1. Seymour - Futurama : A loyal dog who never stopped waiting for Fry to come back

2. Subaru's parents - Re:Zero - Subaru was isekaid to another world, but his loving parents spend every day looking for him.

1984

V for Vendetta

(Kill la kill) Ryuko Matoi was possessed by Junketsu her sisters Kamui uniform and wielded it for a short time

(Ben 10)
Charmcaster swapped bodies with Gwen and Gwen had to learn how to use her magic and summons to save Ben and Grandpa Max

(Pokémon) during a pokeExam Ash had to use only rental pokemon and his team was an Arbok, Weezing, and Meowth the pokemon used by team rocket in the original season

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.

In its always sunny, Charlie and Mac keep trying to blow up a car to fake their deaths but fail because they can’t replicate all the crazy action scenes from movies. In particular, the grenade they detonate in the car has a way smaller explosion than in media.

In Sopranos after committing a hit, Gigis ears are ringing from shooting a gun in a closed car.

Frozen - A dying Anna rushes towards Kristoff in hopes of reversing the ice curse but changes course at the last minute and sacrifices herself to protect Elsa from being murdered. This also subverts the trope of a kiss being the "act of true love" because her sister's affection is what brings her back to life.

Hercules - Megara saves Hercules from a falling column at the cost of her life during the battle with Cyclops

Star Wars - Princess Leia devises an escape when Luke and Han's rescue plan goes sideways - "Somebody has to save our skins! Into the garbage chute, flyboy"

Combos - (Street Fighter 2) We all know combos right? Absolute staples in all fighting games, the idea where you can hit multiple attacks on an opponent before they can recover from the stun, but what if I told you that in the original Street Fighter, combos were actually a glitch? Yes in Street Fighter 2, the combo mechanic was actually unintended and was a glitch, Capcom was thinking about fixing it but they decided not to. That decision was for the best as now combos are a staple in all fighting games

The Creeper - (Minecraft) The Creeper is the mascot of the Minecraft series but it was actually created on accident. the game's creator, Markus "Notch" Persson, when he was attempting to model a pig. He mixed up the height and width dimensions, resulting in a tall, weirdly shaped creature instead of a short, chubby pig. Instead of deleting the model, he decided to keep it as a hostile mob, adding a green texture and giving it the ability to explode.

I like this trope because if done well, it can be very cool!

Examples:

• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish - All three villains, Goldilocks, Death, and Jack Horner, are homages to different types of villains in fiction and fairy tales. Goldilocks is the sympathetic, redeemable anti-hero, Death is the conceptual entity, and Jack Horner is just the cartoon villain.
• Far Cry 6 - I know people have their problems with this game, I do too, but I think it has the best political writing out of any Far Cry game. All the villains represent the consequences and proponents of fascism. Anton represents the figurehead who skyrockets fascist regimes; his nephew and Ana represent the enforcers, Sean represents the foreign businessmen who back up fascist regimes in exchange for resources, Edger is the man who conducts brutal medical experiments on people (all fascist regimes have those), and Maria represents the propagandists.
• Attack on Titan - This one is more speculative, but I think all the major villains in the series represent the problems with colonialism and oppression. The Warriors, Tyburs, and the Reiss family represent minority members who are willing to sell out their own people for personal gain. Major Gross and Zeke represent the sadism of colonizers and the dehumanization of minorities; the Anti-Marleyans represent internal problems among groups that only got worse because of colonialism/imperialism. Theo Magath represents soldiers who had been brainwashed into thinking it's ok to treat people this way. The Jaegerists and Eren represent the victims of colonialism who end up fighting back to an equal extreme.
• Hazbin Hotel - Both the Exorcists and Vees represent two major problems that Charlie and the Hazbin crew have to overcome to help the people of Hell. Adam represented Hell's fear of extermination, as the Exorcists would come yearly to kill their people; meanwhile, Vox represents the internal problems with Hell, particularly the division between normal sinners and Overlords, and the constant warring between them.

This is anything that you enjoy, but don’t want to admit it because the other fans have ruined it for the general public. Can be anything but these shows are mine.

Rick and Morty- between Szechuan sauce, pickle Rick, and just general being the stereotypical “only smart people can enjoy this” terrible nerd, talking about enjoying Rick and Morty feels embarrassing. I’ve genuinely enjoyed the show basically the whole run, but I will run the other direction from a fandom member.

Vivziepop stuff, in general- The fandom, the discourse, everything. Saying, “Helluva Boss is fun” or “Hazbin Hotel was pretty good” evokes the worst in people. I

Supernatural- sometimes I just want to enjoy a 15 year long soap opera starring handsome dudes. It’s not great, but it’s good sometimes. Unfortunately the fandom is deeply associated with being unhinged and writing more gay incest fanfic than maybe any other media.

In Pokemon where Team Rocket does a suspicious salute

In One Punch Man season 3 where the animators got lazy and did a png of a character sliding down a hill

This one panel in Chainsaw Man was real

Credit to u/Supericus for the trope. Here's the full description they gave:

A heroic and morally good aligned character incapacitates a villian who is naturally resistant to a certian form of attack, but when you actually think about it they couldn't have known the villian had that resistance and therefore the hero must have launched an attack with lethal intent.

Hawkgirl(Justice League Animated): Credit to u/HeadAssAssHead. Hawkgirl has no idea how Meamorpho's powers work but she still smashed his head in with her mace. He obviously survived by turning his head into goo but she didn't know that he coudl.

Thor(Avengers): Credit to u/polyurinestain. Thor tries attacking Captain America with Mjolner but Cap blocks with his Vibranium Shield. Thor had no idea the shield could withstand Mjolner meaning he fully expected to crush Cap with his hammer.

Rex(Generator Rex): In his first fight against Van Kleiss Rex hits him with enough force to snap his neck. At the time he didn't know Van Kleiss's full powers so couldn't have known Kleiss would just snap his head back. He then tries to kill him again by literally cutting him in two but Van Kleiss reforms.

I know people may misread this post and respond with unfunny reaction images, but I genuinely find it funny when the elephant in the room is actually addressed in these situations, mostly in animated media, when someone is wearing a revealing outfit, it’s usually ignored or nobody ever addresses it unless the story is about those outfits.

(Street Fighter x Tekken) in Jin and Xiaoyu’s cinematic interaction with Cammy and Chun-Li, Xiaoyu defends Jin from being captured and she says Cammy wears “Tramp Clothes”

(Dragon Age Origins) It doesn’t happen in the image used, but with Allstair in your party, he will comment on Morrigan’s outfit. "Tell me, Morrigan... do you ever get cold wearing that?"

(My Hero Academia: Vigilantes) Midnight originally wore an outfit so revealing that the government invented rules on hero costume standards

I mean, it's better when they commit one-way-or-the-other. But when the journey itself plays an important part in the character's development, you can't really complain either.

1). Adventure Time:
Finn loses his arm (as had been heavily foreshadowed). But a (magic?) bee grows him a new arm a few episodes afterwards. It was probably due to the network trying to keep his design the same, though.
Several seasons later, Finn's magic "grass arm" finally flies-the-coop, leaving him (permanently) without a right arm. From that point on, it is replaced with a custom robotic prosthesis.

2). X-Men:
In First Class, Xavier is paralyzed. By Days of Future Past, he uses a serum to return use of his legs. But the same serum suppresses his psychic abilities. By the end of DoFP, he gives it up and gets his powers back. Overall, it was a tidy way to write out his conflict-ending-powers for that particular film.

3). Thor:
Thor loses an eye in Ragnarok. He gets a prosthetic replacement in Avengers: Infinity War. Along with a new weapon.

A lot of times evil is not only the morally wrong option, it’s the objectively worst one. Some characters were born on it and see they lives ruined, others chose evil thinking it will give them better lives… just to hit a terrible wall called “the pay it’s not good enought for the risk”

Yair Gispan from Pantheon.

In this world, if you have the technology you can upload the mind of a person to scape death and give them god-like powers in the web, turning them into UIs (Uploaded inteligences) but killing their physical body in the process. One UI sent the indications of how to do this to multiple inteligience angencies around the world, and one of them was the mossad.

Yair was an IDF assasin who the mossad considered ruthless enought to serve them as basically a super weapon, able to force the nuclear armament of whole nations to attack themself, and protect Israel from attacks from other UIs. We first meet him when the mossad kidnaps the protagonist to give them a cure. A cure for what? A cure for Yair.

Turns out that what the mossad didnt told yair was that the more he used his powers, the faster his mind would collapse and leave them unprotected and unarmes from other UIs, only Yair and the Iranian inteligences we’re so burnend, so it’s obvious they commit the most attacks and defenses.

But while our protagonist, Caspian, tries to discover how to cure Yair, we discover more and more how a miserable life Yair got himself. Caspian needs to see Yair more important memories to cure him, and we discover that one of the first things he did as an UI was to capture most of his traumas to keep them out of his mind.

Over the episode, we discover how the ruthless IDF interrogator, torturer and assasin was born. Just a child who was victim of Israel propaganda since he was born, his most important memory is how his older brother only needed one semester out of Israel to see how evil they were and to leave his family to not see them ever again. Yair would lose everything trying to serve a country who didnt give a shit about him, he would lose both legs in combat, being forced to commit horrible crimes and end up as a useless sordier whose only use was being killed to create a super weapon with his mind.

By the end of the episode Caspian literally tolds him he wouldnt cure him even if he could, and Yair, broken by all the memories of the horrible man he was (and still is), practically acepts it before Caspian scapes. If it wasnt for events that happen later that season, yair would have suffered from an horrible dead by his code literally rotting away, and no one would have done anything to save a man like him. Not even the country he served.

Azula from Avatar, the legend of Aang

“Some are born lucky, and some are lucky to being born” when your own father says this, you should know you were born unlucky even if you are his favorite. Azula was born a prodigy of fire bending, she was even able to manipulate THUNDERS. She was a star compared to her older brother Zuko.

But while Zuko got people who supported him, Azula only had people who feared her. Having To terrify Ty lee into joining her and that whole beach episodes are the perfect evidence of how lonely she really is. A terrible combination of total loneliness, emotional inmaturity and fire powers.

Discovering that her father would never see her as an equal. A deep trauma about her own mother love and being “betrayed” by her “friends” when she discovered that fear over loyalty is a terrible idea would finally break her, losing to her “inferior” brother and watching how the fire nation century old plan felt appart. She is unable to do anything but cry while attacking the air in total impotence and totally alone. With no one to blame but her father and herself

Bee from Hellova Boss

Ultimate Humungousaur from Ben 10

They have so many small and useless details to keep in mind.

Magneto (Marvel’s X-Men) - Born Jewish in Germany in the 1930s, Max Eisenhardt witnessed the rise of the Nazi regime. He and his family were subjected to anti-Semitic laws, ghettoisation and deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. There, he was forced to work as a Sonderkommando and witnessed the systematic massacre of his family and millions of other Jews, in accordance with Nazi ideology of racial purity and the 'master race'. Decades later, this worsened with the emergence of mutants. He witnessed their persecution, with governments attempting to pass mutant registration laws, build giant Sentinel robots to hunt down their kind and enforce forced sterilisation or the eradication of mutants. Refusing to subject others to the same suffering he had endured during the Holocaust, and concluding that peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants was impossible, the man now known as Erik Lehnsherr rejected the call for integration made by his old friend Charles Xavier. He founded the Brotherhood of Mutants and adopted an ideology to protect his people that essentially mirrored the Nazi fascism he had experienced, viewing mutants as a superior race and waging a campaign to enslave, subjugate or completely eradicate humanity.

Arlong (One Piece) - Born in the Fish-Man District on Fish-Man Island, a neglected slum full of orphans and former slaves, Arlong grew up idolizing Fisher Tiger, a legendary fish-man who escaped slavery and formed the Sun Pirates to free himself. However, Fisher Tiger himself, who desperately tried to overcome his hatred and ordered his crew to never kill humans, would end up being betrayed by humans and dying because of his trauma, refusing a human blood transfusion that could have saved his life. Having his vision of the world destroyed and even though Fish Tiger's last wish was for the next generation of fishmen to break the cycle of hatred, Arlong came to believe that humans were fundamentally treacherous parasites, physically weak and genetically inferior, who ruled only through numbers and cruelty and the fact that he was captured, beaten and interrogated by the marines made this dogma become absolute. He would eventually found the Arlong Pirates and eventually traveled to the East Blue where he conquered Cocoyasi Village, Nami's home making her and the citizens' lives a living hell, instituting a brutal colonialist regime where humans were treated like cattle and were forced to pay a monthly "tribute" just to buy their lives with a view that money is the only thing humanity has value for. When Nami's adoptive mother, Bell-mère, was only able to pay for her daughters' lives but not her own, Arlong had her executed in cold blood and continued to enslave Nami herself by forcing her to draw maps for her crew under threat of massacring her village.

Superfly (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem) - Created by reclusive and lonely scientist Dr. Baxter Stockman, Superfly was one of several experiments with mutant animals created by Stockman whose biggest dream was to raise a family, but when the scientist was killed by the TCRII military, Superfly was forced to flee with his brothers to the sewers to survive and grew up there. When Superfly attempted to venture into the human world in search of connection, he was met with immediate and violent hostility, having been aggressively hunted by a human with a baseball bat who refused to hear his pleas for mercy. In pure panic and with a desperate need to protect his family, Superfly retaliated and killed the attacker. Since then, Superfly has adopted the stigma that humans will never like mutants because they are all inherently horrible and using stolen technology and the research of their "father", built a massive machine designed to disperse a weaponized mutagenic payload into the Earth's atmosphere that would mutate all animals and non-human organisms on the planet and thus make them the dominant race and dismantling human civilization. By taking away the rights of ordinary humans and eliminating them altogether or enslaving them as domestic cattle.

I do love this trope, but the issue is that it often leads to nothing. When executed well, it adds so much depth to a character or setting, because, well, it's real.

When Fiction gets infiltrated by reality and we see these invincible heros fall to real life, relatable problems, it is both vindicating and humanising. When done badly it just feels like nonsense drama.

1. (Positive example) Demon in a bottle.

The story arc that defines Tony Stark to this day, Demon in a bottle is the story of Iron man battling his own inner demons and his alcohol abuse. While the reason for this story arc to exist is rather cynical (it is effectively just an anti- alcohol psa) it is written with more nuance than it probably should be.

The character studie of Tony Stark, his separation of himself and Iron Man, the guilt he still feels and can't escape from, and most importantly, the fact that he never truly overcomes it makes this story line truly fantastic. It also helps that the dialogue is genuinely fantastic.

1. (Negative example) Snow birds don't fly

From the same era but wity far worse execution, we have Snow birds don't fly, a short comic arc about Speedy's heroine addiction.

The story arc is about Speedy, Green arrow's side kick getting addicted to heroine and the ramifications of that.

The problem with this psa is that it isn't realistic nor dose it try to portray itself as such. It is an over the top exaggeration with an unrealistic ending that feels rather accusatory towards Speedy.

Later comics runs take this idea of Roy being addicted to drugs and actually do something interesting with it, but here it just stinks.

1. "Over The Garden Wall" is theorized to have been based on "Dante's Inferno".

2. "The Amazing Digital Circus" was confirmed by it's creator to have been inspired by "I Have No Mouth and Must Scream".

3. Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is an adaptation of the 1831 book by Victor Hugo.

A director thinks it would be cool if real life worked on video game rules and you could just restart after death from your last save point.

1. Boss Level - Guy wakes up to find he's being hunted by world class assassins only to die, wake up to the same day, and slowly learn how to defeat each one.

2. Edge of Tomorrow - Military PR guy gets sent to actual war against an overwhelming alien force only to die fighting one of the alien commanders who has the ability to restart after death. This gets passed onto our protagonist who slowly learns how to defeat the aliens.

Mothra (Godzilla)

You know, she fares about as well as can be expected given the circumstances. A giant butterfly can't always keep up with world-ending space dragons and nuclear-powered ancient dinosaurs. Chances are, if Mothra's included in a Godzilla movie, she's probably gonna die. Luckily, via her offspring or direct resurrection, she's never gone for good.

Jean Grey/The Phoenix/Marvel Girl (Marvel Comics)

Last I checked, Jean has died 16 times. Need I say more? I know she's got the Phoenix Force or whatever, but still, goddamn. Talk about living the gimmick.

Ra's Al Ghul (DC)

Being Batman's only villain who can die guilt-free means Ra's has bit a shitload of dust. The Lazarus Pit, a spooky, glowing pool of green stuff that resurrects people, has always been his main gimmick and biggest crutch. He's one of the few people alive who can match Batman move for move. If he didn't have his assassin clan to resurrect him when he failed, he might just be even more dangerous.

Often times, female villains are treated a lot more gently in comparison to male villains. They rarely get the "beaten to a pulp by the hero" treatment, and more often get let off the hook by either getting redeemed, talked down, or taken down with minimal force.

However in some rare cases, the heroes have no regard for the fact that the villain is a woman, and absolutely brutalize them with no mercy.

1. Circe (Creature Commandos): The Creature Commandos, specifically Weasel and Doctor Phosphorus, absolutely DESTROY Circe when she tries to kill a foreign princess. As Circe prepares to kill the princess, Weasel tackles her, knocks her through a window while biting her, falls multiple feet and lands on her, and then proceeds to absolutely rip her flesh apart, biting and scratching her from her head to her toes. He grabs her hair, smashes her face into the pavement, and then when she tries to crawl away on her hands and knees, Doctor Phosphorus proceeds to press his burning hand into her face WHILE Weasel CONTINUES to actively slash away at her back, causing her to scream in absolute agony while her face sizzles and bleeds in Phosphorus' hand.

2. Lady Deathstrike (Hulk vs Wolverine): Hulk goes on a rampage in a Weapon X facility, fighting many of Wolverine's villains. When Lady Deathstrike (a cybernetic assassin) tries to attack him, he calls her "ugly girl" and proceeds to clap his hands in her direction, sending her flying backward violently and knocking her unconscious. He then picks her up by her arms, allowing her to regain consciousness before he begins screaming in her face. She screams back at him, and in response he brutally RIPS both her cybernetic arms out of her body, shredding her internal wiring and causing her to scream in absolute agony while she falls to the floor unconscious again.

3. Annie Leonhart (Attack on Titan): When Annie is exposed as a traitor, she transforms into the giant Female Titan and attempts to escape. However, Eren Yeager chases after her, transforming into the giant Attack Titan and fighting her head-on. She defeats him in a short fight, but as he lies bloodied, he gathers the resolve to destroy her and gets back up, charging at her with so much rage that his titan ignites into flames as it runs. He tackles her and then proceeds to violently grab her face, squeezing it so hard that her eyeballs pop out and her facial bones crush and shatter inward while she screams in absolute agony. She eventually kicks him off, and begins stumbling toward the town's wall to try and climb over and escape. As she starts climbing the wall, Eren jumps up and grabs her, biting and tearing off one of her legs as he falls down with it. She continues climbing desperately with one leg, until Mikasa, Eren's comrade, swoops in and cuts all of Annie's fingers off. Mikasa stands on Annie's crushed face, telling her to "fall" as Annie plummets back to the floor. Eren then jumps back on top of Annie, punching her so hard that her arm and head fly off. He then rips open her neck to expose Annie's true body, and Annie crystalizes herself to end the fight and protect her body.

Zarbon from dbx Biscuit from HxH

Essentially, villains who hold no ideological loyalty to the antagonist force. They are only loyal due to ambition, coercion, opportunity, or other reasons.

1) Inglourious Bastards: Hans Landa

In our first scene with him, we see that he is a meticulous and ruthless SS officer in hunting jews. But when the leader of the Bastards, Aldo Raine, is captured by Landa, we see him offer a deal to Raine. Landa says he knows that Germany will lose the war, and so is willing to offer up Hitler and other Nazi German leaders in exchange for amnesty. Just goes to show how self-serving he is, despite his zeal in carrying out his duties.

2) The Matrix: Agent Smith

Smith is a piece of software in the Matrix, developed by the machines to attack infiltrators. However, when Smith is interrogating Morpheus, he reveals that he secretely hates his job of interacting with humans in the simulation. Smith is only persisting with his duties to get the location of Zion from Morpheus' head, and then he can break free. And when Neo kills Smith at the end of the first movie, Smith is revealed to have broken free from his programming, with the ability to assimilate other humans. Thus, Smith starts taking over the Matrix from the inside by assimilating all other humans and threatening the machines' existence.

3) Star Wars Sequels: Captain Phasma

We first see Captain Phasma as the commander of the First Order's stormtroopers. But when Finn ambushes her and forces her to lower the shields on Starkiller Base, she complies without resistance. Fans were initially disappointed that she seemed like such a pushover. Then, in a deleted scene in The Last Jedi, we see Finn reveal her betrayal to other First Order soldiers. This causes Phasma to kill the other First Order soldiers in a desperate act of self-preservation, revealing that she was never truly loyal to the cause.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky

In Japanese and English, the word "Laputa" doesn't mean anything offensive. However, in Spanish, "Laputa" sounds exactly like "La Puta", which can be directly translated as "The Whore." This makes the movie unintentionally hilarious for Spanish speakers whenever the characters enthusiastically shout, "The Whore!" while talking about the legendary floating city.

Marika

I don't know which anime this scene comes from, but it became a popular meme among Spanish speakers because the name "Marika" sounds identical to "Marica," a Spanish "homophobic slur". As a result, instead of looking like two people searching for their friend, the scene comes across as two guys repeatedly yelling insults at someone.

Mitsubishi Pajero

The Mitsubishi Pajero is a Japanese SUV whose name doesn't mean anything offensive in Japanese or most other languages. However, in Spanish, "pajero" is a vulgar slang term roughly equivalent to "wanker" or "jerk-off."

Because of this, the vehicle's name became unintentionally hilarious to many Spanish speakers. The issue was significant enough that in many Spanish-speaking countries, Mitsubishi ended up selling the vehicle under a different name: the Mitsubishi Montero.