly monochromatic outfits along the Grayscale of Evil.
Related to Creepy Loner Girl. Compare and contrast Aloof Dark-Haired Girl, Raven Hair, Ivory Skin, and Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl. See also But Not Too Black. Not to be confused with Undeathly Pallor.
## Examples:
- Mei Misaki from
*Another*. She's a mysterious and somewhat creepy girl with black hair and pale skin. She's initially mistaken for a ghost, but it's revealed fairly quickly that she's alive and rather nice.
- The title character of
*Black Butler*, Sebastian Michaelis, is a demon who takes the form of a handsome man with black hair and pale skin.
-
*Bleach*:
- Ulquiorra Schiffer has bone-white skin and jet black hair and his colouring stands out from all other characters around him as a result. He's a symbol of nihilism and his lifeless pallor is part of his theme of not truly understand what it means to live.
- Zaraki's idol Yachiru, the very first Kenpachi and founder of the 11th Division, was an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight whose viciousness in battle was something Zaraki aspired to emulate. In battle, her long hair flowed free and her face would take on an eerie expression that would switch from unnaturally detached to psychopathic depending on how the fight was progressing. ||However, in later years she became the 4th Division Combat Medic Captain Unohana, famed for her beauty in-universe and viewed as the perfect Yamato Nadeshiko, and who always kept her hair neatly bound. Word of God stated Unohana was Soul Society's most beautiful woman and that he wanted there to be a shocking contrast between the two faces of her personality.||
- The titular
*Blue Exorcist*, Rin Okumura, is Satan's son who wants to defeat his demon father. The black hair and pale complexion are more obvious in the manga than anime version, as the anime gave him some color in his skin and changed his dark black hair into a navy blue.
- In
*Bungo Stray Dogs*, the Port Mafia assassin Akutagawa is sickly and pale, with jet-black hair.
-
*Death Parade* has The Dark-Haired Woman who zig-zags this trope. Considering her Mysterious Past and her role as an assistant to a Psychopomp, she certainly falls into this trope in the early episodes, and likely comes across this way to the human guests as well. However, Dark Is Not Evil, and as the show progresses she cements herself as being a Nice Guy and much more down to Earth than the rest of the cast
until her flashback sequence in episode 11, where this trope gets played straight again after her ||Despair Event Horizon renders her an Empty Shell||. The scenes become very monochromatic during this sequence, shes constantly shrouded in darkness, and the bags under her eyes coupled with her Thousand-Yard Stare really help to emphasize this trope.
- Emma from
*Emma: A Victorian Romance* gives off vibes like this to those around her, which led a few men to court her, but is often considered aloof by her peers.
- Re-l Mayer from
*Ergo Proxy*, whose pure white skin, pitch black hair, and liberal amounts of blue eyeshadow make her rather striking and creepy.
- The dreaded immortal mage Zeref from
*Fairy Tail*. He's black-haired and pale-skinned, despite the fact that he's seemingly spent a very long period of time living outdoors in an area with a tropical climate, and ought to be well tanned.
- The villain from
*Food Wars!*, Azami Nakiri, has black hair and unhealthy-looking skin.
- In
*Fruits Basket*, Saki Hanajima is a black-haired and pale-skinned goth, complete with creepy tendencies and an unflattering reputation.
-
*Fullmetal Alchemist*:
- Solf J. Kimblee, who has black hair and unhealthy-looking skin because of his prison time.
- Izumi, though she has an incurable illness as an excuse, and is one of the heroes.
- Lust, as well as most of the other homunculi. ||Especially notable in the 2003 version, since the human body she was created from was Ishbalan, meaning she would have had
*significantly* darker skin.||
- Yuno Morino from
*Goth*. The contrast of the scars on her wrists atop her pristine white skin is what drew the attention (and obsession) of the Nightmare Fetishist narrator.
-
*K*'s Fushimi Saruhiko is extremely pale, bordering on gray actually, and has the dark hair to match. Misaki even comments on how unhealthy pale he is in a side story featuring their early life together.
-
*Kagerou Project*:
- Haruka Kokonose. It serves as a visual reminder that he is ill, and is justified by his frequent trips to hospital and the fact that he cannot participate in physical activity. He is actually a very nice person (if somewhat spacey and odd at times).
- ||Haruka's alternate self, Konoha, becomes this when he is possessed by the Snake of Clearing Eyes. Clearing Eyes, in contrast to the above, is much more in-keeping - to the point that his arrival in any given adaptation is almost always signaled by a shot of his face with Hidden Eyes, a Slasher Smile, or both||.
- Sawako from
*Kimi ni Todoke*, whose creepy looks have had her nicknamed Sadako. She's actually very nice, very naive, and really lonely (since her looks and her (mostly untrue) reputation tends to scare off potential friends).
- Kuromitsu from
*Kurozuka* is pale and with dark hair. He's a beautiful immortal vampire.
-
*Naruto*:
- Orochimaru goes beyond simply having pale skin — his is flat-out white, paired with long black hair.
- In a similar vein to Orochimaru, Sai has completely white skin and black hair. Quite a doozy, since Sai spends most of his time baring his midriff and his shirt is short-sleeved too. They make for a nice contrast to Naruto's blond hair and tanned skin, though.
- Most of the Uchiha clan have pale skin and dark (most often black, though brown or even blue-haired Uchiha exist) hair.
-
*Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan*: Hagoromo-Gitsune has a monochromatic appearance; she has black eyes, black hair, wears black serafuku with a white ribbon and has pale white skin that would make Snow White look tan.
- The Dark Magical Girl Homura Akemi from
*Puella Magi Madoka Magica*. She's dark-haired and so pale her skin tone is closer to gray than mere white, which is notable compared to the rest of the cast who have a healthy tan or blush. ||Justified by her half a year hospitalization.||
- The surreal OVA
*Radio City Fantasy* involves an artist who is in love with his muse who fits this trope, her white skin and black hair being visually interesting to him.
- Hotaru Tomoe from
*Sailor Moon* is a Creepy Child who has both a planet-destroying soldier spirit and a demon bent on bringing "silence" to the world sealed inside her. Despite all this, when depowered, she's just a sweet girl who is misunderstood due to her fainting states and creepy looks.
- Momoko of
*Saki*. This, combined with her ~su Verbal Tic, her power to disappear from sight, and the black smoke effect used to portray those powers, makes her seem like a ghost.
-
*Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei*: Kiri Komori fits this trope pretty much to a T, being a Hikikomori who, by nature, doesn't go outside much.
- Masami Eiri from
*Serial Experiments Lain* is this, with long, dark hair and pale skin. This complexion, combined with his slightly feminine face and use of female speech, makes him all the creepier.
- Death the Kid from
*Soul Eater*. He's a nice enough if eccentric chap, but he *does* have black-and-white hair, slightly creepy yellow eyes, and comes across as eerier than is the norm even for this series when he fights 'properly' or talks about gods, life, and death. And that's before you factor in his temporary insanity.
-
*Talentless Nana* has Shinji Kazama, a necromancer who looks like a corpse himself with his unhealthily pale skin, black hair, and the permanent dark rings under his eyes that make them look sunken in. ||It turns out to be quite justified as he's actually the zombie, not the necromancer.||
- Sunako from
*The Wallflower*. The boys in charge of making her into a lady initially mistake her for Sadako thanks to the general aura of creepy she constantly emanates.
- Yuuko Ichihara of
*×××HOLiC*. Most color illustrations depict the rest of the main cast as these, too. All the main characters have pasty skin and, sans Kohane, dark hair in the manga, due to the way the art was stylized. The anime and official crossover illustrations depict both Doumeki and Himawari with healthier complexions, but Watanuki and Yuuko both remain very pale.
- Bêlit in
*Conan the Barbarian*. While she was described as very pale in the original book, she really fits this trope in the Dark Horse adaptation where she is white as a ghost and very creepy. This look became so striking that it was used by Marvel Comics◊ when the rights transferred to them from Dark Horse.
- Cassie Hack from
*Hack/Slash*. Probably best shown in a panel◊ from *Slice Hard Prelude*, where she and the Acid Angel are staring each other down.
- H'el, the main antagonist from
*H'el on Earth*. Flashbacks reveal that he wasn't always so pale, but how he got his current complexion is a mystery even to him.
- The Bride of Nine Spiders from
*Immortal Iron Fist*. Fittingly, her main power is the ability to summon hordes of spiders.
- Due to his blood disease Morbius was pale even before the scientific accident that transformed him into a living vampire, but after it it turned him outright creepy. The lack of melanin in his skin makes it pure white, while his hair has remained completely black.
- Moon from
*Pocket God* is a goth girl who is fascinated by death and likes doing fatal stunts for the thrill, knowing that she will always resurrect if she dies. Her paleness is especially noticeable because the other pygmies have dark skin.
-
*Raptors*: Camilla, a beautiful vampire, has noticeably pale skin and dark hair because of her Spanish heritage.
-
*The Sandman (1989)*:
- Death and Dream of the Endless, though the former is a much cheerier Perky Goth to her brother's somber disposition. The Endless can change their appearance; Dream appears African to one of his Girlfriends.
- Desire and Despair.
- The Nagai from
*Star Wars (Marvel 1977)* are a whole species of this, being portrayed as an antagonistic extra-galactic force with vampiric features and pure white skin. Word of God explained that their designs were influenced by early 80's anime and manga aesthetics.
- Post-transformation, Rhona Burchill from
*Ultimate Fantastic Four* is a creepy-acting, black-haired woman with a sick-looking pallor to her skin.
- Laura Kinney a.k.a. X-23 crosses this over with Raven Hair, Ivory Skin. She's most commonly drawn with black hair and very fair skin and is often depicted as a goth. One of the other prostitutes in
*NYX* specifically calls her "the creepy one" since no one knows her name, which certainly qualifies her for the "eerie" part.
- Neena Thurman a.k.a. Domino from
*X-Force* has dark hair and literally white skin.
-
*Snow White*: Back in the day, unnatural paleness was the epitome of feminine beauty, since tanned skin was associated with commoners who worked outside all day. Snow White looks gorgeous after her death, but the paleness=corpse=unnatural association wasn't present in the original story.
- The legend of the Yuki Onna, or Snow Lady, in Japanese mythos. Exceptionally pale and beautiful, but her eyes can be terrifying. She may also lack feet.
-
*Child of the Storm* has Harry, who's got solid black hair (except for the skunk stripe at the front), and naturally pale skin that only gets paler in the sequel after his run-in with the Red Room ||(6 months of captivity and use as a brainwashed Winter Soldier type assassin will do that to you)||. He's also got an increasingly eerie sense of being a little too graceful, a little too aware, a little too everything, in fact, to be human - and that's *before* the traumatic experiences and proclivity for radiating ominous psychic power are taken into account.
- Melanie Sampson, Embry's OC imprint, in
*For You, I Will*. Even though Embry liked blondes before, the imprint forces him to see this as beautiful.
- In
*Pokémon Reset Bloodlines*, Red is described by the narration as having very dark hair and pale skin. Due to his rather quiet and subdued nature, he tends to unsettle most people he meets.
- Evelyn Trevelyan in
*Walking in Circles* has dark hair and is pretty pale from years living mostly inside the tower, but once she ||becomes Tranquil|| and her diet suffers for it, she turns even more paler and thinner. That, combined with her attitude during that time, causes most people to find her very creepy to look at.
- The entirety of
*The Addams Family* (except Pugsley, who's just as pale but has brownish hair) in the films, as a physical sign of their, er, 'difference'. Gomez is somewhat less pale than the others, but still qualifies especially with the contrast to his completely jet-black hair. Morticia and Wednesday though are very much classic examples of the trope. (This doesn't include the whole extended family, as Itt has lighter hair and we...don't really see his skin—assuming he has any—and the party scenes include blonde characters, redheads, and at least one Black person. Though of course many of those people might simply have married in.)
-
*All Cheerleaders Die*: Leena, a goth girl, has dark brown hair and nearly alabaster skin. She stalks her ex-girlfriend Maddy at first while practicing Wicca magic in a rather creepy fashion. It turns out that she's Creepy Good though, with her saving Maddy and the other girls who Terry had killed.
-
*Avengers: Age of Ultron*: This is amped up particularly in the beginning with Wanda Maximoff before she's humanized a bit. She spends a lot of time in dark areas that exaggerate her pale skin and dark hair and make her movements and actions creepier. By the time she's a good guy, she's a great deal healthier looking, dyes her hair red, and dresses in brighter clothing.
-
*The Boy Who Cried Werewolf*: Madame Varcolac is pale-skinned with dark brown hair and very creepy at first, as the caretaker of Wolfsberg Manor. However, she turns out to be good.
- Edmund Pevensie◊ from the movie version of
*The Chronicles of Narnia*, due to the actor's natural, dark looks, which easily made him look like the bad one in the first movie and the Anti-Hero in the next ones.
- In
*Corpse Bride*, Victor Van Dort has dark hair and his complexion is nearly white (along with every other living character in the film).
-
*Dark Touch* has the dark hair and the pale skin, as well as psychokinetic powers and a viewpoint that all adults in the world are potential abusers and must be stopped now.
-
*Fright Night 2: New Blood*: Gerri is very pale with midnight black hair, and a vampire. Jaime Murray's trademark looks were certainly put to good use.
- The Thermians in
*Galaxy Quest*, done to emphasize that they are aliens who have disguised themselves as humans in accordance with the film's plot.
-
*Harry Potter*
- Bellatrix Lestrange, and a couple other Death Eaters, as well as young Lord Voldemort are villainous examples.
- Antiheroic examples exist through Severus Snape and Sirius Black, as well as a heroic example in Harry himself.
- This appearance is a plot point, just not in the way you'd expect. All the characters who have it are distant relatives of each other: their gothic looks show this connection. Notably though, while the Weasleys and the Malfoys are also distant relatives since both have ties to the House of Black, they have very different looks. The Malfoys are pale blondes bordering on albino and the Weasleys are redheads.
- Louis of
*Interview with the Vampire*, as mentioned below under Literature. The film both increased it by letting us see his veins through his skin and generally putting us outside his own narration, and decreased it by turning his jet-black hair brown. It also turned Armand into this, where he was a cherubic young redhead (though no less creepy) in the books.
-
*Kill List* has Fiona, Gal's new girlfriend. There's something distinctly off about her and her appearance and strange actions during Jay's dinner party are one of the first major hints that something is very wrong here.
-
*Let Me In*:Owen is incredibly pale with black hair.He actually looks more gothic than the vampire Abby.
- In
*Maleficent*, the title character's raven Diaval is given a human form, who dresses all in black, complete with dark hair and eyes. He's one of the nicest characters in the movie.
-
*Mythica*: Not most of the time, but when using her necromancy powers Marek's eyes go black, looking even creepier with her pale skin and dark brown hair.
- Anton Chigurh from
*No Country for Old Men* fits this trope very well. Movies seem to like making Javier Bardem's villains much paler than the man himself.
-
*The Professional* has Mathilda Lando, the pre-teen protege of Leon Montana. To say that she is quite "Eerie" would be quite an understatement as she does plenty of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior from smoking cigarettes to openly cursing at her half-sister and Leon as well as having a sexual interest in the latter.
- Sadako/Samara from
*Ringu* and *The Ring*, the famous Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl with black hair and ghostly white skin.
-
*Scream*:
- In
*Scream 4*, ||Jill's dark hair and pale skin are initially meant to evoke the image of an archetypal Final Girl, particularly with her similarities to her cousin Sidney. But after The Reveal that she's the Ghostface killer, an Ax-Crazy Attention Whore willing to go to any lengths to become famous, she rapidly reveals herself to be this.||
-
*Scream (2022)* does something similar with ||Amber, the False Friend of the heroine Tara who is revealed to be one of the killers. While her partner Richie, the leader of the murder plot, comes off as more genuinely angry and aggrieved, Amber is presented as Ax-Crazy, clearly relishing getting to kill people. (Appropriately enough, her actress Mikey Madison previously played a member of the Manson family in *Once Upon a Time in Hollywood*.)||
- Selene from the
*Underworld (2003)* movies. Being a vampire and all, this shouldn't come as a surprise.
-
*Vamps*: Stacy (as Krysten Ritter plays her, whose look really is this), and it makes the elder Van Helsing suspicious that she's really a vampire. At first, Dan just thinks they're paranoid, but of course it's true.
- In
*Waltz with Bashir*, the director portrays his ex-girlfriend, who dumped him the same week he shipped out, as one of these. He has fantasies of her as a ghostly presence on the battlefield. In an interview, the director stated that his wife objected to how attractive he made her in the film.
- Amy in
*Would You Rather*. As played by Sasha Grey, her sullen, sarcasm-heavy behavior borders on the Gloomy Goth archetype.
-
*The Addams Family*: Morticia Addams fits the physical description, but is a very nice person. She just has some unusual hobbies and a slightly odd outlook on life. Same thing with her husband and daughter.
**Cosmetics Saleswoman:** What kind of powder does your mummy use?
**Wednesday:** Baking powder.
**Cosmetics Saleswoman:** No, honey, I mean on her face.
**Wednesday:** ...Baking powder.
-
*Alex Rider*: Kyra, with overtones of punk. Her look is clearly meant to contrast with blond, tan, clean-cut Alex.
- Merton J. Dingle from
*Big Wolf on Campus*, since he's a goth.
-
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer*:
- Willow at the end of season 6. Justified in that, by that point, she's become completely taken over by grief, revenge lust, and black magic. She gets better.
- Drusilla - a Mad Oracle who Angelus put through every variation on Break the Cutie before making her immortal so she'd suffer forever. This doesn't stop her from being as dangerous as the rest of the Fanged Four.
- Zoe Graystone from
*Caprica* has very dark (nearly black) hair and very light (as close to white as possible without albinism) skin. Particularly noticeable in the ads, in which she is stark-naked and holding a bright-red apple with a bite taken out of it.
- In season 2 of
*Dexter*, Dexter's girlfriend Lila is a pale-skinned brunette. Because they're all in sun-filled Miami, this leads Deb to speculate that she's "a gross English titty vampire". And when Lila ||turns out to be nuts||, Deb describes her to the other cops as "pale as a fucking corpse."
-
*Doctor Who*:
- River Tam of
*Firefly*. Kinda justified on the pale-skinned part, as she doesn't leave the ship much. And she's pretty eerie.
- Janette in
*Forever Knight*, although most of her relationship stuff with Nick was in flashbacks. Justified since shes a vampire.
-
*Game of Thrones*:
- Northerners are known for their dark, almost black hair and pale skin and have a grim reputation among southerners.
- Lyanna Stark as an adult. Oberyn Martell even describes her in the Blu-ray lore as a "pale northern girl with ice running in her veins like all her people". Though beautiful, she comes off as eerie.
- Arya Stark has the Stark look, including fair skin and brown hair. Due to having the slightly unnervingly pale skin and dark hair of Northerners, she is regarded as less attractive than her red-haired sister, Sansa. However, with time, her appearance becomes the least eerie thing about her, as her behavior verges on Creepy Child territory, as she keeps a list of those who have wronged her and takes a sadistic pleasure in causing their deaths.
- Myranda, Ramsey Bolton's lover, has dark brown hair, is very pale and
*very* crazy and sadistic.
- Oswald Cobblepot from
*Gotham*. He Looks Like Cesare with his chalky-pale skin and greasy black hair, and is undeniably eerie-looking, but is still mostly Creepy Cute in a weird way.
-
*The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power* has Adar, a Corrupted Elf of the First Age. His physical features, having raven hair, Facial Horror and being sickly pale, are a testimony of what Morgoth did with the enslaved Elves of Beleriand. They were turned into Orcs.
- Kenzi from
*Lost Girl* is very pale, has long, black hair, and bright blue eyes. Not very "eerie" as much as "comical", though.
- The loyal warlock Merlin and the king's ward Morgana, from the BBC's
*Merlin*. Though Morgana is a better fit for this trope than Merlin, since she's definitely paler-skinned (Merlin doesn't really have that "ghostly" complexion), as well as conveniently ||turning into a near-psychopathic villainess hellbent on dramatic angst and sorcerous revenge||.
- Lily Munster of
*The Munsters* also looks like this and would probably get along very well with Morticia if they met.
- Red Riding Hood, better known as Red, having dark hair in
*Once Upon a Time* is a contrast from the original storybook version. The change makes sense, because ||Red is also The Big Bad Wolf that has been terrorizing the town||.
- In
*Penny Dreadful*, one of the main characters, Vanessa Ives, carries this trope along with its associated dualities.
- In the series finale of
*Poirot* ("Curtain"), Stephen Norton is a bird-watcher with raven-black hair and a quiet disposition. If this, along with his pale, white skin, doesn't sound eerie, then ||his Manipulative Bastardry and Mind over Matter techniques that can cause people to kill each other|| add to his eerieness and creepiness. In fact, this is an Adaptation Dye-Job of the original novel *Curtain*, where Norton has grayish silver hair, ||but with a black heart.||
-
*The Sandman*: The protagonist, Morpheus, is a supernatural Anthropomorphic Personification who usually appears as a pale-skinned young man with untidy black hair.
-
*Star Trek*:
- Lt. Cmdr. Data in
*Star Trek: The Next Generation* was designed to be a bit eerie on purpose to keep him on the left side of the Uncanny Valley. Amusingly, some aliens think he's just a weird-looking human. In homage to Kirk's "rice-picker" in The Original Series and Blatant Lie regarding Spock in *Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home*, they tell some past humans in "Time's Arrow" that he's a "Frenchman". In at least one holodeck episode, he passes himself off as South American.
- Spock and most Vulcans (barring Tuvok and the reddish-haired T'Pol) in general fit this trope.
- Weyoun of DS9, or every Vorta, for that matter.
-
*Supernatural*:
- While haunting a hospital as a spirit, Dean meets a beautiful, black-haired, pale-skinned female spirit named Tessa, ||who turns out to be a grim reaper.||
- The angry spirit who attacks a philandering professor in "Tall Tales" is this.
- The episode "Bedtime Stories" gives us two: the Monster of the Week Callie, and the latest vessel of recurring villain the Crossroads Demon.
- Ruby 2.0 and Meg 2.0 are both demons, occupying pale-skinned, dark-haired female vessels.
- Jade from
*Victorious* seems to be invoking this trope as part of her gothic persona. She has pale skin, black hair, and a creepy, hostile attitude.
- Märchen from the Sound Horizon Rock Opera of the same name. Being dead might have something to do with it.
- Annie Clark◊, better known as St. Vincent. Before the release of
*Strange Mercy*, she was just Raven Hair, Ivory Skin, but since then she has shifted hard into this trope.
- Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance is this by default with his natural paleness and accord with the supernatural, and has played it up further by usually dyeing his hair an even deeper black
note : although he hasn't been averse to blinding white or fiery-red locks either.
- Tarja Turunen, Lacey Sturm, Sharon den Adel, Vibeke Stene, Anette Olzon, Manuela Kraller
* : formerly of Xandria... needless to say, they're *everywhere* in gothic and symphonic metal.
- The default appearance of the Scream Queens, though as a goth, Daffney's appearance is always subject to change. Prior to the team, WCW often used Daffney as the crazy screaming obsessive but also put her in fanservice roles too. MsChif more so enforced the trope just through raw abrasiveness. Draculletta and White Magic, Wrestlicious's Ghouls Gone Wild, are an even straighter case.
- Moon elves, or Silver elves, in
*Forgotten Realms* usually have black to blue hair and pale to icy-blue skin. At least one novel even lampshaded that the subrace visually is a perfect contrast to dark-skinned blond drow. They look the weirdest of whole elvenkind (except Avariel), but tend to be the most human-like mentally (approachable, curious, and active) and the least decadent.
- Ubiquitous in
*Old World of Darkness* with its Gothic aesthetic design. Open a rule book and you will see this trope.
- Due to flaws in various implants of
*Warhammer 40,000*, all Raven Guards have dark hair and pale skin, regardless of what they looked like pre-surgery.
- Dark Elves in
*Warhammer Fantasy* are almost all pale and black-haired, though no actual reason is given. Perhaps that was just a major dominant trait among the Nagarytheans.
- Nothing in official books, but various pieces of fluff and the occasional Word of God in articles and video-game material state that, yes, Nagarytheans tended towards this aspect. That, and millennia of using dark magic probably hasn't helped matters any...
- The title character of
*Elisabeth*, who was a real person with black hair in braids that fall to her waist, and pallor because she was royalty.
- Laurence Olivier played Shakespeare's
*Richard III* as one of these onstage◊; when he recreated his performance for film, the makeup was toned down and Richard's skin tone was Olivier's own. (Ironically, the real Richard was, according to his surviving portraits, of middling complexion and with light brown hair.)
- The Japanese production of
*Tanz Der Vampire* made Herbert von Krolock into one of these. Western productions tend to go the other route and gives him white hair.
- In The Musical version of
*Wicked*, Nessarose is almost always one of these, no matter the actress (the exceptions being when she is played as a washed-out-looking dishwater blonde or the actress is simply not of an ethnicity that makes this feasible). It makes sense, considering that she's fairly sickly and, being crippled, is confined to bed, and also sees the world in terms of black and white. Later, when she turns evil, she exchanges her blue-and-white outfit for a black one.
- Viola Cadaverini from the
*Ace Attorney* series. She's meant to be creepy and sickly looking, and it works.
-
*Bayonetta*, to go along with the rest of her great looks package.
-
*BioWare* franchises:
- Eleanor Lamb from
*BioShock 2*. Living in an underwater city will probably do that to one's complexion.
- Your "Guardian Angel" in
*Borderlands*.
- The Siren playable character in
*Borderlands 2*, Maya, as well. She's also the only playable character of the game that is clearly Good aligned, the other three being some form of Chaotic, or even Evil.
- In
*Castle of Illusion*, Mizrabel's transformed form is a haughty, evil sorceress who looks like the Evil Queen in *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*.
-
*Castlevania: Lords of Shadow*:
- Dracula has pale white skin and dark brown hair that is almost black. He's feared by practically every character in the setting, including
*The Devil himself*, and for *very* good reason.
- Satan is also an example. He's as pale as Dracula, has long onyx black hair, and dark veins covering his body. In the sequel, it gets even worse, where he becomes an eight-foot tall hulking brute of an angel riddled with scars.
- Satan's daughter, Raisa Volkova, takes after her father with pale skin, dark hair, and a disturbing appearance.
- Death in
*Darksiders II* has skin so pale it's only a few shades darker than his own White Mask of Doom, and depending on the lightning it actually looks like his skin is changing color.
- As the resident Friendly Neighborhood Vampire of
*Disgaea 4*, Valvatorez naturally has this hair color and complexion.
-
*Final Fantasy*:
-
*Final Fantasy VII's* Vincent Valentine fits this trope quite well, although more in the Anti-Hero sense. This doesn't stop people from thinking of him as The Vamp, though...
- Apparently, Kuja in
*Final Fantasy IX* was originally envisioned to be of this trope, but it was changed to make him look like a mini-Sephiroth.
-
*Fire Emblem*:
- Soren from
*Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance* and *Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn*. He's one of the protagonists, but his cynicism and utter lack of idealism occasionally puts off his allies.
- Noticeably, Karla of
*Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade* is the only (female) ally with black hair in the entire game. Mind, this is a series with a *tradition* of having at least *thirty-odd characters* on the allies' side alone, and they are all very pale. Upon supporting, her personality is revealed to be an equal mix of Cloud Cuckoo Lander and Lady of War. Strangely for female characters in this trope, she is an undefeated fighter known as the Princess of Swords as well as The Rival to Bartre the Fighter, and there are absolutely no allusions to her being sickly or weak, ||though she *does* die of an illness years after the game ends||. In the previous game, her daughter Fir continues the trait of having dark hair along with a few others—though, for some strange reason, Fir's hair is *purple*.
- Morphs all have dark hair, pale skin, and golden eyes. This unnatural appearance highlights their status as artificial beings.
-
*Fire Emblem: Awakening*'s Tharja is a Dark Mage with dark hair, who loves to dabble in curses and actively stalks the Avatar (regardless of the Avatar's gender). She is said (in the American version anyway) to have the darkest thoughts. Bonus points for having the pale skin despite hailing from a desert nation. Her daughter Noire can qualify thanks to her negative outlook on life and her Blood Knight split personality, but only if she has a dark-haired father, as her hair color's determined by the father.
-
*Fire Emblem Fates*:
- On the
*Conquest* side of things, there's Nyx, a shaman cursed into a child's body. She prefers living by herself and acts aloof to distance herself from people. ||Her backstory reveals that the reason she's cursed is that she was quite an Enfante Terrible in her childhood||.
- On the
*Birthright* side of things, there's Hayato's daughter Rhajat, a Dark Mage fond of curses and actively stalks the Avatar (regardless of gender, unless she's her mother). She's said (in the American version anyway) to have the darkest thoughts. If you noticed the similarities to Tharja, that's not a coincidence. ||Rhajat and Tharja are hinted to be part of the same reincarnation cycle, though who reincarnates into who is up for debate.|| Like Noire, though, she only qualifies if she has a dark-haired mother, as her hair color is determined by her mother. ||And yes, Tharja's hair color is an option, but only on the *Revelations* route where Nyx can marry Hayato.|| Her 'default' appearance (and the one she uses in *Fire Emblem Heroes*) also has dark hair.
- In
*Fire Emblem: Three Houses* and *Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes*, Hubert is the main instance of this trope. Depending on the route and game taken he can be an enemy, ally, or playable character, but he will always play up other's perception of him as this trope for his own amusement. That said, he does make a note to drop the act around some allies, such as Bernadetta. In *Three Hopes*, Monica suggests his conformity to this trope gives him "the complexion of a coffin dweller."
- Though
**heavily** downplayed in the games themselves because we never see his face, the *Halo* novels describe the Master Chief as this. As a consequence of spending most of their time in their armor, the Spartan- IIs are described as almost painfully pale, and John himself happens to have brown hair. ||Completing *Halo 4* on Legendary provides our one and only glimpse at an adult John's face, although only the area around his eyes are visible.||
- Vanitas from
*Kingdom Hearts*, once you finally see his face. ||He looks like a pale Sora with darker hair and gold eyes, due to their mutual connection with Ventus.||
- Ashei from
*The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess* fits this trope physically, with her black braided hair and almost paper-white skin (complete with under-eye dark circles). She's one of the good guys, however.
- In
*Mary Skelter 2*, Jack gains access to the form of "Ripper Jack" after becoming a Nightmare, and while that way, it turns his eye bright pink ala the Blood Maidens' eyes, while the leaves on his hear turn white and all the vines/beanstalks all over him turn black. However, at the end of the game, Jack ends up creating a Marchen copy of his original Blood Youth form ||so that the Blood Team, and especially the Alice they have, still have a Jack to protect them while he teams up with the original Alice, now also a Nightmare||, and when *it* goes into Ripper Mode, it becomes a far straighter example of this trope.
-
*Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi*: All Vampires who aren't monstrous and don't look like Orlok have this look.
- In
*Path of Exile* the Witch has this look and is the most mystically inclined of the characters, levitating in her selection screen where the rest flaunt weapons. She's almost the most sinister and prone to use spells that involve draining life force, cursing enemies, and summoning undead minions.
- Alex Mercer from
*[PROTOTYPE]* fits the trope well enough, though the only time you can really tell he has brown hair is when you see old pictures of him.
- In
*Red Dead Redemption II*, ||Arthur Morgan turns white as a ghost and gets sunken, bloodshot eyes after his tuberculosis enters the later stages. Eventually the lung infection ends up killing him.||
-
*Resident Evil*:
- Glory in the Dragonfall campaign of
*Shadowrun Returns* is this to a T. Long black hair, sickly pale skin, red-rimmed eyes... giant metal arms equipped with razor sharp claws... Fortunately, she's on your side.
- The
*Suikoden* series has a rather memorable example in the fifth numbered sequel. Zerase is altogether too happy to deride the hero for his quote-unquote "idiocy" while deliberately withholding useful information. For extra tropaliciousness, her pale skin is even commented on in a hidden Furo Scene, which implies that she ||may or may not be undead, per the page heading||.
- More like ||Eerie Pale-Skinned Dark Redhead: Elaine Marley-Threepwood|| from
*Tales of Monkey Island*, ||from the time that she willingly becomes LeChuck's demon bride up to the time that Guybrush manages to shrink La Esponja Grande.||
-
*Tekken*: Sergei Dragunov combines this trope with Icy Blue Eyes and Covered with Scars, and is regarded as a cold and calculating figure that creeps out both enemies and allies alike. His nickname is "The White Angel of Death", likely referencing his pale complexion and incredible skills at hand-to-hand combat.
- Morgana and Abigail in
*Witches' Legacy* both are this with pale skin, dark hair and being powerful witches (albeit ultimately on opposite sides).
- Higashizawa Youdai of
*The World Ends with You* is, considering the rarity of even Big Guys crossing over with this trope, most likely the only Brute example of a Pale-Skinned Brunette in existence.
- There's another example and that is ||Shiki's true self||.
- Venoct from
*Yo-Kai Watch* is a ninja-like youkai with very pale skin and dark navy hair. He's a powerful fighter, but his Perpetual Frown, gold eyes and desire for revenge on Rubeus J (whose description is similar to Jibanyan's, no less) make him sinister.
- ||Taira no|| Yuki||ri|| from
*Six Rules*'s Raven Hair, Ivory Skin beauty ||turns into this when she is revealed to be a cold-hearted Creepy Child who has been planning the death of the protagonist since the beginning. And she's ten years old.||
- Shiki from
*Togainu no Chi* has skin that's practically white and black hair. Were it not for his red eyes, in fact, he would have a very monochromatic appearance since he wears black all the time.
-
*Yo-Jin-Bo*'s Bo has dark navy blue hair and the palest skintone in the game besides Hatsuhime.
- There are a number of pale brunette undead characters in
*Charby the Vampirate* including the vampires Charby, Zerlocke and Adria and the zombies Mye and Hex.
- Four out of the six members of the Mouryou family from
*Contemplating Reiko* are this. Reiko herself, two of her sisters, Shihoka and Shinobu, and her mother Fumiko.
- Toru Akujin from
*Demon King*, emphasis on the eerie. His dad too, as well as Pit the demon hunter and the human form of the demon Marchosias.
- Julian from
*The Guide to a Healthy Relationship* has long black hair and is very pale due to generally working on the night shift and not going out at day unless it's strictly necessary. Being mentally ill and permanently sleepless doesn't help a healthy impression, either.
-
*The Guy Upstairs*: As attractive as Adam is, one cant help but feel theres simply something off about him due to his black hair and eyes.
- This is part of the basic vampire template in
*Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name*, along with Red Eyes, Take Warning (except for Casimiro). None of the *specific* vampires we've met are actually all that eerie, though. Well, maybe Finas.
- Kit of
*Miamaska* is very pale compared to other Alodian citizens.
- Raizel in
*Noblesse* and any Noblesse with black hair fits this because they are mostly centuries-old vampires.
- Umbria/Zaedalkaah from
*Our Little Adventure* is a paler and darker haired version of Julie.
- Levana, the titular
*Vampire Girl*, is a brunette with pale skin.
- Edwina, from
*Various Happenings*, whose coloration is completely black and white when compared to the blonde and bronze Cassandra. Her sudden, unannounced appearance and intense interest in Cassandra don't help matters.
- Raven Branwen from
*RWBY*, something that became clearer as the show's animation evolved. While there are plenty of light-skinned and dark-haired characters, Raven's not merely pale but paper-white. She's also one of the most dangerous and enigmatic people on the show, with even her own family being wary of her, and has mysterious and frightening powers.
- Phase (Ayla Goodkind) at the Super Hero School Whateley Academy in the
*Whateley Universe*. Her hair is jet-black (it was a sandy blond back when she was a boy before she mutated). She's quite pale (some wavelength of light may be passing through her). She's also very rich and highly educated, which fits the trope too. But she's one of the good guys. A lot of mutants don't believe that, because her family are the most notorious mutant-haters anywhere.
- In
*Adventure Time*, Marceline the Vampire Queen is pale-skinned and black-haired.
-
*Avatar: The Last Airbender*:
- Kevin from
*Ben 10* starts out this way and is quite psychotic. When he joins the team in the sequel, his skin tone is almost the same as the Tennysons.
-
*The Incredibles* has Violet Parr who is depicted as gloomy, uncertain and socially withdrawn — preferring to hide behind her long raven hair.
- Dib from
*Invader Zim* is a male example. His sister Gaz comes close, except that she has dark *purple* hair.
- Shego from
*Kim Possible* was designed with this in mind. Her green highlights make her seem poisonous. Oddly (given the suggestion above), she's often seen on a beach, or a tanning bed, with no apparent effects; maybe she wants to differentiate herself from her heroic brothers who follow a similar scheme.
- Creepy Suzie, the Goth "Clubhouse Kid" from
*The Oblongs.*
- Invoked by Lilith Clawthorne from
*The Owl House* as per Word of God. She started out with the skin-tone, but dyed and straightened the curly red-brown mop she had as a teenager (along with ditching her spectacles) for the express purpose of looking more imposing and matching the raven theme of the Emperor's Coven.
-
*Ready Jet Go!*: Mitchell has the palest skin of the entire cast, and has dark brown hair. And he's *definitely* more than a little off his rocker.
- Boris and Natasha from
*Rocky and Bullwinkle* have pale white skin and black hair.
-
*Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated* has comments about Velma's pale complexion, but it's very much an Informed Attribute.
- Master Cyclonis from
*Storm Hawks*, which makes sense since not only does she spend most of her time indoors in a dark room working on her next world-conquering plot, Terra Cyclonia itself seems to be perpetually shrouded in stormy red clouds with sunlight rarely appearing.
- Raven from
*Teen Titans (2003)*. She's pale as a ghost and half-demon.
- Gwen from various
*Total Drama* titles, considering on what her name means.
- Triana Orpheus of
*The Venture Bros.,* a bit of a Perky Goth subversion. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaleSkinnedBrunette |
Padded Sumo Gameplay - TV Tropes
Some games it's nearly impossible to inflict lasting damage, resulting in combat practically just being mutual Cherry Tapping minus the humiliation. Actual skill is most likely still involved, but it will be more about intelligence (Min-Maxing, planning ahead) than agility (Dodging, improvising).
This trope can happen due to various reasons: Higher defensive stats than offensive ones, an abundance of cheap healing supplies, useful healing/protection moves, combos or anything else capable of causing substantial damage being too unsafe to use, et cetera.
This trope doesn't
*have* to be a bad thing. Lengthy battles tend to feel more epic than short ones, and some gamers enjoy calculating the best possible tactics and perfecting them.
Compare Damage-Sponge Boss, usually referred to as "bullet sponges" in shooters. Also compare Healing Loop, where damage isn't low, but either party heals off most of the damage dealt, leading to fights just as drawn out. Contrast the inversion, Rocket-Tag Gameplay, which is a case of mutually ineffective defenses instead of mutually ineffective methods of attack as this trope.
## Examples:
- Exdeath mirror matches in
*Dissidia Final Fantasy* are an extreme example of this. Exdeath is a character built entirely around counter moves, but his non-counter moves are significantly weaker and slower. In the case of Exdeath vs. Exdeath, whoever throws out a move is much more likely to be at a *disadvantage*, and it turns into a game of doing random, barely damaging things until someone chokes enough times. Exdeath mirror matches aren't as agonizing in *Duodecim*, where it becomes more of a pure mindgame match of baiting out moves to cancel into a counter from each other.
- In
*Facebreaker*, stamina recovers incredibly fast, to the point where unless one side connects with a Facebreaker, the fight's almost always going to sudden death. A normal KO is next to impossible unless you absolutely walk all over your opponent.
-
*Sumotori Dreams*. It's impossible to harm the opponent in any other way but pushing him off the platform. Considering the way the game's Ragdoll Physics are rigged, much of the challenge is not falling off yourself while you're trying to do this.
- The later games in the
*Super Smash Bros.* series can be set up like this in custom fights: High-gravity, metal battles will typically result in everyone involved hitting several hundred damage at *least* before a KO is remotely feasible. This is also a lot of the fame and infamy behind maps like Hyrule Temple; the stage is so gigantic that even a Home-Run Bat isn't going to guarantee a KO unless used near the edge. The enclosed cave area near the bottom of the stage is *very* difficult to get knocked out of, leading to it being nicknamed "Hyrule Fight Club."
- Some stages in
*Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion* are set up for very defensive gameplay. Like with *Smash Bros.*, characters can only be knocked out by Ring Out. However, stages like Mung Daal's Kitchen are mostly enclosed, with a few small openings on the sides. Gameplay then becomes finding a way to line up an attack such that opponents are launched through these gaps while avoiding getting lined up by your opponents, with most such attempts failing.
-
*Street Fighter X Tekken* was pretty infamous for this at launch, to the point of receiving the derisive nickname *Street Fighter X Time Out*. Most combos did very little damage, most combos that did do good damage were much easier to stop than they were to execute, and fighters regained health extremely quickly when switched out. This resulted in a game where the most common strategy by far was to get a life lead on the opponent, then run out the clock.
-
*Halo*, by the standards of many FPS games. It takes several hits or prolonged fire from most infantry weapons to kill an opponent. And any opponent who isn't finished off can escape and take cover and their hitpoints will quickly be restored to maximum thanks to regenerating energy shields.
- The
*Borderlands* series: It takes several hits or prolonged fire from most infantry weapons to kill an opponent. And any opponent who isn't finished off can escape and take cover and their hitpoints will quickly be restored to maximum thanks to regenerating energy shields. Add in RPG Elements.
-
*PlanetSide 1* had enormously long time-to-kills on almost all its weapons; bar a point blank Jackhammer triple-blast, no infantry weapon could reliably kill a player in under a second. When combined with the game's awful netcode (where rapid strafing could cause Teleport Spam and desync), it wasn't uncommon for two soldiers with assault rifles to have to dump the majority of their magazine to kill the other. Vehicles were extremely durable - even the humble ATV could survive quite a lot of fire. The sequel, on the other hand, uses Rocket-Tag Gameplay.
-
*Guild Wars* was sometimes disparagingly referred to as "Heal Wars," as all classes had ways to heal themselves and PvP was often a matter of trying to out-DPS your opponent's heals. The alternative was "3, 2, 1, SPIKE!", where all the damage-dealers on a team would suddenly switch damage to a new, single target and try to burst them down before the enemy Monk could catch up. If you could actually burst down the *Monk* this way, usually the entire team would fold like damp cardboard without the heals propping them up.
-
*MapleStory* can have this, if you're trying to solo bosses at your level. It's usually expected that you would bring a party of about 20-30 levels above the recommended. If not, some bosses take minimal damage, and heal periodically, making battles drag on and on (if they're doable at all).
- The Boss tends to be the padded sumo wrestler. Player Characters usually require lots and lots of endgame potions and fast reflexes and/or a macro that somehow managed to escape the hack detection.
-
*World of Warcraft* has this in spades in one-on-one PvP. Every healer class in adequate PvP gear is capable of outhealing any damage dealt by a damage-dealing class in a matter of several seconds while their offensive abilities are rather unimpressive. Tanks have multiple abilities to absorb and negate damage, while damage-dealing classes have higher than average amount of escape abilities. Nearly all tanks and damage-dealers may regenerate their health to some extent, and may often stall matches by being efficient at running away or incapacitating the enemy while their health goes up. While one-on-one duels are not something the game is balanced around, duels occur often between sole survivors at the end of the arena match, making the winner typically the one who made the least mistakes. However, the expansion *Wrath of the Lich King* was well known for its Rocket-Tag Gameplay.
- Making this happen was at one point a popular strategy for players of
*Kingdom of Loathing*; it was called Plinking. Jack up the monster level as high as you can, and also increase your Moxie. You can only get hit with criticals, meanwhile you are slowly whittling down their health turn after turn. In the end, you win, and all of that monster level translates into huge stat boosts for you. This strategy became less feasible with the addition of thirty-turn time limits to fights; on the thirty-first turn, the fight automatically ends in a loss.
- In
*Oblivion* this becomes the norm for combat at the highest levels, as damage caps at a certain point but HP keeps getting higher and higher, which becomes more extreme if the potential 85% damage reduction from armor is brought in. Can be Subverted if you resort to one of a few Game Breakers, though.
- A good example of this is
*Baldur's Gate*, where (especially early on) it's common for opponents to stand around missing each other for round after round, the victor ultimately defeating their opponent after landing two or three hits.
-
*Fallout*:
- In the late game of
*Fallout* and *Fallout 2*, you will be very heavily armoured, and you will encounter opponents with power armor. Both of you will be almost incapable of doing even a single point of damage except in critical blows, so combat basically boils down to taking the Slayer (turn every melee attack into an automatic crit) or Sniper (give each ranged attack a chance to crit equal to 10 times your luck score) and make aimed shots at an opponent's eyes, groin, or other body part to blow through their armor and cripple them. Your only other option is to switch over to single-shot, high-powered energy weapons (and to a lesser degree rocket launchers), which would actually deal real damage through armor. It's likely for this reason that when *New Vegas* re-introduced damage threshold it also kept armor from reducing more than 4/5 of the damage an attack can do.
- While it is possible to use stealth or cover in
*Fallout 3*, the game's economy makes stimpak spamming a much easier tactic. In particular, many of the added enemies in the Downloadable Content have pointlessly high amounts of HP and qualify as Demonic Spiders for most of the game due to the fact that they get damage bonuses with the weapons they use and being as tough as nails coated with more nails, as part of a failed attempt to balance them towards end-game characters who are putting off replaying the finale to screw around in new locations rather than new characters who are check out the new content as they re-explore the original wasteland. By the time you hit the cap at level 30, they will not individually be threats to you, but they *will* take forever and a day to kill, even with your Infinity +1 Sword.
-
*The Legend of Dragoon* has this toward the end. The final boss fight can take HOURS, even if you're well prepared.
- In
*Skies of Arcadia*, due to the increasing health and defense of certain types of enemies, it can actually be faster to have your entire party charge up the spirit gauge in order to use the full party's ultimate attack, Prophecy (which drops a freaking moon on their heads) anytime you come across one such foe.
-
*Pokémon*
- Pretty easy to do with two stall-heavy Mons, or if the battle has been going on for a while and Mons only have Struggle as their move left. Reaches ridiculous levels in Wobbuffet vs. Wobbuffet battles, where due to a lack of actual attacks beyond counterattacks means that they can only hit with Struggle, and their high HP (and very, very low attack power) means that winning with that will take a long, long time. And heaven help you if you both have Leftovers attached, which will easily heal more HP than Struggle will hurt you for...
- The Struggle attack now deals 25% damage to its user (when it does connect). Thus, in a Wobbuffet vs. Wobbuffet battle, the winner is the last one to strike.
- The same generation also allowed mons with Shadow Tag to switch out against other mons with Shadow Tag, and switching into Wobbuffet is generally safe (Wobbuffet cannot damage you unless you hit it first), so a Wobbuffet vs. Wobbuffet matchup will quickly end with one or both Wobbuffets being withdrawn in favor of mons with much greater offenses.
- The "Ubers" metagame in Generation I, where Mewtwo and Mew are legal. One would likely be confused as to how a metagame where two of the most unbalanced Legendaries in the series are on every team could fit this trope—however, in Generation I, Psychic resisted itself and had no significant weaknesses, and about 2/3 of all teams are going to be dedicated to Psychics or mega-bulky types like Chansey and Snorlax. Additionally, both Mewtwo and Mew have access to great recovery moves in the form of Recover and Softboiled, so they can stall damage very easily. This means that battles typically come down to stalling until one Mewtwo runs out of PP or gets hit by a lucky freeze.
- The Generation II metagame has a reputation for looking like this, and not for no reason. Nearly all the top-ranked Pokémon are incredibly bulky, which is furthered by the stat system at the time allowing Pokémon to max out all their stats, the Leftovers item grants slow regeneration and sees nigh-universal use, the Rest/Sleep Talk combo is at its height, due to the fact that Sleep Talk can roll Rest to fully heal the user, and some of the biggest offensive tools of the prior generation (mainly critical hits and Hyper Beam) were nerfed. Though offensive play is certainly common, it's far slower-paced than in other generations, and it's quite telling that the most notable strategies for damage rely on using Self-Destruct or Explosion, as they're some of the few ways to quickly break an opponent's defenses. Part of the reason the famously powerful Snorlax remains legal is a belief that, were it not for Snorlax's presence and insane offensive potential, then the game would lose the one thing keeping it from being an eternal stallfest. This was significantly lessened with the third-generation games, which retooled the stat gain system to force Pokémon to specialize, added powerful offense-boosting items like the Choice Band or moves like Dragon Dance and Calm Mind, and nerfed some of the more annoying stall strategies (namely, Resttalk).
- Single battles in Pokémon games by high-level opponents can begin like this relative to the other types (double, triple, and rotation battles), because a lot of turns are spent switching to Pokémon who will resist the opponent's attacks. The opponent, in response, will switch to a Pokémon who will resist your attacks. Throw in moves that heal like Recover, Leech Seed, Drain Punch, and Wish; and moves meant to cause opponents to lose turns like Swagger (confusion), Thunder Wave (paralysis), Air Slash (flinch), and Spore (sleep), and turn after turn can happen with very little happening. It changes once enough Pokémon have been knocked out, however, as the players' options on switching become more limited.
- High-level play in
*Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!* finds itself in this category due to the very large boosts to HP, Defense, and Special Defense via the Candy mechanic. Some Pokémon take so little damage from attacks that they're weakened more by Toxic-based Poison and fixed-HP moves like Seismic Toss than regular attacks.
- The first of the Four Generals chapters in
*Sailor Moon: Another Story* is a *painful* example, where you play as a solo Sailor Mercury, a healer with only one incredibly weak attack, and fight a boss as weak as you are with gobs of HP. Unless you've searched the level *carefully* for some hidden equipment the fight is close to unwinnable, and even if you have it's still interminable.
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*Final Fantasy XIII*'s Command Synergy Battle system revolves around subverting this trope. At base damage, normal attacks are the equivalent to chucking a grain of sand at a pyramid, even against normal encounter enemies. However, elemental attacks raise the enemy's chain gauge, which is a straight multiplier of how much damage you're dealing that starts at 100%. Raising the gauge high enough on most enemies will inflict Stagger, which gives the gauge an immediate +100% and allows half of your characters to knock them into the air for complete incapacitation. A Staggered enemy's chain gauge slowly decreases, and once it's about to expire a character in the right role can hit them for massive damage.
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*Final Fantasy XIII-2*: A skillful player falls into this during Lightning's Story: Requiem of the Goddess at lower levels. The story consists of Lightning fighting against Caius, with a second fight against Chaos Bahamut if the player does well enough. Both of them are using a variation on the Paradigm system. Caius has access to Commando (powerful but telegraphed attacks), Ravager (long strings of weak hits), and Healer (HP restoration and buffing) stances. Lightning starts with access to Paladin (main damage-dealing), Shaman and Mage (chain-building), and Knight (passive damage reduction and an ability with which to No-Sell everything) roles. Thus, winning the battle and therefore maximizing your CP with which to level-up consists of switching to Knight whenever he starts attacking/gets ready to attack, minimizing your HP loss, maintaining/building his chain gauge at every scarce opportunity, and hoping he only switches to Healer infrequently. As you level up, the fight gradually drifts away from this trope, with Lightning acquiring the Conjurer (buffing) and Sorcerer (debuffing) roles; Chaos Bahamut, meanwhile, is a straight Damage-Sponge Boss, having much more HP but no healing and the power to nearly one-shot a low-level Lightning in any role but Knight.
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*Epic Battle Fantasy 3* had this problem in the late-game. Your characters had enough defensive and healing abilities that getting wiped out was unlikely. But the bosses had so much HP...
- The FIRST boss of
*Bravely Default* can be this, especially in Hard Mode. You have only two party members and only the freelancer job, and - unless you ground your levels - probably only have the Freelancer's healing ability on one of them. The boss is a Dual Boss, and one of them is explicitly a healer. The fight can easily go back and forth as you attack and heal, though it does a good job of teaching you the importance of the Brave and Default system: Knowing to lessen the amount of healing you need to do by Defaulting and maximizing damage by Braving. If you try to Shoot the Medic First you need to have perfect timing of when to Brave otherwise it just goes back and forth with healing (The player's healing ability is no cost, and bosses have infinite MP). Trying to kill the muscle first can actually be easier because he has the tendency to blow himself up when his HP is low, but that does absolutely nothing about the healer's ability to heal themselves.
- Some games in the
*Tales Series* feature an item called the All-Divide, which halves both the damage the player takes and the damage the opponent takes. Since you can carry a massive supply of heal and TP restoring items into battle, it's quite effective for winning by attrition. You get very few All-Divides, and thus it's recommended you save them for certain superbosses—specifically, the ones that are difficult but *not* immune to its effect.
- In
*Endless Frontier,* attacks are Combo-based, being a string of 5 Spam Attacks that can do upwards of 5k damage per character. Each party member carries around very nearly enough dakka, except for Kaguya who uses an improbably large fantasy sword that launches a storm of Fuuma Shuriken on-command. Basic enemies in this game would be Damage Sponge Bosses anywhere else.
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*Xenoblade Chronicles 2* has this in spades. Because auto-attacks deal so little damage, even normal enemies can take a ridiculous amount of punishment unless you min-max the hell out of your party and spam Arts like they're going out of style. On the player side of things, Having a properly set-up tank and healer will mean that you never even have to worry about your HP unless you're fighting an enemy that's a good few levels above you, or a boss who decides to pull out some ability that can hit the entire party For Massive Damage.
- Combat in
*YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG* uses double digit numbers at most and even after a dozen hours most of your attacks struggle to break past *20*, and the enemies hit you for just as much or less. The small numbers is compounded by the fact that every single attack is an Action Command, with some going as long as *half a minute*, and after every enemy attack is an Action Command to reduce damage as well. Each of those elements combined creates an incredibly slow turn-based combat system where a regular enemy encounter takes *several minutes* to complete.
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*Mass Effect* turns into this at high levels, especially if you are playing Shepard as a Soldier. The Soldier's Fortification ability, when maxed out, gives an 80% boost to damage resistance and recharges in less time than the power lasts (meaning that you can have it on all the time). Combine this with the best end-game armors like the Colossus X and the passive bonuses that the Soldier class gets, and it is possible to build Shepard's durability and health regen up to the point where they are effectively immune to anything except for anti-tank rockets and plasma cannons. And even then, Shepard's health bar would barely budge. Meanwhile, Soldiers have few offensive powers so they typically simply blast away with their gun until they wear the target out.
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*Little Town Hero* turns out to be like this due to the fact that both sides have to completely deplete the other side's possible moves before they start dealing direct damage (with a few rare exceptions). As a result, battles can take upwards of an hour as each side has just enough firepower to prevent taking damage but not enough to actually deal it.
- Various
*MechWarrior* games have had bits of this, but it's particularly noticeable in almost all games with light battlemech combat - while they aren't particularly well armored, they generally lack the firepower to kill each other quickly, leading to the light two mechs spinning around each other at 100+ kph firing their lasers repeatedly. *Mechwarrior 4* had this in spades, as most mechs carried copious amounts of armor, so much so that only some of the silly min-maxed custom loadouts could kill another mech (in the same class) in less than 30 seconds.
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*World of Tanks* has this in spades when opponents are heavily armored, but don't have enough penetration to deal damage. It often devolves into a Scratch Damage race with HE rounds or maneuvering to try and get the first hit on an enemy's weakspot.
- This can occur in
*Archon* when a light-side The Phoenix goes up against a dark-side Shapeshifter. The Phoenix has high HP and a fire attack that makes it invincible when it's in attack mode, so if both Phoenixes attack each other at about the same time, each phoenix will suffer Scratch Damage. A Phoenix/Shapeshifter duel always leads to a war of attrition, where the winner is the one with the most patience and the fastest trigger finger.
- In the
*Roblox* game *Battle Buddies 2*, every unit has drastically lower attack power than HP, much more so than in other straight-line Tower Defense games. Due to this, ranged units and units with multi-hit attacks, like Prickly Pete, end up being the most effective, and cheap meatshields like Donnie can also survive for a surprising amount of time.
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*Fire Emblem*:
- The early game of
*Fire Emblem Gaiden* plays out like this. Due to weapons not having any base damage, both the playable characters and enemies do very little damage to each other, and it'll be a while before anyone in Alm's starting party can reliably one-round enemies. Also, terrain bonuses provide rather hefty boosts to evasion, meaning there's a hefty miss chance on both sides. The other games avert this because early weapons have 5-8 base damage added to unit strength.
- In
*Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance*, enemies possess comparatively weak weapons but rather abnormal levels of bulk, to the point that even local Game-Breaker Titania can struggle with one-rounding before long, and are spammed relentlessly on high difficulties. Additionally, Weapon of X-Slaying-type equipment like Armorslayers have only x2 effectiveness rather than the usual x3, meaning that certain enemy types are harder to bring down, many enemies have access to ranged attacks, requiring the player to use weaker 1-2 range weapons, and mounted classes have the Canto skill to enable easy hit-and-run attacks. On the player's side of things, Defense growths are abnormally high (40% is around the average, when in previous games it was closer to 25%), and the more free support system makes it easy to develop hefty-sized boosts to evasion and defense, meaning that raised units can shrug off the combined attacks of whole squads on even the Japan-exclusive Maniac. It's often remarked on that in Maniac, a character is quite likely to run out of weapon uses long before they run out of HP.
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*FTL: Faster Than Light*: dump all your money into upgrading your shields, but forget to upgrade weapons? You won't be able to get through an opponents shields and they won't be able to get through yours. Missile weapons help avoid these situations, as they pass right through shields, but you have a finite number, they can occasionally miss, and there are drones that can shoot them down.
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*Nintendo Wars*: stalemates are a common occurrence. With bases, everyone can produce unlimited amounts of units. Capturing bases and winning the game depends on the survival of infantry, the slowest and most fragile unit type. It's usually suicidal to rush enemy bases too early, as they're quite easy to defend; thus, many battles become wars of attrition where all parties can only advance one step at a time, if at all. This is compounded by various factors, depending on the game:
- Maps that feature huge distances, long chokepoints, or split the field into "cells" enclosed by mountains or rivers, which most units can't pass through. Bounty River is a standout example - one long, winding, narrow path that takes boats many turns to reach the action. This map proved such a problem that almost every sequel had to try improving it.
- Maps that give enormous advantages to the AI to compensate for its lack of intelligence, including many times more units and bases, giving you a lot to chew through.
- (
*AW*- *AWDS*) Superpowers that are charged more from losing your own units than destroying others, giving a losing opponent the chance to undo the progress you made.
- The smarter, defensive AI used in games like
*Super Famicom Wars* and *Days of Ruin*. Due to its habit of massing up units just outside your attack range, it requires a lot of patience to break through its lines, or else fights can easily take over 50 turns.
- (Pre-
*AW*) There's no advantage to attacking first, because both sides hit each other simultaneously in combat, instead of the defender going second and having their counterattack weakened by the health they lost. This makes indirect units extremely valuable as they don't take counterattacks, but they're very slow to use and will dissuade the opponent from engaging you even more.
- (Pre-
*AW*) Only the properties near your HQ can produce units - ones farther away are just resupply points. Even when you're clearly winning, this can make pushing into the enemy base and actually finishing the game immensely difficult, as their reinforcements are right there, while yours are on the opposite side of the map.
- Endgame
*Rise of Nations* turns into this, due to the fact that the last part of the tech tree is laden with options that pretty much destroy the game's time and resource systems—building troops instantly, for instance. This basically turns the match into a contest of who can mash up their armies against each other the longest.
- In
*Sins of a Solar Empire*, by default, most units are capable of absorbing silly amounts of firepower, such as a colony ship brazenly flying through an enemy fleet and surviving. The "Shield Mitigation" mechanic is the main cause of this, and is present on all ships which possess shield systems, even when the shields are down (it acts as a Reinforce Field on the ship's armor instead). Shield Mitigation causes ships to flat-out ignore 15% of incoming damage when full, and become more effective as damage is taken - going up to 60% damage negation on lowly frigates, and 65-75% on capital ships and titans, depending on their level. Disabling mitigation in the pre-match setup significantly increases the speed of combat.
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*Warcraft III* has this as a core philosophy, as unlike *Warcraft I & II* or *StarCraft I & II*, hitpoints are in much greater proportion to the damage values to promote a micromanagement playstyle. The Arbitrary Headcount Limit is also 100 instead of 200 supply units as in *Starcraft* and combat units usually require at least two supply units (with few exceptions) to make each unit a more significant presence in your army. This gets subverted in the endgame with units like Mighty Glacier fliers who can devastate heavy-armor units quickly in sufficient numbers with Magic damage, and how powerful some heroes can get with fully leveled nuke spells that can be combined with other heroes to melt through health bars.
- In vanilla
*XCOM 2*, many of your troops can one-shot most ADVENT forces, and be one-shot in turn if flanked or exposed. The "Beta Strike" modifier doubles the health of all XCOM and ADVENT units, but leaves damage untouched, so both last much longer in battle, making Area of Effect, status effects and other crowd control skills more important.
- "AI-versus-AI" matches in
*Civilization* will rarely last less than several hundred turns, due to the combination of Not Playing Fair With Resources on higher difficulties and Artificial Stupidity. Since it takes a lot less strategy to simply build up troops on your border than to organize an attack and both sides have functionally unlimited resources, this results in them endlessly massing armies and mashing them together.
- In
*Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts* it's possible, particularly early in the tech tree, to build a ship that's so well armored that contemporary guns are unable to meaningfully damage it except at absurdly close range. If that ship also has enough speed and maneuverability, it can also likely dodge any torpedoes sent its way and even avoid ramming attempts. This trope results when two such ships wind up trying to fight each other.
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*Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition* combat was often called "Padded Sumo" by its detractors, as health outstrips damage, many powers focus on moving enemies around, and your more exotic powers are most effective if used at the start of a fight (reducing the rest of the fight to basic attacks). It is rather easy to run through all your powers only a few turns into combat, and then spend the rest of the fight spamming comparatively weak ones. This was particularly bad with solo monsters, which frequently boasted *outlandish* HP relative to when your characters were supposed to fight them. Notably, one of the bigger changes that came a few years into its lifespan was chopping large chunks off enemy HP.
- One criticism of
*Spirit of the Century* that led to later iterations of the Fate system being toned way down in that regard was that it lends itself easily to this. In conflicts, important characters (player and non-player both) will generally take multiple "stress" hits (strictly temporary damage on a track with 5+ boxes that are only filled in one hit at a time) before the risk of more serious consequences or being actually taken out even comes up. Since it's a pulp game, weapons and such don't actually provide damage bonuses — a fist, a knife, and a gun are all equally effective at taking somebody down. And anyone who sees the conflict turn against them always has the option to just throw in the towel and offer a concession, so unless both sides make a habit out of playing for keeps and refusing those, a character who's been in a serious fight minutes ago can potentially be already no worse off for the wear once he or she has had time to catch his or her breath.
- In
*BattleTech*, fights between two mechs can take a dozen turns to end, especially when the two mechs are both of the Assault class from the 3025 era. The tiny weapon max range, huge amounts of armor, weak armaments, and relatively slow mechs of that era can make fights very long, though through armor criticals, ammunition explosions, fusion reactor critical hits, and cockpit damage can bring a mech to its knees with one lucky shot. Later eras, like the 3060 Fedcom Civil War, play this trope less straight as most mechs now carry even more firepower, but often at the cost of a more easily damaged fusion reactor.
- In the first edition of
*Shadowrun*, body armor provided automatic successes to reduce incoming damage. It was fully possible, even common place, for someone to survive a hit from an assault cannon without taking any damage.
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*Exalted*, at least in its second edition (pre-errata) suffers from this in spades. It's trivially easy to throw around one-hit kill attacks, sure, resulting in Rocket-Tag Gameplay if nothing is used to stop them... but it's also trivially easy to defend against any attack with a fixed-cost perfect defense. Once everyone is using an impossible-to-bypass suite of perfect defenses, the game changes from Rocket Tag to Padded Sumo Gameplay, with no attack ever doing more than making the opponent pay a tiny amount of essence, the game's equivalent to Magic Points. As a result, your essence pool is your *real* life meter, and victory is usually about making the enemy spend essence faster than you.
- However, the latest errata is intent on fixing this problem, reducing the lethality of combat in general and increasing the costs of Perfect Defenses so that the above-mentioned "paranoia combos" weigh on your Magic Points much more heavily.
- The first edition circumvented much of this padded sumo element with perfect defenses costing willpower, of which a character would normally only have ten at the absolute maximum. The third did the same by doing away with blanket "perfect defenses" entirely.
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*Magic: The Gathering* gameplay can devolve into this in several situations, especially in a Mirror Match. Some deck styles (red and black in particular tend to exemplify these styles) are so aggressive that even a Mirror Match doesn't slow down gameplay, but when two players are playing a "White Weenie" deck (the objective of which is typically for the player to defend themselves and build up a large number of small creatures until they have enough creatures to overrun their opponent, or a "buff everything" spell that suddenly turns all those tiny creatures into powerhouses), a normally 20-to-30-minute match can easily stretch into an hour-long or longer Cold War.
- In the Commander format is designed this way. You have double the usual starting life, mass-destruction effects are encouraged due to the need to address multiple opponents, and games last an hour on average. The longer games create a place where normally Awesome, but Impractical cards get a place to flourish, though there's no written rules stopping players from putting together a deck that can put out very fast wins.
- "Goat Format" in
*Yu-Gi-Oh!*. All the major mass-destruction cards had hit the banlist, the primary cards of the format were Scapegoat (summons four defensive Tokens) and Thousand-Eyes Restrict (blocks everything from attacking except itself), Traps and Flip Effects saw a resurgence, and some of the most popular cards were based on flipping cards facedown. The result was one of the slowest-paced formats in the game's history - which, ironically, has made it one of the most widely-played legacy formats, since it contrasts so heavily with a meta notorious for Power Creep.
- Similarly to the Magic example,
*Hearthstone* has a meta based partially on this. "Aggro" decks are built around putting out as much damage as possible, and games with them rarely last too long, but "Control" decks are specifically designed around outlasting Aggro decks while building up their hand, minions, or game winning combos. Any two control decks can qualify, but the real winners here are a subset of control decks based around milling the opponents deck until they start taking fatigue damage while somehow returning cards to your own. A normal match is around 15 minutes, putting two control decks against each other might draw it out between 30 and an hour, and two Fatigue Warriors can last up to the *hard-coded 60-turn limit*.
- Though combat itself in
*Mutants & Masterminds* isn't particularly slow, it's designed to be *incredibly* difficult to kill someone when you don't intend to do so. Barring GM fiat, you first incapacitate them, then attack them again, at which they start dying, and *then* you can finish them off properly (or just wait for them to bleed out). It is a superhero game, after all; those mooks that Amazi-Girl punched with enough strength to smash through a brick wall are just fine.
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*D20 Future* (an offshoot of *d20 Modern*) exaggerates this with the combat between capital ships: namely, capital ships typically have tens of thousands of Hit Points, whereas the most powerful ship weapons only do damage in the hundreds of points. Even worse: ships get a size penalty to attack rolls just like creatures do (-8 for colossal size, which all capital ships are), as a result, the ships typically have a really low attack bonus and miss a lot, dragging on the interminable fight even longer.
- Tic-Tac-Toe is probably the most famous game to deal with this: you can only win by getting three in a row, but your opponent can stop most attempts to do so in one move. Consequently, the game is notorious for ending in mutual draws if either player knows what they're doing; the only way to win is if your opponent makes a big mistake.
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*DEATH BATTLE!*
- The Terminator vs. Robocop battle goes on for quite a bit before any of the two combatants display any noticeable damage. Downplayed in that they later do start bringing out their best (Robocop takes out explosive charges, and the Terminator wields a plasma rifle) which does result in some serious damage. ||Robocop emerges victorious as the hosts proved that he could survive the Terminator's weapons while at the same time the T-850 would take crippling damage from Robocop's futuristic weaponry.||
- Natsu Dragneel vs. Portgas D. Ace goes on for quite some time due to combatants' abilities; Natsu has the speed and strength advantage and is both immune to fire and eats it to restore his energy, while Ace has the durability and endurance advantage and is also immune to fire and can shift his body into flames to avoid most physical attacks, turning their battle into a stalemate. It ultimately comes down ||Natsu taking advantage of the fact Ace's fire form makes him extremely vulnerable to being eaten, forcing him to use his corporeal form more, and utilizing his lightning magic, which Ace has no immunity against||.
- Jotaro Kujo vs. Kenshiro. Jotaro's Stand, Star Platinum is incredibly tough and can No-Sell anything that isn't a Stand or Stand User. Since Kenshiro is neither, he can't do anything to Star Platinum. However, Kenshiro's durability far outclasses Star Platinum's strength, and he can use Muso Tensei to make himself impervious to all physical attacks, meaning Star Platinum couldn't do anything to Kenshiro, either. ||Kenshiro wins as while he couldn't harm Star Platinum, he could get around him and get to the much more vulnerable Jotaro, who is not immune to Kenshiro's techniques. Additionally, if a Stand User dies, so does their Stand,
note : As a general rule of thumb, at least; this does not include Posthumous Stands, which persist long after their user dies, and Bound Stands, which do not require a human user to operate, but as Star Platinum is neither that's a moot point for this fight thus when Kenshiro kills Jotaro, Star Platinum would go down with him.||
- Crash Bandicoot vs. Spyro the Dragon hits a bit of a stalemate since both combatants were capable of shrugging off millions of tons of force, however, they both lacked the offensive capability to land sufficient damage on each other. ||Spyro wins since his dark form had access to Aether Breath which could destroy Crash at the atomic level.||
- Carnage vs. Lucy overlaps this with Rocket-Tag Gameplay; the fight goes down to who would be the first to land a lethal hit due to Carnage's frankly ludicrous Healing Factor letting him tank all manner of damage short of complete bodily destruction and Lucy's unbelievably-fast and incredibly durable Vectors letting her block almost anything while one good shot from Carnage could easily kill her. ||Lucy is deemed the winner since the hosts show her Vectors can not only move much faster and reach farther than Carnage, but they can also hit with enough force and firepower (as in, nuclear explosion) to overcome Carnage's durability and Healing Factor while also exploiting his weakness to fire to kill him in one shot||.
- DIO vs. Alucard demonstrates both vampires are pretty much immovable objects. DIOs lies in his Stand, which is Invisible to Normals and can only be harmed by another Stand and his specific brand of vampirism, which gives him a Healing Factor able to survive any physical attacks short of sunlight-based attacks, on top of being able to stop time itself. Alucard, meanwhile, is a living Soul Jar and can use the literally
*millions* of souls of those hes slain to take lethal damage in his place or summon them as a gigantic army, and his true self is actually a Living Shadow which can shapeshift and turn intangible. ||Out of the two, Alucards means of outlasting his foe is truly finite, as DIO could burn through his reserves with his Super Speed and Super Strength eventually, and Stands can interact with ethereal opponents anyways.||
- Madara Uchiha vs. Sosuke Aizen had it noted that both combatants at the height of their power possess Healing Factors so potent neither of their world-rending brute force alone would be enough to put the other down and thus they would need to resort to more creative means to achieve victory. ||Madara comes out on top due to the fact his Truth-Seeking Balls not only possess Anti-Regeneration, but they're canonically capable of destroying spirits, meaning he had a hard counter against Aizen while his foe lacked a similar one against him.||
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*Deadpool (2016)* has Colossus versus Angel Dust in the climactic fight. Colossus is unwilling to go all-out on a lady. Angel can hit hard enough to send him flying, but not enough to damage. The result is that the best they can do to one another is incapacitation until Negasonic Teenage Warhead gets in on it.
- In an early episode of
*The Simpsons*, Dr. Monroe gives our favorite family foam-padded poles to strike each other with as a means of venting. When Homer notices this trope is in effect, Bart responds by taking the padding off.
- After the Battle of Hampton Roads of The American Civil War, there was for a time serious concern that naval battles would turn into this, with the black-powder cannons that worked well enough on wooden-hulled warships no longer able to inflict serious damage on the up-and-coming "ironclads". Advances in gun technology made these concerns moot soon enough, but there
*was* a brief period during the late 19th century in which the possibility that the only way left to disable an enemy might be to actually ram them was earnestly considered and resulted in some correspondingly specialized ship designs. note : And one of Rudyard Kipling's funniest poems, the Ballad of the Clampherdown.
- In robot combat, like
*Robot Wars* and *BattleBots*, matches can become like this if every bot in the match has no weapons (this is not as ineffective as it sounds — because they can allocate everything towards speed, power, and durability, weaponless bots have been considered Game Breakers at times). The match becomes either the bots pushing each other or the operators trying to outmaneuver each other without letting them hit each other until time runs out. Because of the perception that such matches are uninteresting (but the truth is that it depends on the individual viewer), both organizations require every competing bot to have at least one prominent weapon.
- Star Wars:
- Starship combat in
*Star Wars Legends* is like this due to the sheer power of deflector shields, with those found on even smaller warships being capable of absorbing *thousands* of shots. Without shields, most ships won't survive more than a couple of shots from a turbolaser battery, but with them, evenly matched ships can expect to be firing at each other for hours before any progress is made.
- The Film series isn't that much shorter. For all the shooting that occurs between them, starships often may as well be terrain for the Space Fighters to dogfight around.
- The most extreme instance of this trope happening in the Ultimate Fighting Championship is the 1995 match between Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock, a grueling 35-minute match that mostly took place in a grappling position on the ground, Shamrock pinning Gracie to the ground and Gracie holding Shamrock down from being able to lift himself. Gracie kept kneeing Shamrock in the liver area, which would normally be a vulnerable spot, except that he lacked the leverage to deal any significant pain to Shamrock. Meanwhile, Shamrock headbutted and punched Gracie in the head with whatever leverage he was able to wrestle for, and despite landing some good shots, Gracie was able to nullify these blows long enough to hold out until the end of the match. In an unprecedented ruling, the match was extended into a five-minute overtime, and it
*still* ended in a draw; to add insult to injury, the fighters were separated when the match went into overtime, yet they were only on their feet for a few seconds before resuming the grappling position they had been in for the rest of the match. In spite of the outcome of the match, it was still considered a victory for Gracie, as he was able to disrupt Shamrock's perfect record with a draw.
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*Log Horizon*: In the 11th volume, this is what the "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight between ||Elias and Leonardo|| turns into. The former has simply far too high defences for the latter to subdue him without resorting to lethal force, but his ||fairy eye curse|| ensures that he can't finish off his opponent either (sort of; it's a really complicated version of Your Mind Makes It Real). The result is a fight that lasts well over an hour, with the former chipping away *percentages of a single life point* at the time, and the other unsuccessfully trying to stop him.
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*Black Panther (2018)*: During their Final Battle, both T'Challa and Killmonger are wearing vibranium Black Panther suits. Since the suits allow them to walk off a several-hundred foot fall, they're completely incapable of actually harming each other for most of the fight. ||Said several-hundred foot fall puts them on the rails of a train whose suppression system nullifies the absorption properties of their vibranium, causing the fight to bounce between this and Rocket-Tag Gameplay: they're still invulnerable between passes, but the first one to land a solid blow while the suits are suppressed will make that blow fatal.||
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*Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.*: As the title says, main character Maple put all her stat points into defensive ability when she first created her character. This left her with the ability to tank practically everything the game threw at her, but her pitiful offensive ability meant that she couldn't do much to strike back herself. Eventually subverted as she learned new offensive abilities and started becoming more effective at attacking.
- The protagonist of
*With This Ring* reflects on his battle with ||a Sheeda Huntsman|| as this; he's unable to find an attack construct that will properly hurt his opponent, but his own wounds are rapidly regenerated by his ring. Stalling is two-edged as well; he'll eventually run out of ring charge, but the Sivana family are busily inventing a weapon in the background. ||The Sivanas win the race and implode the Huntsman.||
- Can happen in any real life sport when both teams have very good defense. Not uncommon in baseball to see several innings where no one can score a run (or even get on base) because the pitchers and/or fielders on both sides are doing a really good job.
- Trench warfare in World War I is often regarded as this, particularly on the Western Front. With the advancements to machine guns, artillery, and similar technologies, there was no easy way for soldiers to close the gap and earn a decisive victory, barring overwhelming numbers or total incompetence on the part of the enemy. Though technologies existed to try to break stalemates, such as tanks and planes, they were generally in too primitive a state to actually get far. What was more, most of the time, armies went for "defense in depth"—that being, a lightly defended first line which would be easy to take, but tie up the enemy long enough for the second line to pull together and smash them. Consequently, most battles came down to shelling the opponent at a distance with artillery, but both sides would typically be entrenched, minimizing the damage of that as well, resulting in slow grinding battles of attrition.
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*The Death of Basketball* has this occur by way of flooding drafts with the worst possible players the game's systems allow. Once all the actual players have retired, you end up with a court full of minuscule weaklings who barely know the rules and behave as if they're suffering from catastrophic brain damage. While this results in terrible defense, offense is even worse, as these "doomsday players" can barely keep the ball going in a straight line, much less make a shot. The last recorded championship game, between the Denver Nuggets and the Orlando Magic, went on for twelve overtimes and ended at 0-3. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaddedSumo |
Pandering to the Base - TV Tropes
*"If it's an idea you would have thought of anyway, fine. It's okay for a manga artist to adapt like that. But if you go around absorbing everything your fans give you, you end up with gibberish, like this. Listen, fan mail is something to encourage you, not something to steal ideas from. If you start using all these suggestions, then your work won't be Muto Ashirogi's anymore. It'll be something your fans created... understand?"*
One of the oddities of creating art is the nebulous relationship between the fans of the media and the creators of that media. In theory, the creators, producers, and distributors are the ones calling the shots; they decide what's happening in the work, and the fans follow as they will. But that's a bit naive; it's the fans who keep the ratings up, the sales high, and the money flowing in. And if you displease the fans, they can just go elsewhere and take their money with them. The existence of things like Fanon Discontinuity, Audience-Alienating Era, Author's Saving Throw, and Fanon means that any property successful enough to cultivate a group of intensely devoted fans is going to be at least partially concerned with satisfying their wishes; to some degree, you have to give the people what they want.
So, just give the fans exactly what they want, and everything will work out. Right?
Wrong. Generally speaking, the more intensely devoted fans in a fandom are usually outnumbered by the casual fans. But the more devoted a fan becomes, the more active (and louder) they become in the fandom. So while a few million casual fans might enjoy an episode of a show without ever making that fact widely known, a handful of devoted and occasionally unhinged fans are screaming about how the show is Ruined FOREVER, which can be seen and heard by everyone... including the people making the show. The creators may then start pandering to these voices exclusively, believing them to be the voice of everyone watching (which these fans will often claim to be) — but "everyone" in this case may in fact consist only of a handful of people, and what this minority wants and what the less-noisy fans want can differ drastically.
This presents a major problem. The property can end up becoming a private club, accessible only to a select few. Excluding the casual fans means they'll simply drift away to find something else to spend their time on, and raising the entry bar too high means you run the risk of locking out new fans who may have been interested in the property, but now find it too difficult to access. While the vocal minority might now be satisfied (and you can't even count on that), they rarely translate to enough ratings and/or sales to justify the property's continued existence — and to make matters worse, even this hardcore minority that you catered to may begin to drift away for numerous reasons (changing tastes, burnout, lessened interest, etc). This results in diminishing returns, ending in eventual cancellation if unchecked.
Furthermore, the overall quality of the property can begin to suffer if you just listen to the vocal minority; just because someone is intensely committed to a particular work of fiction doesn't necessarily mean they know what makes good fiction
*work*. The hardcore fans are generally fascinated by the backstory, mythos, trivia, and continuity which can build up around a franchise, but this doesn't necessarily make riveting entertainment to anyone less interested in all of this stuff. And if you somehow get the story's continuity tangled up or make any mistakes in your established lore, this makes things *worse*; not only have you lost the interest of the people who don't care about this stuff, you've annoyed the people who do, and it's now guaranteed they won't be shy about saying so.
In many cases, pandering to the base rarely succeeds in making anyone happy, not even the fans it's supposed to win over. This is because what most devoted fans ultimately want is the same as the casual ones: interesting and engaging stories, not just constant pandering. There's a certain kind of irony here: by trying to give the fans what they say they want, you fail to give them what they actually want.
A wise producer understands a simple rule that helps them avoid all of this; generally speaking, you've got the hardcore minority regardless — they'll usually keep following the story, even if they're dragged in kicking and screaming. You need to win over the undecided. A good producer understands that for every one fan who writes a frothing invective on the Internet or a rabid email, there's probably ten fans who are perfectly content with what's happening.
On the flip side, tropes are not bad; pandering to the base can and indeed in many cases does work out just fine. Sometimes giving the fans what they want is the same as giving the wider audience what they want as well. And while they can at times be annoying, the fans are still part of your audience, and if you're deliberately pissing them off, you're still pissing off a potentially significant segment of your own audience, who will desert you if you go too far; make them angry enough, and they may become so loud that they scare away more casual fans or potential new fans. Furthermore, relying on the approval of the silent majority over the noisy fans presents its own pitfalls — in particular, you
*might not actually have that approval*. The fan criticism you're receiving may have a point.
Compare Vocal Minority, which usually is the bases being pandered to. Sometimes the base in question is the Lowest Common Denominator. Can result in The Chris Carter Effect, Better on DVD, Continuity Lock-Out, Continuity Porn. Compare/contrast Running the Asylum, which is sometimes the writers pandering to the fans, and sometimes pandering to themselves. Can also result in fans screaming Ruined FOREVER as well as an Unpleasable Fanbase. When the pandering actually does work, it's And the Fandom Rejoiced.
This phenomenon is sometimes called "fanservice", but don't confuse this with our definition of said trope (although the two can often be related, depending on what exactly the fanbase being pandered to is demanding).
Not to be confused with Pandaing to the Audience; this trope has nothing to do with pandas.
## Tropes this often involves (but are not necessarily this themselves):
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## Other examples:
- The "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads for Apple can be seen as an inverse case of this. The ads seem to exist to reassure prospective Apple newbies that they're cool rather than providing a reason why knowledgeable Mac users (those interested in more than making fan videos on YouTube, and someone likely to use Photoshop) would want to stay. Not with much success - many people (across the OS divide) see the Mac guy as a stuck-up poseur and the PC guy as, well, John Hodgman.
- The UK ones are probably worse; they star Mitchell and Webb, and the Mac and PC guys are
*just* close enough to Jeremy and Mark that PC Guy looks like a Romantic Runner-Up and Mac Guy like a Jerkass. Charlie Brooker pointed this out in a column about how much he hates Macs.
- There is also a small division of grammar vigilantes who berate Apple for claiming that Macs are not Personal Computers. Especially after Apple switched from IBM-Freescale PowerPC to Intel x86.
- One of the major theories of why The Japanese Invasion had begun to grind to a halt in The New '10s is that the anime industry in Japan in general has been pandering more and more to its core otaku base at the expense of a most likely wider audience, creating a vicious circle of appeal to otaku. Sales lower as you appeal to a smaller audience, increasing prices for little content to make up for the loss, and then circling back around to appeal to otaku even more, and on and on.
- The KeyAni trio of animes (
*Kanon*, *Air* and *CLANNAD*) are notable for barely having any sexual fanservice in the Harem genre, where the Accidental Pervert is the default for a lead. They find other ways to please a loyal fanbase for obsessive fans. One shot in the *Clannad* anime has the camera pan up while fading to white, finishing with simply the title of the show.
- Fansubs are as a rule made by and for Occidental Otaku and assume a greater familiarity with the Japanese Language and Japanese culture than professional subtitles do. Their translations also tend to be more literal.
- Discussed, in-universe, in
*Bakuman。*, and deconstructed. When Mashiro and Takagi, collectively "Muto Ashirogi," are desperate to keep their first series going, and so incorporate fan suggestions into their manga. Miura, for all his flaws, immediately notices something's up, and gives the two a lecture, pointing out that the fans sending mail don't necessarily represent what the majority of the readership wants note : The letter writers are mostly girls, but he notes that the magazine is aimed at boys, and even the female readers want to read a shonen manga and that the fans ultimately want to see what *they* come up with.
**Miura**: If it's an idea you would have thought of anyway, fine. It's okay for a manga artist to adapt like that. But if you go around absorbing everything your fans give you, you end up with gibberish, like this. Listen, fan mail is something to encourage you, not something to steal ideas from. If you start using all these suggestions, then your work won't be Muto Ashirogi's anymore. It'll be something your fans created... understand?
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*Carnival Phantasm* seems to have been made exclusively for fans of *Tsukihime* and *Fate/stay night*, being little more than a Slice of Life comedy consisting of the cast of the previously mentioned visual novels.
- The staff behind
*Code Geass* has intimated that fan response incited them into expanding the role of one character as the series progressed.
- This◊ is a stellar example of non-sexual fanservice. Most fans have been wanting to do this to Suzaku for quite a while now.
- Many fans of
*Danganronpa 3* have accused Side:Hope of being this, with ||the entire cast of *Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair* coming Back from the Dead, Kirigiri surviving and Naegi becoming Headmaster of Hopes Peak Academy with the implication that he and Kirigiri ended up together||. Whatever this is a good idea or not is up to debate.
- The live-action
*Death Note* movies have a very common Fandom-Specific Plot, wherein ||L defeats Kira||.
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*Fairy Tail*:
- Hiro Mashima has gone on record saying that, because he had no particular road map laid out for the manga, the response from fans had a huge influence on the way the story and character relationships unfolded, giving characters such as Levy and Mavis more focus based on popularity.
- The Ship Tease between Natsu and Lucy was something Mashima had absolutely no interest in at the start and was mainly as a response when fans started taking the idea more seriously than he did.
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*Gundam*:
- The entire relation between
*Gundam* fans of the original time-line (Universal Century) and the Alternate Timelines is entirely shaped by the very different expectations of each side as well as Vocal Minority. Disentangling what each group really wants and trying to appeal to both sides is for many what is ruining the original appeal of the series. The fact the UC and Alternate Timelines appeal to different tastes with the same success hasn't helped matters.
- Fans often claim that Kira Yamato was thrust back into the spotlight (from episode 39 onwards) of
*Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny* (taking the spotlight from Shinn Asuka, the *de facto* main character of *Destiny*), was because, in Japan, Kira was, and still is, one of the most popular characters in the *SEED* universe, and perhaps, the Gundam franchise. However, according to Word of God the character was always planned to take a big role before the show started.
- In the
*Mobile Suit Gundam Wing* novel sequel *Frozen Teardrop*, the Identical Students of Trowa and Quatre spend a lot of time together. This could possibly be the author (also the head writer of the anime) granting a concession to the Yaoi Fangirls, since Trowa/Quatre was one of if not *the* most popular yaoi pairing amongst that fandom. It's not a complete concession, though; Quatre's successor is his identical *sister*.
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*Gundam Build Fighters* and *Gundam Build Fighters Try* are for all intents and purposes this in addition to being so blatantly Merchandise-Driven even for a *Gundam* show. And it works *spectacularly* to the point of saving the franchise from being killed off.
- Kenjiro Hata seems to have a good handle on this trope. When Athena was introduced in
*Hayate the Combat Butler*, the fandom exploded with praise for how the story had changed for the serious and the better character introduction. Since her arcs ended, and Athena faded back into the background, the fandom has returned to the less vocal minority, and Hata has made note how he's happy the story has returned to its normal functioning many times.
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*Love Live!*: Maki/Nico was one of the most popular Fan Preferred Couples despite being Ships That Pass in the Night for the entire first season, as they rarely interacted and didn't have many in-story reasons to. The second season took note of how much the fans loved them together and ramped up the Ship Tease, although there was zero explanation for why two characters that barely acknowledged each other's existence before were suddenly all over each other.
- This happens again in
*Love Live! Sunshine!!* with Yoshiko/Riko, who start receiving a lot of Ship Tease in the show's 2nd season (even having an entire episode focused on them) despite the 1st season heavily hinting at Riko/Chika and Yoshiko/Hanamaru. This was presumably done because Yoshiko/Riko was a popular pair before the anime aired, as well as the fact that their respective voice actresses got along very well.
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*Lucky Star* had its pandering in the form of Konata and Kagami getting more screentime than the other two mains because a large group of fanboys enjoyed the incidental yuri fodder. They won but fans of other characters lost out.
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*Naruto*: In retrospect, the movie *Road to Ninja* was this for the Naruto/Sakura shippers, as it was a Non-Serial Movie that contains Ship Tease upon Ship Tease involving those characters. The movie started its production around the same time as Sakura's infamous false love confession to Naruto, and was released at the time when their Ship Tease had pretty much stopped in the manga note : Save for a couple of moments that ultimately turned out to be the author, by his own admission, deliberately pulling the legs of the fans, and in hindsight, it was very likely an early apology from the studio for the impending Ship Sinking of the Naruto/Sakura pairing, which would officially come in the canonical movie that came after it and the manga's epilogue. Ironically, a lot of Naruto/Sakura shippers later accused both the author and Studio Pierrot of pandering instead to the followers of the Fan-Preferred Couple, Naruto/Hinata, by making it canon. However, the author, Masashi Kishimoto, stated in this 2017 Jump Festa interview that he already decided that Naruto/Hinata would be the main Official Couple since the early stages of the manga, but he "did throw in some nuggets" *specifically* to troll the Naruto/Sakura shippers.
- 4Kids Entertainment added additional Ship Tease in
*Pokémon: The Series* between Ash and Misty in order to appeal to newfound shippers who were reading more into subtext than the writers actually intended. It got to the point where they even created an original Image Song about shipping the two, though just as many moments were removed as were added.
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*Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion* shows the audience of the original series many things they wanted to see, including: focusing on Madoka and Homura relationship up to an open declaration of love, **heavy** Les Yay between Sayaka and Kyoko, ||showing Charlotte the Witch's human form and giving her an owner-pet like relationship with Mami, making Hitomi briefly into an antagonist, and having Kyubey's evil plan being loudly defeated,|| and throughout showing all five girls attending school with no tears in sight, albeit under ambiguous circumstances.
- In the eyes of some fans,
*Saint Seiya Omega* was hit hard with this during its second season. The Clothstones and sleeker Cloth designs, which a lot of people complained about, were swapped out for the old Cloth Boxes and bulkier Cloth designs, and a good chunk of the main cast, like Souma and Yuna, was severely shafted in favor of the Gold and Legendary Saints.
- This entry at MangaCast discusses the increase of Ho Yay moments in stories published in
*Shonen Jump*. Although the author is a yaoi fangirl (or "fujoshi") herself, she's not entirely pleased with the rate of fanservice:
'When Jump started to give bits and pieces of fanfare for fujoshis, it became fun in the beginning. It felt great to be reassured of your fandom. Of course, those moves were little and those who don't know probably wouldn't notice it, but we fujoshis do and we treasured it like our first love letter. [...But] the magazine became over-saturated with fujoshi overtones and it's no longer fun. [...] the fujoshi Moe
and maybe even regular moe diluted the core of their stories. Perseverance. Victory. Friendship. Although a few titles still keep these values, most have been written simply to whet the fantasies of the readers. In the end, you find yourself wondering, "Why did I even read this story to begin with?"'
- Like
*Shonen Jump*, Light Novels and other manga publishers suffer from a similar issue. Whereas *Shonen Jump* was pandering more and more to fujoshi, light novels went the opposite approach and aimed for *fanservice* and *Moe*. As more hentai artists do the artwork for the novels, authors have to accommodate to their style which has difficulty in drawing men, and so use the visual novel-style approach to their storylines (read: lots and lots of cute girls and a token guy). A chief shounen editor expresses his mind.
'Weve got a lot of followers who are looking to become mangaka, and theres something I noticed about their works Id like to write a bit about what weve noticed. Its about art there seem to be few people who can draw cool-looking men. Especially their faces. People who can draw a man who looks cool to other men, with a sense of sex appeal. Are there no rookies about who can do that
Looking at recent contributions, everyone can draw cute girls. But however you look at it, they put no effort into men. I suspect those who can draw cool men will command the next era in manga (though this is an exaggeration). Keep trying!'
- In
*Valvrave the Liberator*, the five most popular characters survived even though one appeared to be the target of karmic backlash.
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*Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions* is a new Yu-Gi-Oh movie set after the series' end with heavy focus on Seto Kaiba, the series' first Breakout Character, and uses common fandom plots like a new villain with ties to established characters attacking post-series, Yugi and Kaiba dueling, someone trying to bring back Atem, Yami Bakura being involved in even more tragedy in Bakura's life, and Atem acting as a Big Good to his friends ||who comes back at the last second to help Yugi||. The English dub followed suit, going so far as to bring back as many of the original voice actors as possible, reuse music from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! dub, and have Kaiba be so hammy and over the top that he seemed to be channeling the version from the Abridged Series, including a line about firing God.
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*Lord El-Melloi II Case Files* aims itself at hardcore *Nasuverse* fans and doesn't even attempt to hide it. For starters, the series revolves around an Ensemble Dark Horse from *Fate/Zero*, meaning reading of that and *Fate/stay night* is required just to understand the plot. On top of that, throughout the story, Alternate Universe versions of characters from other Fate spinoffs have prominent roles.
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*X-Men: Misfits* is mostly romance with a little action thrown in at the end, in an obvious attempt to sway the interest of young teenage girls.
- A recurring problem in comic books for the past few decades.
- The big comic-book universes are shackled by Continuity Porn, their obsession with trivia, and the need of their fans for everything in a particular verse to be internally consistent and logical (despite the fact that by this point this is next to impossible to achieve). This results in periodic reboots (which are almost impenetrable if you're a casual fan and don't care), where the writers have to retool everything in order to assure the most hardcore fans that no, it all really does make sense; as well as individual series having their plots derailed by massive, universe-spanning crossovers.
- To an extent Marvel managed this with their
*Ultimates* remake. It simplifies plots of the original comics, for good or for bad, but if you come to it without preconceptions, it actually reads pretty well, at least till you get to *Ultimatum*.
- Marvel has been accused of Pandering to Themselves with
*One More Day* and subsequent storylines, which flew in the face of widespread complaints from the fanbase. Even people who disliked the Parker/Watson marriage resented the manner in which it was broken up.
- DC followed suit with their Earth-One series of graphic novels. Part of the rationale of
*The New 52* reboot was to simplify continuity. Then again, part of the rationale for *every* reboot is to simplify continuity.
- Both Marvel and DC have been accused of pandering to a political Vocal Minority since the Turn of the Millennium, with the exact politics of said Vocal Minority varying from accuser to accuser. While comics always included political elements, the advent of the 1999 website
*Women in Refrigerators* ushered in a wave of attacks on both Marvel and DC writers for their supposedly sexist writing, which was countered by a wave of new writers being hired by the Big Two, including the webmaster of *Women in Refrigerators* herself. How this went is YMMV. Some argue that it got too 'political' and cite *Secret Empire* (a Crisis Crossover in which Captain America is retconned by a living Cosmic Cube into a HYDRA sleeper agent) as an example, and characters like America Chavez - originally a Carol Danvers-inspired Latina superheroine into a lesbian Dimensional Traveler from an alternate universe called the 'Utopian Parallel'. Others argue that Marvel has always done political comics (see about 85% of *X-Men* issues) and that diversifying and fleshing out characters has made them more interesting and less repetitive. Let's just say that the reception of this new age of comics has led to quite the Broken Base and leave it at that.
- This reaction to the official DC Comics novel
*Inheritance* takes a similar attitude to Ho Yay in Western comics:
Believe me, there was LOUD, LOUD SQUAWKING. I've reached the phase wherein I'm too embarrassed to continue, and too curious to stop. It's too rich to be subtextual porn; it's too laden with innuendo to be textual and
*serious*.
It's unbelievable, luxuriously, lustily GAY. Bad-fanfic kind of gay. The "OMG, what are you DOING?!" kinda gay. The shrieking and the "How did they even PUBLISH this!?" kind. [...] Oh, God, if it weren't so raw in its obviousness, I'd be in slash nirvana.
- In a positive example of this, James Roberts, writer of
*The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye*, wrote the character of Nautica into the story solely because he knew the fans wanted there to be a female Lost Light crewmember. The character was immensely popular with both fans and critical reviewers and greatly helped to placate fans who grumbled about the lack of female characters in IDW's *Transformers* continuity. It helps that she was actually given plot relevance rather than simply being thrown in for the sake of it.
- One amusing example of this in recent years, at least for fans who got into the
*X-Men* in their heyday during the The '90s, has been Marvel's resorting to Nostalgia Bait to woo long-time readers back to the books. This started more or less after the *Inhumans vs. X-Men* story, when reader fatigue was at an all-time high. Taking cues from the widely praised (if unfortunately not widely *read*) book *X-Men '92*, the writers started bringing back characters from the time period in question who'd long since been abandoned to Comic-Book Limbo, ranging from the awesome (X-Man!) to the headscratchy (Ahab, a villain who wasn't exactly popular even during the 90's yet inexplicably got brought back to be the Big Bad of *Extermination (2018)*). How effective this strategy was in luring disaffected X-readers back to the books isn't clear, but it certainly made sure there were plenty of spare background mutants on hand to immigrate to Krakoa in *X-Men (2019)*.
- DC had Barbara Gordon de-aged and given a Relationship Upgrade with Dick Grayson (effectively dissolving his relationship with Starfire) solely to please the fans of
*Batman: The Animated Series*.
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*Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters*: If you have not seen everything show-related, you will be lost. The movie states this up-front; during the opening "Things not to do in the theater" musical number, one of the lines is "If you don't understand it, *you shouldn't be here!*"
-
*My Little Pony: Equestria Girls*:
- The film features a
*ton* of this in the form of background ponies appearing as humans (namely Derpy Hooves) as well as a few nods such as the Cutie Mark Crusaders dancing to their theme song as well as the great and powerful **TRIIIIXIIIEE** (needing some peanut butter crackers). The more idealistic fans see it as a successful attempt to Win Back the Crowd from the Audience-Alienating Premise and enjoyed it. The less accepting fans, however, see their appearances as blatant pandering and an attempt to cover up what was perceived as bad writing and Canon Defilement. Not so much pandering to the base as the Periphery Demographic, but they would be far more receptive to something like this than the franchise's traditional base anyway, who would just see it as a fun commercial note : Word of God is that the show is designed to appeal to parents as well, and just happened to appeal to bronies, which Hasbro has *zero* problems with..
- The movie's sequel,
*My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Rainbow Rocks* ups the appeal, with inclusion of other fan-favorite background characters without any speaking lines, including Octavia (who has actually does have one line), Lyra and Bon-Bon (with a dash of the fandom's Ship Tease), Bulk Biceps and Maud Pie. It also has much more Trixie (who plays a secondary antagonist in the film), and much more Derpy (having her own band where she plays the saw).
- The
*Scooby-Doo (2002)* live-action movie is an example of this. This includes such fan-made theories as the allusion to drugs, Fred and Daphne as lovers, Velma being teased as a lesbian, and ||Scrappy-Doo being made into the main villain.||
- Kevin Smith admits that he made
*Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back* purely for his fans who wanted a Jay and Silent Bob movie with tons of references to his other films, as well as a lot of swearing, crude jokes, and Fanservice.
- This happened all over again with
*Jay and Silent Bob Reboot* which is not a reboot but a direct sequel, featuring returning characters and plot elements, cameos, and more commentary on now-modern geek movie movie trends (such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Ben Affleck as Batman). A huge part of the plot even involves Jay meeting the daughter of himself and his love interest from the first film.
- The film version of
*How the Grinch Stole Christmas!* changed a lot from the original book (and that's putting it politely), but it also incorporated both of the songs from the well-known animated version. Because, you know, it just wouldn't be the Grinch without that theme song, right?
- Similarly, the 2005 film
*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)* included a lengthy and completely superfluous second intro involving the title book flying through space to the tune of "Journey of the Sorceror", a sequence copied from the BBC miniseries.
-
*Hatchet II* was intended to be the same as the original *Hatchet*, but more, for the sake of fans. It was also littered with in-jokes and one Continuity Nod after another. Reception was mixed.
- The works of Tyler Perry aren't known for being critical darlings (and even has his share of black critics), but despite that he still has a very loyal and dedicated fanbase. Enough so to the point that Perry is actually the highest-paid man in Hollywood.
- Peter Jackson has been accused of doing this with
*The Hobbit*, by introducing characters from *The Lord of the Rings*, such as Frodo, Galadriel, and Saruman, who didn't have any part to play in the original novel (which was written well before *The Lord of the Rings*) but who were made immensely popular and well-known to movie-goers thanks to the movies. He also made three movies out of one book much shorter than any one volume of LOTR, introduced some subplots very loosely based on material from the LOTR appendices, and inserted several Continuity Nods or Mythology Gags to the LOTR movies to such a degree that several critics have called him out on the Fanservice and Padding, and likened the experience to the bad sort of Fanfiction.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Some people accused
*Iron Man 2* of setting up the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe more than its own, due to the greater presence of Call Forwards like Captain America's shield, a clip from *The Incredible Hulk*, Tony being evaluated for the Avengers, Black Widow's introduction, Nick Fury's return, and ||Thor's hammer being found||. However, Nick Fury doesn't appear until more than an hour in and even then his purpose is more to get Tony off of his ass and work than to convince him to join the Avengers. He even tells Tony how annoyed he is that Tony has become his problem to deal with when S.H.I.E.L.D. has more on its plate to handle. Pandering also seems to be parodied when Coulson discovers an incomplete Captain America shield. Tony asks for it excitedly... and uses it to prop up his machine.
- Due to Loki's popularity skyrocketing after the release of
*The Avengers*, the script for *Thor: The Dark World* was rewritten to give him more focus, at the expense of Malekith and the Dark Elves.
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*X-Men: Days of Future Past*:
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*Star Wars*:
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*Episode VII: The Force Awakens* does this with its heavier emphasis on practical effects, and closer look and feel to the Original Trilogy. Ironically, the special effects reel revealed that the film actually didn't use fewer special effects than the Prequel Trilogy, and shot-for-shot actually contains *more* CGI than *The Phantom Menace* does. The difference mostly just comes from smarter use and ten+ years of technology making CGI rendering less of a problem. So in this case, it's more of just telling the base what they want to hear than actually pandering to them.
- One criticism leveled at
*Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker*: Not only does it bring back the original trilogy's Big Bad and declare that he's been behind everything all along, but it also ||makes him Rey's grandfather, undoing the previous movie's decision to make her The Unchosen One||. Many critics have noted that it undoes/downplays several other elements of *The Last Jedi* that upset what they call a Vocal Minority of the fanbase, e.g. Rose Tico is Demoted to Extra and the core new characters are together for most of the story whereas they were split into groups in the previous film. Other critics (who, of course, call fans of the hotly Contested Sequel the Vocal Minority), claim that it doesn't go *far enough* in undoing the sweeping changes TLJ brought to the series in the name of "subverting expectations". What is interesting about this is that *both sides* of the *Star Wars* Broken Base see *The Rise of Skywalker* as an example of this, but which demographic they see it as pandering to varies depending on which side of the TLJ debate they're on. A rare few other reviewers, meeting in the middle, say that the film tries its hardest to pander to *both* groups, which predictably satisfied neither.
- The DC Extended Universe has been attempting to do this ever since its first entry's mixed-to-negative critical and audience reception:
- With
*Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice*, Warner Bros. tried their damnedest to give hardcore superhero fans *everything* they wanted to see on the big screen, even if it didn't always make sense for many of those things to be in the same movie. The film finally delivered on the Batman/Superman crossover that fans had wanted to see for years, but also stuck in numerous subplots that many considered unnecessary, intended to set up a future *Justice League* movie, as well as bringing in cameos from other DC superheroes, and loosely adapting both *The Dark Knight Returns* and *The Death of Superman* (two classic stories that had little or nothing to do with each other, and **really** didn't fit in a film that took place before the formation of the Justice League). The result was overlong (the extended cut in particular nears three hours!), and was widely panned as a disjointed, thinly plotted mess that cared more about satisfying loyal fans than about trying to tell a good story.
- After the backlash against
*Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice* for being too grim and the extremely positive fan reaction to *Suicide Squad (2016)*'s much more fun-looking trailers, WB reshot parts of *Suicide Squad* to be more like the trailers. Unfortunately, this caused the film to have a distractingly uneven tone and inconsistent editing and be panned in reviews too.
- After all of the above happened, WB repeatedly and emphatically promised that
*Justice League (2017)* would have a more light-hearted tone, humor, and a brighter color palette than *Batman V Superman* and *Suicide Squad*. When a personal tragedy forced director Zack Snyder to step down, they hired Joss Whedon, who had directed the much-loved *The Avengers (2012)*, to wrap up production and do reshoots to add his usual brands of banter and humor. They also had the film cut down to only 2 hours in length, most likely as a response to complaints about *Batman V Superman* feeling overly long and bloated, and had a soundtrack by Danny Elfman added (which brought nostalgia-driven themes to the film such as those of *Superman: The Movie* and *Batman (1989)*). The general reaction to all of this attempted "course correction" was decidedly mixed if not negative, and its only lasting impact was ironically a fan campaign to get the film as Snyder envisioned and made it (and that campaign succeeded) with the originally planned Junkie XL soundtrack.
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*Zack Snyder's Justice League*: Snyder knew this film had high chances of being his final DC Comics-based creation, so he arranged for this cinematic universe's Batman to interact with this universe's Joker in the Bad Future scene, something that wasn't given a chance to happen before due to both Jared Leto and Ben Affleck parting ways with DC Films. It was primarily intended as a gift to the fans who fought for the film to be released, and given the positive reception to that encounter, it wasn't a bad thing to do.
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*Deadpool (2016)* and *Logan* at 20th Century Fox both demonstrate why this isn't always a bad thing. Both of them were largely made to satisfy the Vocal Minority of hardcore Marvel Comics fans who had been clamoring for R-rated Deadpool and Wolverine movies for *years*, arguing that only an "R" rating could do either character justice. In fact, they probably *wouldn't* have been made if not for the fan demand, since an R-rated superhero film is a bit of a marketing headache by its very nature. But against all odds, both movies turned out to be huge critical and commercial successes. General audiences loved their first taste of Deadpool's twisted humor and found the Bloodier and Gorier *Logan* to be a refreshing change of pace from the Bloodless Carnage of earlier *X-Men* films (with the Darker and Edgier approach also leading to an emotional and widely praised story). Sometimes, it seems, listening to hardcore fans can be a good way to tap into the most appealing aspects of a long-running series.
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*Spider-Man 3* suffered from a lot of problems, but this is generally cited as a major cause of them. According to most accounts, producer Avi Arad strongly pressured Sam Raimi into adding the fan-favorite character Venom to the movie to make longtime *Spider-Man* fans happy—even though the script already featured Flint Marko (the Sandman) as the big new villain, and the previous film ended with a clear Sequel Hook setting up Harry Osborn taking up the mantle of the Green Goblin. This infamously resulted in the movie having *three* different supervillains, all with their own unrelated backstories and motivations. The story barely held together under all that weight, and it was widely panned as an incoherent mess. It didn't exactly help that Venom was badly at odds with the general tone and aesthetic of the rest of the series; as a Todd McFarlane character from the "grim and gritty" late 1980s, he stuck out like a sore thumb in a trilogy that drew most of its inspiration from the more colorful and lighthearted John Romita era of the late 1960s.
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*Ghostbusters: Afterlife* features numerous Call Backs and Continuity Nods to the original film and its sequel, from small details like Egon Spengler's love of sweets to more blatant ones like ||the presence of Gozer at the film's primary villain||. To those still on the fence about the franchise after *Ghostbusters (2016)* caused a stir, it won them over. To casual viewers, it was met with more of a mixed reaction.
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*Bumblebee* proved to be a rare, positive example of this. The film features very G-1 inspired designs for its robots, more homages to the 1984 animated series, and eschews many of the elements (i.e. heavy action sequences and explosions, product placement, and Male Gaze) Michael Bay's previous films were known for. It wound up being a Win Back the Crowd moment for those who had given up on the franchise, as the film became the best reviewed of all the movies, even the 1986 original that's still held in high regard.
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*Star Wars*:
- Many books, in both
*Legends* and the current continuity, like to repeat famous lines from the movies as shout outs, unfortunately to the point where it's getting a little hard to believe. Sure there must be *someone* in that universe who *doesn't* "have a bad feeling about this".
- Almost every ship in the expanded universe and Legends - prequels, sequels, comics, video games,
*everything* - seems to be based on the ones from the original trilogy. More accurately, the most iconic ones; the X-Wing, TIE series, Star Destroyers, and the Death Star, even unto the Old Republic era, which takes place 4,000 years before *A New Hope*. Speaking of which, the Sith have been going after/building giant superweapons for at least that long; you'd think they'd have caught on by now. Most stories also like to include an Artoo & Threepio-like pair of robots, or at least one of the two, or *some* kind of riff on the buddy-bot theme.
- Many works have some sort of Darth Vader Expy. A tall, imposing Sith in a mask, dark clothes, and cape. In
*Star Wars: The Old Republic*, the player can effectively become one. Not to mention Darth Malgus, who is motivated by the death of the woman he loved and forced to wear a respirator due to battle injuries. Arcann is an even stronger example.
- The way Artemis/Holly is becoming more and more canon in
*Artemis Fowl*. ||They've now kissed and had Artemis' alternate personality, Orion, tell Holly that Artemis thinks of her constantly and is very passionate about her. And Orion spends the entire book mooning over Holly, which he claims he picked up from the real Artemis. Though he does have a very limited social group.|| They've been the Fan-Preferred Couple since the very first book.
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*Kaspar's Box*, from The Three Kings series by Jack L. Chalker. Best known for his physical transformation fetish (and having the strongest fans with similar tastes), there's a purely gratuitous physical transformation which has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, hasn't anything to do with the universe the story appears in, happens offscreen, literally comes out of nowhere, doesn't have any real repercussions, and the effect never happens again. For all intents and purposes, it looks like it was simply thrown in to appease his biggest fans.
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*And Another Thing...* by Eoin Colfer, a book continuing the Hitchhiker's Guide series, is littered with references to the books Douglas Adams wrote. It is a fun book with some interesting ideas, but it could be convincingly argued that it contained far more call-backs than were sensible for no other reason than to cater to fans who simply have to see the phrase "Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster" on every other page.
- "The Foundation of S.F. Success": (Conversational Troping) This poem gives various bits of advice on how to write the sort of Science Fiction that sells well. While written in 1954, the advice is still as good as it ever was.
- The titles of three releases by the Japanese pop group Perfume include the phrase "fan service", namely the CD single
*Fan Service (sweet)*, the concert DVD *Fan Service (bitter)* and the box set *Fan Service Prima Box*. The last is perhaps a genuine example of fanservice since it comprises three discontinued CD-singles from earlier in their career, which fans wanting to complete their collection would otherwise have to look for on the secondhand market. A review of *Prima Box* in the *Japan Times* refers to Perfume's 'coy, knowing references to *otaku* (obsessive fan) culture'.
- The Song Study version of Devo's album,
*Something for Everybody*. Fans participated in an online survey to determine which songs would end up on the album. On the other hand, it is quite clear that the whole Song Study campaign was meant to poke fun at the entertainment industry's extensive uses of focus groups and online surveys, and Devo simultaneously released a "88% focus group approved" version of *Something for Everybody* that contained all the songs that were cut from the Song Study version.
- Taylor Swift has been accused of this by some fans after her second album, which, in stark contrast to her first album (which, for the most part, was startlingly mature and dark, but well-liked by listeners of all ages), is more decidedly geared towards teenagers. Let it not be ignored that the
*small* majority of her first album's sales were from the teenage crowd.
- Nerd Rock duo Paul and Storm explicitly admit to this in their concerts, particularly during
*The Captain's Wife's Lament* (a song that, did they not continually interrupt themselves, would last somewhere on the light side of 90 seconds, but often takes ten minutes or more to get through).
- Similarly to Devo's album, but unironically, Jethro Tull did their own "song study" when selecting the tracks for their 1987 comeback album,
*Crest Of A Knave*. Justified as they had wanted to avoid the backlash they suffered through when releasing their previous album in 1984, the synth-heavy note : most of the instrumentation being programmed on a Fairlight CMI workstation and Linndrum drum machine, with the exception of the acoustic track, "Under Wraps II", very uncharacteristic *Under Wraps* album. The album became a moderate hit and even won a (controversial at the time, but for unrelated reasons) Grammy award.
- Frank Zappa: Zappa is an odd example of this trope. On one hand he simply did what he liked, telling the audience literally to get fucked if they hated what he did on stage or in his work. A huge chunk of his lyrics are inside jokes, incomprehensible to anyone but him and his band members. Yet on the other hand he did put in a lot of inside jokes and clues (
*conceptual continuity*) that only his hardcore fans would recognize and cheer about.
- Neil Young's refusal to do this is what made his record company sue him for producing experimental electronic music "that didn't sound like Neil Young"; it's also why many older fans tend to respond to each new release with an apprehensive "oh, dear God, what's he done
*now*?"
- Two of Queen's most recognizable hits, "We Will Rock You" and "We are the Champions", exist because Brian May and Freddie Mercury realized in the mid-late 1970s that fans were singing along with their songs, so they decided to create deliberate Audience Participation Songs designed to pander to this desire. (May talks about the songs' creation here.) The end result was the creation of two of the most well known Crowd Songs in recent decades that are now ubiquitous at every sports event
*ever*.
- Somewhat downplayed by Anthrax, who similarly to examples above polled their fans to determine which songs they should re-record for their
*The Greatest of Two Evils* Greatest Hits Album. When small but dedicated minority managed to score an unusually high amount of votes for "Lone Justice", it was included in the album...as a hidden track. And they placed it after the final track and the reversed version of "Lone Justice".
- The expression "pandering (or, less judgmentally, 'playing') to the base" originated in U.S. politics, where the primary system requires candidates to win the approval of their party's rank-and-file before formulating a broader appeal in the general election. Essentially, if a candidate wants to be elected, they have to persuade the party faithful to vote for them before targeting the wider majority. Of course, this can and has meant that the party may nominate someone who speaks to their specific views but lacks mainstream electability. Another feature of how Congressional districts are distributed is that by this point almost every district in the country is safe for either a Republican or Democrat candidate. Combined with the primary system, this means that it is quite common for the district to elect a candidate who not only is extreme by national standards but can be an extremist even by the standards of the state. What often happens in Presidential elections, especially for the party currently out of government, is that the chosen candidate must pander to the far wing of the party during the primaries, but then move back to a more middle of the road position for the actual Presidential race.
- While primary elections play this trope straight, general elections more or less invert the trope. Since 75-80% of American voters vote the same way in every election no matter what, the general election becomes about courting the remaining 20-25%, known as "swing voters." While swing voters make up a much smaller subset than the parties' respective bases, they are an unquestionably more important one. As the expression goes, "40% of voters always vote Republican, 40% always vote Democrat, and the other 20% always decide the election."
- Third-party candidates completely avert the trope. They usually run on platforms that state that the two major parties both suck, and that they are actually the sensible alternative to both mainstream candidates. The structure of the American electoral system makes it almost impossible for third-party candidates to win, but they can certainly impact election results.
- Political parties are frequently accused of this (and usually are guilty), especially during elections which pit members of the same party against each other. (Known in the United States as "primary elections," as distinct from "general elections" which feature all candidates.) Politicians who aspire to higher office often engage in this as well, in order to please the base ahead of a "primary election."
- In some democracies, candidates are nominated by and from a narrower group of professional party "members," rather than ordinary voters. Depending on how strict the party's formal membership rules are, and how small the membership is, this can result in nominations being dictated by an even more ideologically extreme, or simply eccentric faction of the public. This can actually present something of a paradox for small parties: the party knows on some level it needs to broaden their appeal, yet because the party membership is tiny and dominated by "true believers," it's hard for them to put forth more moderate or mainstream candidates.
- The German CSU (Christian Social Union, a conservative party) is notorious for doing this. They only exist in Bavaria but caucus together with the CDU (Christian Democrat Union, maybe slightly less conservative) on the federal level. One of the things it is most known for is viciously attacking "Berlin" -
*even while they are in government*. You see, Bavaria has a strong current of people who don't think too highly of the "Prussians" in the rest of Germany and many of them vote CSU...
- Professional Wrestling writer Vince Russo is infamous for catering exclusively to the hardcore Internet "Smart Marks" (who know that wrestling is fake but enjoy it as an art form). His biggest mistake was that he would often try to swerve these fans with confusing Worked Shoot angles. This is a problem for two reasons. First, the casual fans (90% of the fanbase) didn't know enough about the background of these swerves and were just confused by what was going on. Second, the smart marks (by nature of being smart marks) weren't fooled. What's more, he would often load these angles with obscure references that only the most hardcore fan would know of. What is truly bizarre is that Russo caters to the fans' knowledge of tabloid-like stories of backstage shenanigans, but does not cater to what they want most (long, well-wrestled matches with minimal interference and shenanigans). Russo has some very strange beliefs about who his audience is.
- Ring of Honor, at its outset, was more or less
*defined* by catering to the hardcore wrestling fanbase. The result is a generally entertaining product, but not without a little elitist snobbery. Note that hardcore in this case means "purist fan" instead of hardcore wrestling.
- WWE has been doing this lately with
*NXT*. The commentary team of Josh Mathews and Michael Cole full with their commentary with Continuity Nods, talk about the indies, wrestling dirtsheets and blogs and even Ascended Meme. Even the pros and rookies do it from time to time.
- Speaking of
*NXT*, Season 3 rookie Diva A.J. Lee's gimmick is basically pandering to the nerd audience.
- CM Punk's "The Reason You Suck" Speech that led to his (kayfabe) suspension was one big pander to the Smarks and everything they hate about WWE, as Punk listed wrestlers that had supposedly been held back and criticized higher-ups like John Lauranitis. It becomes funnier if one wonders just how many Smarks believed Punk was truly being defiant when, in reality, none of what he said would have made it on the air without WWE approval.
- One could argue that WWE's "New Era" is nothing but pandering to the smark base. After mass online backlash against Wrestlemania 32, WWE immediately (literally starting with the Raw after Mania) began calling up several people from NXT - many of which had been signed out of the indie circuits - and pushing them while cutting out sketch promos, promoting matches more on wrestling than story, and hyping things like the revived Cruiserweights. The most blatant case may have been Summerslam 2016, where the WWE title match pitted babyface vs babyface in Dean Ambrose against Dolph Ziggler while the first-ever Universal Title match pitted smark favorite Seth Rollins against indie darling Finn Balor (with Balor winning the belt just
*three weeks* after being called up). It hasn't really worked: Summerslam was considered one of the weakest PPVs of the year, ratings for Raw remain tepid (while Smackdown, which has emphasized storylines more, has seen its ratings rise since late 2016), and, with almost no huge story arcs having been built, there seems to be even less fan enthusiasm for Wrestlemania 33.
- The
*Torchwood: The Lost Files* audio drama "The House of the Dead" is one long grovel to the fans who were outraged that Jack never told Ianto he loved him in those exact words during the televised serial *Children of Earth*.
- At the time of the 2004 lockout, the National Hockey League had trouble getting new fans to appreciate the game because offense had declined in the league thanks to the neutral zone trap. The NHL tried to deal with it it, but because it created a Broken Base among hardcore fans this proved difficult. (Fans of defensive teams, (and those teams themselves), vocally complained that defense was being taken out of the game, fans of more offensive minded teams, (and again, the teams themselves), complained it slowed the game down. All teams employed it to some degree, but some used it as their primary strategy.) After the lockout, the NHL passed new rules to thwart the neutral zone trap, mainly because they were forced to be more fan-friendly.
- The NHL is a great example of Pandering to the Base. Demographically, the sport is overwhelmingly white. Many fans have complained about the league trying to make new fans through rule changes and expansion/relocation to non-traditional markets, which has also paid off in a way.
- By contrast, Major League Baseball has begun pandering to the more casual fans in the last few decades or so, particularly with the designated hitter in 1973 and interleague play in 1997. There are still traditionalists out there who despise both.
- For years, many college basketball fans and experts wanted a rule in the game where teams in the foul bonus could choose to just inbound the ball after being fouled rather than shoot free throws, thus preventing the end of games from turning into drawn-out free throw shooting contests. The NCAA finally instituted the rule in 1999 - and then repealed it two months later when it appeared coaches were having trouble deciding what to do in that situation.
- The National Football League changed its overtime rules in 2010 to encourage teams to try for touchdowns because many fans didn't like the old rules. To explain the new rules: What had previously been flat sudden death overtime (game ends on the next score) was changed so the overtime won't immediately end if the team possessing the ball first scores a field goal; the other team will get the chance to score and then the game will end when either squad takes the lead.
- ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball program has been accused of pandering to certain teams' fans. What was once a Sunday night tradition to see two different teams slowly became the Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, and Cardinals show, in an attempt to pander to said fans.
- Mark Rosewater's columns about creating
*Magic: The Gathering* on Magic: The Gathering.com have used the defiance of this argument to justify such things as bad cards, skill-testers, overly simple Core Sets, and its focus on recent-duration formats. While Wizards of the Coast appreciates its devoted fanbase, it needs to ensure that newer players have a clear path into learning the game without being inundated with complexities early on.
- Similarly, Upper Deck Entertainment and Konami have been doing this with the
*Yu-Gi-Oh!* card game, specifically demanding that older and more rabid fans not bash on the younger demographic or the anime-based cards that they make for them. The problem is that the anime-based cards that they make are almost always underpowered, and prime targets for bashing.
- One of the great balancing acts of the modern era is on display whenever Games Workshop begins working on a new army codex. Pandering to the base is a great temptation, especially when there's two different bases to pander to. Take the Eldar Wraithlord for example. As it is now, it's a monster in both shooting and close combat and greatly feared when it's taken in numbers. When they release a new Eldar codex, they have three roads they could go: they could pander to their Eldar players and make it more powerful; they could pander to the Wraithlord detractors and nerf it something awful; or they could potentially anger BOTH sides and leave it relatively unchanged. Meanwhile, Space Marines are given far more attention than any other faction, and Commissars feature heavily in the books, despite being fairly minor in the actual game/overall plot.
- White Wolf's
*Old World of Darkness* setting had a specific form of this - every 'splatbook' (or expansion pack) they released inevitably raised the power level, awareness or general coolness of the group being discussed; they'd be depicted as being better than (or at least putting one over on) every other faction. Until the next one, where the next group would top *that*. Some fans said they felt sorry for the one that had to go first, since the second was better, etc. putting the first faction at the bottom of the heap. It was a form of serial base-pandering, with different bases inside the White Wolf fandom. This is averted with the *New World of Darkness*, where each 'splatbook' simply fleshes out and expands on the splat, as well as having discussions on both its strength and merits *and* its flaws and weaknesses. No splat is ever portrayed as inherently "superior" to any other.
- Greg Costikyan (one of the authors of
*Paranoia*) has written an essay about "grognard capture", "grognard" being a term for Napoleon's old guard, and the full term used by hardcore wargame players to refer to products that seek to capture the market of the hardest of the hardcore. It's worth mentioning that in the article Costikyan is somewhat dismissive of Nintendo's strategy of blatantly seeking the non-gamer market for the DS while positioning the PSP as the "hardcore" platform, something that, if nothing else, did indeed make tons of cash for the company.
- Shakespeare did it.
*Macbeth* was first performed in front of an audience including King James I, and popular Fanon at the time was that James was descended from main character Banquo. Shakespeare reversed Banquo's role into a benevolent character to appeal to James. There's also some speculation that several scenes of the Three Witches were added later because they were found to be popular; they may even have been taken wholesale from Thomas Middleton's *The Witch*.
-
*Love Never Dies*, a sequel to *The Phantom of the Opera*, changes the personalities of several characters from the original (in particular, Raoul) just to please Christine/Erik shippers.
- In its later days,
*BIONICLE*'s side stories and expanded universe practically ran on this, by having certain story elements, names of animals and upcoming characters depend on fan polls (mainly members of BZPower). It didn't help that many fans had a blasé attitude on that site, which meant that more critical fans tended to get overshadowed. After author Greg Farshtey was denied further access to the site due to LEGO's policies, this trend continued on the official LEGO Message Board (this time mostly without polls), then on the TTV fan forums, retroactively adding details to canon and defining character appearances over a decade after the franchise had ended. This has also lead to lots of fan controversy, until Greg was laid off from LEGO in 2022, nullifying further fan canonization efforts.
- The
*BIONICLE* reboot offered little nods and visual references, such as curious easter eggs featuring the Mask of Time hidden in the scenery to keep older fans interested. Later, they added overt references to concepts from Generation 1, like the Three Virtues and the Toa of Light. However, this was a failed attempt at pandering to fans, as these teases and hints would lead nowhere, which ended up souring the more hardcore fans who expected deeper worldbuilding. The reboot was basically a marketing misstep that couldn't decide between appealing to old fans or new buyers, and ended up letting down both. As they got the order of the Three Virtues wrong (Duty, Unity and Destiny instead of Unity, Duty and Destiny), fans quickly labeled these pandering attempts a "DUD".
- Due to the massive Periphery Demographic of
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*, Hasbro produced quite a few pony-related toys that are quite obviously geared towards the adult fanbase. The most notable of these are toy versions of Ensemble Dark Horse characters like Derpy Hooves, Lyra, Trixie, Vinyl Scratch, Nightmare Moon, and Queen Chrysalis, who almost certainly wouldn't have gotten toys if not for the fanbase. The large Funko figures are a particular example, being released in waves of two figures (up until wave 8, which added Discord as a third figure), with the top six background ponies note : Derpy, Dr. Hooves, Lyra, Bon Bon, Vinyl Scratch, and Octavia all getting figures released before Applejack and Rarity got theirs to complete the Mane 6.
- Nintendo:
- Theirs is a case of learning from experience: The Nintendo 64 and Nintendo GameCube were ultimately perceived by some critics as being only for little kids and hardcore Nintendo fanboys, which resulted in teenagers, adults, and third-party developers going for the PlayStation instead. With the Wii, Nintendo seems to be avoiding this perception. However, a good number of third party developers, mostly in western nations, have either failed or rejected to follow Nintendo's direction, with most of their top tier titles still on Sony and Microsoft's platforms. That got to change over time: A couple high profile flops on the PlayStation 3, and the fact that of the largest developers, the ones giving the Wii the least support have been showing losses (Take-Two Interactive and Electronic Arts), while the ones giving the Wii support are doing well (Activision and Ubisoft). The CEO of Take-Two even said they couldn't ignore the Wii's success anymore.
- Nintendo eventually tried to please the "core" fans by announcing many games aimed at them during E3 2009. Titles include
*Metroid: Other M*, *Super Mario Galaxy 2*, *New Super Mario Bros. Wii*, *Golden Sun: Dark Dawn*, *Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days*, *The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks*, *The Conduit*, and *Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story*.
- E3 2010 provided an interesting reversal: Microsoft and Sony both seemed to be making overtures at casual gamers, with
*both* of them showcasing Wii remote *and Wii Sports* clones, while Nintendo unabashedly went after core gamers with their announcements of *The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword*, *Kirby's Epic Yarn*, *Donkey Kong Country Returns*, remakes of *The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time* and *Star Fox 64*, *GoldenEye (Wii)*, and a new *Kid Icarus* game, after a two *decade*-long dry spell. Most critics and reporters had Nintendo winning the conference in a walk, and even many gamers are, if not fully won over, at least cautiously optimistic.
- Nintendo later leaned back towards this trope with the Wii U, specifically stating that while the console would still have features and games geared towards casuals, it would also have games and features catered towards the more dedicated fan, pointing out that the "U" in Wii U means the console was made for "you (the consumer)". The gamble wasn't very successful, as the console sold far less than all previous home console systems made by the company, prompting them to swing back towards casual marketing (though not all the way) with the Nintendo Switch.
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*The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess* was intentionally designed by Nintendo to evoke the same mood and atmosphere of *Ocarina of Time*. *Ocarina* is the highest-rated game of the franchise, so when *Twilight Princess* was released, it was heaped with praise from both critics and fans alike as being a return to form for the series after two more experimental games. So much that, infamously, a less-than-positive review from Gamespot coined the 8.8 phenomenon.
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*Pokémon* is infamous for how much it tries to appeal to fans of the original games, with it sometimes being well-received and other times coming across as hamfisted:
- In
*Pokémon Gold and Silver* the games overly relied on existing Kanto Pokémon for things like Gym Leader rosters and standard roles like regional bug (namely Caterpie and Weedle being much more common than the local Ledyba & Spinarak), and Johto Pokémon such as Houndour inexplicably only being found in the Kanto postgame.
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*HeartGold and SoulSilver*. The game is rife with cameos from characters across all generations and references to other games in the series. Perhaps the most prominent of these is the return of Pokémon following the Player, which hadn't been seen since *Pokémon Yellow*, a purely cosmetic function that has no effect on gameplay whatsoever, and it's *glorious.*
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*Pokémon X and Y* set a new record, with extensive pandering to Gen 1 fans. The Kanto starters are given away, the Gen 1 games get a 2-hour anime special, and Charizard gets two Mega Evolutions while the other 2 Kanto starters get one each. And speaking of Mega Evolutions, it was officially stated that popular Pokémon are most likely to be the ones who get them, even if other Pokémon need them more. The actual new Pokémon introduced in the generation make up *only 15% of the total Kalos Pokédex.* *Mewtwo* also got *two* Mega Evolutions, despite being powerful enough as is, and the fact that it getting Mega Evolution makes no sense considering the origins of Mega Evolution. They promoted Mewtwo and used its popularity, to the point that they ignored their own plot to do so. And about that Kalos Pokédex - not only do the new Pokémon take up a tiny percentage of the 'dex, it would still be the smallest amount of new Pokémon to date (with only 72, where all other regions had at least 100). And the final nail in the coffin is that Pidgey is *guaranteed* to be the first wild Pokémon you encounter. The *6th* Gen was also the first to put the most emphasis on Competitive Battling instead of the actual campaign. Mechanics such as Super Training, Wonder Trade, easier breeding (Smeargle, a mon with the ability to copy any move in the game with its Sketch ability, is found on the same route as the Day-Care Center), and quicker leveling up were all made available to the player extremely early. Almost every major addition or change to the game was done so to cater to the competitive battling crowd.
- Also the trope behind the revival of both the anime's original theme song and the "Gotta catch 'em all!" slogan not seen since Generation II.
- Zigzagged with the Hoenn remakes. The Ensemble Dark Horse Giant Space Flea from Nowhere Latias and Latios got Mega Evolutions - and you can fly on them. In exchange, more underpowered Pokemon like Beedrill, Glalie, and Pidgeot also got Mega Evolutions. The post-game Battle Resort also contains even more pandering to competitive battlers than even X and Y did, offering not only a secondary Day Care on an easy egg hatching route, but having Non Player Characters that Break the Fourth Wall to talk about the Pokemon World Championships and telling the player that sometimes, in order to win, they'll have to abandon their favourites and only use strong Pokemon. (An Ironic Echo of Karen's infamous line from Gold and Silver).
- In
*Pokémon Sun and Moon*, despite taking place in an expy of Hawaii on the opposite side of the world from it, the cast simply *will not shut up about Kanto*. The Player Character is a Kanto immigrant, Kukui, Wicke, Hau's father, Lillie, Lusamine, and Gladion all visited Kanto at one point with Kukui constantly sharing anecdotes about how great it is, and the new Alolan forms and signature Z-moves are all exclusive to Kanto Pokémon. In addition, the promotional website for the games stated that Oricorio's Sensu form reminded Kanto tourists of home when *Johto* was the region that actually *had* geishas!
- Another reason
*Pokémon Sword and Shield* is such a Contested Sequel is that it suffered almost as badly as X & Y did from this. In spite of the game's limited roster, Galar somehow managed to fit in a significant portion of Kanto Pokémon with the Champion's ace being a Charizard while Pokémon that actually fit the British theme like Stoutland were excluded (prior to the DLC). Not to mention that of the 32 Gigantamax forms in the game (counting DLC), 12 belong to Kanto Pokémon and 19 belong to Galar Pokémon, meaning that out of all the previous generations of Pokémon, *only two* do not hail from Kanto, these being Gen V's Garbodor and Gen VII's Melmetal.
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*Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels* (the Japanese *Super Mario Bros. 2*) is one of the earliest examples of the trope. Nintendo created a sequel to *Super Mario Bros.* that was a Mission-Pack Sequel designed for players who mastered the first game and its subtitle was dubbed "For Super Players". Nintendo of America feared that the game was more of the same as the first game, too difficult for American players and would tarnish sales after the first *Mario* game sold so well. And they were right; *Lost Levels* has enemy placement and traps designed to catch players off guard very frequently, and many levels require a deep understanding of SMB physics to complete, including exploitation of glitches. Among other things, the game introduced the Poison Mushroom, warp pipes that send the player *backwards* in the level progression and Bloopers that fly. To top it off, the final set of worlds can only be unlocked by *beating the game eight times in a row* a fact which the game gives no real indication of. Western players would eventually get the game in *Super Mario All-Stars* with *slightly* reduced difficulty, but still bone-crushingly hard overall and players would also get the original version of the game on the Wii's Virtual Console.
- After the middling reception to
*Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam*, AlphaDream went back to the games that got the best reception and remade them for the 3DS: *Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga* and *Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story*. It didn't work out too well, with the latter game being a *devastating* flop and one of the worst-selling *Mario* games of all time contributing to the company folding later in 2019.
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*Fire Emblem*:
- A lot of fans accused Intelligent Systems of pandering to the yaoi fangirls in the tenth game: The Ike/Soren base conversation is
*very* sappy and more full of Ho Yay than their supports in the previous game, and they have a paired ending. The perception is that this is at the expense of the Ship Tease Ike had with women in the previous game, though some of that was added by the localization, and said localization seemed to have toned down the Ho Yay in the ninth game.
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*Awakening* was an example of this trope working well. With what looked like the last game in the series, Intelligent Systems threw together a "greatest hits" collection of every gameplay idea people liked about previous games, and it sold so well it saved the franchise. Story-wise, it appealed directly to the Japanese base, with heavy plot references and nostalgic callbacks to the original *Fire Emblem* titles that weren't very popular outside of the home islands.
- The second set of DLC for
*Fire Emblem: Awakening* was this, adding a Beach Episode and Hot Springs Episode where the 2 guys and girls from each generation voted most popular by Japanese fans got fanservice artwork, a set of brutally hard challenge maps aimed at those who bashed the main story chapters for being too simplistic and easy, and a set of DLC exploring the Bad Future and the Ensemble Dark Horse 2nd generation characters.
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*Fire Emblem Fates* tries to content the fans of *Awakening* and the fans of the previous games with two campaigns, one where you can grind freely like *Awakening* and one with more limited resources like earlier titles, resulting in One Game for the Price of Two. The story tries to merge the dark tragedy and cutthroat politics of early titles with the often-breezier tone and character shipping from later ones, including some mechanics that the story can't easily justify. The results of trying to pander to every part of a Broken Base were ultimately financially lucrative, but at the price of absolutely fragmenting the fans, and as if acknowledging this delicate balancing act couldn't go on forever, *Fire Emblem: Three Houses* (for better or worse) has a much firmer core identity.
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*Splatoon 2*:
- The game's Hero Mode is dedicated almost entirely to pandering to Marie
note : who won the Callie vs. Marie Splatfest in the last game fans—she's your Mission Control, she gets a ton of character development, and it's honestly hard not to feel sorry for her when she starts worrying about where her cousin is. Of course, this came at the expense of Callie (at least as popular as Marie), who is kidnapped right off the bat and, for a very long time, was almost completely absent from the game even after being rescued. This in turn led to more pandering, this time to Callie's largely dissatisfied fanbase, once it was revealed that the 3.0 update would add her to the Octo Canyon hub after completing the game.
- Marina's presence in the game as one of the stage announcers is almost certainly due to the massive popularity of the Octolings in the original game.
-
*Final Fantasy*:
-
*Final Fantasy VII* and all of its compilations. After the original game gained its massive popularity, new additions were added on to the story to "expand" its content, or "explain" points in the story that were generally the most confusing or significant. In actuality, these add-ons were created to help cater to the needs of the *many* fans of the game; indulging popular characters such as Cloud Strife, Vincent Valentine, and Sephiroth; and increasing (and complicating) the already large and solid storyline with new plotlines and characters. At this point, *Final Fantasy VII* is practically a new franchise itself.
- The producers of
*Advent Children* admitted in an interview that the reason Cloud acts like a conflicted, pensive loner instead of the strong and confident leader he had become at the end of *Final Fantasy VII* was because that was the way he had been depicted in most doujinshi.
-
*Crisis Core* is, in fact, prefaced with the new symbol created for *Final Fantasy VII*, called the *Compilation of Final Fantasy VII*. Considering the series is famous for love-it-then-leave-it tactics in regards to the various games, the fact that *Final Fantasy VII* has not one, not two, but fully six games featuring the same characters shows a dramatic shift in the management of the series.
- The
*Final Fantasy VII* compilation was a way of pandering to the base through the intellectual property, but it also gave Square Enix developers a chance to try their hand at different genres while still creating popular titles.
- The
*Kingdom Hearts* series, which a lot of the staff of *Final Fantasy VII* work on, has also seen a rise in this; the most blatant being the very existence of *Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days*, which stars the members of Organization XIII. The pandering went as far back as the Final Mix edition of the original *Kingdom Hearts*, which threw in a Sora and Riku flashback scene right at the very end of the game that seemed designed solely to cater to the Yaoi Fangirls of the base.
- In sequels, this can result in the difficulty approaching, and even going past, Nintendo Hard, as each sequel is designed to challenge players who completed (all of) the previous game(s). The
*Guitar Hero* franchise sank into this, with certain note and chord arrangements clearly mixed for challenge instead of logical chord placement on the higher difficulties. This gets worse (or better, if you're one of the hardcore players) with each installment. In fact, *Guitar Hero 4*'s guitar is generally easier than 3's due to these complaints.
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*Devil May Cry*. A chief complaint of the second game from Western audiences was that it lacked the first game's challenge, even the infamous Dante Must Die mode providing little difficulty. The version of the *third* game released in the West went too far in the other direction, with each difficulty spiked up to be the equivalent of the Japanese version's next-higher setting. "Normal" was the Japanese "Hard," "Hard" was the Japanese "Very Hard," and "Dante Must Die" was just plain ridiculous. The fourth game, as well as the third game's special edition, were toned down.
- This was one of the primary reasons the
*Xenosaga* series was stopped at the third installment.
- Fighting and destroying ||343 Guilty Spark|| in
*Halo 3* could be considered more fanservice than boss battle.
- The entirety of the
*Super Smash Bros.* series, particularly after they introduced the trophies in *Melee*, allowing them to pay homage to games and characters who aren't playable.
- The series have been criticized by some western gamers for doing this too much in the direction of Japanese fans at the expense of the rest of the world, as many playable characters reflect Japanese popularity rather than global fame. The inclusion of Marth and Roy in
*Smash Bros. Melee*, for instance, provoked some head-scratching, given it predated the release of any *Fire Emblem* game in America. The constant inclusion of Jigglypuff, likewise, though now seen by westerners as a sort of weird-but-fun franchise tradition, has its roots in pandering to Japanese audiences, where Jigs has long been one of the most popular Pokémon.
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*Super Smash Bros. Ultimate* does this for the series' own fanbase, starting off with the return of *every single character that's been in the series before* (including several that were cut from prior games), continuing with several often-requested changes (such as a Battlefield form and stage hazard toggle for every stage in the game, Ganondorf finally using his sword in more than one move, and the general game flow being reworked to be faster a la the ever-popular *Melee*), and then climaxing with the reveal of Ridley as a playable character (a *very* popular choice who many thought wouldn't get in, owing to his size). Further character reveals, including King K. Rool and Dark Samus have only done this even more, and that's not getting into the DLC reveals (in particular, Banjo and Kazooie, Steve, and Sora).
- The additional battle against Algus/Argath in the PSP version of
*Final Fantasy Tactics*. Since he's a Hate Sink and massive Jerkass, one may think killing him once is not enough. Square Enix did it again in *Final Fantasy XIV* with a *Tactics*-themed storyline that brings Argath back once more, so you can fight him ||and his new Lucavi Demon form.||
- Some critics have argued that the maturity and decline stages of the MMOG life cycle have more to do with this than the actual age of the game. The logic is that at some point developers cave to the demands of the loudest fans—usually more high-end content and boosts to their favorite playstyle—and so the raised barrier of entry makes the game far less appealing to new players. This can also manifest as a new race or class almost nobody wanted save those who had plain run out of things to do. Designs incorporating many wings, belts, zippers, or draconian pants are common. The launch of the Kamael in Lineage II caused a heavy exodus towards private servers, for instance.
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*Call of Duty: Black Ops III* features a segment in which the player is thrown into a dream version of World War II. A new Call of Duty game set in World War II was what many fans had been wanting for a while so that mission should have been giving fans at least some of the thing they want but considering that the developers didn't even bother to add period-accurate weapons and instead everyone just uses mid-21st century weapons, it made the segment feel like a middle-finger to those who wanted a World War II game. A good example of this trope not working as intended.
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*World of Warcraft*:
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*Cataclysm* gave what a contingent of fans had long wanted: letting players fly in Azeroth, new race/class combinations (with controversial lore used to justify Tauren paladins), playable Goblins for the Horde (a much-loved race that had until then been kept out of the Horde/Alliance factions), playable Worgen for the Alliance (which retconned their somewhat vague origin from alien beings to lycanthropes).
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*Mists of Pandaria* turned Garrosh into a full villain, likely influenced by his vast hatedom, and ended with what many of his more vocal haters had asked for since Cataclysm, raising Vol'jin to Warchief. The use of Pandaria itself, a borderline joke from Warcraft III, as the basis for an entire expansion, helped to appeal to Warcraft's large Chinese fanbase.
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*Legion* brought back Illidan Stormrage, who had died as essentially the final boss of *Burning Crusade*. He was retconned from a psychotic, egocentric tyrant with delusions of grandeur into a dark anti-hero who is nonetheless Azeroth's only hope against the Burning Legion. His sizeable fandom had been wishing for something like this, disappointed at how he was killed off.
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*Battle for Azeroth* returned to the franchise's oldest roots, bringing back some from RTS-style gameplay and focusing again on the Alliance vs Horde instead of a common enemy (often referred to as "putting the "War" back in "Warcraft"). It started off with a battle in which the Alliance takes back Lordaeron, appealing to Alliance diehards, and while this did not *please* the Forsaken fanbase (given that they've long argued *against* this very storyline), they were definitely still drawn in by the opportunity to fight *against* the former.
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*We ♥ Katamari*, the first sequel to the wildly popular *Katamari Damacy*, is literally all about this: The whole game is essentially one big thank-you to the game's fans, and the plot itself deals with the King of All Cosmos becoming wildly popular for his Prince's katamaris and receiving an onslaught of requests for new katamaris to roll up from the fans.
- Despite a few alterations throughout its lifespan, the Katamari series defines its base as content with the material from the first game, only wanting to take it to different home and portable consoles. The base has also been pandered to greatly by the
*Katamari Forever* soundtrack, which features remixes and re-imaginings of old Katamari tunes, often re-done by previous Katamari artists that composed different tunes in the series. This pandering is in no way a bad thing, as the soundtrack was amazing, as if the previous soundtracks were now Growing the Beard.
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*Team Fortress 2*'s class updates seem to be one long string of Valve weaponizing memes. They also managed to make "Your mom" jokes with style.
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*Backyard Sports*. They try to attract only young sports fans now.
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*Left 4 Dead 2* has a DLC campaign called The Passing, which brings together the old survivors from the first game and the new survivors together. This is definitely nothing more than appealing to the fans who been wanting to see the two survivor groups together ever since *Left 4 Dead 2* was made.
- That has more to do with the fact that said fans don't like the Wild Mass Guessing Downer Ending theories that have been floating around.
- Done again for The Sacrifice campaign and comic to explain to fans how exactly ||Bill dies|| and how the survivors from
*Left 4 Dead* went down south.
- Valve also ported over every single campaign from
*Left 4 Dead* 1 into *Left 4 Dead 2* as a throw to fans that have been porting the maps over themselves (with varying results) so the fans can play *Left 4 Dead 1*'s maps with elements used in *Left 4 Dead 2*. Of course, this off players who bought *Left 4 Dead 1* already.
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*Sonic the Hedgehog*:
- The entire point of
*Sonic the Hedgehog 4*, which features a return to the classic gameplay while retaining some modern elements. The mixture didn't go over so well, leading to a bona fide classic game in *Sonic Mania* that did.
- Sonic Team has done this when it comes to Sonic's rival Shadow. When he proved to be popular, his apparent death in
*Sonic Adventure 2* was retconned to him surviving with amnesia, and much of the plot focus was put on him in *Sonic Heroes*. He even got a game centered entirely on him intended to resolve his plot arc. This made him a Base-Breaking Character, dividing him between fans who are still happy with him being around and fans who consider him a Spotlight-Stealing Squad.
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*Shadow the Hedgehog* was stated to be a second form of this by the developers. The swearing, use of guns, the motorcycle seen heavily in promotions, and premise of fighting aliens to save the world were specific elements that were included because they were trying to cater to Western audiences. This backfired greatly and caused both critics and fans to heavily pan the game for drifting away from the things that made *Sonic* games good in the first place.
- In
*Sonic Generations*, Classic Sonic doesn't speak. This was not a design choice for the originals, as it was mostly due to technical limitations, and he does speak in a couple of games. It seems to have become a staple if the *Sonic Mania Adventures* shorts are any indication. He is also noticeably more cutesy in *Generations* compared to his Mascot with Attitude roots, likely due to his Modern counterpart filling the role still.
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*Sonic Forces*'s inclusion of the Avatar is this to the many, *many* Original Characters that fans have made. It also features Classic Sonic returning (again) but received heavy criticism for awkward physics (an issue not present in *Generations*) and a lack of relevancy to the game's otherwise more serious plot.
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*Street Fighter*:
- The announcement of
*Street Fighter IV* was the result of fans and competitive players constantly bugging Capcom for it every chance they got.
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*Street Fighter V* seems to be doing to almost to a fault, with the initial release squarely aimed at competitive players with many features deemed as being for casuals delayed for at least a month.
- When
*Marvel vs. Capcom 3* was first shown at E3 2010, many long time fans were disappointed at how different the game seemed to be from *Marvel vs. Capcom 2*. After that, each and every successive demo build of the game featured changes that brought the game closer to its predecessor. The final result, a game that feels like a natural evolution of the previous game (while still showing some influences from *Tatsunoko vs. Capcom*). The only reason the game doesn't seem to be as unbalanced as the previous one is that this time, they seem to be making every character a Game-Breaker.
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*Super Robot Wars* has a lot of this (like any crossover, of course), including giving the player the ability to save heroes that originally died on their shows or recruiting villains that weren't all that evil. Inversely, they also let players kill villains that didn't get directly killed by the heroes or worse, got away scot-free.
- DICE, makers of the
*Battlefield* series, have been doing this heavily with *Battlefield 3* and *Bad Company 2*, feeding the flames of their stalwarts' huge Fandom Rivalry with *Modern Warfare*. In addition, their marketing for the original *Bad Company* pandered to people who disliked popular games in *other genres entirely*.
- Episode 5 of
*Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People* begins with an arcade machine breaking down and emitting ominous smoke. When Strong Sad says that the fan is broken and needs to be serviced, Strong Bad replies, "Where are we going to find fan service around here?" At that moment, fan-favorite Trogdor busts out of the broken machine.
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*Tekken Tag Tournament 2* brought back Jun Kazama due to fan demand, despite the fact that the game was based on the characters who had appeared in the 4th, 5th and 6th games (in none of which she appeared). It can be justified as the game is non-canon, and she had appeared in some of Jin's endings. Similarly, Kunimitsu, another fan-fave missing since *Tekken 2*, was included in the game's console port as free DLC alongside several other "missing" characters like Michelle, Alex, P. Jack, and Ogre.
- The "Citadel" DLC for
*Mass Effect 3* is one giant opportunity for *Mass Effect* fans to put aside the series of Player Punches that comprise the plot of *3* and reunite for one last grand hurrah with all their previous squadmates, with touching Callbacks and Continuity Nods galore. ||Unfortunately, it's a party that Mordin, Thane and Legion aren't allowed to attend.||
- The Gundam Vs Series, especially since
*Extreme Vs.* has become a serial case of this trope. An incredible amount of fanservice abounds, whether it's the mobile suits themselves, the works covered and referenced, the soundtrack and voice-over work or even the quirks lifted directly from the shows. And yet despite or perhaps *because* of all that, it manages to work exceptionally well.
- In the
*Star Wars* games, the iconic opening crawl, music, and Idiosyncratic Wipes are things that fans have come to expect, nay, *demand*. Additionally, everything that was said about *Star Wars* media in the "Literature" section also applies here.
- A former employee of Irem's arcade division blame this phenomenon as one of the reasons behind the company's downfall in this video. Basically: Instead of using "regular" players for location-testing, Irem had their arcade games tested by fans of the company's previous games and hardcore fans of arcade gaming in general, who were much more skilled than the average player. These way above-average gamers made the games look "too easy" during testing so Irem adjusted the difficulty accordingly, but in tuning the game around the top 1%, Irem made the games too difficult to appeal to the average arcade-goer.
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*Mystic Messenger*'s "Another Story" route was basically this from Cheritz, fulfilling the longtime fan demand for a V romance route and also making Unknown romantically obsessed with the player character. A lot of fans were ecstatic about this but some other fans had more negative responses to it, saying that V's core trait of being unconditionally devoted to Rika was derailed and his character Strangled by the Red String with the player character just to please vocal V fans.
- The later addition of an Unknown/Ray route to Another Story also qualifies for this trope as, like with V, the original story gave no indication that Unknown/Ray was ever intended to be a love interest and even made it very clear that ||his brother Seven|| was the only person remotely capable of helping him overcome his severe trauma and mental illness. But many fans still wanted to romance him, so Cheritz gave them their wish.
- Encouraged in-universe in
*POWER*, where keeping your politician's positions close to your state's preferred positions will help you win elections. This can lead to odd situations like a Democrat, a Republican, a libertarian, and a Nazi running for the same seat with everyone having the same positions.
- The
*Metroid* games are generally more popular in the West than in Japan, so *Metroid: Other M* was designed to appeal more to the Japanese fanbase by having Samus being more stoic, repressed, and being very submissive to Adam, who used to be her commanding officer. Samus being stoic and quiet is a trait in Japanese media that is usually seen as badass. The attempt to appeal to Japanese audiences did not work. The game overall received mixed to lukewarm reception in Japan while everyone else critically panned the game while also disliking the changes to Samus's characterization.
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*Grand Theft Auto V*'s main focus on the player characters pulling off elaborate heists was Rockstar's response to fans' overwhelming praise towards the *Grand Theft Auto IV* mission "Three Leaf Clover", which centered around a bank robbery turned into a massive shootout in the vein of *Heat*.
- The marketing strategy of unlicensed gacha games based on big-name franchises involves attempting to pander to those that know said franchise by the star characters and more often than not employ Nostalgia Filter to bring in mind certain characters and/or game mechanics as they were known for in the past. For more specific examples:
- The formerly infamous
*Pocket All-Star Smash Brothers* markets itself as "Reproduction Classics".
- An unlicensed
*Pokémon* gacha will more often than not market the Pikachu or Charmander line in various ways, from having them as starters to being rare Mons (or at least having a unique variant) on par with legendaries/mythicals. Mewtwo is often the highest tier and/or the Big Bad in the single-player campaign. One may also market the one-on-one battle mechanic itself, usually having descriptions that basically says "like the classics."
- Any unlicensed
*Digimon* gacha will shove *Digimon Adventure* to the front regardless of its V-Pet origins, an easy way to rope in the mainstream that knows the franchise from the anime more. Even if it has other Digimon from later years or even obscure ones, Agumon and pals come first.
- Occasionally discussed in
*Terrible Writing Advice*. JP says that pandering allows authors to put a blame to fans when pandering is not effective. After all, that's what the fans wanted.
- One of Yahtzee's videos included a note to any potential writers that fans will never appreciate them and you'll be happier the moment you excise the grating sound of their pleading from your memory. Then he suggests buying The Merch. This memorable clip also ran for a few months at the end of every video as part of an actual ad for said merch (replacing a more generic one).
-
*Questionable Content* was ostensibly about a milquetoast 20-something white guy with a crush on his room-mate, but very quickly evolved into a comic centred upon the numerous quirky odd female hipster characters that replicate various aspects of the fanbase of the comic.
- Marigold is a cute-but-curvy girl with low self-esteem (despite — or because of? — her large breasts) and a major fan of
*World of Warcraft* and popular anime series. She probably represents the fans better than anyone else in the cast.
- Claire, a transgender character to appeal to the ever-growing number of LGBT readers of the comic.
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*Transformers: Animated*:
- While
*Beast Wars* was directly connected to the original *Transformers* series, *Animated* just overdoses on the Mythology Gags and use of characters from the original show to pander to the older *Transformers* fans. You don't have to be familiar with the original versions of these characters to understand and enjoy even the most Fanwank-heavy scenes and episodes. It's just a bonus, if you *are* familiar, to see things that hearken back to your favorite past series.
- Also, it's the first place to have characters originating from the
*Beast Wars* era, namely Blackarachnia, Waspinator, Strika (Beast Machines), and Spittor. There's also a couple of Unicron Trilogy references (Bulkhead and Lugnut) and cameos (Red Alert as a medic rather than security guard, Safeguard, and Hot Shot), and it also has some G1 era characters that were exclusive to Japanese fiction (the concept of the Headmaster, Grandus, Dai Atlas).
- It also owes big chunks of the premise to the 2007 movie, such as the Allspark (previously a Transformers version of the afterlife, a term now replaced by "The Well of All Sparks") and Megatron's original form.
- Also worth noting is the process through which many of these character's appearances are decided: the writers plan out the story beforehand and ask the lead character designer (who is a longtime fan of many different ''Transformers'' series) what character would be good to use in a role they already have.
- Within
*Beast Wars* itself, the continuity ties increased rapidly at the end of the 2nd season. A fan from a newsgroup was actually recruited as a consultant for it.
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*Transformers: Cyberverse* works in the same vein as *Transformers Animated*, featuring fan favorite characters from across the franchise and pulling in as many undeveloped or obscure concepts (shadowplay, Quintessons, Titans, etc.) as possible.
-
*Wolverine and the X-Men*: In both the title and giving him the most screentime.
-
*Adventure Time* started as a silly action cartoon but as time passed the show gathered many shippers, the creators realized that and made romance one of the focuses. They started making episodes whose only focus is Ship Teasing, Finn and Flame Princess' drama, Jake's and Lady Rainicorn family, Princess Bubblegum and Marceline, especially the Fionna and Ice King fanfic book episodes that only exist to pander these fans, season 5 is full of this. All this teasing is great for the shippers but the older fans and kids not interested in romance lose.
- The co-creators of
*Avatar: The Last Airbender* referred to their chibi-short tribute to the show's Shipping phenomenon as "fanservice". With its obvious detachment from the main storyline and nicely animated comedic anime effects (all subsequent to the mid-season downcast ending of the finale), the short was almost unanimously well-received by both shippers and non-shippers alike. There was also an in-universe play near the show's end parodying the show itself.
- Due to popular demand during Seasons 8-12,
*Family Guy*'s former resident Creator's Pet Brian had been getting his just desserts and resident Designated Monkey Meg had been thrown a bone ("Dial Meg For Murder"). The writers have also decreased the Overly Long Cutaway Gags in favor of less derailed episode plots and lampshaded/deconstructed the character changes.
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*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*:
- In "The Last Roundup," there's a largely filler scene in which a perennial Ensemble Dark Horse background character with the Fan Nickname Derpy Hooves is actually canonically revealed to have that name, and gets several lines. This later got a controversial Author's Saving Throw which was partly due to this and partly due to Derpy's clumsiness, name and Simpleton Voice implying she was mentally handicapped.
- Season 4 is running with this trope after the massive fiasco that the finale of season 3 brought up with Twilight's promotion to Princess of Equestria. In the second part of the premiere, she's shown to be unable to fight off a couple of plant buds that spew knockout gas on her own, and from the third episode to the eighth, she only uses her wings twice in circumstances where it's easy to ignore, and her status isn't brought up to so much as ask for a taxi in a long line in Manehattan — not that any of the ponies even acknowledges her as a royal. The developers seem to be going to great lengths to deliberately avert self-insert tropes that the fandom has associated with alicorns.
- The 100th episode, which is titled "Slice of Life". Involves the main characters being busy dealing with a monster—the fact that the monster is part panda may be some kind of a Stealth Pun—while the episode itself focuses on characters that are considered very popular Ensemble Darkhorses in the fanbase, which includes characters like Derpy, Doctor Whooves, Vinyl Scratch, Octavia, and others. Furthermore, it canonizes several elements of Fanon, such as Steven Magnet's name, Vinyl and Octavia living together in Ponyville, and Derpy being a mailpony. It also includes Lyra and Bon-Bon, who are often shipped together in the fandom; the episode explains them as simply being best friends (not that the shippers care, of course)... however, it also had them bicker Like an Old Married Couple in a subtle reference to how often they're shipped.
- After the very controversial reception obtained by
*Ben 10: Alien Force* and *Ben 10: Ultimate Alien* for being different than the original series and Darker and Edgier, the writers went for this trope when working on *Ben 10: Omniverse*: the tone got Denser and Wackier, references to the original series were made to the point of Continuity Porn, most villains and characters who were important in AF and UA (like Kevin, Gwen or Ben's girlfriend Julie) got either Put on a Bus or Demoted to Extra, and flashback segments and episodes taking place in the original series era were included. Other than reversing the position of the fandom (many of the sequels fans hate it and many of the original series fans adore it), it didn't exactly change the situation.
-
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)* has been featuring an overload of references to the previous cartoons, films, and comics to keep older fans interested, especially when it comes to the 1987 series. This includes several characters from it or nods to the characters' 1987 versions (such as Splinter being the human Hamato Yoshi again or ||Baxter being mutated into a fly||), several plot homages to the 1987 series, and even ||a cameo appearance from the 1987 turtles at the end of one episode, with their original voice actors no less.||
-
*The Simpsons*, *Futurama* and *South Park* are all examples of shows that have become increasingly self-referential after a few seasons, with only their own fans able to get most of these references.
-
*The Legend of Korra*:
- The show has an automobile company that was founded by the descendant of the fan-favorite Cabbage Merchant from the earlier series. As the owner is arrested and dragged away in one episode, he even yells "No! Not my Cabbage Corp!" much like his predecessor's "My cabbages!" whenever his cart was destroyed. They're even voiced by the same actor.
- One of the most common criticisms of the earlier seasons is that they focus too much on a Love Dodecahedron at the expense of the much more interesting Myth Arc. After the first series spawned a notoriously large Shipping fanbase, the creators anticipated the same response for Korra and planned an elaborate romantic storyline to sate those fans. Unfortunately, it came off as a Romantic Plot Tumor to many.
- In the Grand Finale, ||Korra and Asami become the Official Couple||, which led to some of the fanbase accusing the creators of making it up at the last minute, with it coming off as pandering. The creators denied this, insisting that the whole thing had been planned for quite some time, and they do want to explore the relationship in the comics. Their reasoning seems questionable because neither ||Korra or Asami|| had any behaviour that would indicate they were ||falling for one another; with a lot of the romance in the show coming from the Korra/Asami/Mako Love Triangle, and the closest to
*any* kind of hint to their relationship was in Season 3, and many assumed it was just a Ship Tease and not much else.|| The creators also admitted that the cameos from ||Tahno and a number of other minor characters in the last episode's wedding|| *were* shameless pandering.
"There is the inevitable reaction, Mike and Bryan just caved in to the fans. Well, which fans? There were plenty of ||Makorra|| shippers out there, so if we had gone back on our decision and gotten those characters back together, would that have meant we caved in to those fans instead?"
- Due to the controversy that "You're Getting Old" had caused, Seasons 15 (B) and 16 of
*South Park* had been making references to earlier episodes, reappearances from old characters, deconstructed character changes and dialled down the topical humor.
- It's very unlikely almost anyone in the target demographic of
*Arthur* notices Maria, the popular, rabbit background character from Arthur's school. Despite this she has a Lower-Deck Episode named "Maria Speaks" all about her. It obviously panders to the Periphery Demographic.
- Luna Loud from
*The Loud House* is a character with a lot same-sex fan shipping, artwork, and fanfiction, comes the episode 'L is for Love' where is revealed that she has a crush on a girl named Sam, thus revealing she's bisexual. A lot of fans were pleased with this development.
- Season 2 of
*Ready Jet Go!* is this big time. Resident Ensemble Darkhorses Mitchell, Lillian, and Dr. Skelley get more screentime, ||Mindy finally turning five and going to space||, and loads of references to previous episodes. It's gotten to the point where you have to watch season 1 just to understand season 2. It also helps that the season had started production in August of 2016 and wrapped up sometime in late 2017, and by then the show had already garnered a fanbase.
-
*Kaeloo*:
- When season 2 aired, fans often voiced their discontent with episodes where Pretty was actually nice instead of being a complete jerkass, and said they liked seeing episodes with her as the antagonist. The writers apparently found out about this, so in Season 3, they made her an even bigger jerk than she already was.
- Season 3 also contains other things that the fans said they enjoyed, like Kaeloo/Mr. Cat shipping, Pretty/Stumpy shipping, ||Ursula|| finally making an appearance, character development, more episodes with Olaf in them, and Stumpy getting more Throw the Dog a Bone moments.
- Season 4 has a heavy focus on Kaeloo and Mr. Cat's romantic relationship, which is the most popular ship in the fandom.
- Intentionally averted with
*Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus*, with Jhonen Vasquez wanting to avoid exploiting fan nostalgia. As such, the film uses a Lighter and Softer art style compared to the original show, downplays a lot of the iconic imagery, and lacks several fan-favorite characters in favor of a smaller standalone story focusing on Zim and the Membrane family.
- According to this blog post, LiveJournal did this constantly, which prevented the site from becoming mainstream.
- Jeff Dunham has been becoming this, as his shows have become more rooted in shock humor and stereotypes (with increased emphasis on Breakout Character Achmed) in order to appeal more to the conservative Southern crowd (Dunham is a Texas native).
- Peter Kay gets accused of this by some other stand-ups. Richard Herring said his act consisted mostly of "remembering things that happened in the 1970s".
- Debian is currently planned to pander to the Vocal Minority that hates GNOME 3 by switching from GNOME to Xfce as the default desktop environment for Debian 8 "Jessie".
- Is the reason why NickRewind exists. During the tail end of the Turn of the Millennium and going through The New '10s, 90s nostalgia was reaching an all-time high, especially among "Generation Y" babies born in the late 80s and early 90s (i.e. the people who spent most of their childhoods in The '90s). Since Nickelodeon was seen as a major victim of Network Decay during this time, there were lots of petitions and requests for Nick to bring back their 90s era programming in some form, much like what Cartoon Network did by introducing Boomerang. At long last, the 90s kids got what they wished for, and the block (then known as
*The '90s Are All That*) premiered on Nickelodeon's "for teens and older audiences" channel TeenNick in 2011 as a late-night block that brought with it shows like the titular All That, Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, and many more. This block is also notable for finally re-airing the infamous "lost movie" CryBaby Lane (during Halloween no less) for the first time since it was banned more than 10 years prior.
- Fascism (particularly Benito Mussolini's brand of it) has been described as an ideology that was whatever the public wanted it to be, as long as it was set to marching music.
- This article argues that one of the reasons that 50% of Canadians still supported the direction that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government in 2015 (despite a terrible picture of employment) was because he gave his supporters what they wanted, (for instance, being tough on terrorists, lower taxes and cuts to social spending) at the expense of the rest of the Canadian population. (Pandering to the base is practiced by all democratically elected governments, it is how they win votes.)
- According to Simon and Martina of Eat Your Kimchi, base pandering is one of the big weaknesses of K-drama. The directors would change the relationships of the characters, based on what they see the fans demand. This would lead to 180 turns where characters that hated each other, would become lovers the next episode without any logical setup.
- This video by Midnight's Edge argues that the phenomenon of recent blockbuster movies that feature China in some way, include Chinese characters and/or involve Chinese companies in their production, obeys the growth of the PRC's market as a sizable source of revenue for Hollywood.
- These two articles about Jeff Goldblum's popularity in The New '10s both argue that his friendliness with fans, amused delight at their stranger tributes to him, and eager willingness to be just as eccentric as the characters he plays — if not more so — whenever he appears in public is a positive example of this.
-
*South Park*: In "Quest for Ratings", this happens with the boys' revamped news show. They mention adding panda bears and hot girls for the sake of appealing to kindergartners and 6th graders, even if they aren't relevant to their stories. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanderingToTheBase |
Palm on Cheek Pose - TV Tropes
A body language, specifically for face and hands. Often a sign of cuteness. It conveys many of the following things:
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*Shock and Awe* — open palms on both cheeks with mouth wide open.
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*Embarrassment* — covering the face with both their hands.
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*Annoyance* — when sitting down, pushing the fists or wrist on their cheeks to pout their lips.
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*Pleasure* — putting one open palm on their cheek when they just ate something good.
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*Excitement* — using both open palms to cover their cheeks.
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*Affection* — caressing another person's cheek(s) with either one or both hands to show affection. A more playful variant is to push their cheeks together and rub them to pout their lips. Usually done on kids.
Compare Face Palm, which deals with stupidity and humiliation (whether your own or other people's). See also Faux Paw, which is also often used for cuteness. See also "The Scream" Parody, the art world's most famous palm-on-cheek pose.
## Examples:
- Yuno Gasai from
*Future Diary* does this in the first episode while "declaring her utmost desire to protect her beloved Yukki." This example is infamous not for being cute, but for being *downright creepy.* In fact, her interpretation of the trope achieved Memetic Mutation on various Image Boards as the "Ecstatic Yandere Pose" or "Yandere Trance".
- Shiro from
*K*, often, especially when talking about the wonderful lunch his "wife" Kuroh made for him.
- Mio Akiyama of
*K-On!* has been known to do this. One example◊: when she's embarrassed when it's discovered that the idea of wearing high school outfits in the band were hers.
- In the climax of
*Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's*, Hayate cups ||the Will of the Book of Darkness'|| face as she declares herself her master and gives her a new name—Reinforce.
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*Non Non Biyori* has Ichijo Hotaru, who tends to put her hand on her cheek when pleased. she also does the other poses apropos to the situation as a Character Tic.
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*Kiniro Mosaic*: Karen does the "embarrassed two handed" version when Tsundere Aya confessed that she looks up to her.
- In the
*Mayo Chiki!* anime, Kanade does the "embarrassed two handed" version when someone praised her.
- Sena and Rika of
*Haganai* notably do the "excited" variation of the pose... when it comes to indulging on their fetish. Notably, Rika is particularly interested in Not-EVAs engaging in Orgasmic Combat...
- In
*The iDOLM@STER*, Makoto had her fangirls going gaga over her and doing variations of the "Excited" version of this trope during a live show in episode 15.
- In the
*Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan* anime, Yura does the "shocked" variation after seeing someone No-Sell a fear based attack.
- The anime for
*Fortune Arterial* has Iori getting various "excited" reactions from his fangirls upon going shirtless (and sparkling)
-
*Fairy Tail*. Juvia often does the excited version, if it involves Gray Fullbuster, that is.
- Pinoko Hazama from
*Black Jack* often does this when she is surprised that's it practically her signature gesture.
- In an obvious Shout-Out to Pinoko Hazama of
*Black Jack*, Mako from *Kill la Kill* makes the exact same face and gesture as Pinoko whenever something shocking happens.
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*JoJo's Bizarre Adventure*: Joseph Joestar frequently makes this pose when he does his Big "OMG!" (see the trope image on that page for an example). It's especially prevalent in *Stardust Crusaders*.
- Albedo also uses this pose to display her excitement at Momonga/Ains Ooal Gown touching her in the first episode of
*Overlord (2012)*.
- This is actually a plot point in chapter 81 of
*Kaguya-sama: Love Is War*, where Kaguya conditions herself -Pavlov style- to calm down whenever she places her right hand on her left cheek. Any time she's seen doing so afterwards is a sign to the reader that she's trying to keep her feelings for Shirogane in check. ||A bonus yonkoma released with the fifth season 2 Blu-ray (which adapted said chapter) reveals that she chose this pose because it subconsciously reminds her of being cuddled by her late mother.||
- In
*Yuri!!! on Ice*, Minako and Victor both do the one-handed version in an amused manner. In JJ's panic attack-induced vision, Yuri does this while smirking like a vampy villainess. He also does the two-handed version in embarrassment.
-
*Fullmetal Alchemist*, Mei Chang does the excited version when Alphonse says he's been looking for her. note : Specifically to know more about Alkahestry rather than any romantic motives.
- The famous painting
*The Scream* by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch uses this pose for the screaming figure on the bridge. It's meant to convey overwhelming and encompassing anxiety.
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*Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf*: In *Flying Island: The Sky Adventure* episode 21, Paddi places both his palms on his cheeks when he is shocked that Wolffy has finally found him.
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*Home Alone*:
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*Happy Heroes: The Stones*: Doctor H. does the one-hand-on-cheek "this is delicious!" pose ubiquitous in anime when he eats meat. ||Said meat is made by Sweet S., who is usually a bad chef but learned to put her cooking skills back in order.||
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*Turning Red*: Some of the movie posters have Mei in this pose showing shock, embarrassment or excitement.
- In the
*Discworld* novel *Unseen Academicals*, Pepe claps his hands to his cheeks in surprise and delight when he first sees Juliet modelling, as part of his Always Camp fashionista persona.
- In the first
*Dragonriders of Pern* novel, Lessa puts both hands to her cheeks in astonishment when she sees her own reflection for the first time in at least a decade.
-
*The Brady Bunch*: When Marcia gets a surprise visit from Desi Arnaz Jr., he kisses her on the cheek. After he leaves, she puts her hand over her cheek and says, "I'm never washing this cheek again." Later in the same episode parodied by her mother: When Mike kisses Carol on the cheek, she puts *her* hand to her cheek and says, "I'm never washing this cheek again!"
- The Owner from
*Kamen Rider Den-O* does this whenever something upsetting happens.
-
*Loki*: He Who Remains *thoroughly* enjoys the Big Damn Kiss between Loki and Sylvie, propping himself up in this pose while leaning over and Eating the Eye Candy. He's *way* more interested in their kiss (and his apple) than what they actually came there for, which was to...well, to kill him.
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*Square One TV*: In the Mathnet story "The Calpurnian Kugel Caper", Benny cups his face in mock shock when Pat shows him the new computerized "Wheel of Jeopardy!" board game. "Golly jeepers, what *will* those computer geniuses think of next?"
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*Star Trek: Picard*: In "Broken Pieces", Enoch performs this gesture after Raffi kisses him on the forehead. He's just so delighted and amazed that someone likes him enough to display affection towards him in this fashion.
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*Tamagotchi*: One piece of stock artwork depicts Himespetchi with both her wrists on her cheeks as she gives her signature "heart-shaped eyes" face. She strikes poses like this in the anime as well, such as in episode 120 when she notices her crush Mametchi is sleeping in the bed next to hers.
- Freddie Wong homages Kevin's famous expression in his parody
*Home, Alone* when his last anti-robber trap ||sets off a shotgun||.
- Many Screamer Pranks, but most especially "What's Wrong?", contain a closeup of a screaming woman doing this pose with her pinky fingers raised. It's actually edited from the poster of a 2001 film titled
*Maniacts*.
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*Ducktales 2017*: Affection version — ||upon returning to Earth and seeing her sons for the first time after missing the first decade of their lives, Della Duck cups Dewey's face in her hands after he's the first of the triplets to run up and hug her; later in the same episode, and in the season finale, she does the same with Louie during some emotional moments.||
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*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*: In "Applebuck Season", Rainbow Dash puts her hooves on her cheeks as she gushes about how "awesome" the stunt she's going to perform with Applejack will be, smiling adorably all the while. It's an iconic enough pose that it's referenced a few times later in the series, including by her human counterpart in *My Little Pony: Equestria Girls*.
- On
*The Perils of Penelope Pitstop*, Clyde assumes this pose, rather than a Face Palm, when Dum Dum does something especially stupid, such as having to figure out how to answer a ringing telephone.
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*Punky Brewster*: A publicity drawing of Punky has her doing this, looking at us smiling. A "now we return to" bumper of the show had this with Punky winking to us. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PalmOnCheekPose |
Pale Females, Dark Males - TV Tropes
In some works, female animals, aliens, monsters and fantastical/mythical creatures tend to have lighter fur, feathers, scales, or skin on their bodies than male animals, aliens, monsters, and fantastical/mythical creatures.
This trope may have its roots in the fact that, on average, human women of a given ancestry have a lighter skin tone than men of the same ancestry and that there is a sexual preference for paleness in women and darkness in men in many cultures throughout the world. To the limited extent that this trope is expected of real-life humans, it's actually an evolutionary adaptation, because darker skin minimizes the risk of skin cancer, but women require large amounts of vitamin D during pregnancy to avoid birth defects, so the risk of skin cancer is outweighed by this need. Also, men tended to work outside more often than women and tan.
This is also true of many other species, especially avians. Males tend to have darker, flashier colors, while females are more drab—peacocks are an especially dramatic example. Some species invert this, notably raptors, where the females are larger, darker, and have more ostentatious markings.
This trope is Older Than Dirt going way, way back in art history. Often the way to discern gender in ancient paintings was by the skin tone. Also, in a lot of anime and manga, the skin color difference between the sexes will be exaggerated.
To invert this, some will go further in the opposite direction than played-straight examples go in the original, such as giving a pale guy a dark-skinned girlfriend, etc...
Obviously a case of Color-Coded for Your Convenience and Secondary Sexual Characteristics, serving an identification function similar to Tertiary Sexual Characteristics. Often overlaps with Messy Male, Fancy Female. Bicolor Cows, Solid Color Bulls is a subtrope involving cattle. The human equivalent is Light Girl, Dark Boy. Not to be confused with Light Feminine and Dark Feminine.
## Animal (Real or Fictional Species) Examples
- In both
*Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin* anime series, the girl Akitas are lighter tans while the boys are silver and flat brown.
- It's pretty much impossible to find a couple in
*One Piece* where the boyfriend is paler than their girlfriend.
- Inverted with Luna (a female black cat) and Artemis (a male white cat) from
*Sailor Moon*.
- Female animals in the
*Ice Age* movies tend to have lighter colored fur than the male animals. Inverted with Scrat and Scratte, however, as he is light grey whereas she is dark red.
- In
*The Jungle Book (1967)*, both the Elephants and wolves have males that are coloured darker than the females.
- Faline the female fawn has lighter colored fur than Bambi and Ronno, the two male fawns.
-
*The Lion King*:
- Nearly all the lionesses are lighter compared to the the male lions. Inverted with Sarabi, who is darker than Mufasa.
- Also mostly inverted with Kiara, who has the same coloring as her father Simba. She IS, however, significantly lighter than her love interest Kovu.
- Even Timon's mom from
*The Lion King 1 ½* is a peach-y tan color compared to the male meerkat shades of tawny.
- Aleu from
*Balto II: Wolf Quest* has lighter fur than her father Balto; both are wolf/dog hybrids.
- The female mouse, Bianca, from
*The Rescuers* is lighter than the male mouse, Bernard. In *The Rescuers Down Under*, Marahute the mother eagle's feather color is a softer golden brown than the feather belonging to the fallen father (possibly justified, since the male had been dead for quite a while, and the feathers might have become dirtier). The same goes for some of the reptiles in both movies, lighter green girls darker green or brown green guys.
-
*Rio* does it with Blu (the male Spix's Macaw) and Jewel (the female Spix's Macaw). This seems to be subverted in the sequel, however. Jewel's father is revealed to have the same pale coloring as her, so it might just be hereditary.
-
*The Land Before Time* has several species of dinosaurs with lighter females. The triceratops do it best, Cera is cream orange while her dad is charcoal. This may actually be due to age instead of gender, since there is a blink and you'll miss a shot of Cera's mother, whose coloring is identical to her dad's.
- The animals in the older
*The Chronicles of Narnia* cartoon had lighter girls than males. Beavers are one example of this.
- Vixey from
*The Fox and the Hound* for some reason actually does not have "stockings/points" on her feet like Tod, a male fox. Vixey is a light colored, peachy orange whereas Tod is a dark shade of orange.
- Coral (Marlin's late wife and Nemo's would-been mother) has lighter orange scales than that of Marlin, as seen at the very beginning of
*Finding Nemo*.
- The female moose from
*Brother Bear 2*, Anda and Kata, are a much lighter shade of brown than those of Rutt and Tuke, a pair of male moose. Also, at the end of the film, ||Nita (Kenai's girlfriend), is actually given lighter-colored fur after being turned into a bear herself so that she can be with Kenai (whom by the end of the first film, had actually decided to stay a bear) forever.||
- The gorillas in
*Tarzan*: Kerchak is black, Kala is light brown, and Terk (who is female) is bluish-grey.
- In
*The Princess and the Frog*, Tiana and Naveen play this trope straight in their frog forms, even though they invert it in human forms (but that's because they are of different race).
-
*Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole* follows this trope at the expense of accuracy by having a whiter-than normal female snowy owl. It also makes the females owls smaller than the males, when in real life the females are bigger.
- Lulubelle the female bear from the "Bongo" segment of
*Fun and Fancy Free* is lighter than both the antagonist male bear, Lumpjaw, and the titular male bear of the segment.
- In
*Pocahontas*:
- "Just Around the Riverbend" depicts a dark brown male otter and a lighter brown female otter.
- Inverted with the two hawks that appear near the end of the song "Colors of the Wind" where the male hawk is colored light brown, while the female is colored dark gray.
- Inverted by the title felines in
*Black Cat, White Cat*. As we learn when we see them "coupling" near the end of the film, the black cat is female, the white cat is male.
- The raptors in
*Jurassic Park III* — the female is mostly pale grey with some darker markings, while the males are mostly a dark purplish colour.
- A 1959 picture book titled
*The Rabbits' Wedding* had a black male rabbit getting married to a white female rabbit. Because of this, some "concerned citizens" in Alabama thought the book was an allegorical promotion of interracial marriage, causing a censorship controversy.
-
*Pete The Cat*: Pete (a male black cat) and Callie (a female white cat).
-
*Warrior Cats*:
- Firestar is a dark orange ginger cat while his mate Sandstorm is a pale ginger. And the differences don't end only in fur color but eye color too; Firestar has darker green eyes while Sandstorm has lighter ones.
- Graystripe is a dark grey while Silverstream is silver and white. His second mate, Millie, is a very light shade of gray.
-
*Survivor Dogs*:
- Moon and Mickey are both (unrelated) Border Collies within the same pack. Moon is predominantly white, while Mickey is predominantly black.
- Storm and her brother Fang are both brown Dobermans, but Fang is a dark brown while Storm is chocolate.
- Inverted and justified in the
*Gandalara Cycle* with the sha'um. The tomswho sometimes venture out into the desert to become Bond Creaturesare shades of pale gray and tan; their sisterswho ||until late in the series|| have never left their secluded and far cooler valleyare brindled and darker.
-
*Child of the Wolves*: The alphas of the wolf pack are the all-white Snowdrift and her all-black mate Ebony.
- In
*Starfinder*, the females of a species of little alien baboon-dogs called eohis are stated to typically be some shade of light brown. Their male counterparts are more often black or dark gray.
- In
*Kingsley's Adventure*, the rabbit queen is skin tone while the rabbit king and the male guards are brown.
- In the
*Crash Bandicoot* series, there is Coco, who is peachy whereas Crash is orange and Crunch is brown. The other girl bandicoots are on the lighter side too.
-
*Star Fox Adventures* has lighter female dinosaurs and pterosaurs, most notably the *Cloud Runners* (some sort of pteranodon). Snowhorns are some sort of mammoth in which the females are lighter than the males. Krystal is lighter (blue) too but that changes in *Star Fox: Assault*.
-
*Sonic The Hedgehog* characters tend to fall under this. The male characters tend to be darker or bolder colors such as blue, red, and black, whilst female characters tend to be lighter pastel colors such as pink, lilac, or cream. However, this is sometimes inverted; as there are also males with colors such as yellow, white, and light grey; and females with colors such as orange-brown and (dark) violet.
-
*Pokémon*:
- Inverted by Hippopotas and its evolved form Hippowdon. In the former's case, the darkest and lightest of its colors are inverted between the two genders, but the female is the one where the darker color takes the prominent part. After evolving, its body is just one color rather than the camouflage pattern it had before evolving: a sandy brown for the males and a dark gray for the females.
- Played straight with Meowstic. Females are predominantly white and males are predominantly dark blue.
-
*Red Dead Redemption II*: Inverted by the white tailed deer as the does have darker and/or fuller pelage and true bucks have lighter, brighter, more contrasted orange and white fur or pale fur.
-
*Przygody Reksia* inverts this with the dogs. Reksio is a piebald dog with a few light brown patches, while his girlfriend Kari Mata is brown with darker ears. Burektor, another male dog, is orange-brown.
-
*Cream Heroes* has Lulu, a dark brown male cat and Lala, a white female cat. The two are known to get up to mischief together. This can also apply to Lulu and Chuchu as she is also the lighter of the two, albeit she is a calico. The two are the channel's Official Couple.
- Inverted in
*Dinosaur Train* with the two *Cryolophosaurus*; the male King's markings are paler than the female Crystal's.
- The general rule of thumb in
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic* is that males will usually have darker or more subdued in coat and mane colors and combinations (such as Night Light, Time Turner, or Thunderlane), while females will be brighter or have more contrasting combinations (Daisy, Rainbow Dash, or Applebloom). There are a few inversions (yellow Braeburn to orange Applejack, white Shining Armor to pink Princess Cadance, bright yellow Cheese Sandwich to Pinkie Pie, yellow Carrot Cake to blue Cup Cake), but this appears to be more the norm.
- In
*Redwall* the animated series, males are brown, dark red or shades of silver while females are peach-tan.
- In
*Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer* (the stop animation one), Claurice the doe has lighter fur than Rudolph the male reindeer.
- Inverted with Mac and Tosh's (the Goofy Gophers from
*Looney Tunes*) aunt from *The Looney Tunes Show*; her base fur color is brown, while their base fur color is tan.
- Clarice the female chipmunk has lighter colored fur than Chip 'n Dale the two male chipmunks.
- Inverted in
*The Amazing World of Gumball*. Anais Watterson the female bunny is a darker shade of pink than her father Richard.
- Inverted in
*The Flintstones*. Fred's adopted pet lion is yellow with an orange mane, while his Love Interest is a tan lioness with pink hair.
-
*Animaniacs*: Inverted with the sparrows in the episode, "West Side Pigeons." The female sparrows, including Carloota, have darker brown feathers than the male sparrows.
- Averted in
*Taz-Mania* where Taz's dad and brother have light golden fur while his mom and sister have darker reddish-brown fur, although Taz himself is darker than all the rest of the family.
- Appears in
*Alvin and the Chipmunks* with the chipmunk cast. Alvin, Simon, Theodore, Uncle Harry, and the nameless wild chipmunk are all noticeably a few shades darker than Brittany, Jeanette, Eleanor, and Benny.
- Horses have subtle variation of this. Stallions tend to have a bit more intense and deeper colors than mares. If a stallion is gelded, his coat eventually turns a little duller in color.
- The most macho lions have the darkest manes.
- Often, female mammals will appear lighter because they produce less sebum (skin oil) than males, which means their coats stay cleaner.
- Common in butterflies. The female is either similar but less showy (either browner or grayer), or lighter all over.
- Inverted with snowy owls as only males get whiter with each molt and females stay much darker and much more speckled.
- The females of most birds will often tend to have more muted colors than the males. Some are extremely obvious, such as cardinals, where the male is bright red, while the female is tan with red highlights. Others, such as blue jays, are less obvious. Ostriches play this straight without being flamboyantly colored. The males have mostly black feathers, the females have brown.
- Inverted with many seabirds and birds-of-prey however, where the females are actually darker than the males.
- Most grizzly/polar bear hybrids have a grizzly bear father and a polar bear mother.
- Likewise, most leopard/lion and jaguar/lion hybrids have a leopard or jaguar father and a lioness mother, because they are closer in size. The far larger male lions rarely see the much smaller leopard and jaguar females as potential mates. An exaggerated version of the trope happened in Toronto in 2006 when a black jaguar and a lioness mated unexpectedly and (now inverting the trope) produced a black female cub and a spotted male cub.
- The banteng, a species of cattle native to East Asia, is largely sexually homomorphic, but for one difference: the females are a reddish brown, and the males are a dark black color.
- The extinct aurochs was the same in this regard. Males were black with a reddish stripe on the back, females were all red.
- In ancient Minoan artwork, men are usually painted reddish-brown, while women are white or ivory. Also in Attic Greek vase painting. One explanation was that women—at least upper class women—spent less time outdoors and tended to wear mantles and veils when they did go out, and thus didn't get suntans.
- In several species of gibbons, males have black fur while females (and juveniles) have blonde fur. Other than this, male and female gibbons tend to look nearly identical, especially in comparison to the pronounced sexual dimorphism of most other ape species.
## Alien and Monster Examples
-
*DC Comics* does this a lot with aliens (and possibly monsters if given a gender). Martian Manhunter is a darker green than Miss Martian in the cartoon *Young Justice* but it may vary in the comics.
- In the
*Discworld*, Angua the werewolf is explicitly described as being a sleek golden-haired wolf in her animal form, who is often mistaken for a large Alsatian or labrador-type dog. Werewolves previously introduced in the canon have conformed to the dark, shaggy and visually sinister archetype. Averted with her brother Wolfgang in *The Fifth Elephant*, who is as blond as she is, being A Nazi by Any Other Name.
- In
*Destined to Lead*, a female fea's stripes are always lighter than her base fur colour while a male's stripes are always darker.
-
*Farscape* has the Nebari, a species of Rubber-Forehead Aliens whose men all have black hair and women white hair, although they all have the same shade of blue-grey skin.
-
*Pokémon*
- Inverted with Hippopotas and Hippowdon where the female is darker.
- Played straight with Doduo and Dodrio who have lighter necks when they are female.
- Some of the fourth generation Pokémon have this as a gender difference.
- The Ralts line, where the male-only Gallade has darker green hair than the more feminine-but both gendered Kirlia and Gardevoir (Ralts averts this by having a gender-neutral appearance).
- Meowstic, where males are primarily dark blue but have white accents while females are white with dark blue accents.
- The Nidoran lines: males are purple, females are light blue and tan.
- In
*Lilo & Stitch: The Series*, Stitch is blue whereas Angel is pink with a white dash on her chest.
- In
*Ben 10*, the Chimera Sui Genesis (Vilgax's species) has lighter green females. It also applies to the Tetramand female who is a pastel red versus Ben's/Fourarms' brick-red. Most of the *Ben 10* species do this (pastel and lighter girls then robust and darker guys) if the female is ever seen.
## Deity and Fantastical and Mythical Creature Examples
- In the "Pastoral Symphony" segment of
*Fantasia*, the male Pegasus is mostly black and dark purple, while his mate is white with a very pale purple or blue mane. (Their offspring are more variable, but the darkest one, "Peter," is also male.)
- In
*The Little Mermaid (1989)*, the girl mermaids have lighter tails and skin than the mermen.
- In
*How to Train Your Dragon* franchise, Toothless is the only dragon of his breed — a Night Fury — to ever be officially seen, distinct in that he is an all-black dragon perfect for camouflaging at night and other dark areas. The closest we ever see to a female is the Light Fury in *How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World*, who looks similar to Toothless but with blue eyes, softer features and is completely white. Whether all Light Furies are what female Night Furies are or if they are a similar, but ultimately distinct species of dragon is never made absolutely clear. The fact that their offspring the NightLights are bicolor points to the later, while Grimmel immediately acknowledging her as female the moment he saw her hints at the former. ||Word of God confirms that they're separate but similar kinds of dragon.||
-
*Night World* features a rare inversion. Shapeshifter Keller's animal form is a melanistic leopard or panther, whilst her soulmate ||Galen|| is a more typically-colored golden leopard.
-
*Zoo Tycoon* features the unicorn, which can only be unlocked by naming an exhibit Xanadu. The females are the usual white seen in unicorns, while the males are black with orange manes and hooves. When bred, they produce foals that have black-and-white zebra stripes.
-
*Danny Phantom*: The dragon siblings. In their dragon forms, Dora the Dragon Goast (the sister) is light blue, and her older brother, Prince Aragon, is black. The dragons have a human-ghost form too, but they don't count as examples in that form.
- Inverted in
*The Dragon Prince* with the parents of the title character. King Avizandum is a light cyan color (which he would pass on to his son) while his mate, Queen Zubeia, is a much darker blue, approaching black.
## Other Examples
- Aztec art and books often portrayed the males as burnt-orange and the females as pale yellow.
- The Ancient Minoans and Mycenaeans did this as well — the males are painted a dark brown, while the female are painted as white (literally white, not a light skin tone). In his illustrated version of
*The Legend of Odysseus*, Peter Connolly depicts gods and goddesses in this fashion, as contemporary images of idealised beauty.
- Some of the later Greek black-figure pottery makers used black and white to distinguish male and female figures. And there's the Homeric epithet "white-armed," indicating a high-class woman who doesn't have to work outdoors.
- Speaking of ancient cultures, this was one of many rules of ancient Egyptian paintings. Men were always painted with a dark reddish pigment and women with a yellowish paint.
- Another example of ancient Egyptian art that follows this trope is two sculptures from ca. 2580 BCE, depicting prince Rahotep and his wife, Nofret. Notably, the limestone sculpture of Rahotep is painted a tan, almost orange hue, while Nofret is much paler, with eggshell white skin.
-
*Power Rangers* and *Super Sentai*: Blue Rangers are usually male and wear a deep shade of blue. When things are switched up on occasion and a team has a girl as the Blue Ranger, she wears a lighter shade of blue instead.
- Multiple Kamen Riders have female counterparts (in terms of looks or fighting style) who's suits possess a lighter shade than their male counterparts. Examples include:
-
*Kamen Rider Ryuki*: The white and gold Kamen Rider Femme against the silver and dark blue Kamen Rider Knight. Both are swordfighters using a similar style.
-
*Kamen Rider Decade* introduces the white and mauve Kamen Rider Kivala, a female version of the red and black Kamen Rider Kiva.
- The English folk song "Sweet Polly Oliver" (whence cometh the trope of the same name) describes a woman disguising herself as a man and enlisting in the army to keep an eye on her beau while he's off to war. One of the things she does to make herself convincing is darken her skin.
- In the WWE, the majority of their championship belts are made of gold,◊ or, in the case of the Tag Team Championships, copper or bronze.◊ The one major exception is the Divas Championship, which is pink and silver.◊
- Almost universally the case in visual novels. The fair maidens you're supposed to court are almost always literally fair, unless they're South Asian, Native American or black, or something else. The general practice is to make the female characters' complexion lighter and more pinkish, while the males' darker, more yellowish or brownish. The only exceptions are probably white Europeans, who may be portrayed as equally light-skinned regardless of sex.
- In
*Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth*, Zen has a noticeably darker skintone than Rei.
- Inverted in
*Buster Buddies*, where Shiela, the only female character, has darker skin than Captain Hog and Don Tacos.
- When it comes to ninjas despite her outfit being more practical than the job Ibuki's ninja clothes are of a light brown while Guy's is of a darker red. In
*V* Ibuki's new default outfit is much lighter than Zeku's.
- Inverted for the Mithra in Final Fantasy XI, where all of the females have tanned skin bordering on orange, wwhile the only Mithra man seen in the game has paler skin. Justified in that it's the females who go out more to work, hunt, fight, and adventure while the males are protected, raise children, and normally stay in their home country.
- In
*Superman: The Animated Series*, most of the male Caucasian characters are noticeably darker-skinned◊ than the female ones. This, along with the fact that he has full lips and is frequently in shadow, helped lead to the common misconception that the show's version of Lex Luthor was African-American. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaleFemalesDarkMales |
Panacea - TV Tropes
**Elsbeth:**
Here, Kat, this should slow the venom long enough for your healing to beat it.
**Katrina:**
Hu... don't you need to know what toxin...
**Elsbeth:**
It's a magic, broad-spectrum antidote, don't worry about it.
The panacea, named for a Greek goddess of healing, is a mythical substance able to cure any illness or poison and even prolong one's life. This basic form of wish-fulfillment, a medicine that instantly fixes everything, is an old idea and takes many forms in various mythologies and subsequent fiction.
The strength of its effect varies. A weak panacea will work on natural diseases but might be useless against certain ailments, especially if they are of a magical or evil nature. It might elongate one's lifespan, but must be taken regularly to do so and it may not work forever. A strong panacea, on the other hand, is proof against anything you can think of and might well bestow endless life with one sip, making its user The Ageless.
It takes many forms as well. Classically it's a liquid, but common substances also include mystical fruits, herbs, flowers, or the body part of some mythical creature. It might even be some kind of jewel.
This is not the same as a Healing Potion, though there is a lot of overlap, especially since both are most often liquids. The distinction is that the Healing Potion is geared towards fixing physical injuries rather than invisible and silent ailments. Nevertheless, many cases of one will work as the other, though this is not always so.
A Sister Trope to Healing Potion (restoring a Life Meter), Mana Potion (restoring a Mana Meter).
Compare Healing Spring, Immortality Inducer, Philosopher's Stone, Spice Rack Panacea (an advertising trope).
## Examples:
-
*Dr. STONE*: The process of un-petrifying an individual can heal terminal injuries they had prior to petrifaction, including a broken neck in the case of Senku and being full-on brain death in the case of Tsukasa's little sister Mirai.
- Invoked in
*Jin*, when the pre-Meiji era doctors at Medical Institute think that penicillin is a panacea. As we know today, it's not.
-
*JoJo's Bizarre Adventure*:
- In
*Diamond is Unbreakable*, Antonio Trussardi's Stand, Pearl Jam, lets him cook up meals that cure illness. However, eating his food makes you heal in some unfortunate ways, like throwing up your intestines, after that you are 150% as healthy. One drawback is that any *individual* meal Pearl Jam makes is not a "cure-all", it takes a specific recipe to cure one specific malady.
-
*JoJolion* has a much darker version of the Panacea in the form of the Locacaca, a mystical fruit capable of healing pretty much anything... but also turns another part of the body to stone, and while it seems to work on the basis of Equivalent Exchange it has an odd sense of priority, such as healing minor injuries by turning brain tissue to stone. A concentrated, experimental liquid version called Locacaca 6251 seems to be more potent and has less adverse side-effects, petrifying patches of skin rather than entire limbs, but the risk is still there, and the creation and distribution of the drug itself is controlled by a secret organization made up of Rock Humans.
-
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi*: One exists in the Magical World, in the form of a potion that can cure any disease if taken. As one might expect however, it is rare and *incredibly* expensive. When three of the girls purchase just one dose of it to cure a life-threatening disease, the price is such that all three have to sell themselves into slavery to pay for it. Also, it's made from the powdered horns of an intelligent magical being.
-
*One Piece*: Chopper's dream is to become a living Panacea, a doctor capable of curing any illness.
-
*Batman* villain Ra's al Ghul uses a pool of liquid called the Lazarus Pit to prolong his lifespan and reverse aging. He's over 600 years old because of this, but the effects no longer last as long as they once did and Ra's is afraid the pits will soon stop working on him altogether.
- In
*Creature Tech*, the staff at RTI realize they're dealing with the *real* Shroud of Turin when they realize the blood on the shroud can heal any wound and raise the dead.
- Doctor Strange has a miniseries where, when Wong comes down with cancer, he fights and defeats an extradimensional being to get its elixir that can cure any ailment. Once he gets it, another problem comes up in a cabal of pharmaceutical companies that conspire to suppress magical solutions in medicine.
- Subverted in the first
*Squadron Supreme* miniseries. Science Hero Tom Thumb knows that a "panacea potion" exists in the future one of the team's foes comes from, so when a person important to him gets a fatal illness, he goes there to obtain it. Turns out that in the future, people are so healthy that they only need penicillin and a few vitamin supplements to beat any illness...
-
*Superman*: In Pre-Crisis comics, the horns of a Kryptonian beast known as Rondor could heal any sickness. In *The Plague of the Antibiotic Man*, Superman uses Nam-Ek, a Kryptonian whose immortality-seeking experiments turned him into a Rondor-like monster, to cure a plague, since his body produces antibodies which can cure anything.
-
*Wonder Woman*:
- The Amazons developed the healing purple ray during their many years of immortality spent inventing things. The Ray's limitations tend to depend on the writer but it can perfectly heal damage modern medicine can't do anything for and during the silver age was used to bring dead characters back to life. They refuse to share the tech with the world at large because it can very easily be reconfigured into an incredibly dangerous weapon and they don't trust other countries not to do so.
- In
*Wonder Woman (1987)*, Diana uses Astral Projection to get a piece of golden fleece to be used to heal burn wounds on a victim whose doctor says he cannot be saved. After the fleece basically erases the man's wounds the doctor takes it and runs around healing all the children in the burn unit before the fleece gets used up and dissipates and Wondy indicates its healing properties cover quite a bit more than burn injuries.
- In
*The Brown Bear of the Green Glen*, the waters of the Green Isle are able to heal blindness and limp limbs.
-
*The Death of Koschei the Deathless*: When Prince Ivan is cut into pieces by Koschei, his brothers-in-law use Dead Water to piece his body back together, and Living Water to bring him back to life.
Afterwards they all three met, broke open the barrel, took out the remains of Prince Ivan, washed them, and put them together in fitting order. The Raven sprinkled them with the Water of Deaththe pieces joined together, the body became whole. The Falcon sprinkled it with the Water of LifePrince Ivan shuddered, stood up, and said:
"Ah! what a time I've been sleeping!"
"You'd have gone on sleeping a good deal longer, if it hadn't been for us," replied his brothers-in-law.
- In
*Godfather Death*, Death shows his godson a magic herb that can cure all diseases so long as the sufferer is not destined to die. The godson becomes a physician who heals all his patients with the magic herb, except those who Death claims for himself.
- In Franz Xaver von Schönwerth
*King Goldenlocks*, the golden apples of the Paradise and the snake's milk are the only known cures for the king's different illnesses.
- In
*Nine Bags Of Gold*, Marie is given by her elven friends a medicine which can cure a sickness that gets every doctor in the kingdom stumped.
- In Asbjørnsen and Moe's
*The Old Dame and her Hen*, the troll's ointment can heal wounds -and presumably rotting- and bring living beings back to life.
- In
*Prince Ivan, the Witch Baby, and the Little Sister of the Sun*, the Sun's sister gives Prince Ivan two youth-giving apples.
So at last he persuaded her, and she let him go away to find out about his home. But first she provided him for the journey with a brush, a comb, and two youth-giving apples. However old any one might be, let him eat one of these apples, he would grow young again in an instant.
-
*The Three Snake Leaves*: The titular leaves are used to bring any living being back from the dead.
After a time a second snake crept out of the hole, and when it saw the other lying dead and cut in pieces, it went back, but soon came again with three green leaves in its mouth. Then it took the three pieces of the snake, laid them together, as they ought to go, and placed one of the leaves on each wound. Immediately the severed parts joined themselves together, the snake moved, and became alive again, and both of them hastened away together.
-
*Hearts of Ice*: Cologne keeps a couple of Shards of the Apple, pieces of fruit of the first apple tree which have incredible healing properties. Unfortunately they are so incredibly old than they have lost most of their potency.
The Shards were, of course, immeasurably old, remarkably preserved pieces of fruit from the very first apple tree in the world. Legend had it that the tree grew far to the north-east of Qinghai province, in the Heilongjiang region, in ancient times. Known to have fantastic healing properties, the fruit from that tree cured the worst diseases and injuries, from blindness, to strange and deadly wasting illnesses, to lost limbs...
-
*Nutricula*: One of the powers of Izuku is Antibiotic Blood: he can cure illness by ingesting his blood. Izuku can just activate it and it'll work immediately on him.
- Rapunzel's hair in
*Tangled*, as well as the flower that she got her magic from.
- The father in
*My Big Fat Greek Wedding* pulls out Windex anytime someone has an ailment, and in the film, it seems to cure everything from poison ivy to pimples.
-
*Ravenous* portrays the Wendigo myth as being true, and eating the flesh of another human grants a wide range of benefits, including a Healing Factor which allows someone to recover from gunshots, stab wounds, or messily broken bones without so much as a scar. Diseases don't fare any better, as the film's Big Bad was on death's door due to tuberculosis before he first turned to cannibalism, and within months he was fully cured and hasn't ever been sick since. Too bad all of this comes with the side effect of an unstoppable Horror Hunger.
-
*Robot Monster*: An attempt at creating a serum to cure all diseases is crucial to the backstory, and is the reason the main characters survived the invasion up to this point; not only did it work, it also turned out to have the unintended side effect of making a person immune to the calcination beam that wiped out the rest of humanity.
-
*Star Wars*: Bacta is a liquid medicine used to regenerate people from severe injuries. In *The Empire Strikes Back*, Luke Skywalker is immersed in a bacta tank to recover from hypothermia and being mauled by a wampa during a misadventure at the start of the film. In *The Mandalorian*, IG-11 uses a bacta spray to heal Din Djarin of a head injury sustained in an explosion. In the Expanded Universe, bacta has also been used to treat diseases.
- In
*Lone Wolf*, Oede Herb is the most powerful Healing Herb of the world, and can cure just about any disease and many poisons. It's also the rarest and most expensive.
- In
*Sorcery!*, the *Fighting Fantasy* 4-issue spinoff, there are chances of the player catching diseases and curses during their adventure. When this happens, they can pray to their Patron Goddess, Libra, to erase all those diseases for them. It's also possible to obtain a potion from Fenestra the Elf that remove diseases instantly.
- In
*The Andromeda Strain*, when a rubber seal fails and one of the main characters is exposed to the virus, he volunteers to take Kalocin, a top-secret antibiotic that destroys all unicellular life — bacteria, fungi, viruses, you name it — and even causes remission in cancer. One of the other scientists absolutely refuses to allow it. An expository paragraph then explains that when tested on humans, the drug wiped out all the symbiotic microorganisms living inside and on them; when the doses stopped, harmful microbes moved into the now-empty biological niches and killed all the subjects in various grotesque ways within six hours.
- In
*The Angel of Khan el-Khalili*, Aliaa obtains ||a bezoar|| from the self-proclaimed angel Seeker with the promise that it will heal her mortally wounded sister Aisha (who rushed into a burning building to rescue Aliaa and their coworkers). Seeker assures that on ingestion it will swiftly and fully heal all of Aisha's ailments, including her burns and smoke-damaged lungs.
- The Grand Panacea from
*Baccano!*. Its perfect form also grants immunity to aging.
-
*Belgariad*: When asked by Adara to magically make a rosebush bloom, Garion refuses because it'd hurt the plant and instead creates a new flower from some twigs. It becomes known a small, lop-sided and unimpressive species called Adara's Rose until *The Malloreon* reveals it to be a sovereign specific — capable of curing any poison, even one like thalot, which has no known antidote and resists magical intervention. Polgara had previously investigated the flower for any sign of usefulness but found nothing; it turns out that the fragrance has to be inhaled for it to work, something she didn't realise was possible until advised by Sadi and Cyradis. While Belgarath is transforming Zakath's bedroom to fill it with blooms that will fend off the thalot poisoning, Garion observes that — even in those who are fully fit and well like him — the fragrance instantly makes him more relaxed, refreshed and revitalised than he's felt for months.
- In
*Bridge of Birds*, when the children of Number Ten Ox's village fall deathly ill from chewing poisoned leaves, Ten Ox and the sage Li Kao go on a quest to find a powerful ginseng root that can cure any disease. Unfortunately, said ginseng root has been broken up into pieces and stored in the extremely well-hidden and guarded treasure vaults of the villainous Duke of Ch'in, and only the *entire* root will be enough to cure the children.
- In the first (plotwise) book in
*The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew*, the apples of a particular tree in a special garden have the power to cure disease. The scenario was written to reference the garden of Eden, and the fruit enfolded a Secret Test of Character: after taking one, Diggory is told that had he eaten it himself, or stolen it for his terminally sick mother, he'd have ultimately regretted it; it doesn't just cure disease, it makes one *unable to die even if one wants to* - they have given up any possibility of Heaven in favor of unending life on Earth. The White Witch did exactly that, and it took Aslan's personal touch to end her. But because he resisted temptation, he is given an apple from the tree which grew from the one he retrieved, which fully restores his mother and permits her to die peacefully decades later.
-
*Codex Alera* has the mushroom called the Blessing of Night, which grows in only one place and can heal injuries, poisoning and ||also infertility||.
- In
*The Elenium*, The High Queen has been administered a poison believed to have no remedy, and her champion must find an object of power to cure her. As it happens, none will suffice but the Bhelliom, a Cosmic Keystone of practically unlimited power. Although the story initially serves up the Bhelliom as a cure to this specific predicament, it quickly becomes a greater MacGuffin by dint of the desire of the Big Bad to possess it by any means. ||While it does cure the poisoning and restore Ehlana back to health, it doesn't cure side-effects of the poisoning such as loss of fertility; as a result, the goddess Aphrael instigates a secretly magical pregnancy whereby Ehlana eventually gives birth to Danae, the goddess Aphrael in disguise. This ensures that Ehlana will have an heir to the throne, even though the poison left her infertile.||
- On
*Gor*, the Caste of Physicians have created a pretty good panacea in the "Stabilization Serums", a series of shots which effectively make you immortal and stop aging. You can still die due to injuries of course, and it doesn't work 100% of the time; more like 98%. In book 27 there's a newer version which de-ages you 10 years per treatment. And the Priest-Kings — the Insectoid Aliens Powers That Be of Gor — have perfected them even more: Misk the Priest-King is over 6,000,000 years old. The physicians have also cured almost all diseases except "the Holy Disease" which is believed to be a punishment by the Priest-Kings.
-
*Harry Potter*:
- A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat, and it can resolve most, though not all, poisons. Despite the seeming mundanity of the origin, bezoars seem to be quite rare, as they are mentioned to be expensive, and the school's potion ingredients store contains only a few.
- As well, phoenix tears, in addition to mending flesh, are strong enough to be the only cure for basilisk venom.
- Drinking unicorn blood can sustain one's life no matter how serious the affliction, but the drinker is cursed thereafter because of how evil it is to hurt a unicorn.
- Mandrakes can be used to brew a potion that will dispel any curse, and even cured an affliction that merely looked like a curse. However, not just any mandrake, only a specific, extra deadly, stubborn variety will do.
- The Hogwarts hospital wing also has a drug that will clear up a wide variety of common illnesses, at the cost of causing smoke and steam to continually come out from the patient's orifices.
-
*Kate Daniels* has panacea be a miracle drug that helps shapeshifters to not go full loup. It's incredibly hard to get a hold of. ||Until Kate rescues a guy who knows how to make it and brings him home with her, anyway.||
- The Athelas weed, a.k.a. Kingsfoil, in
*The Lord of the Rings* has unspecified medicinal properties; it may not be good for everything, but it is able to cure several ailments, most notably the Black Breath, a curse brought on by contact with the corruption of Sauron. The process of preparing the remedy suggests that magic is involved. The same plant is used in *The Silmarillion*.
-
*The Radix*: The eponymous MacGuffin is an ancient plant that, if cooked properly, can heal any illness and even raise the dead. Supposedly, it belonged to Jesus himself. Stored in a mummy's chest for ages, it made its dead tissues regenerate and bleed.
- Among its many other functions, the titular energy of
*The Stormlight Archive* can heal just about anything, including cuts, broken bones, bad eyes, missing limbs, damaged souls, and, under the exact right circumstances, *death itself*. It is as yet unclear whether it will stop aging.
- Lansip fruits in
*Tales of Kolmar* can cure just about anything, and can even reverse aging. However, they're extremely hard to come by, as lansip only grows on an island that is protected by strong storms - ships can only get through about once every hundred years.
-
*Once Upon a Time* has Lake Nostos, where water from it will cure any curse or poison. The lake is guarded by a Siren however and, although Prince Charming kills her to get the water to heal someone else, ||it causes the lake to dry up||. One drop of its water is enough to cure ||an infertility curse on Snow White||.
-
*The Outer Limits*:
- In "Blood Brothers", it is believed that Deighton C is capable of curing any disease and is resistant to any poison. However, it turns out that it uses up the body's natural ability to heal within days, leading to the complete collapse of the immune system.
- In "The New Breed", Dr. Stephen Ledbetter describes the Nanomachines that he has invented as having the potential to cure any and all diseases. However, they prove to be too efficient in altering the body. Having injected himself with them to cure his osteosarcoma, Dr. Andy Groenig develops gills, eyes on the back of his head, nematocysts and a significantly strengthened ribcage. The transformation is extremely painful.
- Some versions of the Holy Grail myth had it that the Grail could cure anything, grant immortality, etc. This idea was relished by treasure-seekers for whom a relic of unrivaled holiness just wasn't good enough. The same kind of powers have been attributed to any number of other Christian relics.
- Russian Mythology and Tales: Living water and Dead water, used to bring someone back from the dead — the Dead Water removes the dead person's wounds and rot (but kills the living) and the Living Water is then used to bring them back to life.
-
*Dungeons & Dragons*:
- The Philosopher's Stone item, which can be broken open and used to make a potion which can heal anything up to and including death.
-
*Pathfinder* also has this item. In addition the Alchemist class can (at high levels, and if they take the relevant skill) make one.
- The 3rd Edition supplement
*Creature Collection*: The ewe of the Amalthean Ram gives milk that neutralizes non-magical poisons and diseases in anyone who drinks it.
- There is also Keoghtum's Ointment which can cure various things.
-
*Warhammer 40,000*'s background lore features an STC, Standard Template Construct, known as the Panacea which would have led to medical breakthroughs that would save billions of Imperial citizens across the galaxy... if the Dark Eldar Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue hadn't stolen it because Asdrubael Vect dared Lady Aurelia Malys to do it.
-
*ANNO: Mutationem*: The N series are medical technology that was created to heal wounds and cure specific diseases. N540 is the latest that has the capacity to cure-all types, until an incident where civilians fought and killed over the medicine resulted in it being kept hidden from the public.
- In
*Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney*, Case 3 has the Chief Justice's son, who is suffering what appears to be an incurable disease called "Incuritis" and is on the point of death. It turns out that the only way to cure it is a Panacea in the form of a Borginian Cocoon that can cure the illness, but if extracted incorrectly, the cure becomes a deadly poison.
-
*Bloodborne* is themed around disease and blood, set in a Mystical Plague infested city that uses Blood Magic. The player character has some sort of disease, and came to Yharnam seeking a substance called "Paleblood" that can cure any ailment.
-
*Bug Fables*: Isau wishes to create a medicine that would heal any illness. She has found the right combination and requests Team Snakemouth to find the last required ingredientSophie Petal that grows over Snakemouth Den.
- In
*Cave Story*, you retrieve a "cure-all" pill from the abandoned hospital in the labyrinth. The full curative abilities of this medicine are unknown, but it heals Curly Brace (who is a *robot*) from unspecified debilitating injuries.
-
*The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim* has disease-curing potions that are easy to make or buy, raw ingredients such as hawk feathers and charred rat skin that cure diseases on their own, and if that's too much bother, praying at a local shrine will have the same effect, plus a deity-specific blessing. Curing vampirism and lycanthropy is a different story, however.
-
*EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce*: After an accident during his study of the Bem, SPICA's resident medical doctor Smoothy began to excrete a slime from his skin that heals wounds, cures sickness, and even restores damaged cells.
-
*Fallout*:
- There are several "chems" that can cure any addiction.
*Fallout: New Vegas* has "Fixer", which can temporarily cure any addiction (with the side effect of making the user woozy for a little bit). *Fallout 4* and *Fallout 76* replace this with "Addictol", which permanently removes addiction, with the relatively small side effect of increasing hunger and thirst (in *76* and *4*'s survival mode).
- Across the series, stimpacks can be used to instantly cure broken limbs and serious head injuries.
- Doctors are able to cure addictions, remove radiation, fix broken limbs, and restore health points for a small cap fee (usually no more than 100), no matter how remote or under-supplied.
-
*Fallout 4* has the "Mysterious Serum" in the Cabot House quest line. It ups the player's strength score by *5* (for context, 10 is considered the upper level of superhuman), gives 50 damage resistance, and removes 36,000 rads. In-game, the serum is derived ||from the Cabot family patriarch, a pre-war madman with an ancient alien artifact fused with him. It has been used to elongate the lifespan of the entire Cabot family by nearly 400 years.||
- The Disease Cure in
*Fallout 76* will cure one disease when taken. Radaway, in this game, also has the chance to cure mutations, although, depending on the mutation, this may be more a hinderance than helpful.
-
*Final Fantasy* has a spell called Panacea that ironically only removes the Poison and Venom status effects. The games do have a spell called Esuna that cures nearly everything, and an item called Remedy that fulfils a similar purpose.
-
*For the King*: The Healing Herb Panax can cure any disease, poison, and almost any other harmful status effects other than Curses. However, the number of ailments a single dose cures is limited by the quality of the user's pipe.
- The Drifter from
*Hyper Light Drifter* seeks the Immortal Cell to cure his Incurable Cough of Death. He isn't alone in his quest, either; a second Drifter is searching for the Immortal Cell as well and often shares info with the playable character. In the end ||it turns out that the Drifer's Incurable Cough actually is incurable and that the Immortal Cell was never a cure, it was an Artifact of Doom, a false hope that the Drifter had to destroy||.
- The goal of one subplot in
*Ōkamiden* is to make a perfect medicine in order to cure a terminally ill girl.
- In
*Pokémon Scarlet and Violet*, the "Path of Legends" storyline involves helping Arven find herbs known as "Herba Mystica" stated to have amazing healing properties so that he can use them to heal his dying Mabosstiff. Aside from that, the sandwiches that Arven makes with said Herba Mystica are capable of empowering Koraidon/Miraidon by unlocking more mobility options such as being able to swim, glide or climb. Unfortunately, they're also guarded by "Titan Pokemon", who are massive beasts thanks to said herbs.
-
*Pou* has potions that make the pet healthier and gives it more energy.
- Panacea is a summonable item in
*Scribblenauts* (along with everything else). In the sequel it heals any sick or diseased creature, and renders an already healthy one invincible.
-
*Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic*: Kolto, which occurs naturally on the planet Manaan, is a liquid medicine used to heal major injuries. The government of Manaan uses kolto production as a sledgehammer to maintain its neutrality in the conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire. Literature around *Star Wars: The Old Republic* states that bacta was introduced later from Thyferra, and outcompeted kolto, which led to Manaan being conquered by the Sith.
- In
*Tales of Vesperia*, Yuri, Karol, and Estelle try to use a panacea bottle to heal the big cherry blossom tree in Halure and, from then on, it becomes a regular item that cures both physical and magical ailments.
-
*Xenoblade Chronicles X*: There's a side mission to collect a scale from the Telethia, a dragon-like megafauna known throughout Mira as the planet's guardian. A single scale is said to act as a Panacea and cure anything. However, you have to fight it and test your worth to obtain the scale, which the story treats as a death sentence. This side mission is ultimately Played for Laughs when you discover that Tatsu's rival Tora just needed to cure some rather bad indigestion and milked it as a life-threatening ailment.
-
*ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal*: Medicine is a consumable item that can be used outside of combat to heal your fairies from burn, freeze, and poison status effects (the only Status Effects that persist after the battle is over).
- In
*Mortasheen*, the Streptile is a reptile-like artificial organism whose body is intensely hostile to all microorganisms, and can even spray a "medicine breath", a cloud of phagocytes which immediately wipes out even the most virulent germs on contact. However, this also includes beneficial symbionts like gut bacteria, so being cleansed by the Streptile is basically just as detrimental to one's health as having an illness, if not more so.
-
*Neopets*:
- Cooling Ointment and Warm Amber Ointment are two rare items that stock in the Brightvale potion shop. Either one can act as any other medicine item.
- A Good Bad Bug is that one of the cheapest and most reliable ways to cure a pet's disease is... feeding them poison. Any new disease they get will overwrite any that already had. The most common way to do this is to use the Poisonous Lollipop, an early reward from Jhudora that will give anyone who eats it Floppy Tongue. A nasty surprise for a healthy pet, but a godsend for one that
*was* suffering from an illness that can be *forty times* as expensive to "properly" cure such as Ugga-Ugga.
- From the
*RPC Authority* RPC-588 are seemingly normal bees whose stings contain a chemical (designated RPC-588-A) that can cure any disease or mental illness, althougn not physical injuries.
-
*SCP Foundation*:
- The SCP-500 pills that cure any disease, but there's just about fifty of them and they're impossible to replicate perfectly (though knockoffs
*can* work if you're lucky).
- Later, SCP-427: the Lovecraftian Locket was developed that has eclipsed it in use. It has its own problems like overexposure, though.
- In one episode of
*American Dad!*, Roger lost a small pouch in Area 51 which contained various things including a tube of cream which if applied to an amputated stump, will gradually regrow the lost limb. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Panacea |
Pan - TV Tropes
A camera move. The camera rotates on its mount from side to side. Usage: "pan left," "pan right." Non-filmmakers often make the error of saying "pan up" or "pan down" — this is actually a Tilt.
Short for panorama.
In some contexts, this sort of movement is called "yaw".
In traditional animation, pan refers to sliding the artwork under the camera (which is suspended vertically and locked in place). In that context, "pan up" and "pan down" are acceptable. Panning each level at a different speed creates Motion Parallax to give an illusion of depth. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Pan |
Regional Bonus - TV Tropes
*"Color me legitimately amazed that the American special edition of *Xenoblade Chronicles X * is superior to the one in Japan and Europe. I've become so used to so many Nintendo things lately either taking significantly longer to come out in North America, being better/bigger everywhere but NA, or just outright only being released everywhere but NA."*
Digital media isn't released at the same time across the world, or in the exact same format. Instead, they are released in separate regions, and occasionally by country. Generally games are released in up to 3 main regions: Japan, North America, and Europe, Australia and much of Africa. Europe and Australia usually get games last, but they sometimes get bug fixes (for a Game-Breaking Bug and/or Good Bad Bug) and sometimes bonus features.
*However*, it's not the only region that receives region specific content; for example, America is a fairly common target for such changes in Japanese games, and if an example of an American bonus is released in European countries at a later date, the changes typically make it over there as well.
A regional bonus is any extra feature inserted into a version of a video game during the region conversion process. This doesn't happen very often, but is marvelous when it does. There are two possible reasons it may be done:
- The developers had content they wanted to include but could not due to time constraints. They decide to take advantage of the conversion time to allow at least some people to experience it.
- The extra content is present as a consolation for players in other territories having delayed exposure to the game.
In recent years, the conversion speed has increased dramatically, and so bonuses are becoming even rarer than they once were. Plus, with video games now being able to patched in real time with updates, what once would be region-exclusive now can be given to all regions with a downloadable update. If the bonus features are particularly popular or extensive, the later version may have an Updated Re-release with a subtitle such as "European Edition" or "International Edition".
European bonuses specifically are usually justified as Europe being Vindicated by History in terms of gaming, as those countries suffered
*massive* amounts of No Export for You, with *Final Fantasy VI*, *Super Mario RPG* and *Chrono Trigger* being the biggest offenders note : *Terranigma* is one exception, being released in Europe but not North America, which finally got a European and Australian release in their original forms on the Wii's Virtual Console, albeit only in English since they're actually the American versions (although games such as a number of *PSOne Classics* and *Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories* keep the tradition even today).
Please don't add an example just because you think content that replaces what was in the original version is better (e.g. soundtrack, dubbing), unless the export content is included
*alongside* what it replaces.
See also Import Gaming. Contrast No Export for You, though some examples of it are Remade for the Export. The inverse is Bad Export for You, when features are removed for the export. Compare Difficulty by Region and Better Export for You, the latter of which is the non-video game equivalent of this trope.
## America/Japanese to European Examples:
- The European Mega Drive version of
*Prince of Persia*, which was handled by British video game developer Domark Software, has four levels not found in any other version.
-
*Resident Evil 4* had some extra gun upgrade options. It also changed the balance between enemies dropping ammo and cash. The latter becoming far more frequent, and the former much rarer.
- The original
*Mario Bros.* was re-released in 1993 as *Mario Bros. Classic*, with graphics much truer to the original 1983 arcade version, plus the original enemy introductory cut-scenes were restored.
-
*Metal Gear*:
-
*Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty* and *Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater* both had an extra difficulty level called European Extreme. *MGS3* also had some extra stages for the Snake vs. Monkey levels, which were included in all versions of *MGS3: Subsistence*.
- Additionally,
*Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance* came bundled with *The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2*, which was sold separately in Japan and the US. *Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence* on the other hand came with a bonus disc that was previously available in America only as a Pre-Order Bonus, which strung together all the game's cutscenes and codec sequences, with some gameplay mixed in, to create a full-length movie of the game.
- Both versions also had Boss Rush modes in the original European releases (mind you,
*MGS2*'s boss rush mode wasn't as long as in *Substance*). *MGS2* also had the Theater mode.
- The UK version of
*Sons of Liberty* also came with a making-of DVD.
- The Japanese and European version of the
*Metal Gear Solid* game for the Game Boy Color (aka *Metal Gear: Ghost Babel*) features the codec serial drama "Idea Spy 2.5". It was not featured in the initial American version.
- The Japanese version of
*Metal Gear Solid* allows Psycho Mantis to make some remarks on *Tokimeki Memorial*, *Policenauts*, and *Snatcher*, to name a few, if they are on your memory card. Having saved data from Policenauts and Snatcher makes Mantis say a message of thanks in the voice of Hideo Kojima.
- The European version of
*Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner* features extra content that were later included in the Japan-exclusive *Special Edition* of the game.
- The German version of
*Left 4 Dead 2* included a few weapons from *Counter-Strike: Source* in exchange for the removed violent bits. These were later added to all versions of the game in an update.
-
*Metroid*:
-
*Metroid*: The NES version has a New Game+ and a Debug cheat, which weren't in the Famicom Disk System version of the game.
- The Japanese version of
*Metroid Fusion*, which was released after other regions, adds Easy and unlockable Hard difficulty levels, a gallery mode to view the ending images you've obtained, and eight additional ending images which reveal details about Samus's childhood that would be elaborated on in the *Metroid* manga.
- In the European version of
*Metroid Prime*, Samus' suit has a lot of additional dialog; in an inversion, since there were worries at the time about the series' reception the conversion was also forcibly de-canonised with references to Samus' previous life with the Chozo omitted.
- The European version also removed all references to the Space Pirates having entered Metroid Prime's lair and built its armour. This was a gaping plot hole, since Prime's lair is in the Impact Crater—an area the pirates were
*still trying to find a way to enter* throughout the whole game. Unfortunately, the new version just creates a different plot hole: Metroid Prime was supposed to have absorbed some weapons the Pirates were reverse-engineering from Samus's arsenal (explaining how the boss fight works), but that's impossible if Prime never encountered them.
- The European version's largest change was a slower loader which solved issues with the American version locking up. Flaahgra's theme was glitched in the American version so the first part looped endlessly, which was corrected in the European version too. Alterations were also made to correct numerous issues with bosses, changing their vulnerabilities and in some cases removing glitchy behaviour like the Sheegoth attacking an invisible Samus during its introduction cutscene. The European version also has some sequence breaks prevented or at least made harder (for example they added many pieces of rubble that can only be destroyed by Power Bombs to prevent early access to some items). Plus, the European version added a narrator in the intro and ending cutscenes.
- Some of the bug fixes and sequence break preventions were added to the North American Player's Choice version. You can see all of the version differences here.
- All of these changes made it into all versions of
*Metroid Prime Trilogy*, with the exception of the suit voice and narrator, which were still absent in the North American version.
- The first
*Tenchu* game got two extra missions in the European version, reworked first mission, and multi-track audio. The game was later re-released in Japan as Tenchu: Shinobi Gaisen.
-
*Final Fantasy X* gained an "Expert" mode for the Sphere Grid. Unlike the regular Sphere Grid, which pretty much locks every character (except for Kimahri) into a single character build until the mid/late game, the Expert Grid starts *everyone* at roughly the same point on the Sphere Grid and lets you customise their character builds from the very start.
- The game also gained some
*extremely* tough Superbosses, such as the Dark Aeons. This proved to be a double-edged sword for all but the most dedicated level grinders, as the Dark Aeons prevent the player from re-entering several important locations. For example, if you don't grab one of the keys to Tidus' Infinity +1 Sword on your first trip to Zanarkand, then you'll find Dark Bahamut blocking your path later on.
- The European version of
*Luigi's Mansion* gets a harder version of the New Game Plus with a reversed mansion and changes in Boss attacks. The Nintendo 3DS remake implements some of the changes from that Hidden Mansion (minus being flipped), but with new twists as well.
- It's also impossible to get an A rank in the European version of
*Luigi's Mansion* without the extra money in The Hidden Mansion. You don't have to beat the game in The Hidden Mansion, just beat most of the Speedy Spirits and Golden Mice (money ghosts) in there.
-
*We Love Katamari*, the sequel to the wildly successful *Katamari Damacy* (which never came out in Europe, to many fans' dismay), had an expanded demo theatre mode where players could watch the first game's intro and some cutscenes, and the first game's theme song was added as a listenable song in-game.
- Due to rating differences, the European version of
*Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe* is less censored, though this merely amounts to the camera not zooming in during the Joker and Deathstroke's gun fatalities.
-
*Shadow Hearts: Covenant* *almost* got one of these: hacking into the European version of the game reveals some items that were only present in the Japan-only Director's Cut version, with descriptions fully translated into English. Unfortunately, for one reason or another they decided not to implement them in the final released version.
- The item in question is a bodybuilder card featuring Meiyuan, which upon obtaining it and having the other bodybuilder cards, would allow the Magimel brothers to make an "invisible dress" for Gepetto's doll. Apparently, Midway didn't want to promote Lolicon and Shotacon, even though said young girl in question is a lifeless puppet with no primary sexual characteristics.
- Veronica's and Lenny's equipment could only be used in Director's Cut during a subquest starring them as playable characters. There is also a warp point to Sea of Woods, but apparently it's been Dummied Out.
- The European version of
*Rock Band* got nine additional songs by European artists that weren't on-disc in the American version. On the day of the European release, those same nine songs became available for download in the US version, but the fact still stands that they're paid downloads for the US version but included with the game in the European version. On the other hand, Tokio Hotel's *Monsoon* doesn't export (for whatever reason) to *Rock Band 2*. Since the bonus songs cannot be bought in Europe, that song is inaccessible for European users outside of the original game.
- For Wii users in the UK, with a Wii Shop Channel account AND Club Nintendo UK membership on the Nintendo Europe official website, you get to convert Star points (gained by "registering" Wii, DS and GameCube games) into Wii Points to get Virtual Console stuff. Recently North America had a similar feature added (albeit not with much variety) in that every two weeks the site releases a game for the Wii and 3DS each (alternating systems between weeks) in exchange for typically 100 or 150 Club Nintendo coins, with the North American Club Nintendo having WiiWare and Virtual Console games for the former and download-only 3DS games, DSiWare, and Virtual Console games for the latter. Japan, shockingly enough, has no such pleasure.
- European gamers got all the extra stuff that was in the Updated Re-release of
*La Pucelle*. The game was re-released in Japan some months after the NA release with a New Game Plus feature, new bosses, as well as an option to Soft Reset within the game itself (which truly can be useful at some points in the game). The game had not been released in Europe yet, so naturally it would make sense to include these features.
-
*Shadow of the Colossus* came with nicer packaging for Europe, four artwork postcards, a making of documentary, Ico Trailer and a Concept Art Gallery.
- Years earlier,
*ICO* initially received a limited edition release, which also had postcards and nicer packaging (it also uses the Japanese version's better cover art, although this is also true of the standard edition). Depressingly, this trope became inverted soon afterwards - the game sold so badly in Europe that Sony stopped producing copies of it barely a month after it was released, meaning that it became scarce and regularly sold for crazy prices on Ebay until it was re-released years later. In fact, the initial print run was so short that there are less copies of the original standard edition in existence than the limited one...
- The European version of
*Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World* has two extras: a gallery mode that allows you to view character skits and concept art, and special head-slot equipment that changes the appearances of Emil and Marta (ala the "attachments" in *Tales of Vesperia*).
- The European release of
*Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2* has extra characters and stages. In this case, these were bonuses being added to the Japanese Wii version, but Europe came late enough to scoop those up for both of their versions of the game.
- Inverted for
*Pokémon Platinum* (and likely all future Pokémon games too), the Slot Machine-esque mini-game was removed in order to comply with new EU laws, and still keep the age rating down. Coins are now just found randomly in the building, but respawn daily.
- In North American versions of
*Pokémon Stadium*, there's a Gallery feature where you can take pictures of your Pokémon, but neither the Japanese nor European versions got such a feature.
- The European version of
*Pokémon Channel* contained a quest which allowed players to download Jirachi, which was not available outside of an event.
- Several of the
*Yakuza* games from *3* onward have some of the paid DLC bundled in the western localized releases.
-
*Yakuza: Like a Dragon* has a substory that involves meeting an English speaking tourist, who the Japanese player character Ichiban doesn't understand. For the English dub, "English" is represented by just speaking really slowly, and an Aside Glance is added to acknowledge the inherent silliness of Ichiban saying, in English, that he doesn't understand English.
- The European version of
*BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger* was released several months late, but came with additional colour schemes for characters, and more importantly, all characters had Unlimited versions instead of just Ragna, Rachel, Hakumen and Nu. This is paid DLC in America and Japan. All of this is slightly offset by the horrid boxart.
-
*BlazBlue: Continuum Shift* got a Limited Edition (which the US version didn't) and an extremely limited (500 copies, all of which have were preordered) of a "Fan edition" with even more goodies (including a voucher to get some of the DLC for free).
- In
*Super Smash Bros. Brawl*, there are no unbreakable windows for challenges in the European version, meaning gamers there can use a Golden Hammer to completely skip the hardest Boss Battles challenges like beating it on Intense. Which is incredibly useful, since the challenge is Nintendo Hard.
- The original (non-Player's Choice) European version of
*The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker* came with a second disc containing *The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time* and *Master Quest* as standard. This was only available in America with pre-ordered copies.
- It was still advertised as a limited edition for preorders in a few countries such as France.
- The Japanese game
*Lolo no Daibouken* for the Game Boy had only fifty levels. The European version, *Adventures of Lolo*, had *one hundred forty-four* . . . *and* it added Super Game Boy support, a tutorial, and a Variable Mix soundtrack.
- Rock Raiders gave the European edition not just three bonus missions, but
*eighteen completely different main levels*.
- The European version of
*Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn* removed several Game Breaking Bugs (most notably one that could prevent an Old Save Bonus) and fixed a couple of Blind Idiot Translations and name inconsistencies with the past game. (except for the Tower of Guidance, due to it being mentioned in voiced dialogue.)
- Tharja's swimsuit scene in the Summer Scramble DLC of
*Fire Emblem: Awakening* was infamously censored in the North American version. The European version does not contain this censorship. (The EU version did censor one dialogue conversation that wasn't censored in the US version, but most would agree having a full artwork uncensored is more than worth it.)
-
*Professor Layton and the Last Specter* is an inversion, as it completely cuts down the RPG *Professor Layton's London Life*. That amounts to *over half the game*. On the other hand, the North American version not only has it intact, but also has it available from the beginning—Japanese players had to unlock it.
- The European version of
*Rhythm Heaven Fever*, known as *Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise*, contains both Japanese and English soundtracks, much to the chagrin of people who wanted such an option in the North American release.
- Not a bonus in a conventional way, but the European release of
*Way of the Samurai 4* sees the game as an actual physical copy instead of the PSN-only release that US has.
- The North American release of
*Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus* allows you to unlock the alternate opening cutscene from the Japanese version, but the European release also allows you to unlock the Japanese ending.
-
*WipEout 3* has a *Special Edition* re-release that was released exclusively in Europe which featured AI bugfixes, minor gameplay tweaks, different ship physics, balanced buffs for the Icarus unGod XVi and Assegai F7200 ships, added unlock messages when meeting the requirements for the game's unlockable contents, 8 additional circuits from the previous two *WipEout* games plus 2 prototype tracks featured from its Japanese release, bringing the grand total of 22 tracks compared to previous releases. The *Special Edition* also supports split-screen multiplayer up to four players whereas the North American and Japanese releases only supported two, but this done through using two sets of TVs and linking two PlayStation consoles.
- The PAL and Japanese versions of
*Airforce Delta Storm* added several new planes (including two more Koanmi shmup guests, one based on *AJAX* and the other on *Space Manbow*), did some minor rebalancing, made small tweaks to some missions (most notably "Attack of the Tyrant", which had the titular weapon's firing timer made more obvious) and added a new Joke Level themed after *Parodius*.
## Non-European Examples:
-
*Soul Calibur II*'s overseas versions had three characters who were previously CPU-only as unlockables: Assassin, Berserker, and Lizardman.
- The American and European versions of the very first
*Metal Gear Solid* added adjustable difficulty settings, a demo theater mode, and the Tuxedo easter egg for Solid Snake. The same extras were included in the Updated Re-release *Metal Gear Solid: Integral* in Japan (later released in the west as the PC port).
- Despite being released in November 2011 for the US and Japan, Metal Gear Solid fans in Europe and Australia/Asia wanting to buy the
*Metal Gear Solid HD Collection* had to wait until 2012 *with no waiting bonuses* on the grounds of a Hand Wave excuse involving the high number of winter releases forcing them to delay. Konami have also decided to insult said fans further by announcing Japan and the US can expect the bonus "Premium Package" and "Limited Edition" versions coming exclusively to their regions. When it was eventually released, there was a bug in the PS3 version which made MGS2 impossible to finish on some difficulty settings. Somewhat mercifully, this only affected those playing in standard definition, which one would expect to be a relative minority of purchasers of an HD remake.
- Working Designs frequently made gameplay adjustments to the titles they licensed. Often overlaps with Difficulty by Region—WD wanted their games to pose a challenge. For example:
-
*Elemental Gearbolt* has beefed-up sound effects and added secret items in support of a promotional contest Working Designs sponsored. It also added GunCon support when the JP version only supported Konami's Hyper Blaster gun.
-
*Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete* has added analog support, tweaks to EXP and money awards, and alterations to the final encounter ||so it requires Alex to play his harp to bring Luna to her senses.||
-
*Magic Knight Rayearth* has expanded save slots and slowdown reduction. Incidental in-game voice throughout the game was cut in the interest of preserving game flow, and the character's diaries are voiced instead.
-
*Silhouette Mirage* got custom loading screens, increases to weapons prices and various other tweaks to increase difficulty. Unfortunately, this greatly increased the amount of grinding required to buy weapons.
-
*Silpheed: The Lost Planet* has less slowdown than the Japanese version, and also added analog control "to retain the 'arcade' feel of the shooter, rather than forcing gamers to bust their thumbs on the directional buttons" (to quote Vic Ireland's manual notes).
- If nothing else, expect Hilarious Outtakes.
- The American Wii port of
*GHOST Squad* adds a "Wii Remote and Nunchuk" control scheme (Z to fire and B for the contextual button, instead of the other way around in the "Wii Zapper" scheme), which is oddly missing in the Japanese version.
- The western release of
*Earthbound Beginnings* has an actual epilogue compared to the original Japanese release. The Game Boy Advance port of Mother 1+2 adds in this epilogue.
- The Japanese version of
*Raiden Fighters Aces* got an online update that corrected some bugs and added new features. The American version includes all of these updates with the disc, with no need to update.
- Prior to that, the American release of the original
*Raiden Fighters 2* has all of the ships, including the hidden ones, available immediately, without the need to keep the machine on for a while, and the American release of the original *Raiden Fighters Jet* offers two loops instead of the Japanese version's single loop.
- The North American version of
*Ridge Racer* on PSP (known as *Ridge Racers* in Japan) adds some bonus tours, called the MAX Tours. These tours are very, very hard (to the point where the game touts that Namco's testers were only able to clear the last tour twice in 60 days), and offer no reward other than the satisfaction of clearing them.
- In
*Castlevania: Symphony of the Night* on the PlayStation, in the Western release, the Opening Scroll text is altered and lacks voice narration, the title "Castlevania" appears instead of "Dracula X", Richter's stage is titled "Final Stage: Chi no Rondo" instead of "Final Stage: Bloodlines", the visual effect when introducing area names is slightly different, and menu screens, menu selection effects and menu text are slightly different, the order of the enemy index has been changed, the eight voice actor interviews in the library have been replaced with a sound test, the voice overs of Death, Maria, Richter and Succubus on the game over screen when dying at certain points of the game are Dummied Out, the Nosedevil Card in the Colosseum is replaced with a Holy Sword, the Sprite Card in Olrox's Quarters is replaced with a Sword Card, and the Sword Card in Olrox's Quarters is replaced with a Garnet, making the two redundant familiars unavailable in the Western release. The European version keeps these changes and fixes a few misspellings. The Japanese "The Best" and "PSOne Books" re-releases change Richter's Holy Whip to the Flame Whip, and the ability of the Sprite to sing "Nocturne" is no longer dummied out.
- The North American and European versions of
*Jet Set Radio* (originally called *Jet Grind Radio* in America) were given more songs note : The additional songs varied between regions: the North American version featured Rob Zombie, Murder Music, and Cold; while the European version had Featured Cast, O.B. One, and Semi Detached. Both versions shared new songs from Jurassic 5 and Mixmaster Mike., 2 new levels modeled after New York City, and internet connectivity via SegaNet to share and download user-created tags.
- Square Enix are somewhat (in)famous for this: Many of its games get loads of extra content when they're localized to western audiences, so much so that they're frequently re-released in Japan with all the extra content, and sometimes with even
**more** extras that generally never saw the light of day overseas although remasters have included the extras. For example,
-
*Final Fantasy VII* was their first game to be modified considerably for Western release; new scenes were added to the story, one formerly Dummied Out Materia was added to the game (the Underwater Materia), and the difficulty was rebalanced, with the random encounter rate decreased (to account for the lesser patience of Western gamers) and three extra bosses were added, one mandatory (Diamond WEAPON, fought near the end of disc 2), the last two optional (the now-legendary Ruby and Emerald WEAPONs).
- The NA version of
*Chrono Cross* contained additional dialogue to clarify background information and cover plot holes present in the Japanese version.
- The North American and European releases of
*The World Ends with You* got extra pins, changed around some effects, added several tracks to the soundtrack and doubled the experience from "mingle" mode to compensate for lower population density/less public transport/less DS per person. Fans also argue that they have a much more fitting title as opposed to the Japanese title; since "The World Ends With You" acts as a metaphor for ||Neku's self-centered attitude, which means his world will end with him with no friends||.
-
*Kingdom Hearts*:
- The international versions of the first game added a slew of bonus bosses, including Ice Titan, Kurt Zisa (named after an American man who won a contest Square Enix held a few months before release), and Sephiroth. It also set the Chernabog battle to the tune of "A Night on the Bare Mountain", whereas the original Japanese version used the generic Disney boss tune "Squirming Evil". Naturally, these were all packaged for Japan as part of the "Final Mix" rerelease, which added a crapload more content that never saw the Western light of the day until a decade later.
- The international versions of
*Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days* awards the player Mission Crowns for completing missions in either Solo or Multiplayer Mission Mode. In the Japanese version, it is only possible to earn Mission Crowns by playing Multiplayer Mission Mode.
-
*Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep* took time to be localized in the West, and attempted to make it up by adding Pete as a D-Link summon, extra stickers, and a new bonus boss. The European release added a few other perks like a small artbook showing characters renders and world artwork, as well as two postcards. And yes, there's a (for a while) Japan-exclusive *Final Mix*, which has all of these plus so much more. Woo-hoo.
- The American and European/Australian versions of
*Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]* include recipes for Dream Eaters that could only be obtained by AR Cards in Japanese.
-
*Dragon Quest*:
- The NA versions of the NES games had several changes made, such as replacing the original game's password system with a battery-backed save.
- The NA version of
*Dragon Quest I* added border graphics when the land connected to water, and added sprites for all the overworld characters to indicate four directional movement. The Super Famicom version keeps the graphical updates, updates the menu to resemble *Dragon Quest II*, and adds the torch attack.
- In the Famicom version of
*Dragon Quest II*, after the title screen, the Prince can immediately walk outside the throne room, out of the castle, and into the overworld. The North American version adds an intro sequence of the three main characters walking forward, and a prologue showing what happened to the town of Moonbrooke and the Princess of Moonbrooke. The Super Famicom version includes the prologue followed by intro text.
- For those who played
*Dragon Quest II* on the Japanese MSX cart, they got an extra scene of the Princess of Moonbrooke in a "Dangerous Swimsuit".
- The North American version of
*Dragon Quest III* adds an intro showing a fight between Ortega and a dragon on top of a volcano, adapted in the Super Famicom and later versions.
- The North American and European versions of
*Dragon Quest VIII* replaced the MIDI soundtrack with symphonic renditions, has voice acting for story moments, and modified the menu system.
- The international versions of
*Dragon Quest XI* saw the addition of voice acting, less plain menues like in *VIII*, many quality of life improvements like being able to sprint when on-foot, and a PC port (though it came at the expense of the Nintendo 3DS version). In fine Square-Enix tradition, these changes were later brought back to Japan with the Definitive Edition on Nintendo Switch, which also included added story content, an orchestral soundtrack, Japanese voice acting, and many other QOL additions, and was also released elsewhere.
- When
*Ōkami* was ported to Wii, the credits were cut out due to copyright issues (such as Clover Studios being defunct) and space constraints. The Japanese version had the credits put back in.
- The North American release of
*Record of Agarest War* fixed the European version's "Blind Idiot" Translation and gave PS3 owners the extras from the Japanese Xbox 360 Updated Re-release.
- Normally, the overseas version of
*Street Fighter* games during the arcade days usually had content cut compared to the Japanese originals (e.g., no ending for Akuma in *Super Turbo*, no endings for the characters in the *Street Fighter EX* games). However, an exception was made with *Street Fighter Alpha 2*, the overseas version of *Street Fighter Zero 2*, which added three extra characters: Evil Ryu and "classic"-style versions of Zangief and Dhalsim. These extra characters were exported back to the game's Updated Re-release in Asia, *Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha*, which added Classic versions of the remaining *Street Fighter II* characters and gave Evil Ryu his own ending (which unfortunately isn't included in any of the western releases of the game).
- The US arcade version of
*Columns* has an alternate gameplay track not found in the Japanese or international versions. It can be used by changing one of the DIP switches.
- The background animation for the
*DJMAX* song "Xlasher", which is sung in Gratuitous English, has Korean subtitles in Korean releases of the games. The overseas releases remove them, clearing up some room at the bottom of the screen.
-
*Pokémon* combines this, strangely enough, with No Export for You in the case of Generation I. Sure, the *Green* version never made it out of Japan (not counting its remake, *LeafGreen*)... but the internationally released *Blue* version was Japan's *Green* in the engine of the Japanese *Blue* (and *Red* was the Japanese *Red* with Japanese *Blue*'s engine). Why is this a bonus? Well, for one, Japanese Red and Green had significantly more Off-Model sprites of the Pokémon, even more glitches, and couldn't support names with more than five characters, which isn't quite so bad in Japanese but would be completely damning in languages using the Latin alphabet.
- The European/Australian version of
*Meteos* changes a lot of names from the direct (well, as direct as possible) translation from Japanese to ones that make more sense. Starrii becomes Stellis, Lastar becomes Candelor, Hotted becomes Pyros... the list goes on.
- The European version of the first
*Inazuma Eleven* actually runs on the improved version of the engine used in the second game in Japan. Of course, this was because it was originally scheduled for a European release around the same time as the *third* game was released in Japan, and was delayed half a year on top of that.
- Subverted with
*DanceDanceRevolution Konamix* - after a drought of DDR releases in the US, Konami promised the next US release that would be up to date with the latest Japanese release. What they delivered was based on the *DDR 4th Mix* engine - a couple weeks before the console port of *DDRMAX: DDR 6th Mix* was released in Japan and half a year after *DDRMAX* was released in Japanese arcades. Not only that, its Edit Data creator had *more* bugs than the original 4th Mix console port.
- And averted by
*Dancing Stage SuperNOVA 2*, which was based off the U.S. version and released *after* the Japanese version (which is the most arcade-accurate in terms of on-disc content; since Konami released the U.S. versions early in the lifecycle of the corresponding arcade version, some of the later unlocks tended to get held over to the next release instead), it had *fewer* songs than the U.S. version (13 of the 28 licenses were removed), and only one new European license was added. note : "Cara Mia", a song that finished 3rd in Sweden's national final for the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest, and was a number-one hit in Finland and Sweden. Adding insult to injury, the arcade version of SN2 was not released in Europe due to EU environmental regulations somehow preventing Konami from distributing the game's hardware (which was built around modifications to the original "fat" PlayStation 2).
- In most countries where
*DanceDanceRevolution A* is available, you have to pay a surcharge for Premium mode (which unlocks extra modifiers and guarantees a full set of stages even if you fail all of them). For the North American version, however, premium only needs an eAMUSEMENT card like in other regions, and usually costs the same as a normal credit. note : This is likely because the only arcades that carry *DDR A* use cards instead of coins for credits, and the only other options would either be to make Premium mode cost double of standard mode or make the player swipe multiple times even for Standard mode (which could confuse casual arcade customers who expect games to start after only one swipe); thus, this mandate can be see as an Anti-Frustration Feature for both operators and customers alike. Round1 actually *did* initially set up their cabinets to require 2 credits for premium, but this was quickly changed back.
-
*Donkey Kong Land III* for the Game Boy was released as *Donkey Kong GB: Dinky Kong & Dixie Kong* for the Game Boy Color in Japan, with color graphics and reduced lag. Unfortunately, animated world map tiles and the Bear shopkeeper became static sprites, and your most recent time was no longer displayed at the bottom of the screen during Time Trials (and the Game Boy version had Super Game Boy support, so you could get color anyway, albeit inferior color).
-
*Fire Emblem*
- The Japanese version of
*The Blazing Blade* required you to beat Hector Hard Mode to see a secret epilogue linking the game to the previous one, of which this is a prequel. In the American version, you just have to beat the game on any difficulty. Inverted for Europeans, who got the Epilogue completely removed.
- Non-Japanese versions of
*Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn* added a few totally new base conversations to the game, which gave Edward, Leonardo and Nolan a new unique weapon each. They also modified a few of the skills to be less luck-based, added support for widescreen and added an option for permanent saves in-battle instead of the traditional Suspend Save. (Though they're disabled on Hard Mode)
- The American and European versions of
*Shadow Dragon* featured bonus content not included in the Japanese version, such as five additional multiplayer maps, instead of just one, like in the other versions. These extra maps were later included in the Japan-only DS remake of *Mystery of the Emblem*.
- Almost every
*FE* released in the west gets some small improvements, you can find a full list here.
- The American release of
*Solatorobo* got the bonus Soundtrack CD the Japanese got with pre-orders. Europe, of course, didn't get it, though at least the game came earlier there for once. US release also fixed some translation errors. The American release also had all of the DLC missions bundled into the base game to make up for the year-long delay in that region.
- The NES version of
*Jackal* was originally released in Japan as a Famicom Disk System game titled *Akai Yōsai* ("The Red Fortress"). Unlike other disk-to-cartridge conversions such as *Metroid* and *Castlevania*, the change in format actually proved beneficial, as the shorter loading times of the cartridge media allowed for four-way scrolling (the disk version could only scroll vertically), resulting in wider stages than the Disk System version and a more accurate adaptation of the arcade original. The NES version even has an entire new stage not present in the Disk System version.
-
*No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle* was launched with several exclusives in Japan (where it was made, came out *last*, and with the smallest sales).
-
*Flying Warriors*, the NES sequel to *Flying Dragon: The Secret Scrolls*, rather than being a straight localization of the Famicom's *Hiryū no Ken II*, is instead a complete overhaul of *Hiryu no Ken II* developed on the *Hiryu no Ken III* engine, resulting in a complete different game than either of them.
- The Japanese Sega Saturn version of Data East's Fighting Game
*Suiko Enbu* was an anomalous Porting Disaster, but the American release, titled *Dark Legend*, had most of the bugs fixed.
-
*Pokémon Colosseum* had this with the pre-order discs, and the legendary Pokémon you get depends on the region. If it's the Japan bonus disc, you get a Japanese Celebi, whereas if you have the North America bonus disc, you get Jirachi. The two can be obtained via the Nintendo GameCube/Game Boy Advance Link Cable. Note that it can also be used on a Wii, and you can still get them if you load up the bonus disc on the Wii.
-
*The Legend of Zelda*:
-
*The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker*:
- The Japanese version of the game featured a sidequest required to receive an important item. This sidequest consisted of finding a map to find a map to find a map... leading to the item. Anyway, Nintendo made this sidequest much easier in the international versions, making the last parts of the game (which are still tedious) just a bit less so for Westerners.
- In the Japanese version, the bottom floor of the Savage Labyrinth (which is part of an optional series of floors past the ones required to complete the Triforce quest) rewarded players with a chest containing... a yellow Rupee. Due to how underwhelming this is, the localizations replaced the yellow Rupee with a Piece of Heart that was originally located under Link's house. The HD remaster lacks this problem; the chest contains the Hero's Charm in all versions of the game, with the Piece of Heart once again being relocated (this time requiring a Treasure Chart added to the HD remaster).
-
*Zelda II: The Adventure of Link*: The game received quite a few changes in the localization process; the dungeons are all colored differently, the overworld battle music was changed, Volvagia is drawn and animated better, the boss Gooma is added to replace what was originally a rematch with Helmethead, etc.
- For each region after the original European release,
*Roll Away* was given more features and level alterations until the Japanese version featured custom balls, alternate endings, a birds-eye view option and the previously Dummied Out tutorial level, but apparently was buggier than the European and American versions.
- When
*Lollipop Chainsaw* was released in Japan, Juliet's anime cosplays were only obtainable through DLC. The American and European releases of the game included them right on the disc instead. Then on Valentine's Day 2013, the game got a Special Edition in Japan only, which included several bonuses, such as a DVD containing all of the game's cutscenes.
- The Japanese version of
*Wario World* adds a second phase to the Final Boss with different attacks and music.
- China and Taiwan received a unique version of
*DoDonPachi dai ou jou*, called *DoDonPachi dai ou jou Tamashii*, which adds an Easy mode.
-
*Pump It Up*'s success in Central and South America has led to Andamiro producing special versions of their mainline games for those regions that feature songs not found in the Korean and worldwide versions.
- The original Japanese release of
*Armored Core: Formula Front* did not allow players to directly control their ACs in battle. This feature was added in the Western version, *Armored Core Formula Front: Extreme Battle*.
- When
*Game & Watch Gallery 2* was originally released in Japan, it was, like its predecessor, a monochrome Game Boy game that could receive some limited color if played on a Super Game Boy. International versions converted it into a Game Boy Color game, allowing for a much more vivid picture.
- The Password Save feature in
*River City Ransom* was updated for the international version to account for defeated boss characters.
- The English localized release of the PC version of
*Soni Comi* has many of the improvements from the Japan-exclusive PS3 remake, such as improved graphics and models, an enhanced interface, extra outfits and a few new features. In Japan, that content was never made available for PC.
-
*Sonic Adventure* had a number of special events and challenges as free DLC. While most of the seasonal events were available for all three regions, all of the challenges were region-specific, with each region getting 1-3 exclusive ones. In addition, Japan got two exclusive holiday events, as these were released before the game came out overseas and as such didn't get localized.
- Most H Games released outside Japan remove the legally mandated censorship present in their original releases (assuming the sexual content isn't just removed entirely), along with sometimes adding a few extra bonuses such as higher-resolution graphics. Unfortunately this can lead to recursive importing and as a result an untouched export.
- The English release of
*CLANNAD* came with an in-game encyclopedia called "Dangopedia" that provides useful information about the more obscure references the characters make and Japanese culture in general.
-
*Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5*'s two non-Japan versions, in spite of losing some content — the biggest removals being two entire courses — does get the Dodge and Audi car makes to make up for it; those two would not appear in the Japanese version until *Maximum Tune 5DX*.
- The American version of
*Tales of the Abyss* was an upgrade from the original Japanese version, featuring several new Mystic Artes and tweaks to gameplay. The 3DS version is actually based on the American release.
- The TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine port of
*R-Type* was originally released as two separate HuCards in Japan, each containing four out of the original eight stages. The 1989 US release included all eight stages on a single Turbochip.
- In Japan,
*Yo Kai Watch 3* was released in two versions, Sushi and Tempura, plus an Updated Re-release named Sukiyaki. Each version had its own Version-Exclusive Content, and some content was doled out via cross-promotions with things like the toy branch of the franchise, the internationally-defunct mobile spinoff *Yo Kai Watch Wibble Wobble*, and several prefectural tourism campaigns. Since that formula bombed outside of Japan, the international version is what Level-5 called "Sukiyaki+"; it was possible to get all Yo-kai that were version-exclusive on one cartridge without trading. In addition, finding the QR codes needed to unlock some content is as simple as checking the official Twitter account. Fitting for a game where the main gimmick is that Nate moves to America (or the fictional state of BBQ in the American version).
-
*Samurai Warriors 3* had a Story Mode specifically for custom characters released in three parts as DLC for the Japanese release. The international releases made this story available out of the box as Historical Mode.
- The Japanese release of
*Tale of Food* introduces two food spirits of Chinese-Japanese dishes, Chili Shrimp and Fucha Ryōri.
- The Japanese version of
*Crash Bash* included Fake Crash as an extra character that could be played on either team.
- The original Japanese release of
*Phantasy Star Online 2* has two different types of weapons: the originals, which have an RNG upgrade system that is almost universally disliked, and "New Type" weapons, which have weapon EXP bars that upgrade the weapon when you feed it other weapons. When the game was brought over to the West, the Western versions of the game decided to remove all weapons belonging to the former category. In exchange, several weapons that only came in "original" format in the Japanese version had New Type versions made specifically for the Western version.
- The Western version also adds equipment from
*Phantasy Star Online 2es* to shops and some drop tables. In the Japanese version, this equipment is *only* obtainable in said game and cannot be acquired otherwise unless you buy it from the player-run market.
- The North American release of
*Darius Twin* features a stereo soundtrack vs the original Japanese release's monaural sound mix. The game's description in the *Darius Cozmic Collection* even specifically notes the NA release as the definitive version of the game.
- The Global version of
*SINoALICE* had mechanics that are exclusive to Global, and *only* Global:
- Skip Tickets - These allow players to skip playing the stage and simply getting the rewards that come with it. Handy for playing events and grinding for medals, shooting gallery tickets and the like, but they cannot be used with drop potions (with the exception of Royal Skip Medals for those who purchased the Royal User Service and certain Twilight Crystal packs).
- Country flags - Due to the number of countries available for the Global server, each guild gets to display their home country's flag (or a simple
*SINoALICE* flag) on top of their guild achievements.
- Colosseum Ticket Grimoire: When playing the Colosseum, players get to earn 1 Gladiator's Medal for every 3 weapons used. These Gladiator's Medals can then be exchanged for Colosseum Tickets which is then used in the Grimoire (150 tickets per pull). On top of that, this Grimoire contains 8 weapons that are Version-Exclusive Content.
- The Chinese and South Korean versions of
*Final Fantasy XIV* are generally several patches behind everyone else due to the game needing to be modified to fit the standards and laws of the countries. To make up for the slower patch releases, players in the affected regions get region exclusive cosmetic items to buy and play around with. Said exclusive items are eventually released to the rest of the world.
## In-Universe Examples | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PALBonus |
Palm-Fist Tap - TV Tropes
*BOP!*
Sometimes when a character has an Idea Bulb moment, they may reflect it by holding one hand (usually the left) out and tapping the palm with the other fist.
Often the action is accompanied by a sound effect: a "bop" or a "bing". The Japanese onomatopoeia for the drum is
*oberobero*. Anime producers often use the sound of a *tsuzumi* drum hit.
Compare Idea Bulb and Beam of Enlightenment. See also Idiosyncratic Cultural Gesture.
## Examples:
- Happens in
*Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts*, the sound effect having been translated "bam". And apparently the onomatopoeia for the drum is *oberobero*.
- The
*Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The Movie 1st Tribute Comics* which doubled as advertisements for the four *Nanoha* manga running at the time of the movie release has Subaru doing this◊ in the *Lyrical Almanac* section when she was pitching ideas for the *StrikerS* movie. ("Erio and Caro's Meeting - The First Touch!")
- Seen every now and then in
*Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple*. As shown in the picture, Akisame-sensei takes Kenichi's request for a day off and figures that it's been a while since anyone else has had a vacation anyway.
- Haruhi in the first episode/chapter of
*Ouran High School Host Club*, upon coming up with a word to describe Tamaki: "I got it...Obnoxious!"
-
*Naruto* occasionally.
- Tomoki does this in one episode of
*Heaven's Lost Property*. The accompanying sound effect dragged on for a few drum beats instead of just one.
- Done sometimes in
*One Piece*.
-
*Ranma ½*:
- Soun Tendo pops his fist against his hand when Nabiki reveals that there is a Japanese translation of the Chinese marital laws right next to the Chinese language version that he had been unable to read, stating, "And I missed that completely!" ** Ranma makes the fist against the palm gesture when Akane suggests that they can clear up all of their issues with Tsubasa just by explaining that Ukyo is, in fact, a girl, with a soft, "Oh, yeah." It doesn't actually help anything, though, as Tsubasa already knew Ukyo was a girl, and that was the source of Tsubasa's interest. ** In the OVA two-parter where the usual cast are fighting the phoenix, the shop keeper keeps doing the fist-against-palm gesture every time he recalls something about the phoenix's development. The last time he does it, it's because the giant Phoenix on Kuno's head resembles the statue outside of his store. Akane chides him for startling her.
-
*Total Drama*:
- At twelve hours into the awake-athon in "The Big Sleep", Owen keeps himself conscious with movement and enthusiasm. While tapping his palm with his fist, he brags it'll be easy to win, then promptly falls asleep.
- During a confessional in "Broadway, Baby!", Heather wonders what caused Sierra to act the way she did and lose Chris's favor. In a flash of realization, she recalls Alejandro's smile and taps her palm with her fist as she comes to the conclusion that he manipulated Sierra into it.
- Heather is robbed of the Immunity Idol in "No Egg-spects the Spanish Opposition" and wrongly concludes that it's Chris's doing because he has cameras everywhere. In the confessional, she directly addresses him and vows she won't be the one to leave the island tonight as she taps her palm with her fist.
- When they're threatened by a crocodile in "This Is the Pits!", Scarlett taps her palm with her fist as she recognizes that this is the perfect opportunity to get rid of Max. It's less that he gets eaten, and more that he gets delayed and will cause the team to lose, upon which he'll be voted off.
- During a confessional in "Twinning Isn't Everything", Amy calls Samey a Spare Amy and realizes a nickname even more cruel than "Samey" would be "Sparemy". She taps her palm with her fist as she declares that once she gets home, she's going to change the name on her sister's birth certificate.
- In
*Xiaolin Showdown* Kimiko does this when confident enough to fight Panda Bubba in the episode "The Return of Panda Bubba" when he took over her father's factory.
- Western politicians sometimes do this to drive a point home during their debates. (It's questionable whether they're actually realizing something when they do it more likely they want to signal to the audience that they should be realizing something because of what the politician just told them.) | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PalmFistTap |
Panel Game - TV Tropes
*... but for once, let's put our heads down, and have an informative, popular, music-based quiz, without resorting to*
jokes—
*the coward's way out.*
A Panel Game or Panel Show is a variation on the Game Show in which celebrities and comedians compete in teams to win points. Panel games are a mainstay of British television, perhaps due to the continued UK popularity of radio entertainment, from which the format was adapted; or to accommodate lower UK production budgets. The games are a useful way for up-and-coming — or fast-descending — comedians to pay the bills.
The celebrity contestants are usually paid an appearance fee, but there is rarely a prize as an incentive to win, although the contestants may still be highly competitive. The focus is on comedy; The Points Mean Nothing, and some shows feature a joke prize that is mundane (
*Have I Got News for You*), bizarre ( *Shooting Stars*), or non-existent ( *I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue*).
Panel games feature a host who asks the questions and adjudicates, and often some of the panelists are regulars who appear every week. The host makes jokes between the rounds, of which there are up to six, some more gimmicky than others, including video clips and minigames.
Not to be confused with Celebrity Specials of a Game Show, where the celeb accrues prize money and donates it to a charity of their choosing.
## Examples:
- The one that is most familiar to American viewers is
*Whose Line Is It Anyway?*, which had four comedians who would perform improv comedy to win points from host Clive Anderson (later replaced by Drew Carey for the somewhat-louder American version).
- A long-running British panel show was
*Never Mind the Buzzcocks*, which is based around music and generally features pop and rock stars as well as comedians. After most of the original cast started having other commitments, the show bounced back with a very successful format of rotating guest hosts and temporary team captains. Phill Jupitus has appeared in every episode but one, making him pretty much the face of the show. The show's initial final season was hosted by Rhod Gilbert, and the other team captain is Noel Fielding. After being cancelled in 2015, it was revived in 2021 with Greg Davies as the host with Daisy May Cooper and Jamali Maddix as the new team captains.
- Another mainstay of British panel games is
*Have I Got News for You*, a political and satirical panel game that generally attracts politicians, journalists, and businessmen as its panelists, as well as more politically-minded comedians.
- A similar show is
*Mock the Week*, basically *Have I Got News For You* meets *Whose Line*.
- One of the oldest British panel games is
*A Question of Sport*, which — since it typically features sportsmen — is generally regarded as more niche and less funny than its competitors (there were a lot of restrictions on how funny they could be when Princess Anne turned up). It's headed a bit more towards the comedic in recent years (ever since Sue Barker took over the chair), which meant that...
-
*They Think It's All Over*, also a sporting panel game but with more emphasis on the funny (each side had a regular sportsman, a regular comedian and one other random, usually a sportsman), was rendered slightly redundant. A change of panelists didn't kill the show; a change of hosts did. Rampantly most famous for the Feel The Sportsman round, where contestants were blindfolded and had to identify a sportsperson (or, in several cases, a *team* of sportspersons) by touch alone.
- The format was taken to its logical conclusion in
*Shooting Stars* which dispensed with rules, order and sense, and featured questions such as "True or False: Bill Cosby was the first-ever black man" (the answer was false; it was actually Sidney Poitier). It also featured dream sequences, sketches, and other distractions from the boring business of actually hosting a show. The guests are more of an afterthought than anything.
- Subverted in
*Annually Retentive*, a 2-for-1 Show which shows both a traditional panel game and the (fictional) behind-the-scenes backstabbing that happens behind it. As far as the celebrities are concerned, it's a 'proper' panel show, and only the host and captains act in the behind-the-scenes bits.
-
*Wild N Out* is an urban-themed improv comedy show. The players, who seem to be regulars with a single exception (the special celebrity guest), are divided into the Red Squad (led by host Nick Cannon) and the Black Squad (led by the special guest). They compete mostly for pride, as well as the opportunity to hold the pro wrestling-style "improv champion" belt.
- This format was once common on North American prime time; the tone was more serious, although there was still some joking going on. The best known of these were CBS's
*To Tell the Truth*, *I've Got a Secret*, and *What's My Line?* (all of which later went into syndication) and CBC's *Front Page Challenge*, which ran for 37 years (1958-95).
- You could argue shows like
*Match Game* and *The Hollywood Squares* (and their various knockoffs and Derivative Works, such as *Break the Bank (1976)*, the 70s revivals of *You Don't Say!*, and *Battlestars*) are the result of the panel game and the game show getting drunk and doing it.
- Australia also has its fair share of these, many differing from their British counterparts only so much as is necessary to avoid paying the BBC for the rights.
- There have been two
*Never Mind the Buzzcocks*-alikes. SBS's *Rockwiz* is considered the more musically credible; it has the feel of a stage show that just happens to be on TV, being filmed in an actual pub and with the scores displayed on cardboard placards. It is trumped in popularity by ABC's *Spicks and Specks*, which is closer to *Buzzcocks* in format but (being hosted by Adam Hills) with a more positive attitude and less likely to go Off the Rails.
-
*Good News Week* was originally a carbon copy of *Have I Got News For You*, but its political satire didn't survive the move to commercial television. After a ten year hiatus, the rebooted show focuses more on oddball stories, celebrity news and musical guests.
- Also Australian is
*Talkin' 'bout Your Generation*, hosted by Shaun Micallef and featuring comedians Baby Boomer Amanda Keller, Generation X Charlie Pickering, Generation Y Josh Thomas, and their celebrity guests, in an attempt to determine the superior generation.
-
*QI*, themed around general ~~knowledge~~ ignorance, has become one of the biggest. (And funniest.) Notable for having no captains but a regular panelist in Alan Davies, who acts as a foil to host Stephen Fry and keeps things from getting too serious. Fry left following Series M and it is now hosted by Sandi Toksvig with Alan remaining his regular panelist position.
-
*You Have Been Watching*, themed around television shows, hosted by Charlie Brooker.
-
*8 Out of 10 Cats*, about statistics, hosted by Jimmy Carr, regular team captain Sean Lock (either of whom tend to be CMOF-worthy *separately*), relatively new team captain Jon Richardson, and the occasional *somewhat* thematic celebrity (such as Chris Hoy, after he won Olympic gold).
- As of Series 22, the team captains are now Rob Beckett and Katherine Ryan though Sean ( until his death in 2021) and Jon are the team captains on the spinoff hybrid series 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown with Jimmy also serving as the host.
-
*Dave Gorman's Genius*, which is also a radio show, involves more audience participation than usual: the general public mails suggestions which could improve the world (or are just funny), and the best ones get invited onto the show to defend their idea to a guest, who is in charge of deciding whether or not the idea is genius. Ideas that have been declared genius before include breeding an elephant that is small enough to be a house pet, helium filled bubble wrap to make parcels lighter and postage cheaper, and to make parliament discuss things under the rules of *Just a Minute*.
-
*Would I Lie to You?*, hosted in the first two seasons by Angus Deayton, currently hosted by Rob Brydon, with team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell. Slightly more emphasis on the *game* part of panel game, the contestants read out a card that either contains an unlikely truth about themselves or a lie made up by the researchers of the show, and they have to defend it as true, while the other team prods them for additional facts and then says whether it's the truth, or a lie. (A video link explains it better than that description.) There are also various other rounds, such as each member of one team claiming to know a mystery guest. It's one of the best panel shows on today, with very little scripted material, lots of funny stories and plenty of good-natured ribbing.
-
*The Bubble*, hosted by David Mitchell isolates 3 celebrities in a country house for a week and shows them a variety of News Stories from the week, some real, some faked and the celebrities have to guess which is which. It's better seen than read about. Notable for the fact that while it's a BBC show they are banned from faking news from the BBC. Here's an interview about the program.
- Ireland has
*The Panel* which dispenses with the quiz format altogether, while still attempting to feel like a panel game show. It used to work, until Dara Ó Briain left.
- The format is quite popular in the Netherlands, although not quite as mainstream as it is in the UK. Popular Dutch panel shows include:
-
*Waku Waku*, a classic charity show with a focus on wildlife trivia. Although it was extremely popular for quite a number of seasons, it was cancelled well over a decade ago. It's the one panel show that all others take their cues from.
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*Dit Was Het Nieuws* (This Was The News), a carbon copy of *Have I Got News for You*.
-
*The Mike And Thomas Show*, a rapid, very musical show not unlike *Shooting Stars*. It consists of the two titular hosts basically just messing about in the guise of a gameshow. And two grand pianos.
-
*Wie Ben Ik?* (Who Am I?), a panel show based around celebrities trying to guess the object, character or concept they've been labeled as. The show made great use of its simplistic rules, letting the comedians run loose and never pretending to be more than it was, resulting in one of the most celebrated light entertainment shows in Dutch TV history.
- New Zealand's local programme
*Seven Days* follows this format, focusing on news stories that happened in the last week. The amount of points awarded per round tends to reference recent news stories, often at impressively different scales (Team one, you can have the number of women that claim to have slept with Tiger Woods; Team Two, you can have the cost of repairing Qantas' air fleet. Team Two wins!).
-
*Figure It Out* has four panelists try to figure out what a contestant's secret talent is before all three rounds are up. Being a Nickelodeon show, lots of slime is expected.
-
*Sponk!*, a *Whose Line*-esque show created for the Nickelodeon spin-off network Noggin. The show had two teams of actors perform improvisational sketches, which in this case would be voted on by the studio audience.
-
*Bunk*, an IFC mock-gameshow with a panel of 3 comedians competing at strange tasks to win strange prizes.
-
*Comedy World Cup*, hosted by David Tennant, which ran for only 7 episodes. In a twist of the normal formal, there were no regulars but four different teams that consisted of the same comedians. The teams were pitted against each other to answer questions regarding comedy history and trivia, and the winner would advance to the next level.
- Comedy Central's
*@Midnight* was a U.S., four-nights-a-week take on the concept themed around internet and pop culture. Although obscured by its use of elements associated with American quiz shows (consisting of three solo guests, some rounds played on buzzers, and a Final Jeopardy-like endgame played between the top two scorers... or all three if Chris Hardwick feels like it), it still carried all of the hallmarks of a British-style panel game (including a focus on rapidly-changing subjects and recurring segments, and points that wildly fluctuated on the host's whim).
-
*Virtually Famous* is another British panel show with the same format as the traditional ones, with the additional theme of things that are internet famous.
-
*Animal Crack-Ups* was a short-lived note : Read: One season, in the "kids aren't even watching" timeslot Saturday-morning game show on Creator/ABC in the mid-80s, in which celebrities answered trivia questions about animals with the winner getting a cash donation to the wildlife-based charity of their choice.
- Nippon TV in Japan is the home of
*Shoten* note : 笑点, which roughly translates as "Funnybone", a comedy panel show that's been running weekly since 1966. As with other similar shows, although the participants - always comedians - are scored, the goal is mainly to entertain rather than to win. Shoten keeps score in a unique way: participants sit on stacks of heavy cushions, each representing one point. This has spawned a popular Internet meme: "you get a cushion" note : 座布団一枚, used as a reply to particularly witty comments.
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*Have You Been Paying Attention?* is an Australian Panel Game in a somewhat similar vein to the BBC's *Have I Got News for You* (though with a larger focus on the "quiz" side of things as the contestants actually score more than five points), *Have You Been Paying Attention?*, as its intro suggests, tests a group of five comedians/radio personalities on the week's events.
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*That's My Jam*, hosted by Jimmy Fallon in 2021-22, has a large focus on karaoke-style singing in addition to trivia segments, and many of the celebrity guests are musicians. They "compete" in teams of two, but The Points Mean Nothing, the last round is worth more than the rest of the game combined, and the winning team receives only a pair of metal-plated boom-box trophies, with actual monetary prizes/donations being divided equally among contestants' chosen charities regardless of outcome.
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*I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue* is a parody of the panel show genre (featuring many intentionally surreal rounds where scoring points would be completely impossible even if they tried) and has been broadcast with most of the original panelists since 1972.
-
*The 99p Challenge* is a radio panel show that offers up a prize of 99 pence (currently equivalent to US$50,000) to its winners.
- American example: NPR's
*Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me*. Not a pure panel game, as it also features segments in which listeners play to win an actual prize, but as the prize is an answering machine greeting from newscaster Carl Kasell, these are played for laughs as much as the ones with only the panelists.
- More panelly American example: NPR's
*Says You!* where a regular cast, consisting mostly of media writers and producers, plays a series of games dealing with trivia and English vocabulary.
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*Just a Minute*, which, over the years, has placed more and more emphasis on joke-telling than on trying to speak for a minute without repetition, hesitation, or deviation, with the panel now generally composed of stand-up comedians (the original regulars included columnist Clement Freud and comic actors (but not stand-up comedians) Peter Jones, Derek Nimmo, and Kenneth Williams). Host Nicholas Parsons did insist that it was the contributions and not the point-scoring that is most important, but this has not stopped many panelists over the years from taking the "game" aspect very seriously.
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*The Unbelievable Truth*, hosted by David Mitchell. The four guests give a lecture on a particular subject that is full of lies, except for five truths scattered throughout, and the others have to pick out the truths as they go.
-
*The News Quiz*, something of a radio counterpart to *Have I Got News for You* (which it predates by thirteen years). In its early years, it was a relatively straight panel game about the week's news, with the panel largely comprising journalists and politicians, but since around the mid-1990s there has been more emphasis on comedy.
-
*The Museum of Curiosity*, which has been described as a sister show to *QI*. Guests including comedians, scientists and explorers each "donate" something to the museum, explaining why it is significant. The "donations" can be literally anything from ordinary objects to cosmic events to abstract concepts.
- A very early example would be
*Information Please*, first broadcast in 1938. Particularly interesting in that the listening public was responsible for sending in the questions asked of the panel members, and they were the ones paid if the panelists got the answer wrong.
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*Fighting Talk*, which airs every Saturday morning during the football season on BBC Five Live. More competitive than most examples, it features four panelists; usually sportspeople, comedians or journalists, discussing topical sporting news with points awarded for good punditry and passion as well as comedy.
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*So Wrong It's Right*, another panel show hosted by Charlie Brooker. Comedians (including several regulars such as David Mitchell, Rob Brydon, Holly Walsh, and Lee Mack) compete to tell the "worst" stories, such as the worst thing that happened to them at a party or the worst idea for a restaurant.
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*Because News*, a CBC radio panel game that first aired in 2015.
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*My Word!*, long-running (1956-1988) BBC radio panel game with challenges based on language and wordplay. Best remembered for the final round, which was an excuse for team captains Frank Muir and Denis Norden to tell comic anecdotes ending in excruciating puns.
- David Firth of Fat-Pie.com doesn't appear to much like panel shows, as displayed in a cartoon he made for Charlie Brooker's show
*Screenwipe* that mocks the pre-written jokes many of them use. It also makes a few jabs at internet videos. See the cartoon here.
- Caught Chatting is presented in this format.
- Pappy's Flatshare Slamdown is a panel show released in Podcast format.
- Citation Needed is Tom Scott's take on the format: He has a Wikipedia article pulled up, and three panelists (Chris Joel, Gary Brannan, and Matt Gray) who can't see the article and have to guess the details. Because all four of them are quite geeky and still intelligent, a lot of educational joking ensues.
- Guest starring on a Panel Quiz Show is a way for your up-and-coming star/starlet to earn money (and fame) in Star Dream. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanelGame |
Pandering to the Base - TV Tropes
*"If it's an idea you would have thought of anyway, fine. It's okay for a manga artist to adapt like that. But if you go around absorbing everything your fans give you, you end up with gibberish, like this. Listen, fan mail is something to encourage you, not something to steal ideas from. If you start using all these suggestions, then your work won't be Muto Ashirogi's anymore. It'll be something your fans created... understand?"*
One of the oddities of creating art is the nebulous relationship between the fans of the media and the creators of that media. In theory, the creators, producers, and distributors are the ones calling the shots; they decide what's happening in the work, and the fans follow as they will. But that's a bit naive; it's the fans who keep the ratings up, the sales high, and the money flowing in. And if you displease the fans, they can just go elsewhere and take their money with them. The existence of things like Fanon Discontinuity, Audience-Alienating Era, Author's Saving Throw, and Fanon means that any property successful enough to cultivate a group of intensely devoted fans is going to be at least partially concerned with satisfying their wishes; to some degree, you have to give the people what they want.
So, just give the fans exactly what they want, and everything will work out. Right?
Wrong. Generally speaking, the more intensely devoted fans in a fandom are usually outnumbered by the casual fans. But the more devoted a fan becomes, the more active (and louder) they become in the fandom. So while a few million casual fans might enjoy an episode of a show without ever making that fact widely known, a handful of devoted and occasionally unhinged fans are screaming about how the show is Ruined FOREVER, which can be seen and heard by everyone... including the people making the show. The creators may then start pandering to these voices exclusively, believing them to be the voice of everyone watching (which these fans will often claim to be) — but "everyone" in this case may in fact consist only of a handful of people, and what this minority wants and what the less-noisy fans want can differ drastically.
This presents a major problem. The property can end up becoming a private club, accessible only to a select few. Excluding the casual fans means they'll simply drift away to find something else to spend their time on, and raising the entry bar too high means you run the risk of locking out new fans who may have been interested in the property, but now find it too difficult to access. While the vocal minority might now be satisfied (and you can't even count on that), they rarely translate to enough ratings and/or sales to justify the property's continued existence — and to make matters worse, even this hardcore minority that you catered to may begin to drift away for numerous reasons (changing tastes, burnout, lessened interest, etc). This results in diminishing returns, ending in eventual cancellation if unchecked.
Furthermore, the overall quality of the property can begin to suffer if you just listen to the vocal minority; just because someone is intensely committed to a particular work of fiction doesn't necessarily mean they know what makes good fiction
*work*. The hardcore fans are generally fascinated by the backstory, mythos, trivia, and continuity which can build up around a franchise, but this doesn't necessarily make riveting entertainment to anyone less interested in all of this stuff. And if you somehow get the story's continuity tangled up or make any mistakes in your established lore, this makes things *worse*; not only have you lost the interest of the people who don't care about this stuff, you've annoyed the people who do, and it's now guaranteed they won't be shy about saying so.
In many cases, pandering to the base rarely succeeds in making anyone happy, not even the fans it's supposed to win over. This is because what most devoted fans ultimately want is the same as the casual ones: interesting and engaging stories, not just constant pandering. There's a certain kind of irony here: by trying to give the fans what they say they want, you fail to give them what they actually want.
A wise producer understands a simple rule that helps them avoid all of this; generally speaking, you've got the hardcore minority regardless — they'll usually keep following the story, even if they're dragged in kicking and screaming. You need to win over the undecided. A good producer understands that for every one fan who writes a frothing invective on the Internet or a rabid email, there's probably ten fans who are perfectly content with what's happening.
On the flip side, tropes are not bad; pandering to the base can and indeed in many cases does work out just fine. Sometimes giving the fans what they want is the same as giving the wider audience what they want as well. And while they can at times be annoying, the fans are still part of your audience, and if you're deliberately pissing them off, you're still pissing off a potentially significant segment of your own audience, who will desert you if you go too far; make them angry enough, and they may become so loud that they scare away more casual fans or potential new fans. Furthermore, relying on the approval of the silent majority over the noisy fans presents its own pitfalls — in particular, you
*might not actually have that approval*. The fan criticism you're receiving may have a point.
Compare Vocal Minority, which usually is the bases being pandered to. Sometimes the base in question is the Lowest Common Denominator. Can result in The Chris Carter Effect, Better on DVD, Continuity Lock-Out, Continuity Porn. Compare/contrast Running the Asylum, which is sometimes the writers pandering to the fans, and sometimes pandering to themselves. Can also result in fans screaming Ruined FOREVER as well as an Unpleasable Fanbase. When the pandering actually does work, it's And the Fandom Rejoiced.
This phenomenon is sometimes called "fanservice", but don't confuse this with our definition of said trope (although the two can often be related, depending on what exactly the fanbase being pandered to is demanding).
Not to be confused with Pandaing to the Audience; this trope has nothing to do with pandas.
## Tropes this often involves (but are not necessarily this themselves):
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## Other examples:
- The "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads for Apple can be seen as an inverse case of this. The ads seem to exist to reassure prospective Apple newbies that they're cool rather than providing a reason why knowledgeable Mac users (those interested in more than making fan videos on YouTube, and someone likely to use Photoshop) would want to stay. Not with much success - many people (across the OS divide) see the Mac guy as a stuck-up poseur and the PC guy as, well, John Hodgman.
- The UK ones are probably worse; they star Mitchell and Webb, and the Mac and PC guys are
*just* close enough to Jeremy and Mark that PC Guy looks like a Romantic Runner-Up and Mac Guy like a Jerkass. Charlie Brooker pointed this out in a column about how much he hates Macs.
- There is also a small division of grammar vigilantes who berate Apple for claiming that Macs are not Personal Computers. Especially after Apple switched from IBM-Freescale PowerPC to Intel x86.
- One of the major theories of why The Japanese Invasion had begun to grind to a halt in The New '10s is that the anime industry in Japan in general has been pandering more and more to its core otaku base at the expense of a most likely wider audience, creating a vicious circle of appeal to otaku. Sales lower as you appeal to a smaller audience, increasing prices for little content to make up for the loss, and then circling back around to appeal to otaku even more, and on and on.
- The KeyAni trio of animes (
*Kanon*, *Air* and *CLANNAD*) are notable for barely having any sexual fanservice in the Harem genre, where the Accidental Pervert is the default for a lead. They find other ways to please a loyal fanbase for obsessive fans. One shot in the *Clannad* anime has the camera pan up while fading to white, finishing with simply the title of the show.
- Fansubs are as a rule made by and for Occidental Otaku and assume a greater familiarity with the Japanese Language and Japanese culture than professional subtitles do. Their translations also tend to be more literal.
- Discussed, in-universe, in
*Bakuman。*, and deconstructed. When Mashiro and Takagi, collectively "Muto Ashirogi," are desperate to keep their first series going, and so incorporate fan suggestions into their manga. Miura, for all his flaws, immediately notices something's up, and gives the two a lecture, pointing out that the fans sending mail don't necessarily represent what the majority of the readership wants note : The letter writers are mostly girls, but he notes that the magazine is aimed at boys, and even the female readers want to read a shonen manga and that the fans ultimately want to see what *they* come up with.
**Miura**: If it's an idea you would have thought of anyway, fine. It's okay for a manga artist to adapt like that. But if you go around absorbing everything your fans give you, you end up with gibberish, like this. Listen, fan mail is something to encourage you, not something to steal ideas from. If you start using all these suggestions, then your work won't be Muto Ashirogi's anymore. It'll be something your fans created... understand?
-
*Carnival Phantasm* seems to have been made exclusively for fans of *Tsukihime* and *Fate/stay night*, being little more than a Slice of Life comedy consisting of the cast of the previously mentioned visual novels.
- The staff behind
*Code Geass* has intimated that fan response incited them into expanding the role of one character as the series progressed.
- This◊ is a stellar example of non-sexual fanservice. Most fans have been wanting to do this to Suzaku for quite a while now.
- Many fans of
*Danganronpa 3* have accused Side:Hope of being this, with ||the entire cast of *Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair* coming Back from the Dead, Kirigiri surviving and Naegi becoming Headmaster of Hopes Peak Academy with the implication that he and Kirigiri ended up together||. Whatever this is a good idea or not is up to debate.
- The live-action
*Death Note* movies have a very common Fandom-Specific Plot, wherein ||L defeats Kira||.
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*Fairy Tail*:
- Hiro Mashima has gone on record saying that, because he had no particular road map laid out for the manga, the response from fans had a huge influence on the way the story and character relationships unfolded, giving characters such as Levy and Mavis more focus based on popularity.
- The Ship Tease between Natsu and Lucy was something Mashima had absolutely no interest in at the start and was mainly as a response when fans started taking the idea more seriously than he did.
-
*Gundam*:
- The entire relation between
*Gundam* fans of the original time-line (Universal Century) and the Alternate Timelines is entirely shaped by the very different expectations of each side as well as Vocal Minority. Disentangling what each group really wants and trying to appeal to both sides is for many what is ruining the original appeal of the series. The fact the UC and Alternate Timelines appeal to different tastes with the same success hasn't helped matters.
- Fans often claim that Kira Yamato was thrust back into the spotlight (from episode 39 onwards) of
*Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny* (taking the spotlight from Shinn Asuka, the *de facto* main character of *Destiny*), was because, in Japan, Kira was, and still is, one of the most popular characters in the *SEED* universe, and perhaps, the Gundam franchise. However, according to Word of God the character was always planned to take a big role before the show started.
- In the
*Mobile Suit Gundam Wing* novel sequel *Frozen Teardrop*, the Identical Students of Trowa and Quatre spend a lot of time together. This could possibly be the author (also the head writer of the anime) granting a concession to the Yaoi Fangirls, since Trowa/Quatre was one of if not *the* most popular yaoi pairing amongst that fandom. It's not a complete concession, though; Quatre's successor is his identical *sister*.
-
*Gundam Build Fighters* and *Gundam Build Fighters Try* are for all intents and purposes this in addition to being so blatantly Merchandise-Driven even for a *Gundam* show. And it works *spectacularly* to the point of saving the franchise from being killed off.
- Kenjiro Hata seems to have a good handle on this trope. When Athena was introduced in
*Hayate the Combat Butler*, the fandom exploded with praise for how the story had changed for the serious and the better character introduction. Since her arcs ended, and Athena faded back into the background, the fandom has returned to the less vocal minority, and Hata has made note how he's happy the story has returned to its normal functioning many times.
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*Love Live!*: Maki/Nico was one of the most popular Fan Preferred Couples despite being Ships That Pass in the Night for the entire first season, as they rarely interacted and didn't have many in-story reasons to. The second season took note of how much the fans loved them together and ramped up the Ship Tease, although there was zero explanation for why two characters that barely acknowledged each other's existence before were suddenly all over each other.
- This happens again in
*Love Live! Sunshine!!* with Yoshiko/Riko, who start receiving a lot of Ship Tease in the show's 2nd season (even having an entire episode focused on them) despite the 1st season heavily hinting at Riko/Chika and Yoshiko/Hanamaru. This was presumably done because Yoshiko/Riko was a popular pair before the anime aired, as well as the fact that their respective voice actresses got along very well.
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*Lucky Star* had its pandering in the form of Konata and Kagami getting more screentime than the other two mains because a large group of fanboys enjoyed the incidental yuri fodder. They won but fans of other characters lost out.
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*Naruto*: In retrospect, the movie *Road to Ninja* was this for the Naruto/Sakura shippers, as it was a Non-Serial Movie that contains Ship Tease upon Ship Tease involving those characters. The movie started its production around the same time as Sakura's infamous false love confession to Naruto, and was released at the time when their Ship Tease had pretty much stopped in the manga note : Save for a couple of moments that ultimately turned out to be the author, by his own admission, deliberately pulling the legs of the fans, and in hindsight, it was very likely an early apology from the studio for the impending Ship Sinking of the Naruto/Sakura pairing, which would officially come in the canonical movie that came after it and the manga's epilogue. Ironically, a lot of Naruto/Sakura shippers later accused both the author and Studio Pierrot of pandering instead to the followers of the Fan-Preferred Couple, Naruto/Hinata, by making it canon. However, the author, Masashi Kishimoto, stated in this 2017 Jump Festa interview that he already decided that Naruto/Hinata would be the main Official Couple since the early stages of the manga, but he "did throw in some nuggets" *specifically* to troll the Naruto/Sakura shippers.
- 4Kids Entertainment added additional Ship Tease in
*Pokémon: The Series* between Ash and Misty in order to appeal to newfound shippers who were reading more into subtext than the writers actually intended. It got to the point where they even created an original Image Song about shipping the two, though just as many moments were removed as were added.
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*Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion* shows the audience of the original series many things they wanted to see, including: focusing on Madoka and Homura relationship up to an open declaration of love, **heavy** Les Yay between Sayaka and Kyoko, ||showing Charlotte the Witch's human form and giving her an owner-pet like relationship with Mami, making Hitomi briefly into an antagonist, and having Kyubey's evil plan being loudly defeated,|| and throughout showing all five girls attending school with no tears in sight, albeit under ambiguous circumstances.
- In the eyes of some fans,
*Saint Seiya Omega* was hit hard with this during its second season. The Clothstones and sleeker Cloth designs, which a lot of people complained about, were swapped out for the old Cloth Boxes and bulkier Cloth designs, and a good chunk of the main cast, like Souma and Yuna, was severely shafted in favor of the Gold and Legendary Saints.
- This entry at MangaCast discusses the increase of Ho Yay moments in stories published in
*Shonen Jump*. Although the author is a yaoi fangirl (or "fujoshi") herself, she's not entirely pleased with the rate of fanservice:
'When Jump started to give bits and pieces of fanfare for fujoshis, it became fun in the beginning. It felt great to be reassured of your fandom. Of course, those moves were little and those who don't know probably wouldn't notice it, but we fujoshis do and we treasured it like our first love letter. [...But] the magazine became over-saturated with fujoshi overtones and it's no longer fun. [...] the fujoshi Moe
and maybe even regular moe diluted the core of their stories. Perseverance. Victory. Friendship. Although a few titles still keep these values, most have been written simply to whet the fantasies of the readers. In the end, you find yourself wondering, "Why did I even read this story to begin with?"'
- Like
*Shonen Jump*, Light Novels and other manga publishers suffer from a similar issue. Whereas *Shonen Jump* was pandering more and more to fujoshi, light novels went the opposite approach and aimed for *fanservice* and *Moe*. As more hentai artists do the artwork for the novels, authors have to accommodate to their style which has difficulty in drawing men, and so use the visual novel-style approach to their storylines (read: lots and lots of cute girls and a token guy). A chief shounen editor expresses his mind.
'Weve got a lot of followers who are looking to become mangaka, and theres something I noticed about their works Id like to write a bit about what weve noticed. Its about art there seem to be few people who can draw cool-looking men. Especially their faces. People who can draw a man who looks cool to other men, with a sense of sex appeal. Are there no rookies about who can do that
Looking at recent contributions, everyone can draw cute girls. But however you look at it, they put no effort into men. I suspect those who can draw cool men will command the next era in manga (though this is an exaggeration). Keep trying!'
- In
*Valvrave the Liberator*, the five most popular characters survived even though one appeared to be the target of karmic backlash.
-
*Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions* is a new Yu-Gi-Oh movie set after the series' end with heavy focus on Seto Kaiba, the series' first Breakout Character, and uses common fandom plots like a new villain with ties to established characters attacking post-series, Yugi and Kaiba dueling, someone trying to bring back Atem, Yami Bakura being involved in even more tragedy in Bakura's life, and Atem acting as a Big Good to his friends ||who comes back at the last second to help Yugi||. The English dub followed suit, going so far as to bring back as many of the original voice actors as possible, reuse music from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! dub, and have Kaiba be so hammy and over the top that he seemed to be channeling the version from the Abridged Series, including a line about firing God.
-
*Lord El-Melloi II Case Files* aims itself at hardcore *Nasuverse* fans and doesn't even attempt to hide it. For starters, the series revolves around an Ensemble Dark Horse from *Fate/Zero*, meaning reading of that and *Fate/stay night* is required just to understand the plot. On top of that, throughout the story, Alternate Universe versions of characters from other Fate spinoffs have prominent roles.
-
*X-Men: Misfits* is mostly romance with a little action thrown in at the end, in an obvious attempt to sway the interest of young teenage girls.
- A recurring problem in comic books for the past few decades.
- The big comic-book universes are shackled by Continuity Porn, their obsession with trivia, and the need of their fans for everything in a particular verse to be internally consistent and logical (despite the fact that by this point this is next to impossible to achieve). This results in periodic reboots (which are almost impenetrable if you're a casual fan and don't care), where the writers have to retool everything in order to assure the most hardcore fans that no, it all really does make sense; as well as individual series having their plots derailed by massive, universe-spanning crossovers.
- To an extent Marvel managed this with their
*Ultimates* remake. It simplifies plots of the original comics, for good or for bad, but if you come to it without preconceptions, it actually reads pretty well, at least till you get to *Ultimatum*.
- Marvel has been accused of Pandering to Themselves with
*One More Day* and subsequent storylines, which flew in the face of widespread complaints from the fanbase. Even people who disliked the Parker/Watson marriage resented the manner in which it was broken up.
- DC followed suit with their Earth-One series of graphic novels. Part of the rationale of
*The New 52* reboot was to simplify continuity. Then again, part of the rationale for *every* reboot is to simplify continuity.
- Both Marvel and DC have been accused of pandering to a political Vocal Minority since the Turn of the Millennium, with the exact politics of said Vocal Minority varying from accuser to accuser. While comics always included political elements, the advent of the 1999 website
*Women in Refrigerators* ushered in a wave of attacks on both Marvel and DC writers for their supposedly sexist writing, which was countered by a wave of new writers being hired by the Big Two, including the webmaster of *Women in Refrigerators* herself. How this went is YMMV. Some argue that it got too 'political' and cite *Secret Empire* (a Crisis Crossover in which Captain America is retconned by a living Cosmic Cube into a HYDRA sleeper agent) as an example, and characters like America Chavez - originally a Carol Danvers-inspired Latina superheroine into a lesbian Dimensional Traveler from an alternate universe called the 'Utopian Parallel'. Others argue that Marvel has always done political comics (see about 85% of *X-Men* issues) and that diversifying and fleshing out characters has made them more interesting and less repetitive. Let's just say that the reception of this new age of comics has led to quite the Broken Base and leave it at that.
- This reaction to the official DC Comics novel
*Inheritance* takes a similar attitude to Ho Yay in Western comics:
Believe me, there was LOUD, LOUD SQUAWKING. I've reached the phase wherein I'm too embarrassed to continue, and too curious to stop. It's too rich to be subtextual porn; it's too laden with innuendo to be textual and
*serious*.
It's unbelievable, luxuriously, lustily GAY. Bad-fanfic kind of gay. The "OMG, what are you DOING?!" kinda gay. The shrieking and the "How did they even PUBLISH this!?" kind. [...] Oh, God, if it weren't so raw in its obviousness, I'd be in slash nirvana.
- In a positive example of this, James Roberts, writer of
*The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye*, wrote the character of Nautica into the story solely because he knew the fans wanted there to be a female Lost Light crewmember. The character was immensely popular with both fans and critical reviewers and greatly helped to placate fans who grumbled about the lack of female characters in IDW's *Transformers* continuity. It helps that she was actually given plot relevance rather than simply being thrown in for the sake of it.
- One amusing example of this in recent years, at least for fans who got into the
*X-Men* in their heyday during the The '90s, has been Marvel's resorting to Nostalgia Bait to woo long-time readers back to the books. This started more or less after the *Inhumans vs. X-Men* story, when reader fatigue was at an all-time high. Taking cues from the widely praised (if unfortunately not widely *read*) book *X-Men '92*, the writers started bringing back characters from the time period in question who'd long since been abandoned to Comic-Book Limbo, ranging from the awesome (X-Man!) to the headscratchy (Ahab, a villain who wasn't exactly popular even during the 90's yet inexplicably got brought back to be the Big Bad of *Extermination (2018)*). How effective this strategy was in luring disaffected X-readers back to the books isn't clear, but it certainly made sure there were plenty of spare background mutants on hand to immigrate to Krakoa in *X-Men (2019)*.
- DC had Barbara Gordon de-aged and given a Relationship Upgrade with Dick Grayson (effectively dissolving his relationship with Starfire) solely to please the fans of
*Batman: The Animated Series*.
-
*Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters*: If you have not seen everything show-related, you will be lost. The movie states this up-front; during the opening "Things not to do in the theater" musical number, one of the lines is "If you don't understand it, *you shouldn't be here!*"
-
*My Little Pony: Equestria Girls*:
- The film features a
*ton* of this in the form of background ponies appearing as humans (namely Derpy Hooves) as well as a few nods such as the Cutie Mark Crusaders dancing to their theme song as well as the great and powerful **TRIIIIXIIIEE** (needing some peanut butter crackers). The more idealistic fans see it as a successful attempt to Win Back the Crowd from the Audience-Alienating Premise and enjoyed it. The less accepting fans, however, see their appearances as blatant pandering and an attempt to cover up what was perceived as bad writing and Canon Defilement. Not so much pandering to the base as the Periphery Demographic, but they would be far more receptive to something like this than the franchise's traditional base anyway, who would just see it as a fun commercial note : Word of God is that the show is designed to appeal to parents as well, and just happened to appeal to bronies, which Hasbro has *zero* problems with..
- The movie's sequel,
*My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Rainbow Rocks* ups the appeal, with inclusion of other fan-favorite background characters without any speaking lines, including Octavia (who has actually does have one line), Lyra and Bon-Bon (with a dash of the fandom's Ship Tease), Bulk Biceps and Maud Pie. It also has much more Trixie (who plays a secondary antagonist in the film), and much more Derpy (having her own band where she plays the saw).
- The
*Scooby-Doo (2002)* live-action movie is an example of this. This includes such fan-made theories as the allusion to drugs, Fred and Daphne as lovers, Velma being teased as a lesbian, and ||Scrappy-Doo being made into the main villain.||
- Kevin Smith admits that he made
*Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back* purely for his fans who wanted a Jay and Silent Bob movie with tons of references to his other films, as well as a lot of swearing, crude jokes, and Fanservice.
- This happened all over again with
*Jay and Silent Bob Reboot* which is not a reboot but a direct sequel, featuring returning characters and plot elements, cameos, and more commentary on now-modern geek movie movie trends (such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Ben Affleck as Batman). A huge part of the plot even involves Jay meeting the daughter of himself and his love interest from the first film.
- The film version of
*How the Grinch Stole Christmas!* changed a lot from the original book (and that's putting it politely), but it also incorporated both of the songs from the well-known animated version. Because, you know, it just wouldn't be the Grinch without that theme song, right?
- Similarly, the 2005 film
*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)* included a lengthy and completely superfluous second intro involving the title book flying through space to the tune of "Journey of the Sorceror", a sequence copied from the BBC miniseries.
-
*Hatchet II* was intended to be the same as the original *Hatchet*, but more, for the sake of fans. It was also littered with in-jokes and one Continuity Nod after another. Reception was mixed.
- The works of Tyler Perry aren't known for being critical darlings (and even has his share of black critics), but despite that he still has a very loyal and dedicated fanbase. Enough so to the point that Perry is actually the highest-paid man in Hollywood.
- Peter Jackson has been accused of doing this with
*The Hobbit*, by introducing characters from *The Lord of the Rings*, such as Frodo, Galadriel, and Saruman, who didn't have any part to play in the original novel (which was written well before *The Lord of the Rings*) but who were made immensely popular and well-known to movie-goers thanks to the movies. He also made three movies out of one book much shorter than any one volume of LOTR, introduced some subplots very loosely based on material from the LOTR appendices, and inserted several Continuity Nods or Mythology Gags to the LOTR movies to such a degree that several critics have called him out on the Fanservice and Padding, and likened the experience to the bad sort of Fanfiction.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Some people accused
*Iron Man 2* of setting up the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe more than its own, due to the greater presence of Call Forwards like Captain America's shield, a clip from *The Incredible Hulk*, Tony being evaluated for the Avengers, Black Widow's introduction, Nick Fury's return, and ||Thor's hammer being found||. However, Nick Fury doesn't appear until more than an hour in and even then his purpose is more to get Tony off of his ass and work than to convince him to join the Avengers. He even tells Tony how annoyed he is that Tony has become his problem to deal with when S.H.I.E.L.D. has more on its plate to handle. Pandering also seems to be parodied when Coulson discovers an incomplete Captain America shield. Tony asks for it excitedly... and uses it to prop up his machine.
- Due to Loki's popularity skyrocketing after the release of
*The Avengers*, the script for *Thor: The Dark World* was rewritten to give him more focus, at the expense of Malekith and the Dark Elves.
-
*X-Men: Days of Future Past*:
-
*Star Wars*:
-
*Episode VII: The Force Awakens* does this with its heavier emphasis on practical effects, and closer look and feel to the Original Trilogy. Ironically, the special effects reel revealed that the film actually didn't use fewer special effects than the Prequel Trilogy, and shot-for-shot actually contains *more* CGI than *The Phantom Menace* does. The difference mostly just comes from smarter use and ten+ years of technology making CGI rendering less of a problem. So in this case, it's more of just telling the base what they want to hear than actually pandering to them.
- One criticism leveled at
*Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker*: Not only does it bring back the original trilogy's Big Bad and declare that he's been behind everything all along, but it also ||makes him Rey's grandfather, undoing the previous movie's decision to make her The Unchosen One||. Many critics have noted that it undoes/downplays several other elements of *The Last Jedi* that upset what they call a Vocal Minority of the fanbase, e.g. Rose Tico is Demoted to Extra and the core new characters are together for most of the story whereas they were split into groups in the previous film. Other critics (who, of course, call fans of the hotly Contested Sequel the Vocal Minority), claim that it doesn't go *far enough* in undoing the sweeping changes TLJ brought to the series in the name of "subverting expectations". What is interesting about this is that *both sides* of the *Star Wars* Broken Base see *The Rise of Skywalker* as an example of this, but which demographic they see it as pandering to varies depending on which side of the TLJ debate they're on. A rare few other reviewers, meeting in the middle, say that the film tries its hardest to pander to *both* groups, which predictably satisfied neither.
- The DC Extended Universe has been attempting to do this ever since its first entry's mixed-to-negative critical and audience reception:
- With
*Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice*, Warner Bros. tried their damnedest to give hardcore superhero fans *everything* they wanted to see on the big screen, even if it didn't always make sense for many of those things to be in the same movie. The film finally delivered on the Batman/Superman crossover that fans had wanted to see for years, but also stuck in numerous subplots that many considered unnecessary, intended to set up a future *Justice League* movie, as well as bringing in cameos from other DC superheroes, and loosely adapting both *The Dark Knight Returns* and *The Death of Superman* (two classic stories that had little or nothing to do with each other, and **really** didn't fit in a film that took place before the formation of the Justice League). The result was overlong (the extended cut in particular nears three hours!), and was widely panned as a disjointed, thinly plotted mess that cared more about satisfying loyal fans than about trying to tell a good story.
- After the backlash against
*Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice* for being too grim and the extremely positive fan reaction to *Suicide Squad (2016)*'s much more fun-looking trailers, WB reshot parts of *Suicide Squad* to be more like the trailers. Unfortunately, this caused the film to have a distractingly uneven tone and inconsistent editing and be panned in reviews too.
- After all of the above happened, WB repeatedly and emphatically promised that
*Justice League (2017)* would have a more light-hearted tone, humor, and a brighter color palette than *Batman V Superman* and *Suicide Squad*. When a personal tragedy forced director Zack Snyder to step down, they hired Joss Whedon, who had directed the much-loved *The Avengers (2012)*, to wrap up production and do reshoots to add his usual brands of banter and humor. They also had the film cut down to only 2 hours in length, most likely as a response to complaints about *Batman V Superman* feeling overly long and bloated, and had a soundtrack by Danny Elfman added (which brought nostalgia-driven themes to the film such as those of *Superman: The Movie* and *Batman (1989)*). The general reaction to all of this attempted "course correction" was decidedly mixed if not negative, and its only lasting impact was ironically a fan campaign to get the film as Snyder envisioned and made it (and that campaign succeeded) with the originally planned Junkie XL soundtrack.
-
*Zack Snyder's Justice League*: Snyder knew this film had high chances of being his final DC Comics-based creation, so he arranged for this cinematic universe's Batman to interact with this universe's Joker in the Bad Future scene, something that wasn't given a chance to happen before due to both Jared Leto and Ben Affleck parting ways with DC Films. It was primarily intended as a gift to the fans who fought for the film to be released, and given the positive reception to that encounter, it wasn't a bad thing to do.
-
*Deadpool (2016)* and *Logan* at 20th Century Fox both demonstrate why this isn't always a bad thing. Both of them were largely made to satisfy the Vocal Minority of hardcore Marvel Comics fans who had been clamoring for R-rated Deadpool and Wolverine movies for *years*, arguing that only an "R" rating could do either character justice. In fact, they probably *wouldn't* have been made if not for the fan demand, since an R-rated superhero film is a bit of a marketing headache by its very nature. But against all odds, both movies turned out to be huge critical and commercial successes. General audiences loved their first taste of Deadpool's twisted humor and found the Bloodier and Gorier *Logan* to be a refreshing change of pace from the Bloodless Carnage of earlier *X-Men* films (with the Darker and Edgier approach also leading to an emotional and widely praised story). Sometimes, it seems, listening to hardcore fans can be a good way to tap into the most appealing aspects of a long-running series.
-
*Spider-Man 3* suffered from a lot of problems, but this is generally cited as a major cause of them. According to most accounts, producer Avi Arad strongly pressured Sam Raimi into adding the fan-favorite character Venom to the movie to make longtime *Spider-Man* fans happy—even though the script already featured Flint Marko (the Sandman) as the big new villain, and the previous film ended with a clear Sequel Hook setting up Harry Osborn taking up the mantle of the Green Goblin. This infamously resulted in the movie having *three* different supervillains, all with their own unrelated backstories and motivations. The story barely held together under all that weight, and it was widely panned as an incoherent mess. It didn't exactly help that Venom was badly at odds with the general tone and aesthetic of the rest of the series; as a Todd McFarlane character from the "grim and gritty" late 1980s, he stuck out like a sore thumb in a trilogy that drew most of its inspiration from the more colorful and lighthearted John Romita era of the late 1960s.
-
*Ghostbusters: Afterlife* features numerous Call Backs and Continuity Nods to the original film and its sequel, from small details like Egon Spengler's love of sweets to more blatant ones like ||the presence of Gozer at the film's primary villain||. To those still on the fence about the franchise after *Ghostbusters (2016)* caused a stir, it won them over. To casual viewers, it was met with more of a mixed reaction.
-
*Bumblebee* proved to be a rare, positive example of this. The film features very G-1 inspired designs for its robots, more homages to the 1984 animated series, and eschews many of the elements (i.e. heavy action sequences and explosions, product placement, and Male Gaze) Michael Bay's previous films were known for. It wound up being a Win Back the Crowd moment for those who had given up on the franchise, as the film became the best reviewed of all the movies, even the 1986 original that's still held in high regard.
-
*Star Wars*:
- Many books, in both
*Legends* and the current continuity, like to repeat famous lines from the movies as shout outs, unfortunately to the point where it's getting a little hard to believe. Sure there must be *someone* in that universe who *doesn't* "have a bad feeling about this".
- Almost every ship in the expanded universe and Legends - prequels, sequels, comics, video games,
*everything* - seems to be based on the ones from the original trilogy. More accurately, the most iconic ones; the X-Wing, TIE series, Star Destroyers, and the Death Star, even unto the Old Republic era, which takes place 4,000 years before *A New Hope*. Speaking of which, the Sith have been going after/building giant superweapons for at least that long; you'd think they'd have caught on by now. Most stories also like to include an Artoo & Threepio-like pair of robots, or at least one of the two, or *some* kind of riff on the buddy-bot theme.
- Many works have some sort of Darth Vader Expy. A tall, imposing Sith in a mask, dark clothes, and cape. In
*Star Wars: The Old Republic*, the player can effectively become one. Not to mention Darth Malgus, who is motivated by the death of the woman he loved and forced to wear a respirator due to battle injuries. Arcann is an even stronger example.
- The way Artemis/Holly is becoming more and more canon in
*Artemis Fowl*. ||They've now kissed and had Artemis' alternate personality, Orion, tell Holly that Artemis thinks of her constantly and is very passionate about her. And Orion spends the entire book mooning over Holly, which he claims he picked up from the real Artemis. Though he does have a very limited social group.|| They've been the Fan-Preferred Couple since the very first book.
-
*Kaspar's Box*, from The Three Kings series by Jack L. Chalker. Best known for his physical transformation fetish (and having the strongest fans with similar tastes), there's a purely gratuitous physical transformation which has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, hasn't anything to do with the universe the story appears in, happens offscreen, literally comes out of nowhere, doesn't have any real repercussions, and the effect never happens again. For all intents and purposes, it looks like it was simply thrown in to appease his biggest fans.
-
*And Another Thing...* by Eoin Colfer, a book continuing the Hitchhiker's Guide series, is littered with references to the books Douglas Adams wrote. It is a fun book with some interesting ideas, but it could be convincingly argued that it contained far more call-backs than were sensible for no other reason than to cater to fans who simply have to see the phrase "Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster" on every other page.
- "The Foundation of S.F. Success": (Conversational Troping) This poem gives various bits of advice on how to write the sort of Science Fiction that sells well. While written in 1954, the advice is still as good as it ever was.
- The titles of three releases by the Japanese pop group Perfume include the phrase "fan service", namely the CD single
*Fan Service (sweet)*, the concert DVD *Fan Service (bitter)* and the box set *Fan Service Prima Box*. The last is perhaps a genuine example of fanservice since it comprises three discontinued CD-singles from earlier in their career, which fans wanting to complete their collection would otherwise have to look for on the secondhand market. A review of *Prima Box* in the *Japan Times* refers to Perfume's 'coy, knowing references to *otaku* (obsessive fan) culture'.
- The Song Study version of Devo's album,
*Something for Everybody*. Fans participated in an online survey to determine which songs would end up on the album. On the other hand, it is quite clear that the whole Song Study campaign was meant to poke fun at the entertainment industry's extensive uses of focus groups and online surveys, and Devo simultaneously released a "88% focus group approved" version of *Something for Everybody* that contained all the songs that were cut from the Song Study version.
- Taylor Swift has been accused of this by some fans after her second album, which, in stark contrast to her first album (which, for the most part, was startlingly mature and dark, but well-liked by listeners of all ages), is more decidedly geared towards teenagers. Let it not be ignored that the
*small* majority of her first album's sales were from the teenage crowd.
- Nerd Rock duo Paul and Storm explicitly admit to this in their concerts, particularly during
*The Captain's Wife's Lament* (a song that, did they not continually interrupt themselves, would last somewhere on the light side of 90 seconds, but often takes ten minutes or more to get through).
- Similarly to Devo's album, but unironically, Jethro Tull did their own "song study" when selecting the tracks for their 1987 comeback album,
*Crest Of A Knave*. Justified as they had wanted to avoid the backlash they suffered through when releasing their previous album in 1984, the synth-heavy note : most of the instrumentation being programmed on a Fairlight CMI workstation and Linndrum drum machine, with the exception of the acoustic track, "Under Wraps II", very uncharacteristic *Under Wraps* album. The album became a moderate hit and even won a (controversial at the time, but for unrelated reasons) Grammy award.
- Frank Zappa: Zappa is an odd example of this trope. On one hand he simply did what he liked, telling the audience literally to get fucked if they hated what he did on stage or in his work. A huge chunk of his lyrics are inside jokes, incomprehensible to anyone but him and his band members. Yet on the other hand he did put in a lot of inside jokes and clues (
*conceptual continuity*) that only his hardcore fans would recognize and cheer about.
- Neil Young's refusal to do this is what made his record company sue him for producing experimental electronic music "that didn't sound like Neil Young"; it's also why many older fans tend to respond to each new release with an apprehensive "oh, dear God, what's he done
*now*?"
- Two of Queen's most recognizable hits, "We Will Rock You" and "We are the Champions", exist because Brian May and Freddie Mercury realized in the mid-late 1970s that fans were singing along with their songs, so they decided to create deliberate Audience Participation Songs designed to pander to this desire. (May talks about the songs' creation here.) The end result was the creation of two of the most well known Crowd Songs in recent decades that are now ubiquitous at every sports event
*ever*.
- Somewhat downplayed by Anthrax, who similarly to examples above polled their fans to determine which songs they should re-record for their
*The Greatest of Two Evils* Greatest Hits Album. When small but dedicated minority managed to score an unusually high amount of votes for "Lone Justice", it was included in the album...as a hidden track. And they placed it after the final track and the reversed version of "Lone Justice".
- The expression "pandering (or, less judgmentally, 'playing') to the base" originated in U.S. politics, where the primary system requires candidates to win the approval of their party's rank-and-file before formulating a broader appeal in the general election. Essentially, if a candidate wants to be elected, they have to persuade the party faithful to vote for them before targeting the wider majority. Of course, this can and has meant that the party may nominate someone who speaks to their specific views but lacks mainstream electability. Another feature of how Congressional districts are distributed is that by this point almost every district in the country is safe for either a Republican or Democrat candidate. Combined with the primary system, this means that it is quite common for the district to elect a candidate who not only is extreme by national standards but can be an extremist even by the standards of the state. What often happens in Presidential elections, especially for the party currently out of government, is that the chosen candidate must pander to the far wing of the party during the primaries, but then move back to a more middle of the road position for the actual Presidential race.
- While primary elections play this trope straight, general elections more or less invert the trope. Since 75-80% of American voters vote the same way in every election no matter what, the general election becomes about courting the remaining 20-25%, known as "swing voters." While swing voters make up a much smaller subset than the parties' respective bases, they are an unquestionably more important one. As the expression goes, "40% of voters always vote Republican, 40% always vote Democrat, and the other 20% always decide the election."
- Third-party candidates completely avert the trope. They usually run on platforms that state that the two major parties both suck, and that they are actually the sensible alternative to both mainstream candidates. The structure of the American electoral system makes it almost impossible for third-party candidates to win, but they can certainly impact election results.
- Political parties are frequently accused of this (and usually are guilty), especially during elections which pit members of the same party against each other. (Known in the United States as "primary elections," as distinct from "general elections" which feature all candidates.) Politicians who aspire to higher office often engage in this as well, in order to please the base ahead of a "primary election."
- In some democracies, candidates are nominated by and from a narrower group of professional party "members," rather than ordinary voters. Depending on how strict the party's formal membership rules are, and how small the membership is, this can result in nominations being dictated by an even more ideologically extreme, or simply eccentric faction of the public. This can actually present something of a paradox for small parties: the party knows on some level it needs to broaden their appeal, yet because the party membership is tiny and dominated by "true believers," it's hard for them to put forth more moderate or mainstream candidates.
- The German CSU (Christian Social Union, a conservative party) is notorious for doing this. They only exist in Bavaria but caucus together with the CDU (Christian Democrat Union, maybe slightly less conservative) on the federal level. One of the things it is most known for is viciously attacking "Berlin" -
*even while they are in government*. You see, Bavaria has a strong current of people who don't think too highly of the "Prussians" in the rest of Germany and many of them vote CSU...
- Professional Wrestling writer Vince Russo is infamous for catering exclusively to the hardcore Internet "Smart Marks" (who know that wrestling is fake but enjoy it as an art form). His biggest mistake was that he would often try to swerve these fans with confusing Worked Shoot angles. This is a problem for two reasons. First, the casual fans (90% of the fanbase) didn't know enough about the background of these swerves and were just confused by what was going on. Second, the smart marks (by nature of being smart marks) weren't fooled. What's more, he would often load these angles with obscure references that only the most hardcore fan would know of. What is truly bizarre is that Russo caters to the fans' knowledge of tabloid-like stories of backstage shenanigans, but does not cater to what they want most (long, well-wrestled matches with minimal interference and shenanigans). Russo has some very strange beliefs about who his audience is.
- Ring of Honor, at its outset, was more or less
*defined* by catering to the hardcore wrestling fanbase. The result is a generally entertaining product, but not without a little elitist snobbery. Note that hardcore in this case means "purist fan" instead of hardcore wrestling.
- WWE has been doing this lately with
*NXT*. The commentary team of Josh Mathews and Michael Cole full with their commentary with Continuity Nods, talk about the indies, wrestling dirtsheets and blogs and even Ascended Meme. Even the pros and rookies do it from time to time.
- Speaking of
*NXT*, Season 3 rookie Diva A.J. Lee's gimmick is basically pandering to the nerd audience.
- CM Punk's "The Reason You Suck" Speech that led to his (kayfabe) suspension was one big pander to the Smarks and everything they hate about WWE, as Punk listed wrestlers that had supposedly been held back and criticized higher-ups like John Lauranitis. It becomes funnier if one wonders just how many Smarks believed Punk was truly being defiant when, in reality, none of what he said would have made it on the air without WWE approval.
- One could argue that WWE's "New Era" is nothing but pandering to the smark base. After mass online backlash against Wrestlemania 32, WWE immediately (literally starting with the Raw after Mania) began calling up several people from NXT - many of which had been signed out of the indie circuits - and pushing them while cutting out sketch promos, promoting matches more on wrestling than story, and hyping things like the revived Cruiserweights. The most blatant case may have been Summerslam 2016, where the WWE title match pitted babyface vs babyface in Dean Ambrose against Dolph Ziggler while the first-ever Universal Title match pitted smark favorite Seth Rollins against indie darling Finn Balor (with Balor winning the belt just
*three weeks* after being called up). It hasn't really worked: Summerslam was considered one of the weakest PPVs of the year, ratings for Raw remain tepid (while Smackdown, which has emphasized storylines more, has seen its ratings rise since late 2016), and, with almost no huge story arcs having been built, there seems to be even less fan enthusiasm for Wrestlemania 33.
- The
*Torchwood: The Lost Files* audio drama "The House of the Dead" is one long grovel to the fans who were outraged that Jack never told Ianto he loved him in those exact words during the televised serial *Children of Earth*.
- At the time of the 2004 lockout, the National Hockey League had trouble getting new fans to appreciate the game because offense had declined in the league thanks to the neutral zone trap. The NHL tried to deal with it it, but because it created a Broken Base among hardcore fans this proved difficult. (Fans of defensive teams, (and those teams themselves), vocally complained that defense was being taken out of the game, fans of more offensive minded teams, (and again, the teams themselves), complained it slowed the game down. All teams employed it to some degree, but some used it as their primary strategy.) After the lockout, the NHL passed new rules to thwart the neutral zone trap, mainly because they were forced to be more fan-friendly.
- The NHL is a great example of Pandering to the Base. Demographically, the sport is overwhelmingly white. Many fans have complained about the league trying to make new fans through rule changes and expansion/relocation to non-traditional markets, which has also paid off in a way.
- By contrast, Major League Baseball has begun pandering to the more casual fans in the last few decades or so, particularly with the designated hitter in 1973 and interleague play in 1997. There are still traditionalists out there who despise both.
- For years, many college basketball fans and experts wanted a rule in the game where teams in the foul bonus could choose to just inbound the ball after being fouled rather than shoot free throws, thus preventing the end of games from turning into drawn-out free throw shooting contests. The NCAA finally instituted the rule in 1999 - and then repealed it two months later when it appeared coaches were having trouble deciding what to do in that situation.
- The National Football League changed its overtime rules in 2010 to encourage teams to try for touchdowns because many fans didn't like the old rules. To explain the new rules: What had previously been flat sudden death overtime (game ends on the next score) was changed so the overtime won't immediately end if the team possessing the ball first scores a field goal; the other team will get the chance to score and then the game will end when either squad takes the lead.
- ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball program has been accused of pandering to certain teams' fans. What was once a Sunday night tradition to see two different teams slowly became the Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, and Cardinals show, in an attempt to pander to said fans.
- Mark Rosewater's columns about creating
*Magic: The Gathering* on Magic: The Gathering.com have used the defiance of this argument to justify such things as bad cards, skill-testers, overly simple Core Sets, and its focus on recent-duration formats. While Wizards of the Coast appreciates its devoted fanbase, it needs to ensure that newer players have a clear path into learning the game without being inundated with complexities early on.
- Similarly, Upper Deck Entertainment and Konami have been doing this with the
*Yu-Gi-Oh!* card game, specifically demanding that older and more rabid fans not bash on the younger demographic or the anime-based cards that they make for them. The problem is that the anime-based cards that they make are almost always underpowered, and prime targets for bashing.
- One of the great balancing acts of the modern era is on display whenever Games Workshop begins working on a new army codex. Pandering to the base is a great temptation, especially when there's two different bases to pander to. Take the Eldar Wraithlord for example. As it is now, it's a monster in both shooting and close combat and greatly feared when it's taken in numbers. When they release a new Eldar codex, they have three roads they could go: they could pander to their Eldar players and make it more powerful; they could pander to the Wraithlord detractors and nerf it something awful; or they could potentially anger BOTH sides and leave it relatively unchanged. Meanwhile, Space Marines are given far more attention than any other faction, and Commissars feature heavily in the books, despite being fairly minor in the actual game/overall plot.
- White Wolf's
*Old World of Darkness* setting had a specific form of this - every 'splatbook' (or expansion pack) they released inevitably raised the power level, awareness or general coolness of the group being discussed; they'd be depicted as being better than (or at least putting one over on) every other faction. Until the next one, where the next group would top *that*. Some fans said they felt sorry for the one that had to go first, since the second was better, etc. putting the first faction at the bottom of the heap. It was a form of serial base-pandering, with different bases inside the White Wolf fandom. This is averted with the *New World of Darkness*, where each 'splatbook' simply fleshes out and expands on the splat, as well as having discussions on both its strength and merits *and* its flaws and weaknesses. No splat is ever portrayed as inherently "superior" to any other.
- Greg Costikyan (one of the authors of
*Paranoia*) has written an essay about "grognard capture", "grognard" being a term for Napoleon's old guard, and the full term used by hardcore wargame players to refer to products that seek to capture the market of the hardest of the hardcore. It's worth mentioning that in the article Costikyan is somewhat dismissive of Nintendo's strategy of blatantly seeking the non-gamer market for the DS while positioning the PSP as the "hardcore" platform, something that, if nothing else, did indeed make tons of cash for the company.
- Shakespeare did it.
*Macbeth* was first performed in front of an audience including King James I, and popular Fanon at the time was that James was descended from main character Banquo. Shakespeare reversed Banquo's role into a benevolent character to appeal to James. There's also some speculation that several scenes of the Three Witches were added later because they were found to be popular; they may even have been taken wholesale from Thomas Middleton's *The Witch*.
-
*Love Never Dies*, a sequel to *The Phantom of the Opera*, changes the personalities of several characters from the original (in particular, Raoul) just to please Christine/Erik shippers.
- In its later days,
*BIONICLE*'s side stories and expanded universe practically ran on this, by having certain story elements, names of animals and upcoming characters depend on fan polls (mainly members of BZPower). It didn't help that many fans had a blasé attitude on that site, which meant that more critical fans tended to get overshadowed. After author Greg Farshtey was denied further access to the site due to LEGO's policies, this trend continued on the official LEGO Message Board (this time mostly without polls), then on the TTV fan forums, retroactively adding details to canon and defining character appearances over a decade after the franchise had ended. This has also lead to lots of fan controversy, until Greg was laid off from LEGO in 2022, nullifying further fan canonization efforts.
- The
*BIONICLE* reboot offered little nods and visual references, such as curious easter eggs featuring the Mask of Time hidden in the scenery to keep older fans interested. Later, they added overt references to concepts from Generation 1, like the Three Virtues and the Toa of Light. However, this was a failed attempt at pandering to fans, as these teases and hints would lead nowhere, which ended up souring the more hardcore fans who expected deeper worldbuilding. The reboot was basically a marketing misstep that couldn't decide between appealing to old fans or new buyers, and ended up letting down both. As they got the order of the Three Virtues wrong (Duty, Unity and Destiny instead of Unity, Duty and Destiny), fans quickly labeled these pandering attempts a "DUD".
- Due to the massive Periphery Demographic of
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*, Hasbro produced quite a few pony-related toys that are quite obviously geared towards the adult fanbase. The most notable of these are toy versions of Ensemble Dark Horse characters like Derpy Hooves, Lyra, Trixie, Vinyl Scratch, Nightmare Moon, and Queen Chrysalis, who almost certainly wouldn't have gotten toys if not for the fanbase. The large Funko figures are a particular example, being released in waves of two figures (up until wave 8, which added Discord as a third figure), with the top six background ponies note : Derpy, Dr. Hooves, Lyra, Bon Bon, Vinyl Scratch, and Octavia all getting figures released before Applejack and Rarity got theirs to complete the Mane 6.
- Nintendo:
- Theirs is a case of learning from experience: The Nintendo 64 and Nintendo GameCube were ultimately perceived by some critics as being only for little kids and hardcore Nintendo fanboys, which resulted in teenagers, adults, and third-party developers going for the PlayStation instead. With the Wii, Nintendo seems to be avoiding this perception. However, a good number of third party developers, mostly in western nations, have either failed or rejected to follow Nintendo's direction, with most of their top tier titles still on Sony and Microsoft's platforms. That got to change over time: A couple high profile flops on the PlayStation 3, and the fact that of the largest developers, the ones giving the Wii the least support have been showing losses (Take-Two Interactive and Electronic Arts), while the ones giving the Wii support are doing well (Activision and Ubisoft). The CEO of Take-Two even said they couldn't ignore the Wii's success anymore.
- Nintendo eventually tried to please the "core" fans by announcing many games aimed at them during E3 2009. Titles include
*Metroid: Other M*, *Super Mario Galaxy 2*, *New Super Mario Bros. Wii*, *Golden Sun: Dark Dawn*, *Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days*, *The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks*, *The Conduit*, and *Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story*.
- E3 2010 provided an interesting reversal: Microsoft and Sony both seemed to be making overtures at casual gamers, with
*both* of them showcasing Wii remote *and Wii Sports* clones, while Nintendo unabashedly went after core gamers with their announcements of *The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword*, *Kirby's Epic Yarn*, *Donkey Kong Country Returns*, remakes of *The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time* and *Star Fox 64*, *GoldenEye (Wii)*, and a new *Kid Icarus* game, after a two *decade*-long dry spell. Most critics and reporters had Nintendo winning the conference in a walk, and even many gamers are, if not fully won over, at least cautiously optimistic.
- Nintendo later leaned back towards this trope with the Wii U, specifically stating that while the console would still have features and games geared towards casuals, it would also have games and features catered towards the more dedicated fan, pointing out that the "U" in Wii U means the console was made for "you (the consumer)". The gamble wasn't very successful, as the console sold far less than all previous home console systems made by the company, prompting them to swing back towards casual marketing (though not all the way) with the Nintendo Switch.
-
*The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess* was intentionally designed by Nintendo to evoke the same mood and atmosphere of *Ocarina of Time*. *Ocarina* is the highest-rated game of the franchise, so when *Twilight Princess* was released, it was heaped with praise from both critics and fans alike as being a return to form for the series after two more experimental games. So much that, infamously, a less-than-positive review from Gamespot coined the 8.8 phenomenon.
-
*Pokémon* is infamous for how much it tries to appeal to fans of the original games, with it sometimes being well-received and other times coming across as hamfisted:
- In
*Pokémon Gold and Silver* the games overly relied on existing Kanto Pokémon for things like Gym Leader rosters and standard roles like regional bug (namely Caterpie and Weedle being much more common than the local Ledyba & Spinarak), and Johto Pokémon such as Houndour inexplicably only being found in the Kanto postgame.
-
*HeartGold and SoulSilver*. The game is rife with cameos from characters across all generations and references to other games in the series. Perhaps the most prominent of these is the return of Pokémon following the Player, which hadn't been seen since *Pokémon Yellow*, a purely cosmetic function that has no effect on gameplay whatsoever, and it's *glorious.*
-
*Pokémon X and Y* set a new record, with extensive pandering to Gen 1 fans. The Kanto starters are given away, the Gen 1 games get a 2-hour anime special, and Charizard gets two Mega Evolutions while the other 2 Kanto starters get one each. And speaking of Mega Evolutions, it was officially stated that popular Pokémon are most likely to be the ones who get them, even if other Pokémon need them more. The actual new Pokémon introduced in the generation make up *only 15% of the total Kalos Pokédex.* *Mewtwo* also got *two* Mega Evolutions, despite being powerful enough as is, and the fact that it getting Mega Evolution makes no sense considering the origins of Mega Evolution. They promoted Mewtwo and used its popularity, to the point that they ignored their own plot to do so. And about that Kalos Pokédex - not only do the new Pokémon take up a tiny percentage of the 'dex, it would still be the smallest amount of new Pokémon to date (with only 72, where all other regions had at least 100). And the final nail in the coffin is that Pidgey is *guaranteed* to be the first wild Pokémon you encounter. The *6th* Gen was also the first to put the most emphasis on Competitive Battling instead of the actual campaign. Mechanics such as Super Training, Wonder Trade, easier breeding (Smeargle, a mon with the ability to copy any move in the game with its Sketch ability, is found on the same route as the Day-Care Center), and quicker leveling up were all made available to the player extremely early. Almost every major addition or change to the game was done so to cater to the competitive battling crowd.
- Also the trope behind the revival of both the anime's original theme song and the "Gotta catch 'em all!" slogan not seen since Generation II.
- Zigzagged with the Hoenn remakes. The Ensemble Dark Horse Giant Space Flea from Nowhere Latias and Latios got Mega Evolutions - and you can fly on them. In exchange, more underpowered Pokemon like Beedrill, Glalie, and Pidgeot also got Mega Evolutions. The post-game Battle Resort also contains even more pandering to competitive battlers than even X and Y did, offering not only a secondary Day Care on an easy egg hatching route, but having Non Player Characters that Break the Fourth Wall to talk about the Pokemon World Championships and telling the player that sometimes, in order to win, they'll have to abandon their favourites and only use strong Pokemon. (An Ironic Echo of Karen's infamous line from Gold and Silver).
- In
*Pokémon Sun and Moon*, despite taking place in an expy of Hawaii on the opposite side of the world from it, the cast simply *will not shut up about Kanto*. The Player Character is a Kanto immigrant, Kukui, Wicke, Hau's father, Lillie, Lusamine, and Gladion all visited Kanto at one point with Kukui constantly sharing anecdotes about how great it is, and the new Alolan forms and signature Z-moves are all exclusive to Kanto Pokémon. In addition, the promotional website for the games stated that Oricorio's Sensu form reminded Kanto tourists of home when *Johto* was the region that actually *had* geishas!
- Another reason
*Pokémon Sword and Shield* is such a Contested Sequel is that it suffered almost as badly as X & Y did from this. In spite of the game's limited roster, Galar somehow managed to fit in a significant portion of Kanto Pokémon with the Champion's ace being a Charizard while Pokémon that actually fit the British theme like Stoutland were excluded (prior to the DLC). Not to mention that of the 32 Gigantamax forms in the game (counting DLC), 12 belong to Kanto Pokémon and 19 belong to Galar Pokémon, meaning that out of all the previous generations of Pokémon, *only two* do not hail from Kanto, these being Gen V's Garbodor and Gen VII's Melmetal.
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*Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels* (the Japanese *Super Mario Bros. 2*) is one of the earliest examples of the trope. Nintendo created a sequel to *Super Mario Bros.* that was a Mission-Pack Sequel designed for players who mastered the first game and its subtitle was dubbed "For Super Players". Nintendo of America feared that the game was more of the same as the first game, too difficult for American players and would tarnish sales after the first *Mario* game sold so well. And they were right; *Lost Levels* has enemy placement and traps designed to catch players off guard very frequently, and many levels require a deep understanding of SMB physics to complete, including exploitation of glitches. Among other things, the game introduced the Poison Mushroom, warp pipes that send the player *backwards* in the level progression and Bloopers that fly. To top it off, the final set of worlds can only be unlocked by *beating the game eight times in a row* a fact which the game gives no real indication of. Western players would eventually get the game in *Super Mario All-Stars* with *slightly* reduced difficulty, but still bone-crushingly hard overall and players would also get the original version of the game on the Wii's Virtual Console.
- After the middling reception to
*Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam*, AlphaDream went back to the games that got the best reception and remade them for the 3DS: *Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga* and *Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story*. It didn't work out too well, with the latter game being a *devastating* flop and one of the worst-selling *Mario* games of all time contributing to the company folding later in 2019.
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*Fire Emblem*:
- A lot of fans accused Intelligent Systems of pandering to the yaoi fangirls in the tenth game: The Ike/Soren base conversation is
*very* sappy and more full of Ho Yay than their supports in the previous game, and they have a paired ending. The perception is that this is at the expense of the Ship Tease Ike had with women in the previous game, though some of that was added by the localization, and said localization seemed to have toned down the Ho Yay in the ninth game.
-
*Awakening* was an example of this trope working well. With what looked like the last game in the series, Intelligent Systems threw together a "greatest hits" collection of every gameplay idea people liked about previous games, and it sold so well it saved the franchise. Story-wise, it appealed directly to the Japanese base, with heavy plot references and nostalgic callbacks to the original *Fire Emblem* titles that weren't very popular outside of the home islands.
- The second set of DLC for
*Fire Emblem: Awakening* was this, adding a Beach Episode and Hot Springs Episode where the 2 guys and girls from each generation voted most popular by Japanese fans got fanservice artwork, a set of brutally hard challenge maps aimed at those who bashed the main story chapters for being too simplistic and easy, and a set of DLC exploring the Bad Future and the Ensemble Dark Horse 2nd generation characters.
-
*Fire Emblem Fates* tries to content the fans of *Awakening* and the fans of the previous games with two campaigns, one where you can grind freely like *Awakening* and one with more limited resources like earlier titles, resulting in One Game for the Price of Two. The story tries to merge the dark tragedy and cutthroat politics of early titles with the often-breezier tone and character shipping from later ones, including some mechanics that the story can't easily justify. The results of trying to pander to every part of a Broken Base were ultimately financially lucrative, but at the price of absolutely fragmenting the fans, and as if acknowledging this delicate balancing act couldn't go on forever, *Fire Emblem: Three Houses* (for better or worse) has a much firmer core identity.
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*Splatoon 2*:
- The game's Hero Mode is dedicated almost entirely to pandering to Marie
note : who won the Callie vs. Marie Splatfest in the last game fans—she's your Mission Control, she gets a ton of character development, and it's honestly hard not to feel sorry for her when she starts worrying about where her cousin is. Of course, this came at the expense of Callie (at least as popular as Marie), who is kidnapped right off the bat and, for a very long time, was almost completely absent from the game even after being rescued. This in turn led to more pandering, this time to Callie's largely dissatisfied fanbase, once it was revealed that the 3.0 update would add her to the Octo Canyon hub after completing the game.
- Marina's presence in the game as one of the stage announcers is almost certainly due to the massive popularity of the Octolings in the original game.
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*Final Fantasy*:
-
*Final Fantasy VII* and all of its compilations. After the original game gained its massive popularity, new additions were added on to the story to "expand" its content, or "explain" points in the story that were generally the most confusing or significant. In actuality, these add-ons were created to help cater to the needs of the *many* fans of the game; indulging popular characters such as Cloud Strife, Vincent Valentine, and Sephiroth; and increasing (and complicating) the already large and solid storyline with new plotlines and characters. At this point, *Final Fantasy VII* is practically a new franchise itself.
- The producers of
*Advent Children* admitted in an interview that the reason Cloud acts like a conflicted, pensive loner instead of the strong and confident leader he had become at the end of *Final Fantasy VII* was because that was the way he had been depicted in most doujinshi.
-
*Crisis Core* is, in fact, prefaced with the new symbol created for *Final Fantasy VII*, called the *Compilation of Final Fantasy VII*. Considering the series is famous for love-it-then-leave-it tactics in regards to the various games, the fact that *Final Fantasy VII* has not one, not two, but fully six games featuring the same characters shows a dramatic shift in the management of the series.
- The
*Final Fantasy VII* compilation was a way of pandering to the base through the intellectual property, but it also gave Square Enix developers a chance to try their hand at different genres while still creating popular titles.
- The
*Kingdom Hearts* series, which a lot of the staff of *Final Fantasy VII* work on, has also seen a rise in this; the most blatant being the very existence of *Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days*, which stars the members of Organization XIII. The pandering went as far back as the Final Mix edition of the original *Kingdom Hearts*, which threw in a Sora and Riku flashback scene right at the very end of the game that seemed designed solely to cater to the Yaoi Fangirls of the base.
- In sequels, this can result in the difficulty approaching, and even going past, Nintendo Hard, as each sequel is designed to challenge players who completed (all of) the previous game(s). The
*Guitar Hero* franchise sank into this, with certain note and chord arrangements clearly mixed for challenge instead of logical chord placement on the higher difficulties. This gets worse (or better, if you're one of the hardcore players) with each installment. In fact, *Guitar Hero 4*'s guitar is generally easier than 3's due to these complaints.
-
*Devil May Cry*. A chief complaint of the second game from Western audiences was that it lacked the first game's challenge, even the infamous Dante Must Die mode providing little difficulty. The version of the *third* game released in the West went too far in the other direction, with each difficulty spiked up to be the equivalent of the Japanese version's next-higher setting. "Normal" was the Japanese "Hard," "Hard" was the Japanese "Very Hard," and "Dante Must Die" was just plain ridiculous. The fourth game, as well as the third game's special edition, were toned down.
- This was one of the primary reasons the
*Xenosaga* series was stopped at the third installment.
- Fighting and destroying ||343 Guilty Spark|| in
*Halo 3* could be considered more fanservice than boss battle.
- The entirety of the
*Super Smash Bros.* series, particularly after they introduced the trophies in *Melee*, allowing them to pay homage to games and characters who aren't playable.
- The series have been criticized by some western gamers for doing this too much in the direction of Japanese fans at the expense of the rest of the world, as many playable characters reflect Japanese popularity rather than global fame. The inclusion of Marth and Roy in
*Smash Bros. Melee*, for instance, provoked some head-scratching, given it predated the release of any *Fire Emblem* game in America. The constant inclusion of Jigglypuff, likewise, though now seen by westerners as a sort of weird-but-fun franchise tradition, has its roots in pandering to Japanese audiences, where Jigs has long been one of the most popular Pokémon.
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*Super Smash Bros. Ultimate* does this for the series' own fanbase, starting off with the return of *every single character that's been in the series before* (including several that were cut from prior games), continuing with several often-requested changes (such as a Battlefield form and stage hazard toggle for every stage in the game, Ganondorf finally using his sword in more than one move, and the general game flow being reworked to be faster a la the ever-popular *Melee*), and then climaxing with the reveal of Ridley as a playable character (a *very* popular choice who many thought wouldn't get in, owing to his size). Further character reveals, including King K. Rool and Dark Samus have only done this even more, and that's not getting into the DLC reveals (in particular, Banjo and Kazooie, Steve, and Sora).
- The additional battle against Algus/Argath in the PSP version of
*Final Fantasy Tactics*. Since he's a Hate Sink and massive Jerkass, one may think killing him once is not enough. Square Enix did it again in *Final Fantasy XIV* with a *Tactics*-themed storyline that brings Argath back once more, so you can fight him ||and his new Lucavi Demon form.||
- Some critics have argued that the maturity and decline stages of the MMOG life cycle have more to do with this than the actual age of the game. The logic is that at some point developers cave to the demands of the loudest fans—usually more high-end content and boosts to their favorite playstyle—and so the raised barrier of entry makes the game far less appealing to new players. This can also manifest as a new race or class almost nobody wanted save those who had plain run out of things to do. Designs incorporating many wings, belts, zippers, or draconian pants are common. The launch of the Kamael in Lineage II caused a heavy exodus towards private servers, for instance.
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*Call of Duty: Black Ops III* features a segment in which the player is thrown into a dream version of World War II. A new Call of Duty game set in World War II was what many fans had been wanting for a while so that mission should have been giving fans at least some of the thing they want but considering that the developers didn't even bother to add period-accurate weapons and instead everyone just uses mid-21st century weapons, it made the segment feel like a middle-finger to those who wanted a World War II game. A good example of this trope not working as intended.
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*World of Warcraft*:
-
*Cataclysm* gave what a contingent of fans had long wanted: letting players fly in Azeroth, new race/class combinations (with controversial lore used to justify Tauren paladins), playable Goblins for the Horde (a much-loved race that had until then been kept out of the Horde/Alliance factions), playable Worgen for the Alliance (which retconned their somewhat vague origin from alien beings to lycanthropes).
-
*Mists of Pandaria* turned Garrosh into a full villain, likely influenced by his vast hatedom, and ended with what many of his more vocal haters had asked for since Cataclysm, raising Vol'jin to Warchief. The use of Pandaria itself, a borderline joke from Warcraft III, as the basis for an entire expansion, helped to appeal to Warcraft's large Chinese fanbase.
-
*Legion* brought back Illidan Stormrage, who had died as essentially the final boss of *Burning Crusade*. He was retconned from a psychotic, egocentric tyrant with delusions of grandeur into a dark anti-hero who is nonetheless Azeroth's only hope against the Burning Legion. His sizeable fandom had been wishing for something like this, disappointed at how he was killed off.
-
*Battle for Azeroth* returned to the franchise's oldest roots, bringing back some from RTS-style gameplay and focusing again on the Alliance vs Horde instead of a common enemy (often referred to as "putting the "War" back in "Warcraft"). It started off with a battle in which the Alliance takes back Lordaeron, appealing to Alliance diehards, and while this did not *please* the Forsaken fanbase (given that they've long argued *against* this very storyline), they were definitely still drawn in by the opportunity to fight *against* the former.
-
*We ♥ Katamari*, the first sequel to the wildly popular *Katamari Damacy*, is literally all about this: The whole game is essentially one big thank-you to the game's fans, and the plot itself deals with the King of All Cosmos becoming wildly popular for his Prince's katamaris and receiving an onslaught of requests for new katamaris to roll up from the fans.
- Despite a few alterations throughout its lifespan, the Katamari series defines its base as content with the material from the first game, only wanting to take it to different home and portable consoles. The base has also been pandered to greatly by the
*Katamari Forever* soundtrack, which features remixes and re-imaginings of old Katamari tunes, often re-done by previous Katamari artists that composed different tunes in the series. This pandering is in no way a bad thing, as the soundtrack was amazing, as if the previous soundtracks were now Growing the Beard.
-
*Team Fortress 2*'s class updates seem to be one long string of Valve weaponizing memes. They also managed to make "Your mom" jokes with style.
-
*Backyard Sports*. They try to attract only young sports fans now.
-
*Left 4 Dead 2* has a DLC campaign called The Passing, which brings together the old survivors from the first game and the new survivors together. This is definitely nothing more than appealing to the fans who been wanting to see the two survivor groups together ever since *Left 4 Dead 2* was made.
- That has more to do with the fact that said fans don't like the Wild Mass Guessing Downer Ending theories that have been floating around.
- Done again for The Sacrifice campaign and comic to explain to fans how exactly ||Bill dies|| and how the survivors from
*Left 4 Dead* went down south.
- Valve also ported over every single campaign from
*Left 4 Dead* 1 into *Left 4 Dead 2* as a throw to fans that have been porting the maps over themselves (with varying results) so the fans can play *Left 4 Dead 1*'s maps with elements used in *Left 4 Dead 2*. Of course, this off players who bought *Left 4 Dead 1* already.
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*Sonic the Hedgehog*:
- The entire point of
*Sonic the Hedgehog 4*, which features a return to the classic gameplay while retaining some modern elements. The mixture didn't go over so well, leading to a bona fide classic game in *Sonic Mania* that did.
- Sonic Team has done this when it comes to Sonic's rival Shadow. When he proved to be popular, his apparent death in
*Sonic Adventure 2* was retconned to him surviving with amnesia, and much of the plot focus was put on him in *Sonic Heroes*. He even got a game centered entirely on him intended to resolve his plot arc. This made him a Base-Breaking Character, dividing him between fans who are still happy with him being around and fans who consider him a Spotlight-Stealing Squad.
-
*Shadow the Hedgehog* was stated to be a second form of this by the developers. The swearing, use of guns, the motorcycle seen heavily in promotions, and premise of fighting aliens to save the world were specific elements that were included because they were trying to cater to Western audiences. This backfired greatly and caused both critics and fans to heavily pan the game for drifting away from the things that made *Sonic* games good in the first place.
- In
*Sonic Generations*, Classic Sonic doesn't speak. This was not a design choice for the originals, as it was mostly due to technical limitations, and he does speak in a couple of games. It seems to have become a staple if the *Sonic Mania Adventures* shorts are any indication. He is also noticeably more cutesy in *Generations* compared to his Mascot with Attitude roots, likely due to his Modern counterpart filling the role still.
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*Sonic Forces*'s inclusion of the Avatar is this to the many, *many* Original Characters that fans have made. It also features Classic Sonic returning (again) but received heavy criticism for awkward physics (an issue not present in *Generations*) and a lack of relevancy to the game's otherwise more serious plot.
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*Street Fighter*:
- The announcement of
*Street Fighter IV* was the result of fans and competitive players constantly bugging Capcom for it every chance they got.
-
*Street Fighter V* seems to be doing to almost to a fault, with the initial release squarely aimed at competitive players with many features deemed as being for casuals delayed for at least a month.
- When
*Marvel vs. Capcom 3* was first shown at E3 2010, many long time fans were disappointed at how different the game seemed to be from *Marvel vs. Capcom 2*. After that, each and every successive demo build of the game featured changes that brought the game closer to its predecessor. The final result, a game that feels like a natural evolution of the previous game (while still showing some influences from *Tatsunoko vs. Capcom*). The only reason the game doesn't seem to be as unbalanced as the previous one is that this time, they seem to be making every character a Game-Breaker.
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*Super Robot Wars* has a lot of this (like any crossover, of course), including giving the player the ability to save heroes that originally died on their shows or recruiting villains that weren't all that evil. Inversely, they also let players kill villains that didn't get directly killed by the heroes or worse, got away scot-free.
- DICE, makers of the
*Battlefield* series, have been doing this heavily with *Battlefield 3* and *Bad Company 2*, feeding the flames of their stalwarts' huge Fandom Rivalry with *Modern Warfare*. In addition, their marketing for the original *Bad Company* pandered to people who disliked popular games in *other genres entirely*.
- Episode 5 of
*Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People* begins with an arcade machine breaking down and emitting ominous smoke. When Strong Sad says that the fan is broken and needs to be serviced, Strong Bad replies, "Where are we going to find fan service around here?" At that moment, fan-favorite Trogdor busts out of the broken machine.
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*Tekken Tag Tournament 2* brought back Jun Kazama due to fan demand, despite the fact that the game was based on the characters who had appeared in the 4th, 5th and 6th games (in none of which she appeared). It can be justified as the game is non-canon, and she had appeared in some of Jin's endings. Similarly, Kunimitsu, another fan-fave missing since *Tekken 2*, was included in the game's console port as free DLC alongside several other "missing" characters like Michelle, Alex, P. Jack, and Ogre.
- The "Citadel" DLC for
*Mass Effect 3* is one giant opportunity for *Mass Effect* fans to put aside the series of Player Punches that comprise the plot of *3* and reunite for one last grand hurrah with all their previous squadmates, with touching Callbacks and Continuity Nods galore. ||Unfortunately, it's a party that Mordin, Thane and Legion aren't allowed to attend.||
- The Gundam Vs Series, especially since
*Extreme Vs.* has become a serial case of this trope. An incredible amount of fanservice abounds, whether it's the mobile suits themselves, the works covered and referenced, the soundtrack and voice-over work or even the quirks lifted directly from the shows. And yet despite or perhaps *because* of all that, it manages to work exceptionally well.
- In the
*Star Wars* games, the iconic opening crawl, music, and Idiosyncratic Wipes are things that fans have come to expect, nay, *demand*. Additionally, everything that was said about *Star Wars* media in the "Literature" section also applies here.
- A former employee of Irem's arcade division blame this phenomenon as one of the reasons behind the company's downfall in this video. Basically: Instead of using "regular" players for location-testing, Irem had their arcade games tested by fans of the company's previous games and hardcore fans of arcade gaming in general, who were much more skilled than the average player. These way above-average gamers made the games look "too easy" during testing so Irem adjusted the difficulty accordingly, but in tuning the game around the top 1%, Irem made the games too difficult to appeal to the average arcade-goer.
-
*Mystic Messenger*'s "Another Story" route was basically this from Cheritz, fulfilling the longtime fan demand for a V romance route and also making Unknown romantically obsessed with the player character. A lot of fans were ecstatic about this but some other fans had more negative responses to it, saying that V's core trait of being unconditionally devoted to Rika was derailed and his character Strangled by the Red String with the player character just to please vocal V fans.
- The later addition of an Unknown/Ray route to Another Story also qualifies for this trope as, like with V, the original story gave no indication that Unknown/Ray was ever intended to be a love interest and even made it very clear that ||his brother Seven|| was the only person remotely capable of helping him overcome his severe trauma and mental illness. But many fans still wanted to romance him, so Cheritz gave them their wish.
- Encouraged in-universe in
*POWER*, where keeping your politician's positions close to your state's preferred positions will help you win elections. This can lead to odd situations like a Democrat, a Republican, a libertarian, and a Nazi running for the same seat with everyone having the same positions.
- The
*Metroid* games are generally more popular in the West than in Japan, so *Metroid: Other M* was designed to appeal more to the Japanese fanbase by having Samus being more stoic, repressed, and being very submissive to Adam, who used to be her commanding officer. Samus being stoic and quiet is a trait in Japanese media that is usually seen as badass. The attempt to appeal to Japanese audiences did not work. The game overall received mixed to lukewarm reception in Japan while everyone else critically panned the game while also disliking the changes to Samus's characterization.
-
*Grand Theft Auto V*'s main focus on the player characters pulling off elaborate heists was Rockstar's response to fans' overwhelming praise towards the *Grand Theft Auto IV* mission "Three Leaf Clover", which centered around a bank robbery turned into a massive shootout in the vein of *Heat*.
- The marketing strategy of unlicensed gacha games based on big-name franchises involves attempting to pander to those that know said franchise by the star characters and more often than not employ Nostalgia Filter to bring in mind certain characters and/or game mechanics as they were known for in the past. For more specific examples:
- The formerly infamous
*Pocket All-Star Smash Brothers* markets itself as "Reproduction Classics".
- An unlicensed
*Pokémon* gacha will more often than not market the Pikachu or Charmander line in various ways, from having them as starters to being rare Mons (or at least having a unique variant) on par with legendaries/mythicals. Mewtwo is often the highest tier and/or the Big Bad in the single-player campaign. One may also market the one-on-one battle mechanic itself, usually having descriptions that basically says "like the classics."
- Any unlicensed
*Digimon* gacha will shove *Digimon Adventure* to the front regardless of its V-Pet origins, an easy way to rope in the mainstream that knows the franchise from the anime more. Even if it has other Digimon from later years or even obscure ones, Agumon and pals come first.
- Occasionally discussed in
*Terrible Writing Advice*. JP says that pandering allows authors to put a blame to fans when pandering is not effective. After all, that's what the fans wanted.
- One of Yahtzee's videos included a note to any potential writers that fans will never appreciate them and you'll be happier the moment you excise the grating sound of their pleading from your memory. Then he suggests buying The Merch. This memorable clip also ran for a few months at the end of every video as part of an actual ad for said merch (replacing a more generic one).
-
*Questionable Content* was ostensibly about a milquetoast 20-something white guy with a crush on his room-mate, but very quickly evolved into a comic centred upon the numerous quirky odd female hipster characters that replicate various aspects of the fanbase of the comic.
- Marigold is a cute-but-curvy girl with low self-esteem (despite — or because of? — her large breasts) and a major fan of
*World of Warcraft* and popular anime series. She probably represents the fans better than anyone else in the cast.
- Claire, a transgender character to appeal to the ever-growing number of LGBT readers of the comic.
-
*Transformers: Animated*:
- While
*Beast Wars* was directly connected to the original *Transformers* series, *Animated* just overdoses on the Mythology Gags and use of characters from the original show to pander to the older *Transformers* fans. You don't have to be familiar with the original versions of these characters to understand and enjoy even the most Fanwank-heavy scenes and episodes. It's just a bonus, if you *are* familiar, to see things that hearken back to your favorite past series.
- Also, it's the first place to have characters originating from the
*Beast Wars* era, namely Blackarachnia, Waspinator, Strika (Beast Machines), and Spittor. There's also a couple of Unicron Trilogy references (Bulkhead and Lugnut) and cameos (Red Alert as a medic rather than security guard, Safeguard, and Hot Shot), and it also has some G1 era characters that were exclusive to Japanese fiction (the concept of the Headmaster, Grandus, Dai Atlas).
- It also owes big chunks of the premise to the 2007 movie, such as the Allspark (previously a Transformers version of the afterlife, a term now replaced by "The Well of All Sparks") and Megatron's original form.
- Also worth noting is the process through which many of these character's appearances are decided: the writers plan out the story beforehand and ask the lead character designer (who is a longtime fan of many different ''Transformers'' series) what character would be good to use in a role they already have.
- Within
*Beast Wars* itself, the continuity ties increased rapidly at the end of the 2nd season. A fan from a newsgroup was actually recruited as a consultant for it.
-
*Transformers: Cyberverse* works in the same vein as *Transformers Animated*, featuring fan favorite characters from across the franchise and pulling in as many undeveloped or obscure concepts (shadowplay, Quintessons, Titans, etc.) as possible.
-
*Wolverine and the X-Men*: In both the title and giving him the most screentime.
-
*Adventure Time* started as a silly action cartoon but as time passed the show gathered many shippers, the creators realized that and made romance one of the focuses. They started making episodes whose only focus is Ship Teasing, Finn and Flame Princess' drama, Jake's and Lady Rainicorn family, Princess Bubblegum and Marceline, especially the Fionna and Ice King fanfic book episodes that only exist to pander these fans, season 5 is full of this. All this teasing is great for the shippers but the older fans and kids not interested in romance lose.
- The co-creators of
*Avatar: The Last Airbender* referred to their chibi-short tribute to the show's Shipping phenomenon as "fanservice". With its obvious detachment from the main storyline and nicely animated comedic anime effects (all subsequent to the mid-season downcast ending of the finale), the short was almost unanimously well-received by both shippers and non-shippers alike. There was also an in-universe play near the show's end parodying the show itself.
- Due to popular demand during Seasons 8-12,
*Family Guy*'s former resident Creator's Pet Brian had been getting his just desserts and resident Designated Monkey Meg had been thrown a bone ("Dial Meg For Murder"). The writers have also decreased the Overly Long Cutaway Gags in favor of less derailed episode plots and lampshaded/deconstructed the character changes.
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*:
- In "The Last Roundup," there's a largely filler scene in which a perennial Ensemble Dark Horse background character with the Fan Nickname Derpy Hooves is actually canonically revealed to have that name, and gets several lines. This later got a controversial Author's Saving Throw which was partly due to this and partly due to Derpy's clumsiness, name and Simpleton Voice implying she was mentally handicapped.
- Season 4 is running with this trope after the massive fiasco that the finale of season 3 brought up with Twilight's promotion to Princess of Equestria. In the second part of the premiere, she's shown to be unable to fight off a couple of plant buds that spew knockout gas on her own, and from the third episode to the eighth, she only uses her wings twice in circumstances where it's easy to ignore, and her status isn't brought up to so much as ask for a taxi in a long line in Manehattan — not that any of the ponies even acknowledges her as a royal. The developers seem to be going to great lengths to deliberately avert self-insert tropes that the fandom has associated with alicorns.
- The 100th episode, which is titled "Slice of Life". Involves the main characters being busy dealing with a monster—the fact that the monster is part panda may be some kind of a Stealth Pun—while the episode itself focuses on characters that are considered very popular Ensemble Darkhorses in the fanbase, which includes characters like Derpy, Doctor Whooves, Vinyl Scratch, Octavia, and others. Furthermore, it canonizes several elements of Fanon, such as Steven Magnet's name, Vinyl and Octavia living together in Ponyville, and Derpy being a mailpony. It also includes Lyra and Bon-Bon, who are often shipped together in the fandom; the episode explains them as simply being best friends (not that the shippers care, of course)... however, it also had them bicker Like an Old Married Couple in a subtle reference to how often they're shipped.
- After the very controversial reception obtained by
*Ben 10: Alien Force* and *Ben 10: Ultimate Alien* for being different than the original series and Darker and Edgier, the writers went for this trope when working on *Ben 10: Omniverse*: the tone got Denser and Wackier, references to the original series were made to the point of Continuity Porn, most villains and characters who were important in AF and UA (like Kevin, Gwen or Ben's girlfriend Julie) got either Put on a Bus or Demoted to Extra, and flashback segments and episodes taking place in the original series era were included. Other than reversing the position of the fandom (many of the sequels fans hate it and many of the original series fans adore it), it didn't exactly change the situation.
-
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)* has been featuring an overload of references to the previous cartoons, films, and comics to keep older fans interested, especially when it comes to the 1987 series. This includes several characters from it or nods to the characters' 1987 versions (such as Splinter being the human Hamato Yoshi again or ||Baxter being mutated into a fly||), several plot homages to the 1987 series, and even ||a cameo appearance from the 1987 turtles at the end of one episode, with their original voice actors no less.||
-
*The Simpsons*, *Futurama* and *South Park* are all examples of shows that have become increasingly self-referential after a few seasons, with only their own fans able to get most of these references.
-
*The Legend of Korra*:
- The show has an automobile company that was founded by the descendant of the fan-favorite Cabbage Merchant from the earlier series. As the owner is arrested and dragged away in one episode, he even yells "No! Not my Cabbage Corp!" much like his predecessor's "My cabbages!" whenever his cart was destroyed. They're even voiced by the same actor.
- One of the most common criticisms of the earlier seasons is that they focus too much on a Love Dodecahedron at the expense of the much more interesting Myth Arc. After the first series spawned a notoriously large Shipping fanbase, the creators anticipated the same response for Korra and planned an elaborate romantic storyline to sate those fans. Unfortunately, it came off as a Romantic Plot Tumor to many.
- In the Grand Finale, ||Korra and Asami become the Official Couple||, which led to some of the fanbase accusing the creators of making it up at the last minute, with it coming off as pandering. The creators denied this, insisting that the whole thing had been planned for quite some time, and they do want to explore the relationship in the comics. Their reasoning seems questionable because neither ||Korra or Asami|| had any behaviour that would indicate they were ||falling for one another; with a lot of the romance in the show coming from the Korra/Asami/Mako Love Triangle, and the closest to
*any* kind of hint to their relationship was in Season 3, and many assumed it was just a Ship Tease and not much else.|| The creators also admitted that the cameos from ||Tahno and a number of other minor characters in the last episode's wedding|| *were* shameless pandering.
"There is the inevitable reaction, Mike and Bryan just caved in to the fans. Well, which fans? There were plenty of ||Makorra|| shippers out there, so if we had gone back on our decision and gotten those characters back together, would that have meant we caved in to those fans instead?"
- Due to the controversy that "You're Getting Old" had caused, Seasons 15 (B) and 16 of
*South Park* had been making references to earlier episodes, reappearances from old characters, deconstructed character changes and dialled down the topical humor.
- It's very unlikely almost anyone in the target demographic of
*Arthur* notices Maria, the popular, rabbit background character from Arthur's school. Despite this she has a Lower-Deck Episode named "Maria Speaks" all about her. It obviously panders to the Periphery Demographic.
- Luna Loud from
*The Loud House* is a character with a lot same-sex fan shipping, artwork, and fanfiction, comes the episode 'L is for Love' where is revealed that she has a crush on a girl named Sam, thus revealing she's bisexual. A lot of fans were pleased with this development.
- Season 2 of
*Ready Jet Go!* is this big time. Resident Ensemble Darkhorses Mitchell, Lillian, and Dr. Skelley get more screentime, ||Mindy finally turning five and going to space||, and loads of references to previous episodes. It's gotten to the point where you have to watch season 1 just to understand season 2. It also helps that the season had started production in August of 2016 and wrapped up sometime in late 2017, and by then the show had already garnered a fanbase.
-
*Kaeloo*:
- When season 2 aired, fans often voiced their discontent with episodes where Pretty was actually nice instead of being a complete jerkass, and said they liked seeing episodes with her as the antagonist. The writers apparently found out about this, so in Season 3, they made her an even bigger jerk than she already was.
- Season 3 also contains other things that the fans said they enjoyed, like Kaeloo/Mr. Cat shipping, Pretty/Stumpy shipping, ||Ursula|| finally making an appearance, character development, more episodes with Olaf in them, and Stumpy getting more Throw the Dog a Bone moments.
- Season 4 has a heavy focus on Kaeloo and Mr. Cat's romantic relationship, which is the most popular ship in the fandom.
- Intentionally averted with
*Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus*, with Jhonen Vasquez wanting to avoid exploiting fan nostalgia. As such, the film uses a Lighter and Softer art style compared to the original show, downplays a lot of the iconic imagery, and lacks several fan-favorite characters in favor of a smaller standalone story focusing on Zim and the Membrane family.
- According to this blog post, LiveJournal did this constantly, which prevented the site from becoming mainstream.
- Jeff Dunham has been becoming this, as his shows have become more rooted in shock humor and stereotypes (with increased emphasis on Breakout Character Achmed) in order to appeal more to the conservative Southern crowd (Dunham is a Texas native).
- Peter Kay gets accused of this by some other stand-ups. Richard Herring said his act consisted mostly of "remembering things that happened in the 1970s".
- Debian is currently planned to pander to the Vocal Minority that hates GNOME 3 by switching from GNOME to Xfce as the default desktop environment for Debian 8 "Jessie".
- Is the reason why NickRewind exists. During the tail end of the Turn of the Millennium and going through The New '10s, 90s nostalgia was reaching an all-time high, especially among "Generation Y" babies born in the late 80s and early 90s (i.e. the people who spent most of their childhoods in The '90s). Since Nickelodeon was seen as a major victim of Network Decay during this time, there were lots of petitions and requests for Nick to bring back their 90s era programming in some form, much like what Cartoon Network did by introducing Boomerang. At long last, the 90s kids got what they wished for, and the block (then known as
*The '90s Are All That*) premiered on Nickelodeon's "for teens and older audiences" channel TeenNick in 2011 as a late-night block that brought with it shows like the titular All That, Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, and many more. This block is also notable for finally re-airing the infamous "lost movie" CryBaby Lane (during Halloween no less) for the first time since it was banned more than 10 years prior.
- Fascism (particularly Benito Mussolini's brand of it) has been described as an ideology that was whatever the public wanted it to be, as long as it was set to marching music.
- This article argues that one of the reasons that 50% of Canadians still supported the direction that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government in 2015 (despite a terrible picture of employment) was because he gave his supporters what they wanted, (for instance, being tough on terrorists, lower taxes and cuts to social spending) at the expense of the rest of the Canadian population. (Pandering to the base is practiced by all democratically elected governments, it is how they win votes.)
- According to Simon and Martina of Eat Your Kimchi, base pandering is one of the big weaknesses of K-drama. The directors would change the relationships of the characters, based on what they see the fans demand. This would lead to 180 turns where characters that hated each other, would become lovers the next episode without any logical setup.
- This video by Midnight's Edge argues that the phenomenon of recent blockbuster movies that feature China in some way, include Chinese characters and/or involve Chinese companies in their production, obeys the growth of the PRC's market as a sizable source of revenue for Hollywood.
- These two articles about Jeff Goldblum's popularity in The New '10s both argue that his friendliness with fans, amused delight at their stranger tributes to him, and eager willingness to be just as eccentric as the characters he plays — if not more so — whenever he appears in public is a positive example of this.
-
*South Park*: In "Quest for Ratings", this happens with the boys' revamped news show. They mention adding panda bears and hot girls for the sake of appealing to kindergartners and 6th graders, even if they aren't relevant to their stories. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanderingToTheFanbase |
Surveillance as the Plot Demands - TV Tropes
*"Lex Luthor had cameras everywhere. It didn't matter if Jayna was on the toilet or if Superman was 3 galaxies away enjoying a bowl of cereal, Lex Luthor could put it up on the big screen if he wanted."*
The bad guys have cameras everywhere. They probably also have Ominous Multiple Screens to follow all those cameras. Like some even-more-sinister version of
*Big Brother*, they always know exactly where the heroes are and what they're doing, even if there's no possible reason for them to be able to. It doesn't matter if they're three galaxies away or five thousand years in the past: the villains can still find them. They can put anything that they want up on the big screen, making you wonder why they don't give up on the bizarre plans for world domination and just surreptitiously blackmail every government in the world without the good guys ever finding out. Or at least, you would if you weren't so busy trying to puzzle out exactly how Luthor managed to get a live feed of the Super Friends repairing satellites in outer space.
The Omniscient Council of Vagueness will often make heavy use of this trope this trope is primarliy used to keep the villains and their Plan up-to-date on the situation. Heroes or antagonists savvy to this will give them a Poke in the Third Eye to escape detection.
Incidentally, magical versions of this trope (Crystal Balls, Magic Mirrors, etc.) are a little
*more* sensible, being one of those tropes that's so unlikely that A Wizard Did It becomes the most plausible explanation.
See also Big Brother Is Watching for the dystopian version. Not to be confused with Magical Security Cam, which is when the surveillance footage is recycled from elsewhere in the show. Also compare Convenient Photograph, which is a case where something
*specific* gets caught, often improbably, in a picture, but it may or may not be as a result of this trope.
## Examples:
-
*Death Note*: L likes constant surveillance, ||as do Mello and Near||. L is often seen watching Ominous Multiple Screens. At one point he put 64 cameras in his suspect's room only to take them out again later.
-
*Digimon Adventure 02*: The Digimon Kaiser. One of the standby jokes in any Crack Fic involved him being caught aiming the camera in odd directions...
-
*Dragon Quest: Legend of the Hero Abel*: Baramos monitors the heroes' progress through magic, using the eyes of his many minions.
-
*Get Backers*: MakubeX, while inside his tower.
-
*Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann*: Tymilph has a wall of screens, displaying various things. Including one camera aimed directly at Kiyoh's breasts.
-
*Powerpuff Girls Z*: Professor Utonium has a screen in his lab that can show any spot in the city, no matter how little sense it makes for him to view anything there. Mojo Jojo, unlike in the original, does not.
-
*Soul Eater* has Arachne using her spiders as spies to track enemy movement. Even to the point of semi-omniscience, which she demonstrates by telling Maka & Soul that Soul is the one who burnt their curry the previous night, because he left it on too long. So, apparently, she's either an excellent multitasker, or she just likes watching people do mundane things.
-
*JoJo's Bizarre Adventure*:
-
*Battle Tendency*: The Nazis are apparently aware of everything that goes on with Joseph through their spy network. However, this also happens to be towards the benefit of the protagonists, as they are able to stop the Red Stone of Aja from being delivered to Kars when Suzi Q, possessed by Esidisi's disembodied brain, sends it to him.
-
*Stardust Crusaders*: Joseph's Hermit Purple Stand can summon pictures of where a person is by destroying a camera, and can read the future by adjusting a television set (it manifests as people on random TV channels saying words that link into a proper sentence). Dio Brando has the same power due to having the body of Jonathan Joestar (Joseph's grandfather).
-
*Stone Ocean*: Pucci uses the constant surveillance by the prison guards to look for any suspicious move from Jolyne's part.
-
*Steel Ball Run*: Funny Valentine watches over the heroes by using the observation balloons that are normally used to watch over the racers, but comments that balloons aren't fit for constantly watching over them.
- In
*SD Gundam Force*, clips from past episodes are used as in-universe footage of those events. No explanation is made of this. The Zako Soldiers are the biggest offenders, as they had clips from episodes where there were nowhere to be found.
-
*One Piece*:
- Zigzagged, due to the heavy amounts of Schizo Tech in its worldbuilding. It
*began* as a Wooden Ships and Iron Men setting with letters and newspapers as the highest form of communication, but whenever the plot calls for it, the Marines/World Government will have a media network comparable to those of the 21st century - especially in the Marineford Arc, where the big war is broadcast to the people of nearby Saobaody through what can only be described as a jumbotron tree.
- How the marines can get such clear photos of the Straw Hats (and other, decidedly less friendly pirates) so quickly is usually glossed over; Oda eventually invented a joke character to explain it, and took it one step beyond by showing that no, he's nowhere near infallible.
-
*Yu-Gi-Oh!*: In the Japanese version of *Sinister Secrets - Part 1*, Leon relates how he gained an interest in Duel Monsters by watching Yami Yugi's duels in Duelist Kingdom and Battle City. Cut from the dub most likely after the dubbers realized that there weren't camera crews at those locations in the episodes.
-
*Wonder Woman*:
- In Volume 1, the Pre-Crisis Amazons had a scrying device with which Hippolyta could view anything on earth, or elsewhere in the cosmos, with ease if she so desired. She mostly used it to keep an eye on her daughter's exploits.
- In
*Judgment In Infinity*, the Adjudicator uses a luminous scrying ball to watch the battles between the Earth's champions and his agents across different dimensions.
- Played with in an issue of
*The Flash*, where the Mirror Master finds a Pocket Dimension in which he can see through all the mirrors in the world. However, with millions of mirrors to choose from, he can't find the one he's *looking* for. ||This turns out to be not quite right, though; the woman he's seeking has removed all reflective surfaces from her house.||
- The Inventor from
*Ms. Marvel (2014)*. At least in the sewers he seems to have cameras everywhere.
-
*New Gods*: In keeping with his theme of knowing everything, Metron has been shown to have a corridor full of "datalinks" (which are really just TV screens) showing information from all across the universe. Even Highfather is shocked by the things he sees Metron is able to spy on.
-
*Agents of Atlas*: Justified. The titular group's opponent has ||a video link to their robot team member, allowing him to always have a camera where they are||.
-
*Warheads*: Initially averted and later justified. In early issues, their superiors are completely unable to monitor the squad when they jump through a wormhole. Later, they integrate a dead Warhead's brain into a scrying device and start monitoring the team without their knowledge.
- In the graphic novel
*Lucifer* the title character once flies to the "Aleph Point" which seems to serve this exact function. Given the Norse mythological overtones the series has later on it's not unlikely the reference to Hlidskjalf is intentional.
- In a
*Swamp Thing* story, Metron attempts to breach the Source Wall, and sees thousands of events simultaneously across the universe. He later learns that this was actually an "Aleph Point".
-
*New Avengers (2015):* The Maker infects the team with nanocameras when they first run into some his super-science experiments. Since they breed, he becomes able to spy on the team any time he wishes (except when they're on the toilet. He has minions for *that*). ||Then it gets turned on its head when Roberto reveals AIM had known all along thanks to POD's powers.||
- In
*Civil War II*, Captain Marvel and Gamora discuss keeping Thanos prisoner on Earth, and some random dude films it on his cell phone and shares it. Somehow, Annihilus intercepts that (despite being some galaxies away), and starts to make related plans with the Brood queen.
-
*All-New Ultimates*: Issue 8 ends with a figure watching and following the Ultimates with several screens.
-
*Disney Ducks Comic Universe*: When bored, Magica De Spell spends her free time spying on Scrooge McDuck in her crystal ball. Scrooge too has detectives who keep Magica under surveillance.
-
*Superman*:
- At the beginning of
*Crucible*, Lys Amata, preceptor of the titular space academy, is watching Kara going through her day; and in the second-to-last issue, Lys Amata can be seen watching footage of the battle between her students and Roho's villainous squad on Earth. It's never explained how she got real-time records of events happening in a faraway world.
- In
*The Unknown Supergirl*, Lesla-Lar's spying devices can see everything Supergirl does, anywhere and at any time, despite Lesla being stuck in Kandor, the Shrunken Bottle City.
-
*The Killers of Krypton*: As Supergirl and the Omega Men fight an army of Kryptonian clones, Harry Hokum watches the battle while inside his starship, which is standing by out of the planet.
- In
*The Coming of Atlas*, Lana Lang uses LexCorp's flying drones to monitor the battle between the Science Police and a giant monster, and later the fight between Superman and Atlas.
- In
*Strangers at the Heart's Core*, the camera devices of a criminal alien trio called The Visitors' can somehow keep watch over Supergirl wherever she goes, even when she flies into the Fortress of Solitude and shrinks herself to go into the Bottle City of Kandor.
- In
*Superman's Return to Krypton*, Jor-El's telescopic viewer, equipped with a language translator device, allows him to watch people on distant planets. As looking for a place where Kryptonians can survive, he finds Earth and starts observing a certain couple from a little USA town called Smallville who have caught his attention.
- In
*Superman vs. Shazam!*, Karmang's devices let him track Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel as they fly between dimensions, and watch the battle between Superman and Captain Marvel from his Martian castle. Since Karmang is both a Mad Scientist and an Evil Sorcerer, readers are left to guess his machines' nature.
- Downplayed in
*The Hunt for Reactron*. Project 7734's monitoring systems can track Kara and her companions down in Metropolis and other cities, but they cannot find the trio when they fly out of US territory.
- In
*The Girl with the X-Ray Mind*, Lesla-Lar's devices can monitorize both Linda Danvers and Lena Thorul at once, no matter where they go.
- In
*The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor*, the eponymous villain proves his surveillance systems can monitor his wife Ardora, who lives on another planet, whenever he wants (in his defense, he switched on his monitor because he was concerned about her).
-
*Supergirl (1984)*: Selena can spy on people in other dimensions thanks to a door-sized magic mirror.
- In
*Batman/Superman: World's Finest*: Niles Caulder's remote cameras show hero vs villain battles happening simultaneously in three different cities.
- In
*Girl Power*, Batman uses satellites to monitor Kara's activities across the world. However, Kara notices them during one mission, and she goes to the Batcave to tell him personally how she feels about that invasion of privacy.
-
*The Death of Lightning Lad*: It is not explained how the Legion of Super-Heroes' space monitor can show events ranging from a Sun-Eater plunging into the Sun to monsters rampaging on random planets.
-
*The Legion of Super-Heroes!*: When Cosmic Boy turns off the Legion's Television Trouble-finder, the monitor automatically displays images of a scavenging ship. Cosmic Boy never explains how the Trouble-finder finds, records and broadcasts random catastrophes.
-
*The Earthwar Saga*: The Legion's computers can simultaneously monitor the Khund's invasion, Wildfire's mission on Weber's World, and Superboy and his friends streaking through the space.
-
*The Planet Eater Trilogy*: When controlled by Brainiac, the cameras of his mechanical planet-weapon can display images of different catastrophes happening simultaneously in different planets.
-
*Ultron Unlimited*: Played for laughs. Ultron is watching the activities of the Avengers... and, in turn, Alkhema is watching Ultron.
-
*The Judas Contract* provides an exaggerated example. Exaggerated. Deathstroke watches the Titans though the camera in Terra's lens, and in turn, he's being watched by Adeline.
-
*Venom (Donny Cates)*: In Issue #8, the Maker — an evil version of Reed Richards — is shown to have a series of CCTVs showing events ranging from Thanos' death to Namor's war on the surface world to the events of *Spider-Geddon*.
- A Running Gag in
*Nobody Dies* is the fact that Yui knows everything that happens in Tokyo-3. *Everything*.
**Shinji**: Mom, please tell me you don't have cameras in Misato's bathroom. **Yui**: I have cameras *everywhere*.
- Humorously invoked in
*Hogyoku ex Machina*, where Unohana is particularly disturbed to learn that Mayuri installed surveillance devices in Ichigo's hospital room long before his arrival in Soul Society, claiming that it was a "necessary precaution".
- In
*The Stars Ascendant*, Luna and Celestia use the images in the starry realm of ascension to review Twilight Sparkle's battle with Tirek.
-
*Supper Smash Bros: Mishonh From God* gives this to Sara, thanks to the villains holding the Idiot Ball. Basically, the villains main hideout has security cameras in it, and the camera feed is conveniently located in the Smash Mansion for Sara to watch, and learn their plans. Later on, we see Sara's ally Tiffany using the Home Depot website during an assault on one Home Depot store. The website apparently functions as a radar, since it's said to have a map of that particular store, as well as tracking the location of Sara, and showing which way the 'lesbans' are coming from.
-
*Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!*:
- While the Japanese government doesn't have Midoriya under constant watch, it generally keeps tabs on him after he nearly killed Bakugou when they were children. This lets Alexis Luthor obtain Midoriya's life story with her connections, thoroughly unnerving Midoriya when they finally meet.
- As per canon, the testing sites for the U.A. Entrance Exam are littered with cameras for the proctors to observe the students with.
-
*With this Ring... (Green Lantern)*: The Green Lantern trio is watched during their adventure by the Guardians of the Universe, who certainly possess the means to observe anyone at anywhere and at any time.
- In
*Here There Be Monsters*, the old wizard Shazam! uses his magic to observe the Marvel Family from afar.
In a room on the Rock of Eternity, the old wizard sat, and stared at a conjuring of Earth.
The image of the world on which he had been born hung in a flickering vision-screen before him, the stone wall of his cottage visible beyond it.[...]
Old Shazam's forefinger flickered out, bringing various parts of the globe into closer focus. The viewpoint zoomed in, as if held by a cameraman with a powerful lens. He homed in on the presences of the three he knew and loved best.
- In
*Ashikabi of Thunder and Lightning*, Matsu has hacked Shinto Teito's computer systems so that she can spot attacks being made against Minato before they can reach him. This has saved him multiple times.
- Justified in
*Power Rangers Take Flight*, where the Rangers are equipped with camera drones called "Hoverbirds" that can automatically sense trouble. ||Unfortunately, the villains have access to the Hoverbird feeds; it leads to the Rangers' apartment building being turned into a monster and the Rangers have to destroy their own home.||
- Parodied in
*Blazing Saddles*, where the villain goes into a movie theater to escape the hero, sits down, and sees the hero coming into the theater on the screen.
-
*The Bourne Ultimatum*. Combined with Everything Is Online, this takes things to ridiculous levels.
-
*Casino*: Justified, Las Vegas is a watchful territory at first, but Nicky draws so much heat that he manages to attract many kinds of surveillance; wiretapping, lip reading, electronic bugs, car chases, aerial vigilance. Nicky is smart and gets away implementing anti-surveillance devices and tactics for a while, but he is bested when the Feds put a wire inside an adjacent wall.
- The skeksis of
*The Dark Crystal* have spying creatures called crystal bats, whose bodies appear to be lenses; the images picked up by these lenses can be seen through the eponymous crystal.
-
*The Dark Knight*:
- Batman has this. He ||hacks all the cell phones in the city to act as sonar-esque devices which all report to a central hub, giving him real-time, 3D, audio and video of nearly
*all of Gotham City*||.
- Surveillance was used in a much worse fashion in
*Batman & Robin*. Incriminating speeches made by the villains were sometimes replayed using *the same shot that was used earlier in the movie, surveillance-free!*
- The main villain of
*Eagle Eye* apparently has the ability to spy on anyone she cares to, including closely monitoring our heroes to ensure that they enact her plans. ||As it turns out, she's a super-computer that the government has built for spying, and her hijacking of various cameras was justified by the DHS having forced the companies to include back doors.||
- Victor von Doom apparently has surveillance of the Baxter Building in
*Fantastic Four (2005)*. It's never explained how.
-
*Other Halves*: It's pretty lucky there were surveillance cameras in the *locker room*, or Elle might not have figured out who The Peeping Tom was.
- Parodied in
*Spaceballs*, where the bad guys track down the heroes using a VHS tape of the film itself.
- In
*You Only Live Twice*, two scenes where James Bond follows the action through TV screens might bring Fridge Logic. In one, the car television shows a helicopter throwing a car in the middle of the sea - *from above* - and Blofeld's ship engulfing the American one *in space*.
-
*Enemy of the State* zig-zags with it like crazy. Satellite surveillance needs time to get in position and cannot record the face of a man that isn't looking straight up (even after the film had showcased some pretty impressive uses of the Enhance Button earlier) in one scene, on one that follows shortly afterwards it takes many men to maintain constant line of sight of a conversation that the villains want to overhear, and later on a satellite just happens to apparently always be orbiting over Philadelphia and is able to perfectly play back the travel of a single vehicle from someplace in the suburbs to an industrial park a great many miles away, information that is as easy to recall as giving the computer the coordinates and time from which the vehicle started to move.
-
*Mean Guns*: Vincent Moon has eyes throughout the prison by looking through the security camera feeds, but the action is often shown from implausible angles.
-
*Ai no Kusabi*: Iason has surveillance cameras all over Eos watching Riki where ever he goes.
-
*Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident*: Opal Koboi has concealed cameras set up throughout Haven City to engineer the plan to unleash a goblin rebellion.
-
*The Dark Tower*: Stephen King's epic Dark Tower universe includes thirteen different-hued crystal balls of "the Wizard's Rainbow"—they can be used as typical crystal balls are, but each has a certain psychotic bent.
-
*Discworld*:
- Some of the wizards at Unseen University own small pocket crystal balls that can be used to observe a specific location, although sometimes reception is bad. And lampshaded: An Omniscope, one of the most powerful magical devices, can technically show
*anything* *anywhere* in the universe; the tricky problem is getting it to show you the specific thing at the correct place and correct time that you want (it's easier now that Hex, the magical computer at Unseen University, can crunch the numbers for you). Some wizards just set the lens of the Omniscope to the dark of infinite space and use it as a shaving mirror. In *Going Postal*, two omniscopes were successfully linked for long-distance "video conference" communication purposes.
- This is the result of an accidental discovery Ponder Stibbons makes in
*The Last Hero*, where his clumsiness reveals that one half of a broken omniscope automatically sees out the other half's POV.
- In
*Witches Abroad*, the villain, an evil Fairy Godmother, has a Magic Mirror room that allows her to scry through any reflective surface on the disc. It's a bit Awesome, but Impractical, though, since she has no magical ability to locate what she wants to look at, so she has to essentially scroll through every reflective surface in a given area to find what she's looking for.
-
*The Light of Other Days* by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. The whole book is about the invention of a device that allows the user to look anywhere in the world they want; later on, the technology is discovered to be able to directly view events *in the past*. The main focus of the novel is on how the world adapts to the fact that "privacy" literally has no meaning anymore, since you can be watched at any point in your life (and even things you've done in the past).
- Robert Ludlum's
*The Prometheus Deception* has a villain with this *modus operandi*.
- The
*Star Trek* novel *The Starship Trap* involves the use of a dimensional vergence (a construct that touches every point in every universe simultaneously) as a weapon to eliminate starships, and thus war, from the galaxy. The crew uses surveillance of the vergence to spy on an alternate-universe Klingon ship to bluff it into leaving them alone while they try to use the vergence to return to their own universe.
- In
*Tolkien's Legendarium*:
- Some of the Valar have vast surveillance assets. When upon the holy mountain Taniquetil beside his spouse Varda, Manwë Súlimo could see anywhere in the world; likewise, when Varda was similarly situated, she could hear anywhere in the world. Melkor/Morgoth had a rather nasty variant; he set a chair atop the peak of Thangorodrim where he imprisoned Húrin, just so Húrin could see all of Morgoth's victories and the ruin of Húrin's own nation and family.
- Oddly, the Palantíri themselves seem to subvert this trope — they were primarily designed for communication between the owners of the stones. However, they are not purely communication devices. Tolkien elaborates on how they can be used in one of the chapters in
*Unfinished Tales*. They have limited range, cannot see through things, and cannot look everywhere at once, but they can be used to view things in locations other than the rooms where other stones are kept.
- Due to their limitations, Frodo famously slipped through the surveillance net to get into Mordor. Sauron has to resort to more "mundane" methods of info gathering such as via his flying Nazgûl.
- Additionally, one is actually used against Sauron: Aragorn uses the Palantír taken from Isengard to show Sauron that Isildur's heir is alive and challenging him. However, this is all just a ploy to keep Sauron's attention (and Palantír) pointed elsewhere while Sam and Frodo slip into Mordor.
- Another was used by Denethor, who was apparently unaware of the limitations and had Sauron manipulating what he saw through it. This drove him to madness and almost led to the loss of Gondor.
- The Numenoreans built a similar "Seat of Seeing" on the hilltop of Amon Hen. Frodo was able to see all the way to Minas Tirith and into Mordor from the stone seat there.
-
*Momo*: Master Hora can watch anybody and anything from his house whevener he wants thanks to his magic Omnivision glasses.
-
*Villains by Necessity*: Mizzamir plays the Palantir Ploy throughout the book. It seems to work perfectly at first, but the presence of both Kaylana and Valeriana in the group causes it to only give him some vague glimpses of the villains' progress (Arcie also damaged his scrying font while prying gemstones out of it, thus reducing the font's power). Later, the protagonists get ahold of a magic mirror which allows them to remotely view Mizzamir, conveniently revealing ||that Robin is his spy||.
-
*The Adventures of Slim Goodbody*: This is a rare case where the *heroes* actually have access to this! Body Control has a Surveill-o-scope in it that lets the heroes spy on the villains *if* they know where the villains are. Justified in that [a] Magic from Technology exists in this setting, and [b] Body Control is heavily implied to be a government-funded operation.
- Averted by
*Battlestar Galactica (2003)*. They have cameras and TVs but the existence of an internal security camera system on the *Galactica* would have solved many problems before they could expand into episode-length plots. The aversion is justified since the colonials are downright (and considering the Robot War very properly) paranoid about any computer networks. The more modern Pegasus *has* security cameras, making this one more way in which the Galactica shows just how old it is.
- In
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer*, the Trio has cameras where they need them. How they pulled off planting that ||gnome in Buffy's lawn|| is a question for the ages.
-
*Doctor Who*:
- "Army of Ghosts": Torchwood London is able to detect the Doctor messing with a ghost, find a public camera nearby
*and* pipe the picture from it to a screen at their headquarters just in time to see the TARDIS dematerialize.
- In "The Sound of Drums", the Master observes the Doctor, Jack and Martha on a public CCTV camera, while speaking to the Doctor on a mobile phone. While the camera's existence is perfectly plausible, the Master's ability to quickly gain access to the exact one our heroes are standing in front of is not, ||even if he is the Prime Minister||. Barring Fourth Tier Time Lord technology, of course, though the episode doesn't say that.
- Not to mention, both Sarah Jane Smith and Harriet Jones both had their own secret global communications network (in "Journey's End"). Or the "magical" cell phones the Doctor is handing out to his companions these days, that use the TARDIS as a transtemporal relay station. Communications technology is the new plot shortcut.
- "Sleep No More" has it look like this trope for quite some time, only for it to turn out to be
*very* important that what we thought was surveillance footage comes from angles where there couldn't possibly have been actual cameras.
- In "Spyfall", a tech CEO is able to track down the Doctor's companions through their phones, data mining, and having "cameras everywhere."
- Granted, she's not a council, but disregarding that
*Gossip Girl* fits this trope to a T.
- On
*Henry Danger*. When Henry is blamed for causing Debbie to fall off of a roof of a building, he shows three high-quality pictures that proves he's innocent and ||Piper did it by accident||.
- In
*Kyle XY*, Latnok apparently installs cameras in places like a diner in the middle of nowhere.
-
*Lost*'s "Others" seem to know the Losties' every move for the first few seasons. This is eventually explained (mostly) by the presence of spies in their camps and cameras all over the island.
- On
*The Mentalist* this becomes a crucial point during an investigation of a murder in a high school. The school's principal is able to obtain information about events he could not have witnessed and was not told about. It turns out that he secretly installed security cameras in the bathrooms.
- Justified and then averted in
*Person of Interest* where the Machine is fed data from millions of cameras already installed all over the country. It can thus track individual people everywhere in the county and determine if they are pose a threat. However, the Machine was specifically designed to deny its human operators access to its inner workings and thus they cannot just tell the Machine to track a specific person. The Machine outputs a Social Security number of a Person of Interest and the humans have to track that person down through other means.
- Nearly every
*Power Rangers* team from the beginning to the present has improbable surveillance, good guys and bad guys alike able to observe any plot-relevant event no matter where it took place and at angles that make you wonder if they've got an invisible camera crew (though it's not *always* footage we've just seen in reality). In some seasons, surveillance devices are literally magical ("Observe the viewing globe!") but in others... apparently, the entire world (and in some seasons, the galaxy) is filled with never-seen hovering security cameras for both sides.
- In
*Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers*, Rita and Zedd have their telescope and visor respectively, and both are X-Ray Vision capable... but you'd expect them to only be able to look from above. They get impossible camera angles with those things!
- In
*Power Rangers Turbo*, the periscope of Divatox's sub can appear from any body of water... even a glass of water on a table across the room from the Rangers. It resizes to match, being bigger when it's in a lake than when it's in a coffee cup.
- Handwaved occasionally;
*Power Rangers Ninja Storm* makes a mention of a security drone, and *Power Rangers Jungle Fury* mentioned a citywide surveillance system - the show's first (and to date, only) attempts to justify this.
- Played with in
*Power Rangers Samurai*: the city is rigged with sensors like the ones in *Ninja Storm* and *Jungle Fury* allegedly are, but not cameras - the alarms are accompanied by maps showing the monster's location but no video feed of the monster itself. This often leaves them unprepared for the monster's attack - most teams get to witness the monster's means of tormenting the populace before facing it themselves, but this one doesn't.
-
*Power Rangers Ninja Steel* lets us know how the *villains* do it - the Rangers' battles are being broadcast galaxy-wide as Deadly Games, using insect-sized 'buzzcams' that can fly anywhere to film the action. As for the Rangers, they've got a magic viewing globe-like device again (in the form of the MacGuffin that gave them their powers) but *no* all-knowing mentor to give explanations: they often don't understand what they're being shown or why.
- In
*Pretty Little Liars*, it seems that "A" knows what each of the protagonists is doing almost all of the time. "A" uses this to intimidate, threaten and blackmail them.
- Played straight and subverted in
*The Prisoner (1967)* where part of Number Six's problem is that the Village is rife with spies and hidden surveillance. As the show progresses, he learns first to hide intentions from their gaze, and eventually to twist these measures to manipulate his jailers.
- Implied (though benevolently) by the contents of Ziggy the supercomputer's database in
*Quantum Leap* - for example, in the episode "Another Mother", when a teenager mocks another for being a virgin, Al confidently states that the bully is a virgin himself "and you will be for another six years." Rule of Funny is in play, and Ziggy's omniscience is very much dictated by the demands of the plot.
- Lampshaded in the
*Star Trek: The Original Series* episode, "The Menagerie", when Spock shows footage from his days with Capt. Pike (using footage from "The Cage") and when it gets so detailed, Kirk objects, noting that no security footage could be like that. It turns out it is images sent from the Masters of Illusion from Talos IV instead.
-
*Tales of the Tinkerdee*: Taminella Grinderfall, witchiest witch of them all, is capable of clairvoyance with a particular magic potion and spell, at least for a limited amount of time. She uses this to spy on a conversation between the prime minister and the king, and finds out that the king has zero intention of sending her an invitation, even though nearly everyone in the kingdom, poor and rich alike, got an invitation.
- In the song "Wolverton Mountain", in the chorus the singer claims "the bears and the birds" tell the father of the girl he loves if a stranger comes on the mountain where the father and the daughter live.
- Norse Mythology: Odin is said to possess a high seat called "Hlidskjalf" which enables him (and anyone else who sits on it, at least if they are gods) to see everything that occurs in the nine worlds. He also has his two ravens, Hugin ("Thought") and Munin ("Memory") who fly out at dawn each day from Odin's hall across the three worlds and upon their return whisper in his ears the news of everything they've seen.
-
*Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition*: The cover illustration of the fourth edition *Dungeon Masters Guide* is a dragon spying on adventurers (from the cover of the *Player's Handbook*) via a crystal ball in Palantir Ploy fashion.
- This is a mainstay of
*Paranoia*. In just about any campaign, ever-present surveillance cameras are a staple of Alpha Complex. However, between poor maintenance, collateral damage, sabotage by Secret Societies, sabotage by High Programmers, sabotage by Commie Mutant Traitor scum, and random acts of Friend Computer, no one knows just who is watching what and where.
- In
*Mage: The Awakening*, this is a favorite tactic of the Seers of the Throne: they build libraries of people's stray hairs and personal effects as Sympathetic Magic foci for scrying spells, create ghostly servant "Grigori" to observe and trace the Fate lines of people's acquaintances and relationships, form pacts with spirits that can stalk targets unseen, and so on.
- In
*Alpha Protocol*, you can buy maps of all of the various locations from a surveillance company, even those of extremely secure facilities. Including those which your highly powerful government agency can't get accurate data for.
-
*ANNO: Mutationem*: While making her way through The Consortium's underground facility, Ann comes across a surveillance room and discovers the organization has been monitoring her and Ayane at specific locations ever since they started closing in.
-
*Chrono Cross*: The ||save points|| also acted as ||subtle mind-control devices for FATE||.
-
*Disney's Hades Challenge* has a heroic example with Phil, who uses the Fates' *other* eye to watch your progress and communicate with you.
-
*Hades*: The Olympian Gods are able to track Zagreus' escape attempts through Hades, but they can't speak to him directly, listen in on Zagreus' conversations, or see what happens fully within either the House of Hades or ||the surface, as Nyx is blocking them||.
-
*The Legendary Starfy*: In *Densetsu no Stafy 4*, The Evil Degil uses the Mon Amor Stone to oversee the Star/Starfish *Kid Hero*es *Player Character*'s Prince Starfy and Princess Starly of the Pufftop Kingdom and how far they progressed in the Ami Kingdom, and she sends her strongest and most loyal minions to try to assassinate them, as you defeat the bosses that have been sent to murder you and get further in the Ami Kingdom, Degil gets visibly and verbally more frustrated that Starfy and Starly are still alive and getting ever so closer to fighting and defeating her in her lair.
- The Combine of
*Half-Life 2*. It makes more sense than most though, as they've conquered the entire planet.
- A character limit caused this to apparently happen in the English versions of the first two generations of
*Pokémon* *from a kind, loving mentor*. Whenever you tried to use an item improperly, the game would all of a sudden have Professor Oak speak to you, saying that this isn't the correct time to use that. *Nintendo Power* explained that Oak had set up a complex series of cameras across Kanto and Johto expressly for this purpose. By the time the games moved to a 32-bit system, there was more room for text, and thus they could explain that it was simply the character imagining what his mentor would say in that situation.
-
*Kingdom Hearts*:
- In
*Kingdom Hearts* the Council of Disney villains lead by Maleficent is shown viewing Sora's actions in some of the cutscenes.
-
*Chain of Memories* had Axel, Larxene, Marluxia, and Naminé watching Sora's every move from that one room, through a crystal ball. ||Downstairs, Zexion, Lexaeus, and Vexen were doing the same thing to Riku, though Vexen switches to upstairs once the Riku Replica is finished.|| Justified, considering that the entire game takes place in one castle.
- In the climax of Sora's story in
*Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]*, it is revealed that ||the Recusant's Sigil - you know, that nondescript unimportant *X* right on his shirt? - was being used as a tracker making sure he was kept in place during his time in the Sleeping Worlds||.
- Played straight in
*Mega Man X2*, replete with villains in the shadows. They exchange words about their master, but ||anyone who's even a little well versed in the series' trend of recurring final bosses already knows this "master" is Sigma||.
- In
*Rayman*, Mr. Dark spends most the game spying on the eponymous hero. Doesn't matter if Rayman's inside a cave or atop a mountain; Mr. Dark is always watching from that hill.
- In
*The Secret World*, the ubiquity of Orochi-controlled tech and media has elements of this. Then again, so does the Illuminati.
-
*Xenogears*: Combines this with one of the most brilliant aversions of Gameplay and Story Segregation to date when it's found out that the bad guys had been tracking the heroes through ||the Save Point network||.
- The non-canon spy spoof arc of
*Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures* shows some increasingly-improbable surveillance, then lampshades it in this strip.
- In
*Holiday Wars*, The Bunny teams up with The Forgotten which allows him to keep track of the story's protagonist. You can check it out here.
- In
*Jenny and the Multiverse*, a mysterious new villain is introduced on Chapter 2 Page 2 watching a live image of Jenny *in the middle of an open field* to which she teleported randomly. Justified by the visal implication that the device he's using is actually an interdimensional scanner of some kind, used to directly observe dimensions, rather than an ordinary camera feed (given its clear resemblance to Laura's Triangular Bisector which opened portals to other dimensions as seen in Chapter 1).
-
*The Order of the Stick*:
- Xykon makes heavy use of his crystal ball. It features picture-in-picture (for viewing multiple groups of heroes at once), widescreen, and a "TeeVo" to record actions the heroes take while he's busy with something else.
- The Three Fiends also have a TV that lets them watch whatever they're interested in, complete with a mode to see invisible things.
-
*Ben 10: Omniverse*: In "The Vengers", the Vengers recorded the fight between them and Ben without any of them carrying any sort of recording device. The footage shown takes clips from the episode, rather than from an angle a camera would be viewing.
-
*Big Hero 6: The Series*: Obake has this coupled with Ominous Multiple Screens. ||Liv Amara|| notably averts this, preferring to hear the explanation verbally or just check the news.
- In
*Captain N: The Game Master*, Mother Brain's "Metroid Mirror," which is a computer monitor, can be used to show anything going on in Videoland. In the second episode, Mother Brain uses it to show her footage of Kevin playing a video game in his bedroom, from before he came to Videoland.
- Plasmius by Season 3 of
*Danny Phantom* has taken to using numerous, tiny, bug-shaped, *Spider-Man*-esque cameras. But not that tiny.
-
*Disenchantment:* Cloyd and the Enchantress are able to watch the series' proceedings from the comfort of their dark chairs, through a magic fire. It's hinted that they're seeing Luci's point of view, since when he's asleep the fire only shows static, but on other occasions they've been able to change "channel" as it were.
- In the
*Donkey Kong Country* episode "To The Moon, Baboon" Cranky's contribution to the time capsule is a film of K. Rool's past defeats. Said film consists of clips from past episodes, set in sepia tones. It's unclear how Cranky was able to accomplish this, although he *does* have unlimited access to the wish-granting Crystal Coconut. On a lesser, but more frequent note is that King K. Rool is able to have video conferences with Klump anywhere. Klump even manages to interrupt one of K. Rool's games in "Buried Treasure." Season 2 explained this slightly by showing K. Rool communicating with Klump via walky-talky...although the video part is never understood.
- Robot Santa in
*Futurama* has a screen where he spies on people being naughty. Which, due to a glitch in his programming, is *everyone*. note : Except Dr. Zoidberg, the only person Robot Santa regards as "nice". "Don't you ever knock? Who knows what naughty things I could be watching? I get New Orleans on this thing, you know!"
- The Duke's Viewing Stone provides this in
*Gawayn*.
-
*Get Ace*: The villains seem to have eyes on Ace at all times where ever he is, even explicitly placing hidden cams inside the protagonist's house. One episode reveals they kept tabs on him and his family *while on vacation*.
-
*G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero*: The Gamesmaster's screens showed the inside of Cobra's base, *Lady Jaye changing her clothes*, and the Baroness *taking a bath*. Serious Paranoia Fuel.
-
*He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983)*: He-Man's nemesis Skeletor had (at least in the Ladybird books) a 'mystic viewscreen' which let him see absolutely anywhere, including inside Castle Grayskull. When you can watch the heroes' every movement and still lose every time, you're obviously doing something wrong.
- In the 2002 remake, Tri-Klops uses a series of small floating CG devices to spy on everyone. The heroes completely fail to notice them flying around their palace... most of the time. There are at least two cases of animals chasing them, and a minor villain finds one and uses it as an excuse to get inside Skeletor's base.
-
*Inspector Gadget*:
- Dr. Claw has cameras everywhere. Apparently his minions carry them around everywhere, but sometimes they pop up in weird places, like ancient pyramids, the police stations, and Gadget's
*own house!*
- Subverted with Gadget's dog, Brain, who communicates with Gadget's niece, Penny, by means of micro-transmitters in his collar. When they're retracted, Penny can't speak with or see Brain. How Brain can talk is unrevealed.
- In the "Abducted" episode of
*Invader Zim*:
- On
*Jimmy Two-Shoes*, Lucius seems to be able to pull up anything going on in Miseryville on his big screen. This is probably a side effect of his Reality Warper powers.
-
*Kim Possible*: This is lampshaded when Kim points out to Team Go the obvious security risks of the bad guy having a direct video link into the hero's base. Somehow, the heroes fail to see any problem with this. Aside from Kim and Shego, who exasperatedly comments that such idiocy is the reason the Dark Action Girl left.
-
*Lady Lovely Locks* had both a heroic and villainous example.
- Duchess Ravenwaves' spyglass let her spy on Lady no matter where she was.
- Lady Lovely Locks' Looking Room let her see what was going on in the kingdom and acted as a conduit for her Fisher King powers, letting her repair damage done to it.
- Dr. Wily in the
*Mega Man (Ruby-Spears)* cartoon had what some fans call the 'Anywhere Screen', letting him see live feed of just about anywhere.
- Lampshaded in
*Moonbeam City* when Rad confesses to a scam on TV:
**Rad:** *[while blubbering like a child]* I tried to stop the punks... but I got scared and I ran away... and tripped on the rack of sunglasses and all the sunglasses fell on me. I got up and ran into the street, but I couldn't see, so I fell down an open manhole. HOW IS THERE FOOTAGE OF *THIS* PART?! **Vex:** Sewer-cam.
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*: In "Magical Mystery Cure", princess Celestia reveals that she's been watching Twilight Sparkle since the very beginning. On several magic screens suspended in a supernatural void. Which not only show her adventures in Ponyville, but also scenes from her childhood and *one of her imagine spots*. Feel free to worry about the implications of Celestia monitoring her student's thoughts.
- It did save the day in one episode where Twilight went nuts from stress and managed to drag the whole town down with her using magic. Given that the first thing Celestia saw her do was lose control of her powers and nearly destroy the capital, surveillance is probably warranted.
- The origin of the screens isn't mentioned, so given the unusual nature of the place they're shown in, it's possible they represent something else, such as moments pulled from Twilight's memories, and her talk about watching Twilight grow was more in a figurative weay.
- Her surveillance doesn't end there. In "Twilight's Kingdom", when Tirek attacks a random pony, both Celestia and Luna experience it as a vision.
- The
*Phineas and Ferb* Clip Show claims that most of the clips shown were things Irving had recorded over the summer. Some of these clips were from an episode that was All Just a Dream Within A Dream.
-
*The Powerpuff Girls (1998)*: Lampshaded in "Monkey See, Doggie Two", when Mojo Jojo steals the Anubis head for the second time and replays clips from the last episode of the effects of the head's magic in countries around the globe.
**Blossom**: Hey, who filmed this, anyway? **Buttercup:** Yeah, do you have cameras set up all over the world? **Mojo Jojo**: Yes! Now shut up!
-
*Robotboy*: Kamikazi seems to have cameras installed everywhere Tommy goes, especially in the first season. The cameras are usually hidden inside random things in the background.
- On
*Samurai Jack*:
- The Big Bad Aku has a crystal ball that allows him to see whatever Jack is doing. Why he doesn't try more often to send his flunkies right to Jack is anyone's guess.
- It has been demonstrated at least once that it can be "jammed", causing it to display only static (Aku treats it like a faulty TV, but hitting it doesn't help much). Also, it probably does a great job of
*tracking* people once the user has found them, but might not be so hot at actually finding them in the first place.
- Still, even if Jack keeps winning, you'd think he would just send staggered waves of weak or competent enemies to tire and infuriate Jack before he delivers a finishing blow. At least part of this plan has actually happened in series.
- He has space-capabilities as well, if he knows where Jack is, how about an orbital weapon? Or just a Colony Drop (not like that kind of collateral damage is Out of Character for Aku, the living embodiment of darkness and evil).
- During the comics Aku checked in on Jack frequently, and within hours of Jack's magic sword being broken saw this and sent minions. "Time passes" though and Jack's seen disguised, with Aku's minions searching again and Aku himself waiting for word. These are not in continuity with Season Five, where Jack's sword is gone and Aku has no idea, apparently having long given up on watching him.
-
*Star Wars Rebels*: Averted for the most part or at least rarely ever brought up, just like in most of other *Star Wars* media. Played with in one episode. Agent Kallus turns off the surveillance to Ezra's cell so that ||they can talk about why what Ezra is doing is putting Kallus's spywork at risk||. Later, the other villains notice that the surveillance has been shut off, tipping them off that there's something special about the prisoner (unaware that it is Ezra) and that there's ||an inside man||, but Kallus is able to set it up as ||Lyste||'s doing.
-
*Star Wars Resistance*: Like its predecessor series and many other *Star Wars* stories, surveillance only exists for purposes of the plot. In one episode, Tam sees live security cam footage of Kaz and Neeku infiltrating the same First Order facility she's in, but in another episode, there's apparently no surveillance in the brig since she is able to talk to a prisoner without either of them worrying about it.
-
*Superfriends* abused this heavily. One episode had the Legion of Doom getting real-time footage of events 75 million years in the past. (Wrap your head around that one.) Lex Luthor had cameras everywhere, including Earth orbit...and near the Earth's *core*.
- Mumm-Ra from
*ThunderCats (1985)* does this. Only partially justified, based on how much you want to believe that he really is confined to his pyramid in any given episode. Lion-O's Sword Of Omens can do this too.
- Shredder was a huge offender of this trope in the
*'80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* cartoons.
-
*Total Drama* is (in-universe) a reality show. Okay. But some of the things that Chris and Chef manage to record is just ridiculous—like, for example, *Owen's dreams.* And how did they pull off the TDWT penultimate episode? Did they put cameras all along the pathway between Alberta and Tijuana, despite not even having planned that challenge before Sierra blew up the plane?
- WOOHP, the Heroes "R" Us of
*Totally Spies!* can not only record *everything* everywhere in the world but can find and summon the girls from *anywhere*: at school, at the mall, in the Middle Ages, even from their bedroom or from in the shower!
-
*Transformers*:
-
*The Transformers* is *crawling* with hidden cameras, from both the Decepticons *and* the Autobots. Oddly enough, even when they're supposedly connecting with the 'visual sensors' of another bot, there's always some sort of angled camera view instead.
- Megatron has full view of the Autobots via Sumdac Tower's security cams ||after being dismembered|| during the first season of
*Transformers: Animated*.
- In a case of the good guys using this, in
*Transformers: Rescue Bots* the Rescue Team has cameras all over town.
- Defied in the Season 3 première of
*The Venture Bros.*:
**The Monarch:**
Yeah, yeah, roll the clip...
**Councilman 1:**
Unfortunately, we have no visual records of your time in college.
**The Monarch:**
...Really? So we're not going to have to sit through hours of me abusing myself to Markie Post
?
**Councilman 2:**
Of course not! How could we have video of you from that long ago? That's crazy!
**Councilman 3:**
We're the Council of Thirteen, not magic angel babies.
**Councilman 2:**
We don't have like a... magic window into the past-
**The Monarch:**
Okay, okay, I get it. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PalantirPloy |
Panicky Expectant Father - TV Tropes
*"My goodness! My gracious! *
When will this day be done?
Will it be a girl
Or will I have a son?"
When the Delivery Guy
*is* the father of the baby, and has been preparing for this for the last nine months, he's often every bit as badly prepared when the time comes as some random guy would be, and usually a lot less calm. Sometimes he's *over*-prepared, so that he's still reading his checklist while his wife is having a Screaming Birth, sometimes his mind just goes blank at the thought he's going to be a father. On being told by his partner that the baby is coming, he will often charge off immediately to the hospital only to return a few seconds later to collect said pregnant partner. (It's a comedy trope.) When they finally get to the hospital, expect the wife to have to push said husband into the building in the wheelchair, instead of the other way around, since by this point he's likely fainted, hit his head, or possibly fallen downstairs in a panic.
A fairly modern trope, as older works generally assume that the father will have as little as possible to do with the birth—possibly because if he was there, he'd only be flapping around like a headless chicken. In fact, in olden times, it was strongly frowned upon for men to be present when their wives (or female partners) are in labor, and pretty much anything with pregnancy and childbirth was left largely to the women in society. Until doctors (who were mostly men in olden times) started becoming more involved with pregnancy and childbirth, much of that was handled by midwives (who, even in modern times, are predominantly women). Having a doctor present would probably be the one exception to the general "no men allowed" mentality of the childbirth process—and even then, a doctor would usually only be present in the case of an emergency.
In the United States, it actually wasn't until around the 1970s that it was considered "okay" for men (including the pregnant woman's male partner) to be present during the time a woman was in labor; men, with the exception of medical professionals, were basically all but flat-out banned from most delivery rooms.
Frequently, a father may be given something ostensibly helpful to do by someone more competent, with boiling water and finding clean sheets being fairly common tasks (which may actually be useful). Or, if he's been kept out for whatever reason, he's shown pacing outside the delivery room (quite possibly wearing a groove into the floor); in older stories, he may well be smoking like a chimney an increasing number of cigarette stubs may be a way to indicate the progress without having to actually show the woman in labor. In either traditional or modern childbirth scenes, once the baby is born, expect various celebratory traditions, including handing out cigars and/or buying A Round of Drinks for the House.
## Examples:
- ||Minato|| in
*Naruto*. In his case, he's got *very* good reasons to panic: ||his wife Kushina is the host of the Kyuubi, and childbirth is the moment in which the seal containing said Sealed Evil in a Can is at its weakest; if it ever broke, Kushina would die *and* the Kyuubi would be unleashed. And it happened—sort of.||
- Bill Cosby had a bit in his act about how he panics when his wife gives birth.
-
*A Crown of Stars*: In chapter 68 ||Asuka tells Shinji that she is pregnant.|| He is on the brink of freaking out, but since he can see that she is upset he holds it back until he has reassured her. And THEN he starts to freak out and shake.
Shinji froze as still as she was. "You're..." It came out as a strangled gasp. He reminded himself to breathe again. A couple of deep breaths gave him the ability to try again. "You're right. We did see this already. We should have expected it." His shocked expression shifted to a faintly happy one. "At least this means we're going to be rescued sometime in the next four months."
Asuka gave him a dour look that would have hit harder if she hadn't still been shaking so much. "You're taking this awfully lightly, Third Child."
He laughed weakly. "Oh, I'm holding on by a thread. I want to run around the room screaming right now, I'm not sure if in joy or terror. But you obviously do not. I can freak out later if I need to. You need me, and that's more important. I promised. I've got your back for everything, including this."
- In Chapter 1 of
*Sonic The Hedgehog* fanfic A Rose And A Thorn 2: Eclipse, Amy is giving birth and Shadow actually considers using Chaos Control to get it out while she's straining and screaming. Fortunately he changes his mind. After the baby comes, Shadow faints.
-
*The Child of Love*: During Asuka's pregnancy, Shinji is panicked about the fear of being a father, he is concerned about Asuka and their daughter's health when the former delivers the latter, and he is frightened of disappointing them or being unable to protect them. Most of time he does his best to keep his panic in check, though. Most of time.
- In
*Ghosts of Evangelion* Shinji gets frightened when Asuka is giving birth and nearly dies by childbirth. He got scared, yelled at everyone and essentially lost his mind for a short while.
-
*The Second Try*: ||Shinji|| displays this in chapter "bear", especially in his last pregnancy log where he expresses his worries and doubts about having to take care of the delivery by himself despite learning all he could on the subject, and when he rushes ||Asuka|| to the hospital when her contractions begin. During the delivery proper however, he does his best to keep his panic in check and make sure that both mother and baby are all right.
- In this
*Fallout: New Vegas* fic, Arcade and Veronica (who are *both* gay) sleep together after getting very, very drunk. Pregnancy ensues. To say Arcade becomes a panicky expectant father is putting it mildly.
- In Spy & Pyro, a
*Team Fortress 2* fan film, ||Spy and Pyro end up having a child, at which point Spy is seen nervously pacing outside the hospital smoking far too many cigarettes.||
- Downplayed version of this in
*The Lion King* Fan Fic *Pride Lands: Generations,* where expectant father Dhahabu does pace nervously outside the birthing den (after somewhat frantically trying to get in earlier to see his mate—justified by having found their den empty with birthing blood in it) but in the end patiently waiting until the first cub's birth is announced, then falling asleep until the whole thing is over.
- Subverted in Chapter 13 of the
*Superjail!* fic *Extended Stay.* The Warden, for the most part, tries to stay calm while his love, the Mistress, is in preterm labor the same day they're getting married. He even sends Jailbot and NOVA to find a doctor for them.
-
*Mass Effect*'s *Crucible* has Garrus as the very panicky father, since Shepard is not only going into a premature labor but also gets kidnapped right at that moment.
- Averted in
*How the Light Gets In*, where Laurel remembers that Dean was "cool as a cucumber" through her giving birth to their child. Though she acknowledges inwardly, he was probably flipping out.
- The author confirms however, that the
*other* men in their lives (her father, Sam, Tommy) were flipping out, even if they weren't there. Castiel however was fine, and annoyed by Sam's panicking.
- In
*The Goblin Emperor* fanfic *The Honourable Thing* Beshelar cares enough to organize to be alerted immediately when the birth starts, but remains perfectly calm. Zig-zagged in that he is not actually the father, but it is implied that he would have acted exactly the same if he was. There's a moment when he enters the room after "his" daughter is born, politely inquires after his wife's wellbeing, and implies to the midwife, who is suspicious at the short pregnancy, that he was "impatient" and therefore not at all surprised.
- In
*His Plans to Get a Good Life* Sirius mentions body-binding a hyperventilating James to stop his pacing when Harry was being born.
- In
*I Must Be Going*, it's noted that dad-to-be Cullen has been driving his poor wife a bit spare throughout her pregnancy. ||However, as the installment opens, she's gone into premature labor - giving him legitimate reason for concern.|| Another panicky dad-to-be is seen later in the same series, with even more justification for his antics ||since his wife has a chronic and potentially fatal illness||.
-
*Joys of the Parenthood - The Țepeș Edition*: Dracula winds up fainting the moment Lisa tells him that she is pregnant.
- In the
*Pokémon Adventures* fic, "Maps I Must Keep," Ruby is far more concerned about his wife and their unborn child's well-being than Sapphire herself. She continues to do her work as a Gym Leader as if she's not pregnant at all, while he fusses over her diet and worries that her strenuous activities might harm the baby. One might think he's the one pregnant instead of Sapphire.
- Fireheart paces around the territory when Sandstorm gives birth in
*Bitter Repercussions*. He's mainly worried about the health of his mates and children.
- In
*Lifecycle of a Rose*, Taiyang was a nervous wreck during Yang's birth. He was also this way during Ruby's birth, but less so.
-
*Us and Them*: *Life Renewed, Love Renewed*: Aeris is going into labor. The father? Sephiroth. This is about as close to outright panic as you'll ever see him.
-
*The Mountain and the Wolf*: Averted when the Wolf brings Jaime to Cersei when she goes into labor. He makes Cersei grab Jaime's arm so they both participate in the Screaming Birth, and then brings him back to his cell once the baby is born.
-
*Injustice (2021)*. Even the Man of Steel is not immune; on realising that Lois is pregnant, he starts babbling on about where they should send the kid to college. Then Batman Sherlock Scans that he's a father because the man who took on Darkseid without trembling is doing so now. That and the fact that he's grinning like an idiot.
-
*101 Dalmatians* (both versions) portrays anxious expectant fathers of both the human and canine variety. In the animated version, Roger is acting *exactly* like this trope, pacing around the room and smoking, when the "children" are actually puppies and Pongo's similarly pacing. In the live action version, Roger comments on his own anxiety regarding the puppies, wondering how much worse it'll be for his own child; Pongo, by contrast, is rather chill.
- This trope is weaponized in
*Tower Heist*. The thieves manage to trick Charlie, a former member of their ragtag fellowship and current manager of the hotel they're breaking into, into leaving by stealing his pregnant wife's cellphone and sending him a text saying the baby is coming. Charlie rushes to the hospital in a panic, and spends an hour searching for his wife and interrogating doctors before calling his in-laws and learning she's safe at their place.
- In
*Warcraft (2016)*, Durotan is freaking out when Draka starts to give birth, although this is probably because they're surrounded by a bunch of orcs furious that he's brought a pregnant woman through the portal, and Gul'dan himself is overseeing the birth.
-
*Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter* has a variation. Herman anxiously paces back and forth ||outside the doghouse where his greyhound Mrs. Brown is giving birth.||
- Dave Barry wrote a column in which it turns out he much prefers the older way of childbirth where the men were relegated to a small room while the women and medical professionals got on with the birth, but now they're
*expected* to be present.
-
*The Belgariad*:
- Garion loses his mind during Ce'Nedra's first labor. He gets sent away to make himself useful. By the time she gives birth, he's chopped several cords of wood and is considering how much wood he could get if he destroyed the woodshed...
- His brain doesn't shut down when the second birth is imminent, but he still gets the assignment of taking his son out of the royal apartments and to the other end of the Citadel. Apparently Poledra doesn't believe in taking chances.
- At the end of the
*Malloreon*, Durnik's brain stays in gear when Polgara goes into labor, but Poledra chases him off to the smithy to boil water anyway.
- The prequel novels make it clear that this is one of Polgara's general rules of thumb for midwivery: find the father a time-consuming task to do
*somewhere else* so that he won't get in the way.
-
*Discworld*:
- Sam Vimes, of all people, shows signs of this in
*Night Watch*, not helped by the fact that it's a tricky birth. But given the cultural setting, and Sybil taking some pity on him and letting him off the hook, he's not present at the birth. Sam's generally not so good at handling things he can't control, which seems to be why, even as Commander, he does a lot of hands-on police work.
Sybil had already made it quite clear, with gentle tact, that he was not required on this particular case. It had been, he had to admit, a bit of a relief.
- In
*Thief of Time*, when Nanny Ogg remembers delivering the child of Wen the Eternally Surprised and the Anthropomorphic Personification of Time, she comments that Wen (who normally had Zen Master levels of tranquility, because that's what he was) was in such a panic when he went to get her that he was *hurrying*, because he'd forgotten he had literally all the time he needed. He also went to get her at the wrong time twice, first showing up to a young Miss Ogg who'd never been a solo midwife.
-
*Dragon's Teeth*: The first scene of the novel has protagonist Lanny Budd in the waiting room of a maternity hospital, stressing out and wondering what's taking so long with his wife Irma giving birth.
-
*Earth's Children*: When Fralie goes into labor in the third book, Frebec is extremely worried about her, frantically asking people if they think she and the baby will be alright. Aside from this being his first baby, he's right to be worried, as Fralie is in poor health and her labor has started a month early; premature babies often die in this time period and Fralie's own life could be at risk. He's scared enough about losing them both that he puts aside his pride to ask Ayla's help.
-
*Good Omens*:
- Adam's father is kinda like this. Lampshaded, even: "A man with 'expectant father' written all over him." (So of course, they swap his child with the infant Antichrist...)
- Inverted with the birth of the American ambassador's kid: because this is a truly Special Moment for him and his wife, he calls her while also having a conversation with his stockbroker. And gets one of the Secret Service guards to videotape the whole thing.
- Hemingway's "In Our Time" plays this as darkly as possible: ||the expectant father kills himself "offscreen" during a complicated labour. The doctor and his son only realise this when the birth is finally over.||
- Largely subverted in
*Adam-12* episode "Log 93: Baby", which has Reed gotten most of his wife's birthing day organized, although he forgot to put on his uniform's socks and some clerical mistakes at the hospital are frustrating him.
- Reuben Gregory on
*Amen*, though it's more about dealing with the grossness of the process (he faints when watching a birthing video) and being able to handle Thelma screaming at him. When she does go into labor, he basically snaps himself out of it, determined to be able to support her.
**Reuben Gregory:** Don't worry about me! I'm okay whether I'm okay or not! Okay?!"
- One episode of
*Bewitched* has Darrin treating a pregnant Samantha like dirt after getting some advice from Larry. He then makes the fatal mistake of saying "I know exactly what you're going through" to Sam, and Endora decides to make that statement a reality by giving Darrin pregnancy symptoms. This prompts an Imagine Spot where Darrin pictures being the first man in history to give birth—and we see *Samantha* in the waiting room pacing and handing out cigars when she gets the news that she's now a mother.
- In
*Bones*, Angela has false labor and then the baby is born a few episodes later. Hodgins completely loses it both times. In the actual birth storyline, he makes a show of being calm, cool and collected, then runs off panicking.
**Hodgins:** Okay, uh—baby! Baby! BABY!
-
*Call the Midwife* has used this occasionally; given the time period, they're all exiled to the hallway where they have little to do except wear a hole in the carpet. That, or go down the pub.
- An Argentinian Comedy-Soap called
*Carita Del Angel* (I probably got the name wrong) parodied this. One of the main characters is expecting his second child in a waiting room, showing all symptoms of a Panicky Expectant Father. He gets in a conversation with another man who looks *positively bored*. He explains that he was just as excited with his first two children. After that, he got used to it. The one he was waiting there was his 11th.
- Devon (a.k.a. Captain Awesome) in
*Chuck* is way more freaked out by Ellie's pregnancy than she is. The kicker is, both of them are doctors, so he really should know better. When they are finally at the hospital, she calmly tells him to leave the room to collect himself before returning.
-
*The Cosby Show*: Elvin when Sondra was about to deliver. She was cool as a cucumber throughout most of the ordeal with the occasional bout of pain. Elvin screeches "Contraction!" when Sondra was in pain and needed to breathe in a paper bag.
**Elvin**: What was most embarrassing, when we were on our way here, in the car, I had to pull over, and let her drive.
- John Ritter memorably played one of these.
- The
*Doctor at Large* episode "Mother and Father Doing Well" brings back the character of Huw Evans from *Doctor in the House* as an expectant father whose medical knowledge has given him a laundry list of reasons to worry about the birth itself. After getting into a shouting match with a whole waiting room of panicky expectant fathers, he is wheeled into the delivery room on a gurney—and faints immediately and has to be wheeled back out.
-
*Doctor Who*:
- Tom Branson when his daughter is born during season three of
*Downton Abbey*. However, it's not so much the birth itself that causes his panic, but rather the fact that Sybil isn't doing well and there are two doctors standing around arguing as to whether or not she has eclampsia and if so what to do. ||Turns out she does have eclampsia - and dies from it. So he was rather justified in panicking.||
- Surprisingly averted in
*Farscape*, when John Crichton is just about as calm as it is possible to be when the love of his life is giving birth in the middle of a *battle*. He's still terrified, but not nearly to the extreme you'd expect.
- Subverted in an episode of
*Firefly* where one of Inara's friends goes into labor while the crew is there to help fend off the father of her baby. The actual father of the baby isn't around, and Mal... reacts.
- However, Simon is somewhat nervous as he helps deliver the baby, but then he says that it's the first time he's done so and handles it about as well as he can. Inara helps him and says she's never done that either. River says that it's her first time too.
- One skit from the very first episode of
*Saturday Night Live* was *Bee Hospital*, with the entire skit being a bunch of worried bee dads buzzing around in the waiting room awaiting the births of their children.
- Turk, at the birth of Isabella in
*Scrubs*, eventually ends up trapped in an ice machine. The other births have been aversions or subversions: JD is too concerned with the realization he needs to break up with Kim to panic too much at the birth of Sam. Dr Cox seems to have been fairly calm about the birth of Jack (probably because he didn't know the baby was his), and when Jennifer is born, we only see his concern about people associating her birth with ||Laverne||'s death.
- The lads on
*The Young Ones* freak out when Vyvyan apparently goes into labor (it's just gas), with Mike fleeing the room and Neil calling for boiling towels and clean water.
- Billy Bigelow in Rogers and Hammerstein's
*Carousel* gets an entire solo about this. Unfortunately, it leads him to worry about money so much, he becomes a mugger and is fatally stabbed on his own knife.
- Mr. Buchanan in
*Street Scene* is under a nervous strain because his wife is about to give birth.
- Very common in the Distaff Counterpart
*Harvest Moon* games—usually, during the "child born" scene, the Player Character's husband is off worrying. Some of them have only a normal worry, but others are so panicky, they'll get told by the Delivery Guy or gal: "Honestly, I'm more worried about you!"
- This includes Alex in
*Magical Melody* and Jin in *Tree Of Tranquility / Animal Parade*. Both of them are the town doctors, though to be fair, it sort of makes sense: It's one thing to be delivering a stranger's child. It's another to be delivering your *own* child while *your* wife is in labor.
- Ken Masters shows some traits in the
*Street Fighter IV* series. Good thing that his wife and the soon-to-be-mom, Eliza, is much Closer to Earth - not to mention, baby!Mel is only born in *Super SSIFIV*!.
- In
*Final Fantasy X-2*, Wakka is constantly on edge but luckily Lulu is Closer to Earth and much calmer. ||Of course, the issue isn't that Wakka is scared that the baby's coming but because he doesn't know how a father is supposed to be - he and his brother were orphans and Wakka's prior attempts to "parent" his brother strained their relationship.||
- In
*The Sims 4*, if the father notices the mother in labor, he'll start flailing his arms and/or clutching his head while screaming and jogging in place. His mood will also become tense.
-
*Arthur, King of Time and Space*:
-
*Archipelago*'s Mikel when his pregnant wife *stands up* too fast.
**Mikel:** Sit down, sit down but slowly! We don't want to jostle the baby. **Deliza:** I'm okay Mikel, you can relax. **Mikel:** You know the doctor said sudden falls could be dangerous this close to birth. **Deliza:** Sitting down usually doesn't count as a 'sudden fall'.
- In this episode of
*MOLEBASHED*, Wes goes into full panic mode when he arrives at the hospital with his pregnant wife.
-
*Port Sherry*: The father in "Chip off the old block" is lamenting his life choices as his wife gives birth. The gag turns out to be that the father is Pinocchio, who had been worried his wife was about to give birth to a puppet. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanickyExpectantFather |
Pamphlet Shelf - TV Tropes
*"...why the hell do video game books only have one page in them? Even Chick Tracts have like 24 pages."*
Going on an adventure doesn't always mean you have to hack your way through hundreds of monsters to save the world. Sometimes, you'll want to take a break from all of the killing and relax with a good book. Luckily, whenever The Hero visits his local library, there'll always be tons of books on the shelves, but he'll always find the one book on the shelf with information that's somehow relevant to the quest at hand. Of course, some ordinary people like to keep books in their homes, too. They're not always relevant to the quest, but like the stuff in the library, it's still good enough for a quick read. And we mean
*quick.* Snap-your-fingers-and-you're-done quick.
Usually, books within a video game hardly contain enough text to fit on a full real-world page. This can easily be written off (no pun intended) as an Acceptable Break From Reality. Sure, it may
*sound* kinda silly, but when there's a world to be saved, you wouldn't want to spend hours skimming through a book to find the information you need.
A common variation on this is to imply that the tiny portion that the player gets to read is merely an excerpt, or a summary of everything relevant you managed to glean from it. Curiously, it also seems that not only does every book contain only one page of interest, every bookshelf contains only one book of interest.
In extremely rare cases, the in-game information is in fact as realistically long as you'd expect it to be. In those cases, it's known as the In-Game Novel; even an in-game novel, however, can overlap with this trope, since they're often unrealistically short two-or-three page affairs. A Pamphlet Shelf might be Flavor Text, when the information isn't necessary to understand the plot.
## Examples:
-
*The Legend of Zelda*:
- In
*The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening*, the starting town has a library where eight books are laid out for reading. One is them is a world map, but all the others barely contain a paragraph of text each. In particular, when you combine the fact that the "secrets" book only contains two lines of text with the fact that you need a magnifying glass to read it, it might as well have fit inside a fortune cookie.
- Taken to its irrational conclusion in
*The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask*. The grandmother in the inn offers to read you one of two bedtime stories. The longer tale of the two could easily fit on one or two pages of a real book. The process of listening to the story takes *twelve ingame hours* and requires you to equip a magical mask if you don't want to fall asleep in the process.
- Of all the various in-game books in
*The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*, the most notable example of this is King Rhoam's diary. He wrote in it from the day his daughter Zelda was born up to the day she turned 17, yet it only contains fairly brief accounts of a handful of notable events. Zelda herself has a set of research notes and a diary that are similarly sparse, but it's a bit more justifiable in her case, as she spent much of her time out in the field and thus would have been away from her desk more often.
- The royal library in
*Shining Wisdom* contains around 10 bookshelves, each one contains about one sentence and most of that is the plot for the previous games in the series.
- Averted in
*Myst* and its sequels. Although most of the books in the original game were burned and could not be read (the library being burned is core to the plot), it was a shock to be treated to several journals over 20 pages in length. There isn't nearly that volume of reading in the sequels, but *Mysts 2-5* each have at least one diary to read, and most have several that can be found. Indeed, finding and reading the diaries is critical to understanding the plot in a game with maybe fifty lines of dialog.
-
*Quest for Glory IV* has the shelf in the run-down Adventurers' Guild, which actually does contain some pamphlets. Rather than making the player hunt for each book, however, interacting with the bookshelf simply brings up a list of the readable books.
- Averted in
*Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge*, where the library mostly contained irrelevant books, and finding the useful ones was part of the puzzle. On the other hand, the book of quotations *did* contain remarkably few quotes.
- In
*Marathon*, you get to kick back at computer terminals dotted around the eponymous colony ship and read all sorts of snippets from Martian history to philosophical articles to classified ads to chunks of hexadecimal garbage. The compactness and relevance of most terminal texts is implied to be from malignant cyborgs and sentient (not to mention completely bonkers) computers battling each other.
- In
*Deus Ex*, ellipses help indicate that you didn't just read everything in the book. Sometimes it's even a real book, like *The Man Who Was Thursday*, and you get to see only a few paragraphs from the middle.
- Justified in
*Zork Nemesis*; with most of the many books lying around, you can only read a few pages, but often the last page will end mid-paragraph, implying that there's a full-length book the player character is too lazy to read all of.
- During the Inventing tutorial in
*City of Heroes*, one task you are given is to read a specific book. The entire contents of said book are sufficient to fill one dialog window, and no more.
- In
*World of Warcraft*, information comes in two forms, items in your inventory and books lying out on tables. Items are often letters or notes specifically given to you and written in full (sometimes brief, sometimes verbose) details. Books (both in inventory and more often out) are not quite as full as a book should be, although they contain numerous pages worth of lore. Few if any books have the equivalent of one paperback novel's page of text.
- Played with in
*Mabinogi*. Books are only available for purchase from NPCs, or awarded from quests. The only library doesn't have any readable books. Reading the books gets a visual book with pages that must be turned manually. Length ranges from a single (short) page, to well over a dozen or more. Some of them are guides to various in-game functions, which are useful to read; some are skill-granting artifacts or quest items, which don't *need* to be read, but which can contain useful info on how to use the skill, or on the quest storyline; and some are completely extraneous, containing nothing but backstory or flavour text. Most of the longest books are the extraneous ones, and the newbie guides.
- Books in
*EverQuest II* are usually extremely detailed. If the book is written by any race who values record keeping, scientific study, or has lofty imaginations for story telling, then you can expect a book to be many paragraphs long. If the race is more primitive, like orcs, then you can expect the contents to be brief.
- The Story Chalet in
*Carto* is full of books that write themselves, but none of which seems to have more than half a dozen lines of text.
-
*Aidyn Chronicles* does this with any books you find. There are a few libraries in the game, all of which only have a few books you can read, and almost all the books contain only the briefest of snippets that don't even fill the page.
- Subverted by
*Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura*; while there are quite a few short books in the game used to move the story along or used in a sidequest, there are also entire libraries of books that have no connection to the plot and merely exist to create a feeling of depth. Some of them are quite long, at least by in-game RPG standards.
-
*Dragon Quest* has obeyed this trope from time immemorial; *Dragon Quest VIII* may count as Lampshade Hanging, as the hero opens every book to the middle (after flipping two pages) and never turns the page, so he's clearly only reading the page he needs to read out of the book.
- One sidequest early in
*Fable* asks you to collect books for an elementary school teacher for him to read to the youngsters. You don't get to read the entire books yourself, but when you hand each one over to the teacher, he reads them aloud to the children, and all of them actually are that short.
-
*Fable II* has some actual pamphlet, but all the descriptions of the books simply *tell you* what they're about in a quick synopsis.
-
*Wild ARMs*: Averted in *Wild ARMs 3* with the Adventure Book quest: you have to find eleven books detailing a children's story and then read the assembled story to a certain little girl. The entire story is told with text and still frame pictures, and while not long enough to be a proper book- let alone span eleven books- it's still quite a substantial text compared to the RPG standard.
-
*The Elder Scrolls*:
- Averted throughout the series in which every book shown can be read, though they do cheat a bit by making the actual content of the book being in the density of a pamphlet (as a single in-game book never reach 50 pages in content) and padding the shelves with multiple copies of the same book. These documents range from full blown In-Game Novels like the
*2920: The Last Year of the First Era* series, *The Real Barenziah*, *King Edward*, *A Dance in the Fire*, and *The Wolf Queen* to religious texts such as *For My Gods and Emperor* and *36 Lessons of Vivec*, to numerous historical works which help fill in the thousands of years of backstory, to simple notes handwritten by the world's inhabitants to make the world feel more alive (you can literally find the grocery lists of NPCs). Many of the histories presented within the game are contradictory and at odds with each other, leaving it up to the reader to piece together the history of Tamriel for him/herself. For tropes relating to these works, see *The Elder Scrolls In-Universe Books* page.
- The series' Skill Books, which instantly raise one of your skills by one when read, also contain short stories related to the skill. For example,
*The Armorer's Challenge* is about a competition between two armorers and, naturally, it raises your Armorer/Smithing skill. *The Marksmanship Lesson* is about an unconventional archery instructor and, naturally, raises your Marksman/Archery skill.
- Some books are also simply there for fun:
- One notable example is
*The Lusty Argonian Maid*, written by the Camp Gay (though technically bisexual) Crassius Curio. It centers around a character named Crantus Colto and his...interest...in his, well, Argonian maid. A quest in *Morrowind* has you attempting to find actors willing to be in it. ( *Skyrim* adds a sequel, as well as a Gender Flipped version for the ladies, *The Sultry Argonian Bard*.)
- Another is
*Boethiah's Pillow Book*, which is entirely represented by:
- In
*Daggerfall*, various books throughout the game hinted what days to summon Daedric Princes and what to expect from it. Later games drop the requirement of specific days and circumstances to summon the Daedric Princes, though mentions of them exist as Artifacts in certain in-game books (such as the *Invocation of Azura*).
- Followed in
*Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door*; most of the time, if Professor Frankly has to read a book, he opens it right to the relevant page.
- In addition, a player with coins to burn may purchase, one at a time, the Super Luigi series of books. Like in the Pamphlet trope, these books are rather short; however, they are completely irrelevant to the quest at hand.
- When larger books are read in the
*Fallout* series, an appropriate amount of time passes while the Player Character peruses them.
- Entries in the Codex in
*Mass Effect* appear when something relevant occurs in-game; you don't have to read the Codex, but it provides interesting information anyway.
- Played fairly straight in
*Knights of the Old Republic*. There aren't any shelves or books, but there are datapads, usually containing only a single paragraph or two.
-
*Baldur's Gate* has completely optional books that are longer than typical examples of this trope, but still *vastly* shorter than any self-respecting real-world book. They provide a wealth of flavor text, and a few actually are tangibly relevant to the plot (The Dead Three and Time of Troubles)
-
*Neverwinter Nights* also has the brief, but setting-enriching flavor text books as well.
- The
*Pokémon* series is guilty of this. Normally, the text is purely for fun, or the character will say something like "A bunch of hard-to-read books are on this shelf," but in *Diamond and Pearl* a library is a major plot point, and yet it still does this.
- Played with in Lenora's Gym in
*Pokémon Black and White*, as you only read a few lines from each of her books, but she's hidden vital clues to solving the Gym's puzzles inside some of them.
-
*Final Fantasy*
-
*Earth Bound* plays with this when you find a magazine containing a funny short story in a bonus area.
-
*Geneforge* has a lot of books that are so heavily damaged only a small section of them remains legible. Later games in the series offer other explanations for the speed of reading (Shaper training allows one to learn new things very quickly) and the brevity of the books (most books are composed largely of things over your character's head).
- Similar to
*Mass Effect*, *Dragon Age* had numerous notes, letters, books, and interesting bits of masonry that would dump anywhere from a single paragraph to three pages of text into your journal.
- The sequel has the Player Character perusing his/her own books at home, with comments regarding those which are gifts or recommendations from friends ("101 Uses for a Phallic Tuber? Thanks, Isabela, that's one hundred too many.")
- The SNES game
*Robotrek* has plenty of this, since beyond plot-related reading the main character learns to produce new items from the Invention Machine by finding "Inventor's Friend" volumes. Then again, the machine just spits items out on demand, so maybe he just copies the CD in the back of the book and leaves the written info to the more hands-on inventors. There's also a hidden library that contains one of each volume in the game (a few of which are exclusive to that area), but it's still one whole tile of bookshelf for each book.
-
*Betrayal at Krondor* has you come across a library, and it deals with the issue in its trademark manner - you get a long, wordy narration describing your characters trudging through shelves and shelves of dusty ledgers, obsolete textbooks and illegible scribblings to find a little tidbit of information in the margins of a half-hidden combat manual, for example.
- In
*Dubloon*, you can find a short piece of info about a mysterious captain who searched for the Golden Chest many years ago. This short piece of info can be found in 3 tomes, each lying next to each other.
- In
*Dungeon Siege* and especially the expansion, there are numerous books lying around to read. However, there's always only a single page that remains legible for various reasons.
- In
*Fortune Summoners* each shelf in the game contains only one readable book (although, interestingly, the main character is Book Dumb and can't read most of the books, so you have to switch to another character to read them) although some of them are of a fair length.
-
*Fantasy Life* has a couple of libraries that are like this. The in-game dialogue however, more than makes up for this (it tends to be long enough to annoy the Play the Game, Skip the Story crowd).
- In
*OFF*, each shelf of real library books has only two pages of text (sometimes barely legible), unless one of them has been torn off and misplaced. Many shelves are fake and have nothing to read. Going by one of the local Elsens' comments, there *are* more pages but the other Elsens would freak out at the noise and the Batter would rather avoid the hassle.
- In addition to the miscellaneous books and bookshelves in the rest of the series, there is an entire library of books in
*Ultima VI*. A couple of the books can be traded away, but most are filler. The entire library would make an eight-page chapbook at most.
- Lampshaded several times in
*Undertale*. One of the books in the library ends with the author's remark about only needing to write a minimum number of pages. Another character's house contains a diary which talks about buying a new book to record each entry.
- In
*Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen*, the Books of Ys are MacGuffins with not much actual text in them.
-
*Harvest Moon*:
- Tutorials sometimes take the form of in-game books found in the Player Character's home. While some get relatively long, they never get anything near the contents of an actual book.
- The Thriving Ghost Town in which the Player Character lives will sometimes have a library that will either replace or complement any books they have in their home. When such libraries exist, the "only one interesting book per shelf" variation tends to be in effect.
-
*Littlewood*: One of the objectives is to return all twenty-four of the books that the Grand Library left in the care of various travelers. Getting a book back allows the Hero to read it upon visiting the Grand Library. The contents of the full book collection could easily fit in a small *actual* book.
- Averted in
*Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty*, where the extras section has a book, mentioned in the game as being an account of the events of the first game. It is an actual book at 300-some pages.
- Averted in
*DayZ*, which has about a hundred and fifty real books (public domain, naturally) that can be found in-game and read in their entirety. Some sort of sponsorship deal with a literary association was involved, apparently, but it's certainly a novel way to pass the time while you wait for your buddies to log in for a raid.
-
*Final Fantasy Tactics* averts the trope with the Germonik Scriptures; choosing to read them leads to Ramza summarizing the contents, after noting that it took him quite some time to get through it.
- In
*Fire Emblem: Three Houses*, the monstery's library contains books the player can open up to read a paragraph or two each giving some exposition about the world's history and most prominent houses.
-
*Body Harvest*
- After the 1.3 update,
*Minecraft* players can write their own, mostly due to the limited space per page and the 50 page total limit.
## Non-video game examples:
- Queen Mary's Dolls' House, constructed in the 1920s, was designed as an authentic miniature version of the stately homes of the period, with everything being as real as possible for the size, including working plumbing and light fittings. The library of the Dolls' House contains books that can be opened and read, each containing a single poem or short story. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PamphletShelf |
"Pan from the Sky" Beginning
How do you know when to stop panning the camera when the sky
*and* the sea are made of the same material?
This trope is when a work, or an installment of a work, begins with the point of view starting high up in the sky (whether in the clouds or in space) and then zooms down onto the main setting.
Perhaps the work is themed around space or the sky, or the specific installment does (maybe it's a Space Episode or Alien Episode) or they're giving us a birds-eye view of what the setting looks like, but sometimes, it happens "just because".
Often precedes a Theme Tune. Contrast "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending. Often involves Astronomic Zoom, Falling into the Plot, Logo Joke, and Establishing Shot. Compare Weather Report Opening which is another atmosphere-related beginning.
## Examples:
- Some DreamWorks Animation films and shorts start out with this trope, including several in the
*Shrek* franchise. Often combined with a Logo Joke.
-
*Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa*: The boy in the moon logo dissolves into a blue sky, from which then the camera pans down on the African landscape until it stops at baby Alex playing with his dad.
-
*Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted*: After the usual studio logo of the boy on the moon, the camera pans down to Africa, where monkeys are winding up a plane with the penguins on it.
-
*Shrek the Third*: Played with. The camera pans down from the boy on the moon in the opening logo, which is covered by storm clouds, dissolving into a stormy sky, which reveals a beam of light. Then it shifts downwards to a forest and descends upon Prince Charming supposedly riding on his valiant steed, until suddenly... The camera slowly zooms out to reveal that he is actually performing in a dinner theatre play with a hobby horse.
-
*Scared Shrekless*: The short begins with the boy on the moon, only he nervously hides behind the moon, and then the camera pans down to a Shrek-like pumpkin with the title carved onto it.
- In the
*Shrek* short "The Pig Who Cried Werewolf", after the title appears on the screen, the scene cuts to the clouds and the camera shifts down to Horst and Dieter pushing Heimlich (who broke his leg sometime prior to the short's beginning) on a wheelchair.
- This is also a popular trope used in Disney-Pixar films as well:
-
*A Goofy Movie* begins with a shot of the sky, then panning down to Max, who is in the middle of a dream about Roxanne. The movie ends with a pan up to the same sky.
-
*Hercules* inverts this: After "The Gospel Truth" opening number, the scene switches to a shot of ancient Greece from which the camera pans up through the clouds to the top of Mount Olympus as the opening titles appear.
-
*The Hunchback of Notre Dame* opens with a view of the tops of clouds, with the mighty spires of Notre Dame cathedral poking through, like a granite island in a misty sea. The camera pans downward to a view of the common streets of France as Clopin sings "Morning in Paris, as the city awakes / To the bells of Notre Dame."
-
*The Princess and the Frog* begins with a view of the night sky, before panning down to Charlotte's mansion.
- Simulated in the first
*Toy Story* film. The first scene is a field of azure blue with crisply defined white clouds. The pan down reveals that this "sky with clouds" is actually a pattern of wallpaper in Andy's bedroom, where he's playing with his toys.
-
*WALLE* begins in space with "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" playing, then it zooms into Earth from above, on which we see WALL-E moving along, then it zooms down to the ground and we see that he's cleaning up and playing the song on his radio.
- In
*Turning Red*, the scene in which Jin is seen cooking begins with a pan down from the sky to a shot of the Lee house.
-
*Anastasia*, much like *The Hunchback of Notre Dame* example above, following the opening prologue, opens up with the opening titles appearing in a view of the tops of clouds with the spires of the Imperial Palace poking through before panning down below to the dingy streets of St. Petersburg showing how much the city has changed for the worse in the ten years since the prologue.
- In
*The Loud House Movie*, it zooms in from above on a younger Lynn Sr.
-
*My Little Pony: Equestria Girls*: The film starts with a shot of the moon and three stars before panning down to reveal a bird's eye view of the Crystal Empire and the train station.
-
*My Little Pony: The Movie (2017)* starts by following a team of Pegasi flying above the clouds before they dive towards the ground. The camera then follows them as they fly to the city of Canterlot where everypony is arriving for a celebration.
-
*Back to the Future Part II*: After the opening recap of the end of Part I, we then cut to a shot through a cloudy sky as the opening credits play to Alan Silvestri's title theme before panning down to a sky freeway as the Delorean arrives in 2015.
- This is how
*Bad Times at the Battle Royale* starts, with a quick camera pan down from the clouds to the parking lot outside the institution building where the movie takes place.
-
*Forrest Gump* opens with a Long Take of a bird feather falling from the skies (with the camera initially pointing at the clouds) and eventually landing at the title character's feet.
-
*Ted 2* has one, leading right up to Ted's wedding.
-
*Star Wars*: The mainline films traditionally transition from their Opening Scrolls in outer space by panning down to an orbital view of a planet, a startship, or both (except in *Attack of the Clones*, where it pans up instead).
-
*Red Dawn (1984)* begins above the clouds before moving downward to show the town of Calumet, Colorado. The unspoken implication being that it's showing the flight path of planes carrying paratroopers it's about to drop into town.
- At least one Discworld novel begins this way, with the reader invited to contemplate the majestic star-turtle, elephants and flat world making their way through the ocean of space. Then the perspective shifts with a plummet onto the flat world and through the clouds, narrowing down further and further until the perspective of the reader is drawn to a particular character.
-
*Doctor Who*:
- The first episode of the revival era, Rose, begins with a shot of Earth before we zoom down to Rose Tylers bedroom in the Powell Estate, East London.
- This is repeated in "The Christmas Invasion", although this time, it eventually zooms down into Jackie preparing the presents in her living room.
- Again repeated in The Runaway Bride, with the zoom going down to a church in Chiswick, West London where Donna Noble is about to get married.
- Every episode of
*Mork & Mindy* begins with a shot of outer space with Mork's egg-shaped spaceship zooming through the sky, then it pans down to Earth.
- The pilot of
*Stranger Things* opens with a shot of the night sky and then pans down to the secret lab at Hawkins.
-
*Sesame Street*: The "Madlenka" cartoon segments begin with a scene of outer space, then it gradually shifts down to the eponymous girl's apartment. This fits in with the lyric in the theme song: "Madlenka, Madlenka, lives in the universe. Madlenka, Madlenka, lives right here on the Earth."
-
*Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!*: The intro cutscene starts with the camera pointing at the Helios Station in the sky, and then zooms out of it into Pandora, and a Skag appears. Cue the theme song.
-
*Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity*: In the opening cutscene (prior to the title screen), several Pelipper are flying in the sky and the scene zooms down from a birds-eye view into Post Town.
-
*Xenoblade Chronicles 2* opens this way, except when the camera pans down, all it reveals is more clouds — the Cloud Sea, and a lone Titan.
- A video trailer for
*Vampire Girl*'s second season utilized this in an interesting manner by using the comic's first panel, which was a long shot of the Vampiress' castle. Both of these are rectangular, but while the comic panel is vertically rectangular, the video trailer's aspect ratio is horizontally rectangular, which gave the panel something of a pan-and-scan effect from the moonlit sky downward.
-
*ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks*: The opening for Season 3 begins with the Bagdasarian Productions Logo in the sky, which is wiped away by a plane before we go into Dave and the Chipmunks jumping out of said plane.
- The opening to the obscure cartoon
*BB3B* begins with a shot of the planet Earth before cutting in further on a plane going from the UK to America with Lucy and Louie's grandmother on it.
-
*Big City Greens* combines this with In-Scene Title Text:
- The episode "Tilly's Goat" begins with the title spelt out in the clouds before panning down to the Green house.
- "Football Camp" begins with the title appearing on a blimp before it pans down to Bengal Stadium.
- Though not really in the sky, "Heat Beaters" begins with the title displayed as a thermometer against a telephone pole with the sky in view before panning down to Keys' car.
- "Winter Greens" begins with the title on a snowflake falling from the sky.
- Due to the double-length episodes beginning with a Cold Open, "Green Christmas" starts with a pan down from the snowy sky to the Green house on Christmas Eve. In a case of Book Ends, the episode ends with a "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending with that scene played in reverse.
-
*The Dragon Prince* starts the introduction this way, as an Establishing Shot. The magical nature of the world is immediately established by weird-looking, brightly colored flying creatures. Then a shot-reverse-shot reveals the perspective character: Thunder, the Dragon King.
-
*The Jetsons*: Every episode begins with a shot of Earth, then it pans down to the family in their Flying Car.
- One
*Little Princess* episode begins in the sky with a closeup of the flag and the narrator notes, "The flag's up; that means the family is at home".
-
*The Mr. Men Show*:
- "Rainy Day" begins with a shot of the sky before storm clouds begin to cover the sun. The camera then pans down to the ground, where the Mr. Men are doing things in the rain.
- "Sun and Moon" starts with a shot of the sun in the sky (hence the title) before the camera pans down to Mr. Bump and Miss Sunshine laying down beach towels.
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*: The intro starts with Twilight Sparkle in her hot air balloon, then Rainbow Dash flies past, then Twilight lands.
-
*Ready Jet Go!*: Almost every episode begins with a brief shot of the sky before the camera pans down to whatever the characters are doing. This is fitting, considering that the premise is about Jet and the gang going to space.
-
*Rolie Polie Olie*: The intro begins in space, then pans down to Earth, to go along with the theme tune lyrics "Way up high in the rolie-polie sky".
-
*Rowing Across the Atlantic*: The opening shot shows seagulls flying around in the sky, before the camera pans down and shows the abandoned rowboat as it washes up on a beach.
-
*The Simpsons*: Each episode begins in the sky with the title being sung by a chorus as clouds uncover it written in the sky. Then, it shifts down to Springfield Elementary where Bart is Writing Lines.
-
*Tamagotchi Video Adventures* opens with a view of outer space that pans down, eventually reaching the surface of Tamagotchi Planet. A Flying Saucer is then seen zooming by before the scene cuts to a panning shot of a town on the planet that slowly approaches Tamagotchi Museum, one of the video's main settings. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanFromTheSkyBeginning |
Pan and Scan - TV Tropes
Modification of a widescreen movie to fit the (now older) TV Aspect Ratio of 4:3, or the (current norm) HDTV aspect ratio of 16:9.
This is done by isolating a viewing window within the original frame, then cutting and "panning" said window back and forth to follow the action on the screen; this has the natural side effect of "slicing off" a large portion of the original frame (up to 50 or 60 percent).
This practice was common in The '80s and The '90s when movies were released on VHS and Betamax and TVs had smaller screens. As home video became more common in the '80s, film directors would take pan and scan into account when framing shots even in widescreen. Completely CGI productions like those from Pixar could simply be re-framed and re-rendered for the 4:3 home video release.
LaserDisc used to be primarily Pan and Scan, too, but starting in the late '80s, it started releasing letterbox versions of every widescreen film available. It was seen as the premium format of movie buffs and A/V geeks. The VHS format would later follow suit, with movies featuring rare widescreen releases on tape oriented for videophiles. LaserDisc remained far more reliable for finding letterbox movies, and most VHS films were Pan and Scan "full screen" releases for the broader public. Pan and Scan is still used today for some films when shown on TV channels, though letterbox movies on TV are more common than they used to be thanks to the advent of High Definition.
Since the pan looks entirely unlike a camera move, it can be very jarring for the viewer. Pan and Scan also has minor troubles whenever it encounters a Widescreen Shot in a movie, having to pan across it or picking one little part. With the growing acceptance of the 16:9 (or 'letterbox') ratio, publishers have differentiated the formats with pan and scan being marketed as "full screen" while letterboxed editions are "widescreen" (though as of 2017, you'll only find full screen films to purchase in store discount bins for stock manufactured at least a decade ago and still not sold).
For many directors, this was also something of a minor (or major) Berserk Button, since this means a technician has to, according to some, redirect the film, and will frequently lose either important details, or the ambiance of a scene or a whole movie. Turner Classic Movies (TCM) made a quick documentary with several famous directors talking about the downside of pan and scan (it's only 5 minutes, give it a watch).
Because of how ubiquitous Pan and Scan was and how much of a problem it was for both videophiles and filmmakers, many directors adopted the practice of shooting movies in "Open Matte" format, in which a film is shot in a full-frame aspect ratio but designed to be cropped to a widescreen format in the theater. Thus, movies could be screened to audiences in an intended widescreen format, but be un-cropped to 4:3 on both TV broadcasts and home media releases without needing to be given the Pan and Scan treatment.
note 1 : In the silent era, the full 35mm film frame was exactly 4:3, assuming you use the standard four perfs per frame. The addition of sound-on-film tracks made the image slightly narrower to 6:5 (1.19:1) Movietone ratio. The film was then matted slightly shorter to Academy Ratio (11:8 or 1.375:1), which is very close to 4:3 (1.333:1), as illustrated here. The difference is so small that it's generally considered inconsequential except by only the most extreme videophiles. note 2 : In many movies shot this way, VFX shots would have a "hard matte", meaning the widescreen theatrical frame is the most you can get. Showing these in open matte will reveal an Aspect Ratio Switch. These shots had to be pan and scanned for full screen releases. note 3 : This practice of 35mm with widescreen safe areas is older than home video, as *On the Waterfront* was shot in the same way so it could look good on older Academy Ratio screens and newer wide screens in The '50s. It could be shown in Academy Ratio, 1.85:1, or anywhere in between. This video essay explains in more detail. The extra image area can cause problems when done carelessly, such as revealing filming equipment that was just outside of the theatrical framing, and can aesthetically mess with a shot's composition. The most notable director to make use of this technique was Stanley Kubrick, who used it for his last three movies (as they were produced when VHS and television broadcasts of films had already become commonplace) and even mandated in his will that open matte transfers be used for posthumous home media releases of all of his movies (which were shot in full-frame and cropped to widescreen in theaters even before he started consciously using the Open Matte technique) just to prevent any horizontal detail from being lost. Later home media releases made after the mass adoption of widescreen at home reverted back to a widescreen-friendly aspect ratio.
An alternative compromise that was popular for television in Turn of the Millennium and The New '10s is "shoot and protect", whereby important details are framed within a 4:3 "safe area" in the middle of a 16:9 image. This allows the final product to be watchable when center-cropped to 4:3, with the creative limitation that a shot's focus can't stray too far from the middle of the frame. This is distinct from open matte, because here the "opened up" version uses the intended framing and does not have extraneous details. Before analogue broadcasts were shut down, the BBC would protect its widescreen programs for 14:9 instead, with the 4:3 feed having both minor cropping
*and* thin letterboxes.
Pan and Scan started to decline in the 2000s, with DVD credited with killing it off for good
note : Pan and Scan DVDs exist, but were only made in the early days of the format, and typically for movies aimed at younger viewers; studios would often make widescreen versions available alongside pan and scan versions. DVD has an anamorphic widescreen mode, which is the innovation that killed Pan and Scan. The way it works is that a movie can letterboxed to 16:9 instead of 4:3, which provides more pixels to the movie and fewer to the letterbox. It is squeezed into the 720x480 resolution of the DVD, with the player unsqueezing it for playback based on the display width, allowing the picture to maintain image quality regardless of the monitor's aspect ratio As it is with acceptance of 16:9 screens note : 16:9 was chosen as a compromise ratio. 4:3 and Cinemascope, the two most common extremes in aspect ratio, will both take up 75% of the screen when letterboxed. and the fact that both formats are priced the same, pan and scan has seriously declined in popularity, with letterboxing being seen as more "classy"; plus it doesn't lop off the rest of the screen. As 16:9 sets became the dominant aspect ratio, some TV shows that were originally shot in 4:3 have been "remastered" for HD by cropping them to 16:9; this introduces a lot of the same problems of pan and scan, namely losing important parts of the picture.
Contrast Letterbox, Open Matte, Visual Compression, and Widescreen Shot. Similar to Screen Crunch in video games. Not to be confused with Stan & Pan, the names under which Laurel and Hardy are known in Hungary.
## Due to the ubiquity of this device, only Lampshade Hangings or other unusual examples will be listed:
- Probably one of the most disastrous examples of pan-and-scan was featured in the Cary Grant/Doris Day comedy
*That Touch of Mink*, which was used in an example on a *Siskel & Ebert* show chastising the process. One scene in question takes place at a New York Yankees game: in one shot, Day is making such a big commotion, but you can't see her; only the others *reacting* to her. The same scene has a cameo by Yogi Berra, but while you can hear him, he's barely in the frame!
- The initial home video release of
*The Black Hole* was pan-and-scanned to anamorphic 1.78:1 as opposed to 1.33:1, resulting in a full picture if you unsqueezed it on a widescreen tv.
- The
*Die Hard* DVD contains a featurette giving a very good illustration of the differences between letterbox, "centre-scan" and pan-and-scan.
- Parodied in a sketch of
*The Benny Hill Show* in which a technician attempting to pan and scan a movie in real time manages to miss all of the important details.
- Sadly, upon 16:9 TVs coming into popular use, some presentations of material originally filmed for 4:3 sets is now being cropped
*the other way* on HDTV channels (tilt and scan). Victims of this process for Blu-ray include *Thunderbirds* and at least one edition of the classic documentary series *The World at War* (a subsequent release restored the 4:3 ratio). Justified for movies that premiered in theaters with mattes covering the top and bottom of the picture, such as *Shane* and *The Jungle Book*. The Criterion Collection's *On the Waterfront* DVD and Blu-ray sets include the option to watch the movie in either matted widescreen or 4:3, and a "visual essay" comparing them.
- Starting in the late 1950s, and proceeding through at least the '70s, movies that premiered in 1.37:1 were re-released in theaters with the top and bottom cropped to simulate a widescreen picture. During the transition towards widescreen in the 1950s, Columbia Pictures (and possibly other studios) had their films made in such a way that they could be projected at any ratio from 1.33:1 to 1.85:1;
*On the Waterfront* was one such film, whose cinematographer Boris Kaufman framed the shots at 1.66:1 to split the difference (this aspect ratio is the default one on the Criterion discs).
- In the 1980s and 1990s, many directors and directors of photography avoided pan-and-scan by shooting in the Super 35 format, which exposed a large non-anamorphic 4:3 image on the film, and the theatrical 2.39 print was created by cropping the top and bottom of the frame. The camera negative was still 4:3 though and was (mostly) well-composed, so creating a version for TV was as easily as simply not cropping the original image.
- For the
*Dragon Ball* franchise, this trait is one of the biggest points of contention against Funimation's "remasters" of *Dragon Ball Z* for DVD and Blu-Ray, mainly stemming from the perception that it is both unnecessary and awkward compared to the original 4:3 footage (the releases of *Dragon Ball* and *Dragon Ball GT* weren't cropped). Sadly, Toei Animation themselves followed this approach when making *Dragon Ball Z Kai: The Final Chapters* to adhere to Japanese broadcast standards, as it was cheaper to do that than to also make a separate uncropped version for the home release.
- Inverted regarding widescreen releases of the classic
*Dragon Ball* films: while they were originally animated in 4:3 for TV broadcasts, they were composed to still work when cropped to a widescreen aspect ratio, which is how they were screened in cinemas. Toei did the same for *The Transformers: The Movie* and the *Sailor Moon R* and *Sailor Moon S* movies.
- When every episode of
*The Simpsons* was marathoned on FXX, the pre-season 20 episodes were cropped like this, rather than being pillarboxed as they were on prior airings and streaming platforms. This led to a lot of visual gags being completely cut out of the frame, and when these versions began streaming on Disney+, there was enough public outcry that Disney vowed to fix them shortly afterward.
- The Full-Screen DVD of
*The Dark Knight* shows the IMAX scenes in Open Matte, while the scenes filmed in Panavision (anamorphic) 35mm are pan and scan.
- Inverted with most of the earlier animated films by Pixar (starting with
*Ratatouille*, the movies are all shown only in widescreen), which use a digital equivalent of the open matte technique: rather than cropping the edges and showing only the major elements of their films, they actually re-rendered their films entirely to fit the whole frame, showing visual elements at the top and bottom that aren't visible in the widescreen version. In some cases, they moved certain characters and objects either toward the center of the screen or off to the side in order to better resemble the original framing.
- One of the most obvious examples of this is a particular scene from
*A Bug's Life* where they show two young ants climbing up a leaf: in the original widescreen version, you couldn't see the second ant at all, but in the fullscreen version, you actually do.
- Another obvious example is a moment in
*Finding Nemo* during the Aquascum scene. When a female patient with a skirt enters the dentist office, her legs are visible in the fullscreen version, but not in widescreen.
- Played straight with most Disney animated films, but inverted in
*Brother Bear* where the film actually starts out in fullscreen, but switches to widescreen just right after Kenai turns into a bear.
- Subverted in the horror movie
*Cabin Fever*, where the widescreen version trades off vertical details for horizontal ones. Of particular note is the immediate lead-up to an oddly out-of-place sex scene, where the man placing his hand on the woman's leg is hidden and replaced with greater coverage of the surrounding scenery.
- The music video for R.E.M.'s "Imitation of Life" was designed around this: the entire video is just one looping 20-second take, with pan-and-scan used to zoom in on individual parts of the scene.
- In the commentary for
*Ghostbusters (1984)*, during the lobby scene at the Sedgwick Hotel, Harold Ramis laments that he's frequently chopped out of the picture entirely in pan-and-scan presentations due to his not having many lines in that shot. This actually cuts out the main joke of the scene, that he's silently feeding Bill Murray's character the numbers.
- Warner Bros. Animation's shows from the 2000s were made specifically to avert this. The animation team had monitors with 4:3 and 16:9 safe areas so they wouldn't crop off important elements like characters. When most television networks started using HD feeds, the team switched to monitors without 4:3 safe areas effectively getting rid of the old monitors by The New '10s. Recent reruns of some of the shows (shows such as
*Teen Titans* and the earlier *Tom and Jerry* and *Scooby-Doo* DTV Films) are in the original 16:9 aspect ratio, as are the Blu-ray releases and the versions on streaming services.
- Some channels air movies with the picture cropped down to fill an HDTV screen. As a result, SDTV viewers watch a letterboxed version of the movie, albeit one that
*still* doesn't show the complete picture.
- There are some channels that still have pan & scan copies of some films and keep their High Def feeds horizontally stretched regardless if the content is 4:3 or not. So you end up watching a movie that has been cropped to fit the old style televisions, then distorted sideways in order to fit the new style of televisions.
- Then there are channels whose Standard Def feed is just a downscaled version of their High def feed meaning its cropped to fit the old style televisions, then distorted sideways to fit the new style of televisions and then Letterboxed to again fit the old style televisions.
- The Spanish Blu-Ray of
*Highlander: The Source* proves that this trope lives on in the HD era, cropping the 2.39:1 image to 1.78:1, on top of heavy compression that would be unforgivable for a single-layer DVD.
- HD channels will often air the pan-scan version of widescreen films despite the fact that HDTV is designed for their original aspect ratio. This is also done with television shows as wellfor instance, Comedy Central's pre-prime-time reruns of
*South Park* do this for all episodes prior to Season 10, despite the fact that Seasons 5-9 were rendered in widescreen.
- The Fox Cinema Classics Made on Demand DVD service has made an unpleasantly surprising effort to revive this practice. DVD Talk gives automatic "Skip It" ratings to most of these discs and does not even bother with proper reviews, insisting that no good reason exists for a DVD released in The New '10s to have its widescreen picture cropped to 1.33:1.
- Some of Cartoon Network's broadcasts of
*Doraemon* consist of older episodes created before the anime jumped into widescreen, with the top and bottom cropped so that they fit onto a 16:9 screen. Particular egregious in that some of the network's older programs that are still played on a night-time slot note : i.e. past midnight ( *The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy*, *The Powerpuff Girls (1998)*, *Dexter's Laboratory*) remain in 4:3.
- The DVD release of
*Spaceballs* is a "flipper" disc with the original widescreen version on one side and the pan-and-scanned 4:3 version on the other. It includes a paper insert that educates the viewer on the difference and implores them to watch the widescreen version, using a screenshot of the characters skipping four abreast in a visual Shout-Out to *The Wizard of Oz* as an example of the sort of gag that's ruined when the two characters on either side are cropped out of the picture. However, the 4:3 version can play out to the Droste effect in the "We're in 'now' now" joke as Dark Helmet and Col. Sandurz were watching the movie in 4:3. All widescreen DVDs released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during this time have similar inserts, but are often inaccurate depending upon the nature of how the movie was shot.
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*Atlantis: The Lost Empire* has a particularly annoying case of this in its DVD release (Especially the European release), especially because it touted its letterbox format and beautiful, sweeping panorama-esque sets as something of a selling point...Only for it to be presented with a tiny aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The worst case of this is a couple of dialogue scenes, for example the discussion between Rourke and Helga discuss the difference to the plan to sell the Heart of Atlantis, where the camera has to very awkwardly cut back-and-forth between two people *standing right next to each other*. Luckily the Cinescope aspect ratio was fully restored in the Blu-Ray version.
- Video game example: The Xbox Live and Play Station Network releases of
*Dragon's Lair*, as well as *Dragon's Lair Trilogy* for the Wii, have the top and bottom of the picture cropped to fit a 16:9 screen. Fortunately, you can avert this in *Trilogy*: by switching the Wii's screen to 4:3 mode, you can play the games without any cropping at all.
- The pan-and-scan VHS and DVD releases of
*Anastasia* (1997), have one of the most unusual cases of this trope, in that the picture is actually slightly wider than 4:3 (the DVD specifications list the aspect ratio of this version as 1.48:1 as opposed to the common 1.33:1). As such, it is one of the few pan-and-scan versions of a film where you can see black bars at the top and bottom of the frame throughout the entire movie (as opposed to just the opening and end credits). note : Yes, this statement does also apply to 16:9 TV owners: except for the elusive, CinemaScope-only Family Fun Edition, all *Anastasia* DVDs lack anamorphic enhancement.
- Some scenes in
*Star Trek: The Next Generation* and *Star Trek: Deep Space Nine* were filmed in anamorphic widescreen and intentionally panned and scanned for their TV presentations. They include shots in which special effects couldn't be rendered on a moving camera shot, and one scene in *If Wishes Were Horses* in which Dax interacts with her Doppelgänger, to make it look more convincing.
- The HD remasters of
*Resident Evil Remake* and *Resident Evil 0* use vertical cropping and tilt & scan that follows the player in their widescreen modes, which can obscure important objects. Luckily, the original 4:3 display is still available as an option via Letterboxing.
- When Terrytoons started making shorts in CinemaScope, much of the action was kept in the center of the screen so it wouldn't be lost when they would be eventually be shown on television. It helped that, by that time, the studio was owned by a TV network.
- The short-lived smartphone-exclusive streaming app Quibi allowed people to watch content in vertical or horizontal aspect ratios. Many of the vertical versions are pan and scanned versions of the horizontal versions. Some also provided gimmicks, such as the horizontal versions looking like a normal TV show and the vertical version showing what's on the main character's phone.
- While
*Avengers: Endgame* was largely filmed in an open matte 1.90:1 aspect ratio for IMAX, and cropped vertically to 2.39:1 for general exhibition, repurposed footage from *Thor: The Dark World* was cropped horizontally in the IMAX release (though retaining its original aspect ratio in the general release), as the latter film was shot in Panavision. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanAndScan |
Palette Swap - TV Tropes
Wait till ya meet Reptile, Smoke, Noob Saibot, Ermac, Rain, Chameleon...
*"It's just like the old days, reusing the boss, changing its color and pretending it is completely new."*
In 2D game development, the creation of sprites is labor-intensive. One cost-effective method for increasing the variety of game characters is to reuse the same sprite, but using a different color palette.
This is seen in some platformers, but it most often appears in Role Playing Games and Fighting Games. In fighting games, this is commonly used to differentiate players using the same character, but it is also employed to create "new" characters. In the 8- and 16-bit era RPGs, it was pervasive: because of console limitations, disk and screen space were serious concerns. Palette Swapping was used to create a large variety of different enemies, often using different colors for various power levels. The most famous group of these are probably the Slimes, topped by the powerful Metal Slime, of
*Dragon Quest* fame.
A more elaborate variation found in 3D games is the Texture Swap, where the textures on the character's uniform are changed, but the actual model used remains the same. While the concept is a little different, these are often called Palette Swaps anyway as they're still easier for developers to make than a full-fledged alternate costume or character. The Head Swap is another tried-and-true technique for making more out of less.
Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs) are often set in a very large world that must be populated by monsters. Palette Swap to the rescue! By changing the size and textures used on the same model, the designers can make many types of monsters from only a few basic meshes. Sometimes even bosses are simply re-textured and are huge versions of weaker monsters.
Some fans of fighting games use the term to refer to characters that use the same animations and move sets, even if the characters look very different. Such characters are also known as "clones". Individual characters may also have a choice of several different colors or costumes (or both).
Caution: Tropes Are Tools. Palette swapping may be a shortcut, but it does allow designers to create enemies that keep pace with the player's progress while still hinting that the enemies will follow a familiar pattern. This is especially important when a given area is intended to be fast-paced or lead up to a climax, and the designers don't want the player stopping constantly to study "new" enemies. Also, can be used for worldbuilding: using palette-swapped monsters can hint at connections between otherwise disparate locations. In the case of bosses it can be used to hint at relationships between creatures that might not otherwise be apparent to the player.
One of the best ways developers found to make this trope smarter and loved by the audience, is use it as references, usually to other aspects of a franchise, when videogames have sequels, characters can have their original clothes from previous games back, superheroes in videogames can have multiple uniforms from their history in comics, TV shows and movies, characters who were completely redesigned over the years or with reboots can get reverted to their original designs, characters who appeared or debuted in the early days of 3D graphics like the PlayStation 1 or the Nintendo 64 can get turned into their low-poly models from those times, and even pallete swaps that are just alternate colors can work as references, this trope can also be used to reference other unrelated works.
Palette Swaps are also used in Sprite Comics, where they're known as recolors. They are frequently looked down upon. Outside of videogames, nearly all toylines will reuse parts with some colors changed, as much of the cost of a new toy comes from making the steel injection mold used to create parts. This can sometimes result in most of the line effectively being the same character with a different head and accessories, and is a major reason for the prevalence of the Environment-Specific Action Figure.
For a similar time-saving technique, see Ambidextrous Sprite. See also Colour-Coded for Your Convenience. Often associated with Moveset Clone in fighting games. Separate, but Identical is this trope for strategy games, which can also be Palette Swaps. For the level/world equivalent, see Remixed Level and Hard Mode Filler.
Palette swaps can be used to make Underground Monkeys, different colors to show different elemental affinities with Color-Coded Elements, Palette-Swapped Alien Food, or just a different variant.
## Examples:
- The Sheredyn of
*Endless Space* were original a clone of the United Empire, albeit with gold/red/black ships rather than gunmetal gray, and were exclusive to the Emperor Edition of the game. Following the release of the *Disharmony* Expansion Pack, all owners of the base game were upgraded to the Emperor Edition, and the Sheredyn received a unique Affinity and bonuses separate (but similar) to the United Empire, though their ships remain as palette swap.
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*Endless Legend* continues the tradition with the Mezari, exclusive to owners of the Founder Pack for an entirely different spinoff game. They have a unique leader in the diplomacy screen and alternate texture layouts for their units, but are otherwise identical to the Vaulters.
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*Anodyne 2: Return to Dust*: Played for Drama. ||Zera, Nova's Replacement Goldfish looks exactly like Nova except their skin is darker, their visor is gold, and their skirt is red instead of green.||
- In
*Blaster Master*, the Stage 6 and 7 bosses are palette swaps of the Stage 2 and 4 bosses, respectively. The palette-swapped versions were very hard to beat.
- The
*Blaster Master Zero* games get this pretty bad; every boss in the second game is fought at least twice, and they still bring some of them back for the third!
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*Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King*: True to the early Zelda games it's paying tribute to, most later enemies are simply recolored versions of earlier ones, with maybe a few more hit points or a new attribute.
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*Castlevania*: The handheld games since *Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance* have been accused of palette swapping (some point out the Saturn Port of *Castlevania: Symphony of the Night* had Maria's spells being copied out of *Gradius* games, showing that this practice has been around much longer then most initially suspected). The palette swapping of the Metroidvania games shares a common source point: *Castlevania: Rondo of Blood*. Almost everything else is from *Castlevania: Symphony of the Night* instead. This is literally sprite reuse going from 1993 to about now. Harmony was worst about this though: many enemies had level 2 and even level 3 versions.
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*Cave Story*:
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*Earth Defense Force 2025*: The game and the first DLC make extensive use of larger palette swapped elite enemies.
- In
*Golden Axe Warrior*, most enemies appear in at least two of the three basic colors: green, blue and red.
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*The Hobbit (2003)*: Several of the dwarves look the same except for their hoods. The book doesn't give them any more traits than that either.
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*Island Saver*:
- The Golden Eggs share the same sprite as the Nest Eggs, only golden-coloured. Similarly, there are two different kinds of Fishberry in the game that can be distinguished by the tail colour - green tailed berries are for the turtles on Sandy Island and purple-tailed berries are for the Pteranodon on Dinosaur Island.
- This can be done intentionally with bankimals by shooting paintballs purchased from Pigby's store at them.
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*Keith Courage in Alpha Zones*: The Final Boss is a gold-colored version of the Area 4 boss accompanied by an invincible purple walker drone.
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*Legacy of the Wizard*: Many of the game's colorful dungeons use a specific color scheme for similar background sprites.
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*The Legend of Spyro*:
- Apes are recolored to fit the various levels they are found in, without affecting their strength or abilities. In the first game there are gray, unadorned Apes in the Swamp, frosty white ones in fur coats in Dante's Freezer, red ones in Mayincatec costumes in the Tall Plains, golden-furred ones in iron armor in the Munitions Forge, and white ones with spiky purple armor in Concurrent Skies. The second has Apes in ninja clothes during the Dragon Temple attack and purple-furred and -armored ones in the Mountain Fortress.
- The Apes' dreadwing mounts similarly appear in regionally-appropriate palettes, with blue-grey ones with tan manes in Dante's Freezer, blue ones with orange wings and manes in the Tall Plains, dark purple ones with lighter, more reddish wings and manes in the Munitions Forge, and gray ones with cyan manes and pink wings in Concurrent Skies.
- A number of minibosses — the Ice King, Electric King, Executioner and Elemental Spirits — use the same base model of a giant armored warrior, just with different colorations and elemental effects.
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*The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night*: The Elemental Dragon is a recolor of Cynder's giant form from *A New Beginning*, minus her jewelry and plus a translucent effect. In-universe, this is specifically because it takes the form of its foes' greatest fears and, at the time, Spyro's is the thought of Cynder returning to evil.
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*The Legend of Zelda*:
- It's common to palette swap even
*Link* for his different tunics or mails. Same style and cut, different color. Like the fire-proof tunic (red), and the inexplicable *water-breathing tunic* (blue). It wasn't until *The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess* that the different tunics actually looked different beyond their colors.
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*The Legend of Zelda*: Most monsters come in red and blue, with one color (usually blue) being tougher than the other.
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*Zelda II: The Adventure of Link*: Orange is added for weaker variants of enemies, with red being stronger than orange and blue being stronger than red, though with armed enemies the weapons often change with the color (such as the orange variant of the Daira enemy in Death Mountain swinging its axe at Link and the red variant *throwing* axes at him).
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*The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask* has two elemental versions of Wizzrobe (ice and fire). The ice version is the Mini-Boss of Snowhead Temple, while the fire version appears as a miniboss in Ikana Castle and is degraded to an enemy in Stone Tower Temple.
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*The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks*: There are two forms of Geozard, green and red. The red one is stronger, to the point that it's a Mini-Boss.
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*The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword*:
- The first few enemies Link faces in Lanayru Mine and Lanayru Desert are electric versions of monsters he met in Faron Woods and/or Eldin Volcano: Electro Spume, Thunder Keese, Yellow ChuChu, Technoblin. Afterwards, he finds more unique enemies.
- The primary bestiary in the sixth dungeon, Fire Sanctuary, consists of dark-purple versions of enemies (Cursed Spume, Dark Keese, Dark Lizalfos), while the boss Ghirahim (first fought in Skyview Temple) takes a form that has some parts of his body turned black. Notably, the dungeon is still fire-themed. There's also the Cursed Bokoblin, but it only appears in the Ancient Cistern.
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*The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*:
- The monsters come in red (green for the Lizalfos), blue, black, and silver (with the DLC adding gold) and get progressively stronger along that spectrum, with their eyes also getting progressively redder.
- Pebblits and Taluses come in purely aesthetic color variants depending on where they're found — most are the same light grey as most common rocks, but others are dark gray, sandstone-red, or mossy green, and one Talus found in the Zora's Domain area is blue like the local rocks.
- Most of the dogs found around stables are colored like border collies, but a few are a uniform dark grey or light tan instead.
- Most of the small ambient critters, such as pigeons, sparrows, lizards and various insects, have several recolors each found in different areas of Hyrule.
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*Hyrule Warriors*: Fiery Aeralfos are flaming red-versions of Aeralfos. Icy Big Poes are icy blue-versions of Big Poes.
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*Tomb Raider III* has Sophia Leigh, one of the artifact holders, whose face texture looks exactly like Lara's although Sophia has makeup.
- Three of the bosses in
*Wonder Boy in Monster Land* have their sprites reused later in the game, Death becomes the Poor God, who steals your gold coins, the Giant Kong is palette-swapped as the Snow Kong, who summons ice cube-throwing Mini-Kongs instead of throwing rocks, and the Red Knight has Blue and Silver variations.
- The
*Bomberman* series generally gives the combatants their color based on their player slot (Player 1 is white, Player 2 is black, Player 3 is red, etc.) A notable variation of this is the Fan Game *Power Bomberman*, where the palette swaps give a few characters such as Hige Hige Combatant new outfits, and others like Land Bomberman change their design entirely.
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*The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle* (a port of a Famicom Disk System game starring Roger Rabbit-don't ask) has differently-colored enemies of the same type that behave slightly differently.
- The
*Special Edition* of *Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening* plays this perfectly straight. When playing as Vergil and you come to the boss battles against Vergil (the game is usually played as Dante, with the Vergil playability a feature of the Special Edition), the Vergil you fight is dressed in red instead of his usual blue. Apparently it's to give the impression that you're fighting Dante, but the only difference between the two versions is the colour; the boss' moveset remains the same.
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*Devil May Cry 4*:
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*Devil May Cry 5*:
- The "mirage" versions of Goliath, Artemis, and Cavaliere Angelo are completely recolored in a ghostly pale white to differentiate them from their original counterparts.
- Alternate "EX" costumes don't modify much detail apart from changing the color palette, although there are subtle exceptions. Most of these costumes are just palette swaps of pre-existing color themes from the previous games; EX Dante has
*DmC* Dante's colors, EX Nero has Credo's colors from *DMC4*, EX Trish has Gloria's colors when she was disguised in *DMC4*, EX Lady simply references Trish's default colors, and EX Vergil references his color palette from *DMC3*.
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*Rengoku*: The boss of ||HEAVEN-66|| is just Gryphus but blue instead of red.
- In the
*Rolling Thunder* series, the attack patterns and hit points of the Maskers can be determined by the colors of their clothes and hoods.
- Steve's jacket in
*Shatterhand* turns from green to red when he buys the double strength Power-Up.
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*Captain Commando*: Plenty to go around. For example, three of the bosses, Shtrom, Shtrom Jr, and Druk, are all the same body with different colors- purple, yellow, and pink respectively.
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**Exaggerated** in *Cosmo Police Galivan*. The game has mooks in each stage, but appearance-wise (excluding bosses) there's actually only **4** enemy designs - the skinny "Shade" foes (ninja-like mooks with Wolverine Claws), the caveman-like "Oger", the robotic "Borg" and perhaps the only one that's remotely unique, the Starfish Aliens-esque "Grader". The entirety of the game have you fighting recoloured, palette-swapped incarnations of these four, over and over again, for around eight levels (or at least 40 minutes of gameplay). What's more baffling is that it's not like the game suffers from graphic limitations - the backgrounds have plenty of scary-looking foes, like those reptilian horse-creatures in the amusement park stage, the flying oversized piranhas, the skull-headed giants armed with gigantic swords and Snake People creatures, but in the context of the game itself, these are either background objects the players couldn't interact with or statues meant to fill up space.
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*Cyborg Justice*: The player character can choose torso, weapon and legs which are interchangeable and used by virtually every other cyborg in every level at some point including bosses. The only unique enemy in the entire game is the end boss who is a giant brain. If you play with two players, then player 1 is primary gold and player 2 is primarily purple.
- The arcade version of
*Double Dragon*, in addition to the two player characters (Billy and Jimmy Lee), has a set of three enemy mooks (Williams, Rowper and Abobo) that it uses for every stage, but with a different palette each time, along with the occasional black variants. The two bosses, who are themselves head swaps of other characters, reappear in the final two stages as well (in particular, the third boss is the first boss with green skin). The only enemies who don't have palette swapped variants are Linda (who wears the same purple outfit in all of her appearances) and Machine Gun Willy (the final boss).
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*Fairy Bloom*: V3.03 has red versions of the protagonist as the enemy horde's components.
- The character designs in
*Fear Is Vigilance* are basically limited to three: male, female, and Marcy in disguise. Everything else is palette swapping.
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*Final Fight* mostly averts this by making variants of the same enemy head swaps as well, but there are a few notable exception:
- Roxy is just Poison with orange hair and everyone in the Andore clan are identical except for the colors of their clothing (lavender for the standard Andore, red for Junior, gold for Father, black for Uncle and blue for Grandpa). There are also red-clothed variants of Holly Wood who carries Molotov cocktails instead of his usual knives.
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*Final Fight 2* for the SNES has a cheat code that allows both players to use the same character if selected, distinguishing the second player with a different palette.
- The GBA version of the original game,
*Final Fight One*, also allowed two players to choose the same character after defeating a certain number of enemies.
- Some of the enemies from
*The Gladiator* are just modified sprites of each other, notably the bandit legions which are The Goomba - brown for foot soldiers, reds are sergeants, greens have ranged attacks, etc. For the heroes, the Shang-guan sisters, Shang-Guan Jin and Shang-Guan Xue, are palette-swapped as well, though there's an in-universe justification that they're twin sisters (on different sides).
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*Golden Axe* has a huge amount of palette-swapped characters, from the mooks to the bosses to the Bizzarians to the energy-replenishing elves.
- Some of the enemies from
*Jitsu Squad* are recolored versions of existing sprites. Notably, the green-clad goomba-variety ninja gets recoloured as brown versions armed with Wolverine Claws and blue versions who uses bombs. There's also the recurring red Oni enemy, and their green brethren in the final stage, using the same sprites.
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*Legionnaire* have numerous enemies which are recoloured versions of existing sprites. In particular, the Dual Boss, Dragon and Tiger, uses the same body but wear different-coloured robes (one wears blue with magenta markings, one wears magenta with blue markings, no we can't tell which is which).
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*Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers* for the SNES did this. While the unmorphed rangers are distinct from each other, when they morph, the suit they wear is basically Jason's (Red Ranger) suit colored five different colors. You can tell because of how the helmet looks, how buff the less physical rangers get, and the fact that Kimberly (Pink Ranger) doesn't have her skirt.
- Negative Mazinger from
*Mazin Saga: Mutant Fighter* is a clone of your titular character, recoloured white instead of blue, but otherwise using your own sprite all the way. You also face a Boss Rush late into the game, where the revived bosses are just recoloured sprites of the bosses' previous forms.
- In
*Ninja Combat* for the Neo Geo, the main characters, Joe and Hayabusa, are red and blue palette swaps of each other. This Lazy Artist technique is painfully obvious in the cutscenes, which have obviously the same renderings of these characters being horizontally flipped and palette-swapped between shots.
- The arcade version of
*Ninja Gaiden* (aka *Shadow Warriors*) features six stages, the same four staple adversaries, a few novelties here and there, three distinct end of stage bosses, one final boss, and a different palette for each stage. There are also ninja mooks who are just palette swaps of the player characters (who are already themselves palette swaps of each other).
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*River City Ransom* recycles the same enemy gang of nine members by changing the colors of their t-shirts, as well as modifying their stats and attack patterns.
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*Karate Blazers* recycles the sprites for it's mooks. Notably, there's an unnamed dreadlocked enemy (which gamers call "Jamaican thugs") which uses the same head three◊ times◊ over◊.
- In
*Robo Army*, while the player characters' humanoid forms are Head Swaps, their Super Buggy forms are identical except in color. One enemy is a green version of the second player character.
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*Shui Hu Feng Yun Zhuan*, an unofficial Chinese remake of *Knights of the Round* (based on The Water Margin), blatantly plagiarizes sprites from various games as their enemies and bosses, to laughable levels (and nicking some musical scores here and there too). There's notably bald axe-wielding mooks lifted from *Golden Axe*, spear-wielding enemies taken from *Knights of the Round*, and shielded soldiers from *The King of Dragons*, with some minor edits here and there. Even without prior context of the plagiarism, something still feels a bit off in the game, since it's set in Ancient China, yet enemy soldiers are wearing Medieval armor that looks more fitting for the Authurian Era, holding long lances fitting for European knights, or viking-like shields and armours, because they're practically transplanted from a bunch of unrelated games set in Europe.
- The
*Streets of Rage* series used palette swaps for enemies very often
- In the "Dueling" mode featured in the sequels, the second player is assigned a different palette if he chooses the same character as the first player.
- In the first game, Onihime and Yasha (aka Mona and Lisa), the twin bosses in Round 5, were both palette swaps of Blaze but with a green outfit instead of red. In Round 8, they appear one more time with a dark purple outfit. When the twins returned in
*Streets of Rage 3*, they were given a unique design.
- In the third game, the boss of Round 3 was a robot copy of Axel, only difference was his gloves were purple instead of red so that players who played in co-op wouldn't attack each other by mistake if one of them was playing as Axel.
- Also in the third game, Shiva and Roo (plus Ash in the Japanese version) change palettes when they become player characters.
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*The Super Spy*, owing to it being an *old* arcade title, will constantly reuse sprites for enemies. The recurring balaclava-clad mooks, for example, are faceless goons in black, blue, purple, white armor, and sometimes a mix of colours.
- The Foot Clan ninjas in
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game* and *Turtles in Time* come in numerous colors in addition to the standard purple variant from the 1980s animated series. The Foot Soldiers are color coded to indicate their weapons of choice. For example, the white Foot Soldiers attack with katanas, while the orange ones wield boomerangs.
- In
*Disney's Math Quest with Aladdin*, the Wizard Pharaoh Very Ankh-Amman appears as a ghostly mummy head with a different color scheme each time you meet him.
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*BioShock* only had a few distinct Splicer models, with palette swapping used (mostly on their clothes) to make them slightly less identical. Of all the characters in the first game, only Sander Cohen, Andrew Ryan, and Frank Fontaine in his final boss form have a unique model. This would be largely averted in the sequel, where most of the game's principal characters have their own model.
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*Blood*:
- The only visual difference between various types of cultists is the color of their robes: regular cultists wear brown robes, fanatics wear black robes, acolytes wear green robes, zealots wear blue robes and the priest wears red robes.
- Stone gargoyles look exactly like regular gargoyles, except that they have a different texture and are bigger in size.
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*Borderlands*:
- Visually, this is the only difference between gun brands. Each manufacturer has a palette with a few variations.
Atlas: White with black contrasts.
Dahl: Military camo (shades of green, bluish-grey, or brown with dark brown).
Hyperion: Bright red or crimson, sometimes with grey details.
Jakobs: Reddish-orange or brown, like wood.
Maliwan: Blue of varying hues.
S&S: Yellow, sometimes faded orange with pale yellow contrasts.
Tediore: Light grey of slightly varying hues.
Torgue: Grey to jet, like raw iron and steel.
Vladof: Bright orange with steel-grey or white highlights.
- In a more general sense that goes beyond the first game, there are bright lines or accessories with colors that denote the element the weapon fires. Fire elemental guns have them in red, electric ones get them in vibrant blue, corrosives are green, explosives were yellow (before Torgue took the element for itself from
*Borderlands 2* and on), slag is purple, and ice is light blue.
- In
*Conduit 2*, the models of the soldiers are all the same, but the armor they wear is chosen randomly.
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*Doom*:
-
*Doom*: The game uses palette swaps mostly for changing the uniform color of different players in multiplayer mode (the green armor becomes indigo, brown and red for players 2, 3 and 4); however a variant of palette swap is used for one of the monsters: the Spectre is a Demon whose sprite's shape is replaced by a zone of transparent static.
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*Doom II*: A palette swap was used to create the Hell Knight from the Baron of Hell; however, both sets of sprites are present in the game's data and the two are treated by the game as totally separate enemy types, other than being hard-coded against the usual rules for taking and responding to friendly fire. Doom RPG, however, has "classes" of enemies that change palettes according to their type and subsequent difficulty.
- BUILD Engine games, such as
*Duke Nukem 3D* and *Shadow Warrior*, make use of palette changes on sprites and surfaces for a number of uses.
- A number of surfaces which basically look the same, but have something a different colour (such as a row of tiles on a wall) use an internal palette change to provide more graphical variety without needing to include more textures.
- Coloured lighting uses a palette change over the whole palette of anything in the area in question.
- The ever-common alien Troopers and Captains in
*Duke Nukem 3D* use the same sprites, but different internal palettes. The base sprites use blue for the uniform, but the Troopers use a palette that replaces it with green and the captains use one that replaces it with red.
- On a similar note, the different colours of the trousers on the player sprites in multiplayer games are the result of palette swaps.
- Putting the same palette used for blue light onto a sprite such as a weapon or switch in the level editor will (at least for
*Duke Nukem 3D*) make that sprite only appear in deathmatch games.
- Different palettes on special sprites which control level functionality can have various effects, ranging from simply changing the colour of a light to making a teleporter that doesn't show the usual teleporter effects, to determining what kind of enemy teleports in.
- Palette swaps combined with translucency are also used to give the enemies shadows. Squash a copy of the sprite vertically, put it on the ground, put an all-black palette on it, then make it translucent. Some levels also use all-black translucent palette swaps of sprites to add nice shadows to certain areas.
- Then there are user-made levels which give oddly-coloured enemies via palette swaps just for the fun of it. Some sadistic authors put the all-black palette on the enemies and make them transparent. Great, now you're fighting almost-invisible aliens.
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*Half-Life 2*: The Overwatch transhuman infantry serving guard duty in Nova Prospekt prison have a unique uniform; while the standard Overwatch soldiers have a navy blue camo pattern and blue optics, Nova Prospekt prison guards have yellow optics, a dark ultramarine-ish color with blue stripe and a Nova Prospekt insignia. This is also the case with Shotgun Soldiers, whom have orange optics and dark reddish-brown uniforms, but otherwise behave identically to standard Overwatch soldiers with shotguns (and in fact replaced those following the update that added them in).
- The original
*Halo* trilogy does this with almost all of its Covenant enemies, with you being able to tell how powerful they are simply by the color of their armor/shields. The in-game explanation is that their armor is color-coded by rank. *Halo 3* started to move away from this by giving each Brute rank a different set of armor (though each rank was also split into different colored sub-ranks), and games from *Halo: Reach* onward have extended this to basically every Covenant species (with Elite Mooks getting the fanciest suits, obviously).
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*Halo 5: Guardians*'s Warzone has a lot of boss enemies, but most of them are just palette-swapped versions of regular foes.
- Ebitan, one of the zombies in
*House of the Dead 2*, comes in three different colours; green, brown and black. Kageo also has multiple skins.
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*Left 4 Dead 2*:
- The laser sights and special ammo using the same world model, but with different textures.
- The common infected use similar models, but have different skin/clothes colors. The original game only did this with their shirts.
- The
*Marathon* series used palette swapping extensively. An alien's uniform color denoted its rank, while a human's denoted his department.
- Several of the enemies in
*Overload* have super variants, characterized by a red glow, increased armor and considerably stronger weaponry.
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*PAYDAY: The Heist*:
- The game has the Clown mask model recycled for other masks and use different textures, namely the Golden and Secret masks.
- Dallas' Vyse mask is also the Clown mask retextured while Hoxton's Vyse mask is a different textured version of his Beeef mask. Chain's Vyse mask is the same model as the Moderator and Overkill/Dev mask and those two masks are palette swaps of each other. The Alienware masks are a single model with different textures as well.
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*Perfect Dark* for the N64 had Joanna (the main character) and her head-swap Velvet (controlled by Player 2 during Co-Op Mode). Since they were both Carrington Institute agents, they both wore the same uniform.
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*Team Fortress 2*:
- Not only are the classes identical save their team colour, at least three levels contain what are basically palette swapped bases, with changed materials and propaganda posters. Not only that, but the September 30, 2010 update allows players to paint their hats.
- Player-created maps are sometimes guilty of this as well. There are several variations of 2fort with the exactly same layout, but one is at nighttime, etc.
- Every Capture the Flag map is just two bases that are exactly the same except they're mirrored and palette-swapped, with a few paths in between that connect them.
- There was actually a contest to "dress up" a Valve-designed map that only had basic geometry. The winners of which were later used for the Mann Manor Halloween update.
- Several other maps also had Halloween versions.
- Referenced in the Developer's Commentary. They noted that, for balance's sake and outside of Attack/Defend maps, they had to make both the RED and BLU bases identical, as otherwise it would offer a tactical advantage to one team over another. To help players not get lost however, they had a strict set of materials, colors and styles they could use for each side; Red was wooden, red (obviously), and used sheet metal and hay. Blu, on the other hand, used concrete and industrial pressed metal, as well as having an overall blue tone. Red was also suppose to be more rustic while blu was more industrial design-wise.
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*Turok 2: Seeds of Evil* has a few of these; the Cave Worm is a giant version of the Swamp Worm, the Fireborn is a fiery version of the Endtrail, the Blind One Sentinels are a palette swap of the Flesh Eater Sentinels, and the Trooper is a palette swap of the Mantid Soldier.
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*Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus*:
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*Wolfstone 3D*, the Nazis' parody of *Wolfenstein 3-D*, borrows a lot of the Palette Swapped versions of the original *Wolf 3D* characters. Examples include:
- Elite Hans = B.J. Blazkowicz
- U.S. Army soldier = Guard
- Russian soldier = Schutzstaffel
- Naval officer = Officer
- Set Roth = Dr. Schabbs, with a beard and a white lab coat
- Fake B.J. = Fake Hitler
- B.J. "Terror-Billy" Blazkowicz = Adolf Hitler, though more like Staatmeister
- Bombate = Otto Giftmacher
- Caroline Becker = Gretel Grosse
- Anya Oliwa = Gretel Grosse, but with the weapons of General Fettgesicht
- In
*Burly Men At Sea*, the three Beard brothers are distinguished only by the different colours of their huge beards and co-ordinated boots.
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*DRL* has "nightmare" demons, imps, cacodemons, arachnotrons and even arch-viles on higher difficulties and in deeper levels. They are dark blue, faster and tougher, they deal a lot more damage, and worst of all, they're silent.
- The Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and the Super Game Boy (for the SNES) allowed users to palette-swap original Game Boy games entirely (at least the ones that weren't designed to take advantage of the color features of the devices).
- Some old games palette swap
*everything* after each level to give the player a sense of progress. *Desert Falcon* for the Atari 2600 looped between about eight colors as enemies moved slightly faster, so even field below changed from yellow to green to pink. Even the NES version of *Tetris* does this as the game's level increases.
- The
*Diablo* series is infamous for this, frequently featuring the same enemy 3-5 times by recoloring and renaming it.
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*Dynasty Warriors* and its spinoffs use this frequently. Most generic units and officers are recolors of each other, and several games give each playable character a second color palette to use. The DLC maps for *Hyrule Warriors* and its subsequent releases turned this into an art form, adding over a hundred unlockable recolors for most of the cast, most of which reference different characters from across the Zelda franchise.
- In
*Crush Crush*, ||the Dark One|| looks like a goth reskin of Mio which she lampshades in her introduction cutscene by saying that her appearing almost identical to another game character is most definitely not the game devs being lazy or making an in-joke.
- One of the first games to use Palette Swaps was
*Pac-Man*. Also Colour-Coded for Your Convenience as each ghost had a different way of chasing the player. note : Namely: Blinky (the red ghost) actively chases you, Pinky (the pink one) tries to maneuver around you and then cut off your path in an ambush, Inky (the light blue one) takes an erratic pattern that involves both where Pac-Man is going to be and Blinky's location, and Clyde (the orange one) acts like Blinky but runs for the bottom-left area if he gets too close.
- Being the second game Luigi ever showed up in,
*Wrecking Crew* once again has him as a recolored Mario.
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*City of Heroes* makes frequent use of Palette Swapping in uniformed enemy groups such as Arachnos, where different ranks (and sometimes entirely different classes!) of enemies share the same uniform with a modified color scheme. I.E. Psychic Fortunatas wear red versions of the normal Night and Blood Widow uniforms. Arbiters (who are the highest ranking members of Arachnos, said to be above even the four Archvillains in terms of authority) wear shiny versions of the Wolf Spider uniform.
Also interestingly enough, a player using the Mission Architect can actually palette swap preexisting enemies! Even AVs! And, of course, due to the game's customization system, the vast majority of models use one of three basic animation sets anyway.
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*Dynasty Warriors Online*. Given that all mooks on different sides are simply palette swaps of each other, but the custom outfits can also be. You can individually "dye" each item so that they change color, There are three different dyes that give you a unique color for each one. the Weapons also change color when you add an innate element to it. They will take on a basic color for the element, but other colors on more complex looking weapons will change to fit the theme of the main color (like gold might change to silver). You have ice (blue and silver), fire (red and gold), wind (green and silver), Lightning (yellow and bronze), vorpal (purple and bronze).
- Faction ship models in
*EVE Online* are their base ships with different color schemes. This is true of their pirate counterparts as well.
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*zOMG!* is a prime offender.
- Most fluffs are recolors and/or upscales of one another with minor details changed.
- Kat's Kokeshi Doll and the Kokeshi Collectibles are palette swaps of normal Kokeshi Dolls.
- Gift Boxes from the 2008 Christmas event were Christmas-themed recolors of Flying Giftboxes.
- Lightning Bugs, Shockroaches, and Deathroaches share the same base model.
- Landstriders are green and black versions of the Walker.
- Outlaw Wolves are green Outlaw Pups.
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*Granblue Fantasy*: Enemy mobs sometimes have color-coded variants of the same model that appear in other quests:
- The brown, silver, and gold slimes in the "Slimy Search" quest lines.
- The crabs, "Elemental Sprites", and the "-Gyre" type enemies whose color varies depending on their element. These are common in the Rotating Trial quests.
- The Mimics, whose color theme varies depending on the type of treasure that it drops when defeated.
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*Marvel Heroes* had the concept of "Enhanced Costumes," which could be used to turn your character into another Marvel hero or villain with similar abilities and the same moves and stats. These included Spider-Gwen for Spider-Man, Shuri for Black Panther, Beta Ray Bill and Jane Foster for Thor, Sam Alexander for Nova, Captain Mar-Vell for Captain Marvel and Kate Bishop for Hawkeye.
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*Phantasy Star Online* plays this straight for their non-unique weapons. All basic weapons only differentiate in color and name to denote how powerful they are (from weakest to strongest, the colors are green, blue, purple, red, and yellow.)
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*Phantasy Star Universe* takes this a step further. In addition to non-unique weapons differentiating in color, both non-unique and rare weapons have a bland-looking "Kubara" version that usually has worse stats, but offers larger grind bonuses.
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*RuneScape Classic* used this trope: the game environment was 3d but the enemies were 2D sprites, so enemies such as "thief" "man" and "farmer" were often simply palette swaps of one another. Also, the customizable player character models could be considered this as well.
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*SD Gundam Capsule Fighter* has the "-U" rank units, "User-Created" special units from the Korea server who color certain units (all but one being a C-Rank) and are granted different skills and stats, usually having the skills make up for the weaker stats.
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*Temtem*: Every Temtem has a rare alternate colour scheme with a glowing effect, known as Lumas. Ones encountered in the wild are guaranteed to have three perfect stats.
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*World of Warcraft*:
- The first expansion,
*The Burning Crusade*, introduced armor sets that used the same models as Vanilla WoW's Tier 2 raid armor sets. For example, here's Vestments of Transcendence, the priest set, and here's an assortment of cloth armor pieces from TBC dungeons.
- There are thousands of different types of "mobs" (monsters) a player can encounter, but only a couple hundred different animated models. Most of the variety comes from putting differently-colored skins on the same model. For example, the grizzly bears in Elwynn Forest or Dun Morogh use the same models as the polar bears in Icecrown and the disease-raveged bears in the Western Plaguelands, and the same animations. They just use different-colored skins and, in some cases, enlarge or shrink the base model.
- Mounts are this way. For instance there are several drake mounts obtainable in
*Wrath of the Lich King*, however the all use the same drake model with different colors or patterns - from the free bronze drake you get from "Culling of Stratholme" heroic to the black drake you get from finishing Sartharian with three drakes up.
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*Blinx: The Time Sweeper* does this with at least two pairs of bosses. In one, the first monster is yellow; later, you face an identical red counterpart.
- The main characters in the arcade versions of
*Contra* and *Super C* used different sprites for Bill and Lance (Bill wore a white tank top, while Lance was shirtless). Due to hardware limitations of the NES, their versions of both games used the same sprite for Bill and Lance, changing only the color of their pants, making Bill the "blue guy" and Lance the "red guy". Oddly enough, *Contra III: The Alien Wars* for the SNES followed this convention as well. In *Super C* and *Contra III*, the red colored enemy soldiers are usually the ones who actually shoot their guns. Also, the four main characters in *Contra 4* (Bill and Lance, and their "counterparts", Mad Dog and Scorpion) are all palette swaps of the same sprite, with no real playing differences between them. This was due to a 4-Players Mode that was Dummied Out from the final version of the game. The extra characters (Probotector, Sheena, Lucia, Jimbo/Sully) all happen to have four selectable color palettes each as well.
- Played for laughs in
*Distorted Travesty*, with the Sentinel and the Palette Swap Sentinel, the latter of which is slightly tougher. Jerry and Jeremy declare their opinions about how cheap and uncreative this is.
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*Donkey Kong Country*:
- Lampshaded by Cranky Kong in the Game Boy Advance version of
*Donkey Kong Country*, after a boss battle with "Really Gnawty", a recolored version of the first boss, "Very Gnawty", which is itself a big version of a normal enemy called "Gnawty". The quote at the top of the page appears after defeating Master Necky Sr., a palette swap of Master Necky Jr.
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*Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!*:
- In the SNES version, there is a hidden code to give Kiddy and Dixie Kong different colored clothing. It doesn't affect the game, but the alternate colors look cooler than the regular colors.
- Koindozers are similar to Klobbers from the second game, but are a palette swap of Koin (a Kremling that uses a DK Coin as a shield). The rest of
*Donkey Kong Country* follows suit with different coloured Kremlings and other mooks, this gives away whether or not some are Demonic Spiders (the grey Klobbers that rob you of lives) or Invincible Minor Minions (Red Zingers and Nigh Invulnerable Green Zingers). Red Zingers can only be killed with Squitter's webs (unreliable because Squitter is only in a few levels), while Green Zingers can be killed with barrels as well.
- This is used heavily in the TurboGrafx-16 game
*Dragon's Curse*, where eventually you will run into three colors—red, green, and blue—of *every enemy in the game*.
- Name-dropped in
*Gamer 2*, when Kevin enters the game as Player 2. Hailey asks why he looks like a blue-furred version of herself, and he laments that such a feature is hard-coded into the machine.
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*Kero Blaster*:
- Kaeru's color changes depending on the game mode. In Normal Mode, he's green, in Zangyou Mode, he's blue, and in Omake Mode, he's yellow.
- In the first six of Zangyou mode's seven levels, the bosses are heavily based on their normal mode counterparts. Visually, some (but not all) of these are just simple recolors.
- In the train station level, the NPCs at the shop, and also at the hospital you end up at if you run out of lives, use a weird inverted color palette.
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*Kid Icarus* both does and doesn't rely on this trope. The first game had multiple sprites for several monsters that otherwise varied only numerically. Given the wildly different descriptions in the game manual, it can be quite a disappointment to realize that you've just run into yet another version of Monoeye. Some of these enemies *also* come in palette swaps, with three sprites for Kobil, each in two colors, for a total of *six*.
- The two teams in
*Killer Queen* consist of the same sprites with gold or blue color schemes. Four of the characters on each team also look identical to each other except for the patterns on their shirts.
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*Kirby*:
- In
*Kirby & the Amazing Mirror*, you get three palette-swapped helpers and the ability to change your color. You can change colors in *Kirby: Squeak Squad* as well. Many of Kirby's hats for his copy abilities are palette swaps of each other, including bandannas, backwards baseball caps, and crowns.
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*Kirby Super Star* uses different palettes for the Helpers and their enemy counterparts (with the exception of Wheelie). Of note is that the Helpers' colors are in fact their standard palettes as Mooks in *other* Kirby games. *Milky Way Wishes* adds a third palette to most (all?) enemies, and the *Helper to Hero* mode in *Kirby Super Star Ultra* adds a *fourth* to their playable versions. Several of the bosses reappear under different palettes, as well, though they aren't acknowledged as different bosses.
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*Ultra* did begin the trend of subgames with difficult versions of main game bosses, differentiated by the pallete and the additional moniker to their name. *Ultra* had the *Revenge of the King* subgame with its "Revenge" bosses. *Kirby's Return to Dream Land* had the "EX" bosses. *Kirby: Triple Deluxe* had the "DX" bosses. *Kirby: Planet Robobot* had the "2.0" bosses fitting the game's technology theme. *Kirby Star Allies* broke this trend, as the main campaign did have two boss fights that were consided of harder, pallete swapped versions of earlier ones, with completely different names, and didn't have distinguished set of difficult bosses until the *Heroes in Another Dimension* subgame was added via an online update, where it had "Parallel" bosses.
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*Ultra* also began the trend of having "Soul" versions of final bosses, which are basically pallete swapped harder versions, usually only available through the more difficult level of the Boss Rush mode.
- Mega Man's Variable Weapon System allows him to adopt enemies' powers along with a new color scheme.
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*Metroid*:
- Several games have enemies who are palette swaps of each other, though
*Super Metroid* mixes it up by making some common enemies larger instead.
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*Metroid*:
- Activating missiles turns Samus's arm cannon blue when in her armor. The Varia Suit upgrade turns her armor white (pink/purple when missiles are activated), without the shoulder pads introduced in the (monochrome)
*Metroid II: Return of Samus*. Unarmored, the Varia Suit turns Samus's hair and gun from brown to green (and adds some green pixels to her boots).
- A few enemies are also palette swapped, usually appearing together in the same area (typically, one variant takes twice as many shots to kill as the other) while other enemies with the same function get different sprites in other areas. Particularly, red/brown Metroids are slow but more likely to come after Samus while green Metroids are fast but likely to lie in wait (or get caught on bits of scenery).
- Fake Kraid is physically distinct from Kraid by being brown with blue hair and not yellow with green hair.
- The
*Metroid Prime Trilogy* uses this fairly often. For example, the Phaz-Ing in *Metroid Prime 3: Corruption* are reskins of the Inglets in *Metroid Prime 2: Echoes*, the Mechlopses in *Echoes* are reskins of the Triclopses in *Metroid Prime*, *Echoes* uses reskins to create "Dark" versions of many enemies, and so on. In a somewhat odd aversion, the Bombus from *Prime* were reused as Luminoth drones in *Echoes* with no changes to appearance and only the most minor alterations to activity. Even the weapons get this; the Ice Beam and Plasma Beam in *Prime* show up in *Echoes* slightly reskinned as the Dark Beam and Light Beam, respectively. The scan for the Metroids in *Echoes* even mentions that they're vulnerable to the "freezing effects" of the Dark Beam.
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*Mickey Mousecapade* has a seasonal-themed level where you walk through the woods in all four seasons, with only color changes to represent the seasons. Purple leaves for the trees in spring, green leaves for summer, brown leaves for fall, and white leaves along with white "grass" and "ice" replacing the path for winter.
- In
*Mystic Defender*, Round 6 recycles the background tiles from Round 3, recolored green this time.
- In the original
*Prince of Persia* most of the guards only differ by clothes colors. Shadow sprites are created from Prince sprites by XOR operation (selective inversion), at least on Apple ][ and some earlier ports.
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*Purple* reuses enemy sprites with different colours and gives them different behaviour.
- The very first Rayman game had the very first boss and second/third (depending on player's choice) one being palette swaps of each other - originally. However later editions of the game infamously removed the palette change partially or completely, leading many players to believe they were fighting the same character again - which absolutely did not make any sense in context.
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*Sonic the Hedgehog*:
- The character running sprite from the
*Sonic the Hedgehog 2* Special Stage is the same no matter if you're playing as Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles when locked-on to *Sonic & Knuckles*. Only the head (and Tails' titular appendages) is changed - the body is palette swapped.
- The Shadow Androids from the Multiplayer Mode of
*Shadow the Hedgehog* are palette swaps of one another. There's a gold-striped Shadow that's a palette swap of the regular Shadow, and the "Metal Shadow" models are also palette swaps.
- Mephiles from
*Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)* is a demonic creature that has taken the likeness of Shadow. The only difference between them is that - unlike Shadow - Mephiles lacks a mouth and while Shadow has red stripes and cufflinks, Mephiles has green-ish grey ones.
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*SOS*: You'll encounter many dead passengers on the ceiling (now the floor) who look the same except for the color of their hair and clothes. Sometimes even passengers in your group will exhibit this.
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*Spyro the Dragon* provides a 3D example. About midway through the game, Spyro encounters wizard enemies that shoot lightning bolts and wear green robes. Later on in the game, he encounters the same exact enemy model, except these wizards have blue robes and the additional ability to animate suits of armor. Also shows up in *Spyro: A Hero's Tail* with Ember and Flame who use the same basic model of Spyro but slightly changed and when you unlock them as costumes no new voice clips for Ember the girl.
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*Super Mario Bros.*:
- Mario's brother Luigi began life as no more than a palette swap, but he later evolved into the taller, thinner look that he is known for when the Japanese game
*Doki Doki Panic* was ported to the west as *Super Mario Bros. 2*. This differentiation between Mario and Luigi has stuck ever since, as did the alteration of their shirt and overall colours (switching in SMB2 from red/green overalls and blue shirts to the more natural blue overalls and red/green shirts). This was parodied in *Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door*: Mario could change his shirt and hat color to green by wearing the L Emblem badge. Despite this being the only change, the *president of the Luigi Fan Club* can be fooled when Mario uses this badge. In fact, this is how you solve one of the troubles.
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*Super Mario Bros.*: Red Koopa Troopas are smart enough to turn around when they come to a ledge, while Green ones walk right off, even into a Bottomless Pit. Water and lava used the same sprite with different colors, as did the clouds and bushes. Fire Mario is a palette swap, and star power switches through palettes rapidly.
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*Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels*: The Poison Mushroom is black with brown stains, almost an inverse to the normal mushroom (brown with red stains). It gained a more distinct appearance in later versions of the game to make the game slightly less frustrating. The game also introduces red-colored Piranha Plants, which unlike the green ones will always pop up from the pipes even if Mario is standing above them.
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*Super Mario Bros. 2*: There are actually two colors of Shy Guy, although the two colors are closer. The difference is exactly the same: Shy Guys in pink turn around when they hit edges; Shy Guys in red walk right off. The three kinds of Birdo have more strikingly different colors, and they indicate what they spit: eggs only, fireballs only, or both. Snifits come in even more colors with a wider variety of behavior, from walking off of cliffs to turning back to spontaneously changing directions to jumping and firing more rapidly. Also, the flicker of damaged enemies or things about to explode changes based on what character you're using. This is because all sprites on an NES screen note : Actually, on a horizontal line, but SMB2 can't actually take advantage of that since the throwing things play mechanic means sprites could end up ANYWHERE. can only make use of one of four sets of three colours (chosen from a palette of 53). In most games, the player character gets one of these sets, and in SMB2, each player character uses a unique colour set. But since you don't want enemies changing colour based on which character you're playing, that only leaves 3 sets left for every single other sprite, which includes vegetables and anything else that has to move around the screen. note : Though note that it's moving around the screen that matters here: tiles — the other type of object used in NES games — get their own four colour sets, and can be animated by flicking through a series of tiles, but they have to fit into the grid, and the NES can only have a limited number of tiles ready to use at the same time. You can't change the colour scheme assigned to the enemy without changing all other enemies and whatnots using that colour choice, but you can switch that particular enemy's sprite to one of the other colour sets, and the player character's colour set is about the only one that's at all predictable. note : By the way, this restriction actually determines what vegetables are used in a level. The new vegetables seen in the battle against Wart use his (or his bubbles') colour scheme, for example.
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*Super Mario Bros. 3* has brown Paragoombas that hop along the ground, and tan Paragoombas that actually fly around, dropping Mugger Micro-Goombas. The game also introduces the Fire and Boomerang Bros., the latter one being actually more frequent than the Hammer Bros. (though it's not an issue since their boomerangs are easier to dodge than the hammers or the fireballs). Gold Cheep-Cheeps (which later debuted in *New Super Mario Bros. Wii*) and green Parabeetles were among the Dummied Out enemies.
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*Super Mario World* expands on this by having *four* colors of Koopa. Yoshi gains different powers by swallowing shells of different colours, and Yoshis other than green ones add the corresponding shell color's power as long as they have shells in their mouths, so you could actually have two powers at once. A Koopa that climbed into a Yellow Shell would become invincible and chase you down, and a Koopa stomped out of a Blue Shell would become a shell-kicker.
- This happens less frequently in the 3D games, but notably these few cases have included
*bosses*: Dino Piranha and Fiery Dino Piranha in *Super Mario Galaxy*, Gobblegut and Fiery Gobblegut in *Super Mario Galaxy 2*, and King and Queen Hisstocrat (the latter, too, having a Playing with Fire affinity) in *Super Mario 3D World*. There's also the Venus Fire Plant in *3D World*, a black Piranha Plant with red dots which shoots fire (since the normal Piranha Plant doesn't).
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*Paper Mario* has different colors of Shy Guys seemingly just for variety; however, most color changes in enemies do indicate an increase in difficulty. Red and Blue Goomba, the minibosses for the Prologue, have slightly different HP, for example.
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*Mario Party 6*: Since the white Boo is playable in this game (and became so since the previous one), Pink Boo appears to play the former's role as the stealer of coins and Stars.
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*Mario Party: Star Rush*: The main playable characters in Toad Scramble are four Toads, who are only distinguishable based on their color.
- In
*Theta vs Pi 7* this is the whole idea of the Delta Guards. One attacks you then as soon as it's defeated a new one comes out in a different colur.
- amiibo support in
*Yoshi's Woolly World* allows you to play as a Yoshi texture-swapped to look like that character. Characters such as Mario, Ness and Sonic are supported. The *Pokémon* amiibo, though, just give you a Yoshi with an amiibo logo.
- Some lower level monsters in
*Elemental Story* are just recolors with slightly different designs.
-
*Merge Dragons*: Each dragon breeds have two tiers, with the second tier being just a recolor of the first.
- Several of the monsters in the
*New Yankee in King Arthur's Court* series, such as ice wraiths, gorgons, and sand spirits, are this. They're the exact same sprite with identical design, movesets, and noises; they just come in different colors.
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*This Starry Midnight We Make*: Some of the stars, since their names are just color swapped; for example, the Contrary Stars, which come in Blue, Red, Yellow, White and Black.
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*Uncle Albert's Adventures*:
- The fast snail looks like the other snails, except its shell is red instead of yellow.
- The seven statuettes from
*Uncle Albert's Magical Album* all look the same except for their eye color. Notably, the white-eyed statuette is just the black-eyed statuette with a negative filter applied on the eyes, meaning the eyes' shading is inverted compared to that of the other six statuettes.
- The blue scorpion looks like a regular (yellow-ish brown) scorpion recolored in blue.
- The yellow ladybug is like the regular red ladybug with black dots, except its elytra is yellow and the dots are blue and connected by lines.
- The spotted stag beetle is like the regular stag beetle, except that instead of having a brown back, it's red with black dots, like a ladybug.
- The frogen is a dragon/frog hybrid. Aside from the dragon wings and tail, it looks like a frog recolored in orange.
- In the original trilogy, the toad uses the same model as the frog, but with a brown texture instead of the frog's green color.
- The blue beetle and the golden beetle are recolors of each other.
-
*Uncle Albert's Fabulous Voyage* has a potion which changes an animal's colors for a few seconds.
- The Robosector uses the same models as the insecto-robot, except it's completely golden.
-
*Excite*: In *Truck* and *Bots*, vehicles have several color variants to choose between. In *Truck*, all colors are unlocked by default. However, in *Bots*, each vehicle comes with a unique color, plus default red, blue, and yellow, with other options, including special costumes, as unlockable content.
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*Forza Motorsport* uses a bit of this with its cars; some manufacturers have what is essentially two cars that are exactly the same sold under different brands. The standard Acura NSX and Honda NSX are prime examples, being identical except for the badges, default colors, and which side the steering wheel is mounted on. Purpose built racing cars by the same manufacturer hit this as well, as many of them are based on the same car, with the same internals, but with the livery and maybe the default tuning setup (such as suspension height) changed; once the player adds his own livery, the difference between them is almost nonexistent. Some cars also have performance versions, which are generally the same thing but with slightly different bodywork and some more power (such as the standard Lamborghini Murciélago and the Murciélago LP640).
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*Gran Turismo 5*:
- Famous for having around 40 versions of the Nissan GT-R / Skyline, though many are separate generations (and thus, have different bodywork and internals).
- The Vauxhall and Opel car list
*are the same car list, the difference being the brand.* The reason is that *Gran Turismo 5* ownard, all region-exclusive cars are in every region game.
-
*Mario Kart*:
- In
*Mario Kart 8* and its Updated Re Release, certain drivers are given alternate colors, some of which affect the colors of some of the vehicles they are driving.
- If the player preorders the Zelda/Animal Crossing DLC for
*8* they get access to all the Yoshi *and* Shy Guy color variations. In *8 Deluxe*, Yoshi and Shy Guy's color variations are unlocked by default. This also applies to Birdo when she was introduced as part of Wave 4 of the Booster Course Pass.
- In
*8*, the male Villager can be switched into the other gender, but this is more of a subversion as the female Villager has different stats compared to the male Villager. *8 Deluxe* averts this by giving the female Villager her own slot.
- Both genders of Inkling each have three palette swaps. The color chosen also affects the color of the ink that is shot out from the
*Splatoon* themed ATVs when getting a boost.
- Completing every course on 200cc unlocks Golden Mario, who is a palette swap of Metal Mario.
- A later update to
*8 Deluxe* allowed Link to be swapped between his typical green tunic and his appearance in *Breath of the Wild*.
- Upon making her return as a DLC character available in the '8 Deluxe' Booster Course Pass, Birdo also gets a set of color variations in a similar vein to Yoshi and Shy Guy.
- Most of the Palette Swaps in
*Mario Kart Arcade GP DX* are only obtainable via DLC. The only exception to this is Tanooki Mario, who can be unlocked as costume for Mario.
- Yoshi and Toad can resemble other color variations (red and black for the former and blue for the latter).
- Mario and Luigi have colors that resemble their appearances when picking up a fire and ice flower, respectively.
- Dry Bowser and Gold Mario are Palette Swaps for Bowser and Metal Mario, respectively.
- Don-chan is given Strawberry and Hero costumes.
-
*Uphill Rush 1* opponents look like you with a different coat of paint, for instance the quad opponent has a purple helmet and quad as well as a green shirt for differentiation purposes.
-
*Pikmin*:
- The whole series does this with some members of the Bulborb subspecies. There's red, white, black (Bulbear), and orange. Others, like the Whiptongue Bulborb or any of the Bulblaxes, have more unique features.
-
*Pikmin 2*: Most members of the Dweevil family only seen in the game are identical aside from color, which corresponds to their element. The Fiery variety is red, the Munge variety is magenta, the Anode variety is yellow, and the Caustic variety is blue. The Volatile (orange and black) and Titan (black when armored, tan when not) varieties downplay this, as they also have bombs carried on them and a much larger size, respectively.
-
*Sacrifice* has five sides with 9 unique units each. A few of these 'unique' units are palette swaps. The manual explains all of them: Some are the same creatures that defected to the other side, and were granted different powers by their new god. Or were killed by Charnel and raised as The Undead.
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*Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption* example: Grand Admiral Thrawn's flagship, the *Admonitor*, is a blue version of the *Accuser*, Captain Piett's ship from the original *Empire at War*, but with a different special (all Star Destroyers have a tractor beam special).
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*Warcraft* does this a lot.
-
*World of Warcraft* is notorious for reusing character models and animations. Although it's understandable why a polar bear would share the same model as a grizzly bear, it's slightly jarring when you encounter a boss like Murmur who is clearly a copy of Ragnaros with only minor changes. Even in the RTS games, some units share the same model as another one. Like how a tinted Acolyte model was used for a "Fallen Priest" and "Heretic" in the Orc campaign for *Reign of Chaos*. But some are more subtle like how Harpies use a modified Gargoyle model.
- If you lacked 3D rendering skills, this was what you were reduced to doing for custom maps with custom creeps in Warcraft 3's World Editor. The game itself gave you some flexibility in changing their sizes and tinting them different colors, but apart from that you had to work with what was shipped.
- In the original game (Orcs and Humans), the Acolyte, Warlock and Medivh all used the same recoloured sprite.
- A common example of palette swaps in Real-Time Strategy games is the team color of units.
- In
*Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun* and *Red Alert 2*, the 3D models of each units used a palette with some "remap" colors, which were assigned to the team colors. The rest of the palette didn't change. In fact, the entire franchise does that, and the first two games had unit sprites in common: The first two games made no attempt at a distinction between the basic infantry and some of the buildings. This even carried over games, as the Soviets had the same tanks and infantry as GDI, except they were red as opposed to yellow. The Allies and Nod had some tiny variations, since they changed the sizes of some of the tanks to differentiate them, but otherwise the Allies was a palette swap of Nod.
- This eventually carried over to
*Command & Conquer: Generals* and the later 3D games, which had proper 3D models for everything as well as every faction having a completely unique military, by virtue of keeping the "house color" visible as stripes, blocks or other parts on the units and structures to some degree to tell the various players apart even if they play the same faction, but most of the skin of any given object would remain the same. Using changed skins for units with the otherwise same model is popular with Game Mods, however.
- In the
*StarCraft* campaign, special units were often assigned a different team color so the player could tell them apart from their normal counterparts. Only Kerrigan in her Zerg form had a completely unique character model.
- Incidentally, the way this was done (put the "hero" unit on another team and set that team/unit to "rescuable" status, meaning that you gain control of it when you get close enough to it, then put it right next to your starting units) also led to the unit's appearance being accompanied by a short audio jingle, as if to say, "I'm important, so don't go getting me killed, kthx".
-
*StarCraft II* averts this with differently modeled sprites for heroes and mercenary units. In the Protoss mini-campaign in *Wings of Liberty*, enemy protoss were given a rare full model palette swap of Dark Grey/Black and Green. In *Heart of the Swarm*, the developers got a little lazy as certain NPC units in wildly varying contexts were given similar, if not nearly identical, sprite models. *Legacy of the Void* merges palette swap and model change in several cases, particularly the army building component.
- In
*Rome: Total War*, the Lombardi and Burgundi factions are otherwise identical Palette Swaps of each over in every way possible. The same holds true for Sarmatian and Roxolani units, being colourcoded yellow and blue, respectively.
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*Total War* has many of its factions having the same units, but with different aesthetics and availabilities. In the *Rome* games, the Romans have a wide range of infantry units, but have a few average cavalry. Nomadic factions have many types cavalry units but only a few melee and missile units. The Greek factions possess formidable spear men, but have very little cavalry.
-
*DanceDanceRevolution* character dancer's outfits are palette swaps of each other. In Hottest Party 1, and each new character introduced in Hottest Party 2-3, gets 1 outfit in four colors: http://www.konami.jp/bemani/ddr/jp/gs/hp/basic/chara.html#
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*Friday Night Funkin'*: Not in the official game, but there exist many Game Mod's that recolor the whole cast with the addition of denser remixes, all kickstarted by one of the earliest reskins/overhaul mods *Friday Night Funkin': B-Sides*. See here and here for a comparison.
- Most characters in
*pop'n music* have palette swaps that can be selected by pressing a yellow button on the character select screen. Sometimes the character's palette-swapped form takes on a different name (i.e. Vic Viper's swap is called Lord British), and sometimes you'll get a different character altogether.
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*The Binding of Isaac*:
- Most Champion varieties enemies take the appearance of the enemy and layer a color over it.
*Afterbirth* adds size swap Champions and Champions that fade in and out of certain colors, and *Afterbirth+* adds two Champion types that have no color difference, and instead have an icon hovering over them.
- Sloth is a green recolor of the Globin enemies, and Super Sloth is a larger, green recolor of the Gazing Globin enemies. This is a meta-joke about the sin of sloth — the other Seven Deadly Sins and their Super Sins have unique sprites, but Sloth is an intentionally
*lazy* recolor of a basic enemy.
- Super Envy's "whole" appearance is different from Envy's, but when he takes enough damage and splits, his "segments" have the same sprites as the "segments" of Envy's, just blue-violet instead of gray.
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*Dwarf Fortress* is one of the few roguelikes to use Windows-1252, sometimes known as "ANSI" instead, which has 255 characters to standard ASCII's 128. It keeps the 16-colour limit for tradition's sake, despite requiring modern (future?) hardware.
- Roguelike games such as
*NetHack* use standard ASCII characters in place of actual graphics, so using different colors is the only way to have a large number of distinguishable objects or creatures. Roguelikes can usually only support 16 colours due to graphics rendering limitations in early hardware, giving a potential maximum of 2040 unique enemy symbols.
-
*Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book*:
- Minor NPCs in the town — a few models with different coloured clothes.
- Used a lot for monsters. The different colours do not represent different strengths though: for example the weakest Puni is blue, the weakest Ghost is white (with a blue hat), and the weakest Beast is brown and black.
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*Baldur's Gate*:
- Players can choose various races or classes, both male and female, but each combination has basically one repeated model with only colors (and obviously gear) customizable. Some classes don't even have their own paperdoll but share the model of another one (i.e. bards and thieves). Before the
*Enhanced Edition*, the first game even had female models only for humans and elves: female dwarves, halflings or gnomes were the same as their male counterparts.
- The same for various weapons and armors of the same types.
- Some joining characters became iconic and immediately recognizable from other characters with the same class also thanks to their colors: i.e. Imoen is the trumpery fuchsia (BG1) or violet (BG2) hooded thief, Quayle the fuchsia shortie, Aerie is yellow and orange, Keldorn the paladin in orange armor (unless you change it), Nalia is sky blue and brown, Shar-Teel is bright red, Minsc has white hair (despite his portrait shows a bald head).
- The cowled tutor monks in Candlekeep have the same texture, available in red (Tethoril, Ulraunt), yellow (Parda, Feldane, Piato), pink (Shistal), orange (Jessup), grey (Bendalis) and green (Karan) variants.
- Civilians have very few models (from commoners to nobles) and a huge variety of color palettes.
- Flinds are just stronger blue gnolls.
- Gauths are just smaller green beholders.
- Ogre berserkers are just sturdier pink ogres.
- Dryads, nymphs, sirines and succubi. They visually differ just by skin, clothes and hair color. Sirines and nereids are of some shades of blue or pale blueish-gray, thus are easily distinguishable. Succubi usually have dark or orange skin and white hair (except Kirinhale who has human-like colors). Dryads and Nymphs both have pale or human-like skin, various colors for hair (from white to yellow, black, bright green etc.) and clothes (usually green, light blue or brown).
- Firkraag, Draconis and Abazigal are the same red dragon model, but the latter is palette-swapped in blue for the purpose of representing a blue dragon (Draconis in green).
- Stone, clay, iron and adamantite golems are the same model with different colors and sizes.
- Magic golems instead are fire elementals with purple flames.
- The four warders in Durlag's Tower are dwarves assigned to the golem class, with the same clothes except Pride. Love is red, Fear is grey, Avarice is light blue.
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*Brave Story: New Traveler* not only plays this straight, but takes it a step further by having palette swaps within the *same species* of monster. Taken to a ridiculous extreme when one particular event has you fight two sets of triplets; three Cat Girl sisters and three Lizard Folk brothers. Each of the siblings look exactly the same, with the colors of their hair/skin being the only difference.
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*Chrono Trigger* was brutally honest about its use of palette swapped enemies. The imps that you fight early in the game are named "Blue Imp" and "Green Imp" respectively. The bestiary in the DS version differentiates between the two versions of the "Hench" monster by designating them (Blue) and (Purple), and does similarly for the green and purple versions of the Reptite mooks. Other palette swapped enemies are given unique names, however.
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*Chrono Cross*, unlike Chrono Trigger, had a wide variety of diverse enemies with little palette swaps, mostly the human soldier grunts were recolors and dwarf enemies having different names.
-
*Cthulhu Saves the World* switches palettes on several early goons to be used again later. The trope is called out sarcastically in one monster's description, "Not just palette-swapped. Honest!".
- Most wizard enemies in
*Dink Smallwood* mods are darker recolors of Martridge, the wizard from the original game. Occasionally one of the other characters or monsters gets color-swapped, such as the ice-blue pillbugs in *Dink Smallwood's Christmas*.
- In
*.hack//G.U.*:
- Atoli and Shino are palette swaps. Of course, this is easier to understand when you remember that this takes place in an MMORPG; that, and the fact that they look the same is a major plot point. Also, all the NPCs running around "The World" consist of palette swaps.
- A number of characters from
*.hack//SIGN* and the first PS2 game series are palette swaps of each other, including Bear and Orca, Mimiru and BlackRose, and Tsukasa and Elk. This is Played for Laughs in the *.hack//Gift* OVA, where one of the Blademasters (Bear and Orca's class) is killed in-game, and because dead characters are grayed out, nobody can tell which one of them it is.
- In
*Dragon Quest*:
- Palette swaps are used extensively throughout the series as a whole.
*Dragon Quest I* had palette swaps of every single monster save the final boss.
- In later games many of the early boss monsters would eventually show up later with a palette swap as a Degraded Boss.
- The Uderfrykte Matron in
*The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion* is just an extra-strong troll with a blurry shader applied to it.
- In
*Epic Battle Fantasy 1*: There are different colored versions of enemies:
- In the
*Etrian Odyssey* series, palette swaps of regular enemies are common, and each successive version that appears is more difficult to defeat than the previous one(s). *Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan* has a notable example with the Lion: While all of them are asleep by the first turn, the attack power of each new version is higher; and by the time you meet the *Red* Lion in the Bonus Dungeon, expect to deal with an attack so strong (Biting Flurry) that will likely instantly kill many or all of your party members if their defense isn't high enough.
- The
*Fallout* series uses palette swaps for certain subtypes of non-human creatures, as well as giving some the Underground Monkey treatment with different models and abilities.
- The
*Final Fantasy* games feature a lot of these, including Underground Monkeys. Perhaps the most noticeable example is *Final Fantasy X*'s Monster Arena, where all the bonus monsters (save for Neslug) are simply previous enemies and bosses (often not even colored differently).
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*Final Fantasy VIII* is just about the only game that does not use palette swaps in copious quantities, and even that game has Ultima/Omega Weapon and Elnoyle/Elvoret as swaps (the Japanese names of the latter, Aile Noire and Aile Violette, even lampshade this as they mean Black Wing and Violet Wing respectively). This was because the monsters leveled up with you. The other games had to make palette swaps from necessity.
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*Final Fantasy IX* had just about as little of it as possible too. The only palette monsters are the friendly monsters, the Black Waltzes and the crystal versions of the four chaos bosses. Mind you, while the -enemies- were almost all unique, the NPCs could be another story (though they too were often more varied than expected).
- Alongside the aforementioned example,
*Final Fantasy X* had an extremely odd example. The (unusually strange and unsettling) enemy Mimic uses a somewhat unique 'floating debris' model, but the real kicker is that instead of reusing previous enemy palettes/textures, they reuse their *animations*, giving the floating pile of rubble a 'body' used by a random fiend (or machina).
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*Final Fantasy X-2* at least tries some mild deviation, by making its palette swapped baddies progressively *bigger.* Although the game still suffered this trope for a few enemies, *including the Final Boss*; the final boss is basically a copy of the main character from *Final Fantasy X* in different clothes and uses the exact same battle animations, right down to his critical HP and KO animations! This fact is what kickstarts the entire plot.
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*Final Fantasy XII* still uses Palette Swaps, but rely on them a lot less than the past games did. For example, dragons and wolves will still come in different colors, but will also have other features added to make them different from their weaker counterparts, such as spikes on the skull, sport flaming eyes, being larger than the previous monsters, etc. However, the animations are still recycled for all monsters that are in the same family tree. There are mentions of migration and evolution of creatures occasionally in the lore, though, which explains a good few examples... but not why the wolves' basic attack is an uppercut performed with their snouts note : since they use the same animations as the Hyenas, which have a sharp horn on their muzzles that the wolves lack.
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*Final Fantasy XI* has similar explanations for why monsters of the same family had such bizarre separations across environments. On the other hand, FFXI barely even uses palette swaps; including many 'Bosses' (rare monsters referred to as NM, although mostly not storyline related) using the same sprites as the regular mobs that surround them (although occasionally with an inflated size). This was particularly bad where, for quite awhile after they were introduced, five of *the most powerful monsters in the game* (at the time of their release) used the same models as far more mundane creatures. They've since been reskinned, but still use the same base models.
- In
*Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings*, all the regular summons (bar the ones like Levianthan, Ifrit, and so on), are palette swaps of each other, so that like the above example the player can tell them apart.
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*Dissidia Final Fantasy* works this into the plot by having most of the enemies be Manikins, which are player character models with a coloured crystal texture all over and Glowing Eyes. Most of Cloud's animations are also recycled from Zack's in *Crisis Core*, which was developed just a little earlier - although this makes sense due to Cloud's powers being copied from Zack.
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*Final Fantasy Mystic Quest* has palette swaps for virtually every enemy besides the Final Boss. There are two or three different palette swaps of each normal enemy type, each mini-boss comes back as a Degraded Boss enemy(for example, Medusa, the boss of the Volcano, comes back as Stheno in the Lava Dome), and each of the four major bosses returns with a palette swap as bosses of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
- The
*Geneforge* series uses recolors for the second tier of each creation type, and extra enemy exclusive variants are usually colored accordingly. During character creation, the player can choose between 4 colors and a darker shade for each of those colors.
- The vast majority of enemies in
*Golden Sun* have three recolors throughout the game. The few that don't generally have a Dummied Out third color. Even about half of the bosses are derived from this.
- In
*Jade Cocoon 2*, some Divine Beasts come in multiple elemental varieties. For example, Mau Divine Beasts come in Fire, Wind and Earth varieties, each with their own stats and attacks, but not Water because it is the opposite to the Mau family's main element, Fire.
-
*Kingdom Hearts*:
- The standard editions of the games mostly avoid this (surprising for a Square Enix game), only using palette swaps to denote the elemental affinity of the mage-type Heartless; however, the Final Mix editions of both games use palette swaps in interesting ways. First of all, nearly all of the standard Mooks in the Final Mix games have had their colors changed from the original game's colors—for example, the first game's purple and pink Wyverns became blue and gold in the original Final Mix, and the second game's blue Hook Bats became red in Final Mix+. Some enemies, such as the black Shadows, remained the same in all editions, and though there was a rumor that the palette-swapped standard enemies had their stats tweaked, they really are the same enemies. The Final Mix editions of the game also included extra monsters; of these, many of them are palette swaps of standard enemies with slight changes in the mesh, high stats, and a host of annoying special abilities.
- This isn't the case in
*358/2 Days*. Most of the bosses are larger palette swaps of average heartless you fight normally, with a few other minor aesthetic alterations. Also, some of the Keyblades are palette swaps of each other, and when ||you equip the Zero Gear, the Kingdom Key+ is just the Kingdom Key with higher stats||.
- Also from
*Days*: ||Xion|| is a palette swap of Roxas ||minus the dual-wielding||.
- The dream eaters in
*Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]* are perhaps the most notable examples of this in the series, with the friendly Spirits having bright colors, the Nightmares having dark colors, and the rare Nightmares using a blueish-white as their primary body color instead of whatever the normal versions used. The only differences they possess aside from color are the shapes of their eyes; the Nightmares all possess circular red eyes, whereas the Spirits have four different shapes per variety that change based on their disposition.
-
*Kingdom of Paradise*'s field enemies consist merely of differently-colored versions of a few models (archer, swordsman, golem). The color of the uniform lets the player know which clan they're from.
-
*Knight Bewitched*: All the dragons living in Dragon Rock look like recolors of Typhus the Younger, down to using the same face portrait.
- The
*Of Pen and Paper* series:
- All drell characters in
*Mass Effect 2* look exactly identical save for skin colour. Multiplayer characters in *Mass Effect 3* are palette swaps of various *Mooks* and player's armor suits. This is also true for the case of the Earth DLC's N7 kits as only players who are very familiar with various armor sets are likely to recognize that: The Fury is Kasumi with a metal mask; The Destroyer's skin is based on the Terminus armor; The Demolisher has reskinned Cerberus Ajax armor; The Paladin has Inferno armor; The Shadow has a skin similar to a Phantom; and The Slayer is Kai Leng with an Alliance fighter pilot's helmet.
- The pre-"Extended Cut" ending to
*Mass Effect 3* was a rather infamous example of this. While there were some minor differences between each of the Multiple Endings, the difference between the vast majority of the footage was a matter of the color of the particle effects.
-
*Mega Man Battle Network*:
- While there are numerous viruses over the six games, each has three to six different palette swaps, e.g. Mettaur, Mettaur2, Mettaur3, and MettaurOmega, just to name one set. Third-level and Omega viruses often have slightly changed attacks, but for the most part, the only difference is increased HP, speed, and damage output.
- The Omega versions of the bosses in the fourth game also receive a palette swap, perhaps to help indicate that they're on a completely different level from the previous versions strength wise.
- The same is true of
*Mega Man Star Force*. Met viruses, for example go yellow -> red -> blue, with their health, damage, and the speed at which their attacks move increasing; the later ones are also more likely to retreat into their helmets. *Star Force 2* also has different colours of Mu wave soldier, denoting elemental alignment rather than power.
-
*Might and Magic VI* and *VIII* used this, along with size differences, to help differentiate the members of many of the creature sets. *VII*, having prioritised its limited development time differently than *VIII* would, used it more sparingly... as it resorted to *re-tinting* for many monsters.
-
*Monster Hunter* uses Palette Swaps to differentiate standard wyverns from their Subspecies upgrades. For example, a low level Rathalos is Red, a medium powered one is Azure (dark blue), and a high level one is Silver. While many of the Subspecies that debuted in the first generation are simply harder versions of their original versions, over the course of the years the series has added Subspecies that are more unique and easily distinguishable: Their elemental attacks may be different, their attacks may be the same but done in different patterns or ways, and they may be found in very different habitats from those of the main species. There are also Variants (regular monsters that are going under abnormal conditions) and Deviants (monsters that have mutated into more aggressive versions), which are present as palette swaps as well.
-
*Mother*:
-
*EarthBound Beginnings* gave most enemy types multiple palette swaps, but had the decency to occasionally add subtle changes to their swapped sprites (a dog-collar on the wolf sprite to make a 'stray dog', rust marks on the robot sprite to make the 'scrapper'...)
-
*EarthBound* parodied this by giving the palette swaps goofy names "Plain crocodile," (to suggest more varieties are to come) "Manly Fish's Brother," "Starman Deluxe," etc.
-
*The Other: Rosie's Road of Love*: Apples and Tomatoes are both foods that restore 20 HP.
- The
*Persona* games make use of this. All enemies in *3* and *4*, even bosses, save for the plot related ones, are palette swaps of their base-type, although some enemy types have slight differences (for example, the Fuzz enemies wear different type of police uniforms depending on their strength).
- The various
*Phantasy Star* games have used this. The first *Phantasy Star* had one notable (for an ancient 8-bit game) detail: the skeleton-type enemies had a different shield design for all three of their swaps.
-
*Pokémon*:
- The series generally avoids doing this too much with their own Mons. That being said, a few species like Plusle and Minun are purposely designed to look very similar to each other. Later species may have differences between individuals of the same species. These can vary from being purely cosmetic (such as male and female Hippopotas or East Sea and West Sea Shellos) to working differently in battle (Meowstic's moveset varies between the male and the female and Gourgiest's various sizes differ in base stats).
- Backlash ensued when in Gen V, the Kami trio turned out to mostly be this (there are some minor differences, such as the number of horns and the shape of their tails). It's alleviated a bit in
*Black and White 2*, however, as the Kami trio are all given alternate "beast" forms that are *very* different from each other (being a bird, a dragon and a tiger, respectively).
-
*Pokémon X and Y* use this often for overworld NPCs. For example, Ace Trainers, Veterans, Rising Stars, Sky Trainers, and Psychics all use the same two models (one male and one female) with different skins.
- However, the most popular examples of palette swaps in the series are Shiny Pokémon, an extremely rare variant from the Pokémon's normal colors. The colors themselves range from being only slightly lighter or slightly darker than the original, such as normal Gengar's purple to shiny Gengar's dark indigo, to very dramatic examples such as regular Eevee's brown to shiny Eevee's stark white, but due to the fact that they're incredibly rare (roughly a 1 in 8192 chance without modifications, 1 in 4096 from the sixth generation and onwards, and increased by repeating certain tasks enough,) they're highly prized by collectors. Even so, they're functionally no different then regularly colored Pokemon. Can also function as a Metal Slime if the shiny is one that gives tons of EXP when caught or killed, such as Audino or Chansey. As of the eighth generation, there are palette swaps OF the palette swaps in the form of Diamond Shinies, which emit square sparkles as opposed to the standard stars. Set overworld encounters, Max Raid Bosses, and Eggs have a 15/16 chance of being standard and 1/16 chance of being Diamond, while grass and spawned encounters are the inverse.
-
*Pokémon Sun and Moon* introduced regional variants of existing Pokémon. While some variants have distinctly different body shapes, others just have a different coloring.
-
*Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure* has palette-swapped *dungeons*, among other things.
- In
*Secret of Mana*, most enemies have at least a few palette swap variants, and the vast majority of the bosses return with a palette swap later in the game- for example, the Mantis Ant, the first boss, returns as the Metal Mantis midway through the game. A few late-game bosses have unique models, though.
- The
*Shining Series*:
- The various enemies in
*Shining in the Darkness*.
-
*Shining the Holy Ark* was really bad with this, to the point where simliar looking enemies would reappear in the dungeon after the next. It was probably because they were all heavily animated (for the time) so the game couldn't physically have as many enemies.
-
*Shining Wisdom* is split into two areas, east and west. Most of the enemies in the east (the latter part of the game) are just the same enemies with a different colour scheme and new attacks.
- The earlier
*Shin Megami Tensei* games loved to do this. The most notorious example? The three seraphs' sprite when they are in your party is the same as the archangel's: the second demon of the "divine" clan.
- This even happens in newer games. Tam Lin looks like a palette swap of of Cu Chulainn, and Chorozon looks like a blue Legion without the tentacles.
-
*Shin Megami Tensei IV* does this with the four DLC demons that you don't fight. Asterius is based on the Minotaur, Oread is based on Napaea, Plasma is based on Chemtrail, and Aeshma is based on Asmodeus. These are actually pretty clever examples - each of these pairs are connected in some way. For example, Plasma and Chemtrail are both demons based off of deadly conspiracy theories that put humans at fault while Asterius is an alternate name for the Minotaur.
-
*Skies of Arcadia* had the Looper enemies - as Arcadia has six colored moons, a different colored Looper is founds depending on what region you're in note : They are:red Loopers in Nasr, green Loopers in Ixa'taka, blue Loopers in Yafutoma, purple Loopers in the Lands of Ice, yellow Loopers in Valua, and white/silver Loopers in the mostly empty region under the Silver Moon. There is also a far-reaching area in the world where you can find all six varieties of Looper, in addition to a giant orange Looper that you must fight with your ship. Finally, a superboss, Elcian, is a black Looper that is found in the Dark Rift.
-
*Sweet Home (1989)* has several enemies with more powerful recolours in later portions of the game. (Wisp and Bane, Hound and Wolf, etc.) One interesting variation is Ghoul, in which the more powerful version is not only slightly redrawn (Missing an arm) but is also flipped upside down. (Indicating that it's dropping down/hanging from the ceiling.)
-
*Sword of Vermilion* was a heavy offender from the 16-bit era. All the common enemies came in six different colors (in order of ascending power: green, blue, red, black, silver, gold). Also, only the Final Boss was truly unique, all other bosses were palette swaps of four different models (dragon, giant, fire demon and necromancer).
-
*Tales of Legendia* is a big offender. The same twelve enemies appear constantly throughout the game, sometimes twice in the same dungeon, with only their palettes swapped out. This gets ridiculous within the first ten hours of the game, but in a seventy hour game, it begins to feel incredibly monotonous.
- In
*Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land*:
- A number of enemies are recolored for stronger versions. Most apparent in the enemies based on the playable classes like the sorcerer or ninja as there are many versions of them that show up.
- There are only a handful of base bodies which were recolored and given slightly different features such as a different weapon and a different face. It is done well enough that until a conversation that shows a number of them back to back happens you may not even realize that this is the case.
-
*The World Ends with You* does this with the Noise. There are sometimes cosmetic differences between the various versions of each Noise species, and the boss versions of a few of the more powerful versions often have tattoos all over their bodies in addition to more threatening characteristics (bigger horns/tusks), but overall most Noise are palette swaps of about fifteen or sixteen different species. ||Unlike all of the other bosses, who except for the two bat bosses and boss versions of normal Noise all have unique sprites, the superboss Panthera Cantus is a palette swap as well, of two of the bosses, one on each screen.||
-
*Xenoblade Chronicles X*: Nearly all the different indigen species have a counterpart that looks and acts very similar to them. For example, Liceors are swaps of Saltats, Caros are swaps of Grexes, Viragoes are swaps of Vigents, and Jaculs are swaps of Auravis. Usually, the two species live on different continents (Liceors are only found in Sylvalum, for example, while Saltats are everywhere else), but there is some occasional cross-over.
-
*The 7th Saga* has the Bounty Hunter Pison, who, after begin defeated the first time, shows up unexpectedly later in the quest and proudly announces that he is now *Red*-Pison. Turns out to be Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and you immediately fight a stronger version of the original enemy, now palette-swapped to red. He even does this *again* even later on, becoming Metal-Pison and getting a gunmetal gray recolor.
- Roughly half of the Yo-kai in
*Yo-Kai Watch* are palette swaps of each other. In most cases, the game does at least give them different abilities and strengths from the original variation. For example, white and blue Komasan uses fire magic, while brown Komajiro uses thunder magic. Only a few are properly characterized, like Komajiro and Damona. Also, there are also over *200* variations of series mascot Jibanyan, and only a handful of them can be obtained in regular gameplay, with the others all from bonus quests from the toy Yo-Kai Medals, that were either in the blind packs (so good luck finding those) or included in other products, and in one case another game by Level-5.
- Harold and Benny Balacera from
*Balacera Brothers* uses the same model, with the difference being the colour of their outfits and Benny wearing a cap. They *could* be twin brothers though, justifying the trope.
- The different enemy factions in
*BLOODCRUSHER II* are just reskins of the same basic enemies.
- The old
*Bullet* uses the *same* sprite for all the bosses (except the last one, which is a Cyber Cyclops), recoloured again and again.
- One of the final bosses in
*Darius Gaiden* is a palette swap of the **first** boss, making for a nasty trick for any unprepared player.
-
*Galaxian* was the first game to have palette-swapped enemies where sprites were multi-colored. In fact, this is the oldest game to have multi-colored sprites.
- Hardcore fans of the
*Gradius* series were disappointed to discover that in *Gradius V*, the Player 2 ship was not Lord British (the red, single-nosed 2P ship of *Life Force*), but just a red-colored Vic Viper.
-
*The Guardian Legend* does this with bosses Fleepa, Optomon, Bombarder, and Clawbot, each of which recurs in different colors, and the last of which reuses the top half of the Bombarder sprite.
- Raizing's "Bat" series of shmups does this differently. Pressing certain buttons or button combos not only changes the palette of player ships, but also gives them different abilities, such as enhanced speed, bomb, shot and option firepower, and in some cases, a smaller hitbox.
-
*Ninja Commando* allows both players to choose the same character, where their only difference will be their clothing. For instance, both players selecting Joe Tiger will have two Joes onscreen wearing red (P1) and blue (P2).
-
*Super Spy Hunter* has you fight upgraded palette swaps of the second and fourth bosses prior to the final boss.
- Done with an
*attack* of all things in the *Touhou Project* series. In Double Dealing Character and Hidden Star in Four Seasons, due to the circumstances surrounding the incident in each case, Marisa's signature Love Sign "Master Spark" gets a Palette Swap in each (In the former, she Bewitched Weapon "Dark Spark" due to her Mini-Hakkero being possessed, and in the latter, she gets Love Sign "Master Spark Frozen" due to being infused with the power of winter).
-
*Yars' Revenge* does this quite oddly. The Qotile constantly palette swaps as part of its normal function, going through a rainbow of the colors that the 2600 could produce. When it turns red, it becomes a Swirl and tries to kill you. After the player has scored 70,000 points, the shield around the Qotile turns blue, and the Qotile will turn into Swirls when it turns blue and yellow as well. Of course, the original red Swirl is faster and usually trickier to avoid/kill. The shield goes through two other palette swaps as well - at 150,000 points, it turns grey, the Qotile's transforming frequency turns back to normal, but the Swirl can now turn in flight to home in on the Yar; and at 230,000 points, the shield turns pink, and the Qotile now has triple-frequency *and* homing ability.
- In
*Descent* and *Descent II*, some enemy robots would have textures that looked like textures found within the games' walls or floors. Although some were for camouflage, some 'bots had their textures changed to denote different behavior (such as dropping bombs, instead of firing laser or missiles or what-have-you). Red Medium Hulks are three times tougher than Brown Medium Hulks, and use homing missiles, in barrages, nonetheless. Class 2 Platforms have a green Demonic Spider variation that shoots rapid-fire concussion missiles. In *Descent II*, the goddamned Red Hornets later have a more demonic green variant, the Spawns.
-
*Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar*: While the other games will use palette swaps for minor characters and other insignificant things (items, animals, etc.), a lot of the major townspeople in *Grand Bazaar* share sprites with at least one other villager. The two main character choices (a male and a female) are just swaps of each other. Claire shares the same sprite with Nellie, and Isaac with Wilbur; Cindy with Lauren, along with every other young girl (including your daughter); Kevin with all other young boys (including your son); Ethel with Joan; and Raul with Diego and Enrique (they're all brothers). They at least get somewhat different Character Portraits, but because of this they wear really similar clothing in their artwork.
-
*Idol Manager*: Idol portraits are a mix and match of a large, but still limited, pool of poses, faces, hairstyles and outfit designs.
-
*I Was a Teenage Exocolonist*: The career endcards display the trope on two levels:
- Each individual endcard adapts to Sol's gender presentation, but only via changing their hairstyle.
- Several pairs and trios of endcards are clearly using identical or nearly identical poses for Sol, while changing some combination of Sol's clothing and what they are holding. The background is always more heavily modified by comparison. For example, both the botanist and lawyer ending show Sol sitting at a desk from the same angle with their left arm raised, but the botanist is holding a plant, while the lawyer is touching a larger holoscreen.
- Every animal in
*Let's Build a Zoo* has 10 variants. While some of them have slightly different base sprites, most of them are recolours of the default. Averted in the *Dinosaur Island* DLC, though, where every prehistoric species only has one variant each.
- In
*Viva Piñata*, every pinata species has multiple colour variants that can be obtained by feeding them certain items. The Flutterscotch variants have different models in the Xbox 360 games, but they're just palette swaps in *Pocket Paradise*.
- In the SNES ports of
*Wing Commander* and *Wing Commander: The Secret Missions*, the Jalthi was a color-swapped version of the Salthi model, due to storage limitations of the cartridge. However, the Jalthi retains its hard-hitting armament of six guns, making it easier to dismiss the heavy fighter as one of the disposable mook fighters with only two lasers until it's too late.
-
*Wings of Dawn*: Lampshaded in-universe with a direct reference to the trope namer with the Sweeper and Astray, two Fura'ngle fighters that look identical save for their colorations.
- In
*Backyard Skateboarding*, ||Old School Andy|| is a palette swap of Andy MacDonald.
-
*Punch-Out!!*: In the earlier games, many boxers have each a swapped counterpart with a different face:
- The first arcade game has Glass Joe and Kid Quick, Piston Hurricane and Pizza Pasta, and Bald Bull and Mr. Sandman.
- The second arcade game (
*Super Punch-Out!!*) actually has the first two of five fighters, Bear Hugger and Dragon Chan, have their own distinct palettes. Vodka Drunkenski and Super Macho Man share similar bodies. Great Tiger is Piston Hurricane with a turban and slightly longer mustache.
- The NES version has Glass Joe and Don Flamenco, Von Kaiser and Great Tiger, Bald Bull and Mr. Sandman (returning from the arcade game), Vodka Drunkenski / Soda Popinski and Super Macho Man (returning from the arcade sequel
*Super Punch-Out*), and Piston Honda and Mike Tyson / Mr. Dream. The only character with a unique model is King Hippo.
-
*Super Punch Out* for SNES has Gabby Jay and Bob Charlie, Bear Hugger and Mad Clown, Piston Hurricane and Aran Ryan, Bald Bull and Mr. Sandman (again), Dragon Chan and Heike Kagero, Masked Muscle and Super Macho Man, and the two Bruiser Brothers (sharing their own model). The only original palettes are Narcis Prince and Hoy Quarlow.
- The Wii game gave all of the characters distinct character models, although they still have similar appearances, indirectly referencing this trope.
- In
*Mutant Football League*, there are five player races: 'Human'/Superhuman, Troll, Alien, Skeleton, and Robot. Robots are actually palette-swapped Skeleton sprites with the ribcages, arms, and legs "filled out"; the only team with robots, the all-robot Turbo Techies, is thus essentially a palette swap of the all-skeleton teams, the Deathskin Razors and the Sixty Whiners.
-
*Mutant League Hockey*:
- There are just three races in this one (Skeleton, Troll, and Robot), with robots now having completely unique sprites. The Deathskin Razors and Turbo Techies are again guilty of this, but not relative to each other — they have swaps in the form of the Dead Things and Chilly Liars (Razors) and the Bruiser Bots (Techies)
- Of the coaches, only Bricka of the Mutant Monsters and Doc Whizz of the Bruiser Bots have unique portraits and quotes (though Doc Whizz shares his player evaluations with the Robot coaches). The rest are palette swaps of one of the following "molds" — the Robot, the Troll, the Barbarian, the Wimp, or the Hellspawn.
-
*Dead by Daylight*:
- To tie in with the
*Silent Hill* DLC, Behaviour made available some skins that allow series protagonist and *DBD* Survivor Cheryl Mason to instead become NPCs Lisa Garland and Cybil Bennett, with a later update adding James Sunderland.
- Instead of making entirely new Killer slots, they introduced crossover content with Crypt TV by making unique skins available to purchase for existing Killers. Specifically, the Hag can become the Birch-Witch, the Doctor can become the Look-See, and the Huntress can become the Mordeo.
- The
*Resident Evil* chapter came with two Survivors, Leon S. Kennedy and Jill Valentine, who in turn can be skinned up as the Redfield siblings, Chris and Claire. Another chapter based on *Resident Evil* was released later on, which gave Leon and Jill skins of Carlos Oliviera and Sheva Alomar. The second chapter also introduced a skin for The Legion that turns them into HUNK.
- While the Octarians are the main enemies of all three
*Splatoon* games, *Octo Expansion* colors them a blue-to-neon-yellow gradient to signify how they've been "sanitized" by whatever's running the Deep Sea Metro, while *Splatoon 3* gives them all fur to fit with the "Return of the Mammalians" theme.
-
*Dragon Wars* has a lot of this with its dragons. Kinnara and Garuda, Kastor and Borg, and probably others, are palette swaps of each other.
-
*Age of Wonders*, very few fabric units (Larva-Maggot, Gold-Black Dragon) and most modded units.
- Almost all of the non-plot-related enemies and characters in
*Disgaea* have higher class ranks that are palette swaps of their base class, each with slightly better stats than the last.
-
*Disgaea 3* introduces a service that allows one to change a unit's color to that of any of their other creatable ranks for a fee, and 4 expands on it by introducing unique colors that aren't used by any of a class' ranks, and extends the palette swapping privileges to unique characters.
- Also in 3, various Palette swaps of Mao are important to the plot as "Inner Mao"s, such as the orange-colored "Saucy Maos" representing his love of hot sauce, and the green-colored "Maos who Say Dad", representing ||Mao's repressed trauma of accidentally getting his father killed.|| Another green-colored one acts as "Mao's True Heart", portraying a much more mature version of him.
- A similar effect is seen in most other Nippon Ichi titles, including
*La Pucelle* and *Makai Kingdom*. *Phantom Brave* did it with the titles attached to characters instead of classes.
- In
*Disgaea 4* Des X is a palette swap of Desco. This being Disgaea, is pointed out and lampshaded.
- Etna turns Blue for a chapter in
*Disgaea Dimension 2*. This is a plot point, as Etna herself points out, she looks like she's "Player 2". All of her alternate unit palettes are also swapped.
- Most of the named plot characters in D2 - such as Laharl, Etna, Sicily and Flonne - have unique sprites. Lanzarote, on the other hand, is an Archer recolour. Given that Lanzarote is plot-relevant for one chapter and is then basically only notable because you probably won't have a caster of aggressive buffs before then, this was probably done just to save time.
-
*Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance* took this to a whole new level: every character can have their entire palette changed how you want it to look. This applies twice over to any character that has a transformation-style Overload skill, allowing you to custom color their alternate form.
-
*Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny*: In the game's final chapter, Zed has to contend with a version of himself from a differing timeline where ||he ended up giving in to his destructive impulses and resumed being the God of Destruction he once was.|| Zed even complains of how the other one is merely a palette-swap of him.
-
*Final Fantasy Tactics*:
- Nono from
*Final Fantasy Tactics Advance* wears a green version of his job class, the Gadgeteer's clothes.
- All generic units, enemy and ally, in the series are color swaps of each other so players can identify units from each other. Example, a Nu Mou Black Mage is generally clothed in blue while an enemy one has red clothing. This makes things moderately confusing when you have to fight Blue Mages dressed in red and Red Mages dressed in blue. In
*Tactics A2* this becomes funny. The red king is dressed in blue, the blue king is dressed in red, the black king is dressed in red, and the green king is dressed in purple. Not only that, but they aren't masters of their namesake magic, they use other types more often. So apparently magic types can get palette swapped as well.
- The
*Fire Emblem* series plays this in several different ways:
- There is usually just one or two (if both genders are possible) character models per class; everyone in a particular class is a palette swap of that model. Generic units are coloured by affiliation, while playable, boss and other important characters have their own unique colour scheme. Some characters have their own individual class (e.g. Lord) and thus look unique.
*Radiant Dawn* alleviates this to some extent by giving every player and important character a unique skin to their model which reflects their actual appearance, but the model's animations do not change at all. That is why the fans clamor for the official character art—these portraits tend to add a touch of personalization that the in-game models often do not portray. Several exceptions exist to this tendency, particularly in the GBA era. *The Sacred Stones* introduced three apprentice classes; there is only one character each that as such looks rather unique... until he/she promotes into a proper class. *Blazing Sword*'s Hawkeye - comparatively not that important a character - has his own completely unique Berserker sprite which differs significantly from the normal in its movement, whereas all other Berserkers use the generic sprite. Weird.
- Boss portraits are perhaps the more obvious example of this trope in the series, as after the NES era it wasn't really an acceptable break from reality based on technical constraints, unlike everyone's battle sprites being identical. The older the game, the more likely you'll run into a lookalike boss with a random palette. The Jugdral duology is most notorious for this since it was done with semi-important villains, though the original game was even worse. After
*The Binding Blade*, which memorably had six palette swaps of the same boss character all as the bosses of the same chapter, the practice waned through the following handheld games before finally ending for good in *Path of Radiance*.
-
*Fire Emblem: Awakening*: All of your allies' outfits for their classes tend to either be blue or have blue lining. There are a few exceptions, however:
- In the true tradition of the red/green cavalier duo, Sully and Stahl, have red and green cavalier outfits, respectively, and the red and green lining is used for their paladin and great knight uniforms.
- Kellam, an armor knight, has orange lining on his uniform. Like Sully and Stahl, he keeps that color for his great knight outfit; ditto goes for Sully's future daughter Kjelle, only with light purple instead.
- Lissa has a yellow dress for her cleric and war cleric classes, and she gets a green and yellow sage robe - it's actually identical to her sister Emmeryn's outfit. Lissa's future son Owain also gets a dark yellow colored myrmidon/swordmaster outfit.
- Both Miriel (first generation) and Brady (Maribelle's son) get unique-looking sage's robes (Miriel's is black with a thin gold collar, while Brady's is dark purple with the same Roman Numeral collar as Lissa's), and Brady also gets a black and purple war monk outfit.
- Cordelia and her daughter Severa have red lining for their Pegasus knight and mercenary/hero outfits. Flavia's hero uniform also has red linings.
- Nowi, Nah, and Tiki are green, red, and bright yellow-colored dragons, respectively.
note : A female Morgan, if any of these women are her mother, can also become a dragon, but will always have Nowi's coloring
- Both Anna and ||Gangrel|| have red and yellow/black colored Trickster outfits, respectively.
- Finally, Say'ri has a light purple swordmaster outfit.
- There's also an odd variant for the second-generation playable characters: palette swapping their hair colors depending who their parents are.
-
*Fire Emblem Fates* retains the unique color palette for each character's base class model as well as their "canon" promotion. (For instance, Kaze and Saizo wear green and red as Ninjas and Master Ninjas, respectively.) It also keeps *Awakening*'s use of palette swapping the second generation characters' hair based on their parent's color.
-
*Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia* takes this to its logical extreme, with each character getting their own unique palette regardless of what class they're currently in. So, Gray and Tobin will always be wearing green and yellow versions of their classes' uniforms, respectively.
- In
*Fossil Fighters: Champions*:
- All of the Super Evolvers are palette swaps, except for Kaishin and Buldor. They also include similar attack sets.
- Strangely enough, Teffla and Papygon are palette swaps of each other, despite evolving from completely different vivosaurs.
-
*Heroes of Might and Magic* suffers from a bad case of palette swapping when units upgrade. Granted, some bells and whistles are usually added, but it's painfully obvious the models were built from the same sprite.
- Surprisingly for a game of its complexity,
*Jagged Alliance 2* has this. All enemies, mercs and militia are basically the same 3 models (Big Male, Regular Male, and Female) with a different palette for each. Mercs have the most diversity, as each has a different clothing color combination, and of course there are all sorts of combinations for hair color and skin color for everyone in the game.
-
*Luminous Arc* and its sequel are horrible about this. There are probably less than ten different monster sprites that are recolored to make all the generic enemies you face.
- The economic edutainment game
*M.U.L.E.* does this with the players' characters if any of them are the same species, but since they only share the screen during auctions, it's not really a problem.
- The Koubu mecha in the first
*Sakura Wars* game are identical aside from color and weapons. The second game added another set of sprites for the two characters with European designed mecha. Once the games entered 3D with the third game, each character's mecha became more individualized with unique emblems, animations, and weapon models.
-
*Shining Force III* does a pretty good job of averting this, until around half way when you notice the earliest monsters reappearing but with a different colour. The humble bat, one of the earliest enemies, reappears in Chapter 4 as the Vampire Bat which is bright red.
- In
*Super Robot Wars V*, 2 units reused from Z3 had their sprites' colors changed, in the process turning them from Char's Counterattack units to Unicorn units: the Earth Federation's Jegan mobile suits (more or less becoming the Jegan Type A2 without changing the name) and Neo-Zeon's Musaka-class ships.
- Despite
*Unicorn* not being in the *Super Robot Wars X* cast, the Neo-Zeon mobile suits Gaza-D and Zssa are still reused from *V*, only changed to their original coloring from *ZZ*.
- In
*Telepath RPG*, shadowlings get different color palettes to show how old they are. In the original, every shadowling is red except for Festus, who is blue, and Nala, who is green. (Tastidian and Nelis are different colors too, but they get unique models instead of just a palette swap.) In later games, blue shadowlings are always psy healers, probably as a Call-Back to Festus.
- In
*Telepath Tactics*, every class has a colored uniform of some kind that changes color depending on what side they're on. (In the campaign, Emma's army is blue, her enemies are red, and neutrals are a variety of colors, usually green.) In a departure from previous games, shadowling color is no longer tied to age — they don't have a uniform, so they have to change the color of their eyes and hands instead.
-
*Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories* does this in a way to mitigate the infamous ped clumping issue that has plagued sixth-generation installments of the franchise due to artistic and hardware constraints.
- Pedestrian models in
*Mafia II* utilise a variation of *Mortal Kombat*'s palette swap scheme, where a single model is used for a pedestrian type, with certain parts of the character's texture recoloured on the fly. It works somewhat, though players may still notice clones of the same model being clumped together on-screen at points.
-
*Minecraft*:
- Cave Spiders are smaller, blue versions of the regular Spider enemy, and are able to inflict poison with their attacks. Unlike the regular spider, which spawns in any dark condition, the cave spiders only appear from spawners inside abandoned mineshafts.
- The first five ores added to the game were originally all palette-swaps of one-another, having the texture for stone but with bits of the material in it. Black for coal, beige for iron, yellow for gold, red for redstone, and cyan for diamond. This has since been changed in future updates, which differentiated the ore shapes more.
- Horses come in thirty-five varieties (five patterns and seven colors), while Tropical Fish come in over three thousand (two body shapes, six patterns per shape, sixteen colors for the main body, and sixteen colors for the pattern).
- Unlike horses, donkeys and mules each only come in one possible colour, however mules use the same models as donkeys, only coloured dark brown instead of light grey (they are also functionally the same, with the exception that you cannot breed mules).
- Axolotls come in five different colors, pink, white, brown, yellow, and blue. The first four spawn in the wild and represent the different colour morphs that axolotls can take in real life, the last one is a Pokémon reference that has a 1/1200 chance of appearing when breeding two axolotls.
- Cows have a rare variant which spawns on mushroom islands known as mooshrooms, which are bright-red, have red mushrooms growing out of their back, and dark pits instead of eyes. These have their own sub-variant known as brown mooshrooms, which are the same except they are brown and have brown mushrooms growing on them.
- The common zombie has two variants known as husks (basically desert zombies, or mummies) and drowned (basically water zombies). Their models are the same, but the variants are strong, as husks do not burn in daylight and inflict hunger with each hit, and drowned can swim and can wield throwable tridents.
- Skeletons have two variants, the snowy-dwelling husks and the Nether-dwelling Wither skeletons. Their behaviour is the same, but the husks are draped in rags and inflict slowness with their arrows, while the Wither skeletons are much bigger, black in colour, wield swords instead of bows, and inflict the Wither effect with each hit.
- Cats, frogs, parrots, and rabbits can all spawn in a variety of different set colours. The cats and rabbit reference the different natural breeds (although the tuxedo cat is also based on a cat owned by the lead developer), while parrots and frogs reference different parrot and frog species.
- Pandas have a rare brown variant, which looks the same except its black markings are brown, and references a very rare and real subspecies of panda known as the Qinling panda that looks like that.
- Foxes can spawn as a red fox in taiga biomes, or as a white arctic fox in tundra biomes.
- Piglins have a variant known as piglin brutes, which use the same model, except dressed in black clothing with a one-armed gold gauntlet, instead of brown clothing, wield axes instead of a sword or a crossbow, and have a scar over one eye. They only spawn in bastions, and are
*much* tougher than the basic piglin, and *always* hostile.
- Guardians have a mini-boss variant known as elder guardians, which look the same except much bigger and pale-coloured. It attacks and defends itself the same way as a regular guardian, but it also inflicts Mining Fatigue, and is both stronger and
*much* tougher than its smaller relative. However, they do not respawn once killed.
- Squids have a bioluminescent cave-dwelling equivalent known as glow squids (which originated from the spin-off game
*Minecraft Earth*). Interestingly, their textures are more cartoony than the regular squid, with mismatched eyes that don't line up.
-
*[PROTOTYPE]* has both lighter-colored USMC and darker-colored Blackwatch palettes of military vehicles, the ones you can actually hijack. Blackwatch ground vehicles are tougher to kill while their aircraft carry more ammunition(and are also slightly tougher), than their Marine counterparts. They can also be easily identified with their respective logos too.
Also the civilian populace, where any given civilian model has a few color themes affecting attire and skin.
- In
*Saints Row: The Third*, you can unlock new skins for your gang members (like hookers, cops, mascots, National Guard soldiers, and even rival gang members) by completing story missions and minigames. If you actually apply these skins to your gang, it quickly becomes obvious that they are simply palette swapped versions of the originals, right down to the ones modeled on rival gangsters continuing to make disparaging remarks about the Saints during battle.
-
*Terraria*:
- There are seven different versions of the basic Slime monster.
- There's also two versions of the basic Skeleton monster, two of the Skeleton caster, two of the Bat, two of the Man eater (a jungle-based killer plant), and many of the Zombie.
- In 1.2, Lead, Tin, Tungsten, Platinum, Palladium, Orichalcum and Titanium are practically alternate (and slightly better) materials of Iron, Copper, Silver, Gold, Cobalt, Mythril and Adamantite respectively, that can be generated in a world in the place of the latter materials. The weapons, bricks and furnishings made from them are appropriately different-colored as well, while the 'alternate' Hardmode Metal armor suits have unique properties that the Cobalt, Mythril, and Adamantite armor suits lack.
- Wood can be found in different forms depending on the biome, including Shadewood (Crimson), Ebonwood (Corruption), Pearlwood (Hallow), Boreal (Snow), Palm (Beach/Sand), and Rich Mahogany (Jungle).
- Most of the console-exclusive content, including enemies and equipment, were reskinned or recolored versions of existing content. The 1.2 patch to console Terraria changed this, giving the content in question actual unique graphics.
- Gemstones all originally had the same elliptical shape while changing only in color before 1.2 update gave them all different cuts.
- The character sprites in alpha were rather blatantly based off of
*Final Fantasy V* combat sprites, but they were changed for the game's release on Steam.
-
*Red Dead Redemption*:
- In
*I*, adult Jack Marston is just John with a different head and voice.
- ||1907 John in
*II* zig-zags this. He has a slimmer build than Arthur and his own animations for movement, but examining the model shows his body is just Arthur's but scaled down, and he reuses a ton of animations with him - in some circumstances his animations actually revert back to Arthur's note : Such as the ranch and while walking in Heartland Overflow's water His hair is also Arthur's but recolored, and he reuses Arthur's vomiting sounds if he eats a poisonous plant.||
-
*Subnautica* uses this trope on several occasions, including the Spinefish note : a skeletal-patterned variant of the Hoopfish, found in deep-water biomes, the Magmarang note : a variant of the Boomerang adapted to volcanic environments, the Lava Eyeye note : Ditto, for the Eyeye and the Crimson Ray note : Ditto again, for the Ghostray. The Oculus may seem at first glance to be this to the Peeper, but in reality, its model is slightly different, having no beak and a row of tentacles instead of tail fins.
- The majority of the Space Pirate fighters in
*X3: Reunion* and later games are standard faction fighters (mostly Argon and Teladi), but with sweet Nose Art. They retain the turrets and most of the stats of the base ship, though they often can carry a more varied loadout, at the cost of being inferior to the standard ship. *X3: Terran Conflict* introduced several Ace Custom pirate ships with unique models, and proper Pirate capital ships.
## Non-video game examples:
- Every year people get ads in their newspapers showing collectibles for the big local pro or college sports team. Ceramic villages with the team logo on it, Santa wearing the jersey, etc. What you don't really see until you go online to their website is almost every city got the same ad for the same village and often the only thing different in the picture is the team logo and colors.
- USC and UCLA have a particularly intense rivalry to where any merchandise deal one university gets is soon followed by the same deal with the other. They turn to the same manufacturer most of the time, and as a result, the products are exactly the same, only with different packaging and images printed on them.
- Proto, the mascot of Protegent, is a palette swap of Whyatt from
*Super Why!*.
-
*[C] - The Money and Soul of Possibility* has several facets of one◊ basic◊ design.◊
- The Tendou sisters in
*Day Break Illusion* are triplets, which sort of justifies them often being literally copy-pasted and colour-tweaked. Also, Etia and Ariel's outfits are identical except for colour and the pattern on their circle-things.
- Devilman has Akira Fudo, and Ryo Asuka, when they both appear, Ryo is literally a blond Akira, luckily, other adaptations give them different haircuts... Most of the time.
- Common throughout the
*Digimon* franchise; though it has well over one thousand mons, it is slightly padded with palette swaps:
- Perhaps the most understandable examples are the Evil Counterpart palette swaps, darker versions of certain heroic Digimon. The most prominent example, both in the anime and otherwise, is
*Digimon Adventure 02*'s BlackWarGreymon, whose contrast with the actual WarGreymon was played up for all it was worth.
- Sometimes, the difference in color is used to denote a variant of a different level, attribute type, or associated with different elements/powers. For example, Otamamon's has water powers and is of the Virus attribute, while Otamamon Red is associated with fire and is of the Data attribute. Both are of the Child level. On the other hand, sometimes there are less reasonable instances: there's Monochromon, an Adult, and Vermillimon, a red Monochromon of the Perfect level. There are many more examples.
-
*Digimon World* is *horrible* about doing this to differentiate random enemy Digimon from recruitable ones. You can *recruit* Betamon and Drimogemon (frog and drill-nosed mole, basically). You *fight* ModokiBetamon and NiseDrimogemon. (Modoki means 'seems like' or 'looks like;' Nise means 'false.') The only difference at all between them is that ModokiBetamon is a *slightly different shade of green* and NiseDrimogemon *has a mustache instead of whiskers.*
- If they're bad, Soulmon is worse. The only difference between him and Bakemon would be a pointy sorcerer's hat.
- Not as bad as Gottsumon, a Child-level golem Digimon who has two palette swaps, Icemon and Insekimon. At least Icemon (Adult-level) is clearly white as opposed to Gottsumon's grey so you can easily tell them apart, but Insekimon is distinguished from Gottsumon and Icemon solely by being
*a slightly lighter shade of grey with a green tinge*, and what really takes the cake is that he is a Perfect. You heard correctly, a Perfect is a palette swap of a Child. This was lampshaded neatly in *Digimon Data Squad* - when Gottsumon evolves to Insekimon, Yoshino comments that all that seems to have changed is his colour.
- Gururumon has to be Bandai poking fun at themselves over this practice. The difference between Garurumon and Gururumon is that Gururumon's blue stripes are
*slightly more purplish in hue*; I *dare* you to tell them apart if you don't have their pictures/trading cards side by side. Many are the fans who thought that "Gururumon" was just a typo.
- There's also ClearAgumon, which is basically a transparent ToyAgumon! Incidentally, they also have an Evil Counterpart palette swap.
- Vegimon has two palette swaps: Zassoumon and RedVegimon. RedVegimon, at least, has the decency to differ in design somewhat insofar as having large clubs at the end of its tentacles instead, but otherwise it just looks like a Vegimon that is blue.
-
*Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time* marks the debut of such a palette swap as a main character in the anime - Ryouma Mogami's partner is Psychemon, a rather garish palette swap of a particularly famous former main character, Gabumon.
-
*Digimon Adventure tri.* has a mysterious villain who drives much of the series' plot and normally looks like ||an evil version of Gennai wearing a black version of his outfit||. While disguised as ||the Digimon Emperor||, he summons a purple version of Imperaldramon to cover his escape while kidnapping Meicoomon.
- The third kind is random recolourings which serve no purpose at all, are given little to no context, are not differentiated from the main Digimon at all, and seem to be there for the hell of it. Like in
*Digimon World 3*. The *entire* Amaterasu Server (before you free it) is a Dark World-themed palette swap of the Asuka Server, and most of the Digimon in it are palette swaps of the ones from Asuka.
- The
*Future Card Buddyfight* anime does this whenever more than one of the same monster appears in a single match. With Drum, at least, it's at least explained as him being part of an entire clan of dragons that all look the same aside from differently-colored hair and armor. Gemclone also generally appears as a blue, crystalline copy of the monster whose Super Mode they are copying at the time.
-
*Kaze no Stigma*: ||Ryuuya Kazamaki|| is this for main protagonist Kazuma Yagami.
- Shion, the heroine of the Non-Serial Movie
*Naruto Shippuden: The Movie*, is aside from hair and eye color identical to Hinata Hyuga, one of the supporting characters of the main series. They even both have pupil-less magical eyes.
- The "Rose Bride dress" of
*Revolutionary Girl Utena*: The original dress is red and worn by Anthy during the duels. In the first ending sequence ||and in episode 38||, Utena wears a light pink version of the dress, and in the third story arc, Kozue and Shiori gain dresses that match their hair colors (indigo and purple, respectively).
-
*Sgt. Frog*: It's used a lot in the anime for background Keronians, which generally share a few sets of generic designs (eyes with small irises, star emblems, hats similar to Keroro's or Kururu's, headphones included.
- Later episodes also use it for random background aliens.
- During
*Yu-Gi-Oh!*'s DOMA Arc, Jonouchi / Joey adds the Blue Flame Swordsman to his arsenal. This is, unsurprisingly, Exactly What It Says on the Tin—a blue Palette Swap of his already existing card, Flame Swordsman, with the exact same stat (ATK: 1800, DEF: 1600, Level: 5). On the plus side it does have a useful ability that the original card does not possess—when it's sent to the Graveyard it allows Joey to summon a regular Flame Swordsman to take its place.
-
*Noonbory and the Super 7*:
- All of the Dotoris look identical, with only their hats being different colours.
- The Builder Borys all have the same character model, just with different skin and clothing colours (one is pink-skinned wearing red, one is yellow-skinned wearing orange, and one is cream-skinned wearing pink).
-
*Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf*:
- Wolffy's grandfather Yellow Wolf looks
*exactly* like Wolffy, but colored yellow. Identical Grandson indeed.
- The Rainbow Beans from the season
*Flying Island: The Sky Adventure* are all literally the same character, right down to their cephalothorax-like designs. The only thing that distinguishes them is their color schemes, with each one made to match the colors of the rainbow.
- The Hobgoblin is effectively a palette swap of the Green Goblin, albeit with a hooded cape. There is an in-story reason, as the person behind the Hobgoblin mask intentionally dyed it a different color.
- In
*Ultimate Comics: Avengers*, Gregory Stark is introduced as Tony's twin brother. He has blond hair and wears white suits.
- In the short lived Continuity Reboot
*Wonder Woman: Odyssey* Artemis's costume and build are identical to Diana's in all but coloration, to reflect her former status as Diana's rival.
-
*Calvin & Hobbes: The Series* has Thunderstorm, who is described as his brother Brainstorm with a black lab coat and jet-black hair.
- In
*Contractual Obligations* Harry and Tom wear green and silver bonding robes with the colors reversed.
- In
*Expelled* Harry wears a gold robe with red trim for his marriage to Hermione, while her father has a red robe with gold trim.
- In
*Finding Heather* Padma and Parvati wear pink/orange and orange/pink dresses at the Yule Ball.
- In
*Harry Hadrian Snape and the Sorcerer's Stone* when Harry and Draco go to Diagon Alley for first-year school supplies, Draco is wearing a silver robe with green accents, while Harry's is green with silver accents.
- In
*Let's Try Again* Fred and George's Animagus forms are red foxes with black tips on their ears and tails, while Hadrian's is a black fox with red tips on its ears and tail.
-
*My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic*: According to the author's vids and artwork, many of the characters greatly look like each other with the only differences being colour and hairstyles. In the stories themselves, characters are often described by their similarities to others, such as Cerise Wonder being someone "whom greatly resembled princess Cadance same color, same mane style, even same voice but Cerise had a golden horn like Lightning had."
-
*Ojamajo Doremi: Rise of the Shadows*: The Shadows all look *exactly* like their Light Halves, except for color; most of them just have darker colors than their Light Halves. Black Queen and Evil Rin take this a step further; the former replaces all the white on the Queen's garb with black while the latter is black, gray, and silver.
-
*SuperSaiyanKirby Adventures* has Anti-SuperSaiyanKirby, who's literally the main character with some changed colors.
- That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's also Mattboo Sux, Sidney, Casy, "Evil Pac-man 64 clone", etc.
- That may be explained by the fact that the original character designs were made in MS paint.
- In
*Veiled Threat* Harry's Animagus form is a black phoenix with red wingtips and Ginny's is a red phoenix with black wingtips.
-
*The Matrix* homemade pinball machine was made by altering a *Johnny Mnemonic* machine in this way, and a *Genie*'s theme was repurposed into that of *The Ramones*. This is the preferred method for aspiring creators who don't have enough technical knowledge or money to build one from scratch and no intention to sell.
- Barbie movies:
- Several of the princesses in
*Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses* are palette swaps of each other, most noticeably twins Hadley and Isla, and triplets Janessa, Kathleen, and Lacey.
- In
*Barbie in A Christmas Carol*, the time and space vortexes the Ghosts of Christmas use are identical effects, just yellow for past, green for present, and red for future. Also, the twins wears identical Pimped Out Dresses, save for different colors, such as having feather headdresses, one pink and the other blue.
- Little John from
*Robin Hood (1973)* is basically Baloo from *The Jungle Book (1967)* but with brown fur (instead of gray) and wearing clothing. Not only that, but they also share the same voice actor.
- The character model for Queen Iduna from
*Frozen* bears a striking resemblance to Elsa, such as her wearing her hair in a crown-twist bun (only with brunette hair instead of platinum blonde).
- Word of God for
*Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse* revealed that the silhouette of the Lizard from Spider-Gwen's flashback was made by *heavily* modifying the character model for the Green Goblin (helped by this incarnation of Goblin being a hulking and brutish monster based on the *Ultimate Spider-Man* version).
- Rapunzel's wedding dress in
*Tangled Ever After* is actually her homecoming celebration dress colored white instead of pink.
- The villain in
*Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo* summoned several Palette Swapped copies of previously created villains for the final battle.
- Andy's birthday guests in
*Toy Story* are recolors of his model with the occasional baseball cap. Given how Pixar was struggling with humanoid models at the time, this was to be expected.
- In
*Turning Red*, each of the members of 4*Town wear white versions of their usual clothes when performing at the SkyDome.
-
*Wreck-It Ralph* used this for several of the background *Sugar Rush* racers. Both meta and in-game. Of course, when you have a racing game featuring tons of characters, and especially one from 1997, this is to be expected.
-
*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory* - The machine guns (which are black) in the Exploding Candy scene in the elevator show up in the *very next sequence* in white as the cameras in the Television Chocolate room.
-
*Children's Party at the Palace* has Mary Poppins, who first appears wearing a black coat when she chastises the Baddies for their attempted sabotage. Later during the "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" performance, her coat is blue instead.
-
*Grandma's Boy (2006)*, which is about video game designers, references this tendency when one tester recommends differentiating between two types of enemies by changing the colors of one of them.
-
*The Lost World: Jurassic Park*:
- The
*Mamenchisaurus* that briefly appear during the stampede scene were made by stretching out the *Brachiosaurus* model from the first movie.
- The male and female
*Tyrannosaurus* are slightly recoloured versions of the same animatronics and CG models, which is a notable change from the novel, which states how the male is smaller and scrawnier.
- Brad and Janet's guest rooms in
*The Rocky Horror Picture Show*. Lampshaded by an audience callback ("same room, different lighting, cheap movie!")
- The Starfleet uniforms seen in
*Star Trek: First Contact* are an inversion of the uniforms worn on *Star Trek: Deep Space Nine* and *Star Trek: Voyager*, being predominantly black with grey shoulders and colored shirts, unlike DS9/Voyager's uniforms which had gray shirts and colored shoulders. The DS9 crew would shortly switch to these uniforms for the rest of the series, whereas Voyager's crew, stuck in the Delta Quadrant, stuck with their uniforms till the end, though subsequent episodes involving the Federation at home featured these uniforms.
-
*X-Men: Days of Future Past*:
- Magneto always had some red and/or purple colour on his outfit, but in 2023 his uniform is completely black and grey, signifying that he's now part of the X-Men.
- Costume designer Louise Mingenbach described Past Xavier's switch from his brown-and-pink casual wear to his more formal blues and greys that is typically associated with the character in the other movies.
"At the beginning of the film, Charles is medicating, and very possibly on hallucinogens, so we had that come through in his shirt. As he pulls himself together, he wears a nice blue oxford like all good, put-together mena progression from that psychedelic Cat Stevens-wear."
- Many multicolored candies, such as gummy bears, are this. Though some will swear otherwise, many colored candies all have the same flavor unless explicitly advertised otherwise.
- Novelty cake pans in special shapes (of the sort often used to make childrens birthday cakes) often come with a little insert suggesting how the pan can be used to create numerous different cake designs. Given the bakers creativity will be somewhat limited by the shape of the pan, these alternative design suggestions are inevitably just palette swaps of whatever the main cake design is. So for example, if the pan is shaped like a truck, the alternative suggestions may be an army truck in camouflage colors or an ambulance which is just the truck in white with a red cross on it.
-
*The Fold* explores the possibility of duplicates from an alternate dimension, several of which are palette swapped for clarity and convenience.
-
*The Barrier*: In a presentation including photos of children who were taken away from their parents by the government under false pretenses, some photos are altered to change the color of the subject's eyes and/or hair. One boy has very light blond hair in the presentation despite his real hair being significantly darker, while a girl with relatively light hair has it much darker on her presentation photo.
- This is the difference in the
*Community* episode "Physical Education" between ||Abed|| and his Identical Stranger, Joey. ||Or, in other words, Brown Joey and White Abed.||
- In
*Denji Sentai Megaranger*, the suits, which often have some sort of variety per season, are rather homogenous this time around save color. Perhaps a moment of Fridge Brilliance, since this season was about video games, particularly ones made in the mid-90s.
-
*Dinosaur Planet*: The show heavily reused the CG models of the animals for different species in each episode to cut down on cost, and only with slight colour changes. *Allodaposuchus* and *Notosuchus*, *Aucasaurus* and *Tarascosaurus*, *Saltasaurus* and the unnamed titanosaurs in "Pod's Travels", *Alvarezsaurus* and *Shuvuuia*, *Troodon* and the unnamed troodontids in "Pod's Travels'' to name some.
-
*Kamen Rider* frequently recycles its rubber suits, since these costumes are expensive and repainting them is cheap. At times this is the suits used for each Monster of the Week, but more commonly the components of a Rider suit that has become obsoleted by the story, such as a Mid-Season Upgrade form, will be recycled for a new form. With the advent of direct-to-DVD movies giving secondary Riders a day in the limelight, this trend became much more prominent, as each movie often only has the budget for a single brand-new costume per film while everyone else who gets a new outfit will use repainted or slightly retooled parts of old costumes.
- Gold Drive from
*Kamen Rider Drive* is a very literal Evil Knockoff of the title hero created by the Big Bad stealing Belt-san's tech (a recurring theme with him).
-
*Kamen Rider Ex-Aid* has Kamen Rider Genm, a palette-swapped Super Prototype of the title character, as part of its videogame theme. Multiple crossovers feature Genm being mistaken for Ex-Aid or vice-versa.
- In the
*Psych* episode "We'd like to thank the academy", Shawn shoots two civilian cardboard cutouts in a training exercise. His justifications:
"The first woman with the groceries was exiting a library that doesn't allow snacks. I know this because we've tried on several occasions. And the second woman was simply a replica of the first woman, but they painted her face brown, which is both offensive and suspicious."
- By the time of
*Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger*, it's has become quite obvious that *Super Sentai* not longer has the budget to create unique monster suits so all we've got are the same body suits with a different head and/or weapon. Even so, there's still plenty of palette swaps like Milk World being a dairy themed repaint of Bullfighting World or Carrot World being an orange version of Daikon World.
-
*Planet Dinosaur* is a rather heavy offender in this category: *Rugops* and *Skorpiovenator*; *Saurornithoides*, *Troodon*, and *Bradycneme*; *Sinornithosaurus* and *Rahonavis*; *Jeholosaurus* and the small ornithopods in "The New Giants" (likely *Gasparinisaura*); all of the generic pterosaurs, with the exception of *Hatzegopteryx*; *Allosaurus* and *Saurophaganax* (this one is at least justified, as *Saurophaganax* might just be a giant *Allosaurus* species).
-
*Prehistoric Park* did this with the *same species*; the adult *Tyrannosaurus* uses the same body of the juveniles, only with a different head, because they did not have the budget to make two *Tyrannosaurus* models. This results in the adults looking too slim and lanky compared to the real animal. They also recoloured the *T. rex* orange to make the *Albertosaurus* in the later episode.
- In
*Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger* and *Power Rangers S.P.D.,* Make My Monster Grow mostly took the year off, in favor of each alien criminal of the week having his or her own Humongous Mecha. While the monster suits each looked original, the mecha started to repeat themselves, with minor details, and yes, colors, changed. (A few times, there wasn't even a repaint!)) *Two* once-used monster suits per week was just not gonna happen.
- The Trickster in
*The Sarah Jane Adventures* actually invokes this in ''The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith,'' appearing in white instead of his usual black to ||Peter Dalton|| as an angel. Lampshaded by the Doctor.
-
*Star Trek: The Next Generation* introduced Starfleet Academy cadet uniforms that were largely a partial palette swap of the standard Starfleet uniform, moving the department color from the upper body and sleeves to the shoulder yoke and leaving the rest of the uniform black, while adding large pockets on the pant legs. When it came time for *Star Trek: Deep Space Nine* to send Nog off to the Academy, the cadet uniform's primary color was swapped from black to gray, in order to contrast against DS9's black jumpsuits. Following the introduction of the *First Contact* uniforms on DS9, new cadet uniforms were introduced; the outer uniform was a gray version on the movie version, with quilted shoulders and divisional stripes on the sleeve cuffs, but with the department colors on the shoulders and the gray undershirts of the original DS9 uniform.
-
*Walking with Dinosaurs* was guilty of this. Similar looking animals (like *Utahraptor* and *Dromaeosaurus*, as well as *Dryosaurus*, *Leaellynasaura*, and the small ornithopods in "Death of a Dynasty") were just these. Certain animals (like large theropods and ornithopods) only got new heads. You can tell, because many creatures have the exact same folds and blood vessels on their skin. Then, there is *Plesiopleurodon*, which is just Stock Footage of *Liopleurodon* from the previous episode, only tinted lighter. *Quetzalcoatlus* is the worst offender, as in its case it's obvious that the animators didn't have much time; it's just the *Ornithocheirus* from "Giant of the Skies" with a few minor tweaks. They didn't even edit out the teeth!
- The MAD Magazine comic
*Spy vs. Spy* features the titular black and white spies, palette swaps of one another.
-
*Pin*Bot* was repurposed nine years later into *Jack*Bot*. It uses the same characters as *Pin*Bot* and *The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot*, as well as the same layout, but reskins it into a casino theme and changes the rules substantially, as well as updated electronic parts. It also swaps out *Pin*Bot*'s alphanumeric display with a dot-matrix display, allowing it to show pictures and animations instead of just numbers and simple phrases.
- The
*Shrek* pinball machine has a layout, parts, and rules identical to *Family Guy*, the only differences being artwork and sounds. That being said, it was not a careless adaptation: *Shrek* has hundreds of new lines of dialogue written specifically for the pinball machine, the new art fits the theme perfectly, and the *Family Guy* rules are retrofitted to be as faithful to the movies as possible. The idea is that *Family Guy* did not meet sales expectations, and operators requested a more family-friendly theme, so *Shrek* was conceived to be quickly put together to meet operators' demands.
- Some home-made pinball machines consist of taking an existing machine and replacing the artwork and changing the rules, but the machine is physically unchanged. See Fan Works for examples.
- WWE started doing this big time with their belts since 2016. With the exception of Raw's Womens title (which was originally intended to make the Women's division more on par with the men), these new designs were brought out during the revival of the brand extension and made to be Colour-Coded for Your Convenience (Raw's belts being red-based and SmackDown being blue-based).
- Three of their new belts are palette swaps of the WWE World Title which has black leather and a black background behind the front plate. The Raw Women's title is on white leather with a red background, the Universal title is on red leather with a red background (the WWE logo on the front plate also features a unique black underline) and the SmackDown Women's title is on white leather with a blue background.
- SmackDown's Tag Team titles are also a palette swap of Raw's Tag Team Titles, replacing the black leather and bronze plates with blue leather and silver plates. And then an updated design of the Raw Tag Team Titles became a palette swap of SmackDown's, with a red leather and silver plates.
- A number of Muppets are actually the same puppet with different clothes, hair, and other accessories. The Creature Shop calls them "Anything Muppets."
*Sesame Street* fans reading this will probably not be surprised to learn that the characters Prairie Dawn and Betty Lou, for example, are the same puppet, plus Zoe and Rosita.
- The same thing happens quite frequently in
*Dinosaurs*. Every single puppet not used for a protagonist was used as countless different characters, made male or female simply by changing the clothes.
- A number of competitive racing series have contestants racing in nigh-identical vehicles in order to level the playing field, so that teams without millions to throw at aerodynamics research can stay competitive, though most allow
*minor* modifications. NASCAR is the most prominent example, with each racing having dozens of completely identical vehicles painted in different colors with some token customized front fascias (See, this 1000+ horsepower RWD monster is totally an ecoboost Ford Fusion!). BK Racing's two cars (Toyota #83 and #93) are literal palette swaps; one is red, one is blue.
- Averted by Formula One. Each team is allowed only 2 cars and outside of the driver number both cars must carry identical liveries. This can be confusing for fans at the track (meaning palette swaps would actually be welcome in this case), though these days it's mostly mitigated by phone apps that will give you the running order. In addition, F1 is definitely
*not* a spec series, and while the two cars used by each team are in theory identical to each other every team custom builds their cars from the chassis on up and has a choice of four different engine manufacturers note : Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, and Honda for the 2022 season, couple that with pretty loose regulations that have plenty of loopholes and you end up with 10 pairs of dramatically different (though visually very similar) cars, some of which are much, much faster than others note : Case in point: the last time the World Driver's Championship was won by someone not driving for either Mercedes or Red Bull was in 2009. To Braun GP, which became the Mercedes-Petronas team (as in the guys that have Lewis Hamilton) the very next season. This is pretty common throughout the history of F1, there's rarely more than 3 teams that are really competing for the title.
- Miniatures wargames will often have this. The players will actually play the same army by the same rules, but represent in-universe alignments by paint scheme. For example, one player may represent the WWII 10th Mountain Division and another may represent a US Ranger Battalion by using the same miniatures and rule set, but simply paint the 10th in snow and the Rangers in drab greens. This is especially prevalent in
*Warhammer* and *Warhammer 40,000* where many in universe armies might follow the same rule set. In the case of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 a number of factions started out life as simple palette swaps, but have developed over the years to get their own models and/or rules. The Space Marine chapters are a good example - originally Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Ultramarines and Space Wolves were just red, dark green, blue and grey versions of the same thing, but now they have their own distinct stylings and rules. Other factions, such as Eldar Craftworlds and Ork Clans, are still just different colour schemes, though each can be characterised somewhat by choice of units taken as well as the livery.
- The fourth edition of
*Dungeons & Dragons* and its player base have been noted for actively embracing the concept of "reskinning" powers, monsters, and potentially even entire character classes to allow for more variety in play — that is, basically taking one mechanic, stat block or the like and simply reusing it as-is (with perhaps some minor tweaks along the way) to represent something potentially *described* entirely differently from the original.
- The early days of
*Yu-Gi-Oh!* was very fond of recycling monster designs, with a lot of random monsters having at least one counterpart. The localization had a habit of changing their names to be variants of "[monster name] #1" and "[same name] #2." Curiously, while the designs were identical bar colors, the *artwork* was always completely redrawn, depicting them in different poses or from different angles, and barring that artwork, the monsters usually had nothing in common. (Videogame adaptations that used 3D models tended to use them as more conventional palette swaps.)
- About two-thirds of the original
*Masters of the Universe* toyline reused parts from the original He-Man and Skeletor toys. This is a big reason for the World of Muscle Men look of the franchise; just about every male character has the exact same bulging biceps.
- The
*Marvel Legends* and *DC Universe* lines and their permutations tend to have a number of "generic" bodies (slim but muscular man, fairly muscular man, beefcake man) that they reuse for any character whose design can be boiled down to "buff guy in spandex." Swap out the head, add some accessories, change the paint and plastic colors, and suddenly a lot of characters look the same.
- Many themed Merkur sets (such as the Army, Safari, and Farm sets) are the same parts painted a different colour.
-
*G.I. Joe* has several 'covered head to toe' enemy characters. Each meant to be a different mook an identical uniform. Swaps come as ideas do. The 'Python Patrol' was, storywise, a way to make characters invisible to sensor equipment. The heroes had, for example, 'Tiger Force', which swapped the usual uniform colors with yellow, brown and red. Nameless Joe Greenshirts (think 'redshirts') got this, though their heads were clearly seen. Some were logical (light skin and a tanned one could mean a sibling was in the sun) but others were different races, same facial features.
- Palette swaps and parts sharing created the original wave of twelve male Joes in 1982. Grunt (who, although established as a unique character, served as the basis for the Greenshirts) has the most common components of the wave, save for his head (which is only shared with Grand Slam and Zap; the most common head is shared between Flash, Hawk, Short-Fuze, and Steeler), and all of the shared pieces are recolored in one way or another on at least one of the figures - with the exception of Flash and Grand Slam, who aside from their heads are identical. Grand Slam did get his own palette swap when he was reissued with a different vehicle in 1983, though, and a few other 1982 figures received palette swaps when reissued with new vehicles.
- Hot Wheels at least acknowledges its recolors for different model years are the same cars, but one can pinpoint which model year a certain car comes from by the paint job.
- The Jack Russell terriers Bennett and Yank, who are pet dogs of Molly McIntire and Emily Bennett of the American Girls Collection respectively, are palette swaps of each other, bearing the same coat pattern with the colors inverted.
- Nearly every LEGO minifigure ever, if for fairly understandable reasons. It's only within the past few years that they've started implementing unique body, limb and head designs for non-human characters.
- In
*BIONICLE*, the act of palette swapping represented a very disliked trend throughout the line's early run. The most infamous case is that of the Bohrok and Bohrok-Kal lines: 12 sets that, beyond their weapons (and usually their collectibles), are exactly the same model, just in different colors. The same could be said for most of the Matoran sets, which only differed in their colors and/or mask designs. Yet narrowly avoided by most of the original Rahi two-packs which had two almost identical models, but each had at least one tiny detail that differentiated it from its partner (the exception being the Nui-Jaga scorpions). Outside of the toys, story material also had its share of these, but not many were truly canon. The green Vortixx from the comic *Shadow Play* was colored that way so that the readers could tell him apart from the black Roodaka. On the other hand, Tuma's green colored Rock Steed from *Rise and Fall of the Skrall* is canon. As a result, most background extras in the animated films were just recolors of the same handful of models. Even the Vahki soldiers used the same model, despite that their toys at least came with unique weapons. And in the third movie, the Muaka tiger was a mere palette swap of the ash bear from the first, with a slightly retooled head — it looked *nothing* like the actual Muaka toy, so they explained that it was really a mutant.
- At the beginning,
*Hero Factory* somewhat dipped back into the practice for its Heroes (the villains still avoided it). They were built in a factory as variations of the same basic design rather than individual and unique life-forms. The first wave Heroes were recognizable solely by their different helmets, weapons torso armour designs (the three rookies had the same one, however). The 2.0 and 3.0 waves, thanks to the new building style, added subtle differences that made each Hero unique: limbs length, shoulder width, armour size and orientation, colour schemes. By the Breakout arc, though Heroes are still all built off the largely same basic frame, Hero designs are even more varied in height, designs, colour schemes, armour and other elements.
- LEGO Trains did this several times:
- Passenger coach 7818 is the same design as the two coaches in 7710, but coloured blue and red rather than yellow and blue.
- The 1996 train station 2150 is a reissue of the 1991 design 4554, in red rather than yellow.
- The "My Own Train" range sold locomotives of the same design in a choice of five different colours.
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*:
- Not only do the line of figurines resemble more toward pre-G4 versions, but various background characters (sometimes not even existing in the series) are palette swaps of the main characters, if their packaging graphic is anything to go by. For instance, look up Dewdrop Dazzle
note : of Twilight Sparkle, Feathermay note : of Rainbow Dash, Flitterheart note : of Fluttershy on her brushable packaging and collector's card, but her blind bag figure is based on Rainbow Dash, Lulu Luck note : of Rarity, Plumsweet note : of Pinkie Pie, Snowcatcher note : of Rarity also, Diamond Rose note : of Fluttershy again, and Twinkleshine note : of Rarity yet again, if you're already familiar with the main G4 cast. Some other examples show attempt to differentiate however, such as "Cupcake" being a wingless version of Fluttershy, or "Sunny Daze" being a non-unicorn Sweetie Belle, or even "Minty" as an Applejack mold sans the hat.
- The "blind bag" minifigures even went so far as to have Fluttershy -
*one of the Mane Six!* - as a Pallete Swap of Rainbow Dash. (Which is somewhat amusing after the events of the third season episode "Magic Duel"...) She finally got her own unique mold in a set released in mid-2013 note : but her collector's card still has her as a RD palette swap as of Wave 11. Several other characters who've appeared on the show, though, are still recolors at the blindbag scale, such as Cheerilee note : of Pinkie Pie, Trixie Lulamoon note : of Rarity in wave 4, then of Twilight Sparkle in later issues, Lyra Heartstrings note : of Twilight in the blind bags, but Rarity in the Groovin' Hooves◊ set, Bon Bon(Sweetie Drops) note : of Applejack, Daisy(Flower Wishes) note : Pinkie Pie again, Blossomforth and Helia note : both of Rainbow Dash, Strawberry Sunrise note : of Derpy, and Peachy Pie note : also of Pinkie Pie, ironically.
- The Wave 11 blind bags have the stallion Neon Lights as a redeco of DJ PON-3. This wave's palette swaps also include Sunset Shimmer
note : of Rarity yet again, Suri Polomare (Buttonbelle) note : of Pinkie Pie again, Flash Sentry note : of Thunderlane, Big Wig note : of Mrs. Cake, Candy Apples note : of Applejack again, Purple Wave note : of Lyrica Lilac, Wensley note : of Big McIntosh, Cloud Chaser note : of Thunderlane again, Royal Pin note : of Shining Armor, etc., with Fluttershy and Cheese Sandwich being the only unique molds.
- There is also Forsythia
note : Rarity, and also appears in the mobile game as a minor charcter and Fizzy Pop[[note]]Pinkie Pie, and seems to be based on the same g3 pony who inspired the colors and real name of the movies villain[[/note]
- Nerf blasters are often released in recolored versions as store exclusives, notably the Sonic Series from Toys R Us, the Clear Series from Target, and the legendary Red Strike series from Walmart, which was only for sale for one Black Friday and is now one of the most sought after and expensive repaints ever in Nerf history.
- The toyline for
*Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves* reused parts from both an Ewok playset and the *Super Powers* line. This resulted in Robin Hood himself having a conspicuous G-shaped belt buckle.
-
*Transformers*: The franchise, being what it is frequently redecos (puts different colors and painted designs on an old mold) and/or retools (puts new parts on old models) the same model several times to get better return on their toys. This can vary from a new paint scheme on a character to making a completely different character.
- Starscream, in particular, has an entire group of palette swaps known as the Seekers, starting with the originals, Thundercracker and Skywarp. Move some things around (retool) and you get the 'coneheads,' Thrust, Dirge, and Ramjet. Background characters from the cartoon who were meant as generics would also eventually gain names, backstories, and toys of their own as they appeared in stories. There are even female Seekers now, starting with
*Animateds* Slipstream. Rest assured, if a new Starscream toy is made than at least one of the Seekers is soon to follow, regardless if they actually appear in the associated media or not.
- Other famous or reoccurring redecos include Optimus Prime into both Nemesis Prime and Ultra Magnus (under the armor, Ultra Magnus is a white Prime), Bumblebee into Cliffjumper, Megatron into Galvatron (particularly popularized by the
*Unicron Trilogy* shows), Soundwave into Blaster, Rumble and Frenzy, Ironhide and Ratchet, and Lazerbeak and Buzzsaw.
-
*Trasformers Generation 2* consisted in large part of palette swaps of G1 toys. There were some exceptions, like Optimus Prime remained in his classic red and blue and Megatron got an entirely new vehicle mode as a tank instead of a handgun, but mostly the figures were simply the same toys in different colors (and spring-fired weapons the originals didn't have).
-
*Transformers: Cybertron* interestingly avoids this, for the most part (okay, not in the toyline), with Thundercracker having a standard Seeker body... but Starscream himself is a *completely* different design, with only the head looking particularly Starscreamy. (It's actually based on Screamer's pre-Earth design from the Dreamwave *War Within* comics.) The exception is Galvatron. After upgrading to Galvatron, visually, Megatron is Palette Swapped to G1 Megatron's colors. Major Homage, bordering on non-sexual fanservice.
-
*Transformers: Prime*:
- Skyquake and Dreadwing are twins with two halves of the same spark, explaining why they look essentially the same, just with different colors. Fowler even lampshades, multiple times, how he essentially gave the same alt-mode to two different robots (he was piloting the same jet when facing each of the brothers).
- The Jet Vehicon mooks and the more elite Seekers, who are basically silver and grey versions of the regular Jet Vehicons (in-universe, their colouring is in homage to their commander Starscream).
- In
*Transformers: Animated*, they were explained as having the same "body type" in-fiction. Oddly, though, only a handful of toys *actually* got recolored, namely Starscream as his clones and a couple of BotCon exclusives. More recolors came out in Japan or were cancelled before release. This has been done so often in both the official toyline and the shows, that it's considered a fairly acceptable method of inventing an Original Character (that one plans to create art of).
-
*Transformers: BotBots* manages to change alt modes for characters simply via recolors, thanks to the characters transforming into mundane objects rather than specific vehicles. For example, Angry Cheese, who transforms into a grilled cheese sandwich, has PB Junior as a recolor, who turns into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead. Because their faces are printed on instead of molded on, the recolors will often have different faces to differentiate them further.
- The Transformers fandom actually differentiates between recolors (which are the same figure with different colours, often to represent a brand-new character) like Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp and retools (the figure is slightly modified, such as new wings, arms and so on) such as the Coneheads (Starscream molds with new heads and wings), or Bumblebee and Cliffjumper in many toylines. In the original toyline, Bumblebee was a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, while Cliffjumper was a red Porsche 924, but as their toys had Super-Deformed
*Choro-Q/Penny Racers* proportions, they had identical transformations and were otherwise very similar in appearance. It also didn't help that Hasbro released red Bumblebees and yellow Cliffjumpers, or that they somehow managed to release the *Micro Change* Mazda Familia figure (which also had the same transformation) in yellow on Cliffjumper (and possibly Bumblebee) cardbacks. It also probably didn't help that Cliffjupmer was retooled into Hubcap in 1986, or that Pretender Classics Bumblebee's robot head from 1989 was modeled after Cliffjumper's. By the time Hasbro and Takara started making new toys of the G1 characters in the 2000s, they just started making Cliffjumper a palette swap of Bumblebee, sometimes with a new head, sometimes not.
- Hasbro also has a habit of doing this with their superhero properties, especially with the Marvel Legends line. For instance, the Marvel Legends Captain America figures they released for
*Avengers: Age of Ultron* and *Captain America: Civil War* were just repaints of the Marvel Legends Captain America figure that was released for *Captain America: The Winter Soldier*.
- Toy Biz once released an Elektra figure that was just a repaint of an old Psylocke figure. They even gave her Psylocke's trademark psi-blade, even though Elektra doesn't have any superpowers in the comics.
- Toy Biz did the same thing with their
*X-Men: Mutant Armor* and *Spider-Man: Techno Wars* lines. If you're wondering why Spider-Man and the X-Men would need to wear suits of Powered Armor despite already having superpowers, it's because the toys were actually unreleased Iron Man figures from his cancelled TV show. So for instance, with only a new head sculpt and paint job, the Magnetic Iron Man figure became a "Battle Armor Wolverine" figure, Radiation Iron Man became "Radioactive Spider Armor Spider-Man," Living Laser (who was itself a retooled version of an unreleased U.S. Agent figure) became "Astral Plane Professor X," and so on.
-
*Dino-Riders* features this in both the cartoon and toy line. In the cartoon, most of the Mooks are Palette Swaps of the main "Generals", and go unnamed. For the toys, numerous mini-figures of the humanoid characters were created, with the same molds being used frequently (there are seven "Ant-Men" based off of the base Antor figure, for example; others simple use the same name but a different color scheme). Many dinosaurs share molds- the *Torosaurus/Triceratops*, numerous small *Ceratopsians* (the three toys all have different heads), and both sides have a *Deinonychus*, with only their stripes being different colors. Only the armor is different on most of them. Both sides also had a *Quetzalcoatlus*, though the second was only released in a limited area, making it quite valuable now.
-
*Flick-to-Stick Bungees*, being made by the same people who made the below-mentioned *Gogo's Crazy Bones*, takes a note from that toy series and gives each of its characters two color schemes, complete with a different name and stats (e.g. the green Lojo and the yellow Luji are just the same character in different colors). This is in the case of the European version; the American version mostly averts this, but it does have two characters made specifically for it named Samos and Peltast who are just the same character in different colors.
-
*Flush Force* gives each character mold two different color schemes. Unlike other blind bagged toys, each different color is considered its own character, rather than the same in two different colors.
-
*Gogo's Crazy Bones* figures came in different colors, usually about two to five in the reboot series depending on the set. The sets in the classic series, however, did not have any restrictions on what colors characters could come in, allowing them to be available in literally any color. In addition to all this, certain characters from the reboot series use the same mold as another character, for example Miro-K uses the same mold as Ayu from the Megatrip set, but the use of recycled molds is exaggerated in the Evolution set, which consists of Gogos that use all of the molds from the previous set, Series 1.
-
*Jurassic Park* has this in spades. Almost every line has at least one or two toys that are repaints of sculpts from previous lines, and the *Jurassic World* era toys get repeated repaints of the same sculpt. The worst is probably the *Velociraptor* molds, but almost every figure released gets a repaint release at some point. Sometimes it's seen as okay, if it's a nicely made model, but when the sculpt wasn't that great to begin with, or when theres already a bunch out, it can irritate fans. You can see the list of older ones here.
-
*The Trash Pack*, *Shopkins*, and *The Grossery Gang*, all blind bag toys by Moose Toys, gives each character more than one color scheme, treating them like an extra figure to collect. *The Trash Pack* has three minimum color palettes, while the other two have a minimum of two. Some special packages gives existing figures exclusive colors that can only be found in those packages.
-
*30 Minutes Missions*: The EXAMACS units and Option Armor parts are available in various different colors, allowing you to mix-and-match the color palettes if you have multiple kits with different colors.
- Higher end figure companies like Papo and Rebor are known to do this with their figures. Multiple color variants of dinosaur figures are often released together. Papo in particular has repainted movie inspired figures like their
*Velociraptor* and *T.Rex* several times. Papo has done the same with some of their non-dinosaur figures, as an Unicorn offered with mane and tail either yellow or silver and characters as princesses, who differ at least in the coloration of their dresses.
- In
*Aventure Dennis*, the protagonist fights Shadow Dennis, a palette-swapped version of himself.
- The world of
*Adventurers!* apparently suffers from a severe case of this. The characters get to fight monsters like dark blue spectres and navy blue spectres, each requiring different tactics to defeat.
It was also lampshaded in a discussion between the Big Bad and his minion, where the Big Bad complains he has no time because he has to create new monsters to send after the protagonists, and the minion points out he usually just takes an existing monster and puts 'Ice' in front of it's name.
-
*Akuma's Comics*: Original characters introduced early on used to be recolors of other sprites, with Akuma himself starting as a Super Sonic colorized like the Street Fighter character of the same name. Over time they became distinct from their base sprites and no longer fit this trope.
- In
*Bob and George*, many of the characters were recolors. Indeed, this might be the first recolor ever. And this the first intentional one. Lampshaded on a regular basis, such as when half the cast and most authors ended up stuck in "devious recolour traps".
-
*Books of Adam*: Parodied in "Palette Swapping". The protagonist complains that this practice is a symptom of Lazy Artist, before being confronted by a tanner and blonder version of him.
- In Dragon City, Natasha was a brown version of Erin, but she was later discovered to be an alternate universe version of Erin, so it doesn't really count.
-
*El Goonish Shive*: When Elliot needs to become female (to burn off magic energy), the easiest way not to look just like his Opposite-Sex Clone Ellen is to change hair and eye color.
-
*Homestuck*:
- The Underlings of Sburb are all the same basic few monster species given countless different colours themed after grist types, and all bearing some combination of the attributes of the players' prototypings. Given that it's an ersatz RPG in webcomic form, it's probably a homage to the palette-swapping practice in general.
- The frogs used only three distinct models — the basic one, a modified version that leans forward more, and a larger one that croaks with its mouth open and without inflating its throat — which are recolored in every shade of the rainbow when large shots need to be populated.
- This also happens when you make SBURB Unwinnable by trying to play it with only one person. The Prospit carapaces will wear black and the Derse carapaces will wear white. But if that happens, you've got bigger problems.
-
*Manly Guys Doing Manly Things*: As noted early on, pallet swapping Commander Badass ends up making him resemble the artist's father. She promptly turned him into recurring character, Canadian Guy. The in-universe explanation is that ||Canadian Guy is an unsanctioned regional bootleg of the Commander||.
-
*The Non-Adventures of Wonderella*: The mirror-universe versions of Wonderella and Wonderita wear costumes with the colors reversed.
-
*Philler Space*: Ephil looks just like Philler except for their palettes.
-
*Sheldon The Tiny Dinosaur*: The titular character is a green dino. A "bootleg" version of him exists, but it's coloured blue, and wears a peanut shell instead of an acorn cap.
- In
*Yokoka's Quest*, Mao and Yokoka are basically palette-swaps of each other in cat form, and would be this normally if not for hair length and clothing differences. A Q&A strip explains the colour differences as Yokoka having a type of albinism.
- In the sixth, final episode of
*Don't Hug Me I'm Scared*, ||we get a blue Red Guy, a green Yellow Guy, and a red Duck; which also happen to be their favourite colours, as described in episode one||.
-
*DSBT InsaniT*: This is what Bill's second and third forms are. His second form turns his hair a lighter shade of blue, and his third form turns his hair and clothes black with a yellow shirt.
- GoAnimate has Daillou (sometimes others) as a palette swap for Caillou.
- Parodied by Pikasprey with "Donny Rage", an Original Character who is nothing more than an all-red Johnny Cage sprite.
- The characters in
*Red vs. Blue* look identical except for their unique colors. This is due more to the nature of the work (Machinima using the *Halo* Color-Coded Multiplayer mode) than a stylistic choice.
- In later seasons, when the current game in the series allowed for customized pieces of armor, this cleared up a bit.
- Being one of the web's most potent Fountain of Expies characters, there are a massive number of recolored Sonic the Hedgehog lookalikes on sites like
*DeviantArt*. The least modified are simply Sonic with a new color scheme or some clothes on.
- On user-created-adoptable site Squiby it's common for users to take a single format for a creature and use creative colorfills to make multiple versions. Some popular lines that use this formula include Mites, Tencats, Shika and Coons.
- SMG4: Most characters in his early videos were just Mario recolors, including SMG4 itself and his old friends.
- In the
*Batman Beyond* episode "Heroes," the character of Magma is a simple recoloring of Clayface from the previous series.
- Invoked in
*Ben 10: Alien Force* with Albedo, the Insufferable Genius and former apprentice of Azmuth made an improved version of the omnitrix and began to masquerade as Ben to trash his reputation. At the end of the episode, Azmuth appears and breaks his version, getting him stuck in a Shape Shifter Mode Lock of Ben, except with white hair, a red jacket, and red eyes.
- In
*The Crumpets*, the recurring Weather Girl is usually blonde and wears a pinkish dress. In "Pity The Prize", the Weather Girl in that episode is colored like Cassandra (black/bluish hair, cyan shirt, dark blue skirt, brown belt), not to mention a different voice. This Palette Swap lets Cassandra disguise as the Weather Girl with few changes (as well as imitating her voice) so she can try preventing her love interest Pfff from attaching to the real Weather Girl.
- In
*Dinosaur Train*, similarly to *Walking with Dinosaurs*, prehistoric creatures that are related or look similar have the same generic body shape and only differ through their colour schemes and diverse display structures (horns for the ceratopsians, crests for the hadrosaurs, plates for the stegosaurs etc). The large theropods always have the same shape of the body and skull, no matter how closely related they are. For instance, aside from their colours, the *Allosaurus* and *Giganotosaurus* can only be told apart from a *T. rex* by their different number of fingers, the former's brow horns and the latter's osteoderms running down its spine. The *Daspletosaurus* looks exactly like *T. rex* (since they are related), but coloured differently.
- In the
*Donkey Kong Country* CGI cartoon, the character model for Eddie the Mean Old Yeti is the same as Donkey Kong's, but with white fur and a cap instead of a necktie.
- Huey, Dewey, and Louie tend to dress identically but for color in
*DuckTales (1987)* and various Donald Duck shorts. They vary it up a bit more in *Quack Pack*, though their preferred colors stay.
-
*Family Guy*:
- Lois' sister, Carol, is basically another Lois with different hair and clothes. They sport the same exact face and body shape.
- Stewie's evil clone from "The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair" has the colors of Stewie's yellow shirt and red overalls switched.
- Retep is Peter with a green shirt and white pants. And he is evil.
- In the
*Futurama* episode "The Farnsworth Parabox", the crew of Planet Express goes to a Parallel Universe where coin flips and other random events having the opposite outcomes from their own and where they meet palette-swapped versions of themselves (Fry has black hair and a green jacket, Bender is gold-plated instead of gray, etc.), otherwise nearly identical in personality. This is a literal example in Bender's case, as when Bender originally came off the assembly line he flipped a coin to decide if he was going to have himself painted with a gunmetal gray finish or a golden one, making the two Benders ones that chose different palettes for the same physical model.
- In
*Gargoyles*, Owen and Vogel. They say nobody's ever said they look alike. ||Turns out it's because Puck based his Owen identity on Vogel, the trickster enjoying the irony of playing The Comically Serious.|| Further, one of the consequences of rapid growing a Gargoyle clone is a change in coloration, which was probably done to avoid the usual narrative consequences thereof.
- Hanna-Barbera became infamous for this in the 60s and 70s, one example being Mumbly who was somewhat derived from Muttley of
*Wacky Races*. Mumbly would later be partnered with The Dread Baron in *Laff-A-Lympics* as stand-ins for Muttley and Dick Dastardly, likely due to rights issues with Heatter-Quigley Productions who co-produced *Wacky Races*.
- One somewhat bizarre non-Video Game example are Wile E. Coyote and Ralph Wolf. They were basically identical, except Ralph had a red nose and Wile E had a black one, and they lived in different areas.
-
*Miraculous Ladybug* tends to re-use characters with different colors during crowd shots to save budget. This◊ class photo is one of the more obvious examples; pretty much all of the students are recolors of each other except for Aurore and Mireille (the blonde girl with pigtails and the dark-haired girl with the aqua sweater, respectively).
-
*Mixels* has various background filler Mixels that share the same character models, with the only difference being swapped colors to represent the elements of the tribe they're from.
- In
*The Mr. Men Show*, Mr. Bounce looks like a yellow Mr. Tickle with a pink hat instead of a blue one.
-
*My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic*:
- Due to the show's use of Flash animation, the easiest way to fill out crowd scenes is to reuse the same Flash models multiple times, in addition to mixing and matching mane, tail and cutie mark designs and adding or removing wings or a horn, to make new background ponies. The result is that most background characters tend to be recolored versions of a relatively small handful of basic models, and sometimes even major characters are palette-swapped to make background ponies.
- Daring Do◊ has the same appearance as Rainbow Dash, just with a monochrome mane and a tan rather than blue coat. Her explorer clothes help differentiate her. In her original appearance it was because Dash was imagining what she read in a book... and then when she appeared in person she still looked like that.
- Photo Finish is a recolor of Twilight Sparkle, only with a shorter mane to make her look a little more like Anna Wintour. There are a few frames that lampshade this with her cutie mark, which is the same as Twilight's but with a camera added.
- While most of the Woodland Creatures associated with Fluttershy only appear in one palette and the songbirds have different models for each color scheme, some are given extra variety by means of recolors of the same base model. The most extreme case are the rabbits, which have white, light or dark gray, tan, brown, and black recolors, with the addition of a pair of antlers making jackalopes.
- "Swarm of the Century": The individual bugs in the multicolored parasprite swarm all share the same character design.
- "Owl's Well That Ends Well": The green dragon is a palette swap of the red dragon in "Dragonshy" earlier in the season. This dragon's character design is used once again multiple times in "Dragon Quest", colored red, green, light blue or black. In addition, the dragons flying in the actual migration all use one of two character models, identical save that one has a slender snout and a long spike on its head and the other has a heavy jaw, an underbite and two short horns, both recolored in a rainbow of hues.
- "Over a Barrel": The buffalo (besides Chief Thunderhooves and Little Strongheart, who have important enough roles to get their own models) all use the same Flash model as each other, recolored to have either brown, russet or tan fur to make scenes with their tribe less visually monotonous.
- "The Return of Harmony, Part 1": The Keepers of the Grove of Truth are physically perfect copies of each other, their only differences being that one is dark red, one is orange-red, and one is green.
- "Luna Eclipsed": The band that performs on stage are actually palette swaps of the band from "The Best Night Ever" but are wearing scarecrow costumes. Fiddly Faddle, the Octavia palette swap, also appears in "Apple Family Reunion".
- "Magic Duel": The various versions of Applejack and Rarity that Twilight makes during the titular duel look like palette swaps of their younger sisters and various other members of the apple family. This is because ||they really are palette swaps, as Twilight is not strong enough to actually cast those spells, so the Apple Family and Sweetie Belle disguised themselves with paint and hair dyes instead||. Likewise, Fluttershy is painted in Rainbow Dash's colors for the duplication illusion.
- "Apple Family Reunion": The fruit bats are a particularly extreme example of this. Only the red ones are given detailed models, while all other bats are just outlines filled in with all the colors of the rainbow.
- "Bats!": The same Flash model is used for all the vampire fruit bats, recolored brown, gray or slate blue to give them some variety.
- "Amending Fences": Moondancer, a friend first mentioned in the first episode of the series but who does not appear properly until here in season 5, is partly a recolor of Twilight, emphasizing her role as a foil. When they're young, they're complete palette swaps aside from their Cutie Marks (and both are antisocial bookworms). At the time of the episode, Moondancer has acquired Big Ol' Eyebrows, Nerd Glasses, a sweater and a messier "I don't care what I look like" version of the hairstyle, though it's still a modification of the same one with a hair bobble. (And she's become even more antisocial whereas Twilight has learnt to appreciate friendship.) We also see that before Twilight's rejection traumatised her and she decided to isolate herself, she had the eyebrows and glasses but was still otherwise a palette swap. (This doesn't so much seem to have symbolic significance as to be a needed halfway point between the two other looks.)
-
*The New Scooby-Doo Movies*: One episode reuses a character model of a villain from the original series, and just recolors him white to make a 'new' villain.
-
*PAW Patrol*: One episode features a one-off pup named Sylvia, who is a palette swap of Chase with blue fur and purple eyes rather than brown fur and orange eyes.
-
*Ready Jet Go!*:
- Moonbeam is a light blue version of Sunspot.
- Carrot and Celery's boss from "Back to Bortron 7" is just a huge green Sunspot, but with a mustache obscuring his mouth.
- Face 9001 is an orange recolor of Face 9000.
-
*Shimmer and Shine:* Dottie, the polka-dotted elephant from "My Secret Genies", is practically the elephant from "Abraca-Genie" with polka dots and a different color pattern.
- Homer and Krusty the Clown in
*The Simpsons* have the exact body shape and face with the obvious difference being Krusty is in clown shoes and makeup. Originally, Homer was supposed to have been a clown as a hidden job that Bart wouldn't know about, but the idea got scrapped and Homer's clown design was made into a separate character.
- Fairly common in
*South Park* for background classmates at the boys' school, or for adults in other crowd scenes. Although the animators have put together more distinct character models for extras in later seasons, palette swaps can still occur when they don't feel up to making even more new ones.
- Many extras on
*SpongeBob SquarePants* are Palette Swaps of each other. For example, the "My Leg!" and "Deaugh!" fishes.
-
*Star Wars Rebels*: Minister Maketh Tua is a palette-swapped generic citizen. Which led to confusion ||after her death in "The Siege of Lothal", because on at least two occasions afterward ("The Future of the Force", "Legacy") extras with that character model have been seen. Especially notable in "Legacy", where the extra in question gets a distinctive reaction shot||.
-
*Totally Spies!* has a Shout-Out example with the girls' predecessors, Pam, Alice, and Crimson. The women look almost *exactly* like Hitomi, Ai, and Rui from *Cat's Eye*, just with different hair and eye colors.
-
*Transformers* has some In-Universe examples of characters performing Palette Swaps on themselves, though:
- In the original series, Optimus Prime received one as a side effect of being coated with Dr. Morgan's impervious alloy in "The Return of Optimus Prime, Part 2". He's back to his original colors by the end of the episode, but it's never mentioned if it's because the alloy coating was removed, or if his colors were repainted over the alloy, and neither the American nor Japanese continuations make further mention of the alloy. Amusingly, the "impervious" Optimus Prime ends up looking like Ultra Magnus' cab robot mode (albeit the toy variant without the blue paint highlights on his head), which is likely why they put him back in his normal colors as soon as the story no longer had the need for the alloy.
- In
*Transformers: Animated*, Bumblebee, Wasp, and ||Longarm Prime/Shockwave|| demonstrate palette-swapping abilities via "electronic paint job".
- Lampshaded in the third season of
*Transformers: Prime*. When the Autobots went underground, Bumblebee reversed his colors, from being a yellow car with black stripes to a black car with yellow stripes. Arcee (who is blue with a few pink accents) notes that if she were to do that, she'd end up mostly pink.
-
*The Triplets*: While it's justified due to them being identical triplets, Anna, Helena, and Teresa look exactly the same other than different-colored shirts and hair bows.
- Any product that is mass produced can also be made with different colors. Cars and electronics are a big example of this.
- Nintendo is very fond of making their consoles and accessories in different colors. The Nintendo 64 had controllers of various colors, ranging from red, blue, green, purple, etc. The console itself would also be produced in colors beyond black late in its life. When the Gamecube was launched, it came in either black or purple, along with its controllers. Later on, there would be a silver/platinum version and for a short time, there was orange, but that color was used only for the controller. The Wii initially released only in white, but it was also produced in black years later and there were controllers in black as well, along with pink, blue, and a limited edition of gold. The Wii-U and its controllers only ever came in either black or white. The Switch console is only produced in black, although the attachable Joy-Con come in gray, as well as several neon colors such as blue, red, yellow, green and pink. A set of limited edition
*Super Mario Odyssey* red Joy-Con also exist. The standard wireless Pro Controller is black, although a *Splatoon 2* Pro Controller with green and pink grips came out to coincide with the release of the game. There are several other cheaper Pro Controller variants, but they lack several features found only in their more expensive brethren.
- Nintendo's handhelds are an even bigger example of palette swapping, having huge amounts of colors consumers could pick from and some of them were limited edition colors (such as gold) and a few of those were never released outside of their regions. There's a
*ton* of colors that were used throughout each handheld iteration and they can be found here for the Game Boy line and for the DS line.
- Badge engineering.
- Basically any cheap self-promotional item handed out by a hotel, real estate agent, car dealer, etc, was almost certainly ordered from some generic wholesaler, meaning the pen, notepad, fidget spinner, etc, you got from them is probably completely identical to many other free pens/notepads/fidget spinners floating around out there except the color and logo is different. Companies in China specialise in this, where they offer "original design manufacturer" (ODM) services to interested clients through sites such as Alibaba — one would place a miminal order of about a hundred or so units and have them rebadged to suit the client's needs. This accounts for why you can see a cheap Android smartphone or MP3 player being sold by unrelated companies but share the same design and internals. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaletteSwaps |
Frame Break - TV Tropes
A Painting the Medium and Medium Awareness trope, where characters interact with the confines of the scene. For example, interacting with borders around comic strip panels by crashing through the side or falling out the bottom. In live-action media, it might be implied that two characters are in two completely different locations, only to subvert this by having one of them reach into the other scene. It can also have objects in the frame enter the letterbox to emphasize or simulate a 3D effect.
A Sub-Trope of Odd-Shaped Panel and Metafictional Device.
Particularly common in Webcomics, as a fairly straightforward way to employ the Infinite Canvas.
Compare Camera Abuse. Contrast Behind the Black.
## Examples:
- In an early
*Dragon Ball* chapter, Goku hits Yamcha so hard he flies into the top frame of the page and cracks it.
- Obligatory
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi* example: Negi, Blue with Shock, holds on to the frame in a "Kilroy was here" pose when he contemplates what Evangeline's going to do to him for losing the ring she gave him.
- When a character is formally introduced in
*One Piece*, they often stand outside the panel, overlapping it.
- Invoked in episode 11 of
*Anime-Gataris*, where Minoa nearly walks into the abyss when the aspect ratio of a scene changes from 16:9 to 4:3. ||This is just one example of reality breaking down into anime tropes during her day, but she's the only one to notice the change.||
-
*Loop*: The twins use their time powers to cross panel borders, such as the red twin firing her gun at the next panel's blue twin, or the blue twin leaping back a panel. Their dad, Father Time, also does this, reaching back a panel to poke his daughter's cheeks.
- She-Hulk did it once or twice. One issue of
*She-Hulk* has her ripping through two pages of ads to go after a villain.
- Ambush Bug once jumped back several
*pages* to rescue Cheeks.
-
*X-Men*: Kitty Pryde, in some comics, can phase through panels.
- An issue of
*Superboy* has Doomsday ||(actually a clone of him)|| smash through the entire bottom half of a page in attacking Superboy, destroying the frames in the process.
- In part 10 of the
*Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide* crossover, ||Duo|| does this when he flies off to fight ||the Chaos Devil.||
-
*Asterix*:
- The characters sometimes use the comic's panel dividers to support themselves.
-
*Asterix and the Secret Weapon* features a bird being bothered by noises in the forest and flying straight into the next panel, which is at sea, where a seagull looks at it in surprise.
- Issue #17 of
*The Unbelievable Gwenpool* is mostly composed of Gwen going How Do I Shot Web? over her new Ninja Prop wielding abilities which culminate into her not only touching the panel border, but pushing a pencil through it, then breaking into her future (the next panel), and finally falling through the hole out of the comic.
- The eponymous hero of the French comic
*Imbattable* (Undefeatable) has the ability to move across panels as a superpower. Other characters see him teleporting, travelling in time, or duplicating himself, and never understand his explanations on how he's doing it.
- In one issue of
*Batman/Superman*, Mr. Mxyzptlk gives Calendar Man the power to see the comic panels and reach across them to interact with things in other panels.
-
*The Official Sonic The Hedgehog Yearbook*: In the first iteration of this short-lived U.K. annual book, one story has Dr. Robotnik develop an upgraded engine for his Egg-o-Matic in order to outpace Sonic. Sonic eventually outsmarts his nemesis by ducking under the flying machine when Robotnik goes to top speed, leading to the Egg-o-Matic hitting the edge of the panel. Sonic then tells the readers that Robotnik had indeed went off the edge of the page.
- "Little Sammy Sneeze" by Winsor McCay used this as early as the 1900's.
-
*Little Nemo* used this on occasion. In one strip, Flip tears off the bottom frame of a panel and uses it to knock down letters from the comic's logo.
-
*Pearls Before Swine*:
- Done fairly often; sometimes the characters sit on the top of the panels, sometimes the panels are tilted, causing issues in-strip, as well as "Panel Walking" into other comics.
-
*Pearls* occasionally has jokes that work best if the comics page happens to be laid out just right:
-
*The Family Circus* has Billy denying that he was spilling sunflower seeds in the kitchen. The *Pearls* strip that day has Rat throwing sunflower seeds down and out of the panel. When positioned directly above *The Family Circus*, Rat's abuse of the long-running comic became apparent.
- Another has Rat comment about being able to see up Blondie's skirt. Obviously the joke worked best when Pearls was immediately beneath
*Blondie*.
- Every so often a character in
*Pogo* would literally lean on the fourth wall this way (or at least against the frame border); on occasion Albert would use it to strike a match for his trademark cigars.
-
*Liberty Meadows* occasionally features things like Ralph trying to hold onto the panel borders while Brandy drags him off to therapy. *SNAP* "Stupid cheap panel borders!"
- In
*Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them*, magical elements such as the creatures and spells have a tendency to move outside the letterbox bars while everything else remains contained within the main screen.
-
*Ghostbusters (2016)* had some scenes in the 3D version where characters and elements would protrude over the black letterbox bars. ||When Erin saves Abby from falling into a dimensional portal, the *whole movie* expands over those bars.|| On DVD and Blu-ray, the 2D version also features these protrusions.
-
*Life of Pi*: In one sequence, the frame narrows to Cinemascope to show fish jumping out of the frame.
- One
*Monty Python's Flying Circus* animation has a Comic Book superhero bouncing off the walls of his panel in an attempt to escape.
- Quiz show
*University Challenge* always shows the two teams in split-screen, one above the other (in reality they're sitting at desks next to each other). This was parodied on *The Young Ones* when its characters appeared on the show, and Vyvyan kicked through the "floor" to attack the opposing team.
- Though it was a split screen in this case, one segment of "Formidable Opponent" on
*The Colbert Report* (where two Stephens would debate via chroma-key tricks) had Stephen Al-Bert (his terrorist counterpart) blowing up the split-screen at the end of the segment with a rocket launcher; when the smoke clears, the image is mainly broken like glass and all three Stephens have vanished.
- In the
*Advanced Dungeons & Dragons* (2 nd edition) "Monster Manual", the border around the fire elemental is burning up due to the close proximity. Similarly, the rust monster is corroding its border.
- The sprite comic
*Double-U Tea F* features King Lyger jumping into frame and kicking Mikau through the outer panel. A few issuess later, Mikau collides with the outside frame, which startles the characters in the comic.
- Only the outsiders of
*Project 0* break panel to show that they aren't bound by reality.
-
*The Order of the Stick* plays with this sometimes. Haley gets knocked into the next strip in the fight with Tsukiko. (The strip in question is called "At Least It Wasn't the Fourth Wall This Time.")
- In the Art Shift chapter of
*Welcome to the Convenience Store*.
- In a strip of
*Square Root of Minus Garfield*, Garfield breaks through all the panels to get a cookie jar that's just two seconds out-of-sync.
-
*The Book of Biff*: One panel and all the others that same week have Biff end up as a giant who towers above the comic panel.
- From
*Keychain of Creation*: Nemen Yi is a master of Infinite Canvas Style. High-level Exalted are just *that good*. Including using part of the frame as throwing knife.
-
*Gunnerkrigg Court*: A massive fire spreads beyond the panel borders, and even onto the following page (an effect that will presumably be more impressive in the print version).
-
*Rock, Paper, Cynic*
- Panel-breaking is used as a version of two-dimensional time travel in the comic, "Time Travel".
- We see a similar trick in "Free", where a stickman tries to dig his way out of the frame.
-
*The Way of the Metagamer* does this. A lot. Looking at previous and future panels, climbing between panels, and even pulling a section out of a panel are common occurrences.
-
*Footloose* may provide the most triumphant example. Faerie pirates cast a spell that lets them fire a *cannon* through the side of the panel and into the next.
- The aliens in the webcomic
*One Small Step* grab the corners of the panel so they can pull apart from being stuck.
-
*Schlock Mercenary* likes to show characters leaning into frame and holding onto the panel borders.
- Of particular note is that when Tagon crashed through a ceiling to make an entrance, it also looks like he crashed through the top of the panel with a large section missing, and bits falling off.
- In
*Unbound*, events sometimes spill over the sides of the comic. In one case a fire spreads to the 'paper' of the website's background, leaving it blackened once the fire is out.
- In
*Unsounded*, weird supernatural stuff—like certain fires, or metaphorical snake skeletons—extend off the page. When the characters walk through a dark tomb, the entire webpage is darkened. Interactions between the Khert and the physical world are also occasionally shown through frame breaks—Sette enters the Khert by falling through a frame, and during a later conversation she has with Murkoph he's trapped outside the page's frames while Sette is safely inside of them.
-
*Bob and George*. During the *Mega Man 5* parody, the protagonists split up and the comic began running two strips per day so the plots for both groups could update concurrently. After about a month of these updates, the characters in the bottom strip began wondering how their allies were doing, so they climbed into the strip above them to ask.
- In
*Mixed Myth*, Tamit learns the secret of Time Travel, and it involves seeing the comic panels. She then demonstrates her mastery by reaching through time (i.e. across the panel borders) to poke someone in an adjacent panel.
- In a strip of
*Out at Home*, Penny bats a speech balloon from one frame to another.
- Gavin, the main villain of
*The Fancy Adventures of Jack Cannon*, here tries to trap the titular hero in a shrinking panel frame, and Jack has to break it to escape.
- In
*El Goonish Shive*, a flashback panel featured Grace holding onto the "pop-up" panel she's coming out of in one instance and pointing at the flashback in another instance.
-
*Homestuck*:
- Late into the comic's sixth act, a villainous (and metafictional) character discovers a magical Crowbar and proceeds to use it to beat a harmless, if unsettling, clown. The narrator is disgusted and plays terrible music to punish the villain, but the Anti-Magic gives the crowbar the ability to attack the website's format, and send links across the page flying around. He uses this to keep the narrator in-line and protest any story development he objects to here.
- Cans clocking powers allow him to punch characters out of panels into the default background of
*MS Paint Adventures*. This escalates in the End of Act 6 animation, where his powers have him chasing a character across and through multiple panels until they start fighting on top of one.
- To demonstrate John's new metafictional powers to traverse and retcon the story, when he turns into wind he dissipates past the panel borders.
-
*Dark Legacy Comics* #421 features a whole page full of increasingly broken frames (eventually collapsing onto each other, with objects sticking from one frame to the next) as a result of Narya and Miji *mining the frame sides* to make "white platinum". #411 features the clones attacking each other (accidentally) through the panel borders, even between *rows* in a strange form of time travel.
-
*L's Empire* has this as part of a Wham Shot when ||Temporary Dark Samus jumps out of the frame of the comic, taking one of the authors with him.||
- Near the end of the original series of
*Star Mares*, the background ponies are trying to reach the top of the Empress's tower, but are trapped in an adjacent shaft with no way through. Maple Leaf, after having spent the entire comic telling everypony *not* to break the fourth wall, uses her party cannon to bust through the frame (it being more easily broken than the wall would be).
-
*Paranatural*: On this page, when ||the werewolf digs its claws into the Ghost Train||, one of its claws extends past the panel border, tearing a gash in the surrounding white.
- In the intro of
*The Beano Video* we see numerous instances of this, including Teacher being used by the Bash Street Kids as a battering ram.
- In
*The Fairly Oddparents*, when Timmy magically goes into the Crimson Chin comic book, he's able to jump from frame to frame (and time travel by doing so).
- Several scenes in
*Maya and the Three* depict objects or characters "breaking out" of the letterbox, usually for some sort of dramatic effect.
- The
*Zeke's Pad* episode "King of the Pad" combines this with Split-Screen Phone Call. Zeke calls Jay late at night, and once the screen splits, Jay hits his head on the border when he sits up. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanelBreak |
Panel Game - TV Tropes
*... but for once, let's put our heads down, and have an informative, popular, music-based quiz, without resorting to*
jokes—
*the coward's way out.*
A Panel Game or Panel Show is a variation on the Game Show in which celebrities and comedians compete in teams to win points. Panel games are a mainstay of British television, perhaps due to the continued UK popularity of radio entertainment, from which the format was adapted; or to accommodate lower UK production budgets. The games are a useful way for up-and-coming — or fast-descending — comedians to pay the bills.
The celebrity contestants are usually paid an appearance fee, but there is rarely a prize as an incentive to win, although the contestants may still be highly competitive. The focus is on comedy; The Points Mean Nothing, and some shows feature a joke prize that is mundane (
*Have I Got News for You*), bizarre ( *Shooting Stars*), or non-existent ( *I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue*).
Panel games feature a host who asks the questions and adjudicates, and often some of the panelists are regulars who appear every week. The host makes jokes between the rounds, of which there are up to six, some more gimmicky than others, including video clips and minigames.
Not to be confused with Celebrity Specials of a Game Show, where the celeb accrues prize money and donates it to a charity of their choosing.
## Examples:
- The one that is most familiar to American viewers is
*Whose Line Is It Anyway?*, which had four comedians who would perform improv comedy to win points from host Clive Anderson (later replaced by Drew Carey for the somewhat-louder American version).
- A long-running British panel show was
*Never Mind the Buzzcocks*, which is based around music and generally features pop and rock stars as well as comedians. After most of the original cast started having other commitments, the show bounced back with a very successful format of rotating guest hosts and temporary team captains. Phill Jupitus has appeared in every episode but one, making him pretty much the face of the show. The show's initial final season was hosted by Rhod Gilbert, and the other team captain is Noel Fielding. After being cancelled in 2015, it was revived in 2021 with Greg Davies as the host with Daisy May Cooper and Jamali Maddix as the new team captains.
- Another mainstay of British panel games is
*Have I Got News for You*, a political and satirical panel game that generally attracts politicians, journalists, and businessmen as its panelists, as well as more politically-minded comedians.
- A similar show is
*Mock the Week*, basically *Have I Got News For You* meets *Whose Line*.
- One of the oldest British panel games is
*A Question of Sport*, which — since it typically features sportsmen — is generally regarded as more niche and less funny than its competitors (there were a lot of restrictions on how funny they could be when Princess Anne turned up). It's headed a bit more towards the comedic in recent years (ever since Sue Barker took over the chair), which meant that...
-
*They Think It's All Over*, also a sporting panel game but with more emphasis on the funny (each side had a regular sportsman, a regular comedian and one other random, usually a sportsman), was rendered slightly redundant. A change of panelists didn't kill the show; a change of hosts did. Rampantly most famous for the Feel The Sportsman round, where contestants were blindfolded and had to identify a sportsperson (or, in several cases, a *team* of sportspersons) by touch alone.
- The format was taken to its logical conclusion in
*Shooting Stars* which dispensed with rules, order and sense, and featured questions such as "True or False: Bill Cosby was the first-ever black man" (the answer was false; it was actually Sidney Poitier). It also featured dream sequences, sketches, and other distractions from the boring business of actually hosting a show. The guests are more of an afterthought than anything.
- Subverted in
*Annually Retentive*, a 2-for-1 Show which shows both a traditional panel game and the (fictional) behind-the-scenes backstabbing that happens behind it. As far as the celebrities are concerned, it's a 'proper' panel show, and only the host and captains act in the behind-the-scenes bits.
-
*Wild N Out* is an urban-themed improv comedy show. The players, who seem to be regulars with a single exception (the special celebrity guest), are divided into the Red Squad (led by host Nick Cannon) and the Black Squad (led by the special guest). They compete mostly for pride, as well as the opportunity to hold the pro wrestling-style "improv champion" belt.
- This format was once common on North American prime time; the tone was more serious, although there was still some joking going on. The best known of these were CBS's
*To Tell the Truth*, *I've Got a Secret*, and *What's My Line?* (all of which later went into syndication) and CBC's *Front Page Challenge*, which ran for 37 years (1958-95).
- You could argue shows like
*Match Game* and *The Hollywood Squares* (and their various knockoffs and Derivative Works, such as *Break the Bank (1976)*, the 70s revivals of *You Don't Say!*, and *Battlestars*) are the result of the panel game and the game show getting drunk and doing it.
- Australia also has its fair share of these, many differing from their British counterparts only so much as is necessary to avoid paying the BBC for the rights.
- There have been two
*Never Mind the Buzzcocks*-alikes. SBS's *Rockwiz* is considered the more musically credible; it has the feel of a stage show that just happens to be on TV, being filmed in an actual pub and with the scores displayed on cardboard placards. It is trumped in popularity by ABC's *Spicks and Specks*, which is closer to *Buzzcocks* in format but (being hosted by Adam Hills) with a more positive attitude and less likely to go Off the Rails.
-
*Good News Week* was originally a carbon copy of *Have I Got News For You*, but its political satire didn't survive the move to commercial television. After a ten year hiatus, the rebooted show focuses more on oddball stories, celebrity news and musical guests.
- Also Australian is
*Talkin' 'bout Your Generation*, hosted by Shaun Micallef and featuring comedians Baby Boomer Amanda Keller, Generation X Charlie Pickering, Generation Y Josh Thomas, and their celebrity guests, in an attempt to determine the superior generation.
-
*QI*, themed around general ~~knowledge~~ ignorance, has become one of the biggest. (And funniest.) Notable for having no captains but a regular panelist in Alan Davies, who acts as a foil to host Stephen Fry and keeps things from getting too serious. Fry left following Series M and it is now hosted by Sandi Toksvig with Alan remaining his regular panelist position.
-
*You Have Been Watching*, themed around television shows, hosted by Charlie Brooker.
-
*8 Out of 10 Cats*, about statistics, hosted by Jimmy Carr, regular team captain Sean Lock (either of whom tend to be CMOF-worthy *separately*), relatively new team captain Jon Richardson, and the occasional *somewhat* thematic celebrity (such as Chris Hoy, after he won Olympic gold).
- As of Series 22, the team captains are now Rob Beckett and Katherine Ryan though Sean ( until his death in 2021) and Jon are the team captains on the spinoff hybrid series 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown with Jimmy also serving as the host.
-
*Dave Gorman's Genius*, which is also a radio show, involves more audience participation than usual: the general public mails suggestions which could improve the world (or are just funny), and the best ones get invited onto the show to defend their idea to a guest, who is in charge of deciding whether or not the idea is genius. Ideas that have been declared genius before include breeding an elephant that is small enough to be a house pet, helium filled bubble wrap to make parcels lighter and postage cheaper, and to make parliament discuss things under the rules of *Just a Minute*.
-
*Would I Lie to You?*, hosted in the first two seasons by Angus Deayton, currently hosted by Rob Brydon, with team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell. Slightly more emphasis on the *game* part of panel game, the contestants read out a card that either contains an unlikely truth about themselves or a lie made up by the researchers of the show, and they have to defend it as true, while the other team prods them for additional facts and then says whether it's the truth, or a lie. (A video link explains it better than that description.) There are also various other rounds, such as each member of one team claiming to know a mystery guest. It's one of the best panel shows on today, with very little scripted material, lots of funny stories and plenty of good-natured ribbing.
-
*The Bubble*, hosted by David Mitchell isolates 3 celebrities in a country house for a week and shows them a variety of News Stories from the week, some real, some faked and the celebrities have to guess which is which. It's better seen than read about. Notable for the fact that while it's a BBC show they are banned from faking news from the BBC. Here's an interview about the program.
- Ireland has
*The Panel* which dispenses with the quiz format altogether, while still attempting to feel like a panel game show. It used to work, until Dara Ó Briain left.
- The format is quite popular in the Netherlands, although not quite as mainstream as it is in the UK. Popular Dutch panel shows include:
-
*Waku Waku*, a classic charity show with a focus on wildlife trivia. Although it was extremely popular for quite a number of seasons, it was cancelled well over a decade ago. It's the one panel show that all others take their cues from.
-
*Dit Was Het Nieuws* (This Was The News), a carbon copy of *Have I Got News for You*.
-
*The Mike And Thomas Show*, a rapid, very musical show not unlike *Shooting Stars*. It consists of the two titular hosts basically just messing about in the guise of a gameshow. And two grand pianos.
-
*Wie Ben Ik?* (Who Am I?), a panel show based around celebrities trying to guess the object, character or concept they've been labeled as. The show made great use of its simplistic rules, letting the comedians run loose and never pretending to be more than it was, resulting in one of the most celebrated light entertainment shows in Dutch TV history.
- New Zealand's local programme
*Seven Days* follows this format, focusing on news stories that happened in the last week. The amount of points awarded per round tends to reference recent news stories, often at impressively different scales (Team one, you can have the number of women that claim to have slept with Tiger Woods; Team Two, you can have the cost of repairing Qantas' air fleet. Team Two wins!).
-
*Figure It Out* has four panelists try to figure out what a contestant's secret talent is before all three rounds are up. Being a Nickelodeon show, lots of slime is expected.
-
*Sponk!*, a *Whose Line*-esque show created for the Nickelodeon spin-off network Noggin. The show had two teams of actors perform improvisational sketches, which in this case would be voted on by the studio audience.
-
*Bunk*, an IFC mock-gameshow with a panel of 3 comedians competing at strange tasks to win strange prizes.
-
*Comedy World Cup*, hosted by David Tennant, which ran for only 7 episodes. In a twist of the normal formal, there were no regulars but four different teams that consisted of the same comedians. The teams were pitted against each other to answer questions regarding comedy history and trivia, and the winner would advance to the next level.
- Comedy Central's
*@Midnight* was a U.S., four-nights-a-week take on the concept themed around internet and pop culture. Although obscured by its use of elements associated with American quiz shows (consisting of three solo guests, some rounds played on buzzers, and a Final Jeopardy-like endgame played between the top two scorers... or all three if Chris Hardwick feels like it), it still carried all of the hallmarks of a British-style panel game (including a focus on rapidly-changing subjects and recurring segments, and points that wildly fluctuated on the host's whim).
-
*Virtually Famous* is another British panel show with the same format as the traditional ones, with the additional theme of things that are internet famous.
-
*Animal Crack-Ups* was a short-lived note : Read: One season, in the "kids aren't even watching" timeslot Saturday-morning game show on Creator/ABC in the mid-80s, in which celebrities answered trivia questions about animals with the winner getting a cash donation to the wildlife-based charity of their choice.
- Nippon TV in Japan is the home of
*Shoten* note : 笑点, which roughly translates as "Funnybone", a comedy panel show that's been running weekly since 1966. As with other similar shows, although the participants - always comedians - are scored, the goal is mainly to entertain rather than to win. Shoten keeps score in a unique way: participants sit on stacks of heavy cushions, each representing one point. This has spawned a popular Internet meme: "you get a cushion" note : 座布団一枚, used as a reply to particularly witty comments.
-
*Have You Been Paying Attention?* is an Australian Panel Game in a somewhat similar vein to the BBC's *Have I Got News for You* (though with a larger focus on the "quiz" side of things as the contestants actually score more than five points), *Have You Been Paying Attention?*, as its intro suggests, tests a group of five comedians/radio personalities on the week's events.
-
*That's My Jam*, hosted by Jimmy Fallon in 2021-22, has a large focus on karaoke-style singing in addition to trivia segments, and many of the celebrity guests are musicians. They "compete" in teams of two, but The Points Mean Nothing, the last round is worth more than the rest of the game combined, and the winning team receives only a pair of metal-plated boom-box trophies, with actual monetary prizes/donations being divided equally among contestants' chosen charities regardless of outcome.
-
*I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue* is a parody of the panel show genre (featuring many intentionally surreal rounds where scoring points would be completely impossible even if they tried) and has been broadcast with most of the original panelists since 1972.
-
*The 99p Challenge* is a radio panel show that offers up a prize of 99 pence (currently equivalent to US$50,000) to its winners.
- American example: NPR's
*Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me*. Not a pure panel game, as it also features segments in which listeners play to win an actual prize, but as the prize is an answering machine greeting from newscaster Carl Kasell, these are played for laughs as much as the ones with only the panelists.
- More panelly American example: NPR's
*Says You!* where a regular cast, consisting mostly of media writers and producers, plays a series of games dealing with trivia and English vocabulary.
-
*Just a Minute*, which, over the years, has placed more and more emphasis on joke-telling than on trying to speak for a minute without repetition, hesitation, or deviation, with the panel now generally composed of stand-up comedians (the original regulars included columnist Clement Freud and comic actors (but not stand-up comedians) Peter Jones, Derek Nimmo, and Kenneth Williams). Host Nicholas Parsons did insist that it was the contributions and not the point-scoring that is most important, but this has not stopped many panelists over the years from taking the "game" aspect very seriously.
-
*The Unbelievable Truth*, hosted by David Mitchell. The four guests give a lecture on a particular subject that is full of lies, except for five truths scattered throughout, and the others have to pick out the truths as they go.
-
*The News Quiz*, something of a radio counterpart to *Have I Got News for You* (which it predates by thirteen years). In its early years, it was a relatively straight panel game about the week's news, with the panel largely comprising journalists and politicians, but since around the mid-1990s there has been more emphasis on comedy.
-
*The Museum of Curiosity*, which has been described as a sister show to *QI*. Guests including comedians, scientists and explorers each "donate" something to the museum, explaining why it is significant. The "donations" can be literally anything from ordinary objects to cosmic events to abstract concepts.
- A very early example would be
*Information Please*, first broadcast in 1938. Particularly interesting in that the listening public was responsible for sending in the questions asked of the panel members, and they were the ones paid if the panelists got the answer wrong.
-
*Fighting Talk*, which airs every Saturday morning during the football season on BBC Five Live. More competitive than most examples, it features four panelists; usually sportspeople, comedians or journalists, discussing topical sporting news with points awarded for good punditry and passion as well as comedy.
-
*So Wrong It's Right*, another panel show hosted by Charlie Brooker. Comedians (including several regulars such as David Mitchell, Rob Brydon, Holly Walsh, and Lee Mack) compete to tell the "worst" stories, such as the worst thing that happened to them at a party or the worst idea for a restaurant.
-
*Because News*, a CBC radio panel game that first aired in 2015.
-
*My Word!*, long-running (1956-1988) BBC radio panel game with challenges based on language and wordplay. Best remembered for the final round, which was an excuse for team captains Frank Muir and Denis Norden to tell comic anecdotes ending in excruciating puns.
- David Firth of Fat-Pie.com doesn't appear to much like panel shows, as displayed in a cartoon he made for Charlie Brooker's show
*Screenwipe* that mocks the pre-written jokes many of them use. It also makes a few jabs at internet videos. See the cartoon here.
- Caught Chatting is presented in this format.
- Pappy's Flatshare Slamdown is a panel show released in Podcast format.
- Citation Needed is Tom Scott's take on the format: He has a Wikipedia article pulled up, and three panelists (Chris Joel, Gary Brannan, and Matt Gray) who can't see the article and have to guess the details. Because all four of them are quite geeky and still intelligent, a lot of educational joking ensues.
- Guest starring on a Panel Quiz Show is a way for your up-and-coming star/starlet to earn money (and fame) in Star Dream. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanelShow |
Pals with Jesus - TV Tropes
Jesus with his best bud, Biff.
**Bethany:**
Christ? You knew Christ?
**Rufus:**
Knew him? Nigga owes me twelve bucks.
Maybe you live in a Fantasy Kitchen Sink. Perhaps you're the proud resident of a world with a Crossover Cosmology. Whatever the case, you need to put the kettle on the boil and biscuits on the tray because your pal Jesus, or your old buddy Krishna, is coming over for tea in twenty minutes.
This trope is about the tendency of fantastic fiction and ancient myth to have
*completely* mundane mortals (often of the heroic variety) be on a First-Name Basis with the movers and shakers of the universe. The reasons vary: maybe the Physical God, Anthropomorphic Personification, or (surprisingly personable) Eldritch Abomination have taken a liking to the character for their own reasons. Maybe their portfolios coincide a great deal, so they share the same interests. Or maybe the god just wants to chill out with someone who's not depressed due to Time Dissonance, or because they don't identify with their vainglorious "equals". Then again, if your hero is actively fighting Dracula and his minion The Grim Reaper across several games, it's only natural they get to get friendly after a while.
Whatever the case, the character has a direct line to the Powers That Be.
Though not limited exclusively to these types of characters, the following tend to attract deific attention most often: The Unfazed Everyman and Weirdness Magnet.
Compare God Was My Copilot, where this is used as The Reveal, and Reasoning with God, where higher powers can be talked to but only on extraordinary occasions. See also Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?, Olympus Mons, and Enemies with Death. If they get involved in the characters life, may become a Sidekick Ex Machina or Monster Roommate. If the relationship involves more than just friendship, may lead to a Divine Date. Contrast Egocentrically Religious for conceited characters who believe themselves to be pals with Jesus. The situation can get even
*more* interesting if Jesus' Pal happens to be a Flat-Earth Atheist. For a more mundane example, see Interclass Friendship.
## Examples:
-
*Dragon Ball*:
- By the end of
*Dragon Ball Z*, not only have our heroes met three tiers of gods, the manager of hell, and sundry other beings, the main characters are also *more powerful than they are.*
- They are also the ones who selected Dende as the new God of Earth. So, not only are they pals with Jesus, but they're his bosses, mostly because Asskicking Leads to Leadership.
- Half the point of the
*Battle of Gods* movie seems to be restoring some meaning to the word "god", as it pits Goku against Beerus, a God of Destruction who makes Buu look like a pushover. Not only does he declare Goku a worthy opponent despite *beating* him, he joined in Bulma's birthday celebration before threatening to blow up the Earth.
- This is furthered in
*Dragon Ball Super*, where both Beerus and Whis regularly drop by for tasty food, and Goku later catches the attention of Zen'ō, the Top God of the *Dragonball*-verse, who decides that Goku would make a great friend. Later deconstructed with Zen'O, as Goku being friends with him blinds Goku to how Zen'O's innocent, childlike nature actually makes him insanely dangerous given his power level (guy could wipe out the whole multiverse with ease) and that maybe the warnings Beerus and Whis have been giving him about not reminding Zen'O about a multiversal tournament have a point. Goku is horrified when Zen'O decides all losing universes in the tournament will be *destroyed*. ||Of course, Goku's reminders turn out to have been the one thing that kept those universes in existence, as Zen'O was planning to destroy them *anyway* and the tournament was merely to decide which one was spared his wrath.||
- In
*YuYu Hakusho*, Yusuke's boss is Koenma, a centuries-old being with the body of a toddler who is in charge of running the afterlife's Celestial Bureaucracy.
-
*Excel♡Saga*, the Great Will of the Macrocosm regularly chastises Excel for getting killed, forcing the Will to bring her back to life.
- In
*Saint Young Men*, Buddha and Jesus are roommates.
-
*Haruhi Suzumiya*. Kyon and ||Haruhi||. Hell, make that *everyone* and ||Haruhi||.
- First Easter Mirage Corps and other associates of Amaterasu dis Grand Grees Eydas IV, Emperor of Amaterasu Kingdom Demesnes from Mamoru Nagano
*Five Star Stories*, and Amaterasu mel Gibih Lachesis Fanatic B Guiress, his fatima and wife. While not really a local Almighty, Amaterasu is damn close, and there is strong indication that he's the *grandfather* of one.
-
*Pokémon* often has Legendary Pokemon palling around with human children. And in the games, you can capture them and order them around.
- Pyramid King Brandon captured not one, but
*three* Legendary Pokemon. Tobias has at least two. Noland is a close friend of an Articuno, although it's not actually on his team.
- Ash Ketchum has never captured a Legendary Pokémon, but he's befriended most of them, ||even Arceus||. Some would say that he is more recognized by divine forces that watch over Pokémon than humans.
- In the Sun and Moon anime, Ash makes such a good impression on Tapu Koko without realizing it that it gives him a Z-Ring on the first night. The next day, it teaches him how to use Gigavolt Havoc. ||He
*also* has a mythic Pokémon on is team since the *sun & moon* arc.||
- Mallow becomes the temporary guardian of the Mythical Shaymin after coming to terms with her mother's death.
- Goh earns the respect of a rightfully suspicious ||Suicune|| (who had been targeted by hunters and later captured by him to make sure they didn't get it first) by making sure it and its forest friends were healthy before giving it a chance to go back into the wild. It takes that chance, but not before letting him know it's there if he needs its aid.
-
*Saint Seiya* has Saori/Athena as a rich heiress who also is the Team Mom to the Bronze Saints who protect her directly. Also, one of the Golden Saints at her service is Shaka, the reincarnation of Buddha.
- In
*Ah! My Goddess* Keiichi Morisato makes a wish for a goddess to stay with him forever, and gets that wish granted by way of Belldandy, Norse goddess of the present who's the daughter of a deity who is God (read: "The Almighty"). Her sister Urd is the daughter of Hild, the current ruler of the other side.
- In the OVA continuity
*Tenchi Muyo!*, two of Tenchi's housemates are revealed to be part of the three Choushin goddesses who created the multiverse they live in. Sasami merged with the goddess Tsunami when she was injured as a young child, while Washu simply sealed her memory and powers away in the three power gems that she gave to her daughter Ryoko. As of the end of the 3rd OVA series, their sister Tokimi seems to be joining in on the fun as well.
- Word of God has seemingly stated that ||Tokimi will eventually join in on Tenchi's Harem. Tenchi's batting three for three now.||
- In
*High School D×D*, the Only Friend Ophis considers is Issei, the protagonist.
-
*Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!*: Under the "surprisingly personable Eldritch Abomination", we have Mahiro, who has attracted the affection of a certain Lovecraftian horror, namely Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. Fortunately for Mahiro's sanity, Nyarlathotep has taken on the form of a human girl.
-
* Inari, Konkon, Koi Iroha*: Inari herself no longer qualifies as a "mundane mortal." But her brother Touka, who only has the ability to see gods, somehow became the belligerent pal of Uka, the local fox goddess. They play video games together, and eventually develop feelings for each other.
- Karin from
*UQ Holder!* knew Jesus back in the day. ||They probably haven't been on speaking terms since she sold him out to the Romans.||
- Downplayed in
*Lyrical Nanoha*. Vivio Takamachi isn't actually a divine being, but she (or rather, the woman she's cloned from) is worshiped by a major religion. Technically, all of her friends and family (five of whom are members of the very church that worships her) are this by default.
-
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8* takes this one step beyond. After Season 7 but before Season 8, Xander went on a bit of a vacation. During that time, Dracula found him and re-brainwashed him. During that time, they were best friends, doing all kinds of things (Xander taught Dracula how to ride a motorcycle, for example). The Slayer Organization ends up rescuing Xander, but they need Dracula's help in Season 8. It turns out that Dracula hadn't shaved, fed or dyed his hair (causing it to go grey) since Xander left. When he learns they are coming, he shaves and dyes his hair once again to look good for Xander. He pretends that everything has been fine since Xander left, but it's clear he's lying. When he mistakenly thinks Xander is asking him out on a date, he haughtily refuses in a way that can only be described as Tsundere. Basically, in the Buffyverse, Dracula is gay (or bi, but that word doesn't seem to exist in the Buffyverse) and has a crush on Xander. Oh, and Xander has a subconscious verbal tic because of the months of brainwashing. Whether he wants to or not, he refers to Dracula as "Master".
- In
*Spider-Man* so far Peter is the only character in the entire Marvel Multiverse to ever have The One Above All (literally God in the Marvel Universe) go after him to have a chat, a meaningful one; others looked for The One Above All and some talked to him but Peter was the only one who was looked after by the man himself; in all Peter seems to have a tendency to intrigue multiverse beings, good and bad, to sometimes take their precious time to talk with him.
- Uatu The Watcher in
*Marvel Comics*. Sure he isn't quite a "god," per se, nor does he ever visit our heroes at home, but we sure do see an awful lot of him, don't we? Given that the Watchers are supposed to be True Neutral observers who never interfere, the fact that Uatu even *lets* humans see him shows how much Uatu likes us.
- Deadpool once visits an alternate future where he is still around and best friends with Death.
- The Marvel Universe and DC Comics both have more than enough gods running around as superheroes. DC even has several
*angels* running around as superheroes.
- Many characters in
*The Sandman (1989)*, but mainly Hob Gadling, who is friends with the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. One (minor) goddess thinks of friendships like these as "like falling in love with a kitten: one day you'll have to put an old cat to sleep."
- Apparently this (literally) is the premise of a Finnish Swedish-language comic called
*Ernst och Jesus*.
- In
*Battle Pope*, the title character has Jesus for a roommate and Cowardly Sidekick.
- This is the point of the
*Chick Tracts*. If you are a good Christian, you will be in a "relationship with God" and Jesus will be your friend. Which means that you will get instant results from your prayer, including giving people heart attacks. Or something.
- Played with in The Chronicles of Wormwood. The Antichrist (a really nice guy who rejects his heritage) pals around with Jesus, who has brain damage from a police beating.
- Doctor Strange is on a first-name basis with a lot of powerful entities, from the Vishanti to Eternity and even the Living Tribunal. They seldom go to him, though he has paid a house call on Agamotto once or twice.
-
*Daily Bugle* reporter Ben Urich, who is about as normal as you can get, is on a real-identity basis with both Daredevil and Spider-Man.
- Meet Verity Willis, Living Lie Detector and social recluse (think about that power a bit and you'll get why), from
*Loki: Agent of Asgard* neighbour and Only Friend of (the 3rd) Loki and through them acquaintance of at least Thor Odinson, Lorelei, Sigurd (The Ever-Glorious), and Valeria Richards, also *trusted ally* of Latveria (how to get on every terrorist watchlist in one easy step).
- During Tony Isabella's run on
*Ghost Rider*, the titular cyclist struck up a friendship with a character known only as "a friend", who just happened to look a hell of a lot like Jesus Christ. Had editorial not intervened, he would have eventually been revealed to actually be Jesus, and would have redeemed Ghost Rider's soul. Instead, he was revealed to be a demon, and Isabella quit Marvel in outrage.
-
*Wonder Woman*:
- In the 1988
*Advanced Dungeons & Dragons* comic by DC, the heroes are close friends to Luna the innkeeper, who turns out to be the goddess Selune.
-
*Angus Og*: During the story arc where Drambeg is being sold to the Sheikh and due to be shipped piece by piece to the Arabian Gulf, Rev. McSonachan says he will get legal advice to see what he can do to stop it. Lachie wonders what good that will do, and Angus says that that Reverend has some very influential contacts. Gilligan Cut to McSonachan praying and repeating "an Interim what?" implying that God has told him to get an Interim Edict note : A type of restraining order to stop the removal.
-
*Ivan Turbincă*: The titular character befriends God and Saint Peter at the beginning of the story.
-
*Child of the Storm* has a number of examples, what with the number of gods and demigods hanging around - mainly, Loki and Thor. The Avengers and their associates are pretty much unfazed by their divine status, but as is pointed out on more than one occasion, not everyone is quite so familiar with them. A particularly prominent example is Harry, the protagonist, who serves as the Jesus figure who people are pals with, what with him being the demigod son of Thor (who had been incarnated as James Potter. Long story). Said friends mostly take this in their stride (much to his relief), aside from one or two occasions when the whole We Are as Mayflies thing is brought up, though the Christmas Special features Harry complaining about how, when they went to a carol service, Carol sniggered at him the whole way through 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'. Apparently the line 'hail the incarnate deity' set her off.
- Additionally, after most of a million words of the Jesus Taboo being firmly held (save for mentions that Thor and Loki used to be friends with Jesus and were supposedly a bad influence on him), a friendly dark skinned man with curly hair introduces himself to Harry as 'cousin Joshua' - no prizes for guessing who that is. He lends Harry a sympathetic ear after one particularly spectacular Trauma Conga Line resulting in ||Harry becoming the Dark Phoenix||, giving him some good advice in the bargain, and afterwards pops up every now and then, serving as what Harry dourly remarks is best described as a combination of 'therapist and parole officer.'
- The final chapter of
*Red Jewel Diaries* uses this as the punchline to a scene when an evangelical member of the Saint Church tries to get Lutecia to turn to religion.
**Lutecia:** *(To her mother)*
I think someone was trying to set me up with Vivio
.
- In
*Pokémon Reset Bloodlines*, the Alolan Kahunas seem to be close friends with the respective Deity Guardians of each island, at least in the case of Hala (from whom Tapu Koko frequently steals root beer) and Olivia (who apparently gets dating advice from Tapu Lele). In addition, Lady Ilene in Rota is in contact with Celebi and the Mew from the Tree of Life.
- In the Pokémon fanfiction,
*Ash's Just Reward*, Ash is on friendly terms with a lot of the Legendary Pokémon, much to the shock of his classmates. The Legendary Pokémon are even given gifts to Ash as their way of saying thanks for helping them.
- In
*no grave can hold my body down*, the church of Maxine Caulfield has managed to piece together, through months of painstaking debate and mysterious recurrent nightmares, a vague outline of what their goddess looks like. Then the town delinquent drops by and happens to note that their drawing looks *exactly* like this girl who shows up to chat with her about life and the universe...
- In
*The Weaver Option* Lelith Hesperax casually chats with Cegorach, the Laughing God of the Eldar, and even criticizes his plan for ||creating new Eldar gods||.
-
*Coco*: Miguel strikes up a friendship with Frida Kahlo, which helps him in the climax.
- In
*The Return of Hanuman*, Maruti (the incarnation of Hanuman) befriends Minku, Munni, and Daddu, until he's not allowed to play with them because he is considered dangerous. ||However, they get to be friends again after Maruti saves the village from Armageddon.||
- In
*Dogma*, Rufus knew Jesus Christ, as said in the page quote. He also claimed to be the Thirteenth Apostle, who was left out of the historical record, as he was Black.
- In
*Clerks II*, Jay is ||a born-again Christian||, so at least he remembers his previous movies.
- A non-canon short, shown as promotion for
*Thor: Ragnarok* during the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con, "reveals" that during the events of *Captain America: Civil War* Thor was in Australia palling around with a regular guy called Darryl, being roommates and bothering him at the office.
-
*TRON* plays it a little strangely in the Expanded Universe. The Programs worship human Users as creator deities, and the citizens of The Grid view Flynn (a talented human programmer) as their chief deity. Flynn considered Tron a close friend and the feeling was mutual, but Flynn treated his friends in both the analog and digital worlds shabbily. After making a Heroic Sacrifice to fend off Clu's forces during the coup, the two never saw one another again ||until right before their deaths. By then, Flynn was too broken and Tron was too brainwashed to do much, though it did snap Tron out of it long enough to make another Heroic Sacrifice that only bought Flynn and crew a few extra seconds.||
-
*Andromeda:* Trance Gemini is eventually revealed to be the avatar of the sun of Tarn-Vedra and exists across multiple realities.
-
*Bernard and the Genie*: Before he got trapped in the bottle, Josephus was a friend of Jesus who witnessed three of his miracles and the cleansing of the temple. Although he didn't realise that He was the Son of God. He's impressed to learn that Christmas is a festival which (deep down) celebrates his friend's birth, and is upset to learn that He was crucified. Towards the end, when he's about to send Josephus back to his own time, Bernard tells him to tell Jesus to watch out for Judas.
- The whole point of the [adult swim] series
*Black Jesus*, in which Jesus is a homeless guy living in a van in Compton, California.
-
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer*: Xander Harris with Dracula in the comics. Xander even taught him how to motorbike.
-
*Doctor Who*:
- From the point of view of their companions, the Doctor could be seen like this. They're an immortal, time-travelling alien who fights terrifying monsters for fun... and also pops round for tea every now and then.
- In "The Fires of Pompeii", ||both the Doctor
*and* Donna are this for a Roman family they help out. At the end of the episode, we see that the family honours the two as their household gods.||
- It's also implied that the Doctor
*themself* may have been this. The Tenth Doctor claimed to have been at the first Christmas (he got the last room at the inn) and the first Easter, although he provided no details. "Between you and me, what really happened was..."
- The basis of
*God Friended Me*. It's heavily questioned whether or not God himself is actually involved, but given everything that happens by seeming chance here, that doesn't seem too likely.
- Iolus on
*Hercules: The Legendary Journeys*, best buds with Zeus's son. He also got along pretty well with Aphrodite, too.
- While "pals" isn't the best word for most of the relationships, being on speaking terms with the gods was standard on Hercules and Xena.
- Speaking of Xena... Gabrielle was a close friend to Eli...who looked and acted like Jesus, and ushered a new, Christian-looking religion into the world.
-
*Joan of Arcadia*: Joan is either this or Cosmic Plaything depending on how you interpret her relationship with God.
-
*Kamen Rider Gaim*: It's eventually revealed that Kouta is ||the favored candidate to win the race for the Forbidden Fruit of Helheim by DJ Sagara, who is the avatar of Helheim itself and who shows up frequently to give Kouta pep talks and power-ups, when need be.||
- Played with in
*The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power*.
- Nori Brandyfoots befriends the Stranger, a man who fell from the sky in a meteor. The final of Season 1 reveals he is an Istari, implied to be everybody's favorite bearded wizard.
- Galadriel's case is a bit complicated. She has no idea that the ||man she befriended in the middle of the ocean, is a weak and lost Sauron||.
- The Filipino TV series
*May Bukas Pa* has a boy named Santino being best friends with Jesus, whom he nicknames "Bro".
- An in-universe example: A
*Saturday Night Live* sketch focuses on Jesus and his best pals Paul and, um, Barry.
-
*Star Trek: The Next Generation:* The *Enterprise* (with Picard in particular) are, much to their own irritation, pals with Q.
**Picard**: I've just been paid a visit from Q.
**Riker**: Q? Any idea what he's up to?
**Picard**: He wants to do something nice for me.
**Riker**: I'll alert the crew.
- In
*Supernatural*, the Winchester brothers have befriended a couple of angels, and are at least on speaking terms with Death. And as of the season 11 ender, they ||hang out with *God* and eventually help Him and His sister overcome their relationship issues. Oh, and Lucifer, too||.
- Older Than Feudalism: In Greek Mythology, Zeus was known for his fondness of having affairs with human women.
- There were also a number of times in Greek mythology when gods and goddesses would take likings to mortals, particularly heroes on quests. As was the case with Zeus, a good number of those interests were romantic, but there were still a few cases in which the deity really respected the mortal. Notable examples include the hero Odysseus with Athena, and the hero Jason with Hera.
- Special mention goes to Baucis and Philemon, who gave two tattered vagabonds a hospitable and kind welcome, only to realize they were entertaining Zeus and Hermes. The two gods were pleased with the old married couple, and set them up for life — and then ensured that they would be together even after they died.
- The Bible: Judaism, and later Christianity, are filled with stories that basically go: "Hello, humble and/or morally questionable person; the creator of the universe wants a chat with you!"
- In The Talmud, aside from the many cases of people speaking to God, we're told in Ketubot 77b that Rabbi Hanina bar Pappa was friends with the Angel of Death.
- In some Native American Mythology, Coyote is God's best friend.
- In one particular story, God allowed all of the animals to change their names. Except for Coyote, because Coyote was His friend and He didn't want Coyote's name to change.
- In another story, Coyote is hanging out with God and is responsible for the diversity of humans (including the male and female genders) because he kept messing with God's basic human design. God just let him do it, because Coyote was his friend and it would be rude to get mad at him.
- In some stories, Coyote is even singled out by God to be a more important teacher of life lessons than the other Animal People. Usually, this is because he and God are friends. Given that half the lessons we learn are because Coyote gets his ass handed to him because of his own dumbfuckery, it could be a case of Vitriolic Best Buds.
- Radio Free Vestibule's
*Kevin and God* is an audio skit about God appointing a mortal named Kevin to be his new prophet, but things get derailed due to Kevin's airheaded nature. This eventually rubs off, and God spends his time watching TV and going bowling with Kevin.
-
*Dungeons & Dragons*: Immortals in the Mystara setting adopt mortal identities whenever they have something to do on the mortal plane that they don't want other Immortals to notice. In the *Wrath of the Immortals* adventure, ||Benekander|| does this by becoming the player characters' patron.
-
*Forgotten Realms*: Elminster was a close confidant and occasional lover to the original Mystra, the goddess of magic, and he has a friendly relationship with Midnight, the current Mystra.
-
*The One Ring*: It's entirely possible for the PCs to gain Saruman the White, Gandalf the Grey, and Radagast the Brown as Patrons. Whether they realize that they're exchanging favours with angelic spirits clothed in flesh is another matter.
-
*Rifts*: Erin Tarn, the hero/narrator, is ridiculously well-connected. Her most powerful personal friend is the goddess Isis!
-
*Scion* has the player-characters set as mundane children of the gods. Mundane until they are revealed to be children of the gods, and then slowly ascend their way from "basic mortal" to "Physical God." While still simply Scions (as opposed to Demigods or Gods), their powers basically come from being on first-name basis with their god-parents (as opposed to later, when their powers come from their own deification).
-
*Sinfest* practically runs on this concept. In the first week, God is introduced as a frequently recurring character. In the more literal sense, Jesus is shown to be good pals with Buddha.
- Jesus's attempts to befriend Seymour are a running gag. Despite all his Bible-thumping and Jesus obsession, Seymour routinely fails to recognize the real deal, and even shakes Him down for Jesus memorabilia at one point... which is an apt metaphor for Seymour's relationship with Christianity in general.
- The various Deaths in
*Irregular Webcomic!* have struck up friendly relations with characters.
-
*Wapsi Square*: Monica and Shelly are on speaking terms with some very strange and powerful beings who have influenced the destiny of the entire world. In Minneapolis.
- Cleric is friend with Jessie, lord of undeath.
- Gabe and Tycho have occasionally been shown to be
*literally* friends with Jesus.
-
*Gunnerkrigg Court* is frequently visited by mythological creatures and sometimes deities. At least, the Minotaur lives there, Coyote (that sneaky Trickster God from Native American Mythology) and Chang'e dropped in, and some teacher-parent meetings apparently involved Odin.
- ...because reincarnated Brynhildr was one of the Court students — and a good friend of Surma and Anja — and "the Old Man" personally checked her diligence.
- Antimony has spent enough time speaking with various Psychopomps that she's become conversant in several of their languages. Apparently they like Annie's company because her (very rare) ability to see them unassisted means she's one of the few people they ever get to speak with who isn't dead, scared, and confused. Also good friends with Renard and Ysengrin and Coyote. She once mentioned the latter before the whole classroom of people who know all too well who Coyote is, but didn't happen to interact with him this closely. By the way, immediately after realizing this from their reactions happened the first time we saw her blushing.
- One fine lady with personal interest in Moon affairs ||(Chang'e)|| accidentally ran into Annie's classmate, Matt. Then lad helped her to catch the white rabbit, they had a nice chat and he ended up a little... moonstruck. She also "borrowed" his mp3 player with the full Dire Straits discography on it.
- In
*Headbanged*, the main character becomes friends with Jesus after he (Jesus) borrows one of his black metal CDs.
-
*The Adventures of Billy and God.* Should have become a series.
- Jeffrey Rowland, creator and main character of
*Overcompensating*, infrequently hangs out with YHWH and his son.
- The main heroes of
*Planescape Survival Guide* not only end up having one-on-one training time with Thor and his ilk, but are also ||close personal friends and allies of The Youngest, one of the three Powers That Be who created the whole Planescape. Of course, it helps that they do know her - The Eldest is dead and The Elder is evil||.
- Ironically, Zexion and Axel are the people who are closest to Jesus in
*Ansem Retort*. They go out drinking, use Jesus' blood as a cure for hangovers, and play *Pictionary*. Then again, this Jesus doesn't necessary have his head screwed on right either...
- ... though in the context of
*Ansem Retort*, the fact that Jesus's only flaw is a taste for weird porn makes him still one of the nicest characters in the series, if not *the* nicest. Even in *Ansem Retort*, Jesus Was Way Cool.
- T-Rex of
*Dinosaur Comics* frequently talks with God and the Devil, and is the only character in the strip who seems to be able to hear them.
- Elan and Banjo. Banjo even gets a "Brother," Giggles, who leaves to be the god of an orc tribe. *sniff*
-
*Russel's Teapot* has a primary character who hangs around with Jesus and discusses theology.
- Death seems to be good friends with the main character of
*Ctrl+Alt+Del*'s side comic sillies.
- In
*Digger* the statue of Ganesh, an avatar of sorts containing *part* of the god Ganesh, is perfectly personable and quite a nice guy, as you'd expect for the remover of obstacles.
- In
*Jack* heaven appears to operate a "my door is always open" policy as it is perfectly possible for mortals to have a friendly, down to earth relationship with Angels both before and after they are dead, regardless on where they end up after death, and it is shown that senior Angels who were once mortal enjoy an equally pleasant and informal relationship with god. Unfortunately as the gates of hell appear to have been replaced with revolving doors, it is just as possible to have a relationships with Anthropomorphic Personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins, whether you want to or not.
- In early strips of
*The Devil's Panties*, Author Avatar Jennie would hang out with JC and the Devil. They still make occasional appearances but not as often.
-
*Happle Tea* has this on a regular basis with a few different beings.
- In
*Casey and Andy*, Andy is dating Satan, so Casey and his girlfriend Mary have her (yes, *her*) around the house a lot. Plus, this means Andy has a rather uncomfortable I'm-dating-your-daughter relationship with God.
- This is the entire basis for
*Hero In Training*. The heroes hang out with the high and mighty.
-
*minus.*: The green-haired girl is the only one of minus's friends who is a normal human.
- An odd variation in
*Sonichu* as one comic had both God AND Jesus talk to Ivy and declare that she is to be Chris' true love. Of course, she ends up dead the next issue without even meeting Chris, so...
-
*Axe Cop*: "Abraham told me how God is his friend, and He gave him a copy of all His powers."
-
*Shortpacked!*: Re-resurrected Jesus works at the toy store with the rest of the cast. And officiates at weddings.
- In
*Unsounded*, ||when the undead Duane finally maintains his lucidity when his soul enters the Khert, the timeless vault of all humanity's past and future memories and the gods-forged infrastructure of reality, he is greeted by the legendary demon Lady Ilganyag. When he rejects her offer of help, she distracts him by making his fleshless, lifeless corpse aroused.||
-
*Team Fortress 2*: ||After dying to a wound left by an gray mann robot, Scout ends up in Heaven, where God eagerly awaited him, saying he is a big fan of him (or at least acting like one), even requesting to see him flex and makes a deal with him, when, instead of destroying the world for not having their women sleep with Scout, he'll send Scout back to Earth to try again till he dies on December 4, 1987.|| Yes, this is actually what happened. The comics can just be that weird.
- It's been mentioned that Nodwick has died so many times that he's on a first-name basis with a large number of non-evil deities.
- In
*El Goonish Shive*, after the events of Question Mark, Sarah is on friendly terms with Pandora... although she didn't really realize who she was actually dealing with until later.
- Done in the short fiction Me and Sue and Ricky and God. It doesn't end well.
- Rather literal example in
*The Salvation War*, with Michael-Lan and Jesus. Except here, it's Getting *Baked* With Jesus.
-
*Metal Gear Awesome* and its sequel has Jesus appear to Snake's aid a couple of times.
- A relatively common occurrence in multifandom roleplaying games which allow gods or godlike characters. In Drama Drama Duck, for example, people like Phoenix Wright and Mikaela Banes are on friendly terms with the likes of Jordan C. Wilde and Apollo.
- Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts seem to have a direct line to Jesus in
*Sailor Moon Abridged*, as he always responds immediately whenever they so much as say his name. This doesn't seem to help them in the slightest, though.
- A relatively common ocurrence in
*We Are All Pokémon Trainers*, due to the group having saved the world from one too many Eldritch Abominations or some of them being the "player characters", to the point the players usually have the Legendaries on their phones's Speed Dial. Examples include Gamer being pals with Mesprit, DS with Dialga and Palkia, or Luke with Ho-Oh... and with Reshiram, whom he was dating.
- In
*Funny Business* Lucy and Lewis don't care much that their friend Jeannette has the powers of a god. It's deconstructed when it turns out that ||Lucy *does* view Jeannette as God, and so follows her without question. When Jeannette finds out, she is not happy.||
-
*DSBT InsaniT*: Corla is presumably the right-hand-woman of Waterfall Girl, who is the more-or-less the Poseidon of series.
- In
*Farce of the Three Kingdoms*, Zhuge Liang appears to be pals with *the narrator.*
- Both members of Chrimson Phantomas from
*Within Lapenko* died, got into Heaven and made friends with God. Later the three of them even recorded a song together.
- The Cleric Jester Lavorre from the second campaign of
*Critical Role* towards her god, the Traveler. He has been around her since her childhood, and she sees him as her oldest and best friend. Where other clerics have to rely on mystical signs, she can directly talk with him if no one else is around.
- The importance of having a "relationship with God" is a common theme in various religions.
- Parodied and played straight with T-shirts that say "Jesus is my homeboy". | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PalsWithJesus |
Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us - TV Tropes
*"We have to face the facts. The technology exists. It can't be uninvented. Once it gets out there, it will be abused. None of us can prevent that from happening. But we can choose, where we want to be and on what side when the end finally does arrive. Do you want to be the destroyed? Or the destroyers?"*
Consider the following:
A subtrope of I Did What I Had to Do, this is a stock explanation for those operating on the extremely cynical end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. When such characters have to employ a morally dubious weapon but still care about justifying it, this will almost always be the go-to rationalization. The argument goes that once a weapon has been invented it will inevitably proliferate and be used, and therefore the only sane response is to use it as early and often as possible. Expect to hear it as a paper-thin excuse from General Ripper, the Well-Intentioned Extremist, or The Social Darwinist as they sprint gleefully towards the Moral Event Horizon with the rest of the world in tow. If one with this mindset ends up on the losing end of a conflict, there's a good chance a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy could play out, with the others being well willing to do unto them as payback, though they may also choose to Turn the Other Cheek, if only to invalidate the aggressor's beliefs about them. If your
*heroes* are using this justification, you probably live in a Crapsack World, a world of Black-and-Gray Morality at the least or Protagonist-Centered Morality at the worst.
The title is, of course, a common subversion of The Golden Rule.
## Examples
- Kanako from
*Star Driver* uses this as her justification for working with Crux and fighting Takuto.
- The Earth Alliance from
*Mobile Suit Gundam SEED* uses this trope as justification for their deeds. Seeing Coordinators as sins against nature for their partially artificial origins, the majority of them were driven from the earth to live in space colonies. Seeing this as not enough, the Earth Alliance destroys a civilian colony, with the casualties numbering in at least the hundreds of thousands. To prevent further nuking, ZAFT develops N-Jammers to somehow stop nuclear reactions and ZAFT launches an invasion of Earth to stop the Alliance in part to keep them from developing a countermeasure, eventually escalating to both sides actively throwing weapons of mass destruction at each other under the (by that point entirely correct) reasoning that if they don't genocide the other bunch first, the other side will genocide *them*.
- It takes the deaths of the extremists advocating this on both sides for the shooting to reluctantly stop but even then, the idea never fully goes away and in
*Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny*, Cagalli points it out that for supposedly only wishing to protect themselves in case of a future war, ZAFT sure put a lot of resources into developing ground-based and even *aquatic* Humongous Mecha that would be of no use protecting space colonies...
- In
*Attack on Titan*, Eren Yeager finds a way to destroy the Founding Titan, eliminating Titanization in the Eldian population. However, the intense fear and prejudice Marley has against the Eldians (due to the cruelty and oppression of the Eldians against others in wars that ended in their eventual defeat a century before the series begins), culminating in Willy Tybur's attempt to unite the world against them, spurs on Eden and Ymir's decision to kill *as many non-Eldian humans as possible* (80% of the population before he is stopped) before removing the Eldians' greatest weapon.
- In the
*X-Men* comics, one of Magneto's main rationales in his war on humanity is an assumption that humans will inevitably enslave/exterminate/oppress mutants unless mutants overpower them first at least enough to force them to leave them alone. It's one of the main sticking points in his philosophical differences with the more idealistic Professor Xavier; moreover, judging by the number of bad futures where mutants experience such horrors that have been depicted over the years, he may not be wrong.
-
*Hellblazer*: When John Constantine was hired by a corrupt adviser to the Royal Family to discreetly resolve some demon business, his anarchist friend tried to warn him that they'll betray him as soon as his work is done. John is not unaware of the possibility, and reassures his friend that he will follow his usual strategy: "Screw them before they screw me."
- Played for Laughs in a
*Baby Blues* strip, wherein Wanda catches Zoe putting salt in Hammie's milk. Zoe defends her actions saying that she is following the Golden Rule: "Do unto brothers before they do unto you." Wanda suggests they read the real Golden Rule again.
- According to an issue of
*The Savage Dragon*, this is why Mars Attacked Image Comics' Earth. They saw Earth's rising Superhuman population as a growing threat and chose to attack first.
- The infamous General Ripper from
*Dr. Strangelove* gives this excuse, claiming he's giving the US "the best kind of head start."
- The explanation for the construction and deployment of DESTINI in
*The Core*: " *Someone* was going to build it, so we built it first."
- Said word for word in
*Van Helsing*, with Dracula starting and Igor finishing the quote. However, they were talking about generally being horrible to people rather than a particular plan or pre-emptive strike.
- According to
*The Men Who Stare at Goats*, both sides of the Cold War ended up doing psychic research because, even though not many people on either side actually *believed* there was anything in it, they couldn't let the other side lead the field *just in case* it turned out to be real.
- In the Bad Future the protagonist of
*Paycheck* is trying to prevent, a machine capable of seeing into the future predicts a nuclear war. So the US decides to strike first, starting said war.
- In
*The Dark Knight*, the Joker attempts to set up this kind of scenario with two barges, one filled with ordinary civilians and the other with criminals. They are each given a detonator and the same instructions: Blow up the other boat before they blow up you, and if neither boat blows up within a certain time limit, then he'll blow them *both* up himself. Neither group plays along with the Joker's game.
- Magneto's motive in some
*X-Men* movies. In *X2: X-Men United* and *X-Men: First Class* it's quite clearly "do unto them *what they just tried to do to us*, so they don't get another shot at it". In *X2* this involves a weaponized version of Cerebro; in *First Class* it involves a ton of missiles fired by US and Soviet fleets.
- In the 1950s
*St. Trinian's* movies, the school song contains the lines:
Let our motto be broadcast, "Get your blow in first"
She who draws her sword last always comes off worst!
- The Pluckans trancklucate their unnamed sister planet in
*Kin-Dza-Dza!* "so that they don't do that to us". Wef and Bi, who are from that exact planet, seem to be fine with that, because their people *did* plan to do the same for the sole reason of "because fuck you", and they are being good sports to the winners:
**Gedevan**: Why did they do it? **Wef**: So that we don't do it to them first. **Gedevan**: And why would you do that? **Wef**: So that they don't hang over our heads.
-
*Star Trek Into Darkness*: General Ripper Admiral Alexander Marcus has the *U.S.S. Vengeance* built for this purpose, as well as manipulating John Harrison and the *Enterprise* into situations where they take the fall for seemingly being traitors, and twisting the evidence, without an ability to escape, to force the Federation into a war with the Klingons.
**Marcus:** *[in the middle of being placed under arrest by Kirk]* You better stop and think about what you're doing, Kirk. You better think about what you did on Kronos. note : (Kirk was searching for Harrison) You made an incursion onto an enemy planet! note : (Kirk was forced to) You killed a Klingon patrol! note : (Harrison killed the patrol, not Kirk.) Even if you got away without a trace, war is coming! And who's gonna lead us, If I'm not in charge, our entire way of life is decimated! So if you want me off this ship, you better kill me!
**YOU?!**
-
*Starship Troopers*: Both sides see the other as a hideous horde of insane vermin, who hate everything their very genes stand for (humans represent arrogance and infighting, bugs represent obedience and gluttony) and will do anything they can to wipe the other side out. Fancy that.
- In
*Plan 9 from Outer Space*, this is the driving motive of the aliens — that they believe that humanity is on the path to inventing a powerful weapon that would threaten the universe itself, and the track record of recent history suggests that we'd *do* it, too, so better swoop and Do Something before that can happen.
- In
*A Canticle for Leibowitz*, this is, at least according to the surviving Catholic Church, what caused the Flame Deluge. Having obtained weapons of mass destruction, every world leader decided to launch a preemptive strike on their enemies to prevent them from doing it - at the same time.
- In
*Dragon Bones*, Ward comforts himself with this after killing a mere boy, telling himself that the boy was a bandit who would have killed him without a second thought if he had had the chance.
- This trope is the very basis of
*Ender's Game* by Orson Scott Card. Instead of preparing for another alien invasion, mankind chooses to attack first this time. ||And discovers, *after* destroying nearly the entire species, that the aliens had no desire to invade again, being horrified by the violence theyd inflicted on humanity.||
- This is explored in
*Ender's Shadow*, where Bean figures this out by attempting to postulate how Earth might prepare for the Third Invasion. Through a series of logical steps, he realizes that there *is* no way to adequately protect a planet in three-dimensional space, since all the Formics would have to do was get a single ship past the human blockade to lay waste to Earth. Therefore, an all-out attack is the only logical option.
- Subverted in the
*H.I.V.E. Series*. The big Council 'O Evil's policy is "Do unto others." Yeah, that's the entire motto.
- In Larry Niven's
*Known Space* stories, the ARM ("Amalgamated Regional Militia," the police force of the United Nations) exists primarily to stop this sort of thing from happening.
- Occurs in the Robert A. Heinlein short story "Solution Unsatisfactory". One of the U.S. characters considers having everyone who knows about the secret of the radioactive dust shot, but decides that the enemies of the U.S. would eventually discover it and use it against the U.S. anyway. The U.S. goes ahead with creating and using the dust itself.
- In
*The Saga of Darren Shan*, this is the standard vampire attitude towards the much smaller clan of enemy outcasts, the vampaneze. The only reason they don't try to is that there's a prophecy saying that no matter how hard they try to wipe them out, there will still be some survivors and those survivors will rise and destroy the vampires. Of course, all of these prophecies, and the split between the clans in the first place, are from Mr. Des Tiny, whose authority isn't as predestined as he wants you to think it is.
- In Alexander Zorich's
*Tomorrow War*, this trope is a bitter discovery for heroes. They believed they were defending Earth against an unprovoked Concordian invasion, but it turns out ||the Earth prepared invasion as well, and Concordians only *managed to* fire first, 'cause they were better prepared||.
- In the novel
*The Killing Star* by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski, the aliens use this as a motive to wipe out humanity.
- The third, unnamed Entian power in Stanisław Lem's
*Observation On The Spot* was attacked by *both* Lusanians and Kurdlandians for the fear of them getting hit by the Depopulation Bomb they've got rumors of (or were developing themselves, it's somewhat unclear). Poor southerners never stood a chance, though the reader is left with the impression that they *indeed* planned to do the same to their northern counterparts. Interestingly, even the fact that the third power *existed* is suppressed in both countries.
- This is the tenor of "Dark Forest theory" (see Quotes) in
*The Three-Body Problem*: with a finite amount of universe and trust between interstellar players being expensive to develop and unreliable anyways, any species is a threat, and that means any species exposing its existence is a target.
- In
*The Lost Fleet*, this is pretty much the Bear-Cows' philosophy. While looking like cute teddy bears with some bovine features, they also prove that herbivore does not mean harmless. Their "herd first" mentality is taken to the extreme. They have exterminated every predator and potential rival species from their home planet and are determined to do the same in space. Even if someone is not a predator (whom they attack on sight), they are still a potential rival for resources, who may one day attack. Therefore, the Bear-Cows will wipe them out first.
- Referenced in Discworld's
*Making Money*, where in a discussion about killer golems, Moist replies "if you don't think of a fifty-foot-high killer golem first, someone else will".
-
*World of the Five Gods*: Minister Methani's stock in trade; he pre-emptively attacks people who aren't a threat on the grounds that they might become one. He had the loyal Adelis blinded because he was afraid Adelis's popularity with the troops would lead him to attempt a coup; he had Prince Ragat assassinated while claiming that Ragat was planning to seize the throne, with no evidence to that effect. Penric refers to him as "iatrogenic", a cure that creates a disease.
- A Talmudic dictum (Sanhedrin 72:1) is: "If someone comes to kill you, get up early to kill him first", also translated "rise up and kill him first".
- The
*Zero Escape* series revolves around several Deadly Games. Naturally, even heroic participants are worried by the fact that their 'opponents' could easily betray them if left alive. Given that several murderers are also participating, there are actually times when killing someone *is* the right and sensible decision. Not shooting ||Eric|| in *Zero Time Dilemma*, for example, will lead to a bad ending where he fatally shoots the protagonist.
-
*Rick and Morty*: in "A Rickle In Time", Rick and his grand-kids are split into two timelines. He attempts to fix the issue by merging their timelines back together, but runs into a snag, and immediately assumes that this means the other Rick gave up on merging and has moved on to try and kill the other, motivating both Ricks to actively try and kill the other before they themselves are killed.
- This line of thinking underpinned much of the nuclear proliferation in the Cold War. While nuclear weapons (utilising nuclear fission) were still weak, to the point that it would take half a dozen of the USA's stock of just 500 to completely destroy cities such as Shanghai or Warsaw outright (though the firestorms generated would have been largely sufficient even in the event of a single strike), certain US generals such as MacArthur talked openly about nuking the Commies into submission. Of course, the Soviet Union's invention and mass-production of the thousand-fold more powerful nuclear fusion ('hydrogen') devices and ICBMs in the early 1960s changed all that.
- The first two and only uses of nuclear bombs in warfare were deployed because of this trope. The United States knew that Japan would fight to the last man, woman, and child to defend the home islands and did not like the prospect of invasion that would have to be done to win the war. Casualties were expected to be some of the costliest in American history. (Fun fact: About Half a million Purple Hearts, an award given to US military personnel for injuries sustained from enemy combat, were ordered in anticipation. As one historian put it, they were the best war surplus. The United States would not need to place another order for the decoration until 2000! Even then, the original WWII era medals are still given out... the country is just getting close to running out of them half a century later.). Needless to say, Truman recognized that there would be a lot of American troops killing Japanese civilians and vice versa, and he had an advantage that could kill more of them before they killed his own.
- The entire reason the Soviet Union even sought a nuclear bomb was that the only people who had one at that time were people who were aggressively opposed to their political style. It didn't help that America had used nukes in the past, and did threaten a first strike whereas the Soviet Union maintained Second-Strike Only policies (and meant them, not that the Americans knew that at the time).
- A serious debate in the Soviet 1970s was whether or not it was best to nuke the PRC's atomic and rocket research facilities, since many argued that an escalation of the Sino-Soviet border skirmishes into a Total War was basically inevitable: the Chinese were crazy, they said (with some justification, as the Cultural Revolution was ongoing), and would never again accept 'peaceful co-existence' because it constituted acceptance of the heretical doctrine of 'Soviet Revisionism' (i.e. administration of the country by bureaucrats and not 'the people' themselves) and thus an end to Mao's much-vaunted 'Perpetual Revolution'. Therefore, the Chinese had to be nuked, and they had to be nuked
*now* before they got their hands on nukes capable of reaching the European republics of the USSR. Initially, cooler heads prevailed, as it was hard to counter the incredibly obvious point that the quickest way to start a Total War with China was by nuking them. But as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese nuclear program, and the border skirmishes all escalated, the Soviets eventually agreed that they really were on a course to Total War and something had to be done. Accordingly, they merely threatened to nuke the PRC's research facilities if they refused to negotiate an end to the border skirmishes (while accepting the Chinese development of nuclear weapons in principle). Which they did, ushering in Sino-Soviet Détente.
- It was Hitler's favourite excuse for invading countries. The Soviet Union also loved using this excuse. Some
*Wehrmacht* fanboys and German nationalists *still, to this day,* follow the official line of Nazi Germany: that the Jewish puppetmasters controlling the Soviet Union were going to make it invade Germany and then exterminate all European people (because the superior intellect and morality inherent to European races made them the only ones capable of resisting Jewish manipulation). Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us was invoked to morally justify the war.
- "Anyone who has ever looked into the face of a Red commissar knows what the Bolsheviks are. There is no need here for theoretical reflections. It would be an insult to animals if one were to call the features of these, largely Jewish, tormentors of people beasts. They are the embodiment of the infernal, of the personified insane hatred of everything that is noble in humanity. In the shape of these commissars we witness the revolt of the subhuman against noble blood. The masses whom they are driving to their deaths with every means of icy terror and lunatic incitement would have brought about an end of all meaningful life, had the incursion not been prevented at the last moment" - German Army Information Pamphlet
- "The battle against these subhumans, who've been whipped into a frenzy by the Jews, was not only necessary but came in the nick of time. Our Führer has saved Europe from certain chaos." - German Army gunner Karl Fuchs, letter written 4th August 1941 (translated by Horst Fuchs Richardson)
- "What the Asiatic hordes would not have wrecked, would have been annihilated by Jewish hatred and revenge." - German Army Captain E.P., letter written 15th February 1943 (translated by Stephen G. Fritz)
- Interestingly, although German propaganda was fairly clear on the point that Judeo-Bolshevik overlordship would be replaced by German rule, no mention was made of the German authorities' genocidal plans for the region's non-Jewish population.
note : This is because the basic idea seems to have been to exterminate a quarter of the region's population (c. 30 million) in the short-term and enslave the rest, who would be sterilized and exterminated as needed to make room for settlement by ethnic Germans in the medium-term - the long-term goal of course being to replace the entire population with Aryan-German settlers (though some Fit elements of the more Aryan native ethnicities might not have been sterilized or exterminated). This allowed German military personnel to feel not just that they were waging a defensive war of liberation, but that they were fighting to stop genocide:
- "Now I know first hand what war really means. I also know however that we are forced into this struggle against the Soviet Union. For God have mercy on us, for if we had waited, or if these beasts had come to us. For them the most gruesome death is too beautiful. I am fortunate, therefore, that I should be here to put a stop to the handiwork of this genocidal system [völkervernichtenden]" — German Army private Frederich Fallnbigl, letter written July 1941
note : printed in David Redles' *Hitler's Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation* p.175
- Another interesting point relating to the Conspiracy Theory that papa Stalin was about to invade Germany: when The Holocaust became popular knowledge in the 1960s, some of those groups switched to a "Stalin-Bolshevik" model. The last popular scholar to advance the view that the Soviet Union was about to attack Germany was the Soviet defector Victor Suvorov, who in the 1970s used circumstantial evidence hinting at Soviet plans to counter-attack the Germans on the borders of the Soviet Union and drive them back into Germany when the war began as 'proof' that the Soviet Union was going to declare war on Germany. Direct examination of the actual plans in the 1990s revealed the true nature of the planned operation, a defensive counter-offensive.
note : The plan was very much a product of its time. It called for fighting the enemy on the Soviet-German border and driving them back into Germany, attacking the Germans at every turn rather than mounting what we (and the Red Army of earlier and later years) would consider a proper defense. At the time of the plan's creation, planning for fighting within Soviet territory and defensive actions in general were politically risky because of their association with military academics purged for 'defeatism'. In the aftermath of the purges, *nobody* wanted to be the first person to find out if going against the anti-defensive trend was going to get them imprisoned (it wouldn't have, but they didn't know that).
- This is a popular theory for why people allowed the commons in medieval England to be overgrazed. "If I cut back and give the fields time to recover, then someone else will just come along and overgraze the field anyways. They'll have better-fed cattle and I'll be cut off from a free resource." And that was a real tragedy.
- The Second and Third Punic Wars were largely the result of both Carthaginians and Romans fearing a future invasion from one another. The second one was started when it became clear to Carthage that Romans weren't going to tolerate their territorial expansions in Iberia for any longer. The third one, on the other hand, started when what little remained of Carthage after the devastation of the second war was getting back on its legs. Romans started to fear that they might become a threat once again, and decided to annihilate the entire Carthaginian population.
- This is the sort of reasoning that Thomas Hobbes feared would dominate people's actions in the absence of an all-powerful ruler whom none could overpower (making it downright suicidal to shoot first, last, or ever). He thought that even genuinely good-natured people would be motivated by worries that their neighbors might not be equally peaceable, leading them to kill lest they be killed (though it should be noted that Hobbes believed
*most* humans didn't need this excuse).
- This was the George W. Bush administration's rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, based on claims that the country had weapons of mass destruction before such claims could be fully verified. Then-National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice famously said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Bush and other administration officials repeatedly stressed links between Iraq and Al-Qaida, without evidence, in the months leading up to the conflict, when many Americans were still fearful of another terrorist attack after 9/11.
- Thucydides in
*The Pelopennisian War*, "What made war inevitable was the growing power of Athens and the fear this roused in Sparta".
- Also one of the many causes of World War I. Germany feared the alliance between France and Russia would be used by the French to try and get revenge on Germany for losing the Franco-Prussian War, and figured their growing power meant that Germany had to act first. They also feared that if left unchecked, Russia would become too powerful military in a few years due to its massive size and population, combined with the fact that Russia was starting to become more industrialized, whereas previously they had very little industry and had always lagged behind the other European powers. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PandoraPlea |
Panty Fighter - TV Tropes
*"The spirit of the legendary San Gokushi Period (panties) is alive and well within a secret (panties) system of High School warriors, skilled (boobs) in varied styles of martial arts and constantly (panties) at war with one another. [...] And yes, that's exactly what watching this show is like."*
Basically, any series with a heavy emphasis on nubile teenage girls involved in martial arts or other forms of combat. Their age can vary from highschool to college. Either way, they'll mainly fight in school uniform to further entice the audience. Also, expect Clothing Damage to be frequent and inevitable, as will upskirt camera angles, close-ups of bouncing breasts, cleavage, and so on. If any of them favors kicks, so much
*the better.*
The cast is likely to be predominantly female to facilitate as much eye candy as possible, or the setting will be at an All Girl School. The plot itself will usually (but not always) center around some sort of tournament, or an ongoing feud between different highschools to justify the need for so many combat ready schoolgirls. Though they can just as easily be junior agents serving under a team of adults.
Compare and often overlaps with Catfight because Girl on Girl Is Hot. Contrasts with Designated Girl Fight, which is when writers restrict females on opposing sides to fighting each other, to prevent violence between men and women. Compare Modesty Shorts, which has the girls wear shorts under their skirts to prevent this. Contrast Magic Skirt, the antithesis of panty shots.
## Examples:
-
*Highschool of the Dead* often makes use of upskirt shots during tense scenes, or the girls' skirts will simply flare dramatically, both in and out of combat situations. Suffice to say, you'll be seeing almost as many undies as "not zombies".
-
*Ikki Tousen* (pictured above) and its sequels are one of the most flagrant examples. Virtually every fight will feature rampant upskirt camera angles and Clothing Damage, along with frequent close-ups of the girls' panty-clad crotches. Which is the main reason the series is Best Known for the Fanservice.
-
*Kandagawa Jet Girls* sort of zig-zags the genre. If anything, this series is more of a "Panty Racer" with combat elements involved, but not violent enough to be considered a "Fighter" per se.
-
*Keijo!!!!!!!!* is about a fictional sport where swimsuit-clad girls try to knock each other off a floating platform using their boobs and butts. The sport was practically invented for the purpose of fanservice.
-
*Kill la Kill*. For starters, heroine Ryuko Matoi and her rival Satsuki Kiryuin fight each other while wearing Stripperiffic Sailor Fukus. Then, the show introduces an evil clothing corporation bent on world domination and a resistance movement named "Nudist Beach" who oppose them while wearing nothing but strategically-placed bandoliers. Then.... **it gets weirder**. Luckily for the ladies watching, there's copious male nudity too.
-
*Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka* sort of leans towards this with the designs of most of the female cast being rather revealing and all the gratuitous fanservice featured in most scenes, fighting or otherwise.
- In
*Maken-ki!*, you'll be seeing girls' underwear fairly often regardless of whether they're fighting or not. And even includes an instance of attempted rape during one of the later fight scenes for the sake of drama and fanservice.
-
*Master of Martial Hearts*, like *Queen's Blade* in premise; an all-female combat tournament with a variety of unique participants, each representing some Moe or fetish. Lampshaded in a Meido café episode, where Aya is declared Moe when she wins in a Cat Girl outfit. Also, the most shocking subversion of the genre: ||the final fight is quick, brutal, and ends in a bloody Discretion Shot. Flashbacks to earlier fights show more blood than the original scenes, and later fights include bloody gun violence and neck-breaking. There is also quite a hefty deconstruction in that the losers are turned into brainwashed sex slaves, and everything was created as an absurdly complex attempt at getting back at the protagonist's mother for vile things she did in the past. This is all presented in the last episode in a barrage of reveals that is as disgusting and horrifying to the protagonist as it is to the audience.||
-
*Najica Blitz Tactics* has its camera angle constantly well below skirt level, fighting or not.
- Unsurprising, since Studio Fantasia created
*Aika* as well.
-
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi*, has unsurprisingly done this at times. Notable was this being an Enforced Trope during the martial arts tournament at Mahora Academy. The organizer decides that Setsuna's and Asuna's fight would be too boring without some Fanservice so puts them in short-skirted maid outfits.
- While more subtle than others,
*Project A-Ko* has A-ko's calf-length skirt flapping in the breeze high enough to consistently flash her white panties, especially in fights, but only for brief moments instead of a good look at them.
- The
*Queen's Blade* anime makes sure that at least one woman's breasts are exposed in *every episode,* though not always necessarily through fighting (though it happens the most during.)
- The manga version of
*Rosario + Vampire* focuses more on the Fighter element than the panties, but when it was turned into an anime, the amount of panty shots increased. Early on, at least, it seemed the manga went out of its way to *avoid* this trope, at least in the case of Moka. Any shot that would have flashed her panties is obscured by word balloons or debris.
-
*Ranma ½*:
- For Kodachi's first appearance, she's in her Catholic schoolgirl uniform, and her panties are visible during a backflip (both in the anime and the manga). Most of the time, though, she's instead wearing a leotard.
- Rarely with Akane. In the episode "A Sudden Storm of Love", her white undies are seen better in a freeze-frame from above, as she fights off a track runner among the other sporty male students pursuing and harassing her, and she front-flips.
-
*Sekirei* swings wildly between the fanservice aspects and serious fighting, with 108 beautiful aliens fighting to be the last one standing. Clothing Damage is a viable tactic, since it exposes an opponent to a One-Hit Kill.
-
*So, I Can't Play H!*:
- Not a fight goes by without Lisara's battle gown being dissolved by enemy attack, or as a result of her powers being drained. Which gives Ryosuke and the audience ample opportunity to enjoy the eye candy.
- It also happens to Iria both times she's defeated by Lisara. The second KO shreds Iria's leotard; leaving her sprawled on her back, in only her panties.
-
*Strike Witches*, because none of the girls are wearing any pants. But they're not panties, so it's no problem.
- Always in
*To Love Ru* and with all the girls, especially when are involved Lala and Yami.
- Averted in Yami's first appearance. She also block the view to her panties to Principal.
- Exaggerated in sequel "Darkness". Such as when Lala battled Yami's (Darkness form), during which she was forced to destroy her own panties and 'go commando' for the rest of fight.
-
*Usagi-chan de Cue!!*: Almost every female character wears ultra-short skirts, and the combative Action Girls, namely Inaba and Koshka, routinely high-kick and gymnast flip. It'd be hard not to notice that Inaba's panties have a frilly pocket on the front, as it gets shown many times. Koshka's skirt has a slit up the back to accommodate her swishing tail, so her panties are constantly exposed from the rear and yield a complete view while Inaba has her in a wrestling clinch.
-
*Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid* is by the same people who brought the world *Senran Kagura*, and it follows in its predecessor's footsteps with great enthusiasm. Between the steamy Yuri makeout sessions that are actually *needed* to prepare for combat and the Clothing Damage-prone combat itself, there's plenty of titillation for the audience to enjoy.
- The short-lived miniseries
*X-Men: Phoenix Legacy of Fire*, written for Marvel's MAX label, during the days when they thought they could do manga better than the Japanese. It bombarded pages with so much Fanservice that it all actually had a *negative* effect with readers.
- There have been several "Foxy Boxy" leagues since at least the 1980s. Traditional leagues such as WBC, IBA and IFBA tend to discourage the practice, unsurprisingly.
- Cage fighting meanwhile has Lingerie Fighting Championships (LFC), which is exactly what it sounds like.
- Mixed Martial Arts fighter Dennis Hallman wore only a speedo for one of his UFC fights due to a lost bet, which resulted in the audience getting inadvertently flashed mid-fight. UFC president Dana White gave a special bonus to Hallman's opponent for finishing the fight early and getting the speedos out of the octagon.
-
*Dead or Alive* (which boasted "Jiggle Physics" when the first couple of games were released). Naturally, the series also capitalized on this by creating a few beach-themed spin-off games.
- The
*Final Fantasy* series does this to several of its female characters. Most notably in *Dissidia*, where you can pan the camera around to view in between the girls' legs and up their skirts.
-
*Jingi Storm,* released to arcades around the same time as Arcana Heart. It's basically *Tekken* combined with a softcore eroge. May qualify as a subversion since the players are all male, with their assigned partners providing the eye-candy. The stripping feature was removed post-beta (referred to as Location Test) anyway.
-
*Panty Party* is a literal and parodistic interpretation of the trope. As in, you control floating sentient pairs of panties fighting each other. Interestingly the developers, "Animu Game", are from Taiwan.
-
*Rumble Roses* is an all-girl wrestling series, where the cast dresses up in fetish-themed costumes and duke it out using sexually suggestive submission holds. Part 2 upped the ante with skimpier costumes and by adding "Queen's Match" mode, which allowed the winner of each match to "humiliate" the loser.
- The female characters of
*Samurai Shodown* frequently expose their panties when they are killed. Add in the fact that in Samurai Shodown Sen, the girls usually die with their legs spread wide apart and/or propped up.
- Mina Majikina is a prime example, as she exposes the panties she is wearing when she does nearly anything, and especially when she dies, where her body falls through the air with her panty-clad crotch and buttocks facing the screen.
- Suzu from Samurai Shodown Sen also almost always exposes her panties when she is killed, given that some of her death animations involve her spasming with her thighs spread apart, and her body usually lies down with her legs wide open. Even when beheaded, her body staggers backward several steps before collapsing on her back with her legs propped up and spread.
- One of the very first in the actual genre, the Super Famicom Japanese-only
*Seifuku Densetsu Pretty Fighter* featured an all-female cast in various outfits (police woman, gym student in volleyball attire, nurse, Magical-Girl, etc.) in a rather generic fighting game. Yes, there were panty shots, mostly during jumps, with some during kicks. The Sega Saturn saw an Updated Re-release subtitled *X* that replaced the pixel art with hand-drawn (but much less smoothly animated) sprites and added some new characters. As you may have guessed, the creators took advantage of the new artwork by throwing in quite a few more panty shots.
- The
*Senran Kagura* series. The creator, Kenichirō Takaki, has been famously quoted as starting the series on the 3DS because he wanted to see 3D ninja boobs, and this sentiment describes the games almost perfectly.
-
*Skullgirls* definitely seems unashamed of showing off the undergarments of its cast. It's also not afraid to show some of the more disturbing parts of its cast.
- Parasoul, Filia, Cerebella, and Valentine are the characters who expose their undergarments the most. Other characters, not so much and/or "why would you want to?!" (Miss Fortune wears short-shorts, Peacock and Squigly wear floor-length gown-dress-things, Painwheel is horribly disfigured, and Double is an Eldritch Abomination).
- Most panty shots have been patched out of the game. The official reason was to make the game more EVO friendly, though many people were quick to point out this hasn't stopped a lot of other games featured at EVO.
- The
*Soul Series* is also guilty of this, what with the design of some of its female characters' costumes. This was dialed backed a bit in *Soulcalibur V* (and earlier, with the creation of Hilde, a female knight who wears a full suit of armor in battle).
- The Japanese PC fighter
*Line-Kill Spirits* takes this one step further: players will slowly regenerate damage from attacks unless they can snap a picture of their opponent's panties (exposed by knocking them to the ground or into the air), locking in attack damage.
-
*Street Fighter*:
- Capcom zigzags the trope with Sakura's character design. While a blatant attempt to appeal to fans of the trope, she technically subverts it by wearing red bloomers under her skirt. But to western gamers, they still look like underwear.
- Chun Li's leotard (which somewhat resembles panties in appearance while under her Chinese dress) can be seen whenever she uses her Lightning Kick, or her Spinning Bird Kick. Though she subverted the trope during her
*SF: Alpha* incarnation, where she wore a spandex track outfit instead.
- Cammy fights while wearing a thonged leotard and is famous for her victory pose, where she turns her back to the screen and openly displays her buttocks. While in
*SSF IV*, her pre-fight animation begins with a close-up of her legs, thong, and asscheeks.
- Taken to extremes and lampshaded by R. Mika's Critical Art intro animation, from the beta version of
*Street Fighter V*. Her thong is even smaller than Cammy's, best seen when the camera zooms in on her buttocks as she poses and smacks her own ass. It ended up actually becoming a problem when ESPN was broadcasting the EVO 2016 tournament, where in between rounds, a player was requested to change her into an alternate costume because her default one was way too steamy for primetime (which also resulted in the game later editing out her ass slap).
- However, Elena is the series' biggest offender, given she's an African princess who fights in her tribe's native attire. Which consists of nothing but a sarashi tube top, a pair of panties, and multi-colored bracelets.
- Ibuki in
*V* takes over Sakura's asthetics as the schoolgirl fighter fighting in her uniform and her skirt is much less competent than it was in her similarly themed outfit from the previous game. Ibuki as Sakura is given spats as underwear also but in some outfits she gains panties rather than alternate underwear and the outfits rarely cover her in action. Averted in her original outfit where the question if she even wears underwear was answered as a bonus in her comic.
-
*Tekken* has Julia and Lili frequently exposing their panties when they are fighting due to the short skirts they wear. In *Tekken Tag Tournament* their underwear is easily shown when they fail at bowling.
- Ayame from the
*Tenchu* series tends to expose her white panties fairly often when she is wearing her kimono outfit, which isn't surprising given that the skirt of her kimono is very short.
-
*Vanguard Princess* although it's a more serious stab at creating Fighting Games than most other examples of its ilk.
-
*X-Blades*, which is basically an attempt to copy *Devil May Cry*, except the protagonist, Ayumi, is a girl wearing only a bra and a thong. The little of the thong's fabric which covers Ayumi's underparts is stretched tightly over her crotch, clearly accentuating the shape of her labia against the cloth. As the *Zero Punctuation* review put it, "[we're] not sure she doesn't just have white pubes."
-
*Higurashi Daybreak:* Female characters do this repeatedly. Lampshaded during Shmion's storyline.
- This is Jinky's go-to fighting style in
*Banzai Girl*, giving she is usually clad in a highly abbreviated school uniform.
-
*The Panty Bear* is downplayed in that it's only the protagonist, Lucia, that does any real asskicking. It's also justified due to her actually being given a pair of panties which gives her superpowers.
- The premise of the episode Grudge Match in
*Justice League Unlimited*. To bring in more money for an underground superpowered fighting ring, the villains featured death matches between various villainesses and brainwashed super heroines. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PantyFighter |
Panty Shot - TV Tropes
A specific variety of Fanservice, the Panty Shot is exactly what it sounds like: a gratuitous exposure of a female character's panties.
This form of Fanservice tends to be uncomfortable (and incomprehensible) to the poor souls accustomed to underwear exposition of the Comedic Underwear Exposure variety. Often averted by using a Magic Skirt or Modesty Shorts. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PantyShot |
Panopticon of Surveillance - TV Tropes
*"The Building circular - an iron cage, glazed - A glass lantern about the size of Ranelagh - The Prisoners in their Cells, occupying the Circumference - The Officers, the Centre. By Blinds, and other contrivances, the Inspectors concealed from the observation of the Prisoners: hence the sentiment of a sort of invisible omnipresence - The whole circuit reviewable with little, or, if necessary, without any, change of place."*
—
**Jeremy Bentham**, *Panopticon, or The Inspection House* (1791)
Running a prison is hard and labor-intensive, so when it comes to keeping an eye on your inmates, why not design for efficiency?
A panopticon, originally designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, is a prison or containment facility constructed as a ring of cells surrounding a central guard tower. This design allows one or two guards to keep watch over many cells at once, usually built so that prisoners can see the tower, but cannot see into any of the adjacent cells. For bonus points, the guard tower may be designed so that those inside can look out, but those outside cannot look in.
The goal of a panopticon design is to make surveillance as efficient, easy, and total as possible. The prisoners know that they might be watched at any given time, but are never totally sure if they are being watched at that moment; the result is that they learn to behave as though they are always being watched, introducing a psychological conditioning aspect to their time in prison. Because of this, a panopticon is a very common symbol of the Surveillance State, and it is likely to show up as an indicator that Sinister Surveillance is afoot.
If a panopticon is used as part of a prison, that prison is probably The Alcatraz.
## Examples:
- The titular prison in
*Fortress (1992)* is constructed in this way underground, with prison labour used to dig new levels. The central column isn't manned, as the security is automated - instead, it's fitted with rails to convey turrets up and down the complex. ||The escapees use this in their prison break to hitch a ride all the way up into the command centre.|| The rooms are totally exposed to the central shaft, allowing the turrets to shoot into any given area and patrolling scanners to stop the prisoners from dreaming.
- In
*Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)*, the prison cells in the Kiln are arrayed in a hemisphere around a central guard tower, which becomes the focus of the protagonists' escape attempt. That said, the surveillance clearly isn't perfect as there are maintenance hallways behind the cells that some of the prisoners seem to have access to.
-
*Spectre*: The "Nine Eyes" building is cylindrical with a central core, evoking Bentham's drawings in a neat little bit of Genius Bonus.
- In the Mexican series
*Capadocia*, Capadocia is a women's prison run by ECSO, a corporation that uses the inmate work program as a front for drug trafficking. The opening credits feature a shot of Capadocia's blueprints that shows it is built in this design.
- In
*Doom Patrol*, this is the deep, dark secret literally buried under the otherwise-wholesome Danny the Street; that in exchange for Niles using his resources to prevent the Bureau of Normalcy from finding Danny and their citizens, Danny agreed to use their limited omniscience to serve as an all-seeing prison for Niles' daughter Dorothy, making sure that she never, ever left her tiny room beneath Danny's surface. Dorothy was down there for over *ninety years*, and none of the "Dannyzens" ever knew she was there.
- Briefly discussed and namedropped in
*Law & Order*. A liberal college professor writes "panopticon" in big letters on a chalkboard, and says that it's what America has become.
-
*The Magnus Archives*: The Institute itself is built on the ruins of Millbank Prison, the first Real Life example. Among the many miles of old tunnels found beneath the archive is a still-standing Panopticon. ||This turns out to be a vital piece in Big Bad Jonah Magnus' plan to bring his patron into the world. His patron, the Eye, is the personified fear of being watched.||
- The level 'The Gulag' in
*Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2* takes place in a... well, gulag used to hold enemies of the new regime. The concrete brutalism which constructs the rings of cells and the guard tower only drives home the misery of this place.
- An interesting spin on this is seen in
*Control*, wherein the containment facilities of the Oldest House are less of a prison and more of a storeroom for the paranormal oddities the organisation has collected. Instead of a fixed central guard tower, there is an elevator/bridge which can move guards between levels.
- "Panopticon" is used as a password in
* Deus Ex* to characterise the person that set it - ||Helios' plan is to use electronic surveillance to turn the whole world into a Panopticon, and the people are so sick of the Crapsack World they're in that they go along with it.||
- In
*Persona 5*, The Velvet Room resembles a panopticon, with the cells in a circular formation and Joker being confined to one with Caroline and Justine acting as the wardens. ||Later, It turns out Yaldabaoth actually replaced Igor and took over the Velvet Room. The false god fuses the Velvet Room with Mementos, transforming it into a massive panopticon, trapping humanity in an endless tower of countless cells with the Holy Grail acting as the watchtower.||
- The "water prison" from
*Silent Hill 4* is a panopticon operated by the cult, believed by outsiders to be just an abandoned water treatment plant.
- The Flesh Panopticon in
*ULTRAKILL* is a biotechnological version of this, taking the form of a cube of flesh with eyes and a mouth rotating in place atop a pillar of stitched meat in the middle of an arena. Curiously despite the arena's walls being lined with cells, they're all empty and the Panopticon contains the only prisoner (|| Sisyphus Prime||) inside itself. Lore indicates that these cells were intended for the Sisyphean Insurrectionists before it was realized that ||Sisyphus' prime soul was already manifesting|| and thus the prison was hastily completed and sealed before anyone else could be placed inside.
- Eisenwald Prison in
*Wolfenstein: The New Order* features at least one cell block with a panopticon design, which is meant to embody the unsettling totalitarian aspect of the game's fascist society.
- The last remaining human settlements in
*Freedom Wars* are called Panopticons, and though they rely on technological surveillance and Ridiculously Human Robot corrections officers for actual observation, the characters discuss the origins of the term and how appropriate it is at one point.
- As mentioned above, philosopher and architect Jeremy Bentham is the Trope Maker and Trope Namer, having described the concept in his writings. He didn't limit himself to prisons: hospitals, schools, and asylums, among others, were also planned for. He wanted to extract as much labor from convicts as possible.
- Following Bentham's plans, several prisons were built using the panopticon plans.
- In the United Kingdom, Bentham lived to see Millbank Prison being built in 1821 but criticized the approach taken by the Crown. The site was too marshy to be healthy and too costly to operate and it was turned into a holding prison for those Sentenced to Down Under, a local and military prison, before being bulldozed in 1890. The Pentonville prison, built in 1832, was to become the model for British prisons but didn't include the constant watching.
- Philadelphia had the Eastern State Penitentiary, which incorporated several cell blocks that radiated outward from a central hub like the spokes of a wagon wheel.
- In 1925, Cuban president Gerardo Machado ordered the building of a modern prison. It was eventually built as a panopticon, with wardens actually able to see inmates without being seen themselves. However, by the 1960s, the prison was overcrowded and underfurnished.
- In The Netherlands, Breda, Arnhem, and Haarlem penitentiary are cited as historic panopticon prisons. However, wardens couldn't fully see the cells. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanopticonOfSurveillance |
Pair the Spares - TV Tropes
Well, they have
*this* much in common...
Charlie has an unrequited crush on Alice; meanwhile, Doris has been desperately trying to win over Bob's affections. However, Alice and Bob are the ones who ultimately end up getting together.
When Alice and Bob finally go from Unresolved Sexual Tension to Official Couple, Charlie and Doris are left in the cold. Still, both of them have experienced the pain of heartbreak and unrequited love — so why not hook them up together? They may not have any initial attraction to each other, but they can always hang out and reminisce about their similar failed romances, and somewhere along the way, they might just find mutual love with each other like their former partners have.
While it's nice to see Charlie and Doris get a happy ending of their own, this device can very easily reek of red string puppetry and make viewers suspect that the creator just paired them off to permanently get them out of the main couple's way.
Differs from No Loves Intersect in that the leftover pairings are not immediately obvious and the involved people are initially just part of the Love Dodecahedron. Results from Conservation of Detail, since many viewers (and some writers) simply wouldn't "buy" the spares getting over it by, say, dating outside the closed social circle of the cast to get away from the drama.
See Ship Mates for when the fandom does this in Fan Fic. Compare Sexual Karma, Lonely Together, Beta Couple, Everyone Must Be Paired (where the majority of the cast ends up with a love interest, whether or not they had been involved in the Love Dodecahedron). If the 'spares' were originally after the same love interest, see Pair the Suitors.
## Examples:
- The
*Angelic Layer* manga pairs up Tamayo and Oujirou, who had previously shown slight interest in Koutarou and Misaki, respectively. (The anime, on the other hand, *flips* the pairings, putting Tamayo with Koutarou and Oujirou with Misaki anyway.)
- At the end of
*The Anthem of the Heart* ||Natsuki and Takumi|| mutually desire to rekindle their relationship, leaving Jun as the Romantic Runner-Up for his affections. At the end, ||Daiki confesses his feelings for her, but it's unknown whether anything comes out of it||.
-
*Dad, the Beard Gorilla and I* hints a possibility of romance between ||Hino and Yukari|| after Soichi marries ||Tsukasa||, although they don't officially hook up. It helps that the "spares" already have plenty of Ship Tease moments even before the Official Couple does.
- In
*Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba,* this is implied to be the case with ||Inosuke and Aoi||, whereas the pairings of ||Tanjiro/Kanao and Zenitsu/Nezuko|| are more directly confirmed. The epilogue is set in modern day japan featuring what looked like to be the descendants of the main cast and the reincarnations of the dead cast. One of them is ||Aoba Hashibira,|| and while he's a splitting image of Inosuke, he does bear ||Aoi's name in a similar vein to Kanata Kamado, Tanjiro and Kanao's heavily implied descendant.|| And the previous chapter also had them being teased with Inosuke showing an interest in the girl. ||The final volume's extra drawings confirm that he's their descendant.||
- Satoshi and Risa in
*D.N.Angel*. Its beginning as anime-only hints in the end (that exchange of looks and smile can't be platonic, really), and become a popular Ship Mates ever since. The existence of the pairing is acknowledged by the manga (sort of) with them having a lot of screentime together and a truckload of romantic vibes and chemistry (though *D.N.Angel* as a whole tend to tease everyone x everyone so whether they end up with each other in the end is still questionable).
-
*FAKE*. In the epilogue, having reached the realization that Dee is never going to choose him over Ryo, JJ very unexpectedly hooks up with Drake, despite their relationship not having been romantic previously and (perhaps because) Drake conveniently having just been dumped by yet another girlfriend.
- Hiro and Ayaka from
*Gravitation*. Initially, Ayaka was Yuki's arranged fiancée and Hiro was Shuichi's implicitly bisexual childhood friend; both of them push their partners to be with one another, and began dating each other.
- Chapter 84 of
*Horimiya* had a case of pairing the spares of the spares when it starts teasing Yanagi and Sakura. The two of them were originally interested in Yuki and Tooru, who in turn were originally interested in Miyamura and Hori. This is ultimately subverted, as while Yanagi *does* get legitimate ship tease, it's Yuki's older sister in both here and in *Hori-san and Miyamura-kun*, while Sakura ends up with nobody.
-
*Itazura Na Kiss* is guilty of this with ||Chris and Kinnosuke||.
-
*Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple*: ||Takeda expressed being interested in Miu several times (though he didn't make many direct advances on her), while Freya was shown to be attracted to Ukita. The epilogue confirms that Miu married Kenichi and Ukita went to the same university as Kisara and the two started dating, while Takeda often brings Freya for training with his master, who suggests they're dating. While they bashfully deny being in a relationship, it's strongly implied that, if they're not together now, they eventually will be||.
-
*Macademi Wasshoi* has one of the weirder versions of this. At the end of the series, we have Takuto's harem still after him, though with Metallis being a huge supporter of Suzuka. Metallis' former sidekick George has been paired up with Macho Camp angel Hapshiel. It's a healthy, if somewhat bizarre, relationship.
- The
*Mahoromatic* epilogue reveals that ||Kawahara and Miyuki|| married in the future.
- Ginta and Arimi find love in
*Marmalade Boy* in just this way. After chasing Miki and Yuu, they give up simultaneously on them and then fall in love with each other.
- The same thing also happens to the American cast, more or less. In that case, no one ends up with the person they originally wanted (or appeared to want).
- In the
*Natsu e no Tobira* manga by Keiko Takemiya, it's stated at the end that ||Jacques and Ledania|| hooked up. The anime, however, shows that ||Ledania hasn't replied to Jacques' marriage proposal.||
- Lampshaded in
*Negima! Magister Negi Magi*. Natsumi reasons that she can't make a pactio (it requires kissing, but not necessarily coupledom) with Negi, because he's the protagonist and she's just "a side character". She then reasons that she could only do it with "the one guy who's in the same 'side-character' position as me" (Kotaro), with whom she has quite a bit of Will They or Won't They? subtext. ||They do, and they end up getting married.||
- In the last chapter of
*No Bra*, it's revealed that Masato's friend Hideki and Yuki's cousin Mizuki are a couple.
-
*Rizelmine*'s entire Love Dodecahedron gets resolved this way, down to one girl getting paired off with a dog that had molested her in an earlier episode.
- Conversed and defied in
*The Story Between a Dumb Prefect and a High School Girl with an Inappropriate Skirt Length*. In Chapter 38, Tsukishima and Tasaki (the only main characters without love interests) start hanging out discussing manga, and the conversation gets to talking about the tendency of manga writers to pair the spares...to which they both say in unison "I absolutely hate it when the leftover characters start dating each other!" Just to finish off any lingering doubt, the narration then clarifies that both characters would never consider dating each other *because* they are too alike.
-
*Wandering Son* has a Maybe Ever After between ||Saori|| and *Doi*. ||Saori|| had never once shown interest in Doi's one-sided crush on her. Unusually, ||Saori|| isn't technically a "spare" since she is dating someone, however her boyfriend is treated rather like a disposable fling.
- Another case appears to have happened in
*xxxHOLiC*, when it's revealed that despite the unsubtle Ship Teasing that has occurred between Watanuki and Doumeki *from even before the latter was formally introduced in the series*, Doumeki ends up married to ||Kohane|| who *also* is in love with Watanuki.
- The comic continuation of
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer* pairs up ||Xander and Dawn|| who happen to be the last Scoobies who are single and heterosexual.
- In
*Invincible*, after Mark (the title character) starts dating Amber, his best friend William starts dating Mark's ally/secret crush Atom Eve. It sort of makes sense because they both know Mark's identity, but when Eve realizes how immature William is, they break up after a few issues. Mark and Eve eventually end up together while William later comes out as gay.
- The spin-off comic
*Life With Archie: The Married Life* presents two alternate scenarios in which Archie Andrews marries either Betty Cooper or Veronica Lodge. In either scenario, the woman Archie didn't pick ends up dating Reggie Mantle.
- In Archie's
*Sonic the Hedgehog* comic, in the "Mobius 20 Years Later" timeline, the future version of Tails ends up married to the future version of Mina Mongoose, who was Sonic's ex-girlfriend. This caught many fans off-guard since the present versions of the characters barely interacted with each other. Writer Ken Penders admitted to putting the two together because he thought they made for a cute couple and because he didn't want to establish that Tails grew up to be a lonely bachelor after a storyline where Fiona Fox, a girl he liked, broke his heart.
- A December 1993
*FoxTrot* storyline had Peter in conflict over whether or not he should take new character Mindy, who has a crush on him, to the Christmas dance, thus hurting the feelings of his girlfriend Denise (who's taking a vacation to her grandmother's). In the end, though, Peter's problem is solved when Mindy falls in love with his friend Steve (and then mysteriously vanishes from the strip afterwards).
- The LDD-fanfiction,
*Bridge to Terabithia 2: The Last Time* does the usual requisite plot of retconning Leslie Burke's supposed death so that she can be with Jess Aarons, but causes problems because the story is set in a high-school setting where Jess at this point has his own girlfriend, the OC Sonia Taylors, which he ends up dumping because of Sonia's clingy jealous attitude and manipulative nature. But it all works out in the end, because in the Distant Epilogue more than two decades later it's revealed that ||Sonia eventually let go of her grudge and ends up marrying Scott Hoager, Jess' former bully from the 2007 movie adaptation, which Jess and Leslie found out from their daughter who had a crush on Scott and Sonia's son||. Small world?
-
*Supergirl* fanfic *Hellsister Trilogy* first breaks up the Kara Zor-El x Brainiac 5 traditional canon romance and then it has Kara fall in love with Kryptonian fellow Dev-Em, and Brainy end up with Laurel Kent.
- The possibility of Aqualad and Ferris dating has been hinted at in
*Life Ore Death*, but is at least averted in the first season of the story. Specifically, the early additions of Ferris and Zatanna to the Team have evened out the gender ratio as early as mid-September, with the members gravitating toward canon's Dick-and-Zatanna, Wally-and-Artemis, and Conner-and-M'gann pairings. Kaldur'ahm and Renka are both single, both older than their teammates, both members of minority populations, and they both enhance their melee combat with magic. Renka/Ferris has also shown a deep interest in Atlantis, and she and Kaldur have bonded on her visits there. They haven't really thought about dating though, less for Twice Shy reasons than because they both currently prefer a Celibate Hero lifestyle.
- In
*Love Worth Waiting For*, this is how matchmaking works in China. At age fifteen, a matchmaker registers your soulmark and looks for the person that matches it. If they can't find that person, you're married off to another un-matched person at age thirty. Mulan narrowly avoided this because she eventually found out her soulmate lives in a completely different country.
- In the
*Maribat AU*, if Adrien isn't getting hit with Ron the Death Eater, then he usually steps aside so that Marinette can date Damian and ends up with another character, usually either Jon or Kagami.
-
*Naru-Hina Chronicles*: Invoked. Many female OCs are introduced with the main purpose of serving as a love interest to some of the Konoha 12 boys, namely Kiba, Lee, Sai, and Shino. Though some of them, such as Mina (Kiba's love interest) or Kei (Sai's love interest) have enough personality, background, and their own character arcs to avoid being Satellite Love Interests. Also, with the exception of Mina, all of them were created by fellow DeviantArt artists who allowed mattwilson83 (the creator of *NHC*) to use them.
- In
*Ranma ½* fanfiction, this happens very often, mostly with Ship Mates type pairings. These writers mainly get their basis from the presence of Ship Tease for gags/storylines and short-lived moments of in-series Shipper on Deck: most of the characters in the Love Dodecahedron know that if their rival falls in love with somebody else, then whoever they want is sure to fall into their arms. This is why Ukyo promotes Ryoga with Akane, why Mousse promotes Ranma and Akane (and probably would support Ranma with Ukyo or Ryoga and Akane, if the ideas ever arose), and why Akane is quite willing to promote the idea of Ukyo and Ryoga or Shampoo and Mousse. Nabiki and Kuno are a popular fan couple due to a combination of some Ship Tease (a manga Filler story has them temporarily become enchanted with each other after being caught by a Love Potion version of the Umbrella of Togetherness, while an anime one has Kuno mistakenly being predicted as destined to marry Nabiki), though this invariably ends with Ship Sinking, and the fact that Kuno is Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense and Nabiki's Money Fetish makes her easy to picture her hooking up with Kuno for his money.
-
*Ranma the Second time Around* takes it in a different direction - Ranma and Akane end up together, as do Kasumi and Dr. Tofu. Ryouga, meanwhile, ends up with Shampoo (due to accidentally marrying her), while Mousse and Kodachi fall in love with each other. Uyko marries Konatsu, and Kuno ends up with Akari. Nabiki, meanwhile, becomes engaged to Sota Higurashi.
- In
*After the Fall of Giants*, Akari and Konatsu end up together after Ryouga and Ukyo, their former love interests, fall in love with each other.
- TheSavageMan100's
*Fairy Tail* Disney adaptations does this for the adaptations of *Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World* and *The Hunchback Of Notre Dame*. Sting (in the role of John Smith) *Erzahontas II* and Zeref (in the role of Quasimodo) in *The Black Wizard of Notre Dame* had feelings for Erza (playing the roles of Pocahontas and Esmeralda respectively), though in both stories she gets together with Jellal (who plays the roles of John Rolfe and Captain Phoebus respectively). Unlike their Disney counterparts, Sting and Zeref get to find their own Second Love in the epilogues, with Sting getting together with fellow Fiorian Yukino and Zeref getting together with the Gypsy Queen Mavis note : In an interesting application of this trope, Mavis is Zeref's canon Love Interest in the manga.
-
*Vacation from the Norm*, while Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable are very much together ||later joined by Shego in a One True Threesome situation||, and Bonnie hooks up with Senor Senor Jr. as per canon, several other unusual pairs emerge including; Joss Possible and Felix Renton, Vivian Porter and Drakken, Yori and Motor Ed and (in volume 2) Betty Director and Will Du.
-
*What If Goku Married Bulma?* has Chi-Chi hook up with Yamcha after Goku marries Bulma instead of her.
- In the ||wedding|| scene for
*Despicable Me 2*, Silas Ramsbottom (Lucy's boss) and Natalie (Gru's "bad" date) are shown dancing together and actually enjoying each others' company.
- Averted in
*Frozen (2013)*. One would assume that, since Anna and Kristoff are falling in love that Hans would suddenly become Elsa's love interest, especially since he earns her trust while she's in the dungeon. ||However, it turns out he's trying to seize the throne of Arendelle from its heirs and is sent back to his country a criminal||. This doesn't stop fanfiction from pairing the two.
- In
*Gnomeo & Juliet,* Juliet's father tries to set her up with Paris. Unlike in the play, he survives and winds up falling for Nanette, Juliet's friend (roughly equivalent to the Nurse).
-
*Inside Out* has an odd example: throughout the movie, there's a small Running Gag about Riley's mom fantasizing about her old boyfriend, an attractive Brazilian helicopter pilot, whenever the dad annoys her. During the Creative Closing Credits, we find out that Riley's teacher is apparently involved with him now.
- At the end of
*Tom Sawyer*, Tom and Becky become a couple while Tom's formerly resentful ex-girlfriend Amy falls for Huck.
- At the end of
*Toy Story 2*, we already know that Woody would be with Bo Peep, so it left out his sidekick Jessie. But of course, there's the perfectly available Buzz right there, and *Toy Story 3* expands on their relationship considerably.
-
*27 Dresses*: The ending has Jane's best friend Casey meet one of Kevin's co-workers at Kevin and Jane's wedding, with the implication that they're going to hook up.
- Basically the plot of the 1997 Meg Ryan/Matthew Broderick vehicle
*Addicted to Love*.
- Done for laughs at the end of
*Baseketball*. Coop ends up with his love interest Jenna, and Squeak embraces the possible transsexual he has been sharing looks with. Remer, on the other hand, looks despondent until he meets gazes with Yvette, a character he has had no interaction with throughout the movie. They immediately begin making out.
-
*The Baxter* skewers this trope. It tells the story of a hapless man who is cursed to be the spare in *every* one of his relationships. If he makes it as far as the altar, an old flame of his bride *inevitably* shows up at the last minute, accompanied by swelling romantic music, and convinces her that *he* is the one she really loves.
-
*Big Trouble in Little China*: Jack attempts this by telling Margo that Eddie has a crush on her. It's mostly a ploy to keep both of them out of the way while he and Wang are Storming the Castle, but Eddie gives Margo a look that implies Jack isn't wrong. Near the end of the movie, Margo suggestively asks Eddie to come over to her place later and help her choose the title of her planned book.
- Taken to its logical extreme in
*Billy Madison*, which ends with just about every character who got at least one line sharing passionate kisses (including an imaginary penguin), only one pairing of which was set up prior to the ending.
-
*A Cinderella Story*: the closing narration reveals that Carter, the protagonist's best friend, winds up with Astrid, the snarky school announcer, with whom he had never really interacted before this.
-
*Coming to America*: After ||Akeem marries Lisa||, Imani, Akeem's arranged wife, seems to end up with Semmi, Akeem's friend. Meanwhile, Lisa's ex Darryl appears to end up with Lisa's sister Patrice, who has had the hots for him for a long time.
-
*Enchanted*: Leftovers ||Edward and Nancy|| get together after an uncertain amount of time passes. Since the two travel to Andalasia to get married (rather than in the "real" world), where the fairytale nature of the realm can make spontaneous love work it's the sequel *Disenchanted* reveals that by 15 years later they are still literally living happily ever after. note : The *do* have to live through a potentially world threatening situation but their relationship is still solid Although in a Deleted Scene, ||Nancy|| gets some extra character development that foreshadows this quite nicely.
-
*Gorgeous* has a rather hilarious example. Protagonist Ah Bu (Shu Qi) traveled all the way from Taiwan to Hong Kong to seek her true love, Albert, only to find out Albert is gay. She ends up with CN Chan (Jackie Chan), oblivious that her crush and Secret Admirer, Long Yi, had tailed her all the way from Taiwan, but eventually it turns out Long Yi had no problems having relationship with *men*, so leftovers Albert and Long Yi gets paired into a gay couple.
- Subverted in
*A Knight's Tale* (slightly in the movie and expanded in a deleted scene). Will and Jocelyn get together, Chaucer has his wife, and Roland and Christiana hook up. Kate and Wat are left standing there rather awkwardly and Wat holds his hand out. Instead of her hand, she gives him a pastry and walks off. Wat is fine with this.
-
*Licence to Kill*: In the end, James chooses Pam Bouvier over Lupe Lamora and suggests that she hook up with El Presidente instead of him. This basically comes out of nowhere, as Lupe and El Presidente have shared literally zero scenes beforehand.
-
*The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King*: Although in the novel the pairing *was* actually set up quite nicely and built up pretty well in the background of everything else that was going on, the *movie* version makes Faramir and Éowyn seem like a version of this trope. Éowyn loses out on Aragorn and gets his "slightly inferior replacement" of sorts, and the whole implied romance comes and goes in the space of a single reaction shot. The Extended Edition does remedy this a bit with a 50-second scene of them comforting each other at the Houses of Healing. Miranda Otto had posted a photo of herself and David Wenham in their characters' beautiful wedding outfits from a Deleted Scene that still hasn't been released.
-
*Love in the Villa*: Cassie and Brandon get dumped by Charlie and Julie, respectively. They get a drink together in the end, obviously charmed by each other.
- Parodied, then played straight with a little justification in
*Mean Girls*. The remainder of the trio (one a gay guy, the other probably not a lesbian) have an Almost Kiss at the final dance, before being mutually disgusted and breaking apart. Then another minor character, who's actually shown an interest in the girl previously, finally gets his chance.
-
*Mr Malcolm's List*: ||Julia (who was rejected by Jeremy) and Henry (who bows out after understanding he doesn't have a chance with Selina and realizing he has feelings for Julia) get together around the same time Jeremy and Selina do.||
- One film adaptation of
*The Count of Monte Cristo* puts Franz and Haydée together offscreen, mentioned offhand by another character as the former falling madly in love with the latter. Thus allowing Edmond to get back with Mercedes, but more importantly avoiding the Values Dissonance of the original ending that looks disturbingly like Wife Husbandry to a modern audience (in fact it was utterly unintentional on Edmond's part, he took Haydée in as part of his years-long plot to discredit Fernand, and she fell in love with him over time).
- By the end of
*Night of the Comet* everyone in the world is dead except for Sam, her big sister Reggie, the hunky stranger Hector who Reggie has hooked up with, and a pair of cute kids who Hector and Reggie have taken under their wing. So we have a newly-formed nuclear family, and one teenage girl who is still upset that her big sister has once again taken the boy she had her eye on, in this case the last man in the world. Reggie tells the kids to wait for the light to change before crossing the street. Sam thinks this is ridiculous under the circumstances, so she crosses the street - only to be ||almost run over by a cute guy we've never seen before. He invites her to take a ride with him and they drive away, and as we do we see from his license plate he has the initials of the arcade game player whose high score Reggie was trying to beat at the beginning of the movie.||
- Happens in
*Old School* with Frank the Tank and Heidi (Luke Wilson's swinger girlfriend from the beginning of the film). Granted, Frank and Heidi would probably be a pretty good couple.
-
*The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement*: The garden party makes it quite clear that not only are Mia and Nicholas the Official Couple of the film, Mia's fiance Andrew is quite taken with Lady Elyssa, Nicholas' date. Mia ends the film dating Nicholas, and the final scene implies that Andrew and Elyssa did indeed get together.
-
*Saving Silverman* parodies this; the protagonist marries his childhood sweetheart, and the evil Disposable Fiancé is paired off with his best friend, but then Jack Black's character (who has mentioned he might be gay) marries R. Lee Ermey's character.
- In
*She's the Man*, the main characters' mean exes wind up together.
- In the Disney Channel Original Movie
*Stepsister from Planet Weird*, Megan's parents are divorced, and her mother is dating a weird new neighbor named Cosmo Cola. In fact, Cosmo and his daughter Ariel are Starfish Aliens, who escaped from their planet's tyrannical emperor. Ariel's mother was killed during the escape, but she can't bring herself to accept that. So, when Megan's mother and Ariel's father start dating, both girls are determined to drive them apart. Megan also wants her parents to get back together. They invite their parents to dinner, and Ariel invites Serena Soo, a strange woman who believes in Reincarnation, thinking that she is a better match for her father. Fast-forward to the end of the film, and the girls have given up their attempt, Cosmo marries Megan's mother, the girls exchange boyfriends (sort of, Ariel ends up hooking up with Megan's high school crush, but Megan starts liking Ariel's ex-boyfriend Fanul, the Emperor's son), and Megan's dad starts dating Serena.
- Order-inverted in
*When Harry Met Sally...*. The title characters (Just Friends at the time) unintentionally cause the Beta Couple to form, from a cross-pairing in a Double Date. This leaves *themselves* as the "spares" (and after much drama, as the Alpha Couple at the end).
-
*Wild Mountain Thyme* heavily implies that Rosemary's Romantic False Lead Adam ended up together with the girl he met on the plane flight to Ireland; when Anthony and Rosemary get together and forget to pick him up at the airport, the girl offers him a ride, and in the "Everyone Comes Back" Fantasy Party Ending, Adam is shown sitting with her.
- An early script for
*You've Got Mail* has Kathleen (Meg Ryan) and Joe (Tom Hanks) trading partners by the end of the film. This was dropped by the time filming was done.
- Nicely averted in Jennifer Crusie's
*Bet Me*. Despite the main couple and many of the side characters hooking up, ||Liza|| remains with temporary boyfriends by the end of the book.
- Lampshaded at the end of
*The Enemy* by Desmond Bagley, where the first-person protagonist mentions how the Hero Gets the Girl and his offsider gets the second-best girl. While the latter is true, the protagonist has less than a year to live thanks to an infection he caught, so the hero at least Did Not Get the Girl.
-
*The Fionavar Tapestry* series of books begins with five protagonists transported from Canada to the magical world of Fionavar: over the course of the trilogy, two die and one decides to stay in Fionavar after hooking up with a local woman. The remaining two decide to return to Canada, and on the last page, they decide to go on a date, with no particular buildup to this in the preceding 700+ pages.
- An unusual example: the
*Grace Harlowe* series follows the eponymous heroine and a rotating cast of friends (all female, although some of them have male counterparts and some of these couples eventually marry) through high school, college, and World War I, after which Grace (whose husband is conveniently missing in the Amazon) and some of the young women join up with the young men from the previously separate Pony Rider Boys series in a new series, Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders. On the last page of the final book, everyone who was not already in a couple is paired up. In the final two cases the paired characters had evinced absolutely no previous interest in each other, to the point that when the first of the two unattached women announces her engagement, her friends think she is marrying the other single man, and are relieved when the final spares announce that they are also engaged.
- Author J.K. Rowling of
*Harry Potter* fame said in an interview that although she left open the possibility of a relationship between many characters such as ||Neville and Luna (the last pair of The Team)||, she didn't explicitly state one in the wrap-up because it "felt too neat." That was also the main reason both of them ended up marrying ||a background character (Neville and Hannah Abbott) and a character that *never appeared in any of the books* (Luna and Rolf Scamander)||.
- Inversion in OotP: the spares hook up a whole book before the Official Couple (|| Cho Chang and Michael Corner and Harry and Ginny respectively.||).
- In
*The Belgariad*, this ends up happening to many of the supporting characters, such as ||Silk with Velvet||, ||Zakath with Cyradis||, and ||even Beldin with Vella||. In fact, several of these characters aren't even mentioned until the second quintet, which suggests that the characters were created specifically for this trope.
- Justified in that The Destiny is a huge Shipper on Deck. Polgara remarks that people who aid Destiny will be rewarded by finding happy love. At no point does anyone entertain the notion of being happy alone.
- Beldin is quite happy alone. Belgarath also spend lots of time wandering the earth or doing research in his tower with little to no interaction with the outside world and liked it this way. But they are happier when Destiny-shipped.
- In Agatha Christie's
*Hercule Poirot* novel *Appointment with Death*, Jefferson Cope gets paired up with ||Carol Boynton|| in the epilogue after spending the entire book pining after the married Nadine. This probably isn't all that unlikely, but it comes out of nowhere nevertheless.
- Throughout Rachel Hawkins'
*Hex Hall* series, Sophie has a Love Triangle going on with Archer Cross and Cal. Further complicating things is the fact that ||the ghost of|| Archer's ex-girlfriend Elodie is magically bound to Sophie. ||In the final book, *Spell Bound*, Cal decides to sacrifice his life in order for Sophie to live, knowing she is in love with Archer. Afterwards, Elodie's ghost asks Sophie to unbind them so that she can stay with Cal's ghost.||
- The Gareth/Gaheris/Lynette/Lionesse pairings are lampshaded in
*The King's Damosel* by Vera Chapman, in which Lynette marries Gaheris but is in love with Gareth (since they've, you know, actually spent time together). Luckily, Gaheris is as uninterested in the marriage as she is (possibly more so).
- In
*The Lightning Conductor*, Molly is dodging the attentions of Jimmy and Jack is dodging his mother's attempts to set him up with Sybil. After Molly and Jack fall in love, Jimmy and Sybil hook up with each other.
- In
*The Lord of the Rings,* author J.R.R. Tolkien originally wrote Éowyn as the love-interest for Aragorn, before he revised the story to include Arwen; therefore after he did so, Éowyn becomes rather hastily paired with Faramir, and a chapter is dedicated to their growing relationship.
- It works better than most examples of this trope, because Faramir is similar in personality to Aragorn in many ways, while being much closer to Éowyn's age and from a culture that's a bit less foreign than the Elvish-raised Aragorn. Hence, this relationship is more likely to actually last and work. Also because Éowyn's crush on Aragorn was mostly motivated by the fact that he isn't a creep like Wormtongue and takes her more seriously than the other men in her life (excepting her brother). Her own uncle doesn't even consider her for the position of regent while he rides off to Helm's Deep, until her brother's lieutenant Háma speaks up for her. The way it comes off in the book is less that Éowyn is shunted to the side in favor of Arwen, and more that there are
*plenty* of guys who will treat her the way she deserves so she doesn't need to settle for the jerks just because Aragorn is taken.
- In Jane Austen's
*Love and Freindship*, Augusta and Graham — perhaps because they both have some sense.
- Played with via time travel in the short story "Needle in a Timestack" by Robert Silverberg. In the initial timeline, the protagonist Nick Mikkelson is married to Janine Mikkelson nee Carter, and Janine's ex Tommy Hambleton is trying to use time travel to negate Janine having broken up with him as he considered her The One That Got Away. When one of Tommy's efforts succeeds, Nick goes back to a time before Tommy and Janine met and impersonates his past self to break up with his then-girlfriend Yvonne and set her up with Tommy. Upon returning to the future, Nick finds Tommy and Yvonne happily married, and they set him up with their other single friend Janine Carter.
- Swedish writer Simona Ahrnstedt does this in her debut novel
*Överenskommelser*, when ||Lily and Alexandre|| suddenly hook up.
- Generally subverted in P. G. Wodehouse's books (Blandings Castle, Jeeves and Wooster, etc), in which a typical plot might go as follows: A loves B, and C loves D. But just before the book starts, A and B break up over something, and A, seeking to show he's not heartbroken (though he is) proposes to D, who is temporarily convinced that C is a complete bastard. Then everything gets disentangled. Subverted in that the eventual pairings are set up quite early on in the book. This formula is then livened up by wonderfully eccentric characters, hilarious plot twists, and fabulously funny writing.
- William Collins' and Charlotte Lucas' marriage in
*Pride and Prejudice*, though it takes place well before the end, has overtones of this- he being rejected by Lizzie Bennet and she being pretty much an Old Maid already, by contemporary standards.
- Also humorously Discussed at the end by Mr Bennett, after Jane and Lizzie have become engaged in quick succession: "If any young men come for Kitty or Mary, send them in, for I am quite at leisure."
- Conspicuously averted in
*The Quest of the Unaligned*. ||Not only does the story end with the Alpha Couple (Alaric and Laeshana) formally getting engaged, Word of God reveals that Gratelle later got engaged to a ruahk noble somewhere in the south and Nahruahn is too young to get married for another few years.||
- Parodied in
*Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers*. After The Hero and the girl get together at the end of the novel, the two remaining male characters suddenly realise they're gay and do the same.
- From
*The Wheel of Time*, from all indications, ||Berelain and Galad||.
- The season one finale of
*Agatha Raisin* ends with it looking like Gemma and Bill are getting together.
- Downplayed example in
*Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.*. Fitz/Simmons became canon during season 3, and season 4's opener gave us Mack and Elena, leaving... Coulson and May to be next in line. Downplayed in that they *were* extremely close beforehand, but it can still feel a bit sudden.
- Worth noting Mack and Elena could
*also* be seen as pair sparing, as while Mack was the main person she talked to throughout season 3, their relationship got upgraded during season 4's beginnings, seemingly out of nowhere.
-
*Bob Hearts Abishola*: Once Abishola decides to date Bob exclusively, Chukwuemeka is paired with her friend Kemi, who is widowed.
- Some
*Castle* fans view the Espositio/Lanie pairing this way since Castle/Beckett is the Official Couple and Detective Ryan is engaged. However, if you watch closely to first and second season episodes, Esposito is flirting with Lanie.
- The spares to
*Crash Landing on You*'s main couple Jeong-hyuk and Se-ri, Seung-joon (Se-ri's rejected suitor) and Dan (Jeong-hyuk's arranged fiancee, whose feelings he has never reciprocated) have a nebulously flirtatious relationship after Jeong-hyuk and Se-ri affirm their feelings. ||Seung-joon dies at the end, so not much can come of it.||
- Fans of
*Degrassi: The Next Generation* are fond of this, pairing (for instance) Emma with Jay so as not to interfere with Ellie/Sean. (Emma is paired with Sean. Ellie is *not* paired with Jay.) Similarly, practically all Spinner/Manny shipping is to stop anything from happening between Craig and Manny. Craig/Manny shippers are conversely fond of Jimmy/Ashley and Sean/Ashley, while Emma/Sean shippers are fond of Craig/Ellie.
- In series example. At the end of Season 9, long-standing couple Jay/Manny had their best friends (Spinner and Emma) get married. Some fans were not pleased by this. In that it ruined the chances of Emma/Sean and broke up fairly long-lasting Spinner/Jane.
- A better example would be Jimmy/Hazel. Spinner and Jay aren't exactly best buds. It's just that Jimmy was angry at Spinner for the whole paint and feathers incident.
note : Immediately afterward, Rick went home, brought a gun to school, and the rest is history. With Rick dead, Jimmy blamed Spinner. At the same time, Sean had lost his mind after killing Rick.
-
*Doctor Who*:
- A non-romantic example is likely the tendency in both the Classic and New eras to partner Sarah Jane Smith with K-9 (see
*K-9 and Company* and *The Sarah Jane Adventures*). Sarah left the Doctor a good deal before he picked up K-9 and they never had anything to do with each other in any Fourth Doctor stories, but they're the two most beloved Fourth Doctor companions, so apparently belong together.
- "Doomsday": In the main universe, Pete had died some years ago (visited in "Father's Day"), leaving Jackie widowed. In an alternative universe, Pete had survived, Rose was never born and Jackie was killed in "The Age of Steel". The surviving Jackie and Pete are naturally paired together.
- "The End of Time" shows Martha Jones and Mickey Smith being married, even though Martha was previously (supposedly happily) engaged to someone else and their interaction during the show was minimal. Word of God states that her honeymoon mentioned in
*Torchwood* was actually to Mickey, and both characters were initially intended to appear before Noel Clarke and Freema Agyeman were unavailable.
- The final season of
*Downton Abbey* works with this trope to a hilarious extent. First there are the people who really do get married—Mary to her mechanic, Edith to her marquis, Isobel to Lord Merton, Carson and Mrs Hughes to each other—to say nothing of Rose, who married and went to America at the end of the previous season. Then there are all the hinted-at future pairings: Moseley with Baxter, Mrs Patmore the cook with Mr Mason, Daisy the under-cook with the latest footman, Tom with Ediths new editor. By the end of the series, poor Thomas is the only one left without a soulmate (||until the film||).
-
*Drake & Josh*, "Playing The Field": When Drake and Tori get back together, Drake hooks her date up with his Operation: Jealousy date.
- Exaggerated in
*Friends*. Rosss doppelganger Russ, newly dumped by Rachel, is saying goodbye to the gang. Julie, the woman Ross broke up with to be with Rachel, turns up. Russ and Julie look into each other's eyes, and in mere seconds are completely in love.
- Also Played With and eventually Subverted in the case of ||Joey and Phoebe. It seems like they're going to get together at many points during the series, but nothing ever really comes of it.||
- Averted on
*General Hospital* after Jason and Brenda are dumped by Karen and Jagger, respectively. They share one kiss, but quickly realize that they're still too raw from their recent breakups and equally quickly realize that they're still in love with their exes—indeed, Brenda turns her efforts to getting Jagger back. They ultimately remain nothing more than very good friends.
-
*Glee* pairs Brittany and Artie as well as Sam and Mercedes for seemingly no other reason than this trope.
- Lampshaded on
*Home Improvement*: Tim points out Jill's attempts to pair the spares, and Jill responds, in an angry tone, "Because I want everyone to be as happy as we are."
-
*House of Anubis*: At the end of season 3, Fabian and Mara were the only two students still in Anubis House who weren't dating anybody, due to Nina leaving and Jerome ending up with Joy. They shared a moment in the finale, and come Touchstone of Ra, they spent the time having some minor Belligerent Sexual Tension before kissing at the end. This is a particularly controversial pairing because the two of them had barely interacted in the show before they were paired together.
- The last episode of the first season of
*The IT Crowd* ends with three Bedmate Reveals. The first two are already the inverse of what we might expect, and the third involves the only other two recurring characters, Richmond and Denholm.
- By the final season of
*The Leftovers*, Laurie and Kevin have gotten divorced between Season 1 and 2 and John and Erica have gotten divorced between Season 2 and 3. Come Season 3, Laurie and John (two characters who have shared no scenes together to this point, and showed no interest in each other) are married and working together.
-
*Lost*: Jack and Kate get off the Island and hook up (for a while), leaving behind Kate's other love interest, Sawyer, and Jack's other love interest, Juliet. Sawyer and Juliet eventually get together, but it's a testament to the acting ability of Josh Holloway and Elizabeth Mitchell that the Sawyer/Juliet relationship comes out of nowhere (unless you'd been brushing up on this trope) *and yet* many viewers felt they were more convincing, more dramatic and way less annoying than the Jack/Kate relationship, which had been around from the pilot episode.
- In the final season of
*The Nanny*, Niles (the Snarky Butler) and C.C. (the Evil Would-Be Love Interest) end years of antagonism by getting married.
-
*Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide*: While Ned and Moze officially hook up, Ned's ex-girlfriend, Susie, and one of Moze's fanboys, Loomer, get back together.
- In
*Our Day Out*, two students of opposite sexes each have a crush on one-half of a teacher couple. One of the teacher couple encourages the students to get together, and they do.
-
*Padre Coraje*, being a soap opera, ends up with most characters either paired up or dead, but the most egregious example is ||Mercedes and Horacio||, who hook up in the very end of the last episode, and it is even mentioned that what brought them together was having spent their lives obsessing over half of the main couple. The funniest thing is, being Unlucky Childhood Friend and Bad Guy Jr., they'd had lots of interaction, and it was never romantic.
- Enforced and exaggerated on a Netflix Relationship Reality Show, "Perfect Match." The elimination / competition aspect is that each of the contestants has to explicitly declare (or have someone declare for them) a "match" with another contestant, or else they're sent home. While certain couples (as of the first season, Joey and Kariselle
note : pronounced "carousel") remain stable, the other eight contestants typically have to fumble to find something reliable.
- In
*Scrubs*, after J.D. and Elliot get together for good, their exes Kim and Shaun also become a couple.
- Earlier, Season 3's finale played with this by having Sean drive Danni (JD's girl of the season) home.
- In
*Smallville*, after Clark Kent and Lois Lane finally admit their romantic feelings and Unresolved Sexual Tension for one another, and after Zod and Tess start exploring their mutual attraction ||which later evolves into Dating Catwoman||, and because a large contingent of Chloe fans had been calling for Chloe/Ollie since Season 6 (often saying "Chloe deserves to have her own superhero" or "Chloe deserves to have her own billionaire" in comparison to the previous Clana, Lexana, and Lollie relationships) the producers finally acquiesced to the fan campaigns, and put Oliver and Chloe together as Friends with Benefits, and then later as a Battle Couple.
- In one episode of
*Stargate Universe* a failed attempt to get back to Earth leaves the characters stranded on an unpopulated planet centuries in the past. With no way back to Earth or their time, the characters resign themselves to spending the rest of their lives on the planet and quickly start pairing off and getting married. After all the obvious couples are paired up, the leftover characters start pairing up amongst themselves which results in some Crack Pairings. This is justified by the situation since the relationship pool is very small and the only alternative for most of them is to spend the rest of their lives alone. In contrast, an alternate version of the characters who avoided being stranded in the past, avoids this trope because most of them still have a hope of returning home and thus do not see the need to jump into relationships.
-
*War and Peace (2007)*: Sonya ends the novel as the maiden caretaker to Nikolai's children, but this adaptation pairs her with Denisov.
- Parodied on an episode of the sitcom
*Working (1997)*, where after a ban on inter-office relationships is lifted, everyone quickly pairs off in order to release the sexual tension that had been building. The Butt-Monkey is too slow, and the only one left is a Little Old Lady.
- In
*The X-Files*, Dogget and Reyes, the two agents that replace Mulder and Scully, are romantically involved during their one season onscreen. It would have been interesting to see where that relationship had gone, had the show's ratings not been so low and the show cancelled.
- It was obvious from the onset that Reyes was meant to be Doggett's love interest. Chris Carter said that Doggett was not meant to replace Mulder or be a love interest for Scully. So it seems Reyes, while mostly being brought on to replace Scully on
*The X-Files*, also had the added bonus of placating outraged MSR shippers.
- Depending on which version of Arthurian Legend you read, Sir Gareth either marries his Damsel in Distress Lyonesse or his Damsel Errant Lynette (Lyonesse's sister). Either way, his brother Sir Gaheris marries the other one.
- Greek mythology is a giant clusterfuck (in both senses), and so it wasn't very surprising that the fact that Demeter is a) the fertility goddess and b) the only of the 12 Olympian unmarried and not having vowed for chastity, irritated the Greeks somewhat. So in later development, she usually got paired with Poseidon, who is c) even more of a horndog than Zeus, d) who cares for his official wife Amphitrite who you probably know from crosswords, maximally (and already has "trite" in her name), and e) showed his affections for her by raping her when she mourned for her daughter Persephone.
note : For Values Dissonance, the latter got retconned into "somewhat consential"; at least it would explain why Demeter changed, of all, into a mare when fleeing from Poseidon, when the horse is his avatar. Athena and Hermes also got this trope to a certain degree limited by the aforementioned chastity vow, probably they are happily enjoying a daily chess match or so.
- In
*Anything Goes*, broke heiress Hope and stick broker Billy met and knew they were a perfect match before the play opens, but Hope is pushed into an engagement to a hapless and awkward English lord named Evelyn by her gold digger mother and Billy is propositioned by his longtime friend, a sassy nightclub evangelist named Reno. In the end, Evelyn is revealed to have gypsy ancestry and be hiding a spontaneous wild side. He marries Reno, Billy marries Hope, and Billy's boss marries Hope's mother.
- In Kander and Ebb's Musical,
*Curtains*, after Bobby finds his love, Georgia, is back with her ex-husband, he starts a romance with Bambi, the last single female role.
- Gilbert and Sullivan:
- Convincing a character that Pair the Spares really is the way to go and she'll be a lot happier that way is the basis of the entire finale of
*The Mikado*, including the immortal lyric: "You've a very good bargain in me." Katisha (Nanki-Poo's Abhorrent Admirer) finally agrees to marry Ko-Ko (Yum-Yum's ditto), leaving Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum free to marry each other.
-
*Ruddigore*: The first act finale approaches this, where Rose decides to marry Richard for no better reason than that he's "the only one that's left". At the end, it's done straight, when Rose goes back to Robin, so Richard decides to marry one of the bridesmaids instead.
-
*The Yeomen of the Guard*: Subverted. After Elsie and Fairfax get together, the spares are Phoebe (who had pursued Fairfax) and Jack Point (who had pursued Elsie). They don't pair up; Phoebe marries someone else — not for love, but to protect Fairfax — and Jack Point doesn't marry anybody, but drops dead on the spot.
-
*The Grand Duke*: At the end, the protagonists marry their respective love interests and the Grand Duke marries one of his two fiancées, the Princess of Monte Carlo, leaving the other, the Baroness von Krakenfeldt, out in the cold. She hooks up with the Princess's father for his money.
- In Oscar Wilde's
*The Importance of Being Earnest*, all the crazy hijinks due to all the "Bunburying" get sorted out and the young people are satisfied by the end. So of course, the PRIEST and the NANNY embrace passionately too. (He's an Anglican priest, though—not Catholic—so he's allowed to marry. And they *had* been flirting all through act II, though without much success.)
- Not really part of the story itself, but in adapting
*La Bohème* into *RENT*, this is done. In *Boheme*, the musician Schaunard and the philosopher Colline are happily single secondary characters (and make plenty of wry comments about their friends Rodolfo and Marcello, and their relationships). Their analogues in *RENT*, Angel Schunard and Collins, *are* a couple.
-
*Oklahoma!* has Gertie Cummings, who flirts with Curly in the first scene, and Ali Hakim, the threat to the Beta Couple of Will and Ado Annie, married before the final scene by means of a Shotgun Wedding.
- Subverted in Sheridan's
*The Rivals*, in which all the major characters but two are already paired by the end as part of the story. This leads another character to suggest that spares Sir Lucius O'Trigger and Mrs. Malaprop pair up, but Sir Lucius responds with disdain.
- Directly invoked in the lyrics of the Act II Finale of
*Spamalot*, where the male and female chorus members pair off for a big group wedding.
- In
*Wicked*, Galinda's attempt to pair off her Stalker with a Crush Boq with Nessa, Elphaba's unbalanced sister, proves one of the most disastrous on fictional record.
- Even William Shakespeare got into the act on occasion.
**Rosalind:** No sooner met, but they looked; no sooner looked, but they loved; no sooner loved, but they sighed; no sooner sighed, but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy.
- Also, to a lesser extent, in
*Measure for Measure*. ||Vincentio|| and Isabella are paired off together, though Isabella had intentions of becoming a nun and he's obviously way too old for her. There is also Lucio and Random Prostitute A.
- In
*The Winter's Tale*, after the young lovers Perdita and Florizel get together and King Leontes is reunited with his lost love Hermione, Leontes rewards the widow Paulina for her part in ensuring the happy ending by marrying her off to the lord Camillo, who up until this point has barely interacted with her.
- In
*Black Closet*, two of your Student Council minions, Althea and Vonne, will wind up together if you aren't romancing either of them. They're together at graduation, but there's no word on how long the relationship lasts.
-
*Dragon Age*:
- If you don't romance Fenris or Isabela in
*Dragon Age II*, they end up in a fling together.
- Iron Bull and Dorian pair up in
*Dragon Age: Inquisition* if neither is romanced. Blackwall and Josephine have a mutual attraction, but Blackwall knows his position is well beneath Josephine's. Sera and Dagna will also hook up post-game, as confirmed in the *Trespasser* DLC.
-
*Fire Emblem: Genealogy of Holy War* has Badass Bookworm Azel trying to woo over White Magician Girl Edin, while his childhood friend and Rebellious Princess Tiltyu chases after the Priest Claude. Depending on the players' actions, they may succeed their wooing. But should they fail... both of them can hook up together. And they're actually *predestined*, meaning they can be hooked up *very* easily due to game mechanics.
- Since the first half of the game revolves around making sure that all your female characters are paired up with a husband, the gamer can actively engage in this trope if he/she realizes that they did not pair up somebody yet and all the "normal" options are taken.
- Likewise, in
*Awakening* and *Fates*, pairing up your units will net you ||powerful new child units||, so unless your forward planning is super in-depth, most players will end up with at least one or two couples that are paired up just because there are no more available options. note : There are two more men than women in *Awakening*, discounting Robin, meaning at least one of them can't be paired unless one is killed off. Additionally, there's an even amount of men and women who can be paired with one another in *Fates*, discounting Corrin, meaning someone *will* end up alone if you don't marry the PC with a Corrinsexual or second-generation character.
-
*Harvest Moon*:
- Some of the games (especially the Mineral Town ones) fall into this trope. After you've chosen your bride, your romantic rivals will often end up marrying their crushes (e.g. if you decide not to pursue Elli, then the Doctor gets her, and if you don't flirt with Ann, then she winds up with Cliff) a few weeks after you have your ceremony.
- Subverted: If you don't choose Cliff for a certain event, he will leave for good, and Ann will remain single. And if you don't see their 2nd heart event before that event they still remain single (but Cliff doesn't leave).
- In
*Rune Factory 2*, if you marry anyone other than Yue, Mana and Alicia, their canon partner will be paired off with Yue. This is Justified: the second part of the game takes place after a Time Skip and features the children of the original characters, so this ensures that a canon couple's child will still be born. Mana and Alicia will remain unmarried.
- In
*Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals*, Maxim's Unlucky Childhood Friend Tia gets together with Dekar immediately after Maxim and Selan's wedding.
-
*Mass Effect*:
- If you show no interest in the human love interest (Ashley if you're male, Kaidan if you're female) in
*Mass Effect*, they will show hints of mutual attraction ||until you have to leave one to die.||
- In
*Mass Effect 3*, if you did not romance either ||Tali or Garrus|| over the course of the game, they will have dialogue between one another that sounds increasingly flirty. Eventually ||you'll catch them at Garrus' station embracing one another. Apparently BioWare decided the dextro-squaddies/two fan favourites of the franchise might as well date each other at the end given the option. Don't worry Talimancers and Garrus fangirls (or fanboys), if either of them is already in a relationship with Shepard, they'll just remain good friends.||
- In the
*Citadel DLC* for *3*, providing Ashley is still alive, she can potentially hook up with Vega.
- Also in
*Citadel*, Shepard can suggest that Jack and Miranda pair off. They are not amused.
- Yet again from
*Citadel*, Zaeed's attempts to do this with Samara are soundly shut down.
-
*Star Wars: The Old Republic*: In the Bounty Hunter story, if neither Mako nor Torian is romanced and the player encourages them, they will become a couple. It doesnt work out, sadly.
-
*Super Mario Bros.*:
- Daisy being paired with Luigi in spin-offs is an example of this as well, as Daisy was originally a damsel for Mario to save in
*Super Mario Land*. But of course, Mario and Princess Peach are the closest thing the series has to an Official Couple, so it was only natural for Luigi and Daisy to be paired up instead.
- Several spinoffs ship Yoshi and Birdo together simply because they're similar-looking creatures of opposite genders, and there aren't many others to ship Yoshi with.
- Sort of done in
*ToeJam & Earl: Panic on Funkotron* in the Golden Ending. At the end of the game, Leshawna hooks up with either Toejam or Earl depending on who the player is controlling when they finish the game. If it's ended in 2-player co-op mode, then she gets together with Toejam, while Earl is introduced to Leshawna's never-before-seen identical twin sister.
- In
*Until Dawn*, there are eight main characters who arrive at the lodge. Four of them are already coupled and two seem headed that way. Samantha and Josh are the only two not to be paired. But given the flirting between them, it seems natural to pair them as a couple. ||If Sam survives the night she even indicates she felt she made a connection with Josh during her police interview. But the ship clearly sinks due to Josh's actions||. Because of the Butterfly effect and its changing of canon, fans can always wonder What If?.
- A non-romantic variation occurs with ||Jessica and Matt||, two characters who are the most likely to die first due to how hard it is to keep them alive. If they manage to survive, they wind up meeting each other in the mines as a plot-convenient way to tie up loose ends, since they don't interact with the other characters who presumed they are dead.
- The
*Danganronpa* franchise doesn't have an awful lot of romance and relies a lot on Ship Tease. Doesn't stop it from dividing up most of its characters into pairs based on relationships, making this a partial example.
- Mostly nonromantic example - in
*Hatoful Boyfriend*, at the end of the Bad Boys' Love route, the characters who were most significant in each others' plotlines are shown talking to each other - ||brothers Sakuya and Yuuya, couple Kazuaki and Shuu (who have a relationship to which "attempting to apply ethical guidelines is completely futile"), and Victorious Childhood Friend Ryouta with Hiyoko||. San and Anghel, who barely interact, are shown together too, simply because they're both the two characters too weird to coexist happily with anyone else (Anghel is either Longing for Fictionland to the point of madness, a Reality Warper who can't perceive the same reality as anyone else, or a full-blown Talkative Loon with extremely vivid Hallucinations depending on interpretation; San is a throwback to before birds were fully uplifted and thus is The Ditz). The ending portrays them as getting along due to Anghel being too crazy to notice San's stupidity and San being too stupid to notice that Anghel is crazy.
- Most of the cast of
*Kindred Spirits on the Roof* get together with someone else if they aren't already a couple, with only two exceptions- ||Yuna's friend Fuji Ano and Nena Miyama, who's Ano's friend and the "third wheel" to her friends Umi Ichiki and Sasa Futano's relationship||. While the two are friends, they never get together, making this an aversion.
- In
*Boy Meets Boy*, Skids vents his frustration about his unrequited feelings for Harley out on Tybalt, the ex-boyfriend of Mikhael, Harley's current boyfriend. To make things even more complicated, Tybalt has also tried to seduce Harley and initially views Skids' lingering attraction to him as an obstacle. Long story short, the two become close friends and share a kiss near the end of the strip's run.
- In
*El Goonish Shive*, Elliot has a lucid dream in which he considers pairing Susan and Justin after finishing pairing the other main characters.
- In
*Erstwhile*'s take on "Sweetheart Roland," Roland's Disposable Fiancée gets a Maybe Ever After with the shepherd who was in love with the protagonist.
- Toward the end of
*Fans!* Book 5 (the strip's original Grand Finale, before it was revived), Tim ends up married to Julia. In a conversation between Guthrie and Meighan, it is more or less revealed that Meighan had hired Julia (an old friend of hers from college) for the express purpose of setting her up with Tim.
- In-story example, from
*Girl Genius*: As the Heterodyne Boys have been Shrouded in Myth since Bill married Lucrezia shortly before their disappearance, his brother Barry was given the stock character of The High Priestess for a love interest in most present-day dramatizations of their adventures.
- In
*I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!!!*, the artist parodies this by setting Alice and Dr. Wendy up on a date and ||having Dr. Wendy tell Alice she doesn't want to go on a second date as they are better just being friends||.
- The goal in the "Serious Business" story arc in the
*Insecticomics* is to pair the spares. *All* of them, even the ones who weren't unpaired to begin with, and in as many combinations as possible.
-
*Khaos Komix* has an interesting aversion in which Mark and Amber, while dating one another, get their best friends to go on a double date with them. The twist is that Mark and Amber break up that very night to be with their respective 'spares' in the end.
- Played with in
*The Order of the Stick*, where in the second book, the only two main characters without a romantic arc are Belkar and Vaarsuvius. A drunken Belkar tries to pair the spares by kissing V (bear in mind that these characters *hate* each other, and V's gender and orientation are ambiguous). V does not take it well.
-
*Sonichu* takes this to a major extreme. At first, the only pairing was the titular character and Rosechu. However, by issue 9, Episode 19, Chris has paired just about every one of his creations with a girl and remedies the last one, Magi-Chan, in the next episode. He... just doesn't like anyone being alone.
- This is more or less described in The True Love List, the Love Interest's counterpart to the Evil Overlord List. Rule #32 as follows:
There is a fifty-fifty chance that the Hero's Sidekick is in love with me. I'll find him a spunky, moderately-attractive tomboy type about his height, and steer them towards each other. If they quarrel, they're in love; if they hit it off, she loves him, but he's secretly unhappy with her and still loves me, and the Hero will need to send them off on a mission together.
-
*Gameboys*: The final episode of Season 1 hints at a possible hook-up between Terrence and Wesley, both of whom have been pining after separate halves of the main couple (Gavreel and Cairo, respectively).
-
*Code Lyoko*:
- While they don't hook up, Yumi's and Ulrich's Romantic False Leads, Sissi and William, have a heart-to-heart chat at the pool commiserating about their unrequited crushes, realizing they both desperately want the same thing: for these Just Friends to get over each other.
- Sissi and Odd unknowingly dated online. Perfect plot wasted.
-
*Daria*'s finale movie somewhat randomly had Upchuck get together with minor character / Ensemble Dark Horse Andrea. The "Future Alter Egos," though not firmly canon, go even farther by pairing Allison with Lindy. Sort of a Theme Pairing for morally ambiguous characters who showed up in the respective movies?
- Bebe developed a crush on Skeeter at some point during
*Doug*. This may have been requited.
-
*Futurama* uses this to resolve ||the season six episode "Rebirth", in which a robot Fry and robot Leela are created as Replacement Goldfish for the real Fry and Leela||.
-
*Kim Possible*: After the Kim and Ron hookup in The Movie, they started pairing spares. Bonnie got matched with Señor Senior Junior in a late Season 4 episode, and in the Graduation Grand Finale episode they paired Felix (and his cool wheelchair) with Zita Flores (who hadn't been seen for about 70 episodes), Drakken and Shego were implied during that finale and Word of God confirmed them as hooking up. A stand-alone episode involving nerdy Cousin Larry also had an implication that he was going to get involved with a friend of his. This basically left only Monique and Wade as unattached, and probably only because of their age difference.
- In
*ReBoot*, Mouse was first brought in as a former flame to Bob, making Dot jealous. In Season 3, during their travels, Matrix and AndrAIa encounter Ray, who the former instantly pegs as a rival for her affections. Naturally, the two end up together.
- In
*Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated*, Velma and Shaggy are secretly a couple for the first half of season one.
-
*The Simpsons*:
- The end of the episode parodying the Big Brothers mentorship program is a non-romantic example. Homer's Little Brother and Bart's Big Brother seem to be left out in the cold... until Bart points out that they would both do well together.
- Before Bart matches them up, they actually spend a few moments bemoaning their situation in a way that, if they were actually paying attention, would indicate that they were perfect for each other — and then cheerfully bid each other farewell.
- Parodied in the episode "The Canine Mutiny", in which Bart obtains an extremely well-trained rough collie named Laddie, and gives up Santa's Little Helper, who ends up living with a lonely blind man. In the end, when Bart manages to get SLH back, Laddie shows up (now working as a police dog) and appears to take an instant liking to the blind man, making it look like we're in for a heartwarming "Pair The Spares" conclusion. Turns out, Laddie is merely fulfilling his duties as a drug-sniffing dog...
- A later episode depicts Marge and Homer five years in the past, almost cheating on each other at the same time at the same motel. When they run into each other each tries to hide this fact, and Homer's almost-mistress winds up locked in a box with Marge's almost-lover. Back in the present, the two are happily married with a daughter.
- In
*Tiny Toon Adventures*, Hamton J. Pig and Fifi la Fume occasionally had romantic interests with each other. Mostly because they're both the third persons in their 3-man teams, with Buster/Babs and Plucky/Shirley, and the simple fact that there was never a *Tiny Toons* counterpart for Petunia Pig. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PairTheSpares |
Pantomime - TV Tropes
*Where's your career?*
A pantomime (or "panto" for short) is a British and Irish genre of theatre. Pantos are fairy tale adaptations aimed at family audiences, full of slapstick comedy, songs, cross-dressing actors, subtle dirty jokes for the adults, regional shout-outs and single, double and even triple entendres galore. It's a soup of older genres, creating a composite genre which is traditionally played around Christmas even though the performances themselves typically aren't that festive and can be told at any time of the year.
This is a very British tradition — which (like most such traditions) baffles Americans; America used to have a somewhat similar tradition in Vaudeville, minus the association with Christmas, but that died out around the turn of the twentieth century. It's also not to be confused with actually
*miming* things (as in Enemy Mime or Mime and Music-Only Cartoon). In America, the two words have become synonyms, but east of the Atlantic they're *very* different - if you told a Briton someone was miming, they'd think Marcel Marceau, but if you told them someone was *pantomiming*, they'd picture a middle-aged man in drag! Also see Mummers, another closely-related British theatrical tradition.
# The History of Pantomimes
Pantomimes are usually based on a relatively small pool of basic stories, mostly fairy tales and other Public Domain media. These include:
Pantomime began as a development of the Commedia dell'Arte or Harlequinade, in which the characters from that tradition were used as a Universal-Adaptor Cast to parody well-known stories. Victorian pantomimes often included a climactic "Transformation Scene", in which the characters were transformed into their Harlequinade analogues. This became increasingly perfunctory and was eventually abandoned as the pure Harlequinade died out and the characters became less recognisable to younger audience members.
Pantos are traditionally Theatrical Productions, but quite a few have been recorded for Live-Action Television, such as The ITV Panto. They have also featured on BBC radio; the most famous being
*Black Cinderella II Goes East* in 1978, which featured the cast of *I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again* and was co-produced by Douglas Adams. In the U.S., there's Lythgoe Family Panto, which combines the typical building blocks of British pantos with the aesthetics of a Jukebox Musical.
# Traditional roles in Panto
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**The Dame**, played by a middle-aged male actor in quite *heroic* quantities of dresses, makeup and enormous fake boobs. Often the most popular and publicised member of the cast, a Dame will often be a fixture in a particular theatre for decades. Usually the mother or aunt of the Principal Boy character (see below); in *Cinderella* two dames are often used to play the Ugly Sisters.
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**The Principal Boy**. Sometimes the titular character, (eg, Jack or Aladdin), often a Straight Man to the Dame. The principal boy was traditionally played by a young female actor as if they had escaped from the pages of Enid Blyton (think "Bob" from *Blackadder II*). Traditionally slaps her thigh a lot. These days, professional pantomimes will often have a male Principal Boy (sometimes so they can hire a popular young soap actor/pop star to put on the poster). Though it's somewhat debatable whether the Principal Boy, when female, really counts as "cross-dressing"; she tends to wear a costume mainly composed of a leotard, fishnet tights, and high heels, and often looks significantly more feminine and sexy than the Principal Girl. This is down to the Parent Service roots of the character; in the nineteenth century, putting an attractive actress in a mock-medieval doublet and hose was the only way of showing off her legs without causing a massive scandal.
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**The Principal Girl**, always young and full of wholesome charm. She will fall in love with the Principal Boy or the Prince Charming if she's the heroine. For added gender-bending hilarity, a boy may be cast in this role, but even with a girl it works.
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**The Villain**: Dastardly Whiplash types straight out of Victorian melodrama. Black goatees, cloaks, canes, top hats, devilish laughs. They may be Grand Viziers, wizards, witches, pirate captains or stepmothers — whatever they are, they're always played with delicious relish and the part every actor wants. Green lighting is usually present, as is appearing in a cloud of smoke from stage left note : In a tradition dating back to medieval mystery plays, the villains enter from stage left, which used to symbolise hell, and the heroes from stage right ("heaven"). They're always openly and hilariously evil. Think Alan Rickman in *Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves* or Gary Oldman in *The Fifth Element*, though these are both understated and subtle compared to a *proper* panto villain. Describing someone as a "pantomime villain" is an effective shorthand for saying they're cartoonishly, exultantly evil.
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**The Comedian**: Usually, there will be another actor in a supporting role who plays the main comic relief. They are usually dense but good-natured and act as The Lancer to the hero or make up a comedic duo with the Dame. They're often a family member of one of the principals — the classic examples are Aladdin's panto-exclusive brother Wishy-washy or Cinderella's friend Buttons. Sometimes the role is merged with...
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**The Good Fairy:** She's the Big Good. In a traditional panto she serves as the narrator and audience intermediary, who likes speaking in verse for whatever reason. If all hope is lost, she'll pull a Deus ex Machina, solving everything up with a fling of her magic wand.
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**The Pantomime Animal:** Traditionally a horse played by two people, one at the front and the other at the back. Jokes about being the actor stuck playing the arse end of a horse are probably Older Than Radio.
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**The Chorus:** No panto is complete without an all-singing, all-dancing troupe. Often there will be two of these troupes, one consisting of adults, the other of pre-adolescent children. Due to legal restrictions on the hours child actors are allowed to work, the latter will invariably be divided into at least two sub-groups.
# Traditional tropes in Panto
- Audience-Colouring Adaptation: Because many people know the stock pantomime stories primarily from panto rather than from the original sources, their knowledge of those plots may be slightly distorted. For example, many Britons probably assume that Aladdin's mother was always called "Widow Twankey" but that was originally a pantomime joke, based on the name of a cheap brand of China tea. Of course, this also happens in the other direction - if there is a Disney adaptation of a particular story, then songs, characters and plot details exclusive to that version frequently show up.
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**Audience Participation**: Panto usually has No Fourth Wall and audience participation is a treasured part of the experience. The classics are:
- The audience are expected to boo and hiss every time the villain appears onstage.
- The villain will be stalking a hero around the stage, requiring the audience to holler "HE'S BEHIND YOU!" at the tops of their voices. Usually, the villain will duck behind cover as the hero exaggeratedly looks around, then looks back at the audience and says "Oh, no he isn't." The audience dutifully hollers
*"Oh, yes he is!"* in response. This can go on for some time. This tends to happen whenever a panto actor appears *anywhere* in front of an audience: British audiences are prone to collectively getting into spontaneous "Oh no he isn't"/"Oh yes he is" routines with well-known panto actors even during talk shows, quiz shows, panel shows, and other shows *utterly* unrelated to panto.
- Some productions go the extra mile and have the audience 'take part' in the final battle - the comedic characters will hand out massive sacks full of foam blocks to throw at the villain. Everyone gets a chance at this, even in theatres with an upper circle where the bulk of the foam will just gently glide down to the stalls.
- Any good panto will leave a pause for the regular jokes. "I didn't come here to be insulted!" (pause) Audience member(s): "Where do you usually go?" If the audience doesn't say the necessary line another cast member will.
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**Big production** - even the smallest amateur company will pull out all the stops for their pantomime. This is not a genre concerned with either realism or artistic minimalism. Sets are large and elaborate, the dame will usually have the most magnificent over-the-top dress (and change it every couple of scenes) and there is often a scene involving gunge, foam or other "messy" fun. *Aladdin* often features a scene in the Chinese laundry run by Widow Twankey, providing an excuse for filling the stage with suds. Or characters will randomly decide to do some baking, resulting in flour being thrown about. Elaborate lighting and abundant use of pyrotechnics abounds; the villains and other minor antagonists often enter from stage left to a barrage of green lighting and smoke, sometimes even with stage fireworks going off. Some theatres even employ strobe lights! During the Curtain Call, the already-elaborate costumes of the characters are replaced with the same, but outfitted in shiny gold, silver, electric blue and neon green.
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**Camp**: To the average person in Britain or Ireland, if you wanted to define "camp", you would probably say "like a pantomime". Friendly gay jokes are a bit of a tradition in the panto, too.
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**Guest stars** - a trope dating back to the late 19th Century in the UK, whereby if more than one major panto is running in a town, they will often compete for custom by playing one-upmanship with the quality of the cast. Once the realm of respected actors (and Sooty), this particular aspect took a bashing during The '80s and The '90s when soap actors, Wolf from Gladiators, reality TV stars and Frank Bruno all decided to get in on the act; fortunately, most theatres seem to be a little more discerning nowadays, but the occasional Big Brother contestant still slips through the cracks. This can be very lucrative work, which is why Australian soap actors decamp en masse to England in time for the season. Julian Clary, Christopher Biggins, BRIAN BLESSED and John Barrowman are guaranteed to be in panto every single year. We've even taken the liberty of getting a few actors from across the pond, including Henry Winkler, Dirk Benedict, David Hasselhoff (yes, really.) and Mr. T. In some productions, the guest stars can turn into the Spotlight-Stealing Squad, but only if they have the chops to hold the attention of a panto audience.
- A more recent variant is the casting of an actor with impeccable dramatic credentials (such as Sir Ian McKellen
note : One review concluded "...at least we can tell our grandchildren that we saw Mc Kellen's Twankey and it was huge") as a Dame or another minor character.
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**The Harlequinade**: Although a full-blown Transformation Scene is only seen nowadays in self-conscious recreations of the early pantomime, the term is sometimes used to refer to a dialogue-free slapstick interlude. Sometimes this is replaced with a more serious mime or dance section.
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**Local and topical in-jokes**. Some pantos have a script written specially each year. Others are available pre-written with [insert topical joke], [insert local joke], [insert name of celebrity famous for being fat] written in. Often jokes are at the expense of an area of the city known for being posh, or run-down; or a rivalry with a local town (see Springfield v Shelbyville). Sometimes (especially from the villain) they're just broadsides at the area in general. There will also be plenty of Actor Allusions, especially if the show has a notable Guest Star.
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**Innuendo**. While Pantomimes are ostensibly aimed at children, much of the humour is composed of sexual innuendo intended to go over the children's heads. ("I do declare, the Prince's balls get larger every year!") Periphery Demographic features heavily here. It isn't unusual to find work outings booked to a Panto with nary a child to be seen. Frankly half the people there with kids have only dragged them along as cover.
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**The Intermission**: Like most productions, most pantos have an intermission roughly halfway through, and it stays true to its Victorian roots. Sometimes, the minor cast may stay on stage to perform the shout outs - in addition, this is usually the time staff at the theatre come around to sell pots of ice cream, so it's definitely worth sticking around for.
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**Improv**: You just can't work in panto if you're not prepared to improv occasionally. Where other productions might stop the show, panto just soldiers on. The Fairy Godmother's wand breaks? She gets another one from offstage and then claims that she always carries a spare. Need to cover an extra-long costume change or a technical hitch? Get the Dame to go out and ask the audience how they're doing. A child in the audience shouts something hilarious to the heroes that would derail the plot? Tell them the show can't end yet because people paid for their tickets! The Villain and the Dame actually *trying* to make the other corpse? Pretty normal. After all, panto runs are often fairly demanding (two or three shows a day for six weeks to two months), and the cast and crew need to let off steam somehow, so a little extra japery is usually allowed for as long as it doesn't disrupt the running of the show. (In many theatres, backstage pranks during panto constitute a whole secret tradition of their own.)
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**Shout Outs**: Usually prior to the sing-along, during the interval or after the bows. Basically, someone in the cast (usually the Dame) takes the opportunity to read out the names of the groups in the audience. There's always a Scout troop, a primary or secondary school class, a Boys'/Girls' Brigade or a company outing in the audience; normally there's more than one. There's also often shoutouts to people at their very first panto (usually either little children or baffled foreign cousins - cue laughter from the audience and cast members joking that they must be having an *interesting* evening) and people who've been coming for decades.
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**The Singalong**: Also called the Songsheet. After the resolution of the plot note : this is usually done by the Comedian and/or the Dame so the rest of the cast have time to put their posh frocks on for the final bow, the victorious heroes will teach the audience a song. Often the audience will be split in half and ordered to compete against each other. This virtually always ends with something along the lines of 'For the first time in Panto history, it's a draw' to avoid hurt feelings on either side. Often, a deeply embarrassed parent or two will be hauled onstage in order to demonstrate the latest dance craze for the rest of the audience to copy.
- Sometimes they'll use material from other notable comedy acts, preferably older for the adults to recognise and the kids to enjoy. Such as Morecambe and Wise's version of "I'm Wishing" for any Snow White shows.
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**Sweeties**: treats are often thrown into the audience from the stage at some point. Sadly, this tradition is being phased out in many places because of health and safety (to be fair, a fun-sized chocolate bar in the eye can be *painful*, and theatres would rather not be sued by irate punters). Some shows will have a variation — in *Aladdin*, the Widow Twankey might throw comically oversized laundry into the audience instead, or in *The Little Mermaid*, the auditorium might be filled with bubbles.
*It's behind you!* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Pantomime |
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