I don’t know about his case, but you can get cancer from yelling or other damage to your larynx. But I’d bet he was a smoker.
I disagree - what you’re talking about is a flawed hero. They’re a hero because they’re still trying to do good despite their own weaknesses and shortcomings. An antihero, to me, is someone who does good, not because they care, but for selfish reasons like money or revenge. Travis Bickle, for example, kills a bunch of crooks because he’s crazy and obsessed and filled with hate. That makes him an antihero.
In very general terms, it’s like this:
Does good for good reasons: hero.
Does good for bad reasons: antihero.
Does bad for good reasons: tragic hero (or anti-villain, which may not be a word).
Does bad for bad reasons: villain.
(IMHO, of course)
What was it in the ‘70s with gorilla suits, gorillas in cartoons, and chimpanzees? I never understood why that was a thing.
Can we add “lighten up Francis?” The movie came out almost 50 years ago.
To add my 2¢ worth, I’d say that an anti-hero is someone who fights bad guys (or at least worse guys) without being limited by an ethical code. Torture, oathbreaking, summary execution, looting the bad guys’ ill-gotten gains, flat-out vengeance; anything goes. The sort of person who calls classic moral heroes “Boy Scouts”. Who when told that killing the big bad will make them just like them goes ahead and does it anyway.
Or women getting menus without prices.
Or not realizing they just swallowed the hidden engagement ring.
There’s also the reluctant hero, which is similar to the flawed hero. Rick from Casablanca might actually be a better fit for reluctant hero. A reluctant hero is an everyman just trying to get by in life, who suddenly and unwillingly is thrust into the hero role. Luke Skywalker is a good example.
Anyway, back to the dead or dying tropes: one that was ubiquitous for awhile on CSI-style police procedurals is a video playback of a crime scene where the lead CSI commands 'enhance!" and something like a grainy reflection on a car bumper is magically transformed via computer into a clear image of a perp’s face. That one has been ridiculed and satirized out of existence, I think. But then, I haven’t watched too many police procedurals lately.
Something like this?
Ha, I’m feeling a strong sense of deja vu, as if I brought up the enhance thing in another recent thread and you posted that link in reply. I know I’ve seen that video very recently thanks to a link in a SDMB thread, whether or not the prompt was me and / or the video link response was you.
And
I can’t think of too many Very Special Episodes™ recently.
If the misheard-somemthing-while-eavesdropping trope isn’t dead, it should be because Three’s Company ran it into the ground.
And maybe this wasn’t a widely repeated trope, but I kind of remember some old episodes on various shows where a young couple wants to get married RIGHT NOW, so they announce they’re going to drive to Maryland because you don’t need a blood test there to get married.
The “blood test” idea is exactly the type of thing I was thinking about when starting this thread. Definitely something once extremely common that you never hear about any more.
The two current Law & Orders seem to be able to get remarkably detailed closeups from cheap security cameras.
Also have we gotten to 174 replies without mentioning the classic example of a dead trope: Showing a couple smoking in bed to indicate they had just had sex
The irony being showing smoking is nowadays as much of a taboo as showing sex
I never picked up on that! But then, I never realized Liberace or Paul Linde or Charles Nelson Reilly were, either.
TV taught me that as a kid. There was an episode of MASH with an alcoholic nurse. Of course they spent years being booze hounds but to show someone with a serious alcohol problem they needed to use a one off character. She starts hallucinating and Potter says it’s the DTs. Klinger (I think) says she didn’t seem drunk. Potter explains you don’t get DTs when you are drunk you get them when you stop drinking. I had never heard of any of it.
That’s been illegal for quite awhile. I would call bullshit on that. Even if local authorities tried it he would fail the background check. I used to be able to tell you exactly where to find that in the regulations but I haven’t had to find it in a long time.
Here’s at least one case as recently as three years ago:
That article pretty clearly shows why it doesn’t work.