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You kids don't know what you want! That's why you're still kids — 'cause you're stupid!
Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment.
In any case, we felt *action* should be emphasized over *plot* — especially avoiding any complicated story line — to ensure the success of this series with its intended viewers. — The Transformers series bible
Common belief among TV executives. Everyone who watches TV has the intellect of Beavis And Butthead.
Root cause of a lot of Executive Meddling.
Especially common among shows intended for children. Kids can legitimately be said to be less knowledgeable than adults, though we all probably know a depressingly large number of exceptions, but this leads to shows that are condescending and didactic.
Many of these things are also done by Media Watchdogs thinking the same way.
Obviously, some viewers are morons, but executives seem to place the entire TV-watching segment of the human race squarely in the idiot pile.
On top of that, not only are viewers stupid, they are also intolerant of people and things unlike themselves, ignorant, and have the attention span of a goldfish.
It is worth noting that " Viewers Are Morons" is usually an overstatement: executives do not generally change shows with the specific idea that the viewers will be too stupid to get it. Rather, they just think that one approach will be more successful than another, in many cases as a result of input from test groups. If the approach they choose is more straightforward this is taken to indicate a low opinion of the viewers' intellect, but some aspect of this is True Art Is Incomprehensible.
Leads to:
Interestingly enough, though, this meta-trope sounds worse than it is, at least currently; actually comparing and contrasting the entertainment of today with the entertainment of the past will show that overall, shows demand more of your mind than they used to, probably because we'd be bored if it didn't and partly because things like recorders or the Internet now make it possible to examine shows in more depth more easily than in the past (read Stephen Johnson's book Everything Bad Is Good For You for an eloquent explanation beyond the scope of this article).
Of course, all that means is that the bar for entertainment is raised even higher, and that viewers will get annoyed more and more easily if things like Infodump happen a few times too many. Additionally, the caveat about this being what executives believe about viewers was, at least at one point, not particularly untrue. In the era of the "Big Three" networks (NBC, ABC and CBS), before VCRs and the like, shows really were literally designed to be simple and supposedly "unobjectionable" narratives, for fear of making that one third of the entire TV viewing audience tune out and tune in to one of the competitors. This is why television quickly gained the nicknames Boob Tube and Idiot Box from intellectuals who found television pandering and simple.
Note that this viewpoint is not particular to network executives. Question some point of continuity for a children's show with a sizeable adult Periphery Demographic, and you are pretty much guaranteed one of the periphery adult fans will insist that it's "because it's a kid's show and they don't expect kids to notice." Ironically, kids are often far more aware of such mistakes, not because kids are per se "smarter" than we expect, but because not having things like a job, spouse, or "real life" to distract them, they tend to watch their favorites much more obsessively and with more of their minds fully devoted to analysis. Consequently, children can put even the strictest editors to shame with their awkward questions.
Compare Lowest Common Denominator. For when the viewers really are morons, see Fan Dumb.
For the less common polar-opposite, see Viewers Are Geniuses.
Examples
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Advertising
- One of the truisms of advertising is that young men 15-25 are the most likely of any group to be swayed by advertising. This is partly because older people's buying choices are usually already set in stone and women tend to buy what their mothers or friends buy, but numerous studies also show that young men are actually more likely to believe an advertiser's pitch, especially if the advertiser appeals to their masculinity or ego. This leads to fiftysomething advertising executives trying to use tropes they have no understanding of in a desperate attempt to attract that desirable target market, and treating viewers like morons in the process. Cue marketing fiascos like the McDonald's "I'd Hit It" bus ads.
- This commercial for PC cleanup software Finally Fast, featuring such things as a G4 iBook crashing with a Windows BSOD, seems to embody this trope. (Sure, if you want to use Virtual PC just to check your e-mail...)
- "It's not loading!" But it has loaded.
- The text in the second frame in the Blue Screen of Death does not align with the top of the screen. Not to mention that the BSoD quickly pushes off the top 2 thirds of its contents (which never happens in real life).
- For the viewers who almost never use Macintosh computers, the G4 uses an entirely different processor architecture from any other modern PC. Unless Windows somehow became open-source and somebody re-compiled it for the G4's architecture, there would be no way to run Windows on one. [not directly]
- They also mention that the site only works on P Cs and not Macs in somewhat fine print in the middle or towards the end.
- A boy blames a locally played video game on Internet speed. It should have loaded all the way anyway.
- That scene also contains one of the most extreme examples of Pac Man Fever I've ever seen; the kid is playing a video game that looks like a low-budget Play Station top-down shooter with vaguely 8-bit sound effects while frantically mashing buttons on a PS 2 controller (that doesn't seem to be attached to anything), on a laptop.
- Hey, is that a Windows 95 error on Windows XP? And a Windows 2000 error on Windows XP?
- And a Firefox 404 error on Internet Explorer? Which apparently is the result of the top level domain deliberately redirecting to page "www.email.com/error.htm/" (note the slash at the end, which is generally NOT automatically placed after the "dot HTML" part)?
- Put simply, there are a lot of errors and inconsistencies.
-
Interestingly Predictably, Finally Fast.com is filled with spyware and trojans, which concludes that they were two-bit con-artists that knows barely about computers and only knows about bilking money from people who don't know how computers really work.
- And to make things even worse, the producers of the commercial can't seem to take legitimate criticism— they've filed DMCA claims against the above-linked videos.
- It hasn't occured to anyone yet that anyone computer-savvy enough to spot those errors aren't their target market anyway? After all, a quick Google search will direct anyone intelligent enough to Google search to plenty of FREE (and not trojan-filled) solutions to problems like malware. Yes, a woman sitting at her computer whining "It's not loading! Lemme try this again...ugh..." seems amusing/implausible to computer-savvy nerds who read T Vtropes all day, but the people this commercial preys on probably see that quite differently.
- Averted in a marvellous triple—barrelled—trope example from an advert for Citroën. It's against EU law to promote a car on speed in an ad. In practice that means actually showing a figure in km/h or MPH. So they pull an Aint No Rule card saying that if quote a distance and a time we can leave it for the viewer to figure out the speed. It is presented in the form of yet another trope — namely: Bugs Meany Is Gonna Walk. The scene is a courtroom and the defendant's alibi is that he has a witness putting him 50km away in under twenty minutes! As the representative for the defence remarked "Fifty kilometres in nineteen minutes in a normal saloon — impossible." Then the Bugs Meany Is Gonna Walk is subverted when the defendant is cleared and he and his representative steps outside to his car (the product) and she says "I thought you said it was a normal saloon?"
- A Finnish commercial for a tax-free shop with "Tax free, without VAT".
- Parodied in a series of Disaronno Amaretto commercials in which the viewer is taught the oh-so-secret recipes for such obscurely named mixed drinks as "Disaronno on the rocks with lemon" (You pour Disaronno in a glass with ice, then add lemon.), "Disaronno with milk" (You pour Disaronno & milk into the same glass.), and even just "Disaronno on the rocks." (You guessed it.)
- You... pour Disaronno on rocks? I don't get it.
- "Head On apply directly to your forehead! Head On apply directly to your forehead! Head On apply directly to your forehead!"
- Head On is a placebo/homopathic remedy, so they can't say it will relieve pain. But they can say apply to forehead, since that makes no claims about the product.
- They are not allowed to claim to cure specific medical conditions without FDA approval, but they are however allowed to make structure-function claims. Popular claims relate to boosting the immune system, removing nondescript toxins, or just whatever made-up babble seems to lead to the desired effect.
- Video Game themed ads for DeVry University. "Can you believe we get paid to do this?" No, I can't believe you get paid to sit there mashing on a controller and misrepresenting the hours and hours of mindnumbing work that go into making the simplest games, and the marketer who put you up to it should be fired!
- Similarly, the infamous ads for the U.S. military. A couple for the Air Force will be about piloting UAV's or engineering aircraft, but the rest will make service look like a summer camp that teaches you to twirl a rifle and then sends you off to college for free.
- Let's not even mention the ads for the U.S. Marine Corps (now discontinued) which had a marine battling various mythological monsters. Okay, when Cthulu and friends start their invasion of Earth I'll be sure to sign right up...
- Ads for Russian military get even worse. There are a series of commercials featuring all of Russia fawning over a hauntingly beautiful recruit named Vasily which imply that if you join the Russian army, you'll earn the respect of your family and neighborhood, be reunited with your childhood friends, date gorgeous blonds, make ridiculous amounts of money and meet Santa. The commercials also really love to beat you over the head with how much cash Vasily has to throw around (did he just buy his father a Rolex?) which seems especially cynical and predatory considering how poor many Russians are. If you were/knew people who were involved in Chechnya like this troper, it will make you distinctly uncomfortable.
- In American advertising regulations, it is required that hands be shown in toy ads operating toys. In Japan, Merchandise Driven series based on giant robots can have ads with the toys folding and merging via CG, but in America it has to be shown manually. America REALLY thinks their children are dumb, don't they?
- To be fair, most of these regulations came about after a massive false advertising lawsuit during the GI Joe era. Showing toys walking, talking, transforming and firing by themselves, when they, in fact, do not, is hardly kosher.
- A series of PS As featuring an inept superhero (the ads note that unlike saving the world, saving a life, by giving blood, is easy). The hero chucks a meteor into space and accidentally destroys the moon. A horrified witness notes "that means no more tides" then feels the need to have them clarify "tides are created by the moon" after it. Someone who failed elementary school likely has blood so filled with ST Ds and drugs it is unsuited for donation.
Anime and Manga
Films
- Jennifers Body stars Amanda Seyfried as a plain Jane who isn't really wanted by any boys. In case the constant dialogue that about it being bashed into your head as exposition wasn't enough for the viewers to figure out that she's unattractive, the character is named Needy.
- The ending is a real slap in the face to the audience. Needy breaks out of the insane asylum and plots to kill Low Shoulder, the Satan-worshiping band that sacrificed Jennifer to Satan. Then the plot flash forwards to Needy attempting to hitchhike and someone does slow down. She hops in the truck and explains that she wants to go a concert because it's going to be the band's last show. The camera pans out of the truck after Needy explains this and, to the right of the truck, there is a caution road sign that says Low Shoulder just in case you're too stupid to know that Needy is going after them.
- Complaints from higher ups that no one would understand the original purpose of The Matrix (a computer that uses the brain and nerve cells of its inhabitants) meant they had to change it to blatantly impossible idea that they are an energy source.
- This also caused changes to Neo's ending speech, as the higher-ups figured not everyone would understand the word "chrysalis".
- And in the third film, the Oracle was recast because of the previous actress dying. The in-universe reason for the change in her appearance was explained in a dialogue in her first scene. And then the explanation was repeated every single time she appeared after that in case the audience was too thick to wrap its heads around it.
- Technically, the relationship between the Merovingian, Oracle, and Sati's parents is not explained in any detail in the films, and requires knowledge of the series' expanded universe works.
- A variant occurs in the 1939 film adaptation of The Wizard Of Oz when studio brass forced the producers to make Dorothy's adventures in Oz All Just A Dream. Apparently they thought viewers were too sophisticated to accept that a fantasy land like Oz could be real. Go figure.
- The main plot of Men In Black was toned down to something not very logical because the original plot was about two alien species about to enter war, and the bug (a 3rd race) was there to provoke it. The audience will obviously be confused about THREE alien races.
- This Trope could actually be parodied in the film with "Earthlings are Dumb." Kay basically says the whole reason the MIB exist is because "people are dumb, panicky, dangerous creatures" who can't handle extraterrestrials living on their planet.
- It was less "Earthlings are dumb" than, "Groups are dumb". Individuals were said to be smart enough to adapt, but entire social structures would snap if the truth got out too soon.
- A good example of this trope causing Executive Meddling can be seen in the climax of Batman Begins. Batman exposits to Gordon that if the train carrying the Mac Guffin reaches Wayne Tower, the whole city will be covered in fear toxin. Executives were convinced that audiences needed to have this information repeated to them every two minutes during the train chase, and so the action climax repeatedly cut away to water technicians repeating this information over and over.
- This is the Mac Guffin, mind you, that emits magic microwave radiation which only affects liquid water. The viewer is expected not to figure out that people are mostly water and should sizzle like reheated meat when it goes off nearby. How's that for fridge logic?
- Clearly the belief of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer; their movies only contain references to movies made in the past year, presumably in the belief that no one has memories past a year, and wouldn't know the reference of, say, The Smurfs.
- 24 Hour Party People begins with Tony Wilson crashing a hang-glider. He turns to the camera and tells us that was symbolic of what will happen to him. "I'll just say one word: 'Icarus'. If you get it, great. If you don't, that's fine too. But you should probably read more."
- This is less "Viewers are morons", however, and more "Tony Wilson is an insufferable prat". (The MOVIE expects the viewer to get it. The character doesn't necessarily.)
- The Madness Of King George is an adaptation of the play The Madness of George III. Nigel Hawthorn stated that the change was to prevent people from thinking the film was the third in a series, but the author and the director insist that it was to make George's royalty more prominent in the advertising, especially in areas where George III isn't instantly known by that name. In America, George III of the United Kingdom is commonly known as King George.
- The Evil Dead was originally to be called Book of the Dead, until producer Irvin Shapiro argued that the title was too "literary": as he famously said to them, "nobody wants to watch a movie about a book!" While that's a pretty bizarre claim (the book in question is a Tome Of Eldritch Lore), series creators Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell have both agreed since that the "The Evil Dead" really has worked better.
- The American edition of the Highlander film had the scenes at the beginning cut out because executives thought the cuts between Present Connor at and Past Connor would be too confusing. Naturally, the European and Japanese versions retained the scenes.
- Enemy Mine was apparently forced to include subplot about their enemies operating a mine. On the basis that people wouldn't understand the title could be rephrased as "My Enemy", and would want to know where the mine was. Maybe they could have had someone step on one too.
- Watch any big-budget action movie, and chances are you'll hear several characters narrating the action, to inform the audience that the bad guys are, in fact, shooting at them. Sometimes the hero will talk to himself, because there are no sidekicks around for him to exposit to.
- In the climax of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy and his father make sure to repeat the word "penitent" several times, and then define the word — twice — just in case the audience still doesn't get it.
- To be fair, the scene in question involves a riddle to which the precise definition of penitent is rather important (as in "you get sliced into tiny pieces if you get it wrong" kind of important).
- This troper didn't feel so much like Indy was supposed to be spelling out the meaning to the audience and more like he was trying to figure out what the hell the clue meant in the first place. It's not like there's an obvious connection between "penitent" and "duck or the deathtrap will chop your head off".
- Here's a more obvious example from the same movie; near the beginning, Indy tells Marcus that he needs to go to Venice, Italy, with emphasis on the "Italy." Minutes later, shots of canals and gondoliers are accompanied by subtitles clarifying that we are now in Venice, Italy, just to make certain that no one thought Indy was off to California.
Literature
- While the original 1953 Bond book Casino Royale was called that in Britain, in America the name was changed to You Asked For It, and the back cover refers to him as "Jimmie Bond".
- The American edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was renamed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Apparently this is because the US publisher thought American kids would reject a book that sounded as though it was about philosophy, and demanded a title that was less "misleading". This despite the fact that the Philosopher's Stone is an actual (theoretical) alchemical artifact, and is explicitly explained in the book, and that there's just no such thing as a Sorceror's Stone at all.
- The Frederick Pohl short story "Day Million" revolves almost entirely around this trope, as an omniscient narrator who's describing life in the 28th century grows increasingly angry with what he assumes to be the present day reader's ignorant disbelief. Your Mileage May Vary on whether the verbal abuse that ensues makes for a funny Take That or an insulting dismissal of the reader's intelligence.
- This troper felt her intelligence was being insulted when the word "hence" was treated like a big, obscure word in Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix. This troper was ten at the time and the character treating it as such was supposed to be twelve.
- A Series Of Unfortunate Events constantly spoofs this trope by having an adult character say a word, then assume that the orphans wouldn't know what the word means and try to define it for them, to which one orphan or another (usually Klaus) almost always interrupts "We know what it means." The author also often uses various words and phrases in the actual narration, then explains them in a humorous way as they apply to the situation at hand, such as describing "takes the cake" as "a phrase which here means that more horrible things had happened to them than just about anybody" in The Reptile Room. The Baudelaires are generally shown as being far more intelligent than anyone gives them credit for, and the adults of the series routinely underestimate them and never put much stock in anything they say, something which usually results in more of the titular unfortunate events.
Live Action TV
- Although perhaps not considered such at the time, a tedious explanation of DNA and forensic science can be found in some episodes of Quincy ME.
- In an episode of The Weird Al Show, The Hooded Avenger mentions a bunch of impressing-sounding achievements he has, including a PhD. The network demanded that PhD be defined for kids who wouldn't understand the term (although they made no such requests for any of the other obscure/made up information), so Al explains it to Bobby...who replies with "Duh, I'm not an idiot."
- Used in Bones, when called upon at a trial as an expert witness, Brennan goes on about the skeletal remains as though she was talking to fellow scientists, using technical jargon and hardly stopping to take a breath. The prosecution was furious with her behaviour, but she refused to talk down to the jury, believing that they could follow her. She later had a talk with her superior on the matter, who rationally explained to her that most of the world is unfamiliar with the very field she is a master of and that presenting things in a simplified manner will allow her expertise to help the case.
- Simultaneously used and subverted in Stargate SG-1. Super-scientist Carter would often pause to lecture in technobabble to O'Neill, the leader and least eggheaded member of the team, about fairly basic real-world scientific principles. Not only did this make sure that less-knowledgeable audience members wouldn't be completely lost, it also provided some amusement for sci-fi fans who are already familiar with this stuff, when O'Neill would cut off Carter and have her get to the point. To paraphrase a typical example:
Carter: First, sir, we dial the Stargate out to the world orbiting the black hole, then launch it towards the star from a minimum safe distance. When it comes close enough to the star's surface, it will begin siphoning off matter from the photosphere, imbalancing...
O'Neill: Yes, yes, it'll suck away the sun's gas. Which will do what, exactly?
Carter: Make the star go boom.
O'Neill: Cool. That's what I needed to know.
- Another example:
Carter: That might just excite the phase particles enough to bring them into our visible light spectrum.
O'Neill: Carter?
Carter: Sir, the invisibility field must operate—-
O'Neill: Are you about to tell me that you can make the invisible guy vi—-
Carter: Yes, sir.
O'Neill: That's all I need.
- In one episode where O'Neill and Teal'c are trapped in a Time Loop, O'Neill learns — somewhat — the jargon related to their predicament, allowing him to baffle Carter with his knowledge.
- In an early season episode, O'Neill cleverly subverts his dimwitted persona, then steps back up to the plate and hits it out of the park again...
Carter: You can actually see matter spiralling towards it...
O'Neill: Actually, it's called the accretion disc.
Dr. Jackson: You can see why the local population would be afraid of i... what did you just say?!
O'Neill: It's just an astronomical term.
Carter: You didn't think the colonel had a telescope on his roof just to look at the neighbors, did you?
O'Neill: (to Teal'c) Not initially...
- In a later episode he actually cracks a joke regarding General Relativity. Carter appears to be the only one in the room who gets it.
- The underlying rationale for the Law And Order franchise's frequent use of the Idiot Ball / As You Know combo. Although occasionally justified.
- When classic Star Trek was first getting started, its first proposed pilot was rejected by executives for this reason. Said executives seemed convinced that the intelligent writing of the original pilot; "The Cage," would have been impossible for viewers to understand, and that more action was needed to draw modern viewers in. There's no telling how things might have gone, had they not done this. Presumably, Jeffrey Hunter would have been the captain of the Enterprise, as opposed to Shatner.
- An episode of News Radio involved the use of a polygraph. The executives didn't think the average person would know what a polygraph was, so they made the writers put something in that explained it. The writers got even though, because whenever someone mentions the polygraph, Dave chimes in that a polygraph is a lie detector. Whoever he was talking to always responds "Dave, I'm not an idiot."
- Parodied in Arrested Development
Maeby: I know what the shape of a banana reminds you of, and I know when I say nuts it makes you giggle
College Kid: *giggles*
Maeby: But, do you have any other response to "here's a banana with nuts?"
College Kid: Whooooohohoho! *giggles*
Maeby: Why are we even going after this idiot demographic?
- Heroes does this quite often, especially when the dubiously highly intelligent character Mohinder is involved. Complete with set-ups of characters asking questions to prompt the explanation. An example would be:
Eden: *Finds a flash drive in Mohinder's father's lizard tank* What's this?
Mohinder: It's a portable flash drive. My father must have stored his notes on it and then hid it here to keep it safe.
Thank you, Mohinder. Where would we be without you.
- I wonder how Peter survived that fall? How DID Peter survive that fall? If you haven't got your powers, how did you survive that fall. Five stories without his powers. How did Peter survive that fall? Jesus. H. Christ. Thankfully because Volume 3 seemed to have been plotted on speed, with no arc lasting more than about three episodes, Arthur just comes right out and TELLS Sylar he knows he saved Peter, ending all those rhetorical bloody questions.
- Take a shot every time someone uses the word "Hero" or "Villain" in Volume 3. Chances are you'll have liver failiure halfway through. After the first two seasons gave us heroes and villains who were three dimensional with shades of grey, Kring apparently decided that the viewers couldn't handle anyone who wasn't painted pure white or pitch black. So he promptly killed off every 3-dimensional villain (Maury, Adam, Elle, Bob) made those heroes who had darker tendencies out and out villains and simplified everything to the point where there wasn't actually a plot: just random people randomly being dicks, while other random people tried to stop them.
- Arthur Petrelli. Apparently Kring can't trust his audience to tell the Uber-Mencsh fixated sociopath who wants to build an army of powered thugs is the BAD GUY. So he has him Kick the Dog at least once an episode and never, EVER pet it.
- Monty Python has a sketch all about this, where a TV executive suggests showing the last five miles of a highway; the show gets ridiculously high ratings. In the same sketch, the aforementioned executives decide to change the titles on old TV series to make them seem new (e.g. "I Married Lucy").
- The scenes of Lost in which Daniel Faraday (or most any character) explains about time travel are slow-paced and overly pronounced with a head tilt and dramatic music ("we just don't know where we are - dum dum dum - in time!" for the millionth-time-over "explanation"). In a show where audiences are expected to believe an oft-parodied amount of wacky situations and plot lines, time travel must be thoroughly explained, lest the skeptics start wars on the internets.
- There's also the conversation between Miles and Hurley where Hurley seems unable to grasp that, despite the Stable Time Loop, since this isn't their past, they can still die. Thanks, show, for clearing that up.
- Sadly, according to Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, that scene was a direct parody of Lost fans, with Hurley representing the dimwitted casual fans who didn't understand the time travel, and Miles representing the impatient/condescending hardcore fans unwilling to explain it.
- Played with when Harry Hill appeared on Light Lunch as the presenter reluctantly gave the details to contact for a copy of the recipe Harry was cooking, which was Chops and Mash.
- Probably should be invoked by Smallville, if the message boards are any indication...
Fan 1: How did the Fortress get repaired? Brainiac infected it!
Fan 1: ...They should just say that instead of making the fans assume that.
- Grant Morrison claims that a planned Invisibles TV series was cancelled because an executive thought no one could understand the concept of telepathy.
- Just about every American Soap Opera known to man falls under this. Any time there is a mystery, the most obvious answer is nearly always the right one and horribly blatant clues are provided to the audience to spell it out. Despite this, it doesn't stop some hardcore fans from theorizing all sorts of possibilities that make much better sense than what ends up being revealed later on, in an often quite disappointing way. This happens quite often especially on the CBS series The Young and the Restless, and The Bold and the Beautiful.
- Played straight and subverted multiple times in NCIS. Mc Gee, Ducky, or Abbey will sometimes go off into technobabble while explaining what they have just found. Gibbs will either cut them off and demand the bottom line, or ask for a translation. Sometimes, they will cut themselves off.
Abbey: "The hair's missing a protein called - You know what, it doesn't matter what it's called, the important thing is it's not there."
Music
- The band Led Zeppelin refers to a zeppelin made out of lead. (Someone had predicted that they would go down like, well, a lead zeppelin.) However, to prevent a mispronunciation of lead into "leed" rather than "led", the spelling was changed.
Newspaper Comics
- Gary Larson, regarding why he changed the caption of a Far Side cartoon from his first idea: "Of course, almost everyone knows that "ungulate" is the collective term for hoofed mammal, but then why risk confusion among a handful of illiterates?"
Theater
- Plays by Bertolt Brecht, none of which are meant to be taken even a little bit literally, are sometimes taken literally by the audience. This troper has also had the extreme frustration of performing in The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, a satirical metaphor for the rise of Hitler, in which Ui wore a toothbrush moustache and swastika and slides of various dictators, including Hitler himself, playing constantly in the background. No matter how Anvilicious we made the show, every night it played, someone came and asked us what was up with all the Nazi references in a play about gangsters. I'm not sure if this is Viewers Are Geniuses or Viewers Are Morons fodder.
Video Games
- This can happen in Video Games, too — often resulting in a Forced Tutorial (Justified Tutorial or otherwise) or the player wanting to shout, "Stop Helping Me!" One such game with plenty of examples: The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I think it's obvious that pressing A when the blue icon says "Open" and you're standing next to a door opens that door.
- Especially obvious in the Pokemon games. If you're on Generation III, don't assume players don't know how to battle!
- With Pokemon, it's forgivable. There's no guarantee that a given player has worked through the generations in order (seeing as the target audience wasn't even alive when the first gen came out) and introduces any new mechanics.
- The infamous CD-i game Hotel Mario regularly assumes that the people playing the game have no clue about how to play. This includes Breaking The Fourth Wall to tell the player to read the instruction book, or asking them if they "get the hint" when the pre-level cutscenes hint toward the level's gimmick.
- Many gamers accuse Nintendo of treating them like idiots due to Nintendo's encouragement of using the Wii Remote Jacket, a silicone shell that cushions the remote from impact. Of course, the jacket is Nintendo's protection ever since a handful of people broke their TVs or other items by not wearing the wrist strap and letting go of the controller or swinging so hard that the strap snaps. Some of these people even tried to sue Nintendo.
- Some thought that Nintendo would in fact force the use of the jacket with the Wii Motion Plus, which comes inside its own jacket and is even depicted on game boxes as a jacket with an attachment. However, the peripheral itself is not stuck to the jacket and can fairly easily be removed and used without the jacket (getting it back in along with the remote is another story...)
- When the unboxing video of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released, Robert Bowling held up what he called "fully-functioning night vision goggles" with visible lights in front. Despite real night vision goggles that aren't actually toys cost hundreds of dollars and military models costing well over $4,000, COD fans are treating any claim that the night vision goggles aren't real military-grade optics as a personal attack to be met with much accusation of homosexuality that's so prevalent in console communities.
- Specifically, the goggles are Modern Warfare 2-branded EyeClops Night Vision infrared goggles. Except EyeClops Night Vision is a bit more open about the item's status as a toy, while Infinity Ward is trying to pass it off as authentic tactical equipment.
- This troper felt insulted by Okami hinting system, which not content with considering the players as pre-schoolers and telling you exactly what to do the instant you're faced with a puzzle, will also repeat it a few times while you're "solving" it, interrupting you in the process.
- Wii Sports Resort forces the first person to play to sit through a 3 minute instructional video on how to attach and detach the Wii Motion Plus.
Western Animation
- Parodied in Futurama in which an evil A.I. residing inside a laptop computer and three "execubots" are in charge of a television network, and describe their functions, one of which being to "underestimate middle-America".
- "It's funny, but will it get them off their tractors?"
- In another episode, Fry observes something to the effect of, "People don't want unexpected or smart on TV. Unexpected things make them feel scared, and smart things make them feel stupid."
- Subverted in an episode of The Transformers, "Autobot Spike", where Spike comments on Autobot X being a "real metal Frankenstein" and is asked by Bumblebee about what Frankenstein is; Spike then goes on to say it would take too long to explain.
- This is also a good measuring stick upon whether kids are mature enough to deal with some of the nightmare fuel said episode might create. It's a bit of a doozy.
- Parodied in The Tick episode "The Tick vs. Arthur's Bank Account":
Handy: Even now, he [The Tick] sulks like Achilles In His Tent. (everyone stares blankly at him) Handy: Achilles?... The Iliad?... It's Homer?... (close-up on Handy) Handy: READ A BOOK!
- One more than one occasion on Whose Line Is It Anyway, Wayne Brady would make a joke about something from Shakespeare, be met with silence from the studio audience, and say the same thing: "Read a book, people!"
- Ironically, Shakespeare did not write books.
- A quick, but still annoying moment in Ben 10: Alien Force when Ben, Gwen, and Kevin are battling an alien that absorbs life energy from living things to power itself. When it does so, Gwen exclaims "She's drawing life energy from millions of living things around her!" To which Kevin points out "The grass!" The added grass comment was COMPLETELY unnecessary considering it actually SHOWED energy being drawn out from the grass. In fact, the whole series seems to revolve of around the "they are kids so they won't notice" idea mentioned above, because NOTHING in the Alien Force story matches up with the facts that the original series already set out; it
sometimes ALMOST ALWAYS blatantly contradicts them without an ounce of explanation.
- In the first half of the series The Batman the titular character comments every alarm of the Batwave with the words "The Batwave".
- The Spectacular Spider Man had Green Goblin mention that he had possession of a "portable flash drive". In fact, this seems to be a common habit of any TV character whenever a flash drive is mentioned, even when they should know the person they're talking to has more than a passing familiarity with computers.
- Parodied in an episode of Family Guy; Peter rebuts the argument that British men are charming by saying "That's what they said about Benjamin Disraeli." Cut to Disraeli writing at his desk, then looking straight into the camera and saying "You don't even know who I am!"
Real Life
- Fairly recently, the traffic tickets in San Diego went up in price. The announcement in a commercial went something like this: "Ticket prices are being raised by 10%. This means that if previously, you would have gotten a ticket for $100 it will now be $110."
- Every single political campaign.
- This.
- "A Campaign spokesman said the ban might stop people confusing the Latin abbreviation e.g. with the word 'egg'." This is the last line in the article. Just to drive the point home.
- What's worse, another article on the same topic had someone complaining that elitists only used Latin terms to bolster their own... ego.
- Then again sometimes it is completely justified.
- There was also the case of a commercial that assumed people had more knowledge of what goes into their deli meats than they generally do. IIRC, the commercial has two cows standing on a stage. One represents the advertiser while the other represents the competition, and from offstage someone throws a bucket of seaweed over the competition's cow. The cow representing the company, however, remains clean and "natural". They were trying to illustrate how their competition used filler materials (seaweed derivatives being very common as filler ingredients) in their meat products but that they didn't, and where thereby superior quality meats. Too bad the commercial never bothered to explain itself because most people didn't know about filler much less what the seaweed had to do with anything.
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