Trope

In cinema and TV, a trope is a standard plot element that is sometimes or often used in a genre to develop the plot. This can include types of events and actions that can occur, actions that a character might undertake, a standard type of character that appears in examples of a genre, or even commonly used scene or scene elements that contribute to the plot. The term comes from Greek, and literally means "a turn" or "turning," as in a turn in a plot. The use of a trope, such as a fairly typical event in a story, adds to the plot development in a familiar and recognizable manner. For example, action films often have a dramatic climax when the hero faces off against the villain in a physical fight, which viewers understand should be interesting and exciting, even though the viewers expect the protagonist to defeat the villain. This is a very common plot device that is a convention or standard in action, fantasy and superhero movies. Such plot elements most often include actions and events, but can also include recognizable character types and settings.

Actions and events

Certain actions and events might be conventional in a genre, such as a physical fight scene between a protagonist and a villain in an action film, a chase scene in a slahser horror film, or a space battle in a sci-fi film.

Situations

Certain types of situations may be regular occurrences in a genre. For example, romance movies often make use of plot devices like a love triangle.

Characters

Sometimes conventionalized or stock characters are used. For example, in a horror film, one of the first victims of a killer might be a one-dimensional male character who is machoistic, arrogant, and foolish. Some sci-fi films might have a mad scientist character, who creates a radical new technology.

Scenes

A haunted house early on in a film sets the stage for a supernatural horror film with ghosts or other supernatural beings that will torment the human characters, especially if the house is explicitly describe as haunted or cursed.

In literature, a trope refers to the use of figurative language, phrases or images, for narrative or artistic effect. This includes various kinds of figurative language and narrative structuring devices, such as ajllegory, oxymoron, metaphor, and hyperbole.

1 Visual media examples

Many examples exist, and many very specific tropes can be found at the [www.tvtropes.org | TV Tropes website]. Some common and general examples are provided below for different genres of film and TV shows. Some of these tropes may cross over into other genres.

1.1 Action

• A hand-to-hand fight between the protagonist and antagonist
• A dogfight between two fighter pilots in a war film
• A hero defeats a villain or overcomes difficulty all by himself
• An ordinary person is thrust into a heroic role
• Finding a kidnapped person
• A hero must overcome personal internal difficulties
• A hero undergoes personal growth
• Femme fatale: literally, a "fatal woman" or a woman who is smart, sexy, and dangerous
• A villain out for revenge against the hero
• Bomb deadline: the hero disarms a bomb a few seconds before it explodes

1.2 Sci-fi

• An android trying to understand human culture and what it's like to be human.
• Space battles
• A mad scientists who invents some radical new technology
• A new technology goes wrong, and its users are unaware of its dangers and consequences
• A scientist warns political or company leaders of a danger, and is ignored, leading to disastrous outcomes
• Time travel paradoxes
• Characters travel back in time and return to find that they have altered their contemporary history and reality
• Faster-than-light (FTL, or supraluminal) travel: Starships with FTL is often a necessary trope because space is just too big
• Travelling through wormholes, e.g.,allowing for instant travel between distant parts of the galaxy
• Parallel worlds / universes
• Characters encounter a parallel universe, where there exist evil alternate versions of themselves (e.g., Star Trek: Discovery, season 1)
• First contact between humans and aliens
• Killer aliens, e.g., evil aliens come to earth
• Cryosleep. Characters are in deep cryogenic sleep for a long journey; then something goes wrong, e.g., with the cryostasis; or they are discovered by ship with better travel technology; maybe the sleepers were humans, who have difficulty adjusting to life in their new reality after hundreds of years of sleep.
• Generation ships. Large ships carry large populations, who live on the ships generation after generation; often they are escaping a disaster on their home world, or colonizing distant worlds.
• Uploaded consciousness: humans have uploaded their consciousness to machines
• AI / robots taking over the world; evil AI technology, or AI uprisings (like the Terminator movies)
• Cyborgs, often evil cyborgs (human-machine hybrids or alien-machine hybrids), such as the Borg in Star Trek, the Cybermen in Dr Who, or terminators in the Terminator movies.
• Nanotechnology, often nanotech that is out of control or malevolent
• Alien artifacts: remains of ancient aliens are discovered, e.g., on another planet
• Interspecies romance, e.g., between a human and an alien
• Clones
• Bodily modifications or transformations
• Artificially enhanced intelligence: a human gets an intelligence boost from technology, or from an alien influence
• Dystopian governments or societies (dystopian sci-fi): society and government have collapsed, or have undergone a disaster such as ecological / climate collapse, nuclear war, plague, or some other major apocalypse
• Robots, including human-like robots that become or want to become more human; or those who don't like humans
• God-like aliens, as they are so advanced that they have seemingly god-like powers and intelligence (like the Q in Star Trek)

1.3 Fantasy

• A heroic main character
• Use of magic; magical abilities, objects, and even settings
• Quest: A hero goes on a quest with companions to find something or save someone
• Dark lord: a villain with magical or above-human abilities, and who personifies evil
• Good versus evil, with clearly defined moral protagonists and evil antagonists
• Medieval or ancient world elements

1.4 Horror

• A haunted house
• Demonic posession, and the possessed person displays unnatural behavior
• Haunted or cursed dolls
• A serial killer
• A superhuman killer who cannot be killed (or is hard to kill)
• One of the first victims is a slasher film is an arrogant, rash acting person, often an annoying male character
• Among the first victims in a slasher film may be teenagers who engage in sexual activity, and die (somewhat like a sort of moral judgment)
• One or two characters go somewhere where they should not go, and die
• The final girl: the female main character outsmarts the killer and survives to the end, due (at least in part) to her better character and intelligence
• Two characters being chased by a killer split up, making it easier for the killer to kill them both
• Zombies walking slowly and awkwardly

1.5 Romance

• Love at first sight
• Two characters dislike each other at first, but then fall in love
• Love triangle
• The couple breaks up due to an argument or disagreement
• The man realizes his errors and pursues the woman to win back her love
• Parental opposition to the young lovers' relationship

1.6 Comedy

• A lead character with a comedic sidekick
• A sidekick who is less intelligent and/or who misunderstands the lead character's intended meaning, leading to humorous misunderstandings
• Class clown: a less serious student in a high school (or college) class who always makes jokes and likes to be the center of attention
• Catchphrase: a phrase that a character likes to use often, and may be funny mainly due to its repetition
• Running gag: a joke that becomes funny due to its repetation; this might be a catchphrase or an unusual object
• A main character who is clumsy and awkward
• Ambiguously gay male: A male seems gay, but his orientation is never made clear; humor may arise, e.g., when other characters are not sure if he is gay
• Breaking the fourth wall: An actor unexpectedly breaks from the narrative development to directly address the audience

2 See also

1. Academic writing genres on English Wiki
2. List of writing genres at Wikipedia
3. Humor genres
4. Narrative techniques
5. Music genres
6. Paragraph styles
7. Plot elements
8. Trope
9. TV Tropes, a wiki that catalogues tropes from film, TV, and other media forms
10. IMDB, the Internet Movie Database, a wiki that catalogues films and TV shows from English-speaking countries and other countries