Topic on Forum:Trope Talk

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Are you saying that nearly all the tropes that don't start with "The" should have it added?

No, generally only the ones that are unique in the context in which they are used should have a "The". "The Big Guy" on a team implies that there can only be one of them; we wouldn't say "The RedShirt" or "The StrawVulcan" because there is nothing about those that implies uniqueness.

The use of "the" will get a little fuzzy since often something is unique in some contexts and not others, making it a judgment call about whether enough uses are unique to require a "the" on the trope name, so I wouldn't recommend changing one just because it doesn't have "the".

I don't any of the definitions you quoted is relevant here except the last one.

The other definitions apply to some of the examples. For instance, the one about abstract ideas applies to The Worf Effect.

An example that I hope shows my point

"The big guy" is unique within a certain context. So if you're talking about a context where there is one of them (about a single team), you use "the", while if you're talking about a context which refers to a second team, you use "a". You could also say "character A is the Big Guy of the other team" and you could not put "a" in that.