Trope Talk: Trickster Heroes

To quote a famous tumblr thread: Bugs Bunny would've defeated Thanos in five minutes tops by making a mock up tsa checkpoint in the middle of the battlefield and convincing him he needs to take of the gauntlet to pass the scanner, lest he makes the 100 different iterations of bugs in the line behind him who are about to miss their flight wait

I've always had an idea of a trickster hero who's a detective, but is psychic. In order to hide the fact that he's a psychic, he regularly bullshits out Sherlock Holmes style deductions.

"Or why an old word referring to a lowly peasant is 'villain.'" As in 'people who live in a village." My jaw hit the floor.

Tombstone: COME DOWN HERE AND FIGHT LIKE A MAN! Spider-Man: I don't suppose I could convince you to come up here and fight like a spider?

Spiderman has another layer to his trickery that you didn’t mention. He actually holds back a lot, his goading and trickery can be ways to defeat his villains without excessive force.

5:15-5:27 Reminds me of a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Will: "You didn't beat me. You ignored the rules of engagement. In a fair fight I'd kill you." Jack: "That's not much incentive for me to fight fair then, is it?"

There's a false dichotomy between using cunning trickery and being weak. Spider-Man is INCREDIBLY powerful, but using overwhelming force against his villains will usually result in hurting or killing them. He doesn't use trickery because his villains are too tanky, he uses trickery because the alternative is absolutely terrifying levels of violence. Also, Superman is often a trickster as much as he is an unstoppable force, much for the same reason. This can lead to villains going "Oh, SHIT," when they realize the hero wasn't using trickery because they were weak, they were using trickery because they were being nice.

The timing of this is so funny to me, because I was talking to a friend just this morning about how Bilbo is a trickster hero in the Hobbit. He lies, sneaks, steals, uses cleverness and taunts to deal with both the spiders and the elves, all forces stronger and meaner than he is. He’s fundamentally good, but he’s just a little guy and he has to be clever to survive (and save his friends)

“They say the first thing you notice about the Doctor…he’s always unarmed.”

Odysseus will arrive shortly, in 20 years of course if he gets blown off.

The first time I watched Columbo, something that took me by surprise is how often he uses underhanded tactics. As an example in season one (spoilers) the murder’s car broke down and they couldn’t figure out what happened so it had to be kept at a shop for repairs. Then, Columbo said that he caught a break in the case, the victim was wearing contact lenses, and after digging up the body and checking it, Columbo confirms that one contact was missing and that if he finds it, he found the murderer. The murderer hearing this breaks into the shop it is being kept at, searches the trunk of his car he stuffed the victim into before dumping it, and found the contact lens. The police are there waiting for him to find it and arrest him for the murder. Here is the twist though, Columbo is congratulated for knowing the contact lens was the key, and Columbo reveals that the body still had both contact lenses. The lens in the car’s trunk was a plant to get him to react. He could only plant the lens since the car was at the shop instead of the murder’s garage. It was only at the shop since it wouldn’t start and his guys couldn’t figure it was wrong with it. When the guy remarks that this was way too much of a coincidence, Columbo shares that he was a bit of a trickster as a kid. “You could shove a potato in the exhaust of a car and it wouldn’t start, and people would take ages not knowing what was wrong with it” and walks away with a smile.

The opposite of the Hero's Journey is the Trickster's Heist. The trickster doesn't descend into the scary uncivilized world, he ascends into the dangerous civilized one. The trickster doesn't have mentors or allies, just the stuff he'd already prepared ahead of time and the tricks he uses. A lot of Robin Hood and Till Eulenspiegel and Argo and Anansi and Coyote stories fit it, but the two stories that I've found exemplify it perfectly - Raven Stealing The Sun (Tlingit), and My Father's Dragon. Seriously, he goes in there to steal a macguffin, armed with random items, and tricks his way out of danger each time.

Special mention to El-Ahrairah, the trickster hero of the rabbits in Watership Down. "Prince With One Thousand Enemies. Should they catch you, they will kill you and eat you. But first they must catch you." A trickster hero is often a character at the bottom of the proverbial food chain (or the literal food chain, in El-Ahrairah's case) who has to use wiliness and tricksiness because they have nothing else. Trickery helps level the playing field, which is why the powerful call it "cheating."

11:09 "We don't just want to see villains lose; we want to see them proven wrong" if this isn't the crux of the issue for so many unsatisfying stories that setup relatable villain backstories but just end it with a fistfight

You might think that Superman is the antithesis of a Trickster. But he’s actually much more of a trickster than given credit for. Not only does he play up the Clark Kent facade to gaslight them into thinking he’s not Superman, but he’s always involved in several hijinks to trick both friends and foes all the time. One of his greatest villains is a virtual GOD who he has to outwit in order to defeat on a regular basis because he can’t overpower him with strength alone.

The "inside-out whodunnit" Red described is actually an established subgenre referred to as a "howcatchem". Rather than focusing on figuring out who perpetrated the crime, the audience already knows who the culprit is (and usually how they committed the crime) and the draw is in seeing how the detective character uses their wits to expose the criminal and catch them.

“Ah trickster, welcome to my velvet room…”

Bugs: Of course you realize this means war. Antagonist: Why do I hear boss music?

Peter Falk also played the character with considerable charisma. "There's just one thing..." "Oh, by the way..." Columbo is one of those characters you'd want to sit in on your D&D table just to see how he'd play and would be figuring out the villain and main plot in Episode 1. And now I'm picturing Columbo playing a Mastermind Rogue...

The briar patch story illustrates another interesting thing: Tricksters are not immune to trickery. That story kicks off with Brer Fox exploiting Brer Rabbit's temper and impulsiveness to make him trap himself. Similarly, Anansi once tried to frame his son for murder, but his son rebuts that the king totally wanted this guy dead and he'll be rewarded handsomely. At which point Anansi grabs the body and goes tearing off to confess to the king, and is promptly thrown in prison. When a trickster isn't unconditionally a hero, the audience frequently wants to see them get some kind of comeuppance, but not so much that they can never scheme again. So every once in a while, they will lose in a way they can still recover from. Even modern tricksters like Jerry Mouse and Bugs Bunny are occasionally bested, or fall to their own schemes. But these usually end with either a fade-to-black or somehow tricking their way right back out again.