This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Sikon: Isn't this the same as Title Confusion? (Granted, I prefer this title, but nevertheless.)
Paul A: I would say that this is a specific type of Title Confusion; there are other types of Title Confusion that do not relate to characters' names.
Sikon: In this case, we should remove character name examples from there and place them here.
Ununnilium: So it is written, so it shall be done.
Eran of Arcadia: This is another Truth in Television, it happens to me all the time in real life. At work I answer the phones for a company named "John Doe" (not their real name obviously), and when I answer by saying the name of the company, the caller will often reply, "hello John, can I speak with X . . ." - a good sign they are a telemarketer or a wrong number, since anyone who needs to call the company knows what their name is.
Cassius335: Hang on, how are Irma, Will and co not witches? Witches, if you set aside the whole 'warts and pointy hat' thing, are female magic users. If they aren't witches, what are they?
Lale: I don't know, ask Irma — she's the one who said so.
Cassius335: When was this?
Lale: I remember they were all buried in separate groups under snow, in civilian form. I think it was Caleb who asked her if she could just cast a magic spell or dissolve the snow with a potion or something...
Ununnilium: "Frankenstein-class electrical flesh golem" — is there something specific that uses this? It sounds like it. If so, put it in.
- This troper recalls a reference to one of the early episodes in which The Doctor (the first one, played by the late William Hartnell) actually introduces himself with the title "doctor" followed by a name that apparently took at least 45 seconds to pronounce. The non-Gallifreyan human to whom he introduces himself responds with "Doctor WHO!?" And the rest is history.
Taking this out until someone can give a more specific reference; I've always heard that the Doctor has never given out his full name.
- Not to burst your bubble, but the original Frankenstein/Adam/Frankenstein's monster was stronger, faster, tougher, and smarter than any normal man, not a flat-headed green zombie with bolts in his neck.
...so, what exactly was this supposed to mean?
- This troper refers to him as Adam as well, and his destroyed mate as Eve.
What specific contributors personally do isn't an example in most tropes. (In a few tropes, it is — Dis Continuity or Nightmare Fuel, for example.)
Later:
- Similarly, many products are called by a popular brand name. For example, the thin and soft paper that you use to blow your nose is a tissue, but quite a few people will refer to one as a Kleenex, which is a brand.
That isn't really this. It's not one name being confused for another, it's the name of the part being used for the whole.
- It seems that the TV show itself disagrees on the word not referring to anything more specific in-verse; the Opening Narration from season 3 on specifically says, "He is Duncan MacLeod, The Highlander."
Yes... the person-who-comes-from-that-region. It's not his title or anything, he's just one of those. ``
Ununnilium: Gaiman's book is The Sandman; I've got volume 5 right here.
Later:
- This is merely a local phenomena. In this troper's locale, soft drinks are referred to as soda, in others as pop, etcetera.
...yes, so?
Blork: Removed this because while it involves confusion over a character's name, it has nothing to do with misinterpreting the title. If people were calling her "Casper" it would be this trope:
- "Poil" from Casper The Friendly Ghost is actually named Pearl. Spooky's stereotypical New York accent has him say "oi" when "er" is called for (and sometimes reverses it... Spooky once remembered he had an important "apperntment" he had to get to.) so he always calls her "Poil," but some writers forget that, and in the animated series based on The Movie, Poil may have been her official name.
arromdee: Deleted this:
- Initially, the Doctor was known as the grandfather of Susan Foreman. When addressed as "Doctor Foreman" by companion Ian, he replied "Doctor who?" Once the Doctor found out what a doctor was, he agreed "The Doctor" would be a good name for him, but wanted to make it clear that he is not a doctor of medicine.
- The Doctor is a Doctor in every sense of the term; that's the point. He is an expert in every field of every academic subject and he is also a healer.
The first one is nonsense. He knows what a doctor is. And "Foreman" was the name on the junkyard and only used as an alias, so while that part is technically correct, you really can't understand it without adding some explanation that would be pointless. The second one is pointless without the first.
CodeMan38: Changed the following:
- (Ironic, since iPods convert M P3s into a proprietary format when uploading)
to this:
- (Ironic, since Apple's preferred format is actually MPEG-4)
iTunes, by default, rips CDs to MPEG-4, but anything that's originally in MP3 stays in that format on an iPod.
- Adam, used to refer to Shelley's Monster, was a title, not a name. It was supposed to be the first man of a new, improved human race — the title is a reference to the beginning of the book of Genesis. Apparently, old Viktor had a bit of a god complex...
Really really really nitpicky.
HeartBurn Kid: Maybe I'm just out of the loop here, or maybe it's a regional thing, but does anybody actually use Dirt Devil as a generic name for a vacuum cleaner, as the page mentions? Out where I am, the handheld ones are generically referred to as "Dustbusters", but the full-size ones are just called "vacuums".
Freezair For A Limited Time: Pointless comment, but of the Metroid example... While "Samus" is a nonexistant name that merely sounds and looks like "Seamus," her last name, Aran, is Irish. It's both a given name and a chain of islands off the coast of Ireland, famous for its sweaters. (The Irish equivalent of a Hawaiian shirt, if you will.) So, the idea that Samus has some Irish blood may not be completely nonsensical. In fact, before she spoke in Brawl, I always pictured her having a mild but pleasant Irish lilt.
mrcolj: I'm too new to confidently edit things, but Monty Python is an example of this; where a large percentage of the audience thinks one of the characters or one of the actors is named Monty Python.
Korbl: A number of these are somewhat justified in that a person will often be referred to by their Title of Office (the respectfulness or disrespectfulness of this is... quite variable... and could depend on other words surrounding it, President vrs. Mr. President, for example.) However, I'm not sure whether to put "Satan is his title, as is "the devil", his name is Lucifer" under "Real Life" or what... I'm also unsure as to whether the whole "technically this can be justified when referring to a person by their title of office" thing should be included in the main text.
Maso Tey: In answer to the last question: I think it would be perfectly reasonable to include this in the main text. It is true, it does not redefine the trope such that an overhaul of the examples would be required, and the phrasing "technically this can be justified" is conservative enough to (probably) avoid messy disputes.
Blork: Having recently watched the movie again on DVD, I pulled this point about Watchmen
- And in the movie based on the graphic novel, the organization called 'Crimebusters' in the book is called 'Watchmen', probably done to provide a Title Drop. Great, now people will be making this mistake for ANOTHER two decades.
- It really isn't that clear in the movie, not that casual viewers who do not know the comic will likely see the difference. When the phrase is used it could easily be referring to the concept of watchmen itself, which is what the public referred to the heroes roles as, so when Nite Owl II says 'Watchmen are over' not ' The Watchmen are over', and other similar phrasing by others, he need not be calling them by name.
- And in the movie based on the graphic novel, the organization called 'Crimebusters' in the book is called 'Watchmen', probably done to provide a Title Drop. Great, now people will be making this mistake for ANOTHER two decades.
The Justifying Edit is correct that the Crime Busters group is never refered to as "The Watchmen", what's more when Ozymandius is being interviewed near the beginning, the interviewer claims he is one of two watchmen to reveal their identity, the other being Hollis Mason. Hollis was never a member of the Crime Busters but rather the earlier team which was called the Minute Men in both the comic and the film. It seems quite clear from this that "Watchmen" was being used as a generic term for superheroes rather than a specific team.
Rebochan: Per other pages with tropes like this, I pulled a metric ton of "This Troper" references and personal anecdotes. Since there's already a Troper Tales page, they need to go there and not here. Examples should be generalized here. Your mother calling your Voltron toys "Transformers" is a personal anecdote.
I just want to say how much I love the sentence "In the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, a Burger King wanted to open up.". It's like saying a child wants to be conceived, but one step more bizarre.
The Pocket: Um, I just happened to notice — one split-second too late to not commit my last edit — that the article was set as "A work" rather than "A trope." But then Fridge Brilliance set in and I realized how fitting it was. Assuming it doesn't really mean anything as far as site organization, would it be appropriate to suggest it stay that way? :D
BritBllt: Tossing this one...
- Scooby Doo: The original gang was never called "Mystery Inc." or "Mysteries, Inc.":
"All over the web, and now in the movies, you see references to the original gang as 'Mysteries, Inc.' or 'Mystery Inc.' (Including even the childhood gang), if they were already a formally organized detective agency. But the gang was never called this, in the original show. Remember, they were meddling kids; just average teens on typical outings, who stumbled across crimes and the ghost-getups used to cover them up. This is what they were all the way through 1979. Three years later, Scooby got a job working at the Fearless Detective agency, owned by Shaggy's uncle. A year later, Daphne was working as a reporter and returned to the gang, taking them along on her cases. Still 'meddling kids' with no organization of their own. It was not until 1984 when Scooby got his own crime solving business, the Scooby Doo Detective Agency. Scooby slowly worked his way up to the status of an official detective! (The childhood SDDA, was not an official organization, of course.) 'Mysteries Inc.' was originally the name of a cartoon block on the Cartoon Network. It had never even included Scooby! (Though he did appear in some of its promotionals). Scooby was too big to be a part of such a collection of cartoons shows. That one was for the copycat shows, like Jabberjaw, Hong Kong Phooey and the Chan Clan." — The Scooby Story
However the name first appeared, it's been used in their more recent movies and promos, and the next spinoff's even going to be called Scooby Doo: Mystery Inc. It's official: Scooby Doo is Shazam.
Scorpio3002: Deleted the image, for a couple reasons. The image in a trope page is supposed to be informative first (by providing a visual example of the trope being played straight), and funny second. The image here didn't demonstrate a clear, straight example (in fact it was an aversion, though clearly a Shout-Out to a straight example: the Trope Namer). Even though it was funny to the people who understood the trope, it wouldn't have helped the people who didn't (and probably would have hindered them). Since this is a trope about viewer confusion, we want to keep things as clear as possible (a Self-Demonstrating Article would be fun for a while, but still inappropriate).
Prfnoff: On second thought, this might not be exactly true:
- Played with in the version of Die Fledermaus translated not very literally by Howard Dietz and Garson Kanin, which decides to identify Falke as Die Fledermaus for no apparent reason other than the notion that an operetta would need a title character.
