Questions tagged [first-appearance]

Which was the first movie/show to use a certain characteristic or technique?

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6 votes
2 answers
347 views

What's the earliest surviving TV sitcom? Key word is "surviving"

I know Mary Kay and Johnny is the first TV sitcom, but I heard none of the episodes survived except maybe one episode from June 1949 that got archived by the Paley Center for Media, but I don't think ...
RKV's user avatar
  • 71
16 votes
2 answers
3k views

What was the first movie to feature both black and white as well as color scenes?

List of movies featuring both black and white as well as color scenes: Pleasantville (1998) Moulin Rouge! (2001) The Phantom of the Opera (2004) Winter’s Bone (2010) Oppenheimer (2023) What was the ...
Max Power's user avatar
  • 1,369
3 votes
0 answers
133 views

What's the first movie to show trailer of its sequel/prequel at the end?

At the end of "The Matrix Reloaded (2003)", there is a trailer of its sequel i.e "The Matrix Revolutions (2003)". What's the first movie to show trailer of its sequel/prequel at ...
Maro M's user avatar
  • 139
2 votes
0 answers
147 views

What's the first movie to use this technique?

In Scene 1, a man is telling a group of men about something that happened to him in the past. In Scene 2, the audience sees a visual representation of the man’s past experience on the screen. The ...
Max Power's user avatar
  • 1,369
3 votes
1 answer
282 views

What movie or show was the first to feature an "evidence board"?

Also known as a conspiracy board, crazy wall, murder map, conspiracy wall, link chart, investigation board, etc.
joe snyder's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
168 views

What was the first movie or show to use a conlang?

What was the first movie or show to use a conlang? Def: Conlangs: an invented language intended for human communication that has planned and cohesive phonological, grammatical, and syntactical ...
OldPadawan's user avatar
  • 8,265
21 votes
1 answer
5k views

Which movie was the first to use the technique where the camera zooms in on a TV screen and then transitions to the scene shown on the screen?

The above is a scene from The Matrix (1999), where the camera view zooms in on a TV screen and then transitions to the scene shown on the screen. Which movie was the first to use this technique?
Pedro Manuel's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
460 views

What is the earliest appearance of the "pretty ugly girl" trope?

In the "pretty ugly girl" trope, an attractive young woman is cast as "ugly", this being signified typically by (a) baggy clothes, (b) hair in a bun or otherwise held up over the ...
Michael Stern's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
98 views

what's the earliest example of "flipping through various t.v channels creating a coherent message"?

pretty much as the title, i know I've seen it quite a lot in T.V & film. some examples being: The Simpsons - Radioactive Man (4:59) [1995?] Shaun of the Dead [2004] ...
Praxiom's user avatar
  • 131
3 votes
1 answer
185 views

What was the first American-made movie/TV show in which Mandarin or Cantonese was accurately spoken?

It is not too surprising that in a period when Asian characters were portrayed by non-Asians that the producers did not worry too much about authenticity of the Chinese (or Japanese) dialog spoken by ...
releseabe's user avatar
  • 3,497
17 votes
9 answers
4k views

What was the first film to depict the American military as villains?

I just had a talk with a friend and he claimed that Avatar (2009) was the first film that got an American audience cheering for American soldiers being killed. I tried to offer several counter-...
E Tam's user avatar
  • 319
3 votes
3 answers
413 views

What was the first movie or TV show that featured a villain that happened to be a normal person?

I was watching One Hour Photo, and was wondering what was the first movie or TV show that featured a character that was a villain that happened to be a normal person. By 'normal', I mean normal in the ...
Andrew Ryan's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
189 views

What is the first film to show characters watching a film?

I’ve found many lists and supercuts of movie characters watching movies. I’m wondering what the first known instance of this (movie characters watching a movie) is.
Cbob's user avatar
  • 77
2 votes
0 answers
141 views

Who first used the shot of a character being the focus whilst walking in a large crowd?

In films such as Midnight Cowboy and the Pursuit of Happyness, among others. Which director used this specific shot first?
DonkeyBoy19's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
104 views

first occurrence of the angry police boss chewing out his/her subordinates

It's really the highlight of the genre: the sergeant, lieutenant, or chief has the commissioner or mayor "breathing down my neck," and they sometimes have got "my nuts in a vice" ...
Tom's user avatar
  • 3,629
2 votes
1 answer
130 views

What is the oldest piece of visual media involving computerized dating services?

TVTropes mentions the history of digital dating services, and then notes that there's media from before the 1990s about it. Using computers as dating services did not start with the rise of the ...
Malady's user avatar
  • 401
7 votes
1 answer
286 views

What is the first television show with a trans male lead?

I've been telling people that that the first two television shows with trans male leads came out this month, either Dead End: Paranormal Park (Netflix, 16 June 2022) or The Umbrella Academy (Netflix, ...
TMuffin's user avatar
  • 189
27 votes
2 answers
5k views

What is the first animated cartoon?

I am reading a book about film history that says that Fantasmagorie (1908) was the first animated cartoon. Coincidentally, I stumbled upon Pauvre Pierrot which is an animated cartoon from 1882. Not ...
LulY's user avatar
  • 443
5 votes
3 answers
152 views

What was the first dramatization of an existing movie's production?

Recently, Paramount+ aired the new series The Offer (2022), a dramatization of the making of The Godfather (1972). I haven't seen it but it seems to be following in the footsteps of the film Saving Mr....
PlutoThePlanet's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
549 views

How and why did Vivaldi's Spring Allegro become synonymous with "high class" in movies?

Vivaldi has been used a lot in film, and the Four Seasons is probably his most famous and popular work. Often, in films, you will hear the first party of Vivaldi's Spring (specifically the Allegro) -- ...
Aster's user avatar
  • 165
4 votes
1 answer
143 views

What was the first film project to have double directors?

I was recently watching the latest season of Star Trek: Discovery. While watching the opening credits, I noticed that two episodes of season 4 had two directors listed for those two episodes: ...
Darth Locke's user avatar
13 votes
1 answer
175 views

What's the earliest example in comedy of someone reading out the prognosis as the patient quickly suffers them all one by one?

It's a classic trope in comedy. The Simpsons has used it at least twice. Once where Dr Hibbard describes the stages of grief to Homer after he ate badly prepared fugu. (One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, ...
MKHC's user avatar
  • 231
14 votes
1 answer
2k views

Is The Ethel Waters Show lost media?

The Ethel Waters Show was a 1939 NBC variety special starring actress and singer Ethel Waters, in what reportedly may have been the very first appearance of a Black person on TV. I’d love to see the ...
Lieutenant Zipp's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
6k views

What's the first movie to use a prop to destroy/control an entire world?

Infinity stones in Avengers series Mother Boxes in Justice league series Aries prototype in F9: The Fast Saga Project Starfish | The Suicide Squad (2021) What's the first movie to use a prop to ...
J Mac Brown's user avatar
  • 2,795
18 votes
2 answers
4k views

What was the first TV show or movie where the viewer could hear a character's thoughts?

I was watching How to Get Away with Murder and, in the final episode, the character Annalise has a brief mental debate on what to wear to the trial. What was the first TV show or movie to do this?
jinkevin's user avatar
  • 283
0 votes
1 answer
675 views

What was the first movie in which the bad guy(s) are using a sky beam? [closed]

The use of a sky beam has become a trope in the last decade or so. They appear in Star Trek (2009), The Avengers (2012), Big Hero 6 (2014), Independence Day (2016), and many others. Where/when did ...
Michael Stern's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
243 views

Where did this fight scene move originate?

In the movie John Wick (2014), the final fight scene pits the eponymous hero against crime boss Viggo Tarasov. As it seems Viggo is about to get the upper hand and stab John Wick, Wick uses Viggo's ...
Jason P Sallinger's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
173 views

What is the first movie to show present + flashback in single frame?

In Sahoo (2019), Ashok describes how shootout happened to police team. We can see present + flashback in single frame while he describes: What is the first movie to show present + flashback in single ...
S Rajendra's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
357 views

Which was the first commercial movie featuring duplicates (doubles) on screen

Which was the first commercial movie featuring duplicates (doubles) on screen. By duplicates I mean, same person playing two different roles (or same role but from different time in case of Time ...
Abhijeet Shukla's user avatar
6 votes
0 answers
331 views

What's the first movie to show newspaper spinning towards screen?

In old movies, they used to show newspaper spinning towards screen like this: Here is the example from The Godfather (1972):
Chloe P.'s user avatar
  • 107
3 votes
0 answers
386 views

First movie with a "character on a cracking glass floor"-suspense scene

The other day, I re-watched "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" (1997) and I was amazed by the suspense scene in which Julianne Moore's character finds herself on a glass panel that starts ...
marco89_'s user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
436 views

Where did the "ordering someone to kill the dog" trope first come from?

In Dog Soldiers (2002), there is a scene at the beginning where a character is told to shoot and kill a dog to show his allegiance and loyalty to a commanding officer. A similar thing also happened in ...
Krythic's user avatar
  • 421
10 votes
5 answers
802 views

First movie set in a world with COVID-19?

In the middle of The Paramedic (2020), the radio news announced: "Friday, January 3, 2020... According to information from Chinese media, the cause could be a virus that originated in a live ...
preBob's user avatar
  • 107
4 votes
0 answers
74 views

Earliest version of a freelance assassin getting an assignment from a handler

Following a John Wick binge, I've realized how used to the idea of freelance assassins getting sent assignments or bounties from some sort of guild and/or personal agent. We saw that in Hitman (2007) ...
jeffronicus's user avatar
  • 1,500
4 votes
1 answer
814 views

What was the first TV series to show a toilet?

So over the weekend I was listening to my local NPR station to Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! and they were playing a true or false game about characters in the TV series, The Brady Bunch. Anyways, one ...
Darth Locke's user avatar
6 votes
0 answers
265 views

First use of super-slow zoom in horror films to create tension

Here I'm not talking specifically about a "dolly zoom", first introduced by cinematographer Irmin Roberts in Hitchcock's Vertigo, but about the agonizingly slow zoom that you see not ...
DukeZhou's user avatar
  • 6,909
9 votes
0 answers
775 views

Who pioneered the use of Laughing Kookaburra birds to create the impression of a jungle setting?

I was sent a link to the first video below and it immediately sent me back to my childhood watching reruns of what were already old films on Sunday afternoon television. I'm sure I've heard this bird'...
uhoh's user avatar
  • 2,423
7 votes
1 answer
702 views

What was the first movie to show "Google" on-screen?

Google was founded in 1998. So what was the first movie to show "Google" on-screen?
Carl Trevor's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
666 views

Is Psycho really the very first film to show a flushing toilet?

A lot of people always claim this about the film, but I haven't found anything to 100% confirm it yet. Anyone know for sure?
Karlton Hester's user avatar
3 votes
3 answers
1k views

What was the first movie to use viruses as the basis for zombies?

So when you watch old zombie movies, like Night of the Living Dead, zombies tend to be a mysterious thing, they are just an unnatural event with no explanation. Fast forward 50 years into the future ...
Makogan's user avatar
  • 115
5 votes
0 answers
1k views

Origin of the side-view surprise car crash shot?

The most common form of the surprise car crash shot has the camera inside a moving car, with the frame showing the driver or a passenger in profile and (past them) a side window framing the world ...
outis's user avatar
  • 165
2 votes
1 answer
141 views

When was the first action sequence involving a parachuteless jump out of a plane filmed?

The 1991 movie Point Break features a sequence where Special Agent Johnny Utah jumps out of a plane without a parachute and catches up to another person with a chute while in mid-air. I believe I've ...
KlandleGlobes's user avatar
3 votes
4 answers
690 views

What is the earliest example of a 'gag reel'?

Having just watched a string of gag reels on youtube, I would like to know what the earliest examples of this extra material would be. I found one from 1946 on youtube but it would be interesting to ...
SDH's user avatar
  • 205
5 votes
3 answers
4k views

What was the first Zombie movie?

It is widely accepted that the first modern zombie movie is George A Romero's brilliant, low budget, Night Of The Living Dead. But I'm sure zombies featured in Hammer Movies much earlier so Romero ...
matt_black's user avatar
  • 22.5k
8 votes
1 answer
242 views

Which show was the first to use concept art as the ending credits?

In Disney+'s The Mandalorian, each episode ends with concept arts during the ending song. I don't know if this is a new film technique or not, but I've seen in first in RWBY and now in The Mandalorian....
Jokevin's user avatar
  • 89
5 votes
1 answer
4k views

When was the first adult film ever made?

I was curious if anyone happens to maybe know when the first adult porno video was made on record? I was wondering how that might come about and what was the idea backing it versus how it is now?
user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
1k views

Pencils in the ceiling

I've just watched a Castle episode (S07E12) and this (pencils in the ceiling) scene (at 06:05) made me feel nostalgic, and smile. I know another similar scene from The X-Files [1]. Mulder's office ...
akinuri's user avatar
  • 155
4 votes
1 answer
125 views

Origin of montages with incongruously happy music [closed]

I'm asking about montages of some criminal or depressing thing that have a happy song underneath them. The first show I remember seeing them on is Breaking Bad, but I've also seen them on Stranger ...
tagurit's user avatar
  • 149
9 votes
1 answer
307 views

What is the first movie to use a VCR (or recording device) to trick an adversary?

I was watching "Columbo: Playback", and the murderer uses a video security system to cover up a murder. It got me thinking, what was the first movie to use video playback to trick another character? ...
user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
337 views

Has this "lyrics with song" style of scene ever been done?

In the movie Baby Driver, in the Coffee Run scene, some of the lyrics of the song are plastered in graffiti on the walls while the main character walks to the coffee shop. ...
Gustavo Gabriel's user avatar

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