Aerith And Bob / Web Original

• In general, any online community where some people refer to themselves by their real names, and others are only known by their pseudonym. How long they've spent together, how comfortable they are with each other, and their level of preferred privacy factor heavily into it. Some people may start off being known only by their pseudonyms, but switch to their real names once they've known the rest of the group long enough.
• Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society has some agents who are generically named: Tyler, Ben, Dave, etc. It gets a bit crazy when you put them next to people like Aster, Ossa, Chrys, Cristoph...
• Austrailiangamer.com.au and Game Damage's Matt, Yug, and Yahtzee. Yeah, that Yahtzee.
• Berserk Abridged: The original Berserk has some examples that are somewhat easy to overlook (Guts, Pippen, Corkus, Zodd and Caska among others, mixing it up with Julius, Charlotte, and Griffith) but hbi2k turned this trope on its head for his abridged series when he went ahead and named the snake baron Phil.
  Phil: Well, maybe I don't need a scary name full of 'z's and 'x's to be intimating!
• In the Classic Game Room review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From The Sewers for the Game Boy, host Mark Bussler forgets the name of the turtles and names them "Leonardo", "Donatello", "Mussolini" and "Bob".
• The main characters of the Clark Saga: Conneticut Clark and Malfina the Demon Witch.
• Critical Role's characters all come from wildly different backgrounds, so name disparity is bound to happen.
  • From the first campaign, we have Grog, Keyleth, Scanlan, the twins Vex'ahlia and Vax'ildan... and Percy.
  • The second campaign is slightly more balanced in this regard, with names like Caleb and Beauregard contrasted against names like Caduceus, Jester, and Nott. Molly straddles the line, since his full name is Mollymauk.
  • The third campaign has perhaps the wildest disparity, ranging from regular human names like Imogen and Ashton, to fantasy names like Orym and Fearne, to just plain ridiculous names like Fresh Cut Grass.
• Very common in Darwin's Soldiers. Characters with names like Neku or Dr. James Zanasiu interact with people like Dr. Josephine Smithson and Dr. Rudyard Shelton.
• Demo Reel has Donnie, Rebecca, Quinn, Carl and... Tacoma.
• The six characters that have been given proper names in Don't Hug Me I'm Scared thus far are Tony, Roy, Michael, Malcolm, Colin and... Shrignold.
• On the Livejournal roleplaying community Drama Drama Duck, Delirium has mentioned having two fish: Humphrey Finkleton the 75th, and his daughter, Bob. It's in character for her.
• The convicts from Einsteinian Roulette have names that range from Maurice, Thomas and Jim to Feyri, Thrak and Charro.
• Enter the Farside main character Shaun doesn't like the idea of superhero names. Being a new recruit to the NFU means he doesn't have a name regardless, which makes him stand out from other Agents like Visionary, Tether and Grandmaster.
• In Epic Rap Battles of History, Pablo Picasso invokes this during his battle with Bob Ross, by rapping out his entire Overly Long Name and then:
  Back to you... Bob.
• Fire Emblem on Forums: Different roleplays in this series have different levels of enforcement of this specific trope, ranging from averting it entirely to encouraging it with the different cultures present in the settings.
• A few examples from Game Grumps, usually through in-game naming systems:
  • The Jeopardy! two-parter has Nixon (Arin's character), Dixon (Jon's character) and Larry (the AI character).
  • From The Price Is Right: Eva, Jon, Jay, and Sopojkkk.
  • During the intro clip to episodes, the on-screen text introduces the duo as "Egoraptor" and "Danny"
  • Their three legendary bird Pokemon are named Blupl, Lomster, and Greg.
  • In their review of Sonic The Hedge Hog 2006, Arin tries to make a point after finally beating Silver and mentions a made up game called "God of War: Legend of Greg" which sends Jontron into an extended laughing fit.
  • And on Steam Train when Dan and Ross are playing Organ Trail, their party consists of Quat, Cuat, Qwat, and Ross.
    Ross: I think they're spelled right. Yes. Continue.
• From The Gaming Lemon's Assassin's Creed Syndicate funtage, we get this:
  "Me, Sir Big-Toot Erdun Lemon Trout, and my sidekick, Watson."
• The Gaming Beaver likes to give his Jurassic World creatures funny nicknames: his Pteranodon is "Pecky Eyses", his Dimetrodon is "Unicorn Wizard", his Diplocaulus is "Flaffy", his Archelon is... Dave.
• The Gods Are Bastards lampshades this at one point with a drow-human couple whose names actually are Avrith and Bob.
• Kakos Industries generally sticks to Corins, and Stephens, and Haleys — but then there's Melantha.
• Used as a (subtle) plot point in The Lay of Paul Twister: Most of the human characters have standard English names like Paul, Sarah, or Patrick, but then there's Archmagus Ken'tu Kel, head of the Circle of Magi. Gerald says that several things about him are suspicious, including his name which "sounds like something out of an ancient saga." Turns out that's because he spent a couple decades on Earth, where time flows at a different pace.
• Matt Santoro's clones are named Hugo, Eugene, Lorrenzo... and Big Shine.
• Most prominent Minecraft servers and series, in their classic mixture of roleplay and Let's Play, feature both content creators who prefer to be called by their online aliases (often the Aeriths) and those who prefer to be called by their real-life names (usually the Bobs). This goes double with the fact that most of their roleplay characters are The Danza, prompting fans and later, even some of the creators themselves to differentiate characters (c!) and content creators (cc!) with tags on social media.
  • On the Dream SMP, people who prefer to be called their online alias include Dream, Sapnap, Bad, Foolish, and Quackity, and on the other end are people called Tommy, Jack, Connor, Wilbur, and Phil. This also applies in the spin-off series Tales From the SMP occasionally, with characters named Jackie, Levi, Edward, and Laggius co-existing in the episode "The Pit".
  • The Empires SMP has rulers named Katherine, Joey, and Scott exist alongside ones named Sausage, fWhip, and Pix. Its sister series by virtue of creator overlap and Canon Welding, the Afterlife SMP, doesn't have it as bad as other SMPs, as most members of the ALSMP either go by their real names, or, like Gem, have online aliases that can plausibly be used as actual names, but fWhip and Sausage are also on that server.
  • On Hermitcraft, there are Hermits named Stress, Impulse, and Hypno playing alongside Pearl, Cleo, and Joe.
  • Life SMP shares a great creator overlap with Empires and Hermitcraft, which naturally results in this trope being in effect: those who prefer to be called their online aliases include Bdubs, Etho, Tango, Mumbo, and Grian, and on the other end are names like Joel, Lizzie, Jimmy, and Martyn.
  • SMPLive: Compare names like Connor and Josh to the likes of Altrive, Beef, and Krinios.
  • On SMPEarth, this is best exemplified with the Antarctic Empire, which consists of Phil, Pete, and Technoblade.
• Played for Laughs in Needs More Gay; Rantasmo reviews a gay porn parody of The Ring where none of the characters have names, so he makes some up for them. Note that all of them are men.
  "Naomi goes to investigate the other two friends, who I'll call... Cedric and Boniva."
• A running gag in Nigahiga's early "How to be" videos. "Hello, my name is Hanatewakusoshiseotadashiteteriyakisuzukihondacivic!" "Hello, my name is Bob.
• In The Noedolekcin Archives, you've got characters named Gabore and Hypsypops. And then, you've got Kirk.
• The usual cast of OneyPlays consists of Chris, Julian and DingDong.
• The Penumbra Podcast has Peter, Vicky, Omar, Rita, Ramses... Juno, Miasma, and Pilot.
• Pact has names such as Essyit, Blake, Laird, Padraic, Barbatorem...
• Petscop: Some of the pets have strange names like Pen, Wavey, Roneth, and Toneth...but then you have Amber and Randice.
• Pokemon Universe RP: Seeing as the moderators aren't too critical of what you name your character and anybody can play with somebody else, it's inevitable.
• Protectors of the Plot Continuum: The PPC's agents come from all over the multiverse, creating an understandable disparity in names. The Department of Mary Sues alone has agents whose names include the likes of Brenda, Diocletian, Martin, and Evangeline von Lilith.
• The Questport Chronicles gives us Djadan, Sabriel, and Jaheira alongside Emmy, Acre, and Tulip.
• In Reflets d'Acide, we have characters named Zarakaï the Dwarf, Enoriel the Elf... and Roger the Bartender.
• Rise Of The Believers has quite a bit of it. Understandable when you consider that characters come from all over the world and beyond.
• The Runaway Guys' TRG Colosseum charity livestream featured a Dungeons & Dragons game with protagonists Mittens, Methanthor, Feista Ki... plus Barry and Brock (the Rock). Then there's Steve the Dragon (Who is also Brock the Rock) and Barry's ex-wife, Brenda.
• The Saga of Pretzel Bob: In this case though, it's Seraphoth and Bob.
• The heroes from the Something Awful: Dungeons & Dragons gaming sessions include Joey, Miriam, Kensington, Minerelle, Asalynn, Bananaramawicz, and Kodrinschreiner. This isn't even getting into NPC names, such as Thraxidelantis, which is embarrassing enough that Syrg just shortens it to "Thraxi" after a few jokes at his expense.
• Smirvlak's Stone has the main goblin brothers. One of them is named Nickolas, while the other is named Gnekvizz.
• This comes up in Survival of the Fittest a fair bit, with students supposedly hailing from America having bizarre names (although occasionally justified if the character has immigrated). Examples include names like Rais, Shoar, and Venka amongst Adams, Alans and Helenas.
• Tales of MU has quite a bit of this because of the cultural mishmash of the college environment. Characters brought up by Humans have names like Mackenzie, Ian, Steff, and Jamie. Other races have more exotic names or even constructed ones.
• In Time to Shoot Down The Moon and Sentinel, a German scientist is named Vier Sackingen. It means four even though he is the second in his family.
  Vier: My older brother is called Jacob, my younger sister is called Lilia, I'm called No. 4. Not even 2. Oh, and the actual 4th kid, my younger brother is called Elwin, after general Rommel.
• In Twitch Plays Pokémon, a Pokemon will either be nicknamed, and end up with a very bizarre and usually unpronounceable jumble of letters, or it will be left with its original name. The Mob typically gives any Pokemon with a major role a nickname based on said jumble of letters.
  • The Championship team in Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal has, on the one hand, LazorGator, Breakfast Burrito, and METAL GEAR, and on the other hand, Brian, Katie, and Ace.
  • In terms of actual protagonists, we have Red and AJDNNW.
• At the time of her introduction in Worm, the dog-based supervillain Bitch has three dogs: Brutus, Judas, and Angelica.

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