Popcultural Osmosis Failure / Unknown Reference

Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure examples:

Unknown Reference

Advertising

• A whole generation of people grew up thinking of "the background music to the Old Spice advert, you know, the one with the guy on the surfboard" and not Carl Orrf's orchestral-and-choir classical piece O Fortuna! from the Carmina Burana piece.
• A whole generation of British people associate an evocative major theme with the Hovis bread adverts - and not with Dvorak's New World symphony.
• A tie-in Kraft Macaroni and Cheese commercial for the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie has Vanilla Ice rapping the "Go Ninja Go" song from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. A mother and her son overhear him and the mother starts dancing and rapping with Vanilla Ice. The child is annoyed, likely due to not understanding the reference and being embarrassed by his mom.

Anime & Manga

• A Certain Magical Index: Touma Kamijou knows almost nothing about history, mythology, and religion, so he is often lost when people try to explain how a certain magic works or its origins (in this verse, most forms of magic are based on some kind of myth or story). The explainer usually complains that Touma must be an idiot or a slacker to not know about the story.
• Fate/Apocrypha: William Shakespeare is summoned as Caster of Red. He gets annoyed that Shirou Kotomine has never heard of him and has never read any of his works. Shakespeare expected the other Servants to know who he is, because the Holy Grail provides Servants with basic knowledge of the time period they were summoned in, but finds that it did not include knowledge of him. He proceeds to make Shirou read his works... and Shirou, noticing Shakespeare's fondness for tragedy, uses a Command Seal to force Shakespeare to not write his own story as a tragedy.
• Fly Me to the Moon: Nasa Yuzaki was so obsessed with studying that his apartment doesn't have a TV and he has zero knowledge of movies and TV shows. Upon learning this, his wife Tsukasa Tsukoyomi makes it her mission to catch him up on all the pop culture that he missed. Despite her passionate lecture on the subject, he doesn't really get the appeal of pop culture, but buys a TV and watches with her to make her happy.
• Full Metal Panic!: In the original novels, Kaname instructs Sosuke to use the Lambda Driver to perform a Kamehameha. Sosuke, who's spent his entire life as a soldier and mercenary, replies "Kameha-what?"
• I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying does this a lot (as one would expect from the title). A good chunk of the humor in the series comes from the fact that Hajime Speaks in Shout-Outs and Kaoru has no idea what he's talking about.
• Kill Blue: After scarfing down eight bowls of ramen while trying to help Noren with a ramen-making contest, Ogami suffers a Balloon Belly and compares himself to Cell when he's about to explode. Given that the scene was aired on TV in 1993, Noren misses the reference completely as she wouldn't have been born at the time of airing.
• Time Stop Hero: Kuzuno Sekai is a teen from the modern world who gets sent to a fantasy land. He often makes references to anime and video games like Dragon Ball Z and Fist of the North Star that are lost on the others. In his party, he becomes popular as a storyteller by reciting old stories like The Monkey's Paw that no one has heard of.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Battle City arc had a few civilians who had never heard of the Duel Monsters card game and don't recognize the names of prominent duelists like Yugi Muto and Seto Kaiba.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS: Romin Kirishima has no idea what Duel Monsters is and doesn't understand why everybody else is freaking out when Hologram Man summons the legendary Blue-Eyes White Dragon. However, she is a quick learner and plays like an expert in her first duel.

Audio Plays

• In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio story Destiny of the Doctor: The Time Machine, the companion character, Alice Watson, is established early on as never having read fiction, even as a child, because she doesn't see the point in made-up things. Since the Eleventh Doctor's scattergun approach to conversation frequently covers fiction, and in particular he can't resist comparing her to Alice in Wonderland and Dr. Watson, this is the result.

Comic Books

• Batwoman: Though not completely out-of-the-loop, Kate Kane isn't that up-to-date on current music or other media popular with people her own age.
• In Birds of Prey #1 (2010 series), Lady Blackhawk (a time traveller from World War 2) doesn't get a reference to "Putting the Band Back Together". However, she has been in the present long enough to understand one to Twitter.
• The Flash's Rogues sit around drinking beer playing the game of "which musician would you kill." The popular choice is apparently Abba, to which Axel, the new Trickster and the young punk of the group replies, "Who's Abba?"
• Judge Dredd: In Judge Death's Origins Issue Boyhood of a Superfiend, his interviewer thinks that Death is referencing Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho when the genocidal psychopath gives him a False Reassurance that he's grown tired of killing and wouldn't hurt a fly. Since Death is from an Alternate Universe, he thinks that "Psycho" is meant to address him personally, and that "Hitchcock" is some sort of disease.
• In the Legion of Super-Heroes / Teen Titans crossover, Karate Kid had no idea why guys like Beast Boy and Superboy were saying "Wax on, wax off" to him.
• New Avengers: During a fight, Ms. Marvel fails to recognize a reference to Ghostbusters. Spider-Man, the one who made the reference, is deeply upset by this and claims he's unable to talk to her.
• Silk: Cindy Moon has this problem — having been locked away since she was 18, a lot has changed in ten years: she's confused when she asks Peter Parker where Netscape Navigator is (when Google Chrome and Firefox are the big ones nowadays^note this is even worse considering that Internet Explorer had phased Netscape out for longer than ten years), annoys Spider-Gwen when she starts singing one of Eminem's old songs, actually impressed J. Jonah Jameson when she asks "What's a Twitter?" and constantly refers to her first non-Inheritor foe as a Pokémon.
• In Superboy (1994) #92, Conner is suffering PTSD following Our Worlds at War and has a dream in which he follows Impulse (in rabbit ears) through a very Wonderlandish environment, with Steel as the talking doorknob from the Disney version, various bird-themed characters making their way through a huge pool in Penguin's umbrella, Granny Goodness and General Good as the Queen and King of Hearts, and so on. Amusingly, even though it's his own mind pulling out these images, he doesn't get the reference.
• Using in-universe media, Transmetropolitan sees this happen to Spider Jerusalem.
  • When a band comes up on the TV, he mentions an earlier musician that did the same genre better, then asks Channon if she's heard them:
    Channon: My dad liked him...
    Spider: Christ. Never tell me I'm old.
  • The unknown-but-assumed-to-be-vast amount of time that has passed between the present and when the series is set means that this happens to a lot of people.
    Man 1: Who was Hitler?
    Man 2: Rock star. He was in Led Zeppelin. Fucked goats and wrote the old national anthem. Blew up Auckland in the Blitz.
• Two-Face once saw that one of his mooks was obliviously standing in the way of somebody he was trying to shoot. Two-Face asked him to get out of the way, saying he couldn't afford to lose any more Red Shirts. When the confused mook asked what that term meant, Two-Face incredulously asked him if he had ever watched Star Trek. When the mook said no, Two-Face called him too stupid to live and killed him on the spot.
• Early in Ultimate Spider-Man, The Kingpin catches Spider-Man in his building and demands to know who sent him. Spidey, in full Deadpan Snarker mode, says it was Carson Daly. Kingpin, not catching the sarcasm, says "I don't know who that is."
• In The Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia grew up in the Red Room (a Commie assassin training facility), so she's significantly out of touch with pop culture. She's doing her best to catch up, but sometimes gets her wires crossed. Like when she tries to put on a cool act, "you know, like Fozzie".
• In The Witch Boy, the title character, Aster is hanging out with his Muggle friend Charlie when the latter asks him if he'll learn how to fly a broom. He genuinely doesn't know what she's talking about.
• Wynonna Earp: In #5 of the 2016 IDW series, Agents Dolls and Valdez come across a pair of of badly dismembered revenants on the road to Tombstone. Dolls attempts to make a joke that fails because Valdez is an ancient Mayan warrior with zero knowledge of pop culture:
  Valdez: It appears Earp, the Cowboy, or both have been here.
  Dolls: Yeah. That or a Michael Bay-improvised roadside bomb.
  Valdez: This "Michael bay", is he a revenant?
  Dolls: Sigh... Probably.
• Agent 355 from Y: The Last Man never gets pop culture references; at the end, when Yorick brings up Moonlighting he explains what it is "before you ask". In the Distant Finale, set 60 years after the rest of the story, when Yorick asks his young clone, if he knew that Elvis had a twin brother, he asks: "Who's Elvis?"

Comic Strips

• In Calvin and Hobbes, it's expected that every kid knows the rules to baseball, so they're never explained to Calvin — who doesn't know them.
• FoxTrot: In one strip, Jason is musing about winter and makes references to The Empire Strikes Back, The Abyss and Terminator 2; none of which mean anything to his father. Roger then remarks on how one particular cloud looks like Trigger. Which is strange, because in another strip, Roger said that he was a Star Wars fan when he was Jason's age. (The two strips appeared at least a decade apart, with Comic-Book Time seeing Roger and Andy's younger years having shifted forward with time.)
• In a Retail strip, Crystal asks Marla how much the Christmas help get paid. Marla replies "Minimum waaaage! Hiyaaaa! Whip-ishh!" Then, off Crystal's blank expression, clarifies "They Might Be Giants?" Crystal asks who might be giants, and Marla gives up.

Fan Works

• Ambition of the Red Princess: As each of the Cardinal Heroes come from different worlds, they will get confused by specific references. When Motoyasu brings up the Justice League, he compares Naofumi to Owlman^note Who in Naofumi's world is from evil Mirror Universe team the Crime Syndicate rather than Batman. Ren hasn't heard of either but says they remind him of Nighthawk of the Squadron Supreme. Meanwhile, Superhero comics stopped being made in Itsuki's world after Espers started appearing.
• Anthropology is rife with this regarding Lyra after she arrives in the Human World due to having grown up and spent all of her life beforehand in Equestria. When Discord crosses over and begins to wreak Chaotic havoc that would inevitably drive Humanity to extinction. Lyra gathers her friends and the Elements of Harmony to combat against Discord in New York, On the way, they end up passing through several Chaos-inflicted states, including New Jersey.
  Paul: Thank goodness, it's completely unharmed.
  Lyra: I don't think it looked anything like this when we drove through the first time.
  Paul: No, what I mean was... (Beat) Geez. You really did grow up in some other world, didn't you?
• Bleach Zero: Strawberry and the Red Knight: Ichigo Kurosaki has never heard of Arthurian Legend.
• In The Bridge: Humanity's Stand, a scientist brings in a blade that may be the legendary weapon Excalibur. Admiral Taizo Tachibana has never heard of it. Everyone pokes fun at him, with Ozaki pointing out that like Tachibana, he's Japanese, yet he's familiar with the story.
• In Butterflies Bearing Beater's Bats Hermione asks Tonks whether she could morph to match a photo of Dolly Parton. Harry asks "Who's Dolly Parton?"
• In cool and new web comic, Dadd doesn't do anything Con-Air related during the spoof of John's ectobiology scene. o keeps telling Dadd to make a reference even saying "it's con-air", but he mostly stands there confused while the babies pretty much do his work for him.
• In A Crown of Stars, Emperor Daniel cites The Last Starfighter. To his disappointment, neither Shinji nor Asuka know what he is talking about.
  Daniel: Greetings, Starfighter! You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada! Are you ready to begin?
  Shinji/Asuka: What?
  Daniel: [sighing] Never saw that one either? Kids these days, no classical education, I swear...
• The Defensive Space Force Ship Requirement has Lee Jordan loudly pitying the Weasly twins for never hearing of Star Trek. It's later exploited by the Crew when they decide to recruit more people for their space exploration program but are wary about pure-bloods stealing the spaceship — by posing as a Trekkie fan club, they are guaranteed to be approached only by muggleborns and half-bloods.
• Emergence: Team RWBY finds themselves on Earth and are given shelter by some fans. There are occasional people who have never heard of the show.
• Fairytale of Doom: Out of the characters that are trapped in the Fairy Tale Free-for-All world, Natsu, Jellal, and Zeref are unaware of either the original fairy tales or the Disney Animated Canon that it derives its setting from. This is because of different circumstances of their childhood, with Natsu raised by a dragon in the woods for the majority of his childhood, Jellal spent his entire childhood as either a slave or under a Face–Monster Turn, and Zeref grew up centuries before the fairy tales were ever animated.
• In Fate/Black Reflection, Ichigo Kurosaki doesn't know anything about Greek Mythology, so when Rider finally trusts him enough to tell him her true name, Medusa, he doesn't have any reaction. It isn't until he looks the name up that he understands why she thought it was a big deal.
• For Want of a Mohawk: When Noah and Geoff encounter Gwen and Beth during "Wawanakwa Gone Wild!", Noah and Gwen engage in Snark-to-Snark Combat over which character in Heathers the latter would be. Geoff doesn't get what they're talking about.
  Noah: Have you seriously never seen Heathers?
  Geoff: I didn't know we had more than one! Does Heather know?
• Frostbite: Eleya, a Bajoran, apparently has no idea what a Christmas tree is.
• Comes up for both sides in Harry Potter and the Mystic Force:
  • When creating Harry's new alias of "James Bourne", the Rangers are caught off-guard when their new wizard friends have no idea why those names are significant, and Vida is particularly incredulous when she realizes that they don't know about Star Wars.
  • Goes the other way as the Rangers agree to a challenge to face off against other Hogwarts students in Quidditch, and it's only after they agree that it comes out they have absolutely no idea what the most popular sport in the Wizarding world is.
• Heroic Myth: Bell Cranel ends up summoning as his Servants: Archer EMIYA, Caster Gilgamesh, Assassin Jack the Ripper, Saber Sigurd, Lancer Brynhildr, Rider Boudica, and Berserker Asterios the Minotaur. Aside from EMIYA, all of them are from very famous stories on Earth. They follow standard Servant protocol and keep their true names secret to prevent their weaknesses from being found. However, the world of Danmachi is not Earth so they and their stories never existed there. Even if someone learns their true names, no one ever recognizes them. However, it later turns out that modified versions of their legends do exist, but not a lot of people have read them.
• The Golden Boys Last Temptation: While recounting an old adventure, Supergirl tells the villain made Mandrake-like gestures as conjuring visions. Since the little kid whom she is talking is unlikely to have read one single Mandrake the Magician story, Kara clarifiies that he is "a magician in old comic strips".
• In the House fanfic "Imps", a character makes a reference to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which amuses House but baffles Wilson.
• HZD Terraforming Base-001 Text Communications Network: Alva (who belongs to a culture that has been scrounging data for centuries) and Beta (the only person taught by the AI intended to shepherd the sum total of human knowledge) get into a discussion on which shows they should watch with their friends. None of their friends have ever seen a single show before and just barely been introduced to the concept, so they have no idea what "MLP Gen 4," "MCU," or "Law and Order: SVU" are.
  Varl: Are you actually naming real things, or just throwing out random words and letters to make us feel ignorant?
• Often crops up for Kenzi in Lost in Camelot, as most of her references are dated for over a thousand years in the future, so most of Camelot have no idea what she's talking about.
• Meeting of Minds: After Ifrit 259 is baffled by Rumble being a sentient machine, the latter asks if he thought he was a cyborg "like General Grievous". Ifrit's response is to ask, "General who?"
• In Monomyth, Ayako Mitsuzuri describes Rider as looking like 2B from NieR: Automata because of her blindfold. Rin Tohsaka has no idea what she is talking about.
• My Ideal Academia: Shirou Emiya doesn't recognize images of the Cheshire Cat and a Poké Ball, which appalls Yu Takeyama.
• In The N'awlins Connection Harry is annoyed about the Yule Ball.
  Harry: Don't remind me. I still have to dance in front of everyone.
  Hermione: Oh, stop being a baby. You've improved a great deal.
  Claire: Yes, but he'll never be a Mikhail Baryshnikov.
  Harry: Who's that? Another Durmstrang student?
• In Oolon Colluphid Was Right, Team Sheppard is imprisoned and since the Stargate has Translator Microbes, their captors will hear them planning to escape... so Rodney decides to speak only through allusions to Terran pop culture as aliens wouldn't have access to the context.
• The Reactsverse:
  • Lucina Reacts: Nobody in the cast except Sumia and Cordelia know what Fan Fiction is, and most references fly over the heads of everyone except Gregor, Todd and Reflet. Justified, considering Ylisse is a whole world away from where these references would make sense.
  • Homura has absolutely no idea what Hamlet is, or indeed what the concept of Fan Fiction is.
• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness: On two different occasions, a member of Tsukune's posse remarks on how their lives are becoming like a manga or an anime, to which Dark asks what a manga/anime is. Both times, the others just give him confused stares before letting the matter drop.
• Shadowchasers Series:
  • Jalal sometimes misses other character's pop culture references, like when someone made a Wrong Turn at Albuquerque joke. Considering he's centuries old and a very busy man, he most likely doesn't have time to watch TV that much.
  • Red Feather is disdainful of technology, so it makes sense that she doesn't watch TV or go on the Internet. Almost all pop culture references go over her head. At one point, after she makes it through a booby trapped hallway, she is compared to Indiana Jones, but she doesn't know who that is and thinks she is being insulted. And when she faces an opponent who uses a deck that represents classic Universal Horror monsters like Frankenstein, The Wolfman, and Dracula, she doesn't see the theme and thinks the deck is a mismatch of monsters.
  • Karl didn't know who H.A.R.D.A.C. was when he was mentioned.
  • Shadowchasers: Power Primordial:
    • Jinx is dueling a demon who summons a monster called Hellfire Sleeping Princess - Ghost Sleeper, which looks like a skeleton wearing a wedding dress. Jinx compares the creature to Miss Havisham, and the demon directly says he does not understand what she is referencing.
    • Trueman references the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, but since this story is set in the distant future, Ember has never heard of Kevin Bacon and doesn't understand the game.
• Servants of Remnant: In all of this anthology's stories, the stories and histories of the Servants don't exist on Remnant, so nobody has ever heard of them. When Achilles introduces himself, he expects that the people will at least be in awe that he has the name of the legendary mythological hero, but instead a woman asks what kind of stupid name is that. Yang Xiao Long has no idea who Mordred and King Arthur are.
• In Spectacular Seven, Sunset Shimmer is from another world where the TV shows and movies are much different. As a result, she frequently finds herself stymied by her much more up-to-date friends with pop culture.
  • After Twilight makes numerous references to Star Wars that Sunset fails to catch, Sunset admits she's never seen any of the Star Wars movies before. An incredulous Twilight demands that they binge watch the original trilogy immediately.
  • During the Final Battle of Volume II, Rainbow Dash makes a reference to "going Super Saiyan," which Sunset also doesn't recognize. However, Sunset notes now is a bad time to ask.
  • In Volume III, Lamia refers to Twilight as "the Heart of the Planeteers," because Lamia views Twilight as a useless part of the group. Sunset hasn't seen Captain Planet either, but she figures out that it's an insult.
• Statute Under Siege: Taiga and Sakura cosplay as Jedi to try to impress Shirou. They are disappointed when he points out that he never watches TV so he has no idea what they are.
• In Storm on the Horizon, the circa-2022 pop culture references that Max peppers into her speech are naturally lost on hunter-gatherers in a post-apocalyptic future, who have no clue what Facebook, a Wilhelm Scream, chocobos, or Hidalgo are. It goes the other way, too; when Aloy nicknames Max "Snowflake" for her pale skin and bright blue eyes, Max cringes before explaining that "Fight Club didn’t ruin that word for you guys."
• In Sword Art Online Abridged, this plagues Akihiko Kayaba, as seen in the very first episode when he compares the players' situation to TRON and the result of taking off the NerveGear to Scanners, but his audience is too young to have seen these movies. This actually becomes a plot point — guild leader Heathcliff also suffers from this trope, and the fact that Kirito is the only one to get these references allows him to figure out that Kayaba and Heathcliff are the same person.
• To Hell and Back (Arrowverse): The three leads weren't completely isolated from the outside world during their time in the League of Assassins, but while they are aware of current events, they didn't bother to keep up with pop culture. Oliver has no idea what High School Musical is, while Barry is at a complete loss when Cisco makes a reference to The Twilight Saga.
• There Was Once an Avenger From Krypton:
  • According to the author, Hawk Moth calls Roger's Akumatized form "Robocop" simply because he's so out of touch with society and culture that he's never heard of the movies.
  • Allura, being an alien, has never heard of Princess Leia. Pidge lampshades this, saying that they need to give her and Coran a crash course in human pop culture.
  • Doctor Strange has never heard of The Twilight Saga.
  • Admiral Sanda has never watched Star Wars, so misses a reference to the Death Star.
• An Unpleasant Surprise, Molly remembers her old friend Ashley not being familiar with cartoons she watched at the time but was familiar with much older cartoons from her parents' childhood. This was due to her parents distrusting modern cartoons, believing them to be pushing "gay agendas".

Films — Live-Action

• At the start of Angel, Kit Carson is showing his matched pair of Peacemakers to a pair of cops on Hollywood Boulevard and repeating some advice he got from Tom Mix during The Golden Age of Hollywood. After Kit leaves, the younger cop turns to his older partner and asks:
  "Who's Tom Mix?"
• In Annie, Miss Hannigan, as an example of life's chronic unfairness, cites the fact that she's not married to George Clooney, which gets a "Who's George Clooney?" from the foster girls.
• Armageddon:
  • Oscar Choice says he hates when someone says Jethro Tull is the name of the lead singer. The psychiatrist asks back "Who is Jethro Tull?"
  • Just as AJ figures out how to get his Armadillo to the Tasker drilling site with a huge chasm in the way (namely, by exploiting the asteroid's low gravity to pull off one hell of a ramp jump), he asks aloud "have. you ever heard of Evel Knievel?" Lev, the Russian cosmonaut with them, says "I'm sorry, I never saw Star Wars".
• Austin Powers:
  • Happens frequently with Dr. Evil, who keeps naming his evil plans after things that already exist, but he has never heard of since he's been frozen for several decades and wasn't around when they were created.
  • The one time Dr. Evil does get the reference, someone else doesn't. In this case, Paddy O'Brien, a superstitious Irish hitman in Dr. Evil's employ who always leaves a small charm from his bracelet on top of his victims' bodies as a calling card.
    Dr. Evil: Scotland Yard would love to get their hands on that piece of evidence.
    Paddy: Yeah. They're always after me Lucky Charms.
    [Dr. Evil and Frau stifle laughter]
    Paddy: [annoyed] What? Why's everyone always laugh when I say that?! They are after me Lucky Charms!
    [more stifled laughter]
    Paddy: [even angrier] What?!
  • In the second film, Dr. Evil travels back to 1969, and demands a 100 billion dollar ransom from the President of the United States. After being laughed at to his face due to that amount of money in the world not even existing yet, Dr. Evil insists that they "show [him] the money" and uses many stereotypical 1990s slang phrases, much to the President's confusion. The reason why Dr. Evil's threats were not convincing? Dr. Evil was quoting Jerry Maguire - a movie that came in 1996 - and using 1990s slang to the President in 1969, meaning that there was no way the President would get any of the references. However, Dr. Evil manages to get the President to capitulate by playing footage of the White House being destroyed in Independence Day - another 1996 movie.
  • Since Austin has also been frozen for the last few decades, he doesn't understand why using the aliases Richie Cunningham and Oprah are suspicious.
• In The Blues Brothers, Elwood tells Jake that he's not worried that the cops they just ran from will find them because he listed his address as 1060 West Addison — Wrigley Field. The cops are annoyed when they look up his address and see this. Later in the movie there's a Brick Joke of the Illinois Nazis showing up at Wrigley Field looking for Elwood, not realizing until they get there what it is.
• Burnt: David uses a Star Wars analogy to try to explain the importance of Michelin stars to his girlfriend. He says that to get one star, a chef needs to be Luke Skywalker, but when he gets to two stars, he forgets who Obi-Wan Kenobi is and just refers to him as "whoever Alec Guinness was".
• In Camp X-Ray, Cole had no idea what Harry Potter was at first.
• Deep Blue Sea: When Franklin arrives on the marine facility, he makes a Fantasy Island reference that goes over Janice's head.
  Franklin: [sigh] I am getting old.
• Elevated: Hank tries to explain what the monsters outside the elevator look like by comparing them to the creature from Pumpkinhead. When Ben doesn't know what he's talking about, Hank quickly acknowledges that the reference is probably too obscure, so instead compares them to the Xenomorphs from Alien.
• In Freaky Friday, Tess (in Anna's body) complains that she "looks like Stevie Nicks." Anna replies, "Who's he?"
• Glass Onion: One of the features of Miles Bron's island house is a "dong" that goes off every hour. Miles claims he got Philip Glass to write the dong, to which Birdie asks, "Who's Phil Glass?"
• Denis Domaschke in Goodbye Lenin is a West Berlin amateur filmmaker showing off his talent to Alex Kerner, his East Berliner co-worker just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He displays a wedding video he made referencing 2001: A Space Odyssey — which Alex has never seen or heard of due to cultural isolation.
• Halloween II (2009): Sheriff Lee Brackett tries to discuss old Wild West movies starring Lee Marvin with Annie and Laurie, but the girls have never heard of them or him.
• In Happy Death Day, Tree has never heard of Bill Murray, Ghostbusters, or Groundhog Day, which is ironic considering the film deals with a "Groundhog Day" Loop. The sequel, Happy Death Day 2U also features Tree expressing ignorance of the Back to the Future series.
• In How Do You Know, George tells Lisa how his mother left his father after watching Kramer vs. Kramer, but she's never seen the movie, and doesn't get why his story was supposed to make her see him in a different light.
• In I Am Legend, Anna doesn't know Bob Marley (but apparently knows his son Ziggy).
• In the movie In the Land of Women, Carter, the main character, goes out with Kristen Stewart's character and her younger sister to the movies. At the mall food court, he asks Stewart's character to tell him about things that sum up the John Hughes experience at high school that he missed out on, and naturally, she asks, "Who's he?", to which he says, "I am... very old."
• Occurs in Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove when a character brings up Dirty Harry ("Dirty who?")
• The Karate Kid: Mr. Miyagi rescues Daniel from his bullies, then nurses him back to health. When Daniel wakes up, he deliriously asks where Spider-Man is. Mr. Miyagi goes, "Who?"
• In Kingsman: The Secret Service, Galahad tries to explain Eggsy his makeover by asking if he's seen Trading Places, Nikita and Pretty Woman. Negative response, but then:
  Galahad: If you're prepared to adapt and learn, you can transform.
  Eggsy: Yeah, like in My Fair Lady.
• Live Free or Die Hard: Generational differences are a major theme in this belated sequel, and so variations of this come up frequently. For instance, Justin Long's character fails to understand what "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival is — to him, it's noise. (The writers and McClane are hit with Isn't It Ironic? here, but oh well...)
• This famous scene from The Martian:
  Annie: What the hell is "Project Elrond"?
  Vincent: I had to make something up.
  Annie: Yeah, but "Elrond"?
  Mitch: Because it's a secret meeting.
  Annie: How do you know that; why does Elrond mean secret meeting?
  Bruce: The Council of Elrond; it's from The Lord of the Rings...
  Annie: [skeptically] Lord of the Rings.
  Bruce: ...it's the meeting where they decide to destroy the One Ring.
  Teddy: If we're gonna call something "Project Elrond", I would like my code name to be "Glorfindel".
  Annie: Okay, I hate every one of you.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Avengers: Fish out of Temporal Water Captain America has only a blank expression when Phil Coulson drops Stephen Hawking's name in a conversation. Used from the other perspective when Thor mentions an animal from Asgard that Coulson has clearly never encountered (Thor incorrectly assumed we have them on Earth, too). Later, Cap is happy when he gets a Wizard of Oz reference that is lost on Thor.
  • Iron Man 3: The Big Bad Aldrich Killian mentions that his decoy Mandarin, Trevor Slattery, used to be a theater actor, though that means nothing to Killian who says "They say his Lear was the Toast of Croydon, whatever that means."
  • In Cap's next movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it's shown Cap is trying to defy the trope, complete with a checklist on notable works made since WWII; to the point Black Widow says "Shall we play a game?" and before she tries to explain the response is "I've seen it."
  • In Guardians of the Galaxy, Peter Quill is the only human from Earth in a galaxy full of aliens, so he sometimes makes references no-one else gets. In one scene, he recites the plot of Footloose to Gamora while claiming it is an old fable. It's arguable that Quill, himself is a subversion, in that he sometimes makes references that given that he was abducted in 1988 at age 12, he'd be unlikely to know about (e.g Jackson Pollock). His mother's interest in classic Rock probably extended to other pop culture genres as well.
  • This continues in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, in which Quill references Mary Poppins to Yondu as they both escape from an exploding ship.
    Peter: You look like Mary Poppins.
    Yondu: Was he cool?
    Peter: Hell yeah, he was cool.
    Yondu: I'm Mary Poppins, y'all!
  • Ultimately subverted after it happens a couple of times in Doctor Strange when the titular doctor tries to reference pop culture around Wong, only to be met with an awkward somber stare and utter bemusement that the man's never heard of people like Eminem or Beyoncé. However, Kamar-Taj does have wifi and Wong's later shown listening to Single Ladies, so it's possible that Wong knew and just doesn't find Strange's anecdotes all that amusing.
    Strange: Uh, you know, people used to think that I was funny.
    Wong: Did they work for you?
  • Thor: Ragnarok: In a deleted scene, Thor is moping about the destruction of his hammer, Mjölnir. Bruce Banner tries to tell him he doesn't need the hammer and compares him to Dumbo. Thor doesn't know what Dumbo is and assumes Bruce is calling him stupid. Bruce has to very quickly explain the film and the concept of the Magic Feather before he gets beaten up.
  • Thor: Love and Thunder: Jane Foster teaches a man how a wormhole works using some paper as a visual aid. She mentions this method was used in Event Horizon and Interstellar, but the man hasn't seen them. She tells him to watch them.
• In the Korean film Miracle In Cell No 7, a little girl manages to sneak into a prison to meet her father. When she talks about her favorite show Sailor Moon, the other inmates don't know what that is. She ends up teaching the inmates the show's theme song.
• Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb: Sir Lancelot runs into Hugh Jackman, playing himself, and threatens him. Jackman tries to scare him away by acting like his famous role Wolverine from the X-Men Film Series. It falls flat since Lancelot has no idea what he is referencing.
• In Nothing in Common, David is immediately attracted to Cheryl Ann when he sees her in a hotel lobby at a pay phone. When she hangs up the phone, he pretends to ask her for the time, and when she tells him, he responds, "Oh my God; before you know it, The Renaissance will be here, and we'll all be busy painting." She doesn't recognize the fact it's from a Woody Allen movie — Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask).
• This exchange from Notting Hill:
  William: Is this your first film?
  Actress: Well... actually, it's my 22nd!
  William: Any favorites among the 22?
  Actress: Working with Leonardo.
  William: DaVinci?
  Actress: DiCaprio.
  William: Of course. And is... is he your favorite Italian director?
• Parallel Mothers: When Janis is telling Ana about her family, she mentions she was named after Janis Joplin, and Ana asks, "Who's she?"
• Dirty Harry also causes puzzlement in Red Heat.
  Ridzik: Captain Danko, congratulations. You are now the proud owner of the most powerful handgun in the world.
  Danko: Soviet Podbyrin, 9.2 millimeter, is world's most powerful handgun.
  Ridzik: Oh, come on, everybody knows the .44 Magnum is the big boy on the block. Why do you think Dirty Harry uses it?
  Danko: Who is Dirty Harry?
• In Robin and the 7 Hoods, the foreman of the jury makes a statement beginning "For four weeks, this jury has listened to the testimony. The defendant not only supposedly killed the sheriff...he started the Chicago Fire and killed Cock Robin" before going on to find Robbo not guilty. Guy Gisborne's infuriated response is:
  Who mentioned Cock Robin?
• The Running Man:
  • "Who's Mr. Spock?"
  • Likewise, when Killian has to explain what Gilligan's Island was.
• In Sister Act 2, Delores wants to hear her students sing, so she singles them out and has them sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb". One girl doesn't know it. Yet oddly enough, she does know the theme from The Love Boat. This is truth in television for a lot of first and second-generation immigrants.
• Star Trek: Insurrection: When Data is apparently malfunctioning, Picard comes up with a plan to use familiar music to get through to him. He asks Worf if he's familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan, and Worf responds that he hasn't had a chance to review new personnel since returning to the Enterprise.
• Subverted in Taken.
  Bryan Mills: Who's Beyoncé? (Beat) Just kidding.
• In Ted, John's ringtone for his girlfriend Lori is "The Imperial March". And even though that basically became a Standard Snippet for evil characters:
  Lori: Is that my ringtone? What is that? Cause it sounds negative.
  John: No. I-it's from The Notebook.
• In Ted 2, Samantha doesn't seem to know any pop-culture. When John and Ted point out her initials, S.L.J., make her name similar to Samuel L. Jackson, she doesn't know who that is. When Ted decides to make his last name Clubberlang, she doesn't pick up the reference to Rocky III. And when she is told her eyes look similar to Gollum's, she doesn't know who that is either. On the flip-side, when she tells John and Ted that The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, they think she said "Fuck Scott Fitzgerald" and ask what Scott Fitzgerald ever did to her.
• In That's My Boy Donny's son Todd asks him the meaning of his back tattoo, which is a Tattoo from Fantasy Island, he quotes his catchphrase, "Boss de plane, de plane." Todd still has no idea what he's talking about.
• Us: Gabe Wilson suggests to his wife Adelaine that they set up traps Home Alone style to deal with the invaders. Adelaine thinks that's a stupid idea, while their kids don't know what they are talking about.
• The World of Henry Orient is about two young teenage girls, Valerie and Marian, who develop a crush on concert pianist Henry Orient. Valerie's mother finds out and gets Valerie into trouble, which Marian doesn't appreciate. Boothy brings up her own childhood crush on John Barrymore, and Marian asks, "Who's he?"
  Boothy: Excuse me, it's later than I think.
• Zombieland:
  • Little Rock doesn't know who Willie Nelson is, much to Tallahassee's horror.
  • Or who Bill Murray is, ALSO to Tallahassee's horror.
    Little Rock: Who's Bill Murray?
    Tallahassee: Alright, I've never hit a kid before. I mean that's like asking who Gandhi is.
    Little Rock: Who's Gandhi?
  • Also done in reverse with a hilarious scene where Little Rock is trying to explain the concept of Hannah Montana to Tallahassee, which crosses into Real Life, as that scene was, in fact, the two actors just talking as they left the camera running.

Literature

• This is both the title and the subject of Robert Cormier's Bunny Berigan — Wasn't He a Musician or Something?, much to the dismay of the Berigan fanboy who serves as the protagonist.
• Crysis: Legion:
  Barclay grunts softly. "War of the Worlds."
  Gould blinks. "Huh?"
  "Nineteenth-century novel," Barclay says.
• In The Dresden Files,
  • Whenever Harry makes a Shout-Out, other people's reaction is either this or a bit of exasperation. (If it is the former, it is probably a bad guy.) Funnily enough, Harry actually suffered from this one time: Bob was talking about special hell. Dresden's up on pop culture through The '80s but his status as a Walking Techbane makes catching up with modern stuff more difficult.
  • In Changes, Harry witnesses the Senior Council of Wizards, the most powerful wizards on earth, entertaining a peace conference with a Duchess from the Red Court of vampires. Later, Harry learns from the leader of the Council, who bears the title of Merlin, the only council members present were the youngest one who thought he could get peace going, and unknown to him, one member to ask questions if the need arose. Harry is impressed and mentions they didn't "drink the Kool-Aid." The Merlin just stares at Harry before looking at the commander of the Wizard police who clarifies Harry meant the Jonestown mass suicide. After that clarification, the Merlin agrees with the comment.
• In Richard Powell's Don Quixote, U.S.A. when Arthur states his name and Peace Corps skill code as identification, the U.S. Legation employee sent to meet him states that it's too bad that they couldn't make it 007 instead. Arthur replies that he believes it to be the code for a general laborer in the construction and industrial division.
  Employee: Too bad. I thought maybe we were getting James Bond.
  Arthur: I don't know any James Bond in the Peace Corps, but of course I am a recent Volunteer.
  Employee: You don't read those Ian Fleming books, huh?
  Arthur: I can't recall a Fleming who has written any studies in my field. There is a Flemington who did a paper on the pollination of Class A and B varieties of avocados.
• Fate/strange Fake:
  • Ayaka Sajyou is unfamiliar with Arthurian Legend, and when Merlin is mentioned, she says she doesn't know who that is.
  • When Sigma lies that his Servant is Charlie Chaplin, False Assassin doesn't know who that is.
• The Girl and the Ghost: Pink doesn't understand Jing's frequent Star Wars references, accusing her of "speaking in tongues".
• Keeper of the Lost Cities: In Legacy, when Sophie suggests "the Order of the Phoenix" as a team name, no one gets the reference, since none of the others grew up with humans.
• Lord El-Melloi II Case Files: Lord El-Melloi II gets excited when he meets the Japanese Rin Tohsaka, only to be greatly disappointed when Rin has zero knowledge of anime or video games.
• In Ragged Dick, Frank mentions that Madison Square is where Flora McFlimsey lived, referring to the protagonist of a popular poem. Dick, who hasn't read the poem, says, "I don't know her."
• Since PC Peter Grant in the Rivers of London novels is the only geek in his social circle, this happens frequently. In particular, Gentleman Wizard Nightingale — who Peter sometimes suspects of refusing to admit anything's happened since The '40s — needs to have Hogwarts explained to him before he can say no, his Wizarding School was nothing like that.
• Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not. Holmes stakes a vampire Alternate Self, and credits his knowing what to do on "the writings of Calmet." When Watson mentions Bram Stoker, Holmes has no idea who he's talking about.
• In the Veronica Mars spin-off novel The Thousand Dollar Tan Line, Veronica interviews two girls about a party, and when she hears it was a black-and-white party — meaning you dressed in either black or white — mused that Truman Capote must be spinning in his grave. The two girls have no idea who she's talking about.

Live-Action TV

• There's an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where the team comes across the victim of a Chitauri virus:
  Skye: Phys-Ed teacher at the local high school and varsity baseball coach and troop leader and volunteer firefighter. This guy makes Captain America look like "The Dude". [blank stares from Coulson and Ward] The Big Lebowski? [more blank stares] Seriously?
  • Later revelations indicate that this was a subversion, since Coulson is a very Pop-Cultured Badass, and Ward was faking his entire personality. They were most likely just trolling her.
  • Doubles as a meta-joke. Phil Coulson's first appearance was in Iron Man, in which the Big Bad actually was The Dude.
• In the All in the Family episode "Archie and the Computer", Mike complains about the increasing role of computers in society:
  Mike: Pretty soon, we're not gonna be names, just numbers! It's Nineteen Eighty-Four!
  Archie: Eh, shut up, you don't even know what year it is!
• Angel:
  • The scene in "Belonging" (which, not by chance, is similar to the Captain America example, above) where the green-skinned demon Host of Caritas reveals that his actual name is Lorne:
    Lorne: Though I generally don't go by that because — Green. [points to his face]
    Cordelia: Huh?
    Angel: [smiles] Right. Lorne Greene. [Cordelia and Wesley stare at him] Bonanza? Fifteen years on the air not mean anything to anyone here? Okay, now I feel old.
  • In "Dad", Holtz is warned about this when he's brought forward in time to the present day. He takes any strange references in stride:
    Justine Cooper: So, what, you're going to go all Mr. Miyagi on me?
    Holtz: You will find that your modern pop culture references are lost on me.
  • A lot of the first season contains Cordelia mentioning an actress or show that no-one else has heard of, followed by one of Cordelia's rants about their lack of knowledge about current happenings in Hollywood, though Character Development means she grows out of it (for the most part).
  • In "Soulless", Angelus taunts Connor about the fact Connor wants to kill his father (Angel) and sleep with his mother figure (Cordelia) and compares the situation to Oedipus the King. Since Connor was raised in a Hell dimension for most of his life, he has no idea what he's talking about and ignores it.
  • In "Shells", when the group is trying to figure out how Illyria escaped them so fast, Gunn mentions Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, and Wally West, all of which get him a blank stare from Angel.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • Happens all the time in with Penny not getting the geeky references.
  • In one episode, Penny sees failure while asking some regular pop-culture questions to Sheldon and Leonard ("Singer who sang 'Oops!... I Did It Again'?"). Best summed up by:
    Penny: Tweety Bird tawt he taw a what?
    Sheldon: Romulan?^note This is a bit of Biting-the-Hand Humor against Warner Bros., which owns both Big Bang and Looney Tunes.
  • Sheldon will often not get references of popular subjects he deems to be beneath him.
    Sheldon: I'm a physicist. I have a working knowledge of the entire universe and everything it contains.
    Penny: Who's Radiohead?
    Sheldon: [pause] I have a working knowledge of the important things in the universe.
  • Occasionally subverted, such as the episode in which Sheldon found himself in an unwinnable situation and inevitably compared it to the Kobayashi Maru.. After mentioning that James Kirk was the only person who ever beat the scenario, he was quite surprised when Penny responded with, "Yeah, but Kirk cheated."
• Blue Heelers: In "Fair Crack of the Whip", a juvenile suspect gives his name as "Rowdy Yates". Sergeant Tom Croydon replies, "Sure it's not Dirty Harry Callahan?" before adding that Clint Eastwood played him too. Maggie doesn't get the reference, since it's "before my time", but she does recognise the Rawhide theme from The Blues Brothers when Nick starts singing it. Tom is not impressed, saying that he's "running a kindergarten here."
• Bones: Temperance "Bones" Brennan's Catchphrase for virtually any POP Culture reference: "I don't know what that means." (She notably did know who Stewie was when it came up.) She is sliding from Type 1 to Type 2, albeit slowly. In one episode, she tries to console Sweets (who's just broken up with his girlfriend) by offering to take him to the "bowling rink"...
• In the Broad City episode "Pu$$y Weed," Abbi compares a High-School Hustler to Alex P. Keaton. He says, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Giles is unaware of Spider-Man or Jimmy Olsen. Spider-Man came out in America in 1962, when Giles would have been about 8, if we go by Anthony Head's age. Giles has likely heard of Spider-Man and Superman, but doesn't know any details about them. He never gave any indication that he read comic books/watched American cartoons as a kid, so there's no reason to suppose he's lying just to maintain his image of British Stuffiness. (There's definitely reason to suppose he's lying about never having done magic prior to becoming Buffy's Watcher...) It also goes the other way as Giles has sometimes made references that have gone totally over Buffy's head.
  • In "Ted", Xander and Willow are arguing over Captain & Tennille (who was the real power in the relationship), and Buffy has no idea who they are.
  • In the Season 8 comics, Twilight doesn't recognize a prop of Captain America's shield and thinks it's just some kind of fancy Frisbee.
• Castle: In "Last Call", the eponymous character is quite disappointed when nobody gets his Jaws reference:
  Beckett: Any chance he [the Victim of the Week] went overboard?
  Lanie: Classic indicators point to deliberate blunt force, so I'd say no. This was no boating accident.
  Castle: Then we'd better close the beaches.
  [Beckett and Lanie stare at him blankly]
  Castle: No boating accident? Chief Brody? Hooper?
  [they still don't get it]
  Castle: Seriously?
• Charmed:
  • Phoebe once described Piper as being like Jan Brady in high school. Leo asks, "Jan who?"
  • In one episode dealing with an evil witch bringing fairy tale characters and objects to life, the sisters were revealed to have zero knowledge of classic fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White. This led to them making mistakes like Paige naïvely eating an apple that randomly appeared next to her and falling into an enchanted sleep. Their grandma was appalled by their ignorance, especially since she read them these fairy tales when they were children, but they completely forgot when they grew up.
  • During an argument over how aggressive Piper is being about hunting demons, Cole compares her to Charles Bronson. Phoebe interrupts him to ask who Charles Bronson is.
• Class: Ram describes to April's decision to continue exploring a lava-haunted wasteland as "Come on Frodo, let's go hop in a volcano", and explains it's from an old movie his dad likes. While Return of the King would have come out when they were very young, the series is incredibly famous and has never really left the public consciousness, especially since The Hobbit only finished in 2014. The idea that a bookish teenager in England in 2016 wouldn't know anything about it and that this wouldn't be seen as odd is a little improbable.
• In The Closer, Pope is with Provenza and Flynn at a crime scene with an eager detective on the scene, already taking notes on things. Pope lets him leave with much of the notes and evidence but when he tries to call on the guy, he finds there's no record for a Detective Richard Tracy. It takes Brenda openly spelling it out for the Deputy Chief of Police to realize he just let all the evidence be taken by a weirdo fraudster.
  Brenda: Ugh, excuse me. Chief, um, am I to understand that you and, uh, Lt. Flynn and Lt. Provenza handed over all the evidence from the crime scene, including the gun, to a Detective... Dick... Tracy?
• Played for laughs in Cluedo, when the middle-aged Reverend Green is interrogated about his former relationship with the deceased.
  Detective: Did you snog her?
  Reverend Green: I don't know what "snog" means.
• Coach: Christine tells Kelly about the time she dropped out of college to go on tour with a musician she refused to name. When Kelly pressed her on it, Christine says "lets just say I was on the biggest Rocky Mountain High of my life". Kelly does not get the clue.
• Community:
  • This conversation:
    Shirley: You remind me of Sam and Diane...I hated Sam and Diane.
    Anne: Who are Sam and Diane?
    Shirley: [furious] Okay, I get it! You're young!
  • Another example is when they are suggesting Abed change his personality:
    Abed: You're gonna Can't Buy Me Love me. You know, transform me from Zero to Hero, Geek To Chic?
    Troy: Ohhhhh, he wants us to Love Don't Cost a Thing him.
    Shirley: Ohhh!
    Troy: Can't Buy Me Love was the remake for white audiences.^note subtle joke — it wasn't
    Shirley: That's so uncomfortable when they do that, I can't believe they didn't insult anyone.
    Jeff: Nobody here is Can't Buy Me Love-ing or Love Don't Cost a Thing-ing anyone...because we've all seen enough After School Specials — Fat Albert — to know that Abed only needs to be himself.
    Pierce: [anxiously chuckling] Sure glad there's no old people here — this conversation would probably be total gibberish to them!
  • Shirley gives bracelets that read "WWBJD" (What Would Baby Jesus Do?) to the others, who look puzzled — Pierce snorts, "If this stands for 'What Would Billy Joel Do?' I'll tell you right now, he'd write another crappy song," and fist-bumps Troy, who shares a bewildered look with Annie.
• Corner Gas:
  • When Emma delivers wise words to her son Brent, he tells her, "You're like Yoda." Emma replies, "I don't know what that means."
  • In another episode, Emma calls Brent's father Oscar a Trekkie, meaning he's a fan of Neil Diamond. "No, Mom. That's something else."
• Criminal Minds:
  • Apparently, Reid's never heard of the sitting in a tree song. He's also completely unaware of The Twilight Saga.
  • And then there's this:
    Rossi: This from someone whose favorite album is The Beatles' White Album.
    Hotch: Just because Manson liked it doesn't mean that it has to be ruined for the rest of us.
    Reid: That's why I stick to Beethoven. No chance of negative associations.
    (beat)
    JJ:... really? You've never heard of a movie called A Clockwork Orange?
  • Subverted by Rossi, who knows Niko Bellic is a character from Grand Theft Auto.
  Rossi: (as everyone stares at him in surprise) What? I know things.
• CSI-verse:
  • CSI: In the episode "Living Legend", the lab rats figure out that the fake identities a murderous Master of Disguise is using are horror film references (two of his fake identities being Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger), but they need a moment to pick up that "Pamela Voorhees" is a reference to Friday the 13th because they (like many other people) forgot that her son Jason didn't became the main villain of the series until the second film (see Scream (1996) for a similar mistake).
  • CSI: Cyber: In "Red Crone", Avery refers to Brody and Raven by a portmanteau name. DB gets the concept and knows who 'Brangelina' are, but is completely baffled by a reference to 'Kimye'. DB's pop culture tastes are firmly rooted in the 60s and 70s.
• Dash & Lily: Boomer wears a "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker" hoodie and the snobby Priya completely misses the reference.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Return of Doctor Mysterio", the Twelfth Doctor picks up a Superman comic book and, after a few minutes, is shocked to discover that Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same. He even draws glasses on Superman's face to prove it. Grant looks at him like he's insane and tells him that everybody knows that.
  • Similarly, in "Last Christmas":
    Twelve: There's a horror movie called Alien? That's really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you.
  • Note that earlier versions of the Doctor didn't always share this trait. Nine and Ten both geeked out at the opportunities of meeting the likes of Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, and William Shakespeare, and Ten was prone to referencing works such as The Lion King (1994). It seems he just wasn't a fan of superheroes or sci-fi/horror (the latter is kind of amusing, given the Genre that Doctor Who firmly sits in). Maybe he just gets enough of that stuff at work?
  • Twelve continues this in "Empress of Mars", where he doesn't get Bill's references to The Terminator or The Thing (1982). Although he has seen Frozen. (It's not clear whether he also knows The Vikings, or if he thought Bill was just comparing the Ice Warriors to "the Vikings".) Bill, meanwhile, doesn't get why the Victorian soldiers call their native servant Man Friday.
• Elementary: One victim of the week is found dead on a bed covered in cash. Marcus Bell compares him to Scrooge McDuck, a reference Sherlock Holmes fails to understand.
  Holmes: Who or what is a Scrooge McDuck?
  Watson: Think your father, but as a duck.
• Family Fortunes: In one episode a starter question was "Name something associated with The X-Files. Neither contestant was familiar with the show leading to an awkward pause as they didn't answer. The female contestant finally buzzed in to offer the answer "Television".
• In Farscape, Crichton frequently makes pop culture references to aliens, who naturally have no idea what he's talking about and due to lack of entertainment, don't even grasp the concept of pop culture. Moya's crew learns to just accept that he spouts gibberish, but early on it was a major contributor to their view of him as a useless lunatic. In the episode, where he meets Sikozu, whose species learns languages quickly, since they're allergic to Translator Microbes, he has gone a little loopy from isolation and starts spouting fictional languages. To be fair, though, the particular Conlang he chose was developed by a linguist, so someone with a skill for languages could eventually learn it.
  John Crichton: [to the Grudeks] NOH! PAV'HOR! HERRUCH'T! [to Sikozu] You didn't get that one did ya? 'Cos it's Klingon!
• In Fawlty Towers, the inept builder O'Reilly fails to grasp Basil's reference to Hadrian.
  Basil: (On the phone) We've been waiting for that wall about as long as Hadrian... No, Hadrian, the emperor Hadrian. He had a wall... doesn't matter, I'll explain later.
• In Fringe, Olivia doesn't get Peter's reference to crossing the streams.
• Friends: After Monica finds out that her current boyfriend is actually a high school senior she freaks out and compares herself to Joan Collins. Ethan, the boyfriend in question, immediately asks who Joan Collins is.
• In many '90s sitcoms, such as Growing Pains, whenever the name Stan Lee came up, someone always asked "Who's that?". In one episode, Kirk Cameron's character met Stan Lee to show him his comic book art. Lee responded: "This is very good, but why show this to me?" Kirk's character asked "Aren't you Stan Lee, the famous comic book guy?" Lee responded that he wasn't. But he was Stan Lee, the owner of a company called Lee's Carpets. This Stan Lee wasn't played by the famous one and it's also odd that Kirk's character would mistake a namesake for the more distinctive Stan Lee already known to geeks. But then, at the time, the general audience didn't know any better.
• Harry Enfield and Chums: Enfield believes the character Mr Dead (a parody of Mr. Ed with a corpse instead of a horse) failed to make an impact because he failed to realise that the British viewing public didn't share his enthusiasm for old American TV and so didn't get the reference.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • In one episode, Robin mentioned several Canadian celebrities in a row, none of which her friends knew about.
    Barney: What's the opposite of name dropping?
  • Another had this exchange when Barney and Marshall were on a conference call (read: drinking beers on their office roof):
    Marshall: This is awesome!
    Barney: We're basically mad men.
    Marshall: We are. We're such Mad Men.
    Barney: I'm gonna go smack a secretary on the ass.
    Marshall: [laughs] That's totally what they would do on that show.
    Barney: What show?
• In "Checkmate" from The Inside Man, when AJ teases the Handler about his real name, he asks Mark if "Gilligan" can give them a minute so the adults can talk. AJ says that he's not offended because he doesn't know who Gilligan is, but he'll be close by.
• In Treatment: In a first season episode, Sophie reads her diary to Paul at one session. She tells him she wrote the diary as if she was writing to Hermione Granger, and is shocked when Paul says he doesn't know who that is.
• Jane the Virgin: When Petra gives birth to twins she calls them Elsa and Anna, and Petra thinks that Jane is the only person who would ever think that this was a Frozen reference. At which Rafael (who wasn't present for the birth due to traffic where Jane is the only person to know both girls' names, Petra introduces him to Elsa - and he instinctively calls the other baby Anna. Not too long after the girls' birth, there's a Time Skip ahead three years and Elsa is now going by "Ellie" because of the reference.
• Liv and Maddie:
  Karen: He could have married Christie Brinkley in there and instead he chose Carol Burnett.
  Joey: I have no idea who either of those people are.
• Lost:
  • Sawyer constantly uses pop-culture references in his sarcastic quips and derisive nicknames. This backfires when he calls another character "Bobby", and specifies that he's referring to The Brady Bunch, only to get the response "What the hell is The Brady Bunch?" This exchange implies that the character grew up on the island and has little knowledge of the outside world.
  • Sawyer himself fell victim to this in a Season 6 episode where Hurley mentioned to bring someone "back from The Dark Side like Anakin", prompting a response of "Who the hell is Anakin?"... despite Sawyer having made Star Wars references before.
• On The Love Boat, a pair of married people have met once a year on the boat for an affair. In their latest meeting, the woman reveals she's now divorced but doesn't expect the man to leave his wife and family to be with her. To her shock, the man reveals he's never been married and made up the story of a family so the woman wouldn't feel as guilty cheating on her husband. When she doubts this story, he dryly asks if "you never found it odd every member of my family is named after a character on Happy Days? We even had a dog named Fonzie!"
• Lucifer: One case of the week involves a psychiatric patient who claims to be God. Back in the lab, Ella asks if it's really so crazy to believe that God could be one of us. Chloe Decker starts quoting Joan Osborne's "One of Us" but it turns out Ella has never heard the song before, and doesn't understand what Chloe's talking about.
• The Magicians sees this deliberately invoked by Eliot and Margo in season 3, who are aware that the queen of the fairies is spying on them and confident she can't understand a conversation primarily consisting of Earth pop culture references. For the convenience of viewers who might be similarly lost, the dialogue is subtitled.
• Major Crimes: In "Reality Check", a Small Name, Big Ego suspect claims to be famous and asks "Would you treat Justin Bieber like this?". Provenza's response is "Who? Justin who?". Sharon diplomatically shushes Buzz before he can answer Provenza.
• Midsomer Murders: DS Winter totally fails to get a Hamlet reference in "The Ghost of Causton Abbey":
  Sylvia Winters: There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosphy, Horatio.
  DS Winter: It's Jamie actually.
• Million Yen Women protagonist Shin lives a computer-free lifestyle for various reasons. This causes him to not realize that one of the housemates that was basically forced onto him is a celebrity until his publishing agent actually tells him.
• Pipin from Mimpi Metropolitan is a bumpkin, so she doesn't know a lot of pop-culture stuff, ranging from international ones (The Oscars and Seven Wonders of the World) to national ones (Ade Rai and Yayan Ruhian). Expect confusion from Pipin whenever her friends talk about those stuff in front of her.
• Mongrels: In episode 3, cat Marion's teenage girlfriend Lollipop fails to understand references to Romeo and Juliet, Ross and Rachel, and Gavin & Stacey because she is just that young, making it a type 1D.
• Monk:
  • In "Mr. Monk and the Foreign Man", the African visitor compares a situation in a laundromat to Friends. Monk assumes that it is an African TV program.
  • Also, in "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever", Natalie tries to teach Monk that their friendship is comparable to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, to no avail as Monk is unfamiliar with the duo, mistaking Garfunkfel for Garfield and for a carbuncle.
• My So-Called Life: In the episode "Pressure", Rayanne and Sharon are in the girls' bathroom talking about how Angela is afraid of sex. Two other girls in the bathroom talk about sex, and Rayanne, deciding to have a little fun with them, talks about the famous scene from 9½ Weeks involving Mickey Rourke rubbing an ice cube on Kim Basinger before the sex and food scene, and pretends Rourke did that to her (Rayanne) as well. As Rayanne and Sharon are leaving, one of the girls asks, "Mickey Rourke, does he go to this school?"
• In The Nanny episode "Material Fran", when Maggie talks to Fran about going to a concert with her boyfriend:
  Maggie: Fran, I need a favor. Billy Harper wants to take me to a concert.
  Fran: Oh, great, what concert?
  Maggie: You wouldn't know them...
  Fran: Maggie, how old do you think I am?
  Maggie: The Stone Temple Pilots?
  Fran: I'm 100...
• A bit character in NCIS thought one of his employees was childish for being into video games; said employee apparently ran a Skyrim message board in his spare time. After he insults McGee by assuming (correctly) that he's into dweeby role-playing games, McGee responds, "I used to, but then I took an arrow to the knee." The guy looks confused and glances at McGee's legs.
• Never Have I Ever: Fab knows almost nothing of pop culture, so a reference to "Villanelle" from her girlfriend's queer friends and similar things is completely lost on her. This is all due to her being a devoted nerd whose interests lie elsewhere.
• NTSF:SD:SUV::: Summer Glau makes an appearance as a "fake nerd girl" who tries to use her skills of seduction to lure Agent Trent Hauser into a trap. He immediately tells her that her nerd charms are just gonna fly over his head, claiming that the only pop culture reference he knows is Lassie — and he's not even sure if it's a dog or a horse.
• On one of the black-and-white segments on Once and Again, Grace gushes about Judy (her aunt) and how, when she was younger, she was involved with a Doobie Brother — "whatever that is".
• This is shaping up to be a regular Running Gag on The Orville, with a sizable portion of the ship's crew being aliens. There's even odds on the characters trying to explain the reference or just shrugging it off and moving on.
  • Notable in that some of Ed Mercer's references don't register with his own contemporaries as only Ed realizes an alien is referencing Dolly Parton in her big speech. Another episode has Ed showing his girlfriend old films that she's never heard of which implies this is not unusual to him. Of course, the reason she's never seen the films is because she is an alien spy. The pilot also has the entire bridge, including the humans, look baffled at his Bond One-Liner mention of Arbor Day.
• Paper Girls: Obviously, due to being time travelers originally from 1988 movie or TV references from past then go completely over the head of the girls.
• In a game of Password, the judge buzzed the clue "Herman's" for the password "hermit", which the recipient guessed easily. After a review, the clue and response were allowed: The judge was unfamiliar with the British Invasion band Herman's Hermits and had thought that the clue was an unacceptable attempt to use a word similar in sound but with no logical connection to the password.
• On Psych, Shawn complains a teacher was out to get him in high school by giving him a failing grade on his paper about a U.S. President. Gus dryly points out the paper failed because Shawn was writing about the movie Dave with Shawn believing that was based on a real President.
• Quantum Leap:
  • Sam occasionally fails to get Al's pop-culture references, such as in "Glitter Rock", when he doesn't know who Pete Townshend is, leading to a Who's on First? exchange. This is mostly due to time-travel-related memory loss, although (as in this example) it might occasionally occur just because Sam is a huge nerd.
  • This gets Averted or even Inverted when the plot of the episode calls for it. One example is when Sam just happens to know Man Of La Mancha by heart because he listened to it obsessively while building his time machine.
  • In other episodes, he even has an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture when it fits the story, notably the episode set in 1966 when he recalls correctly that Jimi Hendrix won't be well-known in the US until about a year later (and for good measure, he can play guitar like Hendrix, or at least well enough for us to know he's trying for that sound). Probably best considered a Rule of Funny.
  • Occasionally Sam drops pop cultural references to things that haven't happened yet in the time he's leaped into, such as when he as a magician is scheduled for an audition for "Bill Bixby's TV series". Sam thinks that it's The Incredible Hulk (1977) but they're talking about The Magician, three years before Hulk.
• Saturday Night Live's Celebrity Jeopardy:
  Catherine Zeta-Jones: Who are The Beatles?
  Alex Trebek: I'm sorry, that's wrong.
  Catherine Zeta-Jones: No, I'm asking you, who are the Beatles? I've never heard of them.
• In a Scrubs episode, the Janitor tells Eliot that he changed the address in his personnel file to "1 Cemetery Lane" because Dr. Kelso keeps calling him "Lurch". Eliot just looks at him in polite incomprehension. He follows that up by stating it used to be "1313 Mockingbird Lane." When she doesn't get that either, he mutters "I'm old."
• In the Seinfeld episode "The Stranded" Elaine quotes the line "Maybe the dingo ate your baby?" from A Cry in the Dark. The woman she's saying it to doesn't get the reference.
• Smallville: In "Hug", when Lex Luthor mentions To Kill a Mockingbird, Clark Kent has no idea what he is talking about. This is ironic considering it is Superman's favorite book in the comic books.
• Stargate:
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • Before he ends up Going Native in the later seasons, most of the human pop-culture references are frequently lost on Teal'c. Amusingly inverted in "Seth", when Teal'c begins laughing hysterically after telling a popular Jaffa joke, which is completely wasted on his human teammates. Teal'c later becomes a huge fan of Star Wars to the point, where the first thing on his mind, when someone mentions conception without sex is "Darth Vader". Of course, no-one says the obvious answer to avoid a viewer backlash.
    • In the episode "Bad Guys", Cameron suggests that the inept museum guard believes himself to be "a John McClane", which Daniel doesn't understand. Surprisingly it's Teal'c, who is not even from Earth, who simply explains "Die Hard".
    • Vala also regularly complains about her teammates using Tau'ri pop-culture references, which she never gets. This is especially directed towards Mitchell, an allusion to both Claudia Black and Ben Browder's prior roles in Farscape, where the latter would frequently confuse his alien shipmates with human pop-culture references.
  • Stargate Atlantis:
    • Comes up twice, both time involving Neil deGrasse Tyson and Dr. Keller. First, in "Trio", Colonel Carter uses Brian Greene and Neil deGrasse Tyson in a game of "Who would you rather?", explaining to Keller that she chose physicists who were on TV so Keller should know them (she doesn't). A season later, in "Brain Storm", Tyson introduces himself to Keller and adds "from television" when she seems confused.
    • Dr. Lee comparing the McKay-Carter Intergalactic Gate Bridge to "The Twilight Bark", only to get blank stares and be forced to explain that 101 Dalmatians is his kids' favorite film. He then changes his comparison to the lighting the beacons scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King which everyone does get.
  • Stargate Universe:
    • Played with when no-one responds to Eli's suggestion to name the ice-planet "Hoth" after The Empire Strikes Back. Young's continued glare makes it clear that rather than not understand the reference, he wasn't in a joking mood.
    • In "Time", Rush's flippant declaration that "For a moment there, I thought were were in trouble" before jumping through the malfunctioning gate is completely lost on Eli (in two timelines). It's Young who explains it's a reference to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the Bolivian Army Ending.
• Star Trek:
  • In "City on the Edge of Forever", Edith Keeler is amused that neither Kirk nor McCoy is familiar with Clark Gable.
  • Happens a lot due to the various alien races interacting with a mostly human main cast. The largest examples are Data's various failures in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Kira being frustrated several times by Sisko's references to baseball.
  • And TNG's "Darmok", in which Picard has to deal with aliens who communicate by exchanging (their) pop-culture references — none of which Picard has heard of.
  • There are numerous examples across the franchise of modern day objects being completely lost on the characters in the future, suggesting that either the Third World War wiped most of the records or that the Federation's grasp of history is incredibly poor.
• Louis from Suits often fails to pick up on the two main characters constant pop culture references to movies like Top Gun. In this case he's not totally clueless, he just has different tastes. It goes both ways since when he makes a Chariots of Fire reference in an attempt to establish a rapport with Mike, he has no idea what he is talking about.
• Since Supergirl deals with a lot of aliens, this happens from time to time. Brainiac 5, who is both an alien and a time-traveler, is probably hit with this trope the most (although he does start to catch up, eventually).
  Nia: I have an idea how to get in: we do a Wookie gambit.
  Brainy: A Wookie what?
  J'onn: You haven't seen Star Wars?
  Brainy: I believe I've been adequately shamed for that in the past, thank you.
• Supernatural:
  • Castiel, as he is a Literal-Minded angel, much to Pop-Cultured Badass Dean's annoyance. From an episode that deals with Cartoon Physics:
    Dean: It's wabbit season.
    Castiel: I don't think you pronounced that correctly.
  • In "The Song Remains the Same" Castiel doesn't understand Dean's Fatal Attraction reference to how Anna has "gone Glenn Close". When Dean makes a Delorean reference to them traveling back in time, Castiel curtly informs him he doesn't know what that means either. When they're back in The '70s, where Anna plans to kill Sam and Dean's parents to prevent them from being born, Dean points out that they can't use The Terminator to explain things to mom and dad, because that movie hasn't come out yet.
  • A later episode has Sam, Dean and Cas try to stop a series of deaths that are based on cartoon physics, which Castiel completely unable to grasp. When he watches a few episodes of Looney Tunes he crosses into a type 2 as he comes to the conclusion that Road Runner is an allegory for man's relationship with God.
• Treme: In the second season, when Davis is trying to put together a band, he tells Annie about how Phil Ochs once said America needed a singer with the body of Elvis Presley and the soul of Che Guevara. Annie responds, "Who's Phil Ochs?", to which Davis can only stare into space (Annie is a musician, mind you).
• Vera: In "A Certain Samaritan", Kenny is pounding on the door of one of his informants. A voice inside demands to know who it is and Kenny replies "It's Boris Karloff!". The informant's teenage son opens the door with a confused look on his face and asks "Who?".
• In the third season premiere of Veronica Mars, when Veronica and Piz tell Moe (Piz's resident adviser) that Piz's stuff was stolen, Moe responds, "Frak, that blows." They have no idea what he means.
  • In the first season episode "Silence of the Lamb", Keith and Sheriff Lamb go to a music store, and seeing the array of guitars, Keith jokingly yells out, "Hello, Cleveland!" Lamb doesn't get the reference, and Keith notes it explains a lot.
• Warehouse 13:
  • Myka has no knowledge of music or movies within the last 50 years. Early episodes have her just admitting she doesn't know what her partner is talking about but later episodes have her trying and failing to have more up-to-date references.
    Myka Bering: If we don't bag this artifact soon, Pete here is hopping the stairway to heaven.
    Pete Lattimer: It's... buying... BUYING the stairway to heaven.
    Myka Bering: Well, I'm not a Rolling Stones expert.
  • Averted in one episode, where Pete says Artie sees them as Red Shirts, and is quite surprised that she knows what he's talking about.
• The West Wing: In the second season episode "The Drop-In", Leo pulls President Bartlet away from his schedule to have him watch the testing of a missile shield, which Bartlet is sure will fail (and it does). Bartlet compares the Department of Defense assuring Leo this time the missile shield will work (so the President will approve more money for it) to Lucy assuring Charlie Brown this time she won't pull the football away and will let him kick it. Leo doesn't get the reference, to which Bartlet responds, "Leo, were you born at the age of 55?"
  President Bartlet: (after the missile shield test fails once again) By the way, the words you're looking for are, "Oh, good grief."
• In You're the Worst, Lindsay and Edgar have vastly different reference pools:
  Edgar: In your relationship with Gretchen, are you the Mary Tyler Moore or the Rhoda?
  Lindsay: Who are those people? They sound ugly.
  Edgar: Okay, uh, Flipping Out on-on Bravo... are you the Jeff Lewis or the-the Jenni We Don't Know Her Last Name?
  Lindsay: Oh, my God! I am totally the Jenni "We Don't Know Her Last Name". Actually, I do... it's Pulos. I'm a big fan.

Music

• Kenny Chesney asked for a line in his 2005 hit "Summertime" to be changed because it mentioned snow cones, and he had no idea what they were.
• From "Punk Rock Girl" by The Dead Milkmen, when the characters go to a record store:
  We asked for Mojo Nixon, they said, "He don't work here."
• In "Movie Cowboys" by The Irish Rovers, this shows up in the last verse, when he tells his son about his childhood heroes.
  And when he asks who were they, it makes me sad to see/That they're only living in my memory.
• In the Weezer song "El Scorcho", the singer sees this as another attractive trait of the girl he's wooing: "I asked you to go to the Green Day concert. You said you'd never heard of them. How cool is that?"
• Vladimir Vysotsky's "Song about James Bond, Agent 007" tells the story of titular agent (described as an actor, and a ridiculously popular one, but referred to as "07" throughout the song) arriving to the Soviet Union to take part in an international coproduction, where he finds himself completely unrecognized by anyone, to the point of being mistaken for a homeless man. According to Vysotsky, this was inspired by Sean Connery's experiences in the Soviet Union during the production of The Red Tent (1969).

Pro Wrestling

• Vince McMahon apparently doesn't watch TV or go to the movies very often, likely due to his Workaholic ways. He didn't understand that Scott Hall's Razor Ramon gimmick was a homage to Scarface (1983) and thought he made it up himself. He also didn't understand that Paul Burchill's pirate gimmick was a homage to Pirates of the Caribbean. Though according to other reports, Burchill's gimmick happened because he did see Pirates of the Caribbean and liked it, but at the same time the gimmick was apparently dropped because Vince didn't see Pirates of the Caribbean, so who knows? He also scrapped Stevie Richards and The Blue Meanie's The Blair Witch Project parody "The Blonde Bitch Project", a Take That! to Sable, who had left WWE on bad terms earlier in 1999, in part because of concern over her lawsuit and because he didn't know about The Blair Witch Project and didn't know how many people would get the joke.
• Wrestling fans in general are often accused of living in what's called the Wrestling Bubble. Notable examples include an infamous call where wrestling writers Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez failed to notice the reference when someone asked them about Bret Hart purchasing a mansion owned by Montgomery Burns and treated it as fact as well as Pitbull's appearance on Raw leading to much confusion about who he was despite being a massive musical star.
• A running gag on SHIMMER regarding the cosplaying Regeneration X and Canadian Ninja rival Portia Perez, who was also a commentator. As the Super Mario Bros. Perez was technically correct calling Allison Danger Captain Lou Albano but didn't get why Leva Bates (Luigi) wasn't something more recognizable like Cyndi Lauper.
• Jim Cornette says Brock Lesnar expressed complete ignorance of things such as Looney Tunes, having spent all of his childhood working on the farm. Later interviews pan out that the Beast has no interest in pop culture whatsoever, and his only hobby is hunting.
• Once when Paul E. Dangerously (Paul Heyman) was working for the American Wrestling Association in the late 1980s, he was cutting a promo where he mentioned Bruce Springsteen and promoter Verne Gagne told him to "mention someone from New Jersey that people have heard of, like Jerry Vale!"

Radio

• The Unbelievable Truth:
  • In one episode, David Mitchell doesn't recognise what Barney the Dinosaur means, requiring the panellists to explain it to him.
  • Ria Lina once successfully guesses a truth in a lecture on mushrooms thanks to having watched Star Trek: Discovery, naming dropping its "mycellial network". David has no idea what she's talking about.
• Played straight and then subverted on the April 7, 2012 episode of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Roy Blount Jr., asked about the "mother of Blue Ivy", doesn't know the answer and predicts it will be someone whose name he doesn't recognize. When he's told it's Beyoncé, at first he pretends not to know who that is before admitting he does recognize the name.
  Roy Blount Jr.: Mother of Blue Ivy, that sounds like an oath. "Mother of blue ivy!!"

Theatre

• Westeros: An American Musical: Sansa calls Dontos, one of her suitors, "her Florian" after the male half of an in-universe well-known pair of lovers. Sandor, another of her suitors, mistakes Sansa's statement for Accidental Misnaming. It's the setting's equivalent of a woman calling the man she's in love with "her Romeo" and someone correcting it to the man's actual name.

Theme Parks

• This was always the biggest problem with the "Under New Management!" show that played in Disney World's Enchanted Tiki Room: all of its main plot points were contingent upon people hearing about or having seen the original "Tropical Serenade" show, either in California or before 1998 in Florida. By the time "Under New Management!" closed in 2011, it was making call-backs and references to something that most guests watching the show had never seen before.

Video Games

• One of the sidequests in the "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep" DLC in Borderlands 2 is an extended reference to the setting's equivalent of Game of Thrones, much to the delight of Lilith and Brick. Mordecai, not being familiar with the series, spends the entire sidequest frustrated at references that he doesn't get. Tina decides to throw him a bone at the end by making an NPC who makes references to his favorite show, which turns out to be about gossiping duchesses.
• In Dot's Home, Amos tells Dot that he and Hank are like Abbott and Costello, respectively. Dot asks who they are, and Hank replies, "Abbott and Costello? As in 'Who's on First?'?"
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • In addition to the various Cultural Posturing between the races that live there, many aspects of Nordic culture are completely lost on those from outside of Skyrim, such as the legend of the Dragonborn.
  • There can lead to an amusing moment if the Empire wins the Civil War, when General Tullius' epic defeat of Ulfric ends up being mildly thwarted by his own ignorance about the people he's spent most of the past year fighting for and against.
    Tullius: Well, Ulfric, you can't escape from me this time. Any last requests before I send you to... to wherever you people go when you die?
    Legate Rikke: (helpfully)... Sovngarde, sir.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • The protagonist Ritsuka Fujimaru is Book Dumb as in ignorant about history and mythology, so whenever they meet a new Servant, with a few exceptions, they need to have their story explained to them.
  • The event "Servant Summer Camp! ~Chaldea Thriller Night~" features a vacation being turned into a horror movie scenario. Lancer Yu Mei-ren keeps getting herself killed because she's never watched a horror movie in her life, so she keeps making horror movie mistakes that everybody else knows to avoid.
• In Final Fantasy XIII, Vanille doesn't know who the Primarch of Cocoon is. Sazh has to explain, after wondering aloud if she fell asleep during history class or something. Justified, since she's not from Cocoon at all.
• In House of Ashes, Jason and Nick stumble upon a long-dead corpse that was staked through the heart. Nick suggests maybe Buffy did it, but Jason doesn't get the reference.
• The Last of Us:
  • Ellie provides Justified and Downplayed examples. She was born six years after a Zombie Apocalypse kicked humanity back to pre-industrial scavenger levels. As such, while Ellie has a smattering of knowledge of comic books and video game characters, she doesn't know about pizza or ice cream. She also looks very puzzled when another character drops Bobby Fisher in conversation. In Left Behind, another scene with a cassette player implies that she cannot connect music genres to decades, and let's not forget:
  Ellie: What's a... Face-book?
  Riley: Maybe it... Prints our faces in a book?
  • In the sequel, neither Ellie, a lesbian, nor Dina, who is bi, understand the LGBT connotation of rainbows upon seeing a few of them in Seattle, including the pride flag itself inside a gay and lesbian bookstore. An even more pronounced case is that of Lev, who grew up in a religious Luddite cult and thus has only the barest idea of the outside world, to the point he doesn't even understand the colloquial meaning of "cool".
• In Mass Effect, Liara doesn't get the reference when Kaidan jokes that it's always best to RTFM before pushing buttons. She also is completely bewildered by Joker's habit of, well, joking about life and death situations as a result of spending all her time alone in Prothean ruins and being incredibly socially awkward and naive.
• Mortal Kombat 11:
  • Frost asks Cassie why people insist upon calling her "Elsa".
    Cassie: Hey there, Elsa, what's up?
    Frost: Ugh, why does everyone call me that?!
    Cassie: Oh honey, let me help you.
  • Given she is from Outworld, Skarlet fails to understand Cassie Cage's Dracula reference.
    Cassie: Bride of Dracula!
    Skarlet: Who is this "Dracula"?
    Cassie: Lemme tell ya, he's a catch!
  • Apparently, Kronika's Keep doesn't have a movie theater. One has to wonder if Outworld does.
    Geras: Kill me and I become stronger.
    Kotal Kahn: Then I will fight you To the Pain.
    Geras: I am not familiar with that phrase.
• In Splatoon 2: Back in the first game, the Squid Sisters were all the rage. In the time between the first and second games, the two have gotten even bigger solo careers, yet Agent 4 has never heard of them. Marie doing her iconic "Stay Fresh!" pose only elicits a blank stare. This ends up being because, canonically, Agent 4 themselves just doesn't pay attention to pop culture whatsoever, which is brought up in the game's official relationship chart.
  Agent 4: She's apparently famous, but you'd have to watch TV to know that.
• In any given game in Poker Night 2, Brock Samson may come to the amused realisation that Sam is a dog playing poker. When he attempts to communicate this to Sam, the latter claims to not get it.

Web Animation

• In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, the Emperor is constantly calling Ultramarines "Smurfs" and calls their Chapter Master "Papa Smurf", while Kitten has no idea what this is supposed to mean. On the other hand, it's the forty-first millennium, so the Emperor may be the only (semi)living human being who knows what Smurfs are.

Webcomics

• In Avialae, this happens when Gannet is freaking out about wings suddenly growing from his back one morning.
  Gannet: Wait — you can see them, right?! This isn't some kinda Black Swan shit?!
  Bailey: I-I-I don't understand that reference — but yeah, I can see them...
• In Check, Please!, when Bitty hears that Jack Zimmerman's dad is "Bad Bob", he asks who Bad Bob is which causes all of his hockey teammates to stare at him like he's grown a second head. Turns out that "Bad Bob" Zimmerman, while not actually a real-life person, is basically one of the greatest hockey players to ever live in the Check Please universe.
  Bitty: Apparently asking a hockey player who Bob Zimmerman is like asking a figure skater who Michelle Kwan is. Or a sitcom writer who Lucille Ball is. Or any breathing human who Beyoncé is.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • Grace, having been reared isolated from society for most of her life, doesn't get a lot of references people make. Fortunately for her, all her friends are major nerds and are getting her caught up on it. Among the things she hasn't recognized are Santa Claus, Star Wars, Joss Whedon, and World War II.
  • When an ancient wizard explains that he tried to destroy the Dewitchery Diamond after realizing how dangerous it is, but as nothing seemed to harm it he decided it was probably indestructible:
    Raven: Have you considered Mount Doom? I'm sure we could rustle up some sacrificial hobbits...
    Abraham: I... What?
    Raven: Mount Doom? A fictional volcano? How dare you survive to this age and not get that reference.
  • And again, same story:
    Damien: Who are you?
    Elliot: Tell me your name, horse master, and I will tell you mine.
    Damien: Horse master?
  • Justin sets up a gag based on Diane's name, which passes completely over Susan's head even when he tells her the reference.
    Everyone except Justin: SUZE!
    Justin: Susan.
    Susan: Um, hello. I assume something is being referenced and Justin is to blame?
    Justin: Cheers.
    Susan: You're welcome?
• Discussed in Friendship is Dragons, when Rainbow Dash's player questions who David Bowie is. (Earlier, Fluttershy's player failed to catch a Star Trek reference.)
  Fluttershy: It's kind of... careless to assume everyone's had the same cultural exposure. Sometimes, people slip through the cracks. Like me and her.
• Gunnerkrigg Court:
  • Annie barely knows anything about pop culture because (as we learn elsewhere) she grew up in a hospital.
    Kat: Welllll, he's not perfect! I mean, he thinks The Prodigy's "Fat of the Land" is better than "Music for the Jilted Generation".
    [Antimony thinks about this for a panel]
    Antimony: I have no idea what you just said.
  • Antimony is similarly confused when Kat refers to "the Princess Mononoke look you got going on!"
• League of Super Redundant Heroes: Alex fails to see any connectionbetween a giant dragon and a place called the Lonely Mountain. Her girlfriend makes no move to prevent a Dope Slap from another person.
  • Earlier in the story when the Spirit Guardian explains the history of the Fried Chicken War, Alex, with a goofy smile, asks if there was a Colonel in the army. The Guardian doesn't get the joke and decides to just continue with the story.
• Pops up early in My Impossible Soulmate, whilst Chiaki is getting to grips with being transported to another world:
  Chiaki: I don't recognise this place at all. It doesn't look like any place I've ever seen outside of, like, a video game or a fantasy anime.
  Nara: A what?
  Redge: Or a what?
  Chiaki: (internally) If I did die, this is hell...
• PvP: This strip where Brent tells Francis to "call 867-5309 and ask for Jenny". Explanation, in case you don't get it either.
• Scarlet Lady: In "Pixelator", when international rock star Jagged Stone shows up at the Grand Paris Hotel, its owner André Bourgeois doesn't recognize him. Even though they had already met before.
• Selkie: Being a member of an amphibious species who hasn't spent much time on the surface, Scar is confused by Then's Star Wars references.
  Scar: Something is wrong. I am feeling of it.
  Then: What are you, a Jedi?
  Scar: What is... "Jehd Eye"?
  Pohl: No... something is wrong. There's a tone shift in the Resonance. The Eternal Song has gone down in tempo a bit.
  Then: If you say so, Obi Wan.
  Scar: My translator is not knowing "Oh Bee Whan".
  Later
  Then: "Punch it"? Oh great, she's Han Solo.
  Scar: Stop making fake words, Then.
• In Shortpacked!, Malaya, who has no interest in the nerd stuff everyone else in the toy store geeks out over, doesn't know who Jem is. Unfortunately, her baffled repeating of "Gem?" just leads Robin to singing "She's truly outrageous! Her music's contagious!"
  Malaya: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I'M NOT SINGING SOME SONG WITH YOU, I'M TRYING TO ASK YOU WHAT THE HELL "GEM" IS.
  Robin: It was like Barbie and the Rockers, but more firsty.
  Malaya: I hate old people.

Web Original

• Protectors of the Plot Continuum: Agent Trojanhorse gets sent on a mission to a Real-Person Fic about Kurt Cobain despite having a Celebrity Crush on him and normally not being allowed "within two hundred light years" of her Lust Object. She suspects the upper management made an exception due to a lack of other people who know who Cobain is.
• In ScrewAttack's review of the 16-bit adaptation of Judge Dredd, Stuttering Craig claimed he'd never heard of the original comic and was going by the movie.
• TV Tropes: This is the reason that many tropes named after characters got renamed (for example, Bugs Meany Is Gonna Walk to Conviction by Contradiction.)
• Whateley Universe: Phase, being a Fish out of Water, often fails to get the anime and cartoon jokes that his teammates make (he has had to sneak away and search for the reference on the Internet), while his teammates sometimes don't get his jokes (because classical literature jokes go over so well with high-schoolers).

Web Videos

• Jeremy Dooley of Achievement Hunter fully admits he doesn't watch television or movies and has limited knowledge of pop culture outside of his preferred genres. This has lead the rest of the Achievement Hunter crew to try to mess with him by making such references that would go over his head. His limited pop culture knowledge has also hindered him when the group plays trivia games. Ironically, he tends to win those trivia games either through dumb luck guessing or because the other plays screw up just as spectacularly.
• Evoked by The Angry Video Game Nerd when he settles down to review the NES video game adaptation of Rocky and Bullwinkle and struggles to describe what the cartoon it was based on is about:
  AVGN: Rocky and Bullwinkle on the NES, based on the cartoon. Um... the cartoon... about... a moose and a squirrel? [Beat] ...Do I have to see everything?
• Because Alanah Pearce of Funhaus is Australian and also several years younger than the rest of the crew, she doesn't understand the '80s and '90s references the others make and is often seen looking very confused at them.
• Taken to extremes in one JonTron episode, where a coked-up Sonic Team employee has to ask "What the fuck is a Sonic!?"
• The (original) series finale of Doug Walker's The Nostalgia Critic review show was heavily inspired by the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation titled "All Good Things...", and was intended to convey to the audience that the show had run its course and was ending. Now this is fine, except for the fact that a good majority of Walker's fanbase had never seen the Star Trek episode in question before and thought it was just another review. The Critic character's death a couple of months later in the film To Boldly Flee left enough viewers shocked and confused that Walker had to film a short v-log explaining that, yes, the series was over.
• By Ris Grestar's own admission, he doesn't watch television or read comics very often, and is unfamiliar with video games he doesn't own, so he's often in the dark about characters in DEATH BATTLE! until their bios are given. Despite being a fan of Batman, he's not familiar with a lot of the characters. When DEATH BATTLE! mentioned how Son Goku from Dragon Ball was based on Son Wukong from Journey to the West, he didn't know what that was. While he knows what One Piece and Fairy Tail are, he stopped watching them after the first few episodes, so he's unfamiliar with Roronoa Zoro and Erza Scarlet. He added that he's unlikely to watch the two shows because of how many episodes they have.
• TableTop: The Catan Junior episode where Wil Wheaton is playing with three 9-year-olds. Wil mentions that he used to be on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The kids' response? "What's Star Trek?"
• This is the entire point of Tamara's Never Seen, in which Tamara Chambers of Channel Awesome watches a number of classic films that she missed out on as a kid for the first time.
• National Hockey League goalie Curtis Joseph had the diminutive nickname "Cujo", and made sure to homage the namesake rabid dog in his mask◊. A TSN video featuring a mask quiz had a contestant mistaking the animal there for a bear. The producers say it's a dog from a book/movie (the mask downright has "Cujo" written on the same font of the film's poster), the guy not only says he never heard of it, but refuses to acknowledge as anything other than a bear.
• Parodied in Screen Rant Pitch Meetings in the video on Spider-Man: No Way Home when the Screenwriter tries to hype up the Producer by telling him they're getting Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield back, the Producer barely has a reaction. He somehow never knew about the Spider-Man movies made prior to the MCU.

Western Animation

• In American Dad!, Stan's repeated bafflement at things Steve mentions probably is the reason they haven't bonded well. In one episode the family learns that Stan's been secretly restoring a DeLorean for years; Steve keeps dropping references to Back to the Future on the assumption that Stan's a fan, but he isn't (and specifically says he dislikes time travel-based comedies) and just gets annoyed at Steve's quotes.
• Happens frequently in Amphibia, since its trio of protagonists are Trapped in Another World. A Running Gag has one of them (usually Anne) make a reference to something from Earth, only for their amphibian friends to say some variation of "That reference means nothing to me". Hop Pop even lampshades it at one point;
  Hop Pop: Must be painful to make so little sense all the time.
  • Amusingly inverted in the season 1 finale, "Reunion". After Sasha captures Anne and the Wartwood folk, Grimes comments her on "always playing Flipwart when everyone else is playing Bog Jump". Sasha, of course, has no idea what those are, leading Grimes to awkwardly explain that Flipwart and Bog Jump are games, with Flipwart considered far more difficult and advanced.
• Archer:
  • While Archer Speaks in Shout-Outs so much that most of the other people in his team don't always follow him (it's likely Archer has Autism or Asperger's Syndrome, considering the obscurity of some of his pop-cultural references), this is a constant source of friction between Archer and Ron, the former being amazed at what Ron hasn't seen and the latter being annoyed at Archer's way of speaking.
  • Oddly, Archer himself does this in one episode. In "Space Race Part II" Lana says the space station they're on is like Animal Farm. Archer thinks she's talking about a literal farm with animals. He has read the story (and even remembers it's a novella not a full novel), but doesn't make the connection with the situation they're in. The rest of the ISIS team is astounded that he of all people doesn't get the reference.
  • Archer loves the song "Danger Zone" so much that it's basically his catch phrase, particularly when he wants to imply sexual tension with Lana. However, when he actually manages to get Kenny Loggins to perform at Lana's baby shower, the significance is entirely lost on Lana.
    Archer: Danger Zone? You know, that thing I'm always saying?
    Lana: Kind of, I guess. It's from a song?
    Archer: Yes, it's from a song! By Grammy winner and possible Faustian bargain maker Kenny goddamn Loggins!
    Lana: Okay, calm down. (Beat) So who's beard guy?
    Archer: Are you... That's Kenny Loggins!
    Lana: From Kenny Loggins' Roasters?
  • In yet another episode, Lana accuses Malory of wanting to play Palpatine to Cyril's Vader. Malory apparently doesn't know anything about Star Wars. Things get even more convoluted when Malory begins to mistakenly assume this is some sort of biblical reference, not helped by everyone else making it more confusing by asking if Palpatine eventually comes back from the dead after "Moving the rock" and then "Releases the tractor beam and saves the Jews from captivity." And then Malory stumbles upon this:
    Malory: Wait, yes now that sounds familiar.
    Lana: It CANNOT possibly.
    Malory: Gospel of Luke?
  • In "Palace Intrigue", Archer starts a debate comparing the agents to the actors from The Breakfast Club. Malory doesn't recognize any of the names.
    Malory: Are you all just saying random words?
• Batman: The Animated Series: In "Torch Song", while discussing a case, Bruce asks Barbara what she's doing tonight. She remarks, "The same thing we do every night, Pinky." Bruce doesn't get it.
• Batman Beyond: Terry and Bruce are discussing a criminal who's only stealing rubies. The two ponder why, but Bruce guesses that she's probably not going to make slippers with them. Terry doesn't get the reference, because at the point the show is set the reference is for a movie well over a century old, and takes the suggestion seriously.
  Terry: Slippers? From rubies?
  Bruce: Mmm... before your time.
• In one episode of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, Azmuth transports Ben’s team into a simulation of events from hundreds of years ago, and begins to explain that they can’t be interacted with, before Ben cuts him off by comparing it to A Christmas Carol. Azmuth is confused by the reference.
• Family Guy:
  • Brian once took Frank Sinatra, Jr. out club hopping, where his attempts to flirt with one vapid young woman fall completely flat because she doesn't recognize any of the names Sinatra keeps dropping. Brian has to intervene and stop the increasingly frustrated Sinatra from backhanding the girl.
  • Brian himself has this happen when he attempts to hit on another vapid girl, mentioning that he's an author. It falls flat as the girl appears to have no idea what books are, leading Brian to resort to explaining that it's like the Internet made out of a tree.
  • In "The Marrying Kind", Joe doesn't know where the theme song to The Muppet Show, which Peter and the people at The Drunken Clam break out into, comes from, and assumes it's an original song.
• The Looney Tunes Show: In "Best Friends", Bugs Bunny claims that he's from planet Krypton and his parents sent him to Earth were he received special powers. When Daffy Duck immediately takes this as fact, an annoyed Bugs explains he just told Superman's origin story, but Daffy has no idea who that is.
• In the Max Steel episode "Sphinxes", Max and Rachel explore an Egyptian tomb and get attacked by monsters. After fighting them off, Max notices they are robots, and deduces criminals are pulling a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax. Rachel doesn't understand what he means. He groans and briefly explains Scooby-Doo to her.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Luna Eclipsed", Twilight Sparkle dresses up as her idol, the legendary wizard Star Swirl the Bearded, for Nightmare Night. She gets annoyed when the only person to recognize that name and look is Princess Luna, who had lived for thousands of years and actually knew the wizard. Twilight has several scenes complaining about how famous Star Swirl was and how he helped shape their society.
  • Rarity at times gets annoyed when her friends don't know celebrities like Trenderhoof. Her friends aren't really interested in the world of high fashion and gossip.
  • This trope is played for laughs in "The Mane Attraction"; when Applejack asks who Countess Coloratura is, literally everyone else on the scene turns and gasps in shock. In an interesting twist, it turns out that Applejack knew Coloratura when they were both children as Rara... which drives the rest of the episode.
  • In "No Second Prances", Starlight Glimmer has never heard of the Wonderbolts, a celebrity aerobatics team. As a former villain, Starlight half-jokes she must have been too busy enslaving villages.
  • In "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Tolls", Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo are going to Canterlot so Sweetie Belle can fix her mistake of sabotaging Rarity's dress for popstar Sapphire Shores, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo are more interested in meeting Sapphire Shores as they are huge fans. Sweetie Belle reminds them that they're on a mission to save her sister, which Scootaloo says "Serves her right." Sweetie Belle is shocked she would say that, but Scootaloo says she was just saying the title of Sapphire Shores' song Serves Her Right. Sweetie Belle admits she doesn't listen to Sapphire Shores' music and prefers show tunes.
• In The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, despite her parents being fans of their music, Penny has apparently never heard of Prince, Tone Lōc, or Barry White.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Treehouse of Horror VI", Homer tries to describe the 3D world by comparing it to TRON. Nobody present has seen it.
  • In "A Midsummer's Nice Dream", when Cheech and Chong are making a reunion tour — ironic considering The Simpsons ran throughout the '90s, but Comic-Book Time may apply:
    Bart: Who the hell are Cheech and Chong?
    Homer: Cheech and Chong were the Beavis and Butt-Head of their day!
    Bart: Who are Beavis and Butt-Head?
  • In "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song", Skinner apparently never learned about Jurassic Park, and his idea for the next great American novel is a beat-for-beat copy of it, which he names Billy and the Cloneasaurus. Apu takes deep offense.
    Apu: Oh you have got to be kidding, sir. First you think of an idea that has already been done, and then you give it a title that nobody could possibly like! Didn't you think...(time jump) ...the best-seller list for 18 months! Every magazine cover had it! (time jump) ...popular movies of all time, sir! What were you thinking! (Beat) I mean thank you, come again!"
  • In "Stark Raving Dad", Homer befriends a man in the mental institution who claims to be Michael Jackson. Homer has never heard of Michael Jackson, so the man attempts to jog Homer's memory by naming several things associated with Michael, Motown, MTV, Thriller, "Beat It" ("you beat it!"), and doing the Moonwalk Dance while singing "Billie Jean", but Homer hasn't heard of any of these things (note that this was in 1991, when it would have been even more ludicrously unlikely to have never heard of Michael Jackson). This factors into the plot, since, because Homer has never heard of Michael Jackson, it's perfectly plausible to him that Michael Jackson is a large Polish-American man in a mental institution.
• In Static Shock, Vergil is flung into the far future where he meets the current Batman, Terry McGinnis. Vergil sarcastically introduces himself as Beyoncé^*This episode was written in the early 2000s, when people figured her career wouldn't last long past her breaking up from Destiny's Child. Ironically, she became even more prolific in the following two decades, so most Americans Terry's age probably will have heard of her by the 2040s. during their brief scuffle, which Terry takes at face value. It isn't until an aged Bruce Wayne steps in that the confusion is cleared up.
  Terry: You know this kid? He says his name's Beyonce.
• In the episode "Hostile Makeover" of The Venture Bros., old-school manly man Brock tries to convince young Hank to stop emulating Justin Bieber just because "chicks dig him". He loses enthusiasm when he learns that Hank has never heard of Steve McQueen.
  Brock: [sigh] Google him.
• Xiaolin Showdown:
  • Much humor is derived from the fact that Omi has lived his entire life in the Xiaolin temple with virtually no exposure to the outside world, meaning that he usually has no clue what the other characters in the show are talking about.
  • Later in the series, Omi will frequently attempt to make a pop culture reference or use a common figure of speech but badly misword it, prompting another character to correct him, only for Omi to misinterpret the actual reference.
    Omi: [taunting the villain] Defeating you will be a piece of pie.
    Clay: Cake, you mean a piece of cake.
    Omi: Cake? This is no time for food.
  • In one instance, Omi miswords one of his attempted references so badly that none of the other characters can figure out what he was actually trying to say.
• In Young Justice, Artemis is unfamiliar with various nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Her father was neglectful and made her spend her childhood training to be a fighter instead of normal girl stuff.

Real Life

• As described on our very own page for Gargoyles, in the entry for Belligerent Sexual Tension: "When describing Brooklyn and Katana's relationship in "Timedancer", [creator] Greg Weisman mentioned Sam and Diane. No one got it. Then he mentioned Beatrice and Benedick. That one people got, which should tell you a lot about the kind of fans this show has."
• On the 4/4/13 episode of Late Show with David Letterman guest Martin Short told about a group shot taken of the "5-Time Hosting Club" for Saturday Night Live. He noted Steve Martin tweeted with the picture, "If you recognize any of these people, you are over 50 years old.".
• In this backstage interview with Douglas Hodge, who originated the role of Willy Wonka in the 2013 stage musical adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Hodge discusses how his falling into Group B caused problems when deciding on how to handle his big entrance at the end of Act One. Having read the original novel and the script of the show, he thought that he should fake a fall for his entrance as The Trickster Establishing Character Moment. Director Sam Mendes said he just couldn't do that, and Hodge didn't understand why... until he watched the 1971 film adaptation Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory for the first time and realized Mendes thought he got the idea for an Obfuscating Disability from what Gene Wilder did in the film! The finished show goes with an Internal Homage compromise of sorts: Instead of a tumble/somersault, there's an Instant Costume Change following on from the phony feebleness.
• Any of the examples on this very page if you're not familiar with the work it's referencing.
• One recurring meme online is for someone to ask an older or younger relative their first opinion on the person's fandom, with a lot of the humor stemming from the relative's confusion over seeing the characters for the first time, or not having any context for who they are.
• As if to give a shining example of Police Are Useless, they warned of Pedobear. Maybe someone could explain them the meme before someone gets shot accidentally?
• In a commentary track for the 2016 Ghostbusters movie, Paul Feig and writer Katie Dippold blank out on what actress Kate McKinnon's ad-libbed singing of "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" is referencing. Even after admitting that the ad-lib cost them thousands of dollars of licensing fees, the closest Feig is able to get is "some Disney movie" rather than the true origin, The Wizard of Oz.
• As of June 2020, in light of recent social and political events around the world, it bears mentioning that Generation Z is woefully ignorant of the significance and history of the hacktivist group Anonymous, and thus many Spanish and Latin-American Gen Z'ers are calling supposed similarities between the Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask and the Salvador Dalí masks used in the Spanish drama series Money Heist.
• Many people over the age of 50 were reportedly upset when, in the year 2000, a survey was taken of younger moviegoers in which one of the questions asked them to name the film in which "Round up the usual suspects!" was uttered, and hardly any of them guessed right. In defense of the youngsters, though, many would naturally assume the quote was from The Usual Suspects.
• The child cast of the Harry Potter series admitted in interviews that when they were making the early films, they didn't fully appreciate that they got to work with an All-Star Cast that included legends such as Richard Harris, Alan Rickman, and Maggie Smith because they weren't old enough to have seen most of their films.
• When Jim Starlin saw the movie Eternals, he was initially confused by the Celebrity Cameo of Harry Styles as Starlin's creation Starfox, as he had never heard of One Direction or its members beforehand. To Starlin's credit, he was his 60s during the One Direction craze of the 2010s, and by then, his popular music consumption largely stopped after the 1970s.
• As shown in this news documentary, a team of ghost hunters investigating a supposedly haunted building noted a message written on a chalkboard, which they believed to be the work of a perturbed spirit: "The Cake Is a Lie". Made all the more amusing by the fact that the lead investigator correctly identified the phrase's pop-cultural meaning — a promised reward failing to materialize — but believed it to be a "historical" saying. Neither he nor the presenters appeared to realize that they've been trolled by a Portal fan.

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