Small Reference Pools / Real Life

Animals

See also Small Taxonomy Pools.

• There's a tendency to see mammals and birds as cute creatures, fit for anthropomorphization. Reptiles, amphibians and fish may get this treatment too, though not always. Insects and other invertebrates usually don't get this romanticism. This also explains why the cute animals will be namedropped more easily than icky creatures like snakes, bats, rats, crocodiles, toads, spiders, mosquitoes, flies, squids and jellyfish.
  • Averted with, you guessed it, the Internet.
  • In terms of cute reptiles, you're going to mostly see pond turtles, sea turtles, tortoises, a few lizard species like iguanas, chameleons and geckos, possibly a few snakes such as garter snakes and pythons, and maybe smaller crocodilians. Amphibians are overwhelmingly represented by frogs and cute fish are tropical reef fish and goldfish. Most other fish are thought of as food.
  • Of the myriad of insects, only butterflies, ladybugs and bumblebees are generally thought of as cute. Snails, octopus and maybe cuttlefish are the only cute mollusks. Hermit crabs are the only cute crustaceans. Most other mollusks and crustaceans are seafood.
• Household pets will invariably be dogs, cats and goldfish. A macaw parrot or a parakeet/budgie may be mentioned too, along with hamsters, rabbits and/or guinea pigs. Tortoises, snakes and rats already fall into the more special kind of pets.
• Farm animals:
  • Farm animals are always cows, bulls, calves, pigs and piglets, horses, donkeys, goats, sheep, chickens (hens, roosters, chicks). Ducks, geese, peacocks and rabbits may appear too. Crows, ravens, mice and rats as well, but uninvited. Reindeer, camels and yaks will never be mentioned, even though they're some of the very few large mammals to be domesticated.
  • Domesticated reindeer in Europe and Asia aren't thought of as farm animals any more than the bison in North America and even kept in a very similar way. Most of them are owned by someone and once or twice a year you round them up and ship a good number off to slaughter, but the herds are large and move more or less freely over vast areas. Sure, you keep an eye on your herd and make sure that it doesn't wander off the land you hold the reindeer-herding rights to, but it's not like the herd needs a human chaperone 24/7. Yaks on the other hand seem to be kept more like a cross between a horse and your average milk cow, as are camels.
  • In visual media, cows are always Holsteins, bulls are always Herefords, and sheep are always Merino or Hampshire. Chickens are Leghorns or Rhode Island reds, ducks are white Pekins so you can tell they're not wild, and geese are ambiguously gray so you can tell they're not big ducks.
• Forest animals:
  • Forest animals will always be seen in a European setting. Expect rabbits, foxes, wolves, badgers, bears, rabbits, hares, weasels, marters, ermines, moles, squirrels, owls, hawks, woodpeckers, deer, skunks, pheasants, voles, and adders to appear. Blackbirds, swallows, titbirds, chickadees, jays, finches, magpies, orioles, eagles, buzzards, cuckoos, hawks, skylarks, pigeons, sparrows, thrushes and nightingales will be seen in the trees
    • Near a river or a pond you'll always find toads, frogs, sturgeons, carps, storks, kingfishers, cranes, swans, ducks, herons and otters.
    • At night you'll encounter owls, nightingales and bats.
  • Forest animals in a North American setting will add beavers, coyotes, cougars, bald eagles, moose, elks, bison and raccoons.
  • Forest animals in a Eurasian/Russian setting will be musk oxen, caribous, bears and wolves. Never tigers or leopards; they're just "jungle" animals, even though they do occur in Eurasian taiga (pine) forests.
• Arctic animals will show polar bears, polar foxes, seals, walruses, whales, orcas, lemmings, hares, puffins and terns.
• Animals living in American wetlands will invariably be alligators, wading birds, raccoons, possums, skunks and deer.
• Antarctic animals will bring penguins, seals, whales and orcas in frame.
• Desert animals:
  • Desert animals will always be shown in North Africa or the Middle East. If they do you're bound to see camels, sidewinders, scorpions, meerkats, tarantulas, desert lizards, fennec foxes, and mongoose.
  • Desert animals in North America and Mexico will be rattlesnakes, gila monsters, roadrunners, scorpions and coyotes.
• Africa:
  • African savannah animals are usually lions, leopards, elephants, giraffes, plains zebras, ostriches, cheetahs, leopards, jackals, hyenas, Thomson's gazelles, wildebeest, impalas, oryxes, cape buffaloes, warthogs, meerkats, mosquitoes, termites, vultures, baboons, aardvarks, honey badgers, rhinoceroses, oxpeckers, black mambas, pythons and tortoises.
  • African jungle animals will consist of gorillas, chimpanzees, lemurs, colobus monkeys, mandrills, bongo antelopes, okapis, leopards, pythons, geckos, chameleons, hornbills, parrots and mosquitoes.
  • Near a water side you'll find crocodiles, hippopotamuses and flamingos.
• Caribbean animals? Tropical fishes, sharks, marlins, sea turtles, flamingos, manatees, iguanas, albatrosses, crabs, pelicans, seals and tropical penguins.
• In the Latin American mountains people will only be able to name llamas, alpacas, pumas, vicunas and condors.
• A Latin American jungle will provide cameos by these animals only: jaguars, pumas, ocelots, anacondas, boa constrictors, emerald tree boas, vipers, coral snakes, caimans, crocodiles, basilisks, iguanas, geckos, vampire bats, butterflies, mosquitoes, leaf-cutting ants, army ants, katydids, tarantulas, piranhas, pacu, electric eels, stingrays, arapaimas, arowanas, tapirs, Amazon river dolphins, anteaters, chinchillas, capybaras, armadillos, howler monkeys, spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, squirrel monkeys, marmosets, poison dart frogs, red-eyed tree frogs, sloths, coatimundis, kinkajous, hummingbirds, parrots, toucans, harpy eagles, king vultures, hoatzins and ibises.
• South Asian and South East Asian jungles will only show Indian elephants, Indian rhinoceroses, water buffalo, wolves, macaques, gibbons, langurs, proboscis monkeys (famous for their noses), orangutans, tigers, leopards, civet cats, jackals, black bears, striped hyenas, mongoose, cranes, peafowl, salamanders, catfish, king cobras, pythons, Komodo dragons, tapirs, hornbills, babirusas, bearded pigs, gharials (crocodilians with thin snouts) and the kantjil (mousedeer or chevrotain).
  • In India add some holy cows to the landscape.
  • In China tigers, giant pandas, black bears, lesser pandas, giant salamanders, koi, swallows, herons and cranes.
  • In the mountainous areas of Tibet most people will only be able to think of the yak and maybe perhaps snow leopards.
  • In Japan raccoon dogs, foxes, macaques, bears, koi, cranes and giant salamanders.
• Australian wildlife is probably more famous than its citizens: kangaroos and wallabies, koalas, kookaburras, Tasmanian devils, emus, echidnas, dingoes, crocodiles, platypuses, Red Back and Sydney-funnel-web spiders,...
• New Zealand only has two famous animals to be known by the general public: the kiwi and sheep.
• Ocean wildlife will be fish, like sharks, salmon, tuna, sardines, mackerels, seahorses, marlines, snappers, clown fishes, moray eels, manta rays, eagle rays, stingrays, anemone fish, butterflyfish, lionfish and swordfish. Sea mammals will be dolphins, orcas, whales, seals, sea lions, sea otters and manatees. Other species found in the sea are sea turtles, squids, octopuses, jellyfish, crabs, lobsters and sponges. In the deep sea you're bound to see a giant squid, lantern fish, flashlight fish and/or anglerfish.
• Insect and other invertebrates wildlife will usually be ants, termites, spiders, crickets, locusts, bees, wasps, flies, dragonflies, fireflies, damselflies, mosquitoes, caterpillars and butterflies, weevils, cockroaches, moths, worms, silkworms, centipedes, scorpions, beetles, stag beetles, fleas, lice, bed bugs, cicadas and praying mantises.
• Typical city animals will be sparrows, pigeons, mice and rats. Near a harbor you'll encounter albatrosses and seagulls too.
• Dinosaurs:
  • Triassic dinosaurs are usually only represented by Plateosaurus, Eoraptor, Coelophysis, and Herrerasaurus.
  • Jurassic settings will show Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Barosaurus, Mamenchisaurus, Camarasaurus, Stegosaurus, Kentrosaurus, Tuojiangosaurus, Dryosaurus, Camptosaurus, Allosaurus, Yangchuanosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Megalosaurus, Torvosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Archaeopteryx, Ornitholestes, Guanlong, and Compsognathus.
  • Cretaceous features a much wider variety: Tyrannosaurus, Tarbosaurus, Albertosaurus, Gorgosaurus, Nanuqsaurus, Yutyrannus, Velociraptor, Deinonychus, Utahraptor, Microraptor, Sinornithosaurus, Stenonychosaurus/Troodon, Therizinosaurus, Ornithomimus, Struthiomimus, Gallimimus, Deinocheirus, Oviraptor, Gigantoraptor, Sinosauropteryx, Spinosaurus, Baryonyx, Giganotosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, Carnotaurus, Alamosaurus, Argentinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus, Saltasaurus, Sauroposeidon, Amargasaurus, Triceratops, Styracosaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus, Chasmosaurus, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Euoplocephalus, Polacanthus, Edmontonia, Iguanodon, Hypsilophodon, Thescelosaurus, Orodromeus, Parasaurolophus, Corythosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Maiasaura, etc.
  • When people want to depict other animals that live alongside the dinosaurs, they'll pick Pteranodon, Rhamphorhynchus, Quetzalcoatlus, Dimorphodon, Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Elasmosaurus, Mosasaurus, Tylosaurus, Liopleurodon, Kronosaurus, Sarcosuchus, Deinosuchus, non-descript ammonites, and generic small mammals.
• Other prehistoric animals:
  • Paleozoic life will usually be represented by trilobites, eurypterids, Dunkleosteus, Dimetrodon, Anomalocaris, Icthyostega, Meganeura, Arthropleura, and a nonspecific gorgonopsid (usually based on Inostrancevia).
  • Ice Age megafauna typically depicted are woolly mammoths, American mastodons, Smilodon, woolly rhinos, Elasmotherium, Megaloceros, dire wolves, cave bears, Megatherium, Glyptodon, Doedicurus, cave lions, and Castoroides.
  • When pre-Pleistocene Cenozoic animals are depicted, they're typically Paraceratherium, Megacerops, entelodonts, Eohippus, Basilosaurus, Platybelodon, Deinotherium, Moeritherium, Chalicotherium, megalodon, Gastornis/Diatryma, and terror birds.
• The only sharks in the sea are the great-white shark (thanks to Jaws), the hammer-head shark (if only due to its funny appearance), and the whale shark (because it's a Gentle Giant).
• The only animal-like protists are amoebas and Paramecium, and they'll both be (wrongly) called "animals".
• Breeds:
  • There are hundreds of "official" dog breeds and hundreds more that are either extinct or aren't listed in any registry. Fiction lowers this to a few dozen breeds from the Top 200, with even the seldom seen breeds being fairly well-known (such as the Basenji, Lakeland Terrier, and Irish Wolfhound). Oftentimes, designer dogs (like Poodle mixes or "doodles" as they're called) and "teacup" dogs are treated as breeds as well.
  • Most cats are just generic "cats". They might be long-furred or have certain fur patterns, but, unlike dogs, they're rarely noted as specific breeds. When it comes to cat breeds, the only breeds are Persians, Siamese, Sphynx, and Russian Blues. A Maine Coon, Munchkin, Himalayan, Bengal, or Scottish Fold might appear if the writer/artist is cat savvy.
  • The only horse breeds out there are American Quarter Horses, Appaloosas, Arabians, Clydesdales, Thoroughbreds, and maybe Standardbreds. "Draft horse", "Mustang", "Brumby", and "color breeds" (such the palomino and pinto) may be cited as breeds, but they're actually generalized terms. The only type of pony is a Shetland.
  • Angora, Chinchilla, Flemish Giants, and Lop are terms that apply to several rabbit breeds but they're composited into one breed each.
  • There are hundreds of chicken breeds, but in most fiction chickens are just generic chickens. Only a few breeds, such as the Cornish or the Rhode Island Red, get mentioned.
• The only cats that exist are Big cats and domestic cats. Of the non-Big cats, only the cougar, cheetah, bobcat, lynx (all combined into one type of lynx), clouded leopard, caracal, serval, and ocelot might get referenced. The other cats (including the African wildcat that domestic cats descend from) are near nonexistent in media.
• Rockhopper penguins are the only crested penguin. Out of the three rockhopper sub-species, the Northern variety is the most common in fiction.

Anthropology

See also National Stereotypes (and its Analysis subpage).

• If television features American Indians, all American Indian tribes can be summed up as Cherokee (typically a white-identified man with Cherokee ancestry), Lakota (not Dakota or Nakota), Cheyenne, or Apache. And sometimes Navajo.
• American Indian history stops in 1890. Any mention of 20th century American Indian history is a throwaway comment about Leonard Peltier or the Siege of Wounded Knee. One exception is made for World War II Code Talkers, but only the Navajo ones will be mentioned — nobody has ever heard of the Cherokee and Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I, or the Lakota, Meskwaki, and Comanche ones from WWII — let alone the Basque speakers who were used in places Basque soldiers weren't normally deployed.
• Regardless of their ostensible tribe, they will nearly always be played by Sioux or sometimes Cherokee actors — for some reason, virtually never by Mexicans, many of whom are full-blooded Indian, physically. Whatever the ethnicity of the actors, expect Not Even Bothering with the Accent. Because plainly, Apaches from New Mexico have the same accent as Sioux from Canada.
• Culturally, Plains Indians are the most iconic Native Americans from the lower 48, so if Indians show up, expect to see feather bonnets, hairpipe breastplates, teepees, horseback marksmanship... and, for some reason, totem poles, which are Pacific Northwestern in origin. "Indian" words, by contrast, are more often drawn from more easterly languages that Europeans encountered earlier and generalized to all Native Americans. For instance, a shoe will be called a "moccasin", from the Algonquian languages, even if referring to a Lakota hampa or a Navajo kélchí.
• Mexican Indians are either Olmecs, Mayans or Aztecs, and only narrow slices of their history or archaeological record will be seen. Modern Mexicans will invariably be mestizos with Spanish names, not having ancestry from Africa, Asia or anywhere else, and certainly never unmixed Indian.
• South American Indians are either Inca or from the Amazon jungle, typically Yanomamo or Kayapo (and if they are Yanomamo, they are invariably portrayed as Always Chaotic Evil, even in modern works). The "Inca"-like Indians will also include Quechuas and Aymaras — the latter of whom will show up often because they just look so interesting in their old-fashioned bowler hats.
• Everyone in Africa is black. The only white people are the Great White Hunter or the Mighty Whitey (or sometimes Afrikaners^note technically Boers — as a matter of fact "Afrikaner" simply means someone whose native language is Afrikaans; there are actually quite a few black and Coloured people who fit this category, who are all racist against blacks). All black Africans will be dark black. This means they're probably Bantu or from some other Niger-Congo tribe (the tribes from which most American slaves were chosen). You'll never see the reddish-brown Pygmies, the yellowish-brown Khoisan (unless you're watching The Gods Must Be Crazy, of course), or Berbers ^note Most Berbers would fit into the vague pseudo-racial category "brown" in Western eyes, but others can be visually indistinguishable from black or white people (outside of the occasional nomadic Tuareg band, e.g. Beau Geste). There are no Arabs, Indians, Asians or anyone else.
• Rural Africans are all Maasai or Zulu. Or from Papua New Guinea.
• All Arctic peoples are Eskimos. All Eskimos are Inuit, even the Yup'ik. There are no Russian Eskimos.
• And all indigenous people have been completely cut off from the world, with no modern influences on their fashion or culture whatsoever.
• All people in the Caribbean are black. There are no Indian, Chinese, or white people.
• All Arabs are Muslim — and, to a lesser extent, vice versa. In fact, there are many Christian Arabs — mostly in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Israel, and Palestine. Similarly, there are a great variety of Muslim peoples (Albanians being European, Iranians sharing much of their linguistic and racial heritage with both Europeans and Asian Indians, Turks ultimately from East Asia, and Indonesians mostly of Malayo-Polynesian stock),^note the majority of Muslims in fact come from Indonesia, Pakistan and India; less than 20% of the world's Muslims live in Middle Eastern or North African countries. but a Muslim character in popular fiction will always be rendered an Arab or a quasi-Arab unless his/her being of a different nationality is pertinent to the plot.
• All Indians are Hindu. Not Muslim, not Christian, not Sikh, not Buddhist, not Jain or any of the other religions present in India. They're just funny people celebrating gods with many arms. And they will often wear turbans, even though most Hindus do not wear turbans. Sikhs wear turbans, but Sikhism is obscure enough in Western media that Americans tend to mistake Sikhs for either Hindus or Muslims even in real life. Oh yeah, and they're all vegetarians.
• All Muslims are Sunni or Shi'a, if they aren't just one big unified mass, that is. There is no such thing as Ibadi.
• All Russians are either ethnic Russian or Jewish ^note  Note that it is possible to be both, since "Jewish" is a religious and social identity, and not an ethnicity. . Chechens appear sporadically, and will always be depicted as Islamic extremists. What about Tatars, Bashkirs, Ossetians, Dagestanis, Chuvash, and Circassians (among others)? Good luck finding them!
  • During the Cold War, it was believed in the West that the only people living in Siberia were forced there for being political dissidents, because of course, nobody would actually want to live in Siberia. Likewise, all dissidents are total converts to liberal democracy and not, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn turned out to be, neo-Slavophile anti-Westerners who are quite right-wing and only barely restrain their anti-semitism.
  • And the Soviet Union only ever had Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians and (oddly) Lithuanians.
• All Jews Are Ashkenazi, of course. Forget about Sephardim and Mizrahim. And their only holiday is Hanukkah (an extremely minor commemoration of military victory on the Jewish calendar that post-dates the Bible and the many more important festivals it contains). When celebrating this apparently Christmas-like occasion, it is always, always the eighth night (if the number of candles is to be believed).
• All Americans with Eastern European roots are Jewish. Slavic Americans who are Christian won't show up very often, and when they do they're often fresh off the boat, despite the large wave of Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian immigration between the 1880s and 1920s. Despite this, completely assimilated Average Joes will often have Polish surnames for some reason, particularly if they are from Chicago.
• All Hispanics speak Spanish as their mother tongue and only Spanish (when it is not broken English littered with Gratuitous Spanish^note which most of the time will be slang from Southern California/Northwestern Mexico, that is).^note Many Hispanics really speak English and Spanish fluently and switch back and forth with no accent in either. The men are squat, brown, and have black hair and moustaches. The women are curvy, leggy and slutty — except for the ones who are fat and have really gross facial and body hair. Also, there are no Hispanics north of Los Angeles and Miami, except maybe in New York City. And they are all very lazy or very hard-working.
• If white Latin Americans show up, expect them to be from wealthy families. In real life, while most of the wealthiest Latin American families are white, most white Latin Americans are not rich.
• Everyone in Latin America has a Spanish surname — even in countries like Argentina, Chile, and Brazil where non-Spanish/Portuguese surnames are just as common on account of German, Irish, Italian, British, and Japanese immigration. Don't expect Indigenous people in Latin America to have Indigenous surnames and speak an Indigenous language, unless they are from an uncontacted tribe.
  • Similarly, if the writer is non-Anglo the one Anglo-American character will be a monolingual English speaker with an English surname, despite Americans with German and Irish ancestry being more numerous in real life.
• Everyone in Australia is of British or Irish heritage, and will most likely be blond. The few that aren't are Aboriginals.
• Italian-Americans are always from Southern Italy; Central or Northern Italian-Americans do not exist.
• On the other hand, all Italians are Southern Italians: the other two-thirds of the populace are nowhere to be seen, either.
• American Catholics are either Irish, Italian, or Hispanic. Forget about the American Catholics of French, Polish, German, Dutch, Portuguese, and other heritages. African-American Catholics don't exist either, nor do African-American Jews (even if this group includes such famous figures as Sammy Davis Jr., Lenny Kravitz, Yaphet Kotto, and Jackie Wilson).
• All Southerners are devout Baptists or evangelicals. Don't mention the traditionally Catholic Southern populations like the Cajuns and Louisiana Creoles — if religion in Louisiana is a topic of interest, it'll be Hollywood Voodoo.
• Until about the 1950s, all white Americans in fiction worth focusing on were of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, or Irish stock. When "ethnic" whites did show up, it was just to talk in funny accents and get called "wop" and "polack" and such.
• All Pennsylvania Dutch are Amish. The Fancy Dutch (who are typically Lutheran, and are the origins of many "quintessential" Dutch elements such as hex signs) and Mennonites do not exist. If Mennonites are mentioned at all, they'll either be treated as synonymous with Amish or maybe as rivals with no discernible differences. Conversely, all Amish are from Pennsylvania. There are no Amish in other states or nations.
• Christianity is divided into exactly two denominations, Catholicism and Protestantism. Protestantism is a single entity with no further subgroups like Calvinism or Lutheranism. Mormons are not found outside of Utah (with the exception of Mitt Romney, formerly the governor of Massachusetts but now representing Utah in the US Senate). There is no such thing as the Orthodox Church.
  • Somewhat averted in many European countries, as the number of adherents to most other forms of Christianity besides Catholicism and one large Protestant church is low to the point of non-existence.
  • Oh yeah, and there are no Roman Catholics in Greece, they're all Greek Orthodox, which threw some viewers for a loop with The Exorcist.
• If the work in question was made outside of Japan, the only religion practiced in Japan is Buddhism. There are no Japanese Christians, and Shintoism does not exist.
• All Scandinavians/Nordic people are tall, blonde and have blue eyes, as well as left-wing sexually liberal atheists.
• On that note, all irreligious people are full-blown atheists. There are no agnostics, deists, spiritual but not religious, or people who just don't really care.
• All prehistoric humans lived in caves, even though archaeology shows occupation of caves was sporadic, and of course, All Cavemen Were Neanderthals. If a non-divulgation work dares go deeper in human evolution they'll bring up Lucy at most and talk of her as if she was the only Australopithecus skeleton out there (with the genus usually unnamed), when not portraying primitive hominids as a hitherto unknown chimpanzee-human hybrid. The words "missing link" are guaranteed to pop up, as is Piltdown Man being discussed as a devastating hit to "modern" science.

Civil Engineering

• Civil engineering existed only in the 19th century.
• All Brits know of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, though many will struggle to name anything he did other than the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and maybe the SS Great Britain because he posed for an iconic photograph beside it. (Londoners can add Paddington Station.) Beyond him, George Stephenson is recognised for his work on the railways, and Thomas Telford may get a mention, usually for the Menai Suspension Bridge (though Scots also know him for the Caledonian Canal). That's it.
• In southern India, civil engineering is synonymous with one name — Sir M Visveswaraiah, who built the famous KRS dam on the Kaveri River in Mysore.

Countries and cities

• To most foreigners the largest countries will be the most famous and visible in popular culture. The same applies to the cities, which will often be the capitals, but not always. If a smaller country or city manages to be mentioned it's usually because of some historic event, battle, treaty, sports event of disaster that took place there.
• Afghanistan: Kandahar, which was occupied by American troops in 2001 made at least one city in the country more noticeable in popular culture. Also the capital Kabul. After the slew of terror attacks and the tumultuous US military withdrawal of 2020–21, its notoriety has been ingrained in the memories of the global audience for decades, and no doubt will it stay that way for decades to come.
• Algeria: Algiers.
• Argentina: Buenos Aires, which is not Brazil's capital. Argentina Is Nazi-Land is a Discredited Trope by now.
• Australia: Sydney, where the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge will be brought in view. Canberra, the actual capital, might get a mention, just like Perth, Queensland, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. Uluru (Ayers Rock), however, will always be referenced.
• Austria: Best known for Vienna, city of the Waltz, coffee, the Wiener oboe and Vienna sausages. The only other locations worth namedropping are the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald), Tyrol (known for Tyrolean hats, music and Tyrolean sex comedies), Braunau (for Hitler) the Alps and Salzburg, home of The Sound of Music and birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And if Tyrol and Carinthia are ever portrayed, it's because of the Alps, where everybody yodels and wears lederhosen. Bonus points if they mention the Grossglockner.
• Belgium: If it's mentioned at all it will be because NATO has its headquarters in Brussels, a city where the Atomium and Manneken Pis can be seen and nothing else. Antwerp and Bruges may get mentioned, but that's really pushing it. History buffs know it solely for Waterloo (defeat of Napoléon Bonaparte), Ypres (World War I) and the Ardennes (World War II). Culinary experts know it for Belgian waffles, Belgian fries, Belgian chocolate and Brussels sprouts.
• Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, bringing in view Christ the Redeemer Statue, the Carnival and Copacabana Beach. The favelas are another notorious location in Rio, but the government wants you to forget and ignore this problem. Rio is still more famous than the capital city of Brasília, or the largest city and main financial center of São Paulo. Every other square meter of the country is either wild rainforest or newly-decimated landscape that used to be rainforest.
• Bosnia. Sarajevo, best known for the mid '90s siege and "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24". Also known is Srebrenica, for the July 1995 massacre.
• Cambodia: Phnom Penh, if people are able to pronounce the name. Best known for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Also, Angkor Wat.
• Canada is Toronto and Quebec. Montreal, for those old enough to remember the 1976 Summer Olympics; Calgary, for those who remember the 1988 Winter Olympics; or Edmonton, because Wayne Gretzky rose to fame there. Vancouver and some other city in Ontario, if you're lucky. Winnipeg because it sounds funny (I'm from Winnipeg, you idiot!)
• The Caribbean will only be resorts and locals who are always stoned Rastafarians. The women will be dakr-skinned hotties. If you're lucky, it will be a crime-infested slum full of illegal drugs and gangs. The only country portrayed will be Jamaica, or maybe The Bahamas.
• Chile: Santiago, but only to people who don't outright think you're referring to a hot pepper, instead of a country.
• China is fortunate enough to have three cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong (the latter being a territory and not a city), a great wall, and a penchant for censorship.
  • Unless it's ancient China, which is just Xi'an.
  • And if you're tech-savvy, Shenzhen, home of huge factories covered with nets to catch all the suicides.
  • In some works (both set in Ancient and Modern China), there are also Suzhou and Qingdao.
  • Ironically, most Chinese things Americans are familiar with (the food, especially) are from Canton (Chinese name: Guangzhou), which is almost never discussed when talking about China itself. (Either that, or Canton will only be known as that town in Ohio where American football began.)
  • Hong Kong being well-known also has some odd effects, like how Cantonese and traditional Chinese are strongly associated with each other since they are the ones used in Hong Kong, even though most Cantonese speakers use simplified Chinese (in Guangdong) and most traditional Chinese users are Mandarin speakers (in Taiwan).
• Congo: Known for two literary classics: Heart of Darkness and Tintin - Tintin in the Congo.
• Corsica: If people have heard of this island it will be because Napoléon Bonaparte was born there.
• Croatia: Likely to be brought up because of Nikola Tesla. Soccer fans know it for the 2018 World Cup final.
• Cuba: Havana, only known for Havana cigars and Castro. And hijackings, in the '70s.
• Czech Republic: Prague and the region Bohemia, best known for La Bohème, The Bohemian Girl, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", The Dandy Warhols' "Bohemian Like You", the word bohémien, Bohemian crystal and art glass. Also famous for Antonín Dvořák and Franz Kafka. Sigmund Freud and Gregor Mendel were born here but considered themselves Austrian. There's also Mishovy Šílenosti, but he was more of a One-Hit Wonder (outside of the SiIvaGunner community anyway). Ice hockey fans would probably know Dominik Hašek and Jaromír Jágr.
• Denmark: Copenhagen, only known for the statue of The Little Mermaid. Theatre lovers may now it for Hamlet and claim there is something rotten in the state. Also known for Lego.
• Egypt: Cairo, the Nile, the Suez Canal (for the 1956 crisis) and Giza (for the Pyramids and the Sphinx).
• The Falkland Islands: Known for The Falklands War in 1982.
  Children, remain calm. The Falkland Islands have just been invaded. I repeat, the Falklands have just been invaded!
• Finland: Helsinki.
• France: Paris, just for the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and the Louvre, of course. You might get a reference to the Moulin Rouge, Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre, Champs-Élysées, Pont Neuf, the Sorbonne, Place Concorde, Versailles, Place Vendôme, Père Lachaise and the Notre Dame in there too. The Bois de Boulogne may get a shout-out; said park contains the Roland Garros tennis complex (home to the French Open) and the Longchamp horse racing track.
  • The rest of France will usually be Provence, though Bretagne (to show some cliffs), Reims (for the cathedral), Bordeaux (for the wine), Bayeux (for the tapestry), the Mont Saint-Michel, Arles (because of Vincent van Gogh), Dijon (for the mustard), Cannes (for the Film Festival), Avignon (because of the song Sur Le Pont d'Avignon), Le Mans (for the 24 Hours of Le Mans auto race), Rouen (made famous by Joan of Arc), Alsace (for the sauerkraut and sausages and Strasbourg's cathedral) Marseille and Nice could get a small reference if you're lucky. If you're Catholic or know anything about Catholicism, you'll know a bit about Lourdes where they have holy water that magically cures people.^note It's ordinary water taken from a sacred spring. The Tour de France may get a shout-out.
• Germany: Berlin, but it only exists as a location in spy thrillers and because of a wall that is no longer there. The only other memorable location is the Brandenburger Tor and the Berlin cabaret. Other German cities that foreigners might remember are Munich (only during Oktoberfest. It may ring a bell to sport fans, because during the 1972 Olympic Games, a bunch of Israeli competitors were murdered.), Hamburg (birth place of the hamburger, and also briefly the home base of The Beatles), Frankfurt (Frankfurter sausages), Cologne (for its perfume), Bremen (The Bremen Town Musicians) may also receive a mention. In fairy tales only, the Black Forest will make an appearance.
• Greece: Athens, to have a view of the Parthenon and Acropolis. Several Greek locations also thank their fame due to their association with Ancient Greek society: Sparta, Delphi, Lesbos (for lesbians), Crete, Mount Olympus, Rhodes, Thessaloniki, Corinthe, Epidaurus, ...
• Guyana: Mostly notorious for the 1978 Jonestown Massacre.
• Haiti: Port-au-Prince and the 2010 earthquake. And anything involving Hollywood Voodoo. There is no similar religion practiced anywhere else. Ifa, Santería and Candomblé don't exist.
• Hungary: Budapest, often brought up to be confused with Bucharest. Other references will likely be merely for a "hungry" joke, Harry Houdini, or Franz Liszt.
• Iceland: Reykjavík. The only other reference to Iceland will be to the Iceland/Greenland joke or Björk.
  • Possibly also for volcanoes, but no one will be able to spell or pronounce their names.
  • LazyTown could also get a mention, usually something regarding Memetic Badass Robbie Rotten.
• India: Bombay (almost never Mumbai), Calcutta (almost never Kolkata), Delhi (old and new), Bangalore (almost never Bengaluru) and West Bengal (known for the tigers). Nobody knows Agra, but they will recognize the Taj Mahal there. One irony is that Bollywood movies have the same Small Reference Pools to their own culture. Gandhi will always be the first person mentioned.
• Indonesia: Java, most famous for the Java Man, Javan coffee, Javascript and tea. Bali is best known for its gamelan music. And the volcanic island Krakatoa is remembered for its 19th-century volcanic eruption. Notable in that neither of these cities are its capital (that would be Jakarta until August 17, 2024, when the capital moves to Nusantara).
• Iran: Tehran, remembered for the 1979-1981 American embassy hostage crisis. Also infamous for the Iran-Contra affair, Ayatollah Khomeini, and the nuclear weapons programs.
• Iraq: Baghdad, the capital, best known for the Saddam regime. Another infamous location is the Abu Ghraib prison.
• Ireland: Dublin, only Dublin. Limerick might get a mention because of limericks and Tipperary because of the song It's a Long Way to Tipperary.
• Israel and Palestine (often thrown together as one country by foreigners): Most locations Israel (and Palestine) are known for are in essence temples or holy sites, like Bethlehem, Mount Zion, Masada, Al-Aqsa Mosque, The Lions' Gate, King David's Tomb, the Armenian Quarter, The Wailing Wall, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, The Damascus Gate, and the Dome of the Rock. Only the West Bank and Gaza Strip are more famous now as conflict zones than for their historical merit. The only location that exists without a strong holy or violent association attached to it is the Dead Sea, which is actually a lake, by the way. It's famous for its high salt level which makes people able to float on it without being able to sink. And even this location is actually not just Israeli or Palestinian, but also bordering Jordan.
• Italy: The only existing cities are Rome (for The Pope, Colosseum and the Trevi fontain), Venice (boat rides with a gondolas), Naples (for pizza), Milan (for fashion), and — if the need arises — Florence (for the Renaissance). Pisa only exists because of the Leaning Tower and Pompeii because of the volcano disaster during the Roman era. Sicily will bring up associations with the Mafia. Non-Italians only know Genoa (the capital of the province of Liguria) for being the birthplace of Christopher Columbus. Cultivated people know Verona as the setting of Romeo and Juliet.
• Jamaica: The plus side is that together with Cuba it's probably the only Caribbean island most people can name. The down side is that nobody knows any city or location there, save perhaps for Kingston if they have heard it mention in some reggae song. It's known mostly for reggae and Bob Marley than anything else — although sports fans will be aware of Usain Bolt.
• Japan: Tokyo and Osaka. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are infamous for being the first atomic bomb targets, Kyoto for the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.
  • Fukushima is now allowed to exist, but as a far Eastern version of Chernobyl.
• Jordan: Best known for the historical city Petra, but then you are already far more cultivated than most people. Otherwise best known for sharing its name with a common first name. And a certain basketball great.
• Kenya: Serengeti Park, which also crosses over with Tanzania.
• Lebanon: Only known for Beirut, where people are either kidnapped or blown up.
• Libya: Tripoli. Benghazi only exists for the 2011 uprising and U.S. Embassy attacks in 2012. Muammar Gaddafi is the only Libyan likely to be mentioned.
• Mexico: Mexico City is the only place that exists in fiction. Acapulco might get a mention and Tijuana, but more as a Wretched Hive, where whorehouses, cheap tequila and donkeys are the main attractions. Chihuahua might be referenced too, only for the tiny dogs. More recently, Ciudad Juárez has been mentioned, but only as a place where the rule of law has collapsed.
• Monaco: Monte Carlo, only for its luxury casino, and also the annual Formula One race.
• Mongolia: Most people know it only for Genghis Khan and The Horde.
• Morocco: Fez and Casablanca, the latter only known as a movie.
• The Netherlands: Only two cities exist, one being Free State Amsterdam, which lives in popular imagination as one gigantic red light district with coffee shops (to buy legal marijuana) and sex shops on every corner. The other is The Hague, only known for the International Criminal Court. The rest of the country is supposedly one large tulip field with wind mills in the background, which is only in rural parts of the country. To sports fans it's champion speed skaters in screaming neon orange outfits; there's also Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates.
• Nicaragua: Got international attention in the 1980s because of the involvement of the Reagan administration in overthrowing a socialist government there.
• Norway: Oslo gets media attention every year for the annual Nobel Peace Prize, but that's it.
• Panama: The canal will be all that foreigners might be able to mention about it.
• Paraguay: Asunción.
• Peru: Cuzco and Machu Picchu.
• Philippines: Manila.
• Poland: Warsaw and Gdańsk/Danzig. A few people might recall that Frederic Chopin and Madame Curie were from there. More people would be aware of Pope John Paul II.
• Polynesia: Some isles you might have heard from: Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, French Polynesia, Samoa, Tahiti (actually part of French Polynesia), the Solomon Isles, the Cook Islands and Easter Island. Apart from Easter Island, best known for its huge Moai statues, most people wouldn't be able to name one specifically unique thing about these isles.
• Portugal: Lisbon and Porto, but only for the porto wine. If you're Catholic you'll think of Fátima (the famous visions didn't even happen there but outside a nearby village).
• Romania: One province is known by everyone who ever heard of Dracula: Transylvania. The only other reference will be to Ceaușescu. Bucharest is also brought up to be confused with Budapest
• Russia: The capital Moscow, best known for the Kremlin (which if mentioned will almost inevitably be accompanied by a shot of Saint Basil's Cathedral instead) and nothing but snowy landscapes. Saint Petersburg, Vladivostok (as the city all the way in the east), Volgograd might get mentioned too, but far more infamous is Siberia, which lives on in the public imagination as a mysterious place where people are sent to work in slave labor. Some older people may mention Leningrad and Stalingrad, unaware that these cities are now called Saint Petersburg and Volgograd. Olympics buffs will remember Sochi, but only as a place with ice rinks and ski jumps. Other cities and regions mentioned will often be part of an independent Baltic republic now.
• Saudi Arabia: The only place that exists is Mecca, and maybe Riyadh as well. Jeddah apparently doesn't exist.
• Serbia: Belgrade.
• Singapore: Singapore, what else?
• Slovakia: Bratislava.
• South Africa: Johannesburg, Robben Island (for imprisoning Nelson Mandela) and Soweto (for the 1976 government massacre). If any of the three capitals are mentioned, it'll likely be Cape Town.
• South Korea: Best known for Seoul, where the 1988 Olympic Games took place. Pyeongchang is also recognized as the host for both the Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics in 2018. Recently the second most populous city of the country, Busan, is also gaining traction thanks to its appearance in pop culture.
• Spain: Madrid, Barcelona (with the Sagrada Familia as its only recognizable monument) and Seville, the latter best known for The Barber of Seville. The Basque county is known for E.T.A. terrorism. Maybe Málaga only because of Picasso. All of them look like a little Andalusian beach resort, when not one in Mexico or Puerto Rico.
• Sweden: Stockholm. Pop culture references are likely to be about Swedish fish, Swedish meatballs, ABBA and IKEA. Also of note is that the other Nobel Prizes (apart from the Peace Prize) are awarded in Stockholm.
• Switzerland: The only Swiss cities that exist in the public consciousness are Zürich, Geneva, and possibly Davos. The first is best known as a financial giant. The second is famous for being the birthplace of Calvinism and the center of the World Health Organization and World Council of Churches, among other institutions. The Geneva Conventions were also signed here, concerning the treatment of wartime non-combatants and prisoners of war. Usually one of these two cities is thought to be the capital, instead of Bern. Davos receives significant media attention when the World Economic Forum holds its annual meetings there. All other Swiss locations exist purely as ski resorts (of which Davos is one when the WEF isn't there).
• Tanzania: Best known for Zanzibar, which is where Freddie Mercury is from. Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest (and apparently only) mountain is here too, but most people will place it in Kenya instead.
• Taiwan: Cheap products are made there. If lucky, Taipei as a city may be mentioned, with no regard for cities on the south side of the island like Tainan and Kaohsiung.
• Thailand: Formerly Siam. Bangkok, best known for sex tourism and "One Night in Bangkok". And maybe The King and I.
• Tibet: The Shangri-La, Mount Everest or the Himalayas in general, and the Dalai Lama.
• Turkey: Mostly famous for İstanbul, which used to be Byzantium and earlier Constantinople. The city is only well known for the Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace (made famous by the film Topkapi) and the Basilica Cisterne, which is a famous underground water reservoir. Foreigners often think Istanbul is the capital, which is actually Ankara, the only other well known location in Turkey. Ankara in itself is best known for animals like the Angora cat, Angora rabbit, Angora goat and Anatolian shepherd.
  • History buffs may know the country too for the Dardanelles and Gallipoli (World War I).
• Ukraine: Before the Russian invasion in 2022, it was only world-famous for a place nobody dares to go: Chernobyl.
• United Arab Emirates: Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Ajman, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm Al Quwain all apparently don't exist.
• United Kingdom:
  • England: Will take most attention away from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales; however, Britain Is Only London and London only Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, the Tower, Tower Bridge, Madame Tussauds, London Underground, Royal Albert Hall and Harrods. More recently, The Shard and the London Eye. Though in general Big Ben seems to be the only thing needed to imply you're in London.
    • England contains exactly two counties: Cornwall and Yorkshire.
    • Some other English locations that may get a reference: Dover (for its White Cliffs), Stonehenge, Oxford and Cambridge (if we need a university), Liverpool (well known thanks to The Beatles), Manchester (for the football teams and Britpop), Birmingham (birthplace of many British Heavy Metal bands), Sheffield (for football teams and being the birthplace of several British Synth-Pop groups), Southampton (known for harboring Titanic), Yorkshire (for Yorkshire pudding and the Yorkshire terrier), Wimbledon (for the tennis) and Greenwich (for the meridian).
  • Scotland is colorful enough to be referenced, but only because of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Loch Ness, for the monster.. Still they should be glad, because Wales does not exist for foreigners unless they're fans of either Doctor Who (which has been filmed in Wales since the revival), Brother Cadfael, rugby union, or Welcome to Wrexham.
  • Northern Ireland is unfortunately only remembered for being a ground for terrorist bombings and violent confrontations between people of different political or religious ideologies, most notably in Belfast, Ulster and/or Stroke City (Derry or Londonderry, depending on your ideology).
  • There are maybe six British Accents: posh, Cockney, pirate, Beatle, "Scottish" and "Irish". That's if we remember that Scotland and Northern Ireland are part of the UK (and don't conflate them), and that the middle two are regional accents at all.
• The United States is to many foreigners a toss between New York City (because it is treated as Everytown, America in movies and TV shows and instantly recognizable thanks to the Statue of Liberty, skyscrapers, Central Park, Broadway, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center (pre-2001), the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, Times Square, the UN Headquarters and Brooklyn Bridge), Washington, D.C. (home of The White House, Capitol, The Pentagon, Washington Monument, and Lincoln Memorial), Hollywood and a large Southwest area which can be described as Cowboy Country and is usually labeled to be in Texas, yeehaw!
  • Other American locations that have gained enough international fame to be referenced:
    • Alabama: The songs Oh Susanna and Sweet Home Alabama.
    • Alaska: A permafrost-laden tundra. Anchorage and Fairbanks are the only cities in the state, Juneau apparently doesn't exist. Nome may get a mention for the 1925 serum run, which was led by the heroic Balto (Togo doesn't exist), though in more modern times it's the home base of Bering Sea Gold. Dutch Harbor/Unalaska is notable only as the home port for Deadliest Catch.
    • California: Los Angeles (Hollywood), San Francisco (Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge) and Disneyland. If you're lucky, you'll have heard of the Silicon Valley region, known as the technology capital of the world where tech giants Apple, Google, and Facebook are headquartered, but do not expect anyone to acknowledge that San Jose (the most populous city in Northern California, even more so than SF) exists, let alone know the way to it.^note This might be a blessing in disguise for San Joseans, since it means less crowds of tourists in all their favorite places.
    • Colorado: Home of Denver (the mile-high city), its suburbs of Columbine and Aurora (which gave us two deadly shootings), and Colorado Springs (for the US Air Force Academy).
    • Connecticut: Best known for Hartford (the capital), New Haven (for Yale), Stamford (for WWE), and Newtown (for the school shooting).
    • Florida: Disney World, Miami, Cape Canaveral, the Everglades, the MTV Spring Breaks, and men who get on the news, usually named "Florida Man."
    • Georgia: Georgia on My Mind. Home of Atlanta. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is filmed here.
    • Hawaii: Honolulu will be the sole city known.
    • Illinois: Most famous for Chicago, where all the 1920s and 1930s gangsters hung out.
    • Indiana: Location of the Indianapolis 500 race.
    • Kansas: May bring up associations with the song Kansas City, the black-and-white scenes in The Wizard of Oz and as the home state of Clark Kent.
    • Kentucky: Louisville (and the Kentucky Derby), Fort Knox and home of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Abe Lincoln was born here.
    • Louisiana: New Orleans and the jazz center of the world.
    • Massachusetts: Known for Plymouth Rock, where the Mayflower landed in 1620, and Boston, where there was a Tea Party which led to the American War of Independence. Inside the USA it's also known for the Salem witch hunts.
    • Michigan: Detroit, the motor city, and Flint, the city with a water problem.
    • Missouri: Bookworms know it as the setting of many Mark Twain novels. Home of St. Louis and (the larger) Kansas City. Ferguson has now become a household name due to the 2014 racial riots.
    • Nevada: Not every foreigner may know about Nevada, but they have all heard of Las Vegas, aka gamblers' paradise.
    • New Jersey: Many in the Middle East and South Asia know about it from the large immigrant diasporas from their countries in New Jersey; it is thus known as "the part of America where my cousin/uncle/niece/dad's college roommate lives". Iranians in particular are reputed to regard the Garden State as a kind of paradise. Home of Bruce Springsteen, the Jersey Shore, Atlantic City, and Danny DeVito.
    • New Mexico: Either confused with Mexico or known for Roswell, where UFOs never landed. Albuquerque, best known for Bugs Bunny, Breaking Bad, and "Weird Al" Yankovic, is there.
    • South Dakota: Again foreigners might not know the state, but they will recognize Mount Rushmore.
    • Tennessee: Elvis Presley fans know it for Graceland (his Memphis mansion), blues fans for Memphis, country fans for Nashville, science buffs for Oak Ridge.
    • Texas: Super-sized everything, cowboys, Dallas, Houston (we have a problem), NASA, and the Alamo.
    • Utah: Salt Lake City, best known for being Mormon country.
• Venezuela: Known for populist hyper-socialist dictators, oil, beauty queens and widespread poverty. Caracas is apparently the only city in the country.
• Vietnam: Known for a war, and most places that foreigners know are in reference to that time in history: My Lai, Nha Trang, Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon, and Hanoi. Also, in some circles, a bootleg copy of Pokémon Crystal known for its "Blind Idiot" Translation.

Crime

• Can you think of any notorious real-life criminals besides these? If not, go to Criminals.
  • Al Capone
  • Billy the Kid
  • Jesse James (his brother Frank is lucky to even get mentioned)
  • Jack the Ripper
  • Charles Manson
  • Bonnie and Clyde
  • John Dillinger
  • Ted Bundy
  • Jeffrey Dahmer
  • John Wayne Gacy
  • The only female criminals were Lizzie Borden and Aileen Wuornos (and the latter is only known for being played by Charlize Theron in a movie).
• British readers, on the other hand, may be limited to
  • Ronnie Biggs
  • Ruth Ellis
  • Myra Hindley (and just possibly her partner Ian Brady)
  • Ronnie and Reggie Kray
  • Jimmy Savile
  • Peter Sutcliffe
  • Dick Turpin
  • Fred and Rose West
  • Stephen Yaxley-Lennon
• Well-known street gangs? It's pretty much just the Crips and the Bloods and the Triad gangs of San Francisco's Chinatown. When it comes to fictional street gangs, most people will mention the Jets and the Sharks, or perhaps the Baseball Furies. (No love for the Foot Clan or the Red Triangle Circus Gang.)
• Assassins? Some historical ones whose infamy lives on are Brutus, Charlotte Corday, John Wilkes Booth, Gavrilo Princip, Lee Harvey Oswald and Mark David Chapman.
• Bank robbers? Often 1920s and 1930s examples will be namedropped, like John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Ma Barker, Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson. If you need a British one look no further than Ronnie Biggs, accomplice in the Great Train Robbery, who managed to escape and remain a free man for decades.
• Cannibals? Alfred Packer and Jeffrey Dahmer, though usual the fictional Hannibal Lecter may be the only one most people could name. The Donner Party and/or the 1972 Andean plane crash survivors may rate a mention, although none of the individuals involved were criminals and they won't be named.
• Colonials/Explorers: Will often be regarded as heroes in the West. To the colonized countries themselves quite some of these explorers are actually considered to be people who brutally ravaged their lands and took away their independence. Every Western country has a tendency to sugarcoat his own candidates for the title of atrocious colonist and finger point at other countries for being more fit for that title. (Spain has arguably gotten the worst of it, since they had a good head start on every other European power except Portugal, and so naturally had the opportunity to subdue millions more natives.) With that in mind some notorious examples:
  • Conquistadores: Hernán Cortés (usually spelled Cortez) and Francisco Pizarro are the most famous ones, with a tendency to see Pizarro as the worst one —if the author is not under the belief that "Cortés" was the only conquistador ever.
  • British colonialists are limited to the settlers of the American colonies, Captain James Cook, and Cecil Rhodes. The last one is more known for the Rhodes Scholarship than his impact on Africa, however.
• Cult leaders? It will always be the corrupt frauds and/or the ones who committed a major crime that pop up. Charles Manson, Jim Jones (for ordering his followers to drink a cyanide cocktail), Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (for owning several Rolls-Royces while his followers were living in poverty), the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (from his association with The Beatles and allegations that he might have sexually harassed some of his followers) and Sun Myung Moon (because of his mass weddings).
  • And all cults live in a "compound" (a group of buildings enclosed by a fence or barricade) after Ruby Ridge (a house and storage shed) and the Branch Davidians in Waco (a large house with some outbuildings).
• Drug lords? Pablo Escobar and El Chapo.
• Gangsters/Mafiosi? The most famous gangster of all time is Al Capone. Lucky Luciano might get a mention too. Names like Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel, Sam Giancana, Dutch Schulz, Meyer Lansky and John Gotti (whose last name really should rhyme with "goatee" rather than "snotty", but don't expect anyone to ever say it the right way) are already namedropped more by people with special interest in the material. The best-known Mafia family are the Gambinos; although the Bonannos and Genoveses are also well known. To most people the fictional character Don Corleone from The Godfather is the poster boy to all the real-life gangsters. Throw in the Goodfellas and Tony Soprano as well.
• Hackers? Since most of them work under pseudonyms and are only famous for about a week they are forgotten easily. The only ones that are widely known are Edward Snowden and Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning due to their participation in the [WikiLeaks] scandals in the early 2010s.
• Kidnappers? Bruno Hauptmann (for kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, though it's certain now that he didn't do it), Ted Bundy, Marc Dutroux, Jozef Fritzl, John Wayne Gacy, Fred & Rose West.
• Outlaws? The Wild West seems to be the first location where these characters pop up, so naturally Billy the Kid and Jesse James will be the ones everyone knows and mentions. Film fans might add Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid too. Fans of the comic strip Lucky Luke will add the Daltons too, only to be amazed that they actually existed for real.
  • Many countries seem to have their own outlaw who managed to get a Historical Hero Upgrade for being some kind of Robin Hood character (even if that is more myth than fact). The USA has Jesse James, Australia has Ned Kelly, Italy Fra Diavolo, India Phoolan Devi, aka Bandit Queen, Brazil Lampião and the UK Dick Turpin.
• Pirates? Blackbeard remains the most infamous one. William Kidd, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Calico Jack Rackham, Henry Morgan, Hayreddin Barbarossa, Bartholomew Black Bart Roberts, Stede Bonnet and Jean Lafitte are already more for people who know something about the subject. We should mention Sir Francis Drake too, but to the English he is a hero. But once again most people will rather name a fictional pirate like Long John Silver, Captain Hook, Jack Sparrow and/or Captain Blood.
• Presidential assassins? Everyone's heard of John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Far fewer people know of Charles Guiteau or Leon Czolgosz, let alone the ones who failed to hit their marks (except maybe John Hinckley).
• Serial killers? The only true famous one is Charles Manson. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Peter Sutcliffe, Myra Hindley, and Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) are also fairly well known. To know Ed Gein, David Berkowitz, Andrei Chikatilo, and/or Richard Ramirez you have to have a bit more interest in the subject, but they too may apply as the most iconic ones. If you need a European one the most famous choices will be Jack the Ripper and/or Henri-Désire Landru, the real Bluebeard, or more recently Chikatilo. More ancient serial killers are Vlad the Impaler, Gilles de Rais and Elisabeth Bathory.
  • Naturally the most famous fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter may be used as a poster boy for articles about the subject, if writers want to avoid giving real-life serial murderers and rapists too much publicity.
• Spies? Interestingly enough they are often not seen as criminals, unless they work for the enemy. The most famous example is Mata Hari. The most famous fictional spy is James Bond.
• Terrorists? Osama bin Laden. All terrorists in fiction belong to Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, or Hezbollah — or the IRA, in those rare instances when the terrorist characters are not Middle Eastern, but seldom the UVF or UDA. You'll never hear about the Tamil Tigers or Aum Shinrikyo — unless, of course, you're watching a movie or TV program actually made in the country where such a group operates.
  • In the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s Carlos the Jackal was the most famous terrorist of all time, along with the Baader-Meinhof gang.
  • Guy Fawkes is iconic in the UK, but since V for Vendetta a lot of people confuse the real-life Fawkes with V and see him as some kind of rebellious anarchist.
• War criminals? Include any Nazi, but the most famous ones aside from Hitler are those who escaped from being prosecuted and were given a mass mediatized trial later, like Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie. For decades Martin Bormann and Dr. Josef Mengele were the most famous ones at large, but since they have died they are no longer mentioned (at least Bormann, as Mengele is still mentioned as the "Evil Nazi Doctor").
  • War criminals from other wars aren't mentioned that often. The Serbian War has Slobodan Milošević, Ratko Mladić, Radovan Karadžić, and Arkan, but that's it. The most famous war criminal at large today is perhaps Joseph Kony, a Ugandan mercenary known for his army of child soldiers.

Disasters

• A horrific hurricane in an urban area? Surely you talk about Katrina? Or Sandy? Harvey? Because no other hurricane ever made landfall in an inhabited area, right?
• A horrific typhoon in an urban area? Obviously you're talking about Haiyan.
• A horrific tornado in an urban area? If any specific tornado does get mentioned, it's probably either Moore, Oklahoma (1999 or 2013), Tuscaloosa, Alabama (usually barely mentioning any of the 359 other tornadoes from that outbreak), or Joplin, Missouri. In older works, Xenia, Ohio, again glossing over the numerous other violent tornadoes from the same day. In Canadian works, Edmonton, Alberta.
  • Documentaries will be prone to Creator Provincialism, completely ignoring any and all tornado events that occur outside the United States. The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 will be mentioned as the deadliest tornado in recorded history, rather than the Daulatpur-Saturia tornado in Bangladesh. Furthermore, there will be a somewhat disproportionate focus on the traditional Tornado Alley (mainly Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas), even though many of the most notable tornado events throughout history, and especially in the 21st century, have occurred well to the east in and around Dixie Alley.
  • When characters learn of the impending danger, tornado sirens will be the only way they find out. Even in works taking place in modern times, there will be no Emergency Broadcast or smartphone alerts.
• Earthquakes? San Francisco (1906 and 1989), Chile in 1960, the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004, Haiti in 2010, and Japan in 2011.
  • In the United States, California is considered synonymous with earthquakes. No mention will be made of Cascadia or New Madrid, despite the threats they pose of catastrophic earthquakes.
  • The Richter scale is the only way to measure earthquakes. In reality, geologists have mostly abandoned it in favor of other methods of measuring earthquake strength. Any measurements made with these scales will still be attributed to the Richter scale. Intensity measurements (i.e. how strong the shaking is at a specific location) will not be mentioned.
• Volcanoes? Vesuvius, specifically its 79 CE eruption; Krakatoa, specifically its 1883 eruption; Mount St. Helens' 1980 eruption; and Yellowstone. Tambora is somewhat less likely to be featured, despite its 1815 eruption producing enough ash to turn 1816 into the infamous "Year Without a Summer".^note In reality, the planet as a whole only cooled by about 1 °C by even the most liberal estimates, but this was still enough to cause widespread food shortages. Japan's Mount Fuji is also a volcano, but unlike most other volcanoes in fiction, it usually just sits pretty in the background.
  • The Vesuvius eruption destroyed more cities than just Pompeii. Herculaneum might get a mention, but Oplontis, which received some of the worst damage, probably won't. Stabiae, which was actually partially rebuilt and remained prominent over the next few centuries, almost definitely won't.
• On October 8, 1871, a series of major wildfires erupted on the American side of the Great Lakes. These included the Peshtigo Fire (notable as the deadliest wildfire anywhere in the world), the Michigan Fire, and the Port Huron Fire. Of them, however, the Great Chicago Fire is the only one to get significant mention in popular culture.
• Other than the Great Chicago Fire, the only urban conflagrations that will usually be featured are Rome in 64 CE (expect the camera to focus on Nero playing his fiddle), London in 1666, and San Francisco in 1906 due to the earthquake.
• Asteroid impacts? Chicxulub, Tunguska, and maybe Chelyabinsk. The Ch'ing Yang event,^note which hasn't been confirmed to be due to an asteroid, but then again, neither was Tunguska possibly the only impact event in recorded human history to result in mass casualties, will not be featured.
• The Titanic is the shipwreck. Likewise, the Hindenburg is the airship disaster, and one of the most infamous aviation disasters prior to 9/11.

Entertainers

• Some examples of very specific fields of entertainment not covered in the other pages (comic strip artists, animators, actors, film directors, writers, musicians, dancers, web presenters, ...)
• Circus animals? Jumbo the elephant. Fictional ones? Dumbo.
• Circus directors? Buffalo Bill and PT Barnum.
• Clowns? Bozo the Clown, Grock, Emmett Kelly, Karandash, Lou Jacobs, Otto Griebling, Oleg Popov, Albert Grimaldi. Fictional clowns will be Pierrot, Pulcinella, Pagliacci, Scaramouche, Koko The Clown, Ronald McDonald and Krusty the Clown. Or, if you need a scary clown: real life serial killer John Wayne Gacy comes to mind, as does the fictional killer clown Pennywise from It. The Joker from Batman might also count.
• Daredevils? Evel Knievel.
• Illusionists and magicians? Harry Houdini and Uri Geller. If you need a more recent one David Copperfield, Siegfried and Roy and Penn & Teller.
• Jesters? No real-life jester has managed to become famous to the general public. However, there are a few fictional ones that will be namedropped: Till Eulenspiegel, Yorrick, Rigoletto and the Joker in card games.
• Mimes? Marcel Marceau.
• Puppeteers? In the early 20th century Edgar Bergen. Since the 1970s Jim Henson.
• Sideshow artists? The Elephant Man. Chang and Eng Bunker (the Siamese twins). Zip the Pinhead ^note  who inspired Zippy the Pinhead.
• Danny DeVito is either Frank Reynolds or, if you grew up in the 70s, Louie DePalma. And maybe the Penguin and Philocetes.

"Ethnic" People

• The only Italian-Americans are gangsters or actors who have played gangsters. Plus Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Joe DiMaggio, and Danny DeVito. IndyCar fans would know the Andretti family, mainly Mario and Michael; football fans would know Joe Montana and Dan Marino, and devoted basketball fans would know coaches John Calipari and Rick Pitino and Large-Ham Announcer Dick Vitale. Fans of the latter sport would know Caitlin Clark as an Italian-American too... except that pretty much no one outside Iowa knows her mother is from that background.
• Greek-Americans? Well, there's Maria Menounos, George Stephanopoulos... basically, a lot of "oses".
• The only Armenian-Americans are Dr. Jack Kevorkian and the Kardashians (and their names all end with -ian, right? The regular native Armenian form is -yan) and maybe the guys from System of a Down. For college basketball fans of a certain age, also Jerry Tarkanian.
• The only Israeli-Americans are Natalie Portman and Gene Simmons.
• The only Japanese-Americans are George Takei and Kristi Yamaguchi, and maybe Pat Morita or Apolo Ohno.
• The only Korean-American is Margaret Cho. Unless you followed women's golf in this century, in which case you'd probably know Michelle Wie West.
• Until recently, the only Cuban-Americans were Desi Arnaz and Gloria Estefan. Then they started coming into their own in the Republican Party with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
• The only Puerto Ricans are Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin. Although the "Despacito" guys (Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee) have gotten recognition lately, as has Bad Bunny. For baseball fans, Hall of Famers (in order of induction) Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Alomar, Iván Rodríguez, and Edgar Martínez.
• The only Australian-American is Mel Gibson (although he was actually born in the United States). Nicole Kidman was also born in America, but she's considered fully Australian.
• The only Albanian-Americans are John Belushi and Jim Belushi.

Family and Inheritance

• The entire world is patrilineal and patrilocal; other systems do not exist. The entire world, excepting select Islamic states, is monogamous. Inheritance is based on legitimacy, which is rigorously defined. Primogeniture is an optional extra; ultimogeniture does not exist.

Fashion

• All big fashion designers before Calvin Klein (the only American most people can think of) have been French (Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent) or Italian (Valentino, Giorgio Armani, the Versaces). Occasionally Mexican designer Oscar de la Renta will get a mention — though often simply to be humorously confused with Mexican-American lightweight boxer Oscar de la Hoya.
• Fashion models:
  • Claudia Schiffer
  • Naomi Campbell
  • Cindy Crawford
  • Heidi Klum, also notable for her former marriage to Seal.
  • Twiggy (maybe)
  • Gisele Bündchen, mostly because of her former marriage to Tom Brady.
  • Anna Nicole Smith was originally a model, but don't expect anyone to remember that anymore.
• If you ever see a man wearing a hat and he isn't a cowboy, country musician, or into sports, chances are it will be a fedora (which is, admittedly, Truth in Television); trilbies, homburgs, and porkpies are unknown. Bowlers, or derby hats, are sometimes mistaken for top hats. The only hats women ever wear are "fancy" hats (pillboxes, berets, etc.).
• Any long coat, badass or not, will be referred to as a trench coat. Never mind that a trench coat is always a raincoat, and usually has particular features including double-breasted closure, epaulettes, a half-cape, and straps to cinch the cuffs. Your overcoats, your dusters, your greatcoats, your macintoshes? All trench coats.
• All men between the ages of 20 and 50 in The '70s wore bell-bottomed trousers and had outrageously long sideburns. When they got dressed up, their suits were always in fruity pastel colors (blue, especially) or had a wild plaid or paisley pattern. (See also Popular History.)
• All teenage girls in The '80s wore leggings (and leg warmers), oversized T-shirts, and bands or scrunchies in their (flamboyantly teased) hair. In bright neon and/or pastel colors. (The scrunchies, not the hair. Come to think of it, the hair, too.) All businesswomen wore suits with gigantic shoulder pads. (Again, see Popular History.)
• Whenever a fur coat is mentioned by type, the majority of them are mink. Others are mentioned, but not quite as often, and usually just to highlight whether the fur is less expensive (such as rabbit) or more expensive (hello, chinchilla and sable) than mink. Leopard furs are worn only by Tarzan, Jane, the Flintstones, hookers, and porn stars.
  • This is so common that when Joe Namath infamously wore a coyote fur coat to the 2014 Super Bowl, several news outlets called it a "mink coat" — even though coyote fur looks nothing like mink.
  • If someone in a cartoon (and sometimes in other media) has a fur stole, it will almost always be the full fox with the head, legs and tail still attached or some variation thereof. This is often played for laughs, as in an episode of the 1980s reincarnation of The Jetsons in which Jane's mother wore one and when she tossed her head back in disgust the fox did the same.
• Common male hairstyles in fiction:
  • Buzz cut (for "patriotic" Americans and military personnel)
  • Mullet (if the character is a redneck or a hockey player. 80s-90s punks never wore these.)
  • Fifties-style pompadour (if the character is a snobbish redneck)
  • Mop-top or bowlcuts (for nerds)
  • '80s Hair (for rock musicians, bikers, and the occasional urban redneck).
• Common female hairstyles:
  • Louise Brooks-style (proper term: Dutch bob)
  • Marilyn Monroe-style (proper term: pageboy)
  • Farrah Fawcett-style
  • Beehive Hairdo (seen on middle-aged women)
  • Ponytail (for Action Girls)
  • Pigtails (for little girls or "Lolita")
  • Unbraided or partially braided mane (for hippie chicks)

Geography

• Central America is one country. In fairness, it was, for a while. About 180 years ago.
• Canada is a small country consisting only of Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and rural Quebec (and possibly the Yukon, although that's as likely as not to be part of Alaska instead), despite which everyone will talk like they're from Newfoundland, which none of these places are anywhere near. It's always winter, with lots of snow, even though Vancouver has warmer and less snowy winters than, say, New York.
• The only islands in the Caribbean are Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, and The Bahamas (which aren't actually even in the Caribbean).
• The Bahamas are one place (despite the hint in the name). The Cayman Islands get a mention as the only place besides Switzerland to have an offshore bank account, though no one seems to know where they are. Then again, the people who bank there have no intention of visiting anyway.
• Quebec and Haiti are the only French-speaking areas outside of France and Belgium. Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, and Saint Barthélemy do not exist. And Haiti's history only goes back 50 years, despite it being independent for over 200.
• South America consists solely of Brazil, where they speak Spanish, and Generic Banana Republic Dictatorships led by either a Nazi sympathizer, a drug lord, a corrupt military commander or a far-left socialist provocateur.
• Asia consists of Eastern Russia, India, China, Japan, and Korea, unless the work is about The Vietnam War. (If it is, Vietnam itself does not exist except as a backdrop for American characters.)
  • There's no such thing as Central Asia... except for Kazakhstan.
  • The Korean War is precisely the same thing as the Vietnam War. Koreans will be portrayed as living in straw huts, and they certainly don't have three major cities—Seoul exists, but it looks like the poor parts of Shanghai. Pyongyang is only whichever Kim dictator's weird little palace/bunker. Busan is purely apocryphal. Incheon? What's that?
  • The Southeast Asian archipelago only really exists in Western media whenever tourist vacation spots are discussed — Bali in particular — or someone wants to make a point about crippling poverty. This is despite the fact that Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world (after the US, India, and China).
• The Middle East consists of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and whatever country the U.S. is intervening in a civil conflict in. Everywhere ends in -stan. (In actuality, the suffix -stan comes from the Indo-Iranian languages, and is mostly used in Central and South Asia.)
• Speaking of South Asia, it only consists of two countries: India and Pakistan, who hate each other's guts. India is by far the more likely of the two to be referenced, and the term South Asia is often seen to be synonymous with India. In the tourism world, the Maldives is well-known, but few people know that it's in South Asia, and those accustomed to seeing photos of women in their bikinis posing in Maldivian overwater villas may be surprised upon learning that it is actually a fairly conservative Muslim country (though the resorts are free of religious laws). Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka do not exist, despite Nepal being partially home to Mount Everest and Bangladesh being the 8th most populous country in the world, with more people than Russia. Also, Afghanistan is technically in South Asia and, culturally and historically speaking, has more in common with it, but try telling that to people.
• In the Western imagination, only four states exist in India: Maharashtra (Bollywood musicals), West Bengal (Mother Teresa and crowded, dirty slums), Punjab (bearded men in blue turbans)^note  these are the Sikhs , and Madhya Pradesh (heavily forested region where The Jungle Book takes place). Kashmir will be known only to diehard Led Zeppelin fans, or if the news you're listening to covers the latest Indo-Pakistani conflict over it.
• If your characters visit Europe, they will only go to England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Greece, the Netherlands and/or Austria, and maybe Belgium as well if you're lucky. And they will always visit the capital cities, but then suddenly deviate into other countrysides typical for that country as if they are only a few miles away from the capital. The only exception is Italy, because besides Rome, you can also visit Venice, Tuscany, Milan, Pisa and the Isle of Sicily.
• When you visit Paris the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe HAVE to be present somewhere in the background!. If your characters visit other landmarks it will be the Louvre and only to see The Mona Lisa.
• Scotland is the same country as Ireland unless the author is from the UK. Northern Ireland doesn't exist even if the author is from the UK except in works specifically about the Troubles, the same is true for Wales only without the exception, and for a long time Cornwall didn't exist even in this trope entry. There is no such place as the North of England either unless the author is from the UK, and North East England, with notable aversions, is only ever inhabited by "Geordies" {even if they're from Durham or (gasp) Sunderland}.
• There are no distinct countries in eastern Europe (or central Europe, because it's part of eastern Europe) except for Western Russia and maybe Poland. All non-Western Europeans are either Slavs or Greeks; there are no Estonians, Balts, Magyars, Romanian Latins, Albanians, or Turks. Averted for basketball fans, who are very aware of the presence of multiple Slavic nationalities, as well as Lithuanians, Latvians, and Turks (and more) in the NBA. Hockey fans too, with the Czech Republic, Russia, and Slovakia having significant NHL contingents, plus a smattering of other Baltic and Slavic nationalities.
• Africa is Egypt, South Africa, and a Generic Tinpot Dictatorship headed by a corrupt, violent Oxford University graduate. If you want a jungle setting, there are Congo and Cameroon, and maybe the island of Bioko (or Fernando Pó, in older works, unless it's misspelled "Fernando Poo", as it commonly is, and therefore gets laughed at). For savannas, there Tanzania, Kenya, and if you're lucky, Botswana.
• There is no other country in Oceania apart from Australia. New Zealand doesn't exist at all. (However, if it does, it's known only for producing Rachel Hunter, Peter Jackson, Russell Crowe, and Lorde.)
• The Pacific Islands consist of Fiji, Hawaii, occasionally Samoa, and more often some undefined beach with lots of grass skirts. You can just forget about Papua New Guinea.
• All Deserts Have Cacti since all Westerns were filmed at Kirk's Rock.
• Iceland is a frozen rock somewhere near the North Pole where Björk lives and LazyTown was filmed. If you're lucky, Reykjavík will get a mention. Eyjafjallajökull may get a mention if the work was made when it erupted in 2010, an event which wreaked havoc on international air travel.
• The only place in Indonesia are Bali (home of dancing girls in Pimped Out Oriental Dresses) and Java (home of tigers, prehistoric humans, and — apparently — coffee).
• Jane Austen's geography of England is quite varied. You learn something about Bath and also that many English counties end in -shire. Derbyshire of Pride and Prejudice is probably the most famous as Mr Darcy's Big Fancy House Pemberley is situated there.
• In the United States, you can travel from Chicago to Disneyland or Philadelphia to the Grand Canyon in about three hours. The Midwest? What's that?
• The only cities in China are Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong (which is not even technically part of China, but rather a "special administrative region" covered under the "one country, two systems" principle). This is interesting since China is the most populated country in the world. Guangzhou (Canton), Chengdu, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Hangzhou, and Dongguan are almost completely unheard of despite having populations of over 10 million, which by comparison is bigger than New York City's by millions. Macau, the other "special administrative region", may get a mention, but even then most works that do acknowledge it assume it's an island filled with casinos and nothing else. A couple of other cities of over 10 million may get mentions–Xi'an due to its place in ancient Chinese history, and Wuhan for its connections to COVID-19.
  • In Hong Kong, the only places that exist are Central and Tsim Sha Tsui on the two sides of Victoria Harbour, and Mongkok, Wan Chai or the now demolished Kowloon Walled City if you're lucky. The New Territories? The other parts of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon? The Outlying Islands? Unless you're actually from Hong Kong (or are a mainlander who crosses the border often), never heard of them!
• The only places in Japan are Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Mount Fuji, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki (the latter two due to a little historical event you might have heard of).
• California is the third largest state in the U.S., the second largest in the continental U.S., and has the largest population of all. Yet, the only places in California are Los Angeles and San Francisco according to fiction, maybe Orange County or San Diego if the writer's trying to be different. Also, California is either populated entirely by The Beautiful Elite (which is entirely white) or black and latino Gangbangers. The middle class that makes up the vast majority of the state is rarely mentioned. The farms of the Central Valley ^note source of 40% of the food America takes for granted and the entirety of Northern California do not exist.

Historical Periods

• History is usually a Theme Park Version of a specific time period. Entire eras will be summed up into a few key historical or sociological events and historical domain characters, who will often just be namedropped or make a cameo, despite the fact that many of them weren't considered that important in their own age as opposed to decades or centuries later. Expect many things to be nostalgically sugarcoated according to our present morals and standards, full with Anachronism Stew by people unaware that some things are Older Than They Think and others Newer Than They Think. Everybody and everything will always look healthy and clean.
• If people have to name a specific Historical Domain Character it's usually going to be either Julius Caesar, Christopher Columbus or Napoléon Bonaparte. In the USA George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are popular extra choices. Adolf Hitler may be mentioned too, but is a bit too controversial to namedrop in some circles.
• Every country will put extra focus on its own national history. The West has a very Eurocentric view of its historical past and will often just quickly glance over civilizations in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania, unless they happen to be of interest to their own national history.
  • The USA has its own chronology, with the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, the landing of the Mayflower, the Salem Witch Trials, The American Revolution, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, The American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, The Wild West, Theodore Roosevelt, The Roaring '20s/Prohibition, The Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt, World War II and Cold War as the key historical events. Among non-Native Americans, the formation of the Iroquois League is about the only event from pre-Columbian America that gets talked about.
  • China focuses on the Ming Empire (their greatest period), Qing Empire (when they were in war with foreign countries), Chinese Revolution (which was only barely a Civil War because everyone loved Communism so much), and the Second Sino-Japanese War (when those evil Nationalists were cowards and the Communists did all the fighting!). Expect mainland Chinese media to focus on little else but the Second Sino-Japanese War and the latter half of the Chinese Civil War.
    • Media in Hong Kong (being a previous British colony and not as affected by the Communist Party) are more likely to be concerned with the Ming and Qing Dynasties, but are otherwise exclusively focused on other settings directly concerned with Hong Kong (or in some cases, Shanghai) within the past 200 years. The history curriculum is divided into four main time periods, that being pre-colonization, the colonial period after the Treaty of Nanking (1842-1941), the Japanese occupation during WWII (and related events such as the Second Sino-Japanese War and the reconstruction period for the rest of the 1940s), and the "modern" Hong Kong divided by the decade (1950s-1997) up until the Handover to mainland China, which marks the beginning of another time period.
  • The United Kingdom will put its focus on Boadicea's defense against the Romans, Hadrian's Wall, the Picts, the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, King Canute, Alfred the Great, William The Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings, Wat Tyler, King John signing the Magna Charta, The Hundred Years War, Wars of the Roses, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, The Gunpowder Plot, English Civil War, the beheading of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell becoming Lord Protector, Charles II, the Great Fire of 1666, Admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, The Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, Queen Victoria and Victorian Britain (which only consists of industrialisation and exploitation of child workers), the British army during World War I and World War II (the Blitz, Battle of Britain in particular), Winston Churchill, and Elizabeth II. If the history of the rest of the British Isles is ever mentioned then it will probably consist of Scotland during William Wallace's invasion and not much else if you're from outside the Isles. However Irish and Northern Irish history gets expanded somewhat — but even then only to English occupation, the Easter Rising (if you're lucky) and The Troubles.
  • The entire history of Japan consists of the feudal period (especially the Sengoku Jidai and the Tokugawa Shogunate) and the Meiji Restoration, despite the fact that this doesn't leave the latter with much to restore. If World War II is depicted in a Japanese work, it will only be to show the suffering of good ordinary people, probably in the countryside, and will be strangely divorced from all actual context. There is enormous focus on the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People or organisations that committed crimes against humanity, such as Unit 731, didn't and don't exist. Invasions of continental Asia didn't happen either.
  • In works not made by/for Jews, ancient Israel consists entirely of the Roman period (i.e. the very end), and the debut of Christianity was really important (apparently in spite of the fact that few noticed it for a few centuries).
• Canadian history is settlers, the Confederation (by extension Sir John A. Macdonald), World War I, The Great Depression, World War II and Pierre Trudeau. Maybe a vague mention of some stuff specific to the province where children go to school. For examples, Manitobans know something called "the Riel rebellion" happened, but not much else (including the fact that there were actually two such rebellions). At some point Canadians burned down the White House. And Laura Secord might have been involved? She's female!
• Spain was ruled in succession by the Moors, the Inquisition and Franco. (Francisco Franco died way back in 1975, before most of today's generation were born, so it's high time we came up with something after him.) There was also a civil war at some point that must have lasted a hundred years or so, given that it is the only event of note in Spain's 20th century — though oddly, only the small town of Guernica received any bombs from the air in that war, and the only people involved were Franco himself, George Orwell and maybe Ernest Hemingway (was it just a long bar brawl?).
• Everyone living between the fall of Rome (late 400s A.D.) and The '60s will have a stereotypically repressed Victorian view of the world. Though with young women in the fifties, it will always just be a facade.
• Every single human society before The '60s was at least as sexist as Victorian times. Women were never allowed to do anything of economic worth. And racism in its present form has existed in every historical era everywhere (except in nonwhite countries; there everything was cool).
• The prehistoric (13.7 billion to 5,000 BC): The prehistoric age has one interesting time period: the dinosaur age. Everything that happened before is forgotten, except that at one point the Big Bang happened and fish set foot on land and evolved into amphibians.
  • The dinosaur age will always be depicted as one general era, instead of a succession of different time periods. As such, expect all dinosaurs to be shown together despite the fact that some have never co-existed with one another. Tyrannosaurus rex is the most important dinosaur everybody remembers and will recognize by name. It will be seen attacking a herbivore dinosaur at one point, for dramatic effect, preferably a Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, Parasaurolophus, and/or a Triceratops because those are the only ones the general public will be familiar with. Thanks to the success of Jurassic Park the velociraptors have also gained some infamy. The air will be inhabited with pterosaurs and the seas and rivers with plesiosaurs and mosasaurs. The landscape is usually a large open field with a lot of volcanoes, so it's easier to see how huge these beasts are. The climate will always be warm and tropical, due to the endless population of reptiles. Also expect many people to assume that all dinosaurs are huge carnivorous beasts. Ah, yes, and at one point a giant asteroid will destroy everything, so time travelers need to leave fast.
  • Right after the Age of Dinosaurs is the Age of Mammals, but much of that will be ignored until we get to the dawn of man. There will be much greater focus later in the Ice Age since that is the time of mammoths and saber-toothed cats.
• The Stone Age (2.6 million years ago to 4,000 BC)
  • The cavemen period will typically either show ape-like humans or Neanderthals, because All Cavemen Were Neanderthals. They will be hunting or fighting mammoths, saber-toothed cats or giant bears: that is if people are smart enough to remember that men and dinosaurs never coexisted with one another. All cavemen wll typically be white, male, thick-browed, stupid, have a lot of hair and women are Nubile Savage characters. Expect men to to knock people about with clubs and drag women around by their hair. Everybody happens to wear enough fur to cover up their genital parts, so that we as modern viewers won't be distracted or offended. If men aren't hunting they will be sitting around in a cave or at least nearby it. They only have three memorable activities: 1) making cave paintings 2) discovering how to make fire by hitting two rocks together 3) Inventing the Wheel. A typical stone age landscape is nothing but mountains, rocks, caves and large open fields.
• The Classical/Bronze Age, (4,000 BC-500 AD) overlapping with Ancient Grome.
  • Usually forgotten by most people who assume that the cavemen just started living in settlements one day. Indeed, it's not the most interesting time period to depict in popular culture, mostly because there were no giant animals to attack. Domestication of dogs, horses and farm animals will be the point of reference.
• Antiquity: The Antiquity usually only focuses on Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. You might get some Celtic civilization in there too, but that's about it. Ancient Mesopotamia, Assyria, Babylon, India, China, Japan or cultures elsewhere in the world tend to be overlooked or ignored. Ancient Judea may get some attention too, but only as background in Christian, Judean or Islamic religious contexts, not from a historical perspective. Many people also incorrectly assume that all these civilizations just followed one another as soon as one of them fell. In reality many coexisted with one another and didn't just stop existing because their golden age was suddenly over. Most depictions of ancient societies in general forget that these were living, developed cultures that changed constantly over the centuries in terms of fashions, politics, attitudes etc. But they all have two things in common: Sword and Sandal.
  • Ancient Middle East: Usually a hodge podge of different civilizations: Sumeria, Akkad, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Persia, Hittites... The only point of reference is that writing, agriculture, irrigation and laws were invented during this very vague time period. Expect people like Hammurabi, Assurbanipal II, Nebuchadnezzar, and Cyrus the Great to have a cameo or be namedropped. All people wear beards and ride in chariots. The city of Jericho and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are the only locations remembered. The only interesting mythology is The Epic of Gilgamesh.
  • Imperial China: The Emperor, fireworks, gunpowder, paper, porcelain, silk, Confucius, Laozi, Sun Tzu, Zhuangzi, Wu Zetian and the Chinese Wall. People walking around in long robes and pigtails, with douli on their head. The women suffer because of the foot binding tradition. In the 15th to the 16th century we get Ming vases.
  • Bible Times: The rest of ancient Middle Eastern history will describe events from The Old Testament, usually with most of the focus on Moses and King David, but often more from a religious perspective rather than a historical one. The New Testament, of course, focuses mostly on the life of Jesus, but typically ends after his crucifixion. Everybody wears long robes and is oppressed by Egyptians, Philistines or Romans. Also expect a lot of prophets walking around.
  • Ancient Egypt and Ancient Egyptian History: Usually a Theme Park Version of a civilization that lasted for more than a thousand years, with pyramids, sphinxes, obelisques, tombs, mummies, the Nile and people writing hieroglyphs and walking like an Egyptian everywhere. Most people's idea of Ancient Egypt is the New Kingdom time period (18th-20th Dynasties, 1550-1069 BC), but the only events that are usually depicted are Ramses II and his confrontation with Moses, Cleopatra VII and her romance with Julius Caesar and people busy building pyramids. Expect Ramses II, Tutankhamun, Cleopatra VII, Echnaton/Aton, Hatshepsut and Nefertite to either have a cameo or be namedropped. The only Egyptian gods most people know are Anubis, Osiris, Isis, Horus and Ra. All people have long black hair and walk around in nothing but a white dress.
  • Ancient Greece: Once again a civilization that lasted for more than a thousand years and will often be represented in a condensed version, with people, art and institutions from different eras co-existing at the same time. The only time periods that are commonly referenced are The Trojan War, the Greco-Persian Wars, The Peloponnesian War and Classical Greece, home of the first philosophers. All action will take place in Athens, Sparta or Troy and more specifically in a Greek parliament, theatre, temple, the Acropolis, Parthenon, Oracle of Delphi, Epidaurus Theater and some of the Ancient Wonders of the World should be referenced too. Everybody is a politician, law-maker, warrior, philosopher or an athlete at the Olympic Games, preferably a marathon runner, disc thrower, wrestler or chariot racer. The Trojan War will completely be based on The Iliad and The Odyssey and thus mix facts with mythology. Sparta makes up for some Proud Warrior Race Guy and The Spartan Way. Expect cameos or references to people like Alexander the Great, Pericles, Socrates, Plato, Archimedes, Aristotle, Diogenes, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles, Homer, Thucydides, Sappho, Xenophon, ... who will conveniently all be depicted living in the same era.
  • Classical Mythology is usually far more interesting than the actual historical events in Greece and Rome, but there is a preference to use the Roman names for these gods, half-gods and heroes rather than the Greek ones. In either way the only Greek gods that everybody remembers are Zeus ^note  Roman name: Jupiter , Hera ^note  Roman name: Juno , Ares ^note  Roman name: Mars , Dyonisos ^note  Roman name: Bacchus , Athena ^note  Roman name: Minerva , Aphrodite ^note  Roman name: Venus , Demeter ^note  Roman name: Ceres , Persephone ^note  Roman name: Proserpina , Chronos, Hades ^note  Roman name: Pluto , Apollo, Hermes ^note  Roman name: Mercurius Artemis ^note  Roman name: Diana , Hephaistos ^note  Roman name: Vulcanus and Poseidon ^note  Roman name: Neptune . Other mythological characters and beings that will have a cameo appearance are Prometheus, Theseus, the Minotaur, Perseus, Medusa, Icarus, Achilles, Agamemnon, Ajax, Hector, Paris, Diomedes, Helen, Odysseus, Eros ^note  Roman name: Cupido , Pan, Arachne, Cassandra, Charon travelling on the river Styx, Cerberus, Sisyphus, Tantalus, Atlas, Heracles ^note  Roman name: Hercules , Pegasus, the Hydra, Oedipus, the Sphinx, Electra, Jason and the Argonauts, Medea, Andromeda, Adonis, Orpheus, Asklepios, The Muses, The Graeae, The Three Horatii, Romulus and Remus, Nike, and throw in some satyrs, nymphes, cyclopses, centaurs, fauns, titans, gigants, harpies, sirens,... in there as well.
  • Ancient Grome: Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome are often mixed and confused with one another. Not helped by the fact that Roman culture was, to a significant degree, a mass copypasta of Greek culture.
  • Ancient Rome: The only time when The Roman Republic will be depicted is near the end, when it evolved into The Roman Empire. The rise and murder of Julius Caesar is usually the focus. The story may continue until the defeat and death of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII, followed by Augustus taking power. The fashions and politics depicted will be from this period no matter what century it is.^note Ridley Scott's Gladiator is one of the best-known examples of this. The senators scheming to restore republican government are also anachronistic — it's about as realistic as portraying scheming 20th-century British parliamentarians trying to restore the House of Stuart.. The only other historical events that are interesting are the Pompeïi volcano disaster, the Great Fire of Rome, the slave revolt of Spartacus, Hannibal crossing the Alps and the eventual invasion of the city by barbarians. The empire is far more interesting for most people, because it allows scenes of grotesque decadent and immoral behaviour and the opportunity to show Rome in all of its magnificent glory. Naturally all action is concentrated in Rome, except perhaps to show some people battling in Gaul or Carthage. Still, Roman life will only take place in or nearby aquaducts, temples, columns, amphitheaters, bath houses, the Senate, the Imperial Palace and an arena, preferably the Colosseum, where gladiators and large animals will kill one another for blood thirsty spectators. Romans will all wear togas and be a patrician, senator, emperor, gladiator, legionary, centurion or a slave. Most people think every Roman spoke Latin, while upperclass people in Rome spoke Ancient Greek. Expect the following historical domain characters to make a cameo or be namedropped: Julius Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, Augustus, Caligula, Nero, Trajan, Hadrian, Caracalla, Elagabalus, Constantine, Marcus Aurelius, Hannibal, Spartacus, Cicero, Virgil, Messalina, Agrippina, Juvenal, Plautus, Sallust, Tacitus and Ovid.
  • Ancient Celts: Usually reduced to a bunch of men in helmets with a manly stache fighting off Romans. Those who aren't warriors will be a Druid making animal sacrifices near dolmen and menhirs. In the Anglosaxon world this time period is associated with Celtic Mythology, Stonehenge, Neo-Paganism, Boadicea and Wicca. In Europe the association with Asterix is very strong. In France with chieftain Vercingetourix. In Belgium Ambiorix. In the Netherlands Julius Civilis.
• The Middle Ages (500-1500 AD): the Middle Ages are often depicted as a period when intellectual, technological and sanitary development stagnated, contrary to what actually happened. Nevertheless the image is very persistent. The feodal system divides the society in three major groups: royals and noblemen, clerus (the Catholic Church) and peasants.
  • The Low Middle Ages: (476 BC - 1066) The fall of Rome led to a Dark Age Europe, where everybody is a Feudal Overlord, a devout but hypocritical devious priest, monk, bishop or pope and/or oppressed and moronic peasant living in filth.
  • Horny Vikings from Scandinavia will pillage and murder everybody. They use drakar ships and discover cold and icy continents, including North America. Important Vikings to have a cameo or namedrop are Canute, Erik the Red, Harald Bluetooth and Leif Erikson. Norse Mythology will consist only of Odin, Thor, Loki and Freya.
  • In fact, war and pillaging seem to be the only notable activities going on in this time period, whether it be Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Huns, Magyars, Musulmen, Saxons, Norsemen, Vikings, Vandals,... everybody is moving from country to country to invade one another. As a result most important people in this time period are all conquerors: Attila the Hun, Charles Martel, Clovis, Charlemagne, Canute, Alfred the Great,... This is also the ideal time period for epic tales and sagas, including Beowulf, Arthurian Legend, Nibelungenlied, Orlando Furioso, The Song of Roland, all The Icelandic Sagas,...
  • When people aren't fighting battles they will be trying to convert people to either Christianity or Islam. Many people remembered are either saints, bishops, monks or nuns. The Prophet Muhammad is the only Islamic figure of note everybody remembers.
  • The only glorious time period is The Byzantine Empire and the caliphates in the Middle East. The latter will usually be reduced to "Arabian Nights" Days.
  • The High Middle Ages (1066 - 1400): The era most people think of when the Middle Ages are brought up: knights and squires fighting to save princesses while people live in castles and listen to minstrels and troubadours singing songs. People will engage in Chivalric Romance, Courtly Love and tournaments, or storm castles with long ladders while the people inside pour boiling oil over the invaders.Everybody speaks in Ye Olde Butchered English. Also the era of less heroic events, such as The Crusades where Saracens and The Knights Templar kill one another in name of their gods. Or people being burned as witches or for being heretics, even though these became more prominent from the 16th century on. And the awful The Black Death which killed off millions of people, not only due to the illness itself but also because witches and Jews were blamed for it and put on the stake. Historical domain characters that will have a cameo or be namedropped are William The Conqueror, Saladin, Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Richard the Lionheart, King John of England, Robert the Bruce, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Becket, ... Any medieval legend or Fairy Tale is usually set during this time era like Robin Hood.
  • The Late Middle Ages (1400 - 1500): The Middle Ages as we know it from a lot of paintings from this era. Economy is at its highest, architecture is Romanic and people wear a lot of fancy clothing. Royals and noblemen engage in murderous feuds among the noble clans and the Corrupt Church is starting to really get overboard in persecuting witches and heretics by introducing The Spanish Inquisition. In England, the Wars of the Roses is the most important event during this era, though globally The Hundred Years War (1337-1453), The Fall of Constantinople and Christopher Columbus discovering America in 1492 are the only things worth remembering. Expect a cameo or a namedrop of Joan of Arc, Dante Alighieri, Hieronymus Bosch, Thomas More, Desiderius Erasmus, Vlad the Impaler, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Christopher Columbus.
• The Renaissance (late 1450s - 1650): Any reference to this time period will always be set in Italy, despite the tendency to have Renaissance fairs be set in England and be more close to Middle Ages imagery. The Renaissance will only consist of references made to The Mona Lisa, the The Last Supper, the Sistine Chapel, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, and Michelangelo Buonarroti's David. Cameo appearances by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, Niccolò Machiavelli, Petrarch, Giacomo Savaranola, Giovanni Boccaccio, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael Sanzio, Donatello, Pope Alexander VI,... are mandatory. In Britain, this is the Shakespearean age, so expect William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Mary Tudor, Mary, Queen of Scots, Anne Boleyn, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh,... to be namedropped or have a cameo. Spain and Portugal engage in the age of Wooden Ships and Iron Men, but to most people, this is just Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro and other conquistadores massacring Aztecs and Incas in some Mayincatec empire. But the most important event is Martin Luther establishing Protestantism and the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation happening as a result. A close second is Johannes Gutenberg inventing the printing device. In terms of War we have the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War to reference. This is also the most prominent era to reference Charles V and Philip II of Spain, Ivan the Terrible, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, Titian, William the Silent/William of Orange, Nostradamus, Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, Peter Paul Rubens, Caravaggio, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Galileo Galilei, ... In terms of fashion: everybody wears a ruff [1].
• The Enlightenment (1600-1800), The Cavalier Years or The Baroque era: The time period where absolutism reigned, but people starting getting more faith in science and logic rather than religion and divine royals. This led to a number of scientific discoveries, inventions and more humane ways of thought that would prove beneficial to mankind, including those which led to the Industrial Revolution. Yet to the general public this is mostly the era of powdered wigs, Baroque Music, pirates, highway robbers, dandies and swashbucklers. To the English the only noteworthy events are the Gunpowder Plot, English Civil War and the Great Fire in London. To the French this is the era of Versailles, Louis XIV and the eventual The French Revolution. American history focuses on the arrival of the puritans on the Mayflower and The American Revolution, with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Marquis de La Fayette as points of reference. Important people to have a cameo or be namedropped in this time period are James VI and I, Guy Fawkes, Louis XIV, Molière, Frederick the Great, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Maria Theresa, Isaac Newton, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Vivaldi, George Frederic Handel, Voltaire, James Watt, Jonathan Swift, Giacomo Casanova, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine,...
  • The French Revolution: One of the few historic events important enough for all countries worldwide. The general public's idea of this time period is basically peasants storming the Bastille, dethroning the king and falling into the Reign of Terror, where a lot of people are being guillotined. Interesting people to have a cameo are Maximilien Robespierre, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Georges Danton, Jean-Paul Marat, Marquis de Sade and Charlotte Corday. Napoléon Bonaparte will also pop up as a sign of future events.
  • The Golden Age of Piracy: All references to pirates will typically be concentrated between 1650 and 1720, even though piracy has existed centuries before and after. All of them will have wooden legs, eyepatches, beards, Talk Like a Pirate, drink rum and are noble rebellious freedom fighters who make people Walk the Plank and hide their Buried Treasure on a Deserted Island, but leave a Treasure Map behind to find it. If a pirate is needed for a cameo it will usually be Blackbeard, William Kidd, Mary Read and Anne Bonny.
• The Napoleonic Wars: The first two decades of the 19th century are completely dominated by Napoléon Bonaparte and will be marked only by his victory in Austerlitz, being crowned as emperor, his failed invasion of Russia and the Battle of Waterloo. The British will focus a lot on Admiral Horatio Nelson and The Duke of Wellington. In Russian stories shout-outs to Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky are not unusual either.
  • Victorian Britain and Victorian London (1837–1901): The rest of the 19th century is dominated by the British Empire, united under the long-living Queen Victoria. The very prudent morals of this decade and the taboo of sex and nudity are still typecast as "Victorian". A more romanticized image of Victorian London will be based on the novels of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë and Arthur Conan Doyle, often set in the foggy streets. Expect references or cameos by Queen Victoria, Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes.
  • Dichter and Denker: Late 18th and early 19th century romantic German art, literature and poetry are often a combination of a lot of people walking around in forests, nearby lakes and contemplating suicide over love affairs or being an unappreciated genius. Typical authors associated with this time period are Novalis, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Friedrich Schiller. Musicians will be Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann. Painters are Caspar David Friedrich and Carl Spitzweg.
  • Gothic Horror: The late 18th century and most of the 19th century are also a popular setting for horror stories like The Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and most of the works by Lord Byron and Edgar Allan Poe.
  • Most stories set in colonial times will take place in the 19th century and/or the early 20th, preferably in Africa, India or South East Asia. A popular theme is the contrast between the civilized European settlers who feel its their right to tell the local people how to live and behave, while the indigenous people try to win their right for independence.
  • The Industrial Revolution: The 19th century is the age when factories exploited workers for low wages and inhuman working circumstances, including child labor. This naturally leads to new political ideas, like Communism, Socialism, and Anarchism. Expect many Dickensian clichés to pop up, like orphanages and poor man's houses. Women in this era will be suffragettes who demand the right to vote.
  • Politically the 19th century is the era of nationalism, with many European and Latin American countries becoming independent or at least trying to become so. So naturally many tales of a glorious revolution and national heroes will be commemorated here.
  • Stories about artists will preferably be set in Paris and revolve around impressionist, expressionist, or realist painters who are misunderstood by everybody: Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Signac, Georges Seurat, Édouard Manet, Gustave Courbet, Auguste Rodin... They will drink absinthe and visit brothels, while prostitutes dance the Can-Can in the Moulin Rouge. Naturally we also see the Eiffel Tower. Cameo appearances or references to Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Honoré de Balzac, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Émile Zola, and Erik Satie are not uncommon either.
  • The Wild West: Arguably one of the most popular eras for romanticizing is the era of the cowboys, with all The Western clichés you can imagine: Bar Brawl, Gold Fever, The Sheriff, Showdown at High Noon, Bounty Hunter, The Gunslinger, Tar and Feathers, "Wanted!" Poster,... pioneers riding in stagecoaches under attack of outlaws or Native Americans,... Will typically be depicted as a mythical era with hardly any reference to historically true events, except perhaps the Gold Rush of 1848, The American Civil War and/or the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Expect some sugarcoating over the fact that slavery of black people was still in effect and that the wars against Native Americans for their country were going on until the 1890s. Important people to make cameos or be namedropped are Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Calamity Jane, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill, Mark Twain, the Hatfield and McCoy feud (which didn't even take place in the West, but rather in Appalachia), Roy Bean, Wild Bill Hickok, Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Belle Starr, Davy Crockett,...
  • The American Civil War: In US history this is the most important event of the 19th century to the point that all dramas will typically be set during this war. Naturally Abraham Lincoln and his eventual assassination are a major plot point. Other points of reference are Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee.
  • An Immigrant's Tale: All stories about immigrants pursuing The American Dream will be set in the late 19th and 20th century. The image of them arriving by boat at the New York harbor to witness the Statue of Liberty is mandatory.
  • Important 19th century people to namedrop or have a cameo during this era are Queen Victoria, Benjamin Disraeli, Otto von Bismarck, Charles Darwin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Richard Wagner, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, Gilbert and Sullivan, Simón Bolívar, Karl Marx, David Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley, Cecil Rhodes, Sarah Bernhardt, Alfred Nobel, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Florence Nightingale, Shaka Zulu,...
  • The 19th century will be usually romanticized by men walking around in high hats and women in crinolines with a Parasol of Prettiness. People will take a ride in horse carriages, watch a magic lantern show and visit an Opera, Circus or a Vaudeville show too. Expect references be made to many of the new inventions taking place throughout this century, such as photography, the telephone, electric light, pedaled bicycles, the train and, near the 1890s, the car. Sporting events become more prominent, like baseball, cycling, soccer, rugby, cricket and the modern Olympic Games. You will also see the contrast between upper class aristocrats and their servants. Especially the 1890s are a popular target, see The Gay '90s, also characterized as "La Belle Époque".
  • Great Detective novel: The late 19th century and early 20th century are the best place for detective stories, such as Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Literature/Maigret,...
• The 20th century: The only important things that happened overall are usually World War I, the gangster era, World War II, Cold War, The Vietnam War, the moon landing and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
  • The Edwardian Era (1901–1914) Ties in with The Gay '90s (1890s) as a nostalgic period just before the horrors of World War I would break out. People will go to the movie theater, read newspaper comics, join the boy scouts, listen to early phonograph records and watch people fly through the sky in early aeroplanes or zeppelins. Important people who'll have a cameo or be referenced in this era are Harry Houdini, The Wright Brothers, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, Pablo Picasso, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, Henry Ford, Helen Keller, Edward VII, Emmeline Pankhurst, Enrico Caruso, Sigmund Freud, Albert Schweitzer, Sun Yat-sen, Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott and Albert Einstein. The only real tragedy is the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
  • World War I (1914–1918): People getting shot in the trenches, while the whole pointlessness of the war is frequently addressed by soldiers, but not as much by their superiors. Tanks and mustard gas are the most prominent weapons used, not artillery or Machine guns. Expect references to Gavrilo Princip, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, general Paul von Hindenburg, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Henri Pétain, George V, Lord Kitchener, David Lloyd George, Mata Hari, the Red Baron, Douglas Haig and T. E. Lawrence "of Arabia". At the home front women work in factories. In Ireland the other noteworthy event is the Easter Rising. In the field of art Dada is the most important artistic event and Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka the most important authors.
  • Red October: Another event of world importance, where the usual cameos will be made by Rasputin the Mad Monk, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Czar Nicholas II, princess Anastasia and Josef Stalin.
  • The Roaring '20s and Genteel Interbellum Setting: A happy, carefree time where people sing and dance to Jazz while smoking and drinking in shady nightclubs. In the USA alcohol is banned during this time period, so when people do consume liquor it's usually illegal. All women are flappers with a '20s Bob Haircut. Other pastimes are the cinema, Broadway theatre or radio plays. The only negative aspect about these years are gangsters and mobsters rubbing people out in the USA and Fascism rising in Italy. Important people to have a cameo are Al Capone, Eliot Ness, Al Jolson, Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Benito Mussolini, Kemal Atatürk, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Chiang Kai-shek, Mahatma Gandhi...
  • Gay Paree: The 1920s and 1930s are the most interesting hotspot for cultural and intellectual people: Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Coco Chanel, Josephine Baker, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Maurice Chevalier, Le Corbusier, Margot Fonteyn, Django Reinhardt, Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir,... can all be spotted here.
  • Weimar Republic: In Germany the Weimar Republic is ideal to show scenes taking place in shady cabarets, where Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Zarah Leander can be found and Marlene Dietrich before she moved to Hollywood. More dramatic stuff going on in the background is the economic recession and Adolf Hitler slowly but surely gaining power.
  • The Silent Age of Hollywood: When referring to Early Films the only silent movie stars to reference are Florence Lawrence, aka "The Biograph Girl", Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Erich von Stroheim, The Keystone Cops, Mary Pickford, Max Linder, Theda Bara, Greta Garbo, Louise Brooks, Rin Tin Tin, Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and of course Charlie Chaplin.
  • The Great Depression: People worldwide look for jobs, but can't find any. In Germany this is particular bad because it will lead many to vote for Adolf Hitler. In the USA this time period is particularly associated with poor people in The Deep South, bank robbers and gangsters like Bonnie & Clyde, Ma Barker, John Dillinger, Babyface Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd and the FBI. led by J. Edgar Hoover trying to track them down. Still the era is subject to some romanticism, as many great jazz, blues, bluegrass, country, and folk tunes were recorded during this era. Expect references be made to artists like Robert Johnson, Gene Krupa, Woody Guthrie, Glenn Miller and Billie Holiday, for instance.
  • The Golden Age of Hollywood: The introduction of sound in 1927 led to a period of Glamour to give many people some escapism. Whenever Hollywood is referenced in pop culture it's usually during this era, with many references to icons like Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Edward G. Robinson, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Bela Lugosi, Bette Davis, Shirley Temple, James Cagney, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Bing Crosby, Boris Karloff, Busby Berkeley, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Jean Harlow, Maurice Chevalier, Marlene Dietrich, Mickey Rooney, Jimmy Durante, George Burns, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Johnny Weissmuller, Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Spencer Tracy, Peter Lorre, Orson Welles, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, The Little Rascals, The Three Stooges, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Claudette Colbert, and naturally Walt Disney's creation Mickey Mouse. If a specific film needs to be referenced it will be King Kong, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane or Casablanca.
  • Nazi Germany: Naturally most movies depicting the 1930s and 1940s will at one point reference the Nazis or use it as a major plot point. Key moments will be Hitler being elected, the burning of the Reichstag, mass book burnings, the Anschluss with Austria, Kristallnacht, the 1938 Conference of München and the eventual invasion of Poland. It's also the time period of dictators, with Benito Mussolini (Italy), Francisco Franco (Spain), Josef Stalin (Soviet Union),... as the most well known examples. Another drama is The Hindenburg disaster.
  • The 1930s are a quiet time for Great Britain, with only Edward VIII's abdication and George VI's succession as important events. And, of course, Neville Chamberlain's failed attempt to sign peace with Hitler.
  • The '40s pop culture is characterized by Humphrey Bogart, Betty Grable, Bob Hope, Abbott and Costello, Alfred Hitchcock, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, bebop jazz, Frank Sinatra, Vera Lynn, Édith Piaf, neo-realistic Italian movies and The Golden Age of Animation cartoons of Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Droopy and Woody Woodpecker.
  • After 1945 the major events are the Iron Curtain, the Nuremberg Trials, the independence of India, Israel becoming its own state, Harry Truman establishing the Truman doctrine, the Soviet Union launching its own atomic bomb, the arrival of the UN and NATO, South Africa establishing apartheid and Mao Zedong turning China into a Communist state. In the USA anti-communist witch hunts under command of Joseph McCarthy take a turn for the worse, with many people being blacklisted. Important postwar people are David Ben-Gurion, Konrad Adenauer, Harry Truman, Josip Broz Tito, Josef Stalin, Wernher von Braun and Mao Zedong.
  • The Forties are also a popular setting for Hard Boiled Detective novels and Film Noir stories.
  • The '50s: A happy carefree time, at least that is the view that many sitcoms and movies have given us. All adult men are a Standard '50s Father who wears slippers, fedoras and smokes a pipe. All adult women are smiling apron-clad housewives. Their children will be girls in poodle skirts, playing with hula hoops or early Barbie dolls or cute freckle faced boys with slingshots in their pockets and read comic books on the sly. Or, if they are teenagers, they will be teddy boys, Greaser Delinquents, a Badass Biker or a Beatnik reading Playboy on the sly. They drive a Cool Car with RetroRockets to eat at McDonald's or watch a monster B-movie at a Drive-In Theater. But, most importantly, they will listen to Rock & Roll, Doo-wop, R&B or Rockabilly on a transistor radio or a jukebox, especially Bill Haley & His Comets, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly. Jonas Salk developing the first polio vaccine, The Space Race and the launch of the first Sputnik are the most important scientific breakthroughs. Other happy events are Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay being the first men on top of Mount Everest, Elizabeth II being crowned, the opening of Disneyland, the establishment of The European Union and the marriage between Prince Rainier III of Monaco and Grace Kelly. The Beat Generation, early television shows like I Love Lucy, Bonanza and The Twilight Zone (1959), free jazz and abstract expressionism are the cultural highlights. Bettie Page, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Brigitte Bardot, Jayne Mansfield, Sophia Loren, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Playboy lead the sexual revolution. In popular culture there will be far less focus on the anti-communist witch hunts , The Korean War, the fear of the bomb, the first nuclear power plants being built, the Soviet oppression of the Hungarian Uprising, Fidel Castro turning Cuba into a Communist state and the rise of the Afro-American civil rights movement under Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.
  • The '60s: A revolutionary time, where all kinds of minorities (youngsters, college students, blacks, women, gays, colonial countries,...) demand equal rights, freedom of speech and the end of old-fashioned, conformist and repressive values. The Generation Gap between adults and youngsters becomes more prominent. All teenagers are left-wing hippies who wear flowers in their hair, drive around in a Hippie Van and want to travel to California or Katmandu to join a Commune. Or if they are black they will wear an afro and listen to Motown. They will all support the Civil Rights Movement and protest against The Vietnam War. The men are either a Scooter-Riding Mod, a snappin' Beatnik or a peace loving', long bearded hippie wearing Cool Shades playing guitar. That is if they aren't sent off under Conscription to Vietnam to die in a pointless war against the Vietcong. (Veterans who come back maimed, drug-addicted or with PTSD or mental illness is seen in The '70s.) All women are a Granola Girl who may wear a Beehive Hairdo and a Mini Skirt or a long "granny" skirt and peasant blouse. Since the anticonception pill has made its entry and hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and marihuana reach the mainstream everybody will engage in Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll. Expect many hippies to be The Stoner or Erudite Stoner searching for a Higher Understanding Through Drugs. The music is usually the most celebrated part of this era, with great Rock, Surf Rock, Folk Music, Pop, Psychedelic Rock, Soul, Funk being made by bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, James Brown, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead and The Doors as the most iconic examples. Expect a reference to the Woodstock festival too. Underground Comics, Spaghetti Western, Spy Drama, French New Wave and Pop Art are the prime artistic movements. Central Asian culture is very popular, with Ravi Shankar and the Hare Krishna movement as prime examples. Mankind brings the first man (Yuri Gagarin) and woman (Valentina Tereshkova) in space and the first one on the moon: Neil Armstrong. Muhammad Ali becomes boxing's world heavyweight champion. Also namedrop some slogans like: "Make Love Not War", "Black Power!", "Ban the Bomb", "Don't Trust Anyone Over 30", "Flower Power" and "Turn on, Tune In and Drop Out". In fact, most people forget the less fun things going on, like the building of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Che Guevara and Robert F. Kennedy, The Vietnam War, Mao Zedong's "Cultural" Revolution, the Soviet Union oppressing the Prague Spring, Greece becoming a Fascist dictatorship for five years, Libya putting Muammar Gaddafi in charge for more than 40 years, many young people getting brainwashed in religious cults with the Charles Manson murders as a prime example, endless race riots in the US, The Troubles in Ireland, and many colonies in Africa finally becoming independent, only to fall into civil war or dictatorships afterward. The 60s ended at the Altamont rock concert where a black man was killed by the Hells Angels while (or because) The Rolling Stones played "Sympathy for the Devil".^note Speaking of said killing, the victim had rushed the stage with a gun while the Stones were playing "Under My Thumb". The killing was ruled to be self-defense.
  • The '70s: Men wear polyester leisure suits with flaring trouser cuffs and huge ties while sporting heavily sprayed and manicured hair, sideburns included. Women wear feathered, Farrah Fawcett hair above their slinky dresses with no bras underneath. Black people sport a huge, poofy afro as a Take That! to past straightening practices. A great time for cult TV shows, exploitation movies, Martial Arts movies, Blaxploitation, Erotic Film and Hollywood blockbusters. Young people are into Glam Rock, Funk, Reggae, Punk Rock, Disco, New Wave Music and/or Heavy Metal. Video games, video recorders, and skateboards are starting to get in vogue. People seem less keen to remember the Watergate affair, Richard Nixon's resignation, the economic recession, the oil crisis, The Vietnam War, terrorist bombings, serial killers, kidnappings and plane hijackings becoming more prominent, the assassination of Aldo Moro in 1978, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, and Ayatollah Khomeini turning their countries into dictatorships and the death of Elvis Presley. This is also the decade when most people become aware of human pollution destroying the environment.
  • The '80s: Fondly remembered for CNN, MTV, Synth-Pop, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Live Aid, "We Are the World", Hip-Hop, Goth Rock, House Music, arcade video games, Pac-Man, Nintendo, the walkman, the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana, blockbuster action films starring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lech Wałęsa, Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, the fall of the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall. All young people engage in breakdancing, skateboarding, and weary '80s Hair or are a Valley Girl. People feel less nostalgic towards the AIDS epidemic, the crack cocaine craze, the assassinations of John Lennon, Roberto Calvi and Olof Palme, the Falklands War, the Challenger explosion, the Irangate affair, the USA backing the overthrow of the socialist government in Nicaragua, the Iran–Iraq War, the USSR–Afghan war, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, economic recession and unemployment under Reaganomics and Thatcherism, big-money televangelism and subsequent scandals, the rise of the far-right in many Western countries, US and USSR tensions resulting in fear for nuclear missile escalation, Salman Rushdie being put under a fatwa, the Latin American debt crisis…
  • The '90s: Seen as a more innocent, carefree time when the Cold War was finally over, the Soviet Union dissolved; Germany reunited and a freed Nelson Mandela got elected as the first black president of South Africa. Young people enjoy more sophisticated 2-D and 3-D video games, Grunge, Brit Pop, Gangsta Rap, Techno, piercings, the dinosaur rage of Jurassic Park, Quentin Tarantino movies, adult animated shows like The Simpsons, Beavis and Butt-Head and South Park. The Internet and cell phones became huge and introduced a whole new area of pop culture, headed by Microsoft and Apple. The arrival of the first cloned sheep and Viagra brought hope for scientific development. Michael Jordan headed the Dream Team to universal success and made basketball popular worldwide. Also of note: the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Rodney King scandal, the O. J. Simpson scandal, Columbine, the Oklahoma City bombing, the deaths of Freddie Mercury, Kurt Cobain, Tupac and Biggie, and Princess Diana. Usually forgotten are The Gulf War, the war in ex-Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević, Ratko Mladić, Radovan Karadžić, Arkan, Srebrenica, the war in Somalia, the genocide in Rwanda, Joseph Kony, Silvio Berlusconi getting elected as president and not getting out of Italian politics ever since, the deaths of Ayrton Senna, Yitzhak Rabin, and Owen Hart, the Asian and Russian financial crises…
• The 21st century: The major sociological evolution is that most people from the 2000s onwards are able to afford Internet and thus play online games and engage in social networks and web forums. Many listen and watch music and movies for free online. Many Apple gadgets like the iPod, iPad, touch screens, and cell phones with cameras are extremely popular. Politically this is the era of The War on Terror, with the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City as the turning point. For most of the 2000s Osama bin Laden, Guantanamo Bay, Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein dominate the news. In the 2010s ISIS and Boko Haram are the most prominent new threat. Populist right-wing parties, many far-right, get more votes in elections. The Arab Spring in 2011 has many North African and Middle Eastern countries revolting against their dictators and ousting them from power. Harry Potter is everywhere. The European Union gets its own currency: the euro. Spy scandals in both the US government as well as social networks frequently make headlines. The wedding of Princess Kate and Prince William is the most-watched social event. The deaths of Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, Paul Walker, Robin Williams, and Prince are the most prominent celebrity tragedies.

Military

• If you need famous military people all attention will usually go to those in highest rank, namely the generals. Just see Military Personnel, to get an idea.
• World War I:
  • World War I has a very short list of characters. Archduke Ferdinand, Gavrilo Prinzip, Nicholas II, Wilhelm II, George IV, Alfred von Schlieffen, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, Erich von Falkenhayn, Paul von Hindenburg, Erich Ludendorff, Georg Bruchmüller, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, Joseph Joffre, Philippe Pétain, Aleksei Brusilov, Alexander Kerensky, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Sir Douglas Haig, Sir Arthur Currie, Sir John Monash, Lawrence of Arabia, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. That's it.
  • There were no War Crimes in World War I except the Armenian Genocide. None. No gratuitous killing of POWs, no ethnic cleansing in places like Russian-occupied Galicia and Podolia, no deportations of populations like in Alsace (by the French), and no stripping places like Russian Poland and Ukraine of food to feed the German homeland with near-disastrous consequences. Nope.
  • World War I was the Western Front. And not just the Western Front, the French bit of the Western Front. And not just the French bit of the Western Front, the English-speaking corner/third/half/two-thirds of the Western Front.
    • The Italian section of the Western Front (Italy/UK/US/France vs. Germany/A-H), the Eastern Front (Russia & Romania vs. Germany/Ottoman/Austria-Hungary/Bulgaria), the Balkans, Africa, and the Middle East. didn't happen.
    • Except for Lawrence of Arabia, but it's rarely mentioned that this was part of World War I.
    • Except in Australia, where World War I was the Gallipolli campaign of 1915. And maybe France. Despite the fact that more Australians fought (and died, for that matter) in France than in Turkey.
  • World War I was just the UK vs. Germany. And maybe the Americans and rest of the English-speaking Empire.
    • France wasn't in World War I, except as a geographical expression. Never mind that she lost more soldiers than any combatant save Germany and Russia, held up the entire Western Front practically by herself for two years, and a third of it for the two years after that.
    • Russia wasn't in World War I, except as a place for the Germans to transfer troops from in early 1918. Never mind that she lost more soldiers than any combatant save Germany and held up the entire Eastern Front practically by herself for four years.
  • All British WWI brass were upper-class, incompetent, and indifferent as to their failures or the resulting loss of life. For that matter, the British WWI Brass? Sir Douglas Haig, Sir Arthur Currie, and Sir John Monash. That's all three of them alright.
  • The Important operations of World War I were The Marne of 1914, Somme of 1916, Passchendale of 1917, Kaiserschlacht of 1918, and Hundred Days' Offensive of 1918. The French weren't in any of those, of course, just like they weren't in anything else either. And yes, we too have never heard of these 'Verdun', 'Nivelle', 'Brusilov', 'Caporetto', or 'Vittorio Veneto' things.
• World War II:
  • There's a very short list of events and people which make the cut. The invasions of Poland and France, Battle of Britain, (as of very recently) Battle of Stalingrad, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, The Holocaust, Hitler's suicide and the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Key people in this event are Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Erich von Manstein, Erwin Rommel, Benito Mussolini, Hirohito, Hideki Tojo, Isoroku Yamamoto, Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, Georgy Zhukov (maybe), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, Henri Pétain (maybe), George S. Patton, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bernard Law Montgomery, Chester Nimitz and Douglas MacArthur. Some war victims and resistance heroes like Anne Frank, Sophie Scholl, Raoul Wallenberg, Janusz Korczak, Simo Häyhä... may get a mention too, but mostly in their countries of origin. Expect the French, Polish and other continental resistance movements not to get a mention elsewhere.
  • In American shows and movies all of the Allies are Americans and the Axis consists of either mindless umlaut-sputtering Nazis or sadistic Japanese killers. Definitely no Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, or Yugoslavs. And 'the Russians' (don't call them 'the Soviets', you'll only encourage them) and the British? Yeah, well, they were there and hold on until the Americans came to help them and take over, while they both apparently just laid back on their backs. Nothing much happened anyway until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The Allies fought some naval battles with the Japanese and then after D-Day everything just seems to have resolved itself though there were some bumps in the road like the Battle of the Bulge and the atom bomb on Hiroshima (never mind Nagasaki).
  • There were concentration camps, as presented for example in Schindler's List. The Holocaust only took place in the camps, and the only death camp was Auschwitz. Which is always mentioned without its second name, Birkenau. Any and all Holocaust survivors/victims are Jewish. Not Soviet, Polish, Slavic, homosexual, Gypsy, handicapped, or communist: they were all Jewish. Or maybe those other guys were in there for some reason, but probably not a lot. Also need a Big Bad working in a Nazi concentration camp? Dr. Josef Mengele. Who else?
  • German military commanders? Erwin Rommel, Erich von Manstein, aaaand Heinz Guderian. That's all three of them alright. The latter two of which totally didn't deserve those silly 'war crimes' accusation things they got at Nuremberg, by the way.
  • Military fiction and documentaries set on the battlefields of WWII usually revolve around a select few well-known battles:
    • If it is about US forces it is usually Normandy and The Bulge. Italy? Maybe. North Africa? Eeeenope.
    • British get El Alamein and Market Garden. Italy... maybe. Singapore? How about no. Burma? Never heard of it.
    • The Soviets get Stalingrad and Kursk. Moscow and Berlin? Maybe. Kiev and Bagration? Yeeeeeah no. Leningrad, Hungary, and the rest? Don't even bother.
    • The only land battle of the entire war which didn't happen in Europe was El Alamein. Shanghai, all five battles of Changsha, and the Burmese stuff? Didn't happen.
    • The invasion of Poland is often mentioned, but never depicted (except in Family Guy). The invasions of Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries never happened. There was no fighting in the Balkans either, and the only resistance movement was French (and occasionally Polish, but certainly never Yugoslav or Greek, except in Alistair MacLean books). Even in Family Guy, the invasion is depicted in seconds with no resistance. No Polish soldiers are ever seen.
    • No Canada and Juno Beach during Operation Overlord, even though it was one of the two (of four) okay landings which salvaged the initial mess. It's all Utah and Omaha, since all the Americans died. A movie about Dieppe, where the Canadians were simply cannon fodder, is a rare sight. Dieppe hasn't been likely shown outside of Canadian TV.
  • It's rare to find stuff about the Pacific Theater that was made within the last 20 years or so. Both the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series took 5 games before either of them had a campaign set in the Pacific. Most likely because if all 10 games are put together, every major event in the European theater from 1941 onward was already done.
  • When the Pacific Theater does get portrayed, the entirety of it was apparently Pearl Harbor, sometimes Midway, something about a flag on Iwo Jima, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Leyte Gulf, the largest sea battle in history, apparently never happened. And it is a fight solely between Japanese and Americans. The Chinese, Indochinese, Indonesians, Filipinos, and Australians weren't there and did nothing. Unless it's an Australian production, in which case it was just the USA and Australia.
    • The Enola Gay was the only plane involved in the bombing of Hiroshima. The Great Artiste and Necessary Evil did not accompany it, and by extension the Great Artiste was not accompanied by the Bockscar and Big Stink for the Nagasaki bombing.
• The American Civil War:
  • It lasted three days, in 1863, and the entire war started and finished near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Also, all Confederate soldiers wore gray uniforms.^note The Confederacy's economy was entirely incapable of providing a standard uniform for its troops.
  • Other battles that might get mentioned are Bull Run (and always the first battle there, and only because some picnickers foolishly came along to watch the show), Antietam (because it almost looks like and sounds like "Vietnam", which is just cool), and Appomattox (because that's where General Lee surrendered — and don't be surprised if people mispronounce it so that it rhymes with "tomahawks", when it's actually "appa-matticks").
  • The only naval battle during the war was between the Monitor and the Merrimac (which never had her name changed to CSS Virginia when she came into Confederate hands).
  • Even among Civil War buffs, knowledge of the war often remains restricted to Virginia and a few specific Western battles like Shiloh and Atlanta. Other campaigns — Grant's Siege of Vicksburg, Union landings along the Carolina coast, the capture of New Orleans and subsequent campaigns in Louisiana, constant fighting in border states like Missouri and Kansas, the entire naval war — are generally ignored. And anything west of the Rio Grande? Totally ignored. Only the hardest of hardcore buffs know about the Battle of Glorieta Pass in New Mexico Territory, or can tell you what the political scene was like in California at the time (pro-Union around San Francisco, pro-Confederate everywhere to the south).
• The Crimean War is remembered, if at all, for the Charge of the Light Brigade. In other words, a small portion of an indecisive skirmish (Balaclava) gains more attention than the huge, decisive battles at the Alma, Inkerman and Sevastopol, let alone Russia and Turkey's brutal fighting in the Caucasus or various naval campaigns. For American readers, it would be like if Ball's Bluff or North Anna River were the best-known battles of the Civil War.
  • Probably the one individual most people can name from the Crimean War is Florence Nightingale, who served in field hospitals during the war and channeled her experience into a successful campaign for better hygiene and professional standards in nursing. In recent years, Mary Seacole who ran a store / convalescent home for officers has become well-known too.
• The Anglo-Zulu War ended after the Brits won at Rorke's Drift, right? Actually that and Isandlwana were just the first round: six months of fighting with far larger battles lay ahead.
• Custer's Last Stand remains far more recognizable than any other battle or massacre in the 100+ years of American Indian Wars.
• Western accounts of The Russian Revolution tend to ignore or downplay the 1918–1921 Civil War.
• The Vietnam War and The Korean War are the only wars that happened in their respective countries. Never mind the fact that they had other conflicts with certain nations with major consequences in the long run. If one considers Ho Chi Minh (or his successors, after he died in 1969) to have been the main actor in the Vietnam War, then that war lasted for more than thirty years (first against the Japanese, then against the French, and then against the Americans).

Ideology

• All Marxism is a crude pastiche of Leninism, Stalinism, and/or Maoism. Meanwhile Luxemburgism, Left Communism, Marxist Humanism, Council Communism, Eurocommunism, Trotskyism, Democratic Socialism, and all the other various forms, many quite vehemently against the tendencies that began with Lenin, don't exist. If you tell people (especially in the US) about them, they refuse to believe they are any different from Leninists, Stalinists, etc. Lenin himself is often mixed up with Stalin. In truth, Lenin's policy differed strikingly from Stalin's and Lenin fiercely opposed Stalin's line in his final years, telling his supporters to get rid of Stalin as the man was starting to scare him. After Lenin's death, then again, Stalin loved to imply that he and Lenin had been great friends.
• The most important facet of Fascism is racial and national persecution as well as the notion of the race purity. Fascism was also founded by Adolf Hitler and the only fascist country was the Third Reich. Maybe Italy if you're lucky, but only as somewhere for Benito Mussolini to come from. Nothing ever happened in Fascist Italy! Notably averted with Life Is Beautiful, a movie about an Italian Jew that starts off comedic and ends heart-wrenching.
• It's ironic that "fascist" is synonymous with "racist" since Mussolini's movement didn't have an explicitly racist ideology. Mussolini didn't even believe in Hitler's ethnic cleansing since the Italian dictator felt that non-European peoples should be conquered and "converted" to European culture (which made his ideas little different from 19th century imperialists); it was Hitler who introduced the ideas of racist ideology, ethnic cleansing/extermination, and enslavement. Franco's fascist government (particularly the diplomatic service) didn't share the Nazis' racial ideologies, though Franco himself didn't mind them too much either. Franco was okay with serving them, such as by cataloging the Jews in Spain on Hitler's orders, but on the other hand, he was fine with his government's resources being used to protect or evacuate Jews in Nazi-occupied countries (much to the chagrin of the Nazis) as well. In the end, tens of thousands of Jews escaped Nazi Europe through Spain.
• Media would have you believe that all 'Aryan Race/Aryan Union' ideology was Hitler's doing. In actuality, it was all Himmler's doing (Hitler actually laughed at him for that), and was worse than Hitler. The July 20 Bomb Plot held Himmler's assassination just as vital as Hitler's.
• All Capitalism (a Marxist term) is based on cronyism and obsessed with money, even though Adam Smith pointed out in The Wealth of Nations that wealth is goods and services, not gold or silver. It is also industrial, even though America was a wholly agrarian nation at the founding.
• There's a widespread misconception that capitalism is a conservative economic principle, when in fact it always was — and still is — liberal. (Admittedly, the current habit of automatically associating liberalism with leftism and/or socialism, which is especially a U.S. thing, has done a great deal to confuse the issue.) More than that, capitalism (at least if it's free-market capitalism) can be said to be subversive and even countercultural, as economist Thomas Frank discusses in his book The Conquest of Cool.
• Much of what is now called "Stalinist" actually started with Lenin. Stalin's main additions were the cult of personality, adoption of supposedly "rightist" attributes (patriotism, pre-revolutionary military dress) and considerable paranoia. Things like the secret police, political repression, and prison camps all came from Leninism.
• Don't expect anyone to realise that the USSR was never, in fact, communist. While it adhered to a communist ideology as an ideal, it never achieved communism.
• Don't expect racist/supremacy movements to be anything other than "White supremacy". Black supremacy, Asian supremacy and whatnot simply do not exist, and if by some fluke they are acknowledged, they will be dismissed as harmless due to their relative lack of power and influence in the Western world.

Philosophers

• Aristotle: Made a lot of scientific theories without proof which are all debunked nowadays. Also gave us the Golden Mean Fallacy.
• Confucius and Laozi are the only Chinese philosophers to gain fame in the West. Their theories are basically Koan one-liners.
• The phrase "I think, therefore I am" indicating that René Descartes popped into existence long enough to make one pithy comment, which states that only people who think can be proven to exist — and then, only to themselves — then disappeared again.
• Diogenes lived in a barrel, looked for "good people" and snarked at Alexander the Great.
• Karl Marx: Often seen more as a writer than an actual philosopher. Known for his big beard.
• Friedrich Nietzsche. Usually referenced by being a Nietzsche Wannabe. Also, everyone knows he had an epic mustache and went mad later in life. Said "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Also said God is dead at one point, which is often used out of context. Popularly known as a racist and/or anti-Semite, when he was generally neither (his sister on the other hand...)
• Plato wrote something about a cave.
• Ayn Rand, if the character mentioning her is supposed to be edgy or in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
• Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialist who was together with Simone de Beauvoir and said that Hell are the others. Smoked a pipe and was cross-eyed.
• Socrates drank hemlock and died. Also he knew that he knew nothing. He definitely didn't come up with the Socratic method (known in some circles under the bizarre name "sea-lioning").
• Voltaire. Wrote Candide and supposedly said that he would fight for people's right to say things he disagreed with. Even though he never said that.

Politics

• American Presidents:
  • George Washington: Has golden/wooden teeth (which he had neither), chopped down a cherry tree (which he never did), couldn't tell a lie (yeah, right), father of the USA. On the quarter and $1 bill.
  • John Adams: Signed the Declaration of Independence before becoming president and was obnoxious and disliked.
  • Thomas Jefferson: Did a lot of important stuff that most people don't remember. On the nickel and the $2.
  • James Madison: Signed the Constitution, got us through the War of 1812.
  • James Monroe: Had a "doctrine".
  • John Quincy Adams: Son of John Adams. Allegedly "stole" the election from Jackson. Had sideburns.
  • Andrew Jackson: Revolution general known for establishing national banks and hostility towards Indians. On the $20.
  • Martin Van Buren: Was Dutch. Had pointy hair sticking out of his sides.
  • William Henry Harrison: Died after thirty days in office. Apparently didn't have a political career beforehand.
  • John Tyler: First to become president after another's death.
  • James K. Polk: President who fought the Mexican-American War and got Texas. And more than half of Mexico's former territory.^note Polk was responsible for adding more land to the US than any other President... even Jefferson.
  • Zachary Taylor: Died from eating rotten cherries.
  • Millard Fillmore: Took over from Taylor. Didn't do much else other than admit California and ignore the slavery issue.
  • Franklin Pierce: Continued to worsen the slavery issue.
  • James Buchanan: President who failed to stop the nation's split.
  • Abraham Lincoln: Had a beard, a high hat, born in a log cabin^note which he built with his own hands, shot in a theater, Civil War, held a four score and seven years ago speech at Gettysburg. On the penny and $5.
  • Andrew Johnson: President following Lincoln, was impeached and nearly thrown out of office.
  • Ulysses S. Grant: Civil War general who had a corrupt presidency. On the $50.
  • Rutherford B. Hayes: Won by one vote. First to use a telephone.
  • James Garfield: Got shot and killed a few months after taking office. Shares his name with a cartoon cat.
  • Chester A. Arthur: Replaced Garfield, most elegantly-dressed president.
  • Grover Cleveland: Served two non-consecutive terms.
  • Benjamin Harrison: The guy sandwiched between Cleveland's two terms.
  • Grover Cleveland: Served two non-consecutive terms.
  • William McKinley: Former namesake of a mountain. Best known as the guy whose assassination led to the presidency of...
  • Theodore Roosevelt: Hunter who believed in carrying a big stick, turned the country into a global superpower, had a mustache, teddy bears were named after him.
  • William Howard Taft: He was the heaviest President of all time, and so fat he got stuck in the White House bathtub.^note Taft lost a lot of that weight by the time he became Chief Justice of the United States.
  • Woodrow Wilson: President during World War I, his wife secretly ran the country after he had a stroke.
  • Warren G. Harding: Highly corrupt president who died in office.
  • Calvin Coolidge: Never said anything, ever.
  • Herbert Hoover: Single-handedly caused the Great Depression. Has a dam named after him.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt: Wheelchair user during World War II who said we had nothing to fear but fear itself. Held fireside chats on the radio. On the dime.
  • Harry Truman: Bombed Japan. Defeated Dewey.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Ike", former WWII general who got the nation through the height of the Cold War and the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Created highways. Used to be on the $1 coin.
  • John F. Kennedy: Went to bed with Marilyn Monroe, claimed to be a Berliner (not a jelly donut), had a missile crisis in Cuba and was shot while riding in a car by someone we still haven't identified properly. On the half-dollar.
  • Lyndon Johnson: Passed civil rights and welfare laws but got the USA deep into the Vietnam War.
  • Richard Nixon: Made V-signs with his hands, was not a crook, and got caught trying to cover up a burglary in the Watergate hotel, but was pardoned and now lives on as a head in a jar in the year 3000.
  • Gerald Ford: Only non-elected president in US history. Fell down a lot and pardoned Nixon.
  • Jimmy Carter: Peanut farmer who failed to get hostages out of Iran, until the day Reagan was inaugurated. Wimp who was attacked by a swimming rabbit. Did "malaise" speech (which didn't mention the word "malaise"). Has risen to much greater stature in his post-presidency for his humanitarian work.
  • Ronald Reagan: Will mention Nancy at some point, forget what he was talking about, fall asleep, say Tear down this wall, nuke the USSR or say "Well". Interesting case too of someone whose political career has overshadowed his movie career.
  • George H. W. Bush: Said "read my lips, no new taxes", Gulf War, enemy of Homer Simpson.
  • Bill Clinton: Did nothing for eight years but play saxophones & have an affair with an intern. And he didn't inhale. And his wife was the real president and she ran again in 2008 and 2016.
  • George W. Bush: A dumb Manchild who got rid of Saddam, but plunged the USA into an endless war in Iraq.
  • Barack Obama: First black American president. Getting universal healthcare (dubbed as "Obamacare") and getting rid of bin Laden, all the while getting constantly obstructed by Republicans.
  • Donald Trump: A billionaire businessman who writes a lot on Twitter. That's all we'll say about him for now.
  • Joe Biden: The current president, had the biggest amount of votes, delivered millions of vaccines, promises to work on infrastructure, used to have a stuttering problem, and is always sleepy. That's all we'll say about him for now, too.
  • There are over 40 presidents to date, but which ones will be mentioned in pop culture? At the very least, Washington, Lincoln, the current one, and the previous three or four at any moment in time. Jefferson,^note Though with him, it's mainly his actions during the American Revolution — long before he became president — that get talked about. That and, uh, the Sally Hemings matter. the Roosevelts, Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan are also likely to come up. If you need more, you'll likely get Adams, Madison, Jackson, Grant, Wilson, and everyone from Truman on. The others... not really.
• All Vice Presidents will be "recent" ones; think the ones in the last 50 years or so: Spiro Agnew, Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Mike Pence, and Kamala Harris. The only other ones worth noting are the ones who later became presidents (Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Arthur, Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, Nixon, LBJ, Ford, Bush Sr., and Joe Biden). The only other notable ones are famous for something unrelated to their vice presidency (Aaron Burr for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, George Clinton sharing his name with a funk musician, Elbridge Gerry for being the namesake for "Gerrymandering", John C. Calhoun for his pro-slavery activism, George Dallas for being the namesake of the Texas city, John C. Breckenridge for running against Lincoln for president, Adlai Stevenson I for being the grandfather of Eisenhower's Democratic opponent in 1952 and 1956 Adlai Stevenson II, Charles W. Fairbanks for being the namesake of the Alaska city, Hubert Humphrey for being the namesake for the Metrodome and Nixon's opponent in 1968). Some people are able to work out that LBJ must have been Vice President at some point if he became President when JFK was shot; however, that logic doesn't extend to Lincoln; after Lincoln was shot you'd think there just wasn't a President.
• A lot of Americans believe that the Secretary of State is next in line for the presidency after the Vice President, but it is actually the Speaker of the House of Representatives, followed by the President pro tempore of the Senate. The fact that Secretary of State Alexander Haig was apparently under that assumption following the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan did not help matters.
• American First Ladies:
  • Martha Washington: The first First Lady.
  • Dolly Madison: Saved a painting of George Washington from being burnt down. Got a brand of snack cakes named after her.
  • Mary Todd Lincoln: Known mostly because her husband is one of the best known presidents. Constantly depressed/had mental health issues.
  • Eleanor Roosevelt: The First Lady all presidential partners have to live up to.
  • Jacqueline Kennedy: JFK's widow, who later married a guy named Onassis, which is why she's also known as "Jackie O".
  • Betty Ford: Created a medical center.
  • Nancy Reagan: Wanted everyone to just say no, consulted fortune tellers.
  • Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dominant or bitchy, depending what side you're on. Being the first female presidential nominee for a major political party.
  • Michelle Obama: Being the first black First Lady.
  • Melania Trump: Was a model, had a cool (as in "icy") demeanor, spoke in a thick Eastern European accent (being Slovenian-born).
• America's enemy of the moment (or America itself, Depending on the Writer). A full list of America's enemies throughout history:
  • King George III
  • Benedict Arnold
  • Antonio López de Santa Anna
  • Jefferson Davis (assuming that Confederates are considered "un-American")
  • Kaiser Wilhelm II
  • Adolf Hitler
  • Benito Mussolini
  • Hideki Tojo and Emperor Hirohito
  • Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (assuming that demagogues are considered "un-American")
  • Ho Chi Minh (and the last part of his name will always be pronounced "min", even though the man himself pronounced it more like "ming")
  • The Solid South Democratic bloc (assuming that segregationists and racists are considered "un-American")
  • Josef Stalin
  • Mao Zedong
  • Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un
  • Fidel Castro
  • Nikita Khrushchev
  • The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (but only very rarely will people remember his first name) and Ali Khamenei
  • The Sandinistas
  • Manuel Noriega (and he's a footnote at best)
  • Saddam Hussein
  • Osama bin Laden
  • Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
  • Vladimir Putin
• Dictators? A tricky category, because to some people these statesmen may actually be benevolent leaders (usually by people who didn't experience their terrors themselves). For instance, Julius Caesar and Napoléon Bonaparte are technically dictators, but in some parts of Europe regarded in high esteem. Also leaders of democratic nations are generally not viewed as dictators by definition. To people whose countries have been invaded by their troops they may appear more as dictatorial powers. With all this mind, the popular choices are always:
  • Nazi dictators: Adolf Hitler. After all, he was the only one. ^note Karl Dönitz was purely titular.
  • European Fascist dictators: Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco. If you're lucky, you'll get Antonio Salazar (Portugal), Ante Pavelić (Croatia), Ioannis Metaxas and Georgios Papadopoulos (Greece), Ion Antonescu (Romania), Jozef Tizo (Slovakia), Ferenc Szalasi (Hungary), and Vidkun Quisling (Norway)
  • Latin-American Fascist dictators: Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), Juan Perón, Jorge Rafaela Videla (Argentina), Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier (Haiti), Manuel Noriega (Panama), Fulgencio Batista (Cuba), Rafael Trujillo (the Dominican Republic), Alberto Fujimori (Peru), and the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua.
  • Asian Communist dictators: Mao Zedong, Pol Pot (Cambodia), Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), and The Rulers of North Korea (Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un).
    • Other Asian dictators: Hirohito and Hideki Tojo (Japan), Ferdinand Marcos (The Philippines), Sukarno and Suharto (Indonesia), Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan), Saparmurat Niyazov and Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow (Turkmenistan), .
  • European Communist dictators: Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin (considered more dictatorial than any other Russian head of state during the Cold War), Nicolae Ceauceșcu (Romania), Enver Hoxha (Albania), Josip Broz Tito and Slobodan Milošević (Yugoslavia), Walter Ubricht and Erick Honecker (East Germany), and Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus).
  • Latin-American Communist dictators: Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl are the most famous. Also of note are Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. To a lesser degree Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.
  • African dictators: Idi Amin, King Leopold I (who was the Belgian King) and Sese Seko Mobutu (Congo), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Ahmed Sekou Toure (Guinea), Hastings Banda (Malawi), Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), Gnassingbe Eyadema (Togo), Teodoro Obiang (Equatorial Guinea), Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Central African Republic), Haile Selassie and Mengistu Haile Mariam (Ethiopia), Paul Biya (Cameroon), Paul Kagame (Rwanda), ...
  • Arabian/North African/Middle Eastern dictators: The Three Pashas (Ottoman Empire), Atatürk and Erdoğan (Turkey), Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Reza Shah and his son Shah Muhammed Reza Pahlevi of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ali Khamenei, Ilham Aliyev (Azerbaijan), Hafez and Bashar al-Assad (Syria), Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Omar al-Bashir (Sudan),...
  • Mad Roman emperors: Caligula, Nero, Tiberius, Commodus, Caracalla.
• The only Ancient Greek states are Athens and Sparta, which only existed during the Persian wars, and the Empire of Alexander the Great. Also, Sparta didn't exist until 300 came out. Hellenism does not exist at all. Greek history after the Roman Empire is too insignificant to merit mention.
• Ancient Egypt:
  • Cleopatra VII and Tutankhamun are the only Egyptian pharaohs. Ironically, although she was the last pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra was ethnically Greek, which is usually overlooked.
  • Queen Nefertiti, whom most people wouldn't recognize by name, but would recognize from a certain statue of her. Incidentally, Nefertiti just happens to be King Tut's stepmother. And his mother-in-law.
  • Ramses II: Hooray, Ramses the Great is known as well... though outside of history circles, mainly just as "The Pharaoh from the Exodus". (And the Pharaoh from The Ten Commandments.) Even though the Pharaoh in Exodus isn't named and there are three Pharaohs in The Ten Commandments.
• Ancient Rome:
  • Caesar, Augustus, Nero, Caligula and Claudius. Constantine the Great is known to Christians for making Christianity the state religion^note He, uh, didn't actually do that — but it is what he's known for.... Hadrian is known for Hadrian's Wall. Marcus Aurelius, Caracalla, Elagabalus, Commodus, and Tiberius also regularly pop up in lists of daft Roman Emperors.
• England (and it really is just "England"):
  • "England" has only had four sovereigns: Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, and Elizabeth II. The English themselves also know of four others — William The Conqueror, Henry II, Alfred the Great, and the current one (Charles III). Americans know King George III. For obvious reasons. Scots probably know of Edward Longshanks as well. Cultivated people will also know Richard III from Shakespeare's play Richard III. King James is best known for his Bible, otherwise he's only known in Scotland.
    • Also Richard the Lionheart (Richard I), if only for his nickname; his brother, bad King John, only for Robin Hood and the Magna Carta; and King Arthur, who may not have existed, and may not have been a king even if he did (and most definitely wasn't English).
    • The Irish know about Oliver Cromwell, but only for what he did when he went to visit them.
  • "England" has also had at most six Prime Ministers: Benjamin Disraeli (and many people only associate him with Family Guy), Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain (only to emphasize how much better Churchill was), Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and whoever is currently in office.
  • Averted on an episode of The Simpsons: "Pitt the Elder!" "Lord Palmerston!" Still, they're both only remembered for said reference.
  • Princess Diana. And only because of her tragic death. In The '90s she was well-known abroad for her messy falling-out with and eventual divorce from Prince Charles. Of course, the mockery mostly ceased with her death. Charles is still fair game though.
• France:
  • France had only one president, Charles de Gaulle, mostly remembered for his activities during World War II and long presidential term during the 1950s and 1960s. And his height makes it impossible to overlook him.
  • The current head of state, whoever that is, might get mentioned (currently Emmanuel Macron).
  • Marie-Antoinette (who liked cakes more than bread and was the only person who died in the guillotine... besides her husband). She was Austrian and married the King of France, which to be fair some films and books do mention.
  • All the Kings of France were called Louis (which is usually limited to XIV, XV, and XVI), except for Charlemagne, Charles VII and Napoleon.
• Grand Duchess Anastasia (who will be called a "princess")
• German monarchs? Kaiser Wilhelm II. Apparently there was never a Wilhelm I.
  • Chancellors? Otto von Bismarck and Adolf Hitler. Maybe Paul Von Hindenburg will get a mention, and more recently Angela Merkel.
  • Prussian monarchs? Frederick the Great.
• Austrian emperors? Franz Joseph.
• Russian tsars? Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Nicholas II.
• Holy Roman Emperors? Otto the Great, Frederick II, Charles V, and Frederick Barbarossa.
• Spanish monarchs? Ferdinand and Isabella, and Philip II.
• Ottoman Sultans? Suleiman the Magnificent.
• Persian kings? Cyrus the Great.
  • Xerxes I, if you're a fan of 300. Or you're Edward Lear.
  • Darius III, but only as the enemy of Alexander the Great.
• Chinese emperors? Qin Shi Huang. Maybe a Puyi or Wu Zetian if you're especially lucky.
• Princess Grace (in works from before her death in 1982).
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (even though he's not the true leader of Iran; that would be the Ayatollah).
  • For Westerners, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the Iranian boogeyman during his day. Most of us rarely think about any of his successors (Ali Khamenei as of this writing).
• Australian Prime Ministers? Harold Holt and whoever is currently in office (the current PM is Anthony Albanese) and maybe John Howard, Robert Menzies and John Curtin.
• Applies to Strawman Political. The only conservative character we ever seem to see is either the "Bible-thumper" or the Corrupt Corporate Executive. The "paranoid libertarian" conservative (most famously seen in Dr. Strangelove) was a popular stock figure during the Cold War and has recently been making a comeback.
• Any character noticeably more left-wing than average and created after the 1960s will most likely be either a New-Age Retro Hippie or a Dirty Commie. The Bourgeois Bohemian has been showing up with increasing frequency since about the late Eighties.

Science

• The biggest problem with studying the origins of life and the universe is the ludicrously small reference pool of 1 (we only know of one life-bearing planet, and one universe that sprang into being).
• Most people have heard of Carbon-14 dating (and 9 times out of 10, it doesn't even work like it does on television). It's the default dating method in the public conscious. What most people are not familiar with is Uranium-Lead Dating, which is much more accurate and has a much wider range of dates (1 million to 4.5 billion), Rubidium-Strontium, another form of dating closely related to U-Pb Dating, or the others: Uranium-Thorium, Potassium-Argon, and Samarium-neodymium, all of which are older, more reliable, and have a wider date range than radiocarbon.
• Asked to name a periodical for scientists, the average American will name National Geographic (which isn't one) or maybe Scientific American (which is, if you're feeling generous). Asked to name a scientific journal, they might come up with JAMA^note in full, JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association or, if they were science geeks in school, Nature.

Scientists

• Galileo Galilei, who was persecuted by the church (for reasons that have more to do with raising a middle finger to authority). To most people, he's just Galileo, or worse, he's Galileo Figaro.
• Nikolaus Copernicus, who died before he was actually persecuted by the church. He was a German living in Prussia, today Poland, because we've already covered that there's nothing of note in Central Europe.
• Sigmund Freud (Took a photo while holding a cigar. Invented all forms of psychology and reduced all problems to sex with people's mothers or Compensating for Something.)
• Carl Jung, notable for being the only other psychologist than Freud.
• Albert Einstein (had weird hair and a mustache, "invented" E=mc², stuck his tongue out)
• J. Robert Oppenheimer "invented" the nuclear bomb, when this is not being attributed to Einstein instead.
• Isaac Newton ("invented" gravity when an apple fell on his head, had long hair)
• Charles Darwin ("invented" evolution, and is supposedly worshiped as a god by scientists, had a big beard)
  • Evolution of animal species, obviously, because no other living thing evolves. You might have heard something about a guy named Lamarck, but only as that guy that talked about giraffe necks and was wrong.
• Thomas Edison ("invented" the light bulb)
• Nikola Tesla (Had a picture taken of him in front of a lightning machine.) Tesla is a Johnny-Come-Lately; he's gotten a lot more press since the 1990s, and is usually depicted either as a total nutjob (which he was) or a misunderstood genius (which he also was).
• Dmitri Mendeleev (invented some kind of table, presumably for putting vodka on)
• Marie Curie is usually the only woman scientist that gets mentioned in media (though Rosalind Franklin pops up from time to time). Discovered radioactivity (no) and the element radium (yes — and polonium too, but that's much less well known). She is known for being a woman and for getting killed by her research. xkcd lampshaded this.
• Stephen Hawking (for being in a wheelchair wearing glasses while talking with a funny robot voice)
• Carl Sagan (who said "billions and billions" a lot)
• Richard Feynman (for being an eccentric skirt chaser)
• Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Elisha Who? (It's Gray, by the way).
• Neil deGrasse Tyson (is singlehandedly responsible for Pluto being demoted from planet status)
• Richard Dawkins (for inventing the word "meme" and his atheist crusades)

Technology

• To most people, the only modern phones are those by Apple and Samsung. If you're lucky, you might know someone who has an Android phone by Motorola or OnePlus, or one of Google's Pixel line of Android phones. Back in the 2010s, if you were even luckier, you may have known someone who owned a Windows Phone but wasn't a Microsoft employee.
• Ride-hailing apps? Uber. And sometimes Lyft.

Universe in Science Fiction

• Ask someone to name all the planets in the solar system, and they'll eagerly respond with "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (which will always be giggled about), Neptune, and Pluto" (which is now technically a "dwarf planet"). This is largely thanks to popular mnemonics such as "My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas" or even the deliciously meta "My very excellent memory just served up nine planets." Ask someone to name all the moons in the solar system, and..."Well...there's 'the Moon'...and...uhhh..." (no mention of, say, Titan, or Phobos and Deimos). Documentaries and other media tend to have a handful of go-to facts about each celestial body.
  • One of the most well known facts about Mercury is the massive temperature difference between its day and night side, due to the lack of an atmosphere to hold on to heat.
  • Venus is extremely hot (even hotter than Mercury, due to its thick greenhouse-gas-filled atmosphere) and has a day longer than its year. Despite this, a combination of its similar size to Earth and the existence of a zone of relatively comfortable conditions in its upper atmosphere have made it an appealing target for science fiction stories involving aerial colonies.
  • Astronomically speaking, The Moon is best known for causing the bulk of Earth's tides, and for being tidally locked. The resulting "dark side of the Moon"^note or, more accurately, the "far side", since it receives just as much illumination from the Sun thus remained a subject of mystery until it was finally seen by humans for the first time in 1959. The side that is visible from Earth is known for having what looks like a face on it. Finally, thanks to the Apollo program, it's the only celestial body other than Earth that humans have visited in person.
  • Mars is nicknamed the Red Planet due to the most easily identifiable fact about it — it's red. It's also generally assumed to be the most hospitable planet in the solar system other than Earth, and so is one of the most common (if not the most common) subject of stories about extraterrestrial life and colonization. Also helping is the fact that its day length is only slightly longer than Earth's, making Earthlings particularly well acclimated in this regard.
    • Anyone who does know about Phobos and Deimos probably thinks there's demons there.
  • Although the asteroid belt as a whole is well known, the only specific asteroids that exist are the ones on a collision course with Earth. The one exception is usually Ceres (despite now being a dwarf planet), because it's the largest asteroid and — as it will always, and proudly, be pointed out — it's "as big as Texas." Trojan asteroids (i.e. ones located outside the actual asteroid belt and instead co-orbiting with one of the planets) will rarely be mentioned.
  • Jupiter itself is known for its size and for the Great Red Spot.
    • Io is known for its volcanic activity and resulting colorful surface.
    • Europa is considered one of the prime candidates in the Solar System for extant extraterrestrial life, due to its presumed subsurface ocean.
    • Ganymede is known for being the largest moon in the solar system.
    • Callisto is somewhat overshadowed by the other Galilean moons, despite the fact that it would probably be the easiest one to colonize due to its relative lack of radiation from Jupiter. It is, however, somewhat well known for being covered in craters.
  • Saturn is best known for its highly photogenic ring system.^note Although all four gas giants have rings, the others are much harder to spot and thus weren't discovered until the 1970s and 1980s. Other than that, it's the only planet that's less dense than water, and any work that mentions this will make sure to point out that it can therefore "float in a bathtub", despite the obvious problem of obtaining such a large body of water.
    • If Mimas gets any mention, it'll be due to its coincidental resemblance to the Death Star.
    • Enceladus is known for its subsurface ocean, although to a slightly lesser extent than Europa.
    • Titan is by far the most well known of Saturn's moons. It's the only solar system world with an atmospheric density similar to Earth (albeit with a vastly different composition) and the only one with stable bodies of liquid. It's also a frequent subject of science fiction, in part due to the potential of it naturally becoming habitable in the very distant future, after the sun turns into a red giant.
    • Iapetus is known for its very distinct black and white sides.
  • Other than its name, Uranus is known for its extremely high axial tilt. It's also the first planet that's generally assumed to be too dim to be seen by the naked eye.^note Its apparent magnitude varies between 5.4 and 6.0, making it faintly visible if you know where to look.
  • Neptune is mainly distinguished by its deep blue appearance. Other than that, it's known for the Great Dark Spot (albeit less so than Jupiter) and for the extremely high wind speeds that pervade the entire planet.
    • Triton is known for its retrograde orbit, being the only large moon to travel in the opposite direction compared to its planet's rotation.
  • Since 2006, Pluto has been primarily known for its demotion from planet to dwarf planet,^note in actuality, Pluto is not alone in this regard — the first few asteroids suffered the same fate in the 19th century, and of them, only Ceres even got the consolation prize of later being repromoted to dwarf planet status once that term was established and the resulting jokes about its newfound second-class status.
  • The Kuiper belt, which includes Pluto, is less frequently featured than the asteroid belt, and if anything is best known as the reason that Pluto is no longer considered a planet. Mentions of centaurs, the scattered disc, and other populations of objects in the outskirts of the solar system are even rarer.
  • The only comet is Halley's (which always gets mispronounced "Haley's" thanks to a certain pioneering 1950s musical group). If Hale-Bopp is remembered, people will mistakenly say it crashed into Jupiter in 1994 (that was actually Shoemaker Levy 9, while Hale-Bopp was the bright comet of 1997).
• If it's not just stars, the background is either the Crab Nebula, or the Horsehead Nebula.
• The only stars anyone visits are Rigel, Alpha Centauri, Antares, "Orion", and the "Belt of Orion" (the latter two of which aren't even individual stars). "Alpha Centauri" is always one star. Alpha Centauri B does not exist, or so would have you media believed. Neither does Proxima Centauri, despite being closer.
• Betelgeuse is popular, but only because it sounds funny (and has a Monster Clown from Beetlejuice indirectly named after it).
• When it comes to stargazing, the only stars are Polaris, the Big Dipper (a constellation known only by its nickname, which Polaris will be thought to be in) and Sirius... and that last one only occasionally (and often confused with Polaris when it does get mentioned). The only non-zodiac constellation known by its proper name is Orion.
  • The Big Dipper (also the Plough) will be called a constellation, despite only being a part of the actual constellation Ursa Major, containing barely a third of the stars and less than a quarter of the area of the whole thing.
• The only galaxies are the Milky Way and Andromeda. Perhaps justified, as those are two of the only known galaxies lucky enough to have names that are not cryptic (Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte), or numbered (Andromedas I through X), with the exception of the Triangulum galaxy. Admittedly, that last one really should be used more often because its name is awesome.
• The only crewed space missions ever were "John Glenn's flight" (Friendship 7), Apollo 11, Apollo 13, the Challenger disaster, maybe the Columbia disaster, and whatever one is going on right now.
  • The only individual astronauts to be discussed by name are Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Sally Ride, and Christa McAuliffe. The last two will often be confused because there haven't been many female astronauts, and McAuliffe wasn't an astronaut but a teacher who went on one ill-fated trip.
  • Yuri Gagarin is the only Russian who ever went there.
• The only robotic space missions ever were the Voyagers and Pioneers (which may be conflated), some form of Mars rover, and whatever ones have recently been in the news.
• Sputnik 1 is the only satellite ever to rate a name, which usually won't include its number in fiction. Often it'll turn up intact decades after launch, despite the real one's having burned up in the atmosphere after only three months in orbit.
  • In Western fiction, it's often also Russia's sole achievement in space exploration besides Mir.
    • And dog-killing.
  • The Hubble Space Telescope is the only astronomical satellite that exists, and any particularly-impressive space image will be attributed to it, even those beyond the actual Hubble's capabilities.
• Light-years, and to a lesser extent, parsecs, are the only units of astronomical measurement (Astronomical Units, or AUs, are reserved solely for "hard" Sci Fi). Any alien race capable of star travel encountering humans will instinctively know how long a light year is, even if there's no way they could know how long a year is on Earth. Add to that "hours" and "days". (Sometimes aliens acknowledge that their hours and days differ, though.) Even a depressingly large number of human beings mistake light years for being a measurement of time instead of distance.
• If aliens visit Earth, they'll almost always be from Mars (or, if they're female aliens, from Venus). If you are watching TV in the 1950s. No aliens are ever from Mars any more.

Universities

• The USA has the sum total of four colleges or universities or whatever you're calling them: MIT (the nerds); Harvard (the smart kids); Yale (the rich kids); and Brown (the Butt-Monkey). They also know of Princeton, but only because of its association with Einstein.
• The only British universities are Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics.
• The only Catholic university? Notre Dame — and just for football.
• No one ever thinks of Nalanda Mahavihara in northeastern India, founded around 400 A.D. — even though most historians consider it the world's oldest university.
• Any other college, and there's nothing there but a football and/or basketball team.
• It has its own trope: Ivy League for Everyone.

Other

• Fethishes? The only fetish that exists is getting spanked by someone wearing black leather.

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