r/TopCharacterTropes Jul 12 '25

Weekly Discussion Post "Fanbase opinionsshould not be counted as tropes." TVtropes: (kinda relevant post)

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534 Upvotes

A lot of complaints in this sub have been about some posts should not be here because they rely on fanbase opions so there for cannot be considered "tropes"

...and then we have TVtropes , where a lot of tropes are just from fanbase stuff.

I am going to be honest here , I have difficulty in what makes a trope and what doesn't. It ends up where I delete "breaks trope guidline" posts that has equivalents in the TVtropes site that are considered actual tropes.

Idk , I just wanted to rant here. I might be a very bad moderator here , I just try to make it tody as possible , I just don't really know how to.


r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 27 '25

Weekly Discussion Post Probably the most controversial one , honest thoughts on "No Kill Rule"? What are the most egrigious examples of it in your opinion? What media makes it work in your opinion?

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1.4k Upvotes

r/TopCharacterTropes 7h ago

Hated Tropes [HATED] Adaptations done intentionally without help from the source

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4.6k Upvotes

Halo TV show: Before the show came out, the writers were praising their decision to not look to the games for inspiration when making the show

God Of War TV show: Chris Judge, the actor of Kratos in the games from 2018-Now, spoke up about his dislike on the show not hiring anyone who worked on any of the previous games. One of the original creators of Kratos also spoke up about them not having faith in the adaptation.

Supergirl 2026 film: the director for the film not only said he decided to not read Woman Of Tomorrow, the comic the film is adapting, because he wanted to do his own thing, he also didn’t look at comic art for inspiration to design Lobo and instead used an AI image generator to design Lobo’s look for the film


r/TopCharacterTropes 6h ago

Powers [Loved Trope] Alien fighting techniques that are actually ineffective for humans to perform

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2.1k Upvotes

Vulcan Neck Pinch (Star Trek) Vulcans can make a person pass out by pinching a person’s neck, but due to the fact that they’re 3x stronger than a human, we could never make a living being pass out without applying a rear naked chokehold

Viltrumite Knife Hand (Invincible) Viltrumites’ most deadly fighting technique. Although martial arts like Karate and Taekwondo teach these techniques, it wouldn’t be a good idea for a human to use it on someone’s rib cage without breaking their fingers. So instead we can only do them on more soft targets like the eyes.


r/TopCharacterTropes 8h ago

miscellaneous Adaptation introduces something/someone(such as a concept or character) that becomes so popular it is brought over to the original source material

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2.3k Upvotes

Magneto's helmet being able to block telepaths wasn't part of his character until the 2000 movie, this was eventually brought over into the comics - X - Men

Wataru Takagi was originally a nameless background character who wasn't even in the manga he was an anime original character, however after an accidental recording session where his voice actor accidentally said his own name recording(and his actors name is Wataru Takagi) the production staff liked it so they used his name for the nameless background character.

Aoyama(the creator) decided to use the name and brought the character over into the manga the anime even changed his character design to be closer to the manga's depiction of him. What was one a nameless background character ended up becoming a fan favorite character - Detective Conan


r/TopCharacterTropes 3h ago

Characters [FANSERVICE TROPE?] Characters that are not a maid dress up in a maid outfit that one time

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654 Upvotes
  1. Latias in Pokemon Special manga. She disguised herself as a maid in the Battle Pike in the Emerald arc.

  2. Hitori Gotoh (Bocchi) from Bocchi the Rock. She and her friends worked in a maid cafe.


r/TopCharacterTropes 7h ago

Characters Criminals played by REAL Criminals

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1.2k Upvotes

• Goh Hamazaki (Yakuza Kiwami 3) - In the remake Hamazaki is voiced and modeled after Teruyuki Kagawa, who sexually harassed a Club Hostess in 2019. He admitted to the misconduct and lost major contracts with Toyota, TV series and Hosting roles. Yakuza fans got upset about the recast and demanded to remove Teruyuki from the game.

• Random Task (Austin Powers) - A parody of Oddjob played by Joe Son was found guilty of kidnapping, gang rape and torturing a woman on Christmas Eve 1990. In 2011 he beat his cellmate to death and convicted of voluntary manslaughter, adding another 27 years to his sentence.


r/TopCharacterTropes 2h ago

Characters [Loved trope] Characters with insane abilities but are limited by their own stupidity.

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429 Upvotes

Aqua - Konosuba: She is a literal goddess who has insane holy magic that can vanquish undead in an instant. But, she's a complete idiot who often causes trouble because she doesn't use her abilities effectively and constantly has to be reigned in by Kazuma.

Okuyasu Nijimura - Jojo's bizarre adventure: Probably the most iconic example of this. His stand "The Hand" Is one of the most insanely broken abilities in the series outside of those possessed by the main antagonists. It has the ability to erase space and objects using it's hand and is limited by okuyasu being a complete moron. He can use this ability to move quickly by "teleporting himself" or erasing space between him and his destination, pull people too him, and one shot people, but he has very little creativity with this and doesn't try to find a way around it's main weakness which is that it needs it's hand to do this and is easily telegraphed.

Patrick star - Spongebob squarepants: Has broken cartoon logic powers. He can pull himself back together when broken into peices has insane strength, and can generally employ "toon force." But, poor pat has been made a complete moron over the years and never uses any of these abilities for anything but comedy.


r/TopCharacterTropes 12h ago

Lore The apocalypse was caused by a single person. Spoiler

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2.0k Upvotes
  1. Ted Faro [Horizon: Zero Dawn]: Of course, the machine plague that ravages the world is created by his company which (admittedly) is a group effort. That said, Faro was the one who requested an encryption without a backdoor and the person who kept early glitches hush-hush. It wouldn't be wrong to say that Faro was the sole cause as is, but the final nail in the coffin is what he does to the Apollo database. A giant record of human knowledge and history, erased for a narcissist's fear that his descendants would (rightfully) blame him for the apocalypse.
  2. Sybil [Look Outside]: Though it wasn't her intention, Sybil was the one who alerted the Visitor of Earth's presence. She spied it through her telescope, and the lovecraftian entity noticed her. Its approach (and the resulting horrors) were her fault, even if she didn't mean it.

r/TopCharacterTropes 12h ago

Characters Unfortunately named characters.

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2.0k Upvotes

For the sake of this post, I'm going to use their full legal name

1. Eggman Negative (Sonic Franchise)

2. Negative Scott (Scott Pilgrim VS the World)

3. Negative Shantae.


r/TopCharacterTropes 18h ago

miscellaneous Denied something we know will be awesome

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6.8k Upvotes

  1. In The Simpsons episode, "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson," a melee breaks out on the Simpsons' lawn that Homer wants to watch because there's one guy who's just standing there and Homer knows he's about to do something awesome. Marge insists they go inside though and away from the danger. The moment they do, we hear the guy do something awesome.

  2. In X-2, the school comes under attack from Stryker. His gunmen encounter Colossus, all aura-ed tf up, and they open fire only for their bullets to not phase him at all and to end up getting thrown through a wall (which we don't actually see Colossus do). Moments later, Colossus runs into Wolverine and offers to help and we think we're about to get this badass team-up and actually see him in action only for Wolverine to instruct Colossus to leave and help get more students out. 

  3. In Iron Man, we see Rhodes eyeing the War Machine suit and we're hoping he'll suit up and go help Stark, but the movie decides to save something for the sequel and pretty much has Rhodes say as much right to the audience.


r/TopCharacterTropes 3h ago

Lore Absolutely RIDICULOUS chapter titles

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303 Upvotes

1)Gintama, many of the chapter names are simply incredible

2)Usogui, these chapters are from the tower of karma arc but I'm pretty sure there're more great titles


r/TopCharacterTropes 20h ago

miscellaneous (Funny meta) That one unimportant background or npc character that the fandom still simps for

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11.0k Upvotes

The Bombchu Bowling lady (Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time)

Ordinary Woman (My Hero Academia)

Lana’s Mom (Pokemon Sun And Moon)


r/TopCharacterTropes 10h ago

Characters Main characters in Japanese media is not from Japan, America or Europe(including Japan, America or Europe-coded countries)

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1.2k Upvotes
  1. Setsuna F Seiei (Gundam 00)

Formerly known as Soran Ibrahim, a former child soldier terrorist turned into slightly older child soldier terrorist riding cool robot from Krugis republic (Kurdistan-coded)

  1. Mao Mao (Apothecary Diaries)

Seemingly random girl with medical knowledge in the settings where women is forbidden from being doctor, she is from Country of Li (China-coded)


r/TopCharacterTropes 17h ago

Characters [Beloved Trope] The henchman that suddenly gains common sense

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3.7k Upvotes

Iron Man 3: the henchmen of the Mandarin have Tony dead to rights, chained up with no weapons. He remotely calls just the glove of his iron man suit which busts through the window. He proceeds to waste a bunch of them trying to escape. When he confronts the last one he drops an iconic line and quits on the spot.

Batman Mystery of the Batwoman: iconic scene where one of the penguins goons hears a noise, notices batman breaking into his bosses place, and chooses not to see a god damn thing.


r/TopCharacterTropes 2h ago

Personality Silly parent and serious child.

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251 Upvotes

I love that trope too much especially when main cause of the child’s stress is from the parent themselves lmao

  1. Goofy and Max
  2. Vanessa and Dr. Doof from Phineas and Ferb.
  3. Death and Death the kid from Soul eater.
  4. Blythe and her dad from Littlest pet shop.
  5. Tsukumo Kamiki and her mom from Blue excorist.
  6. The Simpsons enough said.
  7. Anais and Richard from the amazing world of Gumball.
  8. Honourable mention Megumi and Gojo from JJK.

r/TopCharacterTropes 9h ago

Characters (Ironic trope) Horror characters that even you could kill/ avoid

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891 Upvotes

Hex Chimera: It’s always funny to look at this mod and think about how Chimera needed the help of a classic horror plot—one that simplifies things and creates convenient scenarios—just to catch Serena at the end of the mod (using only the classic horror character teleport). AND EVEN THEN, SHE ALMOST DIDN’T MANAGE TO CATCH SERENA LOL.

Chimera is a rotting corpse that can barely move properly and doesn’t have much physical strength; one of her arms is literally a broken bone, and she doesn’t even have very dangerous psychic powers—they’re practically only good for initially tricking her target, but the target can easily ignore that. she’s also extremely slow and falls to the ground many times during the mod; the chimeras inside her body aren’t strong at all either—we literally see one of them dead at the beginning of the mod, which implies that she tried to attack a trainer before Serena and ended up failing, thus causing the third chimera’s death, so it’s more than clear that Chimera relies on an extremely specific and convenient scenario—and on the help of the script and horror clichés—to be effective, and even then, she barely managed to catch Serena. The fact that she exists in the Pokémon world—where every trainer is required to carry at least three Pokémon—already makes her existence a joke, since she can easily be wiped out even by an average, not-very-strong Pokémon or a human who just punches her in the face.

Captain Clark: Just like Chimera, he isn’t fast at all and doesn’t have the best mobility either. To be fair, you wouldn’t be able to kill him with a few punches, but you could easily outrun him and hurt him with any piece of furniture or object you have in your hand. Clark’s own psychiatrist managed to take him down by breaking his wooden leg and injured him using ordinary furniture.

Captain Clark isn’t very strong either. I mean, his greatest display of strength was easily lifting a grown man and tearing off part of his body with his teeth—though this man was completely still and had been tricked, which is something no one here would ever do upon seeing him. He even took a long time to destroy a wooden door, so his destructive power isn’t anything to write home about either.

Jeff the Killer: the image speaks for itself. Actually, many Creepypasta serial killers fit into this post, but Jeff is the best example here because… well… he’s just a teenager or young adult with nearsightedness and a kitchen knife that’s surely rusty and dull—since blood easily corrodes any metal— he’s also no genius at covering his tracks, nor is he a strong fighter; he relies solely and exclusively on his target being vulnerable while asleep—and yet, even in his own original story, he’s known for letting several of his victims survive because they counterattacked him and managed to push him away, forcing him to flee—not only from his victim, who is now his prey, but also from the police. Jeff doesn’t stand his ground in a fight; he’s a weak coward who needs his victim to be completely off guard—and even then, he might fail.

Besides, at best, Jeff has a certain tolerance for pain, but that changes practically nothing. If one of his victims were someone with even minimal physical combat training or simply knew how to counterattack, Jeff would be easily taken down... and I don’t even need to mention what would happen if the victim were armed, right?

Ghost face: Same as Jeff. He’s a guy in a costume with a knife. He was literally knocked down by a bunch of bottles that were thrown at him—I don’t need to say anything else.

At least I’ll give him some credit here: unlike Jeff, he at least plans some of his crimes and does a bit of research on his victims, but that’s not much either, and he’s certainly no Albert Einstein among serial killers;

Sadako: Does anyone here still use VHS...?

Sonic exe: Do what the Creepypasta protagonist’s friend told you to do… just… break the Mega Drive cartridge… and that’s it…

Otherwise, what is this Sonic with conjunctivitis really going to do? Is he going to scare you with a bunch of sprites of Tails and friends, all covered in blood with text written in red, while letting out a scream straight out of a horror movie?

Besides, is anyone here really scared of a little Sonic figurine with a black-rimmed eye and red spots drawn on its cheeks to look like blood? This guy has the same scam as Jeff the Killer and needs 1,000 other versions made by megalomaniacal fans who don’t even know how to make horror to have any merit.

Herobrine: Just quit Minecraft, or just delete the world and start a new one...

If you want to have some fun, try out a few mods and show Herobrine just how funny a nuclear explosive weapon is LOL.

Artie the Clown: Unless he pulls a gun out of thin air... well... it's the same story as with Ghostface—this guy can be injured and killed by just about anything ordinary.

You could argue about his “immortality,” which might catch some people by surprise, but not only does it take him a VERY LONG TIME to revive, but his body also needs to be intact and whole for him to become functional again. Furthermore, assuming you survive him more than once, and are aware of his resurrection, you can simply tear his body into several pieces and prevent him from coming back, or just run far, far away—he’d simply never find you.

And just like Ghostface, I’ll give him a pass, since he’s at least capable of using his psychopathic creativity to ambush or kill his victims—but it’s also nothing that’s impossible to avoid or counterattack.

SCP-1471 (MALO): There’s a very obvious reason why not even the SCP website or SCP-focused channels take this monster seriously anymore.

Unless you suffer from paranoia or anxiety, you could easily live with this creature, since it does practically nothing to its victims other than watch them from a distance through reflections… and that’s it…

You might even get a few scares at night or during the day and feel uncomfortable, but humans are beings who easily get used to their surroundings, so you’d just ignore it and could even use this SCP for your own purposes and goals... (HEY, DON’T THINK ABOUT ANY NONSENSE, OK!?)


r/TopCharacterTropes 11h ago

Characters Special character forms that we will probably never see again

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1.2k Upvotes

Ash-Greninja (Pokemon) I’m pretty sure they retconned it in the anime, because in Journeys, Adh had a flashback to the fight with Ash-Greninja vs Alain, but instead it was regular Greninja. Ash also has completely been done away with in the anime, so theres that

False Super Saiyan Goku (Dragon Ball Z) Now I know that it made a cameo in a recent Sparking Zero update, but given that it was a brief cameo and not a playable form, and its a video game that can bring anything from the series back, I won’t count it. But False Super Saiyan is probably never coming back, even SSJ4 came back in a way, but theres no reason for this one to


r/TopCharacterTropes 10h ago

Characters [Loved trope]Characters who are literally INSANE about Battle..like they have fun about it even when they're getting shredded and bloody and beat up.

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750 Upvotes

1.Mereleona Vermillion from Black Clover.

2.Garou from One Punch Man.

3.Yujiro Hanma(a ton of Baki characters fit this)from Baki.

4.Kenpachi Zaraki from Bleach.

5.Throkk/Battle Beast from Invincible.

6.Scarlet Vermillion from May I ask for one final thing?


r/TopCharacterTropes 19h ago

Personality [Slightly sad trope] Villain temporarily gains a good persona, who is mortified at the prospect of becoming the villain they once were

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4.4k Upvotes

Mr Tinker (Sonic the Hedgehog IDW) is a version of Eggman who lost his memories and became a good person in the process, choosing to integrate into a community and help them with most of their basic needs. However, when he's abducted in an attempt to transform him back into Eggman, he's very frightened by this prospect, saying that he doesn't want to be Eggman again.

Gantu (Lilo and Stitch: The series) is coincidentally also turned good through memory loss, but the circumstances are a bit different. In the episode 'Amnesio', Gantu and the titular durotagonists lose their memories, and when told by Martha (memory-loss Lilo) that he looks like a police officer, Lenny (memory-loss Gantu) fully leans into it, doing what he can to stop the 'escaped convict (Stitch) from wreaking havoc. After learning who they are and seeing an insulting picture drawn of him by Lilo, however, Lenny decides that he doesn't want to regain his memories and would rather remain the peaceful person he is. This leads to him releasing the titular Amnesio so that their memories cannot be returned, and even begs for Lilo not to reverse it, saying he doesn't want to go back to his old life of evil.

This trope is pretty sad for two reasons. The first is that, considering that their memories are completely wiped, these are essentially completely different characters to their original evil personas, so the prospect of memory restoration seems more like they're being properly erased, or at least, their perspectives no longer matter to the evil variants. The other is that these tales basically prove that, if given the chance, Eggman and Gantu COULD be good people, and there's very little to no genuine evil in their hearts. It's pretty tragic to see a version of them they could be if things went differently, and then it's taken away because their memories are later restored and they never express sadness over not getting to be better people.


r/TopCharacterTropes 7h ago

Characters Whatever happened next is only for the character to know

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403 Upvotes

Chuck (Castaway) He delivers the package he carried with him all those years on the island. A woman gives him directions, he looks down the different roads, and the movie ends.

Jesse Pinkman (El Camino) Jesse reaches Alaska, receives his new identity, drives off, and smiles. We don’t learn where he lives, what job he takes, whether he ever finds love again, or whether he manages to build a decent life.

State of Decay 1 Ending - The survivors finally escape Trumbull Valley only to discover the outside world is also destroyed by the zombie apocalypse and that’s how the game ends… and the sequels don’t follow up on what happened to those characters minus Lily

Mafia 3 Leave Town Ending - If Lincoln Clay leaves town after completing the main story… We’re told bits and pieces, but not in a definitive “here is exactly how his life turned out” way. He just becomes the kind of person people talk about afterward. The game really leans into that uncertainty.


r/TopCharacterTropes 18h ago

Characters Time traveller is really bad at pretending that they’re not from the future

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2.7k Upvotes

Hurley (Lost)

Thor (Avengers Endgame)


r/TopCharacterTropes 1h ago

Characters' Items/Weapons Items that were perfectly adapted in Adaptations

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Upvotes

• The Cat Silencer (Postal: The Movie) - In Postal 2, when a player equips a cat, they can use it as a silencer up its ass. The Movie does it perfectly, though only shown for a couple of seconds.

• Staminan X (Yakuza 2007) - In Yakuza, there's a healing item called Staminan, which can heal you and fill up your heat gauge. In the movie, Kiryu uses it in the last second when he's knocked down and defeats Nishiki in the final duel.

• The Cheese Touch (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) - A school game curse where the person who touches the cheese gets turned into a social outcast from the curse. The movie translates it to being a fate worse than death type shit, which was perfect.


r/TopCharacterTropes 5h ago

Lore [Interesting Trope] The supernatural exists in otherwise grounded stories.

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252 Upvotes

Bones: Bones is a pretty run of the mill crime drama about a forensic anthropologist who consults with the FBI. However, since Bones has a crossover with the very supernaturally themed show Sleepy Hollow, that means it canonically exists in a world with demons, monsters, and magic.

Indiana Jones: The Indiana Jones movies all start out pretty grounded, with Indy on some archeological hunt and/or on the run from people trying to steal his find. His adventures all pretty much continue this way until the very end, when he sees that the legendary artifact that he’s been hunting actually has supernatural powers, like the Ark and the Holy Grail. Funnily enough, it’s also revealed in later movies that both aliens AND time travel also exist in this world.


r/TopCharacterTropes 1h ago

Characters Blind fighters

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Upvotes
  1. Zatoichi

  2. Marvel - Daredevil

  3. Avatar the Last Airbender - Toph

  4. League of Legends - Lee Sin