-->''"When you were controlling the feeds, did you notice the parabolic? Hey, it's important. Parabolas are important. Here, look at this. In all the equations that describe motion and heat... in all the Feynman diagrams, what's the one variable that you can turn into negative and still get rational answers from?"''
-->--''{{Primer}}''. (If this made sense to you, your name has the letters "[=MSc=]" or "[=PhD=]" after it somewhere.) [[hottip:*:Time.]]

-->''"If you can't handle the complexity, I'm sorry you are stupid, because you are missing out."''
-->--[[http://www.squidi.net/blog/entry.php?id=2008.05.23 Sean Howard]], on ''TheWire''

-->''"I accidentally bumped into a guy who was wearing a hat, had a ponytail, and had piercings in his eyebrows, nostrils, and lip. He tells me, 'Hey! You got a lot of nerve!' And I go, '[[LameComeback Hey! You got]] [[BuffySpeak a...lot of...]] [[ExpospeakGag cranial accessories!]]' ''(crowd laughs)'' This is a smart crowd; I like smart crowds. When I get the dumb crowds I gotta go, 'Hey! You got a lot of shit on your head!'"''\\
--Mitch Hedberg

The public's been clamouring for some more intelligent television in the wake of RealityTV and LowestCommonDenominator {{Recycled Script}}s. So, you go and write a series loaded with difficult quantum mechanics, quoting obscure 17th-century philosophers, with characters who are [[ThePhilosopher philosophical]] {{Magnificent Bastard}}s who speak [[BilingualBonus a dozen languages]] while conversing to each other by sending Shakespearean zen koans hidden into chess move patterns, and packed with [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic allusions to ancient Sumerian religion]]. You make sure all your TechnoBabble is [[HowUnscientific scientifically plausible]] and go to great lengths to make sure [[AnachronismStew all your ancient Roman soldiers are wearing exact replicas of period equipment]]. Now it's TrueArt, right?

So you sit back and watch the ratings -- which plummet faster than a rocket-propelled brick in a nosedive. What went wrong? In trying to avert making the classic mistake that ViewersAreMorons, you went too far and ended up assuming that ViewersAreGeniuses instead.[[hottip:*:Of course, if you're working in a medium that doesn't need an audience of millions to be profitable, you may not care. Remember that TropesAreTools and that some people ''like'' stories that require effort on their part to understand.]]

While a lot less common than its more insulting opposite (any show without the "mass-market appeal" that {{LCD}} stuff has will be ScrewedByTheNetwork without mercy), overestimating the audience can be more of a death knell than underestimating it, even without network sabotage.

There's also the trap of being so consumed with the complexities that you forget simpler things like plot and characterization.

The most successful way to do this may be to make the more intellectual content into an EasterEgg; the series can be enjoyed without it, but those who get it will enjoy its hidden depths.

See also WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic and MindScrew. ''Not'' mutually exclusive with DidNotDoTheResearch or CriticalResearchFailure - just because a show is crammed with obscure knowledge doesn't mean that said knowledge is correct, [[SeriesContinuityError even when it comes from the show to begin with]]. This can be the result of too many [[InJoke in jokes]] being included in a work.

Contrast with GeniusBonus, which is applying this in small doses, so that the rest of the audience can enjoy the rest of the show.

----
!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Meta ]]

* At times, this very wiki. In particular, The tendency of some tropers to refer to game/show titles as acronyms in examples (e.g. [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer BtVS]], [[TheWorldEndsWithYou TWEWY]], [[AvatarAndTheAirbendingFellowshipOfVampireSlayers AAtAFoVS]]), assuming everyone knows what they mean. Some of them nicely [[PotHole pothole]] them, though.
** Even worse are those who insist on using the TwoWordsObviousTrope as an example with no explanation for those who might not have actually ''seen'' the work in question.
** Not to mention XJustX. [[HypocriticalHumor Just... XJustX]]
** And that's not even taking into account the technical jargon some science or linguistic tropes seem to draw from contributors knowledgeable in those areas.
*** That other wiki has this problem as well, with so much jargon in topics that the entire point of the wiki is no longer clear.
* The names of tropes themselves can be a problem this way. The biggest problem being widespread use of Japanese terminology and anime references in trope titles on an English language wiki. This troper keeps forgetting what Bishounen and Shoujo/Shojo (sp?) mean. Granted, in some cases the terminology is used for a trope that primarily appears in Japanese works, but just as often not.


[[/folder]]

[[folder: Universal ]]

*Almost every {{Mockumentary}} and AprilFoolsDay hoax ever, to the extent that they practically constitute a subtrope. Surely viewers are smart enough to work out that there isn't ''actually'' an alien invasion going on right now, without having to say "THIS IS NOT REAL!" every 5 minutes, right? Wrong, as these examples show:
**''Panorama's'' legendary "Spaghetti trees" April Fools bit had people actually calling the BBC and asking how they could grow Spaghetti trees of their own.
**Likewise, ''Dragon's World: A Fantasy Made Real'' apparently convinced several people that ''dragons really existed''.
**And ''Flying Penguins'', although this was ''perhaps'' {{Lampshaded}} by it being a publicity piece for their online TV-on-demand service
**Many people were disappointed after finding out ''[[BritishNewspapers The Guardian's]]'' travel supplement on "San Seriffe" was an April Fools hoax, even though the entire article was clearly one typography pun after another.
*** More people these days would recognise that as a hoax, as the rise of computers and word processing software means more people are exposed to typographical terminology in their everyday lives. At the time, it was quite an obscure field of knowledge and would only be used by (for example) people in the newspaper industry.
** As Daniel Handler found out when writing ''ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'', people will accept anything labeled as "based on a true story" as true, no matter how outlandish it is. Never mind that the series involves at various points a four-year old movie director, a bikini made of lettuce, eagles used as transportation, and a sawmill that pays people in chewing gum and coupons that will employ a baby to bite pieces of wood, people still criticise the movie (which is more obviously a comedy than the books) for disrespecting the memory of the (entirely fictional) Baudelaire children!
** A number of [[UrbanLegendOfZelda video game rumors]] got their start as April Fools' Day jokes in the video game magazine ''EGM''.
*** Equally defunct British games magazine ''CVG'' tended not to be much better.
** RTBF's ''Bye Bye Belgium'', a mock news broadcast stating that Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) had unilaterally declared its independence. This Flemish troper came across it by accident and laughed her ass off, but so many people initially believed the message that the broadcasters had to add a 'this is fiction' note at the bottom of the screen after half an hour. And even then spontaneous protests broke out. It caused a huge uproar. Ironically, the broadcast had been made to get Walloon and Flemish politicians to talk about the growing tensions between both sides of the country. It failed.
** It should be noted however that most countries in the world don't celebrate April 1st as April Fool's Day. So, when some of the stuff that was fabricated in the English-speaking world reaches the rest of the world, it can't be expected that people will instantly recognize it as such if at all. Made worse that sometimes there's a delay, so even if the viewer, target audience, or whoever is aware of the English-language fondness for April's Fools, they may not have the time reference because it'll be April 12th. Or September...
** ''[[BrassEye "Genetically, paedophiles have more in common with]] '''''[[BrassEye crabs]]''''' [[BrassEye than they do with you or me."]]''
** A boy managed to convince his ''entire ninth grade class'' that "dihydrogen-monoxide" was a deadly substance found in "chemical plants, household cleaning devices, and '''even our rivers and oceans'''!" It had killed ''hundreds of people a year!'' And everyone just started gasping and agreeing that they should ban [[spoiler: water]].
*** Meanwhile, the chemistry students were [[CrowningMomentOfFunny ROFL]].
*** There is an entire [[http://www.dhmo.org/ site]] devoted to the dangers of dihydrogen-monoxide. I understand that a city council staffer came across it, and brought the issue to the attention of said city council, which took prompt action. Then they all found out what it was.
** ''Inquest'' Magazine is the source for the oft-persistent rumor that ''MagicTheGathering'' is getting a sixth color. It was, of course, an April Fool's joke. (Although the card Water Gun Balloon Game can put a 5/5 pink creature into play, so in a sense there is a sixth color already.)
** WithoutWarning, a modern(90s) update of OrsonWelles' WarOfTheWorlds broadcast. It actually said on the screen about every five minutes, "This is not real". Still, people kept calling the affiliates and asking if it was real.
*Any show that involves multiple [[TheChessmaster Chessmasters]] facing off against one another can suffer from this. ''TheWheelOfTime'' and ''PiratesOfTheCaribbean: At World's End'' both fall into this trap.
* BilingualBonus is usually a GeniusBonus, but overuse, often combined with having to "get" them in order to understand the plot, falls into this.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Advertising ]]

* ''Byte'' Magazine used to run an ad every April advertising some form of "write-only memory", such as "[[LogicBomb erasable write-only memory]]" or "high-speed write-only memory". Every May they'd print some of the orders they had received.
** That... is awesome.
** It predates ''Byte'' by several years. It started as a prank by an engineer at Signetics, who was sure that the bosses who had to scrutinize and approve all his work didn't know what they were doing. He set out to prove it by slipping a fake write-only memory spec in with some real specs. It was not only approved, the "Model 25120 Write Only Memory" chip made it into the company's price books and order requests started coming in. While their initial reaction seemed to be embarrassment, the company eventually embraced the idea and published the spec in the form of an April Fool's ad. With various graphs, schematics, and an important-looking company logo, it's still a great thing to print off and display on your workplace wall with various other (real) important documents. It'll be weeks or years before anyone calls you on it. [[http://www.national.com/rap/Story/WOMorigin.html More here,]] including the original ad.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Anime ]]

* Partially averted by ''DeathNote'' (which features multiple competing [[TheChessmaster Chessmasters]]) by making ''every single side character'' into TheWatson. The occasional monologue after a successful {{Xanatos Gambit}} helps, too.
* ''GhostInTheShell'' is pretty hard on the brain. ''Ghost in the Shell 2'' is harder on the brain than ''[=MGS2=]''. ''Stand Alone Complex'' discusses sociology and memes, and if you understood it fully the first time, you either already had a [=PhD=] in sociology, or earned one in the process of puzzling it out.
** My Psychology professor used the GhostInTheShell manga as readings for the effect of advances in technology on the identity of humans.
** While difficult enough at parts the comparatively lightweight anime series has a tendency to have characters spout plot points (often convoluted political situations) at an accelerated clip. It then rarely, if ever, repeats itself. Example: In 2nd Gig the full source of the title 'Individual Eleven' and its supposed contents are explained once. Despite coming in in multiple episodes before and after the explanation.
*** Not to mention being [[spoiler: ultimately a RedHerring.]]
* Has a happened a few times in {{Jojos Bizarre Adventure}}.
* ''SerialExperimentsLain''. The central theme revolves around highly technical aspects of computers and networking, and the series is a well-known member of the {{Anime}} MindScrew Club.
** And don't forget the extended Jungian metaphors.
** "Hey, you got [=NeXTstep=] in my shoujo!"
**"''Lain'''s computer hardware is so cool. How come we don't get [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_Anniversary_Macintosh designs]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain#Apple_computers like those]]?"
** Lain lacks a plot at all until you do the research. The first time through, I was enjoying it for the pretty flashing lights. The plot only emerges at all once you get to the point where you're looking at the patent file for Microwave Audio Induction and trying to figure out if on Schuuman Resonance frequencies it can be used to trigger individual action potentials (nb: schuuman resonance is actually a massive frequency range -- the number given in the show of 7.83Hz is actually the median).
* While ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' starts off looking like a fairly ordinary HumongousMecha animé, it soon becomes a dark and convoluted psychoanalytical and philosophical allegory involving a lot of FreudWasRight, allusions to Jung, Schopenhauer, and possibly existentialism, Kabbalistic allusions (half of which were [[RedHerring intentionally bogus]]), and reflections on the nature of humanity, what makes a human, the status of sentient [=AI=]s, etc. Some call it a MindScrew, which isn't totally unfair. Some even consider it as a precursor of the superflat movement, a form of Japanese postmodernism in the visual arts.
** On the other hand, [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic some people have]] [[GainaxEnding different opinions]].
* Many anime series produced by the Bee Train studio (most famously, ''{{Noir}}'' and ''{{Madlax}}'') require so much reading between the lines and background cultural knowledge that most viewers refuse to believe that something worthy was there in the first place. As a result, the rather small fan community deliberately positions itself as "intelligent fans", actively shunning whom they refer to as "fanboys" and "haterz".
* ''SuzumiyaHaruhi''. What starts out as a healthy amount of {{Genius Bonus}}es later falls straight into this. There are as many throwaway references to astrophysics as there are to pop culture, [[spoiler:a TimeTravel incident reaches near-''{{Primer}}'' levels of complexity]], and one novel features an in-depth discussion of Euler's planar graph formula--which is necessary to resolve the current situation. There are ''diagrams''.
** Thank god [[http://www.baka-tsuki.net/project/index.php?title=Suzumiya_Haruhi Baka-Tsuki]] gave ''explanations'' every time Kyon gave one of his countless references and comparisons to history, mythology and advanced scientific concepts in his narration, most of which you don't know anyway.
** Of course, for some people this is exactly the reason that the series is so interesting. The books are obviously written for people who have widely varied and very geeky interests.
* ErgoProxy. What was that gameshow thing was supposed to be about?
** You are a god (limited edition), you have a really small bunch of people under your control, and your goal is to create ''something'' society-like to keep your people happy for an undisclosed number of years in a fallout-like environment. All that follows is pretty much the consequences of the above setup.
*** As far as this troper can tell, though, the gameshow episode itself really is just a NonSequitur {{Exposition}} ComicRelief episode.
** The game show episode is the most useful episode in the series - it gives BackStory as to why the world is the way it is. Don't let it distract you from the bright lights and MindScrew
** The show also casually references Greek myth (Daedelus & Icarus, Theseus and the Minos maze), philosophy (Descartes, Nietszche, Turing, many others), film (Battleship Potemkin, Akira, Blade Runner), gnostic relgion, art (Michelangelo, Millais), history, and many other things, almost to the point of showing off to the audience how smart they are by cramming episodes with as many allusions as possible.
* ''RevolutionaryGirlUtena.'' Good heavens. Everything from Japanese mythology to German literature to Jewish mysticism.
* {{Gantz}}. Most plot twists or shocking revelations aren't understood by everyone because the mangaka simply assumes that ViewersAreGeniuses and explains them with a single, textless panel or with a side glare and an explanation that is stopped mid-sentence. The fact that the manga is filled with non conventional sci-fi doesn't help.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comics ]]

* Just about everything NeilGaiman has ever done hits this trope in some way. ''TheSandman'' oozes cleverness and esoteric references. And if you try to watch ''MirrorMask'' without a reasonable grounding in psychology, you will miss most of what is going on.
* A great many ''FarSide'' strips do this. One notable example is one where two shipwreck survivors are clinging to a shellfish-encrusted rock in the ocean, and one says "Don't worry, we'll have plenty to eat; the oysters go all the way to the top!". If you're a marine biologist, it's hilarious. Otherwise, you may be scratching your head for a good while before you get it.
** Here's a hint: [[spoiler: Oysters live ''underwater''.]]
** Another ''Far Side'' panel had a cow standing proudly next to his work bench of miscellaneous items. The caption, "CowTools." Gary Larson said that no other panel he had done has caused more controversy, because absolutely no one understood it. (He explained later that in taking an anthropology class he learned that it was believed that what separated humans from animals is the use of tools. That idea has fallen away because some birds have been known to use tools. He wondered what a cow's tools would be like. He said his first mistake was thinking this was funny.)
***In the same book, he said his second mistake was making one of the tools look like a saw, so fooling readers into thinking they could figure what the others were. Not a chance, of course, but many people were frustrated in the attempt.
** Yet another Far Side example. I saw an American comedian in some TV special (who I forget) going around showing peoplethis paticular Far Side comic and seeing them try to figure it out. The comic in question showed a Kangaroo on a street amongst some humans, and one of the humans is dead and has a Boomarang in his head, and the Kangaroo is thinking, That was meant for me!" The Americans aparantly had allot of trouble with it, but to me, an Australian, it was pretty obvious [[spoiler: Boomarangs are an aboriginal hunting tool often used to hunt Kangaroos. Nowdays they're mostly hunted by white people with guns.]]
* ''{{Frazz}}''. The author has actually stated that he believes his readers to be among the smartest in the world. Since he's the one getting the fan mail, we'll just have to take his word for it.
* Nearly every panel of ''TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen'' features obscure references to English literature and/or comic art. The accompanying text-stories are, if anything, even worse/better.
** The stories themselves have been quite comprehensible, for the most part - until the ending of ''The Black Dossier'' jumped far off the [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible scale]].
*** [[GainaxEnding Prospero]] [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic is]] [[EpilepticTrees Alan Moore]].
* ''DykesToWatchOutFor'' is festooned with references to culture, history, and current events of all kinds.
* James Robinson's ''Starman'' is full of references to things this troper's never heard of. LampshadeHanging in one issue:
-->'''Jack''': There's nothing wrong with being elite.\\
Or another example.\\
This one isn't about collectibles but it's the same kind of thing. I'm in a book store ... for new books. I've gone a little bit crazy and I'm about to spend a couple of hundred bucks. I murmur under my breath "money's too tight to mention". \\
Now the guy behind the register, he hears this. He looks at me, nodding his head knowingly like we're in some "club of cool" together. He says, "Yeah, Simply Red" like it's a password, and now we do the secret handshake. \\
And I'm thinking "Simply Red"? Lame English band. More soul at a polka convention. And the book store guy thinks he's on some kind of inside loop with that. \\
'''Sadie''': Jack, that's the smuggest thing I ever heard. A guy tries to be nice and you stand there hating him just because he hasn't heard of the Valentine Brothers. \\
You're like my ex-boyfriend. He was that way about authors. He'd deliberately drop obscure quotes and references. He'd take over conversations at parties. But none of what he read was for the love of it. His knowledge was like a weapon. \\
Don't tell me you're like that. I don't want another jerk. I've had... \\
Hey, why are you smiling? \\
'''Jack''': Because you've heard of the Valentine Brothers. \\
(Naturally, since Jack and Sadie both know that the Valentine Brothers are a soul duo who originally performed "Money's Too Tight To Mention" before Simply Red covered it, they have no reason to tell the readers this.)
* A lot of Grant Morrison's works consciously operate on higher levels but Final Crisis expects you to have a pretty robust knowledge of the entire 70+ year history of {{the DCU}} to understand it.
** To be fair, ''most'' [[CrisisCrossover DC Crossovers]] are like that; though FinalCrisis takes the cake for being both poorly paced (jumping from one sequence to the next with no segue) and including obscure scientific or philosophical references many people have never heard of. But it's GrantMorrison, so he gets away with it. This time anyway...
** It's not just the continuity that hung up fans on FinalCrisis - comic book nerds are very good at continuity. Morrison was also doing a lot of meta and philosophical weirdness about the nature of storytelling and the superhero genre in particular, which is a great way to annoy people who don't care about [[DeathOfTheAuthor Barthes]] or Morrison's issues with [[WonderWoman William Moulton Marston]] and just want to see characters they love beat up characters they love to hate in heroic and impressive ways.
*ThePhantom. Not all the time, but a lot of the stories told about past Phantoms are more enjoyable if you know your world history.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Fan Works]]
* ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3291350/1/Prinz_von_Sommerhoffnung Prinz von Sommerhoffnung]]'', my goodness. What's supposed to be, if the author can be believed, a ''{{Mai-HiME}}'' AU novelisation slaps you with a questionably correct piece of translation-wordplay from the title on. The various character names, ostensibly attempts at CaptainErsatz-ing, run on translations, transliterations and wordplay that need some amount of bizarre lateral thinking to decipher; not to mention that {{Shout Out}}s both to modern and older works are handled in a roundabout way. Perhaps the worst part, though? The author ''knows'' his stuff is undecipherable, and seems well blasé about it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

*The movie ''{{Primer}}'' was written by a math graduate who studied physics intensively to produce one of the most plausible TimeTravel movies ever. In the words of one reviewer: "anybody who claims they fully understand what's going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar".
** Fortunately, you don't need to ''fully'' understand the movie to enjoy it; you only need to be able to follow the action as it unfolds. By the end, the characters themselves end up as bewildered as the audience.
* Hardly anyone understands all the vital plot points from ''The Descent'' first time 'round. Either they completely missed that [[spoiler:Sarah went crazy]] or they didn't connect the dots and get that the crawlers [[spoiler:were evolved from cavemen who stayed down in the cave]] or they would miss the subtext that [[spoiler:Sarah possibly only imagined the crawlers]] or they would make a more simple mistake and forget the [[ChekhovsGun seemingly unimportant singular lines of dialogue which would explain things later on]]. To top it off, it's very difficult to tell who's who in the dark, and fans are still arguing over what the hell the ending ''means''...
** Hopefully, the sequel will explain things.
* Spike Lee's ''25th Hour'' has a deleted scene where a pair of gangsters explain the exact reasons why the protagonist has 24 hours of freedom. Pretty much every single review either couldn't figure out the reasons within the context of the film, or presumed said 24 hours were NOT TruthInTelevision (they were, at least at the time).
* ''Trading Places'' is for the most part a very accessible film, but make sure you have at least a cursory knowledge of how the commodities market works or you'll be completely lost at the climax.
** TheOtherWiki has a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_Places#Explanation_of_climactic_scene good explanation]] of the finances involved in said climax.
* ''{{Videodrome}}''. A good understanding of Marshall [=McLuhan=]'s media theory is required to really get it.
*The poker game in the movie ''CasinoRoyale''. It took this troper weeks before she realised that [[spoiler:there was only one hand that would beat Le Chiffre's.]] The entire poker sequence is quite difficult to follow for those who aren't very familiar with poker. Particularly weird compared to [[ViewersAreMorons the rest of the movie]].
** Which in and of itself is actually a case of ViewersAreMorons because in the novel they're playing Baccarat. The producers changed it to Poker because it was popular at the time and didn't think the audience would understand Baccarat.
*** Changing it to poker added a psychological element to the game, that would have been lost using a game that's essentially watching the dealer play cards with himself and betting on the outcome.
* DonnieDarko. Apparently more incomprehensible than [[GoatBoy this editor]] thought.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* Authors who put non-English phrases or sentences into their English-language novels and, instead of leaving them as a BilingualBonus, make them central to understanding the plot.
**AgathaChristie sometimes does this in her Hercule Poirot novels, or else puts {{Bilingual Bonus}}es in places where they ''look'' like they might be important.
** Poe parodies this in his essay "How to write a Blackwood Article" and the "Blackwood Article" that follows.
* Authors using the LiteraryAgentHypothesis sometimes have this happen whether it is their intent or not. For instance, some early reviewers of the first ''{{Flashman}}'' novel thought it was an actual memoir (despite the fact that the protagonist is a character from Victorian fiction). Oddly, one book, ''Dickens of the Mounted'', is a SpiritualSuccessor/pastiche of the Flashman series and actually has a LawyerFriendlyCameo from Flashman was also interpreted as being the actual memoirs of the protagonist (who was in this case actually a real person, the n'er-do-well son of CharlesDickens).
* You can read all the way through Erskine Childers' ''{{The Riddle of the Sands}}'' just for the gripping conspiracy that invented the modern espionage novel or the beautifully verbose and poetic descriptions of the sea... but having extensive knowledge of sailing in small boats certainly ''helps''.
* Most readers find Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles largely incomprehensible for the first 100 pages due to the untranslated Latin, Spanish, and French, the fact that most characters are referred to by multiple names, that much of the meaning comes from snippets of obscure medieval literary quotations that require knowledge of the (unprovided) full piece to understand, and the plot that assumes detailed knowledge of 16th century Scottish politics. There are two official guidebooks and multiple fan-made translations and literary-reference compilations to make up for this.
* Michael Crichton is notorious for this; many people who read ''JurassicPark'' right after seeing the movie were overwhelmed with Crichton's ''stifling'' detail to anthropological and palaeontologic minutiae.
** Then in the second book there are extended sections of dialogue explaining how much of the exposition from the first book was wrong, many of them due to ScienceMarchesOn.
* ArthurConanDoyle often had SherlockHolmes end a case with a witty quip... in untranslated Latin.
** That's not exactly an example of this trope - most well-educated members of Victorian Society are ''expected'' to have a basic grasp of Latin. Modern readers, however do not as a rule study the language.
** It becomes this, however, when modern collections of the Sherlock Holmes stories don't include a translation. That or the editor [[TheyJustDidntCare just didn't care]].
* Umberto Eco:
** ''Foucault's Pendulum'' is a {{Deconstruction}} of [[AncientConspiracy conspiracy theories]] that spans forty years or so, is told [[AnachronicOrder nonlinearly]] using {{flashback}}s and a [[FramingDevice frame story]], and references hundreds of names and concepts related to politics, history, science, religion, and occultism.
** ''The Name of The Rose'' includes monks arguing about classic Greek literature and philosophy, quarreling about medieval church dogma, and throwing untranslated Latin quotes at each other... yet all the discussions should be fully understood to get the whole book.
* [[TSEliot T.S. Eliot]]'s long poem ''The Waste Land'' is either an example of this, or of TrueArtIsIncomprehensible. For example, it contains quotes from various famous sources, still in their original language. If you're not reading an annotated version, it will make no sense.
** The notes don't really help much; they have been described as "simply another riddle - and not a separate one". Eliot himself wrote in ''The Frontiers of Criticism'' that he started out just citing his quotations "with a view to spiking the guns of critics of my earlier poems who had accused me of plagiarism", before realising he had to come up with more material if the poem was going to be released as a book "with the result that they became the remarkable exposition of bogus scholarship that is still on view to-day".
* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in IanFleming's JamesBond novel ''CasinoRoyale'', when M complains to one of his underlings that the report the underling wrote has a French sentence without any translation.
**'This is not the Berlitz School of Languages, Head of S. If you want to show off your knowledge of foreign jawbreakers, be good enough to provide a crib. Better still, write in English.'
* While they can still be enjoyed on a superficial level, William Gibson's novels (''{{Neuromancer}}'', ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'', ''Idoru'', etc.) rely on complex and multilayered metaphors, both pop culture and "learned" allusions, and a blurring of traditional concepts of "human," "life," "technology" and "reality", among others. On the other hand, Gibson admits in interviews that readers shouldn't look too deep into the technical aspects of computer science and cyberspace in his works, because he didn't even ''own'' a computer until well after he'd written ''{{Neuromancer}}'', and was profoundly disappointed with it.
** However, he ''did'' do the research; he's known to keep track of "the invisible literature" - scientific research papers.
** Remember that this story is set in the future. Even extrapolating from the time that Gibson was writing, it states specifically that the Tessier-Ashpool clan had been in orbit for an unspecified but significant length of time; long enough for the clan's progenitors to establish the satellite and die of old age, as well as the next generation going into cryogenic freeze for a motal generation (Molly's lifespan at the time of the story), possibly having done so several times. The process of creating the Boston Atlanta Metropolitan Axis would require at least a full century, which in turn would allow solid-state (silent) desktop computers to become as common and inexpensive as their current real-world equivalents.
* FrankHerbert's ''{{Dune}}'' universe features [[XanatosRoulette wheels-within-wheels]] plots and dense mythology, although the poetic descriptions can make the book enjoyable even to those who fail to understand it.
* JamesJoyce's ''{{Ulysses}}'' requires intimate knowledge of the history of literature (especially English-language literature), geography of Dublin, history of Ireland and a genius ability at recognising allusions. ''FinnegansWake'' requires ... surrendering the possibility of comprehension, which was perhaps the point.
** Given that the title is the Roman name for Odysseus, understanding Homer's ''Odyssey'' is incredibly significant to the book. It also helps if you're familiar with Shakespeare's ''{{Hamlet}}''
* The first half of William Faulkner's ''The Sound And The Fury'' is incomprehensible at first glance. Benjy, a 33 year-old with a profound mental disability, narrates the first section. He narrates all events in the present tense, ''even if it's a past memory.'' The second narrator is the incredibly intelligent and thoughtful Quentin Compson. The difficulty in his section stems from his narrative constantly shifting between what's actually happening, what he's thinking about, long sections of stream-of-consciousness narration without any punctuation, and even being able to tell what even really does happen at some points. Case in point: Did Quentin just fantasize about having sex with his sister, or did it really happen?
* GarryKilworth's WelkinWeasels may suffer from this thanks to the rapid-fire ShoutOut rate. How many of the ten-year-old target audience will get references to Shelley, Coleridge, and Orwell, among others?
* Stanislaw Lem's works are usually loaded with science and philosphy.
* Madeleine L'Engle's ''AWrinkleInTime'' and its sequels feature an extraordinary level of use of complex physics and biology concepts considering that the books are mainly intended for children. However, it also qualifies as a {{Parental Bonus}} since they're mostly just used as plot devices and so the reader doesn't really have to understand how everything works and just accept that it does work.
* The works of author Cormac [=McCarthy=]. Some can be thoroughly enjoyed without being well-versed in [=McCarthy=]'s interests or history -- such as ''All the Pretty Horses'', ''No Country for Old Men'', and ''The Road'' -- but it definitely helps to make sense of it all (especially with ''Blood Meridian'' and ''Suttree'').
** His ''Border Trilogy'' (of which ''All the Pretty Horses'' is the first) has characters have whole conversations entirely in Spanish. There's a website where you can download a list of all of the translated dialogue, which this troper had by her side during the reading, as she doesn't know enough to understand beyond "something about a horse" in most cases.
* Ezra Pound. Try reading his "Cantos" without a way of translating Chinese, ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, and ''Basque''. Yes, Basque!
* Even worse: Thomas Pynchon's ''GravitysRainbow''. This troper, despite having the necessary knowledge in history, statistics, physics and linguistics to understand the background, couldn't get through the MindScrew it is.
* ''Idlewild'' by Nick Sagan and its sequels, several times. For instance, the character of Fantasia averts {{The Schizophrenia Conspiracy}}, but you're assumed to know what hebephrenic schizophrenia ''is''.
* Essentially every book ever written by NealStephenson. At one point, one of his books stops in mid stream to launch an attempt to create a function correlating a character's ability to crack ciphers with time spent since last ejaculation, with differing values depending on the type of stimulation employed, or summarize the working principles of an Enigma machine by analogy with a broken bicycle. Whatever the actual material, it is always treated with an attention to detail bordering on the unnecessary. Which side of the border the reader is on tends to indicate whether they enjoy reading Stephenson.
* CharlesStross' {{Accelerando}}
* S.S.Van Dine was even worse than ArthurConanDoyle. Philo Vance uses quotations not only from Latin, but also from French, German, and Italian. They usually are at least somewhat important, and they may be a paragraph, not just a sentence, long. He had one multi-paragraph footnote in German.
* The WhateleyUniverse. Think about an 'ad' for a movie made based on Umberto Eco's ''Foucault's Pendulum'' (which see)... as directed by noted conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone. Or a classroom discussion of Lucan's ''Pharsalia'' when one of the people in the room is actually the avatar of Juno.
* ''Paradise Lost'' is filled to the brim with allegories, intended to be read by a medieval-era UpperClassWit with an extensive library of contemporary and ancient works. Modern readers can substitute said library with Google and TheOtherWiki.
* The description of the [[{{Precursors}} Xunca]] [[LostSuperweapon superweapon]] in ''Flinx Transcendent'', the final book in AlanDeanFoster's HumanxCommonwealth series, is likely to be incomprehensible to anyone without at least a basic grasp of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory string theory]].
* M. R. James's classic horror story "Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come to You, My Lad" [[{{Lampshade}} lampshades]] this trope: everything goes pear-shaped because the protagonist doesn't realize that the apparently unintelligible inscription on the whistle [[spoiler: is in Latin, just like the intelligible inscription on the other side. To be fair, there's no agreement about how to translate it, but the general gist is that anyone blowing the whistle will be in for a nasty shock.]]
** Most of the horror stories by M. R. James, for that matter. "Mr. Humphreys And His Inheritance" is the most blatant example by far, with a lot of religious, classical and antiquarian references thrown in and a few Latin phrases left untranslated - a succinct discussion of which produces enough materials for [[http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/Article.html a full-blown literary article]]. [[http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/alberic_StudyGuide.pdf A study guide]] is also helpful if the layman wishes to appreciate "Canon Alberic's Scrap-book" fully.
* One can only really understand Dan Simmons' ''Ilium'' and ''Olympos'' after studying the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Shakespeare's ''TheTempest'', and be familiar with TheTimeMachine, the complete works of Marcel Proust, Shakespeare's sonnets, and Hans Moravec's writings, and should know a decent amount about quantum physics, the Voynich manuscript, terraforming, transhumanism, and biosphere theory. Then it might make sense. No guarantees.
** It helps that there are characters who love talking about Proust and the Illiad while much of the rest can be taken as [[TechnoBabble "awesome magic stuff"]].
** Hyperion does the same thing but this time with John Keats, Jack Vance, time travel, quantum mechanics (again), transhumanism (again), internet sociology.
* Despite being known to tweak and alter certain parts of science for the story, Michael Crichton's books tend to be largely grounded in contemporary and near future science. Some of his works, like the Andromeda Strain, get so technical as to greatly bog down the plot. To his credit, Crichton is usually fairly good at explaining things without dumbing it down too much, but without requiring a [=PhD=] either.
** Some of his more politically oriented work like Next actually seems to start from another premis altogether: The audience is intelligent, but not well informed. The work scratches the surface of what's going on, makes it interesting, and points readers (through a prodigous bibliography) where to head for more.
**[[strike:[[color:red:No mention yet of]]]] [[color:blue:House]] [[HouseofLeaves of leaves]]? The wierd text alone is enough to confuse most people.
* Very little of the plot of [[DirkGently Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency]] is actually stated outright. DouglasAdams expects readers to connect several clues by themselves, to remember minor details from early in the book that suddenly become major plot points towards the end, and to be familiar with the life and work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The ending, in which [[spoiler: Dirk Gently saves humanity from being erased from existence]], is completely incomprehensible unless you know the story of [[spoiler:Kubla Khan and the person from Porlock]]. This troper had to read it twice and have several things explained to him before he understood it all, but now it's his favourite book in the world.
* Any copy of the DivineComedy that doesn't include extensive annotations becomes this within, quite literally, the first few stanzas.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action Television ]]

* ''Alternative 3''. A British documentary series decides to have a bit of fun for April Fool's day, and claim British scientists are being taken to a secret base on Mars to protect them from a terrible disaster. Twenty years later, the show is now a central part of a great many conspiracy theories by those who failed to get the joke.
* ''{{Carnivale}}'' had knights templar and tarot card mythology, [[MindScrew obscure symbolism]], cultural references from the 1930s, fabulous and expensive-looking recreations of the depression-era midwest, and refusal to provide helpful exposition to the audience. It got cancelled after two seasons.
* ''DoctorWho'' is generally pretty straight-forward, but the Seventh Doctor episode "Ghost Light" is an involved meditation on the concept of evolution that probably requires two or three viewings to understand.
* {{Firefly}}, Objects In Space. Most blatantly the opening, but the whole thing is a philosophical statement on existentialism. Whedon's DVD commentary ''might'' help the viewer to get the point (that objects have the meaning that people choose to give them).
*''Ghostwatch'', a BBC special Halloween show about celebrities conducting a séance which goes badly wrong. The show was later implicated in several suicides by people who believed that Michael Parkinson actually had been possessed by a poltergeist and was about to unleash his wrath upon Britain. It was done with much more care and attention to detail than the vast majority of the shows it was parodying, actually the buildup was done better than most Hollywood scary movies. Oh, and it was almost pure NightmareFuel.
* While most of the more obscure stuff in ''{{Lost}}'' falls under GeniusBonus, it does fall under this trope when it comes to the plot, which has become increasingly complicated as the show has gone on, with innumerable callbacks to previous episodes, [[ContinuityLockout making it extremely hard for new viewers to understand what the heck is going on]]. Not to mention flash ''forwards''.
** And the fact that now The Island is skipping around in time. ''Literally''. ''{{Lost}}'' requires the utmost of attention, or else the viewer will be utterly confused. In fact, it's not uncommon for a viewer to miss an episode and be completely... err.. lost.
* The 1980s TV Series ''MaxHeadroom'', of all things, was short-lived largely for this reason.
*''MysteryScienceTheater3000'' jokes about ''everything'', from obscure songs most people have forgotten to classical history and famous works of art. Of course the fun of the show is that [[MSTing the riffs]] are so frequent, you can miss one or two and still get the jokes.
** Done by other, different-style riffers as well, such as "The Agony Booth". "Hey, it's ''The Death of Socrates''! They told me there wouldn't be any French neoclassical paintings in this movie!"
** The riffs that revolve around these things are written so that they just sound funny even if you don't get the reference. ("It looks like a Frank Frazetta of Frank Zappa", "You look like Maude with a hellbeast", etc.)
* ''{{The Prisoner}}''.
** In particular; the rest of the series, whilst surreal, is for the most part quite comprehensible, but the final episode goes completely mental.
* Commonly cited as a reason for the low ratings of ''TheWire'', particularly with regard to its tendency not to spoon-feed information and its slow-burn pacing. Fortunately for fans of that series, it aired on {{HBO}}, where ratings for single episodes are somewhat less critical than they are for most networks.
* Australia's ''{{Playschool}}'' which was made to educate and entertain children between the ages of 1 to 6, once dicussed the concept of TimeTravel with a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmV664VvpW0 story.]]
** Except this was actually a segment on 'Sleek Geeks', a 6 part series from 2008 that aired on the same channel as {{Playschool}}.
* "Yes Minister" is a British comedy series about a Politician, an ObstructiveBureaucrat, and a 3rd underling who answers to the second one. I thinik all three are politicians, or at least two of them are. The whole series is about the back-stabbing, palace intrigue, etc. of British Politics. When I was a kid I was TOTALLY lost.
** Even an adult who isn't well-acquainted with the detailed workings of British government, let alone a non-Brit trying to watch the series, would find himself pausing the video to look up things like "quangos" and "marginal constituencies" on ThatOtherWiki.
** This troper watched it with her father, an experienced journalist with editorial experience. He found it faintly amusing. This troper had 4 years experience in the Civil Service and had read ''{{The Screwtape Letters}}'' and could barely breathe for laughing.
*** The main characters are Jim Hacker MP (Minister for Administrative Affairs), Sir Humphrey Appleby (his Permanent Secretary) and Bernard Woolley (his Private Secretary). And yes, it's underwear-drenchingly hilarious.
* It is virtually impossible for a single viewer to correctly identify all of the references made in {{Gilmore Girls}} without looking them up. The cast would spend the majority of their readings just trying to figure out what the hell their characters were talking about, and eventually a book of "Gilmorisms" was distributed with the dvd sets to help aid curious fans.
* {{Dollhouse}} is possibly one of the smartest shows ever to air on primetime national TV. It has a convoluted plot, complex, multifaceted characters, and constant moral dilemmas that have no easy answer. It's not uncommon for a given episode's resolution to make the viewer feel like they're morally opposed to the way the plot unfolded, but can't think of an objectively better way to deal with the situation. It's basically a brilliant deconstruction of GreyAndGrayMorality, and it is currently getting murdered at the ratings. The show just is not easy to watch.
* Some episodes of RedDwarf, especially Series 5.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Music ]]

* In order to find the classical music parodies of P.D.Q. Bach (a fictional composer "rediscovered" by Peter Schickele) funny, apart from the occasional slapstick bits, the listener needs an encyclopedic knowledge of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music, as well as a grounding in music theory and scholarship. Conversely, listeners who only like classical and ignore popular music will miss many of the jazz, country and other non-classical elements Schickele sneaks in.
** The classical quotations are far more prevalent, and often the non-classical touches are no more than jazzy cadences. Even so, there are many pieces which mix both, like one of the fugues in "The Short-Tempered Clavier" which quotes both "You Are My Sunshine" and "Till Eulenspiegels Lustige Streiche."
** It's not just obscure ''music'' he makes jokes about. In "Iphigenia in Brooklyn", Orestes appears "chased by the Amenities". Cheap laughs...except that the Eumenides were actual Greek mythological beings more commonly known today as the Furies.
* In order to even BEGIN to understand what the death metal band Atheist plays, one would need a working knowledge of thrash metal, jazz, progressive rock, funk, and latin music. Try listening to Mother Man from Unquestionable Presence if you don't believe me.
** To say nothing of what Psyopus and Dysrhytmia do.
** Meshuggah is another good example. Enjoyment of their music almost ''requires'' knowledge of death/thrash metal, free jazz, progressive rock, polyrhythmic song structures, polymeters, and syncopes. Since 1993, they have produced exactly one song that relies on a consistent 4/4 timing, and are regarded as one of the most influential bands in the underground, despite having virtually nil in the way of mainstream recognition.
* FrankZappa trampled this one into the dirt.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: ProfessionalWrestling]]

* VinceRusso's entire run in {{WCW}} was based on the idea that Viewers Are {{Smark}}s; the whole thing was extremely hard to follow unless you already had a general idea of how the wrestling business works and the goings-on backstage. The problem was, even if you were able to figure out what was going on, it still wasn't very coherent or engaging.
** One wrestling critic noted that Russo's problem was that he seemed to simultaneously believe that ViewersAreMorons and ViewersAreGeniuses.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Other ]]

* Dennis Miller's short stint as a commentator on ''Monday Night Football'' drew ire from fans who found his dry, academic wit hard to understand. Indeed, pretty much ''anything'' Dennis Miller says qualifies.
** The Encyclopedia Britannica website actually began a feature where they attempted to explain his references every Tuesday.
* Wikipedia articles on even slightly technical topics tend towards assuming that the reader has at least a degree in the relevant field.
* TheFiresignTheatre. Once described by RobinWilliams as the audio equivalent of a HieronymousBosch painting, and you're always looking for the little man who's coming out of the ass of a chicken.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* Many proprietary software end-user license agreements work under the assumption that the person installing the software is either a trained lawyer or can afford to engage the services of one every time they decide to install a piece of software. Though this is probably reasonable when the customer is a large company with lawyers on staff, it's definitely not when you're just selling to ordinary people.
*** That is the point of an EULA. You sign your life away, and they pad them so that nobody can actually read them.
*** Completely averted by the (sadly uncommonly-used) [[http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/ WTFPL]].
** Alternatively, they are working under the assumption that nobody reads the dratted things anyway. After the initial Google Chrome license fiasco, it was pretty obvious that a lot of companies that use them don't either.
** DiabloII: Lord of Destruction also had an easy-to-read EULA in the back of the manual. Only two pages long!
** It's not settled that the EULA's are enforceable, especially if they try to cram in something really lopsided. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_form_contract#Contracts_of_adhesion More here.]]
*** In Sweden, the EULAs found in software that you buy as a boxed CD are probably not enforceable, because they are inside the box wrapped in plastic and therefore not available to read before the moment of purchase. (The customer must be able to know what he buys, so to speak.) However, this particular issue has never been tested in court.
** Please keep in mind that they ''have'' to do this, because contracts have to be very precise. Sadly, legal precision is not conducive to easy understanding.
* [[ThisTropeNameReferencesItself Ignorantia juris non excusat]]. Which every government on Earth says you have to know what it means, which is "ignorance of the law does not excuse". You are required to know every single one of the thousands and thousands of laws, rules and regulations that apply to you. This includes the legalese of every contract you sign and every tax you have to declare.
** Pay attention and read every document you sign, as courts will not allow you to claim that it is "unfair" or that you had no idea about that clause hidden in the small print. Once you sign, you are legally agreeing to it all.
** As with the EULA example though, if it actually ''is'' unfair, there may be some room for argument.
** Mind you, this also applies during police interrogation. The reason you should '''''always''''' get a lawyer is because, frankly, you probably don't know what crimes you might accidentally claim to have committed otherwise.
*** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc This video]] explains, at length, why you should never, ever, under any circumstance whatso''ever'' talk to the police. The major reason being the "hearsay" law. You know that ubiquitous cop show Miranda line, "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law" ? That's literal. Nothing you say to the police can be used '''for''' you. In short : don't talk to the police. Even - no, ''especially'' if you didn't do it.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Theater ]]

*Anything ever produced by ''The Firesign Theatre.'' If you think you even got all of ''Nick Danger'' the first time, you are probably wrong.
* TomStoppard's play ''Hapgood'' initially flopped because so much of the plot exposition is contained within one character's metaphorical double-speak about Quantum Physics. The re-write makes the metaphors easier to understand even if you've never heard of quantum physics, and the plot significance is better signposted. Many people can treat it as a straightforward who's-the-defector spy mystery, missing the revelation (in the first act, in another rambling metaphorical monologue) of who the bad guy is and the idea that the rest of the play is about how they prove it, not about finding out.
** In fact, Tom Stoppard continually walks the line on this trope, and most of his (theatrical) work can be argued to be either refreshingly intelligent and stimulating, or purposefully obscure and elitist.
*** Although he flips it around in ''Rock 'N Roll'', which makes a lot more sense and has more emotional impact if the audience knows a good deal about '60s counterculture and rock music, specifically Pink Floyd.
* Plays by Bertolt Brecht. This troper once saw a (mediocre) performance of ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'', in which most of the audience took the story literally. Here's a hint: ''none'' of Brecht's plays are meant to be taken literally. This troper has also had the extreme frustration of performing in ''The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui'', a satire of the rise of Hitler, in which Ui wore a toothbrush moustache and swastika and slides of various dictators, including Hitler himself, playing constantly in the background. No matter how {{Anvilicious}} we made the show, every night it played, someone came and asked us what was up with all the Nazi references in a play about gangsters. I'm not sure if this is ViewersAreGeniuses or ViewersAreMorons fodder.
** Brecht is perhaps the only playwright in history who considers a piece with a character named Swiss Cheese to be SeriousBusiness. If an audience is unfamiliar with his [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verfremdungseffekt Verfremdungseffekt]], they're likely to be lost from the first line onward.
* Many stage musicals with music and lyrics by StephenSondheim have this criticism levelled at them. Sondheim and his collaborators avoid pat sentimentality and create complex works of art - perhaps a setback when many audience members are expecting ''TheSoundOfMusic''. Just a few examples:
** ''Company'' is an mediation on contemporary marriage. The show has no plot and reduces character empathy to an absolute minimum; instead, it explores different aspects of marriage through a series of non-linear vignettes and songs. There's an emotional and intellectual journey to be had, but it requires the audience to really invest themselves in the material and pay attention.
** ''Pacific Overtures'' is a historical pageant detailing the opening of Japan to the West in the late 1800's. Again, personal involvement is kept to a minimum, and the events are viewed through a [[UnreliableNarrator purposefully biased Japanese perspective]]. The score includes a 9-minute mini-opera detailing American, British, Dutch, Russian and French trading treaties with Japan, and a 7-minute Taoist meditation about observation and memory in which ''nothing happens''.
** ''Sunday In The Park With George'', despite its minimalist, Britten-like score, can still be enjoyed as a classic tale of an artist (Georges Seurat) who alienates his lover for the sake of his art. Until the end of Act I, at which point the action fast-forwards ''a whole century'' to focus on contemporary instillation artist George, great-grandson of the original. Repeated viewings help tease out the direct, micro- and macrocosmic parallels between the two Acts to make the whole work serve as a treatise on art and posterity.


[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''MetalGearSolid 2'' delves into meme theory so deeply that it is used to ''teach'' meme theory. Understanding this is hard. Very hard. It all makes sense, I promise, but don't try too hard, you will fry your brain.
* {{Persona}} 3 and 4 have a rather literal take on this in the form of various pop quizzes throughout the game. They tend to ask you random trivia facts about math, grammar, science, philosophy or Japanese history. Answering correctly gives you a permanent bonus to a particular out of combat stat. There is nothing in the game that tells you the answers, so you have to use your own real-world knowledge ([[GuideDangIt or cheat]]). There are also midterms where you get a whole bunch of these in a row, but the midterms are composed entirely out of questions that they've already asked you so if you had been paying attention it should be simple to answer.
** Someone wasn't paying attention in class...
***To clarify, the game actually does give you many of the answers.
* Most of the comments made about ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' also apply to ''{{Xenogears}}'', especially on the psychiatry and Kabbalah sides (with the [[spoiler: multiple personalities, paradoxical split selves (see [[PropheticName Lacan]] and Grahf), and overlapping selves]] that have postmodern and poststructuralist resonances). The plot is also impossibly convoluted.
** Ditto with Xenosaga, Gears' spiritual prequel. It includes numerous references to Jungian psychology, Gnosticism, classic Christianity, Kabbalah, quantum mechanics, etc.
*** At least Xenosaga had the courtesy to include a ''massive'' in-game database (which they removed in Episode 2...for some bloody reason). [[TheTetrisEffect It's quite a good time sinker]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation]]
* ''{{Gargoyles}}'', is an example of this in relative terms. It's targeted at kids but doesn't really make sense without some understanding of {{Shakespeare}}, TimeTravel and the interplay of history and mythology.
** Interestingly, yet confusingly for {{Shakespeare}} fans, the series depicts Macbeth and Duncan closer to their historical counterparts than the Bard's play, leading many to erroneously think that [[TheyJustDidntCare They Just Didn't Care]].
* A lot of cartoons in the 80s made jokes about old movies that kids would only be aware of from other cartoons that satirized them. Film Noir and Peter Lorre are fairly common for example. And this was LONG before Youtube or companies that rent DVDS through the internet. Videos we had, but what 80s kid is gonna sit through a Bogart movie?
** ParentalBonus?
* Boy howdy, ''{{Animaniacs}}''. What kid, watching this show among the normal AnimationAgeGhetto Saturday morning cartoons, was going to get the {{Whole Plot Reference}}s to ''LesMiserables''? Or ''TheSeventhSeal''? And that's not even getting started on all the GettingCrapPastTheRadar.
** PopCulturalOsmosis? Er, wait...
* TheSimpsons uses a lot of PopCulture references/movie and literacy references in most of their episodes which would make sense if their viewers knew the source movie or book. So you'd have to watch a lot of movies/books to 'get' them.
* FamilyGuy is A LOT funnier if the viewer has good knowledge of culture from the 1960's up until today. Some jokes are more obvious, like the references to IndianaJones and StarWars, but many are more subtle, like the constant references to ''DazedAndConfused'', to The Manson's Family's murder of Sharon Tate, to referencing song lyrics from I'm Too Sexy in dialogue. While it was one of [[{{Gabel}} this troper's]] favourite shows, he found it even better rewatching it and capturing all the references.
** AmericanDad, also by FamilyGuy creator SethMacFarlane, [[LampshadeHanging referenced]] this same practice in an episode. Klaus, bored as a fish in a fishbowl, has started to randomly talk about whatever was going on around him (and later, [[MindScrew in a scene he was even in]]) like he was commenting on a DVD. Stan makes a refence about his daughter ending up as a [[CharlesManson "Squeeky Fromm"]], and Klaus makes the (real for the writers) comment that they weren't sure if they were being to obtuse in mentioning it, but felt that it was a smart joke and that's the kind of thing the fans go for.
* {{Futurama}} is more enjoyable if you have some familiarity with physics. They also have a background "alien language" (several actually) composed of symbols that is translatable if you want to go through the effort.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Comics]]

* ''{{Achewood}}''. Full of obscure references to pop culture, music, history, and foreign languages.
* [[http://www.amongthechosen.com/ Among The Chosen]] states this as part of its author's writing style. The basic introduction to the story may be read [[http://amongthechosen.com/about.html here]].
* ''DresdenCodak'' is very guilty of this, frequently covering subjects such as Jungian philosophy and transhumanism.
** I'm perhaps over-analysing, but tbe fact the jokes are obscure is perhaps the real joke. It pretty beyond unintentional when you act not only like if the viewers are geniuses, but like if the viewers are omniscients.
*** It isn't as difficult as all that. A decent science fiction reader should get almost everything straight away.
* Some ''{{xkcd}}'' strips make jokes about [[http://xkcd.com/364/ rather obscure topics]]. Fortunately, the ''xkcd'' fanbase does include plenty of geniuses, and they post explanations on the forums.
** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in the comic's disclaimer: ''"Warning: this comic occasionally contains advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)."''
** [[http://www.xkcd.com/514/ This strip]] actually links to the appropriate wikipedia article.
** SOP for xkcd is generally that if you don't get Monday's strip, just wait a couple of days and you'll laugh at Wednesday's strip.
**Also, [[http://xkcd.com/532/ this comic]] has an obscure punchline. [[spoiler:The joke is based on [[http://www.ajokes.com/jokes/6157.html another joke]].]]
** The last panel of [[http://xkcd.com/474/ this comic]] requires some knowledge of partcle physics.
** Be warned, [[http://www.xkcd.com/609/ It'll ruin your life]]
* As do ''IrregularWebcomic'' and ''TerrorIsland'', but the more obscure topics are often explained in the annotations of both strips.
*AmongTheChosen gets confusing in a hurry. The mil-speak, the TechnoBabble, mythilogical references, and the tendency to mention important information exactly once all contributes to this.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original]]

* Animated sci-fi/UrbanFantasy series ''BrokenSaints'' has a sprawling, slow-starting, and enormous plot with [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters numerous characters]], [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic deep religious/philosophical themes and motifs]], [[AuthorAppeal references to obscure works, events, and cultures,]] and heaps upon heaps of TechnoBabble. The creators are themselves of the opinion that these elements are why the series is more popular in Asia and South America more so than North America.
* A lot of [[MemeticMutation memes]]. Just try asking (most) anyone who knows about a particular Internet meme what it means, or how it came to be.
[[/folder]]

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