There is a common trope both in theatre and in film where a scene is about to end. One actor is about to leave a room. They pause at the door and either ask or are asked a final question just as they are about to leave. A parting shot??
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10Technically, it's a parthian shot...but people always get that wrong.– Paulie_DJun 17, 2019 at 19:02
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1@Paulie_D I really should have known that! I fairly regularly use a Mongolian bow .. but not from horseback. Great comment!– MiguelHJun 18, 2019 at 8:10
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I would hardly call that a trope, I do that all the time in real life. It’s probably super annoying for my interlocutors though. :-)– Konrad RudolphJun 18, 2019 at 11:00
1 Answer
It's called "And Another Thing"
Two characters are in a room having a conversation. One of them makes to leave. But as this character reaches the door, they turn back to deliver a final line. Often this is some bit of exposition that sets up something later in the episode ("the starboard discombobulator's on the fritz") but that the writer couldn't figure out how to work into the scene's main conversation.
Perfected by Lieutenant Columbo as a means of turning the screw on a suspect who is already exasperated by Columbo's shenanigans, since an Exasperated Perp is liable to make a crucial mistake. Though this became Columbo's most distinctive character trait, it started as a mistake, with two stories on how it came to be. In one, during the filming of the Columbo pilot, "Prescription Murder", Peter Falk simply forgot to deliver his last line before leaving the set, so he turned around, came back, and said "One more thing..." The take was left in, and became a defining moment. In the other, it was the writers that forgot something they needed Columbo to say, so — this being a time of type-writers — rather than start the script page over they threw in "One more thing".
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4I prefer the first story - a director might like that & keep it. For the second, typists are cheap & disposable. (in a completely non-1970s non-sexist way ;-)) In 'hollywood' everybody is disposable, even the main star if it's forced.– TetsujinJun 17, 2019 at 18:08
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5It might be worth noting that that's just what TV Tropes happens to call it (and TV Tropes has all sorts of ridiculous trope names).– V2Blast ♦Jun 18, 2019 at 1:41
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1I hate seeing links to TVtropes in answers. Not because it is bad information or because it is a bad site, but because I am now assured to waste the rest of the afternoon looking at One More Thing on that site. Jun 18, 2019 at 18:58