History Main / TheProblemWithPenIsland

I should probably get off of TV Tropes and get back to practicing some calligraphy...oh no! My penis gone!

* This appears to be a RunningGag with Quackity's appearances on various Minecraft servers. His faction on WebOriginal/SMPEarth directly employed this trope, being named Pen Island, and most of the characters he plays in ''Tales From the SMP'', a spin-off of the ''WebVideo/DreamSMP'', have names based around lewd puns, including and not limited to a LowerClassLout named Drew P. Wiener and a bandit named [[ADateWithRosiePalms Jack Kanoff]].

* ''Series/ThreesCompany'': [[TheDitz Chrissy]] once misread ''therapist'' on a business card as ''the rapist.''

** In one sketch, they couldn't ''say'' Connery's misreading on US prime-time TV, so [[StealthPun they imply the hell out of it instead]]. Trebek decides to just pick a clue from the category "Foreign Flicks", but before he can read the question, Connery buzzes in and responds with "Ursula Andress". After being asked for clarification, he responds, "Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, and Charo, twice." At which point Trebek emphasizes that it's "FOREIGN ''FLICKS''." [[note]]Not "FOREIGN FUCKS", Connery's evident misreading. It seems the L and I were too close together.[[/note]] To further drive the point home, Conner remarks later in the sketch that he had "thought of some more foreign ladies I snogged."

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Farzar}}'', the character, "[[AwesomeMcCoolName Bazarack [=KillDieDeath=]]]", starts up a website and calls it, "www.[=BazarackKillDieDeath=].com" but when he tries to register it, he discovers the domain name is already taken by [[Series/TheGoldenGirls three old ladies]], named Kiki ("KK" as a nicname), Illdi, and Edeath, who made their website a Bazaar (which KK mispells as "Bazar") for arts and crafts, (abbreviated to "AC"), thus giving them ownership of the domain name, "www.[=BazarACKKIldiEdeath=].com".

* The UrbanLegend of the Chevy Nova's alleged failure in Latin America hinges on this. The claim is that since [[InMyLanguageThatSoundsLike "no va" is Spanish for "it doesn't go"]], people didn't want to buy a car with that name. While the idea that customers would automatically conflate one word with two is absurd enough, where this fits the trope is the fact that "nova" itself ''[[http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/nova is a word in Spanish.]]'' And if you were to say "my car won't go", you'd say ''no funciona'' or ''no marcha'', not ''no va''. There's also the fact that ''no va'' (depending of the dialect) normally means ''It doesn't combine'' or ''it doesn't mix''. However, people in Spanish-speaking countries ''did'' make the association...as a kind of pun ("''Mi Nova no va!''" "''Jajajajaja!''").

* When UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher died the hashtag #nowthatcherisdead started trending on Twitter and got misinterpreted by some people as "Now that Music/{{Cher}} is dead" leading some people to think that Cher had passed away.

* In German, Duschlampe (shower lamp) and Du Schlampe (you slut).

* This appears to be a RunningGag with WebOriginal/{{Quackity|HQ}}'s appearances on various Minecraft servers. His faction on WebOriginal/SMPEarth directly employed this trope, being named Pen Island, and most of the characters he plays in ''Tales From the SMP'', a spin-off of the ''LetsPlay/DreamSMP'', have names based around lewd puns, including and not limited to a LowerClassLout named Drew P. Wiener and a bandit named [[ADateWithRosiePalms Jack Kanoff]].

* Overlapping with BlindIdiotTranslation is the infamous scene in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' where the [[WarmUpBoss guard scorpion is way harder then it should be]] due to the game giving you confusing information, namely, at one point it says "attack while its tail is up! It will counterattack with its laser". While not ungrammatical, the formatting (the text saying "attack while its tail is up!" appeared in a different box from "it'll counterattack with its laser!", which made it sound like the first sentence was an imperative rather than part of a warning ''not'' to attack") made a lot of player do the exact opposite of what they were trying to say. (why they didn't just add the word "and" to the beginning of the second sentence to disambiguate it is a mystery.)

* On Website/ThisVeryWiki, a past version of the Laconic page for this trope (circa 2011) consisted of "...is that TheProblemWithPenisLand is a valid link to the exact same page."

* http://www.gencysexit.com. Inactive now, if you looked in the upper left corner of your computer when visiting that site, it even said "Fuck You Wiki/TVTropes".

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Farzar}}'', the character, "[[AwesomeMcCoolName Bazarack [=KillDieDeath=]]]", starts up a website and calls it, "www.[=BazarackKillDieDeath=].com" but when he tries to register it, he discovers the domain name is already taken by [[Series/TheGoldenGirls three old ladies]], named Kiki ("Ki" for short), Illdi, and Edeath, who made their website a Bazaar (which Ki mispells as "Bazar") for arts and crafts, (abbreviated to "AC"), thus giving them ownership of the domain name, "www.[=BazarACKiIldiEdeath=].com".

* On Wiki/ThisVeryWiki, a past version of the Laconic page for this trope (circa 2011) consisted of "...is that TheProblemWithPenisLand is a valid link to the exact same page."

* In the ''WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail'' episode [[Recap/StrongBadEmailE181WebComics "web comics"]], Strong Bad gets a message from one "Gunkiller", presumably meant to be read as "Gun Killer". Since Strong Bad [[MaliciousMisnaming deliberately misnaming]] anyone who emails him is a RunningGag of the series, he refers to this writer as "Gunk Iller" instead, which he later shortens to "Gunky".

** Taken UpToEleven with the India Special, where they place large signs on the sides of the train (which later separated upon arriving on a train station) which read: "'''The United Kingdom promotes''' Briti'''sh I.T. for your company'''" and "'''Eat English muff'''ins".

* Likewise there's a butcher on the Isle of Man that you can order from online. The website is www.isleofmanmeat.com

* Actor/comedian Donald Glover's twitter account used to be donglover ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=901oFNbaAPM mentioned here]]).

[[folder:Newspaper Comics ]]

* Overlapping with BlindIdiotTranslation is the infamous scene in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' where the [[WarmUpBoss guard scorpion is way harder then it should be]] due to the game giving you confusing information, namely, at one point it says "attack while it's tail is up! It will counterattack with it's laser". While not ungrammatical, the formatting (the text saying "attack while it's tail is up!" appeared in a different box from "it'll counterattack with its laser!", which made it sound like the first sentence was an imperative rather than part of a warning ''not'' to attack") made a lot of player do the exact opposite of what they were trying to say. (why they didn't just add the word "and" to the beginning of the second sentence to disambiguate it is a mystery.)

* In ''Webcomic/DanAndMabsFurryAdventures'', [[http://www.missmab.com/Comics/Vol_537.php this comic]] caused a bit of comical reaction in the forms when it came out over amber's choice of sound effect. Apparently, "click" is another word you have to be careful around with some lower-case fonts.

* The video store [[https://terrifictop10.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/megaflicks.jpg MEGAFLICKS]] probably should have been more careful with their font choice, as should [[http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/kidsexchange.jpg Kids Exchange.]] Because the font used it makes it look like they instead say MEGA''[[PrecisionFStrike FUCK]]''S and KID''SEXCHANGE'' respectively. [[EpicFail Whoops]].

** A New Jersey woman's randomly generated license number read "L84-ANL" ("Late for anal"), [[https://images.cdn.circlesix.co/image/1/700/0/uploads/posts/2017/06/4d3edaaf718cdb4cb5fc576cb8e9c4c2.jpg she ended up requesting a new number from the DMV.]]

* There was once a candy bar called HITS. It was quickly pulled when someone noticed what a row of them on the supermarket shelf looked like. HITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITS.

* Chinese in general does not have spaces at all between their characters. Older texts, until about 100 years ago, didn't even have punctuation. Notably, newspaper headlines still traditionally do not use punctuation, which leads to [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/evchk/images/f/fe/1476561_237197409774630_1144025189_n.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20131208044034 this headline]] in Hong Kong which can theoretically be read in 18 distinct meanings (granted, [[EitherWorldDominationOrSomethingAboutBananas most of those meanings are obviously absurd]]).
* In Hong Kong, there is an assessment called Territory-wide System Assessment, or TSA (no, [[OverreactingAirportSecurity not that one]]); The 全港性系統評估 for primary school students to test their academic skill. It may look innocent in English, but if you read it in Chinese and separate the words into 全港-性系統-評估 ([[CrotchGrabSexCheck Territory-wide Sexuality Assessment]]), it's not so innocent as one might think!

* Similar to the 'Dilbert' example above: doing an e-mail with two initals, first six letters of surname [[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.sysadmin.recovery/3Y6HPGk652k/0O6vV4eB9fAJ ends up tragic with Mary E. Cummings.]]

* A variation appears in ''Manga/YuYuHakusho''. Kuwabara, Hiei, Botan and Kurama are facing Kaito, who can make it so that if anyone, even himself, says a specific word- "Hot" at the moment- their soul will be sucked out of their body. When Botan goes for a drink, Kuwabara asks if they can share it with "eac'''h''' '''ot'''her" and loses his soul even though he didn't specifically say "Hot" (in the manga, he asks for "two s'''hot'''s" of orange juice). Kaito points out that he has no control over how his powers are applied, and simply saying the syllables for "hot" is enough regardless of context. In the Latin American dub of the anime, since Hot translates into ''caliente'', Kuwabara loses his soul when he jokingly asks Botan to look for sunglasses due to how the room's heat makes it look like the Sun was inside ("bus'''ca lentes''' de sol").[[note]]Yes, the I is missing, but the dialogue line was the closest the dub team had in mind back then to replicate the scene in Spanish[[/note]]

** Creator/JohnOliver once listed off UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's failed businesses, including travel booking site Go Trump (gotrump.com). He figured it was "a real thorn in the side of anyone hoping [=GotRump.com=] featured a single thing worth masturbating to."
** Whenever John adds a HashtagForLaughs, he'll often point out when it looks like it's saying something else, e.g. in the episode on guardianships, [[ItMakesSenseInContext John used the hashtag "Not All Foxes"]] ([=#NOTALLFOXES=]), noting that it could also be interpreted as "No Tall Foxes".

* Played with multiple times on ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'''s "Celebrity Jeopardy!" sketches, although it's strongly implied that Creator/SeanConnery[[note]]played by Darrell Hammond[[/note]] was just [[ForTheLulz being a dick]] as it's somewhat hard to read "An Album Cover" as "Anal Bum Cover". Other examples from those sketches are "The Pen Is Mightier", read by Connery as "The Penis Mightier" ("Gussy it up however you want, Trebek. What matters is does it work? Will it really [[BiggerIsBetterInBed mighty my penis]], man?"); "S Words", which was read as "[[SwordTropes Swords]]"; "Catch The Semen" for "Catch These Men"; "Jap Anus Relations", for "Japan-US Relations", "Famous Titles" as "Famous Titties"; "Who Reads" as "Whore Ads", crossing out letters from "I Have a Chardonnay" to make it say "I Have a [[BiggerIsBetterInBed hardon]]", "Let It Snow" as "Le Tits, Now", and even the above "Therapists" example. [[Creator/NormMacDonald Burt Reynolds]] also once pronounced "a petit déjeuner" as "ape tit", with [[HilarityEnsues the usual results]]. In most cases, Alex Trebek (Will Ferrell) would correct Connery's mispronouncing by saying (for instance) "That's 'Therapists', not 'The Rapists'."
** In one case, Trebek decided to just pick a clue from the category "Foreign Flicks", but Connery immediately buzzed in and responded with "Ursula Andress". After being asked for clarification, he then responded with "Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, and Charo, twice", after which Trebek emphasized that it was "FOREIGN ''FLICKS''". Evidently Connery was reading it as "FOREIGN FUCKS" (with the L and I so close together as to be mistaken for a U), given that he remarks later in the sketch that he had "thought of some more foreign ladies I snogged."
** The "Therapists" one also happened on ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'' itself when the show [[AscendedMeme did a session of categories inspired by the sketch]].

* Also in Britain, a run-of-the-mill bog-standard women's magazine was called ''Closer'' by its publishers. Given that on at least one occasion, the capital "C" of "Closer" has been obscured by elements of the cover design or lead picture, this might have been a naming error..
** ''Closer'', like its sister magazines and imitators, is deliberately edited, priced low and targeted at women in the lower social demographics - the advertising within the pages makes this clear. so the front-page error that obscures the "C" might well be perceived as [[TakeThat rubbing it in]], or as a [[BitingTheHandHumor snidey joke perpetuated by the designers at the expense of the targeted audience]]...

* In one of the ''Literature/RamonaQuimby'', Ramona tries to get her dad to kick his smoking habit, so she draws a NO SMOKING sign to put on the front window. But she tries to fit both words on one line, runs out of space, and has to put the line break in the middle of "SMOKING". When Dad gets home, he sees the sign and wonders who "Nosmo King" is.