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.)

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's Fake.com Endings).

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

Contrast Self Demonstrating Articles 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.

Oh, and don't bother listing this page itself, as that will create a paradox (specifically, Russell's paradox).

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Tropes:

Actual nonexample trope namers

• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder — King's Quest V does not contain an example of a couple separating and moving on instead of waiting.
• 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 has to 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 throw suspicion off himself.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy — Scrappy 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.
• 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.
• An Axe to Grind — The phrase means to have a strong opinion, or perhaps a grudge, not an actual axe.
• And Some Other Stuff — The Trope Namer is Burn Notice, which typically does include the full recipes for all the dangerous stuff they use. 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 named after a secret movie that plays after beating Kingdom Hearts I with certain criteria fulfilled, having nothing to do with showing an alternate perspective due to being a Sequel Hook.
• 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.
• 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 doesn't even 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.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word — Being a Heroic Comedic Sociopath, Futurama's Bender doesn't bother with euphemisms for any of his heinous acts, and he has absolutely no problem with admitting when he's blackmailing somebody. He just prefers to call it "extortion" because he thinks it sounds cooler.^note Never mind that “blackmail” and “extortion” aren’t really synonyms.
• 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 Shelley's 'To A Skylark' provide examples.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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).
• Brought to You by the Letter "S" — Has nothing to do with the closing announcement on Sesame Street.
• Cannot Tell a Lie — The trope is about characters who are physically incapable of lying, but the Trope Namer is Mason Locke Weems' 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 famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt ("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 more or less literal, actually being about wielding clubs and related weapons.
• Catapult to Glory — Trope is named after a Darwin Award-nominated Tree Buchet accident.
• 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.
• 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 warfare, 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, the character only commits one act of murder that would simply place him beyond 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 an Asshole Victim and Hate Sink.
• Cue the Sun — When the line is spoken in the The Truman Show, there is no intended symbolism behind it. Chistof 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.
• Days of Future Past — About a type of future, not 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 — Only the connecting bones are mentioned in the folk song Trope Namer, but in the source, Ezekiel 37, the bones are covered in flesh. They're also not Mooks, they're the resurrected and restored nation of Israel.
• 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 painfully 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.
• Enemy Within: Named for an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, which episode is actually about a Literal Split Personality.
• Ethnic Scrappy — Scrappy-Doo is not based on any ethnic group.
• 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 3 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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-naming episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation has nothing to do with people from the future having incorrect ideas about the past; it's about Riker winding up in an illusory vision of his own future life (his future is "imperfect" in the sense that it's not real, and it's not convincing enough to fool him).
• Game-Over Man — A video game trope named after a quote from a movie.
• 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 — Ranier 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 fundamentally useless or unnecessary 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. 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.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose — The Trope Namer is #35 on the The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Clichés, which is actually describing The Battle Didn't Count.
• Heal Thyself — The quote in The Bible is a reference to how doctors can't heal themselves, or at least not very well.
• He-Man Woman Hater — The Little Rascals are too young to qualify for the trope, and instead fall under Girls Have Cooties.
• Horse of a Different Color — The horse in The Wizard of Oz is just a Literal Metaphor. 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.
• 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.
• I Believe I Can Fly: While the song by R. Kelly has been used in some media to describe characters who can actually fly, the intent of the song was to express a man finding inspiration after falling in love, and was not about the power to actually fly.
• 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 — The trope is named for a line from The Dungeonmaster (later famously quoted by Adam Savage). In the actual scene, it's a response to the villain saying "In a future reality, I shall destroy you!" and has nothing to do with the trope. Adam Savage definitely was using it in the sense of the trope when he popularized the phrase, though.
• 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.
• 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 episode "The Joy of Sect" by Homer when he was driving towards the cultists saying "Outta my way, jerkass!". Homer himself started out as a mostly likable, well-meaning husband/father, and it was not until fans of the The Simpsons nicknamed his Flanderized self "Jerkass Homer" that this adjective came to denote a jerkish character.
• Kill It with Fire — The meme is about deletion of files, images, or articles, which never involves literal fire.
• Knight of Cerebus — Cerebus the Aardvark did not introduce Cerebus Syndrome via a character. It drifted in more gradually.
• 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 an insult that Homer used to describe Lisa after she wrecked his barbecue 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.
• 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 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 presented negatively.
• 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 the trope namer heavily implies that you'd already have to be ludicrous just to want to go that fast.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father — The trope name is a Snowclone of Luke, I Am Your Father. Darth Vader is indisputably the father of Luke Skywalker.
• Luke, You Are My Father — The trope is a Snowclone (and inversion) of Luke, I Am Your Father. Darth Vader was the one to reveal his relation to Luke Skywalker, not the other way around.
• 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, something that the Hatter in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was not shown to do. (At least not enough to make him stand out among the other residents of Wonderland.) 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 — Rommel was fighting for the Axis, but he doesn't really fit the trope. He was a Worthy Opponent to the Allied Generals he faced, a Father to His Men, and a member of the Wehrmacht who didn't believe all that much in the whole Nazi ideology. His efforts in North Africa and Normandy ultimately only really stalled the Allied advance, and he wasn't devious enough to survive the constant scheming among the Nazi elites. When he was implicated in the July Plot, he was forced to commit suicide to save face^note the closest trope to that is Seppuku, but that’s specific to Japan and samurai, so at least he was able to Face Death with Dignity.
• 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 actually a parody of the Mary Sue Classic. The original Mary Sue is actually what would now be considered a Parody Sue.
• Mexican Standoff — The term originated in a 19th-century newspaper as a metaphor to describe a political struggle for power in Mexico.
• Miles Gloriosus: The trope doesn't fit the Trope Namer from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum who, despite being an egotistical blowhard and loudmouth, does not seem to be lying about his abilities.
• Missed Him by That Much — A riff on one of Maxwell Smart's many catch phrases, but he never actually engaged in the trope himself.
• 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 is about the life of a rock star from the view of a lower-class worker, not about earning money that can't actually be used for anything.
• 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.
• Most Annoying Sound — The scene from Dumb and Dumber doesn't qualify because it's not a video game or toy.
• My Country, Right or Wrong — This is only half 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 Stephen Decatur meant the opposite of what the trope says.
• 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 far more literal.
• The Napoleon — The real Napoleon Bonaparte was 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 and demanded too much suspension of disbelief for a few years one way or the other to cover up.
• 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 His Sled — Named so as to be the inverse of It Was His Sled, but there are no remakes or adaptations of Citizen Kane in which "Rosebud" doesn't turn out to be Charles Foster Kane's sled. In fact, there are no remakes or adaptations of the film at all.
• Not Hyperbole — Lien's threat to "gut you like the catch of the day" is actually a metaphor not hyperbole, and her explanation of it being literal makes it 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; he's only seen 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.
• Officer and a Gentleman — Richard Gere's character in An Officer and a Gentleman is most decidedly not an example of the trope.
• 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 it, though. Every other time, 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.
• Open the Iris — Namer was a shield for the Stargate, not anything about someone's eye.
• The Original Darrin: Dick York, who first played Darrin in Bewitched, never reprised his role.
• Orwellian Retcon — Trope is about editing republished/recut versions of a work to put them in-line with a Retcon made after the original version. Characters in Nineteen Eighty-Four did this in-universe, but George Orwell never did this himself.
• Pac Man Fever — The song (and later, album) that the trope is named after depicts the 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.
• The Pennyfarthing Effect — The Trope-naming bicycle was legitimately seen as the better of two inefficiencies until 1890.
• Playing with Fire: The actual saying means doing something risky, not actual pyrokinesis.
• Pronoun Trouble — Daffy's trouble was with person, not gender.
• 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.
• 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.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap — Scrappy-Doo was never redeemed in the eyes of the 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.
• Restored My Faith in Humanity — Akara means that her faith in the future of humanity (which is understandable to doubt with the demons running around everywhere) is helped by your actions.
• Revenge of the Nerd — None of the Revenge of the Nerds movies feature 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 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 almost all future political and media scandals, the Watergate scandal itself did not follow this convention and, thus, is not an example of the trope.
• 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 recent 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.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Scrappy-Doo is not a hated video game mechanic.
• The Scourge of God — Trope is about serial killers who kill sinners; 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.
• 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.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules! — The Trope Namer was 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.
• Shut Up, Hannibal! — No one ever tells off Dr. Lecter that way; if they did, he would eat them. "Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me."
• The Social Darwinist — Not only does Darwin not fit this Trope, he likely would have been offended by such a notion. At best, social Darwinism is a perversion of his theories.
• So Happy Together — The song gives no indication that the relationship will end badly, and it most likely has not even have begun yet.
• Something Completely Different — Monty Python's Flying Circus rarely deviated from the formula, since the show didn't really have a formula to deviate from.
• 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.
• Starfish Language — Named so as to be a Snowclone of "Starfish Aliens". However, as noted on the trope page, Real Life starfish don't actually engage in any particularly strange forms of communication; in fact, they don't seem to engage in any observable forms of communication at all.
• "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.
• 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.
• Thicker Than Water: The trope is about family coming before friends, which is actually the opposite of the proverb it is named after, the full proverb being "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." (The truncated proverb does fit the trope, though.)
• ¡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.
• 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).
• 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.
• Uncle Tomfoolery — There are two kinds, of which Harriet Beecher Stowe's hero is neither (presumably the name comes from how the character is often lumped into said categories 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 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Worf Had the Flu — 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.
• 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 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.
• Zerg Rush — While the Zerg in StarCraft are often used to win through force of numbers, the term "Zerg Rush" refers to the tactic of quickly making a small number of units at the beginning of the game to seize enemy resources before they set up defenses.
• 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.

Renamed off the list

Tropes that were renamed off this list:

• Actor/Role Confusion — Originally "Your Secret's Safe With Me, Superman", after a line from The Simpsons that does not involve Superman or someone who played the character (which the trope is about).
• 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 Xenification, 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 Attack of the Eye Creatures. This trope is not about an audience reaction, but the creators explicitly admitting that they didn't care.
• 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 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 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), there was a better example in the match before, 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.
• 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 he/she has apparently always knew but never mentioned it before. The original trope namer, Neo from The Matrix, had to get an Upgrade Artifact installed.
• Translation Train Wreck — Originally "Do Not Want", which, while the bootleg the line came from is mostly an example, is merely inaccurate (an infamous translation of Darth Vader's Big "NO!"), not flat-out gibberish.
• 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.

Partial credit

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

• 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 they were "more popular than Jesus", 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 itself that is the trope namer, however, is a different story.
• 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.
• 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.
• Do a Barrel Roll — The "barrel roll" in Star Fox 64 isn't an actual barrel roll, it's an alieron roll.
• The Dog Shot First — The Trope Namer (via Memetic Mutation) is the infamous "Han Shot First" controversy from the special edition of the original Star Wars, 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.
• 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.
• General Ripper — General Jack D. Ripper of Doctor 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.
• 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.
• 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 copyright 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.
• 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 any form of discrimination based on race was wrong; he just put a slightly higher priority on self-determination than peaceful integration.
• My Future Self and Me — Originally in South Park, where Stan meets with 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 of 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.
• 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.
• 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 the original Yu-Gi-Oh!, when he actually said this in the abridged series, he was 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-universe, we're not told why the enchanter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail goes by the name Tim, or if it's even a nickname in the first place. Out-of-universe, John Cleese ad-libbed the line when he couldn't remember the name he was supposed to use, but we don't know if difficulty in pronouncement is why he did so.
• 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.
• Sprint Shoes — The Bunny Hood in The Legend of Zelda was supposed to be this, but rolling is faster. In honor of being technically correct, just overshadowed, it remains an alt title.
• Team Rocket Wins — At the time that the trope was named, Team Rocket never won. However, in the Pokémon Sun and Moon anime, Team Rocket did win a fight against Ash legitimately.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill — A more accurate translation would be "Thou shalt not commit premeditated murder". For example, The Bible does not condemn soldiers who are Just Following Orders, whereas the Thou Shalt Not Kill trope does.
• Timmy in a Well — While Lassie often saves Timmy and the other human characters from danger, those dangers never involve wells.
• 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 with Bart's fling with Lili Von Shtupp. Still, even that part subverts it: Lili is just 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.

Last two lists combined

Mix of the last two:

• 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 a character 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.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick — originally "The Radar", referring to a character from Mash, 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, and his famous example was just a Never Live It Down moment.
• 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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