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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. - Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
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.
As a result, any time a TV character mentions a classical composer it will be Mozart, Beethoven or J. S. Bach. The only pieces of classical music are Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Für Elise, Also Sprach Zarathustra, and Ride Of The Valkyries; the only operas are Carmen, Rigoletto, Pagliacci, Don Giovanni, and the Ring Cycle (and then only if 'Viking' helmets are involved). If there is a tango, it will always be "Por una Cabeza". The only tenor aria is "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot; the only soprano aria is the " Habanera " from Carmen. There are no altos, baritones, or basses in these operas; all singers are dignified tenors or temperamental sopranos, regardless of their actual vocal ranges. Every ballet is either Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, or occasionally Giselle.
The only piece ever written for the cello is Bach's Suite No. 1 in G Major, of which only the prelude will be heard.
No popular musician exists that is not mind-bogglingly well-known. All are American or from the British Isles (save one). Those from the British Isles (e.g. The Beatles) may be referred to as American anyway.
The only painters are Rembrandt, van Gogh, Picasso, Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Norman Rockwell, and the guys the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were named after. (Dalí and Monet are occasionally used to make a character look particularly sophisticated, and you might hear a mention of HR Giger to describe how scary something is, but that's it.) In older shows the references are even more restricted: no show before 1990 will mention Pollock or Giger, who were at the time considered extremely obscure, and Dali will be mentioned only as a figure of fun. Generally, the only specific paintings referenced are Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, Grant Wood's American Gothic, Edvard Munch's The Scream, and James Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black Whistler's Mother. Oh, and something bizarrely pseudo-Cubist that will be said to be a Picasso.
M. C. Escher is also known (especially his Relativity) but is always without exception a "painter"; there is no such thing as a printmaker.
The only sculptures are Michelangelo's David, the Venus de Milo, the Pieta, the Thinker, miscellaneous Roman busts or something abstract.
The only authors of literature are Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, and Dostoevsky ( Jane Austen if it's a chick flick). Occasionally Balzac will be mentioned, but only for a laugh because his name sounds like "ball sack." The only literary works are War And Peace and Moby Dick; even popular authors seem restricted to Clancy, King, and Michener. The works of Shakespeare are the only plays ever written, and even then it's a very limited selection. The only science fiction writer is Isaac Asimov, and he wrote only science fiction. The Lord Of The Rings is the only fantasy in existance, except possibly for Harry Potter, which is the only fantasy anyone (read: the resident geek) has ever actually read. In particular, Harry Potter is the sole representative of the Urban Fantasy genre.
As for poetry, Robert Frost is one of the only poets in existence, and the only two poems he ever wrote were 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' and 'The Road Not Taken.' Wordsworth also wrote something about flowers. And ravens occasionally say "Nevermore". Any poem written by a woman is dismissed as sappy and inferior, especially Elizabeth Barrett Browning's only poem 'How Do I Love Thee?', which just has two lines.
The only scientists who have ever lived are Galileo Galilei, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, and Stephen Hawking. The only philosophers who have ever lived are Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Anyone who becomes a philosopher will either be a Nietzsche Wannabe or at some point quote 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, then disappeared again.
Aside from those who are in office right now, the US Presidents are the only politicians of all time. (Rutherford B. Hayes existed, Charlemagne did not.) The only despotic tyrants are Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and America's enemy of the moment (or America itself, Depending On The Writer). Cleopatra and King Tut are the only Egyptian pharaohs. Julius Caesar, Nero, and the emperor that was most recently portrayed in a BBC mini-series are the only Roman emperors (and maybe Caligula). "England" has only had three sovereigns: Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Victoria. The only other royals to exist are Marie Antoinette, Grand Duchess Anastasia (who will be called a "princess"), Princess Diana and Princess Grace. Royalty and nobility are the same thing.
The only time periods (not counting present and future) are the prehistoric, the stone age, the middle ages, The Renaissance, the Victorian era, and the latter half of the 20th century. (Despite this, everyone living before The Sixties will have a stereotypically repressed Victorian view of the world.) The only dynasty in China was the Ming Dynasty. Ancient Rome began with Julius Caesar. The entire history of Japan consists of early Tokugawa shogunate and Meiji restoration. In Japanese shows, World War II will be mentioned but not willingly. In American shows, on the other hand, World War II and The Vietnam War are the only two conflicts ever. In both instances, all of the Allies are Americans and the Axis consists of either mindless umlaut-sputtering Nazis or sadistic Japanese killers (definitely no Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians or Yugoslavs).
Central America does not exist. Canada is a small country consisting only of Toronto and rural Quebec (Possibly the Yukon, although that's as likely as not to be treated as simply part of Alaska). The only islands in the Caribbean are Cuba, the Bahamas, and Jamaica. 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.) The Middle East consists of Israel plus any country that the US is currently at war with. Scotland is the same country as Ireland unless the author is from the UK. Northern Ireland and Wales don't exist even if the author is from the UK. There are no distinct countries in eastern Europe. Africa is Egypt, South Africa and Generic Tinpot Banana Republic 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.)
Paris is the only city in France, Berlin the only city in Germany, Vienna the only city in Austria, London is the only city in England (which is a country also called the UK), Toronto and Montreal are the only cities in Canada, Sydney is the only city in Australia, Tokyo is the only city in Japan, and Ireland consists of Dublin, Belfast and ten thousand tiny rural villages. China is fortunate enough to have two three cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, and America has an amazing three four five six: New York, Los Angeles (which contains Hollywood, palm trees, and little else), San Francisco (famous landmarks include (depending on genre) the Golden Gate bridge and a gay club, or the Golden Gate bridge and Star Fleet Headquarters), Detroit (as the urban hellhole of choice), Las Vegas (which is home to casinos and Elvis Impersonators) and Chicago (usually in gangster movies), plus one generic Midwestern small town where everyone is white, middle-class, conservative, religious, honest, and full of common sense, if a little naive; one generic small Southern town where everyone is gossipy, racist, insular and even more conservative and religious than the folks in the Midwest town; and one small generic Western town where everyone is a taciturn, weatherbeaten cowboy.
In sci-fi, this trope extends even into space: if it's not just stars, the background is either the Crab Nebula or the Horsehead Nebula. Stars are Rigel, Alpha Centauri, Antares, "Orion" or the "Belt of Orion." Galaxies are the Milky Way or Andromeda. The only comet is Halley's.
Monopoly, Clue(do), Risk, Chess, and Chess's abstract buddies are the only boardgames generally depicted. (That's still better than real life, where 95% of people can be expected to say "its like Monopoly then?" in reaction to every game they see while the Eurogamer grits his/her teeth.) A chessboard will be wrongly oriented about 90% of the time, despite it being a straight 50-50 shot. Playing cards are only used for magic tricks, testing psychics, and four and a half games: Poker, Blackjack, Go Fish, Slapjack, and the bidding part of Contract Bridge. (An exception may be made for pinochle in older works.) Conversely, Tarot cards are only used for divination.
Mario, Halo, Guitar Hero, DDR and any arcade game that was wildly popular in the 80's are the only videogames. If the subject is censorship, expect Grand Theft Auto and Mortal Kombat to show up as well. If a game system is mentioned, it's either a "Nintendo," a "Sony," or a Wii.
If Tabletop RPGs exist at all, it will be Dungeons And Dragons or a Brand X version thereof.
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 was the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the BrontoApatosaurus. Afterwards everyone could suddenly discuss velociraptors and dilophosaurs as though they'd ever heard of them before. Right now the works of Leonardo da Vinci are getting 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 and Mu‘ammar al-Qaḏāfī ( however you spell it), 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.
Nothing But Hits and Small Taxonomy Pools are Sub Tropes.
See also Weird Al Effect, Public Medium Ignorance, Cultural Cross Reference, and Popcultural Osmosis. A specific version is the self-explanatory universal Geek Reference Pool. Contrast Genius Bonus.
Examples
Notable Forms
- Name five dog breeds. Now name five cat breeds. Bet it's a lot harder to do the latter, eh?
- The only time you ever really see cat breeds mentioned is if it's the exceptionally hairy ones, or the exceptionally wrinkly hairless ones.
- Justified. Dogs have "plastic genes"; there is a lot more variation between different breeds of dogs than between breeds of cats.
- Military works 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.
- 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).
- I have yet to see ANYTHING about 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.
- There was a 1993 CBC docudrama miniseries about the Dieppe raid, but I don't know how many people living beyond antenna range of the Canadian border have heard of CBC, let alone one of its programs, so it's yet another thing that doesn't exist.
- 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.
- One reason for this was the absolute avalanche of war movies set in the Pacific Theater that were played over and over on television during the 70s and 80s, when most American game designers were growing up. There were so many of them, and especially so many bad ones, that I suspect the average designer saw the war in the Pacific Theater as close to a Dead Horse Trope - nobody wanted to hear about it any more.
- Did anyone hear about The Great Raid or Pearl Harbor?
- And forget about anything set in the Asian front or Manchuria, outside of China anyway.
- British tropers of A Certain Age will remember the sitcom It Ain't 'Alf Hot, Mum, set in India and Burma.
- Woe to you if you want to find something about Australia in the Pacific War, outside of outright historical/documentary works.
- Or, Australia and New Zealand in the Vietnam War, at least in the US; to say nothing of the other American allies Taiwan and South Korea.
- The third installment in the Panzer General series, Pacific General, has the player as either the US or the Japanese. The first installment of the same series was somewhat rare in that the campaign is played from the perspective of the Germans (the second game, Allied General, is also in the European theater but from the Allied side).
- 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.
- 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. Upon realizing the heroine has no idea who he is, he remarks "You people! If there's not a movie about it, it's not worth knowing, is it?" She later tries to show him up by her knowledge of the Ten Plagues, but the Metatron counters that they were in the movie The Ten Commandments.
- 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.
- Also, there are no martial arts from anywhere other than Asia—you might see someone in a movie do savate, or even pankration, but it'll always either be unnamed, or just called "kickboxing" or "wrestling". In a medieval setting, the knights will not know a system of unarmed fighting; anyone who can fight unarmed will have to have been trained in "the mysterious east." Similarly for modern settings, on the off-chance capoeira is acknowledged to exist, the only varieties are Angola and Regional; there is no such thing as Mandinga or Cordão de Ouro. Capoeiristas will never use the more dangerous techniques designed for streetfighting, and yet will be able to hold their own with fighters from other styles.
- 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.
- Subverted in an episode where the somewhat obscure pop punk band, Nerf Herder (who did the theme song) is playing in the background and the characters say that they suck.
- 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.
- A Canadian mentions this in 'Canadian Bacon', but he is disregarded by the American protagonist (played by Toronto native, John Candy) who heads to Toronto
- 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.
- Far more movies take place in New York City than in Washington D. C. 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.
- New York was the capital of the United States for a brief period before the formation of Washington, D.C.. Other cities that laid the claim include Philadelphia, PA, Baltimore, MD, York, PA, Princeton, NJ, Annapolis, MD, & Trenton, NJ.
- Philadelphia was the capital of the U.S. from the First Continental Congress to the First Articles of Confederation. Then, Baltimore was the capital during the Second Continental Congress. NYC only was the capital during the signing of the Constitution. So, it's not laying claim; rather, it is actualities.
- 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 D.C. (Minority Report springs to mind), unlike the other such federal capitals.
- 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...
- Everyone's heard of the Muses, but how many of you can name even one Muse, never mind what they are supposed to inspire? Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (lyric poetry), Euterpe (music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (choral poetry), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), Urania (astronomy).
- The montage in the opening theme of Star Trek Enterprise was ostensibly supposed to show the "firsts" of human space exploration which would eventually lead to warp. Thing is, all of the scenes used were from the American space program, which would ostensibly be more familiar to the American audience. This, of course, doesn't take into account the fact that in Real Life the Soviets were ahead most of the time in the Space Race, especially during the earlier stages.
- 95% of James Bond parodies are a parody of the Sean Connery era films. The remaining 5%, at least nowadays, are Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig. Roger Moore, George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton? Who are they?
- In all fairness Lazenby's sole film was really just a Connery film with a Jonas Quinn in the lead role, Moore's are practically self-parodies anyway, and not too many people remember that much about Dalton's films.
- For porn films, many people automatically pick Debbie Does Dallas, although it was made in 1978. For actresses, they pick Linda Lovelace (or more recently, Jenna Jameson.) Male actors are almost always just Ron Jeremy or John Holmes.
- 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.
- 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.
- Similarly, "socialism" defaults to some variety of Marxism, ignoring such things as anarchism, mutualism, or democratic socialism.
- Sadly, though, it's not very hard to understand where the misconception springs from. When one of the biggest nations on Earth goes Leninist/Stalinist for the better part of a century, well...
- If you live in a country with experience of a socialist government, all socialism is of the form it practiced. If you don't, all socialism is Soviet Communism.
- 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).
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.
- Apparently, all prank calls are done by the Jerky Boys.
- What? Nobody's heard of Roy D. Mercer?
- 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.
- Further into the present, more and more stuff is being mis-attributed to Da Vinci's Notebook, despite the fact that they broke up in '04.
- Among Canadian listeners, the Arrogant Worms get this a lot too (though still not as much as Weird Al).
- 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?
- 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.
- Rammstein also supposedly did the intro to Final Fantasy X, although the song is in English and not really their style at all.
- There is also a Norwegian parody of the same song that is commonly assumed to be in German by people who have no idea what either Norwegian or German sounds like.
- 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?
- Or Pinkard and Bowden? ("I Lobster But Never Flounder", "Mama She's Lazy"...)
- In a similar manner, many songs sung on The Bob And Tom Show are attributed to either Rodney Carrington (if they have a twang) or Heywood Banks (if they don't), regardless of who actually performed the song. For groups, it's usually attributed to Da Vinci's Notebook.
- All musical scores are by Danny Elfman, John Williams, or Hans Zimmer.
- There's also an outside chance of it being James Newton Howard, or more recently, Michael Giacchino.
- Jerry Goldsmith is also a popular choice for misnaming.
- There's apparently ever 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Apparently, some people believe Dark Side Of The Moon was Pink Floyd's first album.
- The only songs Queen have ever recorded are "Bohemian Rhapsody", "We Will Rock You", and "We Are the Champions".
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 thought) that every non-Christian religion worshiped the Greek or Roman pantheon. The Song of Roland portrays Muslims as Apollo worshipers, 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).
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.
Exceptions:
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