Deliberate Values Dissonance - Television Tropes & Idioms

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Sometimes, morals don't travel well. Often, what is appropriate to one culture or time period is repugnant to another. Thus, when dealing with other cultures, an author must make a choice. Some attach the attitudes of their country to the people in the story, resulting in a potentially anachronistic but enjoyable read.

Some, however, research the culture and make an effort to reproduce the attitudes of the time and place accurately, even when they are wildly different to what the author might consider sensible. Thus, one ends up with a deliberate case of Values Dissonance.

In Historical Fiction and Historical Fantasy, this is an obvious necessity to avoid anachronisms. Readers, indeed, may criticize works for failure to reflect the actual historically accurate views — as when a Regency heroine has common 21st century views on premarital sex, which is about as likely as her wearing blue jeans — as Anachronism Stew. Be wary, though, for sometimes Reality Is Unrealistic and the deliberately different values end up just as inaccurate, but in the opposite direction.

In Fantasy some readers assume that views contained in the story reflect how the author truly thinks, because the writers build the world. However, other readers will find that modern views expressed in a non-modern society are as anachronistic in an imaginary world as in a real one; even in Fantasy, characters in a feudal society will not hold radically egalitarian views (at least, not without a really interesting Back Story) - if they did, it wouldn't stay a feudal society for very long.

Also, one may see such dissonance in futuristic stories as well: after all, if social mores have changed with the rise and fall of previous civilizations, one may reasonably expect them to continue to change along with current and future civilizations. This may be especially common in stories set After the End, where the lack of modern conveniences may well cause a regression to certain medieval or even stone age values (such as slavery and people getting married at a very young age), and in stories involving extraterrestrials, as their civilizations may well have developed completely differently from ours. When moral systems are so different from a reader's culture that they are almost incomprehensible, Blue and Orange Morality is the result.

Often a meditation or argument against Good Flaws, Bad Flaws. See also Your Normal Is Our Taboo, Unfortunate Implications, Culture Clash, No Equal Opportunity Time Travel. Contrast Politically Correct History, Eternal Sexual Freedom, Fair for Its Day, Culture Justifies Anything, The Theme Park Version.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

In Anatolia Story, Yuri is shocked to learn that a young servant is to be hanged for attacking her (she knew he was Brainwashed and Crazy), just because under their law, she was a prince's concubine and thus member of the royal family. She finds out that the penalty for attacking a commoner would have gotten him hard labor, and is disgusted to learn that the servant will die for class issues. Later, she is also very surprised to learn that the child prince Juda has a legal wife and several concubines, and that the people of one town she stops in have no concept of basic sanitation and care for injured people.
- When Yuri and her friends briefly stay in Memphis, they're rather shocked and embarrassed by how Ramses's sister constantly goes around topless and encourages Yuri to do the same. Such a practice was common in Egypt, especially given the climate.
In Fullmetal Alchemist, most people don't seem to mind that their government is a military dictatorship, just that it's an incredibly corrupt and amoral one.
- The Conqueror of Shamballa movie has Ed living in Germany just as the Nazi party is rising to prominence, so there's plenty of anti-Jewish and Roma prejudice going around.
Quite sympathetic protagonist Lawrence in Spice and Wolf considers slavery a necessary and productive trade, even after nearly being forced into slavery to pay off a debt. Meanwhile his companion, Holo, who is a wolf in human form, has a lot of wolf-like mentality; for example, she tends to focus mainly on the now, especially when it comes to stuffing her face full of food, despite Lawrence's complaints about how much money she costs as a result. A great deal of the show's entertainment consists of the two judging each other by their own set of values, and especially in Lawrence's case coming to wrong conclusions because of it.
- Holo's nudity in the first episode as well. She sees absolutely nothing wrong with being naked, she is a wolf after all. In fact it outright angers her that Lawrence expects her to be clothed.
- One area open to Alternate Character Interpretation: whether or not Holo is bothered by the idea of eating humans, and if she thusly avoids it either to avoid frightening Lawrence or simply because she doesn't like doing it at all.
- Used to build tension in the "bankruptcy" arc; most viewers, and in-universe Holo, see no reason why Holo tagging along when Lawrence goes to ask for loans to help with his debt is a problem. Lawrence's friends, however, make the assumption that Holo is some "arm-candy" that Lawrence went broke trying to impress and now he's still trying to keep her, hence the comment one finally makes that reveals to Holo she's the reason why they have all refused to help Lawrence.
Tenchi Muyo! Aeka is engaged to marry her biological half brother which she explains to Tenchi with little more than that's how we do things on Jurai.
- It's played with later on in the OVA, and then outright subverted in the spinoff material. Basically, no one in the family (except Aeka), expected the marriage to go down, and the whole point was to keep anti-integration activists from supporting Aeka as an alternative to Yosho as king. This completely goes to shit when you realize that Aeka's grandmother, Seto, is adopted, and that the current king is of mixed blood himself.
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Asuka (who is mixed-race and grew up in Germany) is baffled upon learning that none of the doors in Misato's apartment have locks. Misato then explains that it's a cultural difference, as in Japan, locking yourself in your room and separating yourself from others is considered quite rude. Comparatively, very few Westerners would see anything odd about a teenager locking her bedroom door in order to ensure privacy.
Thorfinn has no problem with his comrades raping women in Vinland Saga, though he doesn't personally join in. Likewise the slave trade is treated like a normal business by most of the people shown. The story is, of course, about Vikings, whose culture allowed such things.
Femme Kabuki being set during the Meiji Restoration explicitly points out how corrupt and unfair the new system is and the appeal/shame that comes with "Saint" Jodie Hanabusa-Abbott playing up being Foreign Fanservice to the Japanese audience with her blonde hair and Western clothes despite not knowing a lick of English (her Japanese is child-like and ironically innocent) due to her Disappeared Dad running out on her mother after knocking her up and being bullied as a child for being a "Rashomen's Child." She got better being part of the kabuki troupe to the extent of being an Iron Woobie that the kidnappers she tells her life story to (under the belief she was a rich White man's daughter) are motivated to more with their lives and work honestly.
Black Butler has some fun with this. Elizabeth doesn't have any problem with Nina Hopkins sexually assaulting Mey-Rin; after all, Mey-Rin is just the hired help, and hell, Elizabeth practically does the same thing. No, what makes her gasp and blush is Nina showing off her legs.
In the Jaya flashback story in One Piece, the Shandians were willing to sacrifice Calgara's daughter to their snake god because their village was plagued with disease and death and they believed this would appease the snake god. The explorer Noland did not take this well.

Comic Books

Happens frequently in The Sandman and other works by Neil Gaiman due to his attempts to portray the ancient mythology his work is based on as realistically as possible. One particularly good example is in the critically acclaimed Sandman story "Ramadan", in which the Caliph Haroun Al-Raschid, regarded as a paragon of justice by his contemporaries, has several torture chambers in his palace and not only has a harem of wives, but also several underage boys (though they appear to be at least in their teens), which were common practices at the time. Immortal characters often suffer Values Dissonance about their own actions, such as Hob Gadling's guilt over his involvement in the slave trade.
- It also crops up in "August", which is set in Ancient Rome. At one point, a disguised Emperor Augustus meets a man who was born into slavery, but was later freed and grew up to become a wine merchant with his own large collection of slaves. This is treated as an inspirational Rags to Riches story (as it would have been at the time), with no one finding it odd that a former slave would take pride in owning slaves of his own.
Sandman Mystery Theatre actually dealt with the racism and sexism prevalent in 30's and 40's, in sharp contrast to the colorful and nostalgic depictions of the Golden Age seen in most DC Comics publications.
In the Dead Girl miniseries, dead 40s heroine Miss America and dead 00s hero the Anarchist get along poorly at first because, well... he's black. She even refers to him using the n-word at one point.
MAD's parody of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves "Throbbin' Hood: Prince of Heaves" parodied both the movie and, at the end, this trope. When King Richard returns, he informs all of the loyal peasants and outlaws who've helped restore him to his throne that now they shall all live as they have always lived before (to much applause and cheering)... with no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of religion, and absolutely no questioning the divine right of kings. The cheering stops and the suddenly enraged outlaws all throw things at Richard and tell him to "Get lost, baldy!"
In Marshal Law, the members of the Jesus Society of America can hardly see an Asian person or hear a German word without coming to the conclusion that they've become stranded in a parallel universe where the Axis won World War II. Oh, and Marshal Law sets the record straight that these guys were legitimately not real heroes by any stretch of the imagination.
In Strontium Dog, during a story detailing how Johnny and Wulf first met, Wulf and his Viking pals celebrate a good raid by killing a bunch of slaves and splattering their blood everywhere. It's all in good fun.
In an issue of Cable and X-Force, Doctor Nemesis asks a nervous Forge "Where's [his] pioneer spirit?" Forge, a member of the Cheyenne Nation, immediately takes offense to the question, since his people obviously have a far more negative opinion of pioneers than white Americans do.
Warren Ellis's Crecy is a warts-and-all depiction of the famous Battle of Cr�cy in 1346. The narrator acknowledges the dissonance, describing himself as "a complete bloody xenophobe who comes from a time when it was acceptable to treat people from the next village like they were subhumans" and admitting that by modern standards his side have been "acting like evil pricks", but insists that the other side was even worse.
Similarly to the Dead Girl example above, the Ultimate Marvel take on Captain America presents him with some rather modernly distasteful attitudes, as part of a more "realistic" take on what a soldier and average American citizen from 1940 would really be like, especially if he time-skipped to the 2000s. Most prominently, he's a Noble Bigot, a firm believer in My Country, Right or Wrong (as seen during his confrontation with Ultimate Nuke), and he holds an infamous disdain for the French, which is clearly intended to reflect the fact your average US soldier would have loathed the French as a whole for capitulating to the Nazis early in the War and forcing many US soldiers to die trying to free the French from their own government. (This contrasts with 616-Cap, who worked with the Resistance and hates portrayals of the French as cowards: "The government surrendered. The people never did.")
- Warren Ellis gives a similar portrayal in Nextwave. In a flashback, Cap is shown telling Captain Marvel (his black, female teammate) to leave a battle and make him something to eat.
- The idea is subverted in an issue of Young Avengers. Wiccan is shocked when Captain America expresses approval for his gay relationship with Hulkling, figuring that someone born in the 1920's would not view homosexuals in a positive light.
At least one comic book version of Xena: Warrior Princess walked back some of the show's Anachronism Stew by showing a slight difference of attitudes toward slavery between Xena and Gabrielle. When presented with a Roman band of slaves about to be auctioned off, Gabrielle is appalled at slavery in general (not a common attitude in classical Rome) and particularly that one of the slaves is a pregnant woman. Xena, in contrast, is generally convinced that the (otherwise all-male) slaves must be criminals who've done something to deserve their condition, but makes an exception in the pregnant woman's case as it seems improbable to her that a pregnant woman could be guilty of any serious crime. The two thus agree to go buy the woman free, each for their own reasons—but leave the rest of them to be sold.
Atomic Robo reminds us that H. P. Lovecraft was not exactly what one would call politically correct. Take, for example, when he mistakes Robo for a pygmy dressed in ceremonial black ritual armor:
Robo: 'Scuze me.
Lovecraft: Ah! Look, it's attempting to communicate. No doubt the savage thing knows language as a house pet knows its reflection in the mirror. The sense is taken in, but the process, the meaning, is forever lost.
Robo: Yer razzin' me.
Lovecraft: See how vainly it cobbles together a string of sounds not unlike words? Take. Us. To. Magic. Thunder. Man.
Robo: Uh-huh.
In the comic Runaways, there's a storyline where the team finds themselves in America in 1907. There, they meet a girl named Klara Prast. Klara is more upset at the possibility of them recruiting her for a union than the fact that she was forced by her parents to marry a man who is old enough to be her father, and who beats her and is implied to rape her. Molly fails to realize this when Klara alludes to it. Karolina does. Later, Klara refers to Xavin in female, black form as a "negress" and is disgusted at female Xavin and Karolina being intimate.
- The same storyline has an instance where Karolina takes an evening stroll and is mistaken for a prostitute by a creepy man, on the grounds that that's the only sort of woman who'd be walking around the city at this time of night. When she tries to correct the mistake, he refuses to listen and drags her into an alley. One beat panel later, he goes flying across the street and Karolina comments "Looks like history just lost another buff".
During Ed Brubaker's Captain America run, there was a one-shot where the Winter Soldier teamed up with the Young Avengers. Though he got along well with the black teen hero Patriot (he was friends with the black Human Top and the Japanese-American Golden Girl during WW2), Kate Bishop called him out on his homophobia after he referred to a group of Mooks as "pansies." He shrugged it off by saying that he was from the 40's, and thus had no idea the term was considered homophobic in a modern context.
Occurs in Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, where Wolverine is mentally regressed to childhood and believes he's still living in the 1800's. He ignores Kitty Pryde's orders on the basis that she's a woman, calls Armor an "Oriental," and refers to the Japanese language as "Heathen funny talk."
In the 70's, Captain America and The Falcon fought William Burnside and Jack Monroe, the Captain America and Bucky of the 1950's. Both were decidedly politically incorrect, with Jack in particular hurling racist insults at the Falcon and insinuating that Sharon Carter was a weakling because she's a woman.
The 2009 Marvel MAX Dominic Fortune series by Howard Chaykin is set in the 1930s, and is absolutely drenched in this trope. Pretty much all the main male characters throw racial, sexual and anti-semitic slurs around with careless abandon — even the ones who aren't unrepentant Nazi sympathisers — and treat women mostly as animated sex dolls who exist solely for their sexual gratification. The women also take pretty much any opportunity to get their clothes off and have sex, but that can probably be chalked up to a different trope.
Usagi Yojimbo is famous for it being a scrupulously well researched depiction of feudal Japan, the funny animal characters notwithstanding, including its social attitudes to a certain degree. For instance, Inspector Ishida complains that he cannot examine murder victims as thoroughly as Westerners can because autopsies are taboo.

Films — Animated

Mulan is just full of sexist songs like A Girl Worth Fighting For and Honour To Us All, which fit in with how casually patriarchal ancient China was. They also include some odd ancient Chinese fetishes, like when one of the men mentions he wants a girl "paler than the moon". And when they're not going on about what women should be like, they're going on about how important it is to "Be A Man!"
The Prince Of Egypt plays this up with the moral ambiguity of the plagues. In biblical times, God killing the firstborn sons of your enemies was clearly a good thing. With a more modern eye and attention to characterization, it becomes a gut-wrenching event for both Moses and Ramesses.
- Not to mention how the film makes Moses's adopted father go from being a stern but loving dad to being pretty creepy just by reminding us how he (and most of the Egyptians) saw the Jews: "Oh my son, they were only slaves!"

Films — Live-Action

Cult Classic horror film The Wicker Man relies heavily on this, first for humor, as the protagonist's staunch Christianity means he is horrified and baffled by the staunch Paganism of the village inhabitants and what this leads them to do — who are equally horrified and baffled by his religious beliefs and behaviors — and then for horror, when the Paganistic beliefs incite the villages to capture the protagonist and burn him to death in a wicker man as a Human Sacrifice so that their crops will grow.
In Back to the Future, Marty realizes that the black busboy he is talking to in 1955 is the mayor in 1985. When he says this, the caf� owner scoffs "A colored mayor! That'll be the day!". Funnily enough a case of Reality Is Unrealistic, since the first black mayor in California was Edward Duplex, in 1888, in the majority-white town of Wheatland. Most likely either the writers or the character were unaware.
The film Master and Commander:
- The ship's first officer asking permission to bring live Galapagos tortoises on board as food stock. Of course, lots of people still eat tortoises and turtles, but no one in modern times thinks of Galapagos tortoises as food courses.
- Also, prepubescent boys acting as officers, commanding men at least thrice their age by the simple benefit of coming from the upper class.
In the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Anamaria's gender makes Gibbs wary of bringing her on the ship because of the belief that women bring bad luck, but eventually relents. It's historically accurate that sailors were wary of having women on board, and there were a few notable female pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy, including Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
In Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks' deconstruction of the Western, all of the "good" townsfolk of Rock Ridge display violent racism toward blacks, Chinese and the Irish. In one scene especially the Irish. The process of gaining their trust is a fairly major plot point.
In Hairspray, even Edna Turnblad is nervous about her daughter hanging out with "color people". And it still manages to be very upbeat.
- The original, non-musical film is both an affectionate tribute to the relatively underground dance culture of the early 1960's, but also takes some pretty ruthless jabs at the mainstream culture of the time. White housewives become shrieking wrecks at the moment they arrive in the black part of town, a therapist tries to hypnotize Penny out of liking Seaweed, and the heroes, themselves, become terrified when they accidentally stumble into a den of Beatniks ("let's get naked and smoke!"). The segregationists mostly act out of fear, paranoia, vanity rather than any profound hatred, while another scene shows a white woman throwing fireworks into a crowd of peaceful protesters and starting a race riot just For the Evulz.
Love and Honor is ripe with this, but the kicker is when the (truly lovable) hero throws his (also very sweet) wife out the house for, basically, being raped. She comments in all earnestness: "At least he was kind enough not to cut off my head." Though later they reconcile, he never apologizes for it.
Timeline, despite its poor reception, has one of the most accurate depictions of medieval values in modern fiction, moreso in the book. It's rather well summed up in the scene where the main party is escaping and the Scotsman (though Dutch in the novel), standing a few feet from the guard, with an arrow pointed at his chest says something to the effect of "Stay quiet if you value your life." The guard picks up his sword and yells "Traitors!" running at him. Before promptly being shot in the chest.
Help! - it may seem disconcerting to see The Beatles (especially Lennon) referring to "filthy Eastern ways" regarding their cultist pursuers, but all the deliberately stilted dialog in the movie is meant to invoke old movie and adventure novel cliches.
A throwaway line in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time mentions the Crown Prince having several wives.
Played full tilt in The Coen Brothers version of True Grit where among other examples, when a group of outlaws are about to be executed. The white bandits all get their full final words while the American Indian gets a mask over his head before he could get a single word in edgewise.
Ip Man doesn't shy from depicting Japanese brutality towards Chinese or Western racism.
In the 2012 movie version of Twenty One Jump Street, undercover cop Jenko finds out the hard way that, in the age of Glee, environmentalism and a more pro-tolerance atmosphere, his alpha-male jock routine puts him a lot lower on the high school Popularity Food Chain than it did at the Turn of the Millennium (he graduated in 2005). Instead, it's Schmidt, the former high school nerd, whose personality and lifestyle are more in line with what's considered cool in The New Tens.
The townspeople in Federico Fellini's Amarcord are a barely literate, comically inept, short-tempered, base lot with few redeeming features between them. About half-way through the movie, the mayor of the town proudly declares every citizen a committed Fascist.
In Django Unchained, this is pretty frequent. For example, Calvin Candie pulls out the old Phrenology justification for why whites are superior.
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story contains a scene where Bruce and his white girlfriend watch the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. The girlfriend clearly loves the movie, while Bruce is shown to be appalled at the racist humor and use of Yellowface.
Dragnet contrasts the Detective Friday character, who is a throwback to The Fifties, with his more modern new partner played by Tom Hanks.

Fan Fiction

Racer And The Geek brings this up frequently when mercenaries get involved. Because pony society is so unconfrontational and violence is extremely uncommon, firearms and those associated with them are almost all universally hated.
Hivefled: To the readers, the Parental Incest is disturbing, but trolls don't have any concept of incest due to their Bizarre Alien Reproduction meaning that most trolls never meet their children. Similarly, blood sacrifices are usually pretty normal in the cult of mirthful messiahs- the Grand Highblood is just breaking the rules by keeping his victims' ghosts.

Literature

Is all over the place in Trail of Glory by Eric Flint. Slavery and attitude towards race is front and center. Then add in the views on women, individual lives, religion�
In The Roman Mysteries all the characters freak out over free Romans being kidnapped and enslaved, but most of them give little thought to the enslavement of non-Romans or those born to slavery. Also, no one has a problem with 13- or 14-year-old girls getting married to men in their 20s or 30s.
In the 1632 series, the vastly different values between people from 2000 America and 1632 Europe cause no end of confusion, hilarity and conflict between people from the time periods.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written several decades after the civil war. Many modern audiences fail to realize that Mark Twain meant to invoke this trope to show just how bad the South was.
Common in David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series, taking place in a future ruled by the Han (Chinese) with much more acceptance of casual cruelty. Holding up a frozen human head to your business associates to reminisce? They will only be bothered that you are stalling the meeting.
The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (most famous for Things Fall Apart) writes historical novels about the Igbo people, and doesn't fail to include disturbing cultural practices like abandoning newborn twins in the forest to die, a certain caste being forbidden to live with the rest of the people or one protagonist killing his adopted son due to an inscrutable oracular order. The point is that while many aspects of Igbo culture were good and their loss a tragedy, the novels also make it clear why so many Igbo were willing to trade them in for the colonial Anglo-Christian culture, which is also portrayed as neither wholly good or bad.
The Conqueror books present killing and stealing from neighbouring clans and raping girls from allied clans as positive and heroic. Granted, life in the steppes was tough, but wow.
The punishment of Sloan drew from this. When Eragon wonders whether he was justified in his punishment, the kings who have a concept of divine right to rule reply that he has the authority to punish people without sentencing them to death.
- The role of women in the series is another example. Like many fantasy books of the genre, the Inheritance Cycle is set in a time with, shall we say, less enlightened views on the subject. Nasuada, being female, has to go to great lengths to prove herself capable of leading the Varden.
The Judge Dee stories are a good example: The hero has people beaten and tortured to give information. To be fair, in Imperial China there could be no conviction without a confession, regardless of evidence. Torture was often used after evidence was gathered to gain that conviction. There's also the issue that in mirroring the original Dee stories and other Confucian literature, Taoists, Buddhists, and Tartars/"barbarians" are generally Always Chaotic Evil and it's rather unlikely that a modern audience would share these prejudices.
- At least theoretically, at the time, everybody involved in a prosecution would be severely punished at BEST if it was later proven that a conviction was erroneous. It's often a plot point — even the superhuman Judge Dee hesitates to act until he is absolutely certain, both for his sense of justice and for preserving his hide.
Very much the case in the Flashman series: The hero makes Gene Hunt look like Mr. PC in comparison.
Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell features such lovely aspects of Regency England as wildly different ages in marriage, casual racism, and class elitism, but also nicer aspects, such as a gentleman's code of honor. Faeries on the other hand are Ax Crazy sociopaths who at times seem barely aware other people have differing opinions. Also note on the author's website, she wrote reviews of herself "written" by both Strange and Norrell, in which both come across as pretty sexist. Strange has never read the book and spends the review criticizing the author's looks and unladylike behavior. Norrel comes right out and states that women have no business writing books of such sort.
In The Long Ships, slavery, rape and casual violence are seen as acceptable things to do. Considering the story was set in the Viking era...
George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series does this quite a bit.
- Trial by combat, where each side is represented by a champion in a fight to the death, with the victor "obviously" right in the eyes of the gods, is quite popular.
- Tyrion Lannister, who is otherwise one of the most sympathetic characters in the series, makes some rather snarky comments regarding the hill tribes' practice on not only electing their chieftens, but also allowing women to vote and hold office. (Though his primary issue with the democratic process is simply how long it takes to make decisions.)
- People of Westeros generally have Stay in the Kitchen attitude and women are expected to become mothers and wives, not warriors. Action Girls like Brienne often meet with prejudice and discrimination.
- Arranged political marriages, often featuring underage participants.
- In Westeros, the Lord's Right was officially abolished about one hundred years prior to the start of the series; however, it's an open secret that several noble houses still practice it. It comes as no surprise that the treacherous Boltons are among these houses; what is surprising is that the Umbers, who have otherwise been portrayed as honorable and loyal allies of the Starks, do as well.
- Deliberate culture clash is seen in Daenerys's chapters in the first book. She (and by extension, the reader) are completely uninformed about Dothraki culture, and so many of the customs are seen as strange to her. The Dothraki are very horse-oriented and many aspects of their culture reflect that. Some of their customs include no taboo against public nudity or sex, and the consumption of horseflesh. Dany is given a horse at her wedding and is discouraged from naming it; it is only known in the books as "her silver".
- The wildlings, whose entire culture is based on the idea that there are no laws other than Asskicking Equals Authority. This becomes a source of discord between Jon and Ygritte, who occasionally argue about the differences between their cultures.
- The Frey family's rise to prominence through legitimate business may be inspiring to modern readers but they are seen as upstarts by the snobby Great Houses who got their status usually through violence and conquest and are descendants of legendary folk heroes.
- Targaryen family practiced incest. Marriages between brothers and sisters or close cousins were arranged to keep �purity of the bloodline�.
In Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell Trilogy, when the gang travels back in time to the Blitz, they are shocked to hear a nice old lady call the black Yo-less "Sambo", and cook up a story about him being an African prince.
Discworld is a fantasy world, but still contains some of this. Racism is mostly replaced with Fantastic Racism (dwarfs and trolls), but some old fashioned sexism is on display, despite female heroes being common. Equal Rites features the Disc's first female wizard (as opposed to witch) getting looked down upon by other wizards, who believe a female wizard is impossible. Curiously, Granny Weatherwax shares this belief, saying that "if men were witches they'd be wizards", because there are inherent psychological differences between the genders. Esk ends up proving this false, as she can effectively be both.
- The Watch books have some as well. Dwarfs typically don't advertise their genders (females are also bearded), and when one starts to do so it is treated as scandalous. Carrot, himself raised by dwarfs, also finds it a little disturbing, despite being a true Nice Guy. He also assumes that Angua was hired purely because she is a woman (She wasn't. It's because she's a werewolf).
- On the other hand, Snuff features a rather extreme case of Deliberate Values Dissonance within the series. Does eating babies make a race Always Chaotic Evil? Maybe not if you see it from their point of view.
In Mary Renault's The King Must Die, there is mention of its hero, Theseus, taking sexual advantage of female servants/slaves starting from a young age, and this is completely appropriate behavior.
- Her book The Persian Boy was blasted by Moral Guardians because one of its main themes is pederasty. This despite the fact that the narrator clearly states that his treatment as a child was horribly abusive. (If anything, The Persian Boy is a scathing, vicious denunciation of child sexual abuse.) Most of the main action of the novel, where the narrator finds love and happiness, takes place after he reaches adulthood.
  - Of course, the Moral Guardians were also a bit put-out by the fact that the main character finds "love and happiness" in a romance with another man. Which may have been all well and good in Ancient Greece, but apparently not so much in 1972 America.
In How Few Remain, an alternative history novel based on the premise of the South winning the American civil war, the word "nigger" is tossed around casually.
- This is also seen throughout the entirety of Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series, of which How Few Remain is the first installment.
- Also in The Guns Of The South, in which time-traveling Afrikaaners are shown to be even more racist than the Confederates, treating blacks incredibly harshly and calling them "kaffir", which is even worse than "nigger". The Confederates, while fighting to preserve slavery, are rather taken aback by how poorly the time-travelers treat the blacks.
- Later on Grant finds a history book that demonizes the Confederacy because of this trope. This makes him have a Heel Realization in that if the future thinks him a monster they are probably right.
Back in the 1830's, during the Egyptian antique craze, it was common practice to publicly disassemble mummies and sell off the parts, before casually tossing what remained into the trash (which is frankly the least of the things they did with them). Christian Jacq presents this as normal in The Mummy's Trial, while this would make any modern scientist (including himself) cringe.
Extremely prevalent in Colleen McCcullough's Masters Of Rome series:
- Dead girl babies are thrown out the window. (Which may be historically inaccurate, as Tacitus wrote that infanticide, even of daughters, was a capital offence among the Germans.)
- In one of the most emotionally fraught chapters, Livia Drusa's brother Drusus not only basically imprisons her inside their home her entire life, but he also forces her to marry his friend Servilius, a man she despises. Later Drusus has a change of heart when he realizes what a weasel Servilius is.
- Pompey telling his first wife that he has no intention of fathering a son with her, because he only married her for political reasons and she's not good enough to be the mother of his son and heir.
- Gaius Marius' negotiation with Gaius Julius Caesar (grandfather of Caesar the Dictator) to marry his daughter Julia (that is, whichever of two Julias he prefers). This is a straightforward business transaction: Marius is a rich, rising New Man who needs a wellborn wife for status. The Julii Caesares are an impoverished patrician clan and need money for their sons' political careers, and their daughters need rich husbands. At the end, Caesar asks Marius, "Oh, and it won't cause you any distress to divorce your current wife, will it?" Marius says, "Not at all!" And goes straight home and tells his wife (without any prior hints), "I am divorcing you." It's all right because he offers her a generous settlement. He also apologizes, not being entirely indifferent to the pain he's causing her. In fact given the unhappiness of the marriage the divorce may be the best thing that can happen to Grania.
In Book Of The New Sun, the hero Severian is a torturer and executioner, who even at one point delivers a two-page speech about why penal torture is the best punishment and preferable on all counts to prison/hard labour, exile, or indiscriminate death penalty.
- He apparently changes his mind later, though. When he becomes Autarch, he announces his intention to abolish his former guild. Maybe.
This is the entire point of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation.
In Alan Dean Foster's Ice Rigger, after the stranded human heroes help their Tran friends essentially slaughter all the warriors belonging to a rampaging nomadic "Horde", the good guy natives send a team to the Horde's base camp to kill off the non-combatants, including their cubs, that were travelling with them. Skua, one of the humans, points out that the locals have been suffering from Horde attacks for years, but his friend Ethan calls him out on it.
- If nonhuman cultures are eligible for this trope, then the rabbits of Watership Down rate a mention, as Adams openly states that they feel no guilt whatsoever about using force to compel weaker rabbits to yield to them. Which is probably Truth in Television for real rabbits, but needed to be pointed out for his Lapine-speaking, story-telling versions.
James Ellroy's LA Quartet, set from 1947 to 1959, features even its more likeable characters occasionally indulging in racial epithets, as well as similar attitudes to Jews.
- Indeed, in The Black Dahlia Bucky is manipulated into killing two black men by his partner, who is trying to cover up a previous crime. He doesn't seem too bothered by it, as he's too busy obsessing over the eponymous Black Dahlia.
- Unsurprisingly, the Deliberate Values Dissonance continues in his follow-up, the Underworld USA trilogy. Ellroy has described the themes of the trilogy thusly:
The essential contention of the Underworld USA trilogy ... is that America was never innocent. Here's the lineage: America was founded on a bedrock of racism, slaughter of the indigenous people, slavery, religious lunacy ... and nations are never innocent. Let alone nations as powerful as our beloved fatherland. What you have in The Cold Six Thousand � which covers the years '63 to '68 � is that last gasp of pre-public-accountability America where the anti-communist mandate justified virtually any action. And it wasn't Kennedy's death that engendered mass skepticism. It was the protracted horror of the Vietnamese war.
Snow Flower And The Secret Fan is a historical fiction story set in 19th century China, and features the main female character making remarks about how she (and her daughters) are worthless to her family and going through foot-binding to improve their lives. The author has Shown Her Work by going to China and talking to real women who went through foot-binding, and the deliberate values dissonance is commonly viewed as the best part of this book. At least one book on the role of feet and shoes in sexuality, in its extensive discussion of footbinding, reveals that, for many centuries, footbinding was actively sought out by every single Chinese family that could afford the procedure because small, dainty feet were considered the foremost mark of beauty and sexual attractiveness in classical Chinese culture, so girls as young as 5 were sent through it at the risk of infection and even death. Footbinding was universally viewed in classical Chinese culture as improving the shape of the foot to give it beauty and sexual allure. Class issues also enter into the question; bound feet were associated with wealth in general and the upper classes, and unbound feet were considered uncouth and a mark of a woman's peasant status, and several references are made in the book to how "big footed girls" are looked down upon and relegated to servant status.
Harry Harrison and Tom Shippey's alternate history trilogy The Hammer and the Cross is set in 9th century Europe, the values of the historical peoples of the time are accurately represented; including their attitude toward rape, enslavement, trial-by-combat, and the social status of women and conquered peoples.
Ellis Peters' characters from the Brother Cadfael books adhere to medieval feudal values without losing her or the reader's sympathy. Especially Oliver's My Master, Right or Wrong attitude in a civil war doesn't one bit change the fact that she seems a little in love with him.
At one point in the X-Wing Series there's a brief reference to an Imperial-made holofilm about daredevils who tightrope walk between Coruscant's giant skyscrapers... its tragic ending is supposed to be An Aesop against nonconformism and rebellion, and is understood as such by the Imperial watching it (Odd, as it is established that Coruscant has a system that will safely slow you down if you fall).
- Dropping through aerial rush-hour traffic would be pretty rough on anyone who can't use the Force to control their descent, however.
Fever 1793 uses this in a more humorous manner. The main character is supposedly foulmouthed, and everyone reacts in a horrified manner whenever she uses her favorite profane exclamation: "Dash it all!"
Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin takes places in the south around the time of the American Civil War. As a result, most characters are racist. Although protagonist Abner Marsh is presented as more enlightened (he disapproves of slavery, for instance) he still liberally uses the n-word.
Alternate universe example: in Neil Gaiman's short story, "A Study in Emerald", the protagonists watch a historical play about Eldritch Abominations conquering the Earth to barely any resistance from humanity. And applaud the "happy ending" in which the only dissenter is beaten to death.
Often used to good effect in the Aubrey Maturin series. One excellent example is the characters' attitude toward naval discipline and punishment; Jack Aubrey is portrayed as having liberal opinions on the subject for the day, hating indiscriminate flogging (flogging being a standard punishment at the time for offenses not reaching a court-martial level of seriousness) and doing what he can to lessen the severity of punishments issued by court-martials that he sits on. Nonetheless, he will order a set of lashes to be laid on if he deems the reason good and sufficient, e.g., for deliberate insolence toward a superior officer in The Far Side of the World or for shocking incompetence in executing a basic nautical maneuver in The Truelove.
Done similarly in the Temeraire series, which is basically Aubrey Maturin WITH DRAGONS^note Seriously, the author has said it started out as [[Ascended Fanfic alternate-universe fic.
- There's an amusing moment in the first book where Laurence reacts with shock and horror at the revelation that Captain Roland's daughter is 'natural born', i.e. the product of premarital sex.
- Laurence is a bleeding heart liberal in many ways (chief of which is being a staunch abolitionist), but sexuality seemed to be his limit. This is made abundantly clear when Granby confesses that he's "an invert" (gay). Laurence has a hard time reconciling the man he knows Granby to be with what he "knows" "those deviants" are and realizes that, were he still a Navy man, he'd have had Granby flogged and imprisoned for such a thing, without a second thought.
- Most characters outside of the British Aerial Corps don�t like the idea of woman joining the military. Existence of female aviators is kept secret from the general public to avoid a scandal.
- In Tongues of Serpents Laurence believes that Emily should be given a chaperon and thinks her contacts with boys her age to be inappropriate. Other aviators laugh this idea off as ridiculous. In their eyes the worst that can happen is Emily getting pregnant � which would be expected of her anyway in order to produce a next captain for Excidium.
The Second Apocalypse takes this and runs with it, being set in a world highly reminiscent of the Dark Ages, albeit with magic and Eldritch Abominations. Women are considered less than men, peasants are less than nobles, homosexuals are less than heterosexuals (even though Everyone Is Bi), and if someone is less than you, their life is completely worthless.
Seen somewhat in the Belisarius Series. Although many of the characters have somewhat more tolerant views than were common at the time, they're rather nonchalant about the existence of slavery. Ousanos also makes a comment about it being too bad that democracy, as the classic Greeks demonstrated, never works.
Joseph Conrad's novel Under Western Eyes is set in (and written during) Russia around the time of the pogroms. There's one scene where the protagonist, who is a fairly good guy, is angered by someone and mutters to himself to the effect that the person was a "dirty Jew". The British First Person Peripheral Narrator makes a comment about how the offender wasn't Jewish and the protagonist knew that, but Russians were such extreme anti-Semites that this kind of expression was the norm.
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal features a more or less authentic representation of first century life in the region that Jesus would have grown up in. Slavery is referenced regularly, it's made clear that Mary Magdalene could be stoned to death for leaving her husband, and thirteen-year-olds having sex is pretty much normal.
For Ken Follett's novel Fall of Giants, which is dealing with the changes in society during the time of World War One, this trope is inevitable. The most obvious example among the main protagonists would be Earl Fitzherbert, an English aristocrat who is against the very principle of women's suffrage, and (although even he disapproves of the brutal way the Russian nobility treats its subjects) also against the emancipation of the lower classes.
Used deliberately in Orson Scott Card's Enchantment. The modern-day hero finds himself in medieval Russia and unable to understand the cultural norms. No one blinks when he finds himself naked in public, but they are scandalized when he tries to used a woman's cloak to cover himself. His reluctance to enter an arranged marriage is the highest sort of insult, and when he does get married, his wife is perplexed at his reluctance to consummate it, since her body is now his property.
Eliezer Yudkowsky's Three Worlds Collide is an explicit exercise in this. Set in the twenty-fifth century, it tells of Mankind's first contact with two alien species, both of which possess ethical systems that seem utterly insane both to each other and to the present.
- 25th century Humans, who think that rape is an enjoyable activity for both parties.
- The Super Happies, who think that anyone who doesn't abolish all pain and spend all their time having sex must be mentally deficient, and should be forcibly placed under the stewardship of a more advanced species.
- The Baby Eaters who... well, just look at their name.
In The Left Hand of Darkness, on the planet Gethen, there is no gender, there has never been a great war, and rape is nonexistent, though there is a kind of one-sided seduction that the other side might be unhappy about. As well, incest is not a crime (at least not the first time around). Theft, however, is regarded as a serious crime - Gethen is in an Ice Age, and if you steal someone's food, you could be damning them to a death by starvation. It's In-Universe because there is a citizen of Earth observing the Gethenians.
The eponymous Tuareg protagonist from the book by Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa has a fifteen-year-old wife who's the mother of his son. And he isn't very fond of people suggesting that all humans (men and women, free men and slaves, Tuareg and others, smart and dumb ones, rich and poor ones, and so on) are equal. When another guy calls him a fascist for this, he just states, then he has to be a fascist (to his excuse, he doesn't know about fascism). Ironically, he saves the life of the socialist ex-president also thanks to Values Dissonance - the man was his guest, and he'll do anything for hospitality.
Turns up often in the Dragaera novels, to highlight both the callous attitudes of Jhereg gangsters and the alienness of Dragaeran society. Used ironically at times, as when the business Vlad sets up to conceal his office and illegal (untaxed) gambling den is a legal narcotics dealer.
In Kylie Chan's Hell to Heaven (the second book in the Journey to Wudang series), a boy drugs and attempts to rape Simone. Simone, the daughter of Xuan Wu, uses her powers to kill him on impulse, and is convinced she is guilty of murder, or at least manslaughter. The Jade Emperor calls her to the Celestial Plane over the incident, where he commends her for her actions - in his eyes, she was protecting her virtue, and exercising her right as a princess to pass judgment on a criminal. This just makes Simone feel even worse about the act.
The Kingdoms of Evil is all about Deliberate Values Dissonance.
The Full Matilda by David Haynes has this, with the eponymous Matilda's family being African-American servants to a white senator in Washington DC during The Roaring Twenties. This is even discussed when Matilda talks about how later on many people quit having live in servants and started hiring day maids and limo services (as opposed to having a driver and a live-in maid). The Reveal in the book is that Matilda at the age of 16 slept with the senator (who had been showing an...interest in her since she was 13) she and her family worked for in order to secure her father a house of his own, and nobody else knew but her and the senator. That scenario could probably happen now, but eventually it would come out and the senator would probably be arrested, whereas back then nobody would care because she was just a poor black girl. It would be more plausible now if she were older, but it still would cause controversy.
- Truth in Television, of course.
Done by Ephraim Kishon with Saadya Shabatai, the Yemenite Jew. As Kishon wrote, "they are about 2000 years behind western civilization". Used in one story where a guy wants to marry Saadya's daughter, but the father demands a high bride price (i.e. essentially selling his daughter).
Saadya: You see? For fifty pounds, all you get is woman like Mrs Comrade. Can't cook, can't clean, doesn't look good, only knows how to talk, talk, talk.
- The funny thing is, although exploiting the rule to make money is frowned upon, this is actually a more or less Biblically-mandated Jewish tradition, albeit one with a more-or-less universally used loophole.^note
Happens a little in The Lovely Bones, about a girl named Susie who is raped and murdered by a neighbor. In the book, which takes place in The Seventies, people weren't as suspicious about strangers, but now a kid would probably know not to go into the house of a male neighbor. In fact, people would probably be very suspicious of their single male neighbor who likes to sit in his car and stare at girls.
In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Great White Hunter Ned Land asks Captain Nemo�s permission to hunt some whales. Nemo denies it and he accuses Ned of being an Egomaniac Hunter. Next they see some cachalots and Nemo destroys them using the Nautilus� spur. When Ned accuses Nemo of being The Butcher, Nemo answers that the cachalots were mischievous creatures and the Nautilus is his weapon. Verne show us that no matter how mistaken the philosophy of a Great White Hunter is, they will never do the damage that the Ubersmench can do using science.
Letters Back To Ancient China has Kao-tai, a time-travelling mandarin from 1000 years ago, who doesn't understand why he shouldn't have an affair with two women at the same time, as long as he can satisfy them both. Also, when he compliments one of them on her breasts, she is miffed. And he misses cooked dog. And so on.
The Eleventh Year Rite (aka female circumcision) is this both in and out of canon in Who Fears Death: Onyesonwu's mother is horrified when she discovers what her daughter has done (the practice having been banned in her home village), for instance, whereas it's common practice in Jwahir. Indeed, Onyesonwu subjected herself to it in order to fit in, and by doing so she gains a set of True Companions in Binta, Diti and Luyu.
Used to great (and disturbing) effect in Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red.
Joanne Bertin's The Last Dragonlord has a nearly immortal weredragon having an affair with a human noblewoman, then seeing a commonborn sailor who is another weredragon, though unaware of it yet, on the side. The noble finds out and whips the sailor across the face, nearly blinding her; the weredragon is furious when he finds out, but local law doesn't condemn nobles who injure or even cripple commoners. In fact the weredragon is aware that if he's seen to be too angry about it people will wonder why. This is despite the fact that weredragons are explicitly from every class of people, most of them born as very common humans, and that same angry weredragon states his belief that the reason why so many of his kind are born common is so that they'll be more considerate of the commonfolk than noble pride. The only reason he and the other weredragons are so upset about it is because the sailor is a weredragon, which is considered a class above nobility - the angry weredragon talks the talk about consideration for all people, but he's very much in line with the culture.
In Donald Kingsbury's Courtship Rite, this is almost the entire point of the book. Cannibalism is accepted and normal, bound with ritual, and the heretic who argues against it comes off as a bit crazy. Without cannibalism, there would be no people on Geta, or at best, only a desperate handful.
This trope is a strong element in A Brother's Price. It's a Romance Novel set during an age of rifles, steamboats, and horses, and so few men are born that gender roles are largely reversed. The often horrifying implications are spelled out but regarded dispassionately - Princess Ren, who's consulting holy books, concludes that the values they espouse don't include treating men like property, but that doesn't mean they're as hardy, ambitious, and constructive as women. Family structures in this world are also different, so if a sister commits treason and there isn't reasonable evidence that she acted alone, the entire family is executed down to the infants. This is regarded as unpleasant and sad, but practical for preventing You Killed My Mothers and cycles of revenge.
In Octavia Butler's sci-fi/historical fiction novel Kindred, the first sign that Dana has traveled through time as well as through space is Rufus' casual use of the N-word and his innocent confusion when Dana gets offended by it.
The books that begin The General series have the good guy characters accepting slavery as a simple part of life and don't fuss over it (except if the threat is that it happens to them.) Similarly, Raj Whitehall over time gained a reputation as a strict commander who did not allow men to run wild when they defeated an enemy...raping women in the field was only allowed when it didn't cause operational problems, and the mass rapes which followed the conquest of an enemy town or city were organized so that they would be over within a day and then the troops could get back to soldiering.
In C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, when Merlin shows up in 20th century England, the heroes (except Ransom) are shocked by his attitudes and behavior. For starters, he treats Ransom's company as if they were servants, is surprised to find out that there are no slaves to help him bathe and dress, and suggests beheading Jane because she failed to bear a child. (On the positive side, he claims to give a third of his income to the poor, which is far more charity than most moderns show.)
This makes up quite a lot of The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, since the story's about a Chinese girl who moves to America with her parents at a time when Jackie Robinson was at the height of his career. When she first arrives, she begins mentally comparing live in America to life in China.
Used and partially crossed over with Fair for Its Day in Mary Grant Bruce's stories about the fictional Australian cattle-station (USA: ranch), Billabong (The Billabong Books). All of the characters, including the main ones, view the Australian Aboriginals as inferior and having child-like minds. Also, the Chinese occasionally depicted in the books are viewed by most of the characters as degenerate and reprehensible tramps by default. The Billabong family, the Lintons, are very progressive in that they are willing to accept some Chinese as being decent and respectable (most notably, their Chinese kitchen gardener, Lee Wing). The last story in the series is notable for putting forth the progressive (for when it was written) view that Australia once belonged to the Aborigines and they deserve some respect.
Malazan Book Of The Fallen:
- Karsa Orlong is deliberately written as a Deconstruction of the "barbarian fantasy". This entails a great amount of esoteric morals that almost one and all clash with "current" Western culture. Killing those weaker than you is seen as a good thing by the Teblor, Karsa's people, and rape is used as a social reward. This is particularly prevalent in the first quarter of House Of Chains, which depicts Karsa's origins.
- Less specifically, the authors of the Verse—who are anthropologists—go to great lengths to ensure that all peoples are depicted neutrally and non-judgementally. This often causes some sort of dissonance to crop up.
Never Wipe Tears Without Gloves with its depiction of the treatment of gay men in the 80s versus in 2012.

Live Action TV

American Dreams being set in the early sixties plays with this trope extensively. While it contains a certain amount of nostalgia there were pains taken to give characters realistic attitudes in regards to things like race, sexuality and war. There was also a fair amount of care taken to avoid Strawmen (althought there were some arguable examples) and people's attitudes and actions were often conflicting. Pete Pryror was shown to be casually racist in his dealings as a cop but also seemed to genuinely respect Henry, his brother's Black Best Friend. Jack Pryror might have somewhat archaic views on women but allows his wife to work and offers to help his daughter attend college despite his initial misgivings. Even borderline Marty Stu JJ objects to his his sister's budding inter-racial relationship. Some critics (especially since Mad Men has come along) have said it could have hit this trope harder but many others feel that not having a specific political viewpoint gave the show a more expansive perspective on the period.
Gene Hunt on Life On Mars and Ashes to Ashes. His interrogation techniques makes one wonder how the writers intend the viewer to feel about the character ... Hero, Anti-Hero, Jerk with a Heart of Gold ... Villain?
- It should be noted what context Gene Hunt exists in: he is likeable only because he exists as the foil to the ultra-liberal, modern-day-copper. It is also interesting to note that while it is possible to delight is Hunt's lines about 'tits in a jumper' and 'French, fairy bastards', not even he can get away with being endearingly racist.
In Star Trek: The Original Series, when a simulation of Abraham Lincoln is projected onto the Enterprise, he immediately notices Uhura is black:
Abraham Lincoln: What a charming Negress. [Uhura looks at him strangely] Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know in my time some used that term as a description of property.
Uhura: But why should I object to that term, sir? In our century, we've learned not to fear words.
- This is actually a bit of an inaccurate portrayal of Lincoln. Although some of the plans he advocated early in his life regarding slaves (such as the government buying them, freeing them, and then sending them out of the country) would seem bothersome today due to Values Dissonance, he was remarked about at least once for not reminding people of their race.
  Frederick Douglass: In his company I was never in any way reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color.
  - It was said in the series that the historical figures brought back were based on how different characters on the show imagined them; thus, Lincoln's portrayal did not need to be 100% accurate, as Kirk, who had imagined him, never met the man.
Lucius Vorenus from Rome was devoted to a code of honour that often seems barbaric from a modern point of view, at one point he was willing to kill his wife's illegitimate son to preserve honour. In Real Life ancient Rome, the man who did not put his wife's illegitimate newborn to death would be considered not just dishonourable but immoral. However, if the child was older and freeborn (or if the mother had been married to the biological father at the time of conception), killing it would be a felony punishable by death.
- There was also a hilarious bit when Atia took a servant's rumors of Caesar and Octavian coming out of a pantry at the same time after making some strange noises (Caesar was having an epileptic fit) and ran with it. This also becomes a case of deliberate hypocrisy later when she beats Octavia for being in a lesbian relationship with Servilia, an enemy of the family, as immoral. Of course, in the show this relationship led to the downfall of Caesar, but that was a ways off and due to a single seemingly unimportant comment to all involved.
  Atia: For what reason, I wonder, would you and Caesar possibly be skulking around in a cupboard...?
  Octavian: What? We were... it was nothing.
  Atia: "Nothing"? It doesn't sound like nothing. [beams] You seduced him, you sly little fox!
  Octavian: I did not!
  Atia: I am not clear it is decent, him being your great uncle... but who's to say what's decent in times like these? In any case, well done. Let's see Servilia compete with a soft young boy like you. What power we shall wield...!
- The final straw for the conspirators who wanted to assassinate Caesar? He had the 'gall' of offering normal people and conquered peoples to be senators in the Senate... thus giving everyone a say. This was offensive to the nobility, even though in modern day and age it'd be viewed as progressive and natural. It made the conspirators look less like freedom fighters for the Republic and more like Evil Aristocrats trying to preserve their own power.
- Sex is treated very casually, sometimes to a hilarious degree. The teenage Octavian frequently gets chewed out by his mother for not having enough sex, and she eventually forces him to visit a brothel so that he won't dishonor his family by being a virgin. Earlier in Season 1, she also forces him to eat sheep testicles to make him more virile, making some remark to the effect of "When your father was your age, he was forcing himself on servant girls right and left!"
Mad Men is basically about this trope. Set in the early 1960s, the male characters on that show smoke like chimneys, drink like fishes, and regularly display what would today be considered firing offenses with regards to sexually harassing female co-workers. The women on the show also display period behavior, especially with regards to their married lives or with the actions of their female peers. Decidedly non-kosher shrimp cocktails are served at a lunch meeting with a Jewish family. One of the younger men working freelance for Sterling Cooper tells his colleagues he's gay, leading to a painful silence and people talking behind his back, and Betty nicknames her daughter "daddy's little lesbian" because of the daughter's love of handiwork (in fact, as one scene shows, she is a somewhat tomboyish Tsundere-in-waiting). Betty's low-speed car crash which had the kids (restrained only by the friction of their clothing against the car's vinyl seats) thrown into the footwell. And finally, one scene of the Drapers leaving all of their garbage behind after a picnic in a public park seemed so outlandish that some viewers wondered whether the show was accentuating the negative on purpose. Overall, Mad Men is very much NOT a nostalgia piece for 1960s America, but neither is it a condemnation. Everything presented to the viewers is accepted by the characters as normal, acceptable (even expected) behavior.
- Later in the series, however, it becomes clear that many of the reprehensible actions on the show are personal and not even fair for their day.
Deadwood:
- Even the sympathetic characters toss about what would be considered ethnic slurs today: Bullock calling Mr. Wu a "Chinaman", Calamity Jane addressing General Fields as "a short nigger", Trixie making frequent anti-Semitic remarks in reference to her Jewish lover Sol, and Charlie Utter often calling Indians "heathens". Then again, the nastier characters (Swearengen and Tolliver particularly) do it even more.
- Prostitutes in town are little more than sexual slaves to their masters. This is treated as just a natural part of life in the frontier. The show also doesn't shy away from the Stockholm Syndrome felt by prostitutes toward their pimps.
- As was considered appropriate in the time period, Mrs. Garret does not go outside without a male escort, even if the escort is a simpleton who couldn't be expected to perform any useful function.
Roots. Black characters are always called "niggers"; a white sailor describes them as being essentially animals, their languages being no more than grunts. Rape of black women is widespread and accepted. The owners discuss how teaching them to read - if it be possible - would only make them unhappy. (Of course, pretty much the entire point of Roots is to describe this sort of thing.)
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman featuring a female doctor/adoptive mom coming to work in a frontier town, without Politically Correct History coming into play. "Dr. Mike" and her children were exceptionally enlightened, as might be expected, but most plots derived from the ignorance of the townsfolk over natives, Jewish immigrants, reconstruction, Darwinian evolution, or (most commonly) single mothers as doctors.
In the Doctor Who episode "The Shakespeare Code", upon meeting Martha Jones, Shakespeare attempts to compliment and indeed flirt with her by using several terms for 'black person' that were common in the day... terms that are not by any means considered politically correct now. Needless to say, Martha is not impressed. He eventually settles on my dark lady, a term that anyone who knows Shakespeare's sonnets might find a little familiar.
- Even more so in "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood". The students mock Martha ("With hands like those, how can you tell when something's clean?"), Joan doesn't believe that Martha could ever train as a doctor because she's black and female and John Smith believes that Martha can't understand the difference between fictional literature and reality. The best part being that Joan has almost no trouble believing that John Smith was the Doctor and an alien, but can't seem to get her head around a black woman training to be a doctor.
- Played for laughs in the second trailer to the 2012 Christmas special; a Victorian policeman takes it fairly in stride that the detective he's working with is a reptilian woman from Earth's distant past employing a genetically-engineered warrior from space. The fact that she's romantically involved with her maid visibly freaks him out though.
  - The actual episode makes a Discriminate And Switch joke out of this, with Simeon apparently being more disgusted that the Veiled Detective is a woman as opposed to not being human, and is especially derisive of her and Jenny's relationship (Vastra rejects his accusations of impropriety; they are married after all).
Quantum Leap, all the time—for example, when Sam leaps into a black man in the pre-civil rights era South, or a secretary in 1961 who's being sexually harassed by her boss.
Invoked in James Ellroy's LA Quartet, which is set in the 1940s and '50s and features a shocking amount of racist and anti-Semitic statements from lots of characters, including many otherwise likable protagonists. Ellroy deliberately points out how deeply ingrained into society those feelings were, that even nice people could get caught up in them.
In one episode of Murdoch Mysteries, Inspector Brackenreid refers to a woman with undiagnosed mental problems as an "imbecile". George is quick to correct him, "They don't use that word any more, it's insensitive. The accepted term is 'moron'."
- Some might view it as an Anachronism that Julia is a doctor, but some women did indeed have careers at the time, and people who haven't met her are patronising towards her at best and outright prejudiced at worst. Even the people she works with who have come to terms with her being a doctor don't view her as entirely equal; when it comes to light that some women have been dressing up as men and living double lives that way, Brackenreid rants (in her presence, mind) that women don't understand the complexities of life and are foolish for impersonating men.
The Babylon 5 episode "The Corps Is Mother, the Corps Is Father" is made of this, as all three of the episode's main characters are Psi Cops who have grown up in the Corps, and therefore been brainwashed with its skewed values since birth. Also, two of the characters are Naive Newcomers on their first mission, and the third is Bester.
The Unusuals has the episode "The Circle Line," which is basically a forty-three-minute-long attempt to justify the "blue wall."
In the Twilight Zone episode "No Time Like the Past", after the main character decides to live out the rest of his life in the year 1881, he gets into a conversation about global politics with someone from that time. The native goes on about how war is the best measure of the strength of a nation and that the United States should fight wars of conquest against Asia and South America. This angers the main character who says that going down that road will lead to disaster and untold loss of life. (He's right.) He is criticized for this belief. Of course, the whole point of that episode was to show that Nostalgia Ain't Like It Used To Be.
Played for Laughs in the Boy Meets World episode "I Was a Teenage Spy," where Cory dreams he is sent back to the 1950s. When he says "butt" in class, Mr. Turner and all the other students react as if he'd said a horrible curse word.
Pan Am is also set in the 1960's and has some pretty clear examples in the way the stewardesses are treated, but others include the strong taboo against interracial relationships (shown in the outcome of the public display between Laura and a black sailor) and the treatment of women's sexuality.
In Kaamelott, King Arthur is one of the only characters to dislike torture and public executions of criminals, and he allows them nonetheless. He also has several official mistresses, and not even his wife minds it. Every character find the idea of monogamy utterly ridiculous, and when a random woman Arthur has only met once refuse to become his new mistress, the other knights see it as an affront. And even then, many warlords dislike how much of a "progressive" the king is, which in their mind clearly means "pussy".
A flashback episode of Heroes takes place before the civil rights movement and involves Angela Shaw (future Angela Petrelli) as a teenage girl running away from the military base with three boys her age, one of whom is Charles Devereaux, who is black. At a local diner, Charles asks Angela for a dance, but they stop when the customers (all white) stare at them and the cook tells that they don't tolerate that sort of thing there. Charles promptly uses his ability to have the customers and the employees forget this ever happened.
Merlin not only has class distinction be an obstacle for Arthur and Guinevere, but no show based in modern times would have a protagonist that is so innocent, idealistic and naive (at least in the first two seasons) with such a horrendous body count that doesn't seem to bother him at all. Why? Because this is the Dark Ages and killing people who are trying to kill you is completely okay. Killing in cold blood is still frowned upon, though.
Aurora in Once Upon a Time had a mild moment where she was in disbelief that there was a female warrior (Mulan) traveling and fighting alongside Prince Phillip. Part of it may be contributed to Green-Eyed Monster as she might have felt threatened by this beautiful Action Girl.
The Sopranos, in its desire to authentically depict the Italian-American criminal subculture, does not shy away from the casual racism, sexism, homophobia and Moral Myopia that are commonplace within it, even among the (by comparison) more sympathetic characters.
Chappelle's Show
- One sketch has Paul Mooney as a black film critic who watches Gone with the Wind alongside two white female reviewers. The white women laud the film for being powerful and feminist, while Mooney savages it for the blatant racism and whitewashed depiction of slavery.
- A sketch has Mooney remarking on the casual racism in The Godfather, though in this film it's also Deliberate Values Dissonance.
On Parks and Recreation, it's a Running Gag that all of the murals in Pawnee's City Hall are incredibly racist. They proudly depict various sordid events in the town's history that are shocking by today's standards. Leslie shows them off with some embarrassment:
- "She was one of the first feminist leaders in Pawnee! She was the first to dare wearing pants on a Sunday, she spent 30 years in prison for that."
- "In 1867, the progressive Reverend Turnbill officiated a wedding between a white woman and a Wamapoke Indian chief. The secret ceremony was beautiful and romantic. But then word got out and the reception was a bloodbath. Fortunately, there were two survivors. Unfortunately, they were both horses."
- In one episode, we find out that every year, the entire town uses an obscure, misprinted loophole in the town charter to legally harass a man named Ted. Ted finally becomes fed up and decides to use other obscure clauses in the town charter, namely the extremely racist and sexist ones, to bully Tom and Leslie and teach them a lesson about why the laws of the Pawnee founders shouldn't be held in such reverence.

Magazines

The Twisted Toyfare Theater strip featuring the thawed out Silver Age Spider-Man took this trope to town, highlighting the fact that Silver Age Spidey's values and priorities are incredibly screwed up. As the normal Spider-Man says, "He guns downs bank robbers and punches dictators!" Also, the first thing he says after being unfrozen is "What the-?! There used to be a foreigner at the end of this fist."
A story in the National Lampoon ca. 1972 had a 30-ish guy waking up in his early 1950s childhood. He goes with it, figuring his adult knowledge will make schoolwork a breeze...then he blurts out that President Truman had kicked General Mac Arthur out of Korea, forgetting it hadn't happened yet. His teacher is horrified, but he continues his train of thought, going into a Vietnam-era rant about the futility of trying to police the world. The story's tagline was "If you knew then what you know now, boy, would you be in trouble..."
Never Wipe Tears Without Gloves with its depiction of the treatment of gay men in the 80s versus in 2012.

Newspaper Comics

Non Sequitur
- A customer at Flo's diner was talking about all the wonderful things about The Fifties and how America going back to that time and those values would be better for everyone, and Flo replies that she agrees and will turn the diner retro, "starting with this vintage sign..." She writes something down and shows it to him, but with her back to the "camera," all we see is his horrified reaction. In the next panel, we see what the sign says: "WHITES ONLY." The man concedes, "Well, maybe not better for everyone."
- Dana visits an alternate universe in which every person is given one wish. It's revealed that Clarence Thomas wished for the United States Constitution to be interpreted as the Founding Fathers originally intended, and it is implied that he is now a servant/slave because of it.

Radio

Old Harry's Game plays with this sometimes, especially with historically "good" or "heroic" characters, almost all of whom are in hell for one reason or another. For example, Thomas Jefferson in his first appearance relates a funny antecdote about writing the Declaration of Independence, halfway through the line "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal" his ink ran out, and he sent his slave to get more, seeing no contradiction in this. It's also implied that Jack the Ripper was Queen Victoria's nephew, and she ordered the Prime Minister to let him rampage freely, and shielded him from justice, only concerned with the shame the scandal would bring on the Royal Family, not the deaths of her subjects. It's all completely Played for Laughs, of course.

Tabletop Games

FATAL
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay did not shy from adding real-life medieval sexism (if a somewhat watered-down version) to its sourcebook depicting the Medieval Stasis nation Bretonnia; women are second-class citizens without the ability to own property or manage their own affairs, and if female characters want to be adventurers they'll have to pretend to be men. The opening chapter lampshades this, stating that if you find it offensive you are at full liberty to not include it in your game and that "This is not a feature of Bretonnian society of which the author and Games Workshop approves" and furthermore that "The author and Black Library also does not approve of the arbitrary execution of peasants, fighting local wars over an insult, or worshiping the Ruinous Powers, all activities depicted herein. Just so we're clear."
- The Warhammer setting also, in some novels, is implied to have homosexuality be regarded as an act of worshipping Slaanesh and thusly punishable by burning at the stake.
Warhammer 40000 does this quite deliberately to help convey that it's a Crapsack Galaxy. Slavery, racism, murderous xenophobia, the glorification of ignorance and mindless zeal, religious fundamentalism — and that's just the humans! Appropriately this applies even to the more heroic characters, with Ciaphas Cain (one of the most noble and just characters in the setting, even if he doesn't realise it) viewing "mutants" and anyone who disagrees with Imperial rule with the same scorn any loyal Imperial soldier would.
Victoriana RPG makes the Values Dissonance between the setting and the players the defining characteristic of the player-characters. Reasoning that some players would be uncomfortable playing accurate Victorian values unironically, the game encourages them to create characters whose beliefs are more in line with their own sensibilities, and hence profoundly revolutionary by 19th-Century standards.
In Hack Master, there is a system of Honor points, generally gained for heroic actions and lost for cowardly or heinous ones, which gives in-game benefits to characters who consistently act honorably. However, different character classes and alignments gain and lose honor for different things, so a lawful good shining knight type would gain honor for charity, defeating great foes in honest combat, and standing to fight even against overwhelming odds, while a chaotic neutral thief would gain points for successful robbery and fleeing from the aforementioned overwhelming opponent in order to poison or backstab them at a later date, and a lawful evil complete monster would be rewarded for taking slaves or torturing useful information out of someone.
- An even straighter example is in the module Little Keep on the Borderlands. Non-humans would suffer discrimination while staying at the keep, especially races like half-orcs.
The Exalted 1e sourcebook "Manacle and Coin" includes both an exhaustive listing of races generally considered "slave races" and a sidebar from the authors about how utterly WRONG such attitudes are.

Video games

Oh, where to begin with Bioshock Infinite. For starters, take this poster◊, or this one◊. Such was life in the 1900s.
- Comstock, the city's ruler, is shown in posters with the caption "Hero of the Battle Of Wounded Knee". Consider what he had to do to receive that "honor". (Truth in Television: Twenty soldiers got the Congressional Medal of Honor after the tragedy, which Native American activists have tried to get rescinded.)
- The "prize" for the raffle going on at the fair in the prologue turns out to be the chance to throw the first baseball at an inter-racial couple, who are bound to a pole in front of monkey-like "savage" caricatures in preparation to be stoned to death for miscegenation — all while the couple begs and pleads for mercy, and the announcer mocks the protagonist if he hesitates to throw, asking if he likes his coffee black^note. And that's just the start of the downright cruel casual racism in the game.
Used humorously in Dwarf Fortress: elves are cannibals who eat the corpses of their enemies, but refuse to trade with you (or even go to war!) if you offer products that were made by cutting down a tree.
Suda 51 had this concept in mind when he designed No More Heroes. Case point: the name Travis Touchdown. It sounds like an over-the-top cool name in Japan and an incredibly stupid one in the US.
- Which is, in the true definition of this trope, something that Japanese game designers often do accidentally, and he does deliberately. Some of Suda's other games, especially Killer7, also explore the Values Dissonance between western and Japanese players.
Invoked with glee by Red Dead Redemption. On the train ride at the beginning of the game you're surrounded by a bunch of city-slickers with a variety of outrageously outdated ideas of "the savages" and even whether or not man has the right to fly, let along the ability. The protagonist, having been around the block a few times, doesn't comment on the conversations, but he clearly doesn't put much stock into what any of them have to say.
- Other examples include the newspapers saying that tobacco is good for your health, the general store keeper in Armadillo who is very vocal about his anti-Semitism, and the very best being the scandal involving a governor who let non-whites use white facilities and the like. Ah, the West.
- One other nominee for best from the newspaper is the story about the kidnapping of Bonnie MacFarlane. The writer dismisses the idea it was for "personal" reasons (translation: rape) as she's an old spinster clearly too ancient to marry or have children (translation: be young enough that she's sexually desirable). She's 29.
- Another special mention goes to Professor MacDougal, who thinks all Indians are savage members of a sub-human (read: sub-white) race and treats them as such. This is contrasted with Nastas, a Native American who speaks fluent English, has plenty of smarts and common sense, and treats MacDougal with a mix of weary Never Heard That One Before (most of the time) and polite anger (when the man crosses a line).
While King Arthur The Roleplaying Wargame arguably has elements of an Anachronism Stew, 'ladies' in the game are by all means a thing to trade and use... as it probably would have been more or less back then in medieval times.
GUN, set in roughly the same period as Red Dead Redemption, features a bit of this, with characters making derogatory remarks about Native Americans and Irish immigrants, and male characters treating prostitutes (and indeed women in general) as pieces of meat. The approach actually backfired somewhat, as controversy arose regarding the depiction of Native Americans.
Not shown in the game itself, but in the spin-off short movie Lineage for Assassins Creed II features Lorenzo de Medici having a prisoner brutally tortured to reveal his information about an upcoming political assassination, but he is still a good guy, both in the movie and in the game. In Renaissance Italy such brutal methods, along with backstabbings, poisonings and similar cloak-and-dagger manoeuvring were pretty much the norm among nobles. Of course, in a game where the main character is an assassin, the moral issues become a little gray, in any case.
Very much the case in Mafia II (somewhat less so in the first game), where the characters are about as racist as you can get in a game without causing a controversy. For instance: Vito asks Joe if he drove to the bar (in an African-American community), and Joe replies, "I wouldn't park my car in this neighborhood!"
The Fallout series uses this occasionally to show that pre-Great War society was pretty much the Fifties with higher tech, for better or for worse. In Fallout New Vegas, you can find an employee handbook on a computer at a power plant/secret weapon facility that recommends against telling your wife about the project; after all, women are such natural gossips that she'll tell her friend, and she'll tell her friend, and the next thing you know, Red China's invading!
- Caesar's Legion, which is based on The Theme Park Version of Roman ideals (they're closer to Sparta, actually), is loaded with this, and even manages to top archaic Roman values by being violently sexist, able-ist, viciously intolerant of other cultures, fantastically racist and anti-intellectual.
Mass Effect has all its featured species be culturally and philosophically different to humans in some ways, major and minor. Most of it is only explained in the Codex, but they have frequent influences on in-game dialogue and actions.
- Salarians are first and foremost loyal to their families and clans and their respective ruling Dalatresses, with their government run in much the same way as the ancient human feudal royal families, complete with breeding and marriages being a highly political affair. They also find the idea of honour in battle to be naive at best - if they are going to go to war with you, they won't tell you, they'll just kill you.
- Thane discribes himself as kind of a religious conservative among the drell and seems perfectly convinced that as an assassin he is not a murderer but simply a tool used by his employers. While his spirit is able to make judgements if a killing is just or wrong and could decide what to do, his body does not and it appears to make perfect sense to him. He also prays for redemption after every assassination... redemption for his victim, that is, as they have usually done something wrong to warrant their being assassinated.
- The geth are the most extreme example. An entire character (Guest Star Party Member Legion) has their existence based around explaining that the geth aren't just different from organics but think and act in fundamentally different ways, largely because they communicate with each other and reach "consensus" literally at the speed of light. Idealogical differences are resolved completely peacefully, with the different groups allowed to separate from the others and go do their own thing, and the reason they've isolated themselves from the rest of the galaxy is because they don't understand organics anymore than organics understand them, and they want to learn how to interact with organics before doing so. Said character outright states that treating members of another culture the way you would want to be treated is inherently bigoted.
- The Turian Hierarchy is basically a military dictatorship that could also be seen as strictly enforced communism. Everything is organized in a single system encompassing military, administration, services, and manufacturing and every turian goes through basic military training as part of the educational system and serves for about 15 years. After that they may transfer to the civilian branches of the Hierarcy. Internal conflicts usually take the form of armed uprisings, which mostly end with the military offering any citizen a chance to surender and be interred, after which the rest of the community is completely wiped out. This last part is actually necessary, because in the face of any lesser threat turians are psychologically incapable of surrender.
- Even humans get in on the act. Part of the reason humans have such a bad reputation is because they are highly flexible and adaptable, adopting alien technologies and tactics and working their way into alien organisations at an amazing rate, going from Hidden Elf Village to a serious candidate for Council membership in a mere three decades. When the most powerful forces in the galaxy - asari, turians, and salarians - all have cultures that favour conservatism and have been largely politically and military stagnant for the past millennium, this comes as a huge shock to everyone else, and humans are treated with suspicion, distrust, and sometimes outright fear.
- Krogan view strength as of the utmost importance, but physical strength is nowhere near as important as personal strength, being able to obtain followers and keep them from betraying you (which krogan view as inevitable and aren't surprised nor hurt when someone does betray them). This is why Wrex and Grunt follow Shepard almost without question, as they immediately recognise his/her status as a Magnetic Hero and the biggest badass in the galaxy.
- Asari practice Love You and Everybody and Golden Mean Fallacy on a cultural level, believing that all beings are part of the galactic whole and that every species and culture has a place in that whole. The end result is that most of the best diplomats and negotiators in the galaxy are asari, willing and able to see all sides of an issue. They are also far more willing to take the "long view" compared to other species, due to possessing lifespans in the centuries, and much prefer to exert control of galactic affairs via slow cultural assimilation as opposed to political/military/economic dominance.
- Depending on your Real Life country of origin, treason against the Citadel Council carries the death penalty, which the majority of 21st century nations have either abolished outright or not used for decades.
- A sort of In-Universe example is the slavery and caste system that is a part of batarian culture. They claim it's an inextricable part of their culture and therefore should be protected, while this is one of the few points on which almost all the member states of Citadel Space agree being wrong.
- What little is known of yahg culture also features this in abundance: they have a pack-based mentality, so whenever a group of them forms to work together, they will have dominance battles until one rises to the top (either through strength or trickery). The losers are expected to hold no grudge and serve the leader loyally. The very concept of equality seems completely foreign to them, and when it was explained they found it offensive, which lead to the Council quarantining their planet and prohibiting any further contact with their species.
There's a mostly comedic example in Fate/hollow ataraxia with Lancer. Unlike the other Servants who are similarly temporally displaced from their origins, Lancer only superficially blends in. He's completely unable to understand why Shirou might have issue with him trying to sleep with his classmates, is ready to kill people that Shirou thinks are his friends at any time and seems to feel that anything he can take from their actual owners is his.
A Fantasy example; The Reconstruction portrays shra in a rather positive light overall, and the overall message seems to be that the Fantastic Racism against them is wrong. This doesn't stop most of the characters from being perfectly okay with slavery, and even those who don't treat the shra like dirt are prone to using racial slurs or calling them out on their smell.
- Note that there are different levels of racism among your party members—the bratty and immature Child Mage is so offensive the others call him out on it, while the snarky, "eccentric" Defector from Decadence is practically an Audience Surrogate.
This is practically the point of The King Of Dragon Pass, in which, in order to succeed, the player needs to act according to the very tribal morality of the Orlanthi. This includes, among other things: frequently raiding other clans to steal their cattle, fighting to avenge any attack on your own clan, never trusting a foreigner more than your own people, and always obeying your clan's traditions, no matter how barbaric they might seem.
The setting of Darklands averts it in some places and plays it straight in others. It is a version of 15th century Europe where women are treated with some more equality than how it happened in Real Life, meaning women can actually be adventurers and have had any kind of job (Except those related with the clergy) during her life. But on the other hand, religion, and particularly christianity, is a very focal point of the life there: Your party will suffer a Virtue hit for not bowing down to greedy clerics asking for 'donations', and anyone who is not a Christian worships Satan and Eats Babies. And this last part is not and exaggeration.
L.A. Noire has this in spades, mostly concerning misogyny and racism, but also xenophobia and political suppression. Most notably, Cole's affair with a German lounge singer is considered front page news, and so disgraceful in nearly ruins his career. Meanwhile the brutality and complete corruption of the LAPD is glossed over.
Analogue A Hate Story, with its Scifi Counterpart Culture to Korea's Joseon Dynasty, uses Deliberate Values Dissonance for all its worth, even going so far as to give the player a Tsundere Spaceship Girl mouthpiece for the culture in question.
The web game Fallen London takes place in the early 1890s so this trope pops up, though issues of sexism and sexuality are largely ignored, at least with regards to the player character (it does show up occasionally in the background, such as with a remark about "next women will be voting") who is treated the same whatever their gender, and can engage in sexual relationships with various NPCs regardless of gender. This was a deliberate design decision to avoid upsetting players who's gender or sexuality would have been problematical in the Victorian era. Also, conventional racism is played down in favour of Fantastic Racism against Clay Men and Rubbery Men.
Touhou uses this as the basis for the whole series. The reason that Gensoukyou is full of Blood Knights that fight each other at the drop of a hat isn't because they hate each other, but because the region is filled with very old, very powerful, very bored individuals that view the regular incidents as a great way to break up the tedium and have a little fun. Indeed the majority of people the player fights in all the games have nothing to do with the current incident and are just using it as an excuse. Symposium of Post-Mysticism explores this in extensive detail, ultimately revealing that the state of restrained belligerence is not only an intrinsic part of Gensoukyou, but that it is absolutely vital for its continued existence.

Web Comics

In this page Sillice from Drowtales illustrate the difference in in-world values, which is one of the reason that characters that come across as Bad Ass, Ax Crazy, or extremist to people from our world sometimes are portrayed in a positive light. This along with a world of Gray and Grey Morality leads to a lot of debate among the readers.
Trolls in Homestuck have a lot of Values Dissonance built into their society, but it's best illustrated with Tavros's interaction with Jade where he manipulates Becquerel into rerouting a bullet that would've killed Jade...to kill her grandfather instead. He sees this as a perfectly heroic act though, since in Troll society, adult members of their species don't raise young at all, and will generally mooch off of, or outright kill young trolls that they come across, and he thought that Becquerel was in fact Jade's guardian.
- Terezi is also confused at first as to why Dave was raised by Bro instead of a Guardian Lusus.
- A Running Gag involves the trolls being shocked about the humans having buckets lying around: buckets are part of the trolls' reproduction process so seeing buckets all of a sudden would be akin to being flashed. Hilarity Ensues when John, convinced by Vriska that trolls consider cleaning supplies to be indecent, kicks an imp in the face for carrying a broom. Being culturally sensitive is really hard work.
Comes up fairly frequently in Dominic Deegan; most of the non-human cultures have their own distinct values, such as the werewolves being unconcerned with nudity and valuing True Companions above all else, or the Orcs approaching magic much differently than humans (for one thing, they believe ice is sacred, which allows orcs to use ice to great effect against demonic forces) but some of the clans also having extremely misogynistic values. The fanbase, as with nearly everything else, is sharply divided on this; some people feel it is perfectly justified for non-human cultures to have distinct values, while the other side claims that orc culture is insane and Mookie is wrong for depicting them so.
In Erfworld, units are compelled to serve leaders and causes by a loyalty mechanic. Parson Gotti, meanwhile, is from our world and has these strange notions of "free will", "choice", and "not taking sexual advantage of underlings". Egad.
In TwoKinds, heroic-ish character Eric is a Keidran slave dealer. He's actually downright progressive in his treatment of Keidrans compared to most other human characters (he refuses to put "control spells" on his favorite slave, Kathrin, and is more than willing to deal with free Keidrans as equals), but he still sees his other two slaves, Mike and Evals, as little more than his property and refuses to sell them to Trace (who wants to free them).
- However, he later reveals that this is because he can't... Templar law not only forbids freeing your own Keidran slaves, but actually forbids selling them to someone you know is going to free them. Doing so results in prison for the humans and reenslavement for the Keidran. Eric eventually agrees to sell his slaves to Trace anyway.
Rarely used in Arthur, King of Time and Space, where the artist takes the view that, since the Arthurian legends are ahistorical anyway, there's no reason the characters shouldn't have modern sensibilities, even in the baseline arc. It crops up sometimes though, such as the idea that betrothing a young girl to an older man isn't creepy unless it's Agravaine.

Web Originals

Survival of the Fittest spin-off The Program is pretty much based entirely on this trope. It's set in a militaristic, extreme nationalist version of America Twenty Minutes In The Future. So, there's a fair amount of this. Most notably, as a result of their nationalist upbringings, many characters are to some extent xenophobic and treat "foreign" looking people not too kindly, which is most prominently seen with Japanese-American Marilyn Williams and Angry Black Man Bryant Carver.
Land Games: The player's society is extremely imperialistic, regularly invading and conquering foreign worlds. Jayle is pretty much the only one who has a problem with this.
This is done in Three Worlds Collide where future social mores aren't at all like present ones, much like present ones would be almost incomprehensible those of several hundred years in the past. A particular example is future humans' views on (legalized) rape, which are so divorced from modern mores that the latter are incomprehensible to the protagonists even after being explained.

Western Animation

Occurs several times in The Venture Brothers in flashbacks and appearances of the old Team Venture: a giant in the team is called Humongoloid; Col. Gentleman refers to the Japanese Kano's "racial handicap"; and of course:
Announcer: It's The Rusty Venture Show! Brought to you by Smoking!
In The Simpsons episode Three Men and a Comic Book Bart sees an old Radioactive Man cartoon wherein the eponymous superhero is smoking.
Radioactive Man: Ah, these Laramie cigarettes give me the steady nerves I need to combat evil.
Fallout Boy: Gee willickers, Radioactive Man, wish I was old enough to smoke Laramies.
Radioactive Man: Sorry, Fallout Boy, not until you're sixteen *winks at camera*
Used in the Justice League episode Legends. It was created as an homage to the Golden Age of Comics, and featured plot-lines and events taken whole-cloth from the earlier era. However, this does not always translate too well to the current age, and Hawkgirl is rather resistant when Black Siren asks for her help making cookies and letting "the men" talk. Later, John Stewart, the (black) Green Lantern, is not entirely sure how to react when he is told that he is "a credit to [his] people." Both statements were perfectly normal (Even progressive) back in their proper age, when having black or female heroes at all was amazing, but cause discomfort when brought to modern people. The original plot for the episode planned to use actual DC Comics comics from the Golden Age, but Executive Meddling forced the creators to use the Justice Guild of America instead of the Justice Society of America.
- There was also the time that the group had to travel back to WWII to stop Vandal Savage from giving the Nazis a technological edge, although this was half-subverted: several characters are blatantly shocked that Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl are, well, women. Not much is OUTRIGHT said about John Stewart's presence as an African American showing up in the middle of a White battalion, but that was mostly because they were in the middle of being nailed by an artillery barrage, and he was handy with a submachine gun.
Time Pervs is about Bill Clinton, Peewee Herman and Larry Flint using his time-traveling wheelchair to perv out hot women in history decide to see Helen of Troy in person, expecting an Hourglass Hottie only to find she's practically Mrs. Turnblad yet a guard lovingly talks of the same features that creep them out and are aghast that they're actually turned off. Truth in Television considering Ancient Greek vs. Modern American standards of beauty.