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1->''"Every time the TARDIS materializes in a new location, within the first nanosecond of landing it analyzes its surroundings, calculates a twelve-dimensional data map of everything within a thousand mile radius and determines which outer shell would blend in better with the environment... and then it disguises itself as a police telephone box from 1963."''
2-->-- '''The Doctor''', ''Series/DoctorWho'', "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E1TheEleventhHour Meanwhile in the TARDIS]]"
3
4Sometimes, a character or gimmick seems to no longer fit with the mood or design of a story according to a writer, but is kept because there seems to be no way for the writer to get rid of them without causing some serious disruption (unrelated to {{Retcon}}s).
5
6Sometimes it's due to being tied in closely to the mythos or that The Artifact has just been around so long that removing it seems like overstepping bounds. And if it's due to pure fan popularity, the producers probably aren't going to push it out in any case for no reason.
7
8The general way to solve this problem is to avoid it, or rather, them. You can bet anyone considered The Artifact is going to be politely skipped over by the writer whenever they can, although this can get shaky if the audience is seasoned to expect them around.
9
10A common example of this trope is when a story has a point of view character who's "the new kid in town" and learns about the setting along with the audience. It's inevitable that they'll get used to things before long, and if they don't settle into a new role or have something unique about them, they risk being outshone by the ensemble cast.
11
12Very common in {{webcomic}}s and print comics with a rotating circle of writers. Less common on television given the emphasis on demographics and UsefulNotes/{{ratings}}, although {{Filler}} occasionally trots out old premises.
13
14Compare GrandfatherClause, where something cliché or inappropriate is retained because of tradition. Contrast CanonImmigrant, PinballProtagonist, BreakoutCharacter, CreatorsPet. See also ArtifactTitle and ArtifactName. See NetworkDecay when this happens to an entire channel. On occasion The Artifact (or something the writers think is only an artifact) will be done away with but then missed and brought back in a different form as a ReplacementArtifact; if The Artifact is restructured to fit in with current sensibilities, it's ReimaginingTheArtifact. When changes to a story or franchise ARE made after some early ideas don't quite fit development of the concept, that's EarlyInstallmentWeirdness. Artifacts in long-running adaptations are sometimes due to EarlyAdaptationWeirdness.
15
16This {{trope}} has nothing to do with magical items or similar ancient objects of power; for that, see ArtifactOfPower. Has no relation to the [[VideoGame/{{Artifact}} videogame of the same name]].
17
18----
19!!Example Subpages:
20
21[[index]]
22* TheArtifact/AnimeAndManga
23* TheArtifact/ComicBooks
24** TheArtifact/TheDCU
25** TheArtifact/MarvelUniverse
26* TheArtifact/LiveActionFilms
27* TheArtifact/LiveActionTV
28* TheArtifact/ProfessionalWrestling
29* TheArtifact/VideoGames
30** ''TheArtifact/{{Pokemon}}''
31* TheArtifact/WesternAnimation
32** ''TheArtifact/TheSimpsons''
33* TheArtifact/RealLife
34[[/index]]
35
36
37[[foldercontrol]]
38
39[[folder:Advertising]]
40* The [[SoBadItsGood good-kind-of-bad]] jingle singer (Dave Bickler of Music/{{Survivor|Band}}) in Bud Light's ''Real Men of Genius'' campaign made for a better gag when the ads started out and he was [[HollywoodToneDeaf singing]] about ''Real American Heroes''. The latter concept was phased out after 9/11, when making light of "American heroes" started to seem a bit more questionable in taste. [[RuleOfFunny It's still a]] ''[[RuleOfFunny good]]'' [[RuleOfFunny gag]], just minus a little... significance.
41* Advertising/ErinEsurance, of the Esurance ads.
42** During her run, the ad campaign ditched the whole espionage/ActionGirl angle in favor of more traditional type spots. She stuck around for awhile.
43** The next campaign switched the setting to a fictional Esurance office. [[FunnyBackgroundEvent She was reduced to a poster in the halls]].
44** After that, Esurance partnered with Allstate, and all references to past advertisements, Erin included, disappeared.
45* Magic the Dog in Old Navy's first commercials was a fashion designer, with fashion columnist Carrie Donovan (old lady with glasses) talking about his great work in the field of fashion. After the first few commercials, the idea was dropped, and for several years the brand produced generic commercials, but still featuring Magic (just as a dog) and Carrie Donovan (just as an old lady with glasses).
46* Early commercials for Capital One represented credit card debt as rampaging hordes of barbarians, which only a Capital One card could drive away. Now their commercials are about barbarians getting along in the modern world ''using'' Capital One cards.
47** It helps that the barbarians have been remade into [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything fun-loving guys after a good time]]. ''Usually''.
48** Capital One's original selling point was that they charged a lower APR than the competition. When they raised their rates during the late-Oughties credit crunch, they had no choice but to re-tool the characters.
49** Parodied in [[http://www.theonion.com/articles/nobody-at-capital-one-can-remember-why-it-put-viki,30549/ this]] Onion article, where it turns out that "no one at Capital One can remember why it put Vikings in its ads".
50* Around 2000, Charmin toilet paper ran an animated spot about [[{{Toilet Humour}} bears taking the product with them into the woods]]. The bears have since become the center of their own campaign, but because they also live in houses, there is no connection to the original joke.
51* Duke the talking dog from the Bush's Baked Beans commercials. Originally, the joke was that company spokesman Jay Bush had told the secret family bean recipe to his dog Duke, naturally expecting the animal to keep quiet--but it turned out the dog could actually talk, and wanted to sell the recipe! Nowadays, the commercials for the most part inexplicably feature Jay Bush hanging out with this dog that just happens to talk. They seem to be going back with the original gimmick in a more recent commercial, though. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jUBTUk1H0k]]
52* Carfax.com used to have commercials where customers would ask a shady car salesman to "show [them] the Carfax", to which the salesman would instead show them something like the "car mats" or a puppet of a "Car Fox". The latter is now Carfax's mascot.
53* The Advertising/{{Geico}} Gecko started out as a joke in which a customer calls him, to which he responds "You want Geico, not Gecko." Now he's one of the company's mascots.
54** He's also vaguely Australian (or perhaps lower-class British) now, despite being voiced by Creator/KelseyGrammer (a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands) in the original.
55** They introduced a talking pig character with a commercial that asked, "Can switching to Geico save you fifteen or more on car insurance? Did the little piggy go wee wee wee all the home?", then showed a pig hanging out a car window shouting "Wee!". Now they've got the pig in normal situations, using the Geico phone app.
56** The same happened with the Geico cavemen. The original few ads were about fully culturally assimilated modern cavemen being rightly offended by the Geico slogan "so easy a caveman can do it" and making a public stink over it, but they pretty quickly morphed into random skits with the caveman characters.
57* Clearnet, a former Canadian telecom, had an innovative marketing campaign which featured music, animals, images of equipment, some printed words, and nothing else. Telus kept that approach, and has done quite well with it since. Most people have forgotten Clearnet.
58* Carl's Jr introduced a new burger in 2001 called the Six-Dollar Burger which was supposed to emulate the type of a burger that would be served at a fancy sit-down restaurant for six dollars or more at the ironically much cheaper price of only $3-$4 including tax. In fact its entire advertising campaign featured them building a fake gourmet restaurant and serving the burger for upwards of $14 to rave reviews from customers. However thanks to inflation and dozens of pricier variations the Six-Dollar Burger since 2010 now costs over six dollars for the base burger and up to seven or eight dollars for the more complicated variations so the name now can be considered completely unironic.
59* During the 90s, Coca-Cola put in a major advertising campaign for Sprite to try and brand it as a [[TotallyRadical cool, hip, and urban]] drink. The commercials featured lots of tough-looking black guys playing street basketball and then drinking Sprite to cool off. As part of the campaign they added a textured grip to Sprite bottles, so that the bottles would be easier to hang onto while you were playing street b-ball. However, even though the advertising campaign has long since ended, the bottles still have the textured grip on them.
60* UsefulNotes/McDonalds:
61** Ronald [=McDonald=] has been largely retired from the restaurant chain's advertising in the US, mainly due to pressure from nutrition advocates concerned about peddling unhealthy fast food to children (to say nothing of a general trend in pop culture of clowns being perceived as [[MonsterClown creepy]] rather than funny). However, his name is still present in the company's network of children's charities (Ronald [=McDonald=] House), he still routinely appears (both in person and as a balloon) in the UsefulNotes/MacysThanksgivingDayParade, and his image can still be seen in the kids' playset areas in some restaurants (although these are being phased out as well).
62** Mac Tonight's whole gimmick when he was first introduced was that he was a lounge crooner sitting at a (flying) piano singing [=McDonald's=]-themed lyrics to the tune of "Mack the Knife", specifically modeled after Bobby Darin (the artist most associated with the song). Then Darin's son Dodd Mitchell Darin filed a lawsuit against [=McDonald's=] telling them to stop using the tune in their commercials, claiming it infringed copyright. As a result, Mac was relegated to being just kinda... there (occasionally playing a saxophone, or -- in the case of a 2007 Singapore commercial -- singing a totally different song), and the company, realizing he was next to useless without his song, quietly retired him, and began scrubbing out more of him when right-wing supporters made an offensive meme renaming him to "Moon Man".
63** For years, the exterior pylon sign with the Golden Arches read "[=McDonald's=], Over NN Billion Served" (or in later years, "Billions and Billions"), with no real indication of ''what'' they served. This is because the older signs said "[=McDonald's=] HAMBURGERS". When they removed the name of their main product from the signage sometime in the 1960s (as Domino's Pizza and Dunkin Donuts would do decades later), the numbers remained in place. By the '90s, the tally would be replaced with the word "Restaurant", and today it's just the arches and name -- and sometimes not even the name.
64* "Pizza! Pizza!", the slogan of the pizzeria chain Little Caesars, originally referred to their offer of two pizzas (in one giant, unwieldy rectangular box) for a comparable price to one pizza from a competitor. Despite having dropped this offer in the '90s in favor of other things like focusing on their Hot 'N Ready Pizza (a large pepperoni that's ready to be carried out within five minutes of ordering), the slogan remains.
65* Advertising/ToucanSam, the mascot of Froot Loops, was given three different-colored tail feathers and three stripes on his beak to represent the three original Froot Loops colors. When other colors were added later, he kept his color scheme even though the meaning no longer fits. This was rectified with his 2021 redesign which added the green and purple stripes to his beak, but retro throwback merch, the Latin Americas, parts of Europe where Froot Loops are sold and Asia keep the old design with the original color scheme.
66* The premise of the first few ''Advertising/CompareTheMeerkat'' adverts was that their protagonist, Aleksandr, was fed up with his meercat comparison website being confused with the actual product being sold (the insurance comparison site Compare The Market), and was running advertisements to make sure people went to the right URL. When this advertising campaign became a massive hit, Aleksandr and his friends became the stars of every subsequent Compare The Market ad, with the original joke about the 'market vs. meercat' confusion being all but abandoned.
67* Even though the Fleer Corporation had ceased to exist in 2005, its famous Dubble Bubble bubble gum (now owned by Tootsie Roll Industries) still contains the distinctive crown logo on its wrappers that bore the company name, now reading "America's Original" in its place.
68* "Vegas Vic," the neon cowboy of UsefulNotes/LasVegas, was built in 1947 to promote the Pioneer Club, a western-themed casino, until it closed in 1995. But after 48 years, Vic had become the unofficial mascot of Las Vegas and dismantling him was out of the question. Instead, arrangements were made to have him remain lit even as the building sat vacant (it has since reopened as a souvenir shop).
69[[/folder]]
70
71[[folder:Asian Animation]]
72* ''Animation/{{Lamput}}'''s eponymous character being orange is an artifact of how the series was intended to be pitched to Creator/{{Nickelodeon}} India, Nickelodeon having a large orange motif. They shifted gears to Creator/CartoonNetwork India when they saw they didn't have many shows to work with, without changing Lamput's color likewise.
73[[/folder]]
74
75[[folder:Comic Strips]]
76* ''ComicStrip/DickTracy'':
77** The comic had an AudienceAlienatingEra in the 1960s involving space travel, wherein Junior married [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Moon Maid]] and they had a daughter, Honey Moon. Moon Maid later got KilledOffForReal, but Honey is still around. It's simply never mentioned anymore that her cute little pigtails are there to hide the antennae she inherited from Mom.
78** Dick Tracy's signature two-way wrist radio, which would have been a technological marvel in its day, would now get nothing more than a shrug in the modern day era of cell phones. It still exists due to being such an integral iconic item to the character.
79* ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'':
80** {{Lampshaded}} repeatedly: if Bob the Dinosaur ever shows up, it's pretty much just to point out that he no longer has a purpose, after the comic's shift to office humor. But then, this applies to just about ''all'' its non-work characters, including Phil (who only makes an appearance once in a blue moon anyway), Ratbert, and even Dogbert.
81** Dogbert still appears frequently, having made the transition to office humor quite well because he is the personification of how Scott Adams would ''like'' to act if he could get away with it. However, the fact that he is a dog and Dilbert's pet is almost entirely inconsequential.
82** In a broader sense, as the focus of the strip moved from puns, outlandish stories and character-based humor and more toward office observational comedy, removing characters was probably necessary to simplify things to the "incompetent boss/long-suffering, snarky employees" formula. Adams has been filling the void partially with one-off gag characters for some time now, however. Also, some new regular characters were created after the switch to office humor, including Asok, Carol, and Tina.
83** Bob ''had'' a place in the office during the runup to [[MillenniumBug [=Y2K=]]]: he was a COBOL programmer brought back from retirement to upgrade older computer systems in the company from two- to four-digit year fields so that all hell wouldn't break loose when they went from "99" to "00".
84* ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'': Shermy, Patty and Violet. Schulz intended for them all to have been foils for Charlie Brown in different ways, but as other characters developed and Lucy became his primary foil they became increasingly unnecessary.
85** Shermy, who spoke the first line in the strip, was the first to suffer. His original role was to be better than Charlie Brown at everything Charlie Brown loved to do; as early as the late 1950s his appearances become rare and he has only one line in ''WesternAnimation/ACharlieBrownChristmas'' (which was kind of LampshadeHanging; he laments that in every Christmas play, he's always cast as a boring shepherd). He last appeared in 1969 and was last mentioned in 1977. Schulz didn't mind getting rid of him as he said he was basically down to using Shermy when he needed [[GenericGuy a character with almost no personality]]. And he didn't like Shermy's haircut, either.
86** Patty (not to be confused with Peppermint Patty), originally the mother hen and AlphaBitch, diminished as Lucy took over most of her role. She last appeared in a speaking part in 1976, with occasional cameos thereafter. When ''You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown'' was revived on Broadway in late 1990s, her role was rewritten to be Sally instead, as most modern audiences would not have been familiar with the character.
87** On that note, Peppermint Patty's name was to avoid OneSteveLimit-style confusion with the original Patty. When she was phased out, the much more popular Peppermint Patty became OnlyKnownByTheirNickname for no real reason.
88** Violet managed to remain a semi-used character until around 1984. By that time not only had Lucy become the strip's dominant female character, Peppermint Patty and Marcie had also arrived and established themselves. Still, her and Patty managed to remain background characters until the almost the end, with their final appearances being together in a 1997 strip about two years before it ended.
89** Linus never completely gave up his SecurityBlanket, but by the end of the strip Schulz only drew him carrying it if it was setup for a specific joke.
90* As a genre, newspaper comics themselves are almost an Artifact. In previous decades, popular strips like ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'', ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'', ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'', ''ComicStrip/{{Cathy}}'', ''ComicStrip/ForBetterOrForWorse'', ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'' and ''ComicStrip/TheFamilyCircus'' appeared in thousands of newspapers and reached millions of readers, with newspapers publishing full-color pullouts for Sunday comics. Now, however, almost all of the popular strips have ended, newspapers are increasingly cash-strapped and looking for ways to cut costs, and {{Webcomics}} have become a popular alternative. Newspapers have drastically cut back on the number of comic strips they run, and many have dropped the Sunday comics altogether, to the point where they seem to run comics more out of tradition than anything else. This was {{Lampshaded}} by Creator/BillWatterson as early as 1995, when he wrote about how the lack of newspaper competition meant that the surviving newspapers would only purchase the most popular strips. As a result, the big strips would get huge, while the smaller newspapers, in Watterson's words, "play musical chairs and vanish."
91* The famous morse code message in ''ComicStrip/SpyVsSpy'''s title panel, which spells out ''"BY PROHÍAS"'', was iconic enough that it was kept after the strip's original creator, Antonio Prohías, retired in 1987 and passed it on to other contributors. The strip's fifth artist, Peter Kuper, has kept it since taking over in 1997.
92* ''ComicStrip/{{Foxtrot}}'' usually is very good at keeping its pop culture references current; although one that stands out is the family's [[IPhony iFruit computer]], based on the original 1998 iteration of the iMac. The family kept this version long after that style had become archaic by home computing standards. It ''was'' phased out eventually, though -- [[https://foxtrot.com/2011/11/06/remembrance/ a November 2011 strip]] lampshaded that it had been gone for a while when Jason pulled it out for old times' sake while mourning Steve Jobs.
93* ''ComicStrip/Blondie1930'':
94** It has been fairly good in modern times about updating the characters, home appliances and situations; however, Dagwood's iconic bathtub remains a 1930/40s style standalone non-drain basin (sans shower head), which would look odd in any modern house. [[note]] To be fair, retro-looking, freestanding clawfoot bathtubs have made something of a comeback in recent years. Postmodern, if you will. And original mid-20th-century tubs command a good price in decent condition.[[/note]]
95** The family's hairstyles are all ridiculously out of fashion, staying the same since they were created.
96*** Dagwood's strange hairdo reflects the early [[TheThirties 30s]] male trend when it was fashionable to have the hair as flattened as possible against the head with brilliantine or pomade. The unruly streaks of hair were meant to show how when Dagwood was stressed, some locks of hair around his temples would become loose but still kept stiff. When his son Alex was born, he just "inherited" his father's hair.
97*** Blondie herself is still using her old flapper hair style, although it's not as confusing for people who didn't read the strip from the very beginning.
98** Dagwood's single button appears to actually have been a shirt stud, worn in the early 20th century by upper class men at dinner occasions. This reflected Dagwood's former social status.
99* ''ComicStrip/BeetleBailey'' has often updated with the times, starting in the '70s by slowly adding diversity to the cast that was previously all white and male, adding a tech character in, and even calling out General Halftrack's lecherous ways following the Tailhook Scandal and Clarence Thomas hearings. However, the uniforms are woefully out of date (still sporting solid olive drab that went away in the early '70s in favor of camo patterns) as well as old-style open Jeeps, '50s era rifles, and tanks more resembling those from the '50s than modern ones.
100* The dad in ''ComicStrip/{{Curtis}}'' still hates rap and hip-hop music and pines for old R&B and soul; in the modern times a man of his age would have grown up with Music/{{NWA}} and Music/SnoopDogg.
101* ''ComicStrip/{{Zits}}'':
102** Similarly to the above, the parents are still portrayed as Baby Boomers. It's becoming increasingly unlikely people of their age would have biological teenage sons, if not impossible.
103** Jeremy still rocks grunge-era clothes from his introduction in the '90s.
104* An attempted aversion exists in ''ComicStrip/TheFamilyCircus''. Jeff Keane took over after his father's death, and seems to recycle a lot of the older strips from the 80s, removing outdated stuff via (apparently) photoshop. However, it leads to some oddness, such as the kids watching a modern flat screen TV sitting on the floor or Ma Keane having odd blank spots around her head (where her 50s era hair curls are whited out).
105* [[ComicStrip/SnuffySmith Barney Google and Snuffy Smith]]: Originally started out as ''Take Barney Google for Instance'' in 1919, renamed ''Barney Google and Spark Plug'' in 1922, and in 1934, Barney met Snuffy Smith, and from that point onwards, the strip was renamed "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith". The strip's focus eventually shifted to Snuffy and his family and neighbors in Hootin' Holler. Nevertheless, even though the strip is titled "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith", Mr. Google was absent from the strip from 1954 to 1997, and started re-appearing more frequently in 2012.
106* ''ComicStrip/NittioettanKarlsson'' is about an army private going through basic training. Having started in 1932, all soldier characters originally wore the traditional blue uniform with gold buttons. As uniform standards changed over the decades, several characters were changed... but not Karlsson, who wears a now anachronistic blue uniform. The rest of the cast also wears 40's era gray uniforms even though real-life Swedish soldiers have switched to wearing green camo since.
107* ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty'' was originally about the travails of Major Bloom, his grandson Milo, and the other residences of the Bloom Boarding House. The aspect of the Blooms owning the house was dropped after a while, standout ensemble characters like Binkley and Opus started to take prominence, and the elder Blooms and earlier boarding house residents were dropped after a year or two. By the end of the original strip in 1989, Milo was the only character that remained from the beginning of the strip, and we never did get a good idea of who owned the house.
108* Originally in ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'', many of the strips featured interplay between Jon and his housemate Lyman, who owned Odie. But as the dynamic between Garfield and Jon grew stronger, and as other people such as Jon's family and Dr. Liz entered the strip, Lyman's role in the strip became superfluous and he was gradually [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome phased out entirely]].
109[[/folder]]
110
111[[folder:Fan Works]]
112* InUniverse in ''Fanfic/TheCalvinHobbesAndPaineShow'' -- after Miss Wormwood leaves the show, all school-related stories were phased out, but Principal Spittle was still around. Calvin mentions that he ended up being rather awkwardly shoehorned into some of the stories.
113* It's common for {{fanon}} to evolve over time and be displaced by newer fanon. In these cases, often elements of older fanon will still exist in some form. For example, the background pony in ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' [[FanNickname dubbed]] Derpy Hooves was written as InspirationallyDisadvantaged in early fanworks, such as ''Fanfic/TodayTomorrowAndForever''. She [[SpeechImpediment couldn't speak properly]] and her name for her daughter Dinky was "Muffin". Eventually, fan portrayals changed to her being TheDitz instead of having a speech disorder. She still usually uses "Muffin" as an AffectionateNickname for Dinky.
114* Willow in ''Fanfic/MyImmortal'' is originally introduced as Ebony's best friend. After a gothicized Hermione ("B'loody Mary Smith") is introduced, she takes over this role and Willow becomes increasingly OutOfFocus.
115** Depending on how one interprets ''My Immortal'', Willow's role is even odder. According to Tara in the author's notes, Willow is based on the story's real-life editor and beta reader, Raven. Much of the early chapters involve the interplay between the two, culminating in them having a falling-out over a poster. Under the interpretation that the story is a TrollFic, one could assume that the writer realized that few people were following the story for the drama between Raven and Tara, and so downplayed her role to focus more on the CanonDefilement and RougeAnglesOfSatin for which the story is known.
116* [[WesternAnimation/KaBlam Henry and June]] in ''Fanfic/ThePokemonSquad''. Among the many characters that were written out of the series during its long run, the two remain as prominent as ever, even after the mass exodus of most of the non-''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' characters. In a similar vein, the members of the Yaoi House (most of whom aren't from ''Pokémon'' either, save for Harley and Drew) also avoided being written out of the series.
117[[/folder]]
118
119[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
120* From the ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' DirectToVideo films:
121** The Bohrok in ''Mask of Light'' were designed back when the idea was to keep the characters [[ShowAccuracyToyAccuracy accurate to the]] Toys/{{LEGO}} figures. The final designs of all other characters were radically altered, so the Bohrok stick out, which is probably why their appearance as frozen statues barely amounts to a cameo.
122** Lewa was the first redesigned character. His full-face [[MaskOfPower mask]] was initially re-imagined as an ExpressiveMask that left his robotic jaw exposed so he could articulate when speaking. The other characters didn't follow this idea, so eventually Lewa's moving jaw was recolored green and became a part of his mask, explaining why it doesn't look like the mask on the toy.
123** The film was being developed at the same time as the toys for the Rahkshi and Makuta, leading to their character models being based on mid-stage prototypes rather than their final retail products. This is why Makuta's mask looks nothing like the one on his toy (but it ''is'' faithful to the prototype), and why the Rahkshi demonstrate heads that can split open into a FlowerMouth (it was a toyline gimmick that got scrapped, surviving only in the molded detail on their head pieces).
124** On the toys, masks attached to the heads via a round peg in the figures' mouths. The first film reinterpreted the toys' mouths as a circular, mechanical "tongue" that moved as they talked. In later films, this detail was carried over even onto maskless characters whose toys had no peg holes for masks, like Roodaka, Keetongu, Nidhiki, the six Toa Hordika and the six Rahaga, seemingly out of convention or because it looked interesting -- in the three latter cases, [[MorphicResonance keeping this design element made sense]], as Nidhiki, the Hordika and the Rahaga used to be mask-wearing Toa before their mutations.
125** Early publicity materials said the island was going to crumble apart during ''Mask of Light'', in preparation for the return of [[PhysicalGod Mata Nui]], forcing the islanders, the Matoran, Toa and Turaga underground. The film's ending was heavily rewritten, Mata Nui does not wake up, but the dialogue referencing it and Takanuva demanding the Matoran to gather underground were kept, even though in the film only the Toa and Turaga show up and the hundreds of Matoran stay on the surface. The island falling apart was also toned down to a mere two quakes: one when Takua finds the titular mask and activates the volcano he's in, and a rumble near the end as Jaller muses about his destiny, which happens for no in-story reason. We'd finally get to see the island falling apart and Mata Nui awakening in the online animations and the distant sequel ''The Legend Reborn'', released five and six years after ''Mask of Light'' respectively.
126** [[OurCryptidsAreMoreMysterious Keetongu]] from ''Web of Shadows'' was originally going to be a giant, as seen in the Tower of Toa LEGO playset prototype, an idea that tied into his role as a KingKongCopy. In the end, Keetongu was removed from the set and released as a separate toy. While still large, he was by no means a giant -- except for one scene in the movie, when he dramatically rises far above Sidorak, apparently becoming twice as tall. Keetongu's toy is actually a head shorter than Sidorak, but he needed to be taller than him for this scene.
127* Many Creator/{{Disney}} DirectToVideo sequels bring every character back from the theatrical films regardless of whether they have anything to do. The Genie in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' sequels and TV series is probably the biggest one. After the first film, his arc is completely done, his abilities (even after being heavily nerfed) are a massive StoryBreakerPower, and he's an InkSuitActor for [[Creator/RobinWilliams an actor]] who [[TheOtherDarrin only came back for one movie]], but he was so important and popular that it's just not ''Aladdin'' without him. He's in every movie and every episode, but he usually just has a HandWave explaining why he can't just solve the plot, and then does comic relief. He even still has his gold bracers, despite the fact that they vanished at the end of the movie to show his freedom, because they're iconic to his character design and it'd look boring without them. (He actually gets asked about this in ''WesternAnimation/AladdinTheSeries'', and replies that "The only thing I'm a slave to is to fashion!")
128* Much of ''WesternAnimation/TheEmperorsNewGroove'' was decided upon when the film was going to be a more dramatic story, called ''Kingdom of the Sun'', with significant ties to mythology and a traditionally-Disney tone. [[TroubledProduction Later in its development]], it was converted and rewritten into a wacky buddy comedy, which led to a few elements now being out-of-place or feeling a bit odd, such as the rather melodramatic AwardBaitSong. The pre-Colombian Inca setting in particular is a PurelyAestheticEra, with its only relevance being that Kuzco turns into a llama.
129* Much of ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'' was rewritten to turn Elsa from the villain into a deutragonist after it was realized that her VillainSong was entirely too sympathetic. As a result, some pre-rewrite aspects seem out of place or confusing - in particular, the lyrics to ''Let it Go'', while emotionally resonant with her arc, do not factually match it save as a form of lying to herself, and ''Beware the Frozen Heart'' now foreshadows an entirely different movie, as it hews much closer to the Hans Christen Andersen story in its foreshadowing than the rest of the movie.
130* The full version of the song "Great Big World" from ''WesternAnimation/{{Hoodwinked}}'' contains the phrase "goodies make the woods go 'round", which was clearly meant to be ArcWords: an earlier draft of the film used a song named "Woods Go Round" instead, the whole line gets a CallBack in the VillainSong, and before that, Red points out the importance of her delivery job by saying "Woods don't go 'round by themselves." But that entire verse of the song (along with parts of three others) was [[ExecutiveMeddling cut by the producers for alleged pacing reasons]], turning the aforementioned comment into a complete non sequitur.
131* ''WesternAnimation/IceAge''
132** Scrat was originally written to die in his first and only scene in the prologue, mostly acting as an EstablishingSeriesMoment and little else. However, the positive reception to the character led the filmmakers to add more scenes with him and turned him into a recurring presence in all of the sequels (and even becoming a mascot for Creator/BlueSkyStudios itself, with their later non-Ice Age movies having him appear in the company's VanityPlate). This, however, leads to a very obvious issue where all of the movies have a subplot that goes nowhere, has a different tone than the rest of the movie, and never connects with the main plot. There were some attempts to make Scrat fit with the main plot like when he [[spoiler:accidentally drained the flood that almost killed the Herd after causing the glaciers holding the water back to start melting to begin with]] in the second movie or having him cause the titular Continental Drift in the fourth movie, but it's still rather obvious the only reason he continues to be in the movies is that [[BreakoutCharacter audiences can't get enough of the little guy]] rather that for narrative reasons.
133** The franchise is a bit infamous for extending the cast movie after movie, which leads to many characters becoming rather pointless in movies after their introduction. Diego pretty much serves no purpose in the plot of the movies after the [[WesternAnimation/IceAge1 first one]] (he too was originally meant to be [[RedemptionEqualsDeath killed off]], only returning at the end because test audiences were too upset with his death), Crash and Eddie don't add anything after ''[[WesternAnimation/IceAgeTheMeltdown The Meltdown]]''. ''[[WesternAnimation/IceAgeCollisionCourse Collison Course]]'' is by far the worst example of this, as it contains 12 main characters, but only five (Manny, Ellie, Peaches, Julian, and Buck) are of any relevance in the main plot.
134** The titular Ice Age can be seen as an Artifact of the DarkerAndEdgier roots of the franchise. In the first two movies, the events happening during the Ice Age are heavily relevant to the plot, with the first movie focusing on the Herd trying to return baby Roshan to the humans while trying to survive a forthcoming big freeze (with Manny in particular, who originally tried to move toward the ice, having to undergo character development to change his mind), and ''[[WesternAnimation/IceAgeTheMeltdown The Meltdown]]'' focuses on the animals evacuating their valley because of an ice wall about to melt, which would cause the whole valley to flood. Also, the characters' threats are natural elements that animals would have logically faced in that period (whether predators like Soto's pack of saber-toothed cats, any of the natural disasters they find in the way or the flood itself). But, starting from ''[[WesternAnimation/IceAgeDawnOfTheDinosaurs the third movie]]''[[note]]Or even as early as ''The Meltdown'' itself, which, despite having a plot focused on the natural struggles with the flood, featured the {{Prehistoric Monster}}s Cretaceous and Maelstrom [[MonsterInTheIce thawing from the ice]] and encountering the main characters[[/note]], the franchise became a FantasyKitchenSink involving dinosaurs, pirates, the Continental Drift, Atlantis, sirens, immortality crystals, meteors, spaceships, Christmas, and Easter, none of which had anything to do with the Ice Age.
135** Buck's RunningGag of treating inanimate objects as people was in ''[[WesternAnimation/IceAgeDawnOfTheDinosaurs Dawn Of The Dinosaurs]]'' a way to establish how he has been going insane out of being the only sentient animal in the Lost World. But ''[[WesternAnimation/IceAgeCollisionCourse Collision Course]]'' established there were some sentient dinosaurs in the Lost World, some of which are friendly and ''WesternAnimation/TheIceAgeAdventuresOfBuckWild'' went further by showing there are tons of sentient mammals and dinosaurs to the point Buck was actually in a team of heroes to rise against a common antagonist. With this in mind, Buck's insanity makes less sense given he had a lot of animals to keep him company. Nevertheless, given his insanity is an iconic part of the character, there was no way the writers could handwave it as CharacterizationMarchesOn, and both movies keep the RunningGag (most notably through the "baby" pumpkin he adopted in ''Collision Course'').
136* The three main lemurs, King Julien, Maurice, and Mort, in the ''Franchise/{{Madagascar}} franchise'' outside of the first movie, ''[[ChristmasEpisode Merry Madagascar]]'' (which is also set on the island), and ''WesternAnimation/AllHailKingJulien'' (the [[OriginsEpisode origin story]] of Julien which is a prequel to the first film). Unlike all the other recurring characters, they had no reason for wanting to go to New York (being originally from [[TitleDrop Madagascar]] itself), they have no particular abilities that make them useful for the group, they rarely are of any help in the story (a lot of times they make [[TheLoad things harder]]), and the fact that King Julien and Maurice are rulers of their colony makes it nonsensical they would leave the other lemurs behind with the hope that they would be lucky enough to avoid the fossas. Yet, they appear in every movie, special, and show simply because they're too iconic to drop from the story (one HandWave being mentioned, according to the second [[VideoGame/{{Madagascar}} video game]], is that Julien claims it was selfish to only stay in the kingdom). Special mention goes to ''WesternAnimation/ThePenguinsOfMadagascar'' where they are suddenly without explanation, living in the Central Park Zoo in New York, and Julien still refers to himself as King, despite them being the only three (or four whenever [[TheUsurper Clemson]] is around) lemurs in total in the zoo (granted, [[CloudCuckooLander this being King Julien who we are talking about]], [[YouKeepUsingThatWord it wouldn't be out of character that he wouldn't understand the title well]]).
137* This is why all of the characters in Disney's ''WesternAnimation/RobinHood1973'' are portrayed in the movie as anthropomorphic animals. Originally, Disney was not planning on making an animated Myth/RobinHood movie, but rather an animated film adaptation of ''Literature/ReynardTheFox''. However, Disney realized that [[DesignatedHero Reynard the Fox]] would not make a good plot for an animated movie, and as a result, the idea of making all of the characters in their version of the Robin Hood story animals was in fact, a leftover trace from their original intended plan for this movie.
138* The Dragon from the ''Franchise/{{Shrek}} series'' quickly became an issue for the writers. She was an iconic part of the original movie and Donkey's wife so she had to be in the sequels, but at the same time she also plays a important but small role in the original movie and is such [[StoryBreakerPower a powerful ally]] that the plot of any of the movies would be quickly solved if she was around all the time. As such all of the sequels acknowledge her but quickly write her out of the story. The second movie has her entirely absent until TheStinger out of wanting some space [[spoiler:to have her babies]]. She's the first to be captured by the Poison Apple villains in the third movie (at least until the climax where all the fairy tale characters are freed to help Shrek) and ''Forever After'' uses the AlternateUniverse setting as a opportunity to have her as an antagonist again for the climax.
139[[/folder]]
140
141[[folder:Laws]]
142* English-language law has a great many oddly redundant phrases -- "to have and to hold", "aid and abet", "goods and chattels", "cease and desist", and many more. This dates all the way back to the aftermath of the Norman Conquest when the Norman ruling class spoke French and English commoners still spoke English, so terms from Latin/French and English were both used to help everybody understand. These phrases are called "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet legal doublets]]".
143* The criminal law of Finland still starts with the words (roughly translated) "''We, Alexander the Third, with the grace of God, Emperor and Autocrat of Russia, Tzar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, etc. etc. etc. decree that...''" and so on and so forth, even though Finland has not been under Russian rule since 1917, and a quite significant portion of the law has changed since. There are still some statutes in Finnish law from as back as 1734 and that have been completely obsolete for hundreds of years, but have still not been removed. These laws mandate, among other things, what types of plants each household must cultivate every year, and set fines in Thalers (a monetary unit that hasn't been in use in Finland since about 1860).
144* Since the Constitution of the United States cannot be changed, only amended, the 18th amendment still establishes the prohibition of alcohol (repealed by the 21st amendment).
145** There are several other such artifacts, such as original system of selecting the Presidential runner-up as Vice President (replaced by the 12th Amendment). One of the compromises between the free and slave states had a built-in deadline that turned it into an artifact (importation of slaves was protected until 1808; it was banned by law as soon as this clause expired). Many printings of the Constitution will cross out, gray out, or otherwise indicate sections that have been superseded by later amendments.
146** There's nothing in the Constitution requiring this to be so, but when the first few amendments were adopted it was consciously decided that they would stand on their own rather than changing the original text piecemeal.
147* Pretty much anything associated with judicial dress in the English-speaking world. Black robes were originally worn as a gesture of mourning for Queen Anne, wigs as a sign of 17th century aristocratic fashion (or, in the colonies, English political domination).
148* UsefulNotes/BritishLaws:
149** The British aristocratic titles (Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount, Baron, Lord of Parliament) all originate from a feudal system where they were clearly distinct political offices with clear responsibilities and powers: Dukes were high-ranking nobles with vast holdings generally expected to lead the King's armies and advise the monarch; earls were the regional lords of counties; marquesses were more-important earls whose counties were on the borders and therefore had more responsibilities, since they were expected to defend the realm from foreign attack; viscounts were generally related to earls (second sons and so forth) and held smaller holdings; barons were your typical local lords; Lords of Parliament were Scottish nobles without other titles but entitled to sit in the Scots Parliament. As the centuries went on, this diminished to all the ranks of peerage having the same effective function -- granting their holder a seat in the House of Lords. As of 1997, they don't even do that any more, but the titles still legally exist.
150** Similarly, members of the House of Lords cannot vote in elections for the House of Commons. As most Lords are affiliated to a particular party, this rule obviously isn't because of neutrality, so why's it there? Because the Lords and Commons originally represented different strata of society. All aristocrats were automatically in the House of Lords anyway, so why did they need to be represented in the Commons?
151* Multiple kings continued to style themselves rules of territories they didn't rule for a reason or the other.
152** For example, British monarchs continued to style themselves King/Queen of France, among their other titles, centuries after the French recaptured Calais in 1559. George III finally discontinued the title in 1801.
153** To this day the British monarch is styled "Duke of Normandy" in the Channel Islands, more than ''eight centuries'' after Normandy was conquered by France.
154** The last King of Italy styled himself, among other things, King of Cyprus[[note]]at the time controlled by Britain[[/note]], Jerusalem [[note]]not a kingdom since 1263[[/note]], and Armenia[[note]]as in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which was overrun by the Mamluks in 1375 and has been part of Turkey since the 15th century[[/note]], duke of Savoy[[note]]relinquished to France in 1860 as part of a deal to advance the cause of Italian unification; {{justified}} as the Italian royal house was the House of Savoy[[/note]], prince of Montmélian with Arbin and Francin[[note]]three towns in ''Savoy'', so it was also redundant[[/note]], Count of Geneva[[note]]title inherited in 1394 when the previous line of counts died out; the House of Savoy never managed to fully establish control on the city, lost all semblance of control when Geneva allied with the Swiss Confederacy in 1526, and stopped trying to re-establish it after the last failed invasion in 1535[[/note]] and Prince and Perpetual Vicary of the ''Holy Roman Empire'', just to point out the strangest.
155** Some Kings of France styled themselves ''Emperors of Constantinople'' (Charles VIII had bought the title from the last descendant of the Byzantine Emperors, and his successors continued to use it until Charles IX renounced to it in 1566).
156* [[UsefulNotes/FrenchCourts French laws]]:
157** Even though UsefulNotes/{{Algeria}} has been independent since 1962, for quite some time afterwards, the French President was still allowed to declare the state of emergency on the Algerian territory.
158** Some laws dealt with redacting the death certificate of an executed convict or placed capital decrees among the rulings' priority for Supreme Court's review, even though the death penalty was abolished in 1981.
159** Some outdated dispositions about [[WorkingOnTheChainGang hard labor]], abolished in 1960, had also remained on the books until about fifty years afterwards.
160** Some condominiums' bylaws, adopted under the Vichy Regime, still prohibit selling to Jews; this could be considered a double example of this trope since the statutes which these bylaws cite for defining a Jew have been abrogated and the bylaws themselves are nullified by later anti-discrimination statutes.
161** Officially, Parisian women were not permitted to wear trousers until 2013. The law had long since ceased to be enforced before that, of course.
162* Some unconstitutional statutes in state Codes of the USA have still not been repealed.
163** Alabama has still the [[http://www.legislature.state.al.us/codeofalabama/constitution/1901/ca-245806.htm constitutional duty]] to organize a segregated school system [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Alabama#Racial_discrimination among other outdated clauses]].
164** Massachusetts capital statutes [[http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/265-2.htm are still]] [[http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/279-60.htm on the books]] even though the [[http://www.nodp.org/ma/stacks/colon-cruz.html Supreme Judicial Court found them unconstitutional in 1982]].
165** Until 1926, Oregon's constitution officially banned black people from moving to the state. This had been rendered void back in 1868, due to the passage of the 14th amendment.
166* The possibility of appealing a ruling of the High Court of Australia to the Privy Council has been effectively nullified by the refusal of the High Court to give the leave needed.
167* The constitution of the German state of Hesse still includes the death penalty as a possible means of punishment. However, since the death penalty in Germany was abolished on federal level, and federal law trumps state law, this has effectively no meaning.
168* Almost all laws passed in UsefulNotes/WestGermany before 1990 have a sentence (usually near the beginning or end) about its implementation in West Berlin being subject to approval of the West Berlin assembly. West Berlin was ''de jure'' not subject to federal German law although it was ''de facto'' treated very similarly to any other part of Germany, however the Allies would not allow laws to enter into force in West Berlin without being passed by West Berlin authorities. Similarly West Berlin did not have any federal [=MPs=] instead sending non-voting delegates chosen by the city parliament to Bonn. Of course upon [[UsefulNotes/TheBerlinRepublic reunification]] those statues became pointless and were left out of new laws, but they were usually not removed from laws already in force.
169* The entirety of the Portuguese Commercial Code! It was first published in 1833 and had a major revision in 1888, making it the last of the Portuguese legal codes still binding (all the others were approved during the second half of the 20th Century, substituting the older ones). Although many articles have been revised or outright repealed, it still stands in all its antiquated glory - and it shows! Mentions to the "Kingdom [of Portugal] and its domains" (Portugal has been a Republic since 1910, and lost its "dominions" in 1975, except for one in 1961 and another in 1999) and to its King Charles I "by the Grace of God" (Portugal has officially been secular since 1910), 19th-Century language weird to any modern Portuguese speaker, and no mention of air transportation as a commercial activity (it has to be considered so by analogy from land and sea transport).
170* The Weimar Constitution of 1919 (the constitution of the UsefulNotes/WeimarRepublic) while effectively dead with the Nazi takeover in 1933 has never been formally put out of effect and in fact, the Grundgesetz explicitly lists a number of articles of the Weimar Constitution that are still in force. However, wherever newer federal law or the Grundgesetz contradicts the Weimar Constitution, Weimar Constitution rules are inapplicable.
171* UsefulNotes/{{Namibia}} was a strange case of this after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII ([=WWII=]). South Africa conquered then-German South-West Africa during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and, after that, kept the territory (now plain South-West Africa) as a UsefulNotes/LeagueOfNations ([=LON=]) mandate. But, after [=WWII=], when the [=LON=] got replaced by the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations ([=UN=]), all former mandates became [=UN=] trust territories overseen by the [=UN=] Trusteeship Council. Except one, that is: as South Africa refused to do the conversion, Namibia became the lone [=LON=] mandate overseen by the [=UN=] General Assembly (as successor to the [=LON=] Assembly). Ultimately an anti-[[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra Apartheid]] [=UN=] simply cancelled the whole bizarre shebang in 1966 and then Namibia became a plain illegally occupied territory until 1990.
172[[/folder]]
173
174[[folder:Literature]]
175* Jose's character in ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey''. Jose was [[Literature/TheTwilightSaga Jacob Black]] in the [[AscendedFanFic original fanfiction]], serving as the heroine's years' long friend who has an unrequited crush on her. Unlike Jacob though, Jose doesn't go on to become a major romantic rival to Christian for Ana's affections and barely has any relevance to the plot after the first book (all he does in the second is invite Ana to his photo unveiling where she meets up with Christian again). He could be cut from the story altogether and it wouldn't make much difference to the plot and characters, but he's presumably kept around because it would be weird for Ana to stop talking to one of her closest friends.
176* ''Literature/TheFoundationSeries'':
177** InUniverse, even as it becomes a galactic superpower, the Foundation's top authority figure is still the Mayor of Terminus.
178** The Seldon Plan, and Seldon's appearances in the Time Vault, which were once important parts of the plot, slowly lose importance as the story characters concern themselves with other matters.
179* ''Literature/HarryPotter''
180** In ''Literature/{{Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone}}'', the House Cup championship was such SeriousBusiness that Harry, Hermione and Neville became the most unpopular kids in school after losing Gryffindor a hundred and fifty points and the awarding of the Cup was important enough to almost be a second climax. Later in the series the House Cup is barely mentioned, especially from the fourth book on, when SchoolTropes are dropped in favour of the high-stakes war against [[BigBad Voldemort]]. Yet points are still regularly given and taken throughout the later books, long past the point when the Cup they matter for is given any significance, and our heroes are still bothered by things like Snape unfairly taking points from Gryffindor.
181** Quidditch also stopped being important after the third book. The next three books kept creating reasons for Harry to no longer play (having matches cancelled for the Triwizard Tournament in [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire Book 4]], having Umbridge temporarily ban Harry from the team in [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix Book 5]], and having Harry on the sidelines due to injuries in [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince Book 6]]) since it could not be outright ignored. Rowling admitted as much in an interview conducted around the time of the sixth book's release, noting that, "To be honest with you, Quidditch matches have been the bane of my life in the ''Harry Potter'' books. They are necessary in that people expect Harry to play Quidditch, but there is a limit to how many ways you can have them play Quidditch together and for something new to happen."
182** Privet Drive's primary role in the story was being the place Harry lived during the summer, and the Dursleys were to act as his guardians and provide conflict through their intolerance and abusiveness. This was because of a protective spell that made Privet Drive the only place he could never be attacked by Voldemort's servants. When the Burrow was introduced in the second book and Number 12 Grimmauld Place was introduced in the fifth, there were now two other locations to fill the role, full of interesting setpieces and plot-relevant characters who actually liked Harry, in comparison to the rather dull, irrelevant, and unlikeable Dursleys. The protection charm didn't really work as a reason when both the Burrow and Grimmauld Place had their own defenses, not to mention actual wizards (and the protection was effectively nullified by Voldemort in the fourth book anyway). Despite this, every book still ends with Harry going home to the Dursleys... and then the next begins by contriving a new reason for Harry to go to the Burrow or Grimmauld Place or some other magical location within the first three chapters. In the sixth book, exactly ''one'' chapter is spent at the Dursleys, and it's even mentioned that Harry has spent less than a month there since the last book ended.
183** At the start of the series, Hagrid is something of a mentor for Harry. As Harry grows up, however, Hagrid becomes too childish to be a suitable mentor, at which point Harry acquires more mature mentors like Lupin and Sirius. Moreover, Hagrid is deeply relevant to the main story of the first couple books, but in the later books, he tends to be kept busy with largely self-contained subplots. Rowling claims to have considered killing him off, but was too attached to the scene of him [[spoiler:carrying Harry's body out of the forest]] as a means of [[BookEnds mirroring his introduction]] of carrying baby Harry to his new family.
184* Does double-duty in the ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' series -- in-universe 'Herald' became the name of the Monarch's special agents because one of the first to be Chosen was the royal herald. But later books in the series have been set outside Valdemar, featured non-Herald protagonists, or both.
185* Over the years, the ''Literature/HIVESeries'' has gotten [[CerebusSyndrome much darker]], but Block and Tackle continue to appear. When there is a genuine need for some generic mooks, it's always those two, but otherwise they tend to have simple cameos in every volume.
186* ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''
187** Applies to Zaphod Beeblebrox after he fulfills his self imposed mission. He makes a fairly small appearance in ''Literature/LifeTheUniverseAndEverything'' and was then completely absent, with only one or two mentions, until ''Literature/AndAnotherThing''. [[Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1978 The radio version]] of ''Literature/MostlyHarmless'' (made after Creator/DouglasAdams' death) felt compelled to bring him back anyway.
188** Ford Prefect's name. The joke is not only lost entirely on American audiences, but modern British audiences as well, as the Ford Prefect car that was once so popular in Britain had been out of production for some time even before the radio show debuted and is now long-forgotten by anyone except classic car aficionados. (The joke was that Ford, when coming to Earth, had mistaken cars for Earth's dominant life form due to insufficient research.) The German version fixes this by calling the character "Ford Escort", while all other versions keep his name the same. The US film got around the problem by showing Ford and Arthur's first meeting (Ford steps into the street to greet an oncoming car -- which is indeed a Ford Prefect--and Arthur tackles him just in time) and having Ford tell Arthur what he was doing and why, specifically pointing out his unusual name.
189* Roran in ''Literature/InheritanceCycle''. In the second book he takes the role of Deuteragonist, having an action-adventure plot thread when TheEmpire attacks his village, a much needed constrast to Eragons rather slow paced learning focused plot. Roran rallies the villagers to fight back, and the entire village goes off on a quest to join LaResistance in a story arc that is commonly considered one of the best parts of the entire series, if not outright the best. However after joining the resitance and [[spoiler:rescuing Katrina early in Brisingr]], Roran was left with his character arc basically finished and essential nothing to do in the greater arc of the story, being just a BadassNormal. Roran chapters in the final two books consisted solely of occasional relationship development and assorted rebellion missions that help cement his reputation as a stone-cold badass but are completely irrelevant {{Filler}} to the overaching plot.
190* ''Literature/TheMagiciansNephew'' was originally planned to be a direct prequel to ''Literature/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe'' but ended up being the second-to-last ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' novel instead. As such, certain elements can feel out of place with the four novels between ''The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe'' and ''The Magician's Nephew''. Despite being a prequel to the entire series, it only shows Narnia's creation, with the other nations prominent in the sequels like Calormen, Archenland or Telmar never being acknowledged, not even in the epilogue. The novel also contains an explanation on why the Wardrobe has a magical link to Narnia while ''Literature/PrinceCaspian'' established that portals to Narnia can appear anywhere without a connection being necessary, making the explanation rather pointless.
191* ''Literature/TolkiensLegendarium'':
192** ''Literature/TheHobbit'' was [[ArcWelding not intended to be a part of the same continuity]] as Tolkien's larger works, creating a lot of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness. Much of this was changed in rewrites, such as mentions of China or trains or [[CharacterizationMarchesOn Gollum giving Bilbo the Ring]], but a few aspects were too important to be changed in such fashion.
193** When one looks at the broader mythology, hobbits themselves can feel rather out-of-place. They don't have any kind of real origin, even in ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'', their general rural England-esque aesthetic and lifestyle is very off from the Dark Ages feel of the rest of Middle-Earth, and even their names [[AerithAndBob tend to sound rather more folksy and familiar]], which Tolkien had to explain as a TranslationConvention. But of course, since hobbits had been how the world was introduced to Middle-Earth, he couldn't simply drop them.
194*** One particular bit of early weirdness that has drawn a lot of attention from fans is the Arkenstone. From its description to its role as an object that everyone covets, the Arkenstone appears to be a dead ringer for a lost Silmaril, but due to ''The Hobbit'' not being written as part of ''the Legendarium'' from the start, it has too many discrepancies from the Silmarils as described in ''The Silmarillion'' to be one of them. When Tolkien initially wrote ''The Hobbit'', he intended the whole idea to be a way to finally use some of his notes, as the Arkenstone's subplot [[RecycledScript borrows a number of aspects]] from "Of the Ruin of Doriath", a story that focused on elves and dwarves fighting over a Silmaril. With the publication of ''The Silmarillion'', however, [[ExpyCoexistence the two items now coexist despite having no apparent connection]].
195** ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''
196*** The story was originally intended to be a fairly close sequel to ''The Hobbit'' in terms of its tone and storytelling, but as Tolkien got more into it, he started giving it its own voice. Nonetheless, elements from early drafts of the book that feel very ''Hobbit''-y but not so much ''Lord of the Rings''-y stuck around in the final version, especially in the first half of ''Fellowship''. [[WackyWaysideTribe Tom Bombadil]] is only the most famous of these; one scene involves a fox that has an extended internal monologue and never appears again.
197*** In-universe, the role of the Thain of the Shire is considered this. Historically, the Thains were the commanders of the Shire's military musterings, and the closest thing the hobbits had to a king (the name means "chief" in their language). However, after the destruction of Angmar, threats to the Shire became rarer and rarer, and by the time of the books, the last real military threat was soundly defeated over 270 years ago. The position kept being passed down the male line of the Took family, and as it didn't have any other responsibilities and the Shire's government is fairly loose, it became nothing more than a source of trivia about the Tooks. However, this is ultimately challenged during the Scouring of the Shire, where Pippin's father being the Thain gives him the pull he needs to resist Saruman's attempted takeover.
198* ''Literature/PeterPan'' has the Native American characters...or, as the book almost always calls them, "redskins." ''Everything'' about them is problematic to a modern reader. Plenty of other old-timey characters get [[ReimaginingTheArtifact reimagined]] into something less racist, but that's hard with ''Peter Pan''--Neverland is supposed to be like a child's imagination come to life, so having a ''realistic'' American Indian tribe alongside the fairies and foppish pirates would feel out of place. Which RealLife culture would you base them on, anyway? Most adaptations will include Tiger Lily, since she's iconic, but making her work is a tough balancing act.
199* In the ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' series, the Abbey of Redwall itself became an artifact. Author Brian Jacques made a decision to deliberately remove as many religious elements of the series as he could. However, in the original ''Redwall'' novel, the Abbey had explicitly been a monastic order of mice who normally lived in isolation - one of the plot points of the story was that the Abbey, being the only defensible building in the area, allowed all the residents of the area refuge due to an invading army. Redwall Abbey was reworked into a commune where all were welcome, but many of the inhabitants continued wearing robes and referring to each other as Brother or Sister, and the leader of the Abbey continued to be called an Abbot (or Abbotess).
200* Second Prize's presence at the climatic drug deal in ''Literature/{{Trainspotting}}'' is this in later books, due to the Big Four (Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie) receiving the most limelight, and Second Prize's absence from the film adaptation. In both ''Literature/{{Porno}}'' and ''Dead Men's Trousers'' he is little more than an afterthought or mild obstacle for Renton, only interacting with him once in each book and barely figuring into the plot otherwise.
201* At one point, Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/Timeline191'' AlternateHistory was reportedly supposed to feature the United States losing UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and becoming a fascist state [[ANaziByAnyOtherName analogous to Nazi Germany]]; somewhere along the line, Turtledove changed his mind and decided to have the Confederate States fall to fascism instead. Despite this, the series was left with multiple US characters who were strongly implied to be American versions of historical figures from post-WWI Germany--most notably Flora Hamburger (Rosa Luxemburg), Irving Morrell (UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel), and Abner Dowling[[note]] "Dowling" was the surname of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler's sister-in-law[[/note]]. Narrowly averted with Gordon [=McSweeny=], who was strongly implied to be a future bigoted demagogue in the vein of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler himself; he ended up [[DroppedABridgeOnHim abruptly killed off]] in World War I, since he wouldn't have had much to do after the war.
202[[/folder]]
203
204[[folder:Music]]
205* Music/RedHotChiliPeppers' "Give It Away" was a hit, and so has been played live every gig since its introduction, regardless of whether it fits with the set list or not (it's dirty funk and their later music has been more in an alternative rock/ballad vein).
206** "Under the Bridge" and "Otherside" were written during different bad times in Anthony Kiedis' life, but were hit singles, so they have to play them live even if they aren't representative of those time periods. The album ''One Hot Minute'' was written during bad times in the band members' lives, but oddly, the one track they still occasionally play from it is the most negative song of the whole album, Flea's solo song "Pea".
207** "Right on Time" and "Throw Away Your Television" were present in almost every set list from when they were introduced until being only occasionally played this tour. They were artifacts because they were album tracks from the albums that were being promoted at the time (''Californication'' and ''By the Way'').
208*** The funk-oriented bassist Flea and the hard rock drummer Chad Smith seem out of place in the band's alternative rock period which has mostly been written by Anthony Kiedis and John Frusciante (since replaced by Josh Klinghoffer). The band have reintroduced a lot of older tracks in their set list since, so that might be changing.
209* Until Music/{{Genesis|Band}} had enough hits to throw away a lot of their earlier [[EpicRocking epics]], progressive pieces such as "Music/SuppersReady", "Dancing With The Moonlit Knight", "Squonk", "Dance On A Volcano" and "The Cinema Show", which were still played even as late as 1986, often clashed considerably with the new sound, style and line-up changes of the band in TheEighties, to the point where they could be seen as artifacts in the set list.
210** A similar effect happened with the Trevor Rabin-era line-up of Music/{{Yes}}, who had to share catchy, post-modern, commercial, Creator/{{MTV}}-approved '80s pop hits like "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" in their set lists with early progressive [[EpicRocking epics]] like "Heart Of The Sunrise" and "Your Move/All Good People" from TheSeventies.
211* Despite several centuries of independence from Spain, the Dutch national anthem still contains a statement of loyalty to the Spanish king.
212* Russia's current national anthem has the same tune as the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U06jlgpMtQs Soviet Union's]] but with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOAtz8xWM0w different lyrics]].
213* Oddly enough, the horn section that the band Music/{{Chicago}} was originally built around became a bit of an artifact in TheEighties as the band's style shifted from progressive rock/jazz outfit to a smoother, poppier, more keyboard-centered AOR/MOR band. The horns seemed to be used very sparingly, and in the background of their hits, when used at all.
214** A similar situation would be narrowly [[AvertedTrope averted]] with Music/ElectricLightOrchestra. A side project of Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne of Music/TheMove, originally, until The Move's split, the band was made with the intention of crossbreeding the sound of an ''electric'' rock group with the sound of a string section (''orchestra'') used as an integral part of the group[[note]]The band's press kit claimed they were to pick up where Music/TheBeatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am The Walrus" left off, musically[[/note]]; the band's name was a pun on the electric light bulb and BBC Light Orchestra. Even after the departure of Roy Wood from the band after their debut album, and the group's eventual GenreShift into pop (and at one point, disco), they continued to use string arrangements and Beatleseque elements prominently in the group sound; the official string-playing members of the band had less and less to do in the studio after 1974's ''Eldorado'' due to Lynne wanting more elaborate string parts. By the group's 1981 album, the [[NewWaveMusic New Wave]]-inspired, synth-heavy ''Time'', the group had jettisoned strings almost entirely in favor of a synth-pop sound, using only a few string players or studio string parts through TheEighties; ''Time'', however, acknowledged this by shortening the group name to its FanNickname, ''ELO'', officially. 2001's ''Zoom'' had little or no strings on it, either, yet the (canceled) 2001 tour [[note]]it was canceled due to slow ticket sales and the wake of Music/GeorgeHarrison's death, and never got past rehearsals and a DVD concert film[[/note]] was to have used new string players alongside the rock players.
215* Music/BlackSabbath intended to title their second album ''War Pigs'', but it got changed to ''Music/{{Paranoid|Album}}'' instead due to the popularity of the song with the same title. The rest of the artwork remained unchanged, though, and so the war pig on the album cover makes very little sense. This led to CreatorBacklash from the band, who were displeased with the cover art from the beginning.
216* Music/NewRadicals song "Flowers" from ''Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too'' is a double one. It includes the line "It's '97, why aren't things wild?" - however, their album was only released in late 1998, and the majority of people first heard it in 1999 (as the single "You Get What You Give" was only released then). It's explained by the fact that work on the album began in 1995, and Gregg Alexander was such a perfectionist that it was delayed until he was fully happy with it.
217* Music/LinkinPark
218** They have this with the rap aspect of their sound. In the first two {{nu metal}}-influenced albums ''Music/HybridTheory'' and ''Music/{{Meteora}}'', it made perfect sense. After they moved on, they downplayed its presence, removing it from most songs, but not entirely. ''Minutes to Midnight'', in the midst of all the ArenaRock, had several rap songs that felt out of place, while ''A Thousand Suns'' was progressive space rock with the occasional industrial hip-hop song. It's hard to imagine any other band putting in random rap if they had just started out with either of those albums. Their later material afterwards was more rap-oriented however, which may mean this may no longer be the case.
219** Speaking of their nu metal material, despite trying to distance themselves from the genre and even disowning it, they still have to play the material from their first two albums at every live show completely intact. No matter how at odds their old songs are with what they're trying to do, they remain. Examples include "In the End", "Papercut", "Faint", "Numb", "From the Inside", "Points of Authority", "Crawling", and "One Step Closer". The latter is an especially interesting case, because Chester actually said it was his ''[[CreatorBacklash least favorite song]]'', yet it remains a concert staple. However, "Crawling" has in fact been slowly phased out in the '10s (especially after they learned of its memetic reputation for mocking {{wangst}}).
220* Before the concept of ''Music/SixtyNineLoveSongs'' by Music/TheMagneticFields came into place, Stephin Merritt just knew he wanted to write a long album of songs about love, and at one point had the idea that it would be a double album with 26 songs, one for every letter of the alphabet. "Xylophone Track" and "Zebra" were specifically written with this idea in mind, since "X" and "Z" otherwise don't start a lot of other words in the English language, and were kept as the last two songs on the album. "'''A'''bsolutely Cuckoo" being the first song on the first disc might also have something to do with the original alphabetical concept.
221* Music/BillyJoel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" tends to stick out like a sore thumb whenever he includes it in a concert [[CreatorBacklash (not that he plays it often)]] - very few of his songs are as drenched in '80s synth, and most of the other songs are heavily piano-based, have synth parts that are less distracting ("Pressure"), or are so iconic that he can't really leave them out ("The Entertainer").
222** "Captain Jack" is this on the odd occasion that it's performed, since it's one of his earlier works and he's slightly embarrassed by the more juvenile lyrics (such as the masturbation references).
223* Music/CaptainBeefheart's "Run Paint Run Run" (from ''Music/DocAtTheRadarStation'') was an outtake from his previous album ''Music/ShinyBeast'', albeit with a new vocal track. This is evident because the track features trombone, an instrument only used on "Shiny Beast" while Bruce Fowler was in the band.
224* "If Tomorrow Never Comes" and "The Dance" are slicker ballads that stand out compared to the rest of Music/GarthBrooks' discography, but they remain in his setlist due to their enduring popularity.
225* Likewise with "How Forever Feels" and "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy", very early hits for Music/KennyChesney that predate his arena rock-meets-beach bum sound that he's largely hand since the TurnOfTheMillennium. They stick out greatly in his setlist, but remain due to their enduring popularity.
226* When {{Music/Alphaville}}'s original 1984 song "Forever Young" was remixed in 2001 by F.A.F. into "Forever Young: Diamonds in the Sun," Creator/CartoonSaloon created an animated music video in which the band are featured in scenes from several classic movies. However, the band is depicted to resemble the way they looked on the cover of their 1986 studio album, ''Afternoons in Utopia.'' Not only did the band members in 2001 not resemble the way they looked in 1986, particularly in hair length, the band ''lineup'' in 2001 did not match the lineup in 1986. Ricky Echolette is one of the members featured in the video even though he left Alphaville in 1996. Further, he joined Alphaville in 1985, after the original "Forever Young" single released.
227[[/folder]]
228
229[[folder:Myths and Religion]]
230* Myth/ArthurianLegend: Morgan(a) "le Fay," which means "the fairy." In the earliest stories she was a [[BigGood wholly benevolent]] fairy queen who may be related to Arthur, but whose main role is to [[KingInTheMountain take Arthur to Avalon for healing]]. Later legends reworked her into Arthur's human half-sister (and also [[AdaptationalVillainy usually evil]]), but her "le Fay" title lingers on, possibly because "Morgan" is still too common to use on its own. Some modern writers [[ReimaginingTheArtifact try to explain it]], but usually don't.
231* Literature/TheQuran contains several verses that are seemingly contradicted by others. This is because the book was written throughout a period of 23 years, to adapt with the changing political and social climate of the era. Generally, the verses written later supersede the older ones, although since the Qur'an is ordered anachronistically, it can be hard to tell which verse came out first. The Arabic designation for this is ''naskh'' (abrogation).
232** By far the most controversial of this is the so-called "sword verse" (QS 9:5), which justifies the killing of ''mushrikun'' (Arab polytheists) if they refuse to convert as a worship to God, a statement that is diametrically opposed to a hundred other verses elsewhere, as they preach tolerance, forgiveness, and patience towards the ''mushrikun''. This verse was written when the Caliphate had become the most powerful state in Arabia, so the Muslims had more leeway in enforcing state policy compared to the time when they were a persecuted minority in Mecca. Both medieval and modern religious scholars have no problem accepting the fact that the verse abrogates the others, as the issue is no longer applicable today (the Arab polytheists having been extinct for more than a thousand years), so they regard the law as an Artifact by itself. The real controversy is that certain... [[TheFundamentalist people]] believe that the law is ''not'' an Artifact, and the ''mushrikun'' don't just refer to Arab polytheists but to non-Muslims in general, which means that there are still targets available.
233** Abstinence from intoxicants (i.e., alcohol) is a law that is chronologically introduced very late to the book. Heaven is said to contain a wine river (52:23), which is rather weird if Muslims are always prohibited from drinking it. 2:219 merely discourages Muslims from drinking intoxicants, while 4:43 forbids being intoxicated during prayer. It isn't until 5:90 that intoxicants are forbidden from being drunk in any capacity.
234* ''Literature/DoctrineAndCovenants'' 132 still allows for [[MarryThemAll "plural marriage"]], even though current LDS policy, since the 1890 and 1904 Manifestos (indeed, the former is included as Official Declaration 1), is to ban the celebration of new such unions and to excommunicate those engaging in such unions or merely advocate for such.
235** Even before 1890, D&C 132 was thought to conflict with 101 of 1835 edition, which contains anti-polygamy statements. Section 101 ended up being removed on 1876.
236* The earliest books of ''Literature/TheBible'' have some oddities. There are some verses which make it sound like multiple gods exist, and indeed the ancient Hebrew word translated as "gods" is "elohim", which is plural. This is because the ancient Hebrews started out as henotheistic (believing in multiple gods but only worshipping one) before becoming fully monotheistic. There are also some verses that make it sound like God isn't TheOmnipotent, such as Him unsuccessfully trying to kill Moses at one point, or God seemingly worrying that if the humans complete the Tower Of Babel they will become too powerful for Him to control. Again, this is because the ancient Hebrews ''didn't'' think God was omnipotent, just superhumanly powerful like the Greek or Norse gods.
237[[/folder]]
238
239[[folder:Pinballs]]
240* Although ''[[Pinball/LightsCameraAction Lights... Camera... Action!]]'' revolves around completing an action movie, the game also contains numerous references to playing cards, and players must assemble poker hands for extra bonuses. WordOfGod is that the game was originally designed with a card game theme, which was changed to movie-making midway through production.
241[[/folder]]
242
243[[folder:Podcasts]]
244* The medium name itself is TheArtifact. The term, "podcast," is named after the Apple iPod, the device on which the medium first made inroads. However, podcasts didn't really take off as a cultural force until after iPods--where episodes had to be downloaded on a separate machine and loaded onto the iPod manually--had been made obsolete by smartphones that could manage podcast downloads automatically.
245* ''Podcast/WelcomeToNightVale'':
246** The narrator, who originally had NoNameGiven, has been canonically named "Cecil" since "The Phone Call" midway through the first season, but the credits still only call him "The Voice of Night Vale". His Desert Bluffs counterpart is also called "The Voice of Desert Bluffs" in the credits, despite having been canonically named "Kevin" since his first appearance.
247** Cecil's name, and the names of Kevin, Lauren, and Maureen, are an artifact of a New York theater group, the Neo-Futurists, whose performers tend to work exclusively under their real names. Many members of ''Night Vale'''s cast and crew originated from that scene, and few stopped to double-guess the wisdom of making everyone TheDanza until it started causing confusion in fandom. (Cecil the character was given the full name "Cecil Gershwin Palmer" to alleviate the stress the conflation of character and self was creating for Cecil Baldwin.) Characters who had previously only been mentioned suddenly getting voice actors, most of whom didn't share the names of their pre-existing characters, also made the ones that did stand out more.
248* For the first two seasons of ''Podcast/MissionToZyxx'' Pleck has a title (Ambassador, then Emissary) and a job. In the third season he has a mission to fulfill a Zima prophecy. For the fourth season he is without official duties or a life purpose; he's just along for the ride.
249[[/folder]]
250
251[[folder:Print Media]]
252* Though the only unhealthy thing about fat per se is that it has nine calories per gram as opposed to four with protein and carbohydrate (though fat is actually essential for vital functions, and is more filling than carbohydrate), women's magazines and health magazines regularly list both calories and fat.
253* ''Magazine/NintendoPower'': For a long time, the mail section listed what state a reader sent their letter from, or read "via the Internet" if they sent it through email. Eventually the letters all redundantly read "via the Internet", but this tidbit was never taken out until the eventual US takeover.
254* Back in the 1950's, ''Magazine/{{Mad}}'' had actual "departments" for comics and other stuff. Nowadays, "such-and-such department" might as well just be "such-and-such", given that each article just has its own snarky intro line.
255* "[[UsefulNotes/{{Pornography}} Lad mags]]" have been on a massive decline since the 2000's, because TheInternetIsForPorn, letting viewers see as much naked naughtiness as they desire without having to awkwardly buy magazines from newstands and finding a [[PornStash non-embarrassing place to store it]].
256[[/folder]]
257
258[[folder:Software and Technology]]
259* Emoji:
260** Emoji were originally designed for Japanese pager users in 1999, with sponsorship from the Japanese ticketing firm Pia. This explains the inclusion of "Soon with Rightwards Arrow Above" (🔜), "On with Exclamation Mark with Left Right Arrow Above" (🔛), "Top with Upwards Arrow Above" (🔝) and "Back with Leftwards Arrow Above" (🔙) -- these glyphs had been developed as part of an automated notification system for Pia customers, with the idea being that they could receive text messages reminding them that a ticketed event was popular, about to begin, already started, or informing them that they had missed it. The emoji can't be removed, because [[GrandfatherClause doing so would wreck the Unicode system that makes them work]].
261** Several other unusual symbol choices trace their history back to the design intention to use them as automated notification systems. The sun ☀, cloud ☁, umbrella ☂, lightning bolt 🌩, cyclone 🌀, snowman ⛄ and moon phases 🌕🌓🌑 were intended for use by for weather forecast services and tide alerts; the ships 🚢 and planes ✈🛫🛬 for arrival and departure notifications; the astrological symbols ♌ and [[PersonalityBloodTypes blood type icons]] 🅰🅱 for fortune-telling services.
262** The "Pager" (📟) emoji makes perfect sense as a basic telecommunication symbol for a system designed for pagers in 1999, but there is no way it would have been included had the format been designed at [[TechnologyMarchesOn any time after about 2002 at the absolute latest]]. As [[NoExportForYou the system only became popular in the West after its inclusion on the [=iPhone=] in 2011]], many users aren't even sure what the little device is supposed to be...
263* Even as of late 2018, the image of the 3.5" floppy diskette continues to be an ubiquitous symbol of saving data in countless programs when many machines don't even support physical media any longer, let alone the "whopping" 1.44 MB of storage a 3.5" diskette could provide, so kids who have never even laid eyes on a real floppy disk will still know that weird square-shaped symbol with two smaller rectangles in it will represent saving. There have even been a few infamous examples of kids mistaking a floppy disk for a "[[WhatAreRecords 3D-printed save icon]]."
264* Installation programs for Windows software can still ask if the user wants to add a shortcut to Quick Launch, even years after Windows 7 got rid of it and replaced it with pinning applications to the taskbar. These installers will usually not compensate by pinning the program to the taskbar.
265* Mouse Pads were created to compensate for the earliest form of computer mice which used a ball, as the ball struggled to grab traction -- the soft rubber under fabric gave the surface some give and traction, which greatly improved performance. When optical mice were invented, the earliest forms of them actually ''required'' a specially-designed mouse pad (that is, specially designed for ''each model'') to reflect the light back up at their sensor in order to function at all. Nowadays an optical mouse will operate on basically anything without issue, so all a mouse pad really does is limit movement, get in the way, and occasionally rob it of traction if it slips, and yet mouse pads continue to be very popular even to this day purely for aesthetic purposes.
266* When new Platform/MicrosoftWindows versions update the system's GUI, Microsoft always leaves traces of the previous ones, from there still being a few pixel art icons in Windows 11 to [[https://i.redd.it/q517r41dmw571.png two decades' worth of design languages]].
267* The GIF image format is this online. Designed in the late '80s, limited to only 256 colors, it made complete sense for the low-bandwith Internet of TheNineties, where it served its purpose for simple graphics like drawings with transparency, animated or not. Later, throughout the TurnOfTheMillennium, PNG has eclipsed its use for non-animated graphics, but it remained in use for animated pictures. Optimization techniques allowed even turning live-action clips into animated [=GIFs=], even if they didn't look as good as proper video clips - but it still made sense with the technology of the time. Over time, however, advancements in browsers, file formats and internet bandwidths allowed embedding and sharing actual video clips, with sound or soundless without trouble using formats such as WEBM or [=MP4=], nevertheless you will still see meticulously optimized animated [=GIFs=] being posted around the internet with whole websites and services dedicated to generating them, even well into the 2020s - simply because the format is just so well-established.
268* Old-school cash registers are so dead-in-the-ground obsolete that most people alive today have never even ''seen'' one, or god-forbid actually used one in a transaction. Nevertheless, the distinct [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIZ5Sh6UKY0 cha-ching]] is still universally recognized as a sound effect for making a sale, making money, or just being rich in general.
269* Platform/{{Steam}} games are installed within a "common" sub-folder inside of the steamapps folder. This sub-folder exists because games by Creator/ValveCorporation used to have separate installs located inside a sub-folder for each Steam account on the given computer, while the "common" folder existed for third-party games that did not use this system. Eventually, the separate install system was scrapped by Valve themselves and even their own games are installed like any other game, but the structure remains.
270[[/folder]]
271
272[[folder:Sports]]
273* The Los Angeles Lakers, an American basketball team, originally played in Minnesota, which actually has, you know, lakes. The name makes absolutely no sense in Los Angeles, but has been around so long that it's not changing.
274* The Utah Jazz, also an NBA team. This team originated in New Orleans, the home of jazz music. Utah? Not so much.
275** Ironically, after the Jazz left the Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans, keeping the Hornets name (earned from Charlotte's nickname, "Hornet's Nest"). The name isn't completely out of place like some of the others, but it's still humorous that New Orleans is on the giving and receiving end of this trope.
276*** To turn it around straight again, their team colors are still UNC baby blue and white.
277*** The New Orleans franchise has since changed its name to the Pelicans (after the Louisiana state flag), starting with the 2013-14 season. The new Charlotte team, the Bobcats, then announced they would rename themselves Hornets the following season. A deal between the NBA, Pelicans, and Hornets also saw the Pelicans [[{{Retcon}} transfer their Charlotte history]] to the current Hornets.
278* In the English football (soccer) league, London-based Wimbledon FC, nicknamed 'The Dons' were in financial crisis, which their owners decided to 'solve' by moving them to Milton Keynes, a town over 70 miles away, 2004. Unlike in the US where teams moving is common, this is completely unheard of in English football and it was denounced by virtually everyone. The fans of the original team set up their own club, AFC Wimbledon, while the now-Milton-Keynes-based team was told they couldn't call themselves 'Wimbledon' any more, so they changed to 'Milton Keynes Dons', with the last word representing the original nickname. After years of negotiation, it's now been accepted by both sides that AFC Wimbledon are the legitimate successor team to Wimbledon FC, whereas MK Dons are just a team that started in 2004. However, the suffix 'Dons' still remains.
279* In an example of one of these ultimately being changed, in the NFL, when the Houston Oilers moved to Tennessee they kept the Oilers name for a bit, but finally changed to Titans, a name that doesn't scream Tennessee, but at least isn't a nonsensical reference to another region like the Oilers. Also, they had to keep the Oilers name while in Tennessee for a year or two to keep ownership of the trademark.
280* American football has a scoring play known as the ''drop kick'', in which a player can, during play, bounce the ball off the ground and then kick it between the goalposts for a field goal or an extra point. Drop kicks have been obsolete for decades due to changes in play style and the football being made more pointed in shape to accommodate the passing game, but were never actually removed from the rule book. They were even part of the NFL's old Punt, Pass and Kick youth competition (which ended in 2017), meaning lots of players learned how to drop kick, even though they'd never need to do it in a game. Cue a Miami Dolphins/New England Patriots game at the end of the 2005 and consternation when Patriots backup quarterback Doug Flutie scored the first drop kick in over 60 years (it was a thank-you to coach Bill Belichick, and also Flutie's final NFL game, as he was retiring at the end of that season). Most NFL fans were unaware that the drop kick even existed.[[note]]Jim [=McMahon=] says that he unsuccessfully tried to talk coach Mike Holmgren into letting him do a drop kick under similar circumstances in his final NFL season as a Green Bay Packers backup QB in 1996.[[/note]]
281** Likewise, the fair catch kick. A ridiculously rare and obscure play that's only been used a handful of times in the past several decades. It takes place when a team receives a punt or kickoff and signals for a fair catch or otherwise does not return it. From the spot of the ball, rather than run a regular offensive series, the possessing team can attempt a free kick, so called because the opposing team cannot attempt to block it. The kicker and the ball spotter are the only two players involved in the play, with the kicker being allowed to take his sweet time in lining up his kick. In effect, this type of free kick plays like a normal kickoff, only with a spotter holding the ball rather then it being kicked from a tee. The kicker is aiming the ball for the uprights and if successful, his team receives three points like a field goal. Naturally, because even horrible punts and kickoffs are likely to push the ball well into the receiving team's territory, the circumstances where a free kick would be viable are rare in the extreme. A vast majority of recorded attempts took place in the final seconds of the half; since the opposing team can field the kick if it misses ''(and they almost always do)'', this leaves them no opportunity to run their own plays before time expires. Thus, the free kick serves mostly as a fun and arcane way to run out the clock with a somewhat safer result than throwing up a Hail Mary and risking an interception return they aren't prepared to guard against.
282* UsefulNotes/IceHockey, being somewhat of a lesser-tier professional sport in most places, tends to maintain a lot of Artifacts that people either hold up as proof that hockey is the best game ever, or people hold up as proof that the sport is backward compared to other, more popular sports:
283** The [[UsefulNotes/NationalHockeyLeague NHL]] instituted one point for an overtime loss starting in the 1999-2000 season, with the intention being that teams would play for a win in overtime for the extra point, instead of previous seasons where teams played defensively to keep the point they'd get in the event of a tie. After the 2004-2005 lockout, regular season games ended in a shootout if overtime kept the game tied, abolishing tie games, making the "loser point" useless and recreating the same problem that the point tried to fix: now teams that are tied at the end of the third period will play defensively in order to force a shootout, which they perceive to be easier to win.
284* The UsefulNotes/UltimateFightingChampionship name is an artifact relating to its origin as a tournament (the winner of each PPV would become the ultimate fighting champion) and before the term Mixed Martial Arts was coined. Now with no tournaments, multiple titles and many cards with no championships at stake, the term is mostly meaningless. When Zuffa bought out UFC from Semaphore Entertainment Group, they essentially only wanted the initials because they had brand value.
285* In golf, woods are a type of club with a longer shaft and larger head than irons, but they were so named because the heads were formerly made out of a hard wood. In recent decades almost all have been made out of metal, but the most professional of golfers still call them woods.
286* While most national soccer team kits use the colors of the national flag, the German kit is black and white, and the Italian kit is all or mostly blue. This is because black and white, on the one hand, and blue, on the other, were the heraldic colors of the royal houses of Hohenzollern and Savoy, which reigned in Germany and Italy, respectively, before these countries became republics in 1919 and 1946. Meanwhile, the Russian national team still uses the same dark red kit with a few golden details design used by the Soviet Union, despite the USSR's dissolution in 1991 (FIFA recognizes the Russian team as heir of the Soviet team and attributes the latter's historical statistics to the former). Changing the kit's design would be unthinkable in the case of Italy, whose national team is well known by its nickname ''Gli Azzurri'' ("The Blue Ones"). However, alternate designs for Russia and Germany exist with the away kit of Germany often ''green'' to invoke [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Football_Association their football association]]. Even the uniforms for some other sports follow this convention. American Football (for which both Germany and Italy have relatively successful national teams) is a mixed bag, with a blue wearing Italian team and a red-black-gold German team.
287* England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own national soccer teams mostly because the sport was invented in England and the rules to "Association Football" (the official name of the sport) were drawn up in England. The first "international" match was between England and Scotland, mainly because it was the only two places of nation size and shape that could field anything approaching two teams of equal talent. This even screws up the Usefulnotes/OlympicGames, as only the 2012 games in London had agreements for a Great Britain team, otherwise spots earned by England are reassigned due to the other three nations deciding not to collaborate.
288* Rugby also has some teams that represent countries that don't exist any more, have never existed or are at best political projects. One of the more famous is a United Ireland team (including players from the Republic of Ireland as well as Northern Ireland), but there is also a "West Indies" team.
289* The West Indies team in rugby is only a side created for special events. On the other hand, the West Indies is one of the 12 Test UsefulNotes/{{cricket}} "nations" (teams that play at the highest international level). In fairness, most of the former and current British possessions that make up the West Indies cricket side had been briefly united politically as the West Indies Federation.
290* The [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball Cleveland Indians]]' traditional mascot, Chief Wahoo, remains a somewhat controversial one. Due to objections raised over the cartoonish depiction of an American Indian warrior, the Chief is no longer used as silly animated character for rallying fans during games. His image is still used as an emblem on merchandise, but the logo itself was relegated to alternate status in 2014 and dropped entirely in 2019, and the "Indians" name itself was retired after the 2021 season, replaced by Guardians.
291* Also on Native Americans, the Philadelphia Warriors were named for indigenous combatants, and featured them in their logo even after the move to San Francisco. However, they have since 1969 dropped Native American imagery in lieu of Californian themes, eventually changing the franchise name to Golden State Warriors. The only time a warrior has been featured ever since was their superhero mascot "Thunder" (retired once [[OneSteveLimit a team of the same name emerged in 2008]]).
292* American sports media's custom of placing the visiting team first in score listings derives from baseball, where the home team bats at the bottom of each inning, but there's no logical reason why it needs to apply to other sports except for tradition.
293* In [[UsefulNotes/FormulaOne Formula One]], shortened three letter initials are used in some places on the broadcast where full names would be too long and are traditionally the first three letters of the driver's surname (for example, Lewis Hamilton is shortened to HAM). Initially, since there were two Schumacher brothers in the sport, Michael and Ralf Schumacher would be shortened to MSC and RSC respectively, which Michael retained after his brother was no longer racing, despite the differentiation no longer being necessary. This became such an Artifact that when Michael's son, Mick Schumacher started racing, he also retained the MSC shortening as a homage to his father.
294[[/folder]]
295
296[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
297* In general, the backs of long-running [[CollectibleCardGame Collectible Card Games]] often become this as the game and/or its publisher undergo a rebranding. Since updating the artwork on the back of the card could potentially allow a player to distinguish between them while face-down, they keep the now outdated logos or artwork years if not decades after they were phased out, as the alternative would be to require players to use sleeves with opaque backings if they want to use cards from different sets.
298* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'':
299** The Ability scores ranging from 3-18 (or more). In Second edition, an ability check was made by rolling a D20 and trying to roll less than your ability score. In addition, there were mechanical differences that made each point of an ability score matter rather than having breaks at every even number. In Third and beyond, ability scores must be converted to an ability modifier, which is the pertinent information. One could transform a stat line into something like: Str +2, Dx +1, etc. (''True20'' and ''TabletopGame/MutantsAndMasterminds'' 3rd edition, based on d20 Open Content, did just that). Almost no mechanics would be changed, and most of those would be simplified, and modifying creatures or changing sizes would be a cinch. This sort of statline is quite common in other games.
300** A sub-example of this was the concept of Exceptional Strength. In Original, Basic, 1st, and 2nd Edition, there was a rule introduced where if a character rolled 18 Strength for their starting stats, then they could also roll percentile dice and get a further bonus out of it (with the highest bonus going to someone lucky enough to roll 18 and 100, called 18/00). This was always kind of a weird rule, especially since it was the only stat to have this system, but it was accepted because it was the only way to express a character with Strength that was truly above the norm. However, after ''Unearthed Arcana'' introduced ways for a character to increase their stats above 18, Exceptional Strength became rather unnecessary, and led to there being essentially a gradient between 18 Strength and 19 Strength that didn't exist for any other stat. 3rd Edition and onward dropped the idea.
301** A lot of player races that were converted from old editions suffer from this. Thri-Kreen make a good example. Originally from the much-loved ''TabletopGame/DarkSun'' campaign setting of second edition, third edition's ''Psionics Handbook'' tried to convert them to the then-current ruleset. The end result had a level adjustment of +2 (meaning Thri-Kreen characters are 2 levels lower than other characters, at all times) and 2 racial hit dice (their first 2 levels have no class features), Psionic power points (with a penalty to the stats Psionic casting uses, and a Thri-Kreen's 4 dead levels make them useless as a Psionic caster), and five natural attacks (which, due to the aforementioned 4 dead levels and the penalty required to attack with all of them, means it will just flail ineffectually with all four limbs and bite). The end result was a race that [[MasterOfNone pulled in too many different directions]] to be good at any one thing (in comparison to other races that occasionally stray into CripplingOverspecialization territory), and was largely ignored. A non-psionic variant was released which dropped the power points in exchange for dropping its level adjustment, which at least helped this a little.
302** In earlier editions, there weren't a lot of rules for how to simply and easily increase the power level and abilities of existing monsters, and so the designers added in large numbers of monsters that filled clearly similar niches but were graduated by higher stats and maybe one or two extra abilities. The idea was that, for instance, if the DM wanted the player to fight barbaric evil humanoids, they could start with kobolds, then move up to goblins, then orcs, then hobgoblins, then gnolls, then bugbears, and so on. As time went on, there came much stronger rules rules for creating variants of existing monsters, with later versions giving clear guidelines for giving certain monsters class levels, 3rd Edition adding templates and allowing almost all monsters to take class levels, and 4th Edition providing almost every major monster with a mess of pre-statted variations from all across the spectrum of power. This left a lot of existing monsters without a clear niche, since now, if the players had gotten too strong to fight hobgoblins, the DM could simply roll in stronger varieties of hobgoblin rather than transitioning to bugbears. There have been some attempts at DivergentCharacterEvolution (kobolds like dragons and are good with traps, hobgoblins are militaristic, gnolls are borderline demonic), but others haven't been so lucky, and mostly continue to languish in the back.
303** Driders ended up with a case of this in the transition to 3E -- as originally designed, it was a punishment for failing because while the transformed drow did indeed got awesome powers and a body themed to their goddess, they then got ''stuck'' at that level of power (a valid reason for drow to look down on them, given their SocialDarwinist tendencies), since driders (unlike drow) couldn't get class levels. 3E brought in rules for giving class levels to monsters, yet settings that had been written before kept the drider punishment and drow looking down on them as there'd been too many references to it to smoothly retcon it out.
304** The name "fighter" seems oddly doofy for a combat class, which is because it's from the days when there were only a few classes. The original name was "fighting-man", used to refer to infantry, which was shortened to "fighter." Fighters in those days were simply intended to represent any character who fought with weapons, from soldiers to cavaliers to swashbucklers to generals to berserkers (to the point of changing name as they levelled up in some versions, capping out at [[AwesomeMomentOfCrowning "Lord"]]). Later on, most of these archetypes became represented by their own classes or archetypes, leaving the fighter looking and sounding oddly generic. Nonetheless, the name's stuck around in favor of, say, "warrior", because it's become too associated with the class to drop it.
305** An unfortunate one in 3rd was the monk and paladin. Originally, the classes required very high stats all around to take levels in (paladins, for instance, required a Charisma of at least 17), but offered useful abilities that keyed off all those stats. 3rd removed stat requirements for classes, but the monk and paladin continued having most of their abilities key off lots of stats, making them notoriously difficult to use due to [[MasterOfNone requiring every stat to be good]].
306** This trope hit a lot of multiclass characters that were converted to 3.x rules early on. Dual-classing or multiclassing in 2nd Edition worked very differently; a fighter 6/wizard 6 would be about on par with a 9th-level character, since taking multiple lower levels in fighter required less XP than taking a higher level in wizard, and they stayed close enough to the curve to be passable at both. In 3.x, it costs the same amount of XP to take the next level regardless of what class you're taking it in, so that same character was now considered 12th level, and [[MasterOfNone completely abysmal at both their skillsets.]] This led to a lot of major [=NPCs=], particularly from ''Forgotten Realms'', being incredibly weak for their supposed level; Storm Silverhand was notoriously a CR 32 character whose strongest ability was casting sorcerer spells a single-classed character got twenty levels ago. Eventually, the designers realized this, and introduced {{Prestige Class}}es like the eldritch knight or arcane trickster to get the old "sort of good at two things" feel.
307** The orc afterlife is still the [[LawfulEvil Lawful-leaning-Evil]] Acheron, even after orcs and their god Gruumsh were reflavored as ChaoticEvil. The idea still sorta works, though, as it means the orc afterlife is [[HellIsWar a perpetual battlefield.]] Similarly, halflings retain the LawfulGood goddess of plenty, fertility, and the home, Yondalla, as their generic deity, even after being retooled away from their roots of being barely-concealed Tolkien hobbits and made into nomadic TrueNeutral thieves.
308** Druids, Paladins, and Monks got hit with a mild version of this. Post-4th Edition rules remove alignment restrictions on classes, but the descriptions of each class in the Player's Handbook are clearly written with the idea that Druids are always neutral, Monks are always Lawful, and Paladins are always Lawful Good. The Oath of Tyranny paladin variant is also interesting in this regard, as in earlier editions "fallen paladin"-type classes had to be evil, but the Paladin of Tyranny is fully capable of being Good [[BadPowersGoodPeople despite their powers and flavor being clearly malevolent.]] The Oathbreaker Paladin is the one exception to this, as they're explicitly required to be evil and lose their Oathbreaker abilities if they become non-evil, even if they don't get redeemed.
309** 4th and 5th editions de-emphasize the CharacterAlignment system to a roleplaying guide with almost no in-game mechanical component. Previous editions have alignment restrictions on some {{Character Class}}es and many alignment-dependent effects (such as SmiteEvil and DetectEvil); these are either removed entirely or revised to affect entities like [[OurAngelsAreDifferent Celestials]], [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Fiends]], and Undead instead of targeting alignments.
310** The small reptilian monster known as the "pseudodragon" ''really'' ought to be given a new name (stingdrake?), as its official one hasn't made sense for decades. At the time of its debut, in the 1st Edition ''Monster Manual'', it was the only creature to ''look like'' a proper dragon - four legs plus wings, single dragon head - that wasn't one of the classic ten types, so tagging it a "false" dragon seemed reasonable enough. But loads of other dragon-types besides the "true" ten - some, like the faerie dragon or the smaller drakes, every bit as puny in comparison to the "true" dragons as the pseudodragon - have since been introduced, making it hard to explain why this ''particular'' one should be singled out as "pseudo-". And the game boasts plenty of other vaguely-draconic-looking critters (behir, dragonne, fire lizard) that could equally merit the "false dragon" title... the more so, as the ''official'' pseudodragon has been treated as a paid-in-full member of the Dragon creature type, mechanics-wise, since 3e.
311** In the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' setting, the drow city of Menzoberranzan uses a giant rock called Narbondel to measure time by heating it and letting it cool; this was added to the story when the drow saw via infravision, allowing them to see heat signatures. However, infravision was removed from the game years ago, and replaced with darkvision, that allowed people to see in perfect darkness, only in greyscale. Narbondel remains and continues to function as a clock tower, even though it's not exactly clear ''how'' the drow see it heat and cool.
312** Half-orcs became this once character alignment was de-emphasized and orcs were no longer AlwaysChaoticEvil. In the old days of ''D&D'', full-blooded orcs were a purely antagonistic race. Half-orcs were the products of [[ChildByRape war crimes]], but their human blood meant they had the capacity for good. Since everything described here reeks of UnfortunateImplications, half-orcs were given numerous revisions over the years to make their background less dependent on rape, and full orcs were presented with non-evil options as well, meaning they could theoretically be player characters themselves. Still, half-orcs had been one of the default races since the start of the game; it'd be impossible to remove them or even replace them with full orcs without causing an outcry.
313** Dwarves being Medium size is an interesting case. For non-D&D players, this is effectively the standard "weight class" for creatures that are [[HumansAreAverage around the size of the average human adult]], coming with no particular bonuses or penalties. The justification is that the next category down, Small, was for creatures that are around half the size of humans, and dwarves are only a foot shorter than humans and broader. This wasn't always the case. Before Third Edition, it was possible for dwarves to be Small, as creatures were assigned a size category based on their precise height and weight, and dwarves were on the border between Small and Medium. Third Edition settled on most types of creature being a specific size category for simplicity's sake, and chose to make dwarves Medium as the penalties they would get for being Small would be undesirable for the ProudWarriorRaceGuy role they traditionally fill. This stuck, but in later editions a lot of the penalties Small creatures received were removed, which made it possible for them to be a PintSizedPowerhouse. This meant that dwarves being Medium was no longer in the best interest of players, who might want to play as a Small dwarf. 5th Edition would introduce races that players could choose to be either Small or Medium, which seems like it would be ''perfect'' for dwarves, but the One D&D playtest that reworked the core races did not retroactively apply this to dwarves. Peculiarly, it did apply it to humans. The reason why was to accomodate players who want to play as a KidHero or a [[HandicappedBadass heroic little person]], but it did mean that humans were mechanically ''smaller'' than dwarves. In other words, because of intertia after changes made in Third Edition, combined with a desire to appeal to players who wanted to play as nontraditional characters, D&D went from dwarves being either Small or Medium and humans Medium to the reverse being true.
314** Material components of spellcasting, ingredients the caster must produce to make a spell work, have become this. Besides being part of traditional fantasy lore, they originally served to make certain spells harder to cast and as a depletable resource for heavy dungeon crawling. This was so often ignored over the years that by 5E, almost every spellcaster starts with an item that lets them ignore any material components except those that have a specific cost. As such, their only real function is to prevent players from raising the dead willy-nilly and to make them need a hand free (something also covered by somatic components), but they're too ingrained in the VancianMagic system to drop completely.
315** In earlier editions of the game, the assumption was that ''D&D'' was in part a CrossoverCosmology. The various planes were clearly based on the afterlives of real-life mythologies (Hades, Olympus, Tartarus, Heaven, Hell, Asgard, Nirvana, etc), and statlines and guidelines for real-world gods like the Greek and Norse pantheons were presented alongside the FantasyPantheon that ''D&D'' created wholecloth. In 2E, many of the planes were renamed to something more generic due to the Satanic Panic, but they were still noted to be inhabited by their respective pantheons. From 3E onward, though, this idea started getting downplayed; the 3rd Edition ''Manual of the Planes'', though renaming the planes to be closer to their real-world counterparts, makes no mention of any real-world pantheons, and its version of ''Deities and Demigods'', though describing real-world gods, treats them as [[LooseCanon a possible thing that might exist in an alternate campaign setting]] rather than a definite part of the default one. 4th Edition went so far as to remove the entire nation of Mulhorand and its Egyptian-style pantheon from ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms''. However, the classic "Great Wheel" arrangement of planes is still going strong as of 5th Edition, due in part to the consistent acclaim of ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'', even though much of the cosmology that those planes were meant to support has been quietly ignored for years now.
316* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'' was originally written as a pre-history for the TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness; strong hints of this remained all throughout 1st edition, until that train of thought was pretty much abandoned for 2nd edition. This is why the 1st edition Lunars [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse took more than a few elements from the Garou]] ([[FanonDiscontinuity much to the displeasure of fans]]), Sidereals occasionally had to deal with [[TabletopGame/MageTheAscension Paradox]], and the Underworld was ruled by [[TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion Deathlords]] and the Neverborn, who were paradoxically called "Malfeans" as well when Malfeas was a [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Yozi]] instead.
317* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'':
318** The back of the cards. The "Deckmaster" on the back of the cards was originally used to denote that ''Magic'' was the first of a series of games with that title (two others carried the "Deckmaster" theme: ''TabletopGame/VampireTheEternalStruggle'' and ''TabletopGame/{{Netrunner}}''); it no longer has any real relevance, but is kept to prevent people from being able to easily tell information about the card from just the back. Likewise, the word "Magic" remains blue on the card back despite it having been changed to yellow, and later replaced by an ''entirely different logo'', everywhere else.
319** Protection and regeneration. The rules for both mechanics are far messier than anything that would be approved today and there are small nuances that can trip up even experienced players (such as a creature leaving combat when it regenerates). However, both have a very strong flavor behind them as well as [[GrandfatherClause two decades of history]] keeping them in the game.
320** The upkeep step. There are still plenty of cards that use it, as it's useful to have a time for things to trigger at the beginning of the turn, but it's long since lost its original purpose [[note]]many early cards had an upkeep cost that had to be paid each turn[[/note]], leaving it with a [[ArtifactTitle name that doesn't make any sense.]]
321* ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'':
322** Spell cards made a lot more sense back when it was focused mostly on fantasy elements with a pinch of science fiction instead of the other way around.
323** Likewise the term "Tribute" would seem extremely out of place nowadays. This is averted in the OCG, where it is called advance summon instead.
324** The term "monster" can still describe a lot of cards, but even before [[{{Defictionalization}} the game was properly a game,]] there were plenty of cards that looked basically human or humanoid, along with cards that were downright cute (and not in an UglyCute way; straight-up puppies). In the very early days, the cards had a very [[http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/yugioh/images/3/39/SummonedSkull-JP-Manga-DM-NC-initial.png/revision/latest?cb=20131228215127 grotesque bent]] to them, which made the term fitting, but now, even inhuman cards tend towards a far sleeker appearance that hardly calls to mind a monster.
325** This affects certain playstyles and gimmicks, which fall OutOfFocus due to the design and marketing team losing interest in them. Up until the release of the actually-decent Gishkis, sets were still seeing fairly occasional releases of Ritual Monsters even though there had only ever been one meta Ritual deck and the mechanic itself was badly outdated, simply because they were a unique card type and they therefore deserved a ''little'' extra support. This also afflicted the Synchro type during the ''ZEXAL'' era and Pendulums during the ''VRAINS'' era.
326** A number of cards to debut in the anime had fully generic or nearly-generic effects, but were shifted to only work with a single monster or group of monsters when they were turned into real cards (typically the card their user played with them in the anime). This can result in oddities where a card is stated to work for only one monster, but its name and artwork either don't involve that monster (Multiply, Elegant Egotist, Byroad Sacrifice, Natural Disaster) or, in the case of Fake Explosion, depict an entirely different monster with no connection to the card.
327** Toons originated from a period when the game was still in [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness a very experimental phase]] and was uncertain for how to handle certain subcategories of cards that are designed to be used together. Consequently, on top of giving all Toons the term "Toon" in the name (i.e. Toon Mermaid, Toon Summoned Skull), they also made Toon a special classification of monster listed in the rulebook, with the term being listed in the same line as their typing (previously, this was reserved to Flip monsters, which are truly universal and generic in how they function). Later on in the game's history with Gravekeepers, the designers decided that simply sharing a part of their names was enough to designate an archetype, and every archetype since has followed suit, with those special classifications only being handed out for generic mechanics spread out across many archetypes (i.e. Geminis, Unions, Tuners). This leaves Toon in a weird place of being both an archetype ''and'' a special category of monster, even though this has very little effect on how they actually function and almost nothing would change if they ditched the special category and made Toons a regular archetype. This is also worth noting in that Toons do not actually have a universal function that can be defined in a rulebook--while all Flip Monsters truly function the same, newer Toons have [[PowerCreep noticeably different and more powerful effects]] than older ones.
328** Certain cards got a DubNameChange that led to problems with later archetypes, forcing the name to be changed back. For instance, "Oscillo Hero #2" had to be renamed back to "Wattkid", because its Japanese name put it in the Watt archetype. However, some cards have ended up keeping their changed names regardless. Most notably, Summoned Skull's Japanese name (Summoned Demon) puts it in the Archfiend (Demon) archetype, but it hasn't had its name changed into "Summoned Archfiend" or "Skull Archfiend" (like its upgraded versions) because it's an iconic card, showing up frequently in the anime and the real game, and therefore people would be annoyed if it got changed. Modern reprints of Summoned Skull give it a special line of text explaining that it counts as an Archfiend, even though it's a Normal Monster and shouldn't have any special text to begin with.
329** New types are added to the game with some frequency, which can be rather strange in the case of older cards that really seem like they should be in that type but aren't. Jinzo, for instance, is clearly meant to be a monster based on PsychicPowers (down to its Japanese name, which translates to "ArtificialHuman Psycho Shocker"), but because it predates Psychic as a type, it's stuck being a Machine. Even future Jinzo support, despite still being clearly psychic-based, still end up being Machines to match the original. A particularly funny case of this is the Relinquished family of cards, whose manga appearances inspired the creation of the Illusion type--however, since they've all been Spellcasters for twenty-odd years, they can't be a part of the type that was based on them.
330* ''TabletopGame/{{Clue}}'':
331** It's a game about logic and deduction with very little reason for having a die-roll to move around the board - in fact, different editions of the game change the numbers of squares between various rooms for no apparent reason. The game plays more smoothly and less frustratingly when you allow players to automatically move to a neighbouring room, but it has a die-roll to move because it was a standard element of board games at the time.
332** The characters' famous [[ColourfulThemeNaming color-themed names]] ("Mr. Green", "Miss Scarlet", "Professor Plum", "Colonel Mustard", etc.) began as a cheeky nod to the fact that the game pieces were originally just color-coded plastic chess pawns. But as the game has become more popular and widely played, many modern editions have featured individually designed mini-figurines or stand-up cards for the characters, rendering the color-themed names less meaningful--but they're far too iconic to cut out.
333* Initially, ''Anime/CardfightVanguard'' allowed any number of different clans in a deck. At the same time, they wanted to encourage your deck sticking to a single theme, so many skills had riders that allowed them to only work with specific clans. One of these skills was the keyword Forerunner, which appeared on every Grade 0 intended to be a starting Vanguard. Eventually Clan Fight was instigated as the standard format, officially limiting you to only one clan per deck. At that point, they stopped restricting skills by clan (since there was no point), but the reminder text for Forerunner still said that it only works when another unit of the same clan Rides it, years after it stopped mattering.
334* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' started life as a simple, tongue-in-cheek conversion of "''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasy'' [[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]", and as such, featured a lot of counterparts to ideas and factions that are prominent in ''Fantasy''. While the main groups (the Empire becoming the Imperium, the Warriors of Chaos becoming the Chaos Space Marines, the High and Dark Elves becoming the Craftworld and Dark Eldar, the Orcs becoming the Orks, etc) stayed pretty ironclad, a number of factions ported from ''Fantasy'' failed to ever really break out and have mostly languished in the back of the setting since. Groups like Ogryns, Beastmen, and Ratlings are essentially just a handful of troops usable by Imperial Guard players, and as the Imperium's extreme xenophobia has become more prevalent, it's harder to imagine them sticking around. Squats were a particularly notorious case, in that Games Workshop decided to avert this trope by simply ceasing publication of them and removing them from the model range, but this created such a significant backlash (and Squats would go on to creep back into canon anyway) that it's unlikely they'll ever try something on that scale again.
335** The greatest example of ''The Artifact'' is the very name of the game: In Warhammer Fantasy, the game is named after [[InfinityPlusOneSword THE titular Warhammer, Ghal Maraz,]] which is the weapon of the Emperor. In Warhammer 40000 there was no such weapon, The Emperor even used a sword as his main weapon, although later supplementary material eventually created Forgebreaker, the signature weapon of the Primarch of the Iron Hands, Ferrus Manus. While the hammer does lend it's likeness to series, it's nowhere ''near'' as important or iconic to the universe as Ghal Maraz.
336* Modern playing card games:
337** The "full house" hand in poker comes from the early days of the game, where it described the fact that it was the only named hand that required all five cards in the hand (some versions even simply call it "full hand"), that being three of one card and two of another. This put it in opposition with pairs, three of a kind, and four of a kind, which max out at requiring four cards in the hand. Later on, the straight, flush, and straight flush were added to the game, which also require all five cards to meet a certain requirement, meaning the full house is no longer unique in that regard. Nonetheless, the name sticks around because it's too ingrained in the game, and there's no real alternative.
338** Some card games like Twenty-five, Forty-five, and Ombre rank the red-suited pip cards (except Aces) in reverse order (i.e. smaller numbers outrank larger numbers) while keep the standard ranking for black suits. This quirk ultimately comes from how Chinese money-suited playing cards, the ancestor to most sets of playing cards found today, were ranked. While three of four the suits (Strings, Myriads, Tens of Myriads) were ranked where larger numbers outrank smaller numbers, the remaining suit, Cash (or Coins), was ranked in the reverse order. As the cards gradually made their way westward, passing through many different cultures, and redesigned many times, this dual ordering was preserved and used in games. Aces being the highest ranked card in a lot of card games may also be a vestige of this ancient ranking system.
339[[/folder]]
340
341[[folder:Theatre]]
342* ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'''s iconic logo was actually designed (and [[ScrewedByTheLawyers copyrighted]]) before the play itself was completed--which is why the logo shows a full-sized {{domino mask}} rather than the famous vertically spit "half mask" that Erik actually wears. The costume designers came up with the "half mask" during pre-production when they realized that [[SerendipityWritesThePlot it made it easier for the actor to fit his microphone on his face]], but it was too late to revise the logo by that point.
343* ''Theatre/SpiderManTurnOffTheDark'' went through heavy revisions, especially after the original creator, Julie Taymor, was fired. One of the main changes was the character of Arachne, who was a focal character of the initial version to the point of bordering on being a VillainProtagonist; she proved ''very'' unpopular and was widely seen as a CreatorsPet. Because of this, the "2.0" version of the play did its best to reduce her influence, cutting multiple songs and heavily rewriting the play to remove scenes of her and refocus the plot around the Green Goblin. However, actually ''removing'' Arachne wasn't something that could be done, because Arachne not only had the most expensive and elaborate costume in the whole production (meaning cutting her would have left all that money on the table), but she sings the title song. In 2.0, she shows up for only three scenes.
344[[/folder]]
345
346[[folder:Theme Parks]]
347* Ride/DisneyThemeParks:
348** A lot of things exist because they were based on tropes that were popular in 1955, when Disneyland was built. Over time, they have become "the way Disneyland is", and therefore new international parks get the same lands and attractions.
349*** Main Street, USA was built on the Lost and Greatest Generations' (and, especially, Walt Disney's personal) nostalgia for the [[TheGayNineties 1890s/1900s]].
350*** Adventureland and exotica/Tiki culture, as well as nature documentaries (including Disney's own True-Life Adventures series).
351*** Frontierland and [[TheWestern westerns]], which are much less common since the mid-1950s.
352*** Fantasyland and Tomorrowland have largely escaped this because the tropes they're based on, [[Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon Disney's animated films]] and [[ScienceFiction sci-fi]], are still popular. However, Tomorrowland has had a few brushes with this too, mostly regarding TechnologyMarchesOn.
353** Liberty Square at Disney World's Magic Kingdom and the America Sings attraction in Disneyland's Tomorrowland were opened in 1971 and 1974 (respectively) in preparation for the United States' Bicentennial celebration in 1976. They both lasted well beyond that -- America Sings didn't close until 1988 and Liberty Square is still open to this day. This is likely due to the expense of building all the animatronics involved, and the impracticality of discarding them. Especially at the Hall of Presidents, which probably houses the most expensive collection of animatronics ever assembled. And they're not easy to repurpose; their Donald Trump looks like Hillary Clinton in a cheap mask because ''that's exactly what he is''.
354** The [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Disney World]] version of ''Theatre/{{Fantasmic}}'' has an elaborate sequence based on ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'', which seems rather dated, seeing as the film was not a big hit. The Disneyland version, which uses ''WesternAnimation/PeterPan'', has aged much better. ''That'' has since been replaced with a ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' segment, although time will tell how well that ages (despite the commercial and critical failure of ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanDeadMenTellNoTales'' just months before the segment launched in 2017, the franchise has remained popular worldwide; indeed, the segment launched a full 14 years after the release of the first film).
355*** It seems like Disney has caught onto these complaints. Upon [[Ride/WaltDisneyWorld Hollywood Studios]] reopening their [=Fantasmic=] from its extended closure, the Pocahontas scene has been reworked to include songs from ''WesternAnimation/{{Mulan}}'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'', ''WesternAnimation/FrozenII'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Moana}}''.
356** ''Mr. Toad's Wild Ride'' at Disneyland is an odd choice for one of just five dark rides in Fantasyland, considering that the other four are based on ''WesternAnimation/{{Pinocchio}}'', ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'', ''WesternAnimation/AliceInWonderland'', and ''WesternAnimation/PeterPan'', all of which have remained staples of the Disney Animation Canon. ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfIchabodAndMrToad'', meanwhile, is a largely unknown package of two short films that only semi-serious Disney buffs will remember. Nonetheless, [[BrokenBase fans were upset]] when it was replaced in Walt Disney World with the more popular ''Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh''.
357** Disney's Hollywood Studios has [[http://www.yesterland.com/images-studios/dhs_gatehouse.jpg opened guard gates]] littered (seemingly) randomly around the park. These are a holdover from when the park doubled as a working studio, and were meant to signify to the guests that they were leaving the "onstage" area (which featured the rides) and were entering the "backstage" area (where the studio tours were performed). In October of 2014 the last of these tours closed permanently (the Backlot Tram Tour), and so all the guard gates do now is signify that guests are entering a somewhat more sparse area than the area they were just in.
358** Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park was originally intended to include a section called Beastly Kingdom (where Pandora - The World of ''Avatar'' is today), which would have been themed around fantasy creatures. The idea was scrapped early on due to multiple factors, but a dragon still appears in the park's logo.
359** Any remaining California aspects of Disney California Adventure are quickly becoming this. When the California themed-park opened, it was largely panned by guests because who would want to go to a theme park version of the state they're currently in? Through the addition of [[WesternAnimation/ABugsLife A Bug's Land]] (now the site of Avengers Campus), [[Franchise/{{Cars}} Cars Land]], the conversion of Paradise Pier to Creator/{{Pixar}} Pier, the change of ''Soarin' Over California'' to ''Soarin' Around the World'' to match the Walt Disney World version, and the conversion of ''Ride/TheTwilightZoneTowerOfTerror'' to ''Ride/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyMissionBreakout'', almost all traces of the park's original California heritage have been removed. The parts that do remain -- Hollywood Studios, Grizzly Peak, and so on -- stick out like a sore thumb in comparison.
360** On a similar note, the fact that ''WesternAnimation/ABugsLife'' did well enough to warrant an entire land devoted to it was a surprise to many Disney fans. When it opened in 2002, California Adventure needed as many good attractions as possible to justify its existence, and A Bug's Land did the trick, with 4-D film ''It's Tough To Be a Bug!'' being the land's headline attraction for guests. Shortly before the land's closure in 2018 however, between ''Mission: Breakout!'' and the entirety of [[SpotlightStealingSquad Cars Land]], A Bug's Land had fallen to the wayside for people who weren't families with small children (who most of the land's rides were aimed at anyway) or people looking for the ''Radiator Springs Racers'' Fastpass that was located there.
361** EPCOT was originally a planned futuristic city designed by Walt Disney himself. It stood for [[FunWithAcronyms "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow."]] A World's Fair-esque theme park was built to be at its centerpiece, and accordingly named EPCOT Center, but the rest of the city was ultimately canned and the land was repurposed for additional parks. In 1994, the name was changed to simply Epcot, note the capitalization, and more recently even the World's Fair theme has been pushed aside in favor of incorporating yet more attractions themed around Disney properties.
362*** The original EPCOT plan is also why Walt Disney World is so ungodly huge, by the way, and why Epcot is located such a ridiculous distance away from the Magic Kingdom, which was meant to be so far from the city as to not be visible from it.
363** Ride/StarTours was added to Ride/{{Disneyland}}'s Tomorrowland in 1987, but it now appears misplaced due to the introduction of Ride/StarWarsGalaxysEdge in 2019, which included several other ''Franchise/StarWars''-themed attractions. The ''Star Tours'' at Ride/WaltDisneyWorld is located in Hollywood Studios like Galaxy's Edge, but remains in the Echo Lake section of the park, which is a considerable amount of distance away from the other ''Star Wars'' attractions.
364** [[TabletopGame/WorldShowcaseAdventure World Showcase Adventure's]] third (and as of this writing, current) theme, based off ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'', had the misfortune of becoming this shortly before ''and'' shortly after opening. Replacing the previous ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' themeing, the ''[=DuckTales=]'' overlay was delayed from its 2020 opening date due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It took two years before the redone attraction would open. In that time, ''[=DuckTales=]'' would be cancelled, air its final episode and end production in 2021. A month after ''[=DuckTales=] WSA's'' opening in December 2022, Disney revived ''Phineas and Ferb'' for a two season order. This led to WSA's current theme becoming less relevant than its previous theme, rendering the entire overlay more or less pointless.
365* Ride/SixFlags is the name of a string of theme parks from California to Massachusetts. The six flags are the "six flags of Texas," which have flown over it at various times in its history; the original park is near Dallas. The flags are the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan (from its time as an independent nation), American, and Confederate. Now that the franchise is in other states, the six flags are simply shown in silhouette, as a brand logo. One reason this makes sense is because displaying the Confederate flag is a '''major''' controversy in American culture. One could argue that the flag is being used in a purely factual historical context, but one can't fault the company for wanting to steer clear of the controversy. However, there is a whole other can of FridgeLogic involved with the confederate flag, given that the Confederacy had three official flag designs during its existence and it is hard to establish which of them actually flew over Texas and what that would make of the "six flags" that gave the name. In addition to that, the flag commonly known as the "Confederate Flag" was not one of those three. (Though the latter two designs included it in the upper left corner with the rest being white or white with a red horizontal strip respectively)
366** The Magic Flyer kiddie coaster at Magic Mountain is probably one of the oldest coasters in the park (It first moved to the park in 1971, but was first built for Bevely Park in ''1946'') and been numerous rethemeings. During the 2007-2008 off-season, it was given a ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends'' theme and named Percy's Railway. To fit this, the first car was made to resemble Percy. In 2010, Six Flags lost the ''Thomas'' license and the ride was given a generic train theme. As a result, the Percy car was kept, with largly the same paint applications, though the face has been removed.
367** Similarly, the Medusa coaster at Great Adventure was given a retheme in 2009 based around the ComicBook/{{Superman}} villain Bizarro (making it the park's second Superman-themed roller coaster after Superman: Ultimate Flight). Among the elements of the retheme were rings in the shape of Superman's S shield that the train passes through. The ride was reverted back to Medusa in 2022, but the S shield rings are still on the track.
368* Originally, each of the tracks at ''Dueling Dragons'', a dual roller coaster at [[Ride/UniversalStudios Islands of Adventure]], was designed to mirror the other so that there would be several near-miss encounters between the two coasters; the ride was even programmed to make certain calculations to ensure optimal timing. However, after a few accidents (possibly involving objects flying from people's pockets and hitting others), Universal made the decision to permanently end the practice of launching the coasters simultaneously, thus getting rid of the near-miss encounters that used to be the ride's main selling point, and thus rendering the design aspect of it completely without purpose. (Also, the ride changed its name to ''Dragon Challenge'' after it was co-opted into ''Franchise/HarryPotter'', thus averting an ArtifactTitle.)
369* Theme Parks in general being associated with Monorails is explained by the era the first Disney parks opened. Back then Monorails were seen as futuristic and some kind of urban transport panacea. That idea now seems quaint, but as Disney had built monorails Theme Parks around the world decided to FollowTheLeader. Even fictional theme parks such as [[VideoGame/Fallout4 Nuka-World]] will feature them. However, the two biggest disadvantages of monorails are not a major problem for theme parks: They are usually proprietary systems making them difficult to link across city lines (not a problem as no theme park will ever link with a theme park of a different company) and switching is a major headache if it is possible at all (not a problem as most lines are or can be designed as a simple loop).
370* Ride/UniversalStudios:
371** Islands of Adventure still prominently features multiple characters, rides and attractions drawn from Creator/MarvelComics--even though Marvel has been owned by Universal's [[TheRival sworn rivals]], [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Disney]], since 2009. Thanks to a peculiar legal loophole, they still retain the theme park rights to several Marvel characters, while Disney owns the characters themselves, meaning that [[{{Irony}} they're forced to pay their biggest competitor in order to keep the characters in the park]]. While this might seem pretty self-defeating, they can't exactly remove Marvel Superheroes Island overnight, since that would leave a gaping hole in the park.
372** The same is true of Springfield as well, following Disney's purchase of Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox in 2019 giving them ownership over WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons. Unlike with Marvel however Universal's deal with The Simpsons is not in perpetuity, and is [[https://www.insideuniversal.net/2019/03/lets-talk-about-the-simpsons-rights-at-universal-parks/ set to expire in 2028]].
373** At the end of ''Ride/TheAmazingAdventuresOfSpiderMan'', Spider-Man takes a picture of the riders as part of his thank you speech. This was clearly meant to relate to the ride photo you can purchase, and that was indeed the intention. However, in testing it was discovered that the placement of this moment, at the very end of the ride after the action has died down, didn't create many photos of excited or expressive riders. The ride photo is therefore actually taken much earlier, during the transition between the Sinister Six's introduction and Electro's scene, taking advantage of Electro's lightning effects to hide the camera flash.
374* Sesame Place's logo currently features Big Bird on their logo and has done so since the park's opening in 1980. While this made perfect sense back when it first opened, as Big Bird was the de-facto SeriesMascot of ''Series/SesameStreet'' during that time, his continuing promience on the logo can come across as being a bit outdated today and confusing to younger fans who are more familiar with Elmo, who took over the mascot role from Big Bird (who in turn, became DemotedToExtra) starting in the mid-90s and early 2000s.
375[[/folder]]
376
377[[folder:Toys]]
378* Collector-aimed toylines based on originally kiddie properties often have vestiges of their original gimmicks and play patterns, even though they're aimed at an audience that generally abhors them. A good example is ''Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse Classics'' Hurricane Hordak, an updated version of a figure that had a gear-driven spinning gimmick. The modern toy lacks this spinning gimmick entirely (as it would compromise the arm and chest poseability), but still has a big red immobile gear molded into the figure's back, even though the gear no longer does anything.
379* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'':
380** Since the days of ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'', it's utilized the "size class" system by which toys are designed to fit into certain price points depending on size. One of the oddities of the size class, however, is the term "Deluxe" - it refers to the six-inch scale, and it's by far the most common one, with the majority of figures in nearly any modern line being Deluxes. This might seem a little odd, since "deluxe" usually means something particularly good, rather than the baseline, as Deluxe figures seem to be. This is because in the Beast Wars days, the Deluxe size was the second smallest size, beat out by the 4-inch Basic size, which was intended as the baseline. However, the Deluxe class turned out to be the more popular size, and the Basic class, by 2006, was phased out in favor of the pocket-size Legends or gimmick designs like Real Gear Robots or Activators, leaving Deluxe to be the "standard" size. When the four-inch scale returned in 2009, it was in the form of the fairly uncommon Scouts, even in name reinforcing the Deluxe's dominance.
381** The phenomena of "fake [[KibblesAndBits kibble]]" is a pretty consistent one in modern days. Whenever a character gets a redesign, it'll usually have the same vehicle kibble (the parts of the alt-mode that don't wind up tucked away into the robot) as their original design. This even happens when the character's vehicle mode doesn't ''have'' the parts necessary to recreate the original kibble. For instance, Optimus Prime's original design had the front of a flat-faced cabover truck becoming his chest, so he wound up with a truck grille for the abs and the windshield going on his pecs. Modern-day Optimuses usually transform into either a more conventional long-nosed or occasionally a more aerodynamically shaped cabover that can't really do this, but instead pull a random truck grille and windshield from inside them to duplicate the original design.
382*** Megatron is the king of this phenomenon. His original toy turned into a pistol, and most of his design is steeped in that altmode: his silver color scheme is the gun's metal, his black, curved, prominent shins are the grip, his ArmCannon is the scope, his wide chestplate is part of the slide, his shoulders have protrusions that become the hammer, and even his signature helmet was originally the gun's tang. But for a variety of reasons--Megatron being able to shrink to handheld size [[ShapeshifterBaggage raises questions]], the main villain turning into a gun for someone else to use [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway is silly]], and it puts him at the mercy of safety laws that are ''very'' opposed to any toy [[MyLittlePanzer that can be mistaken for a real firearm]]--''very'' few Megatron toys turn into pistols, and only two since the original were meant for mass-market. But since ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'', nearly every new Megatron design features some or all of these elements, even if he turns into something that shouldn't warrant most or any of them.
383** Early toys in the line were repurposed from Japanese toylines that often left them with oddly vestigial features. The Autobot cars and Decepticon jets were designed as piloted mechs rather than sentient robots and therefore had opening cockpits meant to seat drivers, despite no drivers coming with the toys. There was also a large number of toys that used to have firing missiles or projectiles, but the springs in their mechanisms were removed due to them being overpowered and firing tiny fast-moving missiles, making them an active safety hazard. You therefore had a lot of figures that had a weapon, a missile that fits into that weapon, and a switch on the weapon that... does nothing.
384** Optimus's trailer has largely become this--it's an iconic part of his vehicle mode design, but it's also a gray box larger than Optimus himself with very little actual play value aside from folding out a rather dinky turret or containing the equally irrelevant Roller. The animators famously had so much trouble with it that they just had it vanish offscreen whenever he wasn't in truck mode. Later designs tend to struggle with the challenge of whether to try to make the trailer exciting or just leave it out altogether, and high-grade Masterpieces or Masterpiece-alikes pretty much resign themselves to doubling their prices to budget the thing in. There was still considerable rejoicing by fans when it was announced that the ''War For Cybertron: Earthrise'' Optimus Prime toy would include his trailer for the first time for a mainstream G1 Optimus Prime toy in decades, even though reviews generally described the trailer as the weakest part of the package.
385** Overhaul in ''Anime/TransformersCybertron'' was originally going to be named "Trailbreaker", but this didn't go through because the name couldn't be trademarked. However, his upgraded form still ended up being named "Leobreaker", despite the name now being totally incongruous. Reportedly, the designers decided to just roll with Leobreaker as a name because they couldn't think of a better alternative ("Leohaul" just sounds weird).
386* When the first ''[[Film/TheAvengers2012 Avengers]]'' movie came out in 2012, the toy line from Creator/{{Hasbro}} included a Skrull soldier despite no Skrulls appearing in the first movie. It turns out that the Skrull was from a loosely-connected ''Avengers'' video game that THQ was producing that ended up being cancelled.
387* ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'':
388** The franchise's signature [[MaskOfPower masks]] existed because of an action gimmick. The masks were easy to pop off, pretty much every set in the first year had at least one mask somewhere, and every toy had some kind of motion feature (swinging arms, snapping jaws). The idea -- the characters fought by knocking each other's masks off -- was pretty obvious. Even toys without masks had either some compatibility with the gimmick (Bohrok krana could fasten over a mask slot) or a similar function (Rakhshi popping open [[AttackItsWeakPoint when their heads were struck]]). And to cap it off, masks [[MerchandiseDriven made for good collectibles,]] and [[GottaCatchEmAll obtaining a set of masks]] was usually relevant to the storyline. When the Metru Nui arc began, the masks were redesigned to be impossible to easily knock off to improve the toy's stability, and they were only relevant in the storyline as a way to give the characters [[ComboPlatterPowers some extra powers]] or the occasional overpowered MacGuffin. Not long after, the motion features went the way of the dodo as well. By that point, though, the masks had become so ingrained in the setting that it was impossible to ''not'' have primary characters wearing masks.
389** Gear-activated arm-swinging functions lost their original purpose of knocking off masks concurrently with the masks' redesign around 2003, but it took until 2006 for Lego to phase these features out completely. As the models began focusing more on form and articulation than function, many of the toys released between those years were stuck in an awkward middle-point of being well articulated in some points but having floppy arms with limited movement.
390** The franchise was heavily based on the real-world Maori mythology and language, which nearly lead to a lawsuit in 2001 when Maori activists accused LEGO of misusing their culture. Almost all of the Maori elements were toned down or removed, but it took until 2004 for the general "tribal islander" motif itself to vanish. The rest of the franchise was more generic science fantasy, which LEGO had actually planned for since the start, but tribal culture, legends and prophecies were such signature aspects of the brand that they were still alluded to in later years, and the 2015 reboot brought them back in full.
391** Similarly, the constant use of primitive or low tech settings and mixing nature with technology in the franchise's expanded universe. The fact that the original characters (seemingly high tech robotic beings) lived a tribal lifestyle on a tropical island made sense: it wasn't their actual home, they had merely evacuated there from their true place of origin, a giant space robot that had crashed on a planet. Settings introduced later kept up this trend of contrasting high with low tech, with somewhat forced but relatively sensible justifications: these places were either also outside the robot or inside its damaged parts where nature had intruded on an otherwise mechanical world. Other lands within the robot, introduced in side stories, had no real reason ''not'' to be all futuristic and fully industrial. After all, why would a giant robot be full of jungles, deserts, seas or swamps? But juxtaposing nature with tech and showing robotic people living on islands was ''Bionicle'''s "thing", so the writers kept on adding more and more primitive islands to the story even if it made little thematic or narrative sense.
392** While the play features of most early sets involved simply knocking off each other's masks, the 2001 set Muaka & Kane-Ra took this idea further and had models that lost limbs once their connectors were removed during play. It later turned out this rather morbid play gimmick was a carryover from a bizarre early concept for ''Bionicle'', "Bone-Heads of Voodoo Island", which would have featured dismemberment and other bodily violence. All other models were scrapped or heavily reimagined, but one prototype toy only received minimal alterations and became ''Bionicle'''s Muaka & Kane-Ra set.
393** The 2006 Toa Inika were envisioned with glow-in-the-dark heads, and their blank, faceless heads and bizarre organic masks with large eye and mouth holes reflected this design choice. Yet, the toys' heads were cast out of regular, non-fluorescent green and white plastic that rendered their drastically unorthodox designs moot. The glowing heads even made it into the books, explaining that the reason the Inika had no faces under their masks was because of the intense shine that the toys ended up lacking.
394** Popping off masks came back as a gimmick for ''Toys/Bionicle2015'''s first year. Lego later redesigned back of the toys' heads as they no longer wanted to advertise this function, but the masks' connection points were unchanged due to budgetary reasons, inadvertently carrying over the gimmick (or a less functional version thereof) to another year's worth of toys.
395** In-story, Kapura was alluded to have SuperSpeed, the vague ability to walk so slow that he became too fast for everyone else. This was originally intended to be a [[ZipMode game mechanic]] for an unreleased video game which bled into actual canon and various online games. The writers had no idea how Kapura's ability was supposed to work outside the context of a video game, so while it technically remained a part of canon lore, [[ForgottenPhlebotinum it was quietly forgotten later on]].
396** The 2001 tie-in PC game ''The Legend of Mata Nui'' was set to feature six elemental monsters as level bosses. With the game's cancellation, none of these ended up in any part of ''BIONICLE'' lore, except for one. The smaller cousin of the Vatuka Nui RockMonster, called simply Vatuka, made an appearance in ''[=TLoMN=]'''s Platform/GameboyAdvance prequel ''Quest for the Toa'', but without any explanation of what it was and why it differed from the standard cyborg-like ''BIONICLE'' wildlife. In 2005, another rock-based monster showed up in the novel ''Maze of Shadows'' and its [=GameBoy=] adaptation -- WordOfGod later placed it in the same creature category as the Vatuka just to give it some in-universe context.
397** As stated in a 2000 UniverseBible, the word "Rahi" originally referred to animals of special importance that guarded the underground world. The box-art of the 2001 Rahi toys followed this notion by depicting the animals in or around caves. For the sake of the video game ''The Legend of Mata Nui'', Rahi were re-imagined as surface-dwelling beasts to give more challenge to players. The game was cancelled but the idea that Rahi are spread around the entire world was kept for the rest of the story, and the term was broadened to mean all animals in general.
398** The six Makoki Stones were important artifacts in early concepts that the Toa had to [[DismantledMacGuffin gather and unite into a sphere]] alongside collecting Kanohi masks -- in fact, Makoki was a proposed name for the masks, suggesting at one point their roles were strongly connected. The Makoki were to be used as backup memory devices in the Toa's attempt to "reboot" the mind of [[PhysicalGod Mata Nui]], though they lost this purpose when LEGO decided to extend the mystery around Mata Nui's identity. They were also meant to be items in ''The Legend of Mata Nui''. With both the stones' original concept and their video game appearance cut, they showed up for merely a few seconds in the ''Mata Nui Online Game'' as a key the Toa used to enter the underground realm of Mangaia. Later they were [[ReimaginingTheArtifact completely re-imagined]] as stone tablets containing the secret history of the Brotherhood of Makuta.
399* Japanese high-end toymaker Toys/{{Revoltech}} made their mark for their "revolver joint" setup, a rather sophisticated if bulky joint design for the era that allowed for both decent range of movement and solidity when holding poses. In their early days, one could count on nearly every joint in a figure to be a revolver joint. Nowadays, the revolver joint is considered somewhat outdated, as other designs allow for similar traits without the conspicuous spherical bulges it creates, but Revoltech still puts at least one revolver joint in every figure, even if it's a place where the joint's advantages aren't important.
400* Every stuffed animal at Build-a-Bear is referred to within the company as a "bear," even as the company branched out to making animals that don't resemble bears at all.
401[[/folder]]
402
403[[folder:Web Animation]]
404* ''WebAnimation/HistoryMatters'' started out as ''Ten Minute History'', with the aim of explaining historical periods in ten minute videos. After a few years the format got a {{Retool}} to the current channel, which answers historical questions in short three to four minute videos. Despite no longer sticking to a specific time limit for each video, the channel's logo is still a sand timer as a nod to the original concept.
405* WebAnimation/{{Hololive}} was introduced as a VirtualYoutuber IdolSinger group who also occasionally streamed video games. As their gaming streams gained popularity, however, parent company Cover decided to introduce a group called "hololive GAMERS" who would primarily stream games (with 1st generation member Fubuki Shirakami being brought on as a member of GAMERS due to her particular knack for gaming). Since then, however, hololive's game streams have easily equaled, if not eclipsed, the idol singer angle in international popularity, such that the "GAMERS" label has become redundant, remaining largely to differentiate Fubuki, Korone Inugami, Okayu Nekomata, and Mio Ookami's group from the other generations.
406* ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'':
407** Pom Pom was meant to be Homestar's sidekick when the cartoon was still primarily sports-based, easily the number two character in early cartoons, behind Homestar himself. As the cartoon shifted away from sports and more toward Strong Bad and pop culture, Pom Pom became more and more superfluous, now being one of the ''rarest'' of the twelve central characters. Probably doesn't help that he's the straight man with few quirks or flaws in a cartoon where much quirkier characters Strong Bad, Strong Sad, Marzipan, Bubs, and occasionally even Homestar himself can all play the straight man role as necessary, nor that he can't talk in anything besides bubble sounds. Most of his recent appearances make his lack of comedic traits or flaws [[ParodySue the joke.]]
408** Coach Z has also gone through this a little bit; as his name implies, he was intended to be a coach for Homestar and the rest. Unlike Pom Pom, Coach Z quickly diversified his output, with him moving from a coach to a creepy, depressing, [[TotallyRadical poorly-rapping,]] and dubiously sane loser who coincidentally lives in the gym locker rooms. That said, he's still called Coach Z, and is implied to [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything still do coaching]]; we just almost never see him doing it.
409** Senor Cardgage's design originates from his first appearance, which was about Strong Bad imagining what he would be like if he wasn't "cool", and therefore [[IdenticalStranger he looks like Strong Bad as a lanky middle-aged creep]] - only for the ending to reveal that Strong Bad was describing a real person whom Strong Bad inexplicably admires. Even that video only confirms that Senor Cardgage really does look like that in an EasterEgg. Aside from that relationship, the two have nothing in common, so there's really no reason for Cardgage to look like Strong Bad other than the premise of the video in which he was introduced.
410* ''[[WebAnimation/Supermarioglitchy4sSuperMario64Bloopers SMG4]]'':
411** The series started out as Machinimas of ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' starring Mario and other characters from the ''[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Super Mario]]'' series, but then as the series progressed, more non-''Mario'' and {{Original Character}}s were added to the cast, ''VideoGame/GarrysMod'' is used more prominently than ''[=SM64=]'', and the majority of ''Mario'' characters have either been DemotedToExtra, PutOnABus, [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome disappeared]] or even been KilledOffForReal. By TheNewTwenties, this took another step by redesigning multiple OCs (one of them being the titular [=SMG4=]) so that they no longer resemble ''Mario'' characters, and Peach's Castle, the show's main setting, [[ItMakesSenseInContext was swallowed by a black hole]] and disappeared from the show altogether, all to avoid being ScrewedByTheLawyers. But despite all these changes, Mario has remained as the only relevant ''Mario''/Nintendo element in the series since he is TheProtagonist, and a possible removal or redesign could cause huge backlash among fans, even though his mere existence clashes with the entire series and he's been [[ExiledFromContinuity omitted or hidden]] from merchandise and related ''[=SMG4=]'' media such as ''WebAnimation/SunsetParadise''
412** Originally, a trend in the series was that every ''Mario'' character had a trait that would be PlayedForLaughs and make them stand out from their canon counterparts: Mario is dumb, Bowser is a ridiculous villain, etc. In the case of Luigi, his main trait was that [[QueerPeopleAreFunny he was a gay person]] (a reference to an infamous {{Mondegreen}} line in ''VideoGame/HotelMario'') and Mario and other characters would mock him for that. As TheNewTens went by, gay people moved to the formerly acceptable target territory as LGTB people representation in media became more acceptable, meaning that Luigi's homosexuality PlayedForLaughs could be of bad taste for some people, and thus, Luigi [[GetBackInTheCloset lost his main trait]] and starting putting focus on his cowardice and ButtMonkey traits, essentially making him [[RedundantParody a copy of his canon counterpart]]. As ''Mario'' characters and elements lost focus in favor of original ones, Luigi's case became unique, as he is the only ''Mario'' character after Mario himself that is still considered a main character, even though just like Mario, his mere existence clashes with the entire series, and even more so because it seems that they put the real Luigi in the series.
413** Subtitles are nowadays a relic of ''[=SMG4=]'''s HumbleBeginnings. When the show began, characters did not have speaking voices as in most ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' Machinimas at the time, and would communicate through subtitles. They were a few characters who spoke full sentences back then like the guards, but they were a minority compared to everyone else. By the TheNewTwenties, ''[=SMG4=]'' has enough budget to hire voice actors, with many of later character additions being fully voiced and older characters like the titular [=SMG4=] becoming SuddenlyVoiced. Regardless of this, subtitles are still heavily used on the series even though they're redundant most of the time. This in addition to the fact that many characters that used subtitles [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome are long gone]] or been DemotedToExtra, and only a handful of characters that use them as intended remain, one of them being TheProtagonist, Mario, and even that, he's been SuddenlyVoiced in many instances in modern episodes.
414[[/folder]]
415
416[[folder:Webcomics]]
417* Occasionally mentioned by the ''Webcomic/PennyArcade'' creators who, while enjoying the character DIV, admit that the Platform/{{DIVX}} format's failure condemns the character's basis to increasing obscurity.
418* In ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', the author has been quoted to no longer enjoy several of the earlier gags, especially the hammers. Hammers were sacrificed for good, in exchange for a handful of CharacterDevelopment, setting development and {{plot}} points.
419** The level of {{fanservice}} has also dropped off significantly since the author started expressing guilt over objectifying women in the earlier strips. [[ChivalrousPervert Tedd]] and [[OppositeSexClone Ellen]] still have their {{transformation ray}}s, but they almost never see use.
420*** Now averted in the cases of fanservice and transformation; see Elliot's date with Ashley and subsequent scenes in the car park and woods. See also Goonmanji in EGS:NP, which is out of continuity but it's rather interesting to see the characters themselves getting comfortable with transformations and skimpy clothes.
421* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'':
422** Once the central premise of the comic, the constant parodies of the ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' rules have essentially vanished, only being occasionally dragged back in to keep longtime fans happy. The author has stated in his commentaries to one of his books that he basically has nothing else to say about the rules and is concentrating on telling a good story now. Not really a surprise, given that 3.5 Edition Dungeons & Dragons ended in 2008 while the comic is still going in the 2020s, so continuing to make jokes about the rules of a long-defunct game would just serve to make it less and less accessable to new readers.
423** The peculiar way that the [[GreekChorus Demon Roaches]] speak (text without a bubble, just a connector) was also used for when characters would make side comments. However, this was phased out with Book 3, and the Demon Roaches were the only ones who spoke that way until [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1260.html #1260]], where this was phased out entirely.
424* Even though Fred finds ways to keep him important to the plot, pretty much anything involving Largo from ''Webcomic/MegaTokyo'' has felt like this ever since Rodney Caston was forced out of the creative partnership.
425* Choo-Choo Bear has faded into the shadows of ''Webcomic/SomethingPositive''; right now almost all of his appearances are as the snooty Q&A cat. (Randy Milholland was always determined to limit his appearances for fear overusing him, though.) He did become more active for a time as a result of an extended crossover with ''Webcomic/GirlsWithSlingshots''.
426* Spark from ''Webcomic/DominicDeegan'' dates back to the strip's early Gag Per Day days. He has adapted better than most artifacts do, but he still feels out of place in the post-CerebusSyndrome [[FanNickname Deeganverse]]. And he can completely vanish from stories entirely without warning for nearly years at a time, only to occasionally make appearances to reference an old running gag.
427* ''Webcomic/ThisIsNotFiction'': The original premise of the comic was Julian trying to find his CelebrityCrush Sidney Morgan accompanied by [[TheDon Landon]] and [[ShipperOnDeck Isaiah]]. Particularly, after Landon and Julian get arrested, the series goes into CerebusSyndrome and the main focus of the plot becomes Julian and Landon's WillTheyOrWontThey. Eventually, Isaiah recognizes that Julian is not really all that interested in Sidney Morgan anymore and that their latest adventures were pretty much using Sidney Morgan as an excuse to hang around with his friends.
428* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' has a lot of these, mainly due to how quickly the narrative evolves:
429** [[InventoryManagementPuzzle Sylladices]] once played a major role in the story (the first third or so of Act One consisted entirely of John messing around with his sylladex), but are now rarely ever given much thought, the exception being the late-Act Five subplot with Liv Tyler and the Courtyard Droll handling John's Wallet Modus and its contents. A similar fate has befallen [[ItemCrafting punch card alchemy]]; the process became significantly more streamlined when Dave figured out how to upgrade the equipment, so much of the messing-around John needed to do with it early on promptly became irrelevant. Act 6 brought those things back into play for a short time before putting them on the sidelines again around Act 6 Act 5.
430** Creator/VizMedia's rebranding ''Webcomic/MSPaintAdventures'' to Homestuck.com still keeps around references to the old website name. The "comics" section lists the preceding comics as "Other MS Paint Adventures", which itself is an Artifact from the time before ''Webcomic/ProblemSleuth'' and ''Homestuck'' made it big when Hussie concepted it as a site to host his various adventure stories.
431** The name "MS Paint Adventures" was itself an artifact by day 2 of its run; only the very first page of the very first adventure was drawn in MS Paint, with all subsequent art done in Photoshop.
432* In ''Webcomic/LeastICouldDo'', the character Jon originally served as Rayne's foil, being the OnlySaneMan who reined in Rayne's zanier impulses. The character fell out of use as [[RealLifeWritesThePlot the author Ryan Sohmer found himself growing distant from Jon's inspiration]], and a new character based on another friend of Sohmer's (Noel) took over the role of Rayne's wingman. Eventually Sohmer acknowledged this by writing a story arc where Rayne and Jon patch up their friendship, and with Noel's marriage and child Jon has started coming back into the forefront.
433** Thankfully Noel hasn't really ever suffered from ReplacementScrappy Syndrome, in that he's notably different from Jon - Jon is the OnlySaneMan who may or may not suffer ulcers from dealing with Rayne; Noel is a DeadpanSnarker who's more than happy to accompany Rayne on his adventures, and only stops Rayne before he's going to do something TOO stupid.
434* ''Webcomic/NuzlockeComics'' has undergone an unbelievable amount of ArtEvolution from its early days, but Ruby, the main character, is still drawn in a fairly cartoony style. It's a bit jarring to look at the fairly realistic but stylized cast, then see Ruby's almost {{Gonk}}-like proportions; one comic even features a FandomNod cameo from Hale, who was also based on ''RSE'''s male character and gets a more in-line look. The comic largely skirts around this by playing up Ruby's IdiotHero tendencies.
435* A constant fear for the creator of ''Webcomic/DumbingOfAge''. Due to the sliding timescale that will keep the characters in their freshman year forever but always in modern times, any specific reference to technology or pop culture has the ability to become this. Amber and Danny playing ''VideoGame/MarioKart'' on DS/3DS/2DS will seem quaint in 10 years (although ''Mario Kart'' will most likely still exist in some form). An early strip had many students list their favorite movies (in the collection commentary, Willis points out that it will seem strange years from now that all these 18-year-olds love classic movies), something he tries to avoid when at all possible (Amber's ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''-esque MMORPG is never named, conversations about ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' are kept as generic as possible, citing names like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee).
436** During 2016, Amber moved on to ''VideoGame/PokemonGo'', with asides in the AltText expressing anxiety about [[http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/oil/ the game's continued viability]] by the time of publication, given the six months' lead Willis gives himself on the strip. Lampshaded [[http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/magikarp/ here]].
437* The dinosaurs in ''Webcomic/DinosaurComics'' are far too big compared to the house, car, and woman, and not much less out of scale compared to one another. Ryan North has admitted that this is because when he started the comic, he didn't know how big dinosaurs were. But because the comic's central gimmick is that the art never changes, he can never fix it. ([[http://www.qwantz.com/fanart/dinocomicsscale.gif One fan has attempted to explain away the problem by suggesting that some objects are merely closer to the camera than others.]])
438* ''Webcomic/SuicideBoy'': One of the things that drived Hooni to his suicidal tendencies was having left a debt of ₩50,000,000 (about $42,000 USD) which he has to pay on his own. After the first bunch of chapters, this is never treated as an issue but given it would be odd to have Hooni suddenly having enough money to pay all of that, is still mentioned every once in a while but is never treated as an problem anymore.
439* ''Webcomic/TowerOfGod'' has this regarding a few character designs. Early on, SIU was a lot more creative when it came to designing the characters for the series where it seemed like people could appear as anything from basic humans, to monsterous humanoids and animals, or even giant blobs. As the series went on however, that creativity was dropped, and newly introduced characters end up only with designs that are really human-like. This makes characters with animal features, such as the alligator humanoid, Rak, and the lizard humanoid, Anak, start to look really out-of-place in later chapters as they're usually completely surrounded by humans as that's all SIU mostly tends to design nowadays. Basically, the designs of Rak and Anak are leftover from a time where SIU was a lot more creative when it came to designing his characters.
440[[/folder]]
441
442[[folder:Web Original]]
443* Website/TVTropes:
444** Many pages end with some odd-looking markup [=<<|ThatLooksLikeThis|>>=]. This is the old index markup, which has been unneeded for several years now. There's also usually a line ruler ([=----=]) separating the examples from the indices -- this was never ''strictly'' necessary, but under the old indexing system was generally considered good practice.
445** The "deadpan" in DeadpanSnarker. Due to Administrivia/TropeDecay, a deadpan delivery is no longer part of the trope.
446** The wiki has generally tried to move away from Trope Names that reference a specific character, but some have stuck around due to the simple fact that a lot of sub-tropes have been named in reference to them. For instance, TheScrappy, TheStarscream, TheNeidermeyer, XanatosGambit, and CerebusSyndrome: the first three are meaningless if you aren't overly familiar with ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDoo'', ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'', and ''Film/AnimalHouse'', and the latter two are rather confusing references to a pair of relatively obscure series (''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' and ''ComicBook/CerebusTheAardvark''), but they've stuck around nonetheless, and aren't likely to get renamed any time soon. Conversely, AwesomeMomentOfCrowning references a trope name that ''did'' get changed, "Crowning Moment of Awesome", which got renamed to just SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome due to Administrivia/TropeDecay.
447** Thanks to people forgetting that Administrivia/ExamplesAreNotRecent, there's an awful lot of examples on the website about decade-old events that are written as if they just happened.
448** The page for MacGuffin was redefined to be in line with Creator/AlfredHitchcock's original definition of the term: that is to say, an interchangeable plot device that has no important properties beyond being desirable. Despite this, various pages (ClingyMacGuffin, LivingMacGuffin, DismantledMacGuffin) were created back when the definition was simply "plot device that people want," and the tropes themselves often break the definition (for instance, representing entire characters who have active roles in the plot). They keep their names mostly because the broader definition is sufficient to get across the idea of what they are.
449** The Administrivia/TropeRepairShop was once simply called "Rename a Trope." This is why the link to the forum says "topic=rename" even though the TRS is used for actions besides renaming.
450** A long time ago there was a tendency to make trope names humorous, usually at the expense of clarity. For example, SelectiveEnforcement used to be called ''Flaming Cobra Sugar Cellar'' after a gag on ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. Most of the goofily named tropes were renamed, but a couple of them, e.g. StupidJetpackHitler, were clear enough and are still kicking around.
451* The Website/SCPFoundation has old articles (some of which are about ''literal'' artifacts) which are kept and/or not rewritten because they're old, popular, and not influential -- sometimes to the chagrin of users, who lament that "we're stuck with X forever". Also, the LaserGuidedAmnesia drugs were first written "amnesiacs", despite the term referring to amnesia ''victims'', not ''inducers''. Most didn't correct to the proper word, "Amnestics".
452* Website/{{Youtube}}:
453** As of January 2019, the site removed annotations. Many old videos that require annotations tend to be formatted with stuff like "click here" in their videos, usually as boxes, which are practically unclickable and empty now.
454** The "dislike comment" button has no functionality whatsoever. It did back in the day, and comments could even gain visibly ''negative'' likes, but nowadays, it doesn't even have any code behind it. Most large websites avoid anything that allows a person to show non-positive engagement with another person's posts or comments--Youtube predates that era, but hasn't gotten rid of disliking comments, perhaps because people still dislike comments as a way to pointlessly vent.
455* The so-called RulesOfTheInternet are barely acknowledged by the modern Internet. However, RuleThirtyFour and RuleSixtyThree are still popular terms for describing pornographic and gender-swapped art, respectively.
456* The ImageBooru [[https://derpibooru.org/ Derpibooru]] still has some so-called legacy tags that have been rendered entirely redundant but still exist:
457** Some are names for characters from before they had been given canonical names, or from before fans hadn't wholly agreed on their names. They're entirely redundant as they could have easily been aliased into one (where tags are combined, and searching for either yields the same result). Just to name a few, Berry Punch is still also tagged as Berryshine, Vinyl Scratch is still also tagged as DJ Pon-3, and Sweetie Drops is still tagged as Bon Bon. It's been this way for over a decade because, when aliasing was first coded into the site, users asked the site owner if they could keep some of the original tags.
458** After a controversy with the [[ComicBook/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicIDW comics adaptation]] which IDW handled ''incredibly'' poorly, the site created the "IDW advertisement" tag which was to be added to any official artwork of the comics and hidden by the default filter. This, in effect, lumped their official artwork in with poorly-made troll uploads and pornographic content, as the site owner stated his site wasn't going to advertise their work for free if that is how they were going to act toward their fans and customers. Years later, the tag has largely been forgotten, and was eventually removed from the default filter as the entire controversy eventually died down, but all the original pictures tagged with it still exist.
459** The site has a "fan-creations" category for tags regarding fan-made original content such as ''Blog/HorseWife'' or ''Blog/{{Moonstuck}}'', which is color-coded magenta. It used to be you actually had to ask the moderators to manually change the category of a tag to get that color-code, but the site was eventually altered to automatically add the color if you put "series:", "comic:", "oc:", or "fanfic:" in front of it. However, any tags that were color-coded manually ''before'' this implementation were never retro-actively given a prefix and instead still stand on their own.
460[[/folder]]
461
462[[folder:Web Videos]]
463* Sofie Liv and the formerly-eponymous Red Suitcase of the ''Red Suitcase Adventures'', so much so she re-branded the show as ''WebVideo/MovieDorkness''.
464* P. Monkey, the purple monkey puppet CompanionCube from ''WebVideo/Lonelygirl15'', appeared frequently in early episodes, but appeared less and less as the series became darker and more plot driven. By the last series, she appeared occasionally, probably because fans like her, but had no effect on the overall plot.
465* Initially, totheark's [[OnceAnEpisode response videos]] from ''WebVideo/MarbleHornets'' [[{{Foreshadowing}} mostly existed to creepily suggest that]] [[spoiler:Jay might be in for more than just documenting an ApocalypticLog]], but since this was revealed in mid-to-late Season 1, the focus has completely shifted from [[spoiler:the student film to Jay's own ParanormalInvestigation of all of the forces that are controlling his life and what is happening to everyone involved with The Operator]], totheark's original purpose has been nullified. While totheark is still a very important character and his identity is still a driving plot point, his OnceAnEpisode responses have little to no point other than to taunt Jay, [[spoiler:besides the occasional WhamEpisode which he usually hijacks the main Marble Hornets [=YouTube=] channel to deliver]].
466* Since ''WebVideo/TheHeroicReview'' is made up of cast members and creatures who work on the audio play ''AudioPlay/TheHeroicTaleOfHeroicallyHeroicHeroes'', the first few episodes had each cast member mentioning the role they play in their introduction. This was phased out pretty quickly in favor of just a general greeting from each panelist at the start of the episode.
467* Popular Website/YouTube comedian [[https://www.youtube.com/user/DickDynasty666 Richard "The Dick" Coughlan]] has continued to end his videos with the catch phrase "May God be less," even though his videos haven't focused on atheism vs. religion for the better part of a decade, and much of the hard-core Website/YouTube atheist community despises him for his general belief that people can be irrational and hateful with or without religion.
468* The [=YouTube=] review series ''WebVideo/SpectrumPulse'' maintained the line "We talk about music, movies, art and culture", despite having essentially given up on discussing anything but music, for several years. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in Mark Grondin's crossover with ''WebVideo/TheDoubleAgent'', where Ethan tells him to stop lying to himself; Mark responded by saying that it wasn't a lie any more, and showed off the [=YouTube=] thumbnail for his review of ''Film/Deadpool2016''.
469* The [[Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos Slender Man]] and his [[TheBlank facelessness]]. He actually wasn't initially conceptualized that way -- he ''did'' have a face in the early days of the mythos, but it was impossible to describe because everyone who looked at it saw something different. The reason his photographs involved him being minus a face was because [[GlamourFailure this effect didn't work on cameras]].
470* ''WebVideo/StopSkeletonsFromFighting'': Inverted. As part of being the inverse of ''WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd'', he drank wine instead of beer. When he stopped drinking wine and realized that almost nobody realized this, he decided to retire the title of Happy Video Game Nerd.
471* ''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic'' originally used this title because he reviewed things that, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin are nostalgic]]. Specifically, he was originally reluctant to review anything past 2000, and often made excuses for it like being pressured into reviewing ''Film/BattlefieldEarth'' for his 100th episode or having his future self [[Franchise/BackToTheFuture take him in a DeLorean]] to a time period where ''Film/TheRoom2003'' was old enough to be nostalgic. He's long since gone on to review newer content, and even regularly reviews brand new films, but has kept the name.
472* Initially, ''WebVideo/BumReviews'' served as a way for Doug to review movies that had recently come out in theaters without having to rely on clips. As time went on, he eventually started doing vlogs where he gave his honest opinions on recent films he just saw, sometimes without making an accompanying Bum Review. By the time Doug started doing clipless reviews of films still in theaters as the Nostalgia Critic, Chester's role was now completely superfluous and he was relegated to a minor bit character in the Critic's videos.
473* The first few ''WebVideo/CinemaSins'' videos had time limits (some as short as two minutes), but after their first year, the videos ran for as long as deemed necessary to nitpick every problem with the film. Nonetheless, every video is still introduced with "Everything Wrong With (Film Name) in X Minutes or Less".
474* ''WebVideo/JoueurDuGrenier'': The intro sequence was shot in Fred's old room, back when the show was just getting started. Both the quality of the image and the special effect of the show are now much better than they where back then since they have more experience and better equipment, and the intro doesn't include the [[ArcWelding many elements]] that where introduced over the years. Even Joueur du Grenier doesn't look like he does in the opening since Fred have lost a lot of Weight a few years ago. Lampshaded in a 2015 video, when the New year resolution of getting a new opening sequence is met with a HaHaHaNo reaction.
475* The profile picture for ''WebVideo/TheRealJims'', a channel known for making various videos analyzing ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' and to a lesser extent, other animated works, is a picture of [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Yoshi]] taken from ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl'' for some reason. Though looking far back on the channel's video lists will shows it was mostly used for posting video game clips, before its focused shifted and it became known for videos about The Simpsons. Meaning the odd choice in profile picture was likely a hold over from before then. Lampshaded in 2022, when The Real Jims finally updated the picture... to a higher quality version of the same image of Yoshi.
476* The logo for Dan Olson's ''WebVideo/FoldingIdeas'' is still an image of Dan's rectangle-headed puppet ''alter ego'' "Foldy", who hasn't hosted the show in years.
477[[/folder]]

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