McNinja/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A Ninja who isn't Japanese.

  • Straight: Bob is an American ninja.
  • Exaggerated: Bob, an American ninja, regularly hangs out with Pierre, a French ninja; Olaf, a Swedish ninja; Omar, an Egyptian ninja; and Wallace, an Australian ninja.
    • Bob is a conservative, beer-drinking, all-American Good Ol' Boy from Texas who wears a ninja suit, speaks both English and Japanese, quotes eastern philosophy, carries a ninjato and shurikens, and lives in a traditional Japanese-style house.
  • Justified: Bob travelled to Japan to be trained in ninjitsu.
  • Inverted: Takeshi is a Japanese cowboy.
  • Subverted: Bob is Japanese-American.
  • Double Subverted: ...however, his parents were Americans living in Japan who moved back to America.
  • Zig Zagged: ...but although his father was white, Bob's mother was Japanese.
  • Parodied: Bob is an Occidental Otaku who thought it'd be cool to become a ninja.
  • Averted: If ninja show up at all, they're all Japanese.
    • Alternatively: It's impossible to tell what nationality the ninja are, as they're masters of stealth, disguise, and subterfuge.
  • Deconstructed: Bob's American heritage makes his fellow ninja unable to take him seriously, and he's branded as a poser.
  • Reconstructed: Bob refuses to let the views of others get in his way and continues to train to become a ninja, eventually becoming a master.
    • They only call him a poser as a person. Other than that, they respect him as a ninja.
  • Enforced: "Ninja are cool and they should be in, but this show doesn't take place anywhere near Japan. I'm sure we can bend the rules a bit."
  • Lampshaded: "Who cares if I'm not Japanese? I can still be a ninja if I want to!"
  • Invoked: Impressed by his potential, a Japanese ninjitsu master allows Bob to train under him so that he can spread the art of ninjitsu to America.
  • Defied: Bob's sensei refuses to train him because he does not want to share his teachings with outsiders.
  • Discussed: "Wait, aren't ninja supposed to be Japanese?"
  • Conversed: "Why'd they throw in an American ninja? Do they think that being cool is better than being accurate?"

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