For every “Trope” I get, I will post a TV trope for my muse.
@drapehs said: Trope x5??
How can you make a Badass character even more badass? Easy; make him lose an eye, or have her get paralyzed from the waist down, or give them some disease from which there is no cure. Finally, do not use the Reset Button to remove it. "What?!" you say, "My character must stay injured/handicapped?" Simply, yes.
"Clothes make the man" is a well-established idiom, but we all know it's specifically the head gear that makes you who you are. Distinctive headgear (or hair accessories) make people stand out in the crowd. Most of the time, the headgear is unique to only that character (or that group). They also tell you a little something about the character's personality. Oftentimes the headgear/hair accessory is so ingrained into the character, that one only needs to use the headwear as a symbol for that character's presence.
The fraternal twin of the Stepford Smiler. The Stepford Snarker has intense feelings of sadness, anger, numbness, loneliness, or other negative emotions, but, for whatever reason, wants to hide these feelings from the people around them. Whereas the Stepford Smiler hides these feelings by acting sweet and happy, the Snarker hides them by being snide and sarcastic. They often put on an outward appearance of being very jaded and bitter (though some may maintain a brighter disposition when in a better mood, snarking only when upset), and make sarcastic comments about everything and everybody, but those that are able to break their shell find that they're actually deeply hurt. If they're able to heal, they'll not necessarily stop being sarcastic — it may just be a part of their personality — but they'll hopefully find a way to express their feelings to their loved ones, rather than solely hiding them with their quips.
Machine Empathy is the trope where a character can diagnose the state of a machine just by its "feel", such as how it vibrates or the noises it makes. Comparisons between the machine and a living person are often invoked. Unlike the Technopath, no supernormal abilities are involved; a character develops Machine Empathy simply from firsthand experience or knowledge of the hardware.
One very common way to establish that a male (or increasingly frequently female) character is a Nice Guy (even if the niceness is hidden under a gruff exterior) is to give them an instinctive desire to be a respectable big sibling to smaller or younger characters (in more cases female than male). These other characters may be truly younger siblings, or they may be completely unrelated, or even older, but the feeling is the same: to act as their protector.