History RealLife / TropesGToM

* InfinityMinusOneSword: The high school diploma is nowhere near the prestige of college degrees, but it shows that you completed your primary schooling, and in many developed countries, doesn't require expensive tuition fees to reach. A lot of non-specialized jobs require having graduated high school, but don't necessarily require a college degree.

* InfinityPlusOneSword: Again, the nuclear bomb. Restricted to people who hit the maximum Job Level for Politics, and with a lot of restrictions on it even then. That said, there are persistent rumors of bugs in the code that might allow unlevelled characters to gain access to assorted {{Infinity Plus One Sword}}s. None have yet been demonstrated, but the rumors alone have made many in the fan base quite upset, especially a few seasons ago.

* KnightTemplar: Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of situations involving people going to extremes and thinking they're doing something heroic; most of these people are also a BlankSlate and only have ideological extremism as their only purpose. The opposite effect happens and only more destruction occurs (after a century's period). Most of this also involves "fixing" an issue that wasn't there anyway.

* GasChamber: While they are known as very horrible ways of execution, in the recent arcs they are used to test gas mask and prepare soldier class players for the possible event of chemical warfare.

* GeniusCripple: Professor Stephen Hawking provides the Trope Image.
* GenreBusting: Pretty much everything before the human race came along.

* GentleGiant: Blue Whale, which happen to be the largest confirmed race in RealLife. Whale Sharks and Basking Sharks also qualify.

* GhibliHills: Some regions, but they are few and far between. And diminishing.

* GiveMeYourInventoryItem: Muggers.
** Beggars, for a more KarmaMeter version of this.

** Making things worse, there are a bewildering variety of minigames, ''each of which has its own currency''. These minigame currencies can [[MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame in some cases]] be [[RealMoneyTrade exchanged for Real Life money]], but doing so is against the HouseRules on most servers.
*** There are proposals for a global reserve currency though, so this may become true sooner than expected.
** UsefulNotes/{{Bitcoin}} is an experimental attempt.

* AGoodWayToDie: Subverted. Dying pretty much sucks no matter how you go out. Even dying of natural causes is a downer.
** Although, most players agree that dying in one's sleep is the most preferable. And anyone who commits a HeroicSacrifice is usually hailed by the rest of the [=PCs=].

* {{God}}: The devs are generally assumed to be this, though whether or not they exist, or if they do, are one or many, is a matter of dispute among the characters. Likewise some claim that they are really female, or even beyond the concept of gender.

* GrowingUpSucks: But most agree it's worth it.
* GuideDangIt: And to make it worse, there are lots of different guides with conflicting advice!
** It's gotten to the point that to work out anything new about TheVerse, you're actually ''expected'' to spend several years studying the fan community's extensive archive of guidebooks.

* HailfirePeaks: The Iceland level is like this.
* HalloweenEpisode: On October 31.
* HappilyMarried: Played straight with many couples. Unfortunately averted with others.

* HeavenlyConcentricCircles:
* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres Celestial Spheres]] astronomical model postulates that the universe is made of rotating, concentric rings of aether. Each region contains a different level in a hierarchy of fixed celestial bodies. First came two sets of zodiac constellations, then the stars, and finally the observable planets, one per orb, with the Earth at the core. It was developed by Greek thinkers such as Creator/{{Aristotle}}, Copernicus, Plato, and Creator/{{Cicero}}.
* The advent of photography allowed us to capture the night sky for hours on end, easily revealing the path of the stars. Or, more accurately, how Earth's rotation causes the celestial bodies to shift position (aka, diurnal motion). Long exposure times reveal what is known as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trail star trail]], which is a collection of circular, coaxial streaks in the sky.
* Massive planets tend to attract surrounding astronomical junk thanks to their powerful gravity fields. As the planet rotates, it drags the objects, therefore causing them to orbit in layered paths that, from afar, look like this pattern.

* HelmetMountedSight:
** [[http://tri.army.mil/LC/cs/csa/apihadss.htm US helicopter gunships since the early 1980s have used the IHADSS system,]] which can not only aim a laser designator for [[UsefulNotes/AirLaunchedWeapons the AGM114 laser-guided antitank missile]] but also aim an autocannon in the powered turret under the helicopter's "chin".
** The first widespread implementation in a fighter aircraft was the [=MiG-29=] "Fulcrum" in TheEighties, causing some alarm within NATO after they discovered how effective they were from ex-[[UsefulNotes/EastGermany GDR]] examples of that plane, particularly in combination with the R-73/AA-11 heat-seeking missile. The US Air Force and Navy, who had been rolling them out rather tentatively until this point, were quick to catch up.
** The F22 and F35 are/will be equipped with these. Several attack helicopters are equipped with them as well. Specifically, these aircraft, along with several older U.S. fighters like the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 will be made compatible with the new Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System, which when combined with the new AIM-9X model of the Sidewinder allows for some absolutely gratuitous stunts involving {{Roboteching}}.
** A purely peaceful version is the [[https://www.dzsports.co.uk/newton-cross-sight Newton Cross Sight]], which is used to aim a helmet-mounted camera, enabling the operator to properly frame climbing, skiing, or other extreme sports activities while right in the middle of them, while also leaving both hands free and keeping the operator's field of view largely unobstructed.

* HideYourPregnancy: InUniverse. Available for female characters, but this SelfImposedChallenge is not generally a good idea. Hits to your Social points or Relationship values are not worth the trauma and fatigue - to say nothing of the real risks: the unpatched Labor system ''can crash your game and prevent the noob from completing chararacter generation.''
* HighSchoolRocks: But only for those who manage to be popular because of good looks (usually), funniness and/or some respected talent. For others, high school is four consecutive {{Scrappy Level}}s.
** It can also rock for those who [[TheSnarkKnight willingly embrace (and in some cases even celebrate) their unpopularity.]] This is rare, but it happens.

* HitPoints: Averted. Life forms are too complex to sum up their vitals in a number, but many hospitals manage to condense a few properties to numbers; though it's not a true damage tracker, they do help to provide a useful status shot.

* HolyGround: Temples, churches, Vatican City, many graveyards, the Ganges River, and many more.
* HollywoodBoardGames: Music/TaylorSwift joked about her family getting her a new ''Scrabble'' board plus cat treats for Christmas. It's true that she enjoys the game but those gifts, without context, are what you would get for your grandmother.
* HonestRollsCharacter: Every single one. You get what you get. The character generator can absolutely screw you. A significant number of characters, perhaps as many as 40%, are killed by spontaneous miscarriages (or if it's by choice on the mother's part, abortion) before finishing generation. If the character generator decides you should be born tall, good looking, brilliant, with a wealthy, loving family, an amicable personality, prodigious talent, and no diseases, so be it. If it decides to saddle you with a chromosomal abnormality, your mother's HIV infection, and a spinal cord that sticks out a hole in your spine, you get no reroll. At best you can ally yourself with one of the health-insurance factions (and pay substantial guild dues) to have some of the penalties reduced.
** There are Scientist-class players working on [[HollywoodCyborg cybernetic augmentation,]] genetic engineering, and [[BioAugmentation Bio Enhancement]] procedures to correct these, however.

* HopelessWithTech: Unfortunately, there are many players who fall under this trope.

* HowIWroteThisArticleArticle: An academic journal of psychology once published a scholarly study entitled [[http://www.ericpazdziora.com/best-paper-ever/ "The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of Writers' Block"]]. Peer reviewers commended the author for showing his results in great detail while being admirably concise. Of course, [[spoiler:everything except the title is blank.]]

* HumansAreWarriors: We have several millennia of experience with warfare, and while it's not a trait we're always proud of, we are [[{{BFG}} very]], ''[[TankGoodness very]] '''[[UsefulNotes/NuclearWeapons good]]''''' at war.
** Whether or not a member of the military prestige class is proud of their status has a lot to do with whether or not they've had a chance to use their class features in a combat situation. Also, whether or not the Military class even ''is'' a prestige class depends on the server. In many servers, characters are ''forced'' to take the Soldier class: in a few, they're not even allowed to finish the tutorial levels first.

* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Although most episodes and seasons are referred to by number, often in the format "episode number-arc/act-season number", there are systems which use more poetic naming, especially with regard to the acts. Notably, the China server uses a cycle of twelve repeating [[AnimalMotif animal-themed]] seasons, and the Islamic-based system counts the standard arcs from [[MeaningfulName "forbidden" to "the one of pilgrimage"]].
** Code inherited from the Ancient Roman server shows that this was attempted, naming the first few arcs for [[MythologyGag gods]], but it petered out into naming the last seven for their numbers. The attempt was briefly revived when two Emperors named arcs for themselves, but this project was abandoned and the last five arcs are still named for their numbers.

* InappropriateSpeakAndSpell:
** The TropeNamer: the Texas Instruments Speak and Spell. Due to its British accent and faulty sound card, words can be heard inappropriately.
** The Leapfrog Alphabet Pal Caterpillar has 26 feet, each with a letter of the alphabet on it, and one of its settings is to make the letter sound of the foot you press. You can use this to sound out almost any word you want... [[DevelopersForesight except Leapfrog had swear words in mind when they designed it.]] If you want to make it sound out the F word for example (or ''most'' swear words) it will decide you are tickling it halfway through and then go on to say the next sound, so it's like this:
-->'''[Pressing F]:''' Fuh
-->'''[Pressing U]:''' Uh
-->'''[Pressing K]:''' *giggle* That tickles! K.
*** You can still make it say "I see you pee", "You be in pee" and "I see a titty."
** The original Toys/TeddyRuxpin talking teddy bear used animatronics which told the story on the audio cassette put into his back. Teddy would play ''any'' tape you put into him, but his mouth and eyes would move only when you used one of his approved story tapes, and then only when he speaks.
*** A similar talking doll, Cricket, had no such limitations.
** At one time, one could find Toys/GIJoe action figures with voice chips that said things like "Yo Joe!", "ATTAAACK!", and "Vengeance is mine!", and {{Franchise/Barbie}} [[strike:action figures]] dolls with voice chips that said things like "Let's go shopping!", "Math is hard!", and "Will we ever have enough clothes?" Inevitably, the Barbie Liberation Front went to Toys "R" Us, bought a bunch of each, and swapped the voice chips between the Joes and the Barbies. ''And then returned them all to the store.'' One may logically presume that HilarityEnsued.
*** Referenced in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Lisa asks her friends whether there isn't something wrong with what their talking [[BlandNameProduct Malibu Stacy]] dolls say[[note]]referring to the terribly sexist and demeaning phrases[[/note]]. One girl responds, "There's something wrong with what ''my'' Stacy says"; when she pulls the string, we hear "[[ComicBook/SpiderMan My spidey sense is tingling -- anybody call for a web-slinger?]]"
** The [[Series/SesameStreet Tickle Me Elmo]] doll is a talking doll that shakes and giggles when you touch it in several ways. Just ripe for abuse.
*** And then there's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6MhR1S1SlY this video]] of Elmo being humped by a talking Tigger toy.
*** Someone decided to see what would happen if he set an Elmo on fire. The results are very, very unsettling. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYGhmJD9LKc Watch]] [[SchmuckBait at the risk of not sleeping tonight.]]
*** In 2006, [[http://www.clickorlando.com/news/5784303/detail.html a talking Elmo book was somehow programmed to say, "Who wants to die?"]]
*** He's actually saying, "Who has to go [to the bathroom]?" but it doesn't sound like it.
*** It was a chip manufacturing defect. However, many sound books do go berserk when their battery is run down, either starting to sound demonic, or cut off the speech halfway through. The latter can cause the book to say some pretty shocking things. Oh, by the way, said Elmo book was from the same publisher as the infamous Lion King sound book with the defect that may cause the book to say something that sounded like "Squashed bananas up your ass" instead of a chant that went "Asante sana, squash banana, wewe nugu mimi hapana". [[note]] "Thank you very much, squashed banana, you're a baboon and I'm not" in Swahili [[/note]]
*** Another Elmo doll, which could be programmed with the child's name, had a defect that [[https://youtube.com/watch?v=mEwqdlg_ZnY caused it to say "Kill James"]]. What it was actually supposed to say is "tell James".
** When the movie ''Film/SpiderMan2'' was released, Toy Biz released a 18 inch Spider-Man action figure with over 67 points of articulation, including all his individual fingers. Of course, this caused many pranksters to make him flip the bird, and put him in many other inapropriate positions like gang signs.
*** People also made several other Marvel action figures with individual articulated fingers flip the bird, such as The Thing from Marvel Legends Legendary Riders series, the Haslab Galactus, Marvel Legends Hasbro Series 1 Blob Build-A-Figure, Savage Dragon from the Legendary Comic Book heroes series, Rhino from the Marvel Legends Fearsome Foes gift pack, Spider-Hulk from Spider-Man Classics toyline and Super-Poseable Spider-Man from the Spider-Man 2 toyline.
** Mike Mozart, that toy review guy from [=YouTube=], LOVES this trope and exploits it in many of his videos. Some of the exploits demonstrated have been fixed by toy manufacturers in subsequent revisions. His Leapfrog table exploit only worked on older models featuring the character "Lily" which had a compartment flap that came off very easily, said exploit involved removing the flap and toggling a switch rapidly to result in something that sounded like a ClusterFBomb. Newer models featuring the character "Dot" are unaffected as said flap is now molded in and is impossible to remove without breaking it off by force.
** Exploited by Website/YouTube personality Jaxen Ross, who specializes in destroying children's toys. One of his most viewed videos is [[https://youtu.be/qFBHpYPkmVI Word Whammer Destruction 2]], where he tries to spell inappropriate words like "sex" using a Word Whammer. He spliced two clips together to make it seem like it really did. He later destroys the toy when it fails to say other inappropriate words.
** ''Series/{{Teletubbies}}'' has two such incidents involving its dolls. One Tinky Winky doll ostensibly said "I got a gun!", but it was actually "Again, again!". A Po doll was thought to have said a homophobic slur along with "bite my butt", but she was actually saying "fidit", which means "faster" in Cantonese, a language that Po speaks on the show, and the second phrase was actually gibberish.
* InCameraEffects:
** Even inexpensive video cameras from 2015 and possibly earlier supported selecting sepia (all shades of brown) and black-and-white through a menu on the camera's viewscreen.
** As of 2019, Sub-$100 video cameras producing 2.7K video can provide sepia, black and white, cool (increased bluing), warm (increased yellowing) as well as shades of all blue, all red, all green, and all purple, plus a black-and-white "blur" effect. A Website/YouTube video demonstrating all of these and some others [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLNI69Zum1E can be found here]].
* IncendiaryExponent: Played straight in war scenes. HilarityEnsues in chemistry lab backfires. Averted most of the rest of the time.

* InMediasRes: At the start, there is a wide cast of pre-established characters and multiple fully developed conflicts and sub-plots with little initial explanation as to how they came about.

* InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: Played straight for your first level or so. All non-twinks have the choice to avert this trope for a long time, but as your level reaches the max cap it becomes enforced again. Many players are so acquainted to this trope that they never attempt to break it. [[LeParkour Some players on the other hand...]]

* InternationalShowdownByProxy: See the World Cup, the Olympics, and every game of professional sports ever played.
* InTheHood: Averted. In most environments, wearing a hood tends to draw curiosity, if not outright suspicion. If the local culture or weather makes hoods commonplace, a hood won't cause a character to stand out, but it won't make her any less noticeable, either.

* InventoryManagementPuzzle: A recurring mini-game in the form of school bags, camping/canoeing trips, shopping bags, holiday packing, road trips, moving into a smaller apartment, and a woman's purse (which may verge on BagOfHolding).

* {{Irony}}: A surprisingly common trope for a work that is neither satire nor comedy (though it has elements of both).

* IzchaksWrath: Enter a store selling gun items, choose the rob command, and see what happens.
* JerkassGods: A few people choose to blame god(s) and/or fate for how crappy their life is/was.

** The top-tier move "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment Rod From God]]" has been found in the code, but no one has unlocked it yet.

* KudzuPlot: So complicated, even the characters 'in charge' don't know what the hell's going on most of the time. Whether the author(s) do(es) themselves is hotly debated among the fans (apart from the issue of whether the author/s even exist). [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History Entire]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology academic]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleontology disciplines]] are dedicated to making just a little sense of the storyline.

* LeaveTheCameraRunning: A continuous trope.
* LeftStuckAfterAttack: Many kinds of bees have jagged stingers; when they sting, they'll often be stuck on something they're stung, and they have to sacrifice their abdomen to escape, which is often fatal.
** Many dogs breed in this way, although they don't lose any body parts in the process. However, they do get stuck for up to an hour after the fact and report intense pain if they attempt to pull out.
* LemonyNarrator: Sadly, many forms of mental illness take on this trope.
* LensmanArmsRace: Humanity's entire story arc has seen us go from crude rafts and sticks with sharp stones attached to nuclear weapons and space flight.

* LethalJokeCharacter: It's one way to interpret a (relatively) hairless biped with smaller fangs per body size, a generally less practical version of claws, about no poison whatsoever bar bodily waste, a lack of natural weapons such as horns, incredibly long and perhaps dangerous physical development, a muscle tone and a movement speed that are outclassed often enough, if not lethargic, not-so tough skin, no thick fur, about no special defenses, and (until very recently) [[DeathByChildbirth a quite high risk for character creation]], has achieved this status with nothing more than the ability for its thumbs to have [[BoringYetPractical oppositional movement]] and a [[BadassBookworm large brain]]. [[MagikarpPower Technology]] and a potentially limitless TechTree have given this race the chance to either unmake its world or survive its end. Not to mention there have been numerous cases of such beings enduring more than expected and even accounts of them getting an advantage in direct combat against other species in the animal kingdom. Ever notice ''every'', or should we say [[MostWritersAreHuman about every]] player reading this page has this character type?
** Interestingly, although they have Strength and Speed scores that are fixed at low levels, humans ''can'' train up their Endurance stat to exceed that of most land animals. Few choose to cultivate this skill outside of a few hobbyists and the few diehards who stick to the Hunter-Gatherer class.
* LethalLavaLand: Many places, most notably Hawaii, Japan and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Etna Sicily]].
* LetsPlay: There are over millions of videos depicting these, as well as other mediums.
* LevelGrinding: It can take decades of grinding to achieve levels in most {{Prestige Class}}es.
** Most skills require some LevelGrinding to raise to the point where they are at all useful, though there are exceptions.
* LifeWillKillYou: Unfortunately, statistics regarding life expectancy indicate this to be one defining feature of real life.

* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: The Nerd class has a really hard time going through the early levels, especially High School and the PVP, while "jocks" can mostly go around doing what they like unhindered, but eventually the jocks tend to [[WhosLaughingNow end up working for the nerds]].
** However, it's possible for the [[{{Munchkin}} Jock class to take levels in nerding]], and vice versa.
*** The Nerd class is not only often a self-imposed challenge, but all of its class specifics can be freely taken up by any other class without hindrance to physical and social abilities. GeniusBruiser, BadassBookworm, and HospitalHottie are freely available to those who are [[LuckBasedMission blessed with talent and the opportunity to take those classes.]]
* LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading: Played straight with gestation, but otherwise averted. All textures and cutscenes load instantaneously. Even the [[VideoGame/TheSims splines reticulate]] so fast you'd barely notice them at all. It turns out the video engine runs faster than the viewer is physically able to perceive it - which seems like a real waste of processing power.

* LongRunners: 12,000 years of human civilization measured from the start of the Neolithic, with many {{Missing Episode}}s along the way. 13.7 billion years back to the presently held beginning though, the Big Bang, which itself could be questionable. Several other series set in the RealLife-verse are also LongRunners - stromatolites, jellyfish, sharks and spiders to name just a few. Some long-running fan-favorites, including the dinosaurs and mammoths were eventually KilledOffForReal... but spin-off and {{Expy}} characters such as birds and elephants were kept around.
** And of course, bacteria, some of the very first characters to appear, still make up more than half of the cast list.
* LoveDodecahedron: But usually not PlayedForLaughs.

* MacrossMissileMassacre: Favorite tactic of militaries across the world, heavily used in air and naval combat. Combined with [[NukeEm nukes]] to make a superweapon called the ICBM, and the Cluster Bomb to make the staggeringly destructive MIRV warhead. The Macross Missle Massacre has become less popular as newer strategies emerged. Especially in light of recent developments in the manner of war.
* MagicAIsMagicA: The 'laws' of physics are long-standing models which operate reliably enough for the practitioners to 'act' as if they were true. We're still a long way from direct manipulation of the system code.
* MagicalAntibiotics:
** Sadly prevalent in real life medicine, as providers frequently don't want to wait to culture an organism before attempting to treat it. A major cause of the explosion in the rates and severity of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. However, since a culture & sensitivity requires anywhere from one to five days to result and it looks kind of bad if your patient dies of his infection before the C&S report comes back, "empiric therapy" - prescribing a broad-spectrum antibiotic "cocktail" and narrowing it down when the C&S results - is common. This treatment is always prescribed in conjunction with a "pan culture" - culturing samples of the patient's blood, urine, stool, sputum, occasionally cerebrospinal fluid, and any wounds they might have, in order to pinpoint a source of infection. The classic example of this scenario is when someone is dragged into an ER unconscious, running a high fever and in apparent septic shock. They're dying, and you need to treat bacteremia immediately. What do you do? Bomb the infection with as broad-spectrum a cocktail as is reasonable, and hope the drugs kill the bugs before fatal damage results.
*** Choosing antibiotic therapy for as-yet unidentified infections poses yet another wealth of traps for the physician. For example, vancomycin, commonly used as a one-stop bug bomb for skin and soft tissue infections, is deadly to practically all Gram-positive organisms but practically no Gram-negatives. The choice of antibiotics for pneumonia changes quite a bit depending on whether the patient has recently spent time in a hospital or nursing home. Gastrointestinal organisms behave very differently in skin and soft tissue versus their home tract. The general wisdom is to treat with the most effective and narrowest spectrum antibiotic you can; when you don't know the specific infection's resistance, you make an educated guess as to which antibiotics should cover the most common causative organisms. (Hospitals are savvy to this, and one of the jobs of the hospital's infection control department is to create and publish an "antibiogram" - a comprehensive chart of the most common bugs in the community and which drugs they're sensitive and resistant to.)
*** It's worth pointing out that antibiotic resistance is complicated. It's not like all bacteria resist the same things. Penicillin is often useless against ''Staphylococcus aureus'' but great for ''Streptococcus pyogenes'' pharyngitis (a/k/a "strep throat")... but useless again for ''S. mitis.'' Tigecycline is rarely resisted but won't work against any ''Pseudomonas'' due to quirks of the bacteria's biology; cefepime is quite commonly resisted by many bacteria but works great against ''Pseudomonas.'' Giving clindamycin to a patient can actually increase the risk of ''Clostridium difficile'' infection. You treat ''C. difficile'' with metronidazole, and metronidazole is used for ''Candida'' vaginosis (yeast infection) as well... and may cause ''Mobiluncus'' vaginosis. And so on. Treatment isn't easy or obvious.
** Many people will demand antibiotics from doctors for common ailments like colds or influenza. Although those are viral and antibiotics are completely useless, doctors often give in.
** Dr. Drew Pinsky noted on an episode of ''Loveline'' that azithromycin (known best under the brand name Zithromax) is frequently given as a catch-all treatment, and estimated that it was the appropriate treatment for maybe 10% of those cases in which he's seen it prescribed.
** The 1918 influenza pandemic. At least in the US, doctors tended to jab untested or marginally tested "vaccines" into as many arms as they could manage in the hopes that this time, they had it right. (Given that medical science of the early 1900s assumed that influenza was a ''bacterial'' disease, any cures would have been accidental.)
** Related are anti-bacterial soaps or cleaning agents. They are claimed to wipe out infectious bacteria, but the only way to guarantee killing bacteria is to maintain 20 minutes of exposure. Washing your hands or 30 seconds only destroys bacteria with the weakest resistance, and later generations of bacteria will evolve with better resistance to them.
*** Note: This doesn't apply to hand sanitizer. The active ingredient in most hand sanitizers is alcohol; your typical sanitizer is basically 80 proof vodka turned into a gel. Almost needless to say, we've been using alcohol to kill microbes for millennia (without realizing it for most of that time), and none of the critters has ever developed a resistance to ''that''. The same goes for bleach, ammonia, peroxide, and acid (none of which you should get on your hands!).
*** Also note that most soaps work on a much simpler concept: They make your hands slippery, making it easier to rub them under running water and thus shear the bacteria off your skin using mechanical force (which also, conveniently, is something many bacteria have yet to evolve resistance to). Statistically speaking, fifteen seconds of hand-rubbing under running water rubs ''enough'' bacteria off your skin that the survivors have a low chance of propagating in numbers enough to be infectious. So antibacterial soap does work... But not really much differently from regular soap.
*** Soaps and alcohol break down the fatty membrane that encloses cells (incluiding bacteria), as well as many virii, literally disolving them away. Pathogens can evolve to survive targeted biochemical attacks to their lifecycle, but they cannot become immune to things that physically break them down.
** In some parts of the world, some doctors really ''do'' prescribe antibiotics for everything. Typically these are older doctors in developing countries, from a time when indiscriminate prescription of antibiotics was seen as harmless-resistant bacteria hadn't popped up yet. However, even though doctors their age in the rich world have stopped this practice, they haven't--largely because wealthy countries tend to impose fairly rigorous continuing medical education (CME) requirements to ensure that doctors keep up with the state of medicine, while poorer countries either don't have CME requirements or cannot enforce them. So the doctor keeps handing out antibiotics like it's candy, not realizing that this has been a terrible idea for at least the last 30 years.
*** Sadly, this is far from a problem only in the developing world. Recent research in the UK, for example, showed that 48% of [=GPs=] had prescribed antibiotics to patients suffering from a common cold in the past year. Even in developed countries with socialised health care (where insurance companies and private payer demands are not important), antibiotic overuse is still a massive problem.
* MagicalComputer: Most notable aversion... even if some seem not to realize this.
* MagicalRealism: May or may not be explainable by the psychiatry profession.
** Or the paranormal investigator class.

** You know that nerd you always pick on in class? Someday he will be your boss.
*** Unless, of course, the one picking on that nerd realizes grinding mental, physical, and social stats are all possible in this setting and prevent crippling overspecialization.

** Further proof that BearsAreBadNews.

* MasqueradeParadox:
** The [[https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/6630 obstetrical forceps]], a key medical tool in ensuring safe childbirth, were invented by Peter Chamberlen the Elder around 1600. Chamberlen knew his invention was revolutionary in a time when childbirth was dangerous and survival was far from assured -- but even more than saving lives, he worried about midwives and medical establishment getting their revenge on him if they were forced out of a job. He made his invention a family secret, and his family kept that secret for the next hundred years. Even when ''using'' the forceps, they were kept in a special gilded box, ''everyone'' other than the Chamberlens were forced out of the room, and the mother herself was blindfolded. They even made a huge amount of artificial noise to prevent others from hearing the clanking of the forceps. Eventually, they were found out, but for hundreds of years [[WithholdingTheCure who knows how many women and children died who might have been saved]].
** UsefulNotes/RichardNixon's paranoia led him to enact several pointless Masquerades, most notably the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Plumbers White House Plumbers]]", a covert special investigation unit answering directly to the White House; originally founded to stop classified information from leaking to the media, they were soon used to spy on the Democrats to win Nixon the 1972 election. Nixon won that particular election in a landslide; he didn't ''need'' to rig it in his favor. But his "Plumbers" were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in 1972, and that spiralled into the [[{{Scandalgate}} Watergate scandal]], which eventually forced Nixon to resign from office.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Depending on which {{fanon}} you subscribe to.

* MinMaxing: Largely averted, as the most successful people are usually those who have bothered to build up their Charisma alongside whatever technical knowledge needed, and a great many people who have focused on building knowledge at the expense of social networking haven't done as well.
** For the most common objectives, this is true. However, there are plenty of alternate objective and victory conditions allowing for many different min maxing options.

** Philosophy. Quantum physics. Relativity.
** Many things about economics make no sense either.
** Psychology, especially depth psychology (ie Freud and Jung).

* AMinorKidroduction: Downplayed, each character's tutorial section is usually at least 10% of their entire playtime..
* MishmashMuseum: It's possible that the entire Earth is one (inhabited by crazed custodians who regularly smash the exhibits.)
** Under the terms of Henry Clay Frick's will, his New York mansion was made a museum (the [[http://www.frick.org/ Frick Collection]] on East 70th Street), but none of the paintings were moved or removed (nor were labels added); thus the works are arranged according to the robber baron's aesthetic sense.
** [[http://www.mjt.org/ The Museum of Jurassic Technology]] in Los Angeles, California.
** The Science Museum of Minnesota has an entire exhibit designed this way on purpose. It contains a traditional Hmong house, an Egyptian mummy, a phrenology machine, a giant dead polar bear, and many prehistoric tools, among other things.
** The Redpath museum in Montreal is home to several stuffed animals, fully articulated skeletons of ''Gorgosaurus'' and ''Dromaeosaurus'', an Egyptian mummy, a seashell collection, a mineral collection, some trilobite fossils, a samurai suit of armour, a fossil of an aquatic lizard, Chinese shoes made for bound feet, charts showing the dinosaur family tree and the phylogenetic tree of all life on Earth, an anaconda skeleton, a ''Triceratops'' skull, a banner made out of human teeth, skeletons of two whales, a sea lion and a turtle and a giant origami pterosaur, all in about two and a half floors of space. In other words, it looks ''exactly'', inside and out, like every natural history museum stereotype ever. It's awesome.[[note]]Oh, and it's appeared in ''Series/DinosaursDecoded''.[[/note]]
** The [[http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/ Pitt Rivers Museum]] Oxford is a Victorian Anthropology museum with its exhibits grouped by function, so the cases of 'things used as currency' are next to the 'Things used as Armour', the Chinese pigeon whistles are near the Hawaiian feather cloaks, and the whole place is dominated by a totem pole. I'm pretty sure there is a secret '[[ArtifactOfDoom Artifacts Of Doom]]' collection somewhere in here.
** ''Ripley's Odditorium'' located on Hollywood Boulevard of Franchise/RipleysBelieveItOrNot fame.
** The Greybull Museum out in Wyoming fits this trope perfectly. it has taxidermied animals, historical artifacts, and fossils scattered all over the museums with no sense of organization whatsoever. A fossilized turtle shell is on the exact opposite side of the section with ''Coryphodon'' tusks and belimnite shells, both of which are opposite the corner with the sauropod femurs.
** Hungarian Count Istvan Szechenyi once commented that the National Museum features his father's portrait between a snake and a crocodile.
** [[http://www.soane.org/ Sir John Soane's Museum]] in London is another excellent example of the 1800s urge to collect all sorts of anything (medieval objects, large and small sculpture, books, stained glass, Egyptian scarabs, various gems et al.) and then just bequeath your whole house to the city of London to remain a museum in perpetuity. Sir John further distinguished himself by creating a catalogue of his holdings on three separate occasions (1830, 1832 & 1835). Thus, the building and its collection are amongst the best-documented in the world. And most importantly: the deal includes leaving all of the objects exactly where Soane placed them when he acquired them.
** Hearst Castle, which is designed and furnished according to the, ahem, "eclectic" tastes of American newspaper billionaire William Randolph Hearst. Tourists think it's pretty; architecture buffs think it's horrifying.
* MisplacedWildlife: Invasive species and zoos.
* MissingEpisode: [[invoked]]The reason why the "Archaeologist," "Anthropologist," "Paleontologist," "Forensic Scientist" and other similar classes are available. There appear to be no ways to revisit any previous level, nor to stream video footage of those levels in play.

* MistreatmentInducedBetrayal: [[BadBoss Bad Bosses]] who cross the line often have this happen to them.

* MoneyForNothing: Averted. There's just so much stuff to be bought with the in-game currency that you will ''never'' have too much money. Oh sure, the other players may say you do, especially indulging in ConspicuousConsumption, there's always charities to give that money to.

* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate: Played with: The vast majority avert this trope, but those that play it straight tend to gain extreme levels of infamy.

* MrImagination: ''Everyone'' is this to some degree, or 99% if you believe Rene Descartes.

** The "Scientist" and "Engineer" classes, whose class abilities consist of memorizing the complex equations and rules that govern Real Life so they can squeeze every last possible advantage out of them, including figuring out even more of the rules. Unlike other munchkins, though, their work carries with it the potential for respect and prestige.
** The "Theologian" and "Philosopher" classes also work along these lines and were the [[TropeCodifier Trope Codifiers]] for the first several thousand seasons. In fact, the Scientist and Engineer classes developed from these two older classes and there was significant overlap until roughly 250 seasons ago. Theologians and Philosophers are still very common today. For minigames and some [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]] events, the "Attorney" class is very useful (and also related to the others, although somewhat more distantly).

* MurphysBullet:
** President UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan was a real-life version of this trope. When John Hinckley shot at him, he missed with every shot --the bullet that actually hit Reagan ricocheted off the [[{{Irony}} security glass]] of his presidential limo and struck him in the side. Until Reagan started [[BloodFromTheMouth coughing up blood]] while being rushed away in the limo, no one even knew he'd been shot.[[note]]And that was what saved his life, as the limo diverted to the hospital. If they'd gone to the White House as originally planned, Reagan would have bled to death.[[/note]]
** UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars:
*** This is the reason Napoleonic warfare was developed. If the soldiers didn't stand together to mass their fire (and bayonets), they'd have been sitting ducks for cavalry charges, since early muskets were so inaccurate they often missed at near point-blank range. Same thing for early rocket artillery.
*** "The soldier's musket, if it is not too badly calibrated, which is very often the case, can strike a man at a distance of 80 yards and even up to 100 yards. But a soldier has to be very unlucky even to be wounded at a distance of 150 yards, this on condition that his adversary aims well. As for firing on a man at a distance of 200 yards, you might as well aim at the moon hoping to strike it."
*** Gunsmiths of the time actually could make more precise weapons, but they were agonizingly slow to reload, as the tight fit of a bullet to bore would require a time-consuming inch-by-inch ramming of the bullet into place, along with precision workmanship being costly. Given the widespread use of poorly-trained mooks as soldiers, and the persistence of a standard battle formation originally developed in ancient Greece, it was more practical to use a cheap weapon whose bullet could be more quickly loaded, and to heck with accuracy.
** Modern warfare:
*** This situation is usually caused by soldiers using automatic weapons and being scared for their own lives, (1) they don't worry as much about aiming, and (2) the recoil from the previous round throws off their aim anyway.
*** This is also the reason why staying calm is paramount in videogames with realistic recoil, such as ''VideoGame/CounterStrike'' or ''VideoGame/Battlefield1942''.
** The actual strategic purpose of full-auto is basically to make a scary noise so the enemy will be too busy hiding to shoot back. Works well if you have an ammo truck following you, but for a small fireteam it's a good way to get stuck in enemy territory with empty guns.
** To pilots, this is known as the "Golden BB", a shot that should not have done anything but somehow managed to hit something vital. Pilots of the P-51 Mustang in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII [[GallowsHumor joked]] that their plane could be shot down by any sharp-eyed boy with a plinking gun, due to the liquid cooling system the engines used.
** Some really stupid people like to fire guns into the air during celebrations. When the bullets come down, they're still pretty dangerous if they happen to hit someone. ''Straight'' up, they hit terminal velocity and slow down as they fall. Any kind of an angle and the rifling spin are still in play.