Older Than Television

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Tropes first documented after the invention of radio (1890s) and before the emergence of television (1940s).

Radio and Cinema provided two new media, for the first time in millennia, and originated many TV tropes. This is also the time of the first Super Heroes.

For future reference: TV, as we generally know it, was invented in 1928, but regular broadcasts didn't start until 1936 in the U.K. and Nazi Germany and 1939 in the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

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Tropes

• Accidental Aiming Skills: The Gold Rush
• Adorably Precocious Child: Edogawa Rampo's [1894-1965] detective novels.
• Alertness Blink: Pick an early-20th Century cartoon. Steamboat Willie (1928) is a good starting point.
• Animal Talk: The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and The Further Adventures of Nils, Selma Lagerlöf, 1906 and 1907.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Lovecraft
• Aside Glance: silent comedy films
• Banana Peel: Early 20th-century pop culture.
• Blackmail Is Such an Ugly Word: 1930s Hollywood
• Bridge Logic: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900
• Broke Episode: A lot of films and literature made during the Great Depression featured impoverished protagonists.
• China Takes Over the World: The War In The Air, H. G. Wells, 1907-1908
• Cliffhanger Copout: Undersea Kingdom, 1936
• Climbing Climax: King Kong, 1933
• Colonel Badass: Sebastian Moran from The Adventure of the Empty House, 1903
• Contractual Purity: Shirley Temple drinking. *gasp* She was in her twenties.
• Cyberpunk: Metropolis 1927, by Fritz Lang.
• Dawson Casting: 16-year-old Judy Garland as 11-year-old Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, 1939.
• Death in the Clouds: The Trope Namer is the Agatha Christie novel first published in 1935.
• Designer Babies: Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World
• Disney Villain Death: An old Mickey Mouse comic had a giant fall to his death.
• Dramedy: Charlie Chaplin's The Kid. 1921.
• Drunken Montage: Hollywood, 1930s or even earlier.
• The Eeyore: Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne, 1926
• Elaborate Underground Base: The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston LeRoux, 1909
• Epic Tracking Shot: Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans, 1927
• Escalator to Heaven: 1941 film Here Comes Mister Jordan, but the parent trope is much older.
• Fakeout Escape: "The Escape of Arsène Lupin", 1906
• A Fete Worse Than Death: The Lottery, published June 28, 1948
• Fog of Doom: The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel, 1901
• Foot Popping: Already called for in the Hays Code.
• Gorgeous George: 1940s professional wrestler Gorgeous George
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Deja Thoris of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars, published 1912
• Happiness in Slavery: 1900s, possibly older
• Has Two Mommies: Patrick Macnee was raised by his mother and her lesbian lover, who he called his "Uncle" Evelyn. This would have been in the late 1920s.
• Henshin Hero: The first Captain Marvel, 1940s.
• Hook Hand: Peter Pan, 1904
• Human-to-Werewolf Footprints: 1941's The Wolf Man
• Ignore the Disability: 1930s, if not earlier.
• I Hit You, You Hit the Ground: "There'll be only two blows struck: I'll hit him, and he'll hit the earth.": Little Nemo in Slumberland, 1909.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: Citizen Kane, 1941
• In Soviet Russia, Trope Mocks You: Cole Porter's song "Anything Goes" (1934) for the musical of same name provides the Ur Example:

(if the pilgrims could see what became of American society) "Instead of landing on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock would land on them!"

• Just Between You and Me: 1940s movie serials, and possibly earlier.
• Lensman Arms Race: Lensman novels, 1937
• Like You Were Dying: Lucy Maud Montgomery's The Blue Castle, 1926
• Lyrical Dissonance: Puccini's Tosca, 1900, possibly older.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: Metropolis, 1927
• Magic Feather: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900
• Meat-O-Vision: The Gold Rush, 1925
• Meet Cute: 1930s screwball comedies
• Merchandise-Driven: The Little Orphan Annie radio show from The Thirties.
• Monumental Battle: King Kong, 1933
• Monumental Damage Resistance: Deluge, 1933
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Justified [as it's set in a church and involves a villain who's a religious hypocrite] in the Act I finale of Puccini's Tosca, 1900; The modern, more random usages of the trope probably date from Alexander Nevsky, 1938.
• One-Letter Name: The Castle, Franz Kafka, 1926
• Phony Newscast: The War of the Worlds (radio version), 1938
• Private Eye Monologue: Innumerable films noir, 1940s.
• Putting on the Reich: Alexander Nevsky, 1938 - The Teutonic Knights with swastikas.
• Real After All: Miracle On 34 th Street, 1947
• Ret Canon: Batman from its radio serials in 1944.
• Rich Idiot With No Day Job: The Scarlet Pimpernel 1903
• Rule 34: Yeah.
• Secret Identity: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, 1903
• Shangri La: 1933 novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton
• Stop Trick: A Trip to the Moon, 1902
• Stuffed Into the Fridge: Sometime in the early 20th century.
• Superhero: The Shadow comic (1931), Mandrake the Magician (1934), The Phantom (1936), and Superman (1938)
• Super Multi-Purpose Room: It's A Wonderful Life, 1946
• Take a Moment to Catch Your Death: Any hard-boiled radio drama.
• Take the Wheel: Sherlock, Jr., 1924
• Terminally Dependent Society: E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops, 1909
• Terrorists Without a Cause: The Secret Agent, 1907
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: The Greeks Had a Word for Them, 1932
• That Was Objectionable: Duck Soup, 1933
• The Day the Music Lied: Popeye cartoon films, 1933-onward.
• Theme Initials: Superman, starting from the 1940 introduction of Lex Luthor.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Popeye cartoon films, 1933-onward.
• Time Stands Still: "The New Accelerator" by H. G. Wells, 1901
• Tomato in the Mirror: The Shadow Over Innsmouth, 1931
• Trainstopping: Superman did it.
• True Love's Kiss: Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, 1937
• Turned Against Their Masters: RUR, 1921
• Uterine Replicator: Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World
• Video Phone: Metropolis, 1927
• Video Wills: The Greeks Had a Word for Them, 1932
• The Voiceless: Harpo Marx
• Wacky Cravings: Nora in After The Thin Man, 1934
• Wacky Wayside Tribe: The Oz stories, from 1900
• The Watson: Nigel Bruce's portrayal of Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes films and radio dramas featuring Basil Rathbone and Bruce as Holmes and Watson.
• Weird Trade Union: Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories, which he began writing in 1939, contain an Assassins' Guild and Thieves' Guild, and so on. The Lankhmar Thieves' Guild was introduced in the second story, "Thieves' House", published in 1943.
• Working the Same Case: The Hardy Boys, 1927, if not earlier