Pokémon-Speak/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Fictional creatures are only able to say their own name.

  • Straight: The Tropana is a species of birds only able to say their name, "Tropana".
  • Exaggerated: Everything in this universe communicates by only saying their name. EVERYTHING.
  • Justified: Tropanas were named after the sound they made.
  • Inverted: Tropanas are capable of full human speech, but they are forbidden to say their own name.
  • Subverted: A character assumes the bird's name is "Tropana", since it's the only thing is says. Turns out it's a Parrot.
  • Double Subverted: A character assumes the bird's name is "Tropana", since it's the only thing is says. Turns out it's a Parrot, but the locals call it a "Tropana."
  • Parodied: A new species of Tropana-mon is named %&$#?@!. The researcher explains that that's the sound they make.
    • All animals in the work vocalize their names, so dogs go "Dog!" and pigeons coo "Pigeon".
  • Deconstructed: A new Tropana-mon species can speak English, because its name contains the entire English language.
  • Reconstructed: A little girl points at a Tropana and calls it a Parrot; all the Tropanas start saying "Parrot" instead, and the bird is later renamed.
  • Zig Zagged: On some episodes, Tropanas can only say their name; others, they make normal animal sounds and in yet others they speak English.
  • Averted: Tropanas make regular bird sounds.
  • Enforced: In the original dub, the Tropanas only said the Japanese word for something icky. Rather than translate, the American distributor dubbed the harmless nonsense word used for the bird's name.
  • Lampshaded: "How come all that bird ever says is its own name?"
  • Invoked: Bob purposely only says the word "Bob".
  • Exploited: Alice grabs a Tropana and gets it to speak its name, which happens to be the password to the secret base.
  • Defied: One of the Tropanas teaches himself how to speak fluent Japanese.
  • Discussed:
  • Conversed:
  • Played For Laughs: The Chrononhotonthologos is a species of birds only able to say their name, "Chrononhotonthologos"
  • Played For Drama:

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