Grilling the Newbie - TV Tropes
- ️Tue Oct 25 2011
We've seen it every time someone new and mysterious appears, whether it's a New Transfer Student or Naïve Newcomer is given the third degree by the entire class or team. In some cases, there may be references to Noodle Incidents, Noodle Implements, or a Dark Secret.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In A Bridge to the Starry Skies, Daigo lampshades this after Kazuma's class introduction. During the first free time, Kazuma gets grilled by the class.
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, Fate received this treatment when she transferred to Nanoha's class. Interestingly, it wasn't Nanoha who saved her Shrinking Violet of a friend but their other friend Arisa.
- In Magician's Academy, this happens to Tanarotte and Suzuho when they join Takuto's regular school... especially after seeing how they act with Takuto. Of course, none of Suzuho's questions got answered.
- In Neon Genesis Evangelion, shortly after Shinji arrives, there are already rumors that he's the Eva pilot floating around his classroom after his first fight. The moment he innocently confirms it, everybody (save Hikari, Kensuke, and Toji) surrounds him to ask him questions related to the Eva.
- Pokémon the Series has this occur during the Journeys Episode 'Breaking the Ice', where a character of the day named Regina is temporarily part of Goh and Chloe's class. Their classmates grilling of her overwhelms her and her Glaceon, who is overly sensitive to such things because Regina has a history of being bullied responds by freezing them in a block of ice. Naturally this is not the best first impression for Regina.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The girls in Homura's new class grill her about her past, which she replies with as dispassionate 'I was hospitalized for a long time' as humanly possible. Because she has experienced this routine countless times.
- Occurs in the finale of Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion again, this time to Madoka Kaname as part of the new world that Homura created.
- Occurs in Sword Art Online during the Mother's Rosario arc. A hospital patient terminally ill with AIDS attends school with the help of a live streaming camera/speaker. They get grilled immediately after being introduced to the classroom.
Films — Animation
- Toy Story: When the other toys meet Buzz Lightyear, they ask him where he's from, what it's like being a space ranger, and what his buttons do.
- In Finding Nemo, the other fish in the tank ask Nemo about the Ocean endlessly.
Bubbles: "The big blue... what's it like?"
Nemo: "Um... big and blue?"
Bubbles: "I knew it!"
Literature
- In The Well of Lost Plots, Thursday gets grilled by many characters in the unpublished book Caversham Heights (where she's hiding out from Goliath and Lavosier during her advancing pregnancy) when they find out she's an Outlander. Some of them don't believe she is an Outlander when she admits not knowing things (like "the purpose of alphabet soup"), so she has them leave off their speech descriptors and successfully identifies several speakers in order.
Live-Action TV
- Charlie's Angels: New girl Tiffany is grilled by Kelly & Kris when they learn that she's actually met Charlie.
- Farscape: Jool and Sikozu got this treatment as newcomers. Neither of them were particularly forthcoming. Crais got this treatment when he deserted, too.
- On How I Met Your Mother, the gang does this to poor Victoria about her love life, with the questions thinly disguised as being part of a Truth or Dare style board game.
- On The X-Files, Mulder does this to Scully in their very first scene together. It's about five minutes of him grilling her on how she came to be partnered with him, her thesis, her thoughts on the paranormal, and then questions about the case he's working on. It serves to try and throw her off her game and perhaps even frighten her enough to ask for reassignment, but it backfires on him. He finds that she does not back down and has a comeback to his every objection. And thus, the Mulder/Scully dynamic is born, and continues on for the next nine seasons.
Video Games
- During the start of Persona 5, your criminal record gets leaked, which leads to (probably justified the way they see it) the Shujin students talking shit about you.