Informed Flaw: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Much like the [[Informed Ability]], an Informed Flaw is a [[Fatal Flaw]] that simply doesn't have any effect on the plot or character. It can come up in one of two forms:

 

A [[Sub-Trope]] of [[Show, Don't Tell]], A [[Super-Trope]] of [[Hollywood Homely]], [[Hollywood Pudgy]] and [[Gorgeous Gorgon]]. Related to [[Informed Ability]], [[Informed Attribute]], [[Suetiful All Along]] and [[Anti-Sue]]. Contrast with [[I Am Not Left-Handed]], [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]], and [[Obfuscating Stupidity]].

 

* In ''[[Sonic X]]'', in a rather shabby attempt to make Chris Thorndyke likable, he often complains about being rich meaning he doesn't have any real friends, and his parents never being home. While at first this seems almost true, over the course of the show he is shown to have more human friends, more guardians, and his parents repeatedly manage to show up for special occasions. Being obscenely wealthy is certainly never played as a disadvantage.

* In one of the episodes of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'', Usagi lists a bunch of her faults, one of them is flat-chested. Have the writers actually seen any art of the show?!

 

== Fan Works ==

* A shining example of the trend described above happens with Ronan of ''[[Naruto Veangance Revelaitons]]''. When reviewers complained that Ronan had no flaws (apart from those the author doesn't consider as such, including his terrible treatment of women), the author pointed out that Ronan did have a flaw, namely ''a mole on his face that was never mentioned before or since''.

 

 

* In ''[[Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever]]'', Jeremiah Ecks is introduced as an alcoholic that spent the previous couple years getting sloshed in bars. Apparently, not only did it not reduce his physical prowess at all, but he didn't even need any time to sober up.

* The Russian animated movie ''Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber'' draws attention to Ilya's superstitiousness for about its first half, and then it's forgotten and has no effect on the plot when the characters get to Constantinople.

* The film adaptation of ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' has Bella's purported clumsiness displayed in a throw-away scene where she slips and falls on wet steps only to be caught by her father.

* In ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]'', Eddie Valiant seems to be healthy enough for ''five years'' of alcoholism, though the chili dogs have clearly had some effect on his stomach. He quits with no ill effects, too.

** However, he only quits very late in the movie, and the following events occur over a few hours at most. Hardly enough time for him to start going through the DTs. He also does very little running around or heavy physical activity except when in Toon Town (where it can be assumed he's getting some benefits of [[Toon Physics]]).

* Averted in ''[[Die Hard With a Vengeance]]'', in which McClane, established as being only "one step away from becoming a full-blown alcoholic" enters the story with a splitting headache from the previous night's drinking, and spends the entire day bitching about his "bad fucking hangover". He still retains his badass moves, though. {{spoiler|It even proves a help when as a "last request" he asks the [[Big Bad]] if he has any aspirin for his headache: he does, provided by the hotel he was staying at.}}

* In ''[[The Broadway Melody]]'', the two main characters, a sister act, each have one. There's the "attractive but untalented one" (who seems every bit as good a dancer and singer as the other) and the "talented but plain one" (who is [[Hollywood Homely|not even a little plain]]).

* In ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]'', Loki is said to be "sometimes mischievous", possibly as a nod to the [[Trickster Archetype|mythological character]] he's based on. Except he's deadly serious and never does anything you could consider to be mischievous except in the [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|absolute loosest sense of the word]]. His pranks were cut from the theatrical release and only included in the Extended Cut.

 

== Literature ==

* The ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series supposedly has Richard behave as something of a [[Deadpan Snarker]], whose mouth sometimes writes checks his ass can't cash. Most often this flaw is mentioned only in its absence, where the author states that Richard was '''tempted''' to say something snarky, but managed to keep it under control. You can count on one hand with fingers left over the number of times in the entire series where Richard actually spits out some quip that he ends up regretting.

* For a guy who claims he was far too squeamish to finish medical school, Escott from ''[[The Vampire Files]]'' seems awfully at-ease with collecting bottles full of cow blood for Jack every couple of books {{spoiler|or even letting Jack bite his wrist when he's ''really'' horrifically injured}}.

** Of course, Vimes is also a [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]], so it would make sense if he only ''acted'' that way.

** According to Pratchett, Vimes ''thinks'' he is a much worse person than he is, because he's aware of all the impulses he tries to curb... much like everyone else.

* [[Jeeves and Wooster (novel)|Bertie Wooster]] claims to have terrible luck with women in general, only being able to attract a certain type. It seems that that type is the only one who ever shows up in the stories.

* ''[[Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]'': Annabeth's fatal flaw is said to be hubris, but she gets in more trouble from complex abandonment issues that result in irrational distrust of people who have done nothing to deserve it (particularly Percy and her father) and exaggerated devotion to distant parental figures who treat her like crap (particularly her mother and {{spoiler|Luke.}} Percy's fatal flaw is said to be personal loyalty, but he gets in a lot more trouble from his big mouth and [[Leeroy Jenkins|recklessness.]] Bianca, as a child of Hades, is said to have a fatal flaw of holding grudges, but it never really shows up, though the book doesn't have much of a chance to show it before {{spoiler|her death.}}

 

== Live Action TV ==

* In ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', for all of Volume 3's talk about Sylar's uncontrollable "hunger", he seems perfectly capable of hanging around and interacting with other supers without popping open their brains to see what makes them tick. This seems to be the case even after he turns back fully to the side of evil (he never chows down on Luke, for example, despite on multiple occasions being given a good reason to do so. Ditto for Doyle, who he must have been lugging around for more than a day). Peter Petrelli, on the other hand, pretty much chops open the head of ''every single person'' he meets after acquiring Sylar's ability, despite (unlike Sylar) receiving no apparent tangible benefit from doing so. This becomes even more baffling when Sylar learns how to take powers without killing but ''decides'' to do so anyway (it's fun for him), leading one to assume the hunger talk was nonsense and Peter is so thick he felt the compulsion because he thought he would.

* In ''[[Star Trek]]'', much is made of Q being a liar. For example, Worf in "Déjà Q" says "You have fooled us too often, Q," and Vash in "Q-Less" mentions that the people of the planet Brax believe Q is the god of lies. Yet he almost never lies onscreen.

** He is often deceptive about his actual motivations and intent when he visits, and has occasionally outright lied about them (such as claiming his visit had benevolent intentions, when if it did such intentions were buried so deep that you can't blame the characters for not realizing them). In his first appearance he also lied several times about the intent of the Starjellies, urging Picard into a violent confrontation to prove himself right about humanity. Plus it wouldn't be out of the question for him to act differently to different races he comes across (at least once he's implied to have been outright ''malevolent'' towards an entire race of gaseous entities, instead of just futzing about with a few of their members like he does humans).

*** The Cranes' extreme hatred of Lilith seems to be more rooted in a [[Thicker Than Water]]-related personal vendetta against her for dumping Frasier than an objective opinion. It's not completely her fault that the marriage didn't work out, but when even your actions even inadvertently drive someone's son and/or brother to such misery that he threatens to commit suicide, rationality and fairness tends to take a holiday.

* James Berluti on ''[[The Practice]]'' is supposed to be a less-good lawyer than the other employees at McDonnel-Young. In fact, Bobby pointedly makes everyone ''except'' James partner in one day. But while he may lack polish, James seems to have a similar win-loss record as everyone else, and is shown winning cases through sheer relentlessness the partners couldn't match.

** Frank doesn't usually outright kill his patients, but numerous episodes have him making mistakes due to being sloppy... not taking the time to look for all the shrapnel, not being thorough with stitching up and leaving bleeders, in other words things that the other doctors have to go in and fix afterward when the patient doesn't recover properly. Hawkeye and the others are also shown repeatedly keeping an eye on his table and either giving him/his nurse directions or moving to assist when he's in over his head, and those who do triage are apparently told to send Frank the least severe of the group of wounded being brought in. Frank isn't shown to be 100% incompetent, but he's leaning heavily on the rest of the medical staff as a crutch.

* Season four of ''[[Sons of Anarchy]]'' makes a big deal out of the club's racism, and what the Sons would do to their secretly half-black member if they found out about it. This is despite the club having at least two Hispanic members, one Jewish member, the president having a Jewish wife and another member having had a black wife, and generally having no more problems working with [[Gang-Bangers|black]], [[The Triads and the Tongs|Asian]] or [[The Cartel|Hispanics]] criminals than they have with [[The Mafiya|Russians]] or [[The Troubles|Irish]]. They also fight two [[Those Wacky Nazis|white supremacist skinhead groups]], who see the club as traitors to their race. This is because real life outlaw biker groups are often racially segregated, even if the members themselves are not really racist, but a little explanation before would have been nice.

 

== Music ==

 

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

* Therese of ''[[For Better or For Worse]]'' was repeatedly described as shallow, petty, materialistic and whatever else Lynn Johnson could use to paint her as the villain in Anthony's marriage. However, she rarely got any panel time that involved anything other than complaining to Anthony about Liz - whom she turned out to have good reason to dislike. When she was shown interacting with other characters, she came off as little more than a normal, if somewhat removed person and some thought her actions were justified when details of their marriage came to light.

* Lieutenant Fuzz of ''[[Beetle Bailey]]'' is often described as the world's biggest [[Jerkass]] by the other officers (and by Sergeant Snorkel) for no other reason than that he's a bit immature and occasionally dull. Sure enough, he bugs General Halftrack (for advice or approval) quite often, but that still doesn't explain why the other officers seem to hate him so much and with such sincerity. Even the military chaplain claims he can't find any redeeming qualities in Fuzz (and he doesn't help matters by adding "''I really tried!''")

** He ''is'' still drawn as rounder than many other cats in the strip, who can often be described as tubes with heads and legs.

 

== Professional Wrestling ==

* Another way is accuse the [[You Bastard|fans of something]]. Chris Jericho once showed video evidence to prove the fans were hateful toward men like him because they hated values, but the video showed the audience clapping for him.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* Any system that includes a "Nightmares" flaw is generally ripe for this, mainly because most GMs/Storytellers aren't willing to waste time coming up with elaborate, horrifying nightmares for one character, and many systems only describe the consequences of the character being tired from lack of sleep or nerves without applying actual mechanical penalties in the flaw's description. This often results in a grumpy, obnoxious character with little patience, which is what your average munchkin is looking to play anyway.

** Later editions have attempted to address this by reminding the DM of two principles -- for purposes of the disadvantage "weird" is defined as ''weird when compared to the rest of the party'', and that a disadvantage that never actually shows up in play is worth no points. So if you take the advantage, the GameMaster is supposed to make sure that however bizarre your friends' lives might be, yours is even ''more'' bizarre -- and what's worse, bizarre with ''inconvenient timing''.

 

** To be honest, they're some of the only Goblin technology that doesn't have a chance of blowing you up. And how fun would it be to be on a zeppelin that suddenly kills everybody onboard?

** This is partly [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]] - some NPC goblin technology in the game does blow up, but zeppelins are just supposed to get you around, and it would be incredibly annoying to players if they didn't - and partly [[The Artifact]]. The engineering profession is unique among [[Item Crafting|professions player characters can learn]] in that a fair number of malfunctions are possible with the items or abilities it grants. In classic [[WoW]], some malfunctions could single-handedly kill your character, and goblin-related gadgets would usually kill you with explosions. Recent patches have toned down the side effects, making most of them inconvenient or funny but harmless, but lots of players specialized in goblin-style engineering did in fact blow themselves up once upon a time.

* Saki from ''[[Snow Sakura]]'' is teased as being flat-chested every now and then. However, when you're looking at her, there's not any angle that you can consider her chest flat.

* Garet in the original ''[[Golden Sun]]'' is mentioned by his little brother to be a [[Big Eater|compulsive glutton]]. This is never mentioned again in canon (though [[Spin Offspring|Tyrell]] gives it a [[Call Back]] in ''Dark Dawn'').

** Likewise, the official Nintendo strategy guide for ''The Lost Age'' directly describes [[The Brute|Agatio]] as "... [[Dumb Muscle|[lacking] substance between the ears]]". This is the guy who outwits [[The Chessmaster|Alex]] to his face, and later [[Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty|sabotages Isaac's party]] because [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|he knows he won't win a fair fight with them]]. Lacking substance ''he ain't''.

 

== Webcomics ==

* As does Pete in ''[[Darths and Droids]]''. He took Lactose Intolerance as a flaw...for [[Star Wars|R2-D2]].

* In ''[[Sinfest]]'', Crimney assures Fuchsia [https://web.archive.org/web/20140209180750/http://sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4204 he's not always sweet, he gets angry]. His flustered difficulty shows how seldom this happens. (He in fact had a prior flaw which [[Character Development]] has (plausibly!) removed: he used to hide from the world behind piles of books.)

** He's been shown to be angry before, managing to make Seymour back off and run away.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==