Serious Business - Television Tropes & Idioms

By far the worst offender has to be commercials. In almost any given ad, the product of the ad is Serious Business. This ranges from out-of-the-blue conversations about what the product is or does, to the ever-common chases and fights over the product — forgivable for cartoon commercials for kids' cereal, embarrassing if it's a commercial for some product obviously intended to be purchased by adults — to the worst of the lot, beer commercials, such as the Bud Light ad where a man in an arctic station trades away all his clothes for a bottle of beer, then has the gall to tell the other (now warm) guy that he got the raw deal. See The Power Of Cheese for details.
It's surprisingly common for products to talk un-ironically, un-ashamedly about all the wonderful things the product will do for your life that have literally nothing to do with the product. Some make these claims seriously, or at least hoping you will take them that way. Steuffer's macaroni and cheese ads went too far and explicitly claimed it would help raise your grades...for once they got in trouble.
A1's "yeah, it's that important" ad campaign is about being Serious Business.
Another ad that is set in an arctic station, similar to the above Bud Light example, has some people pull up and find all the people inside starving to death. They find that there are plenty of rations and enough food to go around, then they come across the reason for their hunger: there's no more Heinz ketchup left, the only bottle being empty.
What would you do for a Klondike bar?
Don't forget that Shaving Is Science.
Double Pits to Chesty. that is a messed up deal.
From a anti-perspirant commerical: "On the outside you are cool and collected, but in the inside your emotions are free. Emotions make you sweat 5 times more. That is why you need..."
In one Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial, getting precisely what you want is such Serious Business that when the Variety Bucket (three different kinds of chicken in one container) is placed before the family, they all slump in sulky disappointment — until Mom comes to the rescue and rotates the bucket one hundred twenty degrees clockwise, so that each family member has his preferred form of chicken directly in front of him.
An early-80s commercial featured a family arguing over which kind of toothpaste to buy. The teenage son says, "But mom, what about my social life? I need a gel for fresh breath."
Lampshaded by Ann Miller's commercial for Campbell's Great American Soups. Just watch it.

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In the world of Yu-Gi-Oh and especially the sequel Yu-Gi-Oh GX, the card game of "Duel Monsters" is a global phenomenon. National tournaments, academies, politics, etc. all revolve around a fairly simple collectible card game. And this isn't even including the mystical occult properties, known only to a few: that Duel Monsters is actually based on magical games powerful ancient Egyptians used to play. Yes, ancient Egyptians.
- Yu-Gi-Oh the abridged series shows that by replacing the term 'Duel Monsters' with 'a children's card game,' every conversation sounds ten times more ridiculous
- The Abridged Series actually lampshades this in Episode 14, where Kaiba himself states that "Card Games are Serious Business."
- GX's protagonist Judai attempts time and again to convince his opponents that their reasons for getting into the game are wrong, and need to remember that the main point of the game is to have fun. Pretty amusing when you consider that these people go to a prestigious boarding school for the sole purpose of learning how to play it better.
- Yu-Gi-Oh GX has pushed this whole nonsense even further by revealing cardgames are the foundation of the universe, rather than just mere ancient Egyptian game of power.
- At one point during GX, Duel Monsters is placed next to business and politics in terms of importance and world-control. You heard me.
  - Only logical given the above spoiler. Its certainly replaced religion in cosmogony, so why shouldn't it replace it publicly!
- Duel Monsters seems to be the only game in the entire world, it's likely Pegasus has a monopoly on entertainment unknown to most of the world.
Akagi breaks people's minds by playing mahjong.
In Beyblade, the sport of Beyblading itself. It seems like if anyone wants to Take Over The World, they have to do it with duelling tops.
- It is not so much as the tops as the "Bit Beasts" - artificial or spiritual entities of animals that allow the tops to pack as much yield as a nuclear bomb without the nasty side effects. Serious Business however.
Bakugan suffers from this, to the point where it almost seems to be a parody of the Mon genre. Sadly,it is not. It's just an anime that apparently has children who are overly attached to their Bakugan and... Don't get me started about how the Bakugan Universe gets into this matter
Subverted in Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer, CLAMP's version of a typical shonen battle-game series. At first, it seems to fit perfectly, as Angelic Layer matches are broadcast on the sides of buildings to large crowds, Angels are treated as Companion Cubes, and Shuuko has abandoned her daughter in favour of playing professionally. However, as we progress through the series, we realize that it was just a busy public place where people wanted to watch a sport (much like football), people that take the game too seriously frequently learn from being defeated that they should just have fun, and Shuuko's debilitating self-loathing, which propelled her to leave her child, is cured by her coworkers' support and her daughter's forgiveness. The competition is seen to most people as just a normal, if odd, game.
Duel Masters is another card game anime. It's not quite as blatant about it as Yu-Gi-Oh, but stadiums are still packed full of spectators watching our heroes play cards.
- Given that it's an explicit parody of Yu-Gi-Oh that's hardly surprising. Besides, they really are summoning magical beings from other worlds, and that would be pretty epic to watch.
Bread is treated as Serious Business in Yakitate Japan, although given the wondrous properties of the hero's own bread, (including the ability to rearrange the fabric of reality and send people back in time), perhaps this shouldn't be surprising.
- The whole point of the series is hanging lampshades on this trope.
In Ai Kora, quite a number of characters seem to take their personal fetishes far too seriously (including the protagonist!) One chapter involves Maeda butting heads with a band of militant meganekko fetishists, who are up in arms over a fake glasses fad and go around breaking the glasses of "false" meganekko.
Serial Experiments Lain. The Wired: Serious Business. Just like the actual Internet.
- Justified. The Wired is used as a tool to create gods, spy on people, and plot murder.
- Uh, the anime shows that most people don't really think the wire is Serious Business. It's just fringe sects of lunatics that have stumbled upon it's true power, kinda like the Internet truth be told.
- Also very much justified, as even in the most mudane level the society is utterly dependent on the Wired - even traffic goes haywire if someone hacks the right databases. And this is very close to Truth In Television, as well - global economies would utterly collapse in the absence of the Internet.
Arguably, the moral lesson of Martian Successor Nadesico is that treating Humongous Mecha Anime as Serious Business can cause, or at least exacerbate, all manner of death and destruction. If nothing else, the series constantly employs Mood Whiplash to keep its own audience from taking it too seriously.
- Of course the whole thing kind of falls apart when you realize the Space Whale Aesop buried within: "Don't be a fan of Super Robot anime, or else you'll go crazy and try to destroy humanity!" More so, the interesting Fridge Logic sinks in when you realize they made a Giant Robot anime to...convince people to not watch Giant Robot anime. Yeah...
The gondolier business in ARIA consumes all of the protagonists' lives. Sure, it's their profession, but they're basically just transporting tourists through the canals of New Venice and it is indicated that they'll stop once they get married.
As Hayate No Gotoku advances its plot, it seems the butler career becomes more and more Serious Business. The bare minimum seems to be equivalent to applying for a shounen fighting manga's character job. Props if you also have a Finishing Move.
- You act as though having a Finishing Move is a bonus. It is made abundantly clear early on that all butlers should have at least one.
Lucky Star's Anime Tenchou brings gallons of hot blood, various superpowers and nuclear explosions to the humble business of running a comic and animation store. Why can't real managers be like this guy? And wait till you see his boss...
- Bonus points for being voiced by Tomokazu Seki.
In the manga Iron Wok Jan, Chinese cooking competitions can fill stadiums and attract celebrity judges, and a particularly famous food critic is a popular celebrity. There's even a shadowy organization that secretly controls all food production and distribution throughout Asia and is trying to take over the Chinese cooking industry of Japan by defeating Japan's top young chefs in a cooking competition.
Characters in Hunter X Hunter think deeply and strategically about everything they do, in hilariously excessive detail, from playing rock-paper-scissors to using Internet search engines to making sushi to buying antiques to guessing a secondary character's gender. At one point, a character haggles down the price of a cell phone, and a crowd bursts out into applause.
Averted in Hikaru No Go: The main characters take the game of go very seriously...but this is justified, as they ARE professional players (much like go players in the real world). Additionally, it is made clear that the world at large doesn't particularly care about the game, even when it knows it exists.
Grander Musashi takes sports fishing very seriously, to the point that anglers call out a technique whenever they throw fishing lines into the water, and treat their fishing rods and lures as Companion Cubes. There's even an academy that trains would-be anglers in the dark arts of fishing. In the sequel, seven divine lures that everybody is after created by Poseidon are the reason for the sinking of Atlantis.
Keroro Gunsou plays with this trope by having Keroro and Giroro treat everything from vacuuming, to going to the beach, to jumping rope, as though it were either a major military operation or a Cooking Duel to decide the fate of the galaxy.
Lunch becomes serious business in one episode of Ah My Goddess, with Skuld and Mara fighting over a boxed lunch with bombs and magic, culminating in Skuld throwing herself off a roof to catch it before it hits the ground.
Metal Fighter Miku makes women's wrestling Serious Business. Arguably justified in that this is a basic tenet of pro wrestling in the first place (see below).
Likewise, Kinnikuman features wrestling matches that can decide the fate of the earth, and are frequently to the death.
The Japanese junior high school tennis circuit in The Prince Of Tennis.
Rika (Ruki) in the English dub of Digimon Tamers. While all the characters are perhaps a little overly into the Digimon card game even before having to use their cards to save the world, Rika is by far the most intense. She is even appalled at her mother for not taking the childrens' card game seriously enough.
- This is the whole reason she got a Mon in the first place.
In Macademi Wasshoi, a good portion of the school is made to run a magical Death Course, no holds barred, to decide the next school uniform. The students who aren't putting their butts on the line watch this in a large stadium with commentary, video cameras, the works. Serious Business indeed.
- You can also mention Sakuma, who takes dramatic deaths (going so far as to hand a person a gun), and Moe fetishes seriously (he wreaks explosive violence on someone for tricking him with fake moe glasses)
The What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome Deep Immersion Gaming duel between the SOS Brigade and the Computer Society, with Haruhi promising severe punishments to the Brigade if they lose, and even Kyon getting into it by the end.
- Come to think of it, Haruhi takes pretty much everything this way, game or no.
Battle B-Daman. Apparently, in the "B-Da World", a person's social position, level of respect and moral actions are defined by playing marbles. Not playing B-Daman is something so bad that people don't even recognize you as a person (that's the message that the first episode gives to us). And of course, playing with marbles is also a good way to take over the world and be a world-threatening criminal. But to be fair, the marbles can rape physics. Freely.
801 TTS: Airbats has a ramen-eating contest bet on by not only the entire JSSDF, but Chinese and American troops as well.
In Mahou Sensei Negima, Negi and Fate attempt to have a diplomatic meeting and nearly come to blows while arguing about whether tea or coffee is superior. The negotiations later fail for an unrelated reason.
The H-manga Shiwasu no Okina applies this to fellatio, of all things. The competition between one high school's competing fellatio clubs is a matter of life or death.
Welcome To The NHK does this with hentai games, though that might just be an exaggeration to reflect the Satou and Yamazaki's respective mental derangements.
- Of course, it becomes much more serious if you want to make money by making a hentai game.
In Shuffle, the Instant Fanclubs in the anime have carried over into real life, with Ship To Ship Combat, of course.
- Never say Kaede is a psycho Knife Nut Stalker With A Crush in front of members of Kitto Kitto Kaede-chan if you value your life.
Watanuki pretty much Hannibal Lectures a woman he is teaching cooking because she won't eat what she cooks, as she doesn't want to know herself and will not eat what people she is familiar with make either. Yea, that's right. If you don't eat your own cooking or others, it means you don't know yourself or them and are afraid of commitment. Or something.
Air Gear: roller skating is serious business, with a huge subculture, tournaments, gang wars, and a special police force dedicated to catching (read: often brutally injuring) unruly Air Treckers. It should be noted that the manga makes a point of addressing this trope. Both Simca and Ikki state that A.T.s should be for fun, and not used as tools for violence or control.
- Not to mention further on in the Air Gear manga, a cameo appearance from BARACK OBAMA reveals that the roller-skates are pivotal to his plans of change. Seriously.
  - It's later revealed that in-universe the technology developed for Air Trecks was integrated into everything, from transportation to weapons technology, and the Sky Regalia is basically an universal remote that would allow the owner, for example, to control the world's nuclear weapons stockpiles. So yes, Serious Business.
Beauty Pop treats styling this way, to the point where heroine Kiri inherits her super-stylist father's special techniques: The Corkscrew, the Whirlwind, the Wizard, and their signature faster-than-the-eye-can-follow precision hair-cutting.
In Read Or Die, books are most definitely serious business.
{{Bakusou Kyoudai Let's & Go}}, it's a series about mini car racing!
Kitchen Princess, like the Beauty Pop example above, treats baking and pastery-making as though it could create world peace if heroine Najika could just make the perfect flan.
In any anime with cooking context, cooking is Serious Business. REALLY Serious Business. Watch Chuuka Ichiban, for example.
In Saki Mahjong is Serious Business, with "hundreds of millions of players" and tournaments get media coverage, announcers, and high-tech anti-cheating devices.
- And in The Legend Of Koizumi mahjong is even more Serious Business. World politics are decided by secret high-stakes Mahjong games.
Jumbor Barutronica: Construction workers are heroes and knights, riding giant robots equipped with excavator equipment, and cloned children implanted with the memories of worker-heroes with shape-shifting, liquid metal hands that turn into giant shovels and drills. Justified, as it is set two-thousand years in the future, with the world in shambles because of pollution, so re-constructing the earth is vitally important. But...[[ Construction Knights! On Giant Robots! Shape-Shifting Clones!]

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Bowling is apparently a huge deal in Bowling King. No, seriously. Professional bowlers are all either incredibly badass or Bishounen prettyboys. Oh, and then there's how main character Shautieh Ley's ultimate goal seems to involve taking over the world with bowling somehow; while this isn't explicitly stated, chapter opening pages tend to feature things like a Rushmore Refacement where all of the faces are Shautieh (and similar ones with the Sphinx, etc.) and Shautieh disrupting other sports events.
DC had a Golden Age hero called Manhunter, then bought another Golden Age hero called called Manhunter. In a Ret Con, the two men had an argument over who got to keep the name, and they settled it by having one of them go to another universe.
- That's a Lampshade Hanging on how writers in comics loved to remove problems by having them turn out to take place in alternate universes.
Knights of the Dinner Table has roleplaying games as serious business.
In one Calvin And Hobbes strip, Calvin throws an enormous hissy fit after losing a game of checkers to Hobbes. When Hobbes points out that it's just a game, Calvin cheerfully replies: "I know! You should see how I act when I lose in real life!"
Ike planning a theme park trip. That is serious business. Overlaps with What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome.

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Fan Wars, Music Wars, Console Wars, OS Wars, Browser Wars and Sub Vs. Dub Wars.
One can vaguely understand how fans will watch their favorite work several times over with a fine tooth comb, seek out as much information as possible, create comprehensive websites, and write large essays detailing work's importance on culture, its allegorical themes, and its defining message. If it makes them happy, why not? It becomes true Serious Business when members of Hatedoms do pretty much the exact same thing in spite of their supposed undying hatred of the work in question.
Final Fantasy 7. Serious fucking business especially if people worship the White Haired Pretty Boy making a new religion about following said character.
Shipping is Serious Business. Have you ever threatened to sue a hugely successful author because she didn't make your OTP canon? Harmonians have. Have you ever compared the end of a ship in an animated TV series to the death of a friend or relative (and the sunk ship was more traumatic)? Zutarians have.
Have you ever paid for several full-page ads in popular publications urging people to watch your ailing show? Firefly fans have.
Have you ever threatened to kill a hugely successful director because of a Gainax Ending? Neon Genesis Evangelion fans have (some of which are flashed on-screen in The Movie).
- Or a comic book writer because he turned your favourite character evil and then killed him off (despite the fact it was editorially mandated and the most interesting thing to happen to that character in decades)? Green Lantern (specifically, Hal Jordan) fans have.
  - This just proves that Kyle Rayner fans are more rational, as his character was screwed over just as badly in order to bring Hal back and appease his butthurt fans, without causing any such massive outcry. But then, Kyle was a universal Butt Monkey even before this, so maybe his fans were just used to it.
- Or a producer because he Jonas Quinned the main character? Stargate SG-1 fans have.
- Or a story editor for general Character Derailment? Beast Wars fans have (for whatever Bob Skir did, he was pretty involved with the fans, but eventually stopped making public appearances at BotCon).
- Or a professional wrestler (and the promoter and the referee) for screwing a popular wrestler on his way out? Bret Hart fans (and perhaps all Canadian wrestling fans) have. To this day, Bret Hart is still complaining about it, even though Shawn Michaels has already admitted that he was in on the screwjob.
- Or a video game journalist for giving a 9.5 score for a game that should have received four 10s? Chrono Cross fans have.
  - Penny Arcade have done a comic about some people calling reviews of 9 out of 10 for Metal Gear Solid 4 'appalling'. Its newspost chronicles another reaction that will leave you either completely stunned or completely in stitches.
- Or the CEO of the American division of a major Japanese video game company because he refuses to acknowledge the existence of a game's fanbase? Earth Bound fans have. (Here's looking at you, Reggie Fils-Aime.) And when said site had written a fan-fic about the site members engaging in fights with NOA to get Mother 3 (Earthbound 2) released? Not to mention the several fairly large mail campaigns that have achieved a certain amount of notoriety. Starmen.net is Serious Business.
- Or a major animation studio for introducing a character that's annoying to them and claimed that said character "ruined their show"? Scooby Doo fans have.
- Or an MMOG company for cutting characters' ludicrously obscene amounts of power back? City Of Heroes fans have.
  - There are some City Of Heroes fans that are still upset that the devs haven't introduced certain costume parts (Butt Capes) yet.
- On the VG Cats forum we call this "Nerd Rage," and we use the term to acknowledge that we are getting angry over something that should never be taken this seriously. Someone didn't know who River Tam was. We Nerd Raged. And then we left it be. The Nerd Rage system is a wonderful and glorious thing.
- Or the CEO of a production company because his company had the nerve to change the names of characters, remove cultural references that may be confusing for kids or offensive to their parents (including instances of blackface), and change the soundtracks of the animes they dub?
Witness the Professional Wrestling fans who get a little too happy when someone they find to be annoying and/or unskilled gets badly injured and has to take a long period of time away from wrestling. Often there's even the possibility that they may never come back, and this only seems to make certain people happier.
Pick a hobby, any hobby. This Troper has heard horror stories about cross-stitching forums.
- Feel free to Google some of the fun and games over on Usenet's rec.crafts.textiles.needlework. This editor got tired of the playground bitch pack behavior and the lack of grip on reality.
The debut of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite Of Spring was met with a riot between supporters and opponents of the work. Ballet: Serious Business since 1910.
Have you seen the Twilight fangirls? What other group of fans have completely disregarded their home-life just to dedicate their lives to this fandom? I'm talking about forty-year-old women here.
- Not to mention assulting people and scaring the actors who play the book's characters in the movie.
British comedy is such a serious business for the members of the Cooked'n'Bombed website that they went to the trouble of holding their own anti-British Comedy Awards, The Tumbleweeds, for what they felt were the worst achievements in British comedy. Although partly a response to the self-congratulatory smugness of the original awards themselves, much of this seemed to be mainly an excuse for the people behind the website to launch ad hominem attacks at Ricky Gervais.
Otakuism in Japan, where there is an exam. Passing that exam grants you an ID and a certificate.
Videogames in South Korea are such Serious Business (World Cyber Games), that professional matches of games, most notably, Star Craft are capable of moving literally millions of dollars, are often played in full sized stadiums with giant screens, and are also broadcast simultaneously on nationwide networks. Jokes about Star Craft being described as "South Korea's national sport" are even common among the Western gaming community. This has even resulted in a number of deaths and involvement by organized crime. PC Gamer magazine half-joked that they wouldn't be surprised if the South Korean government declared the day of Star Craft II's arrival to their markets a national holiday. Players who play can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars playing each year.
- Star Craft fans can now earn college credits for playing it.
- Other examples are the well-known story of Koreans playing for so long they die of starvation. Also, a joke concerning Star Craft II is that it will include the following play speeds: slow, normal, fast, fastest, and Korean.
- Also, Super Smash Brothers tournaments, which have teams, official events, an annual world tournament, and a rather nice cash. The game's fans even consider it a sport.
So many people in Japan would take off work to get and play the latest Dragon Quest on its launch that the government would actually negotiate with the publisher to make sure it would be on a day where they could spare the workers. Schools may have even been closed.
Cosplay. A lot of people seem to forget that the entire point to wearing the costume is to have fun. This leads to the following types of Fan Dumb:
- Elitists. Cosplayers who relentlessly assault people who haven't mirrored the character 100% or who used perceived substandard materials or techniques.
- Snarkers. People who feel the need to relentlessly stalk cosplayers on the internet and mock them for their cosplaying. Entire forums and communities exist to do nothing but humiliate people like this, with the frequent cry that a cosplayer has ruined their show forever. It's a wonder how people like this deal with trick or treaters.
  - And god forbid you commission your costumes...
Want to see proof that Yu-Gi-Oh isn't completely out there (though on a much smaller scale)? Magic The Gathering. Considering the money to be made as a top-tier player, it's somewhat understandable.
- Magic itself, however, averts the Serious Business in many ways, including Joke sets (Unglued and Unhinged, which feature cards that have no mechanical basis with the rest of the game,) and several non-Un cards that were deliberately meant as jokes. For example, a legendary creature, Norin The Wary, is so cowardly that it runs and hides whenever a spell is played or a creature attacks, even if the creature is Norin itself.
  - And while Magic has its share of Stop Having Fun Guys, even a lot of people aiming for the professional tour will enjoy a casual game to blow off some steam.
- The Yu-Gi-Oh! card game, however, is such Serious Business in real life, there's actually been several tournament scandals and Internet Backlash from the creators over the game.
- This troper had a first-person experience of a hobby store having their entire shipment of a new run of Magic cards stolen the night before they were supposed to be put on sale. And the $40,000 it would have cost to buy them all left on the counter. In cash. (Presumably the theft was perpetrated due to the per-sale limit on card packs the store was enforcing.)
- So, Kaiba was right?
There have been extremely vicious battles on Internet forums over the differing versions/spinoffs/derivatives of Dungeons And Dragons, even going as far as legally actionable activity.
The GameFAQs Character Contests are a key example of how people will take things too seriously. This editor stepped onto the forums of the site during one and found terms like "the Noble Nine" bandied around, much to his confusion; apparently a simple popularity contest was serious enough to create an entire lexicon for. When a Tetris L-Block won the last contest the site exploded.
- I personally come from the exact board you're talking about; I've been a regular there for years, and I'll have you know that few of us take the contest that seriously. Hell, we enjoy it, but in the same kind of way one enjoys video games and learns one's terminology; we don't take it that seriously in the meantime. As a matter of fact, when L-Block won, a good half of the board was celebrating. Seriously, it's like saying someone takes Tales Of too seriously because they know what an "arte" is and will openly discuss them.
  - But some take it too much. Not only some people on the contest board create websites (including a wiki, linked to above) that have detailed info on every match of every contest, but they create things such as "lists of supposed strength in a poll".
Fandom_Wank, especially the ofshoot Other-Than-Fandom, shows us that anything can be Serious Business. We're talking buttercream is evil, pigs don't carry e. coli, and shampoo bought from an overstock store will kill you dead.
Harry Potter in general is Serious Business. Beyond the shippers, we have the groups who wrote long-winded essays about the deep symbolism of a throwaway joke and its obvious foreshadowing, only to find out by the end that it was just a throwaway joke. Most just bitch about supposedly being betrayed; some demand that JKR rewrite the whole series to validate them. Outside of fandom, there are the groups that honestly believe that reading the books will lead to demonic possession. Basically, if you value your sanity, never say that Harry Potter is "just a kids' book".
Neon Genesis Evangelion fans are weird.
- First rule of Evangelion fandom, do not talk about RahXephon, second rule of Evangelion, do not talk about RahXephon. You'll get one guy who likes it AND Evangelion ("oh no u dont idiort"), and twenty who will promptly bitch and moan about it being a ripoff and yet haven't watched more than four episodes.
- The gender, as in if Evas have penises or vaginas or neither, is Super Serious Business to some. Some get angry if you say "it" instead of "she" or "her"... oh, and Ver/Vi/Vis. All Hail the Almighty Yui-Sama.
- Some Eva fans have an innate need to prove that the At Field is an all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent force and can do everything and anything forever, including making waffles, despite that being not the case in the show itself. Evas never made waffles.
- Fem-Kaworu is Serious Business. Serious, Serious Business.
- Asuka/Shinji and Rei/Shinji shipping is Serious Business.
- Secretly wanting a good Live Action Adaptation (good being the operative word) is a heinous sin on the order of not bowing the knee to Yui-Sama and offering burnt sacrifices at the church of your choice. Only Anno-sensei can touch Evangelion.
- Don't ever express revulsion for sexual Evangelion-on-Evangelion fanart. You're a prude if you do.
- HOW DARE YOU LIKE SOMETHING BETTER THAN EVA? Grrrrrrrrr Eva is the only anime you should ever watch, on repeat, once a day! Don't ever watch any other mecha anime, either, as it is all inferior!
To go with the above, Humongous Mecha anime is serious business. Can anything defeat TTGL or Ideon? Who is more Hot Blooded, Gai from Gao Gai Gar or Noriko from Gunbuster? Gundam 00 sux, no it doesn't! Stop Having Fun Guys!

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The new Disney Channel move Dadnapped is all about this trope, in which the main character's father is kidnapped by his fans.
The Wizard plays with this trope in that in the world of the film, Nintendo is an integral part of the culture. Everyone knows it, everyone plays, and everyone's plugged in, to the point where "Video Armageddon" is greater than the Super Bowl.
King of Kong is about all the drama behind Donkey Kong world records. "Donkey Kong kill screen coming up..."
- It's a very bizarre thing to hear a little boy telling his dad to stop playing videogames.
- There was even more serious business behind the scenes. Careful editing played up the rivalry and made a more obvious villain out of one of the players - the fandom went apeshit at the Character Derailment,taking sides and flinging poo at anyone who popped their head out to say they thought it was biased/unbiased.
Hip hop street dancing is Serious Business in the film Step Up 2: the Streets. This is cemented from the very beginning with a ridiculously dramatic opening monologue. It gets worse within the first five minutes, where a subway prank involving dancing is reported on the news as though it was a terrorist attack! (right down to the subway being closed down)
Christopher Guest's line of "mockumentaries" each deal with a different subject in this trope: community theater in Waiting for Guffman, dog shows in Best in Show, and folk music in A Mighty Wind.
Ballroom dancing is Serious Business for the characters in Baz Luhrman's Strictly Ballroom.
The Who's rock opera Tommy: Pinball is serious business! They even create a new religion out of it.
Will Ferrel seems to have built his career around this trope: local newscasting in Anchorman, the fashion industry in Zoolander, fraternities in Old School, figure skating in Blades of Glory''.
Speed Racer, of course, has automobile racing, which seems to be a pillar of the global economy.
Streetracing is handled thus in The Fast and the Furious series.
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit features what the writers call "perhaps the first vegetarian monster." To keep some kind of tension given that the monster is no threat to people, it turns out that everyone in town is insanely protective of their vegetables.
- Country fairs ARE serious business.
The crowd is really unnaturally engaged during all of the debates in The Great Debaters, to the point that it's kind of distracting.
In Canadian Bacon, Canadian beer is Serious Business. Enough to lead to a large riot (that nearly leads to war between Canada and the United States), anyway.
In Crossroads, blues music is apparently serious enough to sell your soul to the devil for, and motivation enough to break self-confessed murderers out of custody.
- The selling your soul is a Shout Out to blues legend Robert Johnson who was said to have sold his soul to the devil to play guitar as well as he does.
The Prestige: stage magic (and Tesla toying with the most blasphemous applications of electricity) is serious, serious business. Read: shooting your rival, breaking your rival's leg, cutting off your brother's fingers, pretending to be a cripple your whole life, burying your rival's partner alive, stealing your rival's daughter, getting your rival in jail for your "murder", and the same person committing "suicide" 100 times.
- The shooting, at least, has nothing to do with him being your rival as a performer and everything to do with him having arguably caused the death of your wife. And the cutting off of fingers was necessary to maintain something that went far beyond, and far predated, that particular magic trick.
In High School Musical, basketball is serious business. As is drama, at least in the mind of its teacher, if not in anyone else's.
The 2005 documentary Pucker Up, about five people travelling to North Carolina to compete in the National Whistling Competition.
Mildly averted in Blackball. The film itself is a spoof in which bowling is a very serious business. When the hero sets up a rivalry with the (60 year old) reigning champion and falls in love with his daughter, he wants to show her some of the magic and importance of bowling. Her response: 'I HATE bowling'. He more or less accepts this.
In Green Street (or Green Street Hooligans for Americans), a visiting American learns that football (The main character is told that calling it soccer is grounds for being murdered.) appreciation is Serious Business in the UK, falling into a circle where it leads to brutal gang brawls, mutilation, and outright murder.
- Truth in television. Similar message in Mean Machine, in which football (Soccer to the Colonies) is Serious Business to convicted felons.
In Hot Fuzz, everyone's obsessed with Sandford winning the Village of the Year contest, taking it to homicidal extremes.
School politics and Fraternities in most college movies are played to the hilt, such as in the Revenge Of The Nerds films and Animal House.
Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story does this with professional paintball.
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story parodies sports movies by making Serious Business out of a children ball game played by adults.
In Robot Jox, the fate of entire nations was decided by duels between giant robots.
Both Free Enterprise and Trekkies believe that Star Trek is Serious Business.
No one's mentioned the original "Rollerball" movie yet, where the Rollerball teams represented nations & the matches stood in for wars?
- The problem there is that if a match stands in for a war, then it really is very serious business.
Walter in The Big Lebowski has bowling. Telling that it's a situation is about life or death doesn't do anything. But if you threaten to quit the bowling team...

Close Films

In Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (and its two film adaptations), the Golden Ticket contest quickly becomes a global obsession, to the point that in the old movie, a news reporter says this (not verbatim):
Well there have to be more important things than the golden tickets (Beat). I can't think of any right now, but I'm sure we will.
The board game of Azad in Iain M. Banks' The Player Of Games is so complex and wide-ranging it resembles life. The entire structure of the interstellar Empire of Azad is informed and held together (and named after) the game, used to settle commercial, military, societal and other disputes. The winner of the great tournament is made Emperor. Playing Azad is very Serious Business.
- This is a reference to The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, in which the game really does exactly mirror life itself.
The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hess features the eponymous game. There are universities devoted to it which appear to be the only way to get a tertiary education and the study of the game takes over people's lives as if they were joining a religious order.
Beer brewing takes on literally mythical proportions in The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers.
In one of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels, Archie Goodwin comes downstairs to find an enraged Wolfe burning a dictionary in the fireplace. The problem? The dictionary gave "imply" as a synonym of "infer".
In Gullivers Travels, the nations of Lilliput and Blefiscu are engaged in a war over which end to open a hard-boiled egg, the wide end or the narrow end. Swift intended this as a not-so-subtle satire of both the schism between Catholic and Protestant Christians and the rivalry between England and France.
American Psycho does this with business cards - there's a serious rivalry in Patrick's firm about how good they look, right down to the subtle shades of white and the font. In fact, they're so serious, Patrick kills the people who have business cards better than him (don't worry, that's not a spoiler).
- That's more of a Film Of The Book thing: Patrick's kills in the novel are mostly of "disposable" low-status people (prostitutes in particular).
- American Psycho does this with almost everything relating to appearances — the book commonly spends about half a page of every chapter just listing the clothing, perfume and other brands of status symbols (such as watches) Bateman and his colleagues are wearing at that moment.
Conor Kostick's novel EPIC is a kind of satire of this tendency. It focuses on a group of far-future colonists using a sword and sorcery MMORPG as a system of government. Also, their economy is based around it too - a player's in-game money is their real world money, thus leading to players spending most of their free time grinding lowest level monsters ( since they dare not risk invoking the games permanent character death system ). Not only is their world slowly stagnating, but the Serious Business manner everyone plays the game in is poisoning it to the point that the games AI wants to be put down. By the end of the story, this results in the destruction of the game world, all its beauty and possibility wasted - an implicit end result of uncontrolled Serious Business.
In the Thursday Next novels, art and literature itself are serious business, with wide riots about the surrealist movement, black market fake manuscripts from renowned authors, and fanatics going door-to-door to convince people about who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.
- At least as of the end of the first book, nobody wrote Shakespeare's plays. A time traveller handed him the complete works.
- Anything and everything is Serious Business: cheese smuggling, international croquet tournaments, toast, you name it it'll have an international society (much like real life).
In Michael Chabon's Summerland, Little League baseball is the key to saving the world and three other worlds.
Dr. Seuss's Butter Battle Book is a clear parody of the Cold War and accompanying Soviet/U.S. arms race. The issue that caused the division and started the whole thing off? Which side of the bread is buttered.
Satirized in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The whole first section is mock-heroic and elevates pizza delivery as serious business. Electronic timers are placed on each pizza box from the very second the order is placed, and should the thirty minute timer expire then... Well, what happens next begins with the owner of the pizza company personally visiting the wronged customer and apologising profusely. Since that boss is the Don, each and every pizza delivery driver knows well enough that they'd be better off breaking the speed limit, their cars, the sound barrier, anything, than deliver a pizza at 30:01 or later.
- There was a cartoon short entitled No Tip with a similar plot: A pizza delivery boy is sent to deliver a pizza to the Arctic Circle, to placate an Eskimo wife who's so fed up with blubber that she demands her husband get them anything, anything at all, that isn't blubber. This should be plot enough, but the pizza boy gets there with time to spare on his half hour - but circumstances conspire to keep him from making it. He finally gets the pizza in the door and paid for inside the half hour, but a bear takes a bite and complains about the anchovies. The annoyed wife says, "In that case, no tip!" This does not go over well with the pizza boy, who has a...Little Moment.
- Stephenson seems to be somewhat fond of turning mundane everyday situations into Serious Business™; consider Randy tackling his everyday bowl of Cap'n Crunch in Cryptonomicon, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
- Don't forget the multiple-page memo in Snow Crash dealing with intra-office purchase and use of toilet paper.
In the novel The Kite Runner kite fighting is portrayed a little like this, except not all year long. Apparently true.
Parodied in Terry Pratchett's Interesting Times, when Cohen realizes that the Agatean Empire's obsession with tradition (such as the tea ceremony) is part of the reason it has stagnated. He starts the winds of change by telling his new Grand Vizier (a man totally unsuited to the job, who will therefore be much better at it than the previous incumbent) that there's a new tea ceremony, and it doesn't take three hours, because it goes like this: "Tea up, luv. Milk? Sugar? Scone? You want another?"
Terry Pratchett's Going Postal features Stanley who takes pins Very Seriously Indeed, and is regarded as "a bit weird about pins" even by other pin collectors. When stamps are invented, he gets over it and goes crazy about stamps. He is promptly appointed to be in charge of the stamp department of the Post Office.
Terry Pratchett does it again in Thud!, when a board game is serious business indeed.
- And for Vimes, getting to read a bedtime story for his son, exactly six PM.
Catherine Asaro's The Last Hawk and A Roll of the Dice describe an entire world run by a game of dice called Quis. In The Ruby Dice, the game gets bigger...
The Rape Of The Lock is a merciless mocking of what was, at the time, real life Serious Business. In essence: Some guy cuts a lock of hair from a woman's head, causing much social drama.
Eon and Eternity by Greg Bear revolve around an incredibly high-tech civilization which arose from the ashes of a late 20th century nuclear war. A large chunk of the population eschew that technology, are leery of advances which they see as dehumanising, and strive to live a "primitive" lifestyle based on the technology and norms of late 20th and early 21st century Earth. And their entire philosophy and religion is based on the teachings of... Ralph Nader's consumer advocacy in the 70s and 80s.
- They're even called "Naderites." The characters from the past lampshade this by commenting "Anyone tell him yet?"
The 39 Clues, are Serious Business for all four branches of the Cahill family.
Sherlock Holmes fandom makes this Older Than Television with The Game.

Close Literature

To Adrian Monk, symetry and multiples of 10, among other things, are Serious Business.
The British series Playing For Real featuring the lives of the Real Falkirk Table Football Club, who lived and breathed Subbuteo.
One episode of MacGyver, a Dramatic Hour Long show, had an episode open with a girl talk extensively about the horrors inflicted upon her hobby by store owners. The topic: counterfeit baseball cards. It's a good thing MacGyver is unfailingly polite, lest he tell her to just shut up.
In an episode of Frasier, Spelling Bees are Serious Business, complete with a Shell Shocked Senior Spell Master and a Young Cub trying to reach the top... of Spelling! The episode was devoid of the usual hijinks and focused the humor on the absurdity of the subject. One of the series' better episodes.
- This is Truth In Television. Check out the documentary Spellbound.
  - Seriously, check it out — great viewing.
- This is referenced twice in Akeelah and the Bee:
"Spelling bees are serious business"
and the less formal
"Spelling bees are serious shit."
In a weird meta-example, the British student quiz show University Challenge made national news headlines when the internet decided nobody should be allowed to be that clever. The young lady in question ended up being interviewed about her public image on national primetime breakfast news, simply because some people objected to the way she smiled (was it embarrassment? Or smugness?) when she was told she'd got a question right. University Challenge: Serious Business to everyone except those who actually play it.
- To make it even worse, the team that young lady was on ended up being disqualified after the winning the final because it was discovered that one of the other team members was no longer a student at the University, he was brought back to give them a better chance of winning. Serious Business indeed.
The "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" episode from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Sisko's private little war against Solok turns baseball into Serious Business until Sisko finally sees the light and decides to just have fun.
- Subverted entirely in another episode which has Quark playing a board game brought by some race from the Gamma Quadrant. Eventually he realizes the Seriousness of the Business as his pieces represent members of the crew who have been somehow teleported into the game and are thus in mortal danger through his actions. Although he plays conservatively from then on, he eventually loses all of his pieces; assuming them all to be dead, he is stunned when the missing crew reappear completely safe. As the alien gamemaster explains, it's only a game. This probably also makes it a Shaggy Dog Story.
The Adventures Of Pete And Pete loves this trope played for surreality. Smoothies, Prank Wars, people urinating in pools and the identity of the masked Ice Cream Man Mr. Tasty are all Serious Business. And Artie, the Strongest Man in the World fighting Killer Bees? Normal Background Stuff.

Close Live Action TV

Weird Al Yankovic's version of "Trapped In The Closet," "Trapped In The Drive-Thru," is a ten-minute long song about a husband and wife going to a drive-thru, ordering their food, and paying for it. It includes moments where the wife asks for a chicken sandwich (instead of her usual cheeseburger) and the husband says, "I don't know who you are anymore!" Everything is an Epic moment. At the end, the husband freaks out because they forgot his onions.
- Beyond that, there's the original Trapped in the Closet itself. The composer honestly believes that about 20 years from now people will be talking about a song where, among other things a midget craps his pants, with such banal lyrics as "And then he said, "I'ma heat this chicken."
The war over what is punk and what is not punk.
- Beautifully exemplified by this anecdote:
You ask me, "What is punk?". I kick over a trash can and say, "This is punk." So you kick over a trash can and ask, "This is punk?" and I say, "No, that's a trend."
- And "Rap vs. Real Music".
- Within the rap community there's the whole debate over what's REAL rap music. Almost anything made after '99 is seen as popcorn trash. On the opposite side anything before '99 is played out garbage.
  - Cynics would argue that the bitterness comes from the former group because they hate the fact Gangsta rap/Hardcore hip-hop/Alternative rap/Political rap isn't popular any more. And that their favorite artists are now forgotten (outside of hardcore hip-hop fans), Which is why they say it's "dead". And the latter group gets defensive when it comes to the new stuff being called garbage cause they feel attacked personally. So basically that's why Rap ~~debates~~ Arguments are Serious Business. Especially music message boards.
  - Rap feuds *are* Serious Business. They've resulted in actual murders.
The Norwegian band TNT's original vocalist Tony Harnell left in 2006 and was replaced by Tony Mills, leading to serious drama among fans. Witness this for yourself by looking at the comments for any TNT video.
Black Metal. Let's just say that aside from all the supernatural shit that goes on & the size of the fanbase, Metalocalypse isn't that big of an exaggeration...
- The actions of the fan base are well justified, as everyone knows that "Black Metal Is Serious Business!"
'Tis a brave soul who ventures onto the Muse messageboards and asks the wrong question. If you're lucky, you'll be told to get lost. If not, you'll experience the online equivalent of a public flogging.

Close Music

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

Close Professional Wrestling

In Exalted, one reason the mightiest of the gods aren't directly trying to fix the mess the world's in is due to their obsession with "The Games of Divinity", which apparently are the Platonic Ideal of Fun. A lot of the fans don't like this explanation much.

Close Tabletop Games

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

Close Sports

In the storylines of many ballets, dancing is Serious Business. The hero of Swan Lake dooms his beloved to spend eternity as a swan because he mistakenly dances with the wrong woman at a ball. The titular heroine of Giselle dances herself to death, and later spares the man she loves from the same fate by offering to dance in his place to appease an evil ghost queen who is forcing him to dance again and again. In The Sleeping Beauty, Aurora pricks her finger not from spinning, but from dancing with the spindle despite her mother's warnings that doing so would be dangerous.

Close Theatre

::deep breath:: NO ITEMS, FOX ONLY, FINAL DESTINATION!
Pokémon's combat is so important in its world that people, including kids as young as 10, are allowed to wander around, doing nothing but Pokémon matches. It seems there is nothing considered important that does not involve Pokémon in some way.
- In the most recent games, it is revealed that a Pokémon (Arceus) created the universe. And you can catch it!
- The Pokémon TCG games for Game Boy take this trope to a ridiculous extent, creating an entire civilisation apparently based around trading and duelling Pokemon cards.
- The first generation Pokémon games featured exactly one character who didn't speak of Pokémon or the geography of his native town. What did he say? Something along the lines of "What? Are you expecting me to talk about Pokémon? Not everyone does that, you know."
  - "I like shorts. They're comfy and easy to wear."
- This one has at least some justification: if every living thing in the world that wasn't a human was a potentially-dangerous monster that could be domesticated through the use of small balls, don't you think that a large chunk of society would be based upon that? It'd be no more unusual than real-world biologists, zookeepers, and pet owners. However, the games do kind of get carried away with this...
  - The anime, and the games themselves to a lesser extent, also show Pokémon being used for other tasks that have nothing to do with battling. Fighting, Ground and Rock Pokémon are used in construction tasks that involve heavy lifting and/or digging into the ground, Fire Pokémon are involved in glassblowing and blacksmithing, Water Pokémon are used in firefighting, Poison Pokémon serve as living garbage disposals, Electric Pokémon are used to provide backup sources of energy when the main power in a building goes out... So Yeah.
  - It does seem very remarkable though that the idea of ritualized Pokémon Battling is so heavily ingrained in society that it supplants inter-human violence even in criminal context.
- You think that's bad, take a look at some of the real people who play the games. Arguments arise on every single facet of the game, from arguing between what moves or pokemon should or shouldn't be used, to whether exploiting glitches is acceptable. On the very extreme end, there are some who turn a cloning glitch, letting a player make an exact copy of a pokemon, into a moral argument that is almost word for word the argument over actual real life cloning.
Similarly, in Mega Man Battle Network series, the entire world revolves around the NetNavis, glorified sentitent computer programs, and their fighting; there's classes in the public elementary school about fighting viruses with your Navi, and such oddities can be found online as coffee shops and in the sixth a fish stick vendor where you spend "real" ingame money on treats for these Navis. The series alternates between treating Navis other than Mega Man and Bass as sentient or not.
- Though technically, in regards to the virus battling classes, the state of online networks in the Battle Network world does actually make viral infections Serious Business: utilities and appliances getting shut down, information getting stolen, vandalism, etc. So having Virus Battling classes there amounts to basic self-defense courses here... but the coffee and fish sticks are still pretty silly.
Averted in the Culdcept games. The cards aren't a game in-universe — although sometimes Cepter battles are put on for entertainment in some of the worlds composing it — and given that the ultimate victor gets to create a new world, and the cards let people use magic, summon monsters, and create items out of thin air, they're a legitimately big deal.
In the fan-made RPG Barkley Shut Up And Jam Gaiden, basketball is Serious Business. In the dystopian Twenty Minutes Into The Future, basketball has been outlawed after a "Chaos Dunk" destroyed New York, and almost every basketball player in the world was killed in "The Great B-Ball Purge". Hilarious if only because of how serious everyone is about it, and surprisingly fun to boot.
- lampshaded in-game with the opening dialogue box "Warning: this game is canon."
In the more recent Final Fantasy games, some sort of minigame, usually a collectible card game, is played worldwide. In the most blatant cases, it's possible to challenge someone to a match in the middle of a battle or other disaster.
- Especially blatant in Final Fantasy VIII and X. In the former after time has been compressed, you can still find members of the card-gaming club from Balamb Garden in the blasted wasteland that is left, and in the latter you can use the save-crystal deep inside of the Cosmic Horror Sin to go play Blitzball.
Custom Robo. Who'd think people fighting with robotic dolls would be big enough to have interscholastic and national tournaments and a black market dealing in illegal custom robo parts? Sometimes, you can challenge any old folk on the street with a custom robo cube in their hand, and challenge them repeatedly before going off to a big tournament or some other plot-mandated event.
- It gets worse than that. Custom Robos are apparently vital to police work.
- Somewhat justified. It's mentioned that they were originally simple toys. The serious business came in because of Rahu's influence.
Need For Speed: Underground and Underground 2 started off giving street racers enough money to buy import sports cars, but Most Wanted and Carbon finally went to over-the-top extremes showing quite a bit of street racers with enough gold to buy German supercars won from street racing alone!
While court trials are Serious Business in real life, the Phoenix Wright games elevate this to a new level with how over the top its cases get. And while being a lawyer is quite a respectable career in real life, they're practically superheroes in the gameverse.
- Superhero lawyers? What a crazy concept.
  - Crazy indeed.
- And let's not forget the hotbed of murder and intrigue that is the children's television industry of Phoenix Wright. Deadly serious business.
Similarly, Trauma Center achieves this not by making serious business out of something trivial (lifesaving surgery really is serious business) but by taking its seriousness way over the top.
The rather unknown party game Poy Poy treats throwing stuff at each other like the biggest thing ever. Okay, said stuff is things like big rocks and rockets but still...
Deus Ex: Invisible War. Templars. Majestic. Illuminati. Nanites. Aliens. Nothing to bat an eye about... But competing coffee franchises? SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!
The bonus-chapter of The World Ends With You parodies that: In this Alternate Universe, everything revolves about the game "Tin Pin Slammer", which is actually just a tiny little mini-game in the main storyline. In this Alternate Universe however, Tin Pin Slammer's power is so great, it actually "managed" to make Neku become an hopeless optimist, instead of an Ineffectual Loner. (Count the times Neku's only two smiling Cut-scene-sprites are used in the main storyline. Now count how often they are used in the bonus chapter) Optimist-Neku also parodies the protagonists of shows like "Pokemon", or "Yu Gi Oh", by holding monologues a lá "Oh Tin Pin, how happy you make our world!" or "All these different people can only be united by one thing: TIN PIN SLAMMER!!"
In Super Robot Wars Original Generation, The virtual reality mech sim "Burning PT" is rather popular, enough that the championship match Ryusei participates in is held in a packed stadium.
- Never mind the fact that the whole thing was a Government Conspiracy to discover ~~Newtypes~~ Psychodrivers in the first place.
- Considering that in the Real World, people are plenty crazy about sports (don't even get me started on soccer, people have committed murder because of that game), it isn't strange at all that people in Super Robot Wars are crazy about the mech sim (could be considered a sport).
Nintendogs: hundreds of people will turn up to watch dog competitions multiple times per day, every day, and are clearly paying to attend each time since how else would the generous prizes be funded?
In Touhou Soccer, the Touhou cast will unleash their world-shattering attacks for the sake off scoring a few goals.
Apparently the boys and girls of the Puyo Puyo franchise are very much aware that they're playing a PUZZLE GAME and it's Serious Business to them. Because apparently, if you lose, you die. Mostly. Heck, any puzzle game with a storyline can have this happen. Just finish Panel De Pon with at least one loss on your record and watch.
In the later games of the Tony Hawk series, the ones with actual stories, this is pretty much a given, but Tony Hawk's American Wasteland takes the cake. First off, skating is a means of expression that Da Vinci himself could never fully comprehend. Second, it also gives you superhuman strength, speed, and jumping... power and allows you to slow the passage of time around you. Well, if you undergo the Training From Hell provided by Old Master Master Zen, that is. Not only do the Black Widowz, the most powerful gang in Los Angeles, rule the streets with skating, but the fearsome Skate Club domestic terrorist group uses their moves to level entire buildings.
- Somewhat humorously, though, it's made pretty clear that BMX (which you can also do in the game) is really not that big a deal; the guy who teaches it to you is a spastic nobody who pays you to get lessons from him.
Internet spaceships are serious business.
- Some people take it a lot farther than running for a player council. Consider the guy who has dropped $150,000 to buy his in-game alliance a massive battle fleet, or the plan to kill a super-ship by having a player cut the power to its pilot's house in mid-battle.
Donkey Kong Country Bananas: SERIOUS DAMN BUSINESS!
- Truth In Television. Just ask Guatemala.
Dance Dance Revolution and In The Groove are very very VERY serious business, and the competitive aspect has to be seen to be believed. People go as far as to blame the MACHINE for not being able to recognise their footsteps (What are you, The Flash?) thus denying them a perfect score (Seriously. Go to any DDR/ITG forum and ask about "Pad Misses.")
Inverted in Avalon Code, where the Judgment Link, a sacred ritual for purifying monsters, is played as a sport.
Jak X gives us Combat Racing. Sound like a good thing to watch on your day off? It brings in more than its home city's entire yearly budget. Crime lords are willing to kill to ensure their bets pay off. And according to G.T. Blitz, it could become bigger. Sure, it's not as basic as a card game, but come on, a sport based around driving in circles shooting people is this big?
- Yes.
  - Well, Twisted Metal seems to be serious business for Calypso, just because he's a Magnificent Bastard. It's serious for the competitors because Calypso's a Literal Genie who'll grant them a wish if they win. It's serious for everyone else because there's a chance they'll get gunned down by crazed clowns in ice cream trucks.
Apparently in Artix Entertainment's Sci-fi RPG Mechquest, piloting giant robots is such serious business that your characters actually GO TO SCHOOL FOR IT. Although how important the school is doesn't seem to be explored...
- Which means, for the most part you're just blowing up other Mecha with your mecha. The whole "university" thing seems to be more of an Excuse Plot than anything else, but DAMN if it isn't an awesome one.
- However, if you think about it, it makes sense: There are many dangers in space that can come to the planet and destroy it, using this mecha technology, like pirates, dimensional aberrations, crazy fanatics, a giant evil organization with hundreds of years that has a armada strong enough to seize a planet in few days, and some cute bear ghost. So a school like that is actually a logical option, if you need something to backup the useless sabotaged armada of your planet.
I BUILT NEW YORK CITY!! The Regions each have their own little functions! See, RTA buses,my house, and even have replaced my citizens with llamas!
Is Second Life a video game? Better not tell the people who think Second Life is Serious Business. To them Second Life is nothing short of The Future of the Internet and a Model for the Perfect Libertarian Utopia and is absolutely deadly Serious Business. There are certain Griefer groups on Second Life that like to annoy these Stop Having Fun Guys by making flocks of flying penises, deploying giant talking penises, crashing Serious Business in-game panels dressed up as penises and ... you get the idea.
- Not for nothing, but Second Life's in-game Linden Dollars can be converted to and from real money. People have made substantial amounts of money with in-game businesses, or by extending real businesses into the virtual world. The Serious Business attitude is somewhat justified.
Hot drinks are a in universe serious business in Iji to the Tasen and potentially the Komoto. (It's ambiguous in the later case as all of their advertisements are incredibly over the top.) Tasen logs describe it as "plasma hot" and state that you shouldn't be able to tell if you're drinking it or have been hit in the face with a plasma cannon. This is not a hyperbole: the cups have to be made out of what they use to armor their elites and the threat of running out is listed above the Komoto, a genocidal race that currently doesn't know their location.

Close Video Games

In Red Vs Blue Reconstruction it is revealed that the whole purpose behind the concept of the Red Army versus the Blue Army is all an elaborate training simulation and that almost none of the characters whom we watched during the Blood Gulch Chronicles were actually members of the military at all. However the character Sarge took it 100% serious. Justified in that none of the characters were actually aware that it was a simulation, plus they were equipped with real weapons and ammo and therefore, were at real risk. Sarge is notably still referred to as Sarge, even though he technically has no military rank whatsover.
- The others still appear to be referred to as privates when not being addressed by name, so either it was a throwaway line that was just Wash being insulting, or the writers themselves forgot Wash said it.
DigitalPh33r regularly parodies the concept in his Halo movies with unnamed characters brutalizing things in game and/or shouting to the heavens "THIS IS SUCH A BIG DEAL!!!"
The classic Flash film Craziest is about someone who considers Scrabble a religion.

Close Web Animation

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

Close Web Comics

In the You Tube series, The Guild, gaming is very serious business. More serious, apparently, than parenting or social interaction.
- It's based on Felicia Day's two-year addiction to an MMORPG, so it's definitely Truth In Television.
Pick a flash submitted to Newgrounds. If it involves fighting, the cause of the fight and bloodshed can be as minor as bumping into other character.
An agent/subject of the SCP Foundation has gotten his hands on a [DATA: THE EXPUNGING] card that makes card games a serious business: Said card can destroy the other player... or its user, if he loses.
~~Owning~~ Hiring a boat is Serious Business. Just ask Adam Sandberg and his friends.

Close Web Original

Tv Tropes is Serious Business - "Don't say This Troper, don't Serial Tweak, don't use first-person, don't say 'on the other hand' or 'to be fair', don't suggest an edit in a Discussion page before you do it, don't edit before discussing it on the dicussion page, don't make pages about a popular piece of fanfiction, don't be too snarky, wait you should be more snarky. Stupid ass, why don't you get it right?"
Wikipedia, naturally. The ironic thing is this troper has yet to meet a college professor who will accept Wikipedia as a legitimate source.

Close Websites

The card game in Chaotic is only serious business in parallel universes (two, in fact). On Earth, it is just a very popular game and nothing more.
- Only popular enough to play it during lunch at school without people thinking you're a total nerd (which most players are)
- On the episode Earth To Kaz tends to avert that as well. Anything Chaotic (actually any TCG) is a brand iron used for nerds.
Galactik Football to the point that most of the characters care more about the matches than about the conspiracies, kidnappings and political manipulation taking place. To be fair, their version of football involves the Flux, which itself is a perfect example of Mundane Utility .
Much to the dismay of The Omniscient Council Of Vagueness, most of the world of Metalocalypse worships the Heavy Metal band "Dethklok" as living gods; allowing them to do anything, including destroying nations.
- In fact, Dethklok IS a nation, with the world's 12th highest GDP. And it's just 5 guys and the people that work for them.
- Dethklok is also a god, their songs have the power to form whirlwinds and summon ancient beings.
Would you believe noodles? In the European/Korean animated series Pucca, the noodles made at the local Chinese restaurant are such Serious Business that in one episode, when the chefs believe themselves disgraced because of a just-barely-unfinished bowl of noodles, they go to a DEATH COURSE to redeem themselves, while in another, when they split up into three separate restaurants over a fight, it causes a sort of Zombie Apocalypse, with most of the inhabitants of the village wandering as an aimless, lifeless, pathetic mob, mumbling and moaning about the lack of noodles until they reunite.
Serious Business was parodied in the episode of Family Guy "E Peterbus Unum". In one of Peter's ancestral flashbacks, the Union won the Civil War with a drinking contest.
- Another episode has a running gag revolving around the Serious Business of whether or not to pronounce the "h" in "whip".
  - Hwhat's really funny is the way people seem to understand hwhat Brian's getting at hwhen he repeats the word they just said without pronouncing the "h."
Parodied in Futurama, when the Harlem Globetrotters show up to challenge Earth to a game of basketball. When asked what's at stake, the Globetrotters reply... "NOTHING! There is nothing at stake, and no threat!" After Earth loses the game, further Lampshade Hanging is done by the commentator, who states that "This is a dark day for humanity. Earth... has been beaten... at basketball." In the DVD Commentary, the creators admit that the entire plot was a jab at the network, who always wanted the stakes to be as high as possible.
- However, in another Futurama episode, the Omicronians are so angered by not being able to finish watching the finale of Single Female Lawyer - they attack the Earth, demanding to see the rest of the episode. Talk about Serious Business taken to extremes! Fortunately, Fry's knowledge of 20th Century television helps save the day.
  - Everything is Serious Business to the Omicronians, even that emotion we humans call "wuv."
- Then, of course, Star Trek has actually become a religion in Futurama. As explained by Nichols: "As country after country fell under its influence, world leaders became threatened by the movement's power." Since then, all the episodes and movies have been dumped on Omega 3 (a forbidden world) - and it became forbidden to use the words "Star" and "Trek" in the same sentence.
Played for laughs in many episodes of South Park. Often made funnier by the fact that there are usually other characters that don't care about the serious business of the week:
- You got F'd in the A: Losing at a dance competition is treated as dire as being assaulted. In the extreme, "getting served" sends Randy Marsh to the hospital despite no injuries or even physical contact whatsoever.
- Make Love, Not Warcraft: The boys give up any semblance of life whatsoever to prepare to avenge a player-killing. Meanwhile, Blizzard employees and Randy Marsh (yes, he does this a lot) behave as though griefing is a coming apocalypse.
  - Well of course it was serious business to the (South Park universe counterparts of the) Blizzard execs—If people stopped playing WoW, the execs would have to start coming up with new games!!!
- The Losing Edge: Little League Baseball is Serious Business...for the parents. The kids themselves are trying to lose on purpose so they can go home and play video games.
  - To the point where they turn losing into practically an art form, and are shocked when another team is much better at sucking than they are. Yes. Losing is Serious Business.
- Stanley's Cup: The outcome of a peewee hockey game determines whether a cancer-stricken child will live or die. Stan, who's only coaching to pay off his community service to get back his bike, is endlessly baffled by how important everyone think the game and him being coach are.
- Super Fun Time: Historical roleplaying is such Serious Business that people get themselves shot in the head rather than break character. Everyone being drunk doesn't help..
- Over Logging: Internet deprivation is potentially lethal.
- Guitar Queer-O: Guitar Hero proves a faster path to fame and riches than playing in an actual band.
  - And a faster path to drug addiction...or drug-video-game addiction...or whatever the hell Heroin Hero is.
- And again, Randy Marsh puts his life on the line, to produce the biggest piece of shit ever to escape a bowel, but it was all for nothing, because no one can be as big a piece of shit as Bono.
- In "Pinewood Derby", Randy steals a component from the Large Hadron Collider to make Stan's wooden car roll down a ramp faster than it would using only the equipment from the official kit. After this actually works, another father (whose son's wooden cars had apparently gone undefeated in previous years) shot himself in the head with a pistol.
  - Of course thats only a slight exaggeration of actual pinewood derbies.
- In several episodes, no matter how obscure and/or washed up a given actress is, the people of South Park will, without fail, think she's the greatest thing on two legs since Tyrannosaurus Rex.
In an episode of The Simpsons, barbershop quartet music is Serious Business: Homer and the Be-Sharps start touring around the world, and as Homer's agent put it, "women are going to want to have sex with you". Granted, it was a spoof of Beatlemania, but still.
Recess had one jigsaw/card game thing called "Ajimbo", which everyone slowly becomes addicted to, becoming like zombies that literally forget how to play other games like kickball.
- Don't forget "Monstickers" without those you couldn't even afford to lay on the grass during recess, it gets worse when TJ monopolizes them and even starts charging kids stickers for standing around because they can't afford to play anything (he calls it a "loitering fee").
- There's also the episode where they find the book of King Morty's rules. In the world of Recess, playground monarchs are serious business.
On paper the games in ReBoot sound like it is serious business, but it is justified because these games are a life-or-death matter for the people inside the computer.
The good guys in Get Ed are couriers. The bad guys are evil couriers, bent on ruling the package delivery market with an iron fist.
In The Mighty Ducks cartoon, the titular Duck's homeworld of Puckworld (It Makes Sense In Context... sorta), ice hockey is a way of life.
The Kids Next Door once encountered Rupert Puttinsky, a guy who made "miniature golf" Serious Business... to the point of insisting on calling it as such:
Numbuh 5: They have champs in mini golf?
Rupert: The game is called miniature golf!

And don't you dare call miniature golf a stupid game, either.

For the titular organisation, many kid activities are Serious Business and often threatened by adults. Case in point: the ban on drinking (root) beer in "Operation Pop", a prohibition parody.

The Beach Episode from Avatar The Last Airbender hangs a lampshade on such things with Azula, Ty Lee, Zuko, and Mai playing a friendly game of volleyball at the beach. When Azula spikes the ball and scores the game point, she makes the ball explode and completely loses it:
Azula: Yes! We've defeated you for all time! You will NEVER rise from the ashes of your shame and humiliation!... Well that was fun!
- As is dating, (and please note, she's only just met the guy and had her first kiss):
  Azula: Together, you and I will be the strongest couple in the entire world. We will dominate the Earth! (columns of blue fire burst from her hands)
  Chan: Uh... I gotta go.
  - Given that Azula, despite her age of 14, is fresh off her conquest of a supposedly unconquerable city, it's perhaps unsurprising that everything is serious business to Azula. Not to mention the number of gifted kids that have problems relating socially to people their age.
Pretty the entire basis of Fillmore! is every aspect of middle-school life is overblown to something everyone's life revolves around.
- Let me reiterate, EVERYTHING is Serious Business, including the Bocci Ball team, Standardized Tests, the School Mascot, a Mini-Golf tournament, Macaroni Art, the world's longest-living Tomagotchi Expy, Baseball Card Forgery, Abstract Art, and tricking kids into stealing scooters so he can look good by giving them to poor underprivliged kids in Russia.
For most of Ratatouille, this is averted, with food only being given relatively reasonable import... until the climax, when Remy's cooking — and the revelation of his role as the chef — are enough to induce a Heel Face Turn in a sadistic critic.

Close Western Animation

A blogger known only as "Speedzzter" went NUTS after Kyle Busch gave Toyota their first NASCAR Sprint Cup win. His rant must be read to be believed.
A secretary in the Mars Corporation once tried to break up an argument between two members of the board with 'Gentlemen, gentlemen—remember it's only sweeties!'. Yeah—tell that to the chocoholics wandering around.
Most (if not all) fads could definitely qualify for this trope. Some more specific examples:
- The Beanie Baby craze of the late '90s.
- Tickle Me Elmo
- Cabbage Patch Kids in the early 80's
- The Pet Rock.
- Beatlemania.
  - Modern Beatlemaniacs still tend to believe Beatles4ever.
- Hula Hoops in the '50s.
- Going way back, the Dutch Tulip Craze.
  - Subverted (can you do that in real life?) by the fact that it actually became the basis of their economy, making it of vital importance to people's livelihoods. Then the bubble burst...
Let's not forget the mini-scandal Fox News got into with their report on Anonymous. Apparently, Anonymous can blow up yellow vans with ease, and are "hackers on steroids." Anonymous was so amused by this that a meme got started about how buying "dog curtains" can protect you from various things, including exploding yellow vans.
In the UK tea is such Serious Business that the British Standards Institute brought out a 5,000 word document on how to prepare the perfect cuppa (legal designation BS 6008) and the UK Governement once worried about how to maintain tea supplies in the wake of a nuclear conflict. A very Serious Business indeed!
- That's not the worst of it. In order to raise enough money to buy all the tea they wanted from China, in the 1800's the UK got a significant fraction of the country hooked on opium, and then fought a couple of wars to keep China hooked.
- Tea has been very, very serious business in Japan for a very long time. The arts of poetry and the incredibly formalised Tea Ceremony were every bit as important to Bushido as combat prowess. Schools dedicated to the tea ceremony have existed for generations and every possible aspect of the ritual, both the physical performance of it and the symbolic aspect, has been carefully studied and mapped out. The ceremony is loaded with social, philosophical and spiritual meaning and is one of the greatest traditions of Japanese culture.
Similarly in the western world, particularly continental Europe and especially France, wine. Oenephiles will spend thousands on the right glasses, the right storage facilities, and all the little doodads for serving, and that's not even counting the wines themselves. Serving, tasting and pairing are as formal and ritualised as some of the stricter religions. And then you get people who are REALLY serious about it.
Weddings are serious business. On average, Americans spend about the price of a decent car to throw an extravaganza including catered meals, professional music, flowers, champagne, photographs, limos, and clothing that will be worn only once (if it's not going right back to the rental store) to celebrate nuptials that could have been completed with a fifteen dollar fee and maybe a blood test. And Heaven help you if Bridezilla (or Groomzilla, Mother-of-the-Bride-zilla, etc.) rears its ugly head...
Similarly, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs. By Jewish law, a child attains "adult" status (for religious obligations and privileges) automatically simply by turning 13 (for boys) or 12 (for girls), no commemoration required (no, not even reading from the Torah). Nevertheless, many parents will spend as much—or more—on a Bar/Bat Mitzvah party (or two, even three for the same kid) as they would on a wedding or, as in the above example, a "decent car."
Birthday. Parties. Because your three-year-old cares whether or not everyone you know is invited, who baked the cake, how big said cake is, whether you have a moonwalk (which very small children can't even use), pony rides, clowns, magicians, hundreds of expensive presents — after a while it clearly becomes more about the parents. And don't even mention "My Super Sweet 16".
Michael Jackson fans. This is a particularly pronounced example: since many casual fans (at least in the U.S.) gave up on him from the child abuse allegations of 1993 onwards, those that remain can be frighteningly fanatical. They're the ones prone to swallowing his claims that Invincible didn't sell as well as expected because of racially-motivated sabotage on Sony's part, or that he really hasn't had all that much plastic surgery, or that there wasn't anything wrong with dangling a baby over a balcony, etc.
- The United States Senate had a moment of silence to commemorate his death.
The art of magic (not the card game, actual illusions) is pretty serious business for the practitioners, but both they and the (anti-)fans tend to take this way too far. Fans go beyond FlameWars over who is the best magician and into vitriol mud-slinging (while the Fan Haters just try to ruin everyone's fun), while magicians themselves write out hit contracts on any fellow prestidigitator who breaks their vow of silence and reveals the secret to their illusions.
- We demand to be taken seriously.
Fonts, apparently. The amount of vitriol towards Comic Sans is enough to power a... car that runs on vitriol.
- The eternal battle between Helvetica and Arial: the two popular fonts are nigh indistinguishable to civilians, intolerably different to font snobs. It has inspired its own pro-Helvetica game at http://www.mimeartist.com/helvetica/.
- For the curious: Sans is for electronic screens. Serif is for print. Monospace is for consoles/code. That's about as serious as fonts should ever get...
The act of Loading the Dishwasher is Serious Business. This Troper at first thought he was overreacting at times when he got annoyed at his family members were loading the dishwasher in ways that would prevent water from cleaning the dishes fully. When asking his mother about this, she told him that she had heard of whole relationships being ruined by disagreements on how the dishwasher should be loaded. This Troper doesn't worry so much anymore.
- It is, sort of. On average, 4 Americans every year die due to improperly loaded dishwashers. For the record, make sure all the pointy things are facing downward.
- This is actually a minor plot point in Johnathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, leading to the father and groom having a dishwasher-loading competition.
- There's also the consideration that getting it really badly wrong can damage the machine, leading to expensive repair bills.
Along that line, there's The Toilet Seat. Whether that's left up or down is of earth-shattering import.
Sometimes Serious Business can be an amazing and a very important thing for us all. An example of this is recorded in the documentary, The Rape of Europa where curators, historians and even the military (!) worked very, very hard to preserve, save and return artwork after they were looted or destroyed by Nazi Germany. I do not know where to start when it comes to the extent of these people trying to save the masterpieces so great art and culture would not be lost forever.
Americans spend $40 billion on their lawns annually.
Orchids are Serious Business. These flowers are apparently so appealing that wealthy orchidophiles will travel around the world searching for new and rare species, since they Gotta Catch Em All.
- Back in the day, expeditions were so dangerous, people died for the orchids. Thankfully, people don't seem to do that anymore and turned to selective breeding for fancier flowers.
- And EVER Yone had an Orchid discovery tale!
Alcohol is very serious business. You have to shell out quite a bit of money for the "Good" stuff and if you are a guy, you have to drink this kind of alcohol, if you are a girl you are allowed to drink everything the guys do but should drink the "girly" stuff that guys can't put in their mouths under penalty of being called nicknames making fun of their sexual orientation or intelligence. Then you have to mix it the right way, and even when you get people who hate alcohol and don't want to taste the toxin in their beverage then it has to be made the exact right way. Alcohol is serious fucking business full of people calling non-drinkers uncultured, Unwritten rules about what you can and can't drink, and people who were told it was worth every penny and spent the night dry-heaving.
Similarly, bird watching is Serious Business. Actually, to be more specific, filling a Life List is Serious Business. (Heaven forbid you observe the rare bird and learn more about it; all you have to do is mark it on the checklist.)
- As CBS learned the hard way...
The US government brings us MIL-C-44072C, a 26-page military specification for oatmeal cookies and chocolate-covered brownies, complete with percent-by-weight requirements for the ingredients.
- I'm not sure what's scarier: that the government paid someone to type that up or that I'm not the least bit surprised that they did.
- Apparently it's not as silly as you might think, it is the requirements of food to sell to the military. While you might think, "Why doesn't the military just buy normal commercial food?", the answer is that the military is such a large market that contractors are willing to create food just for them, and if it is cheaper than buying wholesale...
The Oxford Comma. Is it necessary, pointless, or to be avoided at all costs?
- See also the singular 'they'. If someone wants to use it, they can, unless they get caught up in the war.
Alliance versus Horde in World Of Warcraft. The arguments inevitably get nasty and personal.
Ice cream is serious business. And worthy of plenty of backlash.
The board game Go became so popular in Edo period Japan that the state appointed a Godokoro or Minster of Go. He then founded the Honinbo Go house which specialized in teaching and training Go players. Soon after three other state controlled houses sprung up. The houses would compete in official games that took place in the shogun's castle, sometimes even in the presence of the shogun himself. Because each house's and individual's prestige was on the line, these games were often intense. The most famous example is the Blood-vomiting game, which lasted four days and ended with the losing player vomiting blood (and dying months later). Serious Business indeed.
Livejournal held an election among its userbase for a post on their advisory board. Cut to people complaining about the voting system, having fights over the candidates, and one candidate dropping out of the race because of an alleged death threat. For other great moments in Livejournal history, see Strikethrough.
The SA Ts and AC Ts. They really should just get robots to administer these, because no one - not even the adjudicators - really wants to go through the whole nonsense of reading the instructions word for word AT EVERY NEW SECTION, but apparently they have to. Also, the fuss over filling in bubbles correctly is hilarious.
British football. It's not called the "barmy army" for nothing!
On the first Saturday in May, a nation stops for the Kentucky Derby. Y'all know what I'm talking about.
Shaw, author of Pygmalion, a play about a phonetics expert, at one point interviewed a noted phonetics expert, a Mr. Sweet. This Sweet could not comprehend how not everyone was completely into phonetics as he was, and Shaw wrote in the prologue of Pygmalion that he the phoneticist did not respect any scholar who was not a scholar of phonetics. Also, Shaw himself had the idea that class distinctions were largely caused by phonetics, and this was obviously a big point in the plot of Pygmalion. So Yeah. Phonetics is Serious Business.
Literature. Do NOT say you just read Great Expectations for fun. You can and WILL be castigated for having a different opinion than others about Watchmen. You can more or less say this for every piece of "literature" out there period.
Education is VERY serious business...Never mind that having a 4.2 GPA won't guarantee you a job because you spent so much time attaining that you have no work experience.
- Such heated debates about majors as well. Pick a major. Any major. That is serious business. Especially stuff like Art and Film that might actually cross into the mainstream unlike some stuff in the Horticultural Field.
  - Or stuff that might be useful, like Horticulture, verses things that will leaving starving on a side walk, like Art and Film.
Cars are very serious business. You have to listen to everything your car is trying to tell you and you can't just get a car and ride it from Point A to Point B. Oh no! you have to get a car that's comfortable, tells you good things, has a high maitenance record, has a high safety record, is made in *Insert country here*...
Sex can be very serious business to some people. No descriptions at all need to be added. Period.
Poodle Haircuts. Dog haircuts. ANY haircut.
Pets can be very serious business to some. But then again there are people who make their lives selling and breeding pets...
Bingo actually can be very serious business. A game that is based by the luck of the draw...very serious business!
Different fields of science get a lot of flak going between them. The most common fights are over which are "real" sciences or "hard" sciences or "pure" sciences.
- Sociology seems to be a prime flame target. And, on that matter... I dare you to mention Kuhn or Feyerabend in a discussion of that sort.
The classic Danish version of the Belgian comic Tintin is very popular, and the outrage reached far beyond the hardcore fans, when it became known that the Danish publishers intended to put out a new translation of the albums. And when people found out that the annoying insurance agent Seraphim Lampion (Joylon Wagg) would be given a new name due to copyright issues, a "People's movement for Max Bjævermose" (his TRUE Danish name) was formed and forced the publishers to pony up the extra cash, so they could use the name Max Bjævermose in the new edition as well
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