TV Tropes (also written as TVTropes) is a website created in 2004 that gathers and explains common story patterns and techniques, which it calls "tropes." The site includes information about many creative works and other topics, and its content is written and updated by a group of volunteer contributors known as "Tropers." Because the site offers opinions about popular culture and stories, some online personalities and blogs have noticed and criticized it.
Website content
Founded in 2004, TV Tropes began by studying common patterns in television shows. Over time, the site expanded to include patterns found in books, toys, written works, and fan communities. It also discusses topics outside of media, such as history, geography, and politics. The content on TV Tropes is created and updated by a group of volunteers called "Tropers." According to data from August 2020, most Tropers are between the ages of 18 and 34.
Between April 2008 and July 2012, TV Tropes made its content freely available. After this period, the site changed its rules to allow only non-commercial use of its materials. However, older content remained accessible under a new license.
TV Tropes uses a special wiki software that was heavily modified from a program called PmWiki. The PmWiki website states that the site no longer uses PmWiki in any way, and no original PmWiki code is used. This software is not open source. Before October 2010, users could edit pages without signing up. Now, registration is required for all activities except viewing the site.
TV Tropes has two subwikis for less formal tropes with less strict rules. Darth Wiki, named after a character from Star Wars, focuses on examples that show how the wiki can be misused. Sugar Wiki, on the other hand, highlights positive tropes, such as funny or heartwarming moments in stories. These subwikis are meant to represent different sides of the main TV Tropes site.
History
TV Tropes was started in 2004 by a programmer who used the fake name "Fast Eddie." He said he became interested in the patterns found in genre fiction while studying at MIT in the 1970s and later while reading online forums in the 1990s. In 2014, he sold the website to Drew Schoentrup and Chris Richmond. These two people then used a Kickstarter campaign to update the website’s code and design.
At first, TV Tropes focused on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Over time, the site expanded to cover many types of media, including fan fiction and other topics, such as works found on the Internet like Wikipedia. The site is sometimes jokingly called "The Other Wiki." Articles on the site often connect real-life situations to the tropes they describe. The site also uses an informal style to explain topics like science, philosophy, politics, and history in its "Useful Notes" section. TV Tropes does not require works to be famous or well-known to be covered on the site.
On March 19, 2025, TV Tropes released its own mobile app.
In October 2010, TV Tropes called this event "The Google Incident." At that time, Google temporarily stopped allowing ads on the site because some pages about adult or mature topics did not follow Google’s rules. To fix this, the site separated articles that were not safe for Google (called "NSFG") from those that were safe (called "SFG") so that discussions about mature topics could continue.
In 2012, TV Tropes faced another issue with Google, which it called "The Second Google Incident." In response to more complaints from Google, the site changed its rules to limit coverage of topics related to sexism and rape. Feminist blog The Mary Sue criticized this change, saying it stopped the site from discussing sexist themes in video games and young adult books. ThinkProgress also criticized Google AdSense for making it harder for websites to talk about these topics financially. TV Tropes later created "The Content Policy" to remove works and tropes that included explicit sexual content or depictions of sexual activity involving children. Some tropes and works were removed because of this policy. After the changes, some versions of the site, such as All The Tropes and Tropedia, were created separately.
Reception
In an interview with Fast Eddie, co-founder of TV Tropes, the blog io9 from Gawker Media said the tone of the site's contributions is often light and humorous. Cyberpunk writer Bruce Sterling called its style a "humorous look at fan fiction." Essayist Linda Börzsei described TV Tropes as a modern version of classic literary analysis, helping people examine repeated themes in creative works in a playful way. Economist Robin Hanson, inspired by a study of Victorian literature, said TV Tropes provides a large amount of useful information about fiction, making it a good place to study its features. In Lifehacker, Nick Douglas compared TV Tropes to Wikipedia, suggesting it is helpful when Wikipedia is hard to understand, when someone wants opinions instead of facts, or when they want details that Wikipedia does not include. In The Believer, Chantel Tattolli wrote that it is satisfying to explore the patterns found in stories, across different cultures, types of media, and genres, and to see how these patterns repeat over time.
In the book Media After Deleuze, authors David Savat and Tauel Harper said that while TV Tropes offers a helpful way to study storytelling, the site may reduce creativity and personal experience by trying to "classify and describe" every part of a work. The site is called "an excellent example of linked data" in Reference Reviews, but it is also criticized for not ensuring accuracy or reliability because it does not always follow strict rules about what information is important.