Genre Savvy/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Joey in Friends is too Genre Savvy when he tells Monica who would win in a fight, she or Phoebe:

Joey: Definitely Phoebe. She has lived on the street, she can be really mean when she's angry, and ... she is not standing right behind me, is she?

  • The main characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are almost all Genre Savvy.
    • Spike to Buffy in Blood Ties: "You'll find her, just in the nick of time. That's what you hero types do."
    • Also when Spike kidnapped Xander and Willow, Buffy immediately concludes that he hid them at the abandoned factory. Spike says, "You think I'm an idiot?" They are, of course, at the abandoned factory.
    • Also note Buffy's staking of Dracula after he attempts to regenerate -- "You think I don't watch your movies? You always come back."
    • Their genre savvy is justified because they don't start acting so Genre Savvy until several seasons in. During the early seasons they aren't nearly as genre savvy.
  • In Angel, Spike is even more Genre Savvy. See episode 4: "Is this the part where I say 'Who's there?' and something creepy happens?"
    • Even Harmony, who would need brain-enhancing drugs to match the IQ of a bowl of cottage cheese, gets in on the act. When Angel is temporarily CEO of Wolfram & Hart's LA branch and Harmony is his secretary, there is an occasion where Angel responds to an intruder alert by ordering Harmony to call security and tell them to 'lock down the building, double guards at every entrance, no one gets in or out'. Harmony's reply is an immediate "Okay, but you know how that never works, right?"
      • And is proven right: at the time she raises her objection the intruder is already in the building, and due to his ability to cloak himself from the security systems the only people who are attacked by the automated defenses is Angel's own crew when they attempt to follow the intruder through them.
  • Abed of Community is Genre Savvy beyond all reason. The other characters typically ignore him when he points out various tropes and it won't be too surprising when a WMG goes up saying that Abed knows he's fictional. It's even better than that. There's a WMG that he's a troper.
    • In one episode, Abed is so Genre Savvy he has the ability to predict the future.
    • In the episode 'Horror Fiction in Seven Deadly Steps,' Abed is bored by a cliche horror story and then revises the story to make the characters more genre savvy. His and Britta's characters in the story hear a noise outside and discuss what to do:

Britta: Should we go check it out?
Abed: No. We should call 911 on my fully-charged cell phone, lock the doors, and then stand back-to-back in the middle of the room holding knives.

  • The sisters in Charmed hovered between Genre Savvy and pathetically, if not redundantly, Genre Blind.
  • Richard Castle in Castle is amazingly Genre Savvy, being a mystery novelist in a Police Procedural, and uses this to help the actual police. His partner pokes fun at this, but it works.
  • Doctor Reid Oliver from As the World Turns is this trope.
  • For a miniseries which purports to deconstruct fairytales, surprisingly few characters in The Tenth Kingdom seem to be Genre Savvy. Street smart Virginia certainly isn't, other than when she realizes that "everyone in this place is crazy!" Wolf only gets a few moments now and then, one of the most memorable being his knowledge of fairy tale endings: "We either live happily ever after or we get killed by horrible curses." (Another would be his explanation, after Prince gets turned to gold, that "things have a way of bouncing back here"... only to admit, when confronted by Tony, that he was "just saying that" and proceeding to tempt Prince with a stick with delicious snark.) The most truly Genre Savvy moment in the entire miniseries, surprisingly, comes from Tony, after the Blind Woodsman explains how they can obtain his magic axe... by guessing his name -- except if they fail, he chops off Wolf's head:

Tony: What is it with you people? What kind of twisted upbringing did you have? Why can't you just say, "Oh, that'll be a hundred gold coins"? Why is it always "Not unless you lay a magic egg, or count the hairs on that giant's ass"?

    • Of course this is immediately subverted when Tony, believing he knows which fairy tale he's in, agrees to the deal and guesses the Woodsman is named Rumpelstiltskin. Wrong! Good thing that magic bird came along when it did.
    • And another great Tony moment, when he's told by a talking frog that one door leads to the castle, while the other leads to certain death. The frog says they can ask him any question, but he always lies. Tony flips out, has a similar rant to the one with the woodsman, only a little longer, picks up the protesting frog, opens one of the doors and throws him in, closing the door. Moments later, an explosion is heard from the other side of the door.

Tony: Okay, it's the other one.

Ida: We've come this far, there's no turning back.
Doctor: Oh, did you have to? "No turning back"? That's almost as bad as "Nothing could possibly go wrong" or "This is gonna be the best Christmas Walford's ever had."

    • And in the revived series' third Christmas special, the entire population of London turns Genre Savvy -- after two straight years of horrible disasters and alien invasions on Christmas, they evacuate the city en masse on December 25, certain that some cruel god is going to have it in for them again. Not surprisingly, they're right.
    • The Master is Genre Savvy enough to state that he's not going to hang around telling the hero all his plans, though not enough so to just kill the heroes rather than keeping them around to gloat. The Doctor was also able to accurately predict that the Master would have to have a ticking clock as part of his plan.
    • William Shakespeare is also pretty savvy, rather unsurprisingly. He even figures out on his own that the Doctor is a time traveller.
    • Also, in "The Pandorica Opens":

Doctor: How do you think? A good wizard trapped it.
River: I hate good wizards in fairy tales, they always turn out to be him.

    • River's knowledge of the Doctor's future makes her pretty genre savvy regarding the Doctor, when they're trapped by the Weeping Angels, she says, "No pressure, but this is usually when you have a really good idea."
    • The Ninth Doctor displays this in "Boom Town", when an alien murderess he is dining with gets him to turn his back on a spurious excuse. Naturally, she uses the opportunity to spice up his drink... and when he turns back, he switches their glasses immediately.
    • Rory Williams - from the way he worked out from his own research why the TARDIS is bigger on the inside, to the fact that he's perfectly aware that "We come in peace!" never stops the mooks from trying to kill you, Rory has always been fairly savvy about both science and sci-fi.
    • In "The God Complex", Rory comes up with a somewhat dark and Harsher in Hindsight example:

Rory: Every time the Doctor gets pal-y with someone I have this overwhelming urge to notify their next-of-kin.

    • In "Closing Time", the Doctor drops in on Craig as a social call.

The Doctor: The Doctor: Just popped in to say hello.
Craig: You don't do that. I checked the upstairs when we moved in. It's real. And next door, both sides. They're humans. Is it the fridge? Are there aliens in my fridge?

    • Amy Pond often has moments of Genre Savvy:

Amy: Were you being extra charming and clever?
Doctor: Yeah, how did you know?
Amy: Lucky guess.

  • This seems to be a racial trait unique to Tau'ri (Earthlings) on Stargate SG-1, while all of the aliens are hilariously Genre Blind (except when they've been exposed to enough of Earth's pop-culture):
    • In one episode, the plan to attack the Big Bad's superweapon involves attacking in many small ships to hit the single, small target that is its only weak spot. Jack O'Neill points out that it's a stupid plan with ridiculously low odds of success and gets everyone who agrees with him to raise their hands, which most in the briefing eventually do... including Carter, who came up with it. And when a similar plan goes into effect in a later episode, Jack expresses disappointment that his call sign for the mission isn't "Red Leader".
    • O'Neill and Teal'c have to get to the command center of Thor's ship, get prepared to fight off the Replicators to do it, only to find on opening the door that the room is literally crawling with them. For The Hero normally this is the point where they rush in, guns blazing, against incredible odds only to be forced out after a massive firefight. Jack's response is to mutter "To hell with that", close the door and go off to get a new plan.
    • In another episode, Jaffa Master Bra'tac details the massive defenses between the team and the ship's Phlebotinum, which they will have to fight their way to... at the bottom of a large shaft that they are standing next to. O'Neill shrugs and drops several grenades down the shaft.
      • Then switched around when O'Niell disparages at the guards preventing their escape and Bra'tac shows him a "real" grenade.
    • During a briefing where Carter explains that an asteroid is heading towards Earth and will surely destroy it, O'Neill says in a stage whisper, "I've seen this movie. It hits Paris."
    • Daniel Jackson is quite genre savvy in "The Tomb", one of SG-1's (thankfully) few attempts at horror. On seeing the redshirt -- er, Russian military officer walk down the hall to confront the monster, he waxes sarcastic: "Yes, you go down the dark hallway alone and I'll wait here in the dark room alone."
    • At one point, a character remarks, "we might as well be wearing red shirts!"
    • The episode "200" was full of genre-savviness. Among other things.
    • In another episode, O'Neill and Teal'c are trapped in a Groundhog Day Loop, and eventually take advantage of it for Hilarity Ensues. When they finally confront the person responsible, O'Neill asks him if his plan is to become "the king of Groundhog Day".
    • Jack was rather disappointed when his suggestion of a name for Earth's first starship was rejected. He thought Enterprise was appropriate.
      • Fridge Brilliance: They wouldn't be able to use that name because another ship currently serving has that name: A US Navy aircraft carrier.
    • Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell also displays genre savviness through memorized mission reports and old sayings (usually attributed to his Grandma). It seems to be a prerequisite for the series male leads to have quick wits and knowledge of tropes.
    • Most villains are Genre Blind, but Ba'al sometimes manages to be Dangerously Genre Savvy; he's the only system lord who doesn't believe his own A God Am I propaganda, and is quite willing to manipulate SG1 into helping him take out his rivals. Even so, there are moments when he's clearly holding the Villain Ball (or is it Villain Ba'al?).
    • Also Vala, at least some of the time. Like when she shoots an apparently dead monster, and when she repeatedly points out that Nerous the Goa'uld will betray them. "What a surprise!"
  • Not just limited to the Milky Way Galaxy: on Stargate Atlantis, when trapped in a room with a pregnant woman, Sheppard informs her that she's probably going to go into labor because that's what always happens in movies. (Fortunately, it ends up not happening, though when later trapped on a ship in the next season it does.)
    • Similarly, Dr. (Meredith) Rodney McKay is a Star Trek fan to the point of Genre Savviness. He even says that Dr. Beckett is their Dr. McCoy, due to his views on Stargate travel (hint: it's McCoy's view on transporters). After an alien woman falls in love with Lt. Col. Sheppard, he exclaims "Oh God, he is Kirk!"
  • In Stargate Universe, Everyman Geek Genius Eli Wallace seems to share this trait, in large part due to his enthusiasm for science fiction. A promo had him comparing an ice planet to Hoth and the recently aired Air, Part 3 has him warning the expedition party that splitting up is a verrrrry bad idea. Three guesses as to if he's right or not. He is, though nothing too dramatic happens. Basically half of the team goes through the stargate to an unexplored planet where they have a heavily implied Offscreen Death.
  • Surprisingly enough, this even showed up in a Star Trek series (Deep Space Nine). Sisko, chasing the traitor Eddington, realizes that Eddington sees himself as a noble hero straight out of fiction. Sisko then arranges things, by intentionally playing the bad guy, so that Eddington's only option is to sacrifice his freedom in order to save innocent people.
    • Sisko isn't the only one either; Dax (or at least Jadzia) occasionally has flashes of this, but usually only enough to get a good line in. Garak on the other hand seems to know he's trapped in a fictional world, usually using his savvy to poke fun at Dr. Bashir's chronic Genre Blindness. Which is even funnier because Bashir's main hobby for much of the later seasons is playing holographic recreations of not-quite-Bond novels, about which he is extremely Genre Savvy and Garak knows nothing...
      • With extra bonus irony from Garak being an actual former intelligence officer.
    • Of course the magic really happens when Garak and Sisko finally team up to bring the Romulans into the war with the Dominion. They set up an elaborate scheme to create false holographic evidence that the Dominion will invade Romulus. The evidence is of course discovered by a Romulan senator to be fake, and Garak knowing beforehand that this was a risk that was too big to take in a Crapsack World where things rarely turn out well, already arranged in advance to have the senator blown up with the remnants of the evidence salvaged by the empire and assumed to be genuine.. Best. Episode. Ever.
    • No one in Trek is more Genre Savvy than Weyoun, one of the most impressive diplomats to ever grace television. (Of course, it helps that his race is genetically engineered specifically for it.) One of him (he's a series of clones) correctly predicts that any serious resistance or uprising against Dominion control if/when they conquer the Alpha Quadrant would come from Earth. As such, he plans to wipe out the whole planet as soon as the war is won.
  • Also the episode "A Fistful of Datas" in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Deanna Troi has read enough Westerns to know that the villain will try double-crossing Worf during the prisoner exchange.
    • The episode "Elementary, My Dear Data" has its major conflict come up because of Data, in the role of Sherlock Holmes in a holodeck story, veering past Genre Savvy straight into cutting straight to the ending by telling the first policeman he sees who the villain is and the crime because he already knew the story without doing any sleuthing; the resultant discussion over how Data could "enjoy" the exercise leads to the self-inflicted, ship-endangering mishap of the week.
  • Space Cases: Commander Goddard, perhaps because he's the one with the most experience and has learned the rules of sci-fi tropes, i.e. "Which one is which? This always happens with Evil Twins!"
  • Given a half-twist in Ashes to Ashes. Alex, having been Sam Tyler's psychologist in 2006, is very quickly convinced that she's hallucinating during a near-death experience, that she knows exactly what the rules of her imaginary world are, and that there will inevitably be some sequence of events that will allow her to wake up; rather than gradually assimilating into 1981, as Sam did to 1973, she seems almost to be trying to game her way out of it. Unfortunately, her assumptions tend to be less than infallible since she's working on the rules from Life On Mars, only some of which carried over to Ashes to Ashes.
    • Much to the sadistic glee of Zippy and George, apparently.
  • The Hybrids (the semi-humanoid computers of the Basestars) in Battlestar Galactica seem to be aware that they're on a TV show ("Throughout history, the nexus between man and machine has spawned some of the most dramatic, compelling, and entertaining fiction"). Also, Admiral Adama says in the episode "Revelations" that if they give the alliance with the rebel cylons any more time it will just fall apart again, and gives the order to jump with the Rebel Basestar to their mutual destination instead of sending a scouting party first.
  • Another Battlestar Galactica example is Sam Ander's admission to Starbuck that his resistance team really just lifts tactics out of movies. Which, apparently, Cylons have no real interest in reviewing.
  • The Middleman himself and his Sidekick Wendy are both Genre Savvy, as is potential Love Interest Tyler. Wendy and the Middleman have a tendency to make plans along the lines of "You go get the villain to start monologuing, while I sneak around behind him to disable his dimensional portal."
    • This eventually backfires when the villain doesn't show the slightest intention to give his monologue, demonstrating that he, as well, is Genre Savvy.
  • The first episode of LA 7, aka S Club 7 in LA, entitled "Into the Unknown" has them lost in a forest in which group of film-makers disappeared, which sounded awfully familiar to them.
  • Some (but not all) of the characters on Lost are Genre Savvy. Boone suspects he is a Red Shirt. Hurley and Charlie often question the wisdom of traipsing into a monster-inhabited jungle.
    • On an episode, as Hurley and Charlie bury Ethan, Hurley says that he sees the situation ending badly, with Ethan becoming a zombie and chasing him and Charlie.
    • In season 5, after (most of) the Oceanic Six end up back on the Island in 1977, Hurley hilariously attempts genre-savviness concerning time travel. However, it seems that the entirety of his knowledge on the subject comes from Back to The Future, and he has, let's say, a lot of trouble grasping the show's more realistic implications, much to Miles' exasperation.
    • In season 6, he manages to describe things easily to Jack saying Jacob's appearing to him like Obi Wan Kenobi
  • Hiro Nakamura on Heroes. "You're telling us your plan? What kind of overconfident nemesis are you?"
    • Though not Genre Savvy enough to just listen to the plan.
    • Ando, too. Hiro travels to the future and sees Ando attacking him. He tells Ando, and Ando suggests that it could be a robot or a shapeshifter.
  • In the Farscape episode "Twice Shy", Crichton and D'Argo take it for granted that the Damsel in Distress they've rescued will turn out to be a villain, and resolve to dump her on the first habitable planet they come to. However this turns out to be not so easy as she's actually a giant shapeshifting spider that feeds on emotions.
  • In House, characters occasionally realize where they are in the script. Thus, Wilson sometimes points out that he's just provided House with his routine epiphany, while, in one episode, House complains that the epiphany went to somebody else.
  • NCIS:

Ziva: "Tony, your dying words would be 'I've seen this film.'"

    • The episode "Missing" gives us this gem:

Bomb instructor: "Way to go, MacGyver! If that bomb were real, we'd be washing you off the streets of Baghdad right now! Never assume that a bomb timer is accurate! Bad guys watch movies, too."

  • In one episode of Psych the characters realize they're surrounded by slasher movie cliches but then even more Genre Savvy Shawn figures out all the cliches are a set up, but then people do start dying.
  • In The Worst Witch TV series, Miss Crotchet gains this toward the end of the third season. She says in the penultimate (aired) episode that even though she has only been at the school for a year, she knows how arguments go between the teachers. Miss Hardbroom will argue for a change in the treatment of the pupils, Miss Drill will argue in favour of the pupils, she will say something and get ignored, then Miss Cackle will enter the argument and everything will revert to status quo. However, things don't pan out like that in that episode.
  • Eureka:
    • Sheriff Andy was apparently programmed for Genre Savvy. Faced with a situation where only a main character could succeed he refused to go (because he was programmed to follow the town charter, which says the sheriff cannot take unreasonable risks). Once Carter went in Andy was able to follow and help because he knew that Carter being there increased the odds of success dramatically.
    • All the main characters are Genre Savvy enough that when someone observes that S.A.R.A.H.'s AI started its life as a war-game simulator, and she immediately responds by asking "Shall we play a game?", the answer is an emphatic and unanimous "NO!"
  • Firefly:
    • Instead of lecturing a henchman who has promised to hunt Mal down and kill him, Mal simply shrugs, takes him at his word, and kicks the guy into an engine intake.
    • When Mal and Saffron get interrupted trying to steal the Lassiter, Saffron starts talking fast and Mal plays along. Much to their relief, Haymer appears grateful and leaves to get Mal a reward. When he returns, however, he informs them that he had alerted security the second he saw them and now armed Alliance guards are coming to take them in.
  • Supernatural: In the Season 1 episode, "Asylum," Sam and Dean investigate a haunted, abandoned mental hospital. They find a teenage couple wandering around inside, just for kicks. Dean gives the girl, Kat, this piece of advice:

Dean: You watch a lot of horror movies, right?
Kat: Yeah, so?
Dean: So next time you hear a place is haunted don't go in.

  • A Game Show example: In the original Let's Make a Deal with Monty Hall, when it came time for The Reveal of the endgame, Monty would always save the door with the Big Deal of the Day to be revealed last, opening the other two first. Contestants quickly figured this out, and would start Squeeing and jumping for joy as soon as the door they had picked was the last one left unrevealed, or would become disappointed as soon as the door they had picked was opened without being saved for last.
    • Game shows in general aired during a place theme or holiday can fit this, most notably Wheel of Fortune. Wheel's puzzle rounds during a theme week are likely to have a puzzle that is related to a cultural or holiday event which contestants and home viewers who are savvy enough will solve sooner than usual.
  • Found in Hannah Montana, believe it or not, where about midway through season 1 Lilly begins to develop a dangerous understanding of how Miley's Zany Schemes usually work, sees them coming a good minute and a half before they actually happen, and why she can't say no, even though she knows she should.
    • In more recent episodes, Miley is gaining more savviness about Robbie Ray's Once an Episode heart-to-heart talks, always beating him to the punch when he advises her to "listen to (her) heart", or asking him not to tell her "I Told You So" when a plan backfires, etc.
  • In an episode of The Avengers, one character points out that although it seems that they are all trapped in a thriller, the eyes in a painting aren't moving.
  • Boy Meets World example -- In "And Then There Was Shawn," while the kids are in detention, and things begin looking terrifying, we learn that Shawn is very Genre Savvy when it comes to Horror movies, quickly pointing out the dangers of splitting up and the fact that virgins never die.

Cory: (looks at Topanga, his recent ex) Hey, Thanks for saving my life!
Eric: I'm dead.
Jack: I'm dead.
Shawn: I'm going to get as sick as you can possibly get without actually dying...
Moments later when they realize that Mr. Feeney has died, Eric and Jack begin doing a little dance and singing "Go Feeney, Go Feeney"

  • Everything Tempus says in his appearances in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman flaunts his extreme genre savvy. From saying "I'm the bad guy, we always have a plan" to "The heroine creates her hero, a mythically moving moment." In the episode, "Tempus, Anyone?" he greets Lois Lane by lampshading her previous inability to figure out that her fiance is the originator of Clark Kenting.

Tempus: Remember me? (Lois stares on confused so he removes his glasses) How about now? (He laughs when she doesn't get his glasses/no glasses reference to Clark) Private joke.

  • Master Vile in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Apart from anything else, he was genre savvy enough to cut his losses and decide to try his hand at conquering everything outside of the galaxy holding that Insignificant Little Blue Planet, since, as he puts it, the good guys tend to win around here for some weird reason.
    • The Rangers themselves have their genre savvy moments. One example in season 2 would be Goldar ransoming some captives for the Rangers' Power Coins. He, of course, doesn't hold up his end. However, the Rangers had been in this spot before last season, in "Return of an Old Friend". Goldar cheated them then, too. So this time, instead of giving him the actual Power Coins, they gave him chocolate coins in Power Coin wrappers.
    • Goldar in the movie once he sees the Zord he knows they screwed and flees
  • Subverted in an episode of Smallville. (A subversion, but not Wrong Genre Savvy. The character was right about what was going to happen, but still didn't realize just how dangerous it was.) A meteor crashes near two kids playing basketball. One of them goes to look in the miniature crater, but his friend warns him not to. "Hey man, don't you watch any movies?" The guy who looked in the crater gets possessed by the alien inside it and casually kills his friend. By the end of the episode, he's free of the alien's control and back to normal, but his friend is still dead. Apparently being Genre Savvy isn't enough sometimes.
  • Shown by a suspect on The Glades. When the suspect immediately confesses after Jim announces they have the killer's DNA and just have to get his to compare, Jim immediately believes it was too easy and that the man was protecting his son, the man realizing that while a DNA comparison would clear him, it would indicate that a male relative was the killer. Jim lampshades the genre-savviness by pointing out that thanks to TV, more people know about what DNA comparisons can show.
  • The whole reason for Maddy and David on Moonlighting not to continue their relationship was because they knew they were in a TV show that depended on the UST of the two leads.
  • One episode of Ultraman Tiga had the leader of the human military grumbling about the fact that he realizes that no matter how much artillery they throw at any given attacking monster, it's always Tiga who ends up saving the day (normally, military leaders in Kaiju shows, and Ultraman in particular, just don't acknowledge this kind of thing). But, by the end of the episode, he's reconciled himself to it, and is happy to have Tiga around.
  • The Nennog of Maddigan's Quest: "It's said that the talisman, once matured, will end my reign. Of course the science of prophecy is not well tested, but who wants to take a risk?"
  • From the Golden Girls episode, "That Old Feeling," which focused on Blanche's feelings upon reuniting with the brother of her late husband:

Rose: Dorothy Zbornak, you might show a little compassion!
Dorothy: Catch me on a day when the story's about me.

  • Happens several times in The Walking Dead. In the first season, the survivors are generally savvy enough to avoid most zombie-related cliches - they go for headshots whenever an opportunity arises, they make sure any walker that's still moving is permanently put down for good, they use stealth whenever possible, and anyone who has been infected is immediately outed by other survivors and dealt with. In "Guts", the group of survivors that arrives to save Rick and Glenn is wearing hockey pads and helmets while they beat on the walkers with baseball bats.
  • On Survivor, some of the players from later seasons have watched the previous seasons, and know how certain returning characters will play or what strategies will or will not be used at what stage of the competition. The Fans Vs. Favorites season would have been this, had said Genre Savvy fans not been picked off because they spent too much time fawning over the Favorites. On Redemption Island, Russell was voted out second from his own tribe because they had seen his previous seasons (Samoa and Heroes Vs. Villains) and knew that he would try to pull the same trick of forming an all-girl alliance and dominating the game again.
  • On Married... with Children, there was an episode where Jefferson, Al and Griff entered a military program so they could have some days off from their jobs. During a mission, Griff refused to obey his superior's orders because he believed that, as his group's African American, he'd be the one to die while the white guy returns to his family. Al replied that it meant the both of them would lose.
  • Fails in an episode of Sliders, when the group slides into a world stuck in the 19th century, and the whole thing turns into a western. Then they find out that the local town villain is an enemy of theirs and a Kromagg (humanoids evolved from different apes) to boot. Mr. K uses his species' Psychic Abilities to frame Quinn and Rembrandt for murder. Quinn suggests using their knowledge of western films to set a trap for the jail guards and escape. Quinn climbs and hides above the jail cell door, and Rembrandt yells that Quinn's escaped. Unfortunately for them, Mr. K walks in and the first thing he does is look up. He laughs off their attempts and notes that Kromaggs have their own version of westerns where exact same tricks are employed.
  • On one episode of The Mentalist, Cho and Rigsby stumble upon some marijuana in the woods:

Rigsby: There's a pot plant here. Actually, there's a whole bunch of pot plants here.
Cho: It looks like a farm.
Rigsby: Oh, yeah. Which means there's probably some bad guys with guns.
(Cue gunfire.)

  • In Misfits Simon is a good example of this and it's scarily useful when it comes to the hiding of dead bodies, when it has to do with anything else no one tends to listen to him.

Nathan: Now, I'm not saying we have but what would happen if hypothetically speaking if it came to light that we may have killed one or two people——probation workers and such, no one important.
PR Woman/Super Manager: I would say that these people you may or may not have killed were evil, you were protecting society——you're not murders; you're heroes, superheroes, rich, famous superheroes. And if that doesn't work we banish the bodies and pay off the relatives.
Nathan: Good answer.
Curtis: Sign us up.
PR Woman/Super Manager: Good.
Simon: You're making a mistake.
Alisha: We should all stick together.

Kelly: Just do it with us.
—Of course, it all goes horribly wrong.
  • On Chuck Morgan becomes Genre Saavy when he realizes he's a supporting character in a spy series. He even recognized the choreographic fight sequence Shaw engaged in and realized the failure to find Shaw's body meant he wasn't dead. He shifts to Wrong Genre Savvy when he gets the Intersect and believes he's now the main character.
  • By the last few episodes of Legend of the Seeker, Darken Rahl has grown genre savvy about the hero, Richard, and, as the world's nearing an end, is content to sit back in a hot-tub and relax, comfortable in the certainty that Richard will solve everything in short order.
  • Having already been through two seasons of Survivor each, Rob & Amber were smart enough to prepare before appearing on The Amazing Race (Something none of the other Survivor or Big Brother teams seem to have done). They studied the top teams from the first 5 seasons (Season 6 had not aired yet) and copied their tactics. This is common now, at least if you want to be successful, but back then they were the first team to prepare so thoroughly.
    • The teams on the Season 14 finale spent their final plane ride reviewing the previous legs to prepare for the Final Exam Boss puzzle that had been used in the previous two seasons. From that point on, taking notes on every leg became a common strategy.
    • Jordan played a textbook perfect final leg on Season 16, using strategies and knowledge he got from watching the previous seasons, to upset the much stronger Jet & Cord.
    • On leg 5 of Season 19, when given a clue to disassemble a spirit house and take it with them, five of the eight teams took notes on the positioning of the pieces of the house in case they have to put it back together later, and the other three had team members who at least suggested it (unfortunately, in one of those cases, the team just decided to take mental notes, and in the other two the team member making the suggestion was rebuffed, and all three doing the Road Block had to go back and look at another spirit house).
  • The series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a humorous inversion. Throughout the series the characters seem to constantly try and be Genre Savvy and invoke tropes intentionally for their benefits, apparently believing that everything will work out like a movie or tv show. However it rarely ever works out for them as Reality Ensues. For example in one episode, Mac and Charlie try to fake their deaths by blowing up a car. They make numerous attempts to make the car blow up like in an action movie by crashing it, shooting the gas tank, and even throwing a grenade inside. The most they end up succeeding in is injuring themselves.
  • Being in a town full of amnesiac storybook characters, and armed with a book of fairy tales allows Henry of Once Upon a Time to augment his already considerable Guile Hero skills. Between this and the Living Lie Detector ability he inherited from his mother, his Genre Savvy borders on superhuman.
  • Being a resident of Tree Hill, by Season 8, Skills has become Genre Savvy about wedding days in Tree Hill & proceeds to prepare for every possibility that could go wrong, and actually already had at some point, even threatening the congregation when the priest tells everyone present to Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace.
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