History Main / InexplicableCulturalTies

* ''Series/FarScape'' The Peacekeepers (and therefore the human character who has borrowed their uniform as casual dress) wear DM boots, or biker boots. Presumably someone invented motorbikes at some point, but Docs?

* ''Literature/Nightfall1990'', by Creator/IsaacAsimov and Creator/RobertSilverberg: The forward to the story tells the audience that it might seem more exotic for alien characters to say "[[CallARabbitASmeerp The podnaug is chatnik forgs away, we'll take the whekk]]", but that's just going to [[WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief break the reader's immersion]] as they have to pore over your glossary. As you're [[TranslationConvention translating the rest of the words anyway]], you'd be better off just writing "The airport is fifty miles away, we'll take the car."

** The same is true of many of the character names in ''Literature/Dune''. "Paul" and "Jessica" and other modern-sounding names are actually translations of the Galach names the characters would use.

* Lampshaded In ComicBook/BuckGodotZapGunForHire. The expository encyclopedia explains that every species has some kind of Ninja and nobody knows why.
* Discussed in ''ComicBook/{{DCRWBY}}'' as Zatanna and Wonder Woman express interest in the fact that the characters and themes in the ''Franchise/{{RWBY}}'' universe have similar ties to historic figures and stories in their universe, with Pyrrha Nikos' ties to King Pyrrhus and Jaune Arc's ties to Joan of Arc mentioned as well as Team RWBY's ties to their fairy tales. In turn Blake mentions a Faunus story about a city called Gotham caught in an eternal fight between an orphan knight and a deadly hydra, not realizing it's almost similar to Batman's story.

*** Though Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine did have some of this in reverse. Bashir and Garak would regularly trade commentary on the literature of each other's races and their bafflement by it. Garak doesn't believe that ''Theatre/JuliusCaesar'' was a tragedy so much as a farce [[ValuesDissonance because the Cardassians find the idea of a ruler not anticipating treachery to be ludicrous]] (although he apparently revises his opinion once he comes to better understand the cultural context), and he believes that the lesson of the "Boy who Cried Wolf" is "never tell the same lie twice" -- though this may be more Garak than his society. (He does seem [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids quite alarmed that this passes for a children's story among humans.]])

** KlingonsLoveShakespeare! Though they tend to miss the meaning in some works. ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' is a tragedy because the two children let their love come before their family feud and died for their treachery. Hamlet is not well liked because Hamlet is very hesitant to seek rightful vengeance.

*** Though Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine did have some of this in reverse. Bashir and Garak would regularly trade commentary on the literature of each other's races and their bafflement by it. Garak doesn't believe that ''Theatre/JuliusCaesar'' was a tragedy so much as a farce [[ValuesDissonance because the Cardassians find the idea of a ruler not anticipating treachery to be ludicrous]] (although he apparently revises his opinion once he cones to better understand the cultural context), and he believes that the lesson of the "Boy who Cried Wolf" is "never tell the same lie twice" -- though this may be more Garak than his society. (He does seem [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids quite alarmed that this passes for a children's story among humans.]])

* In ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', the [[AllTrollsAreDifferent troll]] civilization of the planet Alternia displays a staggering similarity to ours, notably in culture--they even have [[Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir the same TV shows]] and a Creator/WillSmith. Justified, however, in that [[spoiler:our universe (and thus Earth) were actually created by trolls, implying that the similarities are a result of humanity having vague memories of their makers' civilization and replicating them.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'', one episode deals with an alien terrorist holding an arcade hostage solely to invoke DieHardOnAnX since he's from a culture that reveres ''Film/DieHard''. He states that ''Film/DieHard'' is a monomyth that various cultures across the universe have created under different names.

** Lampshaded when G'Kar mentions that, with no explanation that he has ever been able to determine, every sentient race in the galaxy has, apparently independently, come up with a dish that looks, smells, and tastes identical to what the Narn call "breen" and humans call "Swedish meatballs". He says that if he could discover the reason behind this, he would likely know a great deal more about how the universe works. He's right, if he means that he would know that he's in a television show written by someone who felt like giving a ShoutOut to ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' and its nigh-identical gag with gin and tonic.[[note]]Technically, the ''Hitchhiker's'' gag was about many very different drinks having the same name on every planet rather than many very similar dishes all existing under different names in every culture, but same point.[[/note]]

* All over the place in the new ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}''. Even though it's [[HandWave handwaved]] by repeatedly stating that[[spoiler: all of this has happened before, all of this will happen again]], the similarities are glaring, with the skyline of UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}, vintage Earth dresses, cars and army trucks, a Myth/ClassicalMythology identical to our own, the Latin alphabet, Western names, Music/BobDylan... [[spoiler: and all of this supposedly repeating itself 150,000 years later down to the details on our Earth without any explanation whatsoever.]]
** Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom gets its name for this trope from a specific instance of this: The [[https://www.alternatehistory.com/wiki/doku.php?id=alternate_history:citroen_ds_incident "Citroen DS Incident"]], after a user criticized the show's use of this trope by pointing out that apparently the Battlestar Galactica humans have, well, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_DS Citroen DS]].

** The episode [[SpaceRomans "Bread and Circuses"]] actually [[HandWave handwaves]] it, citing something called "Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planet Development", an alternative title for this trope.

* [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in the Franchise/StargateVerse by means of an AncientAstronauts premise.
** Although rather less justified when you consider that the [[PuppeteerParasite Goa'uld]] had been thrown off Earth some time during ancient Egyptian times, yet many planets had cultures from much later times on Earth even though the humans transplanted there could not have actually been from those cultures. Similarly, the Ancients, and planets they had influenced, were generally portrayed as similar to Roman, Greek and Arthurian cultures which only existed long after they had [[AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence disappeared]].
* ''Franchise/StarTrek''
** The original ''Series/{{Star Trek|the Original Series}}'' is very aware of this trope (as evidenced by the opening quote) but plays it straight most of time. The episode [[SpaceRomans "Bread and Circuses"]] actually [[HandWave handwaves]] it, citing something called "Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planet Development", an alternative title for this trope.

*** The above two examples, plus the episode with the Roman planet, were actually retconned/handwaved/explained in much later released reference materials, where a scientist determined that sometime in the distant past, the Sol system passed through some kind of NegativeSpaceWedgie that caused the entire solar system to be duplicated at the subatomic level. One "nearly perfect" duplicate was created in the form of Miri's planet, and two less-perfect duplicates were created in the form of the Omega Glory planet, and the Roman planet. All ended up diverging from the original Earth, but the latter two diverged a lot more than Miri's planet, which was identical until the mid 20th century. It should be noted that Voyager encountered a NegativeSpaceWedgie just like this (only smaller) in the Delta Quadrant, and it caused a nearly perfect duplication of the ship. These anomalies go a long way to explaining the "parallel planet development" law posited in the original series.
*** Another later retcon occurs in the ''Literature/StarTrekDepartmentOfTemporalInvestigations'' novel ''Forgotten History'': Miri's Earth is actually from a parallel universe, and the Yangs were ''given'' their US symbols by an Earth ship a mere hundred years before Kirk visited.

*** Though Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine did have some of this in reverse. Bashir and Garak would regularly trade commentary on the literature of each other's race and their bafflement by it. Garak doesn't believe that ''Theatre/JuliusCaesar'' was a tragedy so much as a farce [[ValuesDissonance because the Cardassians find the idea of a ruler not anticipating treachery to be ludicrous]] (although he apparently revised his opinion once he came to better understand the cultural context), and he believes that the lesson of the "Boy who Cried Wolf" is "never tell the same lie twice" though this may be more Garak than his society (He does seem [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids quite alarmed that this passes for a children's story among humans.]])). Conversely, Barshir finds the "The Never-Ending Sacrifice", a tale of generations of one family all dutifully working for the state and their family and a Cardassian great work of literature, to be boring because of the conformity, which is not something admired by humans. Later he expresses his disdain that modern human literature is largely adapting alien works to human settings, rather than creating their own unique works.

While distant planets in fiction are typically different from Earth in many ways (see for example PlanetOfHats, GenericistGovernment, SingleBiomePlanet), they also exhibit astounding cultural similarities: [[AliensSpeakingEnglish aliens tend to speak English]] in the [[OrphanedEtymology dialect of a 21st-century speaker of English]], their written language, numerals and methods of time measurement are conveniently identical to Earth standards or can be easily converted. You might even spot European cars or [[UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} Vancouver landmarks]]. All societies will include two genders, which register as very like human categories of "male" and "female," down to females who have Latin-sounding names ending in ''-a'', wear their hair long and their heels high. Expect to come across proper names imported from Earth.

** Likewise, different accents and dialects of English are used to distinguish characters' affiliation, background or species to the point that a British actor in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' was given an American accent in post to conform to the Rebel-American, Empire-British pattern. In universe it is explained that British accents are from the core worlds, while the Rebels generally came from the outer rim.

* ''Literature/Nightfall1990'', by Creator/IsaacAsimov and Creator/RobertSilverberg: The forward to the story tells the audience that it might seem more exotic for alien characters to say "[[CallARabbitASmeerp The podnaug is chatnik forgs away, we'll take the whekk]]", but that's just going to [[WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief break the reader's immersion]] as they have to pore over your glossary. As you're [[TranslationConvention translating the rest of the words anyway]], you'd be better off just writing "The airport is fifty miles away, we'll take the car."

* {{Deconstructed}} in Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin's novelette ''The Pathways of Desire'', where more and more suspicious resemblances to American stereotyped notions of "primitive" tribes turn up in the HumanAliens' culture. In the end [[spoiler:the adolescent fantasies of a boy back on Earth turn out to have [[RealityWarper created the entire planet]]]].
* One of the footnotes in ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' mentions that every intelligent species independently came up with a drink whose name sounds like "Gin and Tonic". Of course the drinks themselves vary widely, from water served slightly above room temperature to being able to kill a cow at two hundred paces.

* All over the place in the new ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}''. Even though it's [[HandWave handwaved]] by repeatedly stating that[[spoiler: all of this has happened before, all of this will happen again]], the similarities are glaring, with the skyline of UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}, vintage Earth dresses, cars and army trucks, a Myth/ClassicalMythology identical to our own, the Latin alphabet, Western names, Music/BobDylan... [[spoiler: and all of this supposedly repeating itself 150,000 years later down to the details on our Earth without any explanation whatsoever.]]
** Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom gets its name for this trope from a specific instance of this: The [[https://www.alternatehistory.com/wiki/doku.php?id=alternate_history:citroen_ds_incident "Citroen DS Incident"]], after a user criticized the show's use of this trope by pointing out that apparently the Battlestar Galactica humans have, well, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_DS Citroen DS]].
* Mostly [[AvertedTrope averted]] on ''Series/BabylonFive'': the various RubberForeheadAliens' home worlds are usually pretty alien, especially Minbar, and the aliens have distinctly alien cultures.
** The Centauri, however, qualify as [[SpaceRomans European nobility in space]] (with the occasional bodyguard, attendant, and courtesan thrown in), blending the elaborate costumes of pre-Revolutionary Bourbon Frenchmen and late 18th century Prussia with the intrigue-heavy culture of Renaissance Italians and/or Early Imperial Romans, down to freakishly Italianesque names such as Londo Mollari, Vir Coto, Cartagia, and the eye-roll-inducing name of Antono Refa.
** The hat of the Minbari is tradition, and much of their behavior could be compared to a somewhat idealized (discounting that whole KillAllHumans thing, of course) version of several human cultures. It is their architecture that is alien rather then their culture.
** Lampshaded when G'Kar mentions that, with no explanation that he has ever been able to determine, every sentient race in the galaxy has, apparently independently, come up with a dish that looks, smells, and tastes identical to what the Narn call "breen" and humans call "Swedish meatballs". He says that if he could discover the reason behind this, he would likely know a great deal more about how the universe works. He's right, if he means that he would know that he's in a television show written by someone who felt like giving a ShoutOut to ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' and its nigh-identical gag with gin and tonic.[[note]]Technically, the ''Hitchhiker's'' gag was about many very different drinks having the same name on every planet rather than many very similar dishes all existing under different names in every culture, but same point.[[/note]]
* [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in the Franchise/StargateVerse by means of an AncientAstronauts premise.
** Although rather less justified when you consider that the [[PuppeteerParasite Goa'uld]] had been thrown off Earth some time during ancient Egyptian times, yet many planets had cultures from much later times on Earth even though the humans transplanted there could not have actually been from those cultures. Similarly, the Ancients, and planets they had influenced, were generally portrayed as similar to Roman, Greek and Arthurian cultures which only existed long after they had [[AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence disappeared]].
* ''Series/DoctorWho'' often ''references'' many very different and alien worlds, but the ones we usually see seem pretty Earth-like, [[BBCQuarry mostly due to budget reasons]]. Particularly of note is the Doctor's home world of Gallifrey, and the species seen in "Voyage of the Damned"; for a group coming to visit Earth's "strange and foreign culture" they certainly seemed like the British upper class. The original series is rich in examples of cultures who are impossible to distinguish from humans but don't appear to be actually descended from Earthlings.
* ''Series/FarScape'' The Peacekeepers (and therefore the human character who has borrowed their uniform as casual dress) wear DM boots, or biker boots. Presumably someone invented motorbikes at some point, but Docs?

It's difficult to avert this trope completely in live action settings for budget reasons alone, although good writing can help to pull it off. Actually, as the above quote from the original ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}'' pitch shows, use of this trope used to be a selling point to make live action ScienceFiction feasible for the small screen and pull some [[AnAesop Aesops]] in a LikeRealityUnlessNoted setting. Since then, this trope has lost some credibility due to the rise of [[SlidingScale/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness harder science fiction]] and better production values and techniques conspiring to change viewer's expectations. It is something of an UndeadHorseTrope, though. Of course, the whole trope is conveniently avoided in case of AliensStealCable or AbsentAliens.

It's difficult to avert this trope completely in live action settings for budget reasons alone, although good writing can help to pull it off. Actually, as the above quote from the original ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}'' pitch shows, use of this trope used to be a selling point to make live action ScienceFiction feasible for the small screen and pull some [[AnAesop Aesops]] in a LikeRealityUnlessNoted setting. Since then, this trope has lost some credibility due to the rise of [[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness harder science fiction]] and better production values and techniques conspiring to change viewer's expectations. It is something of an UndeadHorseTrope, though. Of course, the whole trope is conveniently avoided in case of AliensStealCable or AbsentAliens.

** Likewise, different accents and dialects of English are used to distinguish characters' affiliation, background or species to the point that a British actor in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' was given an American accent in post to conform to the Rebel-American, Empire-British pattern. In universe it is explained that British accents are from the core worlds, while the Rebels generally game from the outer rim.

Though {{Animated Adaptation}}s and {{Comic Book Adaptation}}s have the potential to shift a hitherto live-action franchise towards visually more alien settings, they still need good writing and design to avoid this trope. Conversely, {{Live-Action Adaptation}}s of animated works or comic books are likely to introduce more Inexplicable Cultural Ties to a fictional world.

Though [[AnimatedAdaptation Animated Adaptations]] and [[ComicBookAdaptation Comic Book Adaptations]] have the potential to shift a hitherto live-action franchise towards visually more alien settings, they still need good writing and design to avoid this trope. Conversely, [[LiveActionAdaptation Live-Action Adaptations]] of animated works or comic books are likely to introduce more Inexplicable Cultural Ties to a fictional world.

* Zigzagged with ''[[Franchise/MassEffect Mass Effect]]''. Turians are pretty blatant SpaceRomans, down to using Roman names like Septimus, with even their racial name being a play on 'centurion'. Similarly, the asari possess a CrystalSpiresAndTogas aesthetic, prefer life in city-states, boast about being the inventors of democracy and worship of a wisdom goddess named Athe'''m'''e, making them obvious Space Greeks (specifically Athenians). The universe is also filled with locations named after Myth/ClassicalMythology, even where it does not make much sense, like buildings on alien homeworlds. However, all communication in ''Mass Effect'' happens through the medium of a UniversalTranslator and your PlayerCharacter is human, so it is very likely that this is mostly the result of an in-universe CulturalTranslation in order to make the alien races seem less, well, alien, to humans.

** KlingonsLoveShakespeare! Though they tend to miss the meaning in some works. ''Theatre/RomeoAndJulliet'' is a tragedy because the two children let their love come before their family feud and died for their treachery. Hamlet is not well liked because Hamlet is very hesitant to seek rightful vengeance.

*** Though Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine did have some of this in reverse. Bashir and Garak would regularly trade commentary on the literature of each other's race and their bafflement by it. Garak doesn't believe that ''Theatre/JuliusCeaser'' was a tragedy so much as a farce [[ValuesDissonance because the Cardassians find the idea of a ruler not anticipating treachery to be ludicrous]] (although he apparently revised his opinion once he came to better understand the cultural context), and he believes that the lesson of the "Boy who Cried Wolf" is "never tell the same lie twice" though this may be more Garak than his society (He does seem [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids quite alarmed that this passes for a children's story among humans.]])). Conversely, Barshir finds the "The Never-Ending Sacrifice", a tale of generations of one family all dutifully working for the state and their family and a Cardassian great work of literature, to be boring because of the conformity, which is not something admired by humans. Later he expresses his disdain that modern human literature is largely adapting alien works to human settings, rather than creating their own unique works.

While distant planets in fiction are typically different from Earth in many ways (see for example PlanetOfHats, GenericistGovernment, SingleBiomePlanet), they also exhibit astounding cultural similarities: [[AliensSpeakingEnglish aliens tend to speak English]] in the [[OrphanedEtymology idiom of a 21st-century speaker of English]], their written language, numerals and methods of time measurement are conveniently identical to Earth standards or can be easily converted. You might even spot European cars or [[UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} Vancouver landmarks]]. All societies will include two genders, which register as very like human categories of "male" and "female," down to females who have Latin-sounding names ending in ''-a'', wear their hair long and their heels high. Expect to come across proper names imported from Earth.