History Seinfeld / TropesAToH

** The pilot features a different theme song; Jerry is living in a studio apartment with a grey leather couch and a skylight; Kramer (actually, "Kessler") knocks on the door, owns a dog, and is agoraphobic; the hangout is a place called Pete's Luncheonette rather than Monk's; and Elaine is absent (Claire, a deadpan waitress at Pete's, was meant to be the major female character. Accounts differ as to why she was replaced with Elaine; NBC executive Warren Littlefield said that he asked for the character to be dropped because he didn't think a waitress would be a good fit for the ensemble, while Jason Alexander later claimed that her actress, Lee Garlington, was fired for rewriting her dialogue without authorization). The scenes of Jerry performing his stand-up also take up a far larger portion of the running time than in subsequent episodes.
** The earlier seasons also had a lot more of a lax tone, and episodes were slower-paced (especially ones that took place in one location, such as "The Chinese Restaurant" or "The Parking Garage"); most likely because of the "show about nothing" premise. For that matter, the early episodes even seemed to be shot on cheaper stock.
** An early episode known as "Male Unbonding" did not conform to the "The Something" title formula, but most importantly, the premise was about Jerry not wanting to spend time with a friend he'd known since he was a kid who was petty and constantly complaining: traits inherent in George.
** During the first two season, Jerry, George and Elaine were all said to have siblings. In Season 3 and onwards, Jerry and George were retconned into being only children and, aside from her father, Elaine's family is never shown or talked about in detail.
** Season 3's first episode had some vocal scatting dubbed over the theme. While not intended to be literal words, many remarked that it sounded like the singers were saying, "easy to beat."

** Newman's first appearance off-camera appearance was a voice-over performed by Larry David, later dubbed in by Wayne Knight in syndication. That's not the weird part: the weird part is that this "Newman" (or "Nueman" in the script) threatened suicide, and was said to be unemployed. In later episodes, it's clear that Newman has been a postal worker as far back as the late '70s when he knew David Berkowitz.
** Both Jerry Seinfeld's and George Costanza's fathers were initially played by different actors from those who would become better-known in those roles. Each had a very different look and gave a very different performance. Again: it's not just a casting change that's weird, or even how different the better-established versions of the characters were, but that in syndication, they reshot John Randolph's scenes as Frank Costanza using Jerry Stiller, but did not do the same thing with the two versions of Jerry's father (because the other characters had all aged five years by then.)
** In "The Handicap Spot," Estelle Costanza says that Kramer is "a real troublemaker" and "altogether crazy." In later episodes, she seems quite fond of him, even to the point of flirting with him.
** George makes some rather cryptic statements in early episodes that prefigure or contradict later ones.
*** In Season 3's "The Truth," George remarks that he's driven women to lesbianism before, but says he hasn't in an episode the following season when he sees Susan with a woman.
*** George says to Jerry in the pilot to "always do the opposite of what your instincts tell you." He actually hears this advice ''from'' Jerry, spends the whole episode doing the opposite of what he thinks he should do, and things go well for him.
*** When George makes up the phony charity he says he'd like to be in a position to give away money to worthy people. Guess he forgot when he was put in charge of just such an organization after Susan's death.
** In "The Busboy", George and Jerry console Elaine after she fails at getting an unwanted houseguest to the airport on time. This kind of compassion is extremely rare for the show, and was quickly phased out.
** The format of the first four or so seasons seem to play out more like a stage play, as is common with many StudioAudience, multi camera sitcoms. Later, despite still retaining an audience and multiple cameras, the overall format broadened, placing the characters in more locations throughout the show, and even outdoors, more akin to single camera sitcoms.
** The episodes also generally followed a single plot until about midway through season four, when the show took on an A-Plot, B-Plot, C-Plot format (with each character, naturally, getting his/her own plot).

** In "The Butter Shave," George raves to Jerry about the private handicap bathroom Play Now gave him, remarking how much he enjoys the high toilet, "[[WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame I feel like a gargoyle perched on the ledge of a building!]]"

* ADateWithRosiePalms: The whole premise of "The Contest" was to see who could go the longest without, um, doing this. George wins. [[note]]Except not really. In the finale he admits that he cheated, so Jerry is the real winner.[[/note]]

* DeadArtistsAreBetter: George buys a crappy painting from an artist who is very sick and expected to die soon, hoping that once he does, the painting will increase in value and he can sell it for a profit. Much to George's chagrin, the artist makes a miraculous recovery, and just to rub it in, he says George is the one who saved his life, because somebody finally buying one of his paintings restored his will to live.

* ADateWithRosiePalms: The whole premise of "The Contest" was to see who could go the longest without, um, doing this. George wins. [[note]]Except not really, he cheated. Jerry is the real winner.[[/note]]

* EarWorm: George can't get "Master of the House" from ''Franchise/LesMiserables'' out of his head. Jerry warns him that getting a song stuck in your head can drive you insane, like how Schumann kept humming an "A" over and over. His randomly singing snippets of the song causes it to get stuck in Elaine's father's head as well.

--> '''Guest''' (to Kramer): You made this salad?
--> '''Kramer:''' Yes, I prepared it ''[[{{Squick}} as I bathed]]!''

** In "The Muffin Tops", Elaine sells muffin tops, and needs to dispose of the stumps (making them without stumps just isn't the same, you see). She drops them off at a homeless shelter, but when she goes to drop off another batch, they refuse to take any more since the homeless all refused to eat them, feeling insulted that they were given what they assumed to be half-eaten leftovers. Later, Kramer tries dropping them off at a garbage dump, only to be turned away because the owner doesn't consider them bad ''enough'' to qualify as garbage.

** In "The Bookstore", George takes a book from the shelf at a bookstore into the bathroom with him and is forced to purchase it. He can't return it at any of the store locations in the city because it's been "flagged" as having been in the bathroom. He tries to give it to Goodwill, only for the woman at the counter to immediately recognize that the book is flagged because she used to work at one of the stores. She calls George a sick and evil man for trying to give the flagged book to the less fortunate.

* ArentYouGoingToRavishMe: One episode features a cult that masquerades as a carpet cleaning company in order to brainwash its customers into joining. George hires them because they're so cheap and he's confident he can beat the brainwashing. He gets offended when they just clean his carpet and give him the bill without attempting to brainwash him, and gets even more offended at the end of the episode when he sees that they've brainwashed Mr. Wilhelm.

* BeastlyBloodsports: One episode involves Kramer realizing that he has improbably come into custody of a fighting cock. When the fight comes, Kramer leaps in to save the cock.

* BoomerangBigot: In one episode George's mother rejects the advice of Jerry's girlfriend Donna Chang because she finds out (having previously talked to the woman only on the phone) that Donna is not Chinese. "I don't want to take the advice of some girl from Long Island!" she shouts.

* CaughtOnTheJumbotron: In one episode, George eats very sloppily on the Jumbotron at the US Open, and the commentators mock him for not using a napkin.

* ConspiracyTheorist: Kramer could fall into this at times; in one episode, he claimed the alternative media is where you hear the truth. And in "The Bris", Kramer claimed that the government has been experimenting with creating a race of pigmen since the '50s ("Jerry wake up to reality. It's a military thing. They're probably creating a whole army of pig warriors!").

* DistaffCounterpart: In one episode, Jerry falls in love with a woman (Creator/JaneaneGarofalo) who is exactly like him in every way. He even proposes to her, before realizing that he can't marry someone exactly like him ... because he hates himself. They then have the perfect mutual break-up, which Jerry proclaims is the world's first, by saying "I hate you" to each other at the exact same time.

** Spoofed in one episode, where Kramer advises Jerry against getting married because, as he puts it, [[FauxHorrific married couples talk about how their days went]]. So, the Seinfeld Gang talking about how their days went is okay, a married couple doing it is not. [[HypocriticalHumor Right...]]

* DrenchCelebration: One episode had this in retrospect. In Improv comedy club, a friend of Jerry's was on the softball team. They won a game and Kramer convinced him to pour a cooler full of Gatorade over the coach's head. The coach ended up dying of exposure and the friend developed a drug problem out of guilt.

* FanDisservice: Used in-universe in one episode when Jerry's girlfriend walks around the apartment naked. He is initially thrilled by this, but seeing her do strenuous tasks naked that involve her muscles contracting are hard for him to stomach, leading to him later explaining to George the concept of "good naked" and "bad naked." When Jerry tries walking around the house naked himself, his girlfriend sees it as "bad naked" entirely.

** In one episode, Elaine thinks the guy she's going out with is black, but she's not quite sure, and spends the episode trying to find out without directly asking. It turns out he had been thinking Elaine was Hispanic.

* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: {{Discussed}} in one episode, when Elaine, who's firmly pro-choice, urges Jerry to not eat at a restaurant whose owner supports anti-abortion groups. He challenges this by later asking Poppy, owner of another restaurant they go to, what he thinks of abortion. Turn's out he is against it, and Elaine gets into an argument with them. Then this comes up ''again'' with a new guy she dates, after Jerry got Elaine to bring it up. He's also pro-life, and they break up over it.

** In an earlier episode, the main characters meet Elaine's macho, controlling father. George has the "Master of the House" song from ''Les Miserables'' in his head, and periodically starts singing it. At the end of the episode, Elaine's father starts singing it to himself.

** Jerry tells Newman that by booking the location of his New Year's party for "[[ExactWords the millennium New Year]]", he actually booked it one year too late, since the new millennium doesn't officially start until the year 2001. Upon this realization, Newman can barely contain his anger, only uttering one single squeaky, wheezing noise that is later played again during the Castle Rock logo in the credits.

* AllMenArePerverts: Jerry and George explain to Elaine how a man will say ''anything'' to get a woman. She doesn't believe them, so they elaborate:

** Men in the ''Seinfeld'' universe become super-intelligent after they stop having sex for a period of time, because [[NinetyPercentOfYourBrain the majority of their brainpower]] is normally focused solely towards obtaining sex, so a celibate man's brain becomes free to think about other things. For the same reason, going without sex has the opposite effect on women. Since men are always so obsessed with sex, women can get sex so easily that they take it for granted, and barely have to think about it at all. A celibate woman's brain becomes cluttered up thinking about sex, and she becomes stupider. This was demonstrated by George becoming an OmnidisciplinaryScientist and {{Omniglot}} after going without sex, while Elaine became TheDitz. Jerry delivered the explanation to both of them.
* AlmostFamousName:

* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: Played with. Lloyd Braun is initially this to George, being far more successful than him and preferred by his parents. However, he has his career ruined at the end of his debut episode and quickly degenerated into a deranged, incompetent wreck who's even more pathetic than George, yet is ''still'' favored by George's parents.

* AbsurdlyBrightLight: The red neon sign from a Kenny Rogers Roasters chicken restaurant outside Kramer's apartment. It drives Kramer ''nuts,'' enough that he mistakes tomato juice for milk at one point.

** Kramer's request to be called by his first name, Cosmo, is almost immediately forgotten. And in that same episode he talks his mother into going to business with him only for her to disappear from the series.

[[folder: E-F]]

* BothSidesHaveAPoint: In "The Parking Spot" both George and the other driver have equal claim to the spot outside Jerry's apartment. George was there first but was just sitting around instead of actually parking. The other guy meanwhile was trying to parallel park front first, which may be his preferred style, but is still unusual and not the recommended method. Played for laughs when observers, up to and including the police can't figure out whose right. In the end the issue is left unresolved.

* DefiniteArticleTitle: All but one episode (Male Unbonding) has a title that begins with "The." (though some online guides list that episode as "The Male Unbonding"). The reason for this is Jerry Seinfeld didn't want the writers wasting time trying to come up with "clever" episode titles and rather they focused on the scripts themselves (a smart decision).

** The pilot features a different theme song; Jerry is living in a studio apartment with a grey leather couch and a skylight; Kramer (actually, "Kessler") knocks on the door, owns a dog, and is agoraphobic; the hangout is a place called Pete's Luncheonette rather than Monk's; and Elaine is absent (it appears that a deadpan waitress at Pete's was meant to be the major female character). The scenes of Jerry performing his stand-up also take up a far larger portion of the running time than in subsequent episodes.

** The pilot features a different theme song; Jerry is living in a studio apartment with a grey leather couch and a skylight; Kramer (actually, "Kessler") knocks on the door, owns a dog, and is agoraphobic; the hangout is a place called Pete's Luncheonette rather than Monk's; and Elaine is absent (it appears that a deadpan waitress at Pete's was meant to be the major female character).

* BizarroUniverse: Elaine's new friend, Kevin. His friends include the charitable and well-dressed Gene; quiet and considerate next-door neighbor, Feldman; and a [=FedEx=] employee known only as "Fargus," whom Kevin is very jovial with. His apartment is a mirror-opposite of Jerry's, complete with a unicycle hanging on the wall, and a PC in place of Jerry's Mac.

--> '''George''': 'Cause you don't think Janet?...
--> '''Jerry''': No.
--> '''George''': Why would I...
--> '''Jerry''': It's ludicrous.
--> '''George''': Yes.
--> '''Jerry''': For either one of us.
--> '''George''': No...
--> '''Jerry''': So...
--> '''George''': Exactly.
--> '''Jerry''': ''I'm'' not gay.
--> '''George''': ...Neither am ''I''... (after a pause, they yell for Kramer to get in there to break the awkward silence)

** Elaine's trademark "GetOut!" complete with shove gets so out of control that she pushes people with enough force to knock them down. RealityEnsues in "The Bizzare Jerry" when she does this to Kevin and he's annoyed and angry like most people would be (the fact that he appears to be genuinely injured doesn't help either).

* GoodIsDumb: Kramer seems to be Larry David's AuthorTract on how being unselfish and caring for people makes you an idiot. Zigzagged in that Kramer's idea of 'good' is often fairly bizarre, and George is both the dumbest and most unscrupulous member of the group.

* ContrivedCoincidence: Almost every episode with an [[TwoLinesNoWaiting A plot and B plot]] will have them collide at the end, no matter how unlikely.