Defied Trope

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Arcee is certainly not doing some cheap Fan Service, thank you very much.

Ira Kane: Snag it and put it in the bucket.
Harry Block: I've seen this movie; the Black Dude Dies First. You snag it.

Happens when a character knows that a trope is about to happen, either due to being Genre Savvy or because someone is trying to invoke it, and then actively attempts to avert it, subvert it, or maybe even invert it.

The character might succeed, or might fail. In failing, he might even set the trope off. The point is that the character is at least attempting to avoid a straight run of the trope.

Compare Reality Ensues (which this may sometimes lead to).

Contrast Invoked Trope, Exploited Trope, Discussed Trope.

Not to be confused with a simple Averted Trope, which has no prompting from any characters.

Also not to be confused with Deified Trope.

Examples of Defied Trope include:

Anime and Manga

  • Judai of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX says he realizes it's pointless to give a Kirk Summation to Yubel.
    • Also, when Alexis is encouraged to become an Idol Singer, she actively refuses to become one.
  • Contrasting the invoked Bodyguard Crush in Kaze no Stigma, Kazuma goes out of his way to keep Ayano at a distance and offend her as much as possible so she doesn't get attached to him either. It doesn't really work.
  • The second season of Princess Tutu is all about the characters defying the roles assigned to them by the writer of the story.
  • Johan Liebert from Monster defies the trope of being Obviously Evil, and on the surface, he seems like a really nice guy.
  • In the second Tiger and Bunny drama CD, Karina assures Barnaby that she has no intention of letting their animosity towards each other become Belligerent Sexual Tension. So far she's proven successful: not only is any attraction between them still absent, they're now competing with each other for Kotetsu's attention.

Karina: You know those situations where people hate each other's guts at first, but then developing feeling for each other?
Barnaby: Yeah?
Karina: That's not going to happen. I'll rip down those Event Flags myself if I have to.

  • At the end of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann A God Am I is deliberately shot down by the potential god-figure himself, who in response to his potential use of power and leadership simply states that he is "just Simon the Digger."
    • If that trope had not been defied, the Bad Ending from the beginning of the show would have happened.

Comic Books

Fan Works

Film

  • The Scream films are supposedly loaded with this, yet most Horror Tropes in them are usually played straight or lampshaded. One genuine instance is when the second of the two killers is apparently dead at the end of the first film. Randy Meeks says this is the moment when the killer comes back to life for one last scare. The killer promptly does, but Sidney, without flinching, puts a bullet in his head: "Not in my movie." Also used in the second film. Also in the second film, a black man leaves town when the bodies start piling up, because he knows "how long brothers last in these movies". He lives.
  • In Galaxy Quest, Guy is, in essence, a Defied Trope in character form.

Guy: Did you ever watch the show?

Literature

  • Done in It's Kind of a Funny Story, where the main character Craig refuses the possibility of heroin, because "If I were doing heroin, then I'd be a depressed teenager on heroin. I didn't need to be that cliché."
  • In Maskerade, once a series of murders begin happening at an opera house, the first thing they do is put extra guards on the giant chandelier, to keep it from being dropped on anybody.
  • The Screwtape Letters plays with, but ultimately defies the Deal with the Devil trope. Screwtape explains that it's fallen out of favor ever since Hell made the strategic switch from promoting Satanism to promoting atheism, which is seen as a safer bet.
  • The Warhammer 40,000 novel Grey Knights notes that the Inquisition defies Never Found the Body in the case of Ghargatuloth; they sent the Grey Knight expedition down to Khorion IX instead of simply calling Exterminatus on it because they needed eyes on the ground to see him die.
  • The short story Another End Of The Empire by Tim Pratt features the Evil Overlord Mogrash who is told the following prophecy:

"A child dwells in the village of Misery Chin, in the mountain provinces to the east. If allowed to grow to manhood, he will take over your empire, overthrow your ways and means, and send you from the halls of your palace forever."

Live-Action TV

The Master: Now then, Doctor! Ooh! New voice! ... Anyway, why don't we stop and have a nice little chat where I tell you all my plans and you can work out a way to stop me -- I don't think!

Video Games

  • Left 4 Dead has one of the guys who write the the saferoom graffiti proclaim that "WE ARE THE REAL MONSTERS". The guy underneath him says "No, that's the zombies".
    • Have you been outside JACKASS!!
    • I think it's them stupid
    • I hope you are DEAD now
    • I miss the internet
  • Capcom openly defied No Export for You when they worked to clear the legal hurdles and get Tatsunoko vs. Capcom localized overseas.
  • Evil Dead: Hail To The King was pretty much a straight up Resident Evil clone with an Evil Dead look, including the puzzles (though, thankfully, most were much less obtuse and nonsensical than RE). However, in the latter part of the game, Ash, in a cutscene, reads the plaque on a door. After noting the overly complicated puzzle mechanism required to open it, and just shoots the door open with his boomstick in the game's Crowning Moment of Funny.
  • In Freedom Fighters, you can prevent soviet reinforcements from coming in by blowing up the bridges their armored transport cars cross, and blowing up the helipads supplying assault and transport helicopters.
  • Dragon Age II presents this in the guise of one of the final Take a Third Option choices. A player actively seeking to achieve some sort of compromise between two factions is rewarded with a rather large "boom".
  • In Portal 2, the Final Boss defies Boss Arena Idiocy by studying the recordings of how you defeated the previous boss and deliberately setting up the arena to avoid those same mistakes. The trope is then zig zagged by having the boss make an entirely new set of glaringly obvious mistakes.

Wheatley: "I also took the liberty of studying the tapes of you killing her, and I am not going to make the same mistakes. Four-part plan is this: One, no portal surfaces. Two, start the neurotoxin immediately. Three, bomb-proof shields for me, leading directly into number four: bombs, for throwing at you. You know what, this plan is so foolproof that I'm going to give you a sporting chance and turn off the neurotoxin. I'm joking, of course. Goodbye."

    • And taken further at the end: "STEP FIVE! BOOBY-TRAP THE STALEMATE RESOLUTION BUTTON!"
    • Unfortunately for Wheatly, he failed to defy the final Crowning Moment of Awesome trope: Chell opening a portal right under him, with the other side on the surface of the moon.
  • Belle defies a Sadistic Choice in Kingdom Hearts II. Xaldin kidnaps her and takes the rose that can lift Beast's curse, forcing Beast to choose which he'll give back. Although Beast chooses for Belle to be safe, she elbows Xaldin, saving herself and the rose.
  • Baldur's Gate II: Irenicus: "No, you'll varrant no villain's exposition from me."

Web Comics

Rayne: I fell down some stairs.
Noel: No he didn't. I beat the shit out of him with a smile on my face.

Elan: Will I ever see you again?
Julio Scoundrél: Well, as an older mentor figure, the most likely scenario is that I'd return only to be randomly killed by an enemy of yours so that you can cradle my dying body while swearing revenge — so don't take it personally if I say I sincerely hope we never cross paths again.

Web Original

Western Animation

  • The Earthworm Jim episode "Hyper Psy-Crow" almost ends with a "Here We Go Again" ending (actually called that) after a Reset Button of the episode's events. Jim won't stand for it, and just drops a cow on Psy-Crow before he can enact his scheme again.
  • Attempted, but failed in the smoking episode of South Park. Kyle wants to just confess what they did to avoid the usual antics, and it doesn't work.
    • Done successfully in another episode. The main characters agree that they don't want to have any part in the episode's plot. They actually don't (letting secondary characters run the episode), and agree at the end that they're glad that they didn't get involved.
  • At the end of an episode of Darkwing Duck, he's forced to work with Quacker Jack, one of the regular villains, to stop a greater villain. When the greater villain is stopped, Quacker Jack asks if this is where they show the greater villain love and kindness, and he vows to mend his evil ways. Neither Quacker Jack, nor Darkwing think so. They just beat him down further.
  • Raven from Teen Titans is aware of the Bad Powers, Bad People trope, and despite the fact that her powers come from her demon father she does her best to be a good gal.
    • Jinx eventually does the same.
  • In the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "The Best Night Ever", the ponies are running away from the chaos they've caused at the Grand Galloping Gala and Rarity drops her glass slipper. Pinkie Pie lampshades the trope of The Girl Who Fits This Slipper and Rarity, who has no interest in meeting Prince Blueblood ever again, screams and crushes the slipper into powder.

Real Life