[[TheBigLebowski http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/automotivator_001.jpg]]
->'''Yami Yugi:''' Dude, don't you think you're overreacting a little? I mean, it's just a card game.\\
'''Kaiba:''' ''(about to jump off a castle battlement)'' Card games are serious business!\\
-- ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series}}''

-> '''Ming-Ming:''' This is se-wius!\\
-- ''{{Wonder Pets}}''

SeriousBusiness is when a show revolves around an activity where a sizable portion of the in-series population takes it ''far'' more seriously than it should. If something's popularity rivals that of Elvis, the Beatles or Michael Jackson, or if there are mainstream ''schools'' devoted to it instead of teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic; it's SeriousBusiness. Expect many a CookingDuel with plenty of TrashTalk to ensue throughout the series. Quite often the protagonist wants ToBeAMaster, particularly if said protagonist is young. Sometimes occurs due to a misplaced HeroicVow.

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There are two variations:
# The characters really do think this trivial matter is that serious. Compare MatterOfLifeAndDeath and NotAGame. On the other hand, either of those tropes can be invoked for SeriousBusiness to show exactly how out of touch with reality a character is.
# The characters take this trivial matter that seriously because it has real consequences. Lives, or the fate of the world, turn on this activity. Which, of course, hands the IdiotBall to someone else: who on earth thought it was a good idea to set things up so the fate of the world rests on a ''game''?\\
Can shade into CombatByChampion, where the reason is to contain conflict.

This trope is named after a MemeticMutation of the tongue-in-cheek saying that originated from the SomethingAwful forums, "The Internet is serious business." There are, of course, some TruthInTelevision examples.

When SeriousBusiness gets in the way of entertainment, we blame the StopHavingFunGuys.

Often a SillyReasonForWar. Frequently "opposed" by the CavalierCompetitor.

Compare WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome, StopHavingFunGuys and TooMuchOfAGoodThing. When the SeriousBusiness is a crime, it's WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous.

Not related to [[http://www.seriousbusiness.com this]].

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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Advertising]]
* By far the worst offender has to be [[CommercialsTropes commercials.]] In almost any given ad, the product of the ad is SeriousBusiness. This ranges from out-of-the-blue conversations about what the product is or does, to the ever-common chases and fights over the product -- forgivable for cartoon commercials for kids' cereal, embarrassing if it's a commercial for some product obviously intended to be purchased by adults -- to the worst of the lot, beer commercials, such as the Bud Light ad where a man in an arctic station trades away all his clothes for a bottle of beer, then has the gall to tell the other (now warm) guy that ''he'' got the raw deal. See ThePowerOfCheese for details.
*It's surprisingly common for products to talk un-ironically, un-''ashamedly'' about all the wonderful things the product will do for your life that have literally nothing to do with the product. Some make these claims seriously, or at least [[ViewersAreMorons hoping you will take them that way]]. Stouffer's macaroni and cheese ads went too far and explicitly claimed it would help raise your grades...for once they got in trouble.
* A1's "yeah, it's that important" ad campaign is about being SeriousBusiness.
* Another ad that is set in an arctic station, similar to the above Bud Light example, has some people pull up and find all the people inside starving to death. They find that there are plenty of rations and enough food to go around, then they come across the reason for their hunger: there's no more Heinz ketchup left, the only bottle being empty.
* What would ''you'' do for a Klondike bar?
* Don't forget that ShavingIsScience.
* Double Pits to Chesty. that is a messed up deal.
* From an anti-perspirant commerical: "On the outside you are cool and collected, but in the inside your emotions are free. Emotions make you sweat 5 times more. That is why you need..."
* In one Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial, getting ''precisely what you want'' is such SeriousBusiness that when the Variety Bucket (three different kinds of chicken in one container) is placed before the family, they all slump in sulky disappointment -- until Mom comes to the rescue and ''rotates the bucket one hundred twenty degrees clockwise'', so that each family member has his preferred form of chicken ''directly in front of him.''
* An early-80s commercial featured a family arguing over which kind of toothpaste to buy. The teenage son says, "But mom, what about my social life? I need a gel for fresh breath."
* Lampshaded by Ann Miller's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jU2pl7bqKg commercial]] for Campbell's Great American Soups. Just watch it.
* If there was any board game that was SeriousBusiness, it had to be Crossfire. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M-WmQWEJRo Crossfire! Crossfire! CROSSFIYAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!]]
** HUUH!!!
* Similar to the beer and ketchup ads from above, some 90s Miracle Whip commercials would feature someone making a huge, delicous looking sandwich...and then throwing the whole thing into the garbage when it turns out they're out of Miracle Whip. (God forbid you just stick the sandwich in the refrigerator while you run down to the store!)
** And now the modern Miracle Whip commercials are passing the product off as being almost counter-cultural and revolutionary as if it were rock and roll in the 50's or 60's. "We are Miracle Whip, and we will not tone it down."
* Averted by Norwegian pop brand Solo, which ads generally featured some guy screwing something up, and the blurb "Solo - quite possibly the only pop that doesn't help against anything but thirst" popping up on the screen, telling us it's just pop, not serious business.
** On a similar theme, one Sprite advert in the UK went out of its way to inform the viewer that it would not make them run faster, jump higher or become more attractive to the opposite sex.
* Does anyone else get the feeling that breakfast is becoming Serious Business with McDonald's lately? Yes, McDonald's, we get it already. Breakfast is greater than Jesus.
** Hey, I might have kept going to church if communion had cheese, egg, bacon, and maple syrup in it. Why couldn't Jesus have been more delicious?
* A hilarious parody of these types of ads is the famous commercial for the fictional energy drink, Power Thirst.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* In the world of ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'' and especially the sequel ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh GX}}'', the card game of "Duel Monsters" is a global phenomenon. National tournaments, academies, politics, etc. all revolve around a fairly simple collectible card game. And this isn't even including the mystical occult properties, known only to a few: that ''Duel Monsters'' is actually based on magical games powerful ancient Egyptians used to play. Yes, ''ancient Egyptians.''
** [[http://www.yugiohtheabridgedseries.com/ Yu-Gi-Oh the abridged series]] shows that by replacing the term 'Duel Monsters' with 'a children's card game,' every conversation sounds ten times more ridiculous.
** [[http://www.yugiohtheabridgedseries.com/ The Abridged Series]] actually [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] this in Episode 14, where [[TropeNamer Kaiba himself states]] that "CardGames are SeriousBusiness."
** ''GX's'' protagonist Judai attempts time and again to convince his opponents that their reasons for getting into the game are wrong, and need to remember that the main point of the game is to have fun. Pretty amusing when you consider that ''these people go to a prestigious boarding school for the sole purpose of learning how to play it better.''
** ''Yu-Gi-Oh GX'' has pushed this whole nonsense even further by revealing [[spoiler: cardgames are the foundation of the universe, rather than just mere ancient Egyptian game of power]].
** At one point during GX, Duel Monsters is placed next to business and politics in terms of importance and world-control. You heard me. %%A CHILDREN'S CARD GAME HAS REPLACED RELIGION IN TERMS OF GLOBAL IMPORTANCE.
*** Only logical given the above spoiler. [[spoiler: Its certainly replaced religion in cosmogony, so why shouldn't it replace it publicly!]]
** Duel Monsters seems to be the only game in the entire world, it's likely Pegasus has a monopoly on entertainment unknown to most of the world.
***True. In fact the only other games that have been shown (Dungeon Dice, that video game Kaiba developed) were just blatant ripoffs of Duel Monsters. Not to mention the Duel Monsters themed amusement park.
*****Actually there was an arcade in one episode and Tea played DDR there.
*****Of course, {{Bowdlerization}} normally keeps that scene from American audiences.
*****And in the original manga, the first third or so of the series has a different game each chapter. The card game is played ''three times'' during this period. Those first two duels (Grandpa vs. Kaiba and Yugi vs. Kaiba) in the first episode of the anime aired in America? They were originally separated by an extremely long death course. That bit got cut, likely because it didn't have enough ProductPlacement. Highlights include Joey fighting a chainsaw-weilding serial killer. Despite being unarmed, Joey wins by ''[[CrowningMomentOfAwesome setting him]] [[KillItWithFire on fire!]]''
** How serious is [[strike:this children's card game]] Duel Monsters? Well, the only people who actually enjoy playing it are apparently people like Judai. You know, the kind that is usually really bad unless they're the protagonist. There's also sciences and mathematics entirely devoted to duelling, and a pro duellist named [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed Eisenstein]] with an equation for duelling that starts [[EEqualsMCHammer E=MC]]... something or other.
*** Real mathematicians have put a lot of time into mathematically modelling card games.
* ''{{Akagi}}'' breaks people's ''minds'' by playing {{Mahjong}}.
** The fact that there is an extreme amount of money riding on each game, which is enough to easily break and ruin a person, probably helps.
* In ''{{Beyblade}}'', the sport of Beyblading itself. It seems like if anyone wants to TakeOverTheWorld, they have to do it with duelling tops.
** It is not so much as the tops as the "Bit Beasts" - artificial or spiritual entities of animals that allow the tops to pack as much yield as a nuclear bomb without the nasty side effects. Serious Business however.
***Voltaire openly states in season one that if he collects all the bitbeasts the world's military powers will be helpless before him.
***Good lord, why the hell do you trust super-powered entities to ''kids'' for the sake of a ''game''?! You're just ''asking'' for these kids to be targeted by more pragmatic people...
* As far as Gintoki from {{Gintama}} is concerned, ShonenJump and sugar are both extremely Serious Business.
* ''{{Bakugan}}'' suffers from this, to the point where it almost seems to be a parody of the {{Mon}} genre. Sadly, it is not. It's just an anime that apparently has children who are overly attached to their Bakugan and... [[spoiler: Don't get me started about how the Bakugan Universe gets into this matter]]
* Subverted in ''KidouTenshiAngelicLayer'', {{CLAMP}}'s version of a typical {{shonen}} battle-game series. At first, it seems to fit perfectly, as Angelic Layer matches are broadcast on the sides of buildings to large crowds, Angels are treated as {{Companion Cube}}s, and [[spoiler:Shuuko has abandoned her daughter in favour of playing professionally.]] However, as we progress through the series, we realize that it was just a busy public place where people wanted to watch a sport (much like football), people that take the game too seriously frequently [[AnAesop learn]] from [[DefeatMeansFriendship being defeated]] that they should just have fun, and [[spoiler:Shuuko's debilitating self-loathing, which propelled her to leave her child, is cured by her coworkers' support and her daughter's forgiveness.]] The competition is seen to most people as just a normal, if odd, game.
* ''DuelMasters'' is another card game anime. It's not quite as blatant about it as ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'', but stadiums are still packed full of spectators watching our heroes play cards.
** Given that it's an explicit parody of Yu-Gi-Oh that's hardly surprising. Besides, they really are summoning magical beings from other worlds, and that would be pretty epic to watch.
** ThisTroper has been told that that only applies to the dub. The original Japanese version was quite serious.
* Bread is treated as SeriousBusiness in ''YakitateJapan'', although given the wondrous properties of the hero's ''own'' bread, (including the ability to rearrange the fabric of reality and send people back in time), perhaps this shouldn't be surprising.
** The whole point of the series is [[LampshadeHanging hanging lampshades on]] this trope.
** ''SaijouNoMeii'', by the same author, takes this trope in a completely different direction by applying an over the top Shonen Manga mindset to something that actually ''is'' serious, namely Pediatric Surgery.
* In ''AiKora'', quite a number of characters seem to take their personal fetishes far too seriously (including the protagonist!) One chapter involves Maeda butting heads with a band of militant {{meganekko}} fetishists, who are up in arms over a fake glasses fad and go around breaking the glasses of "false" meganekko.
* ''SerialExperimentsLain''. The Wired: Serious Business. Just like the actual Internet.
** Justified. The Wired is used as a tool to create gods, spy on people, and plot murder.
** Uh, the anime shows that most people don't really think the wire is Serious Business. It's just fringe sects of lunatics that have stumbled upon it's true power, kinda like the Internet truth be told.
** Also very much justified, as even in the most mundane level the society is utterly dependent on the Wired - even traffic goes haywire if someone hacks the right databases. And this is very close to TruthInTelevision, as well - global economies would utterly collapse in the absence of the Internet.
* Arguably, the moral lesson of ''MartianSuccessorNadesico'' is that treating HumongousMecha {{Anime}} as Serious Business can cause, or at least exacerbate, all manner of death and destruction. If nothing else, the series constantly employs MoodWhiplash to keep its own audience from taking it too seriously.
**Of course the whole thing kind of falls apart when you realize the SpaceWhaleAesop buried within: "Don't be a fan of Super Robot anime, or else you'll go crazy and try to destroy humanity!" More so, the interesting FridgeLogic sinks in when you realize they made a Giant Robot anime to...convince people to not watch Giant Robot anime. [[SoYeah Yeah...]]
* The gondolier business in ''{{ARIA}}'' consumes all of the protagonists' lives. Sure, it's their profession, but they're basically just transporting tourists through the canals of New Venice and it is indicated that they'll stop once they get married.
* As ''HayateNoGotoku'' advances its plot, it seems the butler career becomes more and more SeriousBusiness. The bare minimum seems to be equivalent to applying for a shounen fighting manga's character job. Props if you also have a FinishingMove.
** You act as though having a FinishingMove is a bonus. It is made abundantly clear early on that ''all'' butlers should have ''at least'' one.
* ''LuckyStar'''s Anime Tenchou brings gallons of [[HotBlooded hot blood]], various superpowers and ''nuclear explosions'' to the humble business of running a comic and animation store. Why can't real managers be like this guy? [[spoiler:And wait till you see his boss...]]
** Bonus points for being voiced by TomokazuSeki.
* In the manga ''IronWokJan'', Chinese cooking competitions can fill stadiums and attract celebrity judges, and a particularly famous food critic is a popular celebrity. There's even a shadowy organization that secretly controls all food production and distribution throughout Asia and is trying to take over the Chinese cooking industry of Japan by defeating Japan's top young chefs in a cooking competition.
* Characters in ''HunterXHunter'' think deeply and strategically about ''everything'' they do, in hilariously excessive detail, from playing rock-paper-scissors to using Internet search engines to making sushi to buying antiques to guessing a secondary character's gender. At one point, a character haggles down the price of a cell phone, and ''a crowd bursts out into applause''.
* Averted in ''HikaruNoGo'': The main characters take the game of go very seriously...but this is [[TruthInTelevision justified]], as they ARE professional players (much like go players in the real world). Additionally, it is made clear that the world at large doesn't particularly care about the game, even when it knows it exists.
* ''GranderMusashi'' takes sports fishing ''very'' seriously, to the point that anglers [[CallingYourAttacks call out a technique]] whenever they throw fishing lines into the water, and treat their fishing rods and lures as [[CompanionCube Companion Cubes]]. There's even an academy that trains would-be anglers in the dark arts of fishing. In the sequel, [[GottaCatchEmAll seven divine lures that everybody is after]] created by Poseidon ''are the reason for the sinking of Atlantis''.
* ''KeroroGunsou'' plays with this trope by having Keroro and Giroro treat ''everything'' from vacuuming, to going to the beach, to jumping rope, as though it were either a major military operation or a CookingDuel to decide the fate of the galaxy.
* ''Lunch'' becomes serious business in one episode of AhMyGoddess, with Skuld and Mara fighting over a ''boxed lunch'' with bombs and magic, culminating in Skuld ''throwing herself off a roof'' to catch it before it hits the ground.
* ''MetalFighterMiku'' makes women's wrestling Serious Business. Arguably justified in that this is a basic tenet of pro wrestling in the first place (see below).
* Likewise, ''{{Kinnikuman}}'' features wrestling matches that can decide the fate of the earth, and are frequently to the death.
* The Japanese junior high school tennis circuit in ''ThePrinceOfTennis''.
* Rika (Ruki) in the English dub of ''DigimonTamers''. While all the characters are perhaps a little overly into the Digimon card game even before having to use their cards ''to save the world'', Rika is ''by far'' the most intense. She is even appalled at her mother for not taking the childrens' card game seriously enough.
** This is ''the whole reason she got a {{Mon}} in the first place''.
* In ''MacademiWasshoi'', a good portion of the school is made to run a magical DeathCourse, no holds barred, to decide the next school uniform. The students who aren't putting their butts on the line watch this in a large stadium with commentary, video cameras, the works. Serious Business indeed.
** You can also mention Sakuma, who takes [[DeathIsDramatic dramatic deaths]] (going so far as to hand a person a gun), and [[MoeMoe Moe fetishes]] seriously (he wreaks [[StuffBlowingUp explosive violence]] on someone for tricking him with fake moe glasses)
* The WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome DeepImmersionGaming duel between the [[SuzumiyaHaruhi SOS Brigade]] and the Computer Society, with Haruhi promising severe punishments to the Brigade if they lose, and even Kyon getting into it by the end.
** Come to think of it, Haruhi takes pretty much everything this way, game or no. Which makes it SeriousBusiness for the rest of the SOS Brigade: if losing a baseball game means Haruhi will throw a world-destroying sulk, that really does up the ante.
* ''Battle B-Daman''. Apparently, in the "B-Da World", a person's social position, level of respect and moral actions are defined by playing marbles. Not playing B-Daman is something so bad that people don't even recognize you as a person (that's the message that the ''first episode'' gives to us). And of course, playing with marbles is also a good way to take over the world and be a world-threatening criminal. But to be fair, the marbles '''can rape physics. Freely.'''
* ''[=~801 TTS: Airbats~=]'' has a ramen-eating contest bet on by not only the entire JSSDF, but Chinese and American troops as well.
* In ''MahouSenseiNegima'', Negi and Fate attempt to have a diplomatic meeting and nearly come to blows while arguing about whether tea or coffee is superior. [[spoiler:The negotiations later fail for an unrelated reason.]]
** [[SeriousBusiness Tea is obviously superior.]]
** [[SeriousBusiness I disagree. Although I enjoy black tea, coffee is definitely the better drink.]]
** [[SeriousBusiness That depends. Hopefully, you are not adding cream or sugar. Coffee is to be drunk black.]]
** [[SeriousBusiness Coffee is nothing more than foul muddy water! Tea is the superior drink by]] ''[[SeriousBusiness far]]''!
* The [[{{Hentai}} H-manga]] ''Shiwasu no Okina'' applies this to '''''fellatio''''', of all things. The competition between one high school's competing fellatio clubs is a matter of ''life'' or ''death''.
* ''WelcomeToTheNHK'' does this with {{hentai}} games, though that might just be an exaggeration to reflect the Satou and Yamazaki's respective mental derangements.
** Of course, it becomes much more serious if you want to make ''money'' by making a hentai game.
* In ''{{Shuffle}}'', the [[InstantFanclub Instant Fanclubs]] in the anime have carried over into real life, with ShipToShipCombat, of course.
** Never say [[{{Yandere}} Kaede]] is a psycho KnifeNut StalkerWithACrush in front of members of ''Kitto Kitto Kaede-chan'' if you value your life.
* [[{{xxxHolic}} Watanuki]] pretty much {{Hannibal Lecture}}s a woman he is teaching cooking [[spoiler:because she won't eat what she cooks, as she doesn't want to know herself and will not eat what people she is familiar with make either.]] Yea, that's right. If you don't eat your own cooking or others, it means [[spoiler:you don't know yourself or them and are afraid of commitment. Or something.]]
* ''{{Air Gear}}'': roller skating is serious business, with a huge subculture, tournaments, gang wars, and a special police force dedicated to catching (read: often brutally injuring) unruly Air Treckers. It should be noted that the manga makes a point of addressing this trope. Both Simca and Ikki state that A.T.s should be for fun, and not used as tools for violence or control.
** Not to mention further on in the AirGear manga, a cameo appearance from BARACK OBAMA reveals that the roller-skates are pivotal to his plans of change. [[{{I Am Not Making This Up}} Seriously.]]
*** It's later revealed that [[TheVerse in-universe]] [[spoiler:the technology developed for Air Trecks was integrated into ''everything'', from transportation to weapons technology, and the [[MacGuffin Sky Regalia]] is basically an universal remote that would allow the owner, for example, to control the world's nuclear weapons stockpiles.]] So yes, SeriousBusiness.
* ''Beauty Pop'' treats styling this way, to the point where heroine Kiri inherits her super-stylist father's special techniques: The Corkscrew, the Whirlwind, the Wizard, and their signature faster-than-the-eye-can-follow ''precision hair-cutting''.
* In ''ReadOrDie'', books are most definitely serious business.
* ''[[BakusouKyoudaiLetsAndGo Bakusou Kyoudai Let's & Go!!]]'' is a series about racing miniature cars, which is Serious Business.
* ''Kitchen Princess'', like the Beauty Pop example above, treats baking and pastery-making as though it could create world peace if heroine Najika could just make the perfect flan.
* In any anime with cooking context, cooking is Serious Business. REALLY Serious Business. Watch ''Chuuka Ichiban'', for example.
* In ''{{Saki}}'', {{Mahjong}} is SeriousBusiness, with "hundreds of millions of players" and tournaments get media coverage, announcers, and high-tech anti-cheating devices.
** And in TheLegendOfKoizumi mahjong is ''even more'' SeriousBusiness. World politics are decided by secret high-stakes Mahjong games.
* Jumbor Barutronica: Construction workers are heroes and knights, riding [[HumongousMecha giant robots]] [[MundaneUtility equipped with excavator equipment,]] and [[TykeBomb cloned children]] implanted with the memories of worker-heroes with [[MorphWeapon shape-shifting, liquid metal hands that turn into giant shovels and drills.]] [[JustifiedTrope Justified,]] as it is set two-thousand years in the future, with the world in shambles because of pollution, so re-constructing the earth is vitally important. But...'''''Construction Knights! On Giant Robots! Shape-Shifting Clones!'''''
* In the ''{{Pokemon}}'' universe, every hospital is a Pokemon hospital, every school is a school that teaches how to train and take care of Pokemon, and even the criminals are only interested in Pokemon. Not rape, not murder, not money, they just want to steal Pokemon. God help you if you're a HUMAN and you need a hospital.
** To be fair, the games make it quite clear that TeamRocket is using Pokemon for money and is implied to have a number of other business ventures, some of which (judging by the anime) are even completely legit. The other criminals... have different goals, let's leave it at that. There have also been human doctors in the anime and a human hotel in the games.
** The anime has an episode where Ash and Co. take Pikachu to a hospital for humans, so I guess that's not ''entirely'' true.
*** Justified, if you think about it. If something, such as anything having to do with owning Pokemon, is so big, there would have to be a lot of Pokemon related things. Pokemon are the animals of the Pokemon regions. Also, the games just show the important stuff, human hospitals, etc aren't important in a Mon battling game.
** Remember - beat the bad guy threatening to take over the world in a pokemon battle, and his plan is FOILED.
* In ''Bartender'', making cocktails is most definitely serious business, with businesses and futures hanging in the balance.
* {{Hachimaki}} are SeriousBusiness in the world of ''AfroSamurai'', with the Number One headband apparently conferring the powers and responsibilities of a God, and only the Number Two headband has the right to challenge the holder of the Number One headband.
* TwoWords, SlamDunk!
* ''UltimateMopDaisukeDX'' - Janitorial competitions
* In ''Bakuman'', working on manga is treated as a true calling that could very well threaten your life, like firefighting or something.
**In fact, the main character's uncle [[spoiler:''dies from exhaustion from working on his manga'']] before the start of the series.
* ''[[RanmaOneHalf Ranma 1/2]]''. Martial arts is serious enough in real life, but when you have martial arts tea ceremonies, martial arts take out races, martial arts cooking, and many, many, many others, you know it must be SeriousBusiness.
* Sex is serious business in ''SchoolRumble''. Guy students stampeding towards the museum to see Itoko's nude portrait or conducting clandestine meetings to determine who is the hottest girl in their school (again Itoko) is nothing new.
* While the game itself isn't an incredible amount more popular (possibly unintentionally) than current MMO's are, The World in DotHackSign has players who take it a ''little'' too seriously sometimes. Especially groups like the Crimson Knights, who are becoming thuggish police types in a video game. The serious business was probably more obvious when the show was new and MMO's did not have nearly as high of player bases and twenty million seemed an absurd number.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comics]]
* Bowling is apparently a huge deal in ''Bowling King''. No, seriously. Professional bowlers are all either incredibly badass or {{Bishounen}} prettyboys. Oh, and then there's how main character Shautieh Ley's ultimate goal seems to involve taking over the world with bowling somehow; while this isn't explicitly stated, chapter opening pages tend to feature things like a RushmoreRefacement where ''all'' of the faces are Shautieh (and similar ones with the Sphinx, etc.) and Shautieh disrupting other sports events.
* DC had a Golden Age hero called Manhunter, then bought another Golden Age hero called called Manhunter. In a RetCon, the two men had an argument over who got to keep the name, and they settled it by having one of them ''go to [[AlternateUniverse another universe]]''.
** That's a LampshadeHanging on how writers in comics loved to remove problems by having them turn out to take place in alternate universes.
* ''Knights of the Dinner Table'' has roleplaying games as serious business.
** "You don't understand man." "He TOUCHED my dice!"
* In one ''CalvinAndHobbes'' strip, Calvin throws an enormous hissy fit after losing a game of checkers to Hobbes. When Hobbes points out that it's just a game, Calvin cheerfully replies: "I know! You should see how I act when I lose in real life!"
** Chewing gum is Serious Business in the Calvin and Hobbes universe. Calvin is an enthusiastic reader of a magazine called "Chewing" which is dedicated to it, and informs an incredulous Hobbes that as many as twelve such publications exist.
** So is a SnowballFight.
* [[ShakuganNoShana Ike]] planning a theme park trip. That is serious business. Overlaps with WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films]]
*NationalTreasure rings a bell. In the real world, who cares if someone finds a bunch of gold? History fanatics and no one else.
** Not to mention in the second one; in what parallel universe does discovering a new killer of Abraham Lincoln cause an internet sensation?
* The new Disney Channel move ''Dadnapped'' is all about this trope, in which the main character's father is kidnapped by his fans.
* ''The Wizard'' plays with this trope in that in the world of the film, Nintendo is an integral part of the culture. Everyone knows it, everyone plays, and everyone's plugged in, to the point where "Video Armageddon" is greater than the Super Bowl.
* ''King of Kong'' is about all the drama behind ''DonkeyKong'' world records. "''Donkey Kong'' kill screen coming up..."
** It's a very bizarre thing to hear a little boy telling ''his dad'' to stop playing videogames.
** There was even more serious business behind the scenes. Careful editing played up the rivalry and made a more obvious villain out of one of the players - the fandom went apeshit at the CharacterDerailment,taking sides and flinging poo at anyone who popped their head out to say they thought it was biased/unbiased.
* Hip hop street dancing is Serious Business in the film ''Step Up 2: the Streets''. This is cemented from the very beginning with a ridiculously dramatic opening monologue. It gets worse within the first five minutes, where a subway prank involving dancing is reported on the news as though it was ''a terrorist attack!'' (right down to the subway being ''closed down'')
* Christopher Guest's line of "mockumentaries" each deal with a different subject in this trope: community theater in ''Waiting for Guffman'', dog shows in ''Best in Show'', and folk music in ''A Mighty Wind''.
* We only get brief glimpses of it, but in the ''Bill & Ted'' movies, the music of Wyld Stallyns has become the basis for the entire society of the future, curing diseases, fostering world peace, and even improving people's bowling and minigolf scores.
* Ballroom dancing is SeriousBusiness for the characters in Baz Luhrman's ''StrictlyBallroom.''
* The Who's rock opera ''Tommy'': Pinball is ''{{serious business}}''! They even create a new ''religion'' out of it.
* Will Ferell seems to have built his career around this trope: local newscasting in ''{{Anchorman}}'', the fashion industry in ''Zoolander'', fraternities in ''Old School'', figure skating in ''Blades of Glory''.
* ''SpeedRacer'', of course, has automobile racing, which seems to be a pillar of the global economy.
* Streetracing is handled thus in ''The Fast and the Furious'' series.
* ''Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'' features what the writers call "perhaps the first vegetarian monster." To keep some kind of tension given that the monster is no threat to people, it turns out that everyone in town is insanely protective of their vegetables.
** Country fairs ARE serious business.
* The crowd is really unnaturally engaged during all of the debates in ''TheGreatDebaters,'' to the point that it's kind of distracting.
* In ''CanadianBacon'', Canadian beer is SeriousBusiness. Enough to lead to a large riot (that nearly leads to war between Canada and the United States), anyway.
* In ''Crossroads'', blues music is apparently serious enough to sell your soul to the devil for, and motivation enough to break self-confessed murderers out of custody.
** The selling your soul is a ShoutOut to blues legend Robert Johnson who was said to have sold his soul to the devil to play guitar as well as he does.
* ''ThePrestige'': stage magic (and Tesla toying with [[LightningCanDoAnything the most blasphemous applications of electricity]]) is serious, ''serious'' business. Read: shooting your rival, breaking your rival's leg, cutting off [[spoiler:your brother's]] fingers, pretending to be a cripple your whole life, burying your rival's partner alive, stealing your rival's daughter, [[XanatosGambit getting your rival in jail for your "murder"]], and the same person committing "suicide" 100 times.
** The shooting, at least, has nothing to do with him being your rival as a performer and everything to do with him having arguably caused [[spoiler: the death of your wife]]. And the cutting off of fingers was necessary to maintain something that went far beyond, and far predated, that particular magic trick.
* In ''HighSchoolMusical'', basketball is serious business. As is drama, at least in the mind of its teacher, if not in anyone else's.
* The 2005 documentary ''[[http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0452669/ Pucker Up]],'' about five people travelling to North Carolina to compete in the National Whistling Competition.
* Mildly averted in ''Blackball''. The film itself is a spoof in which bowling is a very serious business. When the hero sets up a rivalry with the (60 year old) reigning champion and falls in love with his daughter, he wants to show her some of the magic and importance of bowling. Her response: 'I HATE bowling'. He more or less accepts this.
* In ''Green Street'' (or ''Green Street Hooligans'' for Americans), a visiting American learns that football (The main character is told that calling it soccer is grounds for being murdered.) appreciation is SeriousBusiness in the UK, falling into a circle where it leads to brutal gang brawls, mutilation, and outright murder.
** TruthInTelevision. Similar message in ''Mean Machine'', in which football (Soccer to the Colonies) is SeriousBusiness to convicted felons.
* In ''HotFuzz'', everyone's obsessed with Sandford winning the Village of the Year contest, [[spoiler: taking it to homicidal extremes.]]
** It's all for the Greater Good.
* School politics and Fraternities in most college movies are played to the hilt, such as in the ''RevengeOfTheNerds'' films and ''AnimalHouse''.
* ''Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story'' does this with professional paintball.
* ''Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story'' parodies sports movies by making SeriousBusiness out of a children ball game played by adults.
* In ''Robot Jox'', the fate of entire '''nations''' was decided by duels between giant robots.
* Both ''Free Enterprise'' and ''Trekkies'' [[{{Parody}} believe that]] StarTrek is SeriousBusiness.
* No one's mentioned the original "Rollerball" movie yet, where the Rollerball teams represented nations & the matches stood in for wars?
** The problem there is that if a match stands in for a war, then it really is very serious business.
* Walter in TheBigLebowski has bowling. Telling that it's a situation is about life or death doesn't do anything. But if you threaten to quit the bowling team...
* In ''Avalon'', the game is so serious Ash makes a living out of playing it.
* The film ''CelticPride'' about a couple of Celtics fans who kidnap the Utah Jazz star player so their team can win. In the end, all three men learn to just enjoy the game. That is until football season...
* That kid from ''DeadPoetsSociety'' who killed himself cause his dad wouldn't let him pursue an acting career.
** Though in all fairness, it could have been that he had seemingly no control over his life's course, as his dad pre-planned it all. SoYeah...
* Bowling seems to be pretty popular for this trope, as ''Kingpin also did it, what with Bill Murray's character getting his young, upstart rival's hand shoved into a ball return through a "misunderstanding" with some gangsters... who also bowl.
* ''Balls Of Fury'' does it with [[strike:Ping-Pong]] table tennis... [[BeyondTheImpossible In a ludicrously over-the-top way]].
* ''The Ten'' does this in most of its stories. Most of the plots are motivated by people obsessing over fairly ludicrous things. Of course, it might just be a statement on people taking religion overboard, but it gets pretty inane. For instance, certain segments hinge entirely on people obsessing over:
** A man half-buried in the ground after a skydiving accident.
** Cat Scan machines.
** A normal ventriloquist dummy.
* ''GlengarryGlenRoss'': because [[ClusterFBomb fucking real estate sales fucking deserve a seven-minute rant from Alec fucking Baldwin]].
* Pro football, being a multi-milion dollar sport, is pretty serious but seeing that player from TheLastBoyScout shoot the opposing team so he can score a touchdown convinced me that football is '''DEAD''' serious.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* In ''CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'' (and its [[TheFilmOfTheBook two film adaptations]]), the Golden Ticket contest quickly becomes a global obsession, to the point that in the 1971 film, a news reporter says this:
--> [W]e must remember there are more important things, ''many'' more important things. ({{Beat}}) Offhand, I can't think of what they are, but I'm sure there must be something.
**Along with many other moments such as kidnappers wanting a case of Wonka Bars for a man's life. The wife needs to ''think about it''.
* The board game of Azad in Iain M. Banks' ''[[TheCulture The Player Of Games]]'' is so complex and wide-ranging it resembles life. The entire structure of the interstellar Empire of Azad is informed and held together (and named after) the game, used to settle commercial, military, societal and other disputes. The winner of the great tournament is made Emperor. Playing Azad is ''very'' SeriousBusiness.
** This is a reference to ''The Glass Bead Game'' by Hermann Hesse, in which the game really does exactly mirror life itself.
* ''TheGlassBeadGame'' by HermannHesse features the eponymous game. There are universities devoted to it which appear to be the only way to get a tertiary education and the study of the game takes over people's lives as if they were joining a religious order.
* Beer brewing takes on literally mythical proportions in ''The Drawing of the Dark'' by TimPowers.
* In one of Rex Stout's ''Nero Wolfe'' novels, Archie Goodwin comes downstairs to find an enraged Wolfe burning a dictionary in the fireplace. The problem? The dictionary gave "imply" as a synonym of "infer".
* In ''GulliversTravels'', the nations of Lilliput and Blefiscu are engaged in a war over which end to open a hard-boiled egg, the wide end or the narrow end. Swift intended this as a [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything not-so-subtle satire]] of both the schism between Catholic and Protestant Christians and the rivalry between England and France.
* ''AmericanPsycho'' does this with [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y business cards]] - there's a serious rivalry in Patrick's firm about how good they look, right down to the subtle shades of white and the font. In fact, they're so serious, Patrick kills the people who have business cards better than him (don't worry, that's not a spoiler).
** That's more of a FilmOfTheBook thing: Patrick's kills in the novel are mostly of "disposable" low-status people (prostitutes in particular).
** ''American Psycho'' does this with almost everything relating to appearances -- the book commonly spends about half a page of every chapter just listing the clothing, perfume and other brands of status symbols (such as watches) Bateman and his colleagues are wearing at that moment.
*** [[GeniusBonus And they look ridiculous]]!
* Conor Kostick's novel ''EPIC'' is a kind of satire of this tendency. It focuses on a group of far-future colonists using a sword and sorcery MMORPG as a system of government. Also, their economy is based around it too - a player's in-game money is their real world money, thus leading to players spending most of their free time grinding lowest level monsters ( since they dare not risk invoking the games permanent character death system ). Not only is their world slowly stagnating, but the SeriousBusiness manner everyone plays the game in is poisoning it to the point that [[spoiler:the games AI wants to be put down. By the end of the story, this results in the destruction of the game world, all its beauty and possibility wasted - an implicit end result of uncontrolled SeriousBusiness.]]
* In the ''ThursdayNext'' novels, art and literature itself are serious business, with wide riots about the surrealist movement, black market fake manuscripts from renowned authors, and fanatics going door-to-door to convince people about who ''really'' wrote Shakespeare's plays.
** [[spoiler: At least as of the end of the first book, ''nobody'' wrote Shakespeare's plays. [[StableTimeLoop A time traveller handed him the complete works]].]]
*** [[spoiler: It later turns out he wrote ''some'' of them. The plays the time traveller gave him were so popular, he wrote several more to keep up with demand. This is why certain things, like ghosts and cross-dressing, were so common- he wasn't very creative himself.]]
** ''Anything and everything'' is Serious Business: cheese smuggling, international croquet tournaments, toast, you name it it'll have an international society ([[TruthInTelevision much like real life]]).
* In Michael Chabon's ''Summerland'', Little League baseball is the key to [[SaveBothWorlds saving the world and three other worlds]].
* Dr. Seuss's ''Butter Battle Book'' is a clear parody of the ColdWar and accompanying Soviet/U.S. arms race. The issue that caused the division and started the whole thing off? Which side of the bread is buttered.
* Satirized in Neal Stephenson's ''SnowCrash''. The whole first section is [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome mock-heroic]] and elevates ''pizza delivery'' as serious business. Electronic timers are placed on each pizza box from the very ''second'' the order is placed, and should the [[ThirtyMinutesOrItsFree thirty minute timer]] expire then... Well, what happens next begins with the owner of the pizza company personally visiting the wronged customer and apologising profusely. Since that boss is the ''[[TheMafia Don]]'', each and every pizza delivery driver knows well enough that they'd be better off breaking the speed limit, their cars, the sound barrier, ''anything,'' than deliver a pizza at 30:01 or later.
** There was a cartoon short entitled ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEcnfTVWvqg No Tip]]'' with a similar plot: A pizza delivery boy is sent to deliver a pizza to ''the Arctic Circle,'' to placate an Eskimo wife who's so fed up with blubber that she demands her husband get them anything, ''anything at all,'' that isn't blubber. This should be plot enough, but the pizza boy gets there with time to spare on his half hour - but circumstances conspire to keep him from making it. He finally gets the pizza in the door and paid for inside the half hour, but a bear takes a bite and complains about the anchovies. The annoyed wife says, "In that case, ''no tip!''" This does not go over well with the pizza boy, who has a...[[BerserkButton Little Moment]].
** Stephenson seems to be somewhat fond of turning mundane everyday situations into Serious Business™; consider Randy tackling his everyday bowl of Cap'n Crunch in ''{{Cryptonomicon}}'', and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
** Don't forget the multiple-page memo in ''SnowCrash'' dealing with intra-office purchase and use of toilet paper.
* In the novel ''The Kite Runner'' kite fighting is portrayed a little like this, except not all year long. Apparently true.
** Serious enough that a character gets [[spoiler: anally raped by another boy]].
* Parodied in TerryPratchett's ''[[Discworld/InterestingTimes Interesting Times]]'', when Cohen realizes that the Agatean Empire's obsession with tradition (such as the tea ceremony) is part of the reason it has stagnated. He starts the winds of change by telling his new Grand Vizier (a man totally unsuited to the job, who will therefore be much better at it than the previous incumbent) that there's a ''new'' tea ceremony, and it doesn't take three hours, because it goes like this: "Tea up, luv. Milk? Sugar? Scone? You want another?"
* TerryPratchett's ''[[Discworld/GoingPostal Going Postal]]'' features Stanley who takes pins Very Seriously Indeed, and is regarded as "a bit weird about pins" [[EvenNerdsHaveStandards even by other pin collectors.]] When stamps are invented, he gets over it and goes crazy about stamps. He is promptly appointed to be in charge of the stamp department of the Post Office.
* TerryPratchett does it again in ''[[Discworld/{{Thud}} Thud!]]'', when a board game is serious business indeed.
** And for Vimes, getting to read a bedtime story for his son, exactly six PM.
*** That doesn't count, though, since the reading is a line Vimes made to himself that [[HeroicSpirit he refuses to cross:]]
---->Every day. Read to Young Sam. No excuses. He'd promised himself that. ''No excuses.'' No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.
* How could you fail to mention Jeremy Clockson from [[Discworld/ThiefOfTime Thief Of Time]]? He ''assaulted'' one of his fellow students for accidentally setting a clock ahead a few seconds.
* Catherine Asaro's ''The Last Hawk'' and ''A Roll of the Dice'' describe an entire world run by a game of dice called Quis. In ''The Ruby Dice'', the game gets bigger...
* ''TheRapeOfTheLock'' is a merciless mocking of what was, at the time, real life SeriousBusiness. In essence: Some guy cuts a lock of hair from a woman's head, causing much social drama.
* ''Eon'' and ''Eternity'' by Greg Bear revolve around an incredibly high-tech civilization which arose from the ashes of a late 20th century nuclear war. A large chunk of the population eschew that technology, are leery of advances which they see as dehumanising, and strive to live a "primitive" lifestyle based on the technology and norms of late 20th and early 21st century Earth. And their entire philosophy and religion is based on the teachings of... Ralph Nader's consumer advocacy in the 70s and 80s.
** They're even called "Naderites." The characters from the past [[LampshadeHanging lampshade]] this by commenting "Anyone tell him yet?"
* ''The39Clues'', are Serious Business for all four branches of the Cahill family.
* SherlockHolmes fandom makes this OlderThanTelevision with The Game.
* In ''Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States'', DaveBarry calls TheAmericanRevolution "the single most important historical event ever to occur in this nation except of course for Super Bowl III (Jets 16, Colts 7. This historian won $35)."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* To Adrian ''{{Monk}}'', symmetry and multiples of 10, among other things, are Serious Business. Justified in that it's part of his OCD: when he tries out meds, these things stop being SeriousBusiness, but he also [[DisabilitySuperpower cannot solve cases]].
* The British series ''Playing For Real'' featuring the lives of the Real Falkirk Table Football Club, who lived and breathed Subbuteo.
* One episode of ''{{MacGyver}}'', a DramaticHourLong show, had an episode open with a girl talk extensively about the horrors inflicted upon her hobby by store owners. The topic: counterfeit baseball cards. It's a good thing [=MacGyver=] is unfailingly polite, lest he tell her to just shut up.
* In an episode of ''{{Frasier}}'', Spelling Bees are SeriousBusiness, complete with a ShellShockedSenior SpellMaster and a YoungCub trying to reach the top... of Spelling! The episode was devoid of the usual hijinks and focused the humor on the absurdity of the subject. One of the series' better episodes.
** This is TruthInTelevision. Check out the documentary ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0334405/ Spellbound]].''
*** Seriously, check it out -- great viewing.
** This is referenced twice in ''Akeelah and the Bee'':
--> "Spelling bees are serious business"
--> and the less formal
--> "Spelling bees are serious shit."
* When Dick Clark hosted {{Pyramid}}, he made sure it was SeriousBusiness. "I remind the audience once again, we need absolute silence, please. GO!"
* In a weird meta-example, the British student quiz show ''University Challenge'' made [[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7906727.stm national]] [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/feb/22/university-challenge-trimble news]] [[http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article5793104.ece headlines]] when the internet decided nobody should be allowed to be that clever. The young lady in question ended up being interviewed about her public image on ''national primetime breakfast news'', simply because some people objected to the way she smiled (was it embarrassment? Or smugness?) when she was told she'd got a question right. ''University Challenge'': Serious Business to everyone except those who actually play it.
** To make it even worse, the team that young lady was on ended up being disqualified after the winning the final because it was discovered that one of the other team members was no longer a student at the University, he was brought back to give them a better chance of winning. Serious Business indeed.
* The "[[BaseballEpisode Take Me Out to the Holosuite]]" episode from ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''. Sisko's private little war against Solok turns baseball into SeriousBusiness until Sisko finally sees [[{{Aesop}} the light]] and decides to just have fun.
** Subverted entirely in another episode which has Quark playing a board game brought by some race from the Gamma Quadrant. Eventually he realizes the Seriousness of the Business as his pieces represent members of the crew who have been somehow teleported into the game and are thus in mortal danger through his actions. Although he plays conservatively from then on, he eventually loses all of his pieces; assuming them all to be dead, he is stunned when the missing crew reappear completely safe. As the alien gamemaster explains, it's only a game. This probably also makes it a ShaggyDogStory.
* ''TheAdventuresOfPeteAndPete'' loves this trope played for surreality. Smoothies, Prank Wars, people urinating in pools and the identity of the masked Ice Cream Man Mr. Tasty are all Serious Business. And Artie, the Strongest Man in the World fighting Killer Bees? Normal Background Stuff. In addition, every single adult, be they a shop teacher, an underwear inspector or a postal carrier, treats their profession with a reverence usually reserved for war heroes and cancer researchers.
* FatherTed and the over-75 football match against Rugged Island.
* In {{Seinfeld}} most things were SeriousBusiness with many episodes focusing on one or two bits of this. The Soup Nazi is a good example. His soup is so good that people are willing to put up with the authoritarian regime that is his restaurant and rejected patrons become motivated to exact revenge rather than just finding someplace else to eat.
* Many reality shows where there are groups of people competing against each other to win things like money, makeover of their house, etc. While everyone does want to win as badly as the next guy, the serious business comes into play when you got some of the competitors get drastic or act dramatic in order to have a shot at winning and act like losing doesn't exist in their dictionary. And then you have the people who say they gave up everything to be on the show (quitting their job, moving away from home, etc), not even thinking about what to do in case they don't win.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* WeirdAlYankovic's version of "Trapped In The Closet," "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJWSkSaLGPA Trapped In The Drive-Thru]]," is a ten-minute long song about a husband and wife going to a drive-thru, ordering their food, and paying for it. It includes moments where the wife asks for a chicken sandwich (instead of her usual cheeseburger) and the husband says, "I don't know who you are anymore!" Everything is an Epic moment. At the end, the husband freaks out because they forgot his onions.
** Beyond that, there's the original {{Trapped in the Closet}} itself. The composer honestly believes that about 20 years from now people will be talking about a song where, among other things a midget craps his pants, with such banal lyrics as "And then he said, "I'ma heat this chicken."
* The war over what is punk and what is not punk.
** Beautifully exemplified by this anecdote:
--> You ask me, "What is punk?". I kick over a trash can and say, "''This'' is punk." So you kick over a trash can and ask, "This is punk?" and I say, "No, ''that'''s a trend."
** And "Rap vs. Real Music".
** Within the rap community there's the whole debate over what's REAL rap music. Almost anything made after '99 is seen as popcorn trash. On the opposite side anything before '99 is played out garbage.
*** Cynics would argue that the bitterness comes from the former group because they hate the fact [[DeadHorseGenre Gangsta rap/Hardcore hip-hop/Alternative rap/Political rap isn't popular any more]]. And that their favorite artists are now forgotten (outside of hardcore hip-hop fans), Which is why they say it's "dead". And the latter group gets defensive when it comes to the new stuff being called garbage cause they feel attacked personally. So basically that's why Rap [[strike: debates]] Arguments are SeriousBusiness. Especially music message boards.
**** It's possibly more accurate that this divide can be narrowed down to be about perceived message or attitude, as it's usually a case of "the best" songs and artists having more serious subject matter opposed to those who revolve around simply having fun or vice versa, without any regard to the actual music itself (and it's not just limited to rap, either).
*** Rap feuds *are* Serious Business. They've resulted in ''actual murders''.
*** The most famous of these murders would probably be the murder of New York City rapper Tupac Shakur.
***These types of killings are also the theme of Eminem's hit song 'Like Toy Soldiers' which contains the lyrics: 'There used to be a time when you could just say a rhyme and woulnd't have to worry about one of your people dying, But now it's elevated cuz once you put someone's kids in it, the shit gets escalated, it ain't just words no more is it? You callin' names and you ain't just rappin'
* The Norwegian band TNT's original vocalist Tony Harnell left in 2006 and was replaced by Tony Mills, leading to serious drama among fans. Witness this for yourself by looking at the comments for any TNT video.
* Black Metal. Let's just say that aside from all the supernatural shit that goes on & the size of the fanbase, ''{{Metalocalypse}}'' isn't ''that'' big of an exaggeration...
** The actions of the fan base are well justified, as everyone knows that "Black Metal Is Serious Business!"
** Black Metal ist krieg!
* Heavy metal music in general is serious business. Go to any heavy metal discussion board and there's a good chance that half of the posts are going to be arguing about what sub-genre a particular band falls under ("It's death metal! No, it's thrash! No, it's black metal! No, it's progressive metalcore! No!!!"). Either this, or they will be arguing about whether a band is "real metal" or not.
** It is, however, subverted by the PowerMetal fandom as they tend to embrace ridiculously over the top bands like {{Helloween}}, [[ThreeInchesOfBlood 3 Inches of Blood]], and DragonForce, as well as performers such as [[BlindGuardian Hansi Kursch]], [[SymphonyX Russell Allen]] and [[{{Kamelot}} Roy Khan]], all of whom realize that musical entertainment is supposed to be fun and enjoyable and, as such, most of which are completely incapable of taking themselves seriously.
* 'Tis a brave soul who ventures onto the Muse messageboards and asks the wrong question. If you're lucky, you'll be told to get lost. If not, you'll experience the online equivalent of a public flogging.
* TheBeatles' fans provide numerous examples, but John being murdered and George attacked in his home by crazed fans are the ultimate ones.
* Manowar serves up this trope with a massive helping of cheese.
* Guitar playing, or at least the equipment required. Dropping $20 for a single handmade guitar pick (mass-produced delrin/nylon ones go for about $3/dozen for comparison's sake) isn't unheard of in the pursuit of the perfect guitar tone.
* Played straight by Fry and Laurie in their 'John and Peter' sketches where they treat running their health sauna in Uttoxeter as if they were running a multi-national corporation. They also inverted this trope with their 'Tony and Control' sketches in which MI5 agents treat terrorist attacks and defections with as much emotion as they do ordering coffee.
* No mention of Kanye West yet? Throwing a hissy fit every time the littlest thing doesn't go his way? Reducing Taylor Swift to tears by saying ''on national television'' that she was underserving of the '''MTV Award''' for Best Female Video (she was the first country singer to achieve this "honor")?

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
* ProfessionalWrestling is very much SeriousBusiness, as any issue, no matter how heinous, threatening, or illegal, can be settled by getting into the ring and fighting it out. In some of the more extreme cases, this can get {{handwave}}d, as the commentators will explicitly say that a wrestler "declined to press charges" in order to get his hands on the other wrestler at the Pay-Per-View this Sunday, only $49.95, call your cable or satellite provider to order now.
** In Mexico Lucha Libre (as they call it) is more or less a religion.
*** Oh yes. They actually have a wrestling "mafia" who ensure that match stipulations are enforced. For example, if you lose a "Loser Leaves Town" match, they will make ''sure'' that you never wrestle in that town again.
**** Don't forget the masks. Once a luchador has put on a mask, he '''NEVER''' takes it off.
** Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio once had a ladder match to determine which man would be granted custody of Rey's son, whom Eddie claimed was biologically his. ''Oh yes.''
** {{Kayfabe}}, at least until the late nineties, was SeriousBusiness for wrestling promoters, many of whom would - as standard - forbid heels and faces from associating with each other in public. Some promoters and wrestlers have gone to insane lengths to keep {{kayfabe}}, believing that the industry would collapse if the illusion was broken. WCW was most infamous for its promoters going so far as to ''lie to their own wrestlers'' in order to get EnforcedMethodActing.
*** Here's one typical (but ultimately tragic) example of how far promoters would go to keep {{kayfabe}} in the early nineties: booker Kevin Sullivan had made his wife (Nancy Sullivan, then known under the ring name "Woman") the (fictional) manager of Chris Benoit. To keep the illusion of this partnership alive, he ordered Nancy and Benoit to travel everywhere together. While they were on the road, they fell in love and Woman left Sullivan for Benoit. ''[[WhatAnIdiot Oops!]]''
**** Ever since then, it has been joked that Sullivan "booked his own divorce". Less funny when you realize that he ultimately also [[FunnyAneurysmMoment booked his own wife's death]].
** Recently Triple H broke into Randy Orton's "home", scared a bunch of women (including Orton's "wife"), fought with Orton and caused a lot of destruction, tossed Orton through a window, beat him up some more, and ended the show by getting "arrested". Guess what happened the next week? Triple H was "out on bail", and Orton... declined to press charges in order to get his hands on the other wrestler at the Pay-Per-View in three weeks, only $49.95, call your cable or satellite provider to order now.
*** That Pay-Per-View was Wrestlemania XV, and everybody knows that every WM is a SeriousBusiness!!
** This is hardly a brand-new trope. Back in the early 1980s a wrestling promoter with ''Stampede Wrestling'' named J.R. Foley ran for mayor of Calgary as part of his shtick. He even took part in debates, making sure to wear cowboy clothes and not one of his usual Hirohito or Hitler costumes (he managed the BigBad). He came in last, if I recall correctly.
*** The 1980s? This has been going on since the turn of the century!!
**** O rly! Century you say!! Wait...
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* {{Chess}}. A mind-boggling amount of literature has been written on the subject, and serious players dedicate countless hours to memorising opening lines.
** The number of complete psychological breakdowns eventually suffered by many of the game's most brilliant players is truly chilling to study. And this, stated by an admitted Chessophile.
* In ''{{Exalted}}'', one reason the mightiest of the gods aren't [[TheGodsMustBeLazy directly trying to fix]] the mess the world's in is due to their obsession with "The Games of Divinity", which apparently are the Platonic Ideal of Fun. A lot of the fans don't like this explanation much.
** There's also Sigereth, The Player Of Games, who's basically the Demoness of SeriousBusiness. She manifests as a game board, and does absolutely nothing but play games with any and all challengers...with ridiculously high stakes for winning or losing. Think memories, skills, your body and soul...
* In RPGs, a player's dice are SeriousBusiness. Never EVER touch someone else's dice.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Sports]]
* Pick pretty much ''any'' professional sport. People make a living from, and others dedicatedly and sometimes over-enthusiastically follow people, playing games. Given how some people make a living from this, it may be justified.
** It's to the point that professional athletes are put on a pedestal all year long, even regarding their personal lives: sports media will freak out about the slightest off-season incident even if it can be resolved without interfering with the player's ability to work, and the NFL has gone as far as institute a "Player Conduct Policy" with which the commissioner can punish players over matters not having anything to do with the league. Serious business, indeed.
* Sports in general, even below the professional level are extremely serious business. If you belong in a team in a league, the coach and your teammates will make you believe that if you lose the game then your family will be skinned alive and then boiled in alcohol before being dropped in front of a steamroller. Good '''GOD'''. And people wonder why people detest sports games enough to drop out of P.E. and find ways to get around Team Sports requirements in school.
* The Rock-Paper-Scissors World Championship in Las Vegas. Oh, the humanity!
* Pick a movie about sports. ''Any'' movie about sports.
* Australian cricket legend and WorldWarTwo fighter pilot Keith Miller put things into perspective when he was asked how he handled the pressure of international cricket. His reply: "Pressure? A Messerschmitt up your arse is pressure. Playing cricket is not."
* Legendary football manager Bill Shankly ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Shankly link for baffled non-Brits]]) told an interviewer "Someone said 'Football is a matter of life and death to you,' and I said 'Listen, it's more important than that'."
* In Brazil, there's the phrase "o futebol é como uma religião", "soccer is like a religion", which perfectly describes how passionate are Brazilians (and Latin Americans overall) about soccer.
** When Brazil lost the final of the 1950 World Cup, two fans in the stadium committed sucide by throwing themselves off a stand.
** A particularly tragic case of soccer being taken far too seriously in that part of the world; Andres Escobar, a Colombian national team player who was murdered following an accidental own-goal which saw Colombia kicked out of the 1994 World Cup. It's generally agreed that his death was a result of the match; some argue, however, that it wasn't just the work of a particularly ticked-off fan, but committed on the orders of drug dealers who lost out big on bets made on the game. Either way, it's a pretty harsh example of this trope.
** In Central America, the [[http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/sierra/soccer1969.htm Soccer War of 1969]] claimed thousands of lives. There was a great deal more at stake than soccer, though.
** Hailing from Italy, this author can testify that most Italian males, and an unexpectedly (and depressingly) high percentage of females, are absolutely batshit crazy about soccer. This author has an otherwise extremely smart friend who inexplicably cries himself to sleep whenever his team loses (this does not happen rarely). The Italian situation is so bad that soccer influences politics, and vice versa. And yeah, soccer-craziness-caused deaths do occur.
*** This was actually mentioned in a Jack-In-The-Box commercial.
** This is OlderThanPrint. The earliest known reference to a game called "football" is a decree by the Mayor of London banning it for being a source of violence...in 1314.
* Melbourne Cup Day, a holiday in Australia celebrating a horse race. It's only a public holiday in Victoria, but the rest of Australia pretty much shuts down while the actual race is running.
** It's called "The Race That Stops a Nation" [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin for a reason]]. But as it's held on a Tuesday and public holidays are {{Serious Business}} in Australia, most people try to skip Monday too.
* Australians as a nation are, for the most part, utterly ''mad'' about almost all forms of sports (but especially the ones they're ''really'' good at, such as cricket and Australian Rules Football). Here's a fun exercise; watch any Australian commercial TV news broadcast and make note of how many of the stories relate to sport in some way. Bet it's over half. Of course, if you happen to live in Australia and ''aren't'' particularly interested in sport, it makes an otherwise wonderful country somewhat less wonderful to live in. It doesn't help that when they ''lose'' something that they normally win (as happened a couple of years ago, when England unexpectedly won the Ashes (a Cricket Test Series), or with recent grumblings about their winning less gold medals at the Beijing Olympics than expected), they can be pretty bad losers.
** Although strangely, unlike other places in the world with strong team loyalties, it's possible to wear shirts with slogans like "I support two teams: Collingwood and whoever is playing Brisbane" without being shanked. Try wearing a shirt saying "I support two teams: Manchester United and whoever is playing Liverpool" and see how long you last anywhere where the English Premier League is followed.
* Red Sox Nation
** [[http://img37.imageshack.us/i/gorillarillafans55.jpg/ Raider Nation]].
*** RIDER Nation.
*** Raider Nation was the first with the Nation name, though, circa sometime in the 1970s, definitely by the beginning of the '80s.
** Even better: Steeler Nation.
** Cardinal Nation, but not about baseball itself. They take fan behavior pretty seriously--fans acting like jackasses get yelled at and piss everyone off. Only one player has ever been boo-ed (Jason Isringhausen, a relief pitcher). Cardinal fans take pride in their classy attitude and good reputation.
** "Titletown, USA" is written into the official political seal of the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
* The Serious Business of sports was mused upon in a Sunday(?) comic of ''Frazz'', wherein Frazz and his cycling partner concluded that the ''unimportance'' of sports made them ''the most important thing there is.''
* Hockey. People who think Canadians are always polite and well-behaved have clearly never been in Vancouver during a Canucks game.
** ...or seen them [[http://www.policeone.com/police-products/vehicles/articles/1688149-16-cruisers-damaged-in-Canadian-hockey-riot/ burn squad cars]] over the results of a Montréal Canadiens game.
*** While this is still speculation, it was believed that those who burned squad cars had little interest in the game and merely took advantage of the Canadiens' victory, however given how fans react in Montreal who knows...
** ...Or been on Whyte Avenue during the Edmonton Oilers' Stanley Cup run in 2006.
** ...Or spent a week in Calgary during hockey season. Hockey isn't a sport: it's a cult.
** In 1994 the Canucks lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals to the New York Rangers. Cue riot.
** Oh, 1955. Maurice "The Rocket" Richard gets suspended for the rest of the season and the playoffs for hitting an official. Cue the riot at the next Canadiens home game.
*** Incidentally, he received a ''16 minute'' standing ovation in 1996, and when he died in 2000 he received a state funeral broadcast across the country, with the Governor-General and prime minister attending. In Quebec, Richard was truly SeriousBusiness.
*** Even more food for thought, this riot cost the city of Montreal an estimated five hundred thousand dollars. One wonders how the city has survived this long.
** Or the hatred of the "Leafs Nation" by everyone else in the country.
** I fear what will happen when the Leafs win another Stanley Cup. It's when not if.
** The smash hit movie ''BonCopBadCop'' was about a serial killer who murdered people he thought were killing hockey in Canada by trading the best players to the States. Like all good satire, it succeeds by sailing very close to the wind.
** On the other side of the border, there are a few places where hockey is every bit as big a deal. The entire metropolitan Detroit area turns red and white from October to May, and you WILL be shot if you admit that you support another team.
*** On the other end of the coin, God help you if you wear a Red Wings jersey in Denver.
**** Meh. Maybe ten years ago, but these days? Other than their minority-faithful, the Avalanche haven't been relevant on the mainstream Denver scene in quite some time, especially since it's such a melting pot that if anyone freaked out about any specific jersey, it would end up becoming a daily thing no matter where they were.
** Ottawa city council once passed a resolution banning anyone from wearing a Leafs jersey to attend a playoff game, unless said Leaf-jersey wearing fans ponied up a canned donation for the Food Bank.
* Chariot Racing in the Roman, and later, the Byzantine Empire. The hatred between the Reds, the Whites, the Greens, and the Blues was both comparable to modern day events like soccer riots. But then, in 532 AD Constantinople, an incident involving a botched execution of Blue and Green leaders for the murder of a citizen resulted in the two factions unifying and attempting, and almost succeeding, in ''overthrowing the Byzantine Empire itself.'' The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots Nika Riots]] were so bad that Justinian I attempted to flee the capitol, but his wife stopped him at the last minute. The riots only stopped when his clever eunuch, along with two generals and several army divisions, lured the rioters into the Hippodrome, convinced the Blues to walk out, and killed ''thirty thousand'' people. So this is OlderThanFeudalism.
* Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson (or at least he was Chad Johnson) recently legally changed his last name to "Ocho Cinco," his nickname, just so he could put it on the back of his jersey.
* Gridiron football, particularly college ball, is a religion in many, many parts of the United States. The greatest rivalry in all of sports, according to ESPN, is [[http://espn.go.com/endofcentury/s/other/bestrivalries.html that between the Ohio State University and the University of Michigan.]] Other college blood feuds include Alabama/Auburn, North Carolina/Duke, Oklahoma/Texas, Georgia/Georgia Tech, and Army/Navy.
**The mania is even more intense for Ohio State fans than Michigan fans. I wouldn't be too concerned wearing OSU garb in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but I would never dare to wear blue and maize on the streets of Columbus, Ohio... just thinking about it is scary.
*** At least Ohio State and Michigan have a little bit of geographical separation between their fan bases. What was that about burning the score of the latest Auburn-Alabama game in your neighbor's lawn? (Wait, that's Alabama-Auburn now. I'm so used to Auburn being the stronger one that I just naturally said it that way. I, personally, have no affiliation in that or any other one, as my part of the country is the one generally thought of as the doormats of the BCS. We are also the ones taking over your brackets.)
*** During one of the recent matchups, the city of Ann Arbor sent their own police officers along to protect their fans in Columbus. Legendary coach Woody Hayes reportedly went on a recruiting trip to Michigan with an assistant coach, who noted that they were about to run out of fuel. Woody was adamant that they would NOT fill up in Michigan or spend a dime there, and they literally had to coast across the state border, barely making it to the first gas station on the other side.
** In Texas, we say football is the state religion. We're only half joking.
*** Then there's the old saw, "There are two sports in Texas: football, and spring football."
*** The Fight Song for Texas A&M calls out and mocks the University of Texas by name.
*** And Texas' fight song calls out A&M, even though their main rivalry is with Oklahoma.
* High school basketball in Indiana, at least back in the day. Showcased well in the movie ''Hoosiers'' where the ''entire'' town came out to all the basketball games and followed the team everywhere they went. This was very much TruthInTelevision back when there wasn't much to do around a small town.
** Since the [[NiceJobBreakingItHero introduction of class basketball]] to the state in 1997, well over half the former obsession is gone. That's communism for you. Down in Kentucky, where universal equality to all high schools still reigns, the obsessiveness remains as strong as ever.
* Another college sport example, the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race. No cash prize, few of the participants go on to row professionally, and it's not even a championship (no one claims the two university crews are necessarily the best in the country, though they do train extremely hard). Still very SeriousBusiness, and with a huge TV audience in the UK.
* ''Kite flying'' in Pakistan; where competition has led to kite-fliers impregnating their kite-strings with glass in order to cut opposing kite-strings and attack rival kites. This has resulted in numerous ''deaths'' each year; despite the government attempting to ban it.
** Metal kite strings add an extra fatality factor when you figure in power lines.
** Also the case in Afghanistan. In fact, it's a big part of the novel and film ''The Kite Runner''. The protagonist is so desperate for the winning kite, and thus his father's love, that he [[spoiler:lets his best friend get raped]]. Drama ensues.
** The practice is so ingrained into kite culture that a kite festival in the US has to explicitly state that no glass or metal may be used in the kite's line in a kite battle.
** Every year, come late August, with the kite season coming up (kite-flying being part of the traditional sports played during National Day in September), chilean authorities have to repeat the same message: ''Do not use glass-coated string, do not fly a kite near power lines...''.
* Rugby tends to ascend to this level in New Zealand: when anti-apartheid protesters clashed with rugby fans over the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Springbok_Tour 1981 Springbok Tour]] it sparked off the bloodiest rioting in the country's history.
* UNC and Duke have one of the greatest college rivalries in history; it extends to every sport (with the notable exception of football, because both teams are horrible - Duke hasn't had a winning season in over a decade, and two years ago UNC was boo-ed off the field by their own fans), as well as academics and facilities. Depending on who wins their big rivalry basketball games (they always meet twice in the regular season), there is likely to be some sort of spontaneous celebration in either Durham or Chapel Hill that involves burning things in the streets and occasionally flipping cars, but it's usually too tame to be considered a true "riot".
** This rivalry is such SeriousBusiness, that a few years ago when Duke lost the NCAA championship to Connecticut, the town of Chapel Hill put a banner across the town's main street congratulating the Huskies for defeating the Blue Devils.
* The NCAA basketball tournament is '''VERY''' SeriousBusiness. Commonly referred to as "March Madness", it seems like the entire United States gets sucked into it; people constantly discuss their bracket picks and skip work to watch games. Needless to say, a lot of money is involved in this whole song and dance.
** Just to hammer the point home for non-Americans, even President Obama thinks that this is SeriousBusiness, as shown [[http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/ncaatourney09/columns/story?columnist=katz_andy&id=3991859 here]]. He even tells the team he picked to win the championship not to "embarrass [him] in front of the nation".
** I actually lost a day or two of Science and Economics classes due to March Madness. In science class there was some extra credit opportunity to turn in a bracket sheet, with more points if you win. Also apparently I have no will to live when I say that I don't care about march madness.
** Connected to the previously-mentioned rivalry, it is SeriousBusiness for people to '''''HATE''''' the Duke basketball team...''[[http://www.spartantailgate.com/forums/3686560-post21.html across]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYOgC2Qbqh4 the]] [[http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/sports/basketball/college_basketball/villanova/Duke-Hate-Guide.html?corder=reverse entire]] [[http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=355217 United]] [[http://atleagle.blogspot.com/2005/03/let-duke-hating-begin.html States]] [[http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/23258333/ of]] [[http://www.snakesinmypants.com/2007/03/19/on-duke-hating-the-yankees-notre-dame-and-even-sort-of-the-cowboys/ America]]''.
*** Well, it is true that [[http://www.fark.com Duke Sucks]]
* Although football doesn't have the same level of support in Canada as it does in the United States, the various Canadian Football League teams and their fans still have passionate rivalries. Canadian football fans tend to go especially crazy around September, when the Labour Day Classic is played and the various teams play their most hated rivals in home-and-home games.
* Currently, in Turkey, all tourists must take note that mentioning the victory of Besiktas against Fenerbahce is a possible threat to your perpetual well-being. You have been warned.
* This [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-6Tn0Ie-AQ New York Giants fan]] after the Giants lost to the Eagles in the 08/09 playoffs. And it was probably even worse for him after my team the [[{{buttmonkey}} Arizona Cardinals]] beat the Eagles and went to the Super Bowl instead of them.
* In a less funny example, Junior Tennis. There was once a player who got poisoned by the parents of another player. Those crazy tennis parents.
* It was said on another Trope page, but calling football "soccer" in some places is grounds for murder.
** At least several Americans feel the same way about people from "[[ButNotTooForeign those other fruity nations]]" calling The Boring Game "football".
* Soccer Moms and Hockey Dads. Why on ''earth'' people take kids' games seriously is ''far'' beyond people and is why this troper will ''never'' make his children sign up for sports.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theatre]]
* In the storylines of many ballets, dancing is SeriousBusiness. The hero of ''SwanLake'' dooms his beloved to spend eternity as a swan because he mistakenly dances with the wrong woman at a ball. The titular heroine of ''Giselle'' dances herself ''to death'', and later spares the man she loves from the same fate by offering to dance in his place to appease an evil ghost queen who is forcing him to dance again and again. In ''The Sleeping Beauty'', Aurora pricks her finger not from ''spinning'', but from ''dancing'' with the spindle despite her mother's warnings that doing so would be dangerous.
* ''{{Wicked}}''. The Pokemon craze of the late '90s pales in comparison how the popularity of ''Wicked'' swept across the country. It was practically becoming a religion, which caused HypeAversion in some.
** Shippings, within the fandom. You '''dare''' like anything other then Fiyero/Elphaba or Glinda/Elphaba?!
* The Arbiter in the musical "Theatre/{{Chess}}" not only takes his job of refereeing a chess championship incredibly seriously, he also seems to think it makes him a badass. "I'm on the case, can't be fooled/ any objection is overruled/ I'm the Arbiter, I know the score/ from square one/ I'll be watching all sixty-four..."
** It's the backup singers and dancers that make the whole thing SeriousBusiness.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* Rule number one of online gaming: All online gaming is SeriousBusiness. Someone is just fooling around? Kick them. Someone is doing better than you? Then they are hacking! Kick them! Someone killed you by accident? Kick them. Your team is losing? Scream at them and insult their sexual orientation. Team is still losing? Scream ''louder''. Your team isn't treating this game like it is a life and death situation? Scream louder, make them know how pathetic they are, and immediately call them "gay". You're losing? It's because you're lagging. Someone is beating you? Then they are hacking, exploiting, or are using "Unfair" or "cheap" strategies. You beat someone using those strategies and methods? Then it's perfectly legit and all part of the game. Someone uses the same things to beat you, then they're cheating. If someone is trying to have fun with the game, [[StopHavingFunGuys STOP THEM!!]] This isn't about having ''FUN!'' it's about WINNING and GAMERSCORES and ACHIEVEMENTS!!
* ''::deep breath::'' [[SuperSmashBros NO ITEMS]], [[CharacterTiers FOX ONLY]], [[StopHavingFunGuys FINAL DESTINATION!]]
* ''[=~Pokémon~=]'''s combat is so important in its world that people, including kids as young as 10, are allowed to wander around, doing nothing but Pokémon matches. It seems there is ''nothing'' considered important that does not involve Pokémon in some way.
** In the most recent games, it is revealed that a Pokémon (Arceus) ''created the universe''. [[OlympusMons And you can catch it!]]
** The ''Pokémon TCG'' games for Game Boy take this trope to a ridiculous extent, creating an entire civilisation apparently based around trading and battling with Pokémon cards.
** The first generation ''Pokémon'' games featured exactly one character who didn't speak of Pokémon or the geography of his native town. What did he say? Something along the lines of "What? Are you expecting me to talk about Pokémon? Not everyone does that, you know."
*** "I like shorts. They're comfy and easy to wear."
*** "I'm a pretty cool guy. I have a girlfriend!"
** This one has at least ''some'' justification: if every sentient, living thing in the world that wasn't a human was a potentially-dangerous monster that could be domesticated through the use of careful training, don't ''you'' think that a large chunk of society would be based upon that? It'd be no more unusual than real-world biologists, zookeepers, and pet owners. However, the games ''do'' kind of get carried away with this...
*** The anime, and the games themselves to a lesser extent, also show Pokémon being used for other tasks that have nothing to do with battling. Fighting, Ground and Rock Pokémon are used in construction tasks that involve heavy lifting and/or digging into the ground, Fire Pokémon are involved in glassblowing and blacksmithing, Water Pokémon are used in firefighting, Poison Pokémon serve as living garbage disposals, Electric Pokémon are used to provide backup sources of energy when the main power in a building goes out... {{So Yeah}}.
**** It does seem very remarkable though that the idea of ritualized Pokémon Battling is so heavily ingrained in society that it supplants inter-human violence even in criminal context.
***** Um, what can people do really? A 6 year old with a charizard who listened to him could beat up trained marines with bellsprouts. There's a reason the police force has pokemon too. . .
** You think that's bad, take a look at some of the real people who play the games. Arguments arise on every single facet of the game, from arguing between what moves or Pokemon should or shouldn't be used, to whether exploiting glitches is acceptable. On the very extreme end, there are some who turn a cloning glitch, letting a player make an exact copy of a Pokemon, into a moral argument that is almost word for word the argument over actual real life cloning.
** Kris vs [[ReplacementScrappy Kotone]]. There was a long war on a few forums about whether or not Kotone is a redone Kris, or a completely new character. The war never officially ended..
* Similarly, in ''{{Mega Man Battle Network}}'' series, the entire world revolves around the [=NetNavis=], glorified sentitent computer programs, and their fighting; there's classes in the public elementary school about fighting viruses with your Navi, and such oddities can be found online as coffee shops and in the sixth a fish stick vendor where you spend "real" ingame money on treats for these Navis. The series alternates between treating Navis other than MegaMan and Bass [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman as sentient or not.]]
** Though technically, in regards to the virus battling classes, the state of online networks in the Battle Network world does actually make viral infections Serious Business: utilities and appliances getting shut down, information getting stolen, vandalism, etc. So having Virus Battling classes there amounts to basic self-defense courses here... but the coffee and fish sticks are still pretty silly.
* Averted in the ''Culdcept'' games. The cards aren't a game in-universe -- although sometimes Cepter battles are put on for entertainment in some of the worlds composing it -- and given that the ultimate victor gets to create a new world, and the cards let people use magic, summon monsters, and create items out of thin air, they're a legitimately big deal.
* In the fan-made RPG ''BarkleyShutUpAndJamGaiden'', basketball is Serious Business. In the dystopian TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, basketball has been outlawed after a "Chaos Dunk" destroyed New York, and almost every basketball player in the world was killed in "The Great B-Ball Purge". Hilarious if only because of how serious everyone is about it, and surprisingly fun to boot.
** [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in-game with the opening dialogue box "Warning: this game is {{canon}}."
** Don't forget the [[AuthorFilibuster author filibusters]] if you want to save. Remember, they're vidcons, not console videogames. And don't even get started on vid-cons.
* In the more recent ''FinalFantasy'' games, some sort of minigame, usually a collectible card game, is played worldwide. In the most blatant cases, it's possible to challenge someone to a match [[TakeYourTime in the middle of a battle or other disaster]].
** Especially blatant in ''FinalFantasyVIII'' and ''[[FinalFantasyX X]]''. In the former after [[spoiler:time has been compressed,]] you can still find members of the card-gaming club from Balamb Garden in the blasted wasteland that is left, and in the latter you can use the save-crystal deep inside of the CosmicHorror Sin to go play Blitzball.
* ''CustomRobo''. Who'd think [[KidouTenshiAngelicLayer people fighting with robotic dolls]] would be big enough to have interscholastic and national tournaments and a black market dealing in illegal custom robo parts? Sometimes, you can challenge any old folk on the street with a custom robo cube in their hand, [[TakeYourTime and challenge them repeatedly before going off to a big tournament]] or some other plot-mandated event.
** It gets worse than that. Custom Robos are apparently ''vital to police work.''
** Somewhat justified. It's mentioned that they were originally simple toys. The serious business came in because of Rahu's influence.
* ''NeedForSpeed: Underground'' and ''Underground 2'' started off giving street racers enough money to buy import sports cars, but ''Most Wanted'' and ''Carbon'' finally went to over-the-top extremes showing quite a bit of street racers with enough gold to buy German supercars ''won from street racing alone!''
* While court trials are SeriousBusiness in real life, the ''PhoenixWright'' games elevate this to a new level with how over the top its cases get. And while being a lawyer is quite a respectable career in real life, they're practically superheroes in the gameverse.
** Superhero lawyers? [[HarveyBirdmanAttorneyAtLaw What a crazy concept]].
*** [[DareDevil Crazy]] [[SheHulk indeed]].
** And let's not forget the hotbed of murder and intrigue that is the children's television industry of ''PhoenixWright''. Deadly serious business.
* Similarly, ''TraumaCenter'' achieves this not by making serious business out of something trivial (lifesaving surgery really ''is'' serious business) but by taking its seriousness way over the top.
* The rather unknown party game ''Poy Poy'' treats throwing stuff at each other like the biggest thing ever. Okay, said stuff is things like big rocks and rockets but still...
* ''DeusEx: Invisible War''. Templars. Majestic. Illuminati. Nanites. Aliens. Nothing to bat an eye about... But competing coffee franchises? SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!
* The bonus-chapter of ''TheWorldEndsWithYou'' parodies that: In this AlternateUniverse, everything revolves about the game "Tin Pin Slammer", which is actually just a tiny little mini-game in the main storyline. In this AlternateUniverse however, Tin Pin Slammer's power is so great, it actually "managed" to make Neku become an hopeless optimist, instead of an IneffectualLoner. (Count the times Neku's only two smiling Cut-scene-sprites are used in the main storyline. Now count how often they are used in the bonus chapter) Optimist-Neku also parodies the protagonists of shows like "Pokemon", or "YuGiOh", by holding monologues a lá "Oh Tin Pin, how happy you make our world!" or "All these different people can only be united by one thing: TIN PIN SLAMMER!!"
** Let's not forget that the reason an important party member was absent for Week Three is because he fled to this alternate universe and wouldn't leave because ''he was having too much fun playing Tin Pin Slammer''. And this guy [[spoiler: is essentially ''god''.]]
* In ''SuperRobotWars Original Generation'', The virtual reality mech sim "Burning PT" is rather popular, enough that the championship match Ryusei participates in is held in a packed stadium.
** Never mind the fact that the whole thing was a GovernmentConspiracy to discover [[strike:Newtypes]] Psychodrivers in the first place.
** Considering that in the Real World, people are plenty crazy about sports (don't even get me started on soccer, people have committed murder because of that game), it isn't strange at all that people in SuperRobotWars are crazy about the mech sim (could be considered a sport).
* ''Nintendogs'': hundreds of people will turn up to watch dog competitions multiple times per day, every day, and are clearly paying to attend each time since how else would the generous prizes be funded?
* In ''[[{{Touhou}} Touhou Soccer]]'', the Touhou cast will unleash their [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kofnEdB8Blc&feature=related world-shattering attacks]] for the sake off scoring a few goals.
*Apparently the boys and girls of the ''PuyoPuyo'' franchise are very much aware that they're playing a PUZZLE GAME and it's SeriousBusiness to them. Because apparently, if you lose, you die. Mostly. Heck, ''any'' puzzle game with a storyline can have this happen. Just finish ''PanelDePon'' with at least one loss on your record and ''watch''.
* In the later games of the ''TonyHawk'' series, the ones with actual stories, this is pretty much a given, but ''Tony Hawk's American Wasteland'' takes the cake. First off, skating is a means of expression that Da Vinci himself could never fully comprehend. Second, it also gives you superhuman strength, speed, and jumping... power and allows you to ''slow the passage of time around you''. Well, if you undergo the TrainingFromHell provided by OldMaster Master Zen, that is. Not only do the Black Widowz, the most powerful gang in Los Angeles, rule the streets with skating, but the fearsome Skate Club domestic terrorist group uses their moves to ''level entire buildings''.
** Somewhat humorously, though, it's made pretty clear that BMX (which you can also do in the game) is really not that big a deal; the guy who teaches it to you is a spastic nobody who pays ''you'' to get lessons from him.
* [[EveOnline Internet spaceships]] are [[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/arts/07eve.html serious business]].
** Some people take it a lot farther than running for a player council. Consider [[http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65475/page/2 the guy who has dropped $150,000 to buy his in-game alliance a massive battle fleet]], or [[http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65475/page/3 the plan to kill a super-ship by having a player cut the power to its pilot's house in mid-battle]].
* ''DonkeyKongCountry'' Bananas: SERIOUS DAMN BUSINESS!
**TruthInTelevision. Just ask Guatemala.
* {{Dance Dance Revolution}} and {{In The Groove}} are very very '''VERY''' serious business, and the competitive aspect has to be seen to be believed. People go as far as to blame the MACHINE for not being able to recognise their footsteps (What are you, The Flash?) thus denying them a perfect score (Seriously. Go to any DDR/ITG forum and ask about "Pad Misses.")
** DanceDanceRevolution being a game you can lose weight playing, one can actually find machines in the gyms of some highschools; people have lost as much as ''300 pounds'' from playing DDR. So the game ''is'' SeriousBusiness in a legitimate way, just not in the way the people who treat it as such are doing it for.
* Inverted in ''AvalonCode'', where the Judgment Link, a sacred ritual for purifying monsters, is played as a sport.
* ''[[JakAndDaxter Jak X]]'' gives us Combat Racing. Sound like a good thing to watch on your day off? It brings in more than its home city's ''entire yearly budget''. Crime lords are willing to ''kill'' to ensure their bets pay off. And according to G.T. Blitz, it could become ''bigger''. Sure, it's not as basic as [[YuGiOh a card game]], but come on, a sport based around driving in circles shooting people is this big?
** [[TwistedMetal Yes]].
*** Well, Twisted Metal seems to be serious business for Calypso, just because he's a MagnificentBastard. It's serious for the competitors because Calypso's a LiteralGenie who'll grant them a wish if they win. It's serious for everyone else because there's a chance they'll get gunned down by crazed clowns in ice cream trucks.
* Apparently in Artix Entertainment's Sci-fi RPG Mechquest, piloting giant robots is such serious business that your characters actually GO TO SCHOOL FOR IT. Although how important the school is doesn't seem to be explored...
** Which means, for the most part you're just blowing up other Mecha with your mecha. The whole "university" thing seems to be more of an ExcusePlot than anything else, but DAMN if it isn't an awesome one.
** However, if you think about it, it makes sense: There are many dangers in space that can come to the planet and destroy it, using this mecha technology, like pirates, dimensional aberrations, crazy fanatics, [[spoiler: a giant evil organization with hundreds of years that has a armada strong enough to seize a planet in few days]], and some cute bear ghost. So a school like that is actually a logical option, if you need something to backup the useless [[spoiler: sabotaged]] armada of your planet.
* [[BigApplesauce I BUILT NEW YORK CITY]]!! The [[SimCity Regions]] each have their own little functions! See, [[CaliforniaDubbing RTA buses]],[[GameMod my house]], and even have replaced my citizens with [[MemeticMutation llamas]]!
* Is SecondLife a video game? Better not tell the people who think SecondLife is SeriousBusiness. To them SecondLife is nothing short of The Future of the Internet and a Model for the Perfect Libertarian Utopia and is absolutely deadly SeriousBusiness. There are certain {{Griefer}} groups on SecondLife that like to annoy these StopHavingFunGuys by making flocks of flying penises, deploying giant talking penises, crashing SeriousBusiness in-game panels dressed up as penises and ... you get the idea.
** Not for nothing, but {{Second Life}}'s in-game Linden Dollars can be converted to and from real money. People have made substantial amounts of money with in-game businesses, or by extending real businesses into the virtual world. The SeriousBusiness attitude is somewhat justified.
* Hot drinks are an in universe serious business in {{Iji}} to the Tasen and potentially the Komoto. (It's ambiguous in the later case as all of their advertisements are incredibly over the top.) Tasen logs describe it as "plasma hot" and state that you shouldn't be able to tell if you're drinking it or have been hit in the face with a plasma cannon. This is not a hyperbole: the cups have to be made out of what they use to armor their elites and the threat of running out is listed above [[spoiler: the Komoto, a genocidal race that currently doesn't know their location.]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4dXsWSHKaE Rock, Paper, Scissors]]
* [[DissidiaFinalFantasy Dissidia,]] a mash-up fighting game by Square Enix in the same vein as Smash Brothers, also has the same kind of StopHavingFunGuy; here, it's "No Acc, No Equipment, No Summons, Order's Sanctuary." The last item is the stage, and this particular stage is the only one that is ''completely'' wide-open. Fortunately, the mentality doesn't seem to have spread too much...yet.
* Similar to the ''FinalFantasy'' minigame examples, there's a minigame in ''LastScenario'' that is ''extremely'' serious business. Of particular note is Saraswati, who shows up all over the world in the process of trying to learn how to play Hex better, and who gets increasingly [[SanitySlippage creepily obsessive and insane]] as the quest continues. When you last talk to her, she [[spoiler:has been possessed by the spirit of a sorcerer who used the game as a SoulJar, and flips out and tries to kill you.]] But even without taking her into consideration, ''everyone'' is always willing to play Hex, [[TakeYourTime no matter the situation]].
* ''WorldOfWarcraft''
** Alliance versus Horde in ''WorldOfWarcraft''. The arguments inevitably get nasty and personal.
*** There are a number of reasons for this, but the most common one was the general perception of Alliance players by Horde players as juvenile children who wanted to play as one of the "pretty" races (Night Elves, for instance). Of course, ever since The Burning Crusade the Horde have had Blood Elves, which are infinitely worse, but even so, the image is still there.
**** Of course, it's not like Horde was any better than Alliance to begin with. Two words: Barrens Chat.
** Raids are extremely SeriousBusiness
*** "FIFTY DKP MINUS!"
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* In ''RedVsBlue Reconstruction'' it is revealed that the whole purpose behind the concept of the Red Army versus the Blue Army is all an elaborate training simulation and that almost none of the characters whom we watched during the ''Blood Gulch Chronicles'' were actually members of the military at all. However the character Sarge took it 100% serious. Justified in that none of the characters were actually aware that it was a simulation, plus they were equipped with real weapons and ammo and therefore, were at real risk. Sarge is notably still referred to as Sarge, even though he technically has no military rank whatsover.
** The others still appear to be referred to as privates when not being addressed by name, so either it was a throwaway line that was just Wash being insulting, or the writers themselves forgot Wash said it.
** The red and blue teams are simulation Troopers. They are a part of the Army, just a part where the soldiers are considered expandable. Its also hinted that the simulation war was a testing ground for Project Freelancer exclusive, which they used to test stuff, train their Agents and recruit new Soldiers(as seen with Donut).[[spoiler:And to hide the Alpha.]] [[NoNameGiven Sarge]] still qualifies as an example, since no one else of the Blood Gulch Crew takes the war serious.
* ''[=DigitalPh33r=]'' regularly parodies the concept in his Halo movies with unnamed characters brutalizing things in game and/or shouting to the heavens "THIS IS SUCH A BIG DEAL!!!"
* The classic Flash film ''Craziest'' is about someone who considers {{Scrabble}} a religion.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* Ethan from ''CtrlAltDel'', as well as Gabe and Tycho from ''PennyArcade'' also tend to treat their respective hobbies (Videogames and/or tabletop gaming) as SeriousBusiness, although this is probably just the authors poking fun at the "hardcore gaming" mentality.
** Additionally, [[http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/10/29/the-regimen/ Ping]] [[http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/2/16/the-onyx-obelisk/ pong]] [[http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/4/23/victory/ is]] [[http://penny-arcade.com/crizawl/ VERY]] SeriousBusiness.
* [[http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF020-Skub.gif Skub is serious business.]]
* In ''Triangle and Robert'', cooking and food is Serious Business. Cuisine magic powers the comic's most fearsome warriors, several of the characters have some sort of mystical cooking skill, most of them are descended from ancient lineages of battle-cooks, and it is eventually revealed that the entire universe is made out of pudding.
* ''{{PS238}}'':
-->"You have wronged innocents, Charles. I formally challenge you to a game of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_square four-square]]. The loser will be given over to the lords of this realm to do with as they please!"
* Mal of ''Head Trip'' warns her siblings in the tone and posture of a [[DrillSergeantNasty drill sergeant]] (even using the words "troops," "soldiers," and "mission") not to talk or make any sound whatsoever while watching the final season of BattlestarGalactica. She is dumbfounded to find that they don't in fact give a rat's behind about the show.
* Emeril [=LeGoinegasque=], a supporting character in ''{{Achewood}}'', is the president of a club dedicated to the made-up hobby of Trashspotting, driving around on garbage day and building up extensively detailed personality profiles of people they've never even met based on what they throw out. He lives and breathes trashspotting, his character blog (yes, Achewood characters get their own blogs) was all about his trashspotting exploits, and he even had a trashspotting forum for a while. To him and his club, if to nobody else on Earth, other peoples' garbage is Serious Business.
** Emeril's trashpotting even acts as a ChekhovsSkill in one arc, where Philippe goes missing -- he manages to figure out where he's going based off a sole discarded can of baked beans.
* In a recent ''TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja'' story tennis was created to make sure there is always a champion to battle an ancient death machine in a game of tennis every year so it does not destroy the world. The U.S. government loses a team of Navy [=SEALs=] to the tennis temple's security system everytime they have to replace the current tennis champion. Also, they have to get through robot commando temple guards to even get to the temple. Really.
** The entire concept is so ridiculous that the doctor, well-experienced at this sort of craziness, loses control and starts laughing hysterically.
** [[BeyondTheImpossible Half the reason for reading it is waiting to see what he'll come up with next.]]
* In ''SluggyFreelance'' holidays are SeriousBusiness. Bun-Bun actually tries to take over the world by becoming the patron figure of Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* In the YouTube series, ''TheGuild'', gaming is very serious business. More serious, apparently, than parenting or social interaction.
** It's based on Felicia Day's two-year addiction to an MMORPG, so it's definitely TruthInTelevision.
* Pick a flash submitted to Newgrounds. If it involves fighting, the cause of the fight and bloodshed can be as minor as bumping into other character.
* An agent/subject of the SCPFoundation has gotten his hands on a [DATA: THE EXPUNGING] card that ''makes'' card games a serious business: Said card can ''destroy'' the other player... or its user, if he loses.
* [[strike:Owning]] ''Hiring'' a boat is Serious Business. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU&feature=channel_page Just ask Andy Samberg and his friends]].
* In DominicFear's Kenny Bassender (Full Title: Kenny Bassender's Quest For Greatness With the Underground Association of Puppydog Racers) movie, Kenny Bassender is a normal person who isn't special. Until he starts playing a game called Puppdog Races, where he is the flawless. So great, that the other members of the Association try to kill him. Not the whole society (it still is in normal present day America), but very serious.
* On LiveJournal, roleplay is very serious business, as evidenced by the "Roleplay Secrets" community, a daily post of nasty things anonymous roleplayers have to say about other roleplayers, allowed to rag on anything from their characterizations to ''the size of their avatars''. Similar is the "RP Anon Meme", a bi-monthly explosion of hateful anonymous discussion. People have actually made ''death threats'' over pretendy funtime games on the internet.
* A [[MemeticMutation meme]] on the Japanese Internet (a translated version of which is well-travelled on anonymous text boards) involves a somewhat lengthy rant about visits to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshinoya Yoshinoya]] being really serious business. [[http://www.lurkmore.com/wiki/Yoshinoya_Rant Just read it.]] Variations are popular for ranting about extremely petty things. The meme itself was actually referenced on SayonaraZetsubouSensei, ''that's'' how widespread it is.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Websites]]
* {{Wikipedia}}, naturally. Ironically, most college professors don't even accept the site as a legitimate source.
** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kobe_Bryant Kobe's career summary is also serious business.]]
*** It's slightly terrifying that there are five pages of people arguing about a basketball player's neutrality and favorite things.
* TVTropes can occasionally be serious business. Let us please leave it at that.
* My Life Is Average has a very dedicated group of people that hate on any story that isn't average or has words like "it made my day" or "Best. X. Ever."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* In ThomasTheTankEngine everything on the Island of Sodor is somehow connected to the railway to such an extent that every delivery made on Sodor is delivered by rail.
** similarly racing is something nearly all the locomotives take seriously.
* The card game in ''{{Chaotic}}'' is only serious business in parallel universes (two, in fact). On Earth, it is just a very popular game and nothing more.
** Only popular enough to play it during lunch at school without people thinking you're a total nerd (which most players are)
** On the episode ''Earth To Kaz'' tends to avert that as well. Anything Chaotic (actually any TCG) is a brand iron used for nerds.
* ''{{Galactik Football}}'' to the point that most of the characters care more about the matches than about the conspiracies, kidnappings and political manipulation taking place. To be fair, their version of football involves the Flux, which itself is a perfect example of ''MundaneUtility'' .
* Much to the dismay of TheOmniscientCouncilOfVagueness, most of the world of ''{{Metalocalypse}}'' worships the Heavy Metal band "Dethklok" as living gods; allowing them to do anything, including destroying nations.
** In fact, Dethklok IS a nation, with the world's 12th highest GDP. And it's just 5 guys and the people that work for them.
** Dethklok is also a god, their songs have the power to form whirlwinds and summon ancient beings.
* Would you believe noodles? In the European/Korean animated series ''{{Pucca}}'', the noodles made at the local Chinese restaurant are such SeriousBusiness that in one episode, when the chefs believe themselves disgraced because of a just-barely-unfinished bowl of noodles, they go to a '''''[[DeathCourse DEATH COURSE]]''''' to redeem themselves, while in another, when they split up into three separate restaurants over a fight, it causes a sort of ZombieApocalypse, with most of the inhabitants of the village wandering as an aimless, lifeless, pathetic mob, mumbling and moaning about the lack of noodles until they reunite.
** And God help you if you run out of chopsticks. The world will scream.
* Serious Business was parodied in the episode of ''FamilyGuy'' "E Peterbus Unum". In one of Peter's ancestral flashbacks, the Union won the Civil War with a {{drinking contest}}.
** Another episode has a running gag revolving around the SeriousBusiness of whether or not to pronounce the "h" in "whip".
*** Hwhat's really funny is the way people seem to understand hwhat Brian's getting at hwhen he repeats the word they just said without pronouncing the "h."
** In one episode they [[LampshadeHanging hang a lampshade]] on how OneTreeHill [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v2wnOU3OtU treats high school as serious business.]]
* Parodied in ''{{Futurama}}'', when the Harlem Globetrotters show up to challenge Earth to a game of basketball. When asked what's at stake, the Globetrotters reply... "NOTHING! There is nothing at stake, and no threat!" After Earth loses the game, further LampshadeHanging is done by the commentator, who states that "This is a dark day for humanity. Earth... has been beaten... ''at basketball''." In the DVD Commentary, the creators admit that the entire plot was a jab at the network, [[ExecutiveMeddling who always wanted the stakes to be as high as possible]].
** However, in another ''{{Futurama}}'' episode, the Omicronians are so angered by [[AliensStealCable not being able to finish watching the finale]] of ''[[AllyMcBeal Single Female Lawyer]]'' - they attack the Earth, demanding to see the rest of the episode. Talk about SeriousBusiness taken to extremes! Fortunately, Fry's [[SomedayThisWillComeInHandy knowledge of 20th Century television]] helps save the day.
*** ''Everything'' is SeriousBusiness to the Omicronians, even [[ThePowerOfLove that emotion]] [[WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove we humans call]] [[ThatMakesMeFeelAngry "wuv."]]
** Then, of course, ''StarTrek'' has actually become a [[IntellectualPropertyReligion religion]] in ''{{Futurama}}''. As explained by Nichols: "As country after country fell under its influence, world leaders became threatened by the movement's power." Since then, all the episodes and movies have been dumped on Omega 3 (a forbidden world) - and it became forbidden to use the words "Star" and "Trek" in the same sentence.
* Played for laughs in many episodes of ''SouthPark'', almost always involving Randy Marsh. Often made funnier by the fact that there are usually other characters that don't care about the serious business of the week:
**You got F'd in the A: Losing at a dance competition is treated as dire as being assaulted. In the extreme, "getting served" sends Randy to the hospital despite no injuries or even physical contact whatsoever.
**Make Love, Not Warcraft: The boys give up any semblance of life whatsoever to prepare to avenge a player-killing. Meanwhile, Blizzard employees and Randy(yes, he does this a lot) behave as though griefing is a coming apocalypse.
*** Well of ''course'' it was serious business to the (''South Park universe'' counterparts of the) Blizzard execs--If people stopped playing [=WoW=], the execs would have to start ''[[SarcasmMode coming up with new games!!!]]''
** The Losing Edge: Little League Baseball is Serious Business...for the parents. The kids themselves are trying to lose on purpose so they can go home and play video games.
*** To the point where they turn losing into practically an art form, and are shocked when another team is much better at sucking than they are. Yes. ''Losing'' is SeriousBusiness.
*** Equally, drunken fisticuffs between dads is Serious Business... at least, as far as Randy's concerned.
** Stanley's Cup: The outcome of a peewee hockey game determines whether a cancer-stricken child will live or die. Stan, who's only coaching to pay off his community service to get back his bike, is endlessly baffled by how important everyone think the game and him being coach are.
*** Made all the more absurd when they are forced to play against ''professional athletes''(the Detroit Red Wings).
** Super Fun Time: Historical roleplaying is such Serious Business that people get themselves shot in the head rather than break character. Everyone being drunk doesn't help..
** Over Logging: Internet deprivation is potentially lethal.
** Guitar Queer-O: ''GuitarHero'' proves a faster path to fame and riches than playing in an actual band.
*** And a faster path to drug addiction...or drug-video-game addiction...or whatever the hell Heroin Hero is.
** And again, Randy puts his life on the line, to produce the biggest piece of shit ever to escape a bowel, but it was all for nothing, because no one can be as big a piece of shit as Bono.
** In "Pinewood Derby", Randy steals a component from the Large Hadron Collider to make Stan's wooden car roll down a ramp faster than it would using only the equipment from the official kit. After this actually works, another father (whose son's wooden cars had apparently gone undefeated in previous years) shot himself in the head with a pistol.
*** Of course thats only a ''slight'' exaggeration of actual pinewood derbies.
** In several episodes, no matter how [[WhiteDwarfStarlet obscure and/or washed up]] a given actress is, the people of South Park ''will'', without fail, think she's the greatest thing on two legs since ''TyrannosaurusRex''.
** Christian Rock Hard: So, you think that downloading music from the Internet illegally is not a big deal, huh? And I bet you didn't even stop to care about the fate of the celebrities whom your irresponcible behaviour doomed to the misery of ''semi-luxurious'' existence, did you?!
* In an episode of ''TheSimpsons'', barbershop quartet music is Serious Business: Homer and the Be-Sharps start touring around the world, and as Homer's agent put it, "women are going to want to have sex with you". Granted, it was a spoof of Beatlemania, but still.
* ''{{Recess}}'' had one jigsaw/card game thing called "Ajimbo", which everyone slowly becomes addicted to, becoming like zombies that literally forget how to play other games like kickball.
** Don't forget "Monstickers" without those you couldn't even afford to lay on the grass during recess, it gets worse when TJ monopolizes them and even starts charging kids stickers for standing around because they can't afford to play anything (he calls it a "loitering fee").
** There's also the episode where they find the book of King Morty's rules. In the world of Recess, playground monarchs are serious business.
* On paper the games in ''{{ReBoot}}'' sound like it is serious business, but it is [[JustifiedTrope justified]] because these games are a life-or-death matter for the people ''inside'' the computer.
* The good guys in ''Get Ed'' are couriers. The bad guys are ''evil'' couriers, bent on ruling the package delivery market with an iron fist.
* In ''TheMightyDucks'' cartoon, the titular Duck's homeworld of Puckworld (ItMakesSenseInContext... ''sorta''), ice hockey is a way of life.
* The ''KidsNextDoor'' once encountered Rupert Puttinsky, a guy who made "miniature golf" SeriousBusiness... to the point of [[InsistentTerminology insisting on calling it as such]]:
-->'''Numbuh 5:''' They have champs in mini golf?\\
'''Rupert:''' The game is called ''miniature golf''!
[[indent:70:And don't you ''dare'' call miniature golf a stupid game, either.]]
** For the titular organisation, many kid activities are SeriousBusiness and often threatened by adults. Case in point: the ban on ''drinking [[FrothyMugsOfWater (root)]] beer'' in "Operation Pop", a prohibition parody.
** Also ice cream, in which the search for the true nature of the "fourth flavor" (vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate being the core three) is akin to that of a religious quest.
** The entire show rests on the premise that childhood is SeriousBusiness. Which is also TruthInTelevision.
* The BeachEpisode from ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'' hangs a lampshade on such things with Azula, Ty Lee, Zuko, and Mai playing a friendly game of volleyball at the beach. When Azula spikes the ball and scores the game point, she makes the ball ''explode'' and completely loses it:
-->'''Azula:''' Yes! We've defeated you for all time! You will NEVER rise from the ashes of your shame and humiliation!... Well that was fun!
** As is dating, (and please note, she's only just met the guy and had her first kiss):
--->'''Azula:''' Together, you and I will be the strongest couple in the entire world. We will dominate the Earth! ''(columns of blue fire burst from her hands)''\\
'''Chan:''' Uh... [[NoGuyWantsAnAmazon I gotta go]].
*** Given that Azula, despite [[WiseBeyondTheirYears her age of 14]], is fresh off her conquest of a supposedly unconquerable city, it's perhaps unsurprising that everything is serious business to Azula. Not to mention the number of gifted kids that have problems relating socially to people their age.
**** Or ''batshit insane'' kids that have problems relating socially to people their age.
****Hmm, gifted and disturbed children control the fate of the entire world? [[NeonGenesisEvangelion Where have I heard that before?]]
* Pretty the entire basis of ''{{Fillmore}}!'' is every aspect of middle-school life is overblown to something everyone's life revolves around.
** Let me reiterate, EVERYTHING is SeriousBusiness, including the Bocci Ball team, Standardized Tests, the School Mascot, a Mini-Golf tournament, Macaroni Art, the world's longest-living Tomagotchi {{Expy}}, Baseball Card Forgery, Abstract Art, and tricking kids into stealing scooters so he can look good by giving them to poor underprivliged kids in Russia.
* For most of ''Ratatouille'', this is averted, with food only being given relatively reasonable import... until the climax, [[spoiler:when Remy's cooking -- and the revelation of his role as the chef -- are enough to ''induce a HeelFaceTurn'' in a sadistic critic.]]
* How has {{Metalocalypse}} ''not'' been mentioned yet? Dethklok are so popular, their fans will go to their concerts despite the ridiculously high risk of dying, some will ''kill themselves'' if an album is delayed, a secret agency exists whose sole goal is to kill Dethklok, they have thousands and thousands of workers constantly putting their lives in danger just to serve every single one of Dethklok's (often ridiculously stupid) desires, Florida's governor was killed by rabid fans just for a negative comment about Nathan, people who download their music are ''tortured'' (often by Dethklok themselves), and the band themselves are ''the world's twelfth largest economy''. In Metalocalypse, '''everything''' Dethklok related is very SeriousBusiness.
** It's been mentioned twice already. Scroll up much. Unless this one came first.
* In {{KingOfTheHill}}'s series finale, meat-inspecting is serious business, or at least the competition Bobby enters is. His teammates go batshit insane when he gets one question wrong despite still making it to the finals, then later at a dinner party, one teammate actually throws pepper in an opposing team's faces. And on the way to the finals, the driver of the bus carrying Bobby's team turns out to be a member of the same opposing team, and parks the bus in a puddle of mud and leaves them stranded there.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:RealLife]]
* Competition is more or less a synonym or one-word description of SeriousBusiness and StopHavingFunGuys rolled into one. Take anything. And I mean ''anything''. Make it competitive. Watch it immediately turn into SeriousBusiness and cock-measuring as the StopHavingFunGuys kick out all the people who actually want to have fun with it. Competition can be good...Except that over 90% of it is absolutely ruined by StopHavingFunGuys who just ''take it way too fucking seriously'' for it to be remniscent of ''any'' kind of fun, because then they will take on the "Win to live" mentality and treat a simple ''game'' as though it is the most important thing in the world.
* Anything related to religion, gods and opinions thereof is taken WAY too seriously by some people.
** To be fair to everyone, religion (believe or disbelieve) is actual serious business with very real implications and consequences for peoples' lives. Not to say that you can't take it to far, though.
* A blogger known only as [[XtremeKoolLetterz "Speedzzter"]] went NUTS after Kyle Busch gave Toyota their first NASCAR Sprint Cup win. [[http://speedzzter.blogspot.com/2008/03/day-nascar-died-note-get-latest-truth.html His rant must be read to be believed.]]
* A secretary in the Mars Corporation once tried to break up an argument between two members of the board with 'Gentlemen, gentlemen--remember it's only sweeties!'. Yeah--tell that to the chocoholics wandering around.
* Most (if not all) fads could definitely qualify for this trope. Some more specific examples:
** The Beanie Baby craze of the late '90s.
*** What's especially sad about this one is that ''you can't give the things away on eBay now''.
** Tickle Me Elmo
** Cabbage Patch Kids in the early 80's
** The Pet Rock.
** [[TheBeatles Beatlemania]].
*** Modern Beatlemaniacs still tend to believe Beatles4ever.
** Hula Hoops in the '50s.
** Going ''way'' back, the Dutch Tulip Craze.
*** Subverted (can you do that in real life?) by the fact that it actually became the basis of their economy, making it of vital importance to people's livelihoods. Then the bubble burst...
** Umm, {{Pogs}} anyone?
* Let's not forget the mini-scandal that the LosAngeles Fox station got into with their report on Anonymous. Apparently, Anonymous can blow up yellow vans with ease, and are "hackers on steroids." Anonymous was so amused by this that a meme got started about how buying "dog curtains" can protect you from various things, including exploding yellow vans.
* In the UK [[SpotOfTea tea]] is such SeriousBusiness that the British Standards Institute brought out a 5,000 word document on how to prepare the perfect cuppa (legal designation BS 6008) and the UK Governement once worried about how to maintain tea supplies in the wake of a nuclear conflict. A very SeriousBusiness indeed!
* SeriousBusiness now presents [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103 ISO 3103]]!!! The way the Government wants you to brew tea!!!
** That's not the worst of it. In order to raise enough money to buy all the tea they wanted from China, in the 1800's the UK got a significant fraction of the country hooked on opium, and then fought a couple of wars to keep China hooked.
** Tea has been ''very, very serious business'' in Japan for a very long time. The arts of poetry and the incredibly formalised Tea Ceremony were every bit as important to Bushido as combat prowess. Schools dedicated to the tea ceremony have existed for generations and every possible aspect of the ritual, both the physical performance of it and the symbolic aspect, has been carefully studied and mapped out. The ceremony is loaded with social, philosophical and spiritual meaning and is one of the greatest traditions of Japanese culture.
* Similarly in the western world, particularly continental Europe and ''especially'' France, wine. Oenephiles will spend thousands on the right glasses, the right storage facilities, and all the little doodads for serving, and that's not even counting the wines themselves. Serving, tasting and pairing are as formal and ritualised as some of the stricter religions. And then you get people who are REALLY serious about it.
* Weddings are ''serious business.'' On average, Americans spend about the price of a decent car to throw an extravaganza including catered meals, professional music, flowers, champagne, photographs, limos, and clothing that will be worn only once (if it's not going right back to the rental store) to celebrate nuptials that could have been completed with a fifteen dollar fee and maybe a blood test. And Heaven help you if Bridezilla (or Groomzilla, Mother-of-the-Bride-zilla, etc.) rears its ugly head...
** One of the anecdotes of the life of a [[{{Jesus}} world-altering religious figure]] make this SeriousBusiness OlderThanFeudalism.
* Similarly, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs. By Jewish law, a child attains "adult" status (for religious obligations and privileges) ''automatically'' simply by turning 13 (for boys) or 12 (for girls), no commemoration required (no, not even reading from the Torah). Nevertheless, many parents will spend as much--or more--on a Bar/Bat Mitzvah party (or two, even ''three'' for the ''same kid'') as they would on a wedding or, as in the above example, a "decent car."
**Spending as much as a new car? Please, that's ''underselling'' it by quite a margin. I don't want to go into what my older brother got for his Bar Mitzvah, but trust me, it would ''blow your frikkin' mind!'' If you get the available funds and the right Jewish community (And it's all about the community, we ''need'' to one-up one another) these things will put reality-show weddings and celebrity Sweet Sixteens to shame; I was thirteen for my Bar Mitzvah and I was thinking about what a waste it was. Think about that for a moment, a ''thirteen year old kid'' was at his own party and thougth it was '''too big.''' If that's not Serious Business, I honestly do not know what is.
* Birthday. Parties. Because your three-year-old cares whether or not everyone you know is invited, who baked the cake, how big said cake is, whether you have a moonwalk (which very small children can't even use), pony rides, clowns, magicians, hundreds of expensive presents -- after a while it clearly becomes more about the parents. And don't even mention "My Super Sweet 16".
* MichaelJackson fans. This is a particularly pronounced example: since many casual fans (at least in the U.S.) gave up on him from the child abuse allegations of 1993 onwards, those that remain can be [[Main/CreatorWorship frighteningly fanatical]]. They're the ones prone to swallowing his claims that ''Invincible'' didn't sell as well as expected because of racially-motivated sabotage on Sony's part, or that he really hasn't had all that much plastic surgery, or that there wasn't anything wrong with dangling a baby over a balcony, etc.
** The United States Senate had a moment of silence to commemorate his death.
** Let's face it, his '''DEATH''' is '''SERIOUS BUSINESS''' cranked [[UpToEleven up to eleven]]. All media treated it like a big deal, [[WorstNewsJudgmentEver bigger deal than protests in Iran]]. Tributes kept pouring in, people rushing to get tickets to his memorial service, heavy traffic on internet, music videos playing on {{MTV}} ('''[[{{NetworkDecay}} I SWEAR I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP]]'''), his songs playing on the radio, his albums completely sold out...never in a lifetime a person's death can trigger such huge attention from everyone around the world. Bigger than [[strike:Princess Diana]] [[strike:Pope John Paul II]] [[strike:Jesus]] '''''EVERYONE'''''.
* The art of magic (not the card game, actual illusions) is pretty serious business for the practitioners, but both they and the ([[FanHaters anti-]])fans tend to take this way too far. Fans go beyond [[FlameWar FlameWars]] over who is the best magician and into vitriol mud-slinging (while the FanHaters just try to ruin everyone's fun), while magicians ''themselves'' write out hit contracts on any fellow prestidigitator who breaks their vow of silence and reveals the secret to their illusions.
** [[ArrestedDevelopment We demand to be taken seriously.]]
*** And what's wrong with the card game? There's real money involved. There's prizes. That's SeriousBusiness.
* Fonts, apparently. The amount of vitriol towards Comic Sans is enough to power a... [[BuffySpeak car that runs on vitriol]].
** The eternal battle between Helvetica and Arial: the two popular fonts are nigh indistinguishable to civilians, intolerably different to font snobs. It has inspired its own pro-Helvetica game at http://www.mimeartist.com/helvetica/.
*** And some type designers/snobs hate Helvetica too, due to being [[ItsPopularNowItSucks overused]] and, as they see it, badly used. They even have a DetractorNickname for it, "Helveeta".
*** Oh, and most designers hate Papyrus. Its creator, Chris Costello, has dedicated an entire [[http://nomiddleroad.blogspot.com/ Blogger page]] to comments about the typeface, as he feels it is the only way he can "clear his name".
** Recently there was controversy over Ikea changing its typeface from a variation of Futura to Verdana. Here's a [[http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1919127,00.html Time Magazine]] article about the change and resulting backlash. You could search "Verdanagate" if you wanted to know more.
** For the curious: Sans is for electronic screens. Serif is for print. Monospace is for consoles/code. [[strike: That's about as serious as fonts should ever get...]] If only design were that simple.
* The act of ''Loading the Dishwasher'' is Serious Business. ThisTroper at first thought he was overreacting at times when he got annoyed at his family members were loading the dishwasher in ways that would prevent water from cleaning the dishes fully. When asking his mother about this, she told him that she had heard of ''whole relationships being ruined by disagreements on how the dishwasher should be loaded''. ThisTroper doesn't worry so much anymore.
** It is, sort of. On average, 4 Americans every year die due to improperly loaded dishwashers. For the record, make sure all the pointy things are facing downward.
** This is actually a minor plot point in Johnathan Demme's ''Rachel Getting Married'', leading to the father and groom having a dishwasher-loading competition.
** There's also the consideration that getting it ''really'' badly wrong can damage the machine, leading to expensive repair bills.
* Along that line, there's The Toilet Seat. Whether that's left up or down is of earth-shattering import.
** Put both parts of the seat down after use. Whoever uses it next (and for whatever reason) has to lift it. If everyone did this there would be no problem, but then, [[ViewersAreMorons humans are such stupid creatures...]]
** [[HumansAreBastards Putting the seat down is just a way of inconveniencing other people.]] It's initiation of force, basically the same thing as charging at you with a knife.
* Sometimes Serious Business can be an amazing and a very important thing for us all. An example of this is recorded in the documentary, ''The Rape of Europa'' where curators, historians and even the military (!) worked very, very hard to preserve, save and return artwork after they were looted or destroyed by NaziGermany. I do not know where to start when it comes to the extent of these people trying to save the masterpieces so great art and culture would not be lost forever.
* Americans spend $40 billion on their lawns annually.
** Many city laws regulate property maintenance, so someone can be fined for either a lawn too dry or, where applicable, too lush.
* Orchids are Serious Business. These flowers are apparently so appealing that wealthy orchidophiles will travel around the world searching for new and rare species, since they GottaCatchEmAll.
**Back in the day, expeditions were so dangerous, people ''died'' for the orchids. Thankfully, people don't seem to do that anymore and turned to selective breeding for fancier flowers.
** And [=EVERYone=] had an Orchid discovery tale!
* Alcohol is very serious business. You have to shell out quite a bit of money for the "Good" stuff and if you are a guy, you have to drink this kind of alcohol, if you are a girl you are allowed to drink everything the guys do but should drink the "girly" stuff that guys can't put in their mouths under penalty of being called nicknames making fun of their sexual orientation or intelligence. Then you have to mix it the right way, and even when you get people who hate alcohol and don't want to taste the toxin in their beverage then it has to be made the exact right way. Alcohol is '''serious fucking business''' full of [[ComplainingAboutPeopleNotLikingTheShow people calling non-drinkers uncultured]], [[FanHater Unwritten rules about what you can and can't drink]], and [[HypeBacklash people who were told it was worth every penny and spent the night dry-heaving.]]
** [[UnfunnyAneurysmMoment Funny]]: Some of us who have lost loved ones to some of the substance's effects might wish to enlighten them on just how Serious such Business can actually be.
*** But even then...people do ''not'' consider that legitimate excuses for refusing to drink.
* Bird-watching is Serious Business. Actually, to be more accurate, [[GottaCatchEmAll filling a Life List]] is Serious Business. (Heaven forbid you observe the rare bird and learn more about it and get a better appreciation for the planet's biodiversity; all you really have to do is mark it off the checklist.)
** As {{CBS}} [[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HFI/is_12_51/ai_68770394 learned the hard way]]...
* The US government brings us MIL-C-44072C, a 26-page military specification for oatmeal cookies and chocolate-covered brownies, complete with percent-by-weight requirements for the ingredients.
* The Oxford Comma. Is it necessary, pointless''',''' or to be avoided at all costs?
** See also the singular 'they'. If someone wants to use it, they can, unless they get caught up in the war.
** A GrammarNazi is, in essence, someone who takes up grammar as Serious Business. Enthusiasm for your brand of grammar is more important than being ''correct'' in any way, mind you.
*** Also, sometimes people will treat NOT being a GrammarNazi as serious business; e.g. if you call them out for posting a giant paragraph without punctuation, they'll respond with another unpunctuated paragraph about how you shouldn't be a GrammarNazi.
* [[http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=jackson/090402 Ice cream]] is serious business. And worthy of plenty of backlash.
** And as Andy Rooney once ranted, [[http://books.google.com/books?id=gTnKjr_BrB0C&pg=PA496#v=onepage&q=&f=false IF IT’S GOT EGGS IN IT, IT’S CUSTARD, NOT ICE CREAM]].
* The board game Go became so popular in Edo period Japan that the state appointed a ''Godokoro'' or Minster of Go. He then founded the Honinbo Go house which specialized in teaching and training Go players. Soon after [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_go_houses three other state controlled houses]] sprung up. The houses would compete in official games that took place in the shogun's castle, sometimes even in the presence of the shogun himself. Because each house's and individual's prestige was on the line, these games were often intense. The most famous example is the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood-vomiting_game Blood-vomiting game]], which lasted four days and ended with the losing player vomiting blood (and dying months later). [[SeriousBusiness Serious Business]] indeed.
* Livejournal held an election among its userbase for a post on their advisory board. Cut to people complaining about the voting system, having fights over the candidates, and one candidate dropping out of the race because of an alleged ''death threat''. For other great moments in Livejournal history, see [[http://wiki.fandomwank.com/index.php/Strikethrough2007 Strikethrough]].
* The SATs and ACTs. They really should just get robots to administer these, because no one - not even the adjudicators - really wants to go through the whole nonsense of reading the instructions word for word AT EVERY NEW SECTION, but apparently they have to. Also, the fuss over filling in bubbles correctly is hilarious.
** The instruction reading of AP exams probably count too.
** In the Canadian corner, we have the Ontario Literacy Test, where test markers take their instructions so seriously that they are willing to fail students for simply using the wrong coloured pen (despite the constant warnings from teachers and the legendary status of the "coloured pen fail", [[TooDumbToLive a not insignificant portion of the school population still fail for that reason]].
*British football. It's not called the "barmy army" for nothing!
** Maybe that's because the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barmy_Army Barmy Army]] is a group of cricket fans. [[IncrediblyLamePun Cricketal]] [[CriticalResearchFailure Research Failure]]!
* On the first Saturday in May, a nation stops for the Kentucky Derby. Y'all know what I'm talking about.
* Shaw, author of Pygmalion, a play about a phonetics expert, at one point interviewed a noted phonetics expert, a Mr. Sweet. This Sweet could not comprehend how not everyone was completely into phonetics as he was, and Shaw wrote in the prologue of Pygmalion that he the phoneticist did not respect any scholar who was not a scholar of phonetics. Also, Shaw himself had the idea that class distinctions were largely caused by phonetics, and this was obviously a big point in the plot of Pygmalion. SoYeah. Phonetics is Serious Business.
* Literature. Do '''NOT''' say you just read ''Great Expectations'' for fun. You can and '''WILL''' be castigated for having a different opinion than others about ''Watchmen''. You can more or less say this for every piece of "literature" out there period.
* Education is VERY serious business...Never mind that having a 4.2 GPA won't guarantee you a job because you spent so much time attaining it that you have no work experience.
** Such heated debates about majors as well. Pick a major. Any major. That is serious business. Especially stuff like Art and Film that might actually cross into the mainstream unlike some stuff in the Horticultural Field.
*** Or stuff that might be useful, like Horticulture, versus things that will leaving starving on a side walk, like Art and Film.
* Cars are very serious business. You have to listen to everything your car is trying to tell you and you can't just get a car and ride it from Point A to Point B. Oh no! you have to get a car that's comfortable, tells you good things, has a high maitenance record, has a high safety record, is made in *Insert country here*...
* Sex can be very serious business to some people. No descriptions at all need to be added. Period.
** In its defense, between babies and AIDS, it is literally a matter of life and death.
* Poodle Haircuts. Dog haircuts. ANY haircut.
* Pets can be ''very'' serious business to some. But then again there ''are'' people who make their lives selling and breeding pets...
* Bingo actually can be very serious business. A game that is based by the luck of the draw...very serious business!
* Poker. OK, so the people who make a decent living from it are perhaps justified in viewing it as Serious Business, but the game abounds with StopHavingFunGuys at all levels of play. [[{{GIFT}} Especially on the internet]], where you can almost guarantee that someone will throw the toys out of the pram after being knocked out of a freeroll by someone playing in a hand in a way with which they disagree.
* Different fields of science get a lot of flak going between them. The most common fights are over which are "real" sciences or "hard" sciences or "pure" sciences.
** Sociology seems to be a prime flame target. And, on that matter... I ''dare'' you to mention Kuhn or Feyerabend in a discussion of that sort.
* The classic Danish version of the Belgian comic {{Tintin}} is very popular, and the outrage reached far beyond the hardcore fans, when it became known that the Danish publishers intended to put out a new translation of the albums. And when people found out that the annoying insurance agent Seraphim Lampion (Joylon Wagg) would be given a new name due to copyright issues, a "People's movement for Max Bjævermose" (his TRUE Danish name) was formed and forced the publishers to pony up the extra cash, so they could use the name Max Bjævermose in the new edition as well.
* Politics are serious business. Okay, I suppose they ''are'', but there is this and then there are people who ''completely change the way they act towards you'' if you as much as mildly approve [insertpoliticianhere] or have voted for [insertpoliticalpartyhere]. Probably proof that this is a very subjective trope, I suppose; to generalise unjustly, in some countries being a self-declared Nazi won't phase anyone much, in others being a Republican instantly makes you a saint or a demon to your listeners, and it's hard to say which is more wrong.
* You wouldn't think Sandwiches are as serious of a business before you work at a delicatessen.
* The Game.
** Goddammit.
*** ''Fuck.'' Well played, Anon. Well played.
*** [[http://xkcd.com/391 Or not.]]
*** ThisTroper has a little bit of tech such that he [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=191313 can't lose the game,]] which provides a good weapon against people who take it too seriously.
* Coffee is very serious business. Not only is there a lot of steps required into making the correct beverages the right way, but there are also extremely varied ways to grow it, as well as how much people will pay for the right coffee beans to make their own way. Coffee is in such high demand and such serious business that people actually collect civet crap to harvest coffee beans out of their excrement. VERY serious business.
*{{Elegant Gothic Lolita}}. Woe befall you if your coordinate lacks a petticoat, has a skirt that's too short, or uses the wrong kind of lace. And don't even think about mentioning that you're wearing a replica of a brand dress unless you're prepared for the flames...
* Celebrity entertainers in general. The fact that this hasn't been mentioned yet should be proof enough. There are major new networks that are explicitly dedicated to covering celebrity news. Then there's all the other major American news networks who spend too much time covering this kind of news because it gets ratings. People clamber over each other to get pictures, endangering the lives of the celebrities and others. When they aren't being worshiped, their lives are being picked apart and destroyed and they in turn wield influence that far outstrips their insight, particularly in the arena of politics. They sing and dance and act people. '''BIG HAIRY DEAL!!!'''
* Nobody has mentioned Marching Band? Marching Band, especially at college level, is very serious business not only for the students but also for the coaches who lead it. Especially for the coaches.
**Coaches? COACHES?! Sir, I am a Director! I- I am an ARTIST!
* Fashion is VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS. What are you doing wearing ''that''?
* Dividing by zero. [[Math/JustBugsMe Even on our own wiki]]
* [[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106857447 Rapping is serious business.]]
* [[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32925695/ns/us_news-education/?GT1=43001 Handwriting]] is such serious business that some people actually consider it an art to make words on paper. Never mind what words they actually wrote, whether they used printing or cursive is fucking '''Everything'''.
** Cranked up to eleven in China, where bad handwriting can cost you your job, and more
*** [[JustifiedTrope Arguably justified]]. Chinese writing is exceedingly complex given its ideographic nature so sloppy handwriting can actually make reading Chinese ''impossible''. [[ValuesDissonance To us in the West, however, with our very simple phonetic alphabets, this seems ridiculous]].
* In 2006, a [[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13274683/ cease-fire]] was called in war-torn Ivory Coast when that country qualified for the World Cup, in interesting case of SeriousBusiness being a good thing.
* In America, [[RedScare socialism]]. Despite the fact that it is not the same as communism, and exists in countries friendly to the US (Sweden is a prime example), some seem to use 'socialism' as a synonym for 'totally evil', or even 'fascism'. Obama has recently been 'accused' of socialism, although few outside of America consider this an accurate.
* In Europe, collecting the toys inside a Kinder Surprise egg is serious business, they can retail for a bit on eBay and it is ''very'' important you know what series they are from. It is in fact a very complex process to identify what series they are from.
* Yahoo Answers' Politics section is packed full of users of such extreme conservatism, it simply must be a huge troll action. And yet they constantly post blatantly flaming questions, and are outright certain that Obama is a [[YouFailHistoryForever Nazi/socialist/Antichrist/Anarchist/Orwellian Dictator/Affirmative Action patsy]], and even go so far as to DENY that anything bad in the US Government could maybe have been a result of the [[GeorgeWBush guy in office for almost a decade before Obama]], even so far as to act SHOCKED and APPALLED at every little thing any liberal or democrat does. They are on the board every hour of every day, and are always sure to give a thumbs DOWN to any answer that is in any way reasonable or neutral in tone.
* Groping (getting felt up on a crowded train or bus) is a serious business in Japan.
** Laws that cover groping include assault (to punish the groper) and female-only cars on subways (to protect the victim.)
*** Girls will often blackmail men by accusing them of groping, and then asking for money instead of calling the police. This is such a serious problem, that a non-profit organization has been created to set up a legal fund to defend men against false accusations of groping.
**** "I Just Didn't Do It" is a documentary about a real life case of a Japanese man who took 5 years to win a groping case against him.
** There is an instructional book about how to grope properly.
** Brothels in Japan include premade sets, like airplanes or buses, so customers can engage in groping fantasies.
** The word for a female who enjoys groping is "chijo."
* [[http://www.koreus.com/video/jonglage_stylo_doigt.html Pen Flipping]]. That is all.
* How is it know one has mentioned fandom yet? It has so much serious business it filled up its own
[[http://wiki.fandomwank.com/index.php/Main_Page wiki]]
* The hysteria created over whether or not music, video games and TV are the cause of violence among young people, is one of the leading causes of complaints from parents and corporate censorship.
* Hilariously made fun of by George Carlin, when he was talking about a reverend who complained excessively about 'hearing something he didn't like' on the radio. Carlin: 'Well there are two knobs on the radio, reverend!'
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