Misused: Urban Legend Of Zelda

The trope title, description, and laconic all suggest that this trope was originally intended for a specific narrow definition: well-known but incorrect rumors (i.e. urban legends) about games.

So... why is there an entire list of examples (as well as a significant number of wicks) that are not games? It would be one thing if these were in-universe examples about game rumors (e.g. an episode of a TV show where a character is trying to unlock Luigi in Super Mario 64), but the majority of non-game examples have nothing to do with games.

This probably leaves us with two options:

• Cut non-game examples, keeping the original definition of the trope. These examples could possibly be moved to a separate trope.
• Redefine the trope, keeping the non-game examples. This would likely make the trope title an Artifact Title, unless we choose to rename it.

edited 11th Mar '18 3:33:19 PM by PeabodySam

Broaden the trope and no other change would be my call here.

I vote to broaden the definition as I don't see why Urban Legend of Zelda should be limited to video game examples since urban legends or false rumors about works aren't something exclusive to video games. Tropes Are Flexible, after all.

edited 11th Mar '18 12:09:12 PM by ADrago

Broaden the trope.

I could almost see a trope split here:

Urban Legend of Zelda: Examples of urban legends centered around video games

Pop Culture Urban Legend: A sister trope for any Urban Legend related to popular-culture or landmarks.

Urban Legend of Zelda is enough of a well-known trope you can't really rename it to fit the broadened form so I think a split to preserve the original trope would be best.

edited 11th Mar '18 1:13:55 PM by shoboni

Isn't video games technically a part of pop culture? I really don't see why false rumours about video games should intrinsically be different from false rumours about other media.

I'd say broaden the tropee.

Well, yeah.

I'm just saying the video game specific version is such a Trope of Legend that there should be a split based on medium in this case.

That would be overcomplicating this, I think. Expand and no split.

See though.

Then we'd have an artifact title and conflict between on-site and off-site use because people outside the wiki use the term to refer specifically to gaming related urban legends.

I agree with this. Cut the misuse and do a wick check, but leave the definition as-is.

I disagree with trashing the misuse.

I say split it and move the non-gaming examples to a new trope since there's clearly enough there for it.

edited 11th Mar '18 2:44:08 PM by shoboni

Expand it is my vote. I feel it works just fine, and the fact it has "Legend" in the trope title makes it clear enough that it's just for fiction. The only thing that it might not cover at best is real life stuff, but the rest it works fine for as it stands with the only change being "not limited to video games".

We don't need a The Same, but More Specific version for video games, even if it has a handy, pre-made name. It's still pointless, and needlessly confusing.

Expand.

It's our job to abide by outside usage though and the fact of the matter is that this is a pre-existing term for video game urban legends.

It literally violates our mission statement to throw that to wind and broaden OUR definition of the term instead of splitting off to abide by the actual usage.

This. We have separate pages for Vaporware and Development Hell for much the same reason.

for making the trope not video-game specific.

There's little reason for split beyond "original intention". Tropes evolve all the time. If the current entries make the page so massive, a split would be fine. But that's not the case from what I understand.

It still fits the point, being all about urban legends. Just fictional only ones.

Lastly, the point of TRS is doing something to fix the issue. Expanding a trope is well within that category. It still fixes the issue by making it more clear that it can cover more than just video game examples. It also means a lot less de-wicking and is actually a simple fix by changing a little bit of text. Sometimes extra work doesn't really resolve anything, since the trope is honestly working just fine. It was misused in its original intention, of course, but letting it evolve also resolves it rather well.

We don't get to decide a trope has "evolved" because of how the page is used internally on the wiki

edited 12th Mar '18 7:19:40 PM by shoboni

Yes, we do. That's one of the things repair shop routinely does. Repair shop is the only place where you can, but this is repair shop, so... :)

Which is a major problem because it's resulted in several tropes that have been redefined in baffling ways that go against common, outside usage.

But that's getting off-topic so it's stick to discussing the issue with applying that HERE.

Aren't we all forgetting the circumstances of the trope? An Urban Legend of Zelda isn't just a popular rumor about a video game. It's specifically the claim that a certain sequence of inputs will do something unique within the game or unlock hidden content.

Bear in mind that the entire list of video game examples on the page does not at any point discuss rumors and urban legends about meta aspects of the game, solely claims about hidden ingame content. So no urban legends about the development of the game, no theories about the inlfuences the developers drew from, etc.

On the other hand, the non video game examples are made up entirely of theories, rumors, and urban legends that fall into a number of categories, such as the following: rumors about future developments in the work that later turn out to be false (what we would call jossed WM Gs); urban legends about the production of the work that are known to be false (such as claiming that the prevalence of giant spiders in Tolkien's works was due to his arachnophobia, when he actually held no fear of spiders); and mistaken trivia about alternate versions of works such as international cuts of films (such as the King Kong vs Godzilla entry).

Video games are unique because of their interactive nature, and the trope was described entirely with this principle in mind. so I propose we remove all non-video game examples and create a new trope specifically regarding common misconceptions regarding non-interactive aspects of fiction, including the development and influences of video games, to allow the uniquely interactive nature of Urban Legend of Zelda to remain unchanged, and to preserve the purpose of the trope name.

edited 13th Mar '18 12:56:18 PM by A_Really_Big_Cat

I agree and second that:

Split the trope and create a new trope for media and pop-culture related legends for the non-gaming section.

We already have Urban Legends. Many of the examples on Urban Legend of Zelda should be moved there.

I think ULOZ should just be a subtrope of Urban Legends. By default, it will mostly pertain to games. ULOZ stories are mostly about "Do this and get this highly sought-after thing", but there aren't many Real Life examples of that. Unless you count things like certain genres of creepypastas, which only rarely result in people actually believing in them on a large scale.

Maybe we could keep things like undercover cops being required to tell you they're cops (that's not actually on the ULOZ page, but it's an example of what we could put there instead as it's a very common myth). At the very least, there's a lot that should be moved from the ULOZ page and put on the Urban Legends page instead.

edited 13th Mar '18 11:25:40 PM by BackgroundGuy

The thing is there is no difference between Urban Legends in works and Urban Legend of Zelda, like watch TV at midnight on a rainy day and you will see your soulmate. Thats an urban legend in Persona 4, that is just the same as 'ooh you can revive Aeris' rumor for FFVII and such.

There kind of is.

This trope dealing with tangible, realistic rumors like hidden secrets in games or lost episodes. Not paranormal happenings.