What's the term for this trope in media and where can I find examples?
August 4, 2022 1:44 PM   Subscribe

The trope: when a scene is about to move to an imagined sequence, a character's last phrase will repeat and get quieter, often with a glissando / ascending piano sequence played in the background. I'm trying to find variations and subversions, as well, but I don't know the term for the trope and can't find it quickly on TVTropes. Would love any help!
posted by LSK to Media & Arts (7 answers total)
 
Best answer: TV Tropes: Flashback... Back... Back...
posted by zamboni at 1:49 PM on August 4, 2022 [4 favorites]


I don't know the term, but I think this clip from Fraiser is an example of a subversion.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:49 PM on August 4, 2022 [3 favorites]


See also: Flashback Effects.
posted by zamboni at 1:50 PM on August 4, 2022


Wayne's World of course
posted by rhizome at 3:17 PM on August 4, 2022 [4 favorites]


The literary term for a flashback is analepsis if you want to get all fancy about it. Flashbacks have been done in movies since the early 1900s - but maybe "Rosebud" in Citizen Kane is he most influential usage for this particular echoing effect.
posted by rongorongo at 2:43 AM on August 5, 2022 [2 favorites]


The earliest example I know is the Turkish bath scene (arguably scenes) from The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp (1943) by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, with the repetition of 'Forty years ago...' but it's going back in time, not to an imagined sequence.
posted by Hogshead at 3:36 AM on August 5, 2022


Abe Simpson's "it'll happen to you!" scene inverts this a little bit because the flashback ends with a repeated word that older Homer keeps saying in the present.
posted by cubeb at 6:44 AM on August 5, 2022 [1 favorite]


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