• Main
  • Laconic
  • All Subpages
  • Create New

    A Trope Maker is the first unambiguous example of a particular trope. Though there may have been similar things in the past, these are the works that defined their respective tropes.

    See also Trope Codifier, which is the example of a trope that defines all other uses. If a Trope Codifier is very different in outlook than the Trope Maker, then the Trope Maker worked on an Unbuilt Trope.

    And, of course, don't confuse with Ur Example—the earliest example that has the essence of the trope, but may not have the actual connotations and may be missing details. However, it's the Trope Maker which starts the consistent enough pattern to be called a trope.

    To provide a concrete example of all three, the Detective Story's Trope Maker is Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin stories, and Sherlock Holmes is the Trope Codifier; but the Ur Example may well be "The Tale Of the Three Apples" in 1001 Nights (The Arabian Nights).

    Related: Trope Namer.

    If you make an entry here, expect some heavy challenges.

    Examples of Trope Maker include:

    Anime & Manga


    Comic Books


    Film

    • Sallie Gardner at a Gallop—Depending on how exactly we choose to define "film", this might be the very first, produced in 1878. Roundhay Garden Scene from 1888 would then be the oldest surviving film.
    • The Sneeze—The first thing ever to be caught on actual film (as opposed to paper, like earlier experiments were).
    • The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari -- Circus of Fear, Looks Like Cesare, Cuckoos Nest, Twist Ending.
    • Equilibrium -- Gun Kata.
    • The Maltese Falcon—Generally considered the first Film Noir.
    • It's a Wonderful Life—First example of It's a Wonderful Plot, for which it also is the Trope Namer.
    • Jaws was the first wide-release film, opening in hundreds of theaters at once instead of a gradual release with the movie travelling from town to town. As a result, it was the first Summer Blockbuster.
    • Seven Samurai—Contained a lot of film firsts, such as recruiting a group of quirky heroes to achieve a goal and introducing the main protagonist in a way unrelated to the plot. Sometimes is considered to be the first modern action movie or first modern epic movie.
    • Since You Went Away—First use of the Train Station Goodbye.
    • Toy Story (and by extension, Pixar themselves) -- Bringing the All CGI Cartoon to the big screen.
    • Scanners—Created the Psychic Nosebleed and Your Head Asplode as part of its Body Horror take on Psychic Powers.
    • Cat People -- Cat Scare. But despite the name, they used a bus.
    • Intolerance—Generally considered to be the first epic movie.
    • Birth of a Nation created the modern Hollywood movie as it stands today.
    • Godzilla -- The Tokyo Fireball was created by, and is a staple of, everybody's favorite giant radioactive lizard. He also invented kaiju and tokusatsu!
    • Bullitt -- Cowboy Cop. Unbuilt as his behavior royally screws up the case.
    • Superman—Not the first Superhero Movie by any means, but it was the first true Summer Blockbuster to feature a comic-book hero as its lead.
    • Blade Runner—Invented cyberpunk in film, along with Gibson.
    • The Great Train Robbery—The first Western.
    • Although it is difficult to determine for sure, the first entertainment on moving film appears to have been the 1895 short L'Arroseur arrose, viewable here. This is the first time in film a 'script' was used rather than simply filming everyday life like boxing matches, cock fights, or people leaving a factory after a long day of work. It's an old gag of standing on a hose to stop the water, waiting for the guy to look into the hose to find the problem, and releasing the pressure on the line to squirt the man in the face. It's film being used for the first time to tell a story.
    • Akira Kurosawa made everything we know about Chanbara.
    • Star Wars—One of first movies to utilize the Used Future in film and popularized the Space Western. Along with Jaws, it also effectively created the concept of the Summer Blockbuster.
    • 12AngryMen - Rogue Juror
    • The Kid - First film Dramedy.
    • Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs was the first full-length animated film.
    • Bringing Up Baby - Dinosaur Doggie Bone.


    Folklore

    • Various legends and folktales from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries about Countess Elizabeth Bathory provide the origins the Blood Bath myth for rejuvenating beauty and youth.


    Literature


    Live Action TV


    Music

    • Bill Monroe created bluegrass.
    • Ougenweide created Medieval Rock/Metal music by combining medieval texts and melodies with modern Rock and Hard Rock.
    • The Beatles, with almost every subgenre of rock music after them. Musicologically speaking, in this day and age, to say a certain rock band is "Beatles-like" is redundant.
      • With Richard Lester, they made the first music videos with the films A Hard Day's Night and Help! and with their promos for Rain and Paperback Writer. MTV credited Dick Lester as the father of music videos. His response was asking for a blood test.
    • The Who directly created Punk Rock, and also innovated in hard rock. Along with Led Zeppelin, made heavier rock and metal as we know it.
      • Despite there being one before it (by the same group, no less), Tommy by The Who is the first—is the rock opera. (Well, okay, The Who had done two other things before which you might call rock operas--"A Quick One, While He's Away", "Rael"—but the former was a track long and the latter two tracks so neither counts.)
      • Additionally, The Who+The Beatles=Power Pop.
    • The Yardbirds are practically a who's-who of blues-rock guitarists (at different times, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page numbered amongst their members). They popularized riff-driven songs and pioneered the use of fuzz, distortion, feedback and innovative recording techniques. And evolved into...
    • ...Music/LedZeppelin, who created heavy metal, along with Heavy Mithril, and Viking Metal.
    • Credit Prog Rock to King Crimson, Yes, Procol Harum and The Moody Blues.
    • Kraftwerk, the first band to really experiment with electronic music.
    • Black Sabbath, the first band to use detuned guitar in a metal context, although they are more of the trope codifiers, because they took disparate elements (dark lyrical themes, riff and guitar-driven music, heavy distortion, drug abuse, and tough attitude) and put them together to create what's known today as "heavy metal".
    • Iron Maiden and Judas Priest first blended hard rock with heavy metal.
    • Pink Floyd established progressive rock as psychedelic.
    • X Japan is arguably the creator of Visual Kei (or at least, the first band to collect all of its elements into one band concept and name it "Visual Kei")
    • By extension, Yoshiki Hayashi, by being the first person to name it as such, is the Trope Maker and Trope Namer of Visual Kei.
    • "The Four Seasons", by Vivaldi, was the world's first symphony, defining classical music forever.
    • Beethoven was the world's first Romantic composer. And Debussy defines the Modern movement that followed the Romantic.
    • While the biggest influences on Stoner Metal had been around for a while before the genre itself formed, Kyuss and Sleep were the first bands to actually make music in that style.
    • Even though there were some innovative music videos before they came along, Russell Mulcahy and the directing team of Godley and Creme (former bandmates in 10cc) were the Trope Makers as far as creative, groundbreaking music videos go. Back when even Michael Jackson was just doing in-studio "performance" videos, Mulcahy was shooting filmic videos on location and Godley and Creme were using innovative visual effects and creating whole stories for their videos that put the focus away from straightforward performance videos.
    • Iggy Pop & The Stooges are the Trope Makers when it comes to punk rock. While there may have been other artists before who laid the groundwork for punk, they were among the first to put all the pieces together and perform what could reliably be considered punk rock.
    • REM essentially created the Alternative Rock genre with their debut single, the original "Radio Free Europe." As noted in one biography, the single "...marked the point in time where post-punk turned into alternative rock."
    • On a more limited level The Velvet Underground more or less invented the Obligatory Bondage Song with "Venus in Furs" (on their debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico).
    • Yellow Magic Orchestra was the first Synth Pop band. While Kraftwerk was the first to do live performances of electronic music, YMO was the first to do it without playing up the instruments' novelty.
    • Lïkë Ümläüts? Thänk Blue Oyster Cult.
    • Dream Theater and Queensrÿche are generally considered the first two Progressive Metal bands.
    • My Bloody Valentine. Shoegazing. Nuff said.
    • Skream popularized dubstep with what is believed to be the first proper dubstep song called midnight request line
    • Metallica's "Kill 'em All" (specifically "Hit the Lights" the first recorded song from the album, released for the compilation album "Metal Massacre" in 1982) is usually cited as Thrash Metal's Trope Maker, but some give that honor to Venom's "Welcome to Hell," and dub Metallica the Trope Codifier.


    Newspaper Comics

    • Dick Tracy—Has been called the first Police Procedural, originator of the Death Trap and the Rogues Gallery.
    • Yellow Kid—The first modern newspaper comic, introducing modern speech balloons.


    Tabletop Games

    • Kriegspiel was the first war game, created by a German nobleman to train his generals in military strategy. The name means "wargame."
    • Dungeons & Dragons—In fact, many video game ideas ultimately came from here, as Ultima and Rogue drew heavily from D&D and went on to influence every computer/video RPG that came later.
    • Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game) was the first major horror RPG, and is the acknowledged Trope Maker of the Sanity Meter, a variation of which can be found in almost all horror RPGs that followed it (e.g. Humanity in Vampire: The Masquerade, the Madness Meters of Unknown Armies, etc, etc). As with Dungeons & Dragons, this aspect is often copied in video games as well as tabletops.
    • It's a rare collectible card game that owes nothing at all to Magic: The Gathering. It could be argued that there's no such thing, since Richard Garfield essentially invented the idea of a game with collectible pieces.


    Theatre

    • William Shakespeare—See The Zeroth Law of Trope Examples, Shout-Out/To Shakespeare.
    • Orfeo sought to revive Greek theater, in which music played an equally important role to the drama. Although it failed in this regard, it created the notion of a "drama set within music"; inventing opera and all other musical theater. Curiously, Orfeo is the name of both the Ur Example and the Trope Codifier: two separate works written by separate composers.


    Video Games


    Webcomics


    Web Original


    Western Animation

    1. ↑ Added point-n-click interface, as well as the real-time action
    2. ↑ Added unit production, ability to capture or destroy buildings and resources management
    3. ↑ From sci-fi to the historical setting, as well as deeper abilitites to manipulate the resources
    This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.