![]() This is a trope about tropes only, and the presence of a Forgotten Trope in a work is not in and of itself a trope. Note: Please don't list this as a trope on a work page. Under the right circumstances, a Forgotten Trope can return to the collective meme pool and become a Resurrected Trope. When a trope is forgotten but its parody isn't, it's the "Weird Al" Effect. Many tropes evolved this way, and while their ancestors went extinct, the fossils remain.įorgotten tropes are almost always some of The Oldest Ones in the Book, except that they've fallen out of the book entirely. For example, the "Invasion Genre" of the 19th century, pitting a helpless Britain against an uber-powerful France or Germany, began to lose popularity in the aftermath of World War II, the beginning of the Cold War, the supremacy of nuclear weapons and the rise of the new "it" genre, Sci Fi so French and German wunderweapons and wundertactics were replaced by Soviet wunderweapons and wundertactics, or even green-skinned men from Mars and their flying saucers. Often, these tropes were a sign of the times, and as the times moved on so did the tropes, morphing to fit the current standard. For example, in Alice in Wonderland, Carroll's poem about the "little crocodile" parodies Isaac Watts's saccharine original about the "little busy bee"-an example of a whole class of Victorian poems that children were taught in order to instill virtue. The best place to find Forgotten Tropes is in "classic" works there you will see them, frozen like insects in amber. They may, on very, very rare occasions, show up in a modern series, but generally only those that are emulating a series that did have these. ![]() ![]() Note that these aren't actually forgotten, Future Imperfect-style, otherwise would we even be talking about them here? Academics will know all about them, and a few minutes with a web search engine will turn up plenty, if you know what to look for. You won't find this in any current series they have disappeared from the writer's toolbox. These are the tropes that are one step beyond Dead Horse Tropes not only are they not used straight, they're not used at all. ![]()
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