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1An Unbuilt Trope is when a work makes it ''seem'' like a trope is {{deconstruct|ion}}ed, {{Subverted|Trope}}, {{Justified|Trope}}, or even PlayedForLaughs, when in reality, it's the {{Trope Maker|s}}. Or at the very least, it's the work [[TropeCodifier that popularized the trope]], and the one that's often {{Misblamed}} for the current saturated use of the trope.
2
3Picture the following scenario:
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5->''Boy, ReplacementGoldfish is kind of a weird idea, isn't it? Replacing someone you loved like that always struck you as kind of odd. The kind of person who would do that must not be a paragon of mental stability.\
6One day you decide to read [[Manga/AstroBoy an old comic]]. In it, a scientist's son dies, and he becomes obsessed with making him anew, a perfect version that can never be beaten, at that! He's a madman! What's this... how can he [[KickTheDog yell at the little boy for not growing up]]? Did... he just [[MoralEventHorizon sell his son into slavery]]!? [[GoshDangItToHeck Mother of Pearl]]! You've never seen someone really examine the morality of Replacement Goldfish like that!\
7So you buy the full stack of volumes and look at the production date. [[OlderThanCableTV 1952]]? 1952! It [[TropeMakers pre-dates]] every Replacement Goldfish you've ever seen. How can someone turn this vision into that?''
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9Because the work was the trope maker, it could freely explore the ramifications of the trope before it [[TropeCodifier solidified]] (or in some cases, congealed) into its current form. It seems like a deconstruction, but at the time there was no trope to deconstruct, just an interesting idea to explore; it wasn't expected to conform to a certain pattern because the pattern [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness had not yet been established]]. And only with the benefit of [[HilariousInHindsight hindsight]] does it comes across as [[AchievementInIgnorance subversive]]. It's like showing a chair to someone who doesn't know a thing about the concept and asking them to describe it; without understanding the primary characteristics of what makes a chair a "chair," they draw from all of their observations, like the material it's made of or its specific shape -- [[Administrivia/PeopleSitOnChairs the fact that it makes for a nice sitting apparatus may cross their minds]], but only as one factor among many.
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11The trope could have taken on its current form for many reasons: the imitators could have been part of the MisaimedFandom of the work they drew inspiration from; they may have consciously decided that the original was unsatisfying and thus needed to be LighterAndSofter or DarkerAndEdgier; later appearances of the trope may have [[Administrivia/TropeDecay decayed]] (or been {{Flanderiz|ation}}ed) compared to the original, defining appearance; they may simply have decided to take what they wanted from the story, and calling the original their inspiration caused people to assume the original was similar plotwise; or the imitators may not have had the talent required to depict the trope with the same depth that the original author did. After all, frequently a genius invents the trope and works it out with skill, and the [[LostInImitation hacks come after]], only able to [[TheyCopiedItSoItSucks vaguely copy it]] or intentionally simplify it to make it easier to work with.
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13It can also go the other way around: the original is bland and unappealing (even ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' was considered such, by some critics, when it first came out), and the later authors are the ones that constructed the mythos and the popular cliches. Alternatively, the deconstructed or {{parod|y}}ic form of the trope, rather than the original, [[ParodyDisplacement became more popular and accepted]] over the long run.
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15Remember that this trope is not about gushing about "the original" and how the subsequent works "don't get" the genius. It is purely about the source of the conventions in a certain genre. Just because a work came early doesn't make it better or more genuine, in the same way that sketches are not better than the final work. If a work simply is an example of a trope that's more commonly associated with a later, more well known work, you may be looking for OlderThanTheyThink or UrExample.
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17The opposite of OnceOriginalNowCommon. Compare and contrast with DeadUnicornTrope. See AudienceColoringAdaptation and LostInImitation for the process of how an idea can gradually lose nuance with new incarnations. Sister trope of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, though sometimes they can overlap. Related to HarsherInHindsight (if it predicts a problem that won't be relevant until well after it's first shown) and HilariousInHindsight. UnbuiltCastingType is this in regards to the {{Typecasting}} of certain actors.
18----
19!!Example subpages:
20[[index]]
21* UnbuiltTrope/AnimeAndManga
22** ''UnbuiltTrope/DragonBall''
23* UnbuiltTrope/ComicBooks
24* [[UnbuiltTrope/LiveActionFilm Films — Live-Action]]
25* UnbuiltTrope/{{Literature}}
26* UnbuiltTrope/LiveActionTV
27* UnbuiltTrope/{{Music}}
28* UnbuiltTrope/MythologyAndReligion
29* UnbuiltTrope/VideoGames
30* UnbuiltTrope/WesternAnimation
31[[/index]]
32
33!!Other examples:
34[[foldercontrol]]
35
36[[folder:Arts]]
37* ''Art/ThePlanetVenus'' is the UnbuiltTrope version of StandardizedSpaceViews because it's meant to highlight the connection between mythology and astronomy, not show the state of humanity's cosmological exploration.
38[[/folder]]
39
40[[folder:Automobiles]]
41* When people think of a sport-utility vehicle, or SUV, they're likely thinking of [[HummerDinger a massive, imposing truck with an enclosed bed, room for nine, and single-digit gas mileage]]. They're likely not thinking of a vehicle not much larger than a normal station wagon (most of its extra size coming in ride height), built on a unibody structure like a regular car in order to give it a smoother ride; ''that'' is known as a crossover. Yet it is also a perfect description of the Jeep Cherokee XJ, the car credited with ''inventing'' the modern SUV, and still remembered as one of the greatest [=SUVs=] of all time! Auto writer Doug [=DeMuro=] has even [[https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/very-first-crossover-was-jeep-cherokee-256145 credited it]] with inventing the crossover as much as it did the SUV. The association of [=SUVs=] with bulky truck bodies and drivetrains mostly came from the later Ford Explorer and Chevrolet Tahoe/Suburban of TheNineties, both of which were built on truck platforms and decked out with creature comforts previously restricted to top-of-the-line sedans and wagons. As if to illustrate how much things have changed, the modern KL model of the Cherokee, despite being similar in size to the XJ and similarly capable off-road, is marketed as a crossover rather than an SUV.
42
43* The BMW 2002 is credited with inventing the Sport Sedan in the early 1970s, but it follows few of the conventions of the modern idea of a sport sedan. Rather than a larger engine in a family car and other such performance upgrades, it instead relied on extremely light weight-its engine was unimpressive even for the time. In many ways, the car resembles a roadster with a back seat more than a sport sedan.
44[[/folder]]
45
46[[folder:Comedy]]
47* Creator/SteveHarvey is a pioneer of the WhiteDudeBlackDude routine. Yet Harvey went to great lengths to show that the Black Dude was just as messed up and irrational as the White Dude; they were just messed up in different ways. In Harvey's routines, the Black Dude's antics were likely to have him end up in far worse shape than if he wasn't so focused on the 'black' way of doing things. The routines thus carried a hint of StopBeingStereotypical to them while also being a DeconstructiveParody. For instance, in a routine about the White Dude and Black Dude getting fired, Harvey mocked the White Dude for underreacting to such a major life-changing event as losing one's job by only getting mildly annoyed. But at the same time, Harvey also mocked the Black Dude for overreacting to something he could conceivably bounce back from by flipping over the furniture, threatening his boss's kids, and trying to burn down the office. Later "White Dude, Black Dude" routines by other comedians would only mock the White Dude, causing Harvey's routines to seem more harsh and self-critical in retrospect, despite predating many of these routines.
48[[/folder]]
49
50[[folder:Comic Strips]]
51* The PointyHairedBoss from ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' is the {{Trope Namer|s}} for an inept boss. However, several strips show why an incompetent buffoon like the PHB can become a manager. While Pointy-Haired Boss is bad at the ''technical'' aspects of his position, [[https://web.archive.org/web/20220810061549/https://dilbert.com/strip/2004-08-29 several strips show he is very good]] at navigating the political aspects of his position, exploiting the incompetence of others for his own gain. When Dilbert is given a managerial position, his technical brilliance is undermined by his social ineptitude. As such, the PHB is a {{reconstruction}} of the trope he helped to popularise.
52[[/folder]]
53
54[[folder:Fairy Tales]]
55* Many old {{Fairy Tale}}s are subject to {{Grimmification}}, being deconstructed into DarkerAndEdgier stories. However, many of the tales that Creator/TheBrothersGrimm recorded were never meant to be kid-friendly. Some were horror stories, written by and for adults, or cautionary tales meant to [[ScareEmStraight scare children straight]]. What English readers got is actually toned down from the German; several stories were omitted in their entirety for the early English editions because they were considered too offensive, and others were changed to be more palatable.
56** Literature/LittleRedRidingHood is often portrayed as '''the''' archetypal "Stranger Danger" story. However, it features elements that nowadays seem like not only a deconstruction, but a particularly angry one at that. The attack happens not outside, but in a house belonging to the girl's grandmother, a place where one would think she'd be safe, and the Big, Bad Wolf preys on her by assuming the grandmother's identity. Furthermore, the attacker gaining entry into said house is not the sole responsibility of the girl; early versions also had the wolf kill the grandmother, trick Red into drinking her blood and eating her flesh, and, ultimately, eat Red. Had it been written today, "Little Red Riding Hood" would've been seen as a stinging critique of the idea of "Stranger Danger", a reminder that most child predators are relatives of the children they prey on.
57** Some early versions of ''Literature/{{Cinderella}}'' had the wicked stepsisters [[AgonyOfTheFeet mutilate their own feet]] in an attempt to make them [[TheGirlWhoFitsThisSlipper fit the slipper]]. As if the foot-mutilation weren't enough, the original Grimm version had the WickedStepmother and the evil stepsisters get their [[EyeScream eyes pecked out by birds]] at the end.
58** Contrariwise, reading the original first edition of the stories (not an option in English until the 2010s, admittedly), one might be surprised at the relative ''scarcity'' of blood and guts and moralistic endings, in large part because the Brothers intended it as a cultural study rather than pure entertainment and thus hadn't yet rewritten things. Some villains are indeed unpleasantly disposed of (as in "The Goose Girl"), but many are simply embarrassed and sent packing, such as in "Hans-My-Hedgehog".
59* There are many HotterAndSexier (if not outright smutty) takes on fairy tales, at least some of which are clearly intended to subvert the supposed innocence of the original story (or stories). But in addition to being darker than they're generally portrayed nowadays, many of the original fairy tales were also somewhat more lewd, if only by implication.
60** For example, Literature/{{Rapunzel}} clearly got knocked up by the prince while she was in her tower, since she gives birth to twins during her banishment to a desert. The original version published by Creator/TheBrothersGrimm even had the witch figure out about Rapunzel's affair when her belly started growing larger.
61** But at least Rapunzel presumably consented. One of the older versions of ''Literature/SleepingBeauty'', called ''Literature/SunMoonAndTalia'', had the slumbering princess be raped by a king while she was still asleep. DarkerAndEdgier versions that take the nonconsensual kiss and turn it into a rape are less original than the author might think.
62* The PrinceCharming in many fairytales is not actually that charming, when you take a closer look. Sometimes he is so stupid he goes against the heroine's counsel and is thus tricked into forgetting her, is so easily influenced by his mother that he is willing to kill his wife because his mother says she committed a crime, and doesn't notice the servant girl forced the princess to change clothes with her and is about to marry him. Modern versions that try to deconstruct the trope by portraying the prince as ShelteredAristocrat or [[BrainlessBeauty empty-headed pretty boy]] may be closer to the original tales than adaptations that play the trope straight.
63* The push for more "feminist" fairytales generally supposes that all heroines wind up getting rescued by a {{Love Interest|s}} or other male character. That may be true for most of the famous ones, but plenty of counter examples exist, including quite a few where the girl rescues a DistressedDude: "Literature/KateCrackernuts," "Literature/TheSnowQueen," the various "sister helps her transformed brothers" stories (like "Literature/TheSixSwans" and "Literature/TheSevenRavens")... even "Literature/HanselAndGretel."
64[[/folder]]
65
66[[folder:Fan Works]]
67* ''FanFic/{{Aftertale}}'': One of the earliest known examples in the Undertale Fandom of Chara being depicted as a pure evil demon who ultimately takes control of Frisk's body. [[spoiler: Except their psychology is explored throughout the story: when Sans asks why they killed Papyrus, they reply that when you love someone, you hurt them, and near the end when he asks again, it's revealed that they hated humans and loved monsterkind, to the point of dying for them, only to come back as a ghost and discover that their adoptive monster father had killed six children and planned on exterminating humanity. The resulting shattering of their faith was so horrific that they became a ruthless murderer.]]
68* ''FanFic/ATrekkiesTale'' is the {{Trope Namer|s}} for {{Mary Sue}}, as it featured the eponymous character in the story. If anything, Mary Sue lacked most Sueish traits typically associated with the character type, and was a ParodySue in a SelfInsertFic. In the early 1970s, fan fiction was emerging onto the scene by being published in fan-made magazines and distributed at fan conventions. Fic author Paula Smith was a fan who happened to notice that many of the bad ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' fan stories had [[FandomSpecificPlot the same plot]] -- a female OriginalCharacter, who is the youngest whatever in Starfleet. Everyone falls in love with her and they go on adventures with her, typically ending with her meeting [[PuritySue a tragic death to be mourned by all.]] After seeing a particularly JustForFun/{{egregious}} example of this storyline, Paula Smith wrote a parody, which features all of those tropes at once but [[FlashFiction in only four paragraphs]]. And yet, the titular Mary Sue went on to name the character type that she was openly and mercilessly mocking.[[invoked]]
69* ''Fanfic/FalloutEquestria'' is known widely for being the TropeMaker for grimdark ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' epics, immensely long stories featuring horrible things happening to cartoon ponies that openly reject the themes of the show. However, while the fic's depiction of Equestria is a CrapsackWorld and most have given up on friendship and love, the protagonist's nature as a {{Determinator}} is what gives the fic its heart. Watcher tells her at the very beginning that living life without a virtue like friendship, generosity, or honesty makes you an empty shell with no purpose or drive. The main characters from the original show are all depicted as dying horribly in the past, but it's only because they gave up on their own virtues and became convinced themselves that such gushy themes were holding them back; an understandable belief, considering they were forced into the roles of generals for Equestria's first ever war. Only one of them, Fluttershy, held onto her virtue of kindness for her entire life. People mocked and derided her for her belief that good people existed on both sides of the war, but she was the one who ultimately turned out to be right; By the end of the story, the Wastelanders have risen up in unity against a common foe, and while everything isn't suddenly better and things will never be like they were pre-war, a community is beginning to form and hope is once again commonplace among ponies. The kicker is, [[spoiler: Fluttershy is rewarded for her omnipresent kindness by living to see this.]]
70* ''Fanfic/{{Heimatfront}}'' can be seen as one to the "girls in World War II" FandomSpecificPlot for ''Anime/GirlsUndPanzer'' fanfics. Rather than being an AlternateHistory in which the girls are fighting on the front lines with everyone else, the girls aren't even supposed to be fighting in the first place. The characters whose Heimatfront equivalents are soldiers have their name and genders changed as appropriate- for example, Miho Nishizumi's older sister Maho becomes Maria Nitzschmann's older brother Marco. Rather than making Miho's equivalent a skilled Panzer ace, the fic has her be a BDM volunteer with as little fighting experience as the rest of her friends- her only qualification is knowing more about tanks than is socially acceptable for a woman in Nazi Germany.
71* ''Fanfic/LordKsShipsLogEntries'', probably better known as the "CVB-44 story", kicked off the ''VideoGame/KanColle'' FandomSpecificPlot of a SelfInsertFic where the SI mysteriously wakes up in the middle of the ocean as a shipgirl and has to make her way to friendly territory. Unlike most of those that FollowTheLeader, it goes deep into the psychological trauma that would be experienced by a hitherto sheltered civilian suddenly turned into a sapient war machine being forced to spend weeks if not months running and hiding from a superior enemy force while surviving on their lonesome far from support.
72* A common element of RonTheDeathEater fics in the Harry Potter fandom has Dumbledore lock away most of Harry's magical potential and installing compulsion charms to make him loyal. ''Fanfic/TheAwakeningOfAMagus'' might look like a deconstruction, with the sides involved being Voldemort (with Lucius Malfoy's assistance) as the perpetrator and Snape as the victim. However, it was published in 2002, before [=OotP=] came out and long before bashing fics became mainstream.
73* ''FanFic/TheDracoTrilogy'' [[TropeCodifier codified]] and [[TropeNamers named]] the DracoInLeatherPants trope, in which a villainous or otherwise unlikable character from canon is depicted in a more flattering light. However, unlike most later examples, this story explains why he's hanging out with the good guys and why he's getting the treatment - Draco's arc in the first part of the trilogy involves him pulling a HeelFaceTurn. It also uses some omniscient narration to show Draco's thought pattern, showing his change gradually towards being a better person, and even after his turn, he remains a snarky AntiHero - a plausible portrayal for a redeemed Draco. Many later examples would just have Malfoy be a good guy (often opposite RonTheDeathEater) for no reason at all, often turning him into a total [[TheWoobie woobie]] in the process.
74* ''Fanfic/TheSacredAndTheProfane'' would read as a DeconstructionFic of "Crowley never Fell and Aziraphale became the demon instead" {{Alternate Universe Fic}}s if it weren't the first well-known fic in the ''Literature/GoodOmens'' fandom to explore that premise, long before the TV adaptation made that plot more popular. Instead of merely flipping Crowley and Aziraphale's NobleDemon and [[GoodIsNotNice Just-Enough-of-a-Bastard Angel]] roles, the fic shows just how psychologically broken an angel like Aziraphale could become by Falling without warning and how Crowley's devotion to Aziraphale becomes much darker and sadder when Aziraphale is a manipulative demon who isn't above exploiting Crowley's affection for him to get away with heinous acts.
75%%* ''FanFic/UndocumentedFeatures'' today seems ridiculous, almost like an over the top parody of the MegaCrossover. And yet it was this story that made the MegaCrossover popular in fan fiction.
76[[/folder]]
77
78[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
79* Classic Creator/{{Disney}} movies are associated with PrinceCharming rescuing the PrincessClassic from distress. Yet the princes in ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Cinderella}}'' don't do much in the way of rescuing, aside from whisking the princess away to a happy ending. The first Disney prince to actually resemble the character archetype didn't appear until [[WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty Prince Philip]], and even then he would have failed miserably if the Three Fairies didn’t help him.
80** Additionally, PrincessClassic in the first three Disney films has one major difference from the commonly associated list - none of the three princesses were raised in a privileged life. Snow White and Cinderella were servants, while Aurora was raised in the forest. None of them enter royal life until the end of their films.
81** Since Cinderella comes from an [[AbusiveParents abusive]] household, her dreams for happiness don't even involve romance, simply leaving her [[WickedStepmother step-family]] behind. In fact, her step-family's the ones that spend the movie seeking the Prince's affections, and it isn't until she overhears that the Prince has become enamored with her that she starts taking the idea seriously. And what's more, when Lady Tremaine destroys the glass slipper in the Grand Duke's possession, as the Duke panics, [[CrazyPrepared Cinderella reveals she has the second slipper]], so she's effectively the one who saves the day.
82* ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'': The Sultan is the TropeNamer for HorribleJudgeOfCharacter, as-in nobody in their right mind would trust someone like [[ObviouslyEvil Jafar]], which nowadays makes him come off more foolish than he perhaps actually is. However, the very first scene with Jafar and the Sultan together features Jafar ''hypnotizing'' him with his staff, making it clear that Jafar's ability to have the Sultan's ear is much more than the Sultan's foolishness. Outside of this so-called lapse in judgement, the Sultan is clearly a capable ruler and considerate person, so being so foolish would be pretty out-of-character for him. It also should be pointed out that when Aladdin breaks Jafar's staff & thus his hold over him, the Sultan immediately orders Jafar to be arrested (which the vizier narrowly escapes from with his sorcery).
83* Parts of ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'' make it feel almost like a {{Reconstruction}} of later Franchise/DisneyPrincess films that follow it. For one, the {{musical}} elements are purposely integrated into the story so as not to feel out of place: the heroine having a beautiful singing voice is actually a plot point rather than a stock character trait, and the elaborate musical numbers are fully justified by having Sebastian be a concert composer. For another thing, Eric is one of the [[PlayingWithATrope straightest]] examples of PrinceCharming in the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon since ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'', only differing from previous princes in that he has more CharacterDevelopment. But ''The Little Mermaid'' was the film that '''started''' Disney's renaissance in the 1980s: it set the template for what became the "standard" Disney movie by being an elaborate Broadway-style musical (with the music being the primary storytelling method) rather than a simple fantasy story with a few musical numbers [[note]] Case in point: the VillainSong didn't really become a Disney tradition until [[WesternAnimation/TheGreatMouseDetective Ratigan’s]] VillainSong and Ursula's "Poor Unfortunate Souls", since most previous Disney movies didn't feel the need to give ''every'' major character their own song[[/note]], and it came out before later movies like ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' started purposefully subverting the PrinceCharming trope. So it reconstructed the Disney formula before anyone thought to deconstruct it.
84* The PrinceCharmless trope has often been used in works [[AffectionateParody mocking]] Disney movies, to highlight the [[GenericCuteness blandness]] and [[SatelliteLoveInterest lack of depth]] the stereotypical Disney Prince has. However most of them [[UrExample seem to be]] [[FountainOfExpies largely based on]] Gaston from ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast''. A Disney movie where the Prince is on equal billing with the Princess and whose character arc is the main driving force behind the film.
85* The first animated film to popularize the deliberate use of AnachronismStew for comedy - ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' - had a justification for it that its numerous imitators ignore. The reason that TheGenieKnowsJackNicholson is because Genie has the power to look through time, which is why he makes a lot of contemporary pop culture references.
86* ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' is the first Disney movie to use TrueLovesKiss as the solution to a spell (earlier in Snow White, the cure was actually Love's ''First'' Kiss). But it has a completely justified in-story reason for it; as Maleficent has cursed the princess to die, Merriweather can only soften the spell by turning it into an enchanted sleep with the kiss as the escape clause. The fact that she is able to do this illustrates that Maleficent is [[EvilCannotComprehendGood so evil, she can't imagine someone saving the princess that way]] - the same reason they are able to successfully hide Aurora from her for sixteen years. So the kiss has a reason for working, rather than being the DeusExMachina it would often be used as.
87* Despite often being labeled as "cute and harmless", many of the classic movies from the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon have dark elements, such as FamilyUnfriendlyViolence and nightmarish sequences. The first few movies of the canon, such as ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Pinocchio}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Bambi}}'', have pretty dark atmospheres and are more focused on drama than on comedy, being considerably more serious than most of the animated movies that came later. ''Snow White'' in particular is noteworthy, since it actually ignited debate in some countries about whether it was appropriate for children to watch. The ''Music/NightOnBaldMountain'' segment from ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' is exactly the ''opposite'' of what could be normally expected from a Disney film, being darker and edgier than most of the animations produced around the same time. It even goes so far as to unashamedly display female frontal nudity, something that not even the PG-rated Disney films of the 2000s and on would ever consider doing or be allowed to do.
88** This is especially evident for ''Bambi'' which became the TropeCodifier for many "cutesy baby forest animal" franchises, so many forget how ominous the film can be, particularly the latter half where Bambi is no longer an innocent fawn, but a badass buck who nearly perishes repeatedly against a storm of rivals, hunting threats and natural disasters. There are also at least two deaths in the film, neither of which are a DisneyVillainDeath. It is telling that [[WesternAnimation/BambiII the midquel]] released [[SequelGap over half a century later]] is LighterAndSofter with more cute banter, though even then it follows the unexpectedly dark construction of the original far more than nearly any of the film's copycats did within that time.
89* ''WesternAnimation/LadyAndTheTramp'' unbuilds the PoundsAreAnimalPrisons trope. The movie is probably the TropeCodifier for the concept, up to and including euthanasia being treated as equivalent to DeathRow, but it also provides a subversion in that the pound workers themselves are gentle dog lovers, Lady is quickly reunited with her owners via her license, and a sign on the door reads "give a dog a happy home."
90* At a certain point in the 2000s/2010s Creator/{{Disney}} decided that it was done having its princesses immediately get married to a man they'd only just met with the ridiculous assertion of them being their OneTrueLove. Movies such as ''Film/{{Enchanted}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'' roundly mocked the old trope and even ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'' took a small jab at it with the final monologue. Only, this never actually happened. At the end of Disney Princess films there occasionally would be a wedding, yes, but it would be taking place an unspecified amount of time after the main events of the plot. In fact, only Cinderella and Ariel have an actual wedding ceremony at the end of their movies (and even then, there's an implied TimeSkip of unknown length in both cases).
91* ''WesternAnimation/TerkelInTrouble'' is a relatively obscure Danish movie from 2004 in a similar vein to ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', but if you were to mistake it for a movie made today (discounting how the animation very obviously dates it to the early 2000s), it would be very easy to interpret it as a parody of [[spoiler:the usage of EvilAllAlong in animated movies, a trend that didn't really kick off until TheNewTens. Justin is friendly and likable on the surface, but he is in fact an AxCrazy murderer on a mission to kill Terkel for the crime of [[DisproportionateRetribution sitting on a spider]]]].
92* Many [[WartimeCartoon Wartime Cartoons]] weren't mindless propaganda, but rather harsh commentaries about war itself.
93** ''WesternAnimation/PeaceOnEarth'' portrays a world where human beings wiped each other out through war, with the sentient animals learning from humanity's failure and building a peaceful world. It was released in 1939, two years before America entered the war.
94** ''WesternAnimation/EducationForDeath'' avoids portraying Germans as fanatically evil. Rather, it portrays the Germans themselves as victims of the Nazi regime. The main character, Hans, [[UsedToBeASweetKid starts out as a decent kid]], but a mixture of peer pressure and propaganda turn him into a merciless tool for the state.
95* ''WesternAnimation/TheBraveLittleToaster'': The film seems like a pretty chilling deconstruction of movies about [[AnimateInanimateObject living inanimate objects]] such as ''Franchise/ToyStory''. The main characters, most of whom are the typical household appliances, are in constant peril in their journey, from dismantlement, obsolescence, and disposal. The climax takes place in a junkyard and includes a song where at least eight still-living cars get destroyed, a stark reminder that for many kinds of inanimate object, the most likely ultimate fate is deliberate destruction. This may sound like an examination of the often-ignored implications of such movies in the vein of ''WesternAnimation/SausageParty'', but it came out in 1987, well before such movies were popular.
96* ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'' changed the landscape of animated films during the 2000s with its fresh style of humor: irreverent, vulgar and heavy on the pop culture references. But what many of its imitators failed to grasp was that much of its humor had a purpose: to make a DeconstructiveParody of Disney Renaissance films. Not only that, but for all its humor, it dealt with some pretty heavy themes, such as prejudice and alienation.
97* ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail'' had "Somewhere Out There", which was the {{Trope Maker|s}} for the AwardBaitSong. Unlike most subsequent examples, however, a large part of its charm came from the fact that it was sung by amateur singers, giving it a kind of sincerity that many would say is lacking in many other "Oscar Bait songs" (as well as the BreakawayPopHit version).
98* [[Creator/RalphBakshi Ralph Bakshi's]] early films pioneered AnimatedShockComedy: Western animation driven by racy content and edgy humor. But they were also [[TheBigRottenApple very serious and fairly grim portrayals of life in New York City]], even featuring some somber moments of MoodWhiplash; the {{jerkass}} protagonists that became common in the genre were targets of satirical mockery; and more "offensive" elements such as racial stereotypes were generally used as social commentary. While some of today's adult animation, such as ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', arguably does follow up on Bakshi's satirical tendencies, this was certainly not the case with the now-forgotten ''WesternAnimation/FritzTheCat'' imitators of TheSeventies.
99[[/folder]]
100
101[[folder:Folklore]]
102* Myth/ArthurianLegend unbuilds the idea of the KnightInShiningArmor. Many later works equated knighthood with nobility with inherent moral goodness, creating knight characters who were {{ideal hero}}es, if not outright [[IncorruptiblePurePureness completely pure]]. But Arthurian mythos has chivalry as a knight's ''job''. They're not inherently or incorruptibly good and noble, and it frequently shows. For the most part, even those who want to live up to the ideals of chivalry have to work at it, since it doesn't come naturally to them, and it's hardly uncommon for them to fall short. Really, the knight who most fits the idea of the pure, untarnished, incorruptible hero is Sir Galahad -- who is very clearly intended as a truly exceptional figure. While many of Arthur's knights were certainly successful, heroic figures capable of great selflessness, that didn't necessarily make them wonderful people. The vast majority of them had serious character flaws and/or did some very questionable things. Some of them could even be downright nasty at times. In other words, a knight could be a great and noble hero who did incredible things and saved countless lives -- and yet [[GoodIsNotNice also be an unlikable jackass]].
103* Imagine, if you will, a "[[LovableRogue noble outlaw]]" who's perfectly willing to help the unfortunate, but who isn't robbing for the express purpose of giving to the poor, doesn't particularly care about the moral alignment of his targets (only their status and role in society), and is willing to outright murder people. Sounds like a more grey-shaded deconstruction of the Myth/RobinHood archetype, right? Actually, this is what Robin Hood was like until the late 19th century, when Howard Pyle decided to [[{{bowdlerise}} make his stories more child-friendly]] by not having him kill except in self-defense and having his robberies be almost entirely motivated by wanting to [[KarmicThief redress injustices]] and [[JustLikeRobinHood support the needy]].
104** Further, some of the earlier versions give justification to the InspectorJavert role of the Sheriff of Nottingham by giving him a [[ItsPersonal personal reason]] for pursuing the outlaw beyond devotion to the king: Robin Hood killed one of his relatives in a dispute over deer hunting.
105* The conflict of ManVersusMachine was pioneered by American {{Tall Tale}}s. But today, they seem like particularly somber deconstructions:
106** Railroad worker John Henry famously competed against a machine to prove that a man can tunnel through rock faster. While he won, this wasn't exactly a triumph for humanity, since [[PyrrhicVictory he died from overexertion]] while the machine could do it all again the next day. Some versions are particularly bittersweet, because they add the detail that Henry was fighting to keep his job... and since he died, [[ShootTheShaggyDog the machine replaced him anyway]].
107** Myth/PaulBunyan and Babe the Blue Ox get in on the act, too, when they go up against a mechanized saw and an advanced steam engine in a tree-cutting contest. In many versions, Paul lost (by a quarter of an inch, in Creator/WaltDisney's [[WesternAnimation/MiscellaneousDisneyShorts version]]) and [[ButNowIMustGo headed for the Alaskan wilderness]] when he realized [[EndOfAnEra the age of the lumberjack was coming to a close]]. In other versions of the story, Paul actually won... but left anyway when he realized that age and mileage would only slow him and Babe down, whereas the machines' ability to be tweaked and upgraded meant that they were virtually immune to those factors.
108* In the earliest [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampire]] folklore, vampires are most definitely ''not'' tall, elegant, [[VampiresAreSexGods sexy aristocrats]]. Instead, they're short, ugly, smelly peasants—which you might realistically expect of animalistic human predators forced to live at the fringes of society and prey on other humans for sustenance. ''Film/{{Nosferatu}}'', one of the first vampire films in history, even uses elements of this early vampire lore in its portrayal of Count Orlok: a [[LooksLikeOrlok tall, ugly, probably smelly aristocrat]]. Realistically speaking, living as an outcast subsisting on human blood is ''not'' glamorous.
109** ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' (which [[TropeCodifier codified]] so many of the characteristics of modern vampires) had Drac [[DaywalkingVampire running around in the daylight]] [[note]] More specifically, daylight hindered most of Dracula's powers but did not kill him. The whole "vampires die in sunlight" thing occurred [[NewerThanTheyThink in 1922]] when the director of ''Film/{{Nosferatu}}'' couldn't figure out how to kill Orlock, so he finally just decided to have him burst into flames when the sun came up –- just about every vampire in fiction's been vulnerable ever since.[[/note]] and being killed by a couple of knives. He was also described as hairy (even hairy palms!), moustachioed, and rather brutish-looking, rather than the suave aristocrat he's been commonly depicted as [[Film/{{Dracula 1931}} after]] Creator/BelaLugosi; he ''could'' pull off a more handsome body, but it required magic to shapeshift and he rarely bothered. His breath stank of rotting corpse, too. There are also other ways it comes off as subversive:
110*** Renfield isn't quite TheRenfield: although more-or-less controlled by Dracula, he's not willingly so, and even tries to kill him.
111*** The original Van Helsing isn't portrayed in the same way as later iterations of the character; he's not a VampireHunter or even all that action-oriented, just a scholar who happens to know a good deal about vampires. Even then, he doesn't immediately figure out that Lucy's illness was caused by a vampire and is heavily implied to not have any personal experience with vampires before he comes into conflict with Dracula.
112*** Dracula has a trio of vampire women who serve and live with him. Sounds like a typical VampiresHarem, right? Except it isn't; there's no confirmation that the "brides" (who are [[CommonKnowledge never actually called that in the original book]]) are romantically or sexually involved with him, and it's implied that at least two of them are actually ''related'' to the Count. They also unbuild the idea of the sexually alluring female vampire; Jonathan is terrified of them despite acknowledging their attractiveness, and their attempted "seduction" of him comes off as more like harassment if not outright sexual predation.
113*** While Dracula is a villain who dreams to TakeOverTheWorld, he has [[WhoWantsToLiveForever also grown weary with his immortality]] and [[DeathSeeker wants to end it all]]. So he's planning to create a vampire army to march on the rest of the world, figuring that he'll either win or be destroyed trying, [[XanatosGambit either outcome of which he'd be happy with]].
114** The villain of the very first vampire novel, aptly-named ''Literature/TheVampyre'' by John Polidori, did not have fangs. He did [[TakeThat bear an uncanny and insulting resemblance]] to [[Creator/LordByron Polidori's boss]], though. It wasn't until ''Literature/VarneyTheVampire'' that fangs showed up, but that was a weird book, too: it ends with Varney [[DrivenToSuicide killing himself]] at the [[DisneyVillainDeath crater of Vesuvius]]. Varney was also the first morally-ambiguous and conflicted vampire, before ''Series/DarkShadows'', ''Literature/TheVampireChronicles'' and ''Series/{{Angel}}'' came along.
115** Prior to ''[[Literature/TheTwilightSaga Twilight]]'''s {{vegetarian vampire}}s, ''Literature/TheVampireChronicles'' skewered the concept of a "vegetarian" vampire in the first book, ''Literature/InterviewWithTheVampire'', with its protagonist Louis. Although he tried to retain his humanity and survive on the blood of animals, his efforts were in vain and his creator scolds him for his hypocrisy of loathing the downsides of being a vampire while enjoying its benefits. In general, Louis is regarded with mild contempt by most vampires for trying to remain human to begin with and is generally considered the weakest of Lestat's children.
116** ''Literature/{{The Silver Kiss}}'' reads like a deconstruction of the teen vampire romance narrative popularized by ''Twilight'', with its exploration of grief and the main character choosing NOT to become a vampire (and the transformation process freezing a person in time, meaning that any illness they have won't be cured), then the vampire love interest [[spoiler:commits suicide by exposing himself to sunlight]] at the very end
117** ''Literature/{{Carmilla}}'' is the {{Trope Maker|s}} for LesbianVampire, but it's not sexploitation. Instead, it's written more as a standard "vampire victim" story, just with the victim and the aggressor sharing the same gender. It's not really a Romance either, although Carmilla can be interpreted sympathetically. At most you could call Carmilla a stalker or sexual predator.
118** And Dracula, Carmilla and Lord Ruthven were all [[DaywalkingVampire unharmed by sunlight]], outside of it limiting their powers or just being uncomfortable but not fatal at all. As noted above, the idea of vampires being killed by daylight didn't appear until 1922 and was imitated by others.
119[[/folder]]
120
121[[folder:Miscellaneous]]
122* Trollface has been used countless times across the Web to illustrate the act of, well, {{troll}}ing. Yet, [[https://web.archive.org/web/20180725175708/https://www.deviantart.com/whynne/art/Comic-Trolls-98357844 the comic that it originated in]] was a demonstration of how trolls want to believe that they're driving people incoherent with rage, while the troll is actually being little more than a minor annoyance. It also implies that most "trolls" are just people [[ParodyRetcon retroactively claiming they were trolling]] after other people criticize their opinions for being utter nonsense, bigoted, or just plain idiotic.
123** The phrase most associated with Trollface ("Problem, officer?") originally [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3SXBirhH7s had nothing to do with trolling]] (and the troll face was actually referred to as the person's "cool face").
124* Many people who read Adam Smith's ''The Wealth of Nations'', the book that codified free trade and [[UsefulNotes/{{Capitalism}} capitalist economics]], are often surprised to see Smith's belief that the invisible hand of the market was not applicable in all situations (such as provision of health care and education), his endorsement of unions (then illegal) as a means of preventing workers from competing against each other and thus driving down wages, and his criticism of acting purely on self-interest. Read today, ''The Wealth of Nations'' seems less like the Creator/AynRand-style endorsement of laissez-faire capitalism that its reputation suggests, and more a critique of such (if not by an out-and-out Marxist, then certainly a left-leaning progressive or an old-school Tory).
125* Creator/KarlMarx himself was also far more enthusiastic about capitalism than is often believed today, and often praised its virtues at length in his writing. His point was he saw capitalism as a ''phase'' of human economic development that mankind was now destined to progress beyond, not something entirely without merit as an idea in any context. [[FairForItsDay While it wasn't his ideal economic system, he found it highly preferable to the feudalism that it replaced]]. To many, it comes off as quite open-minded, pragmatic and even forward-thinking; an almost direct contrast to the revolutionary Marxism of the 20th century.
126* Economic theories' principal ideas are often explored first in literature before being codified: ''The Wealth of Nations'' (published in 1776) codifies [[CripplingOverspecialization Division of Labour]], [[MundaneUtility RealPrice]], and [[ConspicuousConsumption Nominal Price]]. [[WorthlessYellowRocks Coinage]] was first explored in ''Literature/RobinsonCrusoe'', published in 1709. The idea of every human activity (including art) being [[OnlyInItForTheMoney dependent on its economic value]] was first exposed by ''Literature/LePereGoriot'', published in 1819, before The Communist Manifesto (published in 1848) was published by Creator/KarlMarx.
127* Creator/AynRand's philosophy and bibliography have often been cited as inspirations for many on the right. Unlike many of her followers, however, Rand ''hated'' the religious right due to her pro-choice views on abortion and skepticism of organized religion, and her pro-business views did '''not''' extend to people who made money through reliance on lucrative government deals. People claiming her as an influence but being in favor of crony capitalism [[MisaimedFandom would make her spin in her grave]].
128* The first well-recognized discussion of TheSingularity (called the Omega Point) came to be in the writings of [[UsefulNotes/PierreTeilhardDeChardin Pierre Teilhard de Chardin]], a Catholic priest, and it was more like "achieving a complete union with {{God}}" rather than "[[GodhoodSeeker becoming God]]".
129* For a lot of people: UsefulNotes/SchrodingersCat is one of their first ever exposures to the concept of UsefulNotes/QuantumPhysics; as well as becoming a synonym for [[AmbiguousSituation uncertain]] or [[MindScrew contradicting]] situations or states-of-being. What many people probably ''don’t'' know is that the experiment was neither an actual experiment or even a serious exploration of quantum theory; rather it is a DeconstructiveParody of the various interpretations of quantum theory that Schrödinger found ridiculous. Mainly the Born/Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Physics.
130* TheSpartanWay is when an army uses a [[TrainingFromHell horrifically brutal training regime]], sometimes recruiting from young teens, to create the ultimate BadassArmy. When the actual city of Sparta tried this some 2500 years ago, they were tactically inflexible to the point of being outright crippled. The army existed mostly to scare the city-state's [[SlaveRace helot]] population into complacency, so they couldn't operate very far from home. Since their system only produced {{elites|AreMoreGlamorous}}, it took forever to replace the soldiers they lost, which in turn meant they ended up having a rather small army [[CripplingOverspecialization made up almost entirely of heavy infantry]]. An enemy army with a detachment of hit-and-run skirmishers - or worse, cavalry - could run circles around the Spartans, and if the Spartans lost more than a few hundred soldiers, they would have to seriously consider surrendering ''the entire war''. Plus, with a ProudWarriorRaceGuy mentality, they didn't see any reason to adapt and evolve their fighting style. This came back to bite Sparta in the ass in the Battle of Sphacteria (425 BCE), where Athens had the entire Spartan playbook on file and [[CurbStompBattle just walked all over the Spartan hoplites without taking a single casualty]]. Since all Spartan men were expected to be soldiers, and all Spartan women were expected to stay at home and produce strong Spartan babies, this meant that almost every job in Sparta itself had to be done by slaves that the Spartans kidnapped from other villages. When there were [[SlaveLiberation slave revolts]] -- and it wasn't "if", it was ''"when"'', since the slaves revolted against the Spartans quite often -- the army would have to drop everything it was doing and race back home to get their slaves under control, then raid other villages for more slaves to replace their losses. As a result, Spartans were rarely on the offensive, and if they were, it was frequently to raid more slaves. And Persian accounts described Sparta as thoroughly corrupt and easily bribed for allegiance. All in all, the actual city of Sparta reads more like a deconstruction of The Spartan Way, despite naming the trope.
131* Grant Wood's 1930 painting ''American Gothic'' was the trope maker of the AmericanGothicCouple. Contemporary and later audiences have seen it as a caricature of American countryside conservatism ({{Eagleland}}). Wood however intended the painting to be an earnest tribute to the simple countryside life, and a realistic reconstruction of UsefulNotes/TheAmericanDream.
132* Somebody who thinks that celebrity tabloids are nothing but vapid, pointless gossip would likely be shocked if they were to read old issues of ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidential_(magazine) Confidential]]'', the magazine that invented the modern celebrity tabloid in TheFifties. It was just as gossipy as any of its heirs, but its reporting on celebrity misdeeds was meant to serve a point: namely, to whip up outrage and moral indignation about the [[HorribleHollywood "corruption" in Hollywood]] through muckraking journalism of a sort that they felt the rest of the press was too afraid to touch. In particular, it was a driver of UsefulNotes/TheHollywoodBlacklist, with editor Howard Rushmore (who had previously been a director of research for Senator UsefulNotes/JosephMcCarthy himself) seeking to destroy alleged communists and fellow travelers in Hollywood by smearing them as sexual deviants. For all the stereotypes of the tabloids being major players in the HollywoodHypeMachine, they were originally a reactionary effort to demolish that system.
133* When one thinks of a traditional harem, they generally imagine the women in it to be sequestered away from the world at large and not doing anything except producing heirs. However, one of the oldest harems in history, that of the Egyptian pharaoh, was not like this. While the women had a dedicated space (the Eighteenth Dynasty dedicated a ''whole gigantic palace'' in the Faiyum called Merwer to the {{royal harem}}), they weren't actually secluded in the sense of being required to be apart from the world. The ladies in the harem were well integrated into the elite social life of the area surrounding the harem palace, and senior members tended to have important public roles both in the royal court (held wherever the king was, usually Thebes or Memphis) and in the priesthood (for one famous example, the [[TopWife Great Royal Wife]]--''the'' Queen--was usually the chief priestess of Amun at the temple at Thebes). The harem palace was a ''retreat'' for the royal family to escape their public duties, and its inhabitants could and did leave when they liked/needed.
134* The NobleSavage trope is generally thought of as being applied to people of color. However, the [[UrExample first known examples]] of the trope came from AncientRome, where it was used to describe the very white Germanic peoples. White people being portrayed as noble savages today would generally be considered a unique twist on the trope. It should be noted, though, that skin color as a basis of discrimination is NewerThanTheyThink, as the very ''concept'' of race as a means to divide people was actually invented during the Age of Exploration as an excuse for bringing the slave trade back from the dead.
135* Ancient Rome's PraetorianGuard, the trope namer for a leader's security detail, seems like a very deconstructive take on it. Rather than being a strictly professional and loyal group that was truly subordinate to the emperor, it was a powerful institution in its own right with its own interests, and any emperor who failed to keep them happy was liable to find himself deserted -- or worse, [[BodyguardBetrayal backstabbed]] -- by them.
136* The {{Trope Maker|s}} of MysteriousInformant "Deep Throat", the Watergate informant whose identity was unknown, so many aspects of the trope draw heavily from the PopCulturalOsmosis of ''Film/AllThePresidentsMen''. 30 years later he was finally revealed himself in 2005, as William Mark Felt. The real-life Deep Throat's identity was a mystery to the general public, but Bob Woodward knew exactly who he was talking to. UsefulNotes/RichardNixon himself also figured it out pretty quickly (it had to be someone in the FBI and only Felt knew everything Deep Throat had passed on) and torpedoed his career for it.
137* The MatureAnimalStory is often seen as a subversion of the longstanding idea that stories with animal leads are always intended for children. However, the perception that stories about animals were for kids only really emerged in the 20th century; before that, animal-centric stories were generally aimed at adults. ''Literature/ReynardTheFox'' is a raunchy BlackComedy with copious sex and violence, while ''Literature/BlackBeauty'' is a lengthy commentary on issues like animal welfare and social justice that delves into some dark subject matter due to being written with the primary purpose of drawing attention to animal cruelty. So stories like ''WesternAnimation/{{Duckman}}'' and ''ComicBook/{{Maus}}'', often praised for allegedly taking "talking animal stories" in new directions, are really taking the genre closer to its roots.
138[[/folder]]
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140[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
141* Suppose you saw a {{heel}} wrestler who wasn't all that muscular and put bobby pins in his bleached-blond hair and entered the arena to a neoclassical music score ''and'' had Chanel perfume sprayed all over his body before the match so it would disinfect any germs his opponent got on him. Wow, a SissyVillain in wrestling! Sounds like a subversion of the big, macho, ugly WrestlingMonster, right? Well, it's [[Wrestling/GeorgeWagner Gorgeous George]] - the very first gimmick wrestler to become nationally popular, back in the late 1940s.
142* The poetry-spouting Wrestling/SuperstarBillyGraham defied the DumbMuscle stereotype as early as 1977, despite being one of the first major bodybuilders in wrestling. Suddenly Wrestling/TripleH's "blue-blood" gimmick from the mid-'90s doesn't seem so weird, does it?
143* The very first evening gown match between {{Wrestling/Sable}} and Wrestling/LunaVachon had a different 'psychology' than the CatFight the rest would become known for. As it was a DistaffCounterpart to the Tuxedo Match, the gowns were torn off piece by piece - rather than in one go as in later matches.
144* The ideal WWE Diva is thought of as a StatuesqueStunner who's a slim blonde AllAmericanFace PluckyGirl. Likewise, Wrestling/TrishStratus is recognised as the TropeCodifier. While she ticks the blonde PluckyGirl parts, she's rather short, more of an AmazonianBeauty (as a former fitness model rather than glamour model) and Canadian to boot. The other tropes seem to come from {{Wrestling/Madusa}} who was the AllAmericanFace and a StatuesqueStunner, but not slim nor particularly glamorous, and {{Wrestling/Sable}}, who was a slim blonde (by wrestler standards) StatuesqueStunner, but also a FauxActionGirl. What's notable is that none of those three were MsFanservice inside the ring. While Sable and Trish were dressed sexily ''outside'' the ring, their actual gear was fairly modest. Stratus's sexier ring gear was purely for one off GimmickMatches.
145* The International Home Wrecking Crew seem like an interesting take on the GirlPosse. Their concerns are often mature even if they themselves are not. All three of them are [[SickeningSweetHearts buddy buddy]] {{alpha bitch}}es with no {{beta|bitch}}, much less omega in sight. In fighting is less from [[BackStabbingTheAlphaBitch betrayal]], jealousy or [[HeelRealization reform]] than it is a [[InevitableMutualBetrayal consequence]] of no one else to look down on being around. They [[FireForgedFriends began as enemies before settling on life partners]] and though always arrogant, may have never became bullies if they themselves [[FreudianExcuse weren't bullied]] by The Experience TagTeam for being conceited rookies. Thing is, they came before Wrestling/TheBeautifulPeople, Vince's Devils, Team Blondage or even ''Film/MeanGirls'' and were [[BigBadWannabe "inspired"]] by the surly, manly Anderson Minnesota Wrecking Crew.
146* "A Fight Without Honor" is usually regarded as a very dangerous stipulation that is only allowed when it is feared what feuding wrestlers will do to one another if they are not allowed to face one another in a NoHoldsBarredContest. The result is usually lots of GarbageWrestling and bleeding. The first Fight Without Honor is one of the most popular, and it is also one of the most subdued, more so resembling strong or shooting style wrestling with some MMA nods. This is because it originated from [[PowerStable The Prophecy]] of Wrestling/ChristopherDaniels, which was concerned with doing away with the {{code|ofhonor}} used by Wrestling/{{ROH}}. While Daniels had hired Wrestling/SamoaJoe as an "assassin" to soften up his rival Wrestling/LowKi, the simple fact no hands were shaken beforehand was itself a symbolic victory for Daniels.
147* Wrestling/MoneyInTheBank as a gimmick match is known for featuring a couple of wrestlers that everyone knows won't win the briefcase or get pushed as a serious title contender, but will provide some nice highspots in that kind of match. The first MITB match at [=WrestleMania=] 21, however, is notable in that its only participants were guys who had either already held the title or been pushed as title contenders. Wrestling/SheltonBenjamin was the only mid-carder in the match, and even he was enjoying a bit of a serious push as the Intercontinental Champion.
148* If you saw a Buried Alive match end with six men taking forever to fill the grave by hand rather than just dumping a truckload of dirt in, you would likely assume it was a parody of the stipulation put together by some comedy indie fed. Except, that is exactly how it went for the very first Buried Alive match, as WWE critically underestimated how long it took to fill a grave. For well over five minutes [[Wrestling/MickFoley Mankind]], soon joined by The Executioner, [[Wrestling/TripleH Hunter Hearst Helmsley]], [[Wrestling/BrianAdams Crush]], [[Wrestling/JohnBradshawLayfield Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw]], and Wrestling/{{Goldust}}, frantically shovelled dirt while Wrestling/PaulBearer mugged for the crowd to try to make it interesting.
149* It's disputed who exactly invented the [[MeleeATrois three man]] match, but it's generally agreed that Wrestling/{{ECW}} was the first to do one that got national attention with the Three Way Dance. However, Wrestling/PaulHeyman was apparently inspired by a match held a month earlier in his old frenemy Wrestling/JimCornette's [[Wrestling/{{SMW}} Smoky Mountain Wrestling]][[note]]Archives show that variations of this idea have been attempted in the ''1970s'' and possibly even further back, but neither Heyman nor Cornette knew this at the time and developed it independently. Cornette has said he really doesn't know which one stole it from the other (and he doesn't really care) but one thing both of them '''definitely''' agree on is that they [[Main/CreatorBacklash really wish they wouldn't have came up with it in the first place]][[/note]]. The key difference was that SMW's version was organised as a sort of round robin gauntlet, the three competitors having a series of one-on-one matches until each competitor had wrestled the other two, with the man who scored the most falls being declared the winner. The ECW match, and all others that followed, had three guys all fighting at once. The SMW match was also pitched as something that could only happen in the most rare and extreme of circumstances and may never happen again, when nowadays two weeks can't go by without Wrestling/{{WWE}} or [[Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling AEW]] having one.
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152[[folder:Radio]]
153* ''Radio/ImSorryIHaventAClue'' comes across as a DeconstructiveParody of the comedy PanelGame format, with ([[TakeOurWordForIt implicitly]]) cheap production values, a LovelyAssistant who ReallyGetsAround and never shows up, a panel lineup that's barely changed since 1972, players who don't even [[ThePointsMeanNothing get points]], games that range from HurricaneOfPuns to excuses to force the panelists to sing (with one regular guest being genuinely tone-deaf) to pure {{Calvinball}}, impenetrable {{Running Gag}}s and a host who loathes everyone and everything on the show and spends most of his/her time subjecting it all to the most withering snark imaginable. It even bills itself as 'the antidote to panel games'. It was actually one of the first comedy panel games to get big in the UK. Its original parodic target were the contemporary ''serious'' panel shows, and the original joke was that it used the format as a space for doing silly and rude things rather than witty and erudite ones. Nowadays, the panel show format is almost exclusively a comedy genre and the serious games have either got DenserAndWackier (''Radio/JustAMinute'') or just disappeared, changing the central joke to be a swipe at the format itself.
154[[/folder]]
155
156[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
157* Despite being the {{Trope Namer|s}} of GetOutOfJailFreeCard, ''TabletopGame/{{Monopoly}}'' jail is a CardboardPrison that only requires you to roll doubles, pay $50, or use said card to get out. Furthermore, since people in jail can [[MightAsWellNotBeInPrisonAtAll still collect rent and trade properties without fear of paying rent to others]], [[ViolationOfCommonSense staying in jail as long as possible is a good, if counter-intuitive, late-game strategy]]. In fact, players are required to ''leave jail'' after three turns whether they want to or not, whether by rolling doubles, paying the $50 bail, or playing the card.
158* ''TabletopGame/SpaceHulk'', the 1989 board game spinoff of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', takes the time to deconstruct the RuleOfCool that would later come to define the series. The huge bulky [[PoweredArmor Terminator Armor suits]] were originally designed for servicing plasma reactors, not military boarding actions, which you can imagine is a problem when the marines are trying to navigate claustrophobic service tunnels. The suits look awesome, sure, but that isn't doing squat against the Genestealers. What's more, the armor [[ArmorIsUseless doesn't even work]], and the Genestealers can tear right through it. It wasn't until later editions that a justification was thought up: most space hulks are filled with radiation far more lethal than the Genestealers, so the Terminator Armor is seen as a necessary handicap on the occasion it's used at all. It also lets each soldier carry much heavier weapons than their normal armor, and in the tight corridors they're stuck in single file either way.
159* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'':
160** One of the earliest settings, created by Creator/GaryGygax himself, is ''TabletopGame/{{Greyhawk}}'' - a setting which spotlighted a lot of military conflicts and citystate-based {{realpolitik}} (think the Renaissance) in its background. One of its adventures, The City of Skulls, is kicked off when the good-aligned king recruits adventurers to go on a politically motivated rescue mission (the pregenerated [[PlayerCharacter PCs]] even have political ambitions and personal grudges as their motivations for accepting the mission). This is a stark contrast to the cliché assumption of adventurers being noble, heroic figures -- or at least that their dungeon-crawls have no significant political impact.
161** Early ''D&D'' has a lot of this going on, due to its true roots being in pulpy [[SwordAndSorcery sword-and-sorcery]] rather than the [[Creator/JRRTolkien Tolkien]]-esque aesthetic that many people ascribed to it. Motivations were often nakedly mercenary, characters were expected to assume meaningful responsibilities as they grew stronger, combat was grungy and lethal, and many dungeons were designed with thoughtful solutions in mind. Some of the first player characters created were Mordenkainen and Robilar, a WellIntentionedExtremist and a BloodKnight, respectively. The idea that player characters were expected to be [[HeroicFantasy straightforward heroes]] was later codified in 2nd Edition, as a reaction to [[MoralGuardians the Satanic Panic]], and has been the default assumption (to greater or lesser degrees) ever since.
162** For all its role in codifying MedievalStasis, the aforementioned Greyhawk featured both a crashed alien spaceship and an order of paladins wielding guns.
163** Things like turnstiles or gift shops in the dungeon, or monsters giving out T-shirts, while these days associated with April Fools' Day or parodies like ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' or ''ComicStrip/{{Nodwick}}'', were also present in the very first Blackmoor campaign. After all, it still was a game played by young people.
164** In relations to the discourse on monsters--especially Orcs and Drows--and monocultures related to them, such deconstruction was already prevalent in TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms in 2E where there were diverse sets of Drow cultures (one city having male rulers while others--especially Eilistraee and Vhaerun worshippers--rejected Lolth's influence) and instances where many Orcs lived in peace with non-Orcs (former mercenaries and their descendants in Thesk) and even embraced pacifism (Ondonti tribes).
165* ''{{TabletopGame/Cyberpunk}}'':
166** It was the TropeCodifier, if not {{Trope Maker|s}}, for CyberneticsEatYourSoul. Unlike its successors, it does not just treat this as a game balance issue or a matter of course, but delves fairly deeply into exactly what psychological impact replacing parts of your body with metal to give yourself superpowers would have on a person's psyche. In essence ''Cyberpunk'' treats cyberpsychosis (as it's called) as a natural effect of dealing with the nerve damage, body dysmorphia issues, and increasing alienation from the rest of humanity brought on by shoving metal into yourself to boost your abilities beyond those of everyone else. It also treats the causes of cyberpsychosis as fully treatable, and with proper psychiatric care and by choosing a cybernetic surgeon who can keep the neurological damage to a minimum, nearly all effects of cyberpsychosis can be avoided.
167*** The video game adaptation ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'', which is also canon, backs away from this with the revelation (or {{retcon}}) that cyberpsychosis doesn't even exist in the first place, but is rather a collective name for "mental breakdowns by people with cyberware" that the media finds easier to report. In short, it's a [[MediaScaremongering media-driven moral panic]] brought on by [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman suspicion of people with cybernetic enhancements]]. Whether this makes it timelier or undercuts the game's themes is up to the player.
168*** Cyberpsychosis and cyberware resistance were brought back in the 2.0 version of the game, so whether this interpretation was actual canon or an attempt by the devs to justify not including cyberpsychosis as a mechanic in the base game is increasingly unclear.
169** ''Cyberpunk'' also deconstructed EverythingIsOnline a mere six years after the first appliance was given online functionality[[note]] A vending machine at Carnegie-Mellon was connected to ARPANET and equipped with sensors to track what drinks were available and if they were properly chilled[[/note]] and three years before Mark Weiser's paper "The Computer of the 21st Century" that coined the term "ubiquitous computing" was published. Rache Bartmoss found out, to his horror, that a huge number of things that [[InventionalWisdom had no business being online]], like the ESA lunar mass driver (technically used to send minerals to Earth, but could easily wipe a city off the map) and the airlocks on space stations, could be controlled from his home computer. That was when he decided that the only way out was to destroy the Internet in its entirety, though that too [[GoneHorriblyRight went horribly right.]]
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171
172[[folder:Theatre]]
173* ''{{Theatre/Brigadoon}}'': In spite of being the TropeCodifier for VanishingVillage, the play spends a ''lot'' of time examining just how living in an isolated community like that affects someone, mostly through the character of Harry. Harry wants to get an education and marry the love of his life, but is forced by the setting to stay on his family's farm and watch his dream girl marry someone else. The rest of the cast are't completely unsympathetic, but their responses to his desire to get away are more or less sympathetic variations of "Suck it up, you big baby." By act three, Harry is more than willing to [[PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery put the village out of his misery.]]
174* ''Theatre/TheClouds'' has one of the earliest examples of a {{NEET}} in Strepsiades' lazy, horse-obsessed son Pheidippides. But his father's attempts to break him of being one are rather unconventional by modern standards. Strepsiades sends him to a school called the Thinkery, not to learn anything useful, but to learn "philosophy and rhetoric" (read: InsaneTrollLogic) so the boy can help him weasel his way out of having to pay his debts. Not only that, but having him get off his ass and get educated ends up [[GoneHorriblyRight working too well]].
175* ''Theatre/{{Lysistrata}}'' created and named the LysistrataGambit. However, the play was written as a farce; the point was to ridicule the idea of women in politics, [[ValuesDissonance an inconceivable concept in Ancient Greece]]. A modern audience might read the feminist interpretation as SeriousBusiness. While many depictions of this portray the Gambit as easy for the women, due to the ideas AllMenArePerverts and AllWomenArePrudes, the women in Lysistrata find it just as difficult as the men, and when Lysistrata first suggests the idea, they are horrified. The play also shows that the sex strike on its own isn't enough to stop the war; the women also seize the treasury to prevent the war from progressing, the idea being that the war is being prolonged by corrupt politicians so they have opportunities to enrich themselves. The sex strike helps, but there are other factors.
176* ''Theatre/DonGiovanni'' has an example of PlayingCyrano that predates ''Theatre/CyranoDeBergerac'' by a century. The example is pretty complicated, but what it boils down to is that Giovanni acts as PlayingCyrano to his servant, Leporello, and Donna Elvira. The only reason he does this, though, is so that he can get Elvira out of the way; he wants to seduce her chambermaid. What's more, Leporello doesn't even ''want'' Elvira; Giovanni is ''forcing'' him to seduce her. Might be worth noting that Rostand, the author of ''Cyrano'', wrote a FanSequel to Moliere's ''Don Juan'' which has substantially the same plot. While this work was written several decades after ''Cyrano'', it could have been in his mind when writing ''Cyrano''.
177** The trope PlayingCyrano is LostInImitation: always ASimplePlan that inevitably crashes because WhoWouldBeStupidEnough to fall for it? The TropeCodifier is the only work that really explores that question: the ruse works DespiteThePlan for more than a decade, setting Cyrano and Roxanne to a sad, unfulfilled life. This is because Cyrano [[InternalizedCategorism is so ugly he cannot conceive Roxanne could love him]], Roxanne is a [[FanDumb monomaniacal fan]] of beauty that cannot think the fair Christian could be the BrainlessBeauty, and Christian, the OnlySaneMan in this LoveTriangle, [[TheHeroDies dies before he can save his best friends from their own hypocrisy]].
178* ''Theatre/{{Pygmalion}}'' is the {{Trope Maker|s}} for the PygmalionPlot, but Creator/GeorgeBernardShaw's view of Eliza's transformation is more cynical satire than RomanticComedy. [[LostInImitation Unlike in the adaptations]], the play's Eliza has no final reconciliation scene with Henry Higgins. Although Shaw remained as the writer for both the play and film versions, the 'happy' ending in the film is a case of ExecutiveMeddling.
179* [[Creator/KarelCapek Karel Čapek]]'s classic drama ''Theatre/{{RUR}}'' [[TropeNamers single-handedly coined the term "robot"]] and [[TropeMakers invented]] a lot of robot-related tropes in science fiction. The catch? If you've actually read the play, you know the robots are more like vat-grown {{Artificial Human}}s, not machines. The idea of robots being non-organic only appeared in some of the early stage productions of the play, and for some reason, [[LostInImitation the image stuck, even though it contradicted the original text]]. It also hit a lot of other robot tropes before they were tropes. Sapient beings created by assembly line, commentary on the dangers of science run amok, robots analogous to slaves, inevitable [[RobotWar robot rebellion]] leading to the extinction of the human race... It's probably the original [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters Robot Apocalypse]] plot. Website/{{Wikipedia}}'s [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_takeover AI takeover]] article is also headed by a photograph of the original 1921 performance of ''R.U.R.''
180* There is a play in which the rich, eccentric protagonist brings the plot to a screeching halt to address the real-life competition between the theater in which his show is playing, and the theater across the street. Beyond that, the play is suffused from beginning to end with theatrical metaphors, and one of the most famous sequences includes the characters onstage watching a play even as the audience is watching them. A radical new experiment in metatheater, playing now at your favorite off-Broadway location, and critiquing the excess of artificiality in contemporary theater? No – it's ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', and [[JustForFun/TheZerothLawOfTropeExamples it's been around a while]].
181** Hamlet himself is one of the first instances of an AntiHero. An Anti-Hero who ends up getting dozens of people killed out of petty revenge, most of whom had absolutely nothing to do with the conspiracy he's taking revenge against. He's so obsessed with his vengeance that he ends up abusing/neglecting his girlfriend to the point of driving her over the DespairEventHorizon and into madness and suicide. Indeed, Hamlet comes off as LethallyStupid at times.
182* The BastardBastard is one of the most familiar tropes of Shakespearean-type stories. A story where the bastard is portrayed as sympathetic, justifying his evil by saying how [[FreudianExcuse society perceives him as evil]] and he is being treated as TheUnfavourite? Sounds like a new idea? It was done in ''Theatre/KingLear'', with Edmund, the archetypal BastardBastard of fiction. Also Edmund shows he isn't entirely evil, as [[VillainsDyingGrace while dying he tries to do some good and save Cordelia]].
183* ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' is the TropeCodifier for StarCrossedLovers, but the play also works as a GenreDeconstruction of the more upbeat typical CommediaDellArte plot. So the ZanyScheme doesn't work out, and five young people come to die. The survivors get at best a BittersweetEnding, as the sudden deaths of their beloved children can finally make the two families lay their stupid feud to rest.
184* ''Theatre/TheTempest'':
185** One notable scene between Gonzalo, Antonio and Sebastian is essentially a cynical deconstruction of Anarchism... written more than two centuries before it was a recognized philosophical system. While awed by the beauty of Prospero's island, Gonzalo waxes lyrical about the perfect self-governing utopia that he would build if he were allowed to stay there forever, before Antonio (the villain) points out that [[JerkassHasAPoint one can't force a whole population to conform to a "perfect" system unless one is willing to impose it on them by force]] - which contradicts the notion of a world with no authority figures.
186--->'''Gonzalo:''' In the commonwealth I would by contraries execute all things; for no kind of traffic would I admit; no name of magistrate; letters should not be known; riches, poverty, and use of service, none; contract, succession, bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; no use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; no occupation; all men idle, all; and women too, but innocent and pure; no sovereignty--\
187'''Sebastian:''' Yet he would be king on it...\
188'''Antonio:''' [[FullCircleRevolution The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning!]]
189** With his reverence for nature, Gonzalo's aforementioned utopian speech almost sounds like something out of Creator/HenryDavidThoreau... but it's delivered by a drunken AbsentMindedProfessor who's unaware that [[DramaticIrony his "utopian" island is actually home to a temperamental sorcerer who rules it with an iron fist]]. And said speech comes in a play where ''the very first words spoken onstage'' are a dialogue about how humankind will always be vulnerable to nature's fury, delivered by a crew of frazzled sailors as they weather a storm.
190* ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'':
191** LadyMacbeth defined the trope for women who drive their less ambitious husbands to villainy, but the {{Trope Namer|s}} is quickly driven mad by her guilt, and the pressure of intrigue. It gets especially bad when the walls start closing in around the two of them, and Lady Macbeth realizes that her "perfect" murder wasn't so perfect. Both the guilt and the pressure drive her into insanity, culminating in her "Out, damned spot!" line in which [[BloodyHallucinationsOfGuilt she hallucinates blood on her hands that she can't wash off, no matter how hard she tries]], which eventually makes her DrivenToSuicide when she knows she's done for.
192** The soliloquy about life being "a walking shadow" and "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" inspired countless StrawNihilist AntiHero characters since who've quoted it to justify their actions, and it's essentially the speech that made nihilism cool. Except that the people who write those characters [[MisaimedFandom tend to forget]] that Macbeth is the ''[[VillainProtagonist bad guy]]'', and all the things that have [[DespairEventHorizon driven him over the edge]] (like his wife's suicide) have happened as a direct consequence of his own selfish actions. It's not the speech of an aggrieved, noble man [[CosmicPlaything unjustly tormented by the universe at large]], but the bitter ramblings of a mad, petty tyrant who [[NeverMyFault sees himself as the victim]] because he can't accept that what he's done is wrong.
193** This play has one of the most iconic and influential examples of the WickedWitch trope with regards to the three [[TheWeirdSisters weird sisters]]. But rather than being ObviouslyEvil, they're merely a source of dangerous wisdom, and the text [[AmbiguouslyEvil doesn't state whether they actually are evil]]. It's telling that many modern productions - inspired by the trope - expand them into being [[TheChessmaster chessmasters]] who orchestrated the whole thing.
194* ''Theatre/{{Pagliacci}}'' concludes with a MonsterClown stabbing people to death in front of a live audience, but the reason the drama is so effective is precisely because the trope is unbuilt and ''nobody'' expects a clown to be scary, let alone murder anyone. In fact, Canio (the clown) is trying to play a NonIronicClown, while he is actually a SadClown but TheShowMustGoOn. He's not a psychopath or a monster, just a guy trying to bring a little laughter into people's hearts on the stage who finally snaps when his wife turns against him.
195* Creator/NoelCoward is famous for his light comedies of manners set in upper class drawing rooms where warring couples spend the play hurling witty comments at each other. So a play in which the couple are both deeply damaged individuals in which the man is concealing a drug addiction and possibly repressed homosexuality while the woman is indulging in a stream of meaningless love affairs with much younger men... oh and the couple are not lovers but mother and son (for extra Freudian undertones). Sounds like a DarkerAndEdgier deconstruction of Coward's plays, right? The play is actually ''The Vortex'' and was one of Noel Coward's earliest plays, written well before the drawing room comedies with which he made his name.
196* ''Theatre/{{Carmen}}'' can be viewed as a deconstruction of the ManicPixieDreamGirl trope, as noted on that trope's page. The uptight Don José's life is ruined by his love for the free-spirited Carmen, not made better, and their clashing lifestyles and values eventually [[spoiler:drive her to leave him for another man and him to murder her in a jealous rage.]] The story made its debut in novella form in 1845 and premiered on the opera stage in 1875, long before the familiar happy version of the ManicPixieDreamGirl trope was widespread.
197* ''Theatre/MadameButterfly'' is the TropeCodifier of the "[[MightyWhiteyAndMellowYellow exotic, submissive Asian woman falls in love with a Western man]]" plot. The opera itself is actually something of a deliberate deconstruction; the American Pinkerton is a total cad who ruins the Japanese Butterfly's life with his selfish nature and thoughtlessness. It’s topped off by Pinkerton abandoning Butterfly to marry an American woman, which was what he wanted to do all along. Both women also remain unaware of both each other and their relationship with Pinkerton until it's far too late.
198* The climax of the {{melodrama}} play ''Under the Gaslight'' is that of a DistressedDude ChainedToARailway by the villain before being saved by his girlfriend. Sounds like something a parody of a silent movie would do to spoof subvert the classic DamselInDistress tropes.... But the play's from ''1867''.
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201[[folder:Webcomics]]
202* ''Webcomic/BobAndGeorge'' [[TropeCodifier codified]] many of the tropes for {{Sprite Comic}}s, but reading it now makes it read like a big deconstruction of the very tropes it so codified. The AuthorAvatar constantly gets abused, kidnapped or exploited for his control, and having him gone throws everything into chaos. The massive amounts of stupidity displayed by the cast makes them all but useless when [[KnightOfCerebus a real threat shows up]]. The same characters' obsession with [[TrademarkFavoriteFood ice cream]] also leads them to making things worse when they would rather eat ice cream than stop Dr. Wily. Having NoFourthWall means the characters constantly complain about being in a comic at all, insulting both the comic creator and its readership. Finally, [[spoiler:the entire comic turns out to be a ShaggyDogStory when it's revealed that Bob and George's mom set the whole comic up as a gigantic GambitRoulette so that George would be willing to kill Bob if it came to that, both to scare Bob into not being such a {{Jerkass}}, and to [[ARealManIsAKiller toughen up George]]]]. The ending also skewers the [[YouCantFightFate inevitable, tragic deaths of the cast]], which the comic ended up popularizing as a theory for what actually happened to the cast, by [[spoiler:having them all fake their deaths because Dr. Wily found out how he dies and they move to Acapulco, where they live happily ever after]].
203* ''Webcomic/NuzlockeComics'' invented and popularized a certain SelfImposedChallenge for ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' players, along with the tradition of writing a webcomic about their Trainer OC's adventure. Ruby, the writer for the original, ''lost'' his first challenge to Steven Stone, his Fire Red version challenge ended in a PyrrhicVictory over Mewtwo, and his White version storyline has N actively murdering Ruby's Pokemon to [[WhatTheHellHero blame it on him and his challenge]].
204* ''Webcomic/DMOfTheRings'' is considered the {{Trope Maker|s}} for the CampaignComic, but it doesn't make use of the tropes a campaign comic is usually known for. Usually in a CampaignComic, the players have identities and distinct personalities that affect how they play their characters, and the game tries to parse the distinctions of the setting into gaming terms that become a theme (for example, the over-the-top ''Manga/OnePiece'' fighting antics and idiocy of the protagonists turns into a theme of absurd MinMaxing and LethalJokeCharacter builds). ''Webcomic/DMOfTheRings'' is largely built around how the setting and story of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' is an awful choice for traditional gaming and how dysfunctional the group is; we learn next to nothing about the people playing the game and even Gimli's initial introduction as TheRoleplayer is quickly forgotten.
205* The ''Webcomic/VirginVsChad'' meme is commonly used as a plain "bad vs good" template where the Virgin is something they don't like and the Chad is something they do like. However, the [[https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/265/329/e83.png original comparison that started it all]] actually had a purpose which was to mock the original "Virgin Walk" post by creating its {{foil}}, the "Chad Stride". It showed how the Virgin and the Chad both exaggerate stereotypes of "beta" and "alpha" males with the former being easy to be around but boring, and the latter being fun but extremely obnoxious and undesirable to be around. Most comparisons just take the format but [[TheThemeParkVersion not really the message]].
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208[[folder:Web Original]]
209* ''WebAnimation/InanimateInsanity'':
210** Taco can today be seen as a brutal subversion of the TooQuirkyToLose {{Cloudcuckoolander}} relying on WordSaladHumor prevalent in ObjectShows such as [[WebAnimation/ObjectOverload Toaster]] and [[WebAnimation/ObjectHavoc Gold]] -- with her revealed [[spoiler:[[ObfuscatingInsanity to have been completely lucid the whole time]] and [[ManipulativeBastard exploiting her apparent silliness to curry favor with others]]]]. But as the second major object show and thus [[TropeCodifier cementing many of the tropes]] that ''WebAnimation/BattleForDreamIsland'' [[TropeMaker conceptualized]], ''Inanimate Insanity'' was free to experiment with its character archetypes.
211** Balloon deconstructed the [[BadBoss "overbearing leader" archetype]] common in other object shows, as seen with ''WebAnimation/ObjectOverload'''s Clock, [[ToughLeaderFacade as Balloon deliberately put on the appearance of being a jerk]] to try and ensure his progression, only for him to develop a ZeroPercentApprovalRating that ended with his own team mutinying against him, [[ReformedButRejected and his efforts to make up for his actions falling on deaf ears]]. Again, this came from the second major object show, before many of Balloon's imitators were conceptualized.
212* ''WebVideo/MarbleHornets'':
213** Many of the problems stem from how the protagonist lacks discretion and publicly broadcasts all his findings, actions, and plans online in a way that anyone and everyone can see what he's up to, including his (potential) enemies and allies. It would be considered a {{Deconstruction}} of the various web series in Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos if it wasn't the progenitor of them and is largely [[FollowTheLeader what the rest all follow]].
214** With the use of the AxCrazy masked people stalking the protagonists and Totheark sending confusing and vaguely threatening video messages, it became popular in other web series to give the Slender Man proxies who acted in a similar manner. However, in ''Marble Hornets'', [[spoiler:it turns out the crazy masked people are not necessarily working for the Operator, whereas those who take the closest thing to its proxies are more lucid]].
215** The tendency for people in Slender Man stories to film everything is called out by another character when it's pointed out in-universe that the protagonist has no plan beyond "film everything and see what happens." Not only does this not really give them any answers, it ruins the lives of everyone around him over his insistence on doing it. Given what happens to the characters throughout the story, [[StrawmanHasAPoint it's pretty hard to argue with that.]]
216* The LeeroyJenkins trope is derived from the ''WebVideo/LeeroyJenkinsVideo'', which has gone memetic as a descriptor of players/characters who attack impulsively without thinking. However, while the eponymous individual does display that behavior in the original video, the video also shows his teammates as [[ComplexityAddiction fitting the opposite extreme and being overly cautious and methodical in their planning]]. Further, the TotalPartyKill which results is in part because they stuck to their original plan despite changed circumstances. The plan itself is also ''completely insane'', and involves intentionally sabotaging themselves at every point (pulling all the enemies at once and disabling their own casters by misusing an ability that ''kills the healers using it'' are highlights). Even though the plan was so poorly thought-out that it was doomed to fail from the very start, LeeroyJenkins as a trope is still synonymous with wrecking plans by being reckless.
217* The [[HauntedTechnology "haunted video game"]] genre of {{Creepypasta}}s (e.g. ''Fanfic/SonicEXE'' and ''WebVideo/BenDrowned'') have come under fire for their StrictlyFormula plots, which means that some of the very first works in said genre retroactively subverting expectations may come as a surprise:
218** ''Fanfic/PokemonBlack'' is an incredibly mundane story by today's standards. Right off the bat, the protagonist knows that the eponymous game is a ROM hack and that there's nothing supernatural about it. Rather than be scared by what the game presents, they're intrigued and try to replay it to find out if there's any alternate endings. By the end, they're not killed or psychologically scarred, just a bit sad. The only truly mysterious element is the unanswered question of who made the ROM and why.
219** The ''Literature/NESGodzillaCreepypasta'' admittedly indulged in cliches such as "hyper-realistic graphics" and the player being forced to continue playing unwillingly. However, it also subverted some of the cliches that its imitators mostly [[ClicheStorm played straight]]: [[spoiler:some of the supernatural phenomena in the cartridge was on the player's side, and it ended with a SurprisinglyHappyEnding]].
220** A common hallmark for the "haunted video game" genre is for the game to be openly malicious and [[TheMostDangerousVideoGame actively attempting to kill its players]]. Not so ''Sim Albert'', in which the big twist is that [[spoiler:Albert was a FriendlyGhost who was using the player's copy of ''VideoGame/TheSims'' to live the life he never had]]. ''Sim Albert'' was made in 2012, merely two years after the start of ''Ben Drowned''.
221* Most "Lost Episode" creepypastas go for the NothingIsScarier route in regards to the episode's origins, having the protagonist purchase a DVD from TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday or catch a mysterious, untraceable broadcast on their TV. While it still has a lot of ambiguity, ''Fanfic/SquidwardsSuicide'', the inspiration for those stories, had an intern working at Nickelodeon as its narrator, providing a setting where it would actually be plausible for someone to see lost cartoon episodes.
222* A lot of the review shows that arose on the Internet during the late 2000s were inspired by WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic and WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd. However, in mirroring their use of AlterEgoActing, many imitators tended to not notice that both reviewers were [[DeconstructiveParody deconstructive parodies]] of the CausticCritic trope. The Nerd [[NostalgiaFilter is stuck in the past]] (the first time he reviewed a newer generation game, he was utterly bamboozled by it) and has [[HairTriggerTemper major anger issues]] that seem to get worse as the show goes on, while the Critic is a bitter jerk who became a caustic critic largely because of his incredibly screwed-up childhood which was plagued with [[AbusiveParents parental abuse]]. Both are the {{Butt Monkey}}s of their own shows.
223* ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'', meanwhile, is probably the TropeCodifier for caustic criticism on the Internet, especially in the video game community. But its causticity is almost always [[AccentuateTheNegative amped up to an absurd degree]] -- even while implying that he actually liked the game in question -- and Yahtzee frequently diverges into ranting about his own fans or [[SelfDeprecation himself]], or rambling incoherently. The character comes off as more of an eloquent TalkativeLoon than a critical genius. This is further exemplified by the fact that he coined the phrase "Glorious PC Master Race" ''sarcastically'' as a way of mocking elitist PC players, before said players adopted the mantle ''[[MisaimedFandom completely unironically]]''.
224* Most people know Ventrilo Harassment videos for featuring uptight gamers getting irrationally upset over soundboards early on, while later installments feature all but one person having a good time (or in a few rare cases, everyone's having a good time). However, in the first one (with VideoGame/DukeNukem soundclips) only Peggy gets upset; the others find it amusing until she starts screaming her head off.
225* ''WebVideo/DesertBusForHope'' is essentially a parody of [[{{Telethon}} video-gaming marathons for charity]] that started years before any normal ones, like [[WebVideo/GamesDoneQuick GDQ]], existed. The only "game" they play is a ridiculously boring bus-driving simulator--ostensibly, viewers donate to [[ComedicSociopathy torment the hosts by making them play it longer]], but the actual attractions are the sketch comedy, nerd-celebrity guests, and prize giveaways.
226* ''WebVideo/TwitchPlaysPokemon'' had a good chunk of the lore written for ''[[WebVideo/TwitchPlaysPokemonRed Red]]'' focus on aspects of the series that would later be taken for granted by its characters. The protagonist was often seen as either a loon or a remote-controlled {{Ridiculously Human Robot|s}} instead of just a quirky individual, the [[HearingVoices voices in his head]] were very much a ''bad'' influence rather than a fun companion, centering the blame for most mishaps on [[TheScapegoat someone who happened to be there]] was shown to hurt the poor 'mon they inflicted it on, and it was said that the moment Red returned home he collapsed from lack of sleep. His appearance in ''[[WebVideo/TwitchPlaysPokemonCrystal Crystal]]'' was split between isolating himself from Kanto since he was paranoid it would happen to him again, trying to fight AJ on the grounds that the voices in their heads would leave if he won, and foregoing all of it to have a friendly competition with someone for once instead of being forced to do it.
227* Two of ''Platform/GoAnimate'''s most infamous trends started out as ordinary before ballooning to absurd levels:
228** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y9QZ7T-eaQ This video]], possibly the first Grounded video to ever be made, sees the troublemaker expelled from school and grounded for backtalking to his teacher... only to be readmitted and unpunished after he apologizes to the principal (the punishment in question is more reasonable than [[DisproportionateRetribution what would become the norm]], too - he's merely banned from TV for two weeks and from attending a friend's birthday party).
229** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLHjy8_2B4U This early "(Character) Misbehaves at (Restaurant)" video]] has the main character throwing a fit for the considerably less petty reason of not being able to order 80 dollars worth of food from a Popeye's restaurant instead of, say, [[UnsatisfiableCustomer the restaurant being out of the drink they wanted with their meal]]. Instead of destroying the restaurant, the character simply ransacks the counter and knocks the menu board down (albeit still injuring the cashier in the process). Finally, instead of the character's tantrum [[WorstNewsJudgmentEver getting mass media attention]] (complete with [[ComeToGawk the kid being humiliated on national television]]), all that happens as a result of his actions (besides getting grounded) is that he and his mother [[PersonaNonGrata are banned from ever going to Popeye's again]].
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