History Seinfeld / TropesAToH

* ContinuityNod: Tons of them, rewarding loyal viewers with all sorts of in-jokes and references to previous events. It's yet another aspect of SeinfeldIsUnfunny, because nowadays this is common in sitcoms, but back then was relatively rare.

* DamnedByFaintPraise: Elaine's boss, Mr. Peterman, does this on returning after her disastrous attempt at running his company for him:

** Elaine being blacklisted by the [=AMA=]. No matter how much of an AnnoyingPatient one is--and to make matters worse, she ''wasn't'', they are still entitled to medical care. To drop her as a patient or refuse to even see her is highly unethical. She could sue over this.

** 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.

** Jerry is an avid fan of ‘’Franchise/{{Superman}} and even mentions the Creator/ChristopherReeves films. In “The Good Samaritan”, a character played by Creator/HelenSlater appears. Slater played ‘’Film/{{Supergirl}} in a film that was a SpinOff of the Reeves series.

** The pilot features a different theme song and credits style; 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; George has a different hairstyke; 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). The scenes of Jerry performing his stand-up also take up a far larger portion of the running time than in subsequent episodes. While we're talking about his stand-up, such sequences would play on and off throughout an average episode until around halfway through the third season, after which point they would usually only play at the beginning of an episode (before being dropped outright in the last two seasons). The early episodes even seemed to be shot on cheaper stock.

** George is pretty much a more subtle example of this; he's nowhere near as ''huge'' as Newman is, however, his own, "Generous proportions" are brought up on occasion.

** The pilot features a different theme song and credits style; 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; George has a different hairstyke; 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). The scenes of Jerry performing his stand-up also take up a far larger portion of the running time than in subsequent episodes. The early episodes even seemed to be shot on cheaper stock.

** Really, this happens with all of the main cast too, with the possible exception of Kramer. Jerry, George and Elaine are all far saner and empathetic in the earlier years and grow progressively sociopathic and self-centered.

* FourthDateMarriage: Kramer's friend Mickey marries one of the two girls he and Kramer are double-dating after only a few dates. Made funnier in that she confesses to having wanted Kramer all along, while the girl who Kramer was dating wanted Mickey.

* AmbiguouslyBrown: Invoked with Elaine's boyfriend in "The Wizard", who everyone thinks is black ([[ButNotTooBlack or possibly biracial]]). Amusingly, it turns out they're both actually white, and he thought she was Hispanic. Even more interestingly, Julia Louis-Dreyfus actually has Mexican heritage in real life.

* HollywoodDateless: George Costanza is a slow-witted, self-centered, ugly failure who repulses women and can't get them to go out with him... except for, oh, the forty or fifty gorgeous women he dated over the course of the show. He even got a model whom he suspected was bulimic. He winds up getting engaged to the attractive daughter of a rich, Upper East Side, WASPy, old money couple-Susan Ross. Even if they were evenly-matched looks-wise, it's completely far-fetched status, class and money-wise.

** But despite this, the characters are also...
*** HollywoodDateless

* FriendsRentControl: Despite being able to live in a decent one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, Kramer holds down nothing resembling a steady job. He gets by by mooching most of his food off of Jerry and playing with various odd jobs (department store Santa, film extra, babysitter, illness actor for medical interns, the list goes on) and money-making schemes. Some of these are actually quite successful, like when he wins $18,000 dollars at the horse track in an early episode, and later gets his coffee table book about coffee tables published and eventually optioned as a movie (allegedly making him enough money to "retire" to Florida briefly). Subverted in that it's never handwaved as being rent control, but also vaguely plausible at times. The real Kramer managed to live comfortably off royalties from a piece of electronic disco jewelry he invented in the seventies.

** Subverted with Jerry who lives in a small, one bedroom apartment despite being a celebrity comedian with enough significance to regularly appear on primetime television.

-->'''Jerry''': ''(concerned for Kramer's safety)'': Kramer!\\
'''Elaine''': ''(also feeling it)'': Stop the fight!\\
'''George''': ''(looking elsewhere)'': [[SkewedPriorities Tamale!]]

** In "The Hamptons," his bringing over a good dinner was all he needed to get back on his girlfriend's [[OverprotectiveDad father's]] [[ThroughHisStomach good side]].

* {{Hellistics}}: Many of the events one character caused ended up biting another character in the ass...

** In "The Puffy Shirt," George mentions that he won "a contest" to see who can go the longest without ADateWithRosiePalms. In "The Finale", it's revealed that he cheated.

* CompressedAbstinence: In the episode "The Contest", the characters try to "[[UnusualEuphemism be the master of their domain]]" by spending the longest without... [[ADateWithRosiePalms mastering their domain]]. It doesn't last long. It was called back to, however, even in the series finale.

'''Elaine''': Oh yeah, because she caught you [[ADateWithRosiePalms jer-]]\\

* 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]]
** The unseen character Ray [=McKigney=] in "The Puffy Shirt", whose hand modeling career was tragically cut short by masturbating so much that his hand deformed to a "claw" shape.
** Barry the chimpanzee in "The Face Painter". One of the ways that Mr. Pless noticed something was wrong with him was that he curtailed his "autoerotic activities".

* {{Anorgasmia}}: In "The Mango", Jerry finds out that Elaine faked all of her orgasms when the two of them were dating.

** 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 early episodes even seemed to be shot on cheaper stock.

** Plus the woman who robbed George in the episode "The Subway." [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools On the other hand]], it was worth it to hear George say "[[ComicallyMissingThePoint Will I see you again?]]"
* {{Foreshadowing}}: In the episode "The Rye", Elaine tells Jerry "You know, one of these days, something terrible is going to happen to you. It ''[[LaserGuidedKarma has]]'' to!" Come the series finale, and not only does something terrible happen to Jerry ([[AngstWhatAngst not that it bothers him]]), it happens to Elaine too. [[TemptingFate Woops]].