There's a diverse array of titles within any one medium. Not all video games are Pac-Man or Wii Sports or Grand Theft Auto or Super Mario Bros. or Pokémon or Tetris or Halo. There are games like the Silent Hill series, which try to immerse you in an environment before gradually creeping the living daylights out of you over time. Or The Elder Scrolls series, which presents to you a wide-open world and several big choices you can make in it, giving you freedom to experiment and explore. There are also the Splatoon games, which offer a fun, energetic, colorful, and (relatively) nonviolent take on the Third-Person Shooter.
The general public doesn't (always) know that, though — people who don't play video games think that all games are like the ones they hear about on TV, which would tend to be either Wii Sports (due to the Wii showing up in retirement communities all over the place), Super Mario Bros. (due to Mario's recognizability as a Series Mascot), Pokémon (due to the "Pokémania" fad of The '90s and the much later success of Pokémon GO), or the latest "controversial" violent game that the media love to shove in people's faces. If these people are older, expect their perceptions of video games to be even worse.
Likewise, comic books are not all about superheroes in costumes fighting supervillains with outlandish plots, nor are they essentially printed versions of superhero movies where Iron Man is exactly like Robert Downey Jr. and Wolverine is exactly like Hugh Jackman. There are many comics telling other kinds of stories, such as the numerous indie Slice of Life comics like Seconds or Amelia Rules!, or the surreal dreamscapes of Little Nemo. The Japanese manga scene has many well known titles from different genres, ranging from love stories such as Kimi ni Todoke, to family comedy like Yotsuba&!, to Action-Adventure series such as One Piece, to even horror fare like the works of Junji Ito. Certainly the Super Hero genre itself is much better written than what is stereotypically attributed, and can also differ greatly from your typical Hollywood superhero action-fest: Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns should be proof enough of that. If you say you like comic books, people might respond with something like, "So you like Superman, Batman and Spider-Man?"note Some comics (usually ones dubbed "graphic novels" to eliminate this very problem), like the autobiographical Fun Home or the aforementioned Watchmen, have won awards for their artistry and originality.
And of course, cartoons. We know all about the Animation Age Ghetto and the Animated Shock Comedy. Cartoons are often still stereotyped as being all about humor and comedy. On the other hand, many companies seem convinced that kids will watch cartoons only if they are funny, and add extraneous humor that sometimes clashes with the mood just to fulfill their comedy quota. Often, animators have to start with an R-Rated Opening in order to warn young audiences and their parents that what they're watching isn't a Disney animated flick just because it had cartoon people on the cover.
This is especially true for anime. In the public eye, anime is either associated with the Animation Age Ghetto and series that were marketed to kids - Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and maybe Naruto, My Hero Academia, and the Studio Ghibli library if you're lucky - or with sordid, lecherous hentai.
Tabletop RPGs used to be nigh unknown except in general nerd circles, and only Dungeons & Dragons had any real recognition factor, mostly due to the moral panic about it in The '80s in the US. However, the release of 5th edition D&D, the popularity of Stranger Things, and the rising attention to projects like Critical Role and The Adventure Zone have made D&D more popular than ever, making it much more well known than it was at the end of the 2010s. Though, you'd still be hard pressed to find your average person who can name a tabletop RPG that isn't D&D.
The public at large has these prejudices and preconceptions. But this trope can also be an example of a prejudice in itself against the general public. In some cases this trope can be true, but it is also equally possible the larger public is aware of diversity and just isn't blabbing about it with the people who really love it. In the past, we determined what was known by what people actually sat around talking about. Nowadays, when you can gather with people who do all want to talk about this or that, the line between what is a majority/minority and what the general public knows is blurred beyond repair.
"Common Knowledge" is usually ignored in these situations. Works that fall into this have a high tendency to suffer from an Audience-Alienating Premise. Exposure to a Gateway Series can certainly be very helpful to break these prejudices. If a significant title stands out from the perceived "ghettoed" group, No True Scotsman is often applied to try and distance a well-liked entry from it, with Hitler Ate Sugar being applied to reinforce the ghetto back onto that entry. Related to Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure. See also Mistaken for Index. There even is a kind of meta inversion possible when Too Much Information collides with Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch (a Lowest Common Denominator work, you wouldn't touch it at gunpoint, but all media report about it and you can't avoid it).
Tropes associated with this:
- All Abusers Are Male: The belief that any character who was abused in the past was abused by a man, or that women cannot or simply do not commit any kind of abuse.
- All Animation Is Disney: The belief that all noteworthy animated works were made by Disney.
- All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles: The belief that anime is nothing but women getting assaulted by tentacle creatures.
- Aluminum Christmas Trees: Something obscure but real in a work of fiction is mistaken for part of the fiction.
- Animation Age Ghetto: The belief that animated works are only for children.
- Audience-Coloring Adaptation: An installment that affects opinion on the general franchise.
- Beam Me Up, Scotty!: A catchphrase ascribed to a character even though they didn't actually say it. It could be a simplification or paraphrase of the character's original line, or it may have appeared in an adaptation, sequel, or parody.
- Classical Music Is Boring: The belief that classical music isn't interesting or exciting.
- Comedy Ghetto
- "Common Knowledge": Things "everyone knows" about a work or subject which are actually misconceptions or outright untrue.
- Corrupting Pornography: A belief that pornography is inherently dangerous.
- Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: A piece about a work (say, a magazine article about a television series) gets their facts so wrong that even casual fans can tell the source has probably never even seen the series.
- Dead Artists Are Better: Made possible by a large number of people who were barely aware of the artist until their death reading the gushing obits and still not actually engaging with the artist's work.
- Dead Horse Genre
- Emo Teen: Any teenage character who's Angsty is really just moody for no good reason, regardless of why s/he is that way.
- Franchise Original Sin: Fans complain about a flaw in later installments of a work which was actually present from the start.
- Furry Fandom
- Girl-Show Ghetto: Male audiences aren't interested in works that star and focus on female characters.
- God Never Said That: People misinterpret what the creator said about the work or believe the creator said it when the creator did not.
- It's Not Supposed to Win Oscars: The argument that a work doesn't have to win awards to be considered good.
- It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Fans of a lesser known work lose interest as soon as it becomes more well-known.
- Juggalo
- Made in Country X: Assuming that a product or work is good or bad based solely on where the work was produced.
- Mainstream Obscurity
- Metalhead
- Minority Show Ghetto
- Mis-blamed: The audience or critics blame, say, the writer for the flaws in a work when Executive Meddling or other factors caused the work to turn out the way it did.
- New Media Are Evil: The belief that modern forms of media are bad.
- The New Rock & Roll: The latest trend in [whatever] is corrupting youth and will lead to society's downfall!
- Nostalgia Filter: Liking or disliking a work based on how old you were when they first saw it, with preference toward material that came out in your youth. Leads to statements like "Cartoons were so much better when I was growing up; it's all dumb gags now."
- Obscure Popularity
- Old Media Are Evil
- Older Than They Think: A concept believed to be new to the franchise was actually present much earlier in the franchise's history.
- Oscar Bait
- Pac Man Fever: Outdated ideas on what video games are like.
- Pop-Culture Isolation
- Praising Shows You Don't Watch
- Quality by Popular Vote
- Rated M for Money: People believe only M-rated/"adult" works will sell.
- Reviews Are the Gospel: People judge the quality of a work on someone's review of it rather than by their own viewpoints.
- Rock Me, Asmodeus!: Rock music is the work of the Devil!
- Sacred Cow: A work is so popular and well-regarded that saying anything negative about it is guaranteed to make everyone hate you.
- Sci Fi Ghetto: The belief that science fiction/fantasy works aren't "real" literature.
- Small Reference Pools
- True Art: Beliefs on what qualities make a work worthy of merit.
- True Art Is Ancient: It's a good work because it is old.
- True Art Is Angsty: It's a good work because it is tragic.
- True Art Is Boring: It's a good work because it is dull.
- True Art Is Incomprehensible: It's a good work because it's composed of Mind Screw.
- Two Decades Behind: A work's depiction of pop culture is glaringly out of date due to the creators working with what they remember from their youth rather than what's trendy today.
- Word of Dante can easily become this when it's confused with Word of God.
- Wrongfully Attributed: Credit for a work or achievement is wrongly given to individuals or companies that actually had nothing to do with or weren't truly the first to accomplish.
All examples of this are right in those sub pages, or in the page's Discussion thread.
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