uzunhair / cyclic_tv_reference_paradox_finder

A tool for finding Cyclic TV Reference Paradoxes

Cyclic Tv Reference Paradox Finder

Cyclic TV Reference Paradoxes occur when a chain of fictional TV show references form a cycle. Each show’s reality depends on another being fictional, so a cycle of these dependencies is a paradox.

ie.

Here, in the Simpsons' fictional universe, Rick and Morty exists as a TV show (shown by the reference). However, in the Rick and Morty fictional universe, The Simpsons also exists as a TV show. These two references create a cycle where each depends on the other being fictional in their respective universe, which cannot both be true simultaneously - a paradox!

This project finds these paradoxes through looking through subtitles files of popular TV shows. It is divided into two sections:

Reference Gen Scripts

A set of python scripts to get the subtitles, and eventually output a CSV file of all TV show references found to be displayed in a web app.

Script	Explanation
get_top_tv_show_subtitles.py	Downloads subtitles of the top TV shows listed on The Movie DB. Be sure to set the TMDB_API_KEY environment variable to your API key.
index_srts.py	Indexes all subtitle files downloaded by get_top_tv_show_subtitles.py with Woosh.
search_subtitles.py	Searches the index generated by index_srts.py for a keyword.
gen_output_data.py	Generates a graph of TV show references from the index generated by index_srts.py (and saves it to disk). Outputs a CSV of all references found in the index above as well a CSV of all TV shows used.
find_cycles_in_references.py	Runs a DFS on the graph outputted in gen_output_data.py to find cycles in references.

Web App

A react web app for visualizing the the graph generated by the Reference Gen Scripts. Run with npm run start to test locally.