As You Know: Difference between revisions

In discussions of science fiction this is often "As You Know, Bob" (abbreviated AYKB), or occasionally, "Tell me, Professor [[Expospeak|[about this marvelous invention we all use every day and have no reason to be talking about except to inform the audience]"]]. Other common variations involve a newspaper reporter sent to cover events, or conversation between two supporting characters -- hencecharacters—hence [[I Have Many Names|another name]], "maid and butler dialogue".

** This trope is only present in the English version however, in the original french (The show is a France/Japan co-production and the writing team was French) characters never use [[As You Know]]. At best it's them applying what they previously learned to new situations (If X was solar powered, then Y must also be!).

* [[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]!, [[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX|GX]], [[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's|and 5Ds]]. Every time an effect is activated, the player has to explain exactly what it does -- sometimesdoes—sometimes more than once for the same card in the same duel in the same episode. [[Truth in Television|Of course, either this is caused by the fact that most players do this in real life, or it caused most players doing this in real life]]. The Chicken or the Egg?

* The early chapters of ''[[Hogwarts Exposed]]'' are full of [[Just for Pun|(well)]] [[Expospeak]] which often takes this form, even using the actual phrase "[[As You Know]]" at one point.

* Early in ''[[North by Northwest]]'', the Professor presides over a meeting of national security types and explains the situation, so that we in the audience can be ahead of Roger Thornhill, who is still clueless at this point. He explains what's going on (that Roger Thorhill's been mistaken for secret agent George Kaplan, that there ''is'' no such person as George Kaplan, and that the real secret agent is someone else entirely) in exacting and repetitive detail -- todetail—to an assembly consisting of the only people in the world who already know all this. Clumsy, awkward, excruciating.

** The fact that one character needed Seldon's plan explained to him actually served as a plot point in one ''Foundation'' story -- hisstory—his lack of knowledge revealed that he wasn't who he claimed to be.

* Lampshaded in a ''[[Redwall]]'' book where an important tribal custom is explained to the ''son of the recently deceased chieftain'' .<ref>For the record, there's a sword with a wavy edge (the sea) and a straight one (the land). The chieftain throws the sword, and whichever side lands up determines the way they travel</ref>. He yells at the minion telling him this to get to the point .<ref>The minion is showing him how make the sword land the way he wants it to</ref>.

* CS Forester neatly justifies it in a couple of places in the ''[[Horatio Hornblower]]'' books, where a junior officer begins an explanation to a senior officer with an [[As You Know]] in order to maintain a properly deferential tone while in fact telling the senior officer something he probably didn't know, but should have known.

* The problem is routinelyroutinely—and -- and hilariously -- lampshadedhilariously—lampshaded by narrator Bertie Wooster in the [[Jeeves and Wooster (novel)|Jeeves and Wooster]] stories by [[P. G. Wodehouse|PG Wodehouse]], since the plot arcs often span several books.

* Sort of, in [[Splinter of the Minds Eye]]. Luke Skywalker, pretending to be a local miner, asks a real local a question about the locale. The response starts with an [[As You Know]] - the real local thinks Luke knows the first part of what he's imparting, though just like the readers, he does not.

* Subverted in the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' books, whenever the scene includes Richard and two other mages. On finding some kind of magical oddity or artifact, the two or more learned mages will start talking to one another, entirely leaving out the "[[As You Know]]" bits...until Richard, who barely knows a thing about magic, tells them to stop and explain in terms he can follow.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' ran into this problem when Romana (another Time Lord who actually was cleverer than the Doctor) travelled with the Doctor. In this case, however, the sheer quality of the two actresses who played Romana meant that few really noticed -- plusnoticed—plus Romana was meant to be a bit naïve.

** A particularly bizarre ''[[Doctor Who]]'' example occurs in the final episode of "The Armageddon Factor", where two incidental characters As You Know a recap of the Doctor's current predicament for the audience's benefit -- despitebenefit—despite the fact that the Doctor is across the star system and out of contact, and has been for some time: there's no way they could have known the events they relate.

** Somewhat justified -- lawyersjustified—lawyers have to be able to distinguish the case's meaning from the facts, and then apply it to their particular situation. And they have to be able to challenge arguments that the case they just cited shouldn't apply. And in the case of the judges, it's often done as a method of interpreting the law based on the arguments of the lawyers (and playing Devil's Advocate in the process by challenging their interpretation), which is partly what judges are ''supposed'' to do.

** Walter has brain damage and spent many years in a mental institution. As a result he forgot a lot of important things he did and is extremely scatterbrained. His use of [[As You Know]] speeches is portrayed as him reminding himself that he knows this stuff.

* In order for viewers of ''[[The West Wing]]'' to know what the hell was the significance of any of the laws/political issues/etc. the characters were talking about, someone, (usually Donna, who was both politically inexperienced ''and'' very inquisitive) would ask someone else to explain the issue, in the vein of interns on ''ER''. Although the writers of ''The West Wing'' usually described this trope as a necessary evil, they occasionally could get pretty creative with it, such as leaving the audience intentionally in the dark for a good chunk of the episode, only showing the characters' reactions to the mysterious problem, which resulted in the audience either waiting for the point to be revealed or trying to puzzle out [[Noodle Implements]], making for a more suspenseful episode and lots of [[Genius Bonus|Genius Bonuses]]es. Or they sometimes would forego the explain-to-the-non-expert version in favor of a character being out of the loop for various reasons and humorously trying to bluff knowledge, or having someone (usually Toby) rant about the issue at length, providing exposition but not ''just'' exposition.

* In a (deeply failed) attempt to reduce this in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 2'', Kojima came up with the idea of making the player character a character who ''didn't'' know, allowing the other characters to tell the player things that the main character would already know. For the segment where the main character ''was'' the one receiving the exposition, it was compensated for by the fact that the person giving the [[Info Dump]] was a compulsive nag. The whole thing failed miserably, however -- partlyhowever—partly because [[Replacement Scrappy|everyone hated the new guy]], and partly because Kojima infodumps are so [[Author Tract|turgid]] that As You Know actually makes them more accessible.

* ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'': How many times has Lan gone through some sort of homework assignment, field trip, lecture from his dad, etc., learning the basics of battling against a bunch of Mettaurs? Slightly justified in the first game that he hasn't done any serious net battling yet -- thoughyet—though it's implied he's still rather knowledgeable on the subject -- butsubject—but it gets increasingly odd as the series goes on seeing as how he's used these exact skills to save the world multiple times before...

* This comes up rather often in ''[[Code Lyoko]]'' Season 1, since the series starts [[In Medias Res]]. Jérémie is usually the one stuck with frequently reminding his friends about information that they would already know -- likeknow—like the basic properties of the world of Lyoko, the monsters' stats, the fact that they couldn't let anyone die before a Return to the Past or that their main goal is to materialize Aelita.

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