TV Tropes



Affectionately known as The Other Tropes Wiki, TV Tropes is a wiki documenting, in a fairly informal manner, the various conventions of fiction. They're quite similar to All The Tropes, but have a few differences.

Like any sizeable work, they've collected their own fair share of tropes.


 * Accentuate the Negative: Darth Wiki.
 * Artifact Title: It started with TV (Buffy the Vampire Slayer in particular). Nowadays it encompasses all media.
 * Except what they are forced to censor to please advertisers, that is.
 * Beige Prose: The Laconic.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall/Leaning on the Fourth Wall: An editor of the site will often introduce themselves as "This Troper". This is frowned upon for examples though.
 * Blatant Lies: "For the record, it is fine to disagree with the site's editorial or administrative policies."
 * Censorship Bureau: The P5.
 * Darker and Edgier:
 * The Useful Notes sections, detailing more darker facets about reality than fiction.
 * Of course, there's also Darth Wiki, where all the negative opinions go to, though since the wiki has been trying to purge as much negativity as possible, even the Darth Wiki has been severely pruned over time.
 * Dark World: Darth Wiki.
 * Drinking Game: They have one.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Some of the trope titles, and increasing every day. These are listed in the Index of Exact Trope Titles.
 * Hive Mind: A conscious goal.
 * Hurricane of Puns:
 * Just read the Just for Pun index.
 * The Sorting Algorithm of Tropes index qualifies, although the puns will likely slip under your radar if you don't have a computer science background.
 * Lampshade Hanging: For pages about tropes, there will a folder section for TV Tropes, lampshading how TV Tropes uses the trope explained on the page in some fashion. Very meta. Even more meta is the logo.
 * Lighter and Softer: Sugar Wiki, where all the positive opinions go to.
 * Medium Awareness: References to how the site is a wiki are constantly referenced.
 * Mind Screw: At least half the entries in Wild Mass Guessing.
 * Overused Running Gag: I Am Not Making This Up and So Yeah were so overused that the wiki said "Enough is enough!" and purged all mention of them from the wiki, deleting and perma-locking their pages.
 * Post Modern: Plenty of examples. Since the site is a catalog of devices used in fiction, the whole site is this.
 * Punny Name: Quite a few article titles.
 * Running Gag: Several, most commonly "Tropes Will Ruin Your Life".
 * Schmuck Bait: A lot of external links are this. Notable offenders:
 * Ear Worm: Prepare to be hearing the piece of music from that link for the rest of the day.
 * Rickroll: Do we really need to explain this one?
 * Seen It All: Read the site enough and take it too seriously and you may become this.
 * Self-Demonstrating Article: A whole index of them.
 * Theme Naming: Their trope naming organizations, SPOON, FORKS, KNIVES, and PLATTER, were all named after kitchen utensils.
 * Thrown Down a Well: The Permanent Red Link Club.
 * Tropes Will Ruin Your Life
 * Visual Pun: Some of the images for their trope articles are this.
 * Wiki Walk: It's a wiki, what else would you expect?


 * Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick
 * Broken Base: Obviously, Trope Repair Shop.
 * Captain Obvious
 * Continuity Nod
 * Conversational Troping
 * Crowning Moment of Funny: The Made Of Forum Win topic.
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Double Entendre
 * Dysfunction Junction
 * Fan Myopia
 * Freud Was Right
 * GIRL: There is an overwhelming amount of male members with female avatars. This is inverted frequently as well, with plenty of females sporting male avatars.
 * Hidden Depths: At first the characters may seem like shallow archetypes, but the characterization they receive is amazingly human.
 * Hurricane of Puns
 * Hot-Blooded
 * Left Fielder
 * Loads and Loads of Characters
 * Memetic Mutation: By the bucketload. Fast Eddie isn't a fan.
 * Multinational Team
 * Nightmare Fetishist
 * Nightmare Fuel
 * Ninja Editors: The forum tends to move fast. It is not uncommon for threads to gain two or three posts in less than a minute.
 * Online Personas: Most of 'em.
 * Running Gag
 * Serious Business
 * Shipping
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Pretty idealistic, as far as places on the Internet go.
 * Sock Puppet
 * Talkative Loons
 * Thread Necromancer
 * Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: Taken to the extreme.
 * Universal Adaptor Cast: There sure are a lot of troper AUs.
 * Viewer Gender Confusion: Not helped by the GIRL (and reverse-GIRL) avatars, and the fact that gender doesn't come up much.
 * Yaoi Fans
 * Yuri Fans