This Index Is Not an Example

Usually, the Trope Namer for a trope provides the one codifying example to define them all. Sometimes, however, a trope is named after something that isn't itself a good example of the trope — or isn't an instance of the trope at all. Sometimes the quote sounds nice but it is in the wrong context. Oftentimes the trope is a variation on another trope and receives a name based on it.

Be particularly careful when linking to such trope pages, because they might not be what they sound like at first glance. (Obviously, any YMMV entry with a specific Trope Namer could be an example in the eyes of some viewers but not others; and some have actually been renamed because of it.)

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Not to be confused with Just for Pun or Snowclone titles, although this is often caused by snowcloning the name of another trope. Also not to be confused with works that seem like the Trope Namer, but aren't really (Fur and Loathing was not named after the CSI episode, nor was Determinator named from one of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters' Fake.com Endings).

Then there are the tropes named after lines of dialogue that the Trope Namer never actually said.

Contrast Self-Demonstrating Article and This Trope Name References Itself. Compare Defied Trope and Non-Indicative Name. Also see This Image Is Not an Example. Is similar to Dead Unicorn Trope in the sense that both are about believing a certain trope is more prevalent than it really is, but is distinct in that these tropes have one specific moment that does not follow.

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Oh, and don't bother listing this page itself, as then it would no longer belong (due to Russell's paradox).

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Tropes:

Actual non-example trope namers

• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder — The trope is about a character moving on after being separated from their spouse. The absence in King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!, refers to King Graham's family being kidnapped, and going yonder is him setting out to rescue them.
• Acquitted Too Late — The trope is about a character who is executed and then found to be not guilty after the fact. The Trope Namer is Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, which does not have any wrongful convictions, only suspicions since one of the Ten Little Murder Victims must be the killer. The phrase "acquitted too late" refers to the death itself, which clears the victim of said suspicion, but by then it doesn't do them any good. Even this turns out be false as when the "death proves innocence" idea takes hold, the killer fakes his own death to deflect suspicion from himself.
• Aliens of London — In the trope-naming episode of Doctor Who, the Slitheen only speak with British accents because they're disguised as British government officials as part of an Evil Plan. The Doctor's own accent is also addressed in the episode, but isn't a London accent in this incarnation.
• And Some Other Stuff — The Trope Namer is Burn Notice, which typically does include the full recipes for all its dangerous things. The line itself cut out the ingredient simply because it would not have produced as big an explosion as was shown.
• Another Side, Another Story — The trope is about playing the game from the perspective of the other side, and getting a different story. The trope namer from Kingdom Hearts is a secret movie that plays after beating the game with certain criteria fulfilled, thus setting the "other story" for later game rather then being it.
• An Axe to Grind — The phrase means to have a strong opinion, or perhaps a grudge, not an actual axe.
• Bat Out of Hell — The Trope Namer is an album by Meat Loaf, where the music has nothing to do with giant demonic bats, aside from an analogy in the lyrics of one of them.^note One does appear on the album cover, however.
• Bayonet Ya — This trope's name is an obvious pun on Bayonetta, and while the titular Umbra Witch can equip many weapons across both her games, bayonets aren't actually one of those options.
• Bears Are Bad News — The name of the trope was inspired by The Bad News Bears, but no bears are in the movie, which is about a little league team.
• Big Fun — In Heathers Big Fun is a fictitious band that releases a song based on one character's death. The trope has nothing to do with music at all, it deals with a chracter who is both overweight and a good time.
• Bits of Me Keep Passing Out — Arthur Dent may have felt like crap, but he doesn't seem to have had any random body parts going to sleep. He did, however, have them disappearing at one point. Make of that what you will.
• Black Dude Dies First — In Evolution, the black dude says this line as an excuse to not do something dangerous thus he doesn't die.
• Black Metal — While the song by Venom contains many elements of Black Metal, the music and vocals are much closer to the style of Thrash Metal they would invariably influence.
• Blinded by the Light — Trope is specifically about blinding an opponent with bright lights for a combative advantage, which is irrelevant to anything in the original song by Bruce Springsteen (and, later, Manfred Mann's Earth Band).
• Blithe Spirit — Trope is an inspiring force upsetting the stuffy old status quo for the better. Neither the Noël Coward play, nor the movie remake, nor Percy Bysshe Shelley's "To a Skylark" provide examples.
• Blow You Away: The term this trope is named for refers to being very impressed by something. This trope is about wind-based Elemental Powers.
• Boom Stick — A staff that shoots stuff, named after This Is My Boomstick (which was originally referring to a shotgun), though one could say "boom stick" is a literal name for it.
• Breakaway Pop Hit — The Trope Namer is the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Anya specifically notes her song was an aversion of the trope.
• Brilliant, but Lazy — Spider-Man is not lazy; he just appears that way to his teachers as Peter Parker because he spends so much time being a superhero that he is often unable to focus on his studies and civilian life. When Doc Ock names the trope ad-verbatim near the end of Spider-Man 2, he just saw Spider-Man unmask himself and is giving a wry Ironic Echo about his earlier assessment of Peter.
• Brooklyn Rage — The Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series version of Joey Wheeler is explicitly not from New York. He just has a Brooklyn accent because his counterpart from the original anime did (plus Rule of Funny).
• Cannot Tell a Lie — The trope is about characters who are physically incapable of lying, but the Trope Namer is Mason Locke Weems' possibly apocryphal story about a young George Washington honorably choosing not to lie — which is an example of Will Not Tell a Lie.
• Carry a Big Stick — The Theodore Roosevelt quotation ("Speak softly, and carry a big stick; you will go far.") that the trope name is derived from was a metaphor for Gunboat Diplomacy. The trope is basically literal, actually being about wielding clubs and related weapons.
• Catapult to Glory — Trope is named after a Darwin Award-nominated Tree Buchet accident.
• Cat Concerto — About cats singing/yowling on the back fence. In the trope naming Tom and Jerry cartoon "The Cat Concerto", the cat does not sing at all but plays solo classical piano. (After all, in Classical Music a "concerto" is an instrumental solo with orchestral accompaniment, not a sung piece at all.)
• Caught Up in the Rapture — has nothing to do with Anita Baker's song, which is a traditional love song.
• Chained Heat — The movie the trope takes its name from has nothing to do with diametrically opposed characters shackled together. The film is actually just a Les Yay-filled Exploitation Film about a women's prison.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town — No character has ever been exiled from a place, only to return with a Charlie Brown Paper-Thin Disguise.
• A Child Shall Lead Them — The Bible passage in question doesn't refer to a child monarch.
• Church Militant — The Catholic Church defines the Church Militant as the Church on Earth, which is engaged in spiritual, not physical, warfare.
• Clothes Make the Superman — Superman doesn't get his powers from his clothes.
• Complete Monster — The trope was named by Stephen King in his 1981 Book on Trope Danse Macabre to describe the character Herbie Satten from the EC Comics strip "Foul Play!", a conceited baseball player who poisons a member of the opposing team to win a game. However, this one act of murder simply means he's crossed the Moral Event Horizon, whereas the Complete Monster displays a pattern of such villainous acts. Additionally, the manner in which Herbie is himself murdered by the members of the opposing team in a Vigilante Execution and then has his body parts used for a grotesque ball game means his heinousness doesn't even stand out by the standards of the story. Herbie is not a Complete Monster but rather just a Hate Sink.
• Crocodile Tears — The trope is about feigned crying for the purpose of emotional manipulation. Actual crocodiles produce tears for the sake of cleaning their eyes, not for emotional reasons either real or feigned.
• Crying a River: The trope is named after an idiom which means excessive crying, but not to the point of crying enough to fill a bathtub.
• Cue the Sun — When the line is spoken in the The Truman Show, there is no intended symbolism behind it. Christof is literally telling the crew to cue the sun to start the day in the artificial town.
• Daydream Believer — Has no connection to The Monkees' song, which is about a teenage girl who once idolized the singer but now doesn't, so he's trying to cheer her up. The trope is about a character who believes fictional stories are true.
• Day of the Jackboot — The trope is about a totalitarian regime taking over. Named after The Day of the Jackal, which is about an assassination attempt against President Charles de Gaulle in revenge for ending the Algerian War, by an enigmatic assassin known only as "The Jackal," and has nothing to do with replacing the government.
• Days of Future Past — The trope is about a future with historical elements. The X-Men comic storyline and movie are about avoiding a Bad Future.
• Deliver Us from Evil — The Lord's Prayer was talking about being rescued from evil. The trope is about a Heel–Face Turn caused by having a baby.
• Dem Bones — The trope is about animate skeletons. The Bible story of Ezekiel and the Valley of the Dry Bones, that inspired the Trope Namer "Dry Bones"/"Dem Bones" song, has the bones immediately given flesh and souls during their resurrections.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight — The song by Cutting Crew is referring to death as a metaphor for an orgasm, not literally dying.
• Different for Girls — The trope is about a gender-bent protagonist finding out that things are... well, different for girls, while the Joe Jackson song of the same title is about how dating and love is, well, different for girls.
• Do They Know It's Christmas Time? — The original song was a provincial song by Band Aid about the then-contemporary famine in Ethiopia. The trope is about Christmas time not being treated as a big deal by characters.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent — Gameplay constraints in Team Fortress 2 (such as members of the same team being Friendly Fireproof) prevent Spy players from indulging in the required complicated espionage. In supplementary story material, the RED Spy only goes so far as being a mole in the "Meet the Spy" video and is most definitely loyal to his own team.
• Drugs Are Bad: In the episode of South Park that named the trope, the Aesop was not that drugs are bad, but that drug addiction is caused by external factors and can only be combatted through helping those susceptible to addiction.
• El Spanish "-o": Named for El Producto cigars. "El Producto" is in fact grammatically correct Spanish.
• Enemy Within: Named for an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, which episode is actually about a Literal Split Personality.
• Everybody Must Get Stoned — Bob Dylan's song "Rainy Day Woman #12 and #35" is not actually about mind-altering substances, despite a huge Misaimed Fandom thinking so.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family — Cedrik was making a sarcastic quip at an underling when he uttered the Trope Namer line in The Order of the Stick. Outside of the three members of the Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission working together for a common cause, the webcomic's big villains tend to exploit or backstab each other for their own conflicting agendas.
• Excellent Judge of Character — The trope is about being good at judging people's character. While the Sultan in Aladdin is correct to trust Aladdin when saying the line, he also considers the treacherous Jafar to be his loyal right hand man. Jafar's bird Iago even mocks the Sultan for making such a claim.
• Excessive Evil Eyeshadow — It's named after Wyrd Sisters. Magrat is a kind-hearted witch whose personal aesthetic is something of a Discworld hippie. But when she wants to look scary and "witchy," the cosmetics come out and take action.
• Eye of Newt — All the ingredients in the witches' brew at the beginning of Macbeth are folk names for herbs. "Eye of newt" itself refers to mustard seed.
• Fearful Symmetry — The trope is named for a line from William Blake's poem "The Tyger", which has nothing to do with the trope.
• Finger Poke of Doom — The trope is about an attack that looks weak but is actually incredibly powerful. The trope namer is the Fan Nickname for the WCW Monday Nitro incident when a match between Hollywood Hogan and Kevin Nash consisted entirely of Hogan poking Nash, then pinning him for the win. Within the confines of Kayfabe, it could theoretically be a straight example, but no one's disbelief remained suspended and it was obvious the poke did nothing to Nash — he was just Throwing the Fight and didn't care who knew it.
• Flash Sideways — Lost named and, along with Sliding Doors, co-codified the trope with its extensive use of parallel timelines in the final season. But the "alternate timeline" turned out to be the afterlife instead.
• Florence Nightingale Effect — Florence Nightingale is a famous nurse, but there are no examples of romance between her and anyone under her care or anyone at all. It was just called so because she is a famous nurse.
• Foregone Conclusion — Iago was using the term to mean "something that had already happened"; what he was describing had nothing to do with stories where the audience knows how it's going to end from the beginning.
• Free-Range Children: The trope is about kids being able to go around anywhere with little to no adult supervision. The name comes from the "Treehouse Of Horror V" segment "Nightmare Cafeteria", where the kids were literally treated like free-range for eating later.
• Freudian Excuse — While Freud was big on analyzing childhoods and how they could affect adulthood, none of his theories suggested that an unhappy or abusive childhood would turn a man evil, or that such folks would (or should) use it as an excuse for their actions.
• Future Imperfect — The trope is about people from the future having incorrect ideas about the past. The trope naming episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation is about Riker winding up in an illusory vision of his own future life, the future is "imperfect" in the sense that it's not real, and it's not convincing enough to fool him.
• Game-Over Man — The trope is about a game over cutscene where the player character's death is acknowledged. The line from Aliens is a character panicking in fear.
• Girl Friday — This trope is Always Female, but is named after a male character.
• Goddamned Bats — Raoul Duke never had to deal with annoying video game enemies, thankfully.
• Goggles Do Nothing — Rainier Wolfcastle was wearing safety goggles for their intended purpose; they just weren't enough to protect his eyes (let alone his entire body) from a flood of acid, hence his exclamation that they did nothing for him. The goggles were not being kept on his forehead as a purely decorative clothing accessory.
• Got the Whole World in My Hand — The Trope Namer is a spiritual children's song called "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", referring to God and how he keeps the world under control. The trope is about villainous logos depicting a colossal hand holding the world as a marker of villainy.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress — The trope is about gravity not working the way it's supposed to. The Tick was complaining about gravity working all too well, on him. Luckily, he is Nigh-Invulnerable.
• Great Balls of Fire! — Nothing to do with the song by Jerry Lee Lewis, fireballs, or balls on fire.
• Grimmification — The Brothers Grimm actually Bowdlerised the stories they wrote down in their collection. It's just that the originals were so ripe with sex and violence that even the new versions were still quite, well, grim.
• Half the Man He Used to Be — The trope namer is taken from The Beatles song "Yesterday", which has nothing to do with people being cut in half.
• Having a Blast — The phrase the trope is named for means having a great time. The trope is about explosion-based Elemental Powers.
• He-Man Woman Hater — The trope is about grown men who hate or dislike women. The Little Rascals, being too young to qualify for the trope, fall instead under Girls Have Cooties.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose — The Trope Namer, #35 on the The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Clichés, is about a boss not being killed after the fight. The trope goes even further, the boss not only does not die, but turns around and defeats the player despite their previous victory. Both of contrast to Hopeless Boss Fight, as losing to the boss in the actual battle still means Game Over.
• Heal Thyself — The quote in The Bible is a reference to how doctors can't heal themselves, or at least not very well.
• Horse of a Different Color — The saying is a metaphor that means "another matter entirely". The trope is about non-horse animals being used like horses.
• Humanity Is Superior — Crichton doesn't really believe that (indeed, humans aren't special at much of anything other than heat tolerance in Farscape). But he was crazy at the time he said that line.
• Hyde Plays Jekyll — This never happened with the original Jekyll & Hyde.
• The Hyena: Hyenas don't actually laugh; the noise they make only sounds like laughing.
• I Am What I Am: In The Bible, God utters these words in the context of giving his name (or something like it). The trope is for people learning to accept who they are. God didn't need to do that nor was that what he was doing here.
• I Believe I Can Fly: The song by R. Kelly is about feeling like he can fly after falling in love, the trope is about the actual power to fly.
• The Igor — The Trope Namer (Ygor from Son of Frankenstein) wasn't a hunchback, and he wasn't Dr. Frankenstein's servant. The Trope Maker from the original Frankenstein was a guy named "Fritz" who's frequently confused with Ygor.
• I Have the High Ground — This trope is about just looking cool by standing on a tall, thin prominence. The Trope Namer, Obi-Wan Kenobi in Revenge of the Sith, is talking about having a strategic advantage from a higher position, as well as a metaphor for "good will prevail over evil in the end because good has the moral high ground".
• In the Hood is another way of saying "in the neighborhood" (specifically the urban ghettoes of the Hood Film genre, though you may well see at least one hoodie there).
• Insane Troll Logic — The Trope Namer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, referred to "insane troll logic" three times: first, a hero said it to an actual troll cruelly asking if he wanted his girlfriend or best friend to die; second, it was that same troll mocking the idea of altruism; and third, Buffy said it in disbelief to a vampified classmate psychoanalyzing her. All three of these usages are warped logic by twisted minds, but they are logical, not the kind of absurd and clearly erroneous leaps of illogic that Insane Troll Logic now refers to.
• I Reject Your Reality — In the actual scene from The Dungeonmaster, the phrase is a response to the villain saying "In a future reality, I shall destroy you!", meaning that while he was rejecting "your reality" he was not rejecting reality itself. The phrase was popularized when famously quoted by Adam Savage, who definitely was using it in the sense of the trope.
• Isn't It Ironic? — Trope is using a song because one missed the irony in the lyrics. Trope Namer (Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic") cannot be an example because it does not actually contain verbal irony. The title refers to ironic juxtapositions of events.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): The trope refers to Alternate History works that rename Real Life places to reflect changes in the timeline. The song by the Four Lads (made famous by They Might Be Giants) has nothing to do with Alternate History, but is simply about the city of Constantinople being renamed "Istanbul" after the fall of the Byzantine Empire (which actually happened).
• It's Raining Men — Paratroopers have nothing to do with that song.
• It's the Only Way to Be Sure — Ripley suggests nuking the colony from orbit to ensure the eradication of the Xenomorphs in Aliens, but it doesn't actually happen. Instead, the atmospheric processor on the planet explodes by accident.
• Jerkass — The word "jerkass" was first used in The Simpsons episode "The Joy of Sect" by Homer as a meaningless insult, telling people in the path of his car "Outta my way, jerkass!" It was only because of the Fan Nickname "Jerkass Homer", made in response to Homer's increasingly selfish characterization (which was, coincidentally enough, becoming prominent around the same time in the show's run), that this adjective came to denote a jerkish character.
• Join or Die — The trope is about villainous organizations killing anyone who doesn't join them. Benjamin Franklin's political cartoon with this as the caption is instead illustrating We ARE Struggling Together and Divided We Fall.
• Kill It with Fire — The meme is about deletion of files, images, or articles, which never involves literal fire.
• Knight Templar — The Knights Templar were actually very tolerant of the Arabs, but propaganda and conspiracy theory said otherwise.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All — The name of this trope comes from The Simpsons, namely an insult that Homer used to describe Lisa after she wrecked his barbecue and compared meat eating to cannibalism in the episode "Lisa the Vegetarian". While Lisa can definitely be a bit insistent with an "ideas above people" mentality, she is usually characterized as an authentic Insufferable Genius. Rarely, if ever, does she actually wrongly believe herself to be intelligent.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: This trope is named after one of Dudley's quotes in Street Fighter III. Dudley is a boxer, and his moveset includes various illegal moves like grapples, throws, trips, below-the-belt punches, and using a rose as a projectile weapon. He doesn't fight like a gentleman in the slightest.
• Like a Surgeon — The trope namer is Weird Al's parody of Madonna's Like a Virgin, and premised on the narrator being a very poor doctor who probably shouldn't have a medical license, but the trope is about non-surgery situations treated like surgery for comedic effect.
• The Living Dead — The trope namer is any number of films about zombies, but the trope has nothing to do with them or any other undead monsters. It's about Special Effect Failure revealing that a corpse is actually being played by a live person.
• Lolicon and Shotacon: Both "Lolicon" and "Shotacon" are misleading terms. Shotaro Kaneda from Gigantor is not at all sexualized, and although Lolita does focus on the narrator's sexual attraction towards the title character, said attraction is intended as a sign of the narrator being both unreliable and contemptible.
• Lucky Charms Title — The cereal is written with ordinary letters. It's just that the marshmallow shapes called out in the ads could be used for this kind of title.
• Ludicrous Speed — The trope is about speed that is so fast it drives you ludicrous, while Spaceballs heavily implies that you'd already have to be ludicrous just to want to go that fast.
• Machine Empathy — The trope is about someone with enough technical knowledge to know a machine's problems by feel. Paranoia refers to supernatural control of machines, which is covered by the trope Technopathy.
• The Mad Hatter — The Trope is about a madman who acknowledges, accepts, and embraces his madness. The Hatter in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland may be mad, but doesn't stand out among the other residents of Wonderland in this regard. If anyone in the book fits the Trope, it's likely the Cheshire Cat.
• Magic Bus — The bus in the song by The Who for which this trope is named is not itself actually magical — it's just an ordinary bus.
• Magnificent Bastard — The Trope Namer is given to Erwin Rommel by George Patton in Patton. Though it indicates that Patton considered Rommel a Worthy Opponent, Rommel himself doesn't take an active role in the movie and his portrayal doesn't possess a shrewd and charismatic personality that would make him a proper Magnificent Bastard.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman — Shania Twain's song is about female independence, not men feeling themselves up after discovering that they've somehow become women.
• Mary Sue — The Trope Namer is the protagonist of the Star Trek fanfic A Trekkie's Tale, which is a parody of the Mary Sue Classic. The original Mary Sue is actually what would now be considered a Parody Sue.
• The Masochism Tango — The Tom Lehrer song is about a man being physically tortured by his lover, while the lyrics also generally imply that the lovers are an otherwise loving couple engaging in BDSM (just with really over-the-top violent acts). The trope is about emotional abuse and dysfunction within genuinely unhappy relationships between people who are truly ill-suited to each other.
• Mexican Standoff — The term originated in a 19th-century newspaper as a metaphor to describe a political struggle for power in Mexico. The trope is about two or more people with weapons pointed at each other, if one fires, they both die.
• Missed Him by That Much — A riff on one of Maxwell Smart's many catch phrases, but he never actually engaged in the farcical almost meeting of characters described by this trope.
• Mister Big — The villain of that name in Live and Let Die isn't a particularly small man. The version from the original novel is both an inversion and an aversion — he's very much Large and in Charge, but his street name actually comes from the initials of his real name.
• Money for Nothing — The Dire Straits song of this name is from the perspective of a lower-class worker who thinks that rock stars earn loads of money for doing nothing, or at least nothing that counts as "real" work. The trope is about being in a situation where you're getting money but are given nothing to spend it on (or at least nothing worthwhile), making the money effectively useless.
• Most Annoying Sound — The scene from Dumb and Dumber doesn't qualify because it's not a video game or toy.
• Most Common Superpower: The trope is indirectly named after some Conversational Troping from Calvin and Hobbes, which isn't even in the medium or genre most famous for the trope.
• My Country, Right or Wrong — This is only part of the actual saying, which goes, "My country, right or wrong. If right, to be kept right, and if wrong, to be set right, but always, my country!" Hence, while Stephen Decatur may have agreed with the idea of staying loyal to your country associated with the trope, he certainly did not agree with the part involving blind loyalty.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning — Named after the line spoken by Pious Augustus from Eternal Darkness. He dies a very final death immediately after uttering the eponymous phrase.
• My Hero, Zero — The singer in Schoolhouse Rock! is referring to the number zero itself, not a fictional character named "Zero".
• My Horse Is a Motorbike — The meme from Sengoku Basara is just a regular horse that's been outfitted with handlebars and tailpipes.
• My Own Grampa — The titular song is about a man who is his own step-grandfather by marriage. The trope is about being one's own biological ancestor.
• My Own Private "I Do" — It's a pun on My Own Private Idaho and thus, indirectly, the The B-52s song after which the film was titled. Neither work is about weddings or marriages.
• The Napoleon — The real Napoléon Bonaparte was, contrary to popular belief, of average height for his time. He appears comparatively short in paintings because he stocked his Imperial Guard with tall men.
• Next Sunday A.D. — Mystery Science Theater 3000 was inexplicit regarding the date, but clearly wasn't set a couple of years in the future.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Herod! — Even though Herod was trying to kill Jesus to prevent losing his power, his eventual death was not caused (directly or indirectly) by Jesus.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed — The end credits of The Critic used the phrase after announcing out that celebrity voices were impersonated, not to note that characters based on Real Life celebrities have different names on the show.
• Not Hyperbole — Lien's threat to "gut you like the catch of the day" is actually a metaphor not hyperbole (actually, it's a simile, but the comic misidentifies it as a metaphor), and her explanation of it being literal makes it a Literal Metaphor.
• A Nuclear Error — The phrase's appearance in The Clash's "London Calling" is a reference to the partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island — not common factual inaccuracies about nuclear weapons appearing in fiction.
• Obvious Judas — Within the context given by The Four Gospels, Judas Iscariot being the traitor is not obvious; pop culture only sees him as such because of 2000 years of It Was His Sled. When Jesus reveals that he knows one of the disciples will betray Him, they are all shocked and ask, "Lord, is it I?" There are a few tiny hints in the narrative itself (Matthew mentions that Judas was Stealing from the Till), but it essentially comes out of the blue.
• Oedipus Complex — Though he did kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus had no clue that he was related to either of them when he met them, and was thoroughly disgusted with himself when he found out. He killed his father in a chance encounter with him, and he was offered his mother's hand in marriage as a reward for saving Thebes from the Sphinx — he didn't hate his father, and he wasn't in love with his mother. Its Distaff Counterpart, the Electra Complex, is even less of an example. Electra killed her mother purely in revenge for killing her father, eight years after he had died. She didn't kill her mother to have her father for herself, and her brother helped her with the murder to boot.

• Off with His Head! — Many know the trope name from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in which the Queen of Hearts shouts "Off with his head!" and "Off with her head!" and "Off with their heads!" to order the execution of almost everyone at the croquet game. It isn't until the Tim Burton version that the Queen is actually seen to have gone through with it, though. In the book and in all its other adaptations, victims were pardoned behind her back by the King.
• One of These Doors Is Not Like the Other — Sesame Street never featured a maze that could be navigated only by observing subtle hints.
• Only a Model — The trope is about a miniature model of a future or existing structure. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Patsy claims the actual Camelot Castle is a model when he attempts to break the fourth wall, only to be promptly shut up by King Arthur (for added irony, the "model" he's referring to was a real castle; the production couldn't afford to build an actual model).
• Open the Iris — Namer was a shield for the Stargate, not anything about someone's eye.
• Orcus on His Throne: Contrary to common knowledge, Orcus from Dungeons & Dragons is a very proactive villain.
• Pac-Man Fever — The song (and later, album) that the trope is named after depicts video games accurately, and they were current at the time.
• Paint It Black — The trope is about a character's costume changing when they turn evil. The song by The Rolling Stones is about a man overcome by grief after his lover's death who wants to paint everything black.
• A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: The trope is about swashbuckling pirates in modern times; the Trope Namer is a song about a man seeing more years behind him than ahead.
• Playing with Fire: The actual saying means doing something risky, not actual pyrokinesis.
• Rasputinian Death — The circumstances surrounding the death of the Real Life Rasputin the Mad Monk were largely fabricated to paint him as demonic. He actually died after only being shot three times, with the third shot killing him instantly.
• The Real Remington Steele: The trope involves a mysterious character to be revealed as an established character in disguise, only for the identity to be revealed to be based of an actual person or stolen by a anonymous newcomer. The show Remington Steele does involve a Con Man pretending to be the fictitious boss of the detective agency, but there is no reveal or Retcon involved as it is all revealed as the core premise of the show.
• Red Right Hand — The trope refers to some odd physical trait that indicates someone is evil. The line from Paradise Lost is speaking metaphorically, and about God (specifically his punishments), who is not evil.
• Restored My Faith in Humanity — Akara never had any particular doubt in humanity's ability to do or be good — the "faith in humanity" restored for her is that it has a chance to survive, which she was doubting on account of all those demons running around.
• Revenge of the Nerd — None of the Revenge of the Nerds movies features a formerly nebbish high school character growing up attractive and then sticking it to the opposite-sex character who previously rejected them.
• Ride the Lightning — The trope is about moving with or as electricity. The Title Track of the Metallica album Ride the Lightning is about execution by electrocution.
• Ring of Fire — The Trope is about literal rings of fire, the song by Johnny Cash only mentions a fiery ring as a metaphor.
• Rock Me, Amadeus! — The song by Falco is about Mozart, but does not have any Sampling from him.
• Scandalgate — "Watergate" was just the name of the hotel where the famous U.S. political scandal mainly took place. While it inspired the use of the "-gate" suffix in umpteen future political and media scandals, the Watergate scandal itself did not follow this convention and, thus, is not an example of the trope.
• The Scourge of God — Trope is about serial killers who kill sinners; the Trope Namer is a nickname attributed to Attila the Hun.
• The Shadow Knows: This Trope is about a disguised person's shadow revealing his or her true self. It has nothing to do with The Shadow, who used the name as his Catchphrase.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: The protagonist in the ZZ Top song is hilariously overdressed (he's wearing a formal top hat during the day, an autumn coat over a summer suit, and he's either wearing a diamond ring and gloves at the same time or just carrying the gloves for show) and doesn't look sharp in the slighest.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules! — The Trope Namer is a Spoonerism by Kaiba in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series; he was trying to say "Screw the Rules, I Have Money!"
• Shock and Awe — The trope is about electrical-based Elemental Powers. The phrase is about destroying an enemy's will to fight with massive, overwhelming force.
• So Happy Together — The song gives no indication that the relationship will end badly, and it most likely has not even have begun yet.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear — The trope name is derived from "So long, and thanks for all the fish," the last message given to humanity by the dolphins before they fled Earth in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This event has absolutely no relation to a video game character leaving the party and taking all the gear they had equipped with them.
• Spell My Name with an "S" — The trope is about frequently misspelled names. This was the reason Isaac Asimov wrote the short story of the same name, but the story itself exemplifies For Want of a Nail and My Nayme Is instead.
• The Stoic — The philosophy of Stoicism isn't about not showing emotions, but rather about self-control and virtue. While it does teach that you should not let emotions rule you, that is not the same as not expressing them. The trope closest to the philosophy is The Spock (the trope namer of which is an example).
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys — The trope namer is an xkcd strip where someone tells a bunch of Rock Band players to "stop having fun" because they are playing an instrument simulation game rather than real instruments. However, the trope itself refers to people who do play video games, but insult those who don't play as competitively as they do.
• Strong Flesh, Weak Steel — The trope is named after a metaphor used by villain Thulsa Doom from Conan the Barbarian in reference to his subjects' devotion, but he doesn't believe in literal flesh being stronger than steel.
• Suffer the Slings — The trope is about literal slings; the trope namer is a monologue from Hamlet about the metaphorical "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."
• Sympathy for the Devil — The trope is about a hero who has sympathy for a villain. The song by The Rolling Stones with that name only has a villain, and he's the completely unsympathetic Satan, joyfully singing about what a Jerkass he is.
• Taste the Rainbow — The trope is about a particular element of a story or setting has been expanded to the point that there is a version that adapts to the preferences of each viewer, something that the Skittles candy have not done.
• The Pen Is Mightier: Refers to use of a pen as an Improvised Weapon. The phrase on the other hand refers to written words being more powerful than weapons.
• Thinking Up Portals — Named after the memetic "Thinking With Portals" tagline of the Portal series, but the portals in that series don't count because Chell uses a portal gun rather than an innate ability.
• ¡Three Amigos! — The film is about a group of three adult guys, not a high school group with one member of an opposite gender to the others.
• Throw the Book at Them — As described on the trope page, the phrase means "prosecute to the fullest possible extent of the law." The profession probably didn't mean it literally.
• Timey-Wimey Ball — The actual episode of Doctor Who from which this phrase emerged ends in a perfectly reasonable Stable Time Loop, albiet one containing a bootstrap paradox. But the series as a whole is all over the place in explaining the perils and practice of Time Travel.
• Trampled Underfoot: The trope is about a comparatively small character or object being crushed underfoot by a larger one. The trope-naming Led Zeppelin song however, is a series of automotive metaphors for sex.
• Uncle Tomfoolery — The trope is about a comically portrayed African American. The title character from Uncle Tom's Cabin is not comically portrayed, presumably the name comes from how the character is often lumped into the stereotype through "Common Knowledge".
• Under the Sea: The name is taken from the famous song in The Little Mermaid, which song was actually a case of Cultural Posturing ("Everything's better, down where it's wetter"). The trope refers to underwater video game levels.
• Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born — "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." The fulfillment of this was not part of a set of twins, much less fraternal twins.
• Vengeance Feels Empty — The line comes from Grand Theft Auto IV regarding Niko killing Darko. However, it is implied that "empty" feeling isn't from vengeance in general, but from taking the wrong kind of vengeance — specifically, he wanted to die, so letting him live made him suffer more.
• Voice of the Legion — While the Gerasene demon certainly inspired many of the examples, there is no indication in The Bible that he spoke with a reverb.
• The Walls Are Closing In — The trope name was inspired by lyrics lifted from the pre-chorus to the Linkin Park song "Crawling"; however, the phrase's use in the song is intended to be metaphorical and describe the narrator's nervous breakdown — not to convey that he's caught in a Death Trap where the walls literally close in and threaten to crush a character.
• Warp Whistle — The Warp Whistle from Super Mario Bros. 3 is actually a Warp Zone.
• We All Live in America — The Rammstein song "Amerika" is a commentary on the spread of American culture throughout the world, not about authors getting elements from other cultures wrong because of unfamiliarity with them. In fact, given that Rammstein is a German band and the trope itself is not limited to the United States, it would only be an example if the song assumed that We All Live in Germany.
• We Hardly Knew Ye — The trope refers to a character who is killed off or otherwise removed from the continuity of a series before the audience can get to know them properly. The trope namer is the old Irish folk song Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, which is about a soldier who returns home alive, but so maimed and disfigured that he is virtually unrecognisable.
• Whale Egg — The trope namer is an incident from The Simpsons where Ralph Wiggum mistakes a large white isolation tank for said "whale egg"; it didn't involve an actual whale egg or any other egg from an animal that doesn't reproduce that way.
• Where Were You Last Night? — The Song is about not knowing how to find an ex-lover with whom you want to reconcile. The trope is about someone who was gone for a night reappearing and garnering suspicion.
• Whip It Good — The song by Devo is composed of largely nonsensical lyrics about solving one's problems by "whipping it" and serves as a satire of American optimism. The song makes no mention of the use of actual whips as weapons.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"? — The Dude in The Big Lebowski doesn't actually have an unusual birth name; his real name is "Jeffrey Lebowski". "Dude" is just his nickname, making him an example of Only Known by Their Nickname.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Prince Vultan from Flash Gordon (1980) before going into a suicidal battle, while the trope refers to immortals wishing they were dead.
• With This Herring — The Trope Namer, a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was about a joke of an Impossible Task and not any sort of epic quest.
• Xenafication — Xena was an Action Girl from the get-go. The Trope is about other characters becoming more like Xena.
• "X" Makes Anything Cool — Bender from Futurama was referring to the word "extortion" (a normal word that's naturally spelled with an "x"), not to a title or phrase with "X" gratuitously added for Rule of Cool.
• You Bastard! — In South Park, Kyle never directs this phrase to shame the audience for enjoying something immoral, but to admonish whomever is responsible for Kenny's death. The only meta subtext, according to Word of God, is that Kyle is yelling at the writers for writing Kenny's death into the show.
• You Can't Go Home Again — The trope is about somebody being actually unable to return home, due to physical, legal, or other reasons. The trope namer is a proverb that describes a similar, but distinct trope, Stranger in a Familiar Land — you can technically go home, it just doesn't feel like home anymore.
• You Have to Burn the Web — There are no webs in You Have to Burn the Rope.
• Zettai Ryouiki — The phrase means "absolute territory" in Japanese, and originally referred to the AT fields in Neon Genesis Evangelion. This wiki's definition of the term was adopted from otaku slang, which is not standard Japanese usage. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Evangelion doesn't actually have any examples of young girls who wear knee socks (at least, not in the main canon).

Snowclones

• Fisher Kingdom — Named after Fisher King, but this trope's kingdom changes all its residents, not just its ruler. The original fisher-kingdom (in the tales of King Arthur) is an example of that trope, not this one.
• I Am Not Leonard Nimoy — Named so as to be the inverse of I Am Not Spock. However, actor Leonard Nimoy was not known for having a public image or personality which overshadowed the characters he played; it was very much always a case of the opposite.
• Knight of Cerebus — Named after Cerebus Syndrome, but Cerebus the Aardvark did not introduce the Cerebus Syndrome via a character. It drifted in more gradually.
• Luke, I Am Your Father:
  • Luke, I Might Be Your Father — Darth Vader is indisputably the father of Luke Skywalker.
  • Luke, You Are My Father — Darth Vader was the one to reveal his relation to Luke Skywalker (not the other way around), and Luke Skywalker never met any children he didn't know about.
• Mary Sue — Since "Mary Sue" has become a term in its own right, many of the items named after it don't have anything to do with Mary Sue from A Trekkie's Tale:
  • Anti-Sue — The original Mary Sue wasn't designed with traits that Mary Sues typically don't have. Quite the opposite, in fact.
  • Canon Sue — The original Mary Sue never appeared in an actual Star Trek episode.
  • Dream Sue — A Trekkie's Tale didn't take place in the original Mary Sue's dreams.
  • Einstein Sue — Albert Einstein may have had a lot of knowledge, but he was an actual scientist, so it's not implausible.
  • Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue" — The original Mary Sue wasn't a normal woman who only fantasised about doing great things.
  • Marty Stu — The original Mary Sue was a woman.
  • Possession Sue — The original Mary Sue was an Original Character, not a canon character who was behaving like a Mary Sue.
  • Suetiful All Along — The original Mary Sue was a Parody Sue from the get-go.
• Muggles:
  • Muggle Power — Most muggles in Harry Potter know nothing of wizards due to the masquerade, and thus never take a stance on them. The Second Salemers in the prequel/Spin-Off film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them do quality, but that takes place in the United States where muggles are called No-Majs.
  • Muggles Do It Better — Fridge Logic aside, magic nearly always wins in Harry Potter.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Noodle Implements: The noodle incident from Calvin and Hobbes was never described as using any particular objects.
  • Resolved Noodle Incident: The noodle incident was famously and intentionally never resolved.
• Not His Sled — The inverse of It Was His Sled, where a remake or adaptation changes a famous twist, to keep it a twist. There are no remakes or adaptations of Citizen Kane, let alone any in which "Rosebud" doesn't turn out to be Charles Foster Kane's childhood sled.
• The Original Darrin — Named after The Other Darrin, but Dick York, who first played Darrin in Bewitched, never reprised his role.
• Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: Named after Rube Goldberg Device, but the actual Rube Goldberg didn't hate anyone enough to kill anyone with his devices.
• Shut Up, Hannibal! — Named after Hannibal Lecture, but no one ever tells off Dr. Lecter that way in any Hannibal Lecter media; if they did, he would eat them if he could. "Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me."
• Sixth Ranger Traitor — Named after Sixth Ranger, but none of the Power Rangers Sixth Rangers were traitors or moles.
• The Scrappy: Most of the Tropes on the Scrappy Index are not named after Scrappy Doo from Scooby-Doo himself, but rather the perception of him. The main trope itself qualifies to an extent, as the character's reception is more a Base-Breaking Character than being universally reviled, at least in the modern times.
  • Alas, Poor Scrappy — Scrappy-Doo has never been killed off in any incarnation of Scooby-Doo; even in the 2002 live-action film, where he was the villain, he lives.
  • Damsel Scrappy — Scrappy-Doo is male, and he wasn't usually a Distressed Dude.
  • Ethnic Scrappy — Scrappy-Doo is not based on any ethnic group.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap — Scrappy-Doo was never fully redeemed in the eyes of the Scooby-Doo fanbase, partially because he (mostly) stayed absent from the franchise after its initial cancellation. His only other appearance was in the 2002 live-action film, which didn't improve his reputation and even seemed to play into it since he was the villain.
  • Scrappy Mechanic — Scrappy-Doo is not a hated video game mechanic.
  • Scrappy Weapon — Scrappy-Doo is not a weapon (though he wanted to be a living weapon quite a lot) and he's not a video game character.
  • Temporary Scrappy — Scrappy-Doo stuck around for the whole show, and he wasn't intended to be hated by the audience.
  • Tier-Induced Scrappy — Scrappy-Doo is not in any tier-related games, nor is he hated for being too overpowered or underpowered (though his tendency to pick fights he can’t win is one of his more annoying traits).
• Starfish Language — Named to be a Snowclone of Starfish Aliens. However, as noted on the trope page, Real Life starfish don't engage in any particularly strange forms of communication, nor indeed, any observable forms of communication at all.
• Worf Had the Flu — Named for The Worf Effect, but this was never actually applied to Worf in any episode of Star Trek. While he did regularly get thrashed in battles in order to make new villains look stronger by comparison, the writers never felt the need to explain away any of those losses by giving him a legitimate excuse for losing.

Renamed off the list

Tropes that were renamed off this list:

• Anger Born of Worry — Originally "Fear Leads to Anger", the trope refers to a character feeling fear for another's safety that presented as anger at their return. In the quote, Yoda was referring to losing control of your fears, and feeling anger towards the source of the fear.
• Authority in Name Only — Originally "The King of Town". It's established on multiple occasions that The King of Town from Homestar Runner does have legal authority.
• Badass Decay — Originally "Spikeification", after the Buffy the Vampire Slayer character. As with Xenafication, there was never a time when Spike wasn't being Spike. Also, the trope is usually invoked for the writers gradually writing the character differently, whereas Spike was subjected to behavior modification treatment that left him literally unable to be badass, making his case closer to Brainwashing for the Greater Good or Heel–Face Brainwashing.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed — Originally "Biggus Dickus". The mentioned character in Monty Python's Life of Brian engages in no sexual activity, and his anatomy is never discussed — it's just his Punny Name which is highlighted.
• Breakup Breakout — Originally "The Jannetty", referring to Shawn Michaels's tag team partner Marty Jannetty, who was actually a Lesser Star.
• Bystander Syndrome — Originally "Someone Else's Problem", referring to a Weirdness Censor in Life, the Universe and Everything that invokes this trope via Applied Phlebotinum.
• Coincidental Dodge — Originally "Gardener Contract". It was named after Chance, the gardener from Being There and the former Trope Namer of Seemingly Profound Fool, who never escaped an assassination attempt by coincidence. Chance was a very lucky fool mistaken for someone important, the type of character who is sometimes subject to Coincidental Dodge comic scenes.
• Creator's Apathy — Originally "They Just Didn't Care". The trope was named by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew's response to the lack of quality in The Eye Creatures. This trope is not about an audience reaction, but the creators explicitly admitting that they didn't care.
• Failed Future Forecast — Originally "Dewey Defeats Truman", the trope is about a work set 20 Minutes into the Future making assumptions about real world events which turn out to be false. The newspaper headline that made up the former name comes from an early edition of a newspaper going out the next day, meaning it more accurately falls under Assumed Win (and indeed, provides the page image for that trope).
• Impersonating the Evil Twin — Originally "I Am He as You Are He", after the opening lyrics of "I Am the Walrus" by The Beatles, in which the context of John Lennon's words don't appear to be about this trope.
• Informed Equipment — Originally "Fight in the Nude", a game challenge in Diablo to fight without armor, not a failure to render acquired equipment owing to cheap graphics, which is the trope.
• Intentional Engrish for Funny — Originally "Zero Wingrish", after the memetic intro of Zero Wing. The game's garbled script was the result of a "Blind Idiot" Translation and most likely not an intentional choice.
• Lesser Star — Used to define a group member (usually in bands and music outfits) who is superfluous. It was originally named "Garfunkel", but the duo of Simon & Garfunkel was well-known for their harmonies, and Art Garfunkel sang some of their most beautiful melodies, even if Paul Simon had a more successful solo career.
• Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow — Originally "Me Love You Long Time"; however, the prostitute in Full Metal Jacket was responding to purely economic forces rather than the soldiers' ethnicity.
• No Delays for the Wicked — Originally "The Trains Run on Time", a term used about fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, for whom it was never true.
• Ordered to Cheat — Originally "Sweep the Leg". In The Karate Kid, not only was "sweeping the leg" not cheating (and thus a viable strategy), the prior match offered a better example, where the same guy ordered another student to take Daniel out of commission, which he does by wrecking his knee ... despite not wanting to cheat in the first place.
• Playing a Tree — Originally "You Are a Tree Charlie Brown", who had never been cast as a tree.
• Person as Verb — Originally "I Pulled a "Weird Al"". "Weird Al" Yankovic never used the trope in his music, nor did any character in any other work use his name as a verb.
• Resignations Not Accepted — Originally "You Can Never Leave", a reference to lyrics from The Eagles song "Hotel California," which in the context of the song were about not being able to leave a place, rather than an organization.
• Skyward Scream — Originally "The Khan", referring to an infamous scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which didn't involve a scream using that precise presentation. Instead, look for The Scream.
• Slow Laser — Originally "Frickin' Laser Beams", a line that comes from Austin Powers, where Dr. Evil declares his desire for sharks with laser beams on their head. Meant to be used for implausible laser weapons, but was mostly used for references to all kinds of energy weapons. The original trope name now redirects to the more generic Energy Weapon.
• Status Quo Game Show — Originally "You Can't Win", after an in-universe game show from Stay Tuned. The protagonists of the movie actually won on the game show, or at least survived it.
• Suddenly Always Knew That — Originally "I Know Kung Fu", the trope refers to a character suddenly using an advanced skill that they had apparently always known but never mentioned having that knowledge before. The original trope namer, Neo from The Matrix, had to get an Upgrade Artifact installed.
• Three-Month-Old Newborn — Originally "Dawson Babies". Does not occur in Dawson's Creek and is simply a reference to the young adults cast as teenagers.
• Translation Train Wreck — Originally "Do Not Want", which, while the bootleg the line came from (Backstroke of the West) is mostly an example, is merely inaccurate (an infamous translation of Darth Vader's Big "NO!" in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith), not flat-out gibberish.
• Unexplained Recovery — Formerly "I Got Better". Trope is about injured or killed characters recovering offscreen for no reason. The peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail claims to have "got better" after being transformed into a newt, but most likely was never transformed in the first place.
• Unseen Evil — Formerly "Ultimate Evil" after the ULTIMATE EVIL!!! feared by the Spathis in Star Control II, which is seemingly just a product of their paranoia that doesn't actually exist.
• Urban Legend of Zelda — Trope is false rumors of Easter Eggs, former trope namer ("Schala Lives" referring to Chrono Trigger) was about plot development and turned out to be true.
• Verbal Tic — Originally "Spoon Speaker", which The Tick's odd battlecry was not really.
• Wedding Smashers — Originally "Wedding Crashers", but the film version was non-violent.

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Partial credit

Partial Credit (including cases where the trope happens, but not the way the name implies):

• American Kirby Is Hardcore — The Kirby series never used "grittier" North American box art until Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, and even got phased out with Kirby's Return to Dream Land being its last example in 2011. (Though they did use grittier North American advertising in the 90s.)
• And I Must Scream — The narrator's fate at the end of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (when he utters the trope-naming line) fits every aspect of this trope but the immobility. He ends up immortal, blind, voiceless, trapped in a giant computer, and unable to commit suicide, but capable of limited movement.
• Beware the Superman — The original book that Superman was based on had the character become evil. However, most versions of Superman are truly heroic.
• Bigger Than Jesus — John Lennon didn't say this. He actually said The Beatles were "more popular than Jesus now", and he insisted that it was a lamentation rather than a Blasphemous Boast (he found it ridiculous that the public got more enthusiastic about singing groups than about religion).
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment — The Trope Namer is a musical number in All Dogs Go to Heaven — an animated musical about Funny Animals set in New Orleans, where a singing alligator isn't out-of-place at all. And King Gator, the big-lipped alligator in question, reappears towards the end to take out the film's villain, thus having a profound impact on the plot. The musical number fits this trope overall, but it does receive a minor reference later, when King Gator sings a single word from the song.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows — Named after one of Strong Bad's hypothetical designs for potential new looks Strong Mad could sport. Nobody in the work actually has large eyebrows.
• Brawn Hilda — Brünnhilde has traditionally been described as very attractive, but due to the ending song requiring very strong lungs, she's usually played by rather large women, leading to inverse Hollywood Pudgy.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S" — This trope is about superhero costumes with letters on them, and Sesame Street does have a few examples (most notably "G" for Super Grover), but it otherwise has nothing to do with the traditional "Letter of the Day" segments of the show.
• The Cake Is a Lie — The last scene of Portal shows that the cake promised to test subjects actually exists, it's just that GLaDOS never intends to let them eat it.
• Chameleon Camouflage — Only one species of chameleon actually changes color to blend in with its environment; in all others their color-changing abilities are primarily a method of communication. The form of camouflage popularly associated with chameleons more accurately applies to octopuses.
• Continuity Snarl: The Snarl of The Order of the Stick certainly fits the spirit of the trope, being an Eldritch Abomination created by disagreements between the gods during the creation of the world, but the comic itself has a single author and a well-ordered continuity.
• Do a Barrel Roll — The "barrel roll" in Star Fox 64 isn't an actual barrel roll, it's an aileron roll.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Professional wrestler Paul Wight (better known as "Big Show" and "The Giant") was a famous example for most of his career. But as of his 2021 debut in All Elite Wrestling, he goes by his real name, and has no apparent problem with being called "Paul".^note He also went by "Paul" at a few earlier points in his career, but those aren't as well-remembered. The other trope namer, Paul Levesque, also went by Jean-Paul during his brief stint in World Championship Wrestling, but that also isn't particularly well-remembered.
• Dr. Feelgood: The trope is about a doctor handing prescription drugs like a drug dealer. The eponymous character of Mötley Crüe's "Dr. Feelgood" is the opposite, selling illegal cocaine, while styling himself as a doctor. Real doctors, however, have been referred to "Dr. Feelgood" as a nickname before the song came out.
• Every Car Is a Pinto — The real-life Ford Pinto did explode in collisions, but it was only one model of Pinto that was affected, and later models fixed the issue.
• Face Stealer — Koh the Face Stealer from Avatar: The Last Airbender can only keep his stolen faces as Creepy Souvenirs, not use them as disguises—wearing them didn't conceal his enormous, monstrous body.
• From the Mouths of Babes: This name comes from Psalm 8:2 in The Bible. The Psalm is talking about God recieving glory from even children. The trope is about children saying something you wouldn't expect, usually sexual or violent. While the Psalm isn't talking about anything sexual or violent, it is still talking about something unexpected of kids.
• General Ripper — General Jack D. Ripper of Dr. Strangelove is indeed insane, and he does indeed concoct a scheme to start a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, but he has almost none of the classic markers of the trope. Rather than being a loud, brash, jingoistic madman who gleefully sends his troops to die in battle, he's a quiet, soft-spoken man who successfully manages to hide his mental instability from everyone else in the military, and he spends most of the movie keeping his troops safely fortified in a military base.
• A Glass of Chianti — Hannibal Lecter is never actually seen sipping chianti in The Silence of the Lambs; the line comes from a scene where he just relates an anecdote about sipping wine with dinner. And while he's certainly Wicked Cultured, the meal that he describes eating (liver and fava beans) is actually pretty modest; it would be a perfectly unremarkable dinner if it weren't a human liver.
• Golden Snitch — J. K. Rowling has stated that it's common in professional Quidditch for a team to catch the Golden Snitch and still lose despite the point bonus, like what happens at the Quidditch World Cup in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It's just that the version Hogwarts uses has simplified rules and is significantly faster, thus the points won from catching the Snitch have much more weight.
• Hartman Hips — While many mature female characters in Butch Hartman's cartoons indeed have wide hips, this actually comes from Stephen Silver's character designs and art style.
• I Am Not Shazam — Captain Marvel, the protagonist of the DC Comics series Shazam!, was originally a rather infamous example of this trope.^note Because of a trademark dispute with Marvel Comics, the writers weren't allowed to call the series "Captain Marvel." As of DC's New 52 Continuity Reboot in 2011, though, he actually is named "Shazam".
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face — The trope refers to serious instances of damage being done by crass gun safety violations. The Pulp Fiction scene, strictly speaking, fits, but is clearly Played for Laughs, making it a much better example of Juggling Loaded Guns.
• Just Here for Godzilla — There are a handful of films in the Godzilla series where Godzilla himself isn't generally considered the primary draw. For example: King Kong was initially intended to be the main star of King Kong vs. Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters is mainly considered notable because it features nine other monsters teaming up with Godzilla, and the primary reason most people watch Godzilla vs. Megalon is for Jet Jaguar.
• Leeroy Jenkins — The original Leeroy Jenkins did indeed rush in without listening to his team's plans, but that plan was so inherently flawed that it wouldn't have worked even if he followed it.
• Long Pants — Whether or not Homestar Runner actually wears pants is inconsistent due to Rule of Funny, but his character design otherwise qualifies.
• Malcolm Xerox — As noted on the main trope page, the trope is based on a gross oversimplification of the real Malcolm X and his views. While he might have been pretty close to the trope in his early years, he explicitly rejected racism later in his life and came to believe that all forms of discrimination based on race were wrong; he just put a slightly higher priority on self-determination than peaceful integration.
• Mordor — Other than the plateau of Gorgoroth, which Frodo and Sam cross in The Lord of the Rings, Mordor is quite a fertile country, with a large lake and volcanic soil that make the southern parts of the land good for farming.
• My Future Self and Me — Named after a South Park episode, where Stan meets his future self. This is not actually the case; it turns out that he was an actor hired by Stan's parents to keep him off drugs. However, at the end of the episode, Cartman actually does meet his future self.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero — While the game itself contains many examples of this in the form of Stupidity Is the Only Option, when GLaDOS actually utters this line in Portal, it's a lie that GLaDOS tells Chell after she destroys one of her vital parts in the final boss battle in a feeble attempt to make her feel bad by claiming that it was a machine that made shoes for orphans.
• No Respect Guy: While the line "I don't get no respect" is indelibly associated with Rodney Dangerfield, the characters he played are not examples of No Respect Guy, but rather the Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist.
• One-Winged Angel — While Sephiroth does undergo the transformation this trope entails in Final Fantasy VII, the name is derived from his Battle Theme Music, which in itself doesn't reference this transformation in any way.
• Pronoun Trouble — Daffy Duck's trouble in Looney Tunes short "Rabbit Seasoning" was with person, not gender.
• The Red Stapler — The trope is about works affecting demand for Real Life products featured in them. Office Space did cause a spike in demand for red Swingline staplers — but the red stapler featured in the film was a full-sized model that Swingline didn't actually sell at the time, as they only made miniature red staplers (the one in the movie was a black stapler painted red). The company didn't start making full-sized red staplers until people started asking for them after seeing the movie, so it was more accurately a defictionalization.
• Right Man in the Wrong Place — Gordon Freeman is an example in the original Half-Life, in which he's an ordinary scientist who fights an alien invasion. In Half-Life 2, however, where the trope-naming line comes from, he's been deliberately dropped off by the G-Man at a specific time and place to achieve the G-Man's goals.
• Rookie Red Ranger — The Power Rangers franchise includes quite a few examples, but the Red Ranger isn't always the leader of their team (even if they are a rookie). Standout examples include the second half of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (where the leader is Tommy the White Ranger) and Power Rangers Time Force (where the leader is Jen the Pink Ranger).^note In the former, Rocky the Red Ranger replaced the original team leader Jason as Red Ranger after he was Put on a Bus, but Tommy succeeded Jason as leader because he had far more experience; in the latter, Wes the Red Ranger was an Identical Grandson of Alex the Red Ranger, who inherited his powers because his DNA unlocked them, but Jen became the new team leader because she was originally Alex's second-in-command.
• The Scrappy — Scrappy-Doo was hugely popular with kids when he was first introduced in 1979, and his introduction actually saved Scooby-Doo from cancellation when the show's popularity was waning. It was only in later years (after the franchise was cancelled and revived) that the character became infamous for supposedly being hated by fans, largely thanks to a case of Vocal Minority.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money! — While Seto Kaiba is fond of using his wealth to buy himself out of situations in both Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series and its source material Yu-Gi-Oh!, when he actually says this in the abridged series, he is just straight-up cheating in his Duel Monsters game against Yugi.
• Some Call Me "Tim" — The trope is about someone with an absurdly long or very hard-to-pronounce name going by a shorter nickname. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there's no indication that Tim the Enchanter's name isn't his real name; John Cleese did ad-lib the line "There are some who call me...Tim," when he couldn't remember his character's actual name, but nobody knows if that was because it was long or hard to pronounce.
• Springtime for Hitler — The trope is about characters who accidentally succeed after intentionally trying to fail at something, and after attempting to profit handsomely from their failure. In The Producers, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom do try to make their musical Springtime for Hitler fail, but its failure wasn't solely going to make them rich. They were going to get rich by overselling shares to gullible investors; the play failing was just a ploy to make it look like they hadn't made any money so that their investors wouldn't expect a return and the IRS wouldn't investigate them. And unlike traditional uses of the trope, their unintentional success isn't a disaster in and of itself: the musical's success easily could have made Max and Leo rich if they hadn't tried to get rich by cheating their investors.
• Team Rocket Wins — At the time that the trope was named, Team Rocket had never won. However, in the Pokémon Sun and Moon anime, Team Rocket did win a fight against Ash legitimately.
• They Killed Kenny Again — South Park played this trope straight with Kenny for the first five seasons, but after Kenny's semi-permanent death in Season 5 and subsequent resurrection at the end of Season 6, it spent more time subverting this trope via near-misses than playing it straight, and even gave it a Cerebus Retcon showing its impact on Kenny.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill — A more accurate translation would be "Thou shalt not commit premeditated murder". For example: the trope refers to characters who refuse to take a life under any circumstances, but The Bible makes allowances for soldiers who are Just Following Orders. (Indeed, some translations of the Bible verse use the word “murder” rather than “kill”.)
• Timmy in a Well — While Lassie often saves Timmy and the other human characters from danger, those dangers never involve wells.
• Voodoo Shark — Refers to instances where creators' attempts to explain plot holes and unanswered questions just create more plot holes and unanswered questions. But the novelization of Jaws: The Revenge technically doesn't generate any plot holes or unanswered questions when it explains that the Brodie family's bad luck with sharks is the result of a voodoo curse. Its explanation is just generally agreed to be really, really stupid.
• Warts and All — When Oliver Cromwell asked for his portrait to contain "warts and all", he was referring to physical imperfections, not moral ones.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong? — No specific Trope Namer, but whenever the phrase is actually said, Tempting Fate usually applies, and not this trope.
• Where da White Women At? — The trope-naming line in Blazing Saddles is just something that Sheriff Bart says to rile up some Klansmen so that he can lure them into an ambush, but the film does have an example of the trope in Bart's fling with Lili Von Shtupp. Still, even that part subverts it: Lili is a professional seductress who gets hired to woo Bart, only to end up genuinely falling for him; by the time she does, Bart proves himself immune to her charms and leaves her.
• Your Head A-Splode — The Player Character who blew up in Strong Bad's hypothetical video game had his entire body explode, not just his head.
• Zerg Rush — In StarCraft, the term "Zerg Rush" refers to the tactic of quickly making a small number of units to seize enemy resources before they set up defenses. Outside of that tactic however, the Zerg are a perfect example of this trope, using vastly superior numbers to compensate for having weaker units.

Last two lists combined

• Actor/Role Confusion — Originally "Your Secret's Safe With Me, Superman", after a line from The Simpsons episode "Mr. Plow". Barney doesn't simply mistake an actor with a fictional character, but also gets role wrong as he refers to Adam West as "Superman", despite the actor being known from portraying Batman from 1966 tv show.
• Adaptational Self-Defense — Originally "The Dog Shot First", the Trope Namer (via Memetic Mutation) is the infamous "Han Shot First" controversy from the post-1997 editions of the original Star Wars film (later subtitled A New Hope), where Han Solo's confrontation with Greedo in the Mos Eisley Cantina is edited so that Greedo shoots at Han and misses him at point-blank range, and Han shoots back in self-defense. But while Han may have fired the first shot in the original version, he only did it because Greedo was pointing a gun at him and delivering a speech making it clear that he intended to kill him; Han's life is clearly in danger in both versions, so the edit doesn't make his actions look particularly more justified.
• Condemned by History: Formerly "Deader Than Disco". Disco has undergone a Popularity Polynomial, being seen more favorably by later generations whom have no memories of its backlash in the early 80s; see here for more information.
• Cute and Psycho — Originally "Yangire", a term that was coined by fans to describe some unusual behavior of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, though this was ultimately not the case.
• Damsel Scrappy — originally "The Kimberly", referring to Jack Bauer's wife from 24, who Took a Level in Badass during the season that followed the trope renaming and got Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
• Decapitated Army — Formerly "Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead", which refers to the Big Bad's armies dispersing when they are killed or defeated. The first time the song is in The Wizard of Oz, when the Wicked Witch of the East dies, is not an example, as the Munchkins are celebrating the death of an oppressor. The second time, when the Winkies sing it after the death of the Wicked Witch of the West, is a straight example.
• Driven by Envy — Originally "Salieri Syndrome", after Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. While Salieri is deeply envious of Mozart's talent, none of his schemes to destroy him pays off and his claim that he murdered Mozart turns out to be a lie.
• Exaggerated Trope — Had "Up to Eleven" fused into it. Spın̈al Tap's amps don't actually exceed normal limits; they're just labeled strangely. But Spın̈al Tap itself—which is described as the world's loudest band, and generally gets into antics well above and beyond any other—fits the spirit of the trope to a T.
• Head-Turning Beauty — Originally "Hello Nurse". The character from Animaniacs was indeed stunningly beautiful, and got this reaction from Yakko and Wakko, but that reaction wasn't universal, more specific to a few characters.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick — originally "The Radar", referring to a character from M*A*S*H, who was this until Flanderization.
• Replacement Flat Character — Originally "The Niles", referring to a character from Frasier, who was such until Character Development.
• Romantic Plot Tumor — Originally "George Lucas Love Story", changed because most romance stories in Lucas films are not poorly written and absorbing most of the film (most of the time), and his famous example was just a Never Live It Down moment.
• Sprint Shoes — Originally "Bunny Hood". Equipping the Bunny Hood item in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask did increase the player's speed, but many players elected not to use it for that purpose, since rolling is faster. Its incarnation in Super Smash Bros. does increase the player's speed and jump height, however. In honor of being technically correct, just overshadowed, it remains an alternate title.
• Unique Enemy — Originally "The Red Snifit", referring to the only Red Snifit in Super Mario Bros. 2. However, in later Super Mario games where Snifits appear, red ones are much more common than other colors.
• You Just Told Me: Formerly "Rumpelstiltskin Ploy", the trope is about tricking someone into revealing a secret via Reflexive Response (usually by pretending you already know). While the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin's defeat was indeed a result of his speaking aloud his secret, he was not tricked into doing so and in fact thought he was entirely alone at the time.

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