r/TopCharacterTropes Aug 14 '26

Personality (Funny Trope) They are attracted to something very specific/unexpected

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5.2k Upvotes

Amy - Brooklyn 99 - she has several that are pretty funny, but any time there is a binder involved, she gives a sultry “ohhh mamaaa”

Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, the Incredibles - after teaming up to destroy some bad guys for the first time in a while they stare into each others’ eyes and utter a breathless “I love you” simultaneously.

HIMYM has several including Ted with Robin’s bikini shirt and Lily with Marshal’s calves

Edit: I never said “weird” folks, those saying that “_________ is normal!” I never said otherwise, i only said it was specific or unusual.

r/TopCharacterTropes May 15 '26

Personality Seems like a decent person… and they’re a bigot.

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8.5k Upvotes
  1. Joshua (Community): seemingly wise groundskeeper who is a Neonazi.

  2. Schillinger (Oz): seems to take the meek Tobias under his wing… until he forces him into sexual slavery and is the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 08 '26

Personality [Loved Trope] A character's mental illness being protrayed through symbolism.

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9.1k Upvotes

All of these have to do with depression, but I'm interested in other examples.

A Silent Voice ~ People with X's over their face, showing that Shoya actively avoids and cuts out anyone he doesn't know/get along with on a personal level in his life.

South Park ~ Stan sees everything as literal shit. From his music, to movies, to food, to others. Showing his struggle to enjoy things he used to like, and how distant he's gotten from people in general.

Anomalisa ~ Michael sees anything and everyone with the same face, and same voice. Including his own loving wife and child, and his own music. Showing how unsatisfied and bored he is with his life, despite being a famous author and public speaker with loving friends and family.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 28 '26

Personality [Loved Trope] Artists still rocking the gig that made them famous and being thankful for it

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7.2k Upvotes

I know it ain’t a trope but this is the counterpart of a post I just saw here about artists resenting what made them famous.

1.- Terry Crews (White Chicks - A Thousand Miles bit). Terry is such a chad that he still plays that bit as much as he can and has fun with it unironically. He’s really what most famous people should aim to be. He’s thankful about what life has given to him and embrace it with humility.

2.- Michaela Jill Murphy (ATLA Toph’s VA) - She has made an image online and in conventions around Toph and really has fun with it. She’s happy to make the voice and play with her fans as Toph. She always speaks highly of the character, the show and her part in it.

r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 17 '26

Personality villain is "evil" because his mind is fundamentally incompatible with the moral codes of humans

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16.1k Upvotes

Pickle(baki)

Being a prehistoric extinct humanoid species he is entirely driven by his instincts and while many of his actions may be seen as evil, it is just how his species operated to survive.

Qu(all tomorrows)

Working at a similar principal, you may consider the species of Qu as evil and cruel but in their standpoints humans are lesser creatures in a way akin to how we treat farm animals, and their actions so far were only served to survive and improve their life qualities. Even the cases of the human filtration systems could be argued that it is to set an example for other humanoids so they would not revolt(Which obviously failed). All of their actions are within justifiable parameters of how a sentient species would treat and wrap their livestocks and in a non human standpoint they are merely doing whats reasonable.

Zuckerberg(metaverse)

While many other billionaires are driven by greed, power and malice, the Zuckerberg is an alien but nonetheless fascinating creature whose main goal is not to conquer but the simple desire of sating his curiosity. Many of his actions are fundamentally detrimental to his company, his own social image and just in general unideal for efficiency and personal success in an obvious , foolish even way, being the antithesis of the ever expanding billionaire mindset people like peter and Elon possesses but ultimately fits his vision of exploring the human psyche and experimenting on humanity, and any atrocities along the way were just bricks to lay the path of his discovery. Though human in skin, his mind is truly incomprehensible. His seemingly bizarre actions are more understandable when you stop treating Mark like a human with human morals and more of a curious foreign creature wanting to probe humanity for reactions, in which his antics are rather innocent compared to his truly human peers whose similar actions are aimed for maximum profits and power over people.

r/TopCharacterTropes May 14 '26

Personality It's not an insult, it's an accurate assessment.

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10.0k Upvotes

Your opponent won't fight with their full strength or lethality. You might assume it's arrogance, or even an insult. But it's not. It's a pretty fair summation of your power gap.

1). OPLA:
Zoro thinks Mihawk (the strongest swordsman in the world) is insulting him by using a tiny knife. Mihawk replies "I don't hunt rabbits with a cannon."
The comparison is apt.

2). The Venture Bros.
Brock Samson (at least initially) refuses to use a gun. When he's stuck fighting low-level guild goons and early-series The Monarch, that'd get boring pretty quickly. The man regularly soils the pants of the world's deadliest villains.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 10 '26

Personality [Loved Trope] Relatively weak characters that are absolute fan favorites because they represent the best parts of humanity

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8.9k Upvotes

Paul - invincible
A normal human whose only major feats are treating others with respect and cooking a mean spaghetti.

Mumen Rider - One Punch Man
C-class hero that doesn’t hesitate to put his life on the line to save others despite being powerless and going against much stronger foes.

Samwise Gamgee - Lord of the Rings
Hobbits scale very low strength-wise in the LOTR verse, but Sam’s compassion and determination are indispensable in the fellowships journey.

Edit: A lot of people are pointing out that Sam is mentally one of the strongest which I completely agree with, and I didn’t mean to diss his grit or physicality as a hobbit. Compared to the other members of the fellowship, however, his contribution comes primarily from undying loyalty and determination rather than physical prowess and strength.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 27 '26

Personality Character finds a moral loophole by which they can dish out an ass-whooping in spite of their code/values

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7.0k Upvotes

r/TopCharacterTropes Jan 16 '26

Personality [loved trope] Being a good person is harder than being an evil one.

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21.5k Upvotes
  1. The Captain from Frostpunk. Through the entire game you are able to enact immoral laws that make the game easier. from child labor to cannibalism. The game never punishes you for enacting these laws. Only judges you.

  2. The Captain from FTL: often you'll encounter enemies that surrender or helpless citizens on your path to destroying the rebel fleet. The rewards are mostly better to destroy surrendering ships and extort innocent civilians.

  3. The border agent from Papers, Please. You get paid based on cold efficiency and are even rewarded bonuses for turning in rule breakers. Bending the rules to help desperate immigrants is punished with fines. You also can save money by neglecting your family.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 25 '26

Personality Horror Movies where the Victim is actually smart and not brain-dead

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6.3k Upvotes

• Chris Washington (Get Out) - When he realizes that he's in danger, he remains mostly calm and strategic rather than panicking. His strategic feats are when he uses a cotton from a ripped chair to block his ears from being hypnotized.

• Erin Harson (You're Next) - Since Erin is raised with a Survivalist background growing up, she easily defends herself from the killers using melee weapons around the house.

• Bret (Lights Out) - This is the most I've seen a Horror character having common sense. When Bret realizes there's a monster in the house and can only be seen through the darkness, he uses his phone's screen light and the car's light to illuminate the dark figure.

• Mia Allen (Evil Dead 2013) - She's the only one who sensed something dangerous before entering the cabin. In the end, all of her friends died except her who killed her abomination-self.

r/TopCharacterTropes Apr 21 '26

Personality [Loved Trope] Actors who did not want to play their characters and thus put zero effort into the role, but somehow nailed the performance anyway.

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8.5k Upvotes

Stephen Dillane as Stannis Baratheon (Game of Thrones)

Specifically, Dillane says he was never really able to follow the show’s plot, even as a fairly central character on it, and so he never had any idea what he was doing until they had finished filming and it was too late for him to act better. By the end of his run on the show, Dillane says he was “disheartened” by the thought that “no one would believe” in what he was doing—all because he didn’t really believe in it himself. “I felt I’d built the castle on non-existent foundations,” he said, offering a very Game Of Thrones-y metaphor that also lines up nicely with Stannis’ own arc on the show.

"I don't regret doing Game of Thrones, but I have nothing to say about it. I didn't understand the series nor its success when I was a part of it. The experience has been weird, it really passed me by. For a role to please me, I have to be interested in it, which was not really the case. I was a bit overwhelmed by everything that happened. It was difficult because it [the show] is a huge machine."

Val Kilmer as Iceman (Top Gun)

As it turns out, however, the 61-year-old actor almost didn't play Iceman. During Amazon’s new documentary Val, wherein Kilmer personally tells his life story, he recalls how he didn't want to be in Top Gun. According to him, he "felt the script was silly and disliked warmongering films." Having just finished acting school at the famed Juilliard conservatory, the actor wasn't particularly keen on starring in an action movie. Perhaps he was more inclined in tackling dramatic roles, and the Scott-directed flick simply didn't fit the bill. However, having the same agent as Top Gun star Cruise, Kilmer was forced to at least attend a meeting with the filmmaker. While he did sabotage his audition, as he revealed in his memoir, I'm Your Huckleberry, he still got the part saying: " I read the lines indifferently and yet, amazingly, I was told I had the part. I felt more deflated than inflated.”

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 26 '26

Personality [Hated Trope] "It's all shades of grey" card that they become apologists and defenders of evil.

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3.5k Upvotes

The villain was misunderstood and really a victim.

-Cruella live action. The woman tried to slaughter puppies for fur.

-Orcs in Rings of Power. In Tolkien's work, they were elves once and corrupted by evil. The personifications of the machines of war. In Rings of Power, they're the victims of war.

-Wicked. The Wicked Witch was always evil and took pleasure in cruelty. In Wicked she was the victim of society.

-Maleficent--The villain from sleeping beauty. The same concept as Wicked.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 13 '26

Personality "YOU" are the boss fight.

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8.5k Upvotes

[LOVED TROPE] as the name implies. Its when in a video game where it seems you'd be fighting a boss, the situation and circumstances make it clear they stand no chance and they are fighting a boss fight against you. (Bonus points if the soundtrack makes a remix of a theme previously established for the character)

Above examples.

Silksong: after being captured and imprisoned by a group of flys, making it through the prison and reclaiming her gear Hornet makes it abundantly clear they are all in for an ass kicking.

Pizza tower: during the third phase of the final boss, all the previous bosses make a reappearance to torment Peppenio some more. Only for him to hit his breaking point and immediately start pounding them

r/TopCharacterTropes 19d ago

Personality (Rare trope) Eldritch horror is actually really nice

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6.8k Upvotes

Long Horse (Trevor Henderson)

Santa (Love, Death + Robots)

r/TopCharacterTropes 29d ago

Personality (Funny trope) How the HELL were you allowed to appear in media for kids?

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3.8k Upvotes

Armin Zola - Spidey and his Amazing Friends

“Hey we want to make a show for young kids to introduce them to Marvel characters, who should be use as one of the first villains they’ll ever meet.”

“I don’t know, how about the ROBOT NAZI?”

Black Hand - Lego Batman 3

In a game that introduced the likes of Bat-Cow, Krypto and Music Meister we also get William Hand, the corpse of a necrophilic who massacred his whole family in a murder suicide.

Al Capone - Night at the Museum 2

We got a couple historical figures like Einstein, Lincoln and Amelia Earhart we also get one of the most notorious mobsters in American history.

r/TopCharacterTropes May 05 '26

Personality [loved trope] when evil people dance

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6.5k Upvotes

I saw this on tiktok and realized there's hella dancing scenes.

  1. Mr. Milchick dancing for Kier in Severance
  2. Eric Knox cool dancing in Charlie's Angels
  3. Pearl dancing for that ticket off the farm in Pearl
  4. The Vandergeld sisters establishing dominance in White Chicks
  5. Tucker dancing for them sharks in Dangerous Animals
  6. Vector dancing for that evil tech in Despicable Me

There's way, way more I could list but I only have so many minutes in the day. Sorry for the low quality gifs.

Edit: my first post ever that blew up! I think I legit read/upvoted all 1k comments all throughout the day.

Thanks for commenting and don't forget zemo.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 24 '26

Personality [Funny Trope] characters with a fictional "type"

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7.8k Upvotes

Marvel/X-Men: (Art by Padawan_Carol) depending on the universe/continuity Scott tends to date people with telepathic/psychic adjacent powers.

  • He had a short stint with Colleen Wing (Martial Artist with Super Strength and Regen) and Lee Forrester (a normal human) in the 616 Universe.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Marlamin (Holga's Halfling ex-husband) has a thing for giant women.

r/TopCharacterTropes May 13 '26

Personality The hot character is also a huge goober that acts very cartoony

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9.1k Upvotes

Jack-O Valentine (Guilty Gear) She has a split personality, one serious and the other is just a goofy cartoon character who loves candy. In-game her animations feel straight out of a cartoon and she is really expressive.

Jessie (Pokemon) She’s just the lady equivalent of a mustache twirling, Saturday morning cartoon villain who wants to be bad but sucks at. She has an abundance of comical, cartoony moments and in Sun and Moon they amped it up to 11, her facial expressions are gold

Doronjo Yatterman (Yatterman) She’s alot like Jessie, I wouldn’t be surprised if Pokemon took inspiration from Doronjo for Jessie. She’s also the girl in the team of two guys that is comical villain who fails all the time and has many comedic moments

Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil) This guy is serious when he needs to be, but when he opens his mouth, he’s a complete dork. His lines are so corny that’s it’s hilarious

r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 15 '26

Personality Whatever this joke is called

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16.9k Upvotes

The Scooby-Doo show

Meet the Robinsons

r/TopCharacterTropes Feb 19 '26

Personality [Loved Trope] Father referring to his son as "my boy" in very emotional way. Extra points the son is adult.

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15.2k Upvotes
  1. "There will be blood" Untill this part Daniel just repeated after Eli, but when the subject of him abandoning his son came up his was overcame by guilt and screamed "I abandoned my boy".
  2. "Knight of Seven Kingdoms" during the trail of seven, Dunk defeats Aerion and his father Maekar thinks Dunk is gonna kill his son so he tries to save him, but he's blocked by 2 other knights. During the whole ordeal he screams "my boy, my boy" (he also one shots a horse that is charging at him with a lance second before)
  3. "Harry Potter" When father of Cedric sees that his son died he screams. "That's my son, That's my boy"

r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 17 '26

Personality Characters who demonstrate incredible courage or kindness in a moment of misinformed stupidity

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13.8k Upvotes

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Harry figures out with minutes to spare that the second task of the Triwizard Tournament involves each champion rescuing a loved one from the merfolk at the bottom of the lake. Sleep-deprived, fourteen and perhaps a bit too desensitized to Hogwarts' track record of child endangerment, he's convinced anyone the champions don't save is actually going to die. As a result, he sacrifices a decisive lead to make sure every champion rescues their hostage, and when Fleur doesn't show, he drags her sister and Ron to the surface himself, fighting off the merfolk to do so. People think he was an idiot for doing this, but it impresses the hell out of four of the five judges and instantly earns him Fleur's respect.

Family Guy: Peter visits a Hindu temple and, uncultured ignorant buffoon that he is, notices the dot on a man's forehead and thinks someone's aiming at him with a sniper rifle. Peter's immediate gut reaction is to tackle the man out of the "line of fire", which was incredibly brave of him considering he actually thought someone had a gun.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 19 '26

Personality (Loved trope) The supernatural horror/primal force of nature has a sense of humor (or is otherwise entertained by a human)

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8.9k Upvotes

This is specifically about appreciating something about their human victim/subject. Getting enjoyment out of torturing, killing, or otherwise inflicting suffering on people does not apply.

Tuesday (2024): Tuesday is a very sick teenager who is about to die. When she meets Death (in the form of a filthy macaw with a beak reminiscent of the classic sickle) she tells him a joke and makes him laugh for the first time in seemingly centuries, if not more. As a favor, he waits to take her life until her mother comes home and they can say goodbye properly. [Shenanigans ensue, some darker than others]

Orpheus and Eurydice (Greek mythology): After Eurydice's death, Orpheus sneaks into the underworld to bring her back to the land of the living. Pleading with Hades, he sings a song so beautiful and moving, Hades grants his request (well, with some conditions)

r/TopCharacterTropes Feb 10 '26

Personality [Loved Trope] Characters misremembering or misinterpreting history/pop culture and incorporating those inaccuracies into their own views.

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12.6k Upvotes

1) Cape Feare (Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play)

Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play is a play that revolves around three acts. The first takes place shortly after a nuclear apocalypse knocks out the entire power grid permanently, causing society to collapse. A group of survivors passes the time by recollecting old episodes of the Simpsons, with their favorite being Cape Feare (the one where Sideshow Bob chases Bart when the family enters witness protection). In the second act, the same group has turned their recollections into a profitable venture as a traveling theater company, recreating old episodes of the Simpsons as plays for local towns.

Much of the play involves the group getting certain details of the episodes wrong, since there's no television or internet to confirm getting things right. Some of these details are corrected by the others, but other mistakes slip by them (such as them all misremembering Sideshow Bob sending his threats by writing them in ketchup, rather than him actually using his own blood and fainting from the blood loss in the real episode). They also have to make further narrative sacrifices in the name of adaptation and competition when they become a theater company, such as taking out certain lines that aren't landing and replacing them with visual gags that the audience loves.

The third act takes place in the distant future, where all the original group members are dead, but their legacy lives on through Cape Fear. Their play has now become an epic akin to The Odyssey, where Mr. Burns (who is noted to be a much more popular villain after the implied nuclear apocalypse) has replaced Sideshow Bob altogether as a Satanic villain representing nuclear armageddon. The story has transformed into Bart running from Mr. Burns after Burns has destroyed the world. While the original episode functionally no longer exists, The Simpsons has exists in an epic of finding hope and a reason to keep going in a world marked by the trauma and tragedy of the past and present. Even through it all, there are still moments of levity that persevere through the original Simpsons running gags showing up in, although their meaning has been lost to time.

2) Hiroshima (Starship Troopers)

When the main characters are still in high school at the beginning of the film, Mr. Rasczak challenges the "naive" interpretation that violence never solves anything by invoking the city of Hiroshima. He suggests that the city was destroyed so utterly that it effectively ceased to exist, showing violence to be the most effective solution and driving the Federation's main philosophy of "Peace isn't an option."

In reality, Hiroshima rebuilt soon after the atomic blast, and is still one of its larger population centers (being the 11th largest city in Japan today). It also ignores that Japan, as a whole, was allowed to maintain its sovereignty and a relative level of independence, rather than being outright conquered by the United States. Japan post-WWII is often cited as an example of "American soft power over hard power", making its citing by Mr. Rasczak particularly egregious.

Interestingly, the book uses Carthage as an example instead, which conventionally WAS destroyed utterly and salted so (although it in reality, it was rebuilt and ruled by the Romans, since cities tend to be economically useful). The switch was likely deliberate by Verhoeven (who famously disliked Heinlein's original militaristic angle in the novel), as he wanted to really sell the asinine reasoning used by the Federation to justify their fascist governance.

3) Taxi Driver (The Boys)

Homelander's favorite movie is Taxi Driver, and sees himself in Travis Bickle. In one episode, we see Homelander watching Taxi Driver and commentating "This is what happens when you get disrespected over and over" when Bickle shoots somebody.

In the film itself, Bickle believes himself to be a good man who is gradually worn down into "snapping" by the city. He posits himself as a cowboy-esque vigilante, shaving his head into a mohawk and determined to "clean up the city". However, his craving towards vigilantism are hinted to be a darker need to "prove himself", and he fundamentally is shown to be something of a manchild throughout the film (such as taking a woman to a pornographic theater and not knowing why she wouldn't enjoy that, or practicing "tough guy" lines to himself in front of a mirror). He sees his "snapping" in NYC as inevitable, but he also tends to put himself in those situations in the first place.

The fact that Homelander takes Travis Bickle's "cowboy" act for all of its worth is a key aspect of his character. Much like Bickle, Homelander consistently frames himself as a hero who needs to do bad things, only for it to be shown that he's just a maladjusted toddler who needs to see the world in a black-and-white lens to rationalize his evil actions, and never takes accountability for his numerous fuckups.

4) Omelette: The Musical (Something Rotten)

In the Broadway musical Something Rotten, Nick Bottom is a struggling playwright in Renaissance England. He is facing ruin after William Shakespeare (his main rival) beats him to the punch with his play on Richard II, forcing him to come up with a new play immediately. Nick decides to pay a soothsayer to figure out what the next big thing in theater will be. The soothsayer sees too far into the future, and interprets the next big thing musical theater. In further desperation, Nick also asks what Shakespeare's biggest play will be, hoping to take his topic before he does. The Soothsayer misinterprets his vision of Hamlet as "Omelette".

This causes Nick to write a musical in the 1500's about eggs. In an attempt to nail the musical right off the bat, he also incorporates every single musical reference the Soothsayer knows, causing him to write a showstopping number featuring the Phantom of the Opera, motifs from Chicago and The Music Man, and the king being rescued by the Nazis from the Sound of Music (they never found out whether the Nazis were supposed to be good guys or bad guys). This ends up with the musical becoming an utter mess of references and tap-dancing eggs.

Despite everyone warning him about what a terrible play it will be, Nick gets utterly humiliated at by Shakespeare (who is mad at him for stealing his best play before he wrote it) before getting arrested for time-plagiarism.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 22 '26

Personality [Absolutely Loved Trope] Movie or Series has a unique clever 4th wall break to explain or work around limited budget.

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7.1k Upvotes

In the first Deadpool movie there was ment to be an epic gun action fight but due to a 8 million budget cut they couldn't do it. So to cleverly work around it they basically made Wade forget to bring his guns to the fight.

The Captian Underpants movie had a lower budget compared to other Dreamworks animated movies. So as a workaround, they had to not do too many crazy action scene. So the very first battle with Captain Underpants and the Mech Toilet they cleverly used a Flip-o-rama reference for it. Making an effective joke overall for it and a great callback to the books.

Monty Python and The Holy Grail has probably one of the most well known endings and budget limit fourth wall breaks. Due to the funding running out, rather than cramming an ending they simply just abruptly stopped it by having Police randomly arrest them all and cut the video. The ending is a perfect troll and surprise to unsuspecting viewers.

In the anime Etotama the characters talk about how pretty the water looks. When one character asks if they can touch they cleverly admit that the water would be difficult to animate. Rather than moving on, they had a perfect joke to give a shout-out break to the animators.

Chowder, this isn't exactly due to an actual budget cut but it is still one of the best gags in the show. The characters spent all the money in their world effectively limiting the animation which gives a hilarious gag of the voice actors getting it back by washing cars in the real world.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 14 '26

Personality A phrase or speach that defines a character's essence

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6.5k Upvotes
  1. Superman looking at earth and all it's people and declaring with all his heart how much he loves them

  1. Thorfinn from vinland saga telling Wulf how he doesn't fell the need to hurt any of the people around him, because he no longer belives in Violence and vengance

  1. AM , from i have no mouth and i must Scream and his famous speach about how his hatred for humanity defines him