Ruben’s death (Minecraft Story Mode)
Fernando’s death (Fat Albert)

The aliens got our look and language down. But if you know ahead of time, they're not "authentically terrible" enough to blend in. So, humans start using racism as a shibboleth.

1). Key and Peele:
Two survivors make their way through the wreckage of a city. They realize the aliens are impersonating our appearance accurately, but not our behavior.

2). Lanterns:
Hal Jordan interrogates a potential alien in a town outside of Abin Sur's crash site. He notices that the man knows an awful lot about human culture, but not about the "controversies" being discussed in 2016.

3). Pluribus:
It's obvious who is and isn't infected with an alien hive mind. Because the infected are all nice, generous people.

Kyoshi's extreme longevity (The Last Airbender): In episode 4 of ATLA, it's mentioned that Avatar Kyoshi had been born 400 years ago, but when you do the math you realize the writers only went with a big number without thinking too much about it. Aang was 112 due to having been frozen in ice, and Roku lived for 70 years. That meant that Kyoshi had to have lived for over 200 years.

Rather than retconning this, the novel The Rise of Kyoshi explained that she had learned a technique to achieve immortality from a man called Lao Ge, who was over 4000 years old himself. They even worked this into Kyoshi's ruthless reputation, as the longer she lived, the more expendable a single human life looked to her, meaning she was more willing to sacrifice people for the greater good. She also lived long enough that she started to see the long term negative effects of her own actions as Avatar earlier in life. While it is unknown how she died, most fans believe that she eventually realized living so long was interfering with her duty as the Avatar so she decided to voluntarely stop using the technique and pass away at 230 years old.

Rick's survival (The Walking Dead): At the beginning of the story, Rick wakes up after being in a coma for a bit over a month to find out that the world had been taken over by zombies. This is a cool premise, until you realize that a person in a coma would probably have died in this situation with nobody to take care of them.

Well, in the web miniseries The Oath, it's revealed that a doctor called Gale Macones, who worked at the hospital where Rick was, stayed behind to take care of her patients. She is gone by the time Rick wakes up, but it was her care that kept him alive.

The Death Star's huge weakness (Star Wars): Star Wars has a lot of these, but this one is probably the most well known. In A New Hope, the rebels get the Death Star plans and realize it has a huge weakness in the form of a small thermal vent that led directly to the main reactor. Later, Luke uses his X-Wing to shoot through this vent, destroying the whole space station. While this is a cool scene, one is left to wonder why the Empire would design their ultimate weapon with such a big weakness that allowed any pilot with good aim to destroy the entire thing.

In Rogue One, we find out that Galen Erso, the main engineer behind the Death Star's reactor, had been tricked into thinking he was working on a project to provide limitless energy to the citizens of the Empire. When he realized it was to power a weapon, he tried to escape but was forced to complete the project. He then decided to sneak a weakness into the design with the hope that the rebellion would be able to use it to destroy it.

Fairy oddparents Making a joke about income tax

The Amazing World of Gumball: What Are You Doing? We're the bank, we're the ones who rob!

When a show's character is known for being the biggest/baddest/most intimidating, only for the show to introduce someone who is somehow even bigger or more brutal

1. Reacher (TV Show)

Reacher, whose size and toughness is a major aspect of the show, and who frequently dispatches foes with a single punch, suddenly comes face to face with a goon (Paulie) who is almost superhuman in size and strength.

2. Brooklyn Nine Nine

Sgt. Terry is known for being a large, muscular, and strong presence around the precinct. It is only later that we are introduced to his even larger brother-in-law. who makes Terry feel small and weak (Tiny Terry). The BIL even goes as far as opening Terry's pickle jar for him.

3. Game of Thrones

The Hound, bodyguard to Prince Joffrey, is known for being big and brutal. Then we learn of his brother, known as The Mountain, who is revealed to be even more brutal and violent.

Characters who have some weird or funny trait in their design or behavior. Then, after you understand the reason why, your perspective on them changes a lot.

Skips and his way of walking — Regular Show: Skips is a yeti who always moves around by hopping, which is where his name comes from. He used to be called Walks; during high school he fell in love with a girl named Mona, and on their dates they would often take little skips while walking. When she died, he swore to honor her memory by doing little skips as he walked.

Wolverine and his yellow suit — X-Men: The reason Wolverine wears a very flashy yellow-and-blue suit instead of one with more muted colors (like when he was with Weapon X) is so that enemies focus all their attacks on him and don’t hurt his friends.

Bart and his shaved head — Vandread: Bart is the one who pilots the ship in this anime; he was a very vain and arrogant guy. One day the ship visits a planet where he befriends a little girl with a terminal illness. She makes a doll that looks a lot like him so he’ll remember her before she dies, but she passes away before she can sew on the hair. Because of that, he shaves his head and carries the doll with him to honor the memory of that girl.

MCU and The power of the stones being harmful: in the films it was established that the infinity stones immense power is hard or impossible to handle for mortal beings, with only celestials and other powerful entities able to withstand it thank to special tools like the infinity gauntlet. But even then, when together their energy is shown to overwhelm any who wields them; severely burning them and even killing them if they're not strong enough, regardless of tools. Which makes total sense, as they are physical representations of aspects of the universe itself and are supposed to grant infinite power when united, which would naturally destroy nearly everyone who tries to use them.

Invincible and Viltrumite durability: In the show during the viltrumite war, a serum made from some beetles had the ability to make viltrumites less durable, seen when Allen manged to kill one by punching right trough him. In the comics however Allen did this by himself simply using his new strength, commenting that some viltrumites were more resilient than others. The show is a much better representation, as they are supposed to be the most powerful species in the universe. And makes more sense than both Allen suddenly becoming stronger than most viltrumites after almost dying, and the supposedly strongest species having such weak members amongst the 50 that survived the virus that almost wiped them out. Their strength is supposed to be almost unobtainable, and the show made a good job showing that to beat them you either had to be in possession of the strongest weapon, be a full or half viltrumite, be a genetically designed anomaly or straight up cheat and use some random thing that affects their specific biology.

X-men and Magneto's helmet: The movies introduce an interesting and so in-universe perfect concept that it is a surprise it wasn't part of the original lore, that is the fact that Magneto's helmet serves as protection from telepathy. The helmet has been a part of magneto's design for decades and considering his history with Charles Xavier and other Mutant telepaths like Emma Frost or Jean Grey, it would be totally in character for him to obtain a method to protect himself against mental attacks. After all he is one of the most powerful mutants ever, to the point he's almost unstoppable by most physical means and telepathy is one of the few powers that pose an actual threat to him.

Sabertooth (Marvel Comics) realizing a pissed off Deadpool is not something to fight
Wendy Corduroy (Gravity Falls) seing the Shack overrun by the special forces
Domino (Deadpool 2) seeing the Juggernaught

Lesha from The Hate U Give: Lesha is the mother of Seven and boyfriend of King, a gang leader. For most of the book she’s presented as an awful person, being a bad mother and just being generally unpleasant. Near the end of the book however, when Starr, Seven, and Chris go to king’s house to save a bound and beaten DeVante from being executed by the gang, she catches them trying to to leave and instead of calling King over, she kicks them out telling Seven to take his two sisters so she “Can get her party on.” She presents it as her not wanting DeVante bleeding on her carpet and not wanting a snitch in her house but really she was just trying to save them from King which gets pointed out by DeVante to Seven when they get in the car. Later we learn she gets beaten by king so bad she gets sent to the hospital when he finds out DeVante escaped.

Danny from Beef: Danny’s the second protagonist in the show and is kind of a terrible person. He does some down right awful stuff and treats his younger brother, Paul like shit. We learn in one episode of the show that he threw out his brother’s college applications because he couldn’t stand the idea of being alone. Near the end of the series when they need to escape from Jordan’s house durring a police shootout, they get stuck behind a high wall. Danny manages to get Paul over the top but he isn’t able to climb the wall himself. Paul refuses to leave his brother behind and Danny realizing that he’ll either get caught or killed decides to confess about throwing his application letters out to get him to leave.

Hana from Tokoyo Godfathers: Hana is a trans homeless woman who’s one of protagonist in the movie. She’s the nicest character out of the trio, being the first one who wants to find the abandoned babies parents. She’s friend’s with an another homeless person named Gin who abandoned his wife and daughter after he gets into a gambling debt. She finds out about this when they end up at the hospital later in the movie and run into Gin’s daughter who happens to be a nurse. When she finds out, she tells Gin in front of his daughter and I quote “"You really are the lowest of the low! The best thing you'll ever do is die in the gutter! Oh, poor you! You'll be dead and no one'll care! All you ever do is cause people trouble - dead or alive, you're living trash! The king of trash!" Before storming off. She later reveals to Miyuki that she picked such a bitter fight with Gin to force him into standing his ground and make him look better in comparison to her in front of his daughter.

​

1 heretic

A wonderful movie starts with two missionaries visiting and older man they have one rule and it's that there needs to be a woman present, luckily "his wife is in the kitchen baking pie and will be here shortly" as they start discussing things get worse with him saying uncomfortable questions and not letting the girls leave saying how the doors lock on a timer and calling them out when they say they got a phone call and must leave now and as the missionaries find a candle labeled blueberry pie scent they finally demand to see the wife and the man says yes that's fine and then says the line that changes

"Do you still believe my wife is in the next room"

2 iron lung after being trapped in a submarine in an ocean of blood and forced to take pictures of skeletons of creatures as the skeletons move with the blood Simon demands to be let out he is taken up out of the blood (but still sealed inside) where the crew around him ignore him not listening not letting him out so he starts screaming and hitting buttons until he hits the camera button a flash goes off and panic as it's revealed that the camera is not normal

"You can't use a normal camera in blood, you need x-rays to see through"

As it dawn's on Simon they weren't Skeletons and he's about to be put back down with them

3 tadc

Caine After tramatising everyone by pretending escape was possible from the circus, tries to get everyone to go on an adventure, the gang tell him to let them have time to process the fact that they have just lost hope and any chance of escape Caine just responds with

" I see and since when were you in charge?"

The instant switch up showing how this is his world is brutal and terrifying

Characters who are clearly fanservice bait, but when you look past the attractive surface you see them as messy, chaotic, and hilariously terrible girl-failures.

The Examples

Emma Frost, The White Queen. A beautiful powerful telepath. Leader of the Hellfire Club. Sometimes ally to the X-Men, somewhat alcoholic, hilariously selfish, catty to everyone, has no idea how to be a responsible adult around her teenage students, and she sleeps like a toddler.

Faye Valentine. A sexy femme fatale, who also hates kids, animals, work, has a gambling problem, and she eats dog food.

Boa Hancock, The Pirate Queen of Amazon Lily. Who also takes her imperiousness so seriously that she literally looks down on people so hard she looks up and she'd literally punt a baby seal across the room like a football rather than take a single step to the left.

It's not that they're invisible or reflectionless (like a vampire). Instead, something about the creature prevents a clear, accurate photograph from being taken. At least under normal circumstances.

1). Nope:
"Jean Jacket" is a large, UFO-like, floating creature. If it gets close to any electronics, they immediately power off. So, only hand-cranked film can capture it.

2). Spider-Man:
After Dr. Strange's spell, Peter is retroactively obscured in all photos. According to the extended cut of No Way Home, pictures that already had Peter in them are minutely altered. For example, a bird blocks his face in all pictures from his school trip.

3). Bigfoot:
"I think bigfoot is blurry. That's the problem." - Mitch Hedberg.

Nina is from the countryside and ended up moving to Tokyo, where she met Momoka. At one point, Momoka was arguing with another band; Nina gave them the middle finger, claiming she was just saying "thanks"—and later, when they went out to dinner, she gave the middle finger again, thinking she was expressing gratitude (Girls Band Cry)

Special Week was set to race against Montjeu—who had beaten El Condor Pasa in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe—and when she asked El Condor Pasa, "Shall we have a good race?", El Condor Pasa actually told her, "The victory is mine" (the image caption is incorrect). (Uma Musume Pretty Derby)

The character has an ability, but it is not their main gist. The character might use it to support their main strength, rarely use it, or not using it at all. The idea is not that the power is useless, but take it away can the character would function pretty much the same.

examples

- Hatsume Mei(My Hero Academia)- She's a master inventor. Her quirk is zoom and she just use it to observe investor's reaction when she showcase her gadgets.
- Li Ho(The Law of Ueki)- In this series, each student has to recieve a special power from god candidate and participate in a battle-royale-esque fight. Since Li Ho is already a great martial artist, he went like "just give me a random-ass power so I can be in the contest"(he never uses it)
- Kishibe Rohan(JJBA)- Rohan uses Heaven's Door a lot, but without it, he's still a superhuman of a manga artist who can finish a 19-page manucript with ease. His Stand helps him with research, manipulating people (for fun?) and surviving from deadly situations so he can get back to his desk and draw more manga.

Bit of a mouthful to define this one properly - when the protagonists have to work with the enemy, be it going undercover or what have you, and there's someone who is very likable, making the fact they have to go down when the truth is revealed all the sadder.

1. Ace (Mad Max: Fury Road) - A highly competent leader who cares about his men, mourning their deaths, I've seen a not insignificant number of people, including myself, who really liked him and found it sad when he inevitably found out that Furiosa had turned away from Immortan Joe and had to be killed.
2. Alexi (Creature Commandos) - Leader of Pokolistan's Amethyst Knights, he's a big and friendly lug with a love of American pop-culture and a struggle with picking up on sarcasm, the Creature Commando who kills him, Doctor Phosphorus, laments after killing him that "I liked that guy!"

Joel (Last of Us): Joel starts the game as a smuggler sneaking contraband into safe zones. The opening mission involves Joel shooting up a rival's hideout to recover some guns Joel was trying to sell. The plot of the game kicks off when he's paid to smuggle a girl, Ellie, out of a safe zone. This eventually leads to Joel dragging Ellie across the country, as Ellie allegedly carries inside her blood antibodies for the cordyceps fungus.

But along the way, Joel and Ellie encounter a wounded man to tries and stop them for help. Instead of helping, Joel runs the guy over with his truck and tells Ellie the man was trying to kill them. Why? Because in the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, Joel resorted to banditry to survive, and he pulled that same stunt with innocent people. Joel's experience helped him and Ellie survive the ambush and escape.

The Braithwaits (Red Dead Redemption 2): In the second act of the game, the gang goes into a town with two feuding Antebellum families. Dutch sees these families are sitting on a pile of wealth and decides to try and scam them, by playing them against each other. He sends Arthur and other members of the gang on various missions that involve ingratiating themselves with the rival families, until they can find all their money and assets and steal them.

But these are old families with old money. The Braithwaits clock the scam artists almost immediately, because the Van der Linde gang is far from the first group of conmen to try and rob them. The Braithwaits use the gang to destroy their rivals, then punish the gang for screwing with them by kidnapping John's son Jack and selling him to a crime boss. The gang counterattacks and kills all the Braithwaits, but they never get their money and they weren't in time to rescue Jack.

Anora and the Landsmeet (Dragon Age: Origins): The final missions in Denerim require the main character, the Warden, to rescue Queen Anora from the clutches of her father, Teyrn Loghain. Afterwards, they must call the Ferelden nobility to hold what they call a Landsmeet to vote Loghain out of his position as regent of Ferelden. Anora recognizes her father has gone batshit insane, doing things like selling Ferelden elves into slavery to fund a civil war he started in the middle of an apocalypse. She is willing to work with the Warden against her father, but only if the Warden agrees to reinstall her as Queen of Ferelden.

Anora has been the Queen for years, and she built up considerable political pull during that time. She warns the Warden that she has much more experience dealing with the nobility than the Warden, and she will use that against the Warden if they don't adhere to her wishes. This can even result in her having the Warden imprisoned if they don't play her game right. If the Warden does not ally with her and openly tries to make their companion Alister King instead, Anora will use her position to turn the nobility against the Warden, and the Landsmeet will end with the nobles helping Loghain murder the Warden and Alister.

Hugo Strange (batman): the first supervillian of the cape crusader that always used a different plan. He started with a fog machine that wasn't that good, then he used a drug that turned people superstrong but mutated into violent giants (like bane) and used it to create a bat monster (like man-bat), then he used a special fear toxin (like the scarecrow), got obsessed with batman and dressed like him (lime azrael), used neurotoxic gas (like the joker), discover Batman's identity and tried to replace him (like hush). God, there's a villain in gotham that didn't make a Strange failed plan his whole gimmick?

Yuu Takeyama "Mt.lady" (My hero academia): she was originally planned as the main girl of the story. This was changed and she's simply a new heroine at the start of the story. This one is weird cause she has two characters that took things of this first draft, Uraraka had the role of main female character and Yui Kodai from clase 1-B took the design and personality.

Mini-bowser and the koopalings (super mario bros franchise): all of them used to be the children of Bowser. But after Mario Sunshine, Bowser Jr. Appeared and they are now just part of the Koopa army cause is not like people care about Lore or canon in mario games.

A situation where a plot hole becomes the reason the plot even happened.

The Martian – the heroes are forced to abandon the planet due to a powerful sandstorm that threatens to destroy the ascent module. The problem is that, due to Mars's thin atmosphere, storms on the surface of the red planet fall below the upper limit of calm on Earth. Andy Weir himself admitted that he simply couldn't come up with a different plot twist and simply used a fantastical premise.

Spider-Man: Far From Home – The film's plot would have ended rather quickly if Peter had figured out how to use E.D.I.T.H. to check Quentin Beck's file - but due to life's circumstances and some manipulation by Mysterio, Parker simply won't have the opportunity to do so, even if he wanted to.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of Black Pearl — in the first film, Elizabeth threatens to throw the medallion into the ocean, giving the pirates a mini-heart attack... despite the fact that these undead creatures can easily walk on the seabed as if they were on dry land, which they beautifully demonstrate in the climax. Of course, finding it on the seabed is almost impossible, but the pirates sensed the medallion far from the island and came straight to the governor's estate, meaning they somehow knew its location after it sent a signal. The most common explanation is that the magical sense of direction is not very accurate and they have been looking for this damn medallion for decades and it's a bit nerve-wracking...

Eurotrip — the whole plot is based on the fact that someone, having been blacklisted, didn't think to write from a different account.

An important clarification: this trope has nothing to do with the quality of the story itself, and in many cases is entirely intentional and necessary. I also apologize in advance if I have conveyed any details incorrectly.

Airfcraft/Spacecraft designed for dropping in troops and getting out fast as fuck. May or may not carry any firepower.

1. Star Wars Clone Wars Era - LAAT Gunship

2. Star Wars Galactic Civil War Era - U Wing

3. Aliens - UD-4L Cheyenne

4. Helldivers 2 - Pelican 1

1. Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The main character may have been the one to develop the drug that makes apes intelligent, but it was the executives who then fucked it all up and ignored his warnings, ultimately causing a pandemic that killed off most of humanity.
2. Jurassic Park/World franchise. In particular, in the first Jurassic World the park was actually doing OK until executives demanded a bigger dinosaur and the military demanded a more dangerous dinosaur.
3. The Hulk exists because General Ross and the US military wanted a Gamma bomb, and Ross actually rushed the process even though Banner wanted to be more cautious. And that's not the only time General Ross tried to create weapons that ended up endangering people.

I have noticed that in recent years instead of the old trope of the "mad scientists" being the bad guys who cause death and destruction due to their obsession with science, nowadays media tends to lay the blame on these disasters on the people in power who often ignore the advice of the scientists. I for one welcome this change, the "mad scientist" trope can sometimes feel like anti-intellectualism.

Clark Gable, age 59 as Gaylord Langland in the Misfits (1961)

Aaliyah, age 22, as Akasha in Queen of the Damned (2002)

Alan Rickman, age 69, as Absolem in Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass (2016)

Spoilers for Gurren Lagann, Persona 3, and Undertale.

Trope: This trope is the result of a character already being dead for any amount of time, but keeping themselves alive temporarily via a strong will to see something through.

Examples:

Nia from Gurren Lagann: Nia is the creation of the Anti Spiral, a godlike group of sentient beings that banded together to stop the spiral nemesis from destroying the universe. Once team Dai Gurren kills them Nia was supposed to disappear with them, however using the same Spiral Power that killed her she was able to stay alive for around a week, and marry the love of her life before fading away. Kamina had done this earlier in the series, but he only stayed alive for less than a day.

Kotone/Makoto from Persona 3: Both of these are the protagonists from P3. In that game you're forced to fight Nyx (representation of death itself). The player realizes that actually winning the fight is next to impossible, and uses the last of their life force to seal them away (killing them in the process). Afterwards they somehow manage to stay conscious long enough to keep the promise they made and meet everyone on the schools roof, dying in the arms of their partner. This seen almost always makes me cry.

Undyne the undying from Undertale: If the player chooses to kill everyone in Undertale Undyne will attempt to stop them from murdering a child, taking the hit in his place, and instantly killing her. Before fully disappearing she decides to stop you at any cost, forcing her body back together, breaking all of her limits, all of monster kinds limits to save everyone. She's a rare instance of a character failing to accomplish the goal they fought so hard for, ultimately dying in vain at the hands of the player.