Line #13 YMMV/JourneyToTheWest


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3	* AccidentalAesop: A double example from both sides. When applying for a job, be prepared to start from the bottom no matter how talented and powerful you are outside the company. For employers, make sure the job given matches your applicant's qualifications. When Sun Wukong asked to be an immortal deity from Heaven, he was angry that he was given the job of a mere stableman and later on, the watcher of immortal peaches, both which failed to placate him and caused his rampage which was only stopped by Laozi and the Buddha. Wukong had to learn that actual job experience is still a thing even among the divine, which for him came in the form of the titular journey. While it worked out in the end for everyone, the whole mess could've been avoided if Heaven actually tested his capabilities seriously and gave him a job that suits his caliber while Wukong refused to think of working/earning his way up the hierarchy.
4	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Is Xuanzang really that dumb to fall for the disguises and traps of the many, many obvious demons in disguise who want to eat him? Or is it an intentional XanatosGambit on his part? If it is really is a person in need, he becomes the ideal Buddhist monk by helping out. If it is a demon in disguise, he gets rescued while having his disciples kill them. Either way, he is making the world a better place.
5	* AluminumChristmasTrees: Making a monkey the Guardian of Horses seems absurd to modern thinking but in ancient China, before the influx of large, trained guard dogs from the West, many ranchers actually did employ monkeys as guard animals to deter predators from attacking their horses.
6	* AwesomeEgo: Sun Wukong's ego reaches the heights of heaven, and his cockiness touches the bottom of the deepest sea. And he can back it up well.
7	* BadassDecay: At his height, defending Flower Fruit Mountain from heaven with his army, Sun Wukong was unstoppable, even in solo battles against many combatants. After spending 500 years under a different mountain, he loses against demons easily and often has to go to heaven for help.
8	* EnsembleDarkhorse: The White Bone Demon appears to be this; despite being a demon with a rather ordinary skill set (shapeshifting) and pretty much zero fighting ability, the arc featuring her is one of the most well-known in all of China, and the subject of numerous operas and television specials. They even sometimes change the story and delete the demon that comes later.
9	* EpilepticTrees:
10	** A running theory in China has it that the Six-Eared Macaque ''didn't'' die at the end of his confrontation with Wukong, but instead replaced him for the rest of the journey while [[KillAndReplace the real Sun Wukong was killed instead]]. Justifications for the theory include the fact that Wukong's less powerful and bloodthirsty in following chapters, that nobody but the Buddha knew who the real Sun Wukong was since the disguise was too convincing, and that the heavens and Buddha had grounds to kill the real Wukong because they felt that he was becoming (or already was) too unstable.
11	** Additionally, though ultimately explained as an act of spite, it's entirely possible that the intention of giving Trip blank scriptures was for him to become a source of authority in his own right, but Trip was too stuck on the idea of getting already existent texts.
12	* FanficFuel:
13	** The titular journey to the west. As any TV adaptation with original stories can tell you, the road trip-style premise allows room for plenty of self-contained adventures Sanzang and his disciples might have gone on in their travels.
14	** For that matter, the other two immortal monkeys of the four the Buddha mentioned. While we are shown the might of Sun Wukong and a fraction of the power and trickery of the Six-Eared Macaque, the other two monkeys hardly get much information about them, even in later adaptations of the tale.
15	* FridgeBrilliance: It is shown and stated several times that Sun Wukong is able to cover hundreds of miles in just a few seconds with his somersault cloud, which makes you wonder why he doesn't simply carry Xuanzang to the Western Temple by cloud and save them the long journey by land. This is lampshaded by Zhu Bajie in chapter 22, after which Sun Wukong explains that it is impossible for mortals like Xuanzang to travel by cloud because their mortal flesh and bones are too heavy for that. Also, Xuanzang is the only one that the Buddha will give the scriptures to, so there is no point in Sun Wukong traveling to the temple by himself and ask for the scriptures on Xuanzang's behalf. But in any case, the whole ''point'' of the journey is for Xuanzang to go through lots of dangers before getting the scriptures, so that people back home will be properly impressed, and so that it will be symbolic of a pious person's journey through life's temptations etc. Furthermore, had the pilgrims immediately arrived, or even not have to listen to Xuanzang's insistence on helping everyone, several demons would still be at large and terrorize the population for a long time.
16	* GeniusBonus: General Three O'Clock and the Special Dweller's names hint to their identities. [[spoiler:Three O'Clock is the hour of the Tiger, while Special Spotted Dweller is a Chinese epithet for bull.]]
17	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff:
18	** The novel's popularity and influence on East Asian cultures cannot be overstated. This is especially evident in Japan, which created large amounts of anime, manga, and video game adaptations of the story, including ''Manga/DragonBall''.
19	** In Vietnam, the 1986 Chinese adaptation is broadcast every summer by at least one local channel and is widely regarded as the best live-action adaptation of the classic.
20	* IconicCharacterForgottenTitle: The story is often more well known through its most famous character Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King.
21	* LauncherOfAThousandShips: Think of a character in ''Journey to the West.'' Sun Wukong has probably been paired with that character.
22	* MainstreamObscurity: Easily the most famous of the 'Four Great Classical Novels', it has spawned endless derivative works and is popular throughout East Asia but it's rare to know people who have actually read the book. Most East Asians are only familiar with it through PopCulturalOsmosis and television adaptations of the story. Most Westerners will only be vaguely familiar of it through Manga/DragonBall, via speaking out Wukong's name in on'yomi (as "Gokuu") unknowingly for a long time.
23	* MemeticMutation: The AnimatedAdaptation ''Journey to the West: Legends of the Monkey King'' has earned notoriety in Greece due to its poor dub. Especially a scene where a thief yells "I WANT THE GOLD!" in the worst dub possible... then another of the thieves looks for gold between Tripitaka's legs.
24	* MemeticLoser: The Jade Emperor largely due to ''WebAnimation/OverlySarcasticProductions'''s portrayal of him as a total jobber. While he cannot control Sun Wukong at all he still has a few badass moments and most adaptations tend to give him at least a modicum of dignity (though the fact that he is a highly revered deity in most other contexts probably helps).
25	* MentorShip: See {{Shipping}} below. While one of the main messages of the story is that romance is an obstacle on the path to enlightenment, adaptations of ''Journey To The West'' have been setting Sanzang and Wukong up as a couple for centuries. While it's normal for one of them to have a GenderFlip to facilitate this, it's certainly not mandatory.
26	%%* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: Some of the greatest in literature. Most of them pulled off by Sun Wukong.
27	* SacredCow: For Chinese audiences, the 1980s TV series is so universally beloved, that all subsequent TV and film adaptations of the story would be inevitably compared to it.
28	* {{Shipping}}: Has one of the oldest, most famous, and most influential shipping fandoms in literature. Making Sanzang a beautiful woman and setting her up in a romance with Wukong (or, less commonly, keeping him as a beautiful man and doing the same) has been a thing in adaptations of ''Journey To The West'' for centuries.
29	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Yu Long. The number of stories that he has ''any'' kind of plot impact can be counted on one hand. Other adaptations be it dramas and/or video games often fix this by making him have a bigger role and/or being playable.
30	* ValuesDissonance: A lot of motivations and justifications for the heroes' behavior look definitely odd to a modern reader.
31	** The fate of the villain of Chapter 84 can be seen as this for many modern western-minded readers. For those who don't know, in that chapter the pilgrims come across a country led by a king whose goal was to [[WouldBeRudeToSayGenocide kill 10,000 Buddhist monks]] in his kingdom because of [[spoiler: [[DisproportionateRetribution wrongs done to him by Buddhist monks in a past life]]]]. In the end, he is [[HumiliationConga changed into a monk]] and redeemed, with that chapter demonstrating the forgiving power of Buddhism. However, given the scale of his crimes, most modern readers would find it unrealistic and expect him to be killed instead.
32	*** To add to this, a few chapters later, our heroes come across the Phoenix-Immortal Prefecture, which has suffered years of drought. The reason behind this drought was that the Prefect threw a temper tantrum after a spat with his wife, knocked over his votive table, and fed the offerings to his dogs. For that, the CelestialBureaucracy declared that there would be no rain in that prefecture until [[DisproportionateRetribution a chicken had finished eating a mountain of rice, a small dog finished eating a mountain of noodles, and a small lamp burned through a huge metal key]]. Some Western and modern readers are left wondering why an entire prefecture has to suffer so horribly due to their leader's one-time blasphemy, while a king who ''killed thousands of monks for years'' just [[KarmaHoudini gets a slap on the wrist]].
33	** Bajie joins TheTeam because his mortal in-laws end up hiring Monkey and Xuanzang to exorcise him from their farm and chase him away from their daughter, Blue Orchid. However, Bajie legitimately married Blue Orchid and did so with their permission, and while he is quite a glutton (as he himself admits), he's also a very hard and diligent worker who more than earns his keep by his labors. As he notes to Monkey-in-disguise, he cleans the ground, drains ditches, carries bricks and tiles, builds walls, plows fields (pulling the plough singlehandedly at that), plants grain and generally improves the farm, with even his in-laws admitting that he does his labors, which is why they were happy to take him in as their son-in-law in the first place. So why do they want him gone? Because it's undignified to have a monster as a son-in-law. This makes perfect sense to Chinese and Japanese cultures, even today, but modern Westerners tend to see them as {{Ungrateful Bastard}}s engaging in FantasticRacism: he's being cast out, despite being everything a farmer could want in a son-in-law, [[UnintentionallySympathetic simply because of his race]]. [[note]] Incidentally, this may be why this aspect of Bajie's story is almost never adapted straight. For example, in ''Series/{{Monkey}}'', Bajie is to be exorcised because he's given up being a dutiful son-in-law to instead become a wastrel who spends his days eating, drinking and picking fights. In ''Manga/DragonBall'', the Bajie-{{expy}} Oolong is an enemy because he keeps kidnapping girls (all of whom end up pushing him around and bullying him, to the point he's happy to give them back) and the whole "in-laws call for exorcism" angle is dropped entirely. Admittedly Bajie isn't ''entirely'' innocent -- by the time Monkey and Xuanzang come along, he's keeping Blue Orchid locked up in his private room and not letting her parents see her. But it's never clarified whether he's doing that because he's just an asshole or if he's only doing so because he's angry at how, after having welcomed him into the family, his in-laws have turned on him for his supernatural nature. [[/note]]. Notably, Wukong does sass the patriarch about this aspect of the whole affair between fights with Baije, though it's hard to tell how serious he was about it.
34	** As mentioned under DisproportionateRetribution on the main page, Shā Wùjìng receives 800 lashes, is exiled from Heaven, is transformed into a demon, and has to spend the rest of his life hiding in a river to avoid a magic sword that will stab him daily in the chest, all for the heinous crime of...breaking a cup or a vase. A little extreme but not unreasonable in the time-period for when it's set (porcelain, crystal and jade being ''very'' difficult to work with, so it is literally more precious than gold), but horrifying to a modern age audience. Some adaptations state that said vase belonged to an very powerful immortal like the Queen Mother of the West to semi-justify the punishment.
35	* TheWoobie: The Queen of Western Liang. A [[IJustWantToBeLoved lonely,]] ReasonableAuthorityFigure that seems to be genuinely in love with Xuanzang as opposed to her [[InformedFlaw man-hungry subjects]] and the [[SuccubiAndIncubi selfish, lustful demonesses that hit on Xunanzang elsewhere.]] She is also [[PetTheDog nice to the point of registering the disciples' names,]] and the big conflict of the arc isn't even remotely her fault. What does she get for it? Scared off by Bajie and literally left in the dust.
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Context YMMV / JourneyToTheWest