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A recurring item across several works for a director, producer or writer. For recurring associates, see [[Production Posse]]. For recurring characters or items identified with a previous movie, see [[Production Throwback]] and [[Reused Character Design]]. The literary/unintentional equivalent of this is an [[Author Catchphrase]], and the actor equivalent of this is just a normal [[Catch Phrase]] ([[Arnold Schwarzenegger|"I'll be back"]]).
Does not include overarching [[Signature Style]] elements of a body of work, [[Signature Shot
Many of these can be found in trivia sections on [[IMDb]].
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* All of [[Hayao Miyazaki]]'s films have at least one scene depicting characters at great heights or on the edges of precipitious drops: most of his films also feature at least one fantastic flying machine. Many of his films feature flight as a prominent theme.
** And pigs. Don't forget the pigs.
* This is part of the reason why ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' fans love the series. The person in charge of it is a self-admitted fan of ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'', so he inserted ''a lot'' of [[Humongous Mecha]] tropes and references into the anime. [[Mix and Match|The resulting fusion]] of [[Magical Girl
** Of course, the series has taken a considerable amount of flak from critics recently for, you know, [[Genre Shift|not actually being a magical girl show anymore]].
* [[Naoki Urasawa]] is a noted Germanophile, which is very noticeable giving the settings of his work: Large parts of ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'', ''[[Master Keaton]]'', and ''[[Pluto]]'' are set in Germany.
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** Emporio Ivankov, who can carry his right hand man in his afro;
** and Luffy wears an afro wig during his fight with Foxy, and everyone except [[Only Sane Man|Nami]] insists that the afro makes him stronger.
** [[Wild Take
* Kozue Amano, the creator of [[Aria]] and [[Amanchu]] clearly has a thing for [[Scenery Porn]] [[Tropes Are Not Bad|Nobody complains,]] [[Doing It for the Art|for good reason.]]
* Mori Kaoru is an Anglophile. It definitely shows in the immense attention to the details of upstairs-downstairs dynamics, costume details and setting of [[Victorian Romance Emma]].
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** He's explained that alliterative names were just easier to remember since he was writing tons of books and creating new characters all the time.
* [[Garth Ennis]] has a fondness for Irish and British characters, especially working-class ones.
* Scott Snyder has a penchant for starting every story
* [[Bill Finger]], the unsung early writer of the ''Batman'' comics, loved doing stories around giant sized but functional versions of props like typewriters, cigarette lights and similar displays.
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* [[Martin Scorsese]]'s films often feature Catholic imagery, guilt-ridden protagonists, and the Madonna-Whore complex in regards to love interests.
* [[Christopher Nolan]]'s films would be a third shorter if he left out all the [[Scenery Porn|birds-eye view cityscapes]]. Also, at least one of the main characters will carry a small, innocent-looking object around (such as [[The Dark Knight|a playing card, a coin]], [[The Prestige|a bouncing ball]], or a [[Inception|spinning top]] ) which we are treated to many close-up shots of. And if [[Cillian Murphy]] is in the movie, at some point he will have a bag over his head.
* Film producer Jon Peters appears to really like [[Giant Spider
* [[Tim Burton]] has a few:
** has a thing about hands. His films contain strange
** Burton also likes German Expressionist cinema (please note the fact that Johnny Depp [[Looks Like Cesare]] in over half of Burton's films), which is a visible influence of his work. Sometimes he admits this, like how Christopher Walken's character in ''Batman Returns'' is named "[[Nosferatu|Max Schreck]]". This also feeds into his lower-level fixation with [[Goth Spirals|spirals]]. Spiral hair, spiral feathers, spiral coattails, spiral plants, spiral embroidery... maybe he eats a lot of curly fries or something. And stripes. Especially on snakes.
** [[Monster Clown|Scary clowns]], dark woods, tile floors...
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** That's besides his whole "dark underbelly of suburbia" thing, the dominant theme in much of his work.
* [[The Coen Brothers]] seem obsessed with hair, or at any rate like to portray characters who are, and/or characters with bizarre or terrible haircuts.
** They are also fond of: suitcases full of money, powerful men behind desks, shots of walking feet, and [[Implacable Man|Implacable Men]] who verge on being [[Physical God
* If [[Mel Gibson]] is starring in a film, chances are his character will like dogs.
** Mel Gibson's attachment to a film, as star or director, does tend to suggest the presence of torture or similar. ''[[Mad Max]]'' and the hacksaw, ''[[Lethal Weapon]]'' and the electric sponges in the shower, lots of ''[[Conspiracy Theory (film)|Conspiracy Theory]]'', ''[[Payback]]'', the end of ''[[Braveheart]]''. On the other side of the lens, there's some in ''[[Apocalypto]]'', and of course there's ''[[The Passion of the Christ]]''.
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== Gamebooks ==
* Ian Livingstone, co-creator of the ''[[Fighting Fantasy]]'' gamebook series, seems to enjoy sailboat racing, given how he's snuck [[Author Avatar
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* An in-story example: The [[Gordon Korman]] novel ''Son of Interflux'' has an art student who always includes a camel in his paintings, no matter what it's a painting of. His teacher finds it immensely irritating.
* [[Robert A. Heinlein]], ''again'' (the man had trouble keeping himself out of his books, clearly)
** ''[[Starship Troopers (novel)|Starship Troopers]]'' is one of the oft-most cited literary examples, with almost all of the authority figures in the main character's life having [[Author Filibuster|page long monologues that consist of Heinlein's own philosophies]], such as his views on nuclear weapons, the military, and matters of national
** See his entry in [[Food Porn]].
** He also seemed to be a spanko. Many of his books includes scenes where a man spanks a woman.
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* The authors of the ''[[Left Behind]]'' series really, really like their telephone conversations. In fact there's probably as much talking on the phone as there is talking face-to-face in the earlier books.
** Don't forget their love of explaining the difficulties of getting from Point A to Point B. Over a billion people have just disappeared, but I'm going to worry about how hard it is to get to New York.
* [[S.M. Stirling]]'s many books consistently feature detailed description of subjuguation and slavery; ridiculous amounts of detail about weaponry (guns or bows and arrows depending on the setting). However, if you're writing adventure fiction in which the main characters are warriors or soldiers, and do a lot of fighting, this is pretty well inevitable. Not only does the situation demand it, but specialists whose careers and lives depend on their trade tend to be -interested- in their
** And, of all things, cannibalism, but that depends on whether there's an extreme famine going on.
** Much of Stirling's work is a homage to the "heroic [[Mighty Whitey]] explorer" genre of pulp fiction, so this is a cross between [[Author Appeal]] and [[Shout-Out]].
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** He also seems to be very fond of the concept of the country squire, whether in the form of a [[The Draka|Draka]] landholder, a Prime of one of the Thirty Families of New Virginia (from his novel Conquistador), a Commander of post-change Britain in the [[Emberverse]], a zamindar of the [[The Peshawar Lancers|Angrezi Raj]], or a Hereditary Supervisor of the [[The General|Civil Government]].
** However, his real thumbprint is his [[Food Porn]]. It occurs in all his books, from the fifth millenium to the Emberverse.
* Speaking of Piers Anthony... Sure, the Xanth books are filled with puns, but they lurk in other books too, not to mention the [[Meaningful Name
** ''Macroscope'' involved the game ''sprouts''.
* Many of [[Neil Gaiman]]'s stories involve talking cats, imposter mothers, and, of course, eye trauma.
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*** 6, if you count "[[TV Tropes]] telling you the story of Neil Gaiman telling the reader the story...", but you really shouldn't.
*** Even better, in that same Sandman book, a character the protagonist of the book met is telling a story about a meeting he had with someone, who told a story about his mistress, who in THAT story started telling many stories...one of which was a story about a bunch of travelers stuck at an inn, telling stories to pass the time. Yes, it was recursive to that extent, and boy, was Gaiman proud of managing to include the moment.
*** Gaiman's also a huge mythology nut and loves to reference a huge range of tales from almost any culture you can think of, particularly if at some point they were [[Bowdlerization|bowdlerised]] and the original forms were much darker and more gruesome. [[The Fair Folk]] are treated as the trope describes, the original (and deeply [[
* [[Frank Herbert]]'s consistent themes: hallucinatory experiences as a spiritual journey of discovery (usually by means of some substance,) and resentment toward/competition with a father figure.
* [[Cordwainer Smith]] loved to include cats (including an early, Western example of the [[Catgirl]] trope) and references to Chinese culture in his science fiction stories.
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* [[NUMA Series|Clive Cussler]] almost always has a cameo of himself assisting the heroes in some way.
* [[Steven Brust]] is another writer with a taste (pardon the pun) for [[Food Porn]]. He also has a thing (taken from Hungarian folklore iirc) for canny coachman characters. There's a couple in the [[Dragaera]] series, and in ''[[Freedom and Necessity]]'', the protagonist disguises himself as a coachman at the beginning of the novel. Brust was also previously involved in music, so there are a number of musician characters in his books and one book has a lot of carefully disguised allusions to the [[Grateful Dead]].
* [[Roald Dahl]] loved nostalgia for his childhood, and [[Food Porn|food]]. Almost all of his books revolve around food in some way, and most of the [[Happy Ending
* Along with his obsession of going into absurd detail with characters getting diarrhea, periods, and wet trousers (possibly deliberate [[Squick]]), [[Stephen King]] ''also'' seems bent on all his stories being in Maine.
** And if they aren't set there, they will definitely include some passing reference to the state at some point.
* Pretty much the entire oeuvre of [[China Mieville]] is [[Perdido Street Station|one]] [[Kraken (novel)|great]] [[Iron Council|big]] [[The Scar|twisted]] [[Un Lun Dun|love]] [[Bas-Lag Cycle|letter]] to the city of London.
* [[Dale Brown]] was a former bomber crewman, so most of his [[Cool Plane
* [[Eoin Colfer]] and Ireland.
* [[Agatha Christie]]'s second husband was an archaeologist. Several of her novels in the 1930s and 40s involve archaeology.
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== Live Action TV ==
* British comedian [[Rik Mayall]] seems to like politics. Various references to the subject pop up in pretty much every episode of ''[[The Young Ones]]'', ''[[Filthy Rich and Catflap]]'' and ''[[Bottom]]''. So playing the lead role in ''[[The New Statesman]]'' must have been a dream come true for him.
* Jerry [[Seinfeld]]
* [[Tina Fey]] and the other writers of ''[[30 Rock]]'' like to make ''[[Star Wars]]'' references. In the second season, they managed to get Carrie Fisher to guest star and say, "Help me, Liz Lemon... you're my only hope!"
* [[Bryan Fuller]] likes the macabre like fish like water: ''two'' of his shows (''[[Dead Like Me]]'' and ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'') have used death as a metaphor for adulthood. He loves giving his female leads [[Tomboyish Name|tomboyish names]], for whatever reason.
* Steve Smith, co-creator, producer and co-head writer of ''[[The Red Green Show]]'', seems to be a car buff in real life and many of the show's gags involve cars and trucks of some sort. [[Shout-Out|Shout Outs]] and [[Take That
** Along with that, Steve Smith even [[Lampshaded]] the number of gags that involve beer in one form or another. When cars and beer are the basis for so much of the humor, is it any wonder the show was such a hit among middle-aged blue collar guys?
* Inevitable ''[[Doctor Who]]'' examples:
** [[Terry Nation]]: "evolution" depicted as a predictable force with inherent drives, man-eating plants, planets with meaningful names, characters called "Tarrant".
** [[Malcolm Hulke]]: [[Grey and Gray Morality]], [[Humans Are Bastards]], avoidance of [[
** [[Robert Holmes]]: cynicism (sometimes to localised [[Crapsack World]] levels), "double act" guest characters, [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]] references to intestinal gas, references to Earth-Humans as "Tellurians", bureacratic villains, [[Nightmare Fuel]].
** [[Pip And Jane Baker]]: [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]], anvillicious green Aesops
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* Shigeru Miyamoto has implemented personal interests into many of his games, including ''[[Pikmin]]'' (gardening), ''Nintendogs'', ''Wii Fit'', and most recently, ''Wii Music''. Nintendo recently banned him from talking about his current hobbies.
** His earlier works were rather definitely based on his childhood experiences, too.
** The premise of ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' was based on his exploration of caves as a child. In an interview for a game-developer site, he flat-out tells other designers to base their games on things they like
Miyamoto has admitted to being a [[The Western|Western]] fan, which is particularly apparent in the 3D ''Zelda'' games. For example, ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'', ''[[Video Game/The Legend Of Zelda The Legend Of Zelda Majoras Mask|The Legend Of Zelda The Legend Of Zelda Majoras Mask]]'' and ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]'' all have [[Powerup Mount|Epona]], ''Ocarina of Time'' has Lon Lon Ranch, ''Majora's Mask'' has Romani Ranch, and ''Twilight Princess'' has the redesigned Kakariko Village, the Hidden Village, Ordon Ranch and the plot similarities with ''[[The Searchers]]''.
* Yuji Horii of ''[[Dragon Quest]]'' fame is a compulsive gambler which is why many of the games in the series have some sort of gambling mini-game in it. (Though its been said that the fact that you can only save in the town's churches is a way to try to make going out in the field/dungeons feel a bit more of a gamble as well.)
* Speaking of belts, ''[[Guilty Gear]]'' character designer Daisuke Ishiwatari seems to use belts as a unifying motif minus a few rare cases (Anji Mito has only a sash). [[Author Avatar|Sol Badguy]] tops the list with 24 belts in his costume design. Funnily enough, the costumes still manage to look pretty cool.
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*** One of his early sketchbooks was entirely centered around incest, he just doesn't sell it anymore, myth busted.
* ''[[Sabrina Online]]'' ''started out'' as a comic for fans of the Amiga computer platform before gradually expanding into more of a [[Slice of Life]] comic, so its occasional Amiga humor can be dismissed as a non-example of this trope. The increasingly-frequent ''[[Transformers]]'' strips, however, are another matter.
* Tom Siddell has worked many of his own interests into ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]''. First, Kat's [[Otaku Surrogate|interests]] in videogames, TV, and dance music usually mirror his own. Second, his interest in folklore and mythology is the reason for the comic's [[Crossover Cosmology]]. Third, Tom's a big fan of English folk music, with its effect on the story varying between [[Shout-Out]] and "character inspired by a folk song". He's also stated that
* ''[[Erikas New Perfume|Erika's New Perfume]]'' contains certain things that pop up in most of the author's other works, such as [[Fountain of Youth]].
* ''[[Last Res0rt]]'' has its protagonist, Jigsaw (along with the rest of the Talmi species), heavily implied to be Jewish. The author is also Jewish. Hey, it could be worse.
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** Also, either Seth or somebody in his staff has a thing for [http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/Chris_Griffin idiotic] [http://americandad.wikia.com/wiki/Barry fat] [http://cleveland.wikia.com/wiki/Cleveland_Brown_Jr kids]
** Not to mention main characters who logically shouldn't be able to talk but do. Like Stewie, Klaus, and Tim the bear.
* Brad Bird works the number
* One [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]] writer has a disproportionate number of mental breakdown episodes.
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