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

Richard: No, you know how today we're heading into the land of the Giants to offer them the Jewel of Valencia in exchange for joining our quest to save Princess Isabella?

Galavant: Yes, we discussed it last night in great detail. There's no need for your clunky exposition. Galavant No, you know how today we're heading into the land of the Giants to offer them the Jewel of Valencia in exchange for joining our quest to save Princess Isabella?Yes, we discussed it last night in great detail. There's no need for your clunky exposition.

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As you know, we are Describing the trope As You Know Here.

This is a form of exposition where one character explains to another something that they both know, but the audience doesn't or may have forgotten.

"As you know, Alice, my Death Ray depends on codfish balls."

"Damn it, Bob, you know full well that Alice hasn't been the same since that tragic codfish incident ."

In discussions of science fiction, this is often "As You Know, Bob" (abbreviated AYKB), or occasionally, "Tell me, Professor [about this marvelous invention we all use every day and have no reason to be talking about except to inform the audience]". Other common variations involve a newspaper reporter sent to cover events, or a conversation between two supporting characters  hence another name, "maid and butler dialogue". Terry Pratchett refers to the fantasy fiction version as the "As you know, your father, the king..." speech.

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This is also a common feature of pilot episodes, where characters' backgrounds and relationships need to be established for the first time. Likewise, when new characters are introduced or the writers believe a reminder is in order, characters will explicitly refer to each other by name during a regular conversation, when this is rarely done in real life: "Say, Alice, how are you enjoying your coffee?" "Why, it's delicious, Bob, thanks for asking. How are you coming along, Charlie?"

This is also quite common on medical drama shows like ER, Scrubs, and Grey's Anatomy, where common medical phenomena and simple procedures must be explained to the laymen in the audience. In most cases, this is achieved by explaining the disease or procedure to an intern or non-professional character.

On some shows, characters will "As You Know" in order to provide information that was already provided in a previous episode (that viewers might have missed) or even earlier in the show (for those who just tuned in), to the great annoyance of dedicated fans. (e.g. Just Tuned In: "Remember, Bob, you only have 20 minutes to defuse the bomb..." or Previous Episode: "Alice is really mad at you for running over her dog last week, isn't she?") Soap operas or adventure-type shows will often circumvent this with a "When we last left our heroes" recap at the beginning of each two-parter.

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This may also happen with solitary characters (in thought rather than in speech), who, apparently, have such bad memory problems that they have to constantly remind themselves what they're doing right now and what happened in the near past.

Not explaining anything sometimes results in the audience being too busy trying to figure out what's going on to enjoy the show, using this trope is not always a bad thing. In serialized works or plays, "as you know" is seen as a convenient workaround to save time or to spare readers returning to the series. For example, it's easier to say "as you know, Dr. Moriarty is the most feared criminal mastermind in the world" than showing to new readers to the Sherlock Holmes series just what kind of criminal the doctor is. Or, it often would be more advantageous to a play's length to say "as you know, the Montagues and Capulets have been feuding for 50 years" than to show a fifty-year-long feud. Notwithstanding, there are less obvious workarounds in use in modern writing.

Writers try to avoid this by using The Watson, and thus the most common alternative is to give the protagonist amnesia so he doesn't know, which isn't really considered a better option. The Idiot Hero and Fish out of Water are also acceptable tropes to employ to make this trope more believable, though shoehorning in such a character may be worse. A third form is to have two characters comparing information to each be sure that the other does in fact know. A fourth is to have the characters have an argument, since arguments are among the few real-life situations in which people remind each other of things they both already know.note "How could you do X? You know perfectly well that Y..." Breaking the Fourth Wall to have the characters know they are informing the audience is Older Than Feudalism in its own right, but obviously suitable only for broadly comic works.

It was ridiculously common in post-World War II literature, to the point that readers expected it and could become confused if the writer left it out. This might be the most universal trope found in postwar literature; you find it in works by everyone from George Orwell to Barbara Cartland to Rex Stout. (One wonders which one of the three would be most insulted by that grouping.)

Generally more acceptable when dealing with characters who are in situations where exposition is actually going on in-universe, e.g. military briefings or scientific lectures. In these cases, the phrase is less used to explain something and more to bring focus to a particular fact. ("As you know, we lost contact with Delta Squad this morning..." or "As you may know, the proton has a mass of...")

Specific variants:

See also: Mr. Exposition, The Watson, Captain's Log, Expospeak, Captain Obvious, Exact Eavesdropping, Viewers Are Morons. A subtrope of Show, Don't Tell.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Audio Plays

The Audio Adaptation of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is, for much of the time, narrated by Maurice himself. Towards the end, it becomes apparent that he's telling the story to Dangerous Beans. Who a) was right there for most of it and b) is mostly dead

Comic Books

Comic Strips

Frequently turns up in Doonesbury's earliest days. "Well, here I am..."

Lampshaded in the newspaper comic Sally Forth: the title character asked her daughter what she was doing "for Earth Day next week", and was told that was the most obvious bit of exposition she had pitched since "As you know, Hilary, you are my daughter."

Fan Works

Films  Animation

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls  Rainbow Rocks: Although there is some debate as to how long exactly the Dazzlings have been banished in the human world, in the prologue Adagio's comment about how it is lacking Equestrian magic and Aria's discussion about their banishment are something they should know already. Likewise, Sunset Shimmer and the Humane Five discussing the events of the first movie is for the audience's benefit; you'd think Sunset especially wouldn't want to dwell so much on it. Pinkie Pie's intervention is then just rubbing it in, but that's in character for Pinkie. Sunset Shimmer: A demon. I turned into a raging she-demon.

Pinkie Pie: And tried to turn everyone here into teenage zombies for your own personal army! [smile]

Wreck-It Ralph: King Candy explains the nightly roster race. Lampshaded when he says "We all know this," with an Aside Glance to boot. Averted with Calhoun, whose game had only recently arrived at the arcade, meaning that she had no idea about the local slang term of "going Turbo", so Felix explains it to her upon realising this.

The Rescuers: The viewers learn about the Rescue Aid Society's origin when their current head reminds the other members about it. He even starts with "As you know...".

In Barbie in a Mermaid Tale 2, a news report recaps the events of the first film.

Films  Live-Action

Literature

Puppet Shows

Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons: There is a lot of exposition regarding the many, many motivations and backstories of the various characters. Especially notable is Yeh Hsiao-chai, since his being mute means most characters have to exposit for him.

Radio

Frequent in radio drama, where characters not only have to detail the back-story, but frequently have to describe things everyone there can see.

Spoofed in the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue spin-off The Doings of Hamish and Dougal: Dougal: Well, here we are on London's busy Oxford Street.

Hamish: Why did you say that?

Dougal: Well, it doesn't do any harm.

Warhorses of Letters used this extensively and knowingly. "You must remember that all horses are arbitrarily given the same birthday, January 4th. Oh wait... you do not have to remember, as you are also a horse."

That Mitchell and Webb Sound frequently plays the trope for laughs. In later series it becomes somewhat of a Running Gag to have one character sum up things that the others already know, and when called out on it claim that "it's realistic" for them to do it.

Theatre

Visual Novels

Ace Attorney: The first case in each game requires the player to get a quick introduction to the gameplay details. This makes perfect sense in the first game because Phoenix Wright has just come out of college, but not so much in the next two games, considering they still star him after a good number of trials. The second game features a bout of amnesia, whereas the third one is actually a flashback to the second case of Mia Fey, Phoenix's mentor, who'd taken some time off due to being traumatized by the outcome of the first (when you actually get to play her first case, though, she doesn't get any As You Know assistance, possibly due to her different co-counsel). The fourth game introduces a new protagonist, Apollo Justice - but you can actually skip the tutorial here, as Apollo has watched Kristoph Gavin cross-examine several witnesses and is fully aware of the process. The Miles Edgeworth spin-off uses his partner, Clueless Detective Gumshoe, to handle this as The Watson. Still, several characters keep reminding Edgeworth how to use logic (a gameplay mechanic exclusive to the spinoff). The fifth game Dual Destinies has this as an option and it's justified. If the player opts to get an introduction on the mechanics of the game, Phoenix (a seasoned lawyer at this point) asks his rookie partner Athena Cykes to explain how the court system works in the game. However, it's done not so much for Phoenix's sake but for Athena's since she just suffered a Heroic BSoD moments before. Phoenix believes that having Athena explain the rules to him will bring her confidence back up. And, again, in Spirit of Justice. This time, however, the justification is that Phoenix has to explain the process of cross-examination to the judge, who hasn't had to preside over a cross-examination for a witness's testimony in over twenty years, and has forgotten the protocol for the process. This happens again in the third case, where Maya asks if Nick should be reminded of how to cross-examine Rayfa's insights for her divination séances, a new gameplay feature that was only shown for the first time two cases ago.



Web Animation

Parodied in the Homestar Runner cartoon "A Decemberween Pageant". It opens with Homestar talking to Marzipan about how the night of the titular pageant has arrived "After all the weeks and weeks of rehearsing and practicing and memorizing lines," when Marzipan tells him "Homestar, I don't think those are your lines." A Reveal Shot shows Homestar and Marzipan are standing on the stage, and Homestar has been delivering his exposition in the middle of the performance.

Red vs. Blue: Parodied somewhat, where the exposition is for another character's benefit rather than the audience. Church, Tucker and Tex are held at gunpoint by Wyoming. Church uses his radio to try and surreptitiously tell Caboose what's going on, but none of the other characters present know he's doing this and can only wonder why he's suddenly become "the narrator". Par for Caboose, he fails at figuring out the massive hints. Church: (deadpan) We're at Red Base. Wyoming. You found us and are holding us prisoner. At the Red Base. Wyoming.

Caboose: Uh, Red Base, no, I'm in the ship.

A variant occurs in The Misadventures of R2 and Miku, where Miku is enough of a ditz that she manages to forget an important part of R2's backstory, forcing him to irritably retell it to her (and thus explain it for the first time for the audience, of course).

Webcomics

Web Original

Spoofed in Shrove Tuesday Observed's note story is missing from original source "If All Stories Were Written Like Science Fiction Stories". "There are more people going to San Francisco today than I would have expected," he remarked.

"Some of them may in fact be going elsewhere," she answered. "As you know, it's expensive to provide airplane links between all possible locations. We employ a hub system, and people from smaller cities travel first to the hub, and then to their final destination. Fortunately, you found us a flight that takes us straight to San Francisco."

"If All Stories Were Written Like Science Fiction Stories". How David Weber orders pizza .

. MLB Trade Rumors has a tendency to repeat things that regular readers are fully aware of like if a player has received a qualifying offer or not.

The reviews at OAFE do this regularly, usually using the phrase as a pothole link to a source where the information is more thoroughly explained.

Lady Wu (Sr.) gets a truly egregious one in Farce of the Three Kingdoms. Lady Wu: You know how your father married both me and my sister, so your stepmother is also your aunt and its really awkward? Sun Quan: Of course I know, Ive lived with you guys my entire life. Lady Wu: Shhh, son. Its exposition.

Web Videos

Western Animation

Real Life