Popcultural Osmosis Failure / Reference Mistaken for Original

Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure examples:

Reference Mistaken for Original

Comic Books

• Cobra Kai: In the spin-off comic series, Johnny makes a reference to Rocky Balboa, whom his teenage students only know as "the old guy from Creed".

Fan Works

• Ultra Fast Pony: Happens in-universe.
  • "The David Bowie Drinking Game" (which, true to its name, is loaded with David Bowie shout outs): Spike says that Rarity was kidnapped by "scary monsters and super creeps!" Twilight corrects him: "It's scary monsters and nice sprites!" Everyone else is aghast at Twilight's ignorance, and at the episode's end Twilight admits that she has no idea who Bowie is.
  • "The Longest Episode": Pinkie shares her The Lord of the Rings Self-Insert Fic, and her audience tells her that she's ruining a classic book. Pinkie is shocked to realize that "There's a book of Lord of the Rings?"

Literature

• Fate/strange Fake: When Servant Watcher brings up Arthurian Legend, Sigma reveals he only knows of him from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Live-Action TV

• The Handmaid's Tale: In "Fairytale", June, her husband Luke and the Guardian with whom they exchanged info are at an abandoned bowling alley, waiting until it is dark. While they wait, Luke goes to the alley's organ and plays Al Green's "Let's Stay Together", serenading June. The young Guardian, who barely remembers life before Gilead, likes the song and asks Luke if he wrote it. Luke is all, "Yup".
• How I Met Your Mother: This frequently happens between Robin (who is Canadian) and the rest of the gang. For example:
  Robin: I love Springsteen! He's like the American Bryan Adams!

For those who are unfamiliar with these artists (due to age, musical taste, or geography), they have similar artistic styles, but Springsteen had his break ten years earlier and is much more famous around the world, and particularly in the US. Except the gang's lack of understanding over who Bryan Adams is falls completely flat for UK audiences, where the Canadian Adams is more famous than he is in America.

Music

• Also sprach Zarathustra is:
  • a book by Nietzsche;
  • a 30-minute orchestral tone poem composed by Strauss, the first 2 minutes of which is used by:
    • the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and
    • Professional Wrestler Ric Flair as his Leitmotif, and
    • Brazilian musician Eumir Deodato, whose jazz-funk arrangement was a hit single in 1973,
  • and a JRPG (Xenosaga 3: Also Sprach Zarathustra),
    
    pretty much in that order.
• "Ride of the Valkyries" is either 1) the beginning of Act III of Wagner's Die Walküre, 2) "Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit!", or 3) the piece played during the air cavalry attack in Apocalypse Now. Or more recently, 4) Daniel Bryan's WWE theme music. Of course, like many examples from Type 2, The Miz thought it was from Star Wars.
• Basically the reason Covered Up and Sampled Up exist (just see the opening quote for the former entry).

Print Media

• In its episode guide to Lois & Clark, SFX magazine explains that Perry's anonymous source Sore Throat (who actually refers to the line "Follow the money" at one point), is a parody of Deep Throat... from The X-Files.

Video Games

• Counter-Strike servers often added the Unreal Tournament "Headshot!" "Multi kill!" "Killing spree!" etc. sound effects. This became such a wide-spread practice, however, that many modders, unaware of the now-less-popular game, refer to them as "CS" sounds when they add them to other games. This expanded to the point that Valve, the company that made Counter-Strike, used the Unreal Tournament announcements in the beta of their newer game, Dota 2.

Webcomics

• General Protection Fault: In the storyline "Scylla and Charybdis", when Colonel Barker gives the Title Drop, Patty recognises the reference to The Odyssey, but Dexter says he thought it was from an episode of Ulysses 31.

Western Animation

• BoJack Horseman: The fourth season has Hollyhock mention "Chandler's List", an SNL parody of Schindler's List, which was the only reason she got something that BoJack had referenced.

Real Life

• In Linkara and Spoony's crossover review of Warrior #1, Spoony mocks the Ultimate Warrior's disjointed speech patterns by quoting Col. Campbell's infamous line from Metal Gear Solid 2 near verbatim (only adding a "Hoak Hogan" to keep with the theme). Months afterward, TGWTG fans who apparently never played MGS2 would often spout "I need scissors! 61!" when talking about the Ultimate Warrior, as if believing the line only came from that review.
• Every time someone mentions that something reminds them of Bubble Boy from...Seinfeld.
• When Titanic (1997) was re-released (to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the real disaster), a lot of young people took to Twitter to express their surprise upon learning that it was based on a real ship. Cue Facepalming.
  • At least one newscast referred to the Costa Concordia as "the real life Titanic".
• We're now at the point where younger shoppers have no idea that "The Newman's Own guy" was once a movie star.
• In the mid-'70s and on into the ’80s, a common story had a young person in a music store saying “Hey, look, Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings!” Columnist Herb Caen, among others, claimed to have personally witnessed it.
• Many young fans refer to Christopher Eccleston as the first Doctor Who — and many more young fans refer to David Tennant as the first Doctor, too.

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