History Main / ProtocolPeril

* To the humans in the ''Literature/{{Foreigner}}'' 'verse, The War of Landing was caused by this -- everything was going wonderfully until suddenly the atevi attacked them. To the atevi, they spent years trying to negotiate their way out of the war before finally being pushed too far.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's short story ''Strikebreaker'' features a little colony in an asteroid. Being so small everything must be recycled, even water, from feces. Naturally someone has to do the job and the asteroid's inhabitants try to make him as comfortable as possible. However, it's stigmatized by everybody, who due to social prejudice avoid interacting with him and feel physical disgust by him. The trouble appears when an outsider arrives at the colony to make social studies.

* ''[[Literature/TheElenium The Tamuli]]'': The Atan {{Proud Warrior Race|Guy}} have such an unforgiving code of honour that they volunteered to be nominally "enslaved" to the Crown in order to {{Def|iedTrope}}y the trope. Ehlana's bodyguard Mirtai once explains that, had she not been "owned", she would have been honour-bound to kill every man who insulted her by letting his shadow fall on her, among many other incomprehensible offenses.

[[folder:Fan-fiction]]
* ''FanFic/RainbowDoubleDashsLunaverse:'' The main characters have a bad habit of mouthing off toward heads of state, or worse, when they meet them (like Lyra criticising the head of an ''extremely'' paranoid nation for his country's very, very racist notions). Except, funnily enough, for Trixie, who's the only one of the six with prior knowledge of statesm-... err, statesponyship, who's usually trying to get everyone else to stop talking before they have ''someone else'' out for their blood.

Here's the basic formula: take a society. Give them, as one of their [[PlanetOfHats hats]], a [[UsefulNotes/{{Japan}} rigid]] and/or [[UsefulNotes/{{Britain}} complex]] code of manners or tradition they adhere to. Make the consequence of breaking that code dire: death, slavery, imprisonment, declaration of war, loss of a desperately needed supply or alliance they have. Insert the protagonists, usually well meaning but likely to have difficulty complying. If they can get away with asking why the punishment is so severe, the response will often be "[[FelonyMisdemeanor What Do You Mean Its Not Heinous?]]" Or if the custom is particularly lacking in good sense from the outside point of view, well, "NobodyEverComplainedBefore." Shake well and watch your protagonists squirm.

*** Then there is the one where Captain Archer brings his dog along to a meeting with aliens who have some critical parts for ''Enterprise''. Porthos promptly marks a sacred tree and angers the aliens. Archer starts raging about this once he's back on the ship and says he'll piss on their tree himself. [[InformedAttribute This is the episode that also establishes that Archer is a trained diplomat.]]

[[AC:Manga]]
* ''{{Manga/Gate}}'': After Princess Pina is negotiates reparations with the Japanese, the Japanese diplomat goes for a handshake. Pina goes red, since in the other world it's how they finish [[LesYay betrothal ceremonies]]. Fortunately she's told to just go with it.

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

* To the humans in the ''Literature/{{Foreigner}}'' 'verse, The War of Landing was caused by this - everything was going wonderfully until suddenly the atevi attacked them. To the atevi, they spent years trying to negotiate their way out of the war before finally being pushed too far.

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]

** Janeway once nearly ruined relations with a species called the Tak Tak. Apparently to them, putting one's hands on one's hips is the greatest insult possible.
*** Well, body language ''is'' a major part of their language. We can get by without it, but they can't.

*** The crew of ''Enterprise'' once managed to anger alien dignitaries by having a dinner in their honor. This was highly offensive to the visitors (whose [[PlanetOfHats hat]] was already "easily offended") because on their planet you eat alone. "You eat like you mate!"
*** Then there was the one where Captain Archer brought his dog along to a meeting with aliens who had some critical parts for ''Enterprise''. Porthos promptly marked a sacred tree and angered the aliens. Archer starts raging about this once he's back on the ship and says he'll piss on their tree himself. [[InformedAttribute This is the episode that also establishes that Archer is a trained diplomat.]]
* In ''Series/StargateSG1'', [[AscendedExtra Vala]] was burned alive on an [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Ori]] planet for swearing. Well, that was only ''after'' they realised she had no idea how to perform the daily religious ceremony that the person she was currently [[BodySurf inhabiting]] ''should'' have known. They took it as a refusal and thus branded her as a heretic.
** Much earlier, in "[[Recap/StargateSG1S1E3Emancipation Emancipation]]", Carter spoke to a man on a Mongol-influenced planet and was immediately sentenced to death. Fortunately, she had just saved a man's life, though, so she was spared.

[[AC:TabletopRPG]]

[[AC:VideoGames]]

[[AC:Webcomics]]

* ''{{Webcomic/Homestuck}}'' has the trolls who, due to differences in reproduction, results in buckets in the troll world being viewed the same way that pornography would be viewed by an individual from our world. Therefore, {{Hilarity Ensues}} whenever buckets come into play.

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
* In the "Where the Buggalo Roam" episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' featured native Martians as Native American stereotypes. There was a misunderstanding, but it would all be OK if Kif didn't cough while smoking the PeacePipe. He did. The punishment was death.
* [[WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle Mr. Peabody and Sherman]] visit a historic old west settler who cannot leave an Indian village because he does not know the Indian word for "goodbye." Mr. Peabody tells him what it is, but his poor memory has him screw it up and insult the Indians.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{King}}'' episode "The Museum of Tomorrow", Russel has to find out a crime that he will commit. Turns out that he managed to anger aliens by messing up their meeting ritual which involves kicking each other in the shins causing them start destorying the kingdom.

[[AC:RealLife]]

** During the Vietnam Wars, CIA and other intelligence agents undercover as officers were known to mistakenly salute enlisted men and NCO's or address them as "Sir". One would wonder why they weren't properly briefed on military protocol, unless they were set up for failure to amuse the more senior agents.

* ''The {{Traveller}} Adventure'', segment "Pysadian Escapade". While their {{PC}}'s are on the planet Pysadi, the players are railroaded by the referee into having the {{PC}}'s take on a group of anolas (alien animals) as pets. When the Pysadians find out about this violation of their religious laws, they imprison one of the {{PC}}'s as a companion for the anolas and expel the other {{PC}}'s from the planet.

* [[RockyAndBullwinkle Mr. Peabody and Sherman]] visit a historic old west settler who cannot leave an Indian village because he does not know the Indian word for "goodbye." Mr. Peabody tells him what it is, but his poor memory has him screw it up and insult the Indians.

Here's the basic formula: take a society. Give them, as one of their [[PlanetOfHats hats]], a [[UsefulNotes/{{Japan}} rigid]] and/or [[UsefulNotes/{{Britain}} complex]] code of manners or tradition they adhere to. Make the consequence of breaking that code dire: death, slavery, imprisonment, declaration of war, loss of a desperately needed supply or alliance they have. Insert the protagonists, usually well meaning but likely to have difficulty complying. If they can get away with asking why the punishment is so severe, the response will often be "[[FelonyMisdemeanor What Do You Mean Its Not Heinous]]" Or if the custom is particularly lacking in good sense from the outside point of view, well, "NobodyEverComplainedBefore." Shake well and watch your protagonists squirm.

A SubTrope of CultureClash. SuperTrope to FumblingTheGauntlet, where the character's innocent action is taken as a challenge to fight. See also: PlanetOfHats, SacredHospitality and PeacePipe. Likely to involve invoking the AlienNonInterferenceClause.

* This trope was the cause of the Terran-Vasudan War in ''VideoGame/FreeSpace''.
** For clarification, the Vasudan language is ridiculously complex and changes depending on things like your relative status to the other person, the time of day, your spacial position relative to the Emperor, etc. The translator (no word on whether said translator was human, Vasudan, or machine) screwed up somewhere during first contact and it all went south from there.

** This marks the big problem the Citadel Council has with the culture of the yagh. The yagh have a strong pack mentality: if a group of yagh forms to work together, they will compete with one another until one of them arises as the dominant leader. When the Citadel sent a group of diplomats to facilitate first contact, the yagh were extremely insulted by the idea of the other species wanting to speak to them as equals, and slaughtered the group for their disrespect (the fact that the diplomats were politicians, and the yagh are extremely sensitive to body language and could sense duplicity on them, did not help either). The Council declared the yagh homeworld under quarantine and all further contact with the species was cut off.

A SubTrope of CultureClash. SuperTrope to FumblingTheGauntlet, where the character's innocent action is taken as a challenge to fight. See also: PlanetOfHats, SacredHospitality and PeacePipe. Likely to involve invoking the {{Alien Non-Interference Clause}}.
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