Horror on TVTropes.org Table of Contents Elements of Horror Mechanisms of Horror Willing Suspension of Disbelief.......................2 Jump Scare.....................................................17 Primal Fear......................................................3 Cat Scare........................................................18 Anyone Can Die...............................................3 Creepy Basement...........................................19 Monster Delay..................................................5 Daylight Horror..............................................20 Nothing Is Scarier............................................5 Leave the Camera Running...........................21 Uncanny Valley................................................6 Gory Discretion Shot......................................21 Through the Eyes of Madness.........................8 Ultimate Evil..................................................22 Darkness Equals Death.................................10 Cruel Twist Ending........................................23 Quieter Than Silence.....................................10 Genres of Horror Mind Screw....................................................11 Horror.............................................................24 Awful Truth....................................................12 Cosmic Horror Story......................................26 Cabin Fever....................................................12 Gothic Horror.................................................28 Ocean Madness..............................................13 Religious Horror.............................................33 Space Madness...............................................13 Survival Horror..............................................34 Rule of Scary..................................................14 Body Horror....................................................36 Paranoia Fuel.................................................15 Horror Tropes.................................................37 And I Must Scream........................................17 Index of Gothic Horror Tropes.......................48 1 Willing Suspension of Disbelief An eagle-eyed viewer might be able to see the wires. A pedant might be able to see the wires. But I think if you©re looking at the wires you©re ignoring the story. If you go to a puppet show you can see the wires. But it©s about the puppets, it©s not about the string. If you go to a Punch and Judy show and you©re only watching the wires, you©re a freak. Ð Dean Learner, Garth Marenghi©s Darkplace Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet and author, called drama "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith ..." Any creative endeavor, certainly any written creative endeavor, is only successful to the extent that the audience offers this willing suspension as they read, listen, or watch. It©s part of an unspoken contract: The writer provides the reader/viewer/player with a good story, and in return, they a) accept the reality of the story as presented and accepted that characters in the fictional universe act on their own accord. An author©s work, in other words, does not have to be realistic, only believable and internally consistent (see Magic A Is Magic A). When the author pushes the audience too far, the work fails. As far as science fiction is concerned, viewers are usually willing to go along with creative explanations unless the show tries to use real science, at which point it©s fair game, though this is because Science Fiction is just that: Science FICTION. Attempting to use actual science to explain something you made up removes the story from its own fantasy universe and places it in the context of reality. That©s why people don©t criticize your wormhole travel system or how a shrinking potion doesn©t violate the laws of matter conservation. Suspension of disbelief can be broken even in science fiction when a show breaks its own established laws or places said laws outside of fiction. A common way of putting this is "You can ask an audience to believe the impossible, but not the improbable." For example, people will accept that the Grand Mage can teleport across the world, or that the spaceship has technology that makes it completely invisible without rendering its own sensors blind, but they won©t accept that the ferocious carnivore just happened to have a heart attack and die right before it attacked the main character, or that the hacker guessed his enemy©s password on the first try just by typing random letters, at least without some prior detail justifying it or one of the Rules listed below coming into play. What is in Real Life impossible just has to be made the norm in the setting and kept consistent. Most action movies push this trope almost to the breaking point; for the sake of action, the heroes can do virtually anything, given enough Phlebotinum. As always, the various Rules override nearly all other considerations. When the audience©s disbelief, which was suspended during the show, gets reinstated some time afterward, what you get is Fridge Logic. The MST3K Mantra is an exhortation to reinstate your Willing Suspension of Disbelief even if it©s been broken, because "it©s just a show". 2 Incidentally this is one of the more controversial elements of, believe it or not, Professional Wrestling, and is heavily tied to Kayfabe. Primal Fear "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." Ð H.P. Lovecraft A baby rabbit, even one that has never encountered a bird before, will still cower at the sight of a hawk©s shadow. Some fears are universal. The dark, heights, blood, enclosed spaces, snakes, spiders, psychopaths, loud sounds, pain, death, monsters, humiliation, loneliness; these fears have always been with us. They are the dangers our early ancestors faced, and their shadows still haunt our nightmares. Most people are a little nervous about such things - not many people could walk on a glass bridge over the Grand Canyon without any railings, and not feel a little anxious - and full-blown phobias are easily enough induced. Naturally, writers of Horror fiction like to exploit these. See also: Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?, Bears Are Bad News, Fangs Are Evil, Eye Scream, And I Must Scream, Enclosed Space (which isn©t necessarily this trope), Dark Is Evilnote , and a fair number of Horror Tropes. And of course, Fetish Fuel, for those of you who are Nightmare Fetishists. Anyone Can Die "Once you decide that you©re going to have the death of Spock, then how does that affect the other people? Why is it there? I got a lot of stick from a lot of people from the very beginning about the idea of killing Spock. Somebody said, ©You can©t kill him©. And I said, ©Sure you can; the only question is whether you do it well©." Ð Nicholas Meyer, Director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Most of the time when you finally grasp who the main characters of the story are, you can expect that these characters will survive through the end of the story (or at least until the last episode). Well, This Is Not That Trope. This is very common in Darker and Edgier works. When the writers want to impress you with their ruthlessness, they may trumpet that Tonight Someone Dies, then kill off a random second-stringer that nobody much cares about. They might even kill off a major character because his actor was leaving anyway, or because they needed a good cliffhanger to convince 3 people to watch the next season. That is also not this trope (although it©s pretending to be). Anyone Can Die is where no one is exempt from being killed, including pets, children, the elderly, even the main characters (maybe even the hero)! The Sacrificial Lamb is often used to establish the writer©s willingness to kill off important characters early on. To really be the Anyone Can Die trope, the work must include multiple deaths of named characters, happening at different points in the story. Bonus points if the death is unnecessary and devoid of Heroic Sacrifice. This trope is very helpful in keeping Genre Savvy fans from being Spoiled by the Format. In a kid©s show, of course Alice and Bob are going to survive the raging rapids. In a work of this type however, the danger actually becomes dangerous. War shows like Mobile Suit Gundam benefit from having a larger cast since there are so many people to kill off. The frequent deaths within a wide cast make the storyline unpredictable, forcing you to wonder who©ll be left standing once the dust settles. Still, even if all characters are allegedly up for the possibility of a dance with the reaper, the general laws of storytelling (and, more importantly, how actors are contracted) tells us that you can expect the chances of main-character death to increase as you approach the climax of an arc, the final episodes of a season, the final chapters of a book, or the final instalment of a series, even if the work averts Death Is Dramatic. A creator needs to be quite committed to the concept to kill off an important character in a completely plot-irrelevant way. Note that the character needs to be Killed Off for Real or Character Death for the trope to have the desired effect; it does not work if the writers cheat and bring back the guy later (see Not Quite Dead, Disney Death, and Climactic Battle Resurrection). As such Super Hero Comic Books as a medium have gained a reputation of "Anyone Can Die... until someone wants to use the character in a later story."