All The Tropes:Too Rare to Trope

This happens when a Trope is so ridiculously specific that it would only really have an example from that one show, where it didn't have any real meaning anyway. So it's Not a Trope, but because it's too rare to have enough examples (at least at the moment).

A very rare trope is still a trope, but, by definition, a trope still needs to represent some sort of meaningful pattern as opposed to a coincidence. For an example, if a pattern is only visible in Ugandan literature in the 1970s, it's still a trope. However, narrowly-defined trope candidates for which only two or three examples can be found are much more likely to be coincidences than those with a similar degree of specificity and many examples.

"Middle Child Hates Tomato Sauce And Loves Disco", for example, would not be a trope even if five examples of it could be found.

Sometimes, it can be combined with The Same but More Specific, when an existing trope has a specification so rare, that it can't be tropable beyond a few existing examples. "Belligerent Sexual Tension written by Rumiko Takahashi" is an example (that we used to have on this very wiki, under the name "Takahashi Couple" - that's now a redirect to Belligerent Sexual Tension).

This is related to People Sit on Chairs, where there may be enough instances to establish a pattern, but the pattern isn't meaningful enough to be a Trope on its own. "People Cutting Their Fingers With An 80s Nail Clipper" would be one of examples which exhibits both People Sit On Chairs and Too Rare To Trope category as it is not specific-to-fiction, doesn't convey any meaning and has practically no examples to speak of.

If you're not sure whether your Trope Workshop entry falls into this category, try asking "Is This Tropable?"

Compare/contrast No Trope Is Too Common.