May 2012
45 posts
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Reality Subtext - Married… with Children
The writers fully embraced Katey Segal’s first pregnancy as material for that season, and had Peg in-show getting pregnant as well. Unfortunately, this plan did not materialize as perfectly as the writers hoped. Right before the pre-determined birth, Katey suffered a miscarriage. This forced the writers to give the season an All Just a Dream...
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Reality Subtext - Harry Potter
The Dementors are the personified result of Rowling’s own battle with depression.
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Reality Subtext - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
When Angel breaks up with Buffy in the third season, the tears are real. Sarah Michelle Gellar, who considers Angel and Buffy soulmates, apparently cried for so long that the set had to be shut down briefly.
Similarly, in the episode of Angel where Angel becomes human and he and Buffy have 24 hours of perfect bliss before he voluntarily gives it all up,...
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Reality Subtext - Friends
Supposedly, Rachel Green’s pregnancy was written into the plot because Jennifer Aniston expressed her plan to start a family with Brad Pitt.
The same Joey’s broken arm in another episode.
He expressed a plan to start a family with Brad Pitt?
Clearly he expressed it too much and Jenn had to break his arm.
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Reality Subtext - Calvin and Hobbes
One strip features Calvin getting upset over going to bed since it means that he can’t play with Hobbes. Then he realizes that going to sleep doesn’t have to mean being apart because they can always play together in their dreams. Bill Watterson wrote the strip because his cat - who served as the inspiration for Hobbes - had just died, and what made...
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Reality Subtext - Seinfeld
In the episode “The Jacket”, Jerry and George meet Elaine’s father, Alton, and they’re very intimidated by him. Lawrence Tierney, the actor who played Alton scared the Seinfeld cast and crew just as much with his offscreen behavior (he stole a butcher knife from the set and hid it under his jacket), which is why the character never appeared...
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Reality Subtext - The Princess Bride
The reason Mandy Patinkin’s Heroic Resolve was so convincing is a bit of very dedicated method acting. He thought of Rugen in that scene as being the cancer that killed Patinkin’s own Real Life father.
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Reality Subtext - Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea
Hayao Miyazaki made Ponyo partly as an apology to his son Goro, who he had publicly feuded with during the production of Tales from Earthsea, Goro’s first movie. Word of Miyazaki is that Sosuke is modeled after young Goro and his mother after his wife, which by logic would make the father who’s always away Miyazaki himself. The Morse code...
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Reality Subtext
The Reality Subtext extends past the Fourth Wall to issues surrounding the production itself or on an even larger scale.
During the creation of a work, the rest of the world and its struggles go on. Maybe the author or actor is having relationship issues, drug issues, got pregnant, or someone close to them died. Or something major happened in the world: a disaster, a war, the death or birth of a...
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“You ever notice that Batman never goes to the bathroom? Maybe that’s why...”
– Dave Barry
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Nobody Poops - It’s Grinch Night
In the world of Dr. Seuss, they “go to the euphemism”.
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“Well, I feel that films — the film industry — has increasingly failed to reflect...”
– That Mitchell and Webb Look
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“Do you know why we never see Jack Bauer go to the bathroom? Because nothing...”
– Unknown
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Nobody Poops - Harry Potter
Toilet and bathroom scenes are often quite important, although we never actually see them used for, y’know, what they were designed. Characters will use them to cry, brew illegal potions, talk to ghosts, find secret chambers, decode mermaid messages - anything but the whole defecation thing.
Moaning Myrtle does mention that people sometimes flush her into the...
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Nobody Poops
You know that children’s book, Everyone Poops? Well, they lied. Not everyone does.
Sure, real people and animals in everyday life might, but you’re not likely to see a fictional character going to the bathroom. This would detract from the plotline, and, besides, nobody really wants to see that sort of thing. If something’s not crucial to the story, why include it? If the story...
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Magical Negro - South Park
Subverted by Chefwhose advice usually amounts to him singing passionate soul songs about sex. That, or imparting information an 8-year-old really shouldn’t know.
Stan: Chef, how can I get a girl to like me? Chef: Oh, that’s easy! You just have to find the clitoris.
And on one occasion where Chef could have given Stan useful information, he...
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Magical Negro - The Matrix
Poses some interesting cases. Morpheus comes very close to being one, but he does ultimately have his own goals and character arc independent of helping Neo. The Oracle, however, is an absolutely textbook example in the first movie, although the sequels give her a wider role.
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Magical Negro - Morgan Freeman
Driving Miss Daisy is very close to this trope, but Freeman’s character gets a bit too much of his own character development to qualify.
The Bruce/Evan Almighty films, where the main characters are selfish white guys who need his assistance to find wisdom.
Interestingly enough, this is inverted in the film The Shawshank Redemption. Red is the narrator,...
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Magical Negro - Community
In the pilot, Jeff poses a question at a random black cafeteria worker:
Jeff: Shouldn’t be too hard to fake a study group, right? Black Woman: Huh? Jeff: Oh, jeez, I’m sorry. Uhh, I was raised on TV and I was conditioned to believe that every black woman over 50 is a cosmic mentor. Black Woman: Were you conditioned to pay for your damn tacos, Seinfield?
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“Friendly black optimistic advice.”
– A Trailer For Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever
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Magical Negro - In the works of Stephen King
Stephen King seems to have issues on this subject; many of his writings and their film adaptations include examples of this trope. To be fair to King, he does acknowledge his tendency to write characters such as Dick Hallorann and Mother Abigail as superblack heroes (his words) and says they are products of his white liberal guilt.
The Green Mile:...
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Magical Negro
In order to show the world that minority characters are not bad people, one will step forward to help a “normal” person, with their pure heart and folksy wisdom. They are usually black and/or poor, but may come from another oppressed minority. They step (often clad in a clean, white suit) into the life of the much more privileged (and, in particular, almost always white) central...
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Reality Is Unrealistic - World War II
Adolf Hitler embodied so many Villain Ball Contrived Stupidity Tropes that World War II would never have passed muster as a fiction series. Just the fact that he escaped some 40 plus assassination attempts is probably enough to kill the series. (Even though most of the assassination attempts failed because they were abandoned, or the assassins got cold feet,...
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Reality Is Unrealistic - Will and Grace
John Barrowman, who is openly gay, tried out for the role of Will. According to the producers, he wasn’t gay enough. They then proceeded to hire Eric McCormack, who is straight.
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Reality Is Unrealistic - MythBusters
When the MythBusters bust a Hollywood myth, like, say, Blown Across the Room, you can almost be certain that there will be a large number of fans who clamor to have the myth re-tested because they’re so used to seeing such myths on the media for so long that they have difficulty believing that real life won’t live up to what they expect based on...
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Reality Is Unrealistic - Neon Genesis Evangelion
One criticism often leveled against the series is that its characters are unrealistic. The depiction of their dysfunction is supposedly too extreme to be believable. In fact, the main trio’s personalities match up very well to genuine mental problems, to the point where it seems probable that they were consciously modeled after them. Shinji...
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Reality Is Unrealistic - Game of Thrones
The character of Tywin Lannister was introduced skinning a stag. Viewers heartily criticised the silly fake stag and ridiculed the scene. It was a real carcass and the actor was actually skinning it.
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Reality Is Unrealistic - Seinfeld
In the early days of Seinfeld, Jason Alexander complained to Larry David about the way George was written, saying that no person could possibly sink so low as to do some particular thing, that it was completely unrealistic for one person to be that selfish and stupid. Larry informed him that he himself had done that very same thing in real life. This changed how...
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Reality Is Unrealistic - The Dark Knight
Many people have questioned the famous scene from The Dark Knight in which the Joker’s request for a phone call in jail is refused. In reality, there is no law or precedent requiring people in jail to get a phone call. Of course, that being said, most police officers are more than happy to let a prisoner make a telephone call from a department phone....
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Reality Is Unrealistic - The Last Airbender
Avatar: The Last Airbender used real Chinese characters for the posters and messages in its universe, as well as the opening, and actually had an expert in ancient Chinese calligraphy as part of the staff. The Last Airbender used a made-up squiggle language because Shyamalan thought actual Chinese didn’t look Asian enough.
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Reality Is Unrealistic - Gladiators in the Media in General
Many people think that, as portrayed by virtually every Rome-related work of fiction ever, gladiatorial matches were nearly always to the death. In reality, being killed during a match did occur, but it was somewhat rare. Also, they were not no-holds-barred brawls — fights were regulated by a very strict set of rules defining what sorts...
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Reality Is Unrealistic - Animals in the Media in General
Dogs are portrayed in most films as color blind. This is very false. Dogs can see in color, they just see things in a paler shade than we do. This is due to having far fewer cone cells (responsible for providing the means to see color) than humans do and with dogs being dichromatic (meaning they can only see two prime colors; blue and...
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Reality Is Unrealistic
“Things that try to look like things often look more like things than things. Well known fact.” —Granny Weatherwax, Wyrd Sisters
When exposed to an exaggeration or fabrication about certain real-life occurrences or facts, some people will perceive the fictional account as being more true than any factual account.
This might lead to people acting on preconceptions about unfamiliar...
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It’s 4:52am and I highly recommend Gunnerkrigg Court. Note: the art evolves quickly.
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Oh Crap! There Are Fanfics of Us - Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth both discovered all the Fan Fics and Rule 34 and were ecstatic about it. And decided to forward as many fanfics to their parents as possible. Before discussing how unrealistic they are. (“Everyone knows that the Bear Jew is a pitcher, not a catcher.”)
There’s also the part where they comment...
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Oh Crap! There Are Fanfics of Us - Mass Effect 2
This fanfiction has the crew of the Normandy discover highly sexual fanfiction of them… written by Commander Shephard. Disbelief, disgust and Cluster F Bombs ensue.
“Are you ready?” Thane asked, lust making the rasp in his voice even more pronounced than usual. Jacob nodded, then gasped as two of the Drell’s slender...
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Oh Crap! There Are Fanfics of Us - Supernatural
In canon, Sam and Dean discover a man who has written out their entire lives and adventures. The author assumed they were fictional, naturally, leading into him thinking it’s a Stranger Than Fiction tale, where he might’ve been causing these things to happen to them. They also actually find fanfics of themselves — slashfics, to be exact....
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Oh Crap! There Are Fanfics of Us...
One day, you are surfing the interwebs, and you find a fanfic. This one seems to be about… the characters discovering fanfiction being written about themselves. What is this? Has The Masquerade been snapped in two? Has a hero’s Secret Identity been leaked?
This is largely a fanfiction trope (yeah, a bit ironic), but can occur in original works. This is partially a comedy trope, expect...
April 2012
49 posts
8 tags
An open letter from artschoolmo:
Yellow Submarine is NOT a Disney movie!
Dear Mo,
Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention. I presume you are not familiar with TV Tropes. Excellent.
I love introducing people to the wiki. First, disregard the name of this blog. I assure you that TV Tropes will enhance you life. Now go to TV Tropes (convenient link here), read the intro page if...
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