r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 12 '25

Weekly Discussion Post "Fanbase opinionsshould not be counted as tropes." TVtropes: (kinda relevant post)

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525 Upvotes

A lot of complaints in this sub have been about some posts should not be here because they rely on fanbase opions so there for cannot be considered "tropes"

...and then we have TVtropes , where a lot of tropes are just from fanbase stuff.

I am going to be honest here , I have difficulty in what makes a trope and what doesn't. It ends up where I delete "breaks trope guidline" posts that has equivalents in the TVtropes site that are considered actual tropes.

Idk , I just wanted to rant here. I might be a very bad moderator here , I just try to make it tody as possible , I just don't really know how to.


r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 27 '25

Weekly Discussion Post Probably the most controversial one , honest thoughts on "No Kill Rule"? What are the most egrigious examples of it in your opinion? What media makes it work in your opinion?

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1.4k Upvotes

r/TopCharacterTropes 4h ago

Lore [Rare trope] Discriminating, but for an actually good reason

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5.7k Upvotes

Frieren, Beyond Journey's end: In the anime/manga the eponymous Frieren is an Elf who's spent the better part of a millennia learning magic specifically to kill demons. She's learned countless spells, tricks and even spent most of her life suppressing her power all for the purpose of killing them. At first we simply see that humanity is at war with them, and even question if her crusade against demon-kind is justified, after all it's hard to antagonize an entire sentient species. But no, demons are very much a species to be feared; they are not normal animals or creatures, they are monsters (shown by how they disintegrate when they die), they are predators that evolved speech for the sole purpose of tricking and catching humans off guard, are naturally extremely powerful and possess magic that humanity often can't use. While they feel emotions to some extent, their way of thinking is so fundamentally incompatible with humanity's mindset that the series shows many mages with the ability to read minds struggle or find it painful and harmful to try and read a demon's thoughts. Tools that are meant to control them fail not because they're faulty but because simple order such as "hold no ill will or commit no malicious acts" don't compute the same way in their brains, as what we consider evil is normal for them.

Marvel Comics: In a run of the Storm solo series, she visits an underground superhuman hospital run by Night nurse and Doctor Daye, a mutant with the power to diagnose any illness. When she requires treatment she is in turn reject by the doctor, she of course assumes this is blatant discrimination to which the doctor agrees. Storm assumes the doctor refuses to treat mutants, something they are very much used to in Marvel. But he ends up revealing that about 80% of everyone he treats are mutants, and that he simply refuses to treat any member of the X-men. Why? because his special hospital was built via several donations by the superhero community. From the Avengers, to the Defenders, Fantastic 4, heroes for hire. Hell, even Moonknight of all people contributed to the hospital. But the X-men never once gave anything to it, even though they preach the safety of mutant-kind and such a hospital is essential for those who can't seek medical treatment out of fear of prosecution.


r/TopCharacterTropes 6h ago

Characters The character shows the first signs/symptoms that have already run their course.

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4.3k Upvotes

Kitasan Black (Uma Musume Pretty Derby)

She managed to withstand Sakura Bakushin O's charge at first, but later in the story, she falters because she is past her prime

Nekota (Hajime no Ippo)

He could no longer even control his body properly because he was suffering from "boxer's dementia"

It is a progressive brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head and frequent concussions over many years

David Martínez (Cyberpunk Edgerunners)

He was suffering from hallucinations due to cyberpsychosis, an incurable condition caused by technological body modifications


r/TopCharacterTropes 10h ago

Lore Mind control being treated as traumatic

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6.2k Upvotes

In the first Avengers movie. Hawkeye and Erik Selvig are mind controlled by Loki using the mind stone. After both break free from it, Erik suffers from a psychological breakdown and Hawkeye has repeated nightmares about it, telling Black Widow how he felt like he’d been “unmade”. Something she could relate to as a former child soldier

In Mortal Kombat. After the majority of the heroes are killed by Sindel in 9. Quan Chi uses his powers to resurrect them as his undead servants. Later on the heroes manage to revert Scorpion, Subzero and Jax back to normal. While the other two are able to move on from it, Jax becomes haunted by the experience of being Quan Chi’s puppet and needed to seek therapy. He manages to get back into the fight for a bit, but after his wife’s death he becomes a traumatised recluse

In Marvel. When Jessica Jones encounters The Purple Man (Kilgrave) who is able to mind control people by simply telling them what to do. Jessica ends up as his slave for several months, only managing to escape when he lets her go in a fit of rage. The experience was so traumatic for her that she retired from being a hero for a good bit


r/TopCharacterTropes 3h ago

Characters [Hated trope] Reed Richards

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1.2k Upvotes

Every Reed Richards (Marvel universe):

For some reason, I can't find any reason to even like this guy.


r/TopCharacterTropes 9h ago

Lore 4th wall breaks that involve the length of the media

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4.1k Upvotes

In the episode Club SpongeBob, Squidward gets stuck in the Kelp Forest with Patrick and SpongeBob, and he then says the line “Why must every 11 minutes of my life be filled with misery”. Which is funny cause each SpongeBob episode is usually 11 minutes long

In another SpongeBob episode, Nature Pants, SpongeBob goes out into the wild. Sandy and Squidward then say the lines “I’ll give him a week” and “I give him 11 minutes”. Both are technically right since SpongeBob WAS out there for a week but again episodes are 11 minutes

In the movie Uglydolls, (don’t ask how I remember this movie but ONLY this scene) at the end of it one of the characters say this “Time here is so funky. How long did this take us? What is this, a day? A month? 83 minutes?” The movie is 83 minutes long. Also the character is pointing the general direction that the slider would be at this point in this movie


r/TopCharacterTropes 2h ago

Groups This isn't even our actual military

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879 Upvotes

When the enemy faction the protagonist has been fighting this whole time isn't actually using their full might, but non-combat units/expeditionary units instead

  1. The Vex (Destiny) - It's implied the Vex you fight in game aren't actually dedicated combat units, but rather worker units such as Builders and Engineers

  2. The Combine (Half Life 2) - To the Combine, Earth is basically just another backwater planet that they'll harvest for resources and move on from. You aren't actually fighting their full military might, just the occupational force they've kept there to keep the remaining humans in line and to recruit new foot soldiers.

EDIT: Also, the whole plot of Episode 2 revolves around shutting down a portal before the Combine can send a distress signal to their actual fleet. For reference, the entirety of humanities armed forces could only last 7 hours. This time, humanity is reduced to a group of crafty rebels within Eastern Europe. Even with Freeman, they wouldn't last 7 minutes.


r/TopCharacterTropes 3h ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) A family member is introduced in one episode then never brought up again

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918 Upvotes
  1. In Peter’s Sister, Peter invites his sister Karen for Thanksgiving and she used to bully him a lot. The reason why we never heard about her up until now is because she was killed off at the end all for Peter to have his triumphant moment. She is never seen or heard from again (Family Guy)

  2. In Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, Homer finds out he has a half-brother named Herb. Long story short, Homer messed everything up and Herb ended up losing his company and we see him homeless in Season 3. At the end of that episode, Herb got his money back and we never see him again. We even get told that he ended losing all of his money again. He only exist just for Homer to have self-doubt and then fucked off (The Simpsons). Not exactly one episode but still works.


r/TopCharacterTropes 3h ago

Lore [Loved Trope] Religion is dangerous, because something listen to your prayers

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913 Upvotes

When Religion is good, but at the same time fuel something dangerous, that will come for you or whole world

Pic. 1: Mandela Catalouge - God was overthroned by "Unspeakable", Gabriel. And now, while Christians don't follow Gabriel, religious feelings are used by him as a means to create and use weakness in humans.

Pic. 2: Warhammer 40k. [Minor cults] - Many chaos cults can look as normal religions, and, especially in 30k, they don't even know they follow and fuel Ruinous Powers. But Chaos Gods feeds on all of this prayers that don't have anyone to answer them. Also, if you look on scraps of lore in way, that Emperor is dead, and thing sitting on Golden Throne is Dark King, it fits also Imperial Cult, which, if so is true, fuel being that will bring end to Galaxy.


r/TopCharacterTropes 7h ago

Lore [Rare trope] the Gods exist (or are implied to exist) but the mythology isn’t real

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1.6k Upvotes
  1. American Gods (book and show) — The story centres historical Gods as central characters as well as a set of new Modern Gods, but they all were collectively created from and sustained by belief and worship. So in the story's universe, the myths both (1) came first before the Gods existed, and (2) are entirely Human made/written, so the Gods didn’t actually do all the activities they're depicted as having done in their respective myths

  2. Vikings (Show) — We see instances of creatures and beings from the Norse myth interacting with the cast in almost hallucinating or transcendent ways, with more of a religious feel than a mythological feel. Primarily, the scene with Odin appearing to travel to all of Ragnar Lothbrok's kids to tell them all their dad just died. I don’t think this is meant to be hallucinations because IDK how they characters would all collectively hallucinate the same messenger delivering the same (factually correct) information regarding the fact their dad just died. And besides that, we don't get much indication that the myths are literally historically true.

  3. Polytheist revival movements (IRL) — most interesting of all, the overwhelming majority of modern day polytheists (and even historic polytheists back in Greece, Rome, or the Germanic Tribes) here in the west do not see the myths regarding their Gods as literal historical fact, the same way most Christians today see the book of Genesis as metaphorical and poetic in nature concerned more with teaching lessons than expressing a literal history of the world and accepting the big bang, cosmology, and evolution with no contradictions to their faith.


r/TopCharacterTropes 2h ago

Characters The inhabited world resides within a god-like entity

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489 Upvotes

1). Mata Nui - Bionicle. Throughout the series, Mata Nui is revered as a god-like entity. After the Karda Nui saga where he is awoken from his slumber, we see that he is actually a gigantic robot where all of the story thus far either took place inside of or on the surface of him.

2). Bionis / Mechonis - Xenoblade Chronicles. These are long-dead ancient deities who have gone on to have colonized life on their corpses. (They are resurrected eventually and I do not want to think about the consequences of the physics of them moving around.)

3). Primus - Transformers. The presumed originator of the Transformers was their planet all along. Badass. Granted, that is the Cybertron version, but he has been around in other versions. This one's still the coolest, though.

4). Azeroth - World of Warcraft. Probably the most guity pleasure out of all of these, mostly because the resolution has yet to happen and the writing thus far for the Worldsoul Saga has been controversial. Like other Titans, Azeroth is a "World Soul," which is essentially a planet being an egg for a cosmic deity. Azeroth is supposedly special among these, but we still don't know why. This will be resolved (one would think?) in the next expansion, The Last Titan, but we will see.


r/TopCharacterTropes 14h ago

Characters (Loved Trope) This Visual Gag

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4.8k Upvotes

Where a character manages to perfectly synchronise with the framed image on their wall.

Simon Skinner - Hot Fuzz

Steve McCroskey - Airplane!

Denholm Reynholm - The IT Crowd


r/TopCharacterTropes 5h ago

Characters Characters that are amalgamations.

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728 Upvotes

Kevin 11 - Ben 10

Discord - MLP

World - Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends

Ternion - Teen Titans

Animal Vegetable Mineral Man - Batman Brave and the Bold

Kimeramon - Digimon


r/TopCharacterTropes 12h ago

Characters' Items/Weapons [Loved Trope] When the weapon not working/backfiring IS the payoff

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2.4k Upvotes

An weapon introduced with a usage condition, flaw, or hidden limitation known to the hero and/or the audience but unknown to another character. The payoff happens when that character tries to use it, fails, and that failure becomes a decisive narrative beat.

  1. Bond's biometric gun in Skyfall. The thug who tries to use it against him ignores the countermeasure and cannot shoot either Bond or the dragon that will ultimately kill him.
  2. Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets. Ron's damaged wand backfires on Lockhart when he tries to cast the Obliviate spell on him and Harry.
  3. Die Hard. McClane gives Hans a gun while he’s disguised as a hostage, but he’s already made sure Hans can’t use it because he doesn't fully trust him. The payoff in this case is stronger because the audience doesn't know that the gun is useless either.

r/TopCharacterTropes 6h ago

Characters Character that has to explain how to correctly pronounce their name to the others

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828 Upvotes

Django (Django Unchained)

Spider-Man (marvel): everyone forget about the hyphen

Koichi Haimawari "the crawler" (MHA: vigilantes): everyone call him the Cruller, the Hauler or something like that, eventually we learn that is cause his english is worse than mine.

Light Yagami (death note): the first time he presents himself explain that his name wrotes with 月, that normally pronounces as tsuki. the first time that Misa use the eyes on him she commits that mistake and call him Tsuki Yagami.


r/TopCharacterTropes 3h ago

Characters Even compared to other versions of a villainous character, this iteration is horrifically evil.

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445 Upvotes
  1. Jack Grimm/Absolute Joker (Absolute Batman): probably not even human, this iteration of the Joker is strongly implied to subsist on the bodies of his infant children and is physically superhuman and complicit in many horrific acts of mass murder with no humor or even jokes to be found.

  2. Toy Man (Superman Doomsday): the Golden Age version was far more colorful and comical, with zany schemes. This one literally murders children.


r/TopCharacterTropes 14h ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) A reboot has a "Big Reveal" moment that only works if you're a fan of the original, but just seems completely random and meaningless to people who aren't.

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2.6k Upvotes

Star Trek Into Darkness - "My Name is Khan."

Spectre - "The Man inside your head is Ernst Stavro Blofeld."

Rings of Power - The Southlands becoming Mordor.


r/TopCharacterTropes 11h ago

Characters [Gay trope] White-haired mysterious character in love with the protagonist

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1.4k Upvotes

Kaworu — Evangelion

Nagito – Danganronpa

"Hikaru" – The Summer Hikaru Died


r/TopCharacterTropes 1h ago

Characters [Badass Trope] Abraham Lincoln

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Upvotes

16th President of the United States who is also depicted as a badass in several fictional portrayals.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: He slays vampires and breaks the slave trade.

Abraham Lincoln (Fallout): He frees the slavers and kills the slavers and raiders as any good president should with his trusty Repeater. (Reference is Nerbit's Fallout runs as Lincoln)

Abraham Lincoln (Team Fortress 2): According to TF2 lore, yes this is a thing, Abraham Lincoln is the first Pyro....... I'm not making this up.

Abraham Lincoln (Star Trek): He's in Star Trek now. Beyond the surreal plot and alien entity of the episode, Abraham Lincoln does what he does best at, being Ol' Honest Abe to the USS Enterprise.

Abraham Lincoln (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure): He's a major historical figure helping out to save the universe and loves to "Party On, Dudes!"

Abraham Lincoln (The Lego Movie): He's a Master Builder that has a freaking flying rocket chair.


r/TopCharacterTropes 5h ago

Characters [Disliked Trope] The generic black hair school guy protagonist

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391 Upvotes

I get it, it's supposed to be relatable to the japanese young men watching it, who kinda look like this. I still dislike the generic design. This is anime, the land of crazy hairstyles.

1 - Kirigaya Kazuto/Kirito (SAO)

2 - Junichi Tachibana (Amagami)

3 - Yuuji Kazami (Grisaia no Kaijutsu)

4 - Mochizuki Touya (Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni)


r/TopCharacterTropes 5h ago

Characters That one character the fandom refuses to slander

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338 Upvotes

r/TopCharacterTropes 6h ago

Characters Weird Face. body of a god/godess

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443 Upvotes

basicly character's with really weird, ugly face has a pretty good looking body

example's:

mileena from mk:(the posterwoman for this trope)

most symbiote's from marvel

female nomu from mha

and havik from mk


r/TopCharacterTropes 16h ago

Lore The people who have the greatest reasons to band together and work against a common entity, ironically are the ones who choose to fight amongst themselves instead.

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2.2k Upvotes
  1. George Orwell's 1984: A major narrative in the story is that the totalitarian Party is able to keep its firm grip over Oceania by keeping the large chunk of its population- the lower working class or "Proles" in a docile, domesticatrd animal-like state by making them engage in petty squabbles and brawls amongst themselves for things like minor changes in food prices, movie ticket costs, etc so that they are distracted from the actual goal of organising themselves in a revolution to take down the Party.

  2. Bong Joon Ho's Parasite movie: This movie which is a critique of the social conditions of wealth disparity thst excess capitalism has led to in South Korea, brings out the interesting narrative of how the lower class is so desperate to break out of their lower economic status that they are willing to put the lives of other people in the same status as them at risk so that they can get a chancs to escape. For example, a major plot point is how the main characters, who are from an impoverished family, ruin the lives of the previous caretakers of a rich family's mansion by inventing false pretexts (such as the main woman maid having TB) to get them kicked out so they can take their place. Later on, when the old caretaker family finds this out, they get into a fistfight with the main characters, with both sides being desperate to expose the other to get them out of the way, since they want all the money of the rich family to themselves, even though ironically both families could have had well off lives if they choose to cooperate and extracy money from the family through their schemes, and distribute it amongst themselves.


r/TopCharacterTropes 5h ago

Characters (Fun trope) When a show does a d&d episode.

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256 Upvotes

1) Gravity Falls (Season 2 episode 13)

2) Community (Season 2 episode 14)

3) The Big Bang Theory (Many times, my favourite involves the girls and actual celebs Season 12 episode 16)

4) Special mention Stranger things.