The 'Main Movie Sign' trope as used in popular culture, with a list of examples from all media.
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The first rule of Movie Sign: We never start on time.
A simple sit-and-watch Chat, the first of six (and one of two on-going ones) hosted weekly at theOtaku.com. Participants come in, watch an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 simultaneously, and spam up the chatbox. Episodes switch off between the two hosts for fair exposure with the movies selected by TimeChaser and Katana (there have been a few exceptions, such as January being favorites of the various participants).
Originally thought up by Katana as a Sunday matinee-type deal, it was switched to evenings for better time flow across the country. It’s hosted every Sunday night at 8pm EST/5pm PST, with the room opening a half-hour beforehand.
Due to the nature of the program watched, certain in-jokes and memes have been developed amongst the regulars. Such included are the ever-famous “crack pairs” first coined up by Miss Anonymous, Fasteriskhead’s choice of drink for every experiment, and an ever-expanding list of “Movie Sign Commandments”.
Movie Sign shows examples of:
A Child Shall Lead Them - Katana is seen as the leader of the group despite being the youngest and only remembering the show from when she was a toddler.
- Trip is the officially youngest now, so the trope is slightly subverted.
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Accidental Innuendo - The fact that all their movies can be summarized as "SMUT" says a lot about the group's thought process...
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Angrish - Boring movies lead the way for irritable typos.
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Blank Slate – Most people who attend Movie Sign have never heard of the show or only vaguely remember it being on television.
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Channel Hop – In a sense. Copyright wars deleted many of the episodes from YouTube, the group’s main resource for episodes for the first six months. A nice stint on Google Video ended when Google disallowed uploads. Now the group is back on YouTube, with Katana uploading episodes, and occasionally using Google whenever an episode is up there.
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Christmas Episode – Watching Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Santa Claus (the series’ only Christmas episodes) back-to-back.
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Clock King – Subverted. Brutally subverted.
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Cloud Cuckoolander - Everyone has had their moments with this.
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Combat Commentator – Played straight and tweaked. Even when there is no combat to be had, the Movie Sign participants STILL comment on the events happening on screen.
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Cool Loser – Despite being a very well attended Chat event with a devoted group, not everyone can appreciate it.
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Cool and Unusual Punishment – Members always complain about the episodes, notably Rocketship X-M, Monster A-Go-Go, Fire Maidens From Outer Space, and The Skydivers. Yet they keep coming back each week.
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Crack Fic - Half of the things that come out of Miss Anonymous during a tame session deals with shipping random characters together for no apparent reason. Things get really interesting when Cargo Ship comes into the picture.
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Crowning Moment of Awesome – The Space Mutiny session, which was attended by 18 members at its peak – that’s more than there is in the Lobby most times.
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Deadpan Snarker - Everyone. Sometimes, this is necessary to survive
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Did Not Do The Research - Nehszriah’s reaction to her first Movie Sign experience. “DUTCH ACCENTS ARE NOT LIKE THAT! AMSTERDAM DOESN’T LOOK LIKE THAT EITHER! DD<”
- Lo and behold, she kept coming back after that movie. To Secret Agent Super Dragon’s defense, Nehs existed as a tourist-child long after the film was shot, leaving quite a bit of room for discrepancies.
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Drinking Game – How many bottles of [x] brand hooch will Fasteriskhead drink this week?
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Drunken Master – Fasteriskhead.
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Elephant’s Child – Trip. “What does he mean ‘Dutch street’? What happened to the other guy? What does the ‘k’ stand for?”
- The ‘k’ stands for Karl…
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Estrogen Brigade - Katana, Nehszriah, and Miss Anonymous for the most part, though pretty much all the girls fall into this category at some point or another.
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Even The Guys Want Him - Shinmaru, if joking banter is to be believed.
- Evil!Mike. Quote Fasterisk: “I’d do him.”
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Fangirl – Katana and her affections for Mike.
- Thought you were safe during Joel episodes? She has a thing for Trace too.
- And let’s not get started on the mirror universe Evil!Mike…
o “I’d let him sell me my babies.” “You mean help you have them, right?” “Yeap.”- Don’t forget Nehszriah’s suspect infatuation with TV’s Frank…
o I KNEW IT.
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Five Man Band – Arguably one for each gender. They tend to blur the defined roles depending on attendance, but are bands all the same.
- Females:
- Katana (Hero)
- Kei (Lancer)
- Miss Anonymous (Smart Guy)
- Nehszriah (An almost-Class 4 Big Guy)
- AnimeArchAngel (Bumblebee)
- Kimmeh (Sixth Ranger)- Males:
- TimeChaser (Hero)
- Fasteriskhead (Lancer)
- Kastom (Smart Guy)
- Shinmaru (The Chick, if only for his Chat avatar, otherwise a shared Smart Guy)
- schultzie (Class 2 Big Guy)
- Ryu (Sixth Ranger, with elements of a Class 3 Big Guy)
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Follow The Leader – It was the first weekly Chat event at theO. The other long-runner, Anime Club, came three weeks later.
- After that came Sheep in the Big Chat Room, wherein participants watched Sheep in the Big City. It was the only one to successfully run the course of a series – Pierce the Fandom With Our Chat and the chats for Higashi no Eden and FMA: Brotherhood suffered from lack of interest and poor planning.
o To be fair, Pierce the Fandom ran successfully for about 2/3 of the series before interest faded. Higashi no Eden suffered from being shown after Movie Sign while FMA: Brotherhood was on a Thursday…All three, however, shared the same fate of being shown late on school nights.
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Genre Savvy – Give ‘em thirty seconds and one summary and they’ll have the movie all mapped out.
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Ghost Extras – The one-timers. They seemed so promising too…
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Gone Horribly Right - Maybe this Chat event came together a little too well…
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Grumpy Old Man – TC and Fasterisk, since nothing good came out of the ‘90s.
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Hey, It’s That Guy! – A long-running joke that Shin is in every movie.
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Hilarity Ensues - Obviously.
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Incredibly Lame Pun – Courtesy of Fasterisk from the Night of the Blood Beast session: “Hey, hey guys – if Johnny had put on a mask and fought crime, would that have made him…DARK KNIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST?!”
- Immortalized in the second “Movie Sign Musings” comic.
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Intercontinuity Crossover – Jokes and memes from MS have creeped into regular Chat. “SMUT!” is probably the most notorious; “PACKERS WON THE SUPER BOWL” is getting up there.
- “We never start on time. Who do you think we are, Anime Club?”
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Lame Comeback - Many riffs on the riffs tend to land in this category.
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Large Ham – It happens to the best of us.
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Lock And Load Montage - The sacred countdown, as it were.
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Long Runner – Hey, one year is pretty impressive given the attention spans of most participants, not to mention various hurdles that almost killed the event.
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Meddling Parents – Whether real-life…or Adam.
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Memetic Mutation - SMUT and NECKSECKS most often come to mind.
- TWELVE HOURS.
o This troper believes we can safely assume that anything said in capslock or deemed worthy as a Callback follows this trope.
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MST3K Mantra – To avoid over-thinking about why a part of a movie makes little to no sense, members will often times throw this at each other.
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New Meat – What any newbie to Movie Sign is called.
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Nightmare Fuel – With MS as his segue, Fasterisk released Rem Lezar onto the unsuspecting populace of theOtaku.
- And then came The Skydivers…swing choir anyone?
- This troper would have to argue that with the bizarre nature of B-movies in their entirety, almost anything could become Nightmare Fuel, even that of the High Octane type.
o So like those infamous twenty minutes in Soultaker?
- I haven’t slept well since, so yeah.
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Old Shame – It took the group thirty-seven weeks to watch a season one episode. Kat blames TC for this.
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One Steve Limit – Subverted with Ryu and Ryo.
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Only Sane Man – Kimmeh…until she started watching.
- To paraphrase: “You know, it’s fun to watch you guys randomly say things when I have no point of reference.”
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Rule of Cool – It just is.
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Seen It All - Katana’s more of a cheery version, having seen all of the MST3K episodes the group watches (or so most of the attendants believe).
- Word of God says she hasn’t, but she’s still an encyclopedia wealth of knowledge.
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Separated By A Common Language - Localization in Chat speak tends to get a little awkward.
- WHOOOOO! LIONS WON THE SUPERBOWL! WHOOOOOO!
o Though that is more a mix of I Just Want To Be Special and a Lampshade Hanging of Every Year They Fizzle Out.- Hell, schultzie refuses to even say the riff, being an ardent Bears fan.
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Serious Business - Movie Sign is this.
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Spin Off - The Rifftakus , a still-in-the-works attempt at being like Best Brains.
- Complete with their own Theme Music!
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Team Mom – Kei.
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The Determinator – Trip and Katana.
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There Is No Such Thing As Notability – The group is extremely informal, never sticking to the supposed start time of 8pm EST, with participants doing homework/ eating dinner/etc. during the Chat as well.
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They Changed It Now It Sucks – Subverted when the group switched to Google Video. “A complete stream with no breaks?! Sweet!” Mildly played straight when the group went back to YouTube and members complained about having to go back to the segment-system.
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Token Minority – Shinmaru the Mexican, which opens up jokes for the rest of the group. He encourages them.
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Two Four Gamers Riffers On A Couch - The format used for the “Movie Sign Musings” comics.
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Weirdness Magnet - Movie Sign is about watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, which mocks B-movies. A night without any weird happenings would be a night without Movie Sign.
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You Look Familiar – A continuation of “Hey, It’s That Guy!”, where Shin is said to be more than one person in a movie.
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Your Mileage May Vary – There are some who came for a few weeks but decided it wasn’t their cup of tea. Then there are those who are apologetic for missing even one.
