Daphne: I guess that must be where the Tar Monster came from.
Jay: Incidentally, Ms. Silverman’s class was about tar pits today.
Jay: Incidentally, Ms. Silverman’s class was about tar pits today.
— The Scary Cases of Scooby-Doo, "This Is the Pits!"
Pay attention in class, especially science class, because you will need the information later in the episode.
This trope is the awkward tendency of programs to use precisely what they learned in school (almost always science) earlier that episode, and to lampshade it through grating dialogue. Shows aimed at an older audience can make it slightly more subtle; even so, it usually comes out like this:
"Oh no! We're being attacked by Gef the Talking Mongoose. Wait a minute, say, Swotty McCliche, weren't you studying how to defeat talking mongooses just this morning?"
"Oh yes, I totally forgot. How conveniently stupid of me!"
"Oh yes, I totally forgot. How conveniently stupid of me!"
Common in Edutainment Shows. May be the payoff for a "Reading Is Cool" Aesop.
Compare Chekhov's News, Strange Minds Think Alike, Lecture as Exposition.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- A Certain Scientific Railgun: During the Level-Upper Arc, Mikoto and Kuroko discuss Synaesthesia, the phenomenon under which a certain sensory stimulus can evoke sensations in a different form, after Kuroko off-handedly comments on wind chimes making her feel cooler, or red evoking the taste of strawberries. Turns out it's the exact missing link they need in solving the Level-Upper case, and the key to defeating the AIM-Burst.
- Dandadan: Before they met the Boxing Battler Gig Worker, there was a lesson about how the mantis shrimp has the strongest punch in nature. When modified by a Serpoian, the boxing Gig Worker gains mantis shrimp properties (though not the shrimp's gills).
- Done rather effectively in Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid, where during a mission briefing one of the SRT members makes a joke about the Cretans Paradox. When the commanding officers realize that a mole is relaying their communications to the enemy, they manage to turn the tables by obliquely referencing the joke, which lets the field teams know to do the exact opposite of what they're ordered thereafter.
- Hunter × Hunter: Gon escapes from a powerful enemy by remembering a lecture on how to swindle antiquarians.
- Early in an episode of Kamichu!, Yurie is shown reviewing her social studies textbook regarding the role and mission of the Japan Self Defense Forces. Later, she uses this information to convince a group of Ground Self Defense Force troops to not interfere with the alien's escape attempt.
- Naruto:
- Kakashi's lecture about revenge before the Sasuke retrieval arc. Guess what becomes one of the central themes of the manga (and not just to Sasuke)?
- During Naruto's Rasenshuriken training, he finally nails it after asking Kakashi how to "look towards right and left at the same time", whereupon Kakashi creates a shadow clone, inspiring Naruto to use shadow clones to do two things at once. The same phrase uttered word-for-word by Fukusaku later during his Sage Mode training gives him the idea to overcome his obstacle, again by using Shadow Clones.
- In the Hot Springs Episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, they use precisely this grating dialogue when they destroy an angel with the help of thermal expansion, which by amazing coincidence, Shinji had been studying that very day.
- Episode 3 of Night Wizard features a millennia-old puzzle about the color of a burning metal's flame guarding a Cosmic Keystone. No points for guessing what the lecture earlier on in the episode was about.
- In Pokémon Adventures, Pearl is told by the Fan Club President that in order to prepare for Platinum's first Super Contest performance, each member of the Sinnoh Trio must do one different part. Much later on in the story, when everyone is freaking out over the revelation that Team Galactic is planning to blow up the three lakes, Pearl notices the ribbon that Platinum's Empoleon won and remembers the President's words. He then declares that each of them must go to and protect one different lake, marking the first time in their journey together that the three of them would have to travel alone.
- An episode of Transformers Victory had an early scene of Wingwaver and Dashtacker teaching Jean about levers. Sure enough, later in the episode, he came up with a plan to use a lever to free a trapped human.
- Doesn't exactly help the protagonist solve anything, but a plot point is explained this way in The Vision of Escaflowne: Specifically, a class lecture drops off the random tidbit that Isaac Newton studied gravity blah blah but also in a metaphysical sense. Meanwhile the main villain is revealed to be from Earth, for his true first name to be Isaac, and has created a ton of powerful inventions for Zaibach, including technobabble about the gravity of hearts and such. Hmmmmmmmmm.
Comic Books
- On page 12 of the Laff-a-Lympics (1978) special "The Man Who Stole Thursday," Tempus (the story's antagonist who caused the titular problem) appears at a hotel where a comic book convention is taking place and he checks in identifying himself as John Smith. Later when Tempus is apprehended, he is unmasked to be Yogi Bear's nemesis Ranger Smith (Dynomutt's arch-foe Mastermind has him under mind control) who was called as John by another Jellystone park ranger beforehand. The narrator quips "We told you who it was back on page twelve! You weren't paying attention."
- Invoked by Spider-Man in Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man Vol 2 #1. Learning about Genghis Khan's strategies in high school, he decides to use one of them against a corrupt Supreme Court Judge in the latter half of the story.
Fan Works
- The Arithmancer universe: Ancient Runes class is surprisingly helpful at driving the plot, especially in The Arithmancer (as well as Lady Archimedes regarding the ritual to take down Voldemort).
- In the first two years at Hogwarts, Professor Babbling teaches various younger students, this time including Harry, Ron, and Hermione, to carve runes into wooden blocks during seminars. This helps Hermione to create, with Ron's help, wandless potions kits that even muggles can use, using wood-block runes to provide the magic required for the brewing process. It is used again in Chapter 57, where Ron carves runes to be charged with fortification spells to delay Professor Lupin from breaking out of the Shrieking Shack as a transformed werewolf. This manages to hold until the group reaches Dumbledore for help.
- Later in the book, Professor Babbling teaches the Bliviklet spell to her third-year class to link runes together in Chapter 53, explaining its practical application for simple and temporary defensive and monitoring systems. This comes in handy four chapters later, when Ron uses the spell to alert him and the rest of the group the moment werewolf-Lupin breaks out of the Shrieking Shack.
Ron: Entwined pair of runes, remember? They're good for monitoring. When it breaks, we'll know Lupin got out.
- In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) fic A Day Without Leonardo (AO3 link here
), Splinter gives the remaining turtles guidance on being a leader and working together during the first chapter's training. All of his advice is later put to use in the second chapter when the turtles go up against a gang of Kraang.
- Everyday Craziness in Pontypandy: Early in "Valentine's Daze", Elvis teaches Gabby how to perform the Heimlich maneuver. At the end, Gabby uses this knowledge to help a choking girl; this girl, Svetlana, soon becomes Gabby's love interest.
- Early in episode 3 of The Scary Cases of Scooby-Doo, a teacher in Jay Thomas's class does a lecture on tar pits and their composition. Sure enough, the gang is called by Sheriff Stone about a Tar Monster haunting a construction site, and they soon come across one of those said pits over there.
Jay: Incidentally, Ms. Silverman’s class was about tar pits today.
- Abram, the victor who only scored a 3 in The Victors Project, won his Games because of this. He spent his entire time in the Training Center at the edible plant station because no one would bully him there. It came in handy in his Thirsty Desert Arena.
Music
- The Dethklok song "Bloodrocuted" has the protagonist come up with the idea of using his own blood to electrocute his pursuers after having a brief flashback to his high school biology class, where he learned that blood conducts electricity.
Podcasts
- In In Strange Woods, while Lexy stops going to survival training after John Francis breaks his wrist, she takes what she learned to heart. She uses examples of dead reckoning and other things Howl taught to make a case for sending a search-and-rescue team in the final episode when the adults assume the kids would be fine.
Theater
- Lampshaded in A Very Potter Musical; at the beginning, Snape asks if anyone knows what a Portkey is. His next question is if anyone knows what Foreshadowing is.
Visual Novels
- In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, several days end with Monokuma holding a short "Monokuma Theatre" segment. While these can sound quite random (especially as he enjoys reminding everyone that he's a bear), sometimes they foreshadow future events. One example is his lecture about the difference between "I killed someone" and "I ended up killing someone" — shortly afterwards, somebody is murdered, not out of intention but out of a loss of control on the culprit's part.
- Present in the Fate route of Fate/stay night, as Archer decides to give a few hints about his magic to Shirou, with plenty of sarcasm and veiled threats thrown in. Our hero later uses all of the information gained to project Caliburn and defeat Berserker.
Shirou: It wasn't his usual harassment. Those words held an importance that I need to understand right now. — No, saying that... Weren't all of his words a warning that I shouldn't have ignored?
- Katawa Shoujo has this in Emi's route. Mutou, Yamaku's science teacher, takes Hisao aside for a short lecture about observing things (if you let him). Namely, that if you can't observe something directly, observe its effect on other things. This advice comes in very handy, as it unlocks new dialogue options when Hisao and Emi's relationship starts getting off-track.
- A common occurrence in Zero Escape. Characters will sometimes lecture you about something you ran into and will be involved in something more important in the future.
Web Animation
- Helluva Boss: In "The Harvest Moon Festival", Moxxie rattles off his knowledge of angelic weaponry in a failed attempt to impress his in-laws. Later on, he ends up discovering an angelic weapon in Striker's room; he quickly recognizes it as one of the few weapons around that can kill demon royalty, leading to him discovering that Striker is planning on killing Stolas.
Web Videos
- Parodied in Friendship is Witchcraft. At the beginning of 'Cute from the Hip', Cheerilee gives a paranoid and seemingly irrelevant lesson about robots and the dangers they pose to society. It's played off as some sort of Freudian justification for why her husband has been distant lately. But then at the end of the episode we're introduced to Sweetie Belle, who is quite obviously a robot. No one notices or remembers the lesson.
Real Life
- Foreign language courses if you ever use them. NOT having language skills is not only inconvenient, but downright dangerous, especially if you ever have to deal with security forces or even just toughs. Except when the security forces become suspicious because your foreign language skills are better than they would expect.