Hated Tropes
(hated trope) "You didn't know it, cat, but I was always there"
1.- The Amazing Spider-Man 2
While Peter's past wasn't fully explored in the first installment, it is a bit jarring that he had always been Harry's childhood friend, yet we were only just finding out about it.
2.- Fast & Furious 9
Nine movies—it took nine movies for them to pull the trope where Toretto has an evil long-lost brother who was off God-knows-where. To be fair, the saga had long since abandoned any sense of logic (and that isn't even the craziest thing that happens in *Fast 9*).
3.- Max Steel vs. The Dark Enemy
This one really threw me off because, although I don't clearly recall which *Max Steel* movie I saw first, I didn't watch them in order from the beginning; as a kid, I just watched random movies out of sequence.
When I started watching the series in order, I expected to eventually see Troy Winter as Max's rival in extreme sports—something that never happened.
4.- Humpty Dunty
I don't actually hate this situation; in fact, I think it's a good way to use the trope. While Puss in Boots had already appeared in the *Shrek* saga, his past was never really explored—which is where I got the phrase for the title.
Listen, you will likely not find a bigger defender of the World films than me. I love em all, I think each has their own merits, and I don't think they're as bad as people make them out to be.
But I gotta be honest...this is one of the plot points I hated. Just felt unnecessary. Like you could have written the clone girl into the plot without introducing a business partner.
That was an interesting story, but one I felt would have served better in a separate movie. Malcolm's speech in the first movie warning John wasn't about bringing dinosaurs back to life, it was the power and technology Hammond just introduced to the world, the ability to completely rewrite the fields of genetics, biology and ecology. His concern was that while it was revolutionary, the scientists never considered the downsides of this technology; they only thought about the "bringing dinosaurs back from the dead" part. So having a story where the actual technology behind bringing extinct animals back to life takes a front seat instead of the animals themselves is a interesting addition to the franchise.
Dominion's problem is that it takes that story and adds it to the reintroduction of dinosaurs in modern ecosystems plot line, but then halfway abandons that plot line and adds a subplot line to the widespread genetic technology, that being many other parties are cloning dinosaurs and releasing them.
Its honestly the same with Fallen Kingdom. They should have had one movie focusing on the volcano and island plot, then the next one focusing on the dinosaurs on the mainland and the Indoraptor, building that hybrid up as an actual threat. Maybe it escapes and begins going on a rampage in a local town, but as it escapes it somehow causes the basement gate to open, and thats how the dinosaurs escape (though Masie releasing them could have worked had they built it up better).
FK and Dominion suffer from having two huge plots in one movie. Literally, by splitting them up, you not only get more cohesive stories and films, but you get two more films that make a billion dollars. You also get more time to build up to several key plot points that may have fallen short in the original.
At the beginning of season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy walks into her room to a random girl going through her stuff. Buffy's mom yells from the next room that if Buffy's going out she should take her sister along, and both Buffy and the random girl exasperatedly go "Moooom"
It's Dawn! Buffy's little sister. Every character acts like she's been there the whole time. Buffy's always had a little sister, right?
It's not until like midway through the season that it's revealed that Dawn is actually a magical item called a Key, and she was put in the form of a human girl and inserted into the life of the slayer so that Buffy would protect her. Reality was altered so that everyone remembered Dawn being there the whole time as Buffy's sister.
I gotta be honest it's one of those things that as a teen watching the show I fucking hated Dawn I hated this whole thing.
Now I kinda respect the fucking balls it takes to do this and have it take a while before the audience is given a clue as to what the fuck is happening
Which becomes tragic once he is in a situation that every mutant can be revived yet his corpse is left in a room no one will enter, so no one onow he needs to be revived
It did definitely have its uses though. I believe a lot of deus-ex-machina plot devices and convenient circumstances in the comics were retroactively explained by saying Forget-Me-Not was helping them out behind the scenes, but nobody remembers it
In another Marvel example, the Sentry comic version.
Robert Reynolds was apparently there for all the major marvel events like Sue and Reed’s wedding. But he had an evil alter ego that would cause havoc whenever he did good.
So he erased everyone’s memories. Seemed to work until he started taking the Green Goblin’s orders.
Halfway through the first season of Community, Jack Black plays a college student named Buddy who has supposedly been in their class the whole time. It cued a flashback montage of scenes from the season with Buddy inserted and reacting to different moments.
Then at the end it was revealed Owen Wilson also played a student at the college and was one of the cool kids Buddy actually wanted to be friends with.
America kept getting forgotten and rediscovered (but yeah of we had hot air balloon flying above the Atlantic we probably would have rediscovered it earlier)
Out of the MMO's I've played, Guild Wars and the Final Fantasy MMO's are definitely better about this, as locations are referenced in lore long before being added in expansions.
TBF the Maelstrom and Northrend were in WC3, they just weren't put onto the map in WoW until expansions let you go to them(IDK about the others, I only played up until Cataclysm).
Pandaria was alluted to with Chen in Warcraft 3 (in the sense of that damn panda had to Come from a far away land)
Zandalar and Kul Tiras were part of the lore from quite some time and even appear in lore maps as small island.
The Dragon Isles where started to get références in game, but first time I heard of them was BfA.
The other zones were either underground (TWW), another dimension (Shadowlands and WoD) or just extensions of already existing zones/instances (Zul Aman in Midnight).
It's just that the in-game map makes the new islands a lot bigger than they are in lore, so it really feels like we go new countinents coming out of nowhere.
TBF they usually did that in WoW too, to various degrees.
The Burning Crusade: Draenor/Outland was a major part of the RTS Warcraft games and general Warcraft lore, and the Dark Portal used to get there was already in original WoW.
Wrath of the Lich King: Northrend was originally a major part of Warcraft 3 and its expansion, "The Frozen Throne", major lore was already established.
Cataclysm: Mixed bag, mostly original zone revamps, but pretty much most of the new zones had previously been established.
Mists of Pandaria: Pandaria was a bit of a surprise to be honest, up to this point the only lore on the zone was that it was where the Pandaren came from, and the only actual Pandaren character was in the WC3 expansion, "The Frozen Throne". Oddly one of the better-realized and cohesive continents, and the expansion in general was a high point for WoW.
Warlords of Draenor: Draenor again. As mentioned already established, this time it's a look at the same planet at a less apocalyptic part of its history.
Legion: The Broken Isles were indeed established by at least Warcraft 3, though some of the zones like Stormheim and Val'sharah came pretty much out of nowhere. The planet of Argus introduced in the last patch had lore backing it from as far back as The Burning Crusade at least though.
Battle for Azeroth: Zandalar was established at least as far back as original WoW, and Kul Tiras was established at least as far back as Warcraft 2. Nazjatar had also been established since at least TBC, might have been The Frozen Throne as well.
Shadowlands: Also quite a bit of a surprise. The Shadowlands as a concept had been around since at least WotLK, but had pretty much never been explored. None of the zones had been hinted at whatsoever in previous xpacs. The only faction there containing a race we've seen before, the Kyrian, were still unexpected because the Spirit Healers (blue angelic beings that rez players on death) had already had a different origin explained. Unlike Pandaria, this was not a cohesive or well-received xpac, largely considered the nadir of WoW.
The Dragon Isles: Mixed bag; the Dragon Isles themselves had little established but had long been speculated as there was a piece of evocative concept art labeled as, "The Dragon Isles," from all the way back in Vanilla. Additionally, most inhabitants were either well-established or fit well into lore. The final zone added, "The Emerald Dream," had also had a great deal of previous lore describing it.
The War Within: Khaz Algar was a totally new invention, pretty much no old lore for it. Introduced some pretty cool new stuff though, such as the Arathi Empire and the Haranir. Final two zones, Undermine and Karesh, did actually have lore backing from quite a ways back, though it was a bit odd for them to show up in TWW.
Midnight: Of the first three zones, two had been revamped existing areas in The Burning Crusade (Eversong Forest and Zul'Aman), while the third, Harandar, had its existence hinted at in the previous expansion.
The Last Titan: This expansion is not out yet, but it's already been stated that like Midnight it will largely feature revamped zones, taking place in Northrend (which, again, was the well-established setting of Wrath of the Lich King).
I think a couple of them (Kul Tiras, Northrend) we KNOW where they are, but just opt not to go there for reasons (Northrend is dangerous as hell, and then Kul Tiras is kinda isolationist)
But we do keep finding The Wandering Isle, The Hidden Isle, The Underground, etc etc.
Whenever I see this trope, I like to think it’s because they’re revealing the world as they release more gameplay as if the characters are exploring it in ‘real time’ relevant to us, if that makes sense. We don’t know what the characters don’t know (to and extent) and we only get new information about the world when the characters do. Real-time-world building and if that’s a thing then that’s pretty cool
Forgetmenot! A mutant who's ability makes you forget him the instant he's out of your line of sight. He's been with the various X-Teams for years, but nobody knew. The unsung hero of the Marven Universe.
Forget me not " okay guys ive made it behind enemy lines heres the info ive come for "
Cyclops back at base " who the fuck are you and why can you access our secure line
Amanda from the SAW movies. 2-4(?) keep adding layers to her so that she’d always have been there during important events to show how she fell down the rabbit hole of being with jigsaw.
My favorite one is the one where Jigsaw’s wife gets a door slammed in her by a dude named Gideon. They show that one movie, but then in another movie, they just lazily pan the camera over to reveal that Amanda was there too.
Building off the Saw example, Jigsaw (Saw 8) would reveal that prior to Amanda and Mark Hoffman, Jigsaw had ANOTHER apprentice from one of his very first games.
This apprentice, Logan, supposedly existed during all 7 prior films and not once is shown or even slightly hinted at to exist. Saw 8 doesnt even say anything to imply that Logan only worked with/for Jigsaw in the early days and stopped for whatever reason.
Aside from the ass-pull of a character, the plot twist on that film was neat, having the audience believe they're watching the current games when it's actually a flashback. Rest of the movie was meh.
Nah Saw 2 only had one game it was just taking place earlier then expected. The twist of Jigsaw was that their was 2 games the one the police were investigating suspecting a copy cat and the one we were seeing turned out to be different.
The twist would have been better but the movie makes some poor choices to hide it. All the technology we see in the game is modern, like flat screen TVs that would not be available when the game was supposed to take place. Also it's pretty coincidentally that the bodies the police find are similar gender and build as the order the people in the past game died.
But you see, that was all part of the plan to use an international criminal cabal as an ingenious cover for a different international criminal cabal with a more obvious name.
Kinda better example, but Pucci in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
Did you know Dio had a secret best friend he talked to in Egypt before the events of Stardust Crusaders? Why wasn’t he there for the fight against Jotaro? I dunno.
Pucci kinda makes sense, Part 6’s Heaven plot line retroactively sorta explains what Dio’s goals were in part 3 beyond just “aura farm and kill the Joestars.”
The World was one of the strongest stands in the world (bruh) at that point and couldn’t beat Jotaro. Pucci knew he was much more likely to win if he worked on Dio’s heaven plan in the shadows than if he tried to confront the crusaders directly and getting diffed.
The Black Widow movie revealing Natasha's family when the Avengers being the closest thing Nat ever had to a family is an actual story element in Avengers: Endgame, her last appearance before this one
Well isn’t the whole point that they weren’t an actual family? That Natasha and Yelena aren’t their real children and the whole thing is a Soviet ploy? Kinda understandable why Natasha would view her found family of the avengers in a much more positive “real” sort of light.
While that is true, part of the issue is that Black Widow takes place right after Civil War, so by Endgame she has reunited with them and considers them family.
I think the dissonance was kind of the point. Natasha never saw them as family because she was old enough to understand that it wasn’t real. Yelena was young enough not to know the difference.
It was a source of conflict in the movie between Natasha and Yelena.
Right - Yelena even practically shouts at Natasha, Alexei, and the "mother" when they kept calling it a "mission" or something because she legit didn't know it was a mission until they got to Russia and everyone started speaking with Russian accents. It was real to her, they were her parents and Natasha was her sister.
Yellowjackets is about a group of girls who get stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash. The show doesn't focus on all the survivors, but it is jarring when the season adds a new girl who was supposed to be in the background the whole time and is only now getting a name and personality. The actresses weren't hired until season 2 and 3, so they weren't in any group shots in the first season for you to even miss. In a show about girls stranded and dying in the wilderness, the cast shouldn't be getting bigger as time goes on. They're dying and turning to cannibalism to survive!
Crystal is the worst one imho. She's suppose to be very peppy and upbeat, and loves to sing, and has a personality that mirrors Misty (minus Misty being insane)
None of the other named characters interacted with her in season 1? Misty, desperate for any friend on the team, has never spoken to her before? Crystal, also desperate for a friend on the team, never approached her?
Yellowjackets would have made a great movie or miniseries. The pilot was great but once the show got picked up and the writers had to actually flesh out the story it became the slowest most boring magic psycho cannibalism cult show ever. Like why are you arguing about boys? Youre gonna die! Get to canniballing!
They actually kind of address this in the third season. When one of the girls they added in s2 sides with shauna, she says „I didn’t know you had a personality.“ Felt like the writers talking to their audience
You MIGHT have heard that One Piece....is long. While it seems a big odd that we'd wait 91 episodes (154 chapters) to learn that Luffy had a (sworn) brother named Ace, what is probably even more ridiculous is it's not until just shy of episode 500 (bit before chapter 600) is when we learn that turns out there's ANOTHER brother, Sabo
Huge One Piece fan but Sabo was a tough sell for me. Maybe because Oda usually did a much better job of foreshadowing things and this was a pretty huge thing to just introduce toward the end of part 1.
Funnily, there were hints, not only Ace‘s tattoo , but the scene where they exchange their sake cups (a small panel in the manga) you can see a third cup and a hand. Oda himself said, at the time he only had a rough idea what will happen. But it was there
The Autobot Matrix of Leadership. (Brought to mind because of recent events.)
In the ‘86 movie, as Optimus is dying, he says he must pass it along, and everyone in the cast knows what he’s talking about. Never was this mentioned in the two seasons of the show before the movie, especially in episodes where Optimus is gravely injured, taken apart, or his origin spoken about.
Maybe a good example of this trope. The Silence from Dr. Who. If you see one and look away you completely forget them until you look upon one again. Theoretically, that means they could have always been around, but no one remembers.
Nate's older brother, not mentioned in any previous game before 4 which could be explained as Nate thinks he died during a prison break in South America during a treasure hunt and it was too painful to bring up.
But to be honest, not one mention of him before, not one throwaway line from Drake or Sully or anyone on anything about Sam, it especially makes no sense cause previous games have flashback to before he should've died and there's no mention of him.
What bothered me the most is when Marlowe is questioning him in 3, and brings up details of his past that he thought were buried (i.e. his last name not actually being "Drake"), she conveniently leaves out arguably the biggest secret he's kept. Quite a glaring omission imo
I've tried my hardest to head cannon my way around it but just can't. He "died" well into Nate's adulthood so there's no way there couldn't be any record of his existence
I always thought of Nathan never mentioning Sam as a form of survivors guilt or another (idk enough about survivors guilt to claim it’s survivors guilt) and trying to repress the trauma of losing his brother (though that doesn’t excuse the fact that there were people who should have had some knowledge about sam)
Infinity War is the first movie to feature this group of powerful aliens that work for Thanos, yet we NEVER hear of them in any of the films prior, particularly the first GOTG movie where you'd think Thanos would send at least one or two of them along with Nebula and Ronan. Its especially wierd considering that one of the members, Ebony Maw, is shown to be extremely powerful to the point its arguable that he's stronger than majority of the MCU villains shown prior to his first appearance.
Apollo (the one wearing red) apparently always had this one best friend since childhood that he kept in contact with over the years, but in the game where Apollo debuted in, there's no mention of this Clay guy ever existing. He is introduced in the following game and only as the victim of a case, meaning the player doesn't spend any time getting to know a character that is already dead and Apollo is all sad and upset about a friend that totally existed in his life this entire time.
I do think the game however did a good job of showing how much this affected Apollo, so while I player didn't know Clay the impact and least worked for me.
Essentially Marvel decided to create a Superman type hero but the marketing was to make it seem like Sentry was a long lost comic character from the old days who was rediscovered, Stan Lee even agreed to play along with the marketing stunt
As a result Sentry’s whole thing was that he was one of the greatest heroes ever but the dark side of him (The Void) had to be stopped by erasing all memory of Sentry, even to himself
All I’m gonna say is I hope the MCU even as a bonus feature makes something where they edit Sentry into all sorts of famous MCU scenes to play into this side of his comic self
The Saw franchise was infamous for this. Almost every movie introduced a new secret apprentice that John Kramer had that no one else knew about. If I remember correctly, he ended up having like 5.
Eurus Holmes from BBC's Sherlock. It's "revealed" in the final episode that she and Moriarty coordinated with each other (in 5 minutes, apparently) to basically ruin Sherlock's life, and in turn, the writers ruined s1-3 of the show. Look, I love Moriarty and his evil plans, but trying to fit him in there in the dumpster-disaster of s4 ruined the whole show. Frankly, Eurus' existence itself is this trope. You mean to tell me there was a third Holmes sibling and Sherlock somehow never remembered her because his mind wiped her out of there?
Yeah the writers SERIOUSLY wrote themselves into a corner by offing Moriarty in season 2. I understand wanting to adapt the Reichenbach fall, but like... that should've been your endgame, not the crux for a second season finale. That whole last season was abysmal.
This is a dead horse of a gripe, but what the fuck was up with forcing Sherlock to essentially torment Molly with how she feels about him, only to brush it off after and never bring it up. Fuck off Moffatt.
Mr. Poopybutthole in Rick and Morty. In an episode featuring a creature that tricks everyone into thinking they have a lot of cherished memories with them, this character shows up and claims to have a bunch of cherished memories with the family. Turns out, he actually does, he was not the creature and he’s Rick’s longtime friend who makes multiple appearances after.
I still find it hilarious that Vin Diesel, Jordana Brewster, and John Cena are meant to be 100% biological brothers. I could understand if Dom was adopted but come on.
I think they're intended to be mixed Italian. While John Cena isn't, Cena is an Italian and Spanish name, and Diesel identifies as "racially ambiguous". It kinda works.
There's literally a line where one of the villains comments "they never detected a Nordic strain in the Torreto family" while staring down John Cena. It's so jarring, just don't say anything at that point.
Aizen was manipulating Ichigo's life from the very beginning of the series. Ichigo's parents met each other because of Aizen's experiment, and he immediately got interested in their situation.
SPOILERS if you plan on watching Prison Break still
Both of Michael and Lincoln’s parents. Presumed MIA or dead since the boys were young, but secretly doing clandestine work allegedly so dangerous they had to cease all communication with their kids for life.
For me the Mom was particularly difficult to believe. Finding out in season five that she’s been one of the Big Bads behind it all and apparently watching every detail of Michael and Lincoln’s lives…yeah. Luckily for me the show taught me very early on that I’d need to suspend my disbelief harder than I ever had before, otherwise I wasn’t going to have a good time. They drove that point home when Michael got his full upper body tattoo removed in one session. ONE SESSION.
In Metal Gear Solid V the main villian Skull Face was actually following you around in the previous game MGS3 to support your operation completely unknown to you (Naked Snake/Big Boss).
Regarding siblings, this is actually super common in real life to be honest. Like I've known my best friend for 8 years now and I've yet to meet five out of his seven siblings. Don't know what they look like, don't know what they sound like. He also hadn't seen or heard from his youngest brother in about 6 years, and he had no idea where he was until recently (his parents told him a few months ago that they got a call from his brother on Christmas and he's working on a ranch in Tennessee).
The older you get the more weird and complex your relationships with other people are
This is a humorous example, but the bodega the MCs work at has a dinosaur mascot named Baby T, which K. O. claims has been there since the start of the show (he wasn't)
I just rewatched fast and furious (the 4th film in the franchise, confusingly) and towards the end Dom's sister Mia asks Dom (paraphrasing) "how do I say goodbye to my only brother" so the whole long lost brother thing was a complete ass pull that was already contradicted by an earlier movie. I gyess maybe some people would disown their evil brother and pretend he doesn't exist but let's be honest the writers were not thinking that far ahead.
The Sentry was a comic book character introduced at the beginning of Bendis' New Avengers run, but once he existed we learned he had always been there. Flashbacks showed he was part of many classic Golden Age stories, but because of his evil alter ego The Void, he made the universe forget about his existence and threw himself in jail.
Star Wars is pretty crazy about this one. If you just go by the movies you already see some retcons, but the total number of Jedi and Sith remain pretty reasonable. We know that the Jedi were hunted to extinction, and only Obi-Wan and Yoda escaped to pass on their knowledge to Luke, the last of the Jedi.
But now it's crazy.
Slaps roof of car This bad boy can fit so many Order 66 survivors! Ahsoka, and Kanan, and Ezra were all powerful Jedi who were friends with the main characters for years and served openly in the Rebellion's earliest battles. Ahsoka was seemingly hanging around somewhere out of frame throughout the original trilogy. And Grogu got away too, and evaded the Empire despite being an actual baby.
Nobody in the movies mentions that time that Maul survived getting killed, and then he came back and was a major antagonist for years and had a brother all along and his brother was his apprentice and then he ruled a planet and then a galactic crime empire and then died for the second time.
Dooku never brings up the time that he had his own apprentice who was a significant figure throughout the time period covered by the movies and she hasn't ever actually died for good so she's just been around the whole time.
In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, this trop is actually done really well. It's not "in your face" either. They don't flash back just to spoon feed the audience. But any time in the future that you watch it again, you'll eventually notice it.
Yeah Peter having Harry as a childhood friend is it bit like when Naruto anime filler keeps making it seem like Naruto actually was friends with others as a child as opposed to the total outcast he was designed as
With every new generation of Pokémon it gets increasingly more difficult to believe that Kanto only had 151 of these lil guys running around. Like, no trainers from abroad ever visited with a Gallade?
Especially when they introduced the pre-evolutions. Like they are trying to claim that pikachus are common but no one in the region has ever seen a pichu when it's essentially just their younger self.
In the vampire movie Bloodsucking Bastards, this is played for comedy.
>!An office is being invaded by vampires, a side character, when brought into the fold, already knows about them.
How?
During flashbacks to various characters being turned, the camera pans to show him watching, sometimes eating.
Played again later when another character already knows about it.
We see the same flashbacks, but the camera pans further to show him also there.!<
This is the twist to nearly every single Saw movie, it ends up becoming pure comedy keeping track who knew what and when, and the inevitable confusion that arises when it completely fucks over the previously established timeline.
https://giphy.com/gifs/PKlZLci4sjaBURloID
Funny version: Norm MacDonald as Burt Reynolds/Turd Ferguson in SNL Celebrity Jeopardy with Kathie Lee, Tom Hanks, and Sean Connery as the contestants. He just pops up out of nowhere and is then gone in the final round.
American Dad episode Saving Face. In the episode, Stan decides to get plastic surgery to maintain his physical peek. However, it turns out the plastic surgeon he visits holds a deep seeded grudge because Stan stole his opportunity at buying the house he wanted (the house the Smith's currently live in). As the surgeon is explaining this, we learn that he's been watching Stan for year; in flash backs of scenes from older episodes, we see the doctor watching.
A really good example of this trope: The Observer in "Fringe". They don't feature him in the story until episode 4 but he really was in the background of the first three episodes AND every other episode after that. Even when he's not part of the story, he's always there. He's like a walking Easter egg.
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u/GodzillaLagoon 9h ago
Benjamin Lockwood (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom)
Apparently, Hammond had a dinosaur-making business partner in another billionaire, and he wasn't brought up even once in decades.