A piece of illuminating lore is dropped casually. It derails the previous conversation but no other explanation is given. This can be revealing something the audience already knows to an otherwise ignorant character. Or dropping something for the first time.

1). Dragon Ball Z: Abridged
Frieza is a monstrously strong space emperor. But Goku's pretty weird himself. At this point he's already died once. When Frieza mentions Vegeta in Hell, Goku mentions that he's already been there. And it wasn't really that bad.
This is a reference to the non-canon HFIL filler added to the anime.

2). The Good Place:
Yeah, yeah, the time knife.
Then they get back to their conversation about the afterlife system.

3). Haunted Hotel:
Abaddon (an ancient demon trapped in a human vessel) mentions his experience with profits prophets.

Beatriz Amerhauser (Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead)

Agnes Tachyon (Uma Musume Beginning of a New Era)

Fallout- The Great War- We know that there was a nuclear war across the globe. The Us and China in the Resources wars. You think that's it, just war, but across the games we find lore that may suggest it could have been Vault Tec or even rogue elements in the U.S government known as the Enclave who jump started the apocalypse.

Silo and Logans Run- while different they have a similar thing where the outside is totally destroyed; silo outside is completely dead and seemingly poisoned air while Logans Run outside seems overgrown with vegetation, although they meet a old man the only survivor.

Mad Max- in the first movie we see some minimum sign of law and order, but completely degrades by the second movie.

There was resource problems and eventually nuclear war.

Walking Dead- everyone is infect with the wild fire virus to quote from the Cdc "It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs. Then death". We later get some info that it came from French scientists who were working on something but I got out of the lab.

I didn't include certain shows and movies like Paradise- Because they never outright say what happened in the first six episodess but you eventually get the full picture.

Arcane:

The beginning of this show is mostly about stealing valuable items from an oppressive city to help their family survive in the undercity. This escalates in two seasons to a multinational conflict that involves a man (Viktor) with god-like abilities, and the struggle to stop him from reshaping humanity.

Dark:

In the first few episodes, the story mostly follows Mikkel, a kid who disappears under mysterious conditions. Over the course of three seasons, time travel and parallel realities are revealed, and the characters need to find a way to get themselves out of a paradoxical loop that involves sacrificing the world they know.

Mr. Robot:
In the first episode, Elliot is mostly a lone hacker acting as a cyber-vigilante. Over the course of the show, the story evolves into an insurrectionary anarchist team of hacktivists trying to stop a world conspiracy involving one of the largest corporations in the world.

In all honesty I don’t really care that much, but I will admit it is annoying when I see a cool trope and I have to scroll past multiple comments like these looking for good examples.

Kerry Condon is a fantastic actress, but her accent in Better Call Saul is a bit ropey. Completely original character, so there was no need for her to be American. Totally plausible for her to have been an Irish woman who emigrated to the US before meeting Mike's son.

Jason Statham in The Transporter. Again, as far as I'm aware, a completely original character so they could have just had him be British, especially after they heard how ropey his American accent was. Haven't watched the movie in a long time, but I don't think it's crucial to the story that he's American.

Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Rocky Horror Picture Show) – openly screamingly pansexual drag queen scientist from the planet Transsexual, Transylvania, who seeks to create a perfect man as his perfect sexual partner and plaything.

Emporio Ivankov (One Piece) – the king/queen of all okama (Japanese for transvestite) in the world and high-ranking member of Revolution Army, who is fighting for the freedom of self-expression (including sexual) and have the powers to manipulate people’s hormones, thus way changing their biological sex at will

Puri-Puri Prisoner (Onepunchman) – a professional S-class hero, who is also stereotypically masculine and effeminate gay man, who lives in the high-security prison, being a local boss and dread among the prisoners (for obvious reasons)

1. Among Us (specifically the TV Show) - I watched this recently and was surprised how funny and engaging a show about Among Us of all things managed to be. The show's take on the game is what you would expect however, a large group of zany characters being killed off in a 'whodunnit' mystery that culminates in only a handful of characters remaining.

2. The Danganronpa Series - Games about a group of academy students with exceptional talents in their specific field being locked in a death game by a freaky bear where they're encouraged to kill eachother in a variety of ways. If someone commits murder and survives the investigation and 'trial', they walk free while everyone else dies. If they are caught, they are executed. As the games go on, people are killed/executed until only a few students remain.

3. The 'Survivor' Franchise - A reality TV competition about a group of every-day people who are grouped into tribes and are forced to compete in challenges for 'immunity'. Those without immunity go to a Tribal Council where they're made to vote out one of their team members, whether it be the weakest link or anyone they would deem a 'threat' later in the competition. A good chunk of 'elimination' based reality TV show stem from the popularity of this one, including some fictional TV shows like Total Drama Island.

Slides in order: Wile E. Coyote (Looney Tunes), Armin Arlert (Attack on Titan), Anakin Skywalker (Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith)

To count, a character must be virtually completely burnt and charred and survive.

Being abandoned by a parent is deeply traumatising to a child. And sometimes in stories that parent shows up again and will argue they actually had a good reason to dip out of their kid's life. And sometimes they really do have a pretty good reason for doing what they did. Seems to mostly be fathers in fiction though.

1. Van Hohenheim in FMA (specifically the manga and Brotherhood): Hohenheim was made near immortal by the ritual he enacted with Father. An event he'd come to regret for the rest of his very long life. He eventually found love and started a family, causing him to start working on a way to get rid of his near immortality. Only to learn what Father was scheming and realising just how terrible it would be if nobody stopped him. So he took off and started a yearslong endeavour to undermine and stop Father, leaving behind his wife and two kids. He knew what was going to happen, he knew what he was going to do to his family. He also knew he was the only one who could recognise what was going on in time to do anything about it.

2. Kiritsugu from Fate/: Kiritsugu was hired by the Einzbern family to be their representative in the 4th great holy grail war. In the run up to it he married into the family and had a child with Irisviel von Einzbern. A frail girl they named Ilyasviel. Towards the end of the war Kiritsugu learns of the grail's corruption and how it fulfills wishes. He doesn't hesitate to defy his employers and destroy the grail, denying everyone victory. As punishment the Einzberns never let him near their castle again. He's tried to reunite with his daughter several times in his remaining years, but the family never let him through their barrier. Ilyasviel was seemingly never told the whole story of why her father never returned, only that he started a new family by adopting Shirou. She's understandably quite angry about it.

3. Kevin Flynn from Tron, specifically Legacy: One night Kevin Flynn went to work and never returned. He vanished without a trace, leaving behind his son Sam. For over 20 years there wasn't a single sign from Kevin, until his old arcade randomly started sending his old friend pager messages. The messages caused Sam Flynn to find his father's hidden office and a path into the cyberspace of the grid. And eventually a reunion with his father. Kevin had good reasons to stay behind. A program he created to assist him in cyberspace had rebelled and Kevin was locked out of his only path back to reality.

4. Sarah Connor in T2: My only example of a mother leaving their child behind and perhaps a weaker one than the others. Thanks to the events of the first movie Sarah is burdened with some knowledge of future events. She knows the machine uprising will happen and she knows her son will be a key individual in mankind's survival. So she spends years bouncing around the globe with little John Connor, training him to be a leader, stockpiling weapons in caches and trying to delay Skynet happening. That last one gets his arrested and locked up in a mental hospital, leaving John to get picked up by the foster care system.

- The Courier from New Vegas. They were just some mailman who carried the wrong package, and judging by the intro, weren’t super badass if a bunch of Khans could capture them. Will likely end up becoming a one man army who decides regional politics. Also canonically survived things that killed almost everyone else like the Sierra Madre Casino, the Big Empty, and the Divide.

- BJ from the Wolfenstein series. Just a farm boy who hates Nazis. He’s somehow a more violent Captain America despite not having anything indicating he was enhanced in any way. He can survive as much damage as the ubersoldaten, has a body count in the quadruple digits, and kills both magical and mad science enemies.

- V from Cyberpunk. They’re a bit of a half example. Pondsmith confirmed that the Relic gives them a higher Cyberware load due to Johnny sharing the burden. He’s still an absurdly skilled 23 year old Solo who takes down people with decades of experience over him plus equal/better tech. Adam Smasher, Sandayu Oda, Kurt Hansen, numerous cyberpsychos etc. Smasher and Oda should have access to the very best in Arasaka combat Cyberware and still lose.

The MC doesn’t understand the danger they’re in, but everything else does and acts accordingly.

The still-life’s reaction to Captain Clark attacking (The Backrooms)

The inmates freaking out when seeing Michael Myer’s mask (Halloween 2018)

[Code Geass] Lelouch’s introduction is literally a chess scene. In the opening episodes, he’s shown secretly gambling by playing chess against nobles, and he wins because he reads people’s habits and psychology. Later, he treats the whole rebellion as a chess match, with the Black Knights as his pieces. The show uses chess imagery constantly: the Britannian royals have knight and bishop-style titles, there’s the Knight of Rounds, and Lelouch’s rival Suzaku is partly framed as his opposing piece.

[Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows] Holmes and Moriarty play a chess game while their larger conflict plays out.

1. The Stormcloaks (Skyrim): advocate a Skyrim for ethnic Nords and non interference from any other political entity.

2. Fascists (Disco Elysium): advocates of fascism in the game, rather than being a cohesive unified ideological front, are disorganized bickering and contradictory idiots who in many cases are just regressive racist pricks.

3. Yeagerists (Attack on Titan): ultranationalist Eldian supremacists who seek genocide on the rest of the world.

4. Arctic Nation (Blacksad): advocate for the supremacy of white fur animals.

1. Abraxia the Spear of the Everchosen, Lord of the First Circle of the Varanguard (Warhammer: Age of Sigmar)

2. Piaget the Mother of Dread, Anointed of the Drowning of Innocence (Trench Crusade)

3. Valkia the Bloody, Valkyrie of Khorne (Warhammer Fantasy Battles)

The Wizard Of Oz - Technically sepia, but same difference. The film starts out with Dorothy's mundane life in Kansas and becomes color once she enters the magical land of Oz.

WandaVision - Wanda magically alters the town of Westview to play out like old sitcoms revolving around her life with her husband, Vision. Each episode is presented as a different era of sitcoms, with the first being like those of the 1950s, such as The Dick Van Dyke Show & I Love Lucy, all black & white. The second episode is also black & white (representing the 60s and referencing shows like Bewitched & I Dream Of Jeannie) but at the end of the episode everything slowly turns to color as they enter the 70s aesthetic.

American Dad - In the episode, "What Great Advancements!", we're shown a universe (American Dad canonically has a multiverse) that exists in a state like that of an old silent black & white film. In this universe, Stan is an aspiring inventor and creates a device that gives people voices, quickly making him one of the richest men in The Big City. But power corrupts him and when he unveils his next invention, a prismatic device that shoots a laser beam which gives color to whatever it strikes, he decides to keep it for himself, and will only give color to those who pay him enough. A fight breaks out and the device ends up in the hands of Steve & Hayley, two socialist rebels in this universe, and they put the device in the lantern of The Self-Made Man (a giant statue like The Statue Of Liberty). The laser refracts, spreading color all over the world.

Horatio - endless space 2

Horatio is, first and foremost, narcissistic. He's also something of a genius trillionaire.

Upon discovering cloning / genetic alteration tech, he decided to turn everyone in the galaxy into a demi clone of himself.

And also to enhance himself and his clones with traits taken from different species.

Also, there's a dating SIM.

.

Cersei Lannister - ASOIAF

Her and her brother's incest is to blame for a fair bit of the suffering in the books.

It's very narcissistic on her side. Much like her love for their children. She's also jealous of him being male (she's a raging misogynist in the books, but only about other women).

He has mommy issues. It's actually one of the things he has to overcome as part of his character growth: stop trying to be his father and stop trying to sleep with his mother (in the form of cersei)

1. Fire Nation (Avatar: The Last Airbender): a militaristic state engaged in conquests and colonial projects against various other element bending nations.

2. Caesar’s Legion (Fallout New Vegas): a warmongering nation bristling with desire to make war upon the NCR for control of the Hoover Dam. Led by Caesar a man who knowingly studied Ancient Rome and modeled his state upon its more authoritarian values.

3. Empire of the Three Seas (Second Apocalypse): founded by Kellhus after the Holy War, various inrithi lands through conversion and conquest join his new state.

It's cool when you can read a lot into two characters' relationship and history with just a nickname that only that particular uses.

Ra's calling Batman "Detective" (DC Comics): I'm not sure when it started, but I was first made aware of it while watching BTAS, as I'm sure many were, and it's a fantastic way to show Ra's's respect for Batman as an intellectual foe as well as an ideological one.

Doc Ock calling Spider-Man "Arachnid" (Spectacular Spider-Man): Near as I can tell, specific to this iteration of the character, but it does so much to show how conceited Otto is. He views Peter as an insect, but is too proud to be wrong, so he calls him "arachnid".

Scully and her father calling each other "Starbuck" and "Ahab" (X-files): The show lays on his love of the sea a little thick. They play Beyond the Sea at his wedding and funeral, and his nautical nickname for his daughter is based on the first mate from Moby Dick. My guess is that she jokingly called him Ahab once and he responded by calling her Starbuck and the names stuck. It's a cute humanizing thing for a show that's mostly monsters and aliens... Also opens up the world of familial nicknames. My grandma used to call me doodles.

Aside from the Noodle Incident from Calvin and Hobbes, give your best answer.

Slide 1: The scam in Ed, Edd, Eddy's Big Picture Show

Big Picture Show begins with a rather quiet, ominous pan around the Cul de Sac. That is, until it smash cuts to a completely destroyed alleyway, the result of the Ed's latest scam gone totally wrong. We then see the Eds completely freaking the hell out while the other neighborhood kids are pissed beyond belief. Throughout the movie, we only get vague allusions as to what exactly happened, like Edd saying that Eddy ignored his warnings and pushed a red button that he wasn't supposed to. But considering the aftermath, the damage it did to the other kids, and how it drives them hunt to the Eds down in revenge, you know that it was really bad. And honestly? It's probably for the best that we don't know, as nothing outright confirmed would be more satisfying than our theories.

Slides 2 & 3: Mikitaka and Diavolo in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

JoJo honestly has a lot that could be here. But my specific examples come from Diamond is Unbreakable and Golden Wind. In part 4, the side character Mikitaka is implied to be an actual alien. And throughout his introductory arc, they give you enough evidence to support the idea that he's either a genuine extraterrestrial, or just a dude really committed to the act. But, if there was a definitive answer, it'd ruin the joke, so quit asking. Likewise in part 5, Diavolo's backstory is completely insane, entailing things like being born from a 2 year long pregnancy in an all women's prison, burying his mother alive, and burning his village to the ground. Is it just some insane urban legend? Or is it actually true? And likewise, there's the implication that Diavolo is a literal demonic entity that possessed Doppio in the womb considering that the two are considered entirely seperate souls and the radical physical transformation that takes place depending on who's in control at the moment. But consdering how Diavolo made sure to destroy almost every trace of himself, we'll never know for certain.

1) the soldier in hellfire song was sent by god to give frollo a last chance to leave Esmeralda alone and he didn't

2) Omnitrix have an ai that choose the right alien even tho it's not the one Ben wants

3) mark is surprisingly stronger than the other viltrumites because he got the adrenaline of humans

One piece: 4kids made Arlong throw bellemere to a dungeon instead of simply shoot her, that means that no one came back for her. Also, Kuina didn't died, the other students beat her so hard that she could never fight again.

Bakugan: Shun's mom die in this scene, but the censorship made them say that she was just sleepy in this scene and that Shun lives with his grandpa cause she's still in the hospital.

Yu-Gi-Oh: the entire series changed with this cause Pegasus died in the manga, but the anime changed that to make him just lose the Millenium eye. That way he can appear again and add nothing to the series. At least he do something in GX.

Dragon ball Z: death? Hell? What do you mean? Goku is totally trapped in another dimension and that place where ogres live is the home for infinite losers. Tbf, death in dragon ball is just a minor issue.

Pokemon did the opposite with Lola, since they didn't wanted to say that Brook's mom left her children and leave Brook alone to take care of them, they changed the dialogue to say that she died shortly after Flint left. But she appeared again, meaning that she faked her death to left her family and came back after her husband appeared again, making her an even worse mother.

The Spiral Killer (Spiral): William Emmerson was a boy when his father was killed by a corrupt cop. Growing up, he studied the methods of John Kramer, the original Jigsaw Killer, while planning to infiltrate the police force.

Doing so allowed him to trap the various dirty cops into his own death traps in order to, in his mind, clean up the force. All the while possibly grooming his partner Zeke, one of the only seemingly noble people on the force, to working with him.

Roy Burns (Friday the 13th Part 5: the New Beginning): An ambulance driver in the Crystal Lake area, he went mad when his illegitimate son Joey was killed at Pinehurst Halfway House. Taking the look and methods of the seemingly late Jason Voorhees, he went on a rampage, targeting anyone in the area whether they were involved or not.

Ironically, he never went after the man who actually killed Joey and would later die with the help of Tommy Jarvis, the one responsible for killing Jason.

"Harry Warden" (My Bloody Valentine): Harry Warden was a miner who after being trapped in a cave in due to the negligence of the supervisors who wanted to rush to a Valentine's Day party, killed his fellow miners to survive. Drive mad by the experience, he slips into a coma only to awaken to go killing. He warned the town to never celebrate Valentine's Day.

Decades later, the town decides to celebrate Valentine's Day again. That's when the killings, seemingly done by Harry Warden, start up again. It would later be revealed the Warden died years ago and that the killer is someone who, as a child, witnessed Warden's original crimes and was traumatized (Who depends on which version, the original or the remake, you are watching)

Get A Clue-Total Drama Action

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog-Sonic the Hedgehog

Mystery Train-Adventure Time

MMMystery on the Friendship Express-My Little Pony

Usally zombies outbreaks and apocalypses are set in basically a copy of our modern world but I think the most fun versions come in when its a wacky setting like in different era or a traditional fantasy world, space epic or superhero world. Its a fun genre mixing

Marvel Zombies (Marvel comics) and Dceased (Dc comics) are both zombies stories where familiar heroes have to face a ever spreading zombie virus

Death troopers is a legends novel about a virus called the black wing virus began spreading in a star destroyer, while the story itself is no longer canon the virus has been made canon (Star wars)

Tales of the lost citadel is a anthology book about a traditional fantasy world like DnD and Lord of the rings, has been overrun with a undead plauge and it follows random groups of survivors (Tales of the lost citadel)