Haruhi Suzumiya/Tropes F-I

Tropes for Haruhi Suzumiya, F to I:

 * Face Palm: After Picard, Kyon is the best known Facepalmer on the Internets.
 * Fake Band: ENOZ, whose name is a homage to the real band ZONE.
 * Fake Video Camera View: In The Adventures of Asahina Mikuru
 * "Falling in Love" Montage: Parodied without mercy in "The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina."
 * False Camera Effects: Most notably, the first/zeroth episode consists of a simulated student film; but the whole anime has scenes drawn with simulated lens flare, barrel/pincushion distortions and fisheye lenses all over the place.
 * Fan Service: Special mention to episode of season two.  Specific focus given to Itsuki's and Kyon's bodies during shirtless scenes  as well as to Haruhi's and Mikuru's... assets. Also, close ups to the face play up Itsuki's bishonen-ness and the girls' moe-ness (and the entire episode seems to intentionally defy anyone to resist hugging Yuki). To cap it all, there's some Ship Tease all around for Kyon/. (Kyon has reactions to each of the girls' aforementioned Moe facial expressions, and even Itsuki arguably has his bit of ship tease). The episode just screams "intentional gratuitous fanservice."
 * Feel No Pain: Yuki.
 * Then, of course,
 * Female Gaze: Exactly how Tsuruya sizes up Kyon when they meet in The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya.
 * Festival Episode: Part of "Endless Eight".
 * Fetish: Kyon admits to Haruhi that he has a thing for ponytails, and encourages Yuki to lose the glasses because he isn't a fan of Meganekko.
 * In one of the novels, he admits to himself that Mikuru's maid outfit is his favorite one and wonders if he has a maid fetish.
 * And later novels he subverts this trope by noting he finds seeing Yuki in her uniform especially comforting, but not because he has a sailor uniform fetish.
 * Figure It Out Yourself: Both Mikuru Asahina (big) and Yuki Nagato give Kyon very incomplete information about  Kyon puts both clues together at nearly the last minute to do just so. Justified to some extent because both Asahina and Nagato are constrained by rules.
 * Filler: In the books, "Endless Eight" was a brief story that lasted about 30 or so pages and the time loop was broken without the reader seeing any other repeats after . In the anime, it's eight episodes of near-identical footage and dialogue, reanimated from scratch every single time (which in turn angered those who viewed the affair as a waste of money and season).
 * You can just skip episodes 3-7 of second season and literally miss nothing.
 * Hell, Star Trek managed to do the exact same plot in a single episode and nobody complained it was too short.
 * While this doesn't make it excusable, if you assume they were planning to do Disappearance as the movie all along, it starts to make a bit more sense. Both seasons of the anime put together cover literally everything that happens before the Disappearance novel, so they needed about that much filler to squeeze out a full-length "season" - otherwise season 2 would have only been 7 or 8 episodes long.
 * First Kiss: The climax of season one.
 * First-Name Basis: Kyon refers to Haruhi by her first name, no honorific extremely soon after the SOS-dan's founding, and she's the only one to call him by just his nickname, no honorific. Also notable is that Yuki never, ever refers to Kyon by name, only "you". Neither does Koizumi.
 * Also significantly, Haruhi's the only person that Kyon addresses by first name and no honorific.
 * In the student film, the characters are supposed to refer to each other by first name, but the actors sometimes flub their lines and use last name.
 * End of the Disappearance movie (not the novel): "I'm sorry, Nagato...Yuki." However, it's unclear if he was using her name or simply pointing out the fact that it had started snowing.
 * First-Person Smartass: Kyon, in an combination of his Deadpan Snarker and Narrator roles.
 * First Time Feeling: In Disappearance, Kyon discovers that Nagato.
 * Five-Man Band: Lampshade hanging, Haruhi purposely creates the club to her expected stereotypes.
 * Although, it should be noted that the roles change depending on the point of view. According to Haruhi, she is The Hero, Yuki is The Smart Guy, Koizumi is The Lancer, Kyon The Big Guy, and Mikuru is obviously The Chick. But for Kyon, Yuki is The Big Guy (and to an extent, his Lancer) and Koizumi is The Smart Guy. (The rest of them stay the same.)
 * Koizumi once says that he's pretending to be the agreeable Yes-Man everyone sees because he knows it's part of Haruhi's ideal.
 * Flash Back: For example, after the SOS brigade finishes the movie, we see what happens right after Haruhi meets Kyon at the end of Melancholy Part VI.
 * Flash Step: Done by Yuki twice to stop Mikuru's eye beams.
 * Foreshadowing:
 * Episode 00 has.
 * Kyon makes an offhand comment in Novel 11 that Koizumi is the last member of the brigade you would want to see angry.
 * In one early episode (chronologically, not the broadcast order) Yuki mentions that Haruhi would never belive Kyon if he told her about Yuki
 * In the third novel/first series story "Remote Island Syndrome," Haruhi notes that it's better to go to an island in the summer, because you can't get caught in a blizzard unless it's the winter, with Kyon even noting that isn't something to hope for. Sure enough, in the fifth novel, they visit the mountains in winter and get caught in a blizzard.
 * For Science!: Studying Haruhi? Okay. to see how she'll react? Ooookay...
 * Forgot the Call: There are scenes that indicate that Haruhi is up against a mental block as opposed to just being totally clueless.
 * Fortune Teller: Yuki in "Live Alive". However, as Kyon points out, she doesn't understand the difference between telling somebody their fortune and predicting their future; for example, she tells someone that he'll drop his ice cream in ten point three minutes.
 * Four-Temperament Ensemble: All in Haruhi combined! It's... totally awesome.
 * Fourth Wall Psych: In The Movie when Kyon asks a question to "the world".
 * Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the first part of the two-episode island mystery arc, there's a shot of the sunset, and then a wave passing over the beach. Pause in the two or three frames before the wave crosses the screen, and you'll see a bizarre sketch in the sand of...something. Haruhi? A caveman? Itsuki in a bikini?
 * Frickin' Laser Beams: For the most part averted; nobody is able to dodge them and they're even invisible! Completely averted if you can believe Yuki can run at faster-than-lightspeed to block them (and she probably can).
 * Frothy Mugs of Water: Underage drinking is a big no-no to the Japanese (or at least depictions of it are). In the Sigh novel, Mikuru was slipped tequila; the anime changed this to amazake, which is seen as alright to give infants, which makes Mikuru seem much, much worse at holding her liquor (not that she wasn't already bad in the original).
 * In a rare inversion, the English Dub actually changes it to sake.
 * InBoredom the ''Remote Island Syndrome" segment has the entire cast get very drunk twice (with the possible exception of Yuki). The anime adaptation cuts this out entirely and drags Kyon's little sister along just to make sure everyone stays on their (relative) best behavior.
 * Funny Background Event: while Haruhi is talking about how she doesn't see the point in love, there is a brief cut to a random scene outside where a male student helps out a female student with something, and it's all very flirty. Later in the episode, there's another brief cut to where the female student shoves the male student to the ground and runs away.
 * Multiple in "Live Alive":
 * Two TV personalities "Hard Gay" and Akihiro Miwa grab Kyon as he's walking through the halls.
 * When Kyon is leaving the building at the festival, there's a mom getting a balloon for her kid. The kid protests, and the mother threatens to leave the kid behind.
 * The two uninjured ENOZ members can be seen running past in the foreground. Not really a background event, but it's very brief and it happens while the main characters are talking. And, even earlier on, all four members of ENOZ can be seen arguing with the student council representative in the background, as shown up close in the flashback later in the episode. Talk about attention to detail.
 * Fun Size: Tsuruya-san's fan interpretation, Churuya-san.
 * Now Haruhi-chan as well.
 * Achakura, Ryoko's (still psychotic) but barely two-feet-tall incarnation from Haruhi-chan, is notable in that she's tiny compared to the rest of the heavily chibified cast.
 * Fun with Acronyms: SOS Brigade stands for  Sekai wo Ooi ni Moriageru tame no Suzumiya Haruhi no Dan, or Haruhi Suzumiya's gang whose purpose is to greatly enliven the world. To maintain the joke, the fansubbers and the official manga and light novel, gave this as  Save the World By Overloading It With Fun -- Haruhi Suzumiya's Brigade, while the official dub translated it as  Spreading Excitement All Over the World with Haruhi Suzumiya's Brigade.
 * Of course, the Fan Nickname is Slaves of Suzumiya.
 * Future Imperfect: Asahina sometimes does this. For example, she comments on Koizumi's telescope being "not very different from Kepler's."
 * This particular example could actually make sense, who knows how future telescopes work? In Asashina's time they might use non-optical telescopes, or more conventional telescopes built into contact lenses, or even simply direct the visual input into their minds. From this point of view, there is little difference between two cylindrical telescopes with glasses, and only half a millennium's development between them.
 * Gag Sub: The Adventures of Nagato Yuki
 * Gainax Ending: The final chapter of Surprise is the most confusing one yet.
 * Gainaxing: Poor Mikuru. Particularly noticeable in the opening.
 * Generic Cuteness
 * Genki Girl: Haruhi, as well as minor character Tsuruya.
 * Genre Busting: It's depicted as Sci-Fi, come on...
 * Genre Savvy: Haruhi insists on seeing Genre Tropes everywhere, even where they might not have existed; in a completely different way, Itsuki attempts to "appease" Haruhi by providing textbook, predictable examples of tropes. Haruhi does not do "predictable", so these tend to mutate.
 * Girlish Pigtails: One of Haruhi's haircuts. Also, Mikuru in her waitress outfit.
 * Girl with Psycho Weapon:.
 * Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Sometimes played straight but also used to reference Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
 * Or just outright parody Phoenix Wright, down to the dramatic speed lines.
 * A Glass of Chianti: The Computer Club President during the Deep-Immersion Gaming. Also Haruhi in the manga, when describing the importance of Moe. A glass of grape juice, that is.
 * The Glasses Gotta Go: Yuki Nagato, of course.
 * God: Or something similar...
 * A God Am I: subverted and/or reversed:
 * Godly Sidestep: Kyon asks Nagato, after treating with beings that are effectively ghosts of alien lifeforms, what happens after humans die. Her answer? Information classified.
 * Go Mad From the Revelation: Nakagawa in "Love at First Sight", who
 * Good All Along:
 * Gratuitous English: This trope is mostly invoked by Koizumi. Probably the most ridiculous is his line in "Endless Eight": "Perhaps grab her from behind, and whisper 'AI LAAV YOU' into her ear."
 * Kyon tends to speak English a lot too, mostly in "Endless Eight" - highlights are exclaiming "Excellent!" upon seeing Mikuru in a yukata, and his hilarious outburst of "Three days!?" when Haruhi tells him how long it took her to finish her summer homework.
 * Groundhog Day Loop: "Endless Eight", in which the SOS Brigade gets stuck repeating the same two weeks of summer vacation nearly 15,500 times and suffer from severe deja vu throughout -- except for Haruhi, who remembers nothing, and Yuki, who remembers everything. The anime adaptation makes you feel it too, dragging the short story out beyond 15,500 and into eight repetitious episodes.
 * Groundhog Peggy Sue: See above. An interesting variation in that.
 * Hands-Off Parenting: All characters' parents are so absent, they're not even mentioned. Yuki lives alone, being an alien, Itsuki's and Mikuru's parents are never shown, though presumably them being secret agents has something to do with their surprising amount of free time. Even Ordinary High School Student Kyon is at home with his sister, but his parents are never seen. In the novels, we do hear about Kyon's mom now and then though. Haruhi's mother is mentioned very briefly in the beginning of Astonishment, where she's explained to be a Lethal Chef.
 * Have We Met?: Haruhi casually asks Kyon this in their first conversation. So it's really a case of Have We Met Yet?. There's a similar time-travel paradox in the first meetings of Kyon and Mikuru:
 * Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Kyon launches into a paragraph-long example in Disturbance to dispel some of the Ho Yay that had been accumulating.
 * Head Desk: Kyon can be seen doing this in the opening theme song, Bouken Desho Desho, cementing his Only Sane Man role in the SOS Brigade.
 * Healing Factor: Yuki.
 * Heel Face Return: Ryoko in the tenth novel.
 * Heel Face Turn: In the tenth novel,
 * Haruhi has one in Sigh after Kyon makes her realize that what she had done to Mikuru is a potential Moral Event Horizon on her part. Said MEH thus becomes either a subversion or an inversion.
 * Heel Realization: Arguably Haruhi in Sigh when Kyon calls her on her treatment of Mikuru. After that incident, she is much more consistent in her Pet the Dog moments and less consistent in her Kick the Dog moments.
 * Kyon has one in Disappearance where he realizes that
 * Heroic BSOD: Kyon is positively distraught in Disappearance when he finds
 * Heroic RROD:
 * Heroic BSOD: Kyon is positively distraught in Disappearance when he finds
 * Heroic RROD:


 * High School Hustler: Haruhi has gotten away with hijacking the literature clubroom, blackmailing the Computer Club President into giving a computer away for free by having him grope Mikuru, dressing as bunnies, submitting her film to the culture festival with the applications already closed...
 * Homage: One scene plays out as a blatant Shout-Out to the Ace Attorney series, complete with all the epic finger pointing, speed lines, and character sprite animations. This video demonstrates.
 * Hostile Show Takeover: The entire plot of Disappearance.
 * Of course,
 * How We Got Here: The movie.
 * Human Aliens: The Interfaces...whatever they actually are.
 * Humans Are Special: Humans apparently are the only organic lifeform that can actively seek knowledge and continuously advance themselves.
 * I Am Who?: . Kyon also occasionally discusses or invokes this trope when thinking about his own role.
 * : In The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon is given the opportunity to The offer comes complete with, but in one of the most moving inner monologues in the series,
 * Identical Grandson: In the manga,
 * Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every book, video game, and full-length album is entitled "Suzumiya Haruhi no ___", or "The ___ of Haruhi Suzumiya".
 * Idiot Hair: Taniguchi.
 * If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Disappearance!Asakura to Kyon regarding Yuki. See the extra note under This Is Unforgivable.
 * I Just Want to Be Normal/I Just Want to Be Special: The series plays with these tropes in a pretty elaborate manner.
 * Kyon spent his childhood dreaming about having supernatural powers or hanging out with people who did, but he says that he got over it and now he just wants to be normal.
 * Haruhi lived a happy childhood until she discovered that her life was ordinary, and then decided that she would become an extraordinary person, or find extraordinary beings like aliens, time travelers, espers or sliders. She creates the SOS Brigade with that latter purpose.
 * Kyon and Haruhi are foils to each other when it comes to these tropes.
 * is a pretty straightforward case of I Just Want to Be Normal.
 * Image Song: The amount of additional music done for the show is staggering, rivaling Mahou Sensei Negima. 16 character albums, 4 soundtracks, 3 drama CDs, 8 combination soundtrack and drama CDs that shipped with one of the DVD versions, a live concert, and an orchestral concert. All this for just 28 episodes!
 * Not to mention that four of the character albums are for characters who are either spectacularly insignificant or appear in very few episodes.
 * Now that a second set is being released, let's just list all the characters covered:
 * First set: Haruhi Suzumiya, Yuki Nagato, Mikuru Asahina, Tsuruya, Ryoko Asakura, Kyon's sister, Emiri Kimidori, Itsuki Koizumi, and Kyon.
 * Second set: Haruhi Suzumiya, Yuki Nagato, Mikuru Asahina, Itsuki Koizumi, Kyon, Tsuruya, and Taniguchi.
 * Important Haircut: Haruhi cuts her hair after meeting Kyon, about the same time she changes from being antisocial to being outgoing and happy
 * Before that, she changed her hair based on the day of the week, with a full-blown explanation as to why.
 * Haruhi can sometimes be seen holding her hair in a ponytail after  with the most obvious example being   In fact, at one point, when deciding on whether or not to put Mikuru's hair in a ponytail, Haruhi
 * Improbable Age:
 * I'm Taking Her Home with Me: Tsuruya says this about Mikuru in Sigh.
 * Then they actually go to Tsuruya's house to do a scene.
 * Incest Subtext: Though Kyon is most definitely not attracted to his sister, he is attracted to Mikuru, and at least six times, he pointed out how similar she is to his sister, causing an inverted example of the trope. (He also sees simularities between Haruhi and his sister as detectives.)
 * Inconsistent Dub: An incredibly minor example, but when watching seasons 1 and 2 together in chronological order, you may notice that while the season 2 episode "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody" uses the term "Tanabata", the season 1 episode "Mysterique Sign" that comes directly after makes references to the "Star Festival" instead.
 * Indecisive Medium: The Anime went out of its way not to show Kyon's mouth during his monologues, to keep the uncertainity from the novels, where you could never tell if he was saying something out loud, or just thinking.
 * Indirect Kiss: In Sigh, Mikuru shows some rare outgoing qualities by offering Kyon a drink from a water bottle that she already drank from, and Haruhi grabs it before Kyon can. Subtextual meanings runs rampant among fans.
 * A straight example at the end of the last episode of Sigh, when they flashback to when Kyon talked to Haruhi at the cafe in May - Haruhi finishes Kyon's drink shortly before storming out.
 * Info Dump: Lampshaded. Yuki, Mikuru and Itsuki lay these down on Kyon, who usually responds by pointing out that he doesn't understand, or just facepalming.
 * Itsuki in particular loves these, and seems to take pleasure in cornering Kyon for a few pages' worth of exposition.
 * Inner Monologue: Loves to edge on Did I Just Say That Out Loud?.
 * Invisible Parents: There are some parental figures, like the various adults in the island episode, but none of the characters' actual parents are ever seen. Yuki, of course, has no parents (in the human sense anyway) and Mikuru's probably haven't been born yet, but Haruhi and Kyon are implied to have parents...who never show up, (Kyon's mother is never directly seen or heard, but often referenced, and his dad is mentioned once) and never seem to say or do anything that affects the plot.
 * Invoked Trope: Woobie, Absurdly Powerful Student Council and a few others.
 * It Amused Me: Arguably the reason Haruhi does anything.