Steve learned the hard way that all his jokes for TV had to be about events that had been made much of by TV itself, and very recently. If a joke was about something that hadn't been on TV for a month or more, the watchers wouldn't have a clue, even though the laugh track was laughing, as to what they themselves were supposed to laugh about.
On the subject of contemporary music, film, television and (to a lesser extent) sports, television characters can comfortably mention all kinds of people, expecting that at least most of the audience will know who they're talking about. On most other matters, however, their world becomes very small; TV producers fear any comment that might ever go over anyone's head, and thus only the most obvious and world-renowned people and things are allowed a mention.
It's worth noting that a major work of pop culture can completely turn one subject around and make it a free-for-all. For instance, before Jurassic Park, the only dinosaurs you ever heard about were the Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus and Brontosaurus. Afterwards everyone could suddenly discuss velociraptors and dilophosaurs as though they'd known about them since childhood. The works of Leonardo da Vinci got a similar treatment thanks to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
What is obscure varies depending on time and place. Shows from the 1970s assume that the viewer knows about Ayatollah Khomeini but one can't assume the same anymore, while references to certain American personalities in Family Guy or Robot Chicken will fly over the heads of viewers from elsewhere.
There is one notable case where all these qualms about obscurity get thrown out the window: the Celebrity Star. For obvious reasons, it's much easier to get a guest who's "famous" than one who's actually, you know, well known. If a band makes an appearance, most of the characters will suddenly become fans, no matter how obscure or washed up the band really is (which can also lead to such hilarious situations as the City Mouse suddenly liking country music or the wholesome, mostly white, Dom Com family all loving a rapper who is not normally known for being family friendly). Likewise, B- and C-list actors are all suddenly big stars when they walk onto a TV show and everyone will know them by their real names.
Musical examples of these are often used as Standard Snippets.
Nothing But Hits and Small Taxonomy Pools are sub tropes. See also Weird Al Effect, Public Medium Ignorance, Cultural Cross Reference, Popcultural Osmosis, Eiffel Tower Effect, Everybody Knows That. A specific version is the self-explanatory universal Geek Reference Pool. Contrast Genius Bonus.
Examples
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Anthropology
If television features American Indians, all American Indian tribes can be summed up as Cherokee (typically a white man with Cherokee ancestry), Lakota (not Dakota), Cheyenne, or Apache. And sometimes Navajo. Similarly, South American Indians are either Inca or from the Amazon jungle, typically Yanomamo or Kayapo.
Also, American Indian history pretty much stops in 1890. Any mention of 20th century American Indian history is a throwaway comment about Leonard Peltier or the Siege of Wounded Knee.
All Arctic peoples are Eskimos. All Eskimos are Inuit, even the Yup'ik, and even Eskimo women, though inuit is specifically a masculine plural. There are no Russian Eskimos.
In Canada, however, "Inuit" is the official term for the native peoples of the far North, while "Eskimo" is generally considered derogatory.
And all indigenous people have been completely cut off from the world, with no modern influences on their fashion or culture whatsoever.
All people in the Caribbean are black. There are no Indian or Chinese people.
Art
Rembrandt
Van Gogh
Starry Night
It is a truth universally acknowledged that every shrink, ever, has a Van Gogh reproduction in their office. Most commonly, people expect Sunflowers or The Scream, forgetting that the latter is NOT Van Gogh.
Picasso only ever made cubism. Specifically cubism that resembles Les demoiselles d'avignon. Not only that, but he's also the only cubist ever.
Warhol
Usually just his color palette swaps or his giant soup cans.
Jackson Pollock (not before 1990)
Usually played for fun; one character will express high-flown opinions about Art, then another will say that the first is talking a load of Jackson Pollocks.
An Athena-brand poster print of one of the more well-known Impressionist works (Monet's Poppies Blooming[1]◊ and Renoir's Bal du Moulin de la Galette [2]◊ being particularly cliched examples) has been the default wall decoration of the mousey middle-class British female first-year university student since the Sixties.
A chessboard will be wrongly oriented about 90% of the time, despite it being a straight 50-50 shot.
And anyone describing chess moves will inevitably use the now obsolete descriptive notation, e.g. "pawn to king's bishop four", rather than algebraic notation, which renders the same move as simply "f4".
Playing cards are only used for magic tricks, testing psychics, and three and a half games:
Tarot decks consist of a Death card, a Fool card, and a random assortment of occult or just generally creepy symbols. All reading layouts are horizontal or semi-circular spreads, read left to right.
And for bonus points, a Death card given the wrong interpretation! The Death card does not signify doom and destruction, the card which could be seen to do that is probably the Tower. The Tower is beginning to be referenced more (Harry Potter, Max Payne, Sepulchre) but not as an omen of ruin, just as a place where stuff happens.
There are no cities in Scotland at all, only a few rustic Highland villages like Brigadoon and, presumably, someplace where they manufacture violent Glaswegians. And Loch Ness (with added monster).
Similarly, there are no cities or even large towns in Wales (if it exists at all), just a single in-bred farming village near a coal mine with a long unpronounceable name.
Dublin is the only city in Ireland, aside from ten thousand tiny rural villages populated by leprechauns who say "they're always after me lucky charms" every 10-15 minutes.
If you're not from Western Europe, you can skip Dublin.
There is no such thing as Northern Ireland (except if you're referencing The Troubles).
The (former) Eastern Bloc consists of two parts, a generic Ruritania and the city of Prague. No, there isn't anything else between Germany and Russia.
Speaking of which, Russia has Moscow, full of some combination of crime (in the Moscow Metro!), vodka, and secret police, and Siberia, formerly home to The Gulag.
And Venice, which no one has any qualms at all about it being Italian.
To some people, it's just Rome (home of the Colosseum and the Pope), Pisa (which has nothing but a leaning tower) and Venice (which is known for its gondolas)
China is fortunate enough to have three cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong (the latter being a territory and not a city), and a great wall.
Unless it's ancient China, which is just Xian.
The United States has an amazing eight distinct cities which regularly show up in movies and on TV!:
New York City - almost the default choice when you need a large American city. See Big Applesauce. Doubles as Metropolis in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies.
Los Angeles - the second-largest city in America. Contains Hollywood (which only has a sign and movie studios), palm trees, maybe South Central, and little else. Given that the U.S. film industry is headquartered in the area, setting your film or show here is often simply a case of Write What You Know. Prone to earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, and rioting.
San Francisco - famous landmarks include the Golden Gate bridge, the Transamerica pyramid, and, depending on the genre, either a gay club or Star Fleet Headquarters. Wineries and hippie communes are nearby. Dirty Harry, Journeyman, and Sliders all make their homes here. Prone to earthquakes. Traditional greeting is "Oh, hi <name>."
Washington, DC - exists but consists solely of The White House, the Capitol, the Lincoln and Washington Memorials (the Jefferson Memorial usually doesn't exist in fictional settings for some reason), and The Pentagon, which is actually across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia. The only time "The District" is used as a setting is if your story somehow involves the U.S. Government.
In other words, the fact that it is the capital of the USA is the only reason it exists.
Which is sort of Truth in Television actually: the city didn't exist until it was decided that the US capital should be on the border between the North and the South (New York City was serving as the temporary capital at that point), and the site of the city was picked, and then developed.
On rare occasions, spies will allude to the CIA headquarters in Langley, but are unlikely to mention that it is an actual town in Virginia.
Boston - which is the capital city of Hollywood New England. Home to America's best and brightest students at Hahvad University and MIT (both of which are actually in neighboring Cambridge). The default setting for a David E.Kellyshow. Also home to Irish-Americancriminals, Red Sox baseball fandom, and what qualifies as old money and aristocracy in America. In historical settings, expect either the prominent figures of the American Revolution to be around if the setting is the 1700's, or expect the Kennedy family to show up if the setting is in the 20th century.
Miami - the tropical, coastal city in southeastern Florida where the rich and the beautiful play. Lots of boats and beaches, and thus plenty of opportunities for Fanservice. Expect characters of Cuban heritage. See Miami Vice and CSI: Miami. Very flat landscape. Prone to hurricanes.
If it looks like Miami, but there are tropical mountains in the background, and many of the characters appear to be of Asian rather than Latin American descent, then you are probably in Hawaii, most likely the city of Honolulu.
There are numerous generic urban hellholes with boarded-up buildings covered in graffiti, a corrupt police force, drug dealers on the street corners, violent gangs indiscriminately firing machine guns, and lots of Scary Black People. The Bronx, Queens, the South Side of Chicago, and South Los Angeles are popular choices. Sometimes, however, for the sake of variety, the filmmakers might choose a less-visited city for this backdrop. The Wire used Baltimore. Detroit, Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, and Philadelphia are also possibilities. In Britain, this is either south London, or Manchester.
There's one small, generic, Midwestern town where everyone is white, middle-class, conservative, religious, honest, and full of common sense, if a little naive.
There's one small, generic, Southern town where everyone is gossipy, racist, insular and even more conservative and religious than the folks in the Midwestern town.
There's one small, generic, Western town where everyone is a taciturn, weatherbeaten cowboy.
There's one small, generic, ski resort town in the Rocky Mountains full of rich socialites, hot tubs, and upscale shopping.
Texas contains the city of Dallas, and that's about it; everyone else in the state either lives on a vast oil-bearing ranch, or works in a tiny grubby nameless convenience store in the middle of nowhere. Houston is in Texas, too, but it's just a stretch of desert surrounding the Space Center.
Much like with Munich, Germany, and Oktoberfest, there are a number of American cities that are one-trick ponies:
All you need to know about Israel is that ‘Jerusalem’s for praying and Tel-Aviv’s for playing’. If Israel is ever anything but a country full of religious Jews, expect Tel-Aviv to be somewhat like a modern, liberal European capital (mentioning southern Tel-Aviv, which has poorer and more backward places like HaTikva neighbourhood or the even worse Shack Neighbourhood is never present, not to mention places where dirt-poor work immigrants and refugees live), and Jerusalem will be all about Jesus and a strong religious presence (only somewhat of a case of Truth in Television, as Jerusalem is becoming worryingly more and more Haredic, though it is still a very diverse city). In more egregious cases, people might think Tel-Aviv is the capital of Israel (perhaps justified by the fact that no foreign embassies are in Jerusalem, due to the political wars waged around it with the Palestinians). The Bahá'i temple in Haifa and even mentioning of a kibbutz might come up every now and then. No other town is ever mentioned (again somewhat justified, as few of them have anything in them to interest tourists; the situation in Israeli media is clearly different).
The Middle East supposedly consists of Israel, an oil-backed city with palm trees and rich princes (probably in Saudi Arabia), and Baghdad, Iraq, full of dusty slums and terrorists. Nearby states like Afghanistan (which has no cities) and Egypt (which has Cairo and ruins) may miraculously appear on the peninsula.
The Caribbean will only be resorts and locals who are always stoned Rastafarians. The women will be Ambiguously Brown hotties. If you're lucky, it will be a crime-infested slum full of illegal drugs and gangs. The only country portrayed will be Jamaica, or maybe the Bahamas.
And when we say "Fifth Symphony", we mean only the first four notes of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony. (The first 8 notes, if they let it go on for an "interminably" long time.)
Für Elise
Though Moonlight Sonata might pop up here and there. Even then, it's only the first movement.
Otherwise, the opera cycle from which it comes appears only if "Viking" helmets are involved, usually without any of Wagner's music.
For WWE fans, it's Daniel Bryan's old theme song.
Edward Elgar only wrote "Pomp and Circumstance," a song that's only known for two things: First of all: graduation ceremonies. Second of all: The Macho Man! OOOOH YEAHHH!!!
The only tenor aria is "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot
The only mezzo-soprano aria is the "Habanera" from Carmen
The only baritone aria is Largo Al Factotum from The Barber of Seville
There are no altos, baritones, or basses in these operas; all singers are dignified tenors or temperamental sopranos, regardless of their actual vocal ranges.
The only piano piece ever written is Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2; what happened to No. 1 is as much a mystery as the first four versions of Chanel perfume.
Debussy intended Clair de Lune as an ode to sparkly vampires, right?
Nah, he obviously intended it as contemplative music for casino thieves. (See the end of 2001's Ocean's Eleven and the middle of Ocean's Thirteen.)
In general, the "classical music canon" that average viewers can be expected to know only covers a little over 200 years of music, from the late Baroque period (starting around 1700) to the early 20th century. Good luck finding a non-aficianado who is familiar with medieval/Renaissance/early baroque music, or anything written in the last 60 years that isn't a film score or Philip Glass.
Geography
Central America is one country.
Canada is a small country consisting only of Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and rural Quebec (and possibly the Yukon, although that's as likely as not to be part of Alaska instead).
The only islands in the Caribbean are Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Bahamas, and Jamaica.
The Bahamas are also one place (despite the hint in the name). The Cayman Islands get a mention as the only place besides Switzerland to have an offshore bank account, though no one seems to know where they are.
The Bahamas are not Caribbean, though they're close. They're islands in the Atlantic, north of Cuba, east of Florida. Just look at them in Google Earth.
South America consists solely of Brazil, where they speak Spanish, and Generic Banana Republic Dictatorship led by a Nazi sympathizer.
Asia consists of Russia, India, China, Japan, and Korea, unless the work is about the Vietnam War. (If it is, Vietnam itself does not exist except as a backdrop for American characters.)
There's no such thing as Central Asia.
The Middle East consists of Israel plus any country that the US is currently at war with.
Amsterdam, Holland, and the Netherlands are the same thing, even if the writer is Dutch.
There are no distinct countries in eastern Europe (or central Europe, because it's part of eastern Europe).
Africa is Egypt, South Africa and a Generic Tinpot Dictatorship headed by a corrupt, violent Oxford University graduate.
There is no Oceania, except on the rare occasion that Australia exists. New Zealand doesn't exist at all. (However, if it does, it's known only for producing Rachel Hunter.)
The Pacific Islands consist of Fiji, Hawai'i, occasionally Samoa, and more often some undefined beach with lots of grass skirts. You can just forget about Papua New Guinea.
Ancient Rome began with Caesar and ended with Nero. Their only enemies were the Gauls, Germanic tribes, and rival factions during civil wars.
The entire history of Japan consists of early Tokugawa shogunate and Meiji restoration. If World War II is depicted in a Japanese work, it will only be to show the suffering of good ordinary people, probably in the countryside, and will be strangely divorced from all actual context.
The Sengoku is popular as well. Before that, not so much.
Also, the War started when Germany invaded Poland, then nothing much happened until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The Allies fought some naval battles with the Japanese and then after D-day everything just seems to have resolved itself though there were some bumps in the road like the Battle of the Bulge and the atom bomb on Hiroshima (Nagasaki is often forgotten). Oh yeah, and there were the camps and some rumble around Stalingrad.
The only Mongol is Genghis Khan (whose title is likely to be misspelled as Ghengis Kahn or similar), and the only Hun is Attila. Mongols and Huns are the same thing.
When was the last time you saw Russia pre-Revolution? Peter the Great? Catherine the Great? Who the heck were they? Didn't they rule the Soviet Union sometime between Lenin and Stalin?
In works not made by/for Jews, ancient Israel consists entirely of the Roman period (i.e. the very end), and the debut of Christianity was really important (apparently in spite of the fact that few noticed it for a few centuries).
Gabriel García Márquez, whose One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera are becoming curiously ubiquitous in Hollywood films seeking to depict a character as a literate romantic.
Michener.
The only science fiction writer is Isaac Asimov, and he wrote only science fiction.
The Lord of the Rings is the only standard fantasy novel ever written (that, and "The Hobbit"), and is only read by geeks.
The phrase "I think, therefore I am" indicating that Descartes popped into existence long enough to make one pithy comment, which states that only people who think can be proven to exist—and even then, only to themselves—then disappeared again.
Ayn Rand if the character mentioning her is supposed to be edgy.
Well-traveled Hollywood columnist Bob Fenster once quipped that when asked to name their favorite poet, most people just say "Robert Frost" because it's a catchy name.
The only Ancient Greek states are Athens and Sparta, which only existed during the Persian wars, and the Empire of Alexander the Great. Also, Sparta didn't exist until the movie 300 came out. Hellenism does not exist at all.
Cleopatra and King Tut are the only Egyptian pharaohs. Ironically, although she was the last pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra was ethnically Greek.
There's also Queen Nefertiti, whom most people wouldn't recognize by name, but would recognize a certain statue of her◊. Incidentally, Nefertiti just happens to be King Tut's stepmother. And his mother-in-law.
Ramses The Great is becoming more well known recently.
Caesar, Nero, and the emperor that was most recently portrayed in a BBC mini-series are the only Roman emperors (and maybeCaligula).
Ayatollah Khomeini, if the work was made in the '80s.
Also applies to Strawman Political. The only conservative character we ever seem to see is either the "Bible-thumper" or the Corrupt Corporate Executive (although the John Birch-type wacko appears to be making a comeback thanks to the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, et. al.). Similarly, any left-wing character created after the 1960s will most likely be either a New Age Retro Hippie or a Dirty Commie.
Popular Music
Punch ""Weird Al" Yankovic" into a LimeWire search, and you're bound to find scores of parody songs with his name on them that he didn't write. Apparently, people have never heard of Bob Rivers.
It's particularly unfortunate when this happens with songs about subjects the artist it's attributed to would never touch. Both of the above (fairly family-friendly) artists have had their names attached to stuff they'd never have written in a million years.
If you were a fan participant of modern a cappella (a musical style which is too cheap to buy instruments) at the dawn of the millennium, you were crippled by the ignorance of the user who did the first major file-sharing for the genre: he thought the only two bands were Brown University's Brown Derbies and Rockapella. Even songs by all-female groups were attributed to them, which is amusing seeing as how both groups are all-male.
Among Canadian listeners, the Arrogant Worms get this a lot too (though still not as much as Weird Al). Again, often with stuff much racier or more offensive than the Worms themselves would ever do.
On the same note, it seems that any goth or dark-themed music associated with goths is made by one of four artists, according to P2P networks: The Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, Bauhaus, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Anything female is attributed to Siouxsie; anything else to one of the other three (mostly Sisters). 'Cry Little Sister' from The Lost Boys has been attributed to the Sisters of Mercy. Movie about vampires = Must have been made by the Sisters of Mercy?
There have only ever been two German bands making popular music: Kraftwerk and Rammstein. Scorpions are fairly well-known, even in the USA, but not necessarily associated with Germany.
Highly disputable. Older listeners who might never have heard of Rammstein would be highly aware that Scorpions (not "The Scorpions") are German. Their very nickname "Ambassadors of Rock" references this. Besides, there's also that band that did "99 Luftballons", who happens to be a woman named Nena.
However, Rammstein could be a one or two hit wonder to many people.
A weird example is that a Dutch parody of Barbie Girl is often attributed to Rammstein, despite A) being sung in Dutch, not German, B) not being similar to their musical style (poppy music instead of metal), C) featuring a female vocalist, and D) Rammstein not being known for parodies.
Any country music parody tends to get attributed to Jeff Foxworthy, regardless of quality, theme, or voice. Simply because the one-off "Redneck 12 Days of Christmas" was a hit, people apparently assume Foxworthy to be a singer. Hasn't anybody ever heard of Cledus T. Judd?
All musical scores are by Danny Elfman, John Williams, or Hans Zimmer. Granted, these guys have written a flipping TON of them, and often tutored all the others.
You'd be forgiven if you think of Remote Control. There's a very high chance that composer is part of that gang being managed by Hans Zimmer.
There's also an outside chance of it being James Newton Howard, or more recently, Michael Giacchino.
Here's one egregious example: Listen to this one and compare that to this one. And to think they accused Jerry Goldsmith of ripping off from an obscure (at that time anyway) anime series!!!
If anyone waxes poetic about a film composer being a "genius," they're talking about Bernard Herrmann.
Also, all Danny Elfman soundtracks are for Tim Burton Movies.
Corollary: All anime soundtracks are by Yoko Kanno.
Corollary #2: All instrumental TV themes are by John Tesh.
There's apparently only one band that did live performances of video game songs: The Minibosses. That is, if you believe filenames...
Irish musician Enya, who does neo-Celtic new age music, will sometimes get credit for anything that vaguely resembles her work. For example, works by Loreena McKennitt, her sister Moya Breannan, or her former band, Clannad. Not to mention Karl Jenkins Adeimus being attributed to her too.
Any Irish-sounding Drunken Song is credited to the Pogues. Of particular note on file-sharing services is Token Celtic Drinking Song, which will never, ever, be found credited to the band Jimmy George.
Ireland has only ever produced just two rock bands: U2 and Thin Lizzy (though U2 are much more likely to get a mention than Lizzy.) My Bloody Valentine, Horslips, The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers, Boomtown Rats and Ash apparently don't exist. (Though The Corrs and The Cranberries sometimes show up on the occassional rom-com soundtrack, maybe.)
To judge by oldies-station playlists (at least in the UK), the only song Soft Cell ever recorded was their cover of "Tainted Love". No playlist compiler has, it would seem, ever heard of "Bedsitter", "The Torch" or "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" amongst others. (Ironically, recent covers of Tainted Love are usually covers of the Soft Cell cover, rather than of the original.)
All nerdcore is by MC Chris, even the stuff where the artist introduces himself.
The worst part is MC Chris doesn't even consider himself nerdcore.
Excuse me, but Genesis didn't exist prior to Invisible Touch.
King "Who He"?
Good luck on anyone knowing any song by Chris de Burgh except Lady in Red. Honourable mention goes to Mystery Science Theatre 3000 for referencing Don't Pay the Ferryman.
The Bee Gees are overshadowed by their disco era; relatively few people are aware of their Beatlesesque pop era from the '60s and early '70s, nor are very many people aware they began as teens playing an obscure-in-America musical genre called skiffle.
Likewise, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are founding members of Fleetwood Mac.
Most people associate New Wave music with a limited selection of music from the latter era of New Wave and the synthpop era. Not a lot of people are aware of New Wave existing in 1975 - 76 or that it originated as a subgenre of punk rock. Or that a lot of punk rockers morphed into more conventional New Wave acts (cf. Classix Nouveaux, Lords of the New Church).
To clarify, New Wave itself had several substyles, and most of the best-remembered groups- The Knack, The Go-Gos, Cyndi Lauper, The Bangles; suspiciously almost all Los Angeles bands- were highly-commercial Power Pop acts who had little or no connection to the earlier ones who gave the movement its name.
Not only that, but some people believe the above four groups only had like two to three songs each.
Actually, most of these people aren't familiar with The Knack for only two or three songs. Instead, they only know ONE song by them.
There was only ever one Ultravox — the one with Midge Ure as lead singer. Poor John Foxx. Likewise, there was only ever one Human League and that was after 2/3 of the original League left to form Heaven 17 (who some people may only recognize as the guys behind "Let Me Go") and Phil Oakey had to find a way of keeping the Human League going.
An unfortunate truth is that for the vast majority of people, the only music that matters is the music that was recorded from about five years after they were born until today. Everything else is to be considered "boring old farts' music" and not worth exploring.
You must mean 'the vast majority of young people'. For older people it will be the opposite. Anything recorded after they turned 25 isn't worth listening to. That is why oldies stations are so prolific.
Some genres are more prone to this than the others. Fans of electronica and jazz are generally more age-tolerant.
It's a common tendency for people to say they "listen to everything," which generally means anything that gets decent radio coverage in their area, and any other form of music apparently doesn't exist.
Grill them for specifics, and watch them backpedal. "Rap? Opera? Bluegrass? Klezmer?"
Everything ever played by a military band is by John Philip Sousa.
Inverted in Central Europe, where most military music is commonly associated with 'Germany'.
Latin American music, as seen in American TV and movies:
All Mexican music is mariachi.
All non-Mexican Hispanic music is Salsa, which is played by Tito Puente.
Brazilian music is that lady with the fruit hat (Carmen Miranda), and bossa nova, which is Stan Getz.
Tango is a ballroom dance, with no evident connection to Argentina.
If the Gypsy Kings exist, then they are totally singing in Spanish.
Latin American/Hyspanic instruments include maracas, guitars and castanets. They all [[Spexico originate from the same culture.]]
Almost every reggae song is attributed to Bob Marley.
A corollary to that: reggae is usually portrayed as being the only genre of music in the Caribbean. Apparently, Chutney Music, soca, and calypso don't exist in fictional settings.
Surf music with vocals has only ever been recorded by The Beach Boys. Including "Surf City" and "Little Old Lady From Pasadena".
To be fair, Brian Wilson actually co-wrote "Surf City," and The Beach Boys also performed "Little Old Lady." The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean worked hand-in-hand on many occasions.
When the early Nineties incarnation of The Beach Boys appeared on Home Improvement, Tim referenced this trope by mentioning a number of car songs he incorrectly thought were performed by the Boys, only to have them respond with the proper artists. Strangely, one of the songs mentioned is the Rip Chords' "Hey Little Cobra" - and Bruce Johnston fails to mention that he in fact was a member of that group.
According to pop or oldie radio stations, Nazareth have only ever made rock ballads. Ditto Aerosmith, The Scorpions, and Metallica.
If you look at many of the more commonplace 1980s various artists compilations, you'll find a rotating lineup of twenty or thirty songs, usually writen aound 1981-1986, that all of the compilations will have. Jessie's Girl, Down Under, The Safety Dance, Come On Eileen, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, Hungry Like The Wolf, Somebody's Watching Me, Rock Me, Amadeus!, etc. Most of those songs are white Hair Metal, Arena Rock or New Wave pop, usually with an iconic video, and maybe 30% of those songs are one hit wonders or novelty songs. Few dance songs, rap, country or R&B will be included. Made worse by the fact that many major 1980's artists like Michael Jackson, Prince or George Michael refuse(d) to license their songs to such best-of's.
Likewise, because they are promoted heavily on Radio Disney, Justin Bieber, Cody Simpson, Willow Smith (Will's hair-whipping daughter) and Taylor Swift are considered Disney stars as well, though they record for different labels.
Often parodies of rappers (or the image that Moral Guardians have at least) will be a Gangsta Rap-type rapper from the hood who raps about bitches, hos, and money. They will ignore less stereotypical (and usually less mainstream) rappers such as Talib Kweli, Common, Kid Cudi, or heck, even Kanye West doesn't fit the stereotype.
According to millions of Baby Boomers (and even Generation X'ers and Generation Y'ers), the only song Kiss ever recorded was "Rock 'N' Roll All Nite." Which means you can forget about "Deuce," "Detroit Rock City" (although that one has resurged in popularity due to the 1999 movie of the same name), "Christine Sixteen," "I Was Made For Loving You," "I Love It Loud," "Lick It Up," "Heaven's On Fire," "Tears Are Falling," etc.
Amusingly lampshaded in an episode of The Simpsons where Homer attends a Bachman-Turner Overdrive concert, demands to hear "Takin' Care of Business", and when they start playing it, yells for them to "Get to the 'workin' overtime' part!"
If it's not just stars, the background is either the Crab Nebula, or the Horsehead Nebula.
The only stars anyone visits are Rigel, Alpha Centauri, Antares, "Orion", and the "Belt of Orion." (The latter two of which aren't even individual stars.)
And "Alpha Centauri" is always one star. Alpha Centauri B does not exist.
Betelgeuse is popular too, but only because it sounds funny.
And when it comes to stargazing, the only stars are Polaris, the Big Dipper (which Polaris will be thought to be in) and Sirius... and that last one only occasionally.
The only galaxies are the Milky Way and Andromeda.
Somewhat justified, as those are two of the only known galaxies lucky enough to have names that are not cryptic (Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte), or numbered (Andromedas I through X), with the exception of the Triangulum galaxy. Admittedly, that last one really should be used more often because its name is awesome.
The only comet is Halley's.
The only asteroids that exist are the ones on a collision course with Earth.
The only crewed space missions ever were "John Glenn's flight" (Friendship 7), Apollo 11, Apollo 13, the Challenger disaster and whatever one is going on right now.
Light-years, and to a lesser extent, parsecs, are the only units of astronomical measurement (Astronomical Units, or AUs, are reserved solely for "hard" Sci Fi). Any alien race capable of star travel encountering humans will instinctively know how long a light year is, even if there's no way they could know how long a year is on Earth.
Add to that "hours" and "days".
Even a depressingly large number of human beings mistake light years for being a measurement of time instead of distance.
Or how long a parsec is, for that matter, as it's based on the "parallax-second", which a civilization would only have if it divided circles and spheres into 360 degrees, degrees into 60 minutes, minutes into 60 seconds, and lived on a planet with the same orbital radius as Earth.
During time travel encounters, all events of historical importance after 1800 happened in America (Or possibly Germany, but only if there are Nazis involved.) Before 1800 all events of historical importance, or at least those not in America, happened in England, Rome, or occasionally Greece.
Tomb Raider. Of course, the only thing that non-gamers know about the game series is that it features a certain very busty heroine.
Doom, in fact people used to call the FPS Genre "Doom Clones".
Pokémon, also note that the anime's characters are more known than those from the games, so parodies are MUCH more likely to have "Ash and Pikachu" rather than "Red".
In some cases, there's only one Pokemon, and that's Pikachu. Also, there's Bulbasaur, Charmander, Charizard, Jigglypuff, Meowth, Magikarp, Mewtwo, Mew, Pichu, Mudkip, and Lucario, and that's it.
Pitfall. Few non-gamers might know the games name, but the basic image of a stick figure-like man swinging on vines over pits seems to be rather familiar to people in general.
Other
World War One media are almost always set on the Western Front (2.6m dead), and almost nothing about the Eastern Front (1.3m dead; Russia & Romania vs. Germany/Ottoman/Austria-Hungary/Bulgaria), the Italian Campaign (1m dead; Italy/UK/US/France vs. Germany/A-H), never mind the Balkans, Africa, or the Middle East.
Except in Australia, where World War One media inevitably focus on the Gallipolli campaign of 1915, despite the fact that more Australians fought (and died, for that matter) in France than in Turkey.
Most often it features the British Empire and the US vs. Germany. The French don't appear nearly as often. The other countries are rarely mentioned at all.
Except for Lawrence of Arabia, but it's rarely mentioned that this was part of World War One
Military fiction (and documentaries, for that matter) set on the battlefields of World War II usually revolve around a select few well-known battles: if it is about US forces it is usually about Normandy and The Bulge, British get North Africa and Market Garden and the Soviets Stalingrad and the capture of Berlin. Other battles and theaters feature much more rarely.
The only battle which didn't happen in Europe was El Alamein.
It's very rare to see a depiction of any battle in the European Theater before 1942 or 1943 (probably because people don't like to hear about the Allies losing). The Eastern Front is horribly underrepresented in Western works, despite the fact that the vast majority of the fighting and 90% of the casualties occurred there. There are war movies which somehow manage to avoid even mentioning the Soviets! The invasion of Poland is often mentioned, but never depicted (except in Family Guy). The invasions of Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries never happened. There was no fighting in the Balkans either, and the only resistance movement was French (and occasionally Polish, but certainly never Yugoslav or Greek, except in Alistair MacLean books).
Even in Family Guy, the invasion is depicted in seconds with no resistance. No Polish soldiers are ever seen. So it hardly counts, and not just because it perpetuates an incredibly offensive cliche.
No Canada and Juno Beach, even though it was one of the most successful victories in Normandy. It's all Utah and Omaha, since all the Americans died. I've yet to see—or even hear of—a movie about Dieppe, where the Canadians were simply cannon fodder.
It's rare to find stuff about the Pacific Theater that was made within the last 20 years or so. Both the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series took FIVE games before either of them had a campaign set in the Pacific. Most likely because if all ten games are put together, pretty much every major event in the European theater from 1941 onward was already done.
When it does get portrayed, the entirety of the Pacific Theater was apparently Pearl Harbor, sometimes Midway, something about a flag on Iwo Jima, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
While there are a few (Soviet) films about The Battle of Kursk, it goes largely unnoticed despite being pretty much the largest battle anywhere, at any time: 3.4 million Soviet and German troops, 10,000 tanks, 54,000 artillery pieces... mind-boggling in both scope and obscurity (to the general public).
Not to mention the Battle of Prokhorovka (another one of the biggest battle of the armored forces ever fought).
The Axis consists of Germany and Japan plus maybe a few Italians in North Africa. Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Finland (not technically part of the Axis, but it did have an alliance with Germany against the Soviets), Thailand, Iraq, and the numerous puppet regimes are almost always ignored.
The American Civil War lasted three days, in 1863, and the entire war started and finished near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Also, all Confederate soldiers wore gray uniforms.
Whenever a fur coat is mentioned by type, the majority of them are mink. Others, like rabbit, fox, ermine, and lynx, are mentioned, but not quite as often, and usually just to highlight whether the fur is less or more expensive than mink.
Harold Ross, founder of The New Yorker magazine, would write "Who he?" on the copy whenever one of his writers used a name without explaining who the person was. He said that there were only two names you can assume everybody knows: Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini.
People refer to any Wire Fu-heavy fight sequence in a film as being in the style of The Matrix or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. They weren't the only ones, or the first ones, or even the best ones, fight-wise.
And on that note, anyone who has never taken a martial arts class always assumes that if it's done by Asian people, it's karate. Occasionally, they may call what they're seeing tae kwon do or kung fu, the two other widely taught martial arts (even though there are many, many kinds of kung fu). Also, many people don't even realize that Tai Chi is a martial art and not just a hippy exercise routine (hippies included!). The popularity of Mixed Martial Arts has exposed more people to jiu jitsu and muay thai, but not much beyond that.
And, of course, all martial arts are Chinese or Japanese. Except capoeira.
Lampshaded in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Vamps are preying on college freshmen, killing them and stealing everything from their dorms. They have a running contest to see which artist has the most posters: Monet or Klimt. Monet is winning, if only because the only Klimt people have posters of is The Kiss.
In this article, a teacher of English at a 'college of last resort' mentions that the only movie he can count on every one of his students being familiar with is The Wizard of Oz.
It's worth noting that while most films about a country are set in that country's capital.
Most of the ones about Australia show Sydney rather than Canberra.
Toronto is the capital of Ontario; Ottawa is the capital of Canada. This is not a distinction you're likely to ever see.
Virtually all fiction set in the Republic of Ireland takes place either in Dublin or a tiny rural village. The other cities (Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway, Kilkenny) hardly get a mention, nor do the large towns.
If a town does turn up, it will always inexplicably be Ennis.
Or Killarney.
Far more movies take place in New York City than in Washington, DC. Admittedly, New York City is home to Wall Street and the Federal Reserve and is way bigger, so it's sort of the de facto capital of America. And it has 13 times as many people.
Might want to change this to "largest city in the country", perhaps — in most Old World countries this matches up fine, but I'm going to stick my nose out and ask who's heard of Brasília, the capital of Brazil, and who's heard of Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo... as well as the aforementioned pairs like Ottawa/Toronto or Canberra/Sydney. On the other hand, one would not be hard-pressed to name movies that are set in Washington, DC (Minority Report springs to mind), unlike the other such federal capitals.
Brasilia is a rather obscure capital. A good comparison might be to a state such as New York, which has Albany as its capital despite the presence of New York City; or Florida, which has at least a half-dozen metropolitan areas with populations in the vicinity of 1 million, but has its capital in mid-sized Tallahassee.
Or California: 90% of stuff set in California takes place in Los Angeles, San Francisco or San Diego; 9% in small coastal towns, and 1% elsewhere. Unless the film is specifically about state politics, it's unlikely that Sacramento, the state capital, will even be mentioned. Only films set during the 19th century gold rush avert this.
Films set in Scotland seem to be either set in Edinburgh, the capital, or Glasgow, the largest city, if they're not set in the middle of nowhere up north...
The only cities in native Virginia are: Alexandria (which is only Arlington National Cemetery), Langley (which only consists of CIA HQ) and maybe Richmond (as the capital). The only Tidewater Area/coastal city is Norfolk (which is just the navy base). If the show is about ship building the only city is Portsmouth. The only military installation is the aforementioned Norfolk Naval Shipyard, no mention is ever made of the master jet base at Oceana in Virginia Beach. And the only thing related to Chesapeake is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. If you have a Revolutionary War documentary you might hear something about Williamsburg.
95% of James Bond parodies are a parody of the Sean Connery era films. The remaining 5%, at least nowadays, are the Bonds of the nineties and two-thousands; Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig. Roger Moore, George Lazenby, and Timothy Dalton? Who are they?
For porn films, many people automatically pick Debbie Does Dallas or Deep Throat, although they were made in the 1970's. For actresses, they pick Linda Lovelace (or more recently, Jenna Jameson). Male actors are almost always just Ron Jeremy or John Holmes.
Though Peter North has been making quite a splash lately.
Any district or neighborhood of Los Angeles other than "Downtown" or "Hollywood" that is mentioned will be thought to be a different city. Even the two major ones won't be depicted correctly: Downtown will be shown as some kind of combination between Bunker Hill and Skid Row to create a version that doesn't really represent anywhere, and Hollywood will be some generic city where the Hollywood Sign is visible, with a number of movies depicting Hollywood by having an establishing shot of the Sign followed by scenes shot in a completely different city. Even places that should be popular, such as South Park (not THAT one), home of the Los Angeles Convention Center and Staples Center, are obscure outside of L.A. itself.
The East and South sides are sometimes shown, but appear rather small, even though they make up, 2/3 of the inner city.
Parodies of/jokes about Cirque du Soleil almost invariably suggest that all or most of the performers are French-Canadian and/or French, possibly because the French are seen as Acceptable Targets. In truth, the number of different nationalities in a given troupe can be in the double-digits, and the company would never have scaled the heights of success it did without the huge pool of troupes and talents to draw upon. (Ironically, when it came to touring, France turned out to be one of the hardest audiences for Cirque to crack because what was new to American audiences was old hat to them.)
All Marxism is a crude pastiche of Leninism, Stalinism, and/or Maoism. Luxemburgism, Left Communism, Marxist Humanism, Council Communism, Eurocommunism, Trotskyism, Situationism, and all the other various forms, many quite vehemently against the tendencies that began with Lenin, don't exist.
Not only that but even if you tell people (especially in the US) about them, they refuse to believe they are any different from Leninists, Stalinists, etc.
Lenin himself is often mixed up with Stalin. In truth, Lenin's policy differed strikingly from Stalin's and Lenin fiercely opposed Stalin's line in his final years, telling his supporters to get rid of Stalin as the man was starting to scare him. (Insert Ominous Latin Chanting) After Lenin's death, then again, Stalin loved to imply that he and Lenin had been great friends.
Although much of what is now called "Stalinist" actually started with Lenin. Stalin's main additions were the cult of personality, adoption of supposedly "rightist" attributes (patriotism, pre-revolutionary military dress) and considerable paranoia. Things like the secret police, political repression, and prison camps all came from Leninism.
Albeit in a wartime context: during the later part of Lenin's rule, things eased up under the NEP.
Someone can actually be the CEO of a business and still be a Marxist (albeit quite a cynical one). All it means to be a Marxist is that someone accepts Marx's theory of capital as laid out in Das Kapital. Amongst Marxists the best way to get there (or even if there even ought to be any active attempts to get there) is open to debate.
Also, don't expect anyone to realise that the USSR was never, in fact, communist. While it adhered to a communist ideology as an ideal, it never achieved communism.
The most important facet of Fascism is racial and national persecution as well as the notion of the race purity. Fascism was also founded by Adolf Hitler and the only fascist country was the Third Reich.
Maybe Italy if you're lucky, but only as somewhere for Mussolini to come from. Nothing ever happened in Fascist Italy, of course!
It's ironic that "fascist" is synonymous with "racist" since Mussolini's movement didn't have an explicitly racist ideology. Mussolini didn't even believe in Hitler's ethnic cleansing since the Italian dictator felt that non-European peoples should be conquered and "converted" to European culture (which made his ideas little different from 19th century imperialists); it was Hitler who introduced the ideas of racist ideology, ethnic cleansing/extermination, and enslavement.
Similarily, Franco's fascist government (particularly the diplamatic service) didn't share the Nazi's racial ideologies, though Franco himself didn't mind them too much either. Franco was ok with serving them, such as by cataloging the Jews in Spain on Hitlers orders, but on the other hand, he was fine with his government's resources being used to to protect or evacuate Jews in Nazi-occupied countries (much to the chagrin of the Nazis) as well. In the end, tens of thousands of Jews escaped Nazi Europe through Spain.
In that vein, all 'Aryan Race/Aryan Union' ideaolgy was Hitler's doing. In actuality, it was all Himmler's doing (Hitler actually laughed at him for that), and was, quite literally, worse than Hitler. In fact, the July 20 Bomb Plot held Himmler's assassination just as vital as Hitler's.
All Capitalism is a crude pastiche of Social Darwinism, State Corporatism, or, in the case of drug dealers, Market Anarchism.
The biggest problem with studying the origins of life and the universe is the ludicrously small reference pool of 1 (we only know of one life-bearing planet, and one universe that sprang into being).
Almost all media based on the poetry of Dante Alighieri is based on Inferno, the first part of the Divina Commedia (aka Divine Comedy). Few people are aware there are three parts, the others being Purgatorio and Paradiso.
As far as right-pondians are concerned, the USA has the sum total of four significant colleges or universities or whatever you're calling them: MIT (which is a spawning ground for nerds); Harvard (the smart kids); Yale (the rich kids); and Brown (the Butt Monkey). Left-pondians are no better; the only British Unis are Oxford, Cambridge and the London School Of Economics.
We right-pondians also know of Princeton, but only because of its association with Einstein.
For the Asian continent, there is Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA.
Much "Ancient Rome" fiction suffers from the "static society" problem which forgets that the Roman Empire of antiquity was a living, developing society and culture which changed over the centuries in terms of fashions, politics, attitudes etc. Most fictional depictions of the empire are based on the best-known period - the Julius Caesar/early Empire period - and simply depict the fashions and politics of that era no matter when it's set. Ridley Scott's Gladiator is one of the best-known examples of this. The fashions depicted are from over a century previous whilst the senators scheming to restore republican government are also anachronistic - about as realistic as portraying scheming 20th century British parliamentarians trying to restore the House of Stuart.
Let's just say that most ancient societies suffer from this. In addition to the aforementioned Rome (which is often conflated with Ancient Greece) Ancient Egypt is the pyramids and pharaohs' tombs, nothing else. You'll be lucky if other ancient societies of the Mediterranean are mentioned at all.
If there's a mention of any character from Arthurian legend, it's almost always going to be Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere or Galahad.
And where did the Arthurian legend come from? It's always England—never Wales or France, where much of the story is derived from.
Also all events mentioned in Celtic legends took place in Ireland.
What do you mean, there were Celts in places other than Ireland? Ridiculous!
All Celts come from the British Isles, except in the bits of history where Romans fought the Gauls. (Forgetting that Celtic culture at its height may have extended as far as Western China.)
Not forgetting, of course, that Arthur is usually portrayed as English even though he was a Briton which, at the time, meant what we now call Welsh. At the time of the Arthurian legends, the English were a bunch of hired mercenaries brought-over from Germany who were starting to cause trouble.
"If you prick us, do we not bleed?" gets mentioned, but almost never as part of a Shakespeare play.
In recent years the Band of Brothers speech from Henry V has been getting a lot of publicity.
Only a few people have ever set foot in an American boxing arena: Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, and Evander Holyfield. If a boxer isn't American, they'll be drawn from a pool of about two from a given country.
Most people have heard of Carbon-14 dating (and 9 times out of 10, it doesn't even work like it does on television). It's the default dating method in the public conscious. What most people are not familiar with is Uranium-Lead Dating, which is much more accurate and has a much wider range of dates (1 million to 4.5 billion), Rubidium-Strontium, another form of dating closely related to U-Pb Dating, or the others: Uranium-Thorium, Potassium-Argon, and Samarium-neodymium, all of which are older, more reliable, and have a wider date range than than radiocarbon.
Well, Carbon-14 is still the dating technique of choice when dealing with something less than 30,000 or so years old. It only has a half-life of 5200 years, so it's ideal for archaeology, since most things in the human record fall within a few half-lifes of Carbon-14, while something like Uranium-Lead dating won't measure anything that recent at all. So Carbon-14 is perfectly acceptable- when talking about human history. Anything further back than 30,000 years, THEN you get Did Not Do the Research. Any earlier human history - like early members of the genus Homo or late members of the genus Australopithecus - which are highly associated with stone tool assemblages, means you need to bust out the Potassium-Argon or Argon-Argon dating.
And often, those same people use the words "anime" and "manga" interchangeably, or not even realise that the word "manga" exists.
Don't you know? All anime is sci-fi with 50 foot tall neural-interfacing robots.
Many people who aren't big anime fans have only heard of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Dragon Ball (Z), Naruto, and Sailor Moon.
And most of these people believe that "Dragon Ball Z" refers to the entire "Dragon Ball" franchise, when it's really just the second of three series, after the original "Dragon Ball" but before "Dragon Ball GT".
Even good ol' TV Tropes can fall foul of this sometimes where examples may be weighted towards a certain media even if the trope itself is common elsewhere.
Similarly, The Other Wiki also has an issue with being too ethnocentrically "Western" which it terms "systemic bias".
The Civilization series has a habit of including less successful but more famous historical characters as leaders of civilizations, when more successful but lesser-known alternatives exist, particularly if the more famous ruler has a certain archetypal image or mythology attached to them. Examples include Ragnar Lodbrok as the Viking leader in Civilization III and IV, Joan d'Arc as the French leader in Civilization III and Boudicca as a Celtic leader in Civilization IV. Arguably, this is pandering to the small reference pool of most players, given that some fairly obscure monarchs such as Mansu Musa (Mali) and Suryavarman II (Khmer) are included as the leaders of Civilizations that are themselves more obscure.
Also Civilization has altered the leaders over the years. Russia had Stalin in I then Catherine in III now both in IV. France has had de Gaulle, Joan, Napoleon, and Louis XIV. Hiawatha and Sitting Bull. So it seems it's more for variety than anything else.
There is a major aversion in Civilization V, however, as the Chinese leader is not Qin Shi Huang Di or Mao, but Wu Zetian.
The only way to crack into a computer is by guessing the password. Buffer overflows and SQL injections don't exist.
The only nuclear meltdown ever was Chernobyl. Despite this, it is still used to argue against nuclear power.
Now includes Fukushima.
The only hurricane ever was Katrina.
If you live near New York City, there was Katrina and Irene, and that's it.
The only earthquake in history was the one in Haiti.
Or, if you know that tsunami's come from earthquakes, you can add the Indian Ocean and Japan earthquakes.
Wasn't there one in San Francisco too? A long time ago?
The only volcanoes to have erupted are Mt. St. Helens and possibly Vesuvius.
A rare humorous moment in Se7en, when Brad Pitt's character has never heard of the Marquis de Sade, and mispronounces his name "Shar-day", like the Nigerian singer Sade.
Lampshaded in Dogma with an appearance by the Metatron, the angel who speaks for God to humans who would be destroyed by the power of God's voice. The heroine attempts to make up for not knowing who he is by mentioning the Ten Plagues, to which the Metatron remarks "You people! If it's not in a Charlton Heston movie, it's not worth knowing, is it?"
A short list of legendary animators whose mention will get you only a blank stare: Ralph Bakshi, David Silverman, Will Vinton, Richard Williams.
Exceptions
Anime and Manga
Averted to hell and back in Suzumiya Haruhi, mostly in the novels. We have a story which uses Euler's Planar Graph Formula as a plot device. Jean-Jacques Rosseau is mentioned in another short story extremely casually, and half the historical references are of Japanese history. Best of all, Yuki's books always refer to the current plot, like when she reads Hyperion in Melancholy. Koizumi, especially in Melancholy, peppers his words with philosophy, like the Anthropic Principle and the Omphalos Hypothesis. Even the title sequence for the first season isn't spared. Read up about it in the Genius Bonus and the Viewers Are Geniuses page.
Princess Tutu, an anime based around a Magical Girl Ballerina, smashed this trope. Classical music serves as almost all of the background music in the show, and while a number of famous works are included (for example, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker and Swan Lake), both more obscure composers (Smetana, Mussorgsky, Satie) and less-popular works from famous composers (Beethoven's Egmont Overture). And of course, it features a lot of ballets, from Giselle to the aforementioned Cinderella to Coppelia.
Nodame Cantabile naturally also uses works not by Beethoven & Mozart. The animators love "Veni, creator spiritus" from Mahler's 8th, for example, a fact that escapes the Other Wiki's notice. Not to mention Purcell's Abedlazar...
The Gag Dub of Crayon Shin-chan includes references to many obscure things, all the way to making a reference to Mother. An interview by one of the writers said they deliberately tried to avoid this.
Hunter × Hunter features cameos and references to well known Japanese celebrities, but also much more obscure ones (one of the sadistic antagonists reading Trevor Brown probably takes the cake).
Card Games
Arguably the card game Magic: The Gathering does this as well. They tend to use obscure but real mythical creatures, and the original sets, before the storyline became coherent and unique to the sets, would borrow liberally from odd sources.
Comedy
Dennis Miller is famous for constantly bringing up obscure references, so much so that a website was created to decipher his comments on Monday Night Football for the average football fan.
Patton Oswalt likes to lampshade the obscure references in his stand-up, by effecting an even nerdier voice than usual, and mentioning something even more obscure.
David Mitchell argues against using small reference pools in this video, pointing out that many people, especially teenagers, are more likely to just Google the reference than to feel excluded for not getting it.
Comic Books
Alan Moore and Kevin O' Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is definitely a subversion. Sure, three of the original five league members are well known, but the two most important include the fairly obscure (and frequently misspelled) Allan Quatermain and a lesser known character from the novel Dracula. Beyond the League, the references get incredibly obscure.
The Black Dossier is nye literature code without some sort of cypher key to understand what the hell he's talking about.
By the time of Century, the first issue its really light on this. But the second issue, being set on 1969, with a lot of series and film characters on the background and as characters... it's reference porn all the way.
Such as Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell, where he got the idea for the red background during the flight scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1.
In The Great Muppet Caper, Animal is described as being upset that he missed the Rembrandt exhibit at the National Gallery. Animal corrects him; "Renoir."
The indie film Little Miss Sunshine features a Proust scholar as a main character. He talks about Proust during an important character moment.
Parodied in the 1965 film version of The Loved One, in which Dennis Barlow romances Aimee Thanatogenous by quoting classic poetry to her and claiming it to be his own work.
This Trope In Literature
In one of the more egregious mistakes in Angels and Demons (which is said to have an errata list longer than the actual book, but that's for another article), Dan Brown has a so-called "British" journalist (in a fantasy about achieving success in the near future) liken himself to Dan Rather — despite Rather being totally unknown in Britain. A real British journalist, indulging in such a fantasy, would liken himself to Jeremy Paxman or Sir Trevor McDonald — who, unsurprisingly, are just as unknown in the USA.
In a lot of Middle Ages, Renaissance, and English Renaissance literature, it is pretty clear that many writers thought (or thought that their audience would think) that every non-Christian religion worshiped the Greek or Roman pantheon. The Song of Roland portrays Muslims as Apollo worshippers*
or possibly Apollyon worshippers — the actual word in the poem is Apollin
, while Shakespeare had characters reference the Greek gods in stories that supposedly took place before those gods' introduction to the specific settings (although that was a method of Getting Crap Past the Radar, since swearing upon the Christian God was illegal even if onstage).
Though in A Midsummer Night's Dream, despite being set in Greece'', the Roman pantheon is used. Though since most of the mythology came from translated Latin work which was either passed down in monasteries or preserved by Muslims (and in that case translated as many as three times), the usage is understandable.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has the real-life alchemist Nicolas Flamel as an important character, and many people didn't realize he was based on a real person. Rowling even got the colour of the stone (red) correct. She also included mythological beings such as hippogriffs (griffin/mare hybrids) and basilisks that some readers thought were original. Those who didn't probably knew those creatures from Dungeons & Dragons.
That, of course, applies only to the original, for the American edition has the title changed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
Likewise, in Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire JKR introduced veela, which many thought she invented; in fact she drew them from East European (particularly Polish and Serbian) folklore.
Terry Pratchett manages to invert the trope quite regularly in the Discworld series, by drawing inspirations from obscure Roundworld phenomena and essentially migrating some into the Discworld wholesale (vampire watermelons in Carpe Jugulum, The Glooper in Making Money, etc.). It helps that there's a book out (The Folklore of the Discworld) that points out some of the allusions, with many others it might take several readthroughs to notice.
Long before the book was published, explanations of the in-jokes in the books were present in L-space. Many have been amazed by the number of annotations there - and the fact that the jokes frequently work at least partly for those that don't recognise the more obscure British references.
Ursula Vernon'sDigger is also good with this, usually involving tidbits that look like fiction unless you look it up. In addition to a use of the previously mentioned vampiric gourds, large swaths of the hyena tribe's mythology revolves around their tremendously high infant mortality rate—something they share with real life hyenas.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao manages to avert this at every possible turn without treading into Genius Bonus territory. The annotations are there to help with the things most people wouldn't get but occasionally references are made to concepts that requires fairly in depth knowledge of geekdom which the narrator assumes the reader will understand.
Piers Anthony likes to include obscure references in the Xanth books. One such, in Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn was a reference to Langston Hughes' poem Fog.
P. G. Wodehouse, despite writing light-hearted, comedic novels, averts this. Apart from the many quotes from Shakespeare and the Bible, there are also references to, for example Tennyson, Omar Khayyám, Longfellow, Walter Scott, Laurence Hope, William Butler Yeats or Thomas Moore - in just one novel (Summer Moonshine). Jeeves's favorite philosopher is Spinoza, and he quotes, among others, Marcus Aurelius.
Reginald Hill, especially in the Dalziel and Pascoe novels references a whole range of English literature.
Israeli writer and Nobel Literature Prize laureate S. Y. Agnon is particularly notable for using a lot of references to Biblical stories and Jewish religious writing which anyone who isn’t well-versed in Judaism won’t recognise. These references are used either as metaphors (missing those could cause one to miss a key point in the story altogether, or as somewhat obscure references, to the point he practically invented a new language based on archaic Hebrew and the occasional neologism.
Israeli poet Natan Alterman was also a very hard averter of this: The Alterman Notes, vol. 3 mentions he had a vast and diverse library, in six languages and on many subjects, which he used as reference material for his work. He, however, makes these references much more subtly.
Live-Action TV
Played for laughs in the Friends episode "The One with the Apothecary Table". Rachel tries to pass her Pottery Barn furniture off as antiques, because Phoebe "hates all mass-produced stuff".
Discussing the aforementioned table:
Phoebe: What period is it from?
Rachel: Uh, it's from yore. Like the days of yore, you know?
After buying several more pieces of furniture, Rachel then claims that several items are from "colonial times".
Ross: Hmm, a lot of this stuff is from the Colonial times. What are some other time periods, Rachel?
Rachel: Well, there's yore. And, you know, yesteryear.
For a while in the 80's, the only poet TV characters had ever heard of was Byron. And the only poem he ever wrote was "She walks in beauty like the night..." Which apparently only consisted of that line. Then on an episode of Kate And Allie, a character quotes this line and wrongly attributes it to Keats. The best part? The character in question was a professor of literature.
Reverend Jim from Taxi recites the entire first stanza of 'She Walks in Beauty', but when asked who wrote it says that he doesn't know. Some punk spray-painted it on the side of his van.
The Cosby Show: "Cliff, please let the woman sit down, she's been walking a long time".
Artemus Gordon read 'She Walks in Beauty' on The Wild Wild West (in the '60s.) The show featured a variety of literary allusions, though they are sometimes anachronistic, like when Dr. Loveless (in the early 1870s) quotes "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde, not written until about the turn of the century.
Averted in the Gossip Girl TV series out of all places. Serena Van Der Woodsen in the books would never have referenced Anna Karenina, making the TV show an example of adaptation expansion.
"Stay back or I'll pull a William Burroughs on your leader here." — Buffy, in "New Moon Rising," threatening to kill the Initiative colonel in "New Moon Rising" by referring to the beat poet who shot and killed his lover in a drunken game of William Tell in 1951.
Um, foreshadow much?
"Scream Montresor all you like, pet." — Spike to Buffy, referring to the Edgar Allen Poe story The Cask of Amontillado.
And, finally, a historical reference that actually takes two episodes spaced three seasons apart to complete. Anya has a throwaway line in "Superstar" describing the vengeance wishes she'd enact on wronged women's ex-boyfriends: "I'd wish he was a dog or ugly or in love with President McKinley or something." Three years later, chastising Anya for going soft, Halfrek says: "You were the single-most hard-core vengeance demon on the roster, and everybody knew it. Do I have to mention Mrs. Czolgosz?" President William McKinley was assassinated by a man named Leon Czolgosz.
Leon Czolgosz never married. Which is probably an even smaller reference pool, so . . . yeah.
Just before a big battle Buffy gives a rather lackluster pep talk followed by Spike claiming it was "not exactly the St Crispin's Day Speech" which was only understood by Giles, the only other British person there and the only one, except maybe Willow, likely to have read Henry V.
If they have, the only picture he ever made was The Young Hare◊ (and sometimes The Praying Hands◊, though that is rarely attibuted to him).
To be fair, it was made for a German audience, and Germans surely heard of Dürer.
Not only is Inspector Morse more than knowledgeable of classical music and opera, so are the writers on the show, leading to the use of works far outside the limits of this trope in the mysteries, and even obscure jokes that only viewers with an interest in music will ever get.
Blackadder was full of obscure historical jokes, particularly in the third series.
And the new one has at least had Madame de Pompadour.
The episode "Midnight" in the new series 4 has a passenger start chanting a stanza from the poem 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rossetti.
They did this in-universe as well. In "The Unicorn and the Wasp," when they visit Agatha Christie, Donna mentions The Murder on the Orient Express and Miss Marple. Christie hadn't created either of those yet. The reason the episode was created was because of the distinct cover of Death in the Clouds featuring a giant wasp.
Rose was once referred to as a "tim'rous beasty" in an episode set in Scotland.
"The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon", featuring Richard Nixon, only hints at Watergate toward the end, being set near the beginning of Tricky Dick's term.
While Mystery Science Theater 3000 has plenty of the more common ones, they fit in plenty of less common references, often to the area that they live in.
As an extreme example, Mike and the bots pile on so many Chicagoland references in the final act of Beginning of the End that if you aren't familiar with the region you'll probably be bored to tears.
The Hamlet episode had lots of increasingly obscure Shakespeare references, including a few cracks about seating arrangements at the Globe theater.
Servo basically can't see a frog without making the (Ancient Greek!) frog noise from Aristophanes' The Frogs, and then there was the time (in The Deadly Bees) that Mike said, "This must be the 'bee-loud glade' that Yeats spoke of."
Hari Seldon was referenced in The Daily Show by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita (2009-09-28)
Red Dwarf includes Rimmer talking about the cream of Earth's classical music: "Why don't you listen to something really classical, like Mozart, Mendelssohn or Motörhead."
It's not like many viewers know that much about urban legends anyway but Supernatural has pretty much devoted itself to doing every single Legend that it can cram in, no matter how known or unknown it is.
Completely turned on its head by Lost. Numerous works, especially novels, are explicitly mentioned and many, many more are alluded to. Often being seen on the show increases interest in a particular book.
Stargate Atlantis takes place in the Pegasus galaxy. And yes, it actually exists. In fact there are two galaxies by that name, one 2.7 million light-years away, the other 3 Mly.
Fawlty Towers: "That's not a racket! That's Brahms! Brahms' Third Racket!"
Star Trek is pretty bad for this, but will occasionally surprise. The conclusion of one Voyager episode prominently featured Dante's Vita Nuova.
Lampshading: In an episode of Psych, a character refers to Shawn as Iago, to which he responds, "What does the parrot from Aladdin have to do with this?"
Psych is an exception to this in general; some of the references will fly over the heads of people not born in the 80's or 90's, since Shawn and Gus are well-versed in more obscure media.
Although Beakman's World would a lot of times reference the more famous Famous Dead Guys, quite a few were more obscure. For example, in their segment of the microscope, they skipped using Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (the Father of Microbiology) and went for the more obscure Zacharias Jansen, who though credited with creating the compound microscope is far less well-known than Leeuwenhoek (and the FDG Jansen makes sure the kids know it in no uncertain terms).
The Crane brothers in Frasier easily defy this trope, often discussing fine wine and making semi-obscure references to opera and literature.
Criminal Minds begins and ends most episodes with a quote, and there is a huge variety in the sources for these quotes. Plus, one episode had the team only able to solve a case because of knowledge of Geoffrey Chaucer's poem Parlement of Foules and the John Fowles novel The Collector. Then there's all the obscure knowledge Reid spouts on a regular basis...
Also, the serial killers who are referenced as precedent are usually real-life examples, indicating that someone did their homework.
The Big Bang Theory in regards to geek culture, owing to much of its appeal. Comic book discussions are just as likely to bring up Green Lantern as Superman, an episode had Penny getting hooked on the MMO Age of Conan as opposed to World of Warcraft, and discussions of physics go way beyond "E equals MC squared." One bizarre exception was a one-liner where Sheldon says that Ubuntu is his favorite Linux distribution. True, most viewers have probably never even heard of Linux, but Ubuntu is about as mainstream of a distro as you can get, and an odd choice for übernerd Sheldon especially.
This trope is basically the point of the British Game ShowPointless. The show's researchers give 100 people a short length of time to name as many things in a certain group as they can (eg. types of shark, John Grisham novels), and on the show itself, the contestants have to try to score as few points as possible by giving the answers they think none of the research group has said, with answers no-one said landing you an ideal 0 points. Therefore, the larger the reference pools of the contestants, the better they'll do.
Although She Spies tended to go after mostly pop culture, sometimes a slightly more high-brow reference would pop up. In this case, with a bit of Lampshade Hanging:
Cassie: It looks like something Kandinsky threw up on. What? Dennis Miller's gone, somebody's got to make pretentious semi-obscure references.
On Home Improvement, the well-traveled and learned Wilson constantly referenced the ideas of various philosophers and thinkers, both famous and obscure, and took interest in the odd traditions of obscure cultures. A lot of the humor was derived from Tim, who exemplefied Men Are Uncultured, reacting to and being confused by Wilson's knowledge.
Promos for an episode of Community made it seem like it was going to be a parody of the more popular film Pulp Fiction when in reality it was an homage to a more obscure art house film, My Dinner With Andre.
Gilmore Girls was rife with obscure music and literary references.
The quiz show Pointless is built on averting this trope. Contestants are given a category (e.g. Clint Eastwood films) and have to give an answer that the fewest number of people in a survey got; this rewarding the most obscure answers.
Meta
The Japanese surname "Yagami" is spelt with the kanji for "eight" and "god" — so, 八神, "eight gods"; it turns out to derive from a placename. However, most Western anime fans first encounter it through Light Yagami, who spells it with the kanji for "night god". This has resulted in at least two similarly-named characters on this very wiki being written up with incorrect name meanings of "night god". Whoops.
Music
They Might Be Giants have tried to rectify the situation singing the praises of Belgian painter James Ensor and the sorely underrated President James K Polk, among others.
However, Those Endearing Young Charms will never be played correctly, due to a stick of dynamite being placed into the right key, or the original player will have a sixth sense about the dynamite being placed right underneath the key.
Newspaper Comics
Dykes To Watch Out For is festooned with literary, cultural, and historical allusions of all kinds (not solely LGBT culture, either).
Radio
BBC Radio show Round Britain Quiz is almost an inversion of this trope. It's a very highbrow panel game for some very well-read intellectuals, except when it comes to anything that's remotely popular, created after 1950, to do with science or engineering, or American. Then it switches from Huge Reference Pools to 'very easy pub quiz night'. It can be quite extraordinary to listen to people who know everything about classical literature or classical music and yet (to take some recent examples) haven't heard of Elton John or Pink Floyd, or don't know which city is 'Motown'.
Theatre
Shakespeare both embodies and defies this trope - he put in a lot of references to very famous (in his time) figures, but also dug up some obscure things. Like Animaniacs, he designed his plays to appeal both to the intellectuals and 'the groundlings'.
Web Comics
Thanks partly to the influence of Gary Larson's The Far Side, many Dada Comics avert this trope, sometimes bordering on Viewers Are Geniuses. One instance in which this trope caught up was a panel in which one cowboy offered another a latte. In the days before Starbucks, many audience members were convinced that "latte" meant gay sex.
The names of Order of the Stick books often reference works of literature, at least one of which is well outside the norm: War and XPs (Tolstoy's War and Peace), Start of Darkness (Conrad's Heart of Darkness) and On the Origins of PCs (Darwin's On the Origin of Species)
Strips have also referenced the novel Dune, the musical Meet Me in St. Louis, and hinged several key character moments on a game of Go.
Irregular Webcomic! lives on averting this trope. Obscure mathematical jokes abound. Luckily for the majority of his readers, the extensive annotations underneath each comic explain the mathematical or scientific principle in question, often a whole lot better than your math teacher or textbook will. Extensive and accurate historical and literary jokes are also common.
Family Guy, lowbrow show that it is, occasionally allows Brian and/or Stewie to show their considerable knowledge of the arts - Brian was once enraptured by an old woman's rendition of "Habanera" and Lois deplored Peter's jazzed-up version of The King and I. It's perhaps the only show where you can hear the characters talking about Matisse then hearing a fart joke.
Lampshaded when Peter makes a remark about Benjamin Disraeli, and we cut to a cartoon version of Disraeli writing for several seconds before facing to the audience and saying "You don't even know who I am!"
Further lampshaded when Peter says that Kathy Ireland has betrayed him "worse than Lady Macbeth betrayed Duncan" - cut to a bear fighting Lady Macbeth on a spaceship - Peter says "yeah, I don't know Shakespeare very well."
Or how about single-handedly making "Shipoopi" from The Music Man into a viral YouTube sensation... thanks to an excessive touchdown celebration?
Bottom line, for all the references to huge pop culture phenomena like Star Wars that the show makes, it makes almost as many references to stuff that only a small portion of the audience would be familiar with, be it a forgotten old jazz musician or an obscure kids cartoon from the seventies.
In the animated film Anastasia, the characters attend a ballet; the performance is Prokofiev's Cinderella. This was a good choice on the part of the writers—even if only a few audience members were familiar with Prokofiev's ballets, it was immediately obvious from the costumes and props what the story was. Also notable is that the act's closing scene parallels Anya and Dimitri's relationship at that point; such an effect is not as easy to pull off when this trope is played straight.
The 80s children's stop-motion series Moschops had a variety of saurians, from Allosaurus to Icthyosaur. None of them ate each other, though Uncle Rex was a bit fierce.
And the main character was a Moschops? That is not a reptile anyone will have ever heard of without purposely doing the research.
Lisa has previously mentioned the likes of Gore Vidal and Pablo Neruda.
Lisa: Bart, Pablo Neruda said, "Laughter is the language of the soul."
Bart: (irritably) I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda.
One episode has Mr. Burns joking that the power plant's profit margins are "thinner than Louise Brooks' negligee". When Homer fails to respond, Burns is compelled to explain the reference. This is done, though, to show how much Burns is out of touch with recent pop culture.
Futurama gets a lot of humor from Fry's 20th century background, so a lot of the jokes aren't exactly obscure. But many of them are much more subtle and even academic. Examples include Klein Beer (guess what the bottle looked like) being sold in a store advertising free bags of ice-9 and the holophonor, a recurring plot device based on the Visi-Sonor from the Foundation series (extra points for being possibly the only Foundation reference in mainstream pop culture ever). Also made jokes about orders of infinity (a cinema called aleph-0-plex, likely meant to one up "The Googlplex" cinema in The Simpsons) and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle's "observer effect" (scientists change the result of a horse race by observing it).
More Genius Bonus: Bender advertises his computerized dating service as discreet and discrete. In one episode a closet contains two boxes, P and NP, and a robot planet named Chapek 9.
In the commentary on one of the movie DVDs, they talk about one of their favorite gags was to throw in as many obscure mathematical references as they could.
Darkwing Duck managed to work in references to The Dark Knight Returns. It also has a villain named Taurus Bullba, a gag on Taras Bulba, a fictional Ukrainian folk hero and film starring Yul Brynner *
And the Nikolay Gogol's novel, for crying out loud!
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How about that the engines on the air pirates' ship in Talespin are modeled on the one from "Master of the World" starring Vincent Price? Or that the Sea-Duck uses a version of the WWII-era overdrive system known as "war emergency power", in the multi-part pilot (Baloo burns it out, so they can have a cool scene without keeping around a potential story-breaker)?
Robot Chicken has so many pop-cultural references that it is bound to have at least a few obscure ones. It lampshaded a reference to Sleepaway Camp that is followed by a person being shocked that someone actually remembered it to make a reference. It also recently featured an extended parody of Parappa The Rapper.
The Tick features a character named "Die Fledermaus," a Batman pastiche dressed like a bat. The name doesn't make a lot of sense until you realize that it is German for "the Bat" and the name of a popular German operetta. Consequently, unless you speak German you need a working knowledge of light opera. And honestly, who can name a light opera not made by Gilbert and Sullivan? Not many, that's who.
The Batman 1960's TV series actually used a reference to Batman being called "Die Fledermaus-mensch" and helpfully explained what it meant, so no, you don't need to speak German or know opera to understand it.
ReBoot is naturally filled with references to computer technologies, many of them antique when the episodes were made.
Enzo * complaining about going to ancient language class instead of hanging out with Bob* :"COBOL? FORTRAN? They're dinosaurs!
Although Daria, being an MTV show kept a fair handle on pop culture jokes in general, the eponymous protagonist had a great habit of referencing obscure, deep, and intelligent literature in relation to her present circumstances, most of which went right over audiences' heads.
In an episode of Phineas and Ferb, Baljeet imagines himself as "Hanumanman", a superhero modelled after the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, who plays a major role in the Indian epic poem Ramayana. Hanuman is well known in India, but how many western viewers had ever heard of him before?
The ones who have taken a college course about Hinduism
Maybe the few that have played Grand Chase, as Jin has a move called Hanuman.
The Ren & Stimpy Show features plenty of classical musical cues, some of which are not very well-known, like Chopin's "Ballad in F-Minor Op. 52", or Josef Suk's "Asrael" symphony, or Claude Debussy's "Canope", or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Francesca da Rimini".
DefinitelyThe Venture Bros. One major character is the Phantom Limb, who is named after a medical condition, dresses like The Phantom, and is a descendant of Fantomas. Who was a member of a Guild with Eugen Sandow, Oscar Wilde, Aleister Crowley, and Nikola Tesla. And who went on to recruit Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper, preventing them from getting on the doomed flight that killed them in real life. And the guild is now run by David Bowie and Brian Eno, and used to also include Iggy Pop and Klaus Nomi. And all that barely scratches the surface.
In one episode Dean wants to say "Sic semper tyrannis," which is what Lincoln's assassin was alleged to have said. Of course, he actually says "Semper fidelis tyrannosaurus," but Killinger does tell him what the right quote was.
Minor example, played mostly due to Rule of Funny. An episode of Duck Dodgers features a short appearance of a group of people refferred to as the Presidents of the United States, consisting of the four LEAST known US presidents. Dodgers' reaction is understandable.
