http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConspicuouslyLightPatch

Give up? None of them. Guess which toy Steven picks up.

Dean: Whoa, hold on. Check out that book.

Fred: There are a lot of books in here, Dean.

Dean: No, that one. The one that isn't painted into the background of the car —[coughs] — library. Supernatural , " ScoobyNatural Whoa, hold on. Check out that book.There are a lot of books in here, Dean.No, that one. The one that isn't painted into the background of the car —[coughs] — library.

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In some cartoons, it is obvious that a part of the background will be used. What makes it obvious is that it is strikingly lighter in color than its surroundings. It might also have an obvious difference in detail or color saturation. Another telltale sign would be clear black outlines on the object: the three clearly outlined rocks on the cliff would be the ones to tumble.

A similar situation is where things that should move don't, because they are made a part of the background to save time.

This is an unintentional artifact from the traditional, celluloid animation process. This was largely because, besides being painted by different artists at different times/locations, already making consistent matching difficult, each foreground/animated object would require up to hundreds of different drawings, as opposed to backgrounds/matte paintings, which each only needed to be done once. Therefore devoting any more than basic color saturation and contrasting light values would only make the process even more lengthy and time consuming than it already was. Additionally, the unpainted portions of cels were not perfectly transparent, so the colors on lower cels became more and more muted as additional layers were added to the top of the stack.

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Film critic Roger Ebert has called this the "Fudd Flag", after Bugs Bunny's nemesis, who uses it to determine which tree Bugs is hiding behind, which rock he needs to trip over, etc.

Nowadays, digital ink-and-paint and compositing has largely displaced the use of painted cels, meaning that colors can be matched accurately (although conspicuously light patches are still pretty common in cartoons with digitally inked-and-painted foregrounds and hand-painted backgrounds). The issue of lavish backgrounds contrasting with simple animated elements remains to some extent, but it is often avoided. Many TV cartoons now use backgrounds rendered in the same simplistic style as the animation, while theatrical films can now use CG to render "background" elements that can be animated... which can lead to a whole new set of problems.

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Something similar occasionally appears in older live-action productions. In particular, you may see an oddly colored sheen around the characters in shows featuring heavy use of Chroma Key. In his review of the Star Wars prequel trailer , Mr. Cranky dubbed this slight Special Effect Failure a "mystical aura." The technique has since evolved to the point where it is mostly no longer noticeable. Mostly.

This also applies to mid-era point-n-click Adventure Games, when the background would be painted or 3D rendered, while objects would usually be drawn sprites. However, this had a practical use, allowing players to easily locate collectible objects, even small ones. Especially small ones. A similar version can appear in action games that require you to destroy parts of the environment to proceed, again, mostly in older ones. The breakable parts would usually be a different color, and one can sometimes even see the seams where the object is supposed to break apart.

In early console games, some interactive objects might use a noticeably different palette than the background, since sprites and backgrounds have their own color spaces.

Also, it may be used intentionally in video games to help point out certain objects or items, and often in different form than the accidental style mentioned above but the same spirit (something that looks out of place in a minor way that reveals it to be important) most often as a Notice This.

Occasionally inverted by allowing the cel/object to exist and making it readily visually apparent, and then moving the background art instead of the cel.

This trope is particularly prominent in cartoons made during The Golden Age of Animation. With the modern trend of flash animation, there is almost no difference between backgrounds and cels, completely averting this trope altogether by the fortune of new technology.

Examples:

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Striking light objects

Anime & Manga

The Touhou doujin-anime Musou Kakyo: A Summer Day's Dream has this almost constantly.

When the elephant eats bricks on Black Cat Detective.

Dragon Ball Z had it, though not as bad as some other cartoons of the era. For example ◊ .

. Quite obvious at one point in Yu Yu Hakusho, when the part of the Saint Beasts' castle is collapsing.

Parodied in episode 15 of Pani Poni Dash!. When the bus is teetering on the edge of the cliff, every external shot of the cliff shows the edge of the cliff very obviously animated this way, indicating that the cliff is about to crumble. It never does.

In the episode of Digimon Adventure 02 with the Dark Ocean, Kari is at one point inside a tunnel when part of the ceiling collpases. The bricks that fall are a shade lighter than the ones that don't.

Purposely avoided in the second episode of Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions, a missing cat decorated like a chimaera is sitting on the shelf in a bedroom filled with the belongings of a chunnibyou. In full room shot the cat is purposely drawn like the background. However this is explainable since said animal doesn't move till the next shot. Which raises the questions as to why a cat would stay perfectly still and quiet on a shelf for longer than necessary while two strangers enter its temporary residence.



Films  Animation

Video Games

Western Animation

Mystical Auras

Films  Live-Action

Literature

Referenced in the Doctor Who Expanded Universe book Verdigris, where Jo is asked: "... think about every alien artifact or creature you have ever seen. Weren't they always surrounded by a crackling nimbus of blue light? [...] Didn't they sometimes look a little ... unconvincing?"

Live-Action TV

Video Games

Point-and-Click Version

Video Games

Parodies and Aversions

Anime & Manga

The anime Blue Seed has an omake sequence after one episode which parodies this; one character stops and monologues on the properties of a set of desk drawers, noticing that one is drawn more simply and in a different palette — therefore it must be the only one that moves, and contains the item he is looking for. In the same sequence, Matsudaira warns Kunikida not to step on a part of the cliff that was colored differently. Much to their surprise, the more complex part of the cliff collapsed.

Inverted in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, where the titanic Ohmu insects are made up of animated backgrounds.

Averted in Spirited Away; the art book points out that CG was used to animate the dishes when Chihiro's parents start nudging them around with their pig snouts.

Fan Works

Parodied in Episode 70 of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: Pegasus: The only way to defeat him is with a special card that I've hidden somewhere in this room. Think strategically, though. Where can one find an extra card?

Yami: Well, that's obviously Pot of Greed over there.

Kaiba: How can you be so sure?

Yami: And neither do I. But I can tell it's that one because it's animated differently than the rest of the stuff in here. The only way to defeat him is with a special card that I've hidden somewhere in this room. Think strategically, though. Where can one find an extra card?Well, that's obviously Pot of Greed over there.How can you be so sure? Nobody even knows what Pot of Greed does! And neither do I. But I can tell it's that one because it's animated differently than the rest of the stuff in here.

Films  Animation

Mystical aura is spoofed in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs with the Mayor's ad for Sardine Land, in order to make it all the more crapstastic. Ironically, since the film is made with state-of-the-art CGI, it took a bit of doing to properly simulate the look of bad Chroma Key.

Podcasts

Discussed in episode 11 of The Fallen Gods when the only information Mara gives the party on what she wants from a wizard's Tower is "you'll know it when you see it". They decide that this trope will be how they spot it.

Video Games

The creators of Doom 3 made a point of rendering both fixed and dynamic objects the same way for this reason, among others.

The original The Legend of Zelda has identical dungeon walls whether a bomb will punch a hole in them or not. Fortunately, only the middle of any given wall needs checking. The overworld is far trickier, since bombable walls always face south, but otherwise can be in any location (when checking, keep in mind that bombing between tiles can let you hit two walls at once).

Spoofed in Telltale Games's Point-and-Click Game Back to the Future: The Game: Episode 3. A bricked-up doorway features a obviously discoloured brick, the only selectable object upon the surface. It's just there to have Marty make a joke about it being "another brick in the wall". Subsequent clicks confirm its useless nature, with Marty commenting that it is just a brick.

Peasant's Quest subverts the game version. At one point in the game, a conspicuously light candle appears on the screen. If you try to get it, the game says "It seems like you should be able to do that, doesn't it? Sorry. No dice."

Space Quest: Spoofed in one of the first few screens of Space Quest 3. Using the parser to try and examine a very inconspicuous object gives a message along the lines of "We know what you're looking at, and we assure you, you don't need it." In one of the first screens of Space Quest 2 there was a suspicious square of grass outlined by dots, concealing a Pit Trap. The command "look at trap", which only worked on this screen, would tell you to stop being paranoid.



Web Comics

Western Animation

Animaniacs made fun of this. In one episode, the Warner Brothers (and Sister) were rented out to a Hanna-Barbera-esque company, and placed in a Yogi-Bear-esque cartoon with plenty of these.

The Animals of Farthing Wood averted this by having certain objects painted on the animation cels so that the characters could use them without them looking conspicuous beforehand.

In Gargoyles, the animators worked very hard to keep the stone gargoyles from being Fudd Flags. When stone, the gargoyles are in background animation, appearing as any other inanimate object. When they come to life, they are in cel animation. Naturally, this trope is back to being played straight whenever somebody needs to move a stone gargoyle, but that doesn't happen very often.

Parodied in an episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law (which is animated digitally) when Apache Chief picks up a telephone pole and it's suddenly a different color from when it was a background object.

Averted in the Tex Avery cartoon Northwest Hounded Police. There's a scene where the wolf, fleeing Droopy, sits on a beach next to a conspicuously light-colored rock. He points the rock out and predicts that Droopy will pop out from under there, only to have Droopy appear from under a different, less conspicuous rock. The wolf then grabs the first rock and hits himself on the head with it, ensuring that the animators would make it a cel painting instead of a background element.

Lampshaded, as with other animation tropes, on the OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode "Your World is an Illusion". Holo-Jane tries to explain to K.O. that his world isn't real, and has him pick up one of two pebbles on the ground. One is in a lighter color, while the other one is more rendered and clearly part of the background. K.O. instinctively picks up the lighter pebble, but when Holo-Jane asks him to pick up the other one, he finds himself unable to.

Averted in The Simpsons by painting the backgrounds on cels, same as the characters. It succeeded most of the time, but there were still tell-tale "Fudd flags" visible at times until the production switched to digital rendering methods.

SpongeBob SquarePants inverts it with the robot waiter in the episode "No Weenies Allowed", which (except for its claws) is a painted background object whenever it appears.

Steven Universe: According to the artbook, the show's background artists deliberately make some background objects stick out even though they don't move. It's an attempt to make backgrounds more lively, based on a theory they call "threat of activation". You populate the world with little details that you design and paint like props, like they're on cels . And since the audience at least subconsciously knows that drawings on cels are probably going to move, you create this illusion that those things could move, even if they never do! A subtle joke in "Sadie's Song"; Sadie offers Steven a stuffed animal from a large pile. It looks like he's about to choose one that's a blatantly different style and color from the rest, but then he refuses.

In the Unikitty! episode "Hide N' Seek", Richard, being so monotone that people flat out don't realize that he's there sometimes, is drawn in some scenes as literally being part of the background, with his face rendered onto a separate, albeit less detailed, layer. It is not as jarring as most examples, as he is simply a grey LEGO brick in design.

Weird examples

Live-Action TV