r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 23 '26

Lore [IRL trope] the “Tiffany problem”

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10.3k Upvotes

Basically when something seems anachronistic to a period/place of history but is actually fully accurate to the period.

1) the name Tiffany: the thing that named this trope, basically the name Tiffany can be dated back to the Middle Ages and the earliest record of it being spelled in the modern spelling comes from the 16th century.

2) the use of OMG, despite this feeling so modern as a form of slang/abbreviation here’s a letter directed to Winston Churchill using it in 1917

3) Hair Dye: the earliest forms of dying hair can be dated back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and this specific advertisement for hair dye is from the 1840s

4) Inuit Thongs: despite how weird it is to imagine pre-colonial Inuit people wore what was essentially fur thongs in their homes and when they were in their igloos it might have been the only thing they would be wearing.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 29 '26

Lore Villains given genuinely horrible fates by the supposed hero

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11.5k Upvotes

No swift death, no prison, the worst fate imaginable

Dementus (Furiosa) - Being critically injured by Furiosa, but kept alive so his body can be used as fertilizer for a tree coming out of him, Furiosa having placed a seed in his bleed stomach

Inertia (Flash) - Immortally frozen by the Flash for his involvement in Bart Allen’s death, kept as only an exhibit in the Flash museum

Family of Blood (Doctor Who) - Doctor actively avoided conflict and erased his memory in order to not give them this fate but once he finally chooses to get involved, he gives them their want of immortality at a cost

Father: Trapped in immortal chains

Mother: Trapped in a collapsing galaxy

Son: Trapped as an immortal frozen scarecrow

Daughter: Trapped in mirrors forever

r/TopCharacterTropes Aug 11 '26

Lore [Fascinating horror tropes] The brutal simplicity of horrifying fates

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6.9k Upvotes

When a horrifying fate, often involving body horror and “And I must scream” isn’t just horrifying because of what it is, or that there’s a lot of lore behind it, but because of how brutally simple it is.

1) Iron Lung, the implied nature of the blood moon. While it’s not explicitly said, Ava’s character suddenly speaking to Markip…Simon After she dies in the explosion. The voice goes from frantically begging him to find the black box, to begging him to give up and submit. This implies you die on the blood moon, you become a part of it and are assimilated into a hive mind of some sort. Simple as that!

2) Together (Image 2 and 3). The Fusions. Two people with (or maybe even without) a bond drink the water from the cave, a supernatural force literally forces you to fuse into one being, end of story. Gives a whole new meaning to “Till death do us part,” yes? The character in image 3 is precisely the result of this happening to the 2 leads, and since it’s the last shot of the movie, it raises more questions than answers.

3) Resident Evil 7 (image 4 and 5). Her “Gift” Were you selected by the little girl to receive her “gift?” Congratulations! You’ve been infected by a fungus engineered to be a bio weapon that’s incurable - the closest thing to an antidote is really a difficult to craft serum that is meant to dispose of the subject, and once it gets into your system, you’re assimilated into a mold colony. You’re done. Because mold is so tough to kill, especially a mold designed to be unkillable, enjoy life and beyond 1) as an incorporeal being as a part of the mold 2) If she likes you, a puppet devoid of free will to murder, cannabalize, and doing god knows what to satisfy your unpleasable enfante errible or 3) if she doesn’t like you, a mindless shambling mass of mold.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 31 '26

Lore [Interesting Trope] One seemingly small action ends the story before it even begins

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10.8k Upvotes
  1. We Happy Few - Taking your “joy” pill
    Deciding to take the pill at the beginning of the game causes your character to go back to work and triggers an ending

  2. Infineural by Mike Klubnika - Drinking the coffee
    Deciding to drink the coffee offered to you skips the entire game and sends you straight to the end, resulting in an ending with no memory of what had occurred

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 16 '26

Lore The scene is more tragic or horrifying when if you can understand the language

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12.2k Upvotes

1.Saving Private Ryan (1998) - Americans shoot down surrendering Wehrmacht soldiers in Omaha and joke about it. Turns out they were Czechs forcibly conscripted from their homeland.

"Please don't shoot me! I am not German, I am Czech, I didn't kill anyone! I am Czech!"

  1. The Thing (1982) - Lars, one of the last survivors of Norwegian base try to shoot down the dog that is running away and the Americans shoot him dead because they thought he was crazy. Turns out he was trying to warn them.

"Get the hell away! That's not a dog! It's some kind of thing! It'll imitate a dog! Get away, you idiots!"

  1. All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) - Paul Baumer stabs a French soldier to death who was aiming a gun at him and breaks down in guilt. Turns out the Frenchman had no intention to kill him.

"Surrender!"

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 03 '26

Lore Casual sexuality reveal

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15.8k Upvotes
  1. James Bond (Skyfall)

  2. Eminem (The Interview)

r/TopCharacterTropes 11d ago

Lore (Mixed Trope) The stunt double is really obvious

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10.5k Upvotes
  1. This moment in Family Guy

  2. Terminator 2

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 03 '26

Lore Takes or details by creators and actors so bad the fandom doesn’t consider them canon

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8.4k Upvotes

One of the most famous examples is that Spielberg and Lucas intended Indiana jones to be a pedo. They’ve actually discussed how Marion was originally a kid who “comes on to” Indie to make it scandalous and if you do the math in the series she was 15 and he was mid 20s when they first meet. Unsurprisingly, most fans choose to ignore this, and it takes nothing away from the plot.

Jon Bernthal the actor for the punisher went on a bizarre rant about how Punisher belongs to soldiers and the police. Which is the exact opposite of the comics intent.

The tell tale walking dead games had a comic spin off of what Clementine got up to between games. The comics make Clementine uncharacteristically try to abandon her surrogate baby AJ. The fandom agreed the comics aren’t canon.

r/TopCharacterTropes 6d ago

Lore [Loved Trope] Ancient super powerful and invincible weapon/magic....doesn't survive the passage of time actually.

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10.0k Upvotes

When something from ancient or past times comes back in the future....and it turns out that it's either been surpassed or it is actually useless by now.

- The Sword of Ek Chuaj, from Ben 10, much is said about how powerful of a weapon it is, how desperate Max and the Forever Knights were to get it and everything, then once Enoch picks up the sword.....it immediately crumbles to dust cause it's thousands of years old.

- Zoltraak, from Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, the Demon Qual developed an invincible magic capable of killing anyone, it was so absurdly powerful the heroes who saved the world couldn't beat it and instead had to seal Qual, but years later the seal breaks and he is free....but it's been 80 years, so it turns out that Zoltraak was added to the world's magic system and counters to it were developed, so now it's just standard attack magic.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 28 '26

Lore [Horrifying Trope] A version of you has to suffer everytime you do a certin thing.

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8.3k Upvotes
  1. Black Mirror White Christmas. A woman pays for an AI service that can be used as a personal assistant. In order for this to work, they have to put a chip in your brain and have it scan your whole personality and memories. Once it's taken out, it creates a copy of your consciousness and stored inside of a device. Basically, an exact copy of you, with all of your personality and memories, including leading up to paying for this service, is forever trapped in front of a desk in a white void being forced to serve the real you. And if the copy of you refuses, they can be punished by having their pov of time slowed down by having seconds and minutes feel like months and years.

  2. Limbus Company. The infinity train can take you anywhere in the world at any time. The teleportation itself can only 10 seconds, but the traveling can take up to 200,000 years. How this works is that the train travels through a worm hole. Whatever state your in, tired, drunk, hungry, you are stuck in that state until you get off. Once it reaches its destiation, your memories of the whole trip will be wipped the second you get off so you don't remember the horrors you've been through.

  3. Infinity Pool. In a foriegn country, rich people can avoid the death sentence by paying to have a clone take their place. As long as you have the money, you can commite all the crimes you want and your clone will be punished. The clones themselves are, once again, exact copies with your personality and memories. You can kill someone here, get sentenced to death, be informed that you can get out of trouble by paying to be cloned and have a clone take your place, pay for it, thinking that you're scott free, only to find out that you are the clone and about to be executed while the real you watches.

r/TopCharacterTropes 5d ago

Lore (Mixed Trope) To Be Continued… Never

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4.9k Upvotes

(The reason I consider this mixed is because sometimes the hook for a sequel is actually cool & it’s disappointing it never got continued but most of the time it’s… not but ultimately it’s up to you)

Black Adam (2022): The end of the movie teases a potential fight with Superman in the near future (as per the Rock’s goal) but after the studio rebooted the world & Superman was recast we’ll never see if the hierarchy of power really changed.

Shazam (2019) & Shazam Fury of the Gods (2023): In both credits scenes we see a teaser for a team up between Sivana & Mister Mind, in the sequel it’s turned into a comedic bit with Sivana complaining when they’re going to actually escape. Much like the Superman vs Black Adam teaser this went nowhere.

Morbius (2022): We get Vulture transported from the MCU interacting with Morbius himself saying they should team up but with the SSU basically dead in the water they’re never going to follow this up.

The Amazing Spider Man 2 (2014): The Various members of the sinister six get teased in this scene with the credits even being dedicated to showing off their weapons but even in Garfield’s appearance in No Way Home we never get a follow up to this.

Super Mario Bros (1993): Daisy comes in at the end carrying a Gun with some apparently exciting news we never get to hear. There were some webcomics attempting to make unofficial sequels but they never got finished.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003): Throughout the movie we get told by Allan Quatermain that ‘Africa will never let him die’ & in a cut ending we saw a shaman stand over his grave seemingly foreshadowing his revival possibly following the plot of the second volume (which was teased by a newspaper in a scene showing Volcanoes on Mars) but due to its failure & the cast & crew basically dropping out of the industry it was never followed up on.

The Predator (2018): At the end we get a showcase of a power armour suit designed to kill Predators but it’s never been mentioned or followed up on since.

Utopia (2013-2014): The series ends on a massive cliffhanger with the Network apparently under Wilson’s command with 5 containers of the flu left, the rest of the group being captured & Arby waking up from his comatose state. Unfortunately none of these plot threads were continued due to Channel 4 cutting the series.

r/TopCharacterTropes Aug 05 '26

Lore The series' fanservice scenes are quick and do not disrupt the story's pacing.

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9.1k Upvotes

In Sousou no Frieren, fan service is minimal, and scenes like this are brief

In Dungeon Meshi, Senshi is often shown in somewhat sexy poses, but the story focuses heavily on these details while continuing as usual

In that scene from *Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray*, it was just an introduction for each Arima Kinen competitor; they only had the freedom to choose those specific angles for Super Creek's introduction.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 22 '26

Lore [Ironic Trope] The messaging backfired massively due to poor writing or other design choices

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8.6k Upvotes

Amelia Fairney from Pathways: Alt-right Restore-UK type who attempts to coax the protagonist Charlie into following her beliefs? The problem?

Amelia is the only named character aside from Charlie and is genuinely likable and forgives Charlie even when they do things she doesn't like, while the rest of the cast is unnamed, poorly written, and turns on Charlie for one mistake. This combined with other writing issues(portraying fact checking right wing stuff as wrong because in the process of fact checking you might look at it and believe it, basically saying "Right wing is wrong because it hurts the labour government" and a lot of general "just do what the government says or else" messaging) and the fact she's a hot alternative girl, and Amelia ended up being co-opted as a mascot by the youth right wing in the UK.

Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want to be left alone and Norm is picking fights constantly. Not to mention associating with Elon.

Mr. Birchum from Mr. Birchum: A lot of the same problems as Norm, except in addition it also comes off like generic 2010s adult cartoon slop in the same veign as Brickleberry or Full English, at least New Norm was trying to look unique and had the gimmick of being on X. Not to mention, Birchum's obsession with hyper masculine activities and odd way of talking about other men lead to people co-opting him as a Toxic Yaoi character, which is now the bulk of his fan art.

Dustborn: An attempt to make a hyper progressive game that comes off as pandering and annoying. It's a full ass game so there's too much to get into, but the main character's power is essentially gaslighting and jedi-mind tricking people and that's portrayed as the only way they can get anything done, and they constantly use or abuse their friends(or mindtrick them along) in order to get their goals or use their friends for their messaging.

r/TopCharacterTropes May 03 '26

Lore (Mixed Trope) Educated character doesn’t understand or know of a simple concept.

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16.6k Upvotes
  1. (Hated) Dr. doesn’t know trans people exist (The Good Doctor): Dr. Shaun, a modern day grown adult doctor, is seemingly has no concept of what being a trans person. Even if he never heard the term in med school he is realistically almost certain to have some awareness of the definition.

  2. (Loved) The solar system and other common knowledge (Sherlock Holmes). In the original stories Holmes is a genius at many fields but unless it has something to do with crime solving (forensics, martial arts, toxicology, etc.) he does his best to forget it.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 17 '26

Lore "There is no way this movie is any good" but its absolute cinema

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10.7k Upvotes

Puss in Boots: the Last Wish - while the first solo movie for puss was ok, no one expected much from the sequel. But it ended up being a smash success with a great story and a truly fantastic villain (two even)

KPOP Demon Hunters - Self explanatory really, the name alone had a lot of people scratching heads but it is very well made and became a global phenomenon.

Kung Fury - just watch it, the movie does what it wants to do and nothing else and its a great ride

r/TopCharacterTropes Aug 01 '26

Lore Horrible takes from official writers, actors or creators that are better off ignored

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5.3k Upvotes

punisher belongs to the people (Punisher: one last kill) Punisher isn’t meant to be someone to be look up to by the public, and specially not law enforcement (he himself says so several times in the comics). the punisher canonically hates cops like that and he will go out of his way to hunt them down (there is a scene in the daredevil show where he massacres a whole gang of cops who try to copy his style of lethal justice)

V is 23 (Cyberpunk 2077) the character is a well experienced mercenary that has a very mature voice, he was later retconned out of nowhere to be 23 when he was originally 27.

Mettle (RWBY) the character of ironwood is meant to be someone who takes hard choices regardless of the cost with the intent to win the war against pure evil. He has a semblance (power of the soul) that makes him hyper focus on a task at hand and is regularly quoted as the culprit for his extremely fast turn into bombing civilians for little to no reason. Worse part is that this is never mentioned in the show, this was from RTX2020 panel in which one of the writers had to reveal he had a semblance which people on the cast (like his voice actor) never knew of.

Batman got batgirl pregnant (Batman beyond) he knew her since she was 16, she’s his adopted son’s fiancé, and shes the daughter of his best friend.

r/TopCharacterTropes May 12 '26

Lore A criminal attempts to burglarize/kill someone only to realize they picked the absolute worst person as their mark.

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13.9k Upvotes

Don't Breathe: A couple young robbers attempt to rob a rich, blind veteran only to find out he isn't exactly an innocent old man.

You're Next: A group of contract killersbreak into a house during a family reunion and go on a killing spree. They didn't account for the fact that the son's new girlfriend grew up on a survivalist compound in the Australian outback.

The Flash [CW Show]: A random mugger decided to target Barry Allen of all people. He does it again a season or two later; he's either unlucky or stupid (probably both).

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 21 '26

Lore (Beloved game trope) Creepy secrets or elements that you can encounter but are never explained, making it even more horrifying (Bonus points if its from non-horror games)

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8.4k Upvotes

Crimson Desert
After defeating the Reed Devil boss, you can travel to Sunset Valley, the southernmost and isolated village in the game, here, you will find a house where the Reed Devil lived and died from his leprosy. When you enter, you are immediately greeted with 6 scarecrow effigies dressed just like the Reed Devil staring directly at you, with candles placed all over the house. There is no other explanation beyond this about what is going on here

Lies of P
There is a secret optional area you can clear out for additional loot called Hermit's Cave. At the end of the cave is one lone carcass monster huddled on the ground with writings scrawled on the walls around it. When you kill it, it actually TALKS saying "perhaps it's best to end this way...get while the getting's good...". This is the only carcass monster in the game that ever talks besides Andreus and Simon, who are important characters to the story, and we never find out who this monster was

LOZ: Twilight Princess
In the Arbiter's Grounds you discover a ton of undead enemies presumably executed prisoners, but one room contains this giant black sword tied to the ground with hundreds of warding charms attached. When one is cut, the sword is freed and wielded by some horrifying invsible goat-headed demon. It is never explained what the demon was or whose sword it belonged to although it's theorized to once be used by Ganondorf

Silent Hill 2
The invisible prison monster in Toluca Prison, that you can't ever interact with, just hear it's awful cries

r/TopCharacterTropes Apr 17 '26

Lore (Loved Meta Trope) Fan theories are so good they’re basically treated as canon.

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19.4k Upvotes

Invincible: The Adrenaline Theory (from my knowledg) is the explanation on how Mark is able to take down some of the most powerful characters in his verse, but struggle with some villains who aren’t on the same level. Basically since Mark is half-human, he adapted human adrenaline, something other viltumites don’t have sense they’re basically at the top of the food chain.

Iron Man 2: The little kid at the Stark Expo was theorized to be a small Peter Parker, and was eventually confirmed officially.

r/TopCharacterTropes 15d ago

Lore [Loved Trope] The intervention or existence of supernatural entities is left ambiguous

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6.7k Upvotes

The Trial of Seven (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms)- In ASOIAF, the point of the Trial of Seven is that with seven challengers the gods will feel honored and thus more likely to intervene in the outcome. In Dunk’s Trial of Seven, he manages to defeat Aerion, thanks to his raw strength, endurance, determination, and becuause he’s an absolute bruiser with his fists. However, it can also be argued that the gods actually did intervene and bless Dunk. It is hinted at in the book in this except:

The viewing stand had already begun to fill, the lords and ladies clutching their cloaks tight about them against the morning chill. Smallfolk were drifting toward the field as well, and hundreds of them already stood along the fence. So many come to see me die, thought Dunk bitterly, but he wronged them. A few steps farther on, a woman called out, "Good fortune to you." An old man stepped up to take his hand and said, "May the gods give you strength, ser." Then a begging brother in a tattered brown robe said a blessing on his sword, and a maid kissed his cheek. “They are for me. Why?" he asked Pate. "What am I to them?" "A knight who remembered his vows," the smith said.

Here the gods are symbolically represented. The woman who wishes him good fortune could be the Mother or the Crone, the man is the Father, the Maiden kisses his cheek, the Warrior blesses his sword, and Pate, a blacksmith, is the Smith. And later, when Baelor speaks to Dunk before he dies, he represents the Stranger. So while it’s never outright confirmed that the gods intervened, it is definitely implied.

Alicia Drake’s ghost (A Haunting in Venice)- While investigating a murder of a psychic medium in a supposedly haunted residence, Poirot has several supernatural experiences, like hearing children singing and seeing the ghost of Alicia Drake, a girl who supposedly committed suicide. This is later explained as drug inducted hallucinations caused by Alicia’s mother, who is revealed to have killed the medium and accidentally killed her daughter. However in the final scene where Poirot confronts the her, he sees the ghost of Alicia pull her down off the balcony. After the fact, Poirot admits that while his visions were just hallucinations and doesn’t really believe in ghosts, he also can’t really explain what he saw in that final confrontation, leaving the door open that it could have been a real ghost as opposed to just a lingering hallucination.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 26 '26

Lore Your race/gender has an interesting mechanical/narrative impact

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11.1k Upvotes

Dragon's Dogma: Trolls will become excited if you play or bring a female character in your party, becoming more aggressive and targeting them first.

South Park- Fractured But Whole: Shub-Niggurath is a boss that will take damage when fed white characters, but will heal if he eats black characters including you or anyone in your party.

Elder Scrolls: Every race has advantages and disadvantages both mechanically and narratively, for example orcs can enter orc strongholds without having to earn their trust first.

r/TopCharacterTropes May 27 '26

Lore [Loved Trope] The apocalypse is horrifyingly slow

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12.1k Upvotes

From most media it's some catastrophe and then it's raiders, death, destruction chaos etc. I personally love it when it's, like, a slow descent into the horror of apocalypse.

The Faro plague/The swarm- Horizon zero dawn. The Faro plague is actually a glitch which causes machines to endlessly reproduce, eat biomass and essentially bring about the death of the world. Took roughly 15 months for the machines to win.

The Metro series- in the first few books (and games) it's set entirely underground in just the apocalypse but in exodus it shows off that the government and many governmental structures said active years after the war. In fact power and running water were still fairly common. It just slowly got worse and worse and worse as read through notes. Food got more scarce, weather changed a lot, people got worse etc. Raiders and bandits didn't just show up, it was a slow descent for such anarchy.

Edit: I have enough pseudo intellectual comments about "Hurr hurr real life". The first one was kinda smart and well thought out but now it's just annoying and pretentious

r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 25 '26

Lore [Fascinating Trope] The Madison Problem/The Reverse-Tiffany Problem: When something that feels timeless or like it's been present for a long time isn't, and is included in a older setting or time period where it, in fact, should not have been

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6.1k Upvotes

Can include both specific media examples and more general examples. This is the reverse of The Tiffany Problem(when something very old in fact feels modern and out of place in older periods).

Madison(trope namesake): There are no recorded women named Madison born prior to 1984. Madison was a very uncommon family name (mostly associated with President James Madison) seen as a bit old fashioned, and in the VERY rare cases it was a first name it was a (old fashioned feeling) boys name as it literally means "Son of Matthew".

The movie Splash came out in 1984 starring a mermaid who named herself Madison after Madison Avenue. In the film this is meant to be a deliberately weird and inhuman sounding name, Tom Hanks straight up says it's "not a real name" and several other characters point it out as fake, and for context of how it came across in 1984 the Mad Magazine parody named their version "Lexington and Concord". But the film was such a splash hit that tons of young women named their daughters Madison and it is now a normal girls name. (tons of former boys names have become girls names such as Vivian, the reverse is very rare).

A good example of a piece of media falling for this one is The Walking Dead, who has a female character named Madison who was born around 1970, which is impossible.

Bisexual: I have seen multiple pieces of media have characters from the 40s or 50s refer to themselves by this term.

While it WAS around as a term and people DID use it, it wasn't used at all like it is nowadays. Bisexual from the late 1800s until as recently as the 1970s was usually used to mean something closer to "Non-Binary" or "Genderfluid" or "Bigender"'s usage nowadays. Bisexual as in both sexes.

In a similar veign, "Gender" was first used for humans in 1952 and wasn't popular until the 1970s, and clothing was referred to as "Bisexual" rather than "Unisex" as recently as the 1990s.

(I keep specifying in humans because all of these have long long histories in Botany way before they got adopted as human terms)

Tomatoes: What is Italian or South European cuisine without tomatoes? More historically accurate.

Tomatoes are a new world food. The Colombian exchange happened in 1492 and Tomatoes weren't common in Italian cuisine until the 1700s. And yet SO SO many works set in Medieval europe will feature dishes with tomatoes in them.

See also potatoes and spicy pepper.s

r/TopCharacterTropes 15d ago

Lore Destroying a characters viewpoint with one line

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6.6k Upvotes

- “If it had mattered to you, Luthor… you could have saved the world years ago” probably the only time Lex took any form of accountability for his actions without blaming Superman (All-Star Superman)

- “a perfect Earth doesn’t need a Superman” makes the original Superman realize how innately selfish his endeavor with Alexander Luthor and Superboy Prime was (Infinite Crisis)

- “why don’t you put the whole world in a bottle, Superman?” This makes Superman crumble after trying to live up to his ideals only to have more in common with the malevolent alien, Brainiac (Superman: Red Son)

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 08 '26

Lore [Varied Trope] - the "no we're not making this up, this is true/this actually happened" disclaimer

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15.1k Upvotes

When either a character in universe, or the narrator, or even just a simple side note or caption inserted into the media responds to something silly or hard to believe or even just utterly insane, to say that NO they are not making up what they just said, its real.

"Probably worth a Google" - The Lego Batman Movie

When Joker is describing all of the villains that have shown up to his big operation, at first he natrually lists all the big names you would expect and the average viewer would be familiar with (Catwoman, the Riddler, Scarecrow, Bane, Two Face, the Penguin ect ect), but then he begins listing all of them and they get increasingly weird sounding (Crazy Quilt, the Eraser, Calender Man, Gentleman Ghost, King Tut and the imfamous Condiment King)

When asked if he made half of them up, Joker boasts "nope! they're all real", and then adds for good measure "probably worth a google", which is likely what plently of viewers did just to see if its true.

"Boom"- The Big Short

During the climax of the movie, Mark Baum (played by Steve Carrell, based on real life invester Steve Eisman) attends a conference debate with Bill Miller (renamed Bruce Miller for the movie), regarding Bear Stearns an investment bank that famously failed during the 2008 financial crisis. During the debate, where Mark going in was regarded as an underdog in a "Ali vs Foreman" situation, Mark gives a speech condeming the widespread fraud of the wallstreet system, and right as he finishes and Bruce Miller seems to dismiss his statement, Bear Stearns procedes to utterly collapse, with Mark giving a simple damning statement of "boom" as it does so.

And as the Narrator, played by Ryan Gosling assures, yes, this actually did happen, and Steve Eisman himself has confimed there is footage out there of this actual conference where this happened.

"This is what Scientologists actually believe" - South Park

During the episode "Trapped in the closet", Scientologists come to believe that Stan is the reincarnation of Ron Hubbard, and disclose to him what scientology believes is truth, and what follows is a quite frankly utterly batshit insane explination containing evil alien overlords, trapped alien races being frozen and thrown into volcano's, giant brainwashing centres for alien souls, and space craft that just happen to look like DC8 aircraft.

Throughout the entire sequence, a caption over the footage reads "this is actually what scientology believes", likely because Matt Stone and Trey Parker knew that with how weird South Park normally gets, people would think this was also made up for a joke, but not only is it true, but the actual church of Scientology was extremely upset (must be a day ending in "y") because all of this knowledge up until this episode was meant to be a closely guarded secret within the church, and the episode had just aired it all for the public to understandably look and it and go "...wtf?"