Follow TV Tropes

Following

Germans Love David Hasselhoff / Real Life

Go To

    open/close all folders 
    Big In Japan 
  • Pigtails are very popular with young and teenaged girls in Japan.
  • Buzz cuts are very popular in Japan and the rest of East Asia among many men.
  • Maid outfits are relatively popular in Japan than in the west, particularly the "French maid" variation note .
  • The Japanese also have a thing for medieval Europe. Remember Tanken Driland?
  • Japan loves demons so much that they made Beelzebub.
  • Japan also loves dragons, and their fascination carried into projects such as Dragon Ball.
    • Granted since Japan is part of Sinosphere which has fascinations on dragons in their East Asian cultures.
  • Thanks to Mazda, Wankel engines are more popular in Japan than in Germany, their country of origin. However, Mazda was about the only manufacturer to use them, with other companies rarely using them.
  • While zombies are decently popular in the US, they're even more popular in Japan, to the point that they're one of the largest non-western markets for Zombie-themed media. For example, Zombie Ass is among the highest selling movies in the country.
  • Vampires also have a following in Japan, which is one of the largest non-Western markets for vampire-themed media. It's not for nothing that Vampire Knight is among the biggest-selling manga in the country, and characters such as Count Spankulot, the spank-happy vampire from Codename: Kids Next Door, have certainly caught the eyes of the Japanese viewing audience.
  • While mermaids are decently popular in the US, they're even more popular in Japan, to the point that they're one of the largest non-Western markets for mermaid-themed media. Case in point: among the country's most popular movies and manga are the mermaid-themed Ponyo and Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch respectively. Meanwhile, Tokyo Disney Sea has made a "Mermaid Lagoon" port about Disney's The Little Mermaid characters for actual tourist entrance in Japan only, to much acclaim.
  • Surgical mask trends are more popular throughout Asia and Japan than in native France, thanks to Paul Berger.
  • The 1984 Summer Olympics mascot, Sam, is so popular in Japan that he even got his own anime series and gets parodied as a boss called Eagle Sabu in Konami's Parodius series.
  • Has happened twice with Sudoku. It was first invented in America in 1979 as "Number Place" note  and was pretty obscure. However, in 1986, it achieved popularity in Japan. In 2005, the puzzle, as well as the name itself, achieved worldwide popularity. Pretty much the same thing happened with Kakuro.
  • Supposedly, many more foreigners than native Japanese climb Mt. Fuji.
    • Same thing happens to most Japanese landmarks like Tsukiji Fish Market.
  • Guam is an island out the Pacific Ocean that's officially owned by the United States, but it's only a territory, not a state. In fact, there's a lot of US citizens that don't even know Guam exists. However, Guam is seen as a very popular vacation resort in Japan, to the point where Guam actually gets most of its money from Japanese tourists.
    • Hawaiʻi is also very popular with Japanese tourists, but they're more likely to hit the shopping malls instead of the beaches. Hawaii rakes in more money from Japanese tourists than it does from Americans. In fact, Hawaii's largest mall, Ala Moana Center, has the only remaining branch of the formerly-Japanese department store Shirokiya. It also helps that there's a large Japanese-American population in Hawaii, which has also heavily influenced Hawaiian cuisine.
      • Gun ranges in Hawaii do a good deal of business from Japanese tourists. Gun ownership is extremely restricted in Japan so when in America, Japanese tourists take the opportunity to fire a gun, which is perfectly legal in the United States (though Hawaii is a bit more strict than some locations on the mainland).
    • Far northern regions in North America, such as Alaska and Yukon, also attract a lot of Japanese tourists who come to see the Northern Lights.
  • One specific prehistoric creature that gets a lot of love in Japan is the Cambrian stem-arthropod and early apex predator Anomalocaris, probably one of the most iconic pre-dinosaur prehistoric animals over there. With the animal inspiring a bunch of creature designs in anime and video games, most famously Anorith and Armaldo in Pokémon.
  • Like mermaids, pirates are popular in the US but are absolutely beloved in Japan, to the point where they're one of the largest non-western markets for pirate-themed media. Case in point, the pirate-themed manga One Piece is among the bestselling manga in the country. Meanwhile, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides grossed $241 million dollars domestically yet grossed $108 million in Japan. While domestic grosses for the Pirates franchise has been steadily declining in the states, grosses in Japan have gone UP.
  • Street racing, especially unsanctioned ones, can also be added to the list of things that are hot tickets in Japan. After all, they gave us Speed Racer, Wangan Midnight, Initial D and Ridge Racer, and western works like Wacky Races are big draws with Japanese viewers. Wacky Races has also been homaged in various anime works.
    • As mentioned in the Sports section, auto racing actually started out on public roads, and many race tracks were built afterwards. It was originated from France, but Japan really takes a piece of cake when it comes to street races.
      • Street racing can be divided into two types; The sanctioned ones take place on temporary, designated, sanctioned street tracks with some essential safety features. While the unsanctioned ones take place on public roads without permissions, and most have an utter lack of safety features that sanctioned street races have. This example refers to the latter despite Japan lacking any designated street circuits.
  • Dr. Kathleen Drew-Baker was a British scientist who discovered how to grow and farm seaweed. She is virtually unknown in the West, but she is so loved in Japan that an entire holiday (April 14) is devoted to her.
  • Kentucky Fried Chicken has a massive fanbase in Japan, partly due to the fact that a bucket of KFC is a massive staple of Christmas dinner over there. Heck, it's even to the point where there's a KFC buffet in Tokyo that can have queues upwards of 100 customers long.
  • The cartoon "lovers" couple created by French cartoonist Raymond Peynet are popular in Japan. Two of the four museums devoted to Peynet are in Japan, which also has statues of the characters, including one in Hiroshima erected as a symbol of peace in the 50th anniversary of World War II's demise. The 1974 Italian animated movie featuring the characters was also exported to Japan.
  • Convenience stores, known as "konbinis", have been primarily tolerated in the US, particularly in urban areas, highway rest stops, and gas stations, since their creation in the 1920s, but they are a massive thing in Japan. As Convenience stores sell tons of actually amazing products in their Japanese versions, many consider the Japanese Konbini to be leagues better than American versions.
    • 7-Eleven is a very popular convenience store chain in Japan, where it has more stores than it does in the US. It started as a firm in Texas and became a subsidiary of Japanese owned Seven & I Holdings Co, the owner of its Japanese licensee, in 2005. You can find a wide variety of items there that would not appear elsewhere, along with billing and courier services that Americans wouldn't normally expect to find in a convenience store. Don't expect Slurpees, though: they had never caught on there... until 2011, when they start selling them again (in select outlets at first).
    • Even more exaggerated in the case of the second-largest chain of convenience stores in Japan, Lawson. Lawson was originally from Akron, Ohio, and the Japanese company of the same name was originally its Japanese licensee. Unlike 7-Eleven, which still exists in the US, Lawson actually disappeared from the US in the 1980s.
      • It's now returned to the U.S., as two new stores have been planned to open in Hawaii. [1]
    • The popularity of convenience stores in Japan can probably be explained by the small refrigerator sizes. Since living space is so expensive, a minibar-sized fridge can seem luxurious. The small sizes mean that Japanese people have to shop for food more often. It's much easier to go to 7-Eleven than a supermarket, especially when so many people don't have cars.
  • American engineer and industrial management theorist W. Edwards Deming was virtually unknown in his home country until The '80s, late in his life, when all of a sudden, American firms started lining up seeking his advice on how to run a company. Why was this? Because the Japanese Love Deming. He made his name in postwar Japan helping to rebuild their shattered industrial base; his innovations in quality control and continuous improvement in quality and productivity were almost singlehandedly responsible for the Japanese economic miracle of The '50s, such that he was honored by Emperor Hirohito in 1960. By the '80s, Japanese firms had used Deming's ideas to become world-beating powerhouses, and all of a sudden, the American companies that had spurned him in the past became very interested in what he had to say.
  • The corporate logos and film titles of Saul Bass became so famous in Japan that one of his first Japanese clients, the Keio Department Store in 1964, took out a newspaper ad promoting him. His work in Japan, primarily on corporate identity projects, continued into the 1990s.
  • Playboy Bunnies are ubiquitous in Japanese media, so much so that the Anime and Manga folder of this trope specifies that even series that wouldn't normally warrant them would implement bunny suits in official art. Despite it being an Iconic Outfit in the United States, it's too specifically associated with Playboy magazine to have as much presence in the media (in part because the magazine still holds the trademark to the outfit).
  • The Shoebill Stork is an african bird, but they seem to be quite poopular in Japan. Not only do several zoos keep it there, but it has appearences in media from the country, such as the Loftwings from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword being based on them.

Big Everywhere Else

    Companies and products 

Retail

  • The Japanese aren't the only ones who fell in love with convenience stores — much of East Asia did.
    • What country has the most 7-Elevens per capita? Taiwan.
    • Thailand is much the same, one can walk 50 meters and pass four 7-Elevens easily.
  • In the US (particularly the northeast), Walmart is viewed as typical evil corporation that sells cheaply-made items for cheap prices. Other countries, however, hold a fonder view of the retail giant.
    • Citizens of The Bahamas love Walmart. In fact, it is almost considered religious sacrilege not to go there when visiting the United States.
    • So do Mexicans. Walmart is more popular in Mexico for buying groceries over smaller supermarkets, which are generally considered to have poorer quality, and some of the smaller supermarket chains are actually state-owned.
    • Shopping at Walmart is seen as a status symbol in China, since they're only in a few metropolitan areas.
    • The absence of the stigma attached to Walmart and shopping there has been cited as one of the many reasons why Target's attempt to expand into Canada was a flop. In the US, many people shop at Target to avoid shopping at Walmart, but Canadians had no similar compunctions about Walmart to drive them into Target's arms. This makes it ironic that in Canada, the public perception of the two U.S. retail giants is essentially flipped.
  • For many years, Birmingham, Alabama-based Parisian was a popular department store serving the more upscale malls in the Deep South. However, they had a handful of stores in Ohio, three in metro Detroit, and one in Indianapolis. Although most of the Parisian stores were closed or sold to Belk in 2006, the three Detroit stores were apparently popular enough to retain the Parisian name for nearly seven years, when they were ultimately rebranded as Carson's.note 
  • Pennsylvania-based drugstore chain Rite Aid is extremely popular in California, which is second only to New York in number of stores, due to a buyout of Payless Drug in 1996. They even retained the rights to sell Payless Drug's in-store brand of hand-dipped ice cream, Thrifty's, at many locations, making it suitable for the Californian weather. The chain is also very strong in Michigan, which they entered when they bought out Grand Rapids-based chains Muir Drug and Remes Drug, Lippert Pharmacy of Lowell and Herrlich Drug of Flint; all in 1984, followed by the 1985 acquisition of State Vitamin of Lansing, allowing the chain to have a significant number of locations in the state by the time it bought out Waterford Township-based Perry Drug in 1995. Another state where the chain is strong in is Ohio, where they gained a major presence in their buyouts of Cleveland-based Gray Drug in 1987 and Toledo-based Lane Drug in 1989.
  • Woolworths - its cheap-prices/low-quality business model, as well as its random assortment of products and disorganised shop layout, saw the chain go out of business in the UK and US. In Australia, however, they are part of the major supermarket duopoly, with a completely different customer base and thousands of shops across the country.
    • The British Woolworth was spun off from the American one in 1982. For reference, the American chain went under in 1997 after struggling for many years, but fragments of it live on in the forms of shopping mall mainstays Foot Locker, Claire's, and Champs Sports. Its demise was largely due to the "dime store" concept becoming defunct in two ways: the dollar store (e.g. Dollar Tree) and price-point retailers like Family Dollar and Dollar General took its place in downtowns and smaller towns, while Walmart rendered the dime store obsolete everywhere else.
    • Woolworth's discount store division, Woolco, closed its U.S. stores in 1982 as they were unprofitable in the then highly-crowded discounter market. However, Woolco remained popular in Canada until 1997, when its locations were largely sold to Walmart. (Coincidentally, a lot of Woolco stores in the lower Midwest were also sold to Walmart back in the day.)
  • Woodbury Common Premium Outlet Mall, north of New York City, has so many Asian shoppers that it runs Chinese-language ads, in addition to having its signs in about six languages besides English. Some foreign tourists come over strictly to shop there. Locals in turn generally avoid it; most of the Americans you'd see there are probably tourists from elsewhere in the US or daytrippers from New York City.
  • Kmart, which has struggled in the discount department store field since Walmart's rise to power in the early-mid 90s, has nearly completely vanished from the continental United States, though is present in other parts of the world. Most notably, the largest Kmart in the chain is located in Guam, which has exactly zero Walmart stores. The Australian division is also popular, but no longer under the same ownership.
    • Similarly, Kmart's sister brand Sears has been reduced to near-irrelevance in the US and ceased operations in Canada entirely in 2018, but still does quite well in Mexico thanks to different ownership.
  • For most of its last several decades of existence, the formerly-nationwide A & P supermarkets (Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company) were largely concentrated near its origins in New York. However, a small cluster of stores existed in New Orleans until 2007 (including their longest continuously operational one in the French Quarter), and they operated Kohl's Food storesnote  in Wisconsin until 2003 and Farmer Jack stores in Michigan until 2007. The Canadian arm also operated stores as late as 2009.
  • Department store Mesbla started in 1912 as the Brazilian branch of French car part store Mestre et Blatgé. While the original waned and closed their doors in the 1930s, Mesbla grew to become Brazil's largest department store chain, until its bankruptcy in 1999.
  • Clothing retailer Uniqlo is considered cheap and unfashionable in it domestic Japanese market. Its worldwide success and growing positive reputation outside the country hasn't changed that.

Other businesses

  • Products of Sanrio are undeniably more popular outside of Japan than inside of it, especially Hello Kitty, Gudetama, and Aggretsuko.
  • Friendster is an American company, but a vast majority of its users are in Asia. That is until it folded.
    • Orkut originated in the U.S. but was very popular among Brazilians, to the point where their servers were moved to Brazil.
  • TOMS shoes were invented by an American man, but in the U.S. it's stigmatized as "gay" for a man to wear them while they're hugely popular with women. Internationally, however, TOMS are seen as a unisex shoe.
  • Adidas tracksuits are surprisingly popular in Russia and it form the "gopnik" street subculture along with the Memetic Mutation that follows it.
  • Despite Starbucks being based in Seattle, Seattle has only the seventh most amount of Starbucks locations in the US, beat out by New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Diego. This is mainly because of how popular independent coffee shops are in Seattle.
  • A.1. Saucenote  originated in the United Kingdom. That said, it's most widely available in the US and Canada. Incidentally, the US recipe is dramatically different from the ones sold in Canada and the UK.
  • There is a little-known fact about the history of rice cookers — the first rice cooker, released by Toshiba in 1956, requires a small amount of water to be poured in the space between the sleeve and the insert to ensure uniform cooking and also act as a kind of timer. Technologically it was rendered obsolete in the following year when Panasonic introduced what is now the basic design for rice cookers worldwide - except in Taiwan. Up to this day, Taiwanese knockoffs of Toshiba's 1956 design still dominated the market and is considered the single appliance that identifies Taiwanese cooking - to wit, one can safely assume any young Taiwanese that is going to study overseas will have one in their luggage.
    • In the US, rice cookers first became popular in Louisiana, and it's still a stronghold for the device, because of the ubiquity of rice in Cajun and Creole cuisine.
  • Blockbuster Video: While the American physical branch was closed in 2013, the franchise was strong in Mexico until 2015, partly because Mexicans didn't embrace the video-on-demand services as much as Americans have, albeit this changed when Blockbuster changed its name in Mexico to The B Store and later folded definitively, leaving Netflix, Claro Video, Amazon Prime Video, and other streaming services as the only alternatives to watch video in Mexico, besides buying the films directly in stores.
  • French-made Arcoroc Fumer mugs, introduced in the 1960s, remain single-handedly most popular in New Zealand and Australia, long after it went out of fashion in the rest of the world.
  • Marlboro cigarettes were most popular in the US, and marketed with aggressive Americana (see "The Marlboro Man"). The brand was in fact British, and named after Marlborough Street in London where they were originally manufactured.
  • In her native France, the fashion designer Coco Chanel was an icon in the early 20th century, but during World War II, she had an affair with a Nazi agent that led to her being accused of collaboration after the war. With her business and reputation in ruins and the public having turned against her, she had to flee to Switzerland, and while in time the French would warm up to her again, her wartime activities remain incredibly controversial. This wasn't the end of her story, however, as she came out of retirement in 1954 with new designs that caught on in the UK and the US (most famously with Jacqueline Kennedy, who was wearing a pink Chanel suit the day her husband was assassinated) even if the French were still suspicious of her. It was through her newfound Anglo-American fandom that Chanel's reputation was restored.

    Culture and entertainment 
  • Scandinavia seems to have latched onto pinball rather fiercely. Pinball machines can be found in most bowling alleys, arcades, and family amusement centers, and can sometimes be found in convenience stores and malls. A large portion of pinball events in Europe are set in Sweden, Norway, or Finland. The Polish are also crazy for pinball, with a large hardcore group that does high-quality maintenance work, writes books, and frequently places at or near the top of European competitions.
    • As far as making the machines go, however, that distinction definitely goes to Spain. Spain has traditionally been the second-largest producer of pinball machines, and it's also the only country to export domestic pinball machines to the United States (by far the largest producer of pinball machines) in large quantities. Of course, this happened mainly because operators, who maintained pinball machines in public, noticed how popular they were and decided to make pinball machines themselves, to decades-long success.
    • The Documentary Special When Lit notes that this was true for a long time — even during the United States' 30-year-ban, pinball manufacturers continued to thrive solely on the strength of sales to European markets.
  • Bingo machines started off in the United States as a close cousin of pinball machines, but they took off in Belgium in a huge way, to the point that there are plenty of bingo machine addicts there, and the government has had to step in and regulate sales and limit where they can be played. In the United States, bingo machine production has been dead for decades due to its classification as a gambling device, removing it from every location it was previously in and having no luck at casinos (no pun intended).
  • Given the unique-in-Japan combination of strong and exporting cultural industry and widespread Cultural Cringe, Japanese culture fits this trope. Which is ironic given that something being "big in Japan" is a common form of this trope. Ditto for British culture. Same goes for the Scandinavian one.
    • In fact, it is not uncommon to combine all three of them.
  • Digital gambling machines, such as monitor-based slot machines and video poker, have really caught on in China. The result is not only Chinese businesses being a major buyer of such machines (ominantly American-made, quite the inversion of Made In China), but a massive flow of Chinese tourists to Las Vegas, Reno, and to a lesser extent Atlantic City. These cities get so many Chinese visitors that some casinos, like Circus Circus, have direction signs bilingually: In English and in Chinese. That being said, a Chinese tourist is most likely visiting with the intent to win, in contrast to western tourists who more commonly visit to have fun.
  • Hong Kong movie studio logos and idents have bare-bones notoriety in native China. In the US they are so huge that a few video collections were made filled with them.
  • "Twerking"—a sexually provocative style of dance originated by the African-American residents of New Orleans—is weirdly popular in Russia, of all places. There are several popular dance studios in Moscow that specialize in the dance style, and a disproportionately high number of popular "twerkers" who post videos on YouTube are Russian.
  • Clowns in general are a cultural icon in Latin America as a whole, mostly thanks to television. A lot of variety shows and/or children's shows in multiple countries in the region have featured at least one clown sidekick assisting the host and pleasing the audience with their antics. Even Bozo has seen popularity in the region, having multiple shows in Mexico (spawning his "cousin" Brozo the Creepy Clown, a rare hybrid of a Monster Clown and a Non-Ironic Clown) and Brazil.
  • The Society for Creative Anachronism tends to be a very serious history re-enactment society in Scandinavia and Northern Europe, while it is more like dressing in fancy costumes and having fun in the US.
  • Les Lanciers or The Lancers' Quadrilles is a suite of five dances, which was developed in Great Britain in 1817. It was later revived with new music in France in the 1850ies, but is today all but forgotten in both countries — unlike in Denmark, where the dance is a staple of high school dances and university balls and it is still considered the hallmark of good breeding to be able to dance ''Les Lanciers''.
  • Apparently, the Pretty Cure fic Pretty Cure Perfume Preppy is famous around France. Not surprising, given that's where TheHeroine and her family are from.

    Locations 
  • Polls are a great way to know what country is the most loved by another one and they can show fascinating results note . Can you guess:
    • The country that loves the United States the most: The Philippines
    • The country that loves Russia the most: Vietnam
    • The countries that loves China the most: Pakistan, Cambodia and, probably Malaysia?
    • The country that loves France the most: Ghana
    • The country that loves South Korea the most: Indonesia
    • The country that loves Germany the most: Australia
    • The countries that love Japan the most: The Philippines and Indonesia
    • The country that loves India the most: Nigeria
    • The countries that love Canada the most: France and the United States
    • The country that loves Pakistan the most: Pakistan
    • The country that loves Iran the most: Pakistan
    • The country that loves The United Kingdom the most: the United States
  • Malaysia (being an Southeast Asian country with a lot of Chinese populations) was probably loved by China, that even recently they give free COVID-19 vaccines for Malaysian peoples who travelled to China. note  If you were Malaysian, you didn't need to pay 100-200 yuan for vaccines once you arrived in the Chinese mainland.
  • Sweden has an inexplicable love story with Thailand. Without any historical relationship before modern times, Thailand has become Sweden's most popular travel destination outside Europe. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was traumatic to Sweden; it killed more Swedish people than people from any other tourist country; even more populous ones, such as Germany or the UK. The Thai diaspora in Sweden is growing (mostly through women who look for a Swedish husband) and the Thai restaurants seem to outnumber the pizza places. As of the 2010s, the Thai are the second largest non-European guest worker population in Sweden, behind India. Most Thai workers in Sweden are berry pickers.
    • Sweden, more specifically the small town of Ragesunda, is home to the only full-size Thai Buddhist temple outside Thailand. The site was chosen because a guest worker in the area spotted a road in the town named after King Chulalongkorn of Siam, who had visited the local sawmill during a state visit to Sweden in a bid to modernize the Siamese lumber industry.
  • While more of a city example, the Winchester Mystery House gets far more visitors out of area than those living in Silicon Valley. In fact, billboards can be seen in the Los Angeles area.
  • A typical Italian joke about the Adriatic seaside is that there are more German tourists than Italian.
    • In a major tourist city in Tuscany, more English than Italian can be heard on the street. The number of British and Americans is enough to overwhelm the natives. A large number of Brits have already bought property and relocated there.
    • By the same token, the Egyptian tourist town of Hurghada on the Red Sea coast is stereotypically overrun by Russians who do nothing but sit on the beach, go to the club, and eat pelmeni. note 
  • Most visitors to the Eiffel Tower are tourists rather than Parisians. In general, this happens a lot with major tourist destinations.
    • There are many lifelong New Yorkers who've never been to their city's big attractions, like the Statue of Liberty or Empire State Building, unless it's part of their jobs to.
  • The city of Miami (or more specifically, its upscale shopping malls) has recently gained a very large following with many South American countries, particularly Brazil. In fact, thousands of Brazilian tourists fly to Miami every year solely for the purpose of going on shopping sprees at the malls for luxury goods. Many Miami businesses in turn have adapted and accommodated to their needs.
  • The stereotype in Washington is that Evergreen State College tends to enjoy a much better reputation out of state than in-state.
  • Similar to the Caillou example in the Western Animation section, there are a lot of black visitors to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
  • Similar to Guam in the "Big in Japan" folder are the Northern Mariana Islands. Many Americans have never heard of them but they are popular with Chinese and Korean tourists. It's to the point where Saipan International Airport offers numerous direct flights to and from the two countries while residents of the 50 States have to make stopovers in places like Seoul or Guam before finally setting foot onto the islands.

    Plants and Animals 
  • In several European countries, the sauropod dinosaur Diplodocus is seen as THE archtypical sauropod, as opposed to the Apatosaurs or, after Jurassic Park, Brachiosaurus are in the US and Canada, no doubt thanks to fossil casts being sent to several national museums in the 1900's by billionaire Andrew Carnegie. It's probably why the British-made Walking with Dinosaurs features Diplodocus in the central role of the second episode set in the Morrison Formation of Colorado. Even Banjo-Tooie, which is produced by the British company Rare, features a Diplodocus as the token sauropod for the Prehistoria world Terrydactyland.
  • Lions. They're just so cool that many nations put them on their national symbols, even if lions haven't been around in their countries for thousands of years (or were never there in the first place).
  • In his book Whatever You Do, Don't Run, Botswana safari guide Peter Allison notes that German tourists have an inexplicable fondness for warthogs (or ''warzenshwein") and like to count them for some reason.note 
  • Many kinds of crops and livestock have been fundamental to economies far away from their origins. Several Old World species (wheat, sugarcane, grapes, bananas, coffee, cotton, citrus fruits, bananas, cattle, and sheep) have been most extensively produced by New World countries (sheep in Australia & New Zealand, cotton in the Deep South, sugar in the Caribbean, etc). Potatoes invert the above by being South American crops that became a staple in Europe (native to the high Andes, they grow well in cool climates). See the Food section for examples in detail.
  • Axolotls are small pink funny looking salamanders that live in a tiny spot in Mexico City. They are very popular elsewhere, especially in Japan.

    Miscellaneous 
  • U.S. currency:
    • The American dollar coin. Far more widely used in Ecuador than in the U.S. (Ecuador also uses the American dollar.)
      • And not just any coin but the Sacagawea dollar coin representing a Native American woman carrying her child on her back. In fact, some people believe its Ecuadorian coinage as that scene is something you will see more frequently in Ecuador than in the US.
    • The $100 bill. Not commonly used in its home country due to the rise of electronic payment, it's suspectability to being counterfeited (many restaurants and Mom-and-Pop stores won't take them for this reason alone), and it's association with organized crime. Despite this, it's the most printed denomination of U.S. currency. Why? Because approximately 80% of the U.S.'s $100 bill supply end up overseas due to its popularity as a reserve currency, mostly in countries where bank failures are something to be afraid of.
  • The Spanish real de a ocho (piece of eight or Spanish dollar) was the first global currency in the 18th and early 19th centuries, due to its stable value and high silver content. It was legal tender in the United States until 1857 and there is a theory that the $ sign originated as a simplification of the Columns of Hercules in Spain's coat of arms. In East Asia, it was a popularly known as the "fat Buddha" (after the portrait of Charles IV of Spain) and the first Japanese Yen and Chinese Yuan in the 1870s and 1880s had their value paired to it.
  • University of California student Azeem Ward made the mistake of making a Facebook event for his recital and not making it private. The result? Thousands of people all liking his event and spamming the event with memes, most of them from Britain. Interest got so high that his performance is actually being livestreamed on Twitch.
  • Oddly enough, while having a Western name if you were born in Israel generally makes you sound horribly pretentious, the name 'Seán' has maintained moderate inexplicable popularity in Israel across socio-economic groups for decades. (Then again, the number of people who spell it 'Shon' in English is staggeringly high.)
  • Gingers are received way more positively in North and Latin America than in Europe. In Europe, natural redheads have so many stigmas attached to them that they're considered a minority group. But in the Western Hemisphere, those perceptions didn't carry over, and as a result, gingers are seen as little more than a rare sight and are even fetishized by many.
  • DIN 1451, is a font developed by the DINnote  for traffic signs. It's been used by other European countries (such as Greece, Czech Republic or Latvia) for their traffic signs as well. Some countries, like Austria, even have slightly modified version of it. Then in 2017 Microsoft introduced Bahnschrift, a font based on DIN 1451. One beneficial feature of Bahnschrift is that the letters do not change space when changing the look of the font. Rockstar Games used it extensively in Grand Theft Auto IV for its interface and dialogue subtitles likely due to its readability.
  • Ugg boots. In their native Australia, they're seen as a sure sign that the wearer is low class, and are almost always worn as slippers at home. In America, they've since emerged as a fashion trend.
  • The internet as a whole was a big deal in the UK in its first decade or so of popularity. Many of the most famous early internet memes (most notably, Badger Badger Badger) were the creation of Brits, and some long-running internet phenomena such as asdfmovie and Salad Fingers were also from British creators. There was even an attempt in 2006 to get the El Chombo song "Chacarron Macarron" (which was a huge meme at the time) to #1 on the UK Singles Chart (in the end, it only reached number 20). It definitely helps that the inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, was English.
  • The day after Thanksgiving, aka Black Friday, has become a popular shopping day in the UK despite Thanksgiving being an American holiday, and thus, the day having no actual significance in the UK outside of being the day before the last Saturday of November. American retailers offering Black Friday specials online led UK businesses to adopt the concept, even in Wales (where it's called Dydd Gwener y Gwario Gwirion — "Silly Spending Friday"). By 2016 Brits spent over a billion pounds on Black Friday. It's also become a big day in Canada, despite Canadian Thanksgiving falling in early October, though the cultural ties between the US and Canada make that situation more understandable. Other countries like Switzerland are picking up the concept as well.
  • A fascinating, obscure bit of American religious sociology is that the Baha'i Faith has an unexpected stronghold in rural South Carolina. There are roughly 10,000 active Baha'is in South Carolina, out of around 100,000 in the entire country. This is generally credited to a burst of missionary activity the faith engaged in toward the end of The '60s, targeting dispossessed rural communities. With the state still in flux at the end of the Jim Crow era, the Baha'i message celebrating unity and diversity struck a huge chord among young people, especially in the Black community, and Baha'i numbers exploded in the state.
  • Saunas are normally associated with Scandinavia and Russia, but have become increasingly popular in Japan. They fit in very well with Japan's already existing culture of communal bathing, and relatively cheap and easy to build and operate.

Top