History UsefulNotes / Romania

* ''Series/Hercules'' episode sees Hercules is called to Dacia (ancient Romania) to help his old friend fight against the dreaded 'strigoi' AKA vampires. His friend also happens to be named "Vlad of Dacia". I think we know what this is about. This episode is really not complicated, in fact it is so simple that Iolaus has time to make a lot of puns and references to old Hollywood vampire tropes. I guess just using the mythological Strigoi was not enough and they had to sneak in a Vlad the Impaler there even though Vlad the Impaler lived during the fall of the Roman Empire. Vlad even mentions the Turks (I wish he had mentioned the Romans instead) because Greece is right next to Turkey and it wouldn't have dated the episode so badly. The actor for Vlad did an amazing job.

* [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/CloseEnough Close Enough]] is a comedy cartoon about a young couple with a child and their divorced friends. In season 2, they visit an Eastern European country named Cromania. The country is a caricature of everything westerners seem to think Communism is: hyper patriarchy, brainwashed women, military lifestyle, grey buildings. Romania had those things maybe in the 50s and early 60s.

** In 2023, South Park created a carbon copy of Andrew Tate but with the personality of a Russian pimp. They also made him Romanian. His name is Alanzo Foineski and Randy Marsh hires him to organize a "Boy's night" party for his son and friends.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'''s answer to the Elian Gonzalez debacle, ''Quintuplets 2000'', involved Romanian quintuplets... whose hoe country is apparently still Communist, and certainly dominated by grey, bland architecture and an economy and populace so poor that a few hundred US dollars makes one "rich" there. Probably not the best depiction, and not necessarily all that accurate, either it turns out (current-day Bucharest, at any rate, is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucharest actually quite pretty]], as far as we're concerned, and the country's been a democratically-elected Republic for years). This probably stems more from the fact that Romania ''was'' Communist-controlled until 1989 and [[RippedFromTheHeadlines wanting to draw a better comparison between the episode's plot and the Elian Gonzalez thing]] than anything else, though.

* ''VideoGame/FIFA soccer'' the most famous EA sport game series about Soccer is one of the most respected videogames about the sport that received the license from multiple Soccer clubs and teams to use their likeness and Flags. And the game has been produced by two teams of developers since 2017: EA Vancouver and EA Romania.

* ''VideoGame/FIFAsoccer'' the most famous EA sport game series about Soccer is one of the most respected videogames about the sport that received the license from multiple Soccer clubs and teams to use their likeness and Flags. And the game has been produced by two teams of developers since 2017: EA Vancouver and EA Romania.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'''s answer to the Elian Gonzalez debacle, ''Quintuplets 2000'', involved Romanian quintuplets... whose home country is apparently still Communist, and certainly dominated by grey, bland architecture and an economy and populace so poor that a few hundred US dollars makes one "rich" there. Probably not the best depiction, and not necessarily all that accurate, either it turns out (current-day Bucharest, at any rate, is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucharest actually quite pretty]], as far as we're concerned, and the country's been a democratically-elected Republic for years). This probably stems more from the fact that Romania ''was'' Communist-controlled until 1989 and [[RippedFromTheHeadlines wanting to draw a better comparison between the episode's plot and the Elian Gonzalez thing]] than anything else, though.

* WesternAnimation/{{Totally Spies}} is a animated series created by [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/MarathonMedia MarathonMedia]] about a group of 3 Beverly Hill girls that are spies and solve mysteries. One episode in season 5 is called "Evil Gymnast" it involves a group of Romanian gymnast girls that disappear. It is revealed that the mastermind is a former Gymanst named Nadia (a reference to Nadia Comaneci) who seeks for make her students the best gymnasts in the world by mixing their DNA with the best gymnasts in the world... monkeys! Lol.

* ''[[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/FullmetalAlchemistTheConquerorOfShamballa Fullmetal Alchemist The Conquest of Shamballa]] The only FullMetal Alchemist movie, it covers the fate of Edward and Alphonse Elric after the first series in 2003 (not Brotherhood) when Edward seemingly sacrificed himself and disappeared. In actuality, Edward stepped into an alternate Universe named Earth and landed in Modern Europe before World War 2. There he met the Earth version of Alphonse in Romania and they b4cake close friends because of their shared passion for science and technology. The movie also follows a group of Roma people(also known as gypsies), a nomad minority of Europe(mostly from Central and Eastern Europe) who Edward and Alphonse befriend and travel with. The movie is important because it shows as close of an accurate depection of their customs, lifestyle and discrimination they go through in an animated movie.

* WesternAnimation/{{Megamind}} is a
[[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/DreamWorksAnimation?from=Creator.DreamWorksAnimation DreamWorks]]'s movie about a diabolical yet endearing supervillain named Megamind and his trusted minion named... Minion. Although their city exists is a fictional world of superheroes and supervillains, maybe the same world as Despicable Me. Romania seems to exist there too since Minion admits to journalist and practicing damsel Roxanne Ritchi that most of Megamind's tech components ("Tesla coils and 'blinky' dials" said by Roxanne Ritchi) come from an outlet store in Romania;

* [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/GhostbustersII Ghostbusters II]]'s main villian is named [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigBad Vigo the Carpathian]], the Scourge of Carpathia, the Sorrow of Moldovia. Moldavia, not to be confused with current day Republic of Moldova, was actually one of the original 3 Kingdoms that United to formed Romania at the end of the 20th century, the other being Wallachia and after the end of WW1, Transylvania. And the Carpathian mountains are part of Current day Romania. So it is safe to say that this fictional character would have been from Romania heritage today.

Romania's ancestor [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia "Dacia"]] was a huge rival for the Roman Empire at the time. It is said that when the great king of Dacians, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burebista "Burebista"]] could up to arms an army of 100,000 during the hight of its power making the Romans suspiciously

Film rights and airing were scarce, but televisions tried. While the copyright law made it fair game (''now, in 2010'', in Moldova, there are still reports of movies being aired directly from downloaded from the internet by national stations), we didn't really need the problems. On the other hand, television ratings were nonexistent until the 2000s (even 2005). This implied anything short of porn could be aired all day or all night (there were attempts to forbid porn as "violating public morals" or whatever) - 16+ horrors at 8 o'clock, etc, if you can imagine it, it was aired whenever they liked it. This was partly due to the authorities' fear that they'd be accused of limiting the "freedom of the press" ([[DoubleStandard while stealing everything there was to steal left from the old regime]]), and coincided with the country's "Wild West / Aggressive Capitalism" period, where almost anything, however legal, semi-legal or ''illegal'' it was, was mostly fair game (short of stealing from someone's house: steal millions of dollars from a bank, split up the profit with the country's rulership, profit; you steal an apple from someone's house, [[DisproportionateRetribution 5 years jail, no discussion]]).

Fun fact: Romania can be pretty much described as the UsefulNotes/{{Mexico}} of Eastern Europe. Both have long and complex relations with oppressive surrounding powers, both had a rough time in TheEighties, both pretty much opened to the world once the nineties began (Romania with the fall of communism, Mexico with the NAFTA), both have spent a long time amidst war and rebellion, both have large diasporas living in Western Europe and the United States, respectively. And both have an [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking unhealthy obsession with maize]].[[note]]Especially maize porridge, which Romanians and Moldovans call mamaligă, but which in English-speaking countries is better known by its Italian name, polenta.[[/note]]

Fun fact: Romania can be pretty much described as the Mexico of Eastern Europe. Both have long and complex relations with oppressive surrounding powers, both had a rough time in the eighties, both pretty much opened to the world once the nineties began (Romania with the fall of communism, Mexico with the NAFTA), both have spent a long time amidst war and rebellion, both have large diasporas living in Western Europe and the United States, respectively. And both have an [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking unhealthy obsession with maize]].[[note]]Especially maize porridge, which Romanians and Moldovans call mamaligă, but which in English-speaking countries is better known by its Italian name, polenta.[[/note]]

In other words, when someone tries to do a gritty adaptation of '''Count''' Dracula, the vampire who terrorized London before being ultimately put down by a Dutch doctor, and has him speaking Romanian to up the realism, they're wrong--he should be speaking Hungarian. If they were making a film about '''Vlad III''' Dracula, Wallachian prince and freedom fighter also known as "The Impaler", ''then'' he ought to be speaking Romanian.

Transylvania, setting for ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', is in Romania - now. It also initially belonged to Romania, before it was transferred to Hungary, then Romania claimed it again at the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne, and it has always been an ethnically mixed country (there is a serious unresolved - on an international level - debate going on about that though, regarding who was there first - science has pretty much said it was likely Romanians, not that it matters anyhow): despite some 400 years of efforts from Hungarian, and later Austro-Hungarian authorities, a good chunk of it has been settled down by Romanians at least since the Turkish Wars; despite some 50 years of the best efforts from the Commies, the Hungarian "Szeklers" are still there; they currently form an ethnic majority in the counties of Covasna and Harghita (where they form 85% of the population) and are a significant presence in Mureș and other counties, causing some hand-wringing and UsefulNotes/MisplacedNationalism over minority rights (you better not bring up the question of language rights). Traditionally, the south was inhabited by Germans who had come to the Mongol-ravaged land in TheMiddleAges, but they mostly packed up and left after the war or were bought the privilege to leave - one of Ceaușescu's brilliant ideas was to sell off Germans and Jews to West Germany and Israel. There is a still a larger-than-average German minority, German in high-schools, and German names on some road signs. Creator/BramStoker's Dracula was a Szekler, but its inspiration, the "real" Dracula, ''was'' Romanian, although, ironically, not a Transylvanian at all: he was from Wallachia, the southern third of the country.

Transylvania, setting for ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', is in Romania - now. It also initially belonged to Romania, before it was transferred to Hungary, then Romania claimed it again at the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne, and it has always been an ethnically mixed country (there is a serious unresolved - on an international level - debate going on about that though, regarding who was there first - science has pretty much said it was likely Romanians, not that it matters anyhow): despite some 400 years of efforts from Hungarian, and later Austro-Hungarian authorities, a good chunk of it has been settled down by Romanians at least since the Turkish Wars; despite some 50 years of best efforts from the Commies, the Hungarian "Szeklers" are still there; they currently form an ethnic majority in the counties of Covasna and Harghita (where they form 85% of the population) and are a significant presence in Mureș and other counties, causing some hand-wringing and UsefulNotes/MisplacedNationalism over minority rights (you better not bring up the question of language rights). Traditionally, the south was inhabited by Germans who had come to the Mongol-ravaged land in the Middle Ages, but they mostly packed up and left after the war or were bought the privilege to leave - one of Ceaușescu's brilliant ideas was to sell off Germans and Jews to West Germany and Israel. There is a still a larger-than-average German minority, German in high-schools, and German names on some road signs. Creator/BramStoker's Dracula was a Szekler, but its inspiration, the "real" Dracula, ''was'' Romanian, although, ironically, not a Transylvanian at all: he was from Wallachia, the southern third of the country.

The Revolution saw 1,104 deaths, with Ceaușescu and his wife receiving a machine-gunning, on camera, as a Christmas present. It too counts as a MeetTheNewBoss, since in the entire chaos, the second rung of the Communist Party ended up in power. It is wise to try to steer clear of this subject, since there are so many unknowns and suspicious details going around that it's a prime source of conspiracy theories -- where the UsefulNotes/WarsawPactUnitedStates has WhoShotJFK, Romania has What Really Happened In 1989? and What The Hell Was Up With [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineriad The Mineriad]]? [[note]]A series of post-revolution protests and counter-protests that turned violent, involving Romanian miners breaking up anti-government student protests on behalf of the government, before turning against the government themselves[[/note]].

The Revolution saw 1,104 deaths, with Ceaușescu and his wife receiving a machine-gunning, on camera, as a Christmas present. It too counts as a MeetTheNewBoss, since in the entire chaos the second rung of the Communist Party ended up in power. It is wise to try to steer clear of this subject, since there's so many unknowns and suspicious details going around that it's a prime source of conspiracy theories -- where the USA has WhoShotJFK, Romania has What Really Happened In 1989? and What The Hell Was Up With [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineriad The Mineriad]]? [[note]]A series of post-revolution protests and counter-protests that turned violent, involving Romanian miners breaking up anti-government student protests on behalf of the government, before turning against the government themselves[[/note]].

All this ended after he came back from a tour of UsefulNotes/NorthKorea and UsefulNotes/{{China}} in 1971 and published the "July theses". From then on, he managed to be ''even worse'' than Dej, and is routinely credited for destroying the country thanks to his subsequent policies. In detail: He started a personality cult that was JustForFun/{{egregious}} even by Warsaw Pact standards. In 1966, he presided over a policy of enforcing population growth (as in, five children per mother, abortion and contraception completely banned, guaranteed maternity leave and childcare support), officially named [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770 Decree 770]], that produced many unwanted children, who ended up in {{orphanage|OfFear}}s often described as "gulags for children". He destroyed a whole lot of old buildings in Bucharest (already battered by the 1977 earthquake) and other cities as part of a "systematization" policy which saw them replaced with depressing, Stalinist eyesore apartment blocks. And having already showed his complete incompetence at economic matters, ''then'' he decided to export ''everything'' to pay off Romania's foreign debts, leading to rationing, shortages, and starvation for the rest of the population. Unsurprisingly, even with the heavy-handed dictatorship and secret police, the terrible conditions caused revolts, in 1977 in the Jiu Valley and 1987 in Brașov.

Greater Romania lasted between 1919-1940 and is generally regarded as Romania's one period of GloryDays in history, when its culture was flourishing, reforms were implemented to address social ills, the economy was doing well and Bucharest was legitimately called "The Paris of the East" - it's okay as long as you don't mind the worrying popularity of far-right groups (like the Iron Guard) or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Romania#Before_and_after_World_War_I anti-Semitism]]. Unsurprisingly, it did not last. Thanks to the rank incompetence and authoritarianism of King Carol II, Romania had its constitution suspended in 1938 and fell under a dictatorship led by Ion Antonescu, was forced into UsefulNotes/WorldWarII on the Axis' side before defecting to the Allied side in August 1944 after a coup led by the opposition and King Michael. For all their trouble, all Romanians got out of it was MeetTheNewBoss: the Soviet Union imposed a Stalinist regime on the country and even took away the areas of the country beyond the Prut, in essence creating Romania's modern borders. They however were [[SarcasmMode generous enough]] to recognise Romania's ownership of Transylvania.

Greater Romania lasted between 1919-1940 and is generally regarded as Romania's one period of GloryDays in history, when its culture was flourishing, reforms were implemented to address social ills, the economy was doing well and Bucharest was legitimately called "The Paris of the East" - it's okay as long as you don't mind the worrying popularity of far-right groups (like the Iron Guard) or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Romania#Before_and_after_World_War_I anti-Semitism]]. Unsurprisingly, it did not last. Thanks to the rank incompetence and authoritarianism of King Carol II, Romania had its constitution suspended in 1938 and fell under a dictatorship led by Ion Antonescu, was forced into World War Two on the Axis' side before defecting to the Allied side in August 1944 after a coup led by the opposition and King Michael. For all their trouble, all Romanians got out of it was MeetTheNewBoss: the Soviet Union imposed a Stalinist regime on the country and even took away the areas of the country beyond the Prut, in essence creating Romania's modern borders. They however were [[SarcasmMode generous enough]] to recognise Romania's ownership of Transylvania.