Trope Codifier: Difference between revisions

You have before you three series. The first, Series A, was the first known use of a trope, but it may or may not have been intentional. The second, Series B, was the first intentional use of the trope. The third, Series C, does not claim originality, and may in fact have ripped off series B, but is the template that all later uses of this trope follow.

 

Series B is the [[Trope Maker]].

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also see [[Most Triumphant Example (Sugar Wiki)|Most Triumphant Example]].

 

** Of course, this depends on whether you consider the genre in question to be "giant robots" or "giant robots piloted by humans". The former is only ''slightly'' larger.

** Ranma is also the most likely codifier for [[Martial Arts and Crafts]] unless someone who knows their kung-fu flicks can dethrone it - it's probably harder to think of a pursuit they ''didn't'' use in the series than one they did.

** Also Maes Hughes is the codifer for both [[Doting Parent]] and [[Overprotective Dad]]

 

== Comic Books ==

** Also to [[Building Swing]], Since almost every time you see it anywhere else, it is a reference, or [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by a character.

* Robin is the codifier for [[Kid Sidekick]].

 

== Film ==

** ''[[Star Wars]]'' (along with ''[[Blade Runner]]'') was also instrumental in making the [[Used Future]] concept widespread.

* The 1931 movie version of ''[[Dracula]]'' codified most modern [[Vampire Tropes]].

* ''[[Birth of a Nation]]'' pulled together all of the little camera tricks and editing techniques that were tried in the early years of film into a coherent set of storytelling tools. It was also horrendously racist. The gymnastics film history classes have to go through because of this are quite amusing.

* There were car chases on film before, but the one in ''[[Bullitt]]'' became the most famous one which all films after tried to emulate.

 

== Literature ==

** Another Trope Codifier was Terry Books's novel ''The Sword of [[Shannara]]'', which showed that [[Doorstopper]] fantasy novels that weren't written by Tolkien could also go on to sell zillions of copies.

* ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'' is the Trope Codifier for many detective tropes; [[Edgar Allan Poe]]'s ''Dupin'' stories were the [[Trope Maker]], including such tropes as the less astute [[The Watson|Watson figure as narrator]] and the far-reaching deductions based on attention to seemingly trivial details.

** A second possibility, wildly popular at the time but now more obscure, is ''[[The Moonstone]]'' by Wilkie Collins. It placed such concepts as the private detective helping out the near useless police and the [[Locked Room Mystery]] into the popular consciousness a few decades before Doyle's novels.

* [[Raymond Chandler]] is considered the Trope Codifier of hard-boiled crime fiction, following Carroll John Daly with the Ur-example (his "Knights Of the Open Palm" was published several months before Hammett's first 'Continental Op' story) and [[Dashiell Hammett]] (the [[Trope Maker]]).

* ''[[Snow Crash]]'' is widely recognized as the codifier for [[The Metaverse]] and the [[Digital Avatar]] but [[William Gibson]] did them first.

* Jonathan Swift's ''A Modest Proposal'' is regarded as the codifier of the [[Stealth Parody]].

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

* Mork from ''[[Mork and Mindy]]'' is the most prominent example of an [[Amusing Alien]].

* ''[[Eastenders]]'' is definitely the trope codifer for a miserable [[Soapland Christmas]].

** A year before ''Malcolm'' premiered, ''[[Spaced]]'' did the same thing for British sitcoms.

* [[Everybody Loves Raymond]] was hugely influential to later sitcoms and is a codifier for [[All Women Are Prudes]] in sitcoms (the notoriously anti-sex Debra)

* ''[[Cheers]]'' and [[Belligerent Sexual Tension]]. Sam and Diane provided the template for sitcoms to follow.

* The 2007 reboot of [[Bionic Woman]] was the beginning of a trend of adorning hot [[Badass]] Action Girls in leather jackets, even when such attire would be so uncomfortable it'd be a hindrance (such as in summer heat), but it became a new standard for both [[Rule of Cool]] and [[Rule of Sexy]]. Regardless, after this, we see the leather jacket begin to lose its 20th century image as a macho coat worn by a [[Badass]] like [[Happy Days|Fonzie]] and become seen as a feminine piece of attire that [[Color Coded for Your Convenience|just screams]] [[Action Girl]] with the leather jacket on badass males slowly becoming [[The Artifact]] except on villains. Notable examples of this trend are Erica Evans in V, Carrie Wells in Unforgettable, Renee Walker from 24 (and even one of the main female villains), and especially {{spoiler|Olivia and Peter's future daughter}} Etta, who [[Older Than They Look|looks 17 but is really 25]] in 2036 who is from Fringe.

== Music ==

* By the time of [[Michael Jackson]], [[Music Video|music videos]] were evolving beyond just shots of the band, but he set the standard for everything that came after him.

** W.A.S.P. was the Trope Codifier of heavy metal's ''image'' in the 1980s, combining the Judas Priest facade above with KISS and Alice Cooper-style shock rock antics turned up to eleven, unsubtle Satanic imagery, songs about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, big hair, pointy guitars and spandex.

* Pierre Schaeffer's 1948 opus ''Cinq Études de Bruits'' was not the world's first musique concrète. John Cage's ''Imaginary Landscape'' and perhaps other such works predate it. But it was the first music to have that label (coined by Schaeffer), and codified the genre.

* Richard Wagner coined the term "leitmotif" in an 1851 essay and codified the concept in his famous cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen,'' which he had been working on at the time. But the trope was invented two decades earlier by Hector Bérlioz, who called it "idée fixe" in his own writings.

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** The [[Order Versus Chaos]] aspect was borrowed from [[Michael Moorcock]], for what that's worth.

* ''[[GURPS]]'' quite literally defined the [[Weirdness Magnet]] trope.

 

 

== Theatre ==

 

 

== Video Games ==

* Even though ''[[Doom]]'' was the [[Ur Example]] of the [[Space Marine]] trope in videogames, ''[[Halo]]'' became the poster boy for the trope.

** And then we have the romhacks... [[Kaizo Mario World]] codified [[Platform Hell]] (and, of course, [[Kaizo Trap]].)

** [[World of Warcraft]] later became a second Trope Codifier for the MMO genre.

* The ''[[Metal Gear]]'' series and the ''[[Thief]]'' series are jointly the Codifier of the stealth genre. ''Metal Gear Solid'' and ''Thief'' came out at about the same time, but had different approaches. ''MGS'' had a bunch of action sequences, while ''Thief'' was ''pure'' stealth. In fact, when it came out, most critics had difficulty pidgeonholing what category to put ''Thief'' into.

** Chaining on that previous point, ''God of War'' is one for [[Action Commands]].

** Actually, God of War and Resident Evil 4 came out the same year. That would be why they're both credited. How one views the [[Press X to Not Die]] is another matter entirely.

*** [[Capcom vs. Whatever]] games for the concept of "tag battle" fighters (discounting wresting games, which have wildly different gameplay.)

* [[Resident Evil 1|Resident Evil]] for the [[Survival Horror]] despite not being the first of its kind.

* For the 3D [[Fighting Game]], ''[[Tekken]]'' is the most likely codifier, bringing together concepts introduced in [[Trope Maker|preceding 3D fighters]] like [[Virtua Fighter]] and [[Battle Arena Toshinden]].

* Broadly speaking, nothing in any Blizzard game is new or original. They just introduce and tweak the successful elements of previous games to make ones that are quite good. One thing they did create was [[Stop Poking Me|units giving ever more amusing responses if you won't leave them alone]].

* While ''[[Recca]]'' probably was the [[Ur Example]] and ''Batsugun'' was definitely the [[Trope Maker]], ''[[Do Don Pachi]]'' codified very much of [[Bullet Hell]]. And it continues to redefine and codify the meaning of it as the [[True Final Boss]] Hibachi has progressively gotten harder and harder [[Nintendo Hard|beyond]] [[Beyond the Impossible|belief]].

* ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'', particularly ''Grand Theft Auto III'', codified the [[Wide Open Sandbox]] genre.

* ''[[Pokémon]]'' is the codifier for the [[Mon|monster-capturing]] game genre, though it is [[Ur Example|predated by]] the [[Darker and Edgier]] [[Shin Megami Tensei]] series.

* The original ''[[Halo]]'' didn't actually ''pioneer'' any of the revolutions in gameplay it featured (all of them, from limited inventory, to [[Walk It Off|regenerating health]], to melee attacks, to seperate buttons for firearms and grenades, had been done before in previous games), but it is unquestionably the game which popularized them all to the point that most modern First Person Shooters now use them by default.

* ''[[Gears of War]]'' took the idea of [[Take Cover]] as an integral part of the gameplay system - as opposed to an organic "hide behind stuff so you stop getting shot" - from earlier games, but the concept's current popularity would most likely not exist without it.

* While most certainly not the first [[Survival Horror]] game, [[Silent Hill]] introduced, or at least popularized atmosphere with limited visibility that maximizes [[Nothing Is Scarier]].

* While the [[Action RPG]] genre had already seen some entries, ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' made it mainstream; virtually every [[Action RPG]] since ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' owes at least a partial debt to its formula.

* While [[Modern Warfare]] wasn't the first game to use an RPG-esque leveling-up system for its multiplayer, you'd be hard pressed to find another online FPS today that doesn't use a system almost exactly like it. It's fairly easy to implement and can keep the player invested for another fifteen to twenty hours that they normally wouldn't have bothered with.

* ''[[Twisted Metal]]'' wasn't the first competitive [[Vehicular Combat]] game (Both ''Battlesport'' and ''Cybersled'' predates it), but it certainly did popularize the genres and some features, such as tournament-based storylines, quirky characters and more differentiated vehicles.

* [[Tex Avery]], particularly in his short ''[[Red Hot Riding Hood]]'', codified the [[Wild Take]].

* ''[[An American Tail]]'' codified the [[Award Bait Song]], which even spread into live action works.

* [[Wallace and Gromit]] codified [[Silent Snarker]]. Seriously.

 

 

== Other ==

* An earlier work by [[William Gibson]] [[Trope Namer|coined]] the term "[[Cyberspace]]". Both ''[[Neuromancer]]'' and ''[[Tron]]'' set the standards for what we think of it.

* Acorn Computers' Arthur OS had the Ur-Example. NEXTSTEP had the original and the user-interface trope namer. But if you've got a dock in your operating system, the OS you're inevitably accused of copying is Apple's Mac OSX. So of course it's also [[Older Than They Think]].

* For graphical interface conventions in general (mice, menus, windows, etc.), the Ur-Example was Xerox PARC's groundbreaking research of the '60s and '70s, which never turned into commercial products on their part, but was [[Just for Pun|Xeroxed]] by Apple (the Trope Maker) as the basis for its Macintosh interface, and then ripped off (and made even more popular and mainstream) by Microsoft in Windows, the Trope Codifier.

* James Watt didn't invent the first stationary steam engine, and George and Robert Stephenson didn't invent the first steam locomotive. But their versions were so much more efficient than previous ones that [[Older Than They Think|they are often credited as the inventors]].

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Tropes of Legend]]

[[Category:Meta Concepts]]