This can, on rare occasions, be inverted in the anime fandom, with posters saying "You aren't Japanese, so stop using the Japanese names." While certainly some are just elitist, some just use the original name or spelling because they like it better or if it's just what they're used to. There's also the problem some newer members of the fandom may have with correct pronunciation, potentially making it difficult to figure out what they're talking about.
It can also be inverted in real life, when hardcore fans or self-professed Internet scholars attempt to use the "original" Japanese name for anime/game characters around people who have only watched/played the Western version of said show/game, and are completely bashed for being total dorks. Another example suggests that you should never use the Western names for Pac-Man ghosts when taking part in online Pac-Man fan conversations — a corollary to that should be that you're better off not using anything OTHER than the Western names (more specifically, the nicknames Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde) when talking about Pac-Man to 90% of the people you will actually meet in real life.
On the OTHER hand, using English terms for certain anime/manga series rather than the original Japanese terms is liable to get you lynched by the purists. Specific examples are listed below.
Many fan-translations (and by extension their followers) are militant in their use of Japanese equivalents of a word whenever possible, and occasionally reverse-translate portions of a manga (e.g. changing Lordgenome into Genome-sama for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, when it was originally the former, and changing "perverted" to ecchi in other manga when it damages a normal readers ability to understand the text).
This led to the "Just According to Keikaku" memenote "keikaku" means plan, due to a particularly prevalent but sub-par fan-sub of Death Note, where the subber would leave Japanese words randomly in people's sentences, with a separate note on what the word meant. This obviously made reading it for the short time it was on screen a bit of a chore.
Yu-Gi-Oh! communities, especially those with a heavy population of OCG players, get rather snippy whenever someone doesn't use the "proper" name for a character or card. Woe betide anyone who calls "Saint Dragon — The God of Osiris" by the American name, "Slifer the Sky Dragon"... okay, so "Slifer" is a pretty silly name for a God Card, and it has a really stupid origin, but lighten up, people...
It lives on when people watch this guy's subtitling of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. The rule of thumb: when watching a Japanese version of the show, use the Japanese names and terminology. Countless people have been marked as spam just because they refuse to use "Aki Izayoi" or "D-Wheel" and instead use "Akiza Izinski" and "Duel Runner". Some in the fandom find this particularly annoying because like its predecessors before it, almost every term has been changed, seemingly for no apparent reason. There are certain YGO fans who will rip you a new one if you call a character by their dub name.
Though she was initially called "Dark Chii" by fans due to No Name Given for a large part of the manga, call Freya that to any Chobits fan's face and feel the wrath of the heavens descend upon you. Whether the name should be written as Chi or Chii is also an issue with some.
A similar reaction happens among Death the Kid fangirls from the Soul Eater fandom. It's a tossup, but there is still an ongoing debate about the spelling. It's either "Kid" or "Kidd", but still...
Happens in the Dragon Ball fandom. People who use certain names over other tend to get looked at as filthy dub fans. It's not Master Roshi, it's Kame-sennin! Hercule? You moron, it's Mr. Satan! And so on, and so forth.
There are also the so-called purists who insist of saying "Saiyajin" instead of "Saiyan", since the latter is an "Americanized" term. ("Saiyajin", in Japanese, means "someone from Saiya"; "Saiyan", in English, means... "someone from Saiya".) However, the Anglicization of "Saiyajin" to "Saiyan" was first used by Bandai for their Super Battle Collection action figures, which predated any of the American adaptations.
The English Dub references this at one point by having Buu mispronounce "Saiyan" as "Saiyajin."
People who will call the hero "Son Goku" as opposed to just Goku, and Kuririn instead of Krillin.
Treating GT as canon is another good way to get people to flame you.
Treating the movies or filler as canon is another mistake. Some circles go so far as to discourage discussion of the anime at all, as the only true canon is the manga.
And on another bizarre note, in the circles that do support the movies, don't you dare claim that anyone is even a little bit stronger than Broly.
Referring to Anthy Himemiya (of Revolutionary Girl Utena) as "Anshii" has been known to instill homicidal rages in fans of the show, due to "Anshii" being nothing more than a Japanese pronunciation of the actual Greek name (seeing as Japanese does not have a "th" sound so has to approximate it with a "shii").
Referring to the original characters using the dubbed names. Many fans will ignore you or worse (Some will wish/inflict physical harm upon you). However, this has been mediated these days, with fifteen years of rage slowly giving way to admitted nostalgia.
Say that Uranus and Neptune are cousins. You will get one of two reactions: people wanting to strangle you or calling you homophobic, or laughing at you for not picking up on the subtext or, for that matter, being aware of the homophobic censorship in the North American dub (which has reached almost memetic status in the Sailor Moon fandom by this point). Similarly, insisting that Zoisite is a woman and that Zoisite and Kunzite/Malachite are a heterosexual couple.
Do NOT call Roronoa Zoro "Zolo". Ever. Unless you want everyone at the forum you visit (with the obvious exception of 4KidsTV's) to hate you. Also, never ever call Luffy simply "Monkey". Other name changes provoke similar reactions.
What if you know his name is l'Olonnois Zorro? (it would have two Rs but for reasons; Word Of God admits he's named after thatZorro)
There are plenty of One Piece fans who go absolutely berserk if you use the English translations of the Devil Fruit or attack names, insisting the terms are sacrosanct and must never be changed. And then there's nakama. Yeah...
Calling the series "Deathnote", rather than Death Note, usually doesn't go over well.
Many fans of the show tend to call Light "Raito". This is the most understandable of the romaji transliterations, as early translations used Raito, but it gets really crazy when fans talk about "Ryuuku" and "Nia" and "Eru". There has even been "Desu Noto" floating around... fans are calling characters with English names the romaji spelling of their names. These "fans" are typically called out for their militant purism, especially since the "keikaku" fiasco (mentioned above).
CLAMP and Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE fans often get pissed off when someone calls the series Tsubasa Chronicle. See, the anime is called Tsubasa Chronicle and it was beyond awful. It was so bad CLAMP themselves disowned it; in the fandom's mind, calling it Tsubasa Chronicle most likely means you have only seen the anime.
An aversion is just how to the hell you're supposed to spell Fay's name. It's pronounced Fai (rhymes with "eye") but officially written in as Fay in English, but the English translation had already used Fai for volumes when they realized the mistake and basically responded "Whatever", and the fandom reaction was to spell it however they wanted. And don't even get us started on his last name.
InuYasha: The name of Inuyasha's sword is the Tessaiga, not Tetsusaiga. It's spelled with a small "tsu" character, which is not read as "tsu", but doubles the following consonant.
There's also the occasional spat over the pronunciation of the cat-demon's name: the romaji says "Kirara"; the English dub says "Kilala" (which frankly is much easier to say).
Whether you're talking about Naruto, Cardcaptor Sakura, Street Fighter, Pokémon, or any anime, manga, video game, or anything in general — the name Sakura is pronounced SAH-ku-rah, not suh-KOO-ruh, and some fans will be unforgiving if this name is said incorrectly.
Don't call Ryuzaki from Daimos Richard on any anime forum or you are in trouble.
So calling him "Kelly Hunter" would be right out, then?
Unless you're from the Philippines, in which case most who grew up watching Daimos (or Voltes V) would correct you politely whenever you use their Japanese names.
According to some older, more purist fans, a certain series is spelled "Chrno" Crusade and not "Chrono" Crusade. However, Word Of God has admitted that "Chrno" was a mistake on Daisuke Moriyama's part, and by the time he noticed it was too late to change it. Recent reprintings of the manga in Japan call it "Chrono Crusade".
"Chrno" can cause some confusion, too, if you misread the ch as the one from "child" not the one from "chaos". Coincidentally, "czrno" is the Slavic word for "black"... which is also what "Kurono" means in Japanese.
Spelling the (obviously western) names of the Elric brothers as Edo and Aru after the Japanese mispronunciation due to a lack of -d and -l sounds in the Japanese language will automatically brand you as a noob among Fullmetal Alchemist fans.
Some people used to insist that there was a character named Edvard Elric in the Fullmetal Alchemist series, who lived in "Amestria" or even "Shamballa". As you can guess, the former shows up infrequently online where text is far more common than speech, but the rest were fairly common amongst almost-but-certainly-not fans at one time.
Is it Gendo, Gendou or Gendoh Ikari? Ryoji or Ryohji Kaji? Asuka Soryu or Sohryu? The list goes on. This debate is mostly just a microcosm of a debate that can make language forums run ankle-deep in blood: Which Romanization scheme to use for Japanese? It's even uglier for Korean (and there, there's also an asinine "don't romanize at all" thing, because apparently only hangeul can even approximate Korean's sacred phonemes).
Given how much chaos can be caused by conflicting romanization schemes, the "Don't romanize at all" thing may simply be a result of getting fed up with having to figure out from examples which romanization scheme is being used this time, which means practically that if you don't have one very dominant, you have to learn all the schemes for the language. Meanwhile, just using the original writing system means the only romanization scheme anybody needs to know is the romanization scheme they use – and/or the one you have to use to type in the language.
Pronunciation of the title also sets off arguments, especially when the original Greek is brought into the mess.
Hardcore Rurouni Kenshin fans really tend to hate anybody who calls it "Samurai X". Funnily enough, the author likes that term and referenced it on his next work, Busou Renkin.
And then there's the hardcore fans that saw it in Latin Spanish. It's called Samurai X.
The two girls in Please Twins!! are not the twins, and assuming they are may be hazardous to your health. It's actually about two girls who each believe themselves to be the sister of the male lead, and wind up in a Three's Company sort of sitch until they figure out which is which. The twin is Karen. Or Miina. Depends on whether you're talking about the show/manga or the light novels, respectively.
Pronouncing the word "Eureka" in Eureka Seven as anything but ee-oou-reck-ah will cause certain fans to cringe. Even when you're talking about Eureka, an entirely different series.
Doubly Face Palm-inducing when you learn that that awkward pronunciation was forced on the localizers by the Japanese (they'd wanted to use the standard "yoo-REE-kuh"), and also that the actual proper pronunciation of the word, taken from the original Greek, is supposed to be something along the lines of "Ivrika".
For a Ranma ˝ fan, the use of 'Nermia' is akin to a boot to the head.
Chances are, if you mention Robotech, you're going to have to listen to why Robotech sucks, why Harmony Gold sucks, why it ruined Macross forever, and a number of other things that usually don't relate to the other two series Robotech used. Even if it's a Robotech video on Youtube...
Nearly every single Macross video has at least one Robotech basher who just randomly starts the bashing without any provocation or anyone mentioning Robotech before the basher does.
And then you get the oddballs who agree that Robotech has the superior backstory (a la the novels), while Macross has the superior story-proper.
You also have people who support Macross II over Macross Seven being the continuation of the original series - Macross II coming first and being closer in tone to the original Macross with the eerily-human Marduk as the villains, while Seven veers dangerously close to Super Robot, with the Protodevlin being generic "evil alien monsters" helps tremendously; however, 7 was much more popular in Japan and Macross Plus, maybe the most beloved installment outside of the original series, uses 7's mythos as the background for the story.
Also whether Super Dimension Fortress Macross or Do You Remember Love is the "real" Macross. Visually, DYRL is considered canon, while the show's story canon, as referenced in Macross Frontier using the DYRL character designs in story-only situations in flashbacks. Still doesn't stop the fandom from raging.
To that end, whether there are only Zentraedi, male or female, or whether then males only are Zentraedi and the females are Maltrandi, in all other installments in the series.
"Hardcore" fans of the Kirbyanime will be rather annoyed if you refer to the Holy Nightmare Corporation as N.M.E. or eNeMiE or any other way you want to spell it. Calling NIGHTMARE himself that is right out, and justified, as people really should know the name of the FINAL BOSS OF KIRBY'S ADVENTURE/KIRBY: NIGHTMARE IN DREAMLAND is not NME. You can probably get away with using the 4KiDS character names though.
On at least one forum, posters can be targeted by cries of "NEGIMA BANNED!!" for calling Negi's mother Akira or referring to his cousin Nekane as his biological sister. Generally, though, Negima fans seem fairly understanding, because there'sa lotto keeptrack of...
Tales from Earthsea runs into this trope. Most purist fans insist on referring to the film by its Japanese name, Gedo Senki. In fact, most Studio Ghibli films get this treatment from the purist minority. The most notable example of fans' refusal to use an English name is Princess Mononoke (referred to almost universally as Mononoke-hime), with Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) third most likely to suffer from this).
Castle in the Sky is a strange case. The original Japanese title, Tenkuu no Shiro Rapyuta, was changed for its Western release because the official Romanization of the titular castle, "Laputa" (pronounced LA-pyu-ta), looks an awful lot like "la puta" (Mexican slang for "whore"). Nevertheless, purists fans invariably call the film "Laputa" and get angry when you don't know what they're talking about.
Fairy Tail features a currently raging debate over several characters names (Mistgun vs Mystogan, Luxus vs Laxus, Gazille vs Gajeel, Gerard vs Jellal, and Erza vs Ezra vs Elsa vs Elza.), and while a lot of fans will make the translation in their heads and leave it alone, there are some who will rip your spine out if you use the wrong one.
Don't ever call Bleach's Sexta Espada "Grimmjaw". You. Will. Be. ANNIHILATED. People also take issue with most of the Espada's names (partially because they released an official Romanization for their names long after they were introduced). Nnoitra Jiruga is officially Romanized as Nnoitora Gilga, and Szayel Aporro is officially one word, but most people still call them by their original names. Before that was Harribel, incorrectly called Halibel, and Baraggan, which is such a subtle change from Barragan that people probably didn't notice the difference.
After you've recovered from the beatings, try asking why Ichigo's sword has a swastika on it in the company of some Bleach fans. Go ahead and do it; I'll just go over here and call 911 for you.
Debate on the correct Romanization of Hellsing character Seras Victoria's name can get nasty. Some alternate spellings are Celes, Celas, and Ceres. That's not even to mention confusion over whether Victoria is her surname (in the British order) or her given name (in the Japanese order).
In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, due to the nature of Nanoha's intelligent device'susage and partly due to some subtitling errors and pronunciation difficulties, some fans assert that the said device's name is RAGING Heart rather than RAISING Heart. It doesn't help that the English dub used both terms.
Many people who got into Wandering Son by the anime think Chiba's full name is "Chiba Saorin". "Saorin" is actually a nickname used by Sasa, "-rin" is often added to a female friends name in Japan. Fans will make you notice if you call her that.
Listing Strawberry Panic! as your favorite yuri will sort of brand you as a noob to the genre, since, while popular, it's well-known to anyone who has watched/read more than a few yuri series that it's an Affectionate Parody of the genre that takes a lot of its plots and characters from other series.
Since the official releases are generally considered to have pretty good translations, fans who came into the series through scanslations are typically looked down upon for using incorrect character names.
Calling Pokémon Special "the Pokemon manga" is guaranteed to get you berated in many circles.
Black Rock Shooter: Mistaking the title character for a recolored Hatsune Miku. This one is a mess, because BRS was created independently of Miku, but their coincidental similar appearances led to the creation of a BRS-themed Miku song by a famous producer, which was the Colbert Bump that got the franchise going. Besides that song, they are not related; but people still get them confused for obvious reasons, and the fans of both franchises get pretty annoyed when it happens.
The Lucky Star girls are not preteens; they're in high school. Calling them ten or eleven years old will not sit well with some fans.
Comic Books
There's sometimes confusion about whether it's Watchmen or "The Watchmen". This provoked a lot of fan-rage when the movie came out, especially because "watchmen" was an Arc Word in the comic, and became the name of a superhero team in the movie..
Phoebe: "Why isn't it 'Spiderman'? You know, like Goldman, Silverman?" Chandler: "Because it's not his last name." Phoebe: "It isn't?" Chandler: "No, it's not like he's Phil Spiderman. He's a SPIDER <beat> MAN. You know, like 'Goldman' is a last name, but there's no 'Gold-man'."
This isn't helped by the fact that "Spiderman" is the actual name of the official newspaper comic.
This sometimes happens regarding Lex Luthor's name in Superman media, particularly Justice League Unlimited. A talk show host interviewing Luthor, who happens to be running for President at the time, pronounces it Luther, while in another episode Superman gets it right by forcing the 'thor' part.
Making character calls about the modern versions of DC superheroes by using evidence from before Crisis on Infinite Earths (unless you're talking about a large number of specific characters who died during/weren't rewritten by the event) is a great way to get everyone on the forum to laugh their asses off. Also, mixing up which of said rewritten characters had their pasts completely wiped, which ones were rebooted in a modern setting, and which ones had their continuity subjected to Broad Strokes, and how broad those strokes are for each character and each past event, will earn you just as much ridicule. Yes, keeping up with comic continuity is widely known to be a bitch, but this is widely considered basic knowledge that comes right after figuring out which characters belong to Marvel and which to DC.
In general for the DC comics, mixing up characters. Many different people have gone by the same superhero, though in general movies and cartoons stick to one character (for example Dick Grayson is almost always Robin).
Batman has Ra's Al Ghul. His name was originally meant to be pronounced 'Raesh', this from Denny O'Neil who did his research (his daughter asked her college professor). In Batman Begins it's pronounced 'Rahs' or 'Roz'. Pronouncing it in any way other than 'Raesh' will attract much ire from the fans. Nolan was (falsely) accused of racism for allegedly making everyone deliberately mispronounce the name because he didn't want the original arabic pronounciation in his movie.
This is lampshaded in Batman Beyond, where Terry pronounces Ra's as 'Rahs' only to be corrected by Talia.
In any incarnation of the X-Men, misspelling 'Rogue' as 'Rouge'
Computing
Calling a Mac a "MAC" will earn you the ire of Apple fans.note A "Mac" is a brand of computer. A McIntosh is a variety of apple, not a variety of Apple (though it is a variety of expensive audio gear). A MAC is part of a network interface (if you're a geek) or a store where high school girls buy overpriced makeup (if you're not). Same with calling the iPod "IPOD," "I-POD," or "Ipod."
In an episode of House, "Coma Guy" (a man who had been in, well, a coma for a long time) once picked up Wilson's and said "What's this? It says Ip-Odd."
Don't call the company "Mac" or say "Mac" when you meant to say "Apple" (Ex: Calling an Apple Store "The Mac Store"). The Mac is a product of a company called Apple.
Among programmers, making a Perl/PERL/PEARL/Pearl/perl mistake can lead to someone losing all credibility. In general, the capitalization thing for computer language names can get sticky. Especially for older languages, which had a tendency to start life as all caps abbreviations and then become mixed case in later standardization efforts. LISP ("LISt Processing") and FORTRAN ("FORmula TRANslating System") are now just Lisp and Fortran.
Claiming to be proficient in the 'C/C++ language' is a good way to persuade other developers that you have no more than a passing familiarity with at least one of the two. While the languages are legitimately similar, they exhibit very different styles, tend not to get used in the same areas, and have one heck of a Fandom Rivalry.
The editor of one early (late 1970s) British computer magazine persistently claimed that the difference between compilers and interpreters was "academic", even in the face of corrections from knowledgeable readers, until one month he learned the hard way just how wrong he was, by wasting three pages of the mag on a worthless hex-dump of the workspace of a BASIC interpreter. The mag didn't last very much longer after that issue.
Any real-life incident where a tech support person gets a call that starts out with "We bought the internet from you", "Is this the internet?", "I think I need to reboot the internet", "I deleted the internet" will lead to vicious mocking.
Ditto referring to "the hard drive" when you meant the whole computer (as in "Should I take my hard drive for repairs?")
Similarly if asked which browser they're using someone replies with the name of the ISP.
If you wish to communicate with people in the Free Software Foundation, or Debian users, make sure to call the use of the Linux kernel with the GNU userland tools: GNU/Linux. Most people don't care, but there are a few that are very serious about it.
Be very careful about who you talk to. Most other distros' users will get a bit irritated with you if you call the overall operating system GNU/Linux. Some Debian users do too. For further clarification this goes back to a very old argument between Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman over who should get credit for free operating systems.
For some people this is enough of an annoyance that there have been serious proposals to actually excise the GNU userland tools from some mainstream distros, notably Gentoo. In practice doing this would be a lot of work just to introduce a bunch of compatibility problems, but at least people would shut up about it.
Call Microcomputers such as the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and the Amiga "PCs" in front of Microcomputer fans.
It's the Xbox. It's just one word, normally capitalized. Not XBox, XBOX, X-box, X-Box, or xBox. The name comes from Direct X; When Microsoft was creating it, it was codenamed the Direct X Box, or DirectXbox, and when they were trying to come up with a cool name for it, someone realized "Why don't we just use it as it is?".
Google's smartphone OS is called Android, not Droid. (Droid is a hardware branding for Android-based devices from Verizon Wireless)
The basis of the GUI on Unix and similar operating systems (with the exception of Mac OS X, which can use it but primarily uses Quartz) is the X Window System, X, or X11 (after what has been the current major version for some time; the Mac implementation is known as X11.app, for example), not X Windows.
The argument between binary-based definitions of "kilobyte", "megabyte" and "gigabyte" (etc.) and those arguing for decimal-based versions. Computers use binary (base-2), so powers of 2 (e.g. 1024 = 2^10) are a more natural fit than powers of 10 (e.g. 1000 = 10^3). As a result, the definition of a 1024 (not 1000) byte "kilo"-byte and a 1024*1024 (not 1000*1000) byte "mega"-byte became commonly-accepted (if not entirely universal). However, some argue that such use of the prefixes is nonstandard, and in 1996 the SI standardised on 1000-based definitions, using the alternate "kibibyte", "mebibyte", "gibibyte", etc. for the 1024-based versions. Others have argued that this went against existing convention, and the argument goes on...
Fashion
The goth, punk, and emo subcultures tend to be very particular about what is and isn't goth, punk, or emo. All of them look disdainfully on middle-school goth kids that they refer to as "vampires". Bonus points for referring to modern "emo" music and fashion among emo fans from The Eighties.
Do not suggest that Lolita fashion has any sexual connotations.
An "avatar" is a transgenic half-breed telepathically controlled by a human. Go to any collective forum for this movie and call any one person in the film Avatar, or call the Na'vi "Avatars", or ask what this has to do with Avatar The Last Airbender, and chances are you'll get a front row seat to a Flame War. The same goes for referring to the Na'vi (meaning The People) as 'Na'vis' (technically, 'the Na'vi' is Department of Redundancy Department if you go by a literal translation, but ignored for practicality since it also refers to them in a species context). Other mangling of names cause annoyance, such as 'Navi', 'Ney'tiri'/'Neyti'ri' or other omissions or addition of apostrophes. Calling ikran/toruk 'dragons' will cause a lot of annoyance, especially since if you don't want to use the actual name, there are even convenient English versions, and can be considered particularly egregious due to the obvious fact that they are not.
Presumably they also wouldn't like it if you pointed out that an avatar is a virtual representation (in this context, not the Hindu one). A corporeal representation... is called a waldo, after an early example in a Robert A. Heinlein story. That wouldn't look nearly as cool on the poster over the Na'vi eyes, though.
Examples other than words include the depressingly common complete misunderstanding of what tsaheylu is (likely perpetuated by a certain flash animation). Other misconceptions include some people who claim that either the floating mountains can't exist, claim that Pandora's magnetic field would kill a human, or that there is no oxygen on Pandora.
Godzilla fans are funny. Though they aren't likely to flame you for the names you use, the use of Japanese names is sort of a status symbol. So a "real" fan calls Godzilla "Gojira" or "Goji" for short. This gets silly when the name in question was actually in English, but the fans insist on spelling it the way it's pronounced in Japan (Spacegodzilla vs. Supeisugojira, or the Super X vs. the Supaa X [or Supaa Ekusu).
Even among the more tolerant fans who allow American pronunciations, that mutant iguana from '98 is Zilla, now that the Japanese movies have used him. Before that, he was G.I.N.O.
Smith, the main villain in the second and third Matrix films, is an Agent only in the first movie, and his entire existence in the second and third revolves entirely around the fact that he is not an Agent anymore. Some in the Matrix community will unplug you if you call him an Agent in the context of the latter two films.
To the fanbase of the Underworld series of movies, particularly every single person who knows anything about mythology, It is Lycanthrope. The term "Lycan" is a clear shortening of the scientific name for the disease/curse (or rather the real-world symptoms that mimic it), designed to be a slang insult to the species (at least until the prequel, at which point they tossed out their own sense).
Just go on any board where anyone is talking about Coraline and refer to it as a Tim Burton movie... But arguably not their fault, considering that all of the advertising proclaimed "From the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas", (a movie that is titled Tim Burton'sThe Nightmare Before Christmas). The promotion of the movie was trying to make people think it was a Tim Burton film, knowing that a lot fewer people have heard of Henry Selick.
Granted, fans of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen tend to be a bit more tolerant than most, because they know that it's not exactly faithful to the source material. However, there are some no-nos even here, chiefly in character name spelling. It's Dorian Gray, not Darien Grey or any other permutation. It's Jekyll, not Jekall or Jekil or (heaven forbid) Jekkie.
Referring to Toccata And Fugue In D Minor as "Dracula's Theme" around either music fans or horror franchise fans will make you seem like a moron. It hasn't even been used in a Dracula movie.
Using the suffix -ception to imply a thing inside a thing inside a thing is certain to get you a scolding if you go into the bad parts of the Inception fandom. Or pretty much anywhere- that meme's beentired for a while now.
In the film, Inception is used for the idea of planting a thought in someones head, not the dream inside a dream inside a dream.
History
Go ahead, use BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) when talking about dates, rather than BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) around history buffs. You totally won't have your head bitten off.
Actually, this one is more nuanced than that, and can get touchy: there are historians and history buffs who actually prefer the old system. And most non-historical contexts still use it.
Simplifying basically any event in history for whatever means will usually get you flamed by history enthusiasts, especially those in the know. Expect the flames to be white-hot if you have an agenda behind giving half-informed history info as "fact."
Confusing any of the major Central-and-South American empires with one another will probably result in a history aficionado doing their best impression of the infamous "tearing the still-beating heart from the chest" blood ritual on you.
Literature
In one series of Harry Turtledove books (known, alternatively, as TL-191 or the Southern Victory series), a Confederacy that survives into the 20th century is taken over by the dictator Jake Featherston, who is a Hitler analog. For some reason, people insist on misspelling it as "Featherstone". This really pisses off fans, but what took it beyond the pale was when the misspelling appeared on the freakin' dustjacket of one of the books.
Referring to any of the books of the Inheritance Cycle as a "brick" can actually get you in trouble with the staff in some quarters. But in other places, even on fansites, the staff call them "bricks" too, but used as a term of affection rather than, well, ridicule and scorn.
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Victor Frankenstein constructs and brings to life his Creature or, if you prefer, Monster. The Creature itself is never named. Thanks to scads of largely terrible films, comics and stage plays, people have been using the term "Frankenstein" to refer to his Creature (and being criticized for it) since the 19th century. Yup, Older Than Radio.
Some fans of that lady who wrote the Pern books are rather grumpy about "McCaffery", probably because her last name is "McCaffrey".
Many of the fans of the Warrior Cats series will scream (or at least groan) should you make the mistake of not capitalizing the word "Clan". There are four Clans(five if you count SkyClan). The main characters are in ThunderClan. Their ancestors are StarClan. And don't you dare suggest otherwise. Perhaps justified in that this is pounded into your brain for over twenty books, and not bothering with grammar rules automatically gets you labeled as an idiot on the major forum.
In the world of Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark, if your snark* no, not that kind happens to be a boojum, "you will softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again." Not "softly and silently". This did cause arguments way back then, with one fan, Snarkophilius Snobbs, becoming infamous for persisting with this misquote.
Harry Potter fandom is large and diverse enough that almost anything is acceptable in some circles, but in general the following rules hold:
Technology at Hogwarts isn't permissible in any dose. Things that work electronically, as below, do not work. Things that work mechanically, such as Harry's watch, do work.
Hermione's name is Hermione. Unless you're Grawp or Viktor. There are absolutely no other exceptions. "Hermy" is an elf from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
The eponymous entity in the Cthulhu Mythos has a name that will never have an agreed pronunciation (especially since Lovecraft himself used no fewer than three different pronunciations depending on when you asked him), and each pronunciation has a following that will ridicule and shun those who pronounce it differently.
Even worse are the discussions in fandom what the Elder Sign looks like - a star of a tree. Problem is that in different stories it is described as either. Mocked in the musical A Shoggoth On The Roof where in the opening a fight breaks out over this question. 'Star!' - 'Tree!' - 'Star!' - 'Tree!'...
In the presence of hardcore Carrollians, never refer to the Hatter as the Mad Hatter, or to the Jabberwock as the Jabberwocky.
P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves is a valet, not a butler. Not that you can exactly be blamed for making the mistake, since it even occurs on book jackets.
While not likely to get you flamed, referring to George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series as Game of Thrones (the title of the HBO show based on the series which takes its name from the first book) is a good indicator of what kind of fan you are.
Also, don't refer to Asha as Yara unless you want to be laughed at.
In general: Whenever a popular book gets a movie based off it. Saying the movie is better than the book will often anger fans of the original book.
Referring to everyone's favorite Time Lord as "Doctor Who", or his show as Dr. Who, is not going to ingratiate you with the fanbase. The origin of all the confusion, as noted on the main Doctor Who page, is that the name for the character during the show's development was originally "Dr. Who", a name that was retained in the credits and internal documentation for over 20 years, despite the fact that the character was never called that on-screen except in Mythology Gagsnote For example, one character introduces him as "The Doctor", then the other says, "Doctor who?", and in one episode the Doctor uses the alias "Doktor von Wer" and in another calls himself "The Great Wizard Quiquaequod" — German and Latin for "who" respectively and once by accident — a scriptwriter had had a computer ask in dialogue "Where is Doctor Who?" and it was not corrected (Rather like the Trope Namer, in that sense). He was Dr. Who in the two movies released in The Sixties, but those were clearly an Alternate Continuity.
On that note, the Doctor's REAL NAME is not "The Doctor"; "The Doctor" is a "title" or a fake name that he uses for himself, with the presumed reason by fans being that his real name is too complicated for any other species but Time Lords to pronounce. Fans of the show will be very quick to point this out to you if you ask a question such as "why did his parents name him after a medical profession?".
Using "Timelord" instead of "Time Lord" or any spelling other than TARDIS is a bad idea.
It's also probably a good idea to avoid referring to the actor that played the Fifth Doctor as "Peter Davidson," unless you enjoy the thought of being lectured on how Peter Davison is an actor, while Peter Davidson is the guy who used to draw Desperate Dan in The Dandy.
Doctor Who Magazine's Fifth Doctor announcement managed to mess this up , reading "PETER DAVIDSON IS THE DOCTOR" (they lampshaded this later when Davison got a cover for "Time Crash").
Jim intentionally did this to irritate Dwight on The Office. After an ethics meeting where they were told to avoid "Time Theft" in the workplace, Jim had a deliberately loud conversation with Andy about the Battlestar Galactica TV show. During that conversation, he talked about how the show has Klingons and Wookiees, is a shot-for-shot remake of the original, and is about a character named DumbledoreCalrissian who has to return a ring to Mordor. Meanwhile, Dwight is seething at his desk, trying his hardest to refrain from getting involved in this non-work-related conversation.
For a long time, you could easily get a Star Trek fan angry at you by referring to him or her as a "Trekkie". Today, the term has more-or-less been reclaimed by the fandom, in much the same way that "queer" was reclaimed by the gay community.
On The Price Is Right, "Showcase Showdown" is when they spin the big wheel; "Showcase" is when they bid on the prize packages. Many people have been chewed out for confusing the two.
A lot of Super Sentai purists get pissy if you use Power Rangers-specific terminology in the context of Sentai (e.g. "Zords" instead of "mecha") or if you refer to a Super Sentai character by the name of their Power Rangers counterpart (e.g. Rita Repulsa instead of Bandora the Witch). Some fans even go as far as to insist on using the term senshi (the Japanese word for warrior) instead of "ranger" when talking about the members of a Sentai (since the term "ranger" wasn't used for any of the teams prior to Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, with the exceptions of Himitsu Sentai Goranger and Kousoku Sentai Turboranger). Although, the introduction of the "Ranger Keys" in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has made the term "Ranger" a bit more acceptable as a substitute for senshi among purists. The following seriesTokumei Sentai Go Busters has introduced Megazord into the Sentai lexicon as well as the phrase "It's Morphin Time".
Speaking of Power Rangers, Jason David Frank was once booed for saying that he would have preferred it if Steve Cardenas had returned for Forever Red instead of Austin St. John.
Calling any version of Stargate "StarGate" or "Star Gate" will cause every fan of the series in the world to tell you just how wrong you are, and how it's nothing like Star Trek or Star Wars.
Confusing the British original and American remake versions of Skins is likely to get this reaction from fans of the former - who make up the majority of the fandom, and most of whom see the American version as somewhere between forgettable and an unwatchable atrocity.
In the early days of the Glee fandom, spelling Quinn's name as "Quin", "Gwen", or "Gwynn" was a good way to expose yourself as a noob. Nowadays, the relentless exposure the show gets makes it kind of hard to misspell any major character's name if you're following it with any regularity.
The Soup is the current incarnation of an older show that was named Talk Soup. When TV personalities refer to it by the old name (which happens a lot), you can be sure Joel won't let it pass without comment.
Marilyn Manson is a band, and the lead singer's stage name (not even his parents still call him Brian Hugh Warner, and he does not answer to it, so you don't get to call him that). They are not "devil worshipers", they are not evil demons sent from hell to corrupt your kids, Marilyn Manson (the man) did not have any ribs removed, was not on The Wonder Years, is not dead and does not ever kill animals on stage. The one time someone suggested he hurt a cat in an interview, he shot them down and told them that he likes cats, and in fact he has a pet cat (formerly two, but his ex-wife took one in the divorce) named Lily White. Oh, and all of the band is male. Even if Twiggy Ramirez doesn't always look it. Although, the fandom generally doesn't mind if you think that Twiggy and Manson are together, because a fair portion of them agree. Also, their second LP is "Antichrist Superstar". Not "Anti-Christ Superstar" or "Anti Christ Superstar" or "Anti Christ Super Star". Also, liking more than one era of Manson is apparently a crime.
Blaming either the man or the band for Columbine is a surefire way to be flamed to oblivion. The Columbine killers hated his music (they were fans of a band Manson is friends with, Rammstein, mentioned below) which is pretty damn stupid, seeing as Rammstein and Marilyn Manson respect and like each other to the point where Manson played using them when his band wasn't available for an award show in Germany).
That famous Lynyrd Skynyrd song with the long guitar solo? It's called Free Bird, not Freebird. Diehard Skynyrd fans WILL correct you.
Luca Turilli's first album is King of the Nordic Twilight. The tenth track on said album is "Kings of the Nordic Twilight". Remember this if you do not wish to be set on fire.
Quiet Riot's song "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)", or "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)". Calling it just "Bang Your Head" is Tempting Fate.
Metalcore (or any word with "-core" in it except maybe grindcore) is not considered metal. It's best not to call metalcore metal on a metal forum. On second thought, just don't mention metalcore at all.
Do NOT pronounce Yoshiki Hayashi's name as "Yosheekee." Even if the mainstream media almost always does this unless the reporter is Japanese, and even if he tends to ignore it. The best pronounciation for most native English speakers is "Yosh'ki" or "Yoshkey." Neither are perfect Japanese pronounciation, but both are far closer to correct than "Yosheekee."
Groundlessly bashing hide or Munetaka Higuchi or Jasmine You or anyone else who is dead on any jrock community in general is often seen as trolling or shit-stirring behavior. You might get away with trashing poor Soichiro Umemura, but most likely doing so will bring out the one Tokyo Yankees fan still around to start the Flame War.
Neither hide's nor Jasmine's deaths have an exact official cause. hide's may have been an accident, or it may have been suicide — he can't tell us so we'll never know. Jasmine definitely died of an illness, but the exact illness was never specified. So, it's common for people to speculate, and sensible guesses are often sort of tolerated. But sometimes people come out with really, genuinely silly, often downright offensive Epileptic Trees such as "hide killed himself just to piss off Yoshiki" or "Hizaki killed Jasmine You". These are the people who will end up in trouble, and it serves them right, really. In a similar vein, the official cause of Taiji Sawada's death is highly disputed despite being "official" - by, among others, his fiancee, his mother, and other artists who knew him - and defending Kitami Terumi or the actions of the law enforcement in Saipan, or even suggesting that he deserved it, can be seen as very offensive to the degree of being trollish.
Dir En Grey sets the standards for Crazy Awesome and Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly in the Japanese metal scene. Comparing them to bands such as The Gazette, Music/Deathgaze, Music/Lynch and Music/Girugamesh simply because of visual and musical similarities would greatly enrage the fandom.
Even worse: arguing about what the band's musical style is. The band officially recognizes itself as "uncategorized". Don't be stupid enough to put them in genres such as Nu Metal, Progressive Metal or Deathcore without carefully analyzing every song in their discography. Otherwise, get ready to become the target of legions of outraged fans who are willing to defend their opinions to death; they will even go as far as stalking and attacking their targets during live shows.
Calling all electronic music "techno" will earn you death in some circles. It's only swift if you're lucky.
Likewise, dubstep is now the new "techno", becoming more mis-associated with any electronic music that uses harsh leads and drops. The genre itself also an example of a BrokenBase by classifying music under this term. It originally described electronic music that contained elements of garage, 2-step, and dub, hence the name. Dubstep's association with huge drops and wobbly bass came later, when it somehow crossed over with the drum & bass scene. However, in practical terms, it can all be called dubstep in certain contexts. Just don't tell people at the Dubstep Forum (or other diehards of older styles), how Skrillex makes awesome dubstep.
Refer to Pink Floyd as "he" and prepare to be laughed at.
The Pink Floyd example was actually referenced in their song "Have A Cigar":
Oh by the way, which one's Pink?
And later The Wall was sort of written about the life of a character named Pink.
Saying your favorite song is "Dark Side of the Moon" most likely make the fan you're talking to Face Palm. There is no actual song with that title. The penultimate song of the album, called Brain Damage, contains the line "I'll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon" and is often played together on the radio with the following song named Eclipse, leading some people to believe that it's one self-titled song. Or they might be talking about the singles from the album (Money, Time or Us And Them)
Similarly, there is no song called "The Wall", which is again the name of the album. The song in question is called "Another Brick in the Wall (part 2)", and shares its names with two other songs (parts 1 and 3, natch). It's also often played with "The Happiest Days of our Lives" attached to the beginning, and playing the former without the later can result in casual fans asking "Why did it start in the middle?"
All in all, most Pink Floyd fans are forgiving, if weary, of the large number of errors that seem to be fairly common.
You're unlikely to be slaughtered for it, but expect some groans, sighs and face-palms if you walk onto a forum/comments page/website/whatever for a Visual Kei band or song and ask something along the lines of "Are they all men?" or "Such-and-such is a woman, right?" Hardly anyone finds these questions bad in their own right, it's just that they get asked so many times that people get fed up with having to answer them.
If you are discussing sexual orientation in Visual Kei, do not make the mistake of claiming "they're all gay" or, inversely, "they are all straight." "They're all gay" will, depending on the tone, get you seen as a Kayfabe-deludedYaoi Fangirl OR as a bigoted homophobic troll, with predictable results. "They're all straight" developed as a bit of "cool fan" backlash when it was discovered that some bands use onstage Ho Yay as fanservice only while being straight - but applying it to everyone, especially in a snarky tone erases the actual gay and bi men that populate the scene and will get you seen as a troll trying to start a fight at best and a bigot denying the existence of homosexuality at worst. The truth of the matter is, as always, somewhat more gray: KayfabeHo Yay for fanservice done by straight VK artists is a thing, but the scene, especially early on, was also a (somewhat) safe haven for gay and bisexual men and non-gender-conforming people, meaning yes, there are real GLBT people in Visual Kei, and even a slightly higher percentage of them than in the mainstream. It's especially true for some of the earliest artists since fake Ho Yay for fanservice didn't even catch on as a widespread bandwagon trend until the early to mid 90s.
Even though it's impossible for two people to agree on what emo is, if you call a band emo and it isn't, you're bound to catch hell for it.
There are many Queen fans who do not like Freddie Mercury's first name being spelled with a Y at the end.note His birth name was Farrokh Bulsara, so to some people it doesn't matter. The reactions will range from a gentle "*Freddie, please" to flaming you from heaven to earth.
Talk to any Radiohead fan and mention "Tom York". Or, "Johnny Greenwood".
If you're discussing Mozart with any serious classical fan, don't make the mistake of mentioning how Salieri poisoned him. Amadeus plays quite fast and loose with historical fact; it was never intended to be a Mozart biopic so much as just the film of Shaffer's play. No reputable Mozart scholar out there thinks Salieri poisoned him or plotted against him, and in fact, the two men actually got along quite well and greatly respected each other. Salieri also had nothing to do with either the commission for or the completion of Mozart's Requiem. And by the way, Salieri wasn't the talentless hack portrayed in the movie. In fact, he taught Beethoven and Schubert and was one of the most successful composers of his time (even if his popularity died down after his death).
Fans of Muse have sometimes been critical of the name being written as "MUSE" just because the logo is all caps.
A lot of die-hard music fans get very picky over genres, to the point of getting into lengthy flame wars over which of two very similar subgenres of metal a particular band fits into. Even worse is when you get a band that seems to fit perfectly into a certain genre, and the only thing stopping them from doing so is the fact that the bandleader insists otherwise. For a good example of this, look at the My Chemical Romance entry a few lines up, and think of the lives that have been lost because incredibly easy mistakes were made.
Always head into any Heavy Metal discussion with shields raised, targs forwards. Inevitably, you will hit this. May also occur with goth. Standard accusations are mostly that said bands are not (genre) enough to count as real (genre) bands. See also: 'hair metal' like Poison in comparison to the rest of metal, with all but the most generic metal fans proclaiming they are merely 'hard rock' to disassociate from them.
Don't call into a classic rock station and request "The Who's Teenage Wasteland". Not only will they not play it, but they may come to your house and work you over. The title is "Baba O'Riley."
It's also quite irritating to many fans of The Who if you make it clear you only know a particular song of theirs from its use on CSI.
The genre is called "country music" or "country"; it hasn't been "country western" since the 1960s. Using the "western" tag automatically identifies you as a non-fan, and is nothing short of a Berserk Button for fans of the genre.
The genre itself for anyone who isn't a fan. Country music carries with it a lot of baggage, mostly cultural and political.
There are fans of old-style Country (more directly based on old Folk style) who do not appreciate Rockabilly and Pop-fusion being lumped in with "Country".
Its Mötley Crüe, not Motley Crue. The dots are important. However, since most English (North America and the UK) computer keyboards don't have an umlaut feature and not too many people know the "alt + numberpad combo = special character" feature, it's somewhat forgivable.
Since they're ëxtränëöüs ümläüts that were basically chosen because the band liked the way they looked in "Löwenbräu", this comes across to non-fans as a bit precious.
Some people think "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed is simply called "Sickness" (possibly with a "the" added). Disturbed fans aren't happy about it.
Also, the final track on the same album is "Meaning of Life" despite many who might claim it's called "Psycho".
Another track in that record is called "Voices" not "Are You Breathing?".
"Conflict", also from The Sickness, is sometimes referred to as "Enemy".
Eve of Destiny are Goth. Not Visual Kei. This point is nowhere near as trivial as it seems. Anyone who calls EoD visual runs a significant risk of being shot down and stamped on by an indignant fan/fans. It doesn't help that having EoD's genre mistaken in this manner has become something of a Berserk Button for frontman Haruhiko Ash, to the point where he has severed ties with promoters who sold Eve of Destiny as a Visual band.
Many fans of Canadian band The Tragically Hip can be quite hostile towards people who the drop "The" from the band's name — or don't capitalize it.
Led Zeppelin is a band — not a solo artist. Saying "Yes, I like him" will mark you as a poseur by hardcore fans.
Though causal fans might take a bit of ribbing if they say "Zo-so" instead of 'Page's Symbol.'
Led Zeppelin's fourth album does not have a title. Call it "the fourth album" or "the untitled album", and you should be fine. In some circles, calling it "Led Zeppelin IV" or "Four Symbols" will give you away as only a casual fan. Call it "the Hermit Album," "the one with 'Stairway to Heaven'" or "Zoso" and you will be held beneath contempt.
The Phantom of the Opera is a musical, not an opera. Opera buffs will slaughter you if you say Phantom is the last opera you saw.
Another good way to get devoured by opera buffs is to express admiration for any child "opera singer," like (preteen) Charlotte Church or Jackie Evancho. This is because, as most professional voice teachers will tell you, having kids sing repertoire intended for adult voices is actually quite harmful to their vocal development, for the same reason that you don't teach Little League pitchers to throw curveballs. While kids might be able to do it, it really strains their muscles, and doing it repeatedly will lead to permanent damage that warps the muscles' development. (There's a reason these kids tend to fall off the map when they reach their teens.)
And yet another opera fan Berserk Button is when every single singer who has a big voice with lots of vibrato is called an "opera singer," regardless of whether or not s/he actually sings opera. Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman are common examples.
Primus does, in fact, suck. Trying to argue against it will make fans of them laugh at you.
Naming John Williams as your favorite "modern music" composer is likely to get you Gannon Banned by most serious classical music fans on its own. Same with Danny Elfman, or Andrew Lloyd Webber, or any modern film/Broadway composer, but John Williams is a huge Berserk Button since so much of his music is directly-copied from, if not heavily influenced by, older works.
Likewise with confusing the "classical-crossover" genre (i.e., people who blend classical music with pop genres, like Vanessa Mae) with "contemporary classical music" (i.e. music by modern-day classical composers, like Steve Reich, Pierre Boulez, Philip Glass, etc).
And any classical music fan who likes the idea of continuing to breathe without medical help (or just plain continuing to breathe, period) would be advised to not claim fans of film/Broadway music don't like "real" music.
If you refer to a well-known song, especially one involved in Memetic Mutation, by its catchiest lyric, there is a very good chance someone will swoop in and insist you refer to it by the "proper title", which is usually much less known and thus does a poorer job of conveying which song you're talking about.
Spelling Metallica as "Mettalica" won't get a nice reaction.
Or writing it as "MetallicA", just because the logo draws the bordering letters bigger.
Referring to any member of the Backstreet Boysexcept Kevin Richardson as a "former Backstreet Boy" is an instant Berserk Button trigger for BSB fans.
Never EVER wonder out loud how many bass drums Iron Maiden 's Nicko McBrain uses while drumming. The answer is one.
DragonForce's famed song fromGuitar Hero is "Through The Fire And Flames". "Through The Fire And The Flames" is a lyric from said song. Also, ZP was ZP's actual first name, not initials.
On the Band Geek side: Gorramnit, people, trumpets are NOT the awesome ones with the slides!!
Likewise: calling every wind instrument a "horn," calling saxophones brass instruments (despite being made of brass, they're actually woodwinds), or confusing a Sousaphone with a tuba.
If you don't know who wrote the song, you probably shouldn't guess. Saying something like "I love 'Here Comes the Sun'! It's my favorite song by Lennon"*
George Harrison wrote it
(or any other song with the incorrect songwriter) could earn you ridicule from a die-hard fan (to give an example, even Frank Sinatra never heard the end of it after he called George Harrison's "Something" his "favorite Lennon-McCartney song"). Likewise with who sings it; while their Liverpool accents might make them all sound the same to more casual fans, hardcore Beatlemaniacs usually have no trouble telling their voices apart.
Saying with a straight face that Yoko was the sole or main cause of the break-up of The Beatles. At the very least, it will expose you as a newbie or casual Beatles fan, someone who hasn't spent a lot of time diving into their history (where it's clear that, while John focusing more on his relationship with Yoko and bringing her into the studio certainly exacerbated things, the biggest culprits were money problems (particularly the disagreement over whether Lee Eastman or Allen Klein should handle their finances) and the ever-common "Creative Differences").
Do not ever call the group Gorillaz "Gorillas", or even worse, "The Gorillas".
Attempting to define Enter Shikari as anything at all will generally cause backlash from the fans as they are considered to be in no genre in particular, though naming particular genres present in particular songs is certainly acceptable. This can be disregarded if the term being used is non-serious or affection in nature (Entershikaricore)
Calling Richard Wagner a Nazi or his music "Nazi music". While Richard Wagner was a virulent anti-Semite and his music was beloved by and used as propaganda by the Nazis, Wagner himself died before Hitler was even born. There was no way he could ever have been a Nazi. (The Nazi stuff, and how much Wagner's anti-Semitism influenced his music tends to be Internet Backdraft territory among Wagnerian opera lovers anyway, so just don't go there unless you know what you're getting into.) Also, don't confuse valkyries with Vikings, whatever you do.
The above notably does not apply to Israelis or Israel itself, where Wagner is still pretty much outright banned.
Similarly to the Wagner example, do not call Rammstein Nazis or fascists. Not only will you mark yourself as an idiot who can't even go and look up the lyrics if you don't speak German, but one who also is likely just racist towards Germans in general. Especially because they're rather left wing, which is the antithesis of Nazis. Oh, and don't mispronounce the band's name, the fangirls will rip your limbs off.
In general, claiming that "rap isn't music" on a music forum (of any kind, really) will brand you as one of two things: an out-of-the-loop Grumpy Old Man whining about "kids these days", or an angsty 13-year-old who thinks rock fans are oppressed because the popular kids made fun of his Led Zeppelin shirt.
Similar to the above example, don't be surprised when someone bursts into a tirade that Hip Hop and Rap are completely and entirely different forms of music that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The usual distinction? Hip-Hop is whatever that person happens to like, whereas Rap is whatever they don't like. In other words, Hip-Hop is the good stuff, while Rap is the bad stuff.
Could be the other way around for people who hate Hip-Hop.
The name of R.E.M.'s 1986 studio album is Lifes Rich Pageant, with no apostrophe. The missing apostrophe came from one of Michael Stipe's notorious typing errors, and the band decided to run with it instead of correct it, thus making the "incorrect" version the official title.
When listening to Yuki Kajiura's music, asking what language it's being sung in will earn you a facepalm. It's her own made up language. And don't ask for a translation either, because the individual words don't actually mean anything. It's essentially just gibberish.
Vocaloid, like Touhou, has the classic "what anime is this from?" At this point, though, it's happened so many times (both intentionally and not) that it's usually just laughed off. A more dangerous error is to refer to the characters as "holograms." This will make fans assume you're too clueless to know that the concerts are only a tiny part of the fandom, and gullible enough to believe that the characters' concert appearances are actually holograms (they're just projections on a transparent screen, but at some point a news article wrongly called them "holograms" and the misconception stuck).
Never refer to Louis Tomlinson as "Louie" or pronouce his name like "Lewis," or you will get torn apart by thousands of Directioners.
Zayn's catchphrase is not "What's Happening?", it's "Vas' Happenin'."
Suggest Herbie Hancock deserved to win the Oscar for Round Midnight over Ennio Morricone's The Mission and you may find your teeth relocated to your ass. Especially if you say it to a Morricone fan.
There is a section of film music fandom that considers Hans Zimmer to be the Antichrist, not least because of his various protégés and their tendency, for the most part, to sound like him (it doesn't help that many of his scores - and their scores - carry "Additional Music by" credits). And for all the praise heaped on Christopher Nolan's films about Batman, please don't assert to Danny Elfman fans (and even some non-Elfmanites) that Zimmer's scores > Elfman's if you ever want them to give you the time of day again.
D&D has demons and devils. Many, many fans commonly mistake the two (which isn't really helped by the fact that the earliest editions just had demons, but no devils) and nearly just as many are really anal about fans who can't get it right. And when you throw in the fact that the most common kind of both demons and devils have more specific names (Tanar'ri and Baatezu respectively), it all just gets very messy, very fast. Plus other kinds like obyrith and archdevils that more pure-blooded fans know about.
Part of this comes from the fact that, in many versions of the game, demons and devils DO have objective differences based on Alignment: while both are always either Neutral or Evil, Demons are characterized as always Chaotic, Devils are always Lawful. This extends to other celestial beings like Angels, Archons, Devas, Asuras, etc.
Furthermore, if you don't want to start an edition war, do not use past and present tenses to describe changes between 3.5 and 4th edition, e.g., "there is no lawful evil alignment anymore". And please, for the love of Pelor, DO NOT claim that one edition is objectively better unless you want to get flamed to the Nine Hells and back.
Every edition of the game has had a major revision about halfway through in order to, depending on who you ask, fix balance issues or sell more books. The revision of third edition is officially called 3.5. The revision of second edition ("Player's Options") is frequently called 2.5 and that's no big deal. However, calling the revision of fourth edition ("Essentials") "4.5" is a berserk button among fans of that edition.
Even in the game world itself, referring to The Computer as "the Computer" or, worse, "the computer" can get you executed.
Demon is an acceptable vernacular, though the preferred word is Daemon. Lord help you if you get the A and the E confused.
Space Marines armies aren't "pretty much all the same". There are myriad differences between the named codices, much less the various ways the plain Space Marines codex is interpreted by players.
Every army in Codex: Space Marines isn't "pretty much Ultramarines". That was brought about by the egregious and atrocious cannon manipulation of Matt Ward.
The Ultramarines themselves are polarizing. Even before Ward changed the fluff to make them the "default" loyalist army they were scorned by non-Ultramarine players because they were GW's poster boy army. However Ward's comments that every Space Marine chapter secretly looked up to the Ultramarines and beheld their primarch Roboute Guilliman as their "spiritual liege" whom they all aspired to emulate really set the Ultramarines hate to a new level. Bringing up the Ultramarines won't get you into trouble in and of itself, but mentioning the title "spiritual liege" will. Especially from a Space Wolves, Black Templars, or Blood Angels player; who hold their primarchs in equally high regard.
Matt Ward himself is a lightning rod that will get you at least a warning on just about any 40k forum; the name itself is all but guaranteed to start a flame war.
Robin Cruddace less so, but he is still fairly reviled.
Blood Angels and Dark Angels are very different armies, do not confuse them.
Do not call an individual unit selected from Codex: Black Templars a singular "Black Templar". You can call them by their unit names when all else fails. You can also call them an Initiate or a Crusader.
They're Orks. Orcs & Goblins are in regular warhammer. The K is important.
This one is often overlooked, but don't called Dwarfs "Dwarves." The former is the plural in Warhammer Fantasy, the latter is the plural in The Lord of the Rings.
Theatre
Mention to any member of the Phantom of the Opera "phandom" how much you loved the 2004 movie version, and you're likely to get both flamed and spammed with YouTube links to "better performances".
Additionally, any mention of complete and total love for the sequel Love Never Dies will get you ostracized and/or ridiculed.
In some circles, serious love for Éponine will earn you the ire of fans who assume you only like her because of her place in the love triangle.
And god help those who haven't read the book and aren't intending to - many fans see reading Hugo's thousand-page tome as the only true way to experience the story, and will tell you so until you agree with them.
Saying anything positive about Andrew Lloyd Webber at all is guaranteed to get you flamed to death by someone.
Science
Unless you are specifically aiming to torpedo your credibility, don't dismiss the Theory of Evolution as "just a theory", oversimplify it as "survival of the fittest", or ask "If humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?" as if you have single-handedly posed The Question That Will Once And For All Destroy Darwinism.note You haven't, and you won't. Opinions of a plurality of the American people aside, there is ZERO doubt among the scientific community that evolution is a thing that exists.
Additionally, don't confuse the Theory of Evolution with the Big Bang, or any theories about the origins of life, neither of which it has anything to do with directly. Also, evolution in Pokémon has nothing to do with real evolution except the name (it's really more like metamorphosis/an organism's life cycle). Certain extremists have been railing on this one for a long time.
In general, lack of knowledge on what constitutes a thesis, a hypothesis, a theorem, a theory, and a law gets you immediately mocked in any related discussion.
When you enter any online science discussion, take note of the most widely quoted sources and experts and refrain from questioning them unless you want your opinion to be dismissed out of hand, even if you have legitimate grouses.
Some physicists and mathematicians HATE when you mispronounce "Euler", and saying it as "you-ler"note It's OY-ler, because German. will earn you the ire from anyone who generally knows who he was.
Most physicists despise the term "God Particle" often used by the media to refer to the Higgs Boson, not the least because it gets certain religious types upset for no good reason.
Do NOT speak seriously of the Nibiru conspiracy theory when there are astronomers around, or even astronomy enthusiasts.
Also, don't claim that the Sun will explode, go supernova – or worse, nova – around astronomers. It's red giant, and it's not an explosion, it's a slow burn. The Sun is not anywhere close to massive enough to go nova, much less supernova.
Don't call astronomers "astrologers". And please don't ask them if they can tell your fortune.
Never ask an archaeologist if they dig up dinosaur bones.
Sports
Calling the "Super Bowl" the "Superbowl" is considered an easy way to tell if someone is not a fan of the NFL.
Old guys like to remind you that the New York Giants are actually the New York Football Giants.
Which is actually the team's full name, and appears on the wall behind the endzones during home games at their new stadium.
Pick a stadium that's been renamed by a corporate sponsorship. Any stadium. Try calling it by its sponsor name in a local sports bar. For example, "I really like going games at 3Com Park," or "...Monster Park." Proceed to get beat up by the guys who insist that it's "Candlestick Park" and it will ALWAYS BE CANDLESTICK PARK!. Go to another city and repeat. Doesn't help that all sports commentators (and many sportswriters) are required to use the corporate name exclusively and to insist everyone else use it too.
One of the most insane examples: The park formerly known as Comiskey. Charles Comiskey is heralded as one of the worst sports owners; he intentionally made sure his Chicago White Sox players got less meal money than the league average and often skimped on washing their uniforms. All that led to Sox players conspiring to throw the 1919 World Series in one of sports' worst scandals. The White Sox never returned to the World Series in the next 40 years of Comiskey family ownership. And yet Chicago natives still insist on calling their park Comiskey rather than the US Cellular name it currently bears.
We still call it the Sears Tower, too! (there is no such thing as the "Willis" Tower, dammit!)
And Marshall Field's! (there is no Macy's in Chicago, dammit!)
The only time you'll get a pass for calling a park by a corporate name is if it's never had a non-corporate one, or if the non-corporate name is unknown by most fans. If the corporate sponsor changes, generally use the most well-known name, which is usually the first one.
At least one exception to this is Ashburton Grove, the stadium of Arsenal F.C., which is almost exclusively referred to by its sponsored name of "The Emirates" or "Emirates Stadium", even by fans. Conversely, in the same league, the City of Manchester Stadium, home to Manchester City (natch), is generally only referred to as "Etihad Stadium" by sports commentators, who are somewhat obliged to refer to stadiums and competitions by their sponsored names.
Although quite a few Arsenal fans, such as those on The Gooner, loathe the idea of having their stadium named after a corporation and either refer to it as "Ashburton Grove" or simply "The Grove" at times. If deciding to use the corporate name they simply call it "The E***s" like a swear word.
The Houston Astros offer an interesting inversion: their park was originally known as Enron Field. After the Enron scandal, the team went to court to be released from the naming rights agreement, arguing that scandal around Enron diminished the Houston Astros brand. The court agreed. Subsequently, the park was rechristened Minute Maid Park, and nobody in their right mind speaks of Enron Field anymore.
And then there's Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs — the Wrigley it's named after was the chewing-gum magnate who also owned the Cubs at the time, so technically...
The Chicago Bears play at Soldier Field, not Soldiers' Field.
Try referring to a Baseball Park as a Stadium instead. Be ready to run.
Except for the ballparks that actually are named "[something] Stadium", especially Yankee Stadium, which is perennially called "the Stadium" by locals.
It's the Pittsburgh Steelers. Not Pittsburg. And not Stealers.note "Stealers" is kindergartner for "thief". "Steelers" is a reference to Pittsburgh's strong connections to the steel industry; the Steelers logo is taken from the Steelmark used by the U.S. Steel company.
'Course, some who call them the "Stealers" do so intentionally, pointing out the controversy behind their Super Bowl wins.
In a similar vein, fans of Stanford University's sports teams will not hesitate to loudly and frequently remind you that their team is the Stanford Cardinal, not the Cardinals. That is, they are Cardinal, the shade of red, not Cardinals, the birds (or Catholic leaders). Gods help you if you suggest that their mascot is a cardinal. note It's a tree, which is incidentally not Cardinal-colored.
And it's Tottenham Hotspur, or Spurs,note or The Lilywhites, at a push, not "Tottenham Hotspurs"
Calling a foil, epee, or sabre a "sword" will get you mocked mercilessly among fencers. Getting two of them confused will get you murdered.
In some places (mostly Europe, but also Latin America and Africa to an extent), referring to The Beautiful Game as "soccer" will trigger The Running of the Football Hooligans. Chasing after the poor schmuck who dared call it something other than "football", that is.
Do not refer to Manchester United as "Man U". This was done by United fans at one time, but it led to a spate of chants by fans of other teams that used it as the first two syllables of "manure".
Do not get Manchester United mixed up with Manchester City, lest you be forever branded as a noob (or worse, an American). They are completely different teams – bitter rivals in fact – that wear completely different colours and play in completely different stadiums.note Manchester United was founded first, two years before Manchester City. United is more popular nationally and internationally (to the point where even Americans have heard of them), but Man-City is slightly more popular within the City of Manchester itself.
There was an IRC chat back in the mid 90s where the admin would kickban any user who referred a particular character by any name other than "Dezaras". "Deathsaurus" was forbidden, "Deaths-R-Us" was right out, and "Death Czarus?" Well, you know the drill.
So who's the blue robot, Frenzy or Rumble? This question, when ask, will prompt other fans either saying "You had to go there, didn't you?" or straight-out causing flame wars.
As Gabediscovered, LEGO fans are all too ready to point out that the plural of LEGO is LEGO.
Funnily enough, this rule gets broken in the first LEGO Island game when DJ Radio delivers the headline "LEGOs in SPACE!".note Unless it was intended as the contraction "LEGO's", i.e. "LEGO is in SPACE!"
The company that makes them used to specifically make the point on the packaging that they should be called "LEGO bricks or toys" and not "LEGOs". They were worried about their trademark becoming genericized, as happened to, say, aspirin, escalator, and linoleum.
Just try referring to either of the original villains from LEGO Adventurers as "Sam Sinister" and watch the Flame Wars erupt.note This is the result of a series of unfortunate Dub Name Changes where the name passed freely between them before finally sticking to the one who did not originally possess it, ultimately causing much confusion.
Calling Toa or Matoran "BIONICLEs" will result in a massive Internet Backdraft. Pluralizing the title will get you obliterated.
Also, there is a reason why BIONICLE is not under the LEGO section in this folder. Do not refer to BIONICLE as "that LEGO story" or otherwise try and imply that it is "just a story used to sell toys".
Video Games
Asking for Super Mario Bros 4 to be made will lead irked fans to point out that it already exists with the subtitle Super Mario World in Japan - it was simply shortened to only being referred to by the subtitle in most other regions.
This trope was originally named after the Big Bad Ganondorf, aka Ganon, from The Legend of Zelda, who is commonly believed to have gotten an additional "N" in his name in the original game. The reality is more complicated. "Gannon" was used in Japan in the first two games at the very least, and was the official romanization up until that point. This can be seen in Zelda II's intro text and game over screen, and the third game's end credits, where it refers to "Gannon's Tower". Whether due to a simple error or a deliberate choice, the American manual of the original game favored the spelling Ganon, and beginning with Zelda II, the American localizers explicitly went out of their way to change the spelling in-game, giving the appearance that the original three-N form was a simple misspelling, rather than an artifact of the Japanese version.
Claiming that there is only one Link, that the games were released in chronological order, etc., is liable to get you laughed out of any timeline forum. The timeline given in Hyrule Historia is, for the most part, canon.
In recent years, It has become a serious crime to refer to The Wind Waker as kiddy in certain fan groups. Link stabbing Ganondorf through the head may be a big contribution to this.
Also, don't call Link an "elf" in front of a Zelda fan unless you want to be slapped upside your face for being a complete n00b. You'll also probably get a huge speech about how Link is NOT an elf but rather a Hylian, the main race in the games. According to every non-human entity in those games, Hylians are humans. Presumably the ears are just long compared to other, normal-eared humans in the games (such as the ones inhabiting the countries used for the settings of The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games, which have round ears) as Hylians don't have, for example, extended lifespans or other traits associated with elves.
Go to a random community, mention "Hyper Shadow", and watch Satan himself flinch in fear of the backlash you get.
For that matter, mention any of old backstory used in English speaking countries prior to Sonic Adventure and you'll likely be blasted by a group of "Only the Japanese stuff counts" purists. Which will then trigger a war with the "It's our childhood memories and we don't care if it's not really canon" fans.
Calling Metal Sonic "Mecha Sonic" will earn you the ire of Sonic fans. Likewise, do not confuse Metal Sonic any other Sonic robot.note "Metal Sonic" refers specifically to the fan-favourite enemy from Sonic CD, who has also cameoed in Knuckles Chaotix, Sonic Adventure, Sonic 4 Part 2, and a couple other games. "Mecha Sonic" is the unrelated robot you fight near the end of Sonic & Knuckles and was coincidentally also the name used for the roboticized Sonic in the Archie comics, issues 39 and 40.
Questioning whether the events of Sonic '06 really happened is also good Flame Bait despite the ending hinting at the characters possibly remembering the events of the game as well as part of Sonic Generations taking place during the supposedly erased events of said game.
Tails is not a girl, and never has been (despite always being voiced by one in Japanese, and since 2004 in English). People will gladly tell you this repeatedly.
He is in Mexico. Though, only in the old cartoons, they fixed their mistake later.
Calling Amy Rose "Amy the Hedgehog" will give you some flak, though you can get into a debate that her full-name is "Amy Rose the Hedgehog". Likewise calling Tekno from the Fleetway comics "Techno" is a bad idea.
Debating whether Ivo's real name is "Robotnik" or "Eggman" is another classic flame war kickstarter. This is primarily due to his Japanese name always being Eggman while the English versions of the game had his name as Robotnik during the classic era (and both during SA1). Due to the confusion, Sega brought it into both versions that his real birth name was Robotnik, yet everyone, including himself, calls him Eggman so that they didn't have a character with two canonical names. Despite this being confirmed canon however, it worked as well as Miyamoto's gender confirmation.
Oh and do NOT spell Rouge the Bat's name as Rogue.
In some fan communities, there are those who will insist on using only the Japanese names (Rockman instead of Mega Man, Forte instead of Bass, etc.) and will insist that only the events as detailed in the Japanese games are "true", even if the community is based on the American games with American fans or if the fan-work being discussed is explicitly based on the American continuity.
Insisting on using the alternate names for Mega Man X 5 characters will lead to backdraft.
Referring to the primary villain of the original series as "Dr. Wiley" is a bad idea. Calling him "Dr. Willy" is an even worse one.
Pronouncing Bass's name wrong is another easy way to annoy fans, not helping that Mega Man 8's dub pronounces it as this. To note, it's pronounced "baess" (like the clef, upright giant stringed instrument, or guitar), not the name of the fish.
There are several Mega Men (or is it Mega Mans?) with their own respective sub series (Classic, X, Legends, Battle Network, Zero, ZX, and Star Force). It's best not to confuse them with one another, such as recalling a specific Mega Man and saying he's from a game of a sub series he's not featured in (ex: "Mega Man X is awesome! He's such a cool fighter in Mega Man Legends 2!"). In addition, clumping all of the Mega Men together by saying they're the same character isn't a wise move.
In the case of Zero, try to avoid calling him a "Mega Man", even though the name of his own sub series says otherwise. He is never actually referred to as "Mega Man Zero", as the characters will always call him "Zero", as they did in the X series. The sub series is called "Mega Man Zero", because Capcom wanted consumers to know it was a part of the general Mega Man franchise.
This was actually poked fun at in Zero's ending in Marvel Vs Capcom 3, with Zero remarking "I'm Zero, not MegaMan Zero", perhaps indicating that the two are actually different characters.
Go ahead and call Hyperspeed in Guitar Hero a "cheat". Don't expect to last long on any forum, official or not.
Also, don't call Rock Band a Guitar Hero knockoff. You will be bludgeoned to death with various plastic fake instruments.
Confusing speedruns and TASs is not recommended. Trying to pass off a TASnote "tool-assisted speedrun", i.e. one using an emulator and often played at slower-than-normal speed to take full advantage of bugs and glitchesas a console speedrun is heavily looked down upon by both the speedrunning and TAS-making communities. For that matter, calling a TAS "fake" or "cheated" is a bad idea too.
Final Fantasy IV has this persistant FWAK entry about Palom and Porom note specifically, there was a rumor spread around stating they have they can be retrieved after their Heroic Sacrifice in several walkthroughs with FWAK entries in them. Repeating them in forums can be a bad idea.
Final Fantasy VI, like Final Fantasy IV before, has FWAK entriesnote specifically that you can get General Leo to join your party after his demise. You'd better be planning to stay off the Internet for a while after repeating them in forums.
Some old-school fans of Final Fantasy VII still nostalgically cling to "Aeris". Others have been arguing that it was supposed to be "Aerith" since long before the official spelling changed. And a certain amount of Compilation-era fans are just confused when they get around to playing the original. Tread lightly, young grasshopper.
If you equip the Dusk Shard or the Dawn Shard in Final Fantasy XII, don't go on a forum asking people why your MP doesn't go above zero or why you can't get rid of the Silence status. At best, you'll be told to read the freaking item description and at worst you'll be flamed worse than what a Firaga spell will do to you.
There are people who tend to complain about the Shadaloo bosses having the "wrong names" whenever they get to play the Japanese version of a Street Fighter game, unaware of the fact that the names were actually switched for the overseas version of the series: the black boxer M. Bison became Balrog overseas, the Spanish Ninja Balrog became Vega, and the Shadaloo overlord Vega became M. Bison.
Also, using "Shadowlaw," "Shadowloo," or "Shadaloo" will garner criticism depending on where you are.
In Deus Ex, early pirated copies of the game (that didn't include sound because of the internet speed at the time of release) would not allow players to get on the boat and go from the 1st level to the 2nd because the game required a sound clip play (and the soundclip wasn't present in the pirated copy). This has leads to pirates marking themselves as such by asking "How I get on the boat" [sic] questions on various fourms. Flame Wars tend to ensue.
There's a lot of nastiness in Pokémon fandom over names. It usually results from differing translations or romanizations, works of dubious canonicity, and good old fashioned obtuseness.
When Pokémon was first starting to get popular, kids would cringe whenever their parents (or some other adult figure) pronounced Pokémon as "Pokey-man" or "Pokemons".
Go ahead and call the Pokemon Red And Blue player character "Ash". See how fast you get eaten alive. His name is "Red".
Mistaking any counterpart (Ash and Red, Red and Red, Ruby and Brendan, etc) for each other will get you berated by dozens of fans quickly.
Probably the biggest Berserk Button for anyone who consumes a greater portion of their time on this franchise than other do on average is to exclaim that Generation I is the best generation (and to some extent Generations II) and the all the following generations could hardly be called "true" Pokémon. Such closed-minded nostalgia is never tolerated by the fandom.
Devil May Cry fans used to have a civil war over whether one of the bosses in the original game was named Nelo Angelo or Nero Angelo. This has been laid to rest with the introduction of a character named Nero who is distinct from the aforementioned boss.
Related, there was a BIG uproar in the time leading up to Devil May Cry 4 about whether or not Vergil, Dante's brother and Nelo Angelo was dead after the events of the first game. The enemy data files in 4 put the rumors of his survival to rest hard, saying that the Bianco Angelo enemies were actually created by using pieces of his corpse.
Gamers have a tendency to flip out at people (especially journalists) who get the name of the their favorite console wrong, like when people refer to the Nintendo DS as the "Game Boy DS". Variants include calling all handhelds Game Boys and all consoles X-Boxes, or calling anything other than the company or the NES simply "Nintendo".
Especially when they call the Playstation and Xbox consoles by their proper names, but all Nintendo consoles are simply "a Nintendo". Many Nintendo fans are annoyed by this. However, it seems to be more or less accepted to refer to the Nintendo Entertainment System as "Nintendo" (which makes the SNES the "Super Nintendo").
Recently, referring to the 3DS as just "DS" can result in this. It's not just a "new DS", it's a new console with its own games.
Go to the EV:Nova webboard and ask about the "Vellos", "Velos","Vell-Os", or (god forbid) the "Vell'Os", and somebody is sure to point out that they are called the "Vell-os".
This trope can go either way, in that Pyramid Head (debuting in Silent Hill 2) has been seen in other games and the movie. Some rabid fans say that this is NOT okay, Pyramid Head to them is only a representation of James' psyche. However, other fans view him as a God of Silent Hill.
And don't call him Red Pyramid, whatever you do.
In Metroid fandom, calling Samus "Metroid" or even, god forbid, saying "I love Metroid, he's so cool in these games" is considered a horrible crime.
Go onto a forum and say ''Meta-Knight'' or "MetaKnight" is your favorite character. You will not hear the end of it. "His name is Meta Knight, damn it! Meta-Knight is the group of swordsmen and MetaKnight doesn't exist! RAHHHHH, IT MATTERS! YOU'RE NOT A REAL FAN!"
Paint Roller's name is Paint Roller. NOT Skainter. It's supposed to be a clever pun. Besides, try saying "Skainter" out loud. It just hurts.
Although deliberately provoking somebody by using Skainter would be painful trolling, so it kinda wraps back around in a meta sense.
Star Fox is the name of the mercenary unit where Fox McCloud works. It is NOT his name. This misconception isn't helped by the fact that Andross seemingly uses this name to refer to Fox at the end of Star Fox 64 (Andross was actually talking about the team in general, but in context it looks like he's just addressing Fox, who is alone at the time).
Spelling Jak's name with an added c or Daxter with an e is a Berserk Button for many Jak and Daxter fans. If you're lucky, they'll facepalm and point out your mistake. If not, they'll eat you alive.
When someone looks at some piece of Touhou fanart and asks "What anime is this?" flames are to be expected.
Never mention the "Giygas fetus theory" on an EarthBound forum. You WILL get banned (temporarily, at least).
Do not ask for a Fan Translation of Mother 3 that has no profanity in it. Aside from being just plain ungrateful considering how long said fan translation was in production, the first such member to raise a fuss over the issue was extremely immature about the whole thing (although the member in question has long since gotten over it).
Also, his name's Porky, not Pokey. Claiming his name is Pokey will result in some serious hatred, especially after the release of Super Smash Bros Brawl confirmed this.
The main character of Kid Icarus is Pit. Trying to say his name is Icarus will get you laughed out of any Nintendo forum.
In that same vein and depending on the forum/blog you're commenting on, saying Slendy's full name is "Slenderman" rather than "Slender Man" will get some fans of the Mythos very, very angry with you. Other fans really couldn't care less how it's spelled as long as you're not calling it "Slender," and a few will respond by making jokes about Little Kuriboh's "Concrete Giraffes" and "Jack Slenderman, the cop who doesn't play by the rules."
Don't even think about calling World of Warcraft's Mists of Pandaria expansion a ripoff of Kung Fu Panda. Pandaren were first introduced in Warcraft 3, five years before the movie was released.
It used to be that this would happen if you suggested a third-party character for Super Smash Brothers. After Brawl, this is only in effect if it's a character that has no history on Nintendo systems whatsoever (e.g. Master Chief) or is a character from a media other than video games (Goku, for example).
Assassins Creed III faces a triple-dose of this problem. Getting any of the following wrong is bait for serious backlash:
The protagonist is a half-Mohawk whose real name is Ratonhnhaké:ton, which is nearly impossible to spell correctly. The fandom is generally pretty lenient on this one.
Because of the cultural difficulty in using his real name, Ratonhnhaké:ton is re-named (in-universe) as "Connor". Don't make the mistake of spelling it "Conner", it annoys a lot of people.
Furthermore, as his father's family name was "Kenway", many people (including some promotional materials) have taken to calling him "Connor Kenway", despite the fact that Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor never takes on his father's last name. Fans are quick and harsh in correcting this.
Go ahead and say that Apollo is better then Phoenix on a Ace Attorney forum. Or the other way around for that matter. You'll get a front seat to a flamewar between Phoenix and Apollo fans.
Likewise, saying that your favorite game in the series is any other then the first or third ones will get you completely torn apart with rage by people who are insistent that their opinion is the only valid one.
Don't even bother saying whether you think Phoenix is gay or straight. Same goes for Edgeworth. Changes are that you're talking to someone who completely disagrees and will make this known.
On this point, talking about ships AT ALL will get you a flame war with Ace Attorney. Especially saying that you don't like Phoenix/Edgeworth or Phoenix/Maya.
No, the Wii U is NOT a "new controller for the Wii", it's a new console. The controller is called the "Gamepad", and is NOT the console itself - the console is a box similar to other consoles. Many Nintendo fans have less and less patience for people still making this misconception.
The controller is also NOT a "tablet", it's a tablet-based controller called the Gamepad.
It's gotten so bad that Nintendo had to send out a notice to everyone's Wii console to remind them that the W Ii-U is, in fact, a brand new console and not an add on for the Wii whatsoever.
Left 4 Dead 2 has Bill Killed Off for Real. Despite what people and rumors tell you, Bill is dead. You can't revive him with a Magical Defibrillator, he is not "sleeping", and using mods to bring him back does not count. Trying to use any argument based on Fanon Discontinuity will get you mocked and viewed as someone who can't accept canon.
Say anything positive about Tharja from Fire Emblem: Awakening. At all. Be ready for angry detractors to accuse you of supporting child abuse.
For a while following the announcement of Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones's localization, using the localized names would get the old-school elitist fans screeching and throwing fits.
Not a name-related issue, but speculating on the comic's frequent Schedule Slip on the fora is grounds for having your post locked and receiving an infraction.
On the fora of Looking for Group, anyone ignorant enough to post anything even hinting that they think the comic is a World of Warcraft story happening in Azeroth will get beaten up, crucified, eaten and shot, in that order. Despite the fact that the comic started as a Warcraft parody (though only for a very brief period) and incredibly obviously took significant inspiration from the games.
Gunnerkrigg Court: The third girl from the photo is not Jones, and she is not related to Gamma in any way. Fans continued to speculate to the contrary, even though Tomjossed those theories, within hours of their first proposal, then put a note to that effect below the comic. At one point, a forum regular who should have known better suggested that this speculation should be a ban-worthy offense. This specific line of Wild Mass Guessing seems to have stopped now that it's been unambiguously confirmed in-comic that the photo girl and Jones are different people.
Dreamkeepers fans are usually pretty torn when it comes to pronouncing Namah's name. Some people say NAA-MUH, while others believe it to be NAY-MUH and refuse to back down in their opinions.
Well, shoot. I've been pronouncing it nuh-MAW.
Las Lindas author Soul Kat has a big Berserk Button related to this trope due to so many people screwing up Davin Preacher's name, instead calling him Devin.
Loldwell.com features a number of comic strips themed around different iterations of the concept: 1, 2, 3, 4
Don't speculate on the Homestar Runner wiki. Don't forget to sign your posts. And for your own sake, if you don't want a month long banning, NEVER mention their Schedule Slip.
Also, don't call the original show an anime. It's a common mistake, since the show is clearly anime-inspired, but some people will get very mad at you for it (not least of all because of its "Nicktoon" label).
And that A:TLA was animated entirely in South Korea, not Japan. (granted, many actual anime are also animated mostly in Korea, but that's beside the point; most American cartoons are as well)
Any hardcore Disney fan will pointedly tell you, Cinderella's dress is not blue! This can be blamed on the Disney Princess marketing, in which a lot of the merchandise shows Cinderella in a blue dress, despite the fact that she never wore that color in the original movies.
Actually, she wears blue for most of the movie: her blouse or whatever it's supposed to be that she wears (mostly it's just the sleeves that are visible) except for at the actual ball is blue, and while the magic gown itself is white, in some scenes it appears to be a very pale blue or bluish grey (because it's night, and if you want to suggest night in a movie, you tint everything blue). But it's certainly not the bright blue color the merch tends to depict.
You'll get just as much flak for saying that her hair is blonde, which is understandable as the merchandise and recent rereleases give her a brighter hair color than seen on previous releases and earlier artwork (in the original movie, her hair was a sort of strawberry blonde or light brown; whatever it was, it definitely wasn't yellow).
Likewise, Aurora's dress: pink or blue? It's blue during most of the movie and a lot of fans are miffed to see her in pink.
Hilariously, this one is canon thanks to Flora and Merryweather...
Looney Tunes fans hate it when someone spells it "Looney TOONS". Unfortunately for them, people at Warner Bros. actually use that spelling too.
Confusing My Little Pony characters for each other, particularly cross-generation. Confusing Glory (Gen.1) for Rarity (Gen.4) is a bad idea, and believing Glory was the inspiration for Rarity is just as bad of an offense (she's based off Sparkler◊, though it's acknowledged that Rarity's colour scheme is nearly identical to Glory's).
Hell, confusing the fans themselves with each other. Prior to the premier of Friendship Is Magic in late 2010, the MLP fandom was made up almost entirely of women who grew up with the show and toys in the 80's. These fans were neutral on the new show and did not take well to the sudden influx of younger, mostly male, fans. It didn't help that most "bronies" wanted nothing to do with the original shows/toys or its fanbase. To this day, the two fandoms rarely talk to each other. Don't assume they do.
That word "serious" is the key one; most fans consider it harmless fun. That does NOT, as shown above, extend to mentioning that fanon to the original VA. Or any fanon to anyone involved with the show.
Just bringing up the fiasco surrounding the appearance of Derpy Hooves in "The Last Roundup" is known to do this.
For some fans, Alicorn Twilight ("Twilicorn") and the upcoming Equestria Girls spin off movie can be this.
Made simultaneously better and worse when it was revealed that the core staff from the show had indeed worked on the movie (previously it had been thought to involve only some lesser animators and the one US-based voice actor).
Entire Wars within the Fandom have been known to rage over which Episode(s)/Season(s) were good or bad. Or even which writers are good or bad. (defending one of the writers considered "bad" is enough to get yourself flamed)
Just don't go to /mlp/ at all; there's nothing you can say that won't make them rage (except possibly if all you say is how much you fan-worship Lauren Faust).
Family Guy fans hate it when people and the media call it The Family Guy.
They also hate it when people call the show a rip-off of The Simpsons, which both The Simpsons and South Park did without a hint of joking.
There was a small incident in the Transformers Prime fandom, right after episoe 21 aired, when someone who shall remain nameless for their own safety perpetuated a rumor via Wikipedia that episode 22 would be named something along the lines of "one bot, two bots, red bots, blue bots" or some such thing like that, and somehow several people fell for it. It was even uploaded onto Youtube with that name, but ended up being completely wrong.
And the writers have said that most of the comments in that clip were taken from actual fans.
Ed Edd N Eddy: Be careful defending the other kids over the Eds. Things will get heated fast.
Time Squad: Just try to talk about Otto's backstory, try to put in your own opinion about what happened to him before Time Squad, it will always turn into heated arguments.
For fans of old Cartoon Network, it's okay to mention words "Stuart Snyder"... that is, if you want to die.
Other
It's Johns Hopkins University. As in, both words end in the letter s. Not "John Hopkins", and definitely not "John Hopkin". Yes, for some reason, the founder's parents decided to name him "Johns" rather than "John". It's led to over a century of irritated students and alumni correcting people who can't possibly believe that it would be "Johns", even people who really should know better (like long-time Baltimore residents). Also, while the medical school is the most famous part of Hopkins, it offers areas of study as varied as any other top research university. Assuming that everyone who attends Hopkins is studying to become a doctor is a great way to irritate the majority who are not.
Saying or implying that a roller coaster is dangerous will earn you a rebuke from any coaster enthusiast who happens to hear you. Yes, your car really is 10,000 times more dangerous than the coaster.
Referring to science fiction not as "SF" but as Sci-Fi will brand you as a complete mundane. Someone who would be lost at a con, probably looks down his nose at zines, and wouldn't know real fanac if he fell over it. (Or at the very least, pronounce it "skiffy").
Though admittedly the above is mostly restricted to the purist of the pure.
Worse would be considering franchises like Star Trek or Star Wars as "hard" Sci-Fi, when in reality they're the softest of the soft, and Sci-Fi/SF fans will let you have it with both barrels for it.
