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    Animals 
See also Small Taxonomy Pools.
  • There's a tendency to see mammals and birds as cute creatures, fit for antropomorphization. Reptiles, amphibians and fish may get this treatment too, though not always. Insects and other invertebrates usually don't get this romanticism. This also explains why the cute animals will be namedropped more easily than icky creatures like snakes, bats, rats, crocodiles, toads, spiders, mosquitoes, flies, squids and jellyfish.
    • Averted with, you guessed it, the Internet.
    • In terms of cute reptiles, you're going to mostly see pond turtles, sea turtles, tortoises, a few lizard species like iguanas, chameleons and geckos, possibly a few snakes such as garter snakes and pythons, and maybe smaller crocodilians. Amphibians are overwhelmingly represented by frogs and cute fish are tropical reef fish and goldfish. Most other fish are thought of as food.
    • Of the myriad of insects, only butterflies, ladybugs and bumblebees are generally thought of as cute. Snails, octopus and maybe cuttlefish are the only cute mollusks. Hermit crabs are the only cute crustaceans. Most other mollusks and crustaceans are seafood.
  • Household pets will invariably be dogs, cats and goldfish. A macaw parrot or a parakeet/budgie may be mentioned too, along with hamsters, rabbits and/or guinea pigs. Tortoises, snakes and rats already fall into the more special kind of pets.
  • Farm animals:
    • Farm animals are always cows, bulls, calves, pigs and piglets, horses, donkeys, goats, sheep, chickens (hens, roosters, chicks). Ducks, geese, peacocks and rabbits may appear too. Crows, ravens, mice and rats as well, but uninvited. Reindeer, camels and yaks will never be mentioned, even though they're some of the very few large mammals to be domesticated.
    • Domesticated reindeer in Europe and Asia aren't thought of as farm animals any more than the bison in North America and even kept in a very similar way. Most of them are owned by someone and once or twice a year you round them up and ship a good number off to slaughter, but the herds are large and move more or less freely over vast areas. Sure, you keep an eye on your herd and make sure that it doesn't wander off the land you hold the reindeer-herding rights to, but it's not like the herd needs a human chaperonw 24/7. Yaks on the other hand seem to be kept more like a cross between a horse and your average milk cow, as are camels.
    • In visual media, cows are always Holsteins, bulls are always Herefords, and sheep are always Merino or Hampshire. Chickens are Leghorns or Rhode Island reds, ducks are white Pekins so you can tell they're not wild, and geese are ambiguously gray so you can tell they're not big ducks.
  • Forest animals:
    • Forest animals will always be seen in a European setting. Expect rabbits, foxes, wolves, badgers, bears, rabbits, hares, weasels, marters, ermines, moles, squirrels, owls, hawks, woodpeckers, deer, skunks, pheasants, voles, and adders to appear. Blackbirds, swallows, titbirds, chickadees, jays, finches, magpies, orioles, eagles, buzzards, cuckoos, hawks, skylarks, pigeons, sparrows, thrushes and nightingales will be seen in the trees
      • Near a river or a pond you'll always find toads, frogs, sturgeons, carps, storks, kingfishers, cranes, swans, ducks, herons and otters.
      • At night you'll encounter owls, nightingales and bats.
    • Forest animals in a North American setting will add beavers, coyotes, cougars, bald eagles, moose, elks, bison and raccoons.
    • Forest animals in a Eurasian/Russian setting will be musk oxen, caribous, bears and wolves. Never tigers or leopards; they're just "jungle" animals, even though they do occur in Eurasian taiga (pine) forests.
  • Arctic animals will show polar bears, polar foxes, seals, walruses, whales, orcas, lemmings, hares, puffins and terns.
  • Antarctic animals will bring penguins, seals, whales and orcas in frame.
  • Desert animals:
    • Desert animals will always be shown in North Africa or the Middle East. If they do you're bound to see camels, dromedaries, sidewinders, scorpions, meerkats, tarantulas, desert lizards, fennec foxes, and mongoose.
    • Desert animals in North America and Mexico will be rattlesnakes, gila monsters, roadrunners, scorpions and coyotes.
  • Africa:
    • African savannah animals are usually lions, leopards, elephants, giraffes, plains zebras, ostriches, cheetahs, leopards, jackals, hyenas, Thomson's gazelles, wildebeest, impalas, oryxes, cape buffaloes, warthogs, meerkats, mosquitoes, termites, vultures, baboons, aardvarks, honey badgers, rhinoceroses, oxpeckers, black mambas, pythons and tortoises.
    • African jungle animals will consist of gorillas, chimpanzees, lemurs, colobus monkeys, bongo antelopes, okapis, leopards, pythons, geckos, chameleons, hornbills, parrots and mosquitoes.
    • Near a water side you'll find crocodiles, hippopotamuses and flamingos.
  • Caribbean animals? Tropical fishes, sharks, marlins, sea turtles, flamingos, manatees, iguanas, albatrosses, crabs, pelicans, seals and tropical penguins.
  • In the Latin American mountains people will only be able to name llamas, alpacas, pumas, vicunas and condors.
  • A Latin American jungle will provide cameos by these animals only: jaguars, pumas, ocelots, anacondas, boa constrictors, emerald tree boas, vipers, coral snakes, caimans, crocodiles, basilisks, iguanas, geckos, vampire bats, butterflies, mosquitoes, leaf-cutting ants, army ants, katydids, tarantulas, piranhas, pacu, electric eels, stingrays, arapaimas, arowanas, tapirs, Amazon river dolphins, anteaters, chinchillas, capybaras, armadillos, howler monkeys, spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, squirrel monkeys, marmosets, poison dart frogs, red-eyed tree frogs, sloths, coatimundis, kinkajous, hummingbirds, parrots, toucans, harpy eagles, king vultures, hoatzins and ibises.
  • South Asian and South East Asian jungles will only show Indian elephants, Indian rhinoceroses, wolves, macaques, gibbons, langurs, proboscis monkeys (famous for their noses), orangutans, tigers, leopards, civet cats, jackals, black bears, striped hyenas, mongoose, cranes, peafowl, salamanders, catfish, king cobras, pythons, Komodo dragons, tapirs, hornbills, babirusas, bearded pigs, gharials (crocodilians with thin snouts) and the kantjil (mousedeer or chevrotain).
    • In India add some holy cows to the landscape.
    • In China tigers, giant pandas, black bears, lesser pandas, giant salamanders, koi, swallows, herons and cranes.
    • In the mountainous areas of Tibet most people will only be able to think of the yak and maybe perhaps snow leopards.
    • In Japan raccoon dogs, foxes, macaques, bears, koi, cranes and giant salamanders.
  • Australian wildlife is probably more famous than its citizens: kangaroos and wallabies, koalas, kookaburras, Tasmanian devils, emus, echidnas, dingoes, platypuses, Red Back and Sydney-funnel-web spiders,...
  • New Zealand only has two famous animals to be known by the general public: the kiwi and sheep.
  • Ocean wildlife will be fish, like sharks, salmon, tuna, sardines, mackerels, seahorses, marlines, snappers, clown fishes, moray eels, manta rays, eagle rays, stingrays, anemone fish, butterflyfish, lionfish and swordfish. Sea mammals will be dolphins, orcas, whales, seals, sea lions, sea otters and manatees. Other species found in the sea are sea turtles, squids, octopuses, jellyfish, crabs, lobsters and sponges. In the deep sea you're bound to see a giant squid, lantern fish, flashlight fish and/or anglerfish.
  • Insect and other invertebrates wildlife will usually be ants, termites, spiders, crickets, locusts, bees, wasps, flies, dragonflies, fireflies, damselflies, mosquitoes, caterpillars and butterflies, weevils, cockroaches, moths, worms, silkworms, centipedes, scorpions, beetles, stag beetles, fleas, lice, bed bugs, cicadas and praying mantises.
  • Typical city animals will be sparrows, pigeons, mice and rats. Near a harbor you'll encounter albatrosses and seagulls too.
  • Dinosaurs:
    • Triassic dinosaurs are usually only represented by Plateosaurus, Eoraptor, Coelophysis, and Herrerasaurus.
    • Jurassic settings will show Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Barosaurus, Mamenchisaurus, Camarasaurus, Stegosaurus, Kentrosaurus, Tuojiangosaurus, Dryosaurus, Camptosaurus, Allosaurus, Yangchuanosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Megalosaurus, Torvosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Archaeopteryx, Ornitholestes, Guanlong, and Compsognathus.
    • Cretaceous features a much wider variety: Tyrannosaurus, Tarbosaurus, Albertosaurus, Gorgosaurus, Nanuqsaurus, Yutyrannus, Velociraptor, Deinonychus, Utahraptor, Microraptor, Sinornithosaurus, Stenonychosaurus/Troodon, Therizinosaurus, Ornithomimus, Struthiomimus, Gallimimus, Deinocheirus, Oviraptor, Gigantoraptor, Sinosauropteryx, Spinosaurus, Baryonyx, Giganotosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, Carnotaurus, Alamosaurus, Argentinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus, Saltasaurus, Sauroposeidon, Amargasaurus, Triceratops, Styracosaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus, Chasmosaurus, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Euoplocephalus, Polacanthus, Edmontonia, Iguanodon, Hypsilophodon, Thescelosaurus, Orodromeus, Parasaurolophus, Corythosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Maiasaura, etc.
    • When people want to depict other animals that live alongside the dinosaurs, they'll pick Pteranodon, Rhamphorhynchus, Quetzalcoatlus, Dimorphodon, Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Elasmosaurus, Mosasaurus, Tylosaurus, Liopleurodon, Kronosaurus, Sarcosuchus, Deinosuchus, non-descript ammonites, and generic small mammals.
  • Other prehistoric animals:
    • Paleozoic life will usually be represented by trilobites, eurypterids, Dunkleosteus, Dimetrodon, Anomalocaris, Icthyostega, Meganeura, Arthropleura, and a nonspecific gorgonopsid (usually based on Inostrancevia).
    • Ice Age megafauna typically depicted are woolly mammoths, American mastodons, Smilodon, woolly rhinos, Elasmotherium, Megaloceros, dire wolves, cave bears, Megatherium, Glyptodon, Doedicurus, cave lions, and Castoroides.
    • When pre-Pleistocene Cenozoic animals are depicted, they're typically Paraceratherium, Megacerops, entelodonts, Eohippus, Basilosaurus, Platybelodon, Deinotherium, Moeritherium, Chalicotherium, megalodon, Gastornis/Diatryma, and terror birds.
  • The only sharks in the sea are the great-white shark (thanks to Jaws), the hammer-head shark (if only due to its funny appearance), and the whale shark (because it's a Gentle Giant).
  • The only animal-like protists are amoebas and Paramecium, and they'll both be (wrongly) called "animals".
  • Breeds:
    • There are hundreds of "official" dog breeds and hundreds more that are either extinct or aren't listed in any registry. Fiction lowers this to a few dozen breeds from the Top 200, with even the seldom seen breeds being fairly well-known (such as the Basenji, Lakeland Terrier, and Irish Wolfhound). Oftentimes, designer dogs (like Poodle mixes or "doodles" as they're called) and "teacup" dogs are treated as breeds as well.
    • Most cats are just generic "cats". They might be long-furred or have certain fur patterns, but, unlike dogs, they're rarely noted as specific breeds. When it comes to cat breeds, the only breeds are Persians, Siamese, Sphynx, and Russian Blues. A Maine Coon, Munchkin, Himalayan, Bengal, or Scottish Fold might appear if the writer/artist is cat savvy.
    • The only horse breeds out there are American Quarter Horses, Appaloosas, Arabians, and Clydesdales. "Draft horse", "Mustang", "Brumby", and "color breeds" (such the palomino and pinto) may be cited as breeds, but they're actually generalized terms. The only type of pony is a Shetland.
    • Angora, Chinchilla, Flemish Giants, and Lop are terms that apply to several rabbit breeds but they're composited into one breed each.
    • There are hundreds of chicken breeds, but in most fiction chickens are just generic chickens. Only a few breeds, such as the Cornish or the Rhode Island Red, get mentioned.
  • The only cats that exist are Big cats and domestic cats. Of the non-Big cats, only the cougar, cheetah, bobcat, lynx (all combined into one type of lynx), clouded leopard, caracal, serval, and ocelot might get referenced. The other cats (including the African wildcat that domestic cats descend from) are near nonexistent in media.
  • Rockhopper penguins are the only crested penguin. Out of the three rockhopper sub-species, the Northern variety is the most common in fiction.

    Anthropology 
See also National Stereotypes (and its Analysis subpage).
  • If television features American Indians, all American Indian tribes can be summed up as Cherokee (typically a white-identified man with Cherokee ancestry), Lakota (not Dakota or Nakota), Cheyenne, or Apache. And sometimes Navajo.
  • American Indian history stops in 1890. Any mention of 20th century American Indian history is a throwaway comment about Leonard Peltier or the Siege of Wounded Knee. One exception is made for World War II Code Talkers, but only the Navajo ones will be mentioned — nobody has ever heard of the Cherokee and Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I, or the Lakota, Meskwaki, and Comanche ones from WWII — let alone the Basque speakers who were used in places Basque soldiers weren't normally deployed.
  • Regardless of their ostensible tribe, they will nearly always be played by Sioux or sometimes Cherokee actors — for some reason, virtually never by Mexicans, many of whom are full-blooded Indian, physically. Whatever the ethnicity of the actors, expect Not Even Bothering with the Accent. Because plainly, Apaches from New Mexico have the same accent as Sioux from Canada.
  • Culturally, Plains Indians are the most iconic Native Americans from the lower 48, so if Indians show up, expect to see feather bonnets, hairpipe breastplates, teepees, horseback marksmanship... and, for some reason, totem poles, which are Pacific Northwestern in origin. "Indian" words, by contrast, are more often drawn from more easterly languages that Europeans encountered earlier and generalized to all Native Americans. For instance, a shoe will be called a "moccasin," from the Algonquian languages, even if referring to a Lakota hampa or a Navajo kélchí.
  • Mexican Indians are either Olmecs, Mayans or Aztecs, and only narrow slices of their history or archaeological record will be seen. Modern Mexicans will invariably be mestizos with Spanish names, not having ancestry from Africa, Asia or anywhere else, and certainly never unmixed Indian.
  • South American Indians are either Inca or from the Amazon jungle, typically Yanomamo or Kayapo (and if they are Yanomamo, they are invariably portrayed as Always Chaotic Evil, even in modern works). The "Inca"-like Indians will also include Quechuas and Aymaras — the latter of whom will show up often because they just look so interesting in their old-fashioned bowler hats.
  • Everyone in Africa is black. The only white people are the Great White Hunter or the Mighty Whitey (or sometimes Afrikanersnote , who are all racist against blacks). All black Africans will be dark black. This means they're probably Bantu or from some other Niger-Congo tribe (the tribes from which most American slaves were chosen). You'll never see the reddish-brown Pygmies, the yellowish-brown Khoisan (unless you're watching The Gods Must Be Crazy, of course), or Berbers note  (outside of the occasional nomadic Tuareg band, e.g. Beau Geste). There are no Arabs, Indians, Asians or anyone else.
  • Rural Africans are all Masai or Zulu. Or from Papua New Guinea.
  • All Arctic peoples are Eskimos. All Eskimos are Inuit, even the Yup'ik. There are no Russian Eskimos.
  • And all indigenous people have been completely cut off from the world, with no modern influences on their fashion or culture whatsoever.
  • All people in the Caribbean are black. There are no Indian, Chinese, or white people.
  • All Arabs are Muslim - and, to a lesser extent, vice versa. In fact, there are many Christian Arabs - mostly in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Israel, and Palestine. Similarly, there are a great variety of Muslim peoples (Albanians being European, Iranians sharing much of their linguistic and racial heritage with both Europeans and Asian Indians, Turks ultimately from East Asia, and Indonesians mostly of Malayo-Polynesian stock),note  but a Muslim character in popular fiction will always be rendered an Arab or a quasi-Arab unless his/her being of a different nationality is pertinent to the plot.
  • All Indians are Hindu. Not Muslim, not Christian, not Sikh, not Buddhist, not Jain or any of the other religions present in India. They're just funny people celebrating gods with many arms. And they will often wear turbans, even though most Hindus do not wear turbans. Sikhs wear turbans, but Americans think Sikhs are Muslims. Oh yeah, and they're all vegetarians.
  • All Muslims are Sunni or Shia, if they aren't just one big unified mass, that is. There is no such thing as Ibadi.
  • All Russians are either ethnic Russian or Jewish note . Chechens appear sporadically, and will always be depicted as Islamic extremists. What about Tatars, Bashkirs, Ossetians, Dagestanis, Chuvash, and Circassians (among others)? Good luck finding them!
    • During the Cold War, it was believed in the West that the only people living in Siberia were forced there for being political dissidents, because of course, nobody would actually want to live in Siberia. Likewise, all dissidents are total converts to liberal democracy and not, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn turned out to be, neo-Slavophile anti-Westerners who are quite right-wing and only barely restrain their anti-semitism.
    • And the Soviet Union only ever had Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians and (oddly) Lithuanians.
  • All Jews Are Ashkenazi, of course. Forget about Sephardim and Mizrahim. And their only holiday is Hanukkah (an extremely minor commemoration of military victory on the Jewish calendar that post-dates the Bible and the many more important festivals it contains). When celebrating this apparently Christmas-like occasion, it is always, always the eighth night (if the number of candles is to be believed).
  • All Americans with Eastern European roots are Jewish. Slavic Americans who are Christian won't show up very often, and when they do they're often fresh off the boat, despite the large wave of Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian immigration between the 1880s and 1920s. Despite this, completely assimilated Average Joes will often have Polish surnames for some reason, particularly if they are from Chicago.
  • All Hispanics speak Spanish as their mother tongue and only Spanish (when it is not broken English littered with Gratuitous Spanishnote , that is).note  The men are squat, brown, and have black hair and moustaches. The women are curvy, leggy and slutty - except for the ones who are fat and have really gross facial and body hair. Also, there are no Hispanics north of Los Angeles and Miami, except maybe in New York City. And they are all very lazy or very hard-working.
  • If white Latin Americans show up, expect them to be from wealthy families. In real life, while most of the wealthiest Latin American families are white, most white Latin Americans are not rich.
  • Everyone in Latin America has a Spanish surname - even in countries like Argentina, Chile, and Brazil where non-Spanish/Portuguese surnames are just as common on account of German, Irish, Italian, British, and Japanese immigration. Don't expect Indigenous people in Latin America to have Indigenous surnames and speak an Indigenous language, unless they are from an uncontacted tribe.
    • Similarly, if the writer is non-Anglo the one Anglo-American character will be a monolingual English speaker with an English surname, despite Americans with German and Irish ancestry being more numerous in real life.
  • Everyone in Australia is of British or Irish heritage, and will most likely be blond. The few that aren't are Aborigines.
  • Italian-Americans are always from Southern Italy; Central or Northern Italian-Americans do not exist.
  • On the other hand, all Italians are Southern Italians: the other two-thirds of the populace are nowhere to be seen, either.
  • American Catholics are either Irish, Italian, or Hispanic. Forget about the American Catholics of French, Polish, German, Dutch, Portuguese, and other heritages. African-American Catholics don't exist either, nor do African-American Jews (even if this group includes such famous figures as Sammy Davis, Lenny Kravitz and Jackie Wilson).
  • All Southerners are devout Baptists or evangelicals. Don't mention the traditionally Catholic Southern populations like the Cajuns and Louisiana Creoles — if religion in Louisiana is a topic of interest, it'll be Hollywood Voodoo.
  • Until about the 1950s, all white Americans in fiction worth focusing on were of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, or Irish stock. When "ethnic" whites did show up, it was just to talk in funny accents and get called "wop" and "polack" and such.
  • All Pennsylvania Dutch are Amish. The Fancy Dutch (who are typically Lutheran, and are the origins of many "quintessential" Dutch elements such as hex signs) and Mennonites do not exist. If Mennonites are mentioned at all, they'll either be treated as synonymous with Amish or maybe as rivals with no discernible differences. Conversely, all Amish are from Pennsylvania. There are no Amish in other states or nations.
  • Christianity is divided into exactly two denominations, Catholicism and Protestantism. Protestantism is a single entity with no further subgroups like Calvinism or Lutheranism. Mormons are not found outside of Utah (with the exception of Mitt Romney). There is no such thing as the Orthodox Church.
    • Somewhat averted in many European countries, as the number of adherents to most other forms of Christianity besides Catholicism and one large Protestant church is low to the point of non-existence.
    • Oh yeah, and there are no Roman Catholics in Greece, they're all Greek Orthodox, which threw some viewers for a loop with The Exorcist.
  • If the work in question was made outside of Japan, the only religion practiced in Japan is Buddhism. There are no Japanese Christians, and Shintoism does not exist.
  • All Scandinavians/Nordic people are tall, blonde and have blue eyes, as well as left-wing sexually liberal atheists.
  • On that note, all irreligious people are full-blown atheists. There are no agnostics, deists, spiritual but not religious, or people who just don't really care.
  • All prehistoric humans lived in caves, even though archaeology shows occupation of caves was sporadic, and of course, All Cavemen Were Neanderthals. If a non-divulgation work dares go deeper in human evolution they'll bring up Lucy at most and talk of her as if she was the only Australopithecus skeleton out there (with the genus usually unnamed), when not portraying primitive hominids as a hitherto unknown chimpanzee-human hybrid. The words "missing link" are guaranteed to pop up, as is Piltdown Man being discussed as a devastating hit to "modern" science.

    Civil Engineering 
  • Civil engineering existed only in the 19th century.
  • All Brits know of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, though many will struggle to name anything he did other than the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and maybe the SS Great Britain because he posed for an iconic photograph beside it. (Londoners can add Paddington Station.) Beyond him, George Stephenson is recognised for his work on the railways, and Thomas Telford may get a mention, usually for the Menai Suspension Bridge (though Scots also know him for the Caledonian Canal). That's it.
  • In southern India, civil engineering is synonymous with one name - Sir M Visveswaraiah, who built the famous KRS dam on the Kaveri River in Mysore.

    Countries and cities 
  • To most foreigners the largest countries will be the most famous and visible in popular culture. The same applies to the cities, which will often be the capitols, but not always. If a smaller country or city manages to be mentioned it's usually because of some historic event, battle, treaty, sports event of disaster that took place there.
  • Afghanistan: Kandahar, which was occupied by American troops in 2001 made at least one city in the country more noticeable in popular culture. Also the capital Kabul. After the slew of terror attacks and the tumultuous US military withdrawal of 2020-21, its notoriety has been ingrained in the memories of the global audience for decades, and no doubt will it stay that way for decades to come.
  • Algeria: Algiers.
  • Argentina: Buenos Aires, which is not Brazil's capital. Argentina Is Nazi-Land is a Discredited Trope by now.
  • Australia: Sydney, where the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge will be brought in view. Canberra, the actual capital, might get a mention, just like Perth, Queensland, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. Uluru (Ayers Rock), however, will always be referenced.
  • Austria: Best known for Vienna, city of the Waltz, coffee, the Wiener oboe and Vienna sausages. The only other locations worth namedropping are the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald), Tyrol (known for Tyrolean hats, music and Tyrolean sex comedies), Braunau (for Hitler) the Alps and Salzburg, home of The Sound of Music and birth place of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And if Tyrol and Carinthia are ever portrayed, it's because of the Alps, where everybody yodels and wears lederhosen. Bonus points if they mention the Grossglockner.
  • Belgium: If it's mentioned at all it will be because the NATO head quarters are located in Brussels, a city where the Atomium and Manneken Pis can be seen and nothing else. Antwerp and Bruges may get mentioned, but that's really pushing it. History buffs know it solely for Waterloo (defeat of Napoléon Bonaparte), Ypres (World War I) and the Ardennes (World War II). Culinary experts know it for Belgian waffles, Belgian fries, Belgian chocolate and Brussels sprouts.
  • Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, bringing in view Christ the Redeemer Statue, the Carnival and Copacabana Beach. The favelas are another notorious location in Rio, but the government wants you to forget and ignore this problem. Rio is still more famous than the capital city, Brasilia or largest city Sao Paulo. Every other square meter of the country is either wild rainforest or newly-decimated landscape that used to be rainforest.
  • Cambodia: Phnom Penh, if people are able to pronounce the name. Best known for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Also, Angkor Wat.
  • Canada is Toronto and Quebec. Montreal, for those old enough to remember the 1976 Olympic Games. Vancouver and Ontario, if you're lucky. Winnipeg because it sounds funny (I'm from Winnipeg, you idiot!)
  • The Caribbean will only be resorts and locals who are always stoned Rastafarians. The women will be dakr-skinned hotties. If you're lucky, it will be a crime-infested slum full of illegal drugs and gangs. The only country portrayed will be Jamaica, or maybe the Bahamas.
  • Chile: Santiago, but only to people who don't outright think you're referring to a hot pepper, instead of a country.
  • China is fortunate enough to have three cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong (the latter being a territory and not a city), a great wall, and a penchant for censorship.
    • Unless it's ancient China, which is just Xian.
    • And if you're tech-savvy, Shenzhen, home of huge factories covered with nets to catch all the suicides.
    • In some works (both set in Ancient and Modern China), there are also Suzhou and Qingdao.
    • Ironically, most Chinese things Americans are familiar with (the food, especially) are from Canton (Chinese name: Guangzhou), which is almost never discussed when talking about China itself. (Either that, or Canton will only be known as that town in Ohio where American football began.)
    • Hong Kong being well-known also has some odd effects, like how Cantonese and traditional Chinese are strongly associated with each other since they are the ones used in Hong Kong, even though most Cantonese speakers use simplified Chinese (in Guangdong) and most traditional Chinese users are Mandarin speakers (in Taiwan).
  • Congo: Known for two literary classics: Heart of Darkness and Tintin - Tintin in the Congo.
  • Corsica: If people have heard of this island it will be because Napoléon Bonaparte was born there.
  • Croatia: Likely to be brought up because of Nikola Tesla. Soccer fans know it for the 2018 World Cup final.
  • Cuba: Havana, only known for Havana cigars and Castro. And hijackings, in the '70s.
  • Czech Republic: Prague and the region Bohemia, best known for La Bohème, The Bohemian Girl, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", The Dandy Warhols' "Bohemian Like You", the word bohémien, Bohemian crystal and art glass. Also famous for Antonin Dvorak and Franz Kafka. Sigmund Freud and Gregor Mendel were born here but considered themselves Austrian. And maybe Misha (not the angel one), but only to those who spend too much time on the Internet as well as the SiIvaGunner community.
  • Denmark: Copenhagen, only known for the statue of The Little Mermaid. Theatre lovers may now it for Hamlet and claim there is something rotten in the state. Also known for Lego.
  • Egypt: Cairo, the Nile, the Suez Canal (for the 1956 crisis) and Giza (for the Pyramids and the Sphinx).
  • The Falklands: Known for the Falkland War in 1982.
    Children, remain calm. The Falkland Islands have just been invaded. I repeat, the Falklands have just been invaded!
  • Finland: Helsinki.
  • France: Paris, just for the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and the Louvre, of course. You might get a reference to the Moulin Rouge, Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre, Champs Elysées, Pont Neuf, the Sorbonne, Place Concorde, Versailles, Place Vendôme, Père Lachaise and the Notre Dame in there too.
    • The rest of France will usually be the Provence, though Bretagne (to show some cliffs), Reims (for the cathedral), Bordeaux (for the wine), Bayeux (for the tapestry), the Mont Saint-Michel, Arles (because of Vincent van Gogh), Dijon (for the mustard), Cannes (for the Film Festival), Avignon (because of the song Sur Le Pont d'Avignon), Le Mans (for the race 24 Hours Of Le Mans), Roland Garros (for the tennis tournament), Rouen (made famous by Joan of Arc), Alsace (for the sauerkraut and sausages and Strasbourg's cathedral) Marseille and Nice could get a small reference if you're lucky. If you're Catholic or know anything about Catholicism, you'll know a bit about Lourdes where they have holy water that magically cures people.note 
  • Germany: Berlin, but it only exists as a location in spy thrillers and because of a wall that is no longer there. The only other memorable location is the Brandenburger Tor and the Berlin cabaret. Other German cities that foreigners might remember are Munich (only during Oktoberfest. It may ring a bell to sport fans, because during the 1972 Olympic Games, a bunch of Israeli competitors were murdered.), Hamburg (birth place of the hamburger), Frankfurt (Frankfurter sausages), Cologne (for its perfume), Bremen (The Bremen Town Musicians) may also receive a mention. In fairy tales only, the Black Forest will make an appearance.
  • Greece: Athens, to have a view of the Parthenon and Acropolis. Several Greek locations also thank their fame due to their association with Ancient Greek society: Sparta, Delphi, Lesbos (for lesbians), Crete, Mount Olympus, Rhodes, Thessaloniki, Corinthe, Epidaurus, ...
  • Guyana: Mostly notorious for the 1978 Jonestown Massacre.
  • Haiti: Port-au-Prince and the 2010 Earthquake. And anything involving Hollywood Voodoo. There is no similar religion practiced anywhere else. Ifa, Santería and Candomblé don't exist.
  • Hungary: Budapest, often brought up to be confused with Bucharest. Other references will likely be merely for a "hungry" joke, Harry Houdini, or Franz Liszt.
  • Iceland: Reykjavik. The only other reference to Iceland will be to the Iceland/Greenland joke or Björk.
    • Possibly also for volcanoes, but no one will be able to spell or pronounce their names.
    • LazyTown could also get a mention, usually something regarding Memetic Badass Robbie Rotten.
  • India: Bombay (almost never Mumbai), Calcutta (almost never Kolkata), Delhi (old and new), Bangalore and Bengal (known for the tigers). Nobody knows Agra, but they will recognize the Taj Mahal there. One irony is that Bollywood movies have the same Small Reference Pools to their own culture. Gandhi will always be the first person mentioned.
  • Indonesia: Java, most famous for the Java Man, Javan coffee, Javascript and tea. Bali is best known for its gamelan music. And the volcanic island Krakatoa is remembered for its 19th century volcanic eruption. Notable in that neither of these cities are its capital (that would be Jakarta).
  • Iran: Tehran, remembered for the 1979-1981 American embassy hostage crisis. Also infamous for the Iran-Contra affair, Ayatollah Khomeini, and the nuclear weapons programs.
  • Iraq: Baghdad, the capital, best known for the Saddam regime. Another infamous location is the Abu Ghraib prison.
  • Ireland: Dublin, only Dublin. Limerick might get a mention because of limericks and Tipperary because of the song It's A Long Way To Tipperary.
  • Israel and Palestine (often thrown together as one country by foreigners): Most locations Israel (and Palestine) are known for are in essence temples or holy sites, like Bethlehem, Mount Zion, Masada, Al-Asqa Mosque, The Lions' Gate, King David's Tomb, the Armenian Quarter, The Wailing Wall, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, The Damascus Gate, and the Dome of the Rock. Only the West Bank and Gaza Strip are more famous now as conflict zones than for their historical merit. The only location that exists without a strong holy or violent association attached to it is the Dead Sea, which is actually a lake, by the way. It's famous for its high salt level which makes people able to float on it without being able to sink. And even this location is actually not just Israelian or Palestinian, but also bordering Jordan.
  • Italy: The only existing cities are Rome (for The Pope, Colosseum and the Trevi fontain), Venice (boat rides with a gondolas), Naples (for pizza), Milan (for fashion), and - if the need arise - Florence (for the Renaissance). Pisa only exists because of the Leaning Tower and Pompeii because of the volcano disaster during the Roman era. Sicily will bring up associations with the Mafia. Non-Italians only know Genoa (the capital of the province of Liguria) for being the birthplace of Christopher Columbus. Cultivated people know Verona as the setting of Romeo and Juliet.
  • Jamaica: The plus side is that together with Cuba it's probably the only Caribbean island most people can name. The down side is that nobody knows any city or location there, save perhaps for Kingston if they have heard it mention in some reggae song. It's known mostly for reggae and Bob Marley than anything else - although sports fan will be aware of Usain Bolt.
  • Japan: Tokyo and Osaka. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are infamous for being the first atomic bomb targets, Kyoto for the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.
    • Fukushima is now allowed to exist, but as a far Eastern version of Chernobyl.
  • Jordan: Best known for the historical city Petra, but then you are already far more cultivated than most people. Otherwise best known for sharing its name with a common first name.
  • Kenya: Serengeti Park, which also crosses over with Tanzania.
  • Lebanon: Only known for Beirut, where people are either kidnapped or blown up.
  • Libya: Tripoli. Benghazi only exists for the 2011 uprising and U.S. Embassy attacks in 2012. Muammar Gaddafi is the only Libyan likely to be mentioned.
  • Mexico: Mexico City is the only place that exists in fiction. Acapulco might get a mention and Tijuana, but more as a Wretched Hive, where whorehouses, cheap tequila and donkeys are the main attractions. Chihuahua might be referenced too, only for the tiny dogs. More recently, Ciudad Juárez has been mentioned, but only as a place where the rule of law has collapsed.
  • Monaco: Monte Carlo, only for its luxury casino.
  • Mongolia: Most people know it only for Genghis Khan and The Horde.
  • Morocco: Fez and Casablanca, the latter only known as a movie.
  • The Netherlands: Only two cities exist, one being Free State Amsterdam, which lives in popular imagination as one gigantic red light district with coffee shops (to buy legal marijuana) and sex shops on every corner. The other is The Hague, only known for the International Criminal Court. The rest of the country is supposedly one large tulip field with wind mills in the background, which is only in rural parts of the country. To sports fans it's champion speed skaters in screaming neon orange outfits; there's also Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates.
  • Nicaragua: Got international attention in the 1980s because of the involvement of the Reagan administration in overthrowing a socialist government there.
  • Norway: Oslo gets media attention every year for the annual Nobel Prizes, but that's it.
  • Panama: The canal will be all that foreigners might be able to mention about it.
  • Paraguay: Ascunción.
  • Peru: Cuzco and Macchu Pichu.
  • Philippines: Manila.
  • Poland: Warsaw and Gdansk/Danzig. A few people might recall that Frederic Chopin and Madame Curie were from there.
  • Polynesia: Some isles you might have heard from: Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, French Polynesia, Samoa, Tahiti, the Solomon Isles, the Cook Isles and the Easter Island. Apart from the Easter Island, best known for its huge Moai statues, most people wouldn't be able to name one specifically unique thing about these isles.
  • Portugal: Lisbon and Porto, but only for the porto wine. If you're Catholic you'll think of Fatima (the famous visions didn't even happen there but outside a nearby village).
  • Romania: One province is known by everyone who ever heard of Dracula: Transylvania. The only other reference will be to Ceaucescu. Bucharest is also brought up to be confused with Budapest
  • Russia: The capital Moscow, best known for the Kremlin (which if mentioned will almost inevitably be accompanied by a shot of Saint Basil's Cathedral instead) and nothing but snowy landscapes. St. Petersburg, Vladivostok (as the city all the way in the east), Volgograd might get mentioned too, but far more infamous is Siberia, which lives on in the public imagination as a mysterious place where people are sent to work in slave labor. Some older people may mention Leningrad and Stalingrad, unaware that these cities are now called St. Petersburg and Volgograd. Olympics buffs will remember Sochi, but only as a place with ice rinks and ski jumps. Other cities ad regions mentioned will often be part of an independent Baltic republic now.
  • Saudi Arabia: The only place that exists is Mecca. Even its capital Riyadh is far more obscure in comparison.
  • Serbia: Sarajevo, even though it's now part of Bosnia. Best known for the mid '90s siege and "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24". Also known is Srebrenica, for the July 1995 massacre.
  • Singapore: Singapore, what else?
  • Slovakia: Bratislava.
  • South Africa: Johannesburg, Robbeneiland (for imprisoning Nelson Mandela) and Soweto (for the 1976 government massacre). If any of the three capitals are mentioned, it'll likely be Cape Town.
  • South Korea: Best known for Seoul, where the 1988 Olympic Games took place. Pyeongchang is also recognized as the host for both the Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics in 2018. Recently the second most populous city of the country, Busan, is also gaining traction thanks to its appearance in pop culture.
  • Spain: Madrid, Barcelona (with the Sagrada Familia as its only recognizable monument) and Seville, the latter best known for The Barber of Seville. The Basque county is known for E.T.A. terrorism. Maybe Malaga only because of Picasso. All of them look like a little Andalusian beach resort, when not one in Mexico or Puerto Rico.
  • Sweden: Stockholm. Pop culture references are likely to be about Swedish fish, Swedish meatballs, Abba and IKEA.
  • Switzerland: The only Swiss cities that exist in the public consciousness are Zürich and Geneva. The former is best known as a financial giant. The latter city is famous for being the birthplace of Calvinism and the center of the World Health Organization and World Council of Churches, among other institutions. The Geneva Conventions were also signed here, concerning the treatment of wartime non-combatants and prisoners of war. Usually one of these two cities is thought to be the capital, instead of Bern. All other Swiss locations exist purely as ski resorts.
  • Tanzania: Best known for Zanzibar, which is where Freddie Mercury is from. Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest (and apparently only) mountain is here too, but most people will place it in Kenya instead.
  • Taiwan: Cheap products are made there. If lucky, Taipei as a city may be mentioned, with no regard for cities on the south side of the island like Tainan and Kaoshiung.
  • Thailand: Formerly Siam. Bangkok, best known for sex tourism and "One Night in Bangkok". And maybe The King and I.
  • Tibet: The Shangri-La, the Himalaya Mountains, the Dalai Lama and Mount Everest.
  • Turkey: Mostly famous for İstanbul, which used to be Byzantium and earlier Constantinople. The city is only well known for the Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace (made famous by the film Topkapi) and the Basilica Cisterne, which is a famous underground water reservoir. Foreigners often think Istanbul is the capital, which is actually Ankara, the only other well known location in Turkey. Ankara in itself is best known for animals like the Angora cat, Angora rabbit, Angora goat and Anatolian shepherd.
    • History buffs may know the country too for the Dardanelles and Gallipoli (World War I).
  • Ukraine: Before the Russian invasion in 2022, it was only world famous for a place nobody dares to go: Chernobyl.
  • United Kingdom:
    • England: Will take most attention away from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales; however, Britain Is Only London and London only Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, the Tower, Tower Bridge, Madame Tussauds, London Underground, Royal Albert Hall and Harrods. Though in general Big Ben seems to be the only thing needed to imply you're in London.
      • England contains exactly two counties: Cornwall and Yorkshire.
      • Some other English locations that may get a reference: Dover (for its White Cliffs), Stonehenge, Oxford and Cambridge (if we need a university), Liverpool (well known thanks to The Beatles), Manchester (for the football teams), Birmingham (birthplace of many British Heavy Metal bands), Southampton (known for harboring Titanic), Yorkshire (for Yorkshire pudding and the Yorkshire terrier), Wimbledon (for the tennis) and Greenwich (for the meridian).
    • Scotland is colorful enough to be referenced, but only because of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Loch Ness, for the monster.. Still they should be glad, because Wales does not exist for foreigners unless they're fans of either Brother Cadfael or rugby union.
    • Northern Ireland is unfortunately only remembered for being a ground for terrorist bombings and violent confrontations between people of different political or religious ideologies, most notably in Belfast, Ulster and/or Londonderry.
    • There are maybe six British Accents: posh, Cockney, pirate, Beatle, "Scottish" and "Irish." That's if we remember that Scotland and Northern Ireland are part of the UK (and don't conflate them), and that the middle two are regional accents at all.
  • The United States is to many foreigners a toss between New York City (because it is treated as Everytown, America in movies and TV shows and instantly recognizable thanks to the Statue of Liberty, skyscrapers, Central Park, Broadway, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center (pre-2001), the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, Times Square, the UN Headquarters and Brooklyn Bridge), Washington, D.C. (home of The White House, Capitol, Pentagon and Lincoln Monument), Hollywood and a large Southwest area which can be described as Cowboy Country and is usually labeled to be in Texas, yeehaw!
    • Other American locations that have gained enough international fame to be referenced:
      • Alabama: The songs Oh Susannah and Sweet Home Alabama.
      • California: Los Angeles (Hollywood), San Francisco (Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge) and Disneyland. If you're lucky, you'll have heard of the Silicon Valley region, known as the technology capital of the world where tech giants Apple, Google, and Facebook are headquartered, but do not expect anyone to acknowledge that San Jose (the most populous city in Northern California, even moreso than SF) exists, let alone know the way to it.note 
      • Colorado: Home of Denver (the mile-high city), Columbine and Aurora (which gave us two deadly shootings), and Colorado Springs (for the air force academy)
      • Connecticut: Best known for Hartford (the capital), New Haven (for Yale), Stamford (for WWE), and Newtown (for the school shooting).
      • Florida: Disney World, Miami, Cape Canaveral, the Everglades, the MTV Spring Breaks, and men who get on the news, usually named "Florida Man".
      • Georgia: Georgia On My Mind. Home of Atlanta.
      • Hawaiʻi: Honolulu will be the sole city known.
      • Illinois: Most famous for Chicago, where all the 1920s and 1930s gangsters hung out.
      • Indiana: Location of the Indianapolis 500 race.
      • Kansas: May bring up associations with the song Kansas City, the black-and-white scenes in The Wizard of Oz and as the residence of Clark Kent.
      • Kentucky: Fort Knox and home of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Abe Lincoln was born here.
      • Louisiana: New Orleans and the jazz center of the world.
      • Massachusetts: Known for Plymouth Rock, where the Mayflower landed in 1620, and Boston, where there was a Tea Party which led to the American War of Independence. Inside the USA it's also known for the Salem witch hunts.
      • Michigan: Detroit, the motor city, and Flint, the city with a water problem.
      • Missouri: Bookworms know it as the setting of many Mark Twain novels. Home of St. Louis and (the larger) Kansas City. Ferguson has now become a household name due to the 2014 racial riots.
      • Nevada: Not every foreigner may know about Nevada, but they have all heard of Las Vegas, aka gamblers' paradise.
      • New Jersey: Many in the Middle East and South Asia know about it from the large immigrant diasporas from their countries in New Jersey; it is thus known as "the part of America where my cousin/uncle/niece/dad's college roommate lives". Iranians in particular are reputed to regard the Garden State as a kind of paradise. Home of Bruce Springsteen, the Jersey Shore, Atlantic City, and Danny DeVito.
      • New Mexico: Either confused with Mexico or known for Roswell, where UFO's never landed. Albuquerque, best known for Bugs Bunny, Breaking Bad, and "Weird Al" Yankovic, is there.
      • South Dakota: Again foreigners might not know the state, but they will recognize Mount Rushmore.
      • Tennessee: Elvis Presley fans know it for Graceland, blues fans for Memphis, country fans for Nashville.
      • Texas: Super-sized everything, cowboys, Dallas, Houston (we have a problem), NASA, and the Alamo.
      • Utah: Salt Lake City, best known for being Mormon country.
  • Vietnam: Known for a war, and most places that foreigners know are in reference to that time in history: My Lai, Nha Trang, Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon, and Hanoi. Also, in some circles, a bootleg copy of Pokémon Crystal known for its "Blind Idiot" Translation.

    Crime 
  • Can you think of any notorious real-life criminals besides these? If not, go to Criminals.
  • British readers, on the other hand may be limited to
  • Well-known street gangs? It's pretty much just the Crips and the Bloods and the Triad gangs of San Francisco's Chinatown. When it comes to fictional street gangs, most people will mention the Jets and the Sharks, or perhaps the Baseball Furies. (No love for the Foot Clan or the Red Triangle Circus Gang.)
  • Assassins? Some historical ones whose infamy lives on are Brutus, Charlotte Corday, John Wilkes Booth, Gavrilo Princip, Lee Harvey Oswald and Mark David Chapman.
  • Bankrobbers? Often 1920s and 1930s examples will be namedropped, like John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Ma Barker, Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson. If you need a British one look no further than Ronnie Biggs, accomplice in the Great Train Robbery, who managed to escape and remain a free man for decades.
  • Cannibals? Alfred Packer and Jeffrey Dahmer, though usual the fictional Hannibal Lecter may be the only one most people could name. The Donner Party and/or the 1972 Andean plane crash survivors may rate a mention, although none of the individuals involved were criminals and they won't be named.
  • Colonials/Explorers: Will often be regarded as heroes in the West. To the colonized countries themselves quite some of these explorers are actually considered to be people who brutally ravaged their lands and took away their independence. Every Western country has a tendency to sugarcoat his own candidates for the title of atrocious colonist and finger point at other countries for being more fit for that title. (Spain has arguably gotten the worst of it, since they had a good head start on every other European power except Portugal, and so naturally had the opportunity to subdue millions more natives.) With that in mind some notorious examples:
    • Conquistadores: Hernán Cortés (usually spelled Cortez) and Francisco Pizarro are the most famous ones, with a tendency to see Pizarro as the worst one - if the author is not under the belief that "Cortez" was the only conquistador ever.
    • British colonialists are limited to the settlers of the American colonies, Captain James Cook, and Cecil Rhodes. The last one is more known for the Rhodes Scholarship than his impact on Africa, however.
  • Cult leaders? It will always be the corrupt frauds and/or the ones who committed a major crime that pop up. Charles Manson, Jim Jones (for ordering his followers to drink a cyanide cocktail), Bhagwan (for owning several Rolls Royces while his followers were living in poverty), the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (from his association with The Beatles and allegations that he might have sexually harassed some of his followers) and Sun Myung Moon (because of his mass weddings).
    • And all cults live in a "compound" (a group of buildings enclosed by a fence or barricade) after Ruby Ridge (a house and storage shed) and the Branch Davidians in Waco (a large house with some outbuildings).
  • Druglords? Pablo Escobar and El Chapo.
  • Gangsters/Maffiosi? The most famous gangster of all time is Al Capone. Lucky Luciano might get a mention too. Names like Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel, Sam Giancana, Dutch Schulz, Meyer Lansky and John Gotti (whose last name really should rhyme with "goatee" rather than "snotty", but don't expect anyone to ever say it the right way) are already namedropped more by people with special interest in the material. The best known Mafia family are the Gambinos; although the Bonannos and Genoveses are also well known. To most people the fictional character Don Corleone from The Godfather is the poster boy to all the real-life gangsters. Throw in the Goodfellas and Tony Soprano as well.
  • Hackers? Since most of them work under pseudonyms and are only famous for about a week they are forgotten easily. The only ones that are widely known are Edward Snowden and Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning due to their participation in the Wiki Leaks scandals in the early 2010s.
  • Kidnappers? Bruno Hauptmann (for kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, though it's certain now that he didn't do it), Ted Bundy, Marc Dutroux, Jozef Fritzl, John Wayne Gacy, Fred & Rose West.
  • Outlaws? The Wild West seems to be the first location where these characters pop up, so naturally Billy the Kid and Jesse James will be the ones everyone knows and mentions. Film fans might add Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid too. Fans of the comic strip Lucky Luke will add the Daltons too, only to be amazed that they actually existed for real.
    • Many countries seem to have their own outlaw who managed to get a Historical Hero Upgrade for being some kind of Robin Hood character (even if that is more myth than fact). The USA has Jesse James, Australia has Ned Kelly, Italy Fra Diavolo, India Phoolan Devi, aka Bandit Queen, Brazil Lampião and The UK Dick Turpin.
  • Pirates? Blackbeard remains the most infamous one. William Kidd, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Calico Jack Rackham, Henry Morgan, Hayreddin Barbarossa, Bartholomew Black Bart Roberts, Stede Bonnet and Jean Lafitte are already more for people who know something about the subject. We should mention Sir Francis Drake too, but to the English he is a hero. But once again most people will rather name a fictional pirate like Long John Silver, Captain Hook, Jack Sparrow and/or Captain Blood.
  • Presidential assassins? Everyone's heard of John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Far fewer people know of Charles Guiteau or Leon Czolgosz, let alone the ones who failed to hit their marks (except maybe John Hinckley).
  • Serial killers? The only true famous one is Charles Manson. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Peter Sutcliffe, Myra Hindley and the Unabomber are also fairly well known. To know Ed Gein, David Berkowitz, Andrei Chikatilo, and/or Richard Ramirez you have to have a bit more interest in the subject, but they too may apply as the most iconic ones. If you need a European one the most famous choices will be Jack the Ripper and/or Henri-Désire Landru, the real Bluebeard. More ancient serial killers are Vlad the Impaler, Gilles de Rais and Elisabeth Bathory.
    • Naturally the most famous fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter may be used as a poster boy for articles about the subject, if writers want to avoid giving real-life serial murderers and rapists too much publicity.
  • Spies? Interestingly enough they are often not seen as criminals, unless they work for the enemy. The most famous example is Mata Hari. The most famous fictional spy is James Bond.
  • Terrorists? Osama bin Laden. All terrorists in fiction belong to Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, or Hezbollah - or the IRA, in those rare instances when the terrorist characters are not Middle Eastern, but seldom the UVF or UDA. You'll never hear about the Tamil Tigers or Aum Shinrikyo - unless, of course, you're watching a movie or TV program actually made in the country where such a group operates.
    • In the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s Carlos the Jackal was the most famous terrorist of all time, along with the Baader-Meinhof gang.
    • Guy Fawkes is iconic in the UK, but since V for Vendetta a lot of people confuse the real-life Fawkes with V and see him as some kind of rebellious anarchist.
  • War criminals? Include any Nazi, but the most famous ones aside from Hitler are those who escaped from being prosecuted and were given a mass mediatized trial later, like Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie. For decades Martin Bormann and Dr. Mengele were the most famous ones at large, but since they have died they are no longer mentioned (at least Bormann, as Mengele is still mentioned as the "Evil Nazi Doctor").
    • War criminals from other wars aren't mentioned that often. The Serbian War has Slobodan Milosevic, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, but that's it. The most famous war criminal at large today is perhaps Joseph Kony, a Ugandan mercenary known for his army of child soldiers.

    Disasters 
  • A horrific hurricane in an urban area? Surely you talk about Katrina? Or Sandy? Harvey? Because no other hurricane ever made landfall in an inhabited area, right?
  • A horrific typhoon in an urban area? Obviously you're talking about Haiyan.
  • A horrific tornado in an urban area? If any specific tornado does get mentioned, it's probably either Moore, Oklahoma (1999 or 2013), Tuscaloosa, Alabama (usually barely mentioning any of the 359 other tornadoes from that outbreak), or Joplin, Missouri. In older works, Xenia, Ohio, again glossing over the numerous other violent tornadoes from the same day. In Canadian works, Edmonton, Alberta.
    • Documentaries will be prone to Creator Provincialism, completely ignoring any and all tornado events that occur outside the United States. The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 will be mentioned as the deadliest tornado in recorded history, rather than the Daulatpur-Saturia tornado in Bangladesh. Furthermore, there will be a somewhat disproportionate focus on the traditional Tornado Alley (mainly Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas), even though many of the most notable tornado events throughout history, and especially in the 21st century, have occurred well to the east in and around Dixie Alley.
    • When characters learn of the impending danger, tornado sirens will be the only way they find out. Even in works taking place in modern times, there will be no Emergency Broadcast or smartphone alerts.
  • Earthquakes? San Francisco (1906 and 1989), Chile in 1960, the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004, Haiti in 2010, and Japan in 2011.
    • In the United States, California is considered synonymous with earthquakes. No mention will be made of Cascadia or New Madrid, despite the threats they pose of catastrophic earthquakes.
    • The Richter scale is the only way to measure earthquakes. In reality, geologists have mostly abandoned it in favor of other methods of measuring earthquake strength. Any measurements made with these scales will still be attributed to the Richter scale. Intensity measurements (i.e. how strong the shaking is at a specific location) will not be mentioned.
  • Volcanoes? Vesuvius, specifically its 79 CE eruption; Krakatoa, specifically its 1883 eruption; Mount St. Helens' 1980 eruption; and Yellowstone. Tambora is somewhat less likely to be featured, despite its 1815 eruption producing enough ash to turn 1816 into the infamous "Year Without a Summer".note  Japan's Mount Fuji is also a volcano, but unlike most other volcanoes in fiction, it usually just sits pretty in the background.
    • The Vesuvius eruption destroyed more cities than just Pompeii. Herculaneum might get a mention, but Oplontis, which received some of the worst damage, probably won't. Stabiae, which was actually partially rebuilt and remained prominent over the next few centuries, almost definitely won't.
  • On October 8, 1871, a series of major wildfires erupted on the American side of the Great Lakes. These included the Peshtigo Fire (notable as the deadliest wildfire anywhere in the world), the Michigan Fire, and the Port Huron Fire. Of them, however, the Great Chicago Fire is the only one to get significant mention in popular culture.
  • Other than the Great Chicago Fire, the only urban conflagrations that will usually be featured are Rome in 64 CE (expect the camera to focus on Nero playing his fiddle), London in 1666, and San Francisco in 1906 due to the earthquake.
  • Asteroid impacts? Chicxulub, Tunguska, and maybe Chelyabinsk. The Ch'ing Yang event,note  possibly the only impact event in recorded human history to result in mass casualties, will not be featured.
  • The Titanic is the shipwreck. Likewise, the Hindenburg is the airship disaster, and one of the most infamous aviation disasters prior to 9/11.

    Entertainers 

    "Ethnic" People 

    Family and Inheritance 
  • The entire world is patrilineal and patrilocal; other systems do not exist. The entire world, excepting select Islamic states, is monogamous. Inheritance is based on legitimacy, which is rigorously defined. Primogeniture is an optional extra; ultimogeniture does not exist.

    Fashion 
  • All big fashion designers before Calvin Klein (the only American most people can think of) have been French (Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent) or Italian (Valentino, Giorgio Armani, the Versaces). Occasionally Mexican designer Oscar de la Renta will get a mention - though often simply to be humorously confused with lightweight boxer Oscar de la Hoya.
  • Fashion models:
    • Claudia Schiffer
    • Naomi Campbell
    • Cindy Crawford
    • Heidi Klum
    • Twiggy (maybe)
    • Anna Nicole Smith was originally a model, but don't expect anyone to remember that anymore.
  • If you ever see a man wearing a hat and he isn't a cowboy or into sports, chances are it will be a fedora (which is, admittedly, Truth in Television); trilbies, homburgs, and porkpies are unknown. Bowlers, or derby hats, are sometimes mistaken for top hats. The only hats women ever wear are "fancy" hats (pillboxes, berets, etc.).
  • Any long coat, badass or not, will be referred to as a trench coat. Never mind that a trench coat is always a raincoat, and usually has particular features including double-breasted closure, epaulettes, a half-cape, and straps to cinch the cuffs. Your overcoats, your dusters, your greatcoats, your macintoshes? All trench coats.
  • All men between the ages of 20 and 50 in The '70s wore bell-bottomed trousers and had outrageously long sideburns. When they got dressed up, their suits were always in fruity pastel colors (blue, especially) or had a wild plaid or paisley pattern. (See also Popular History.)
  • All teenage girls in The '80s wore leggings (and legwarmers), oversized T-shirts, and bands or scrunchies in their (flamboyantly teased) hair. In bright neon and/or pastel colors. (The scrunchies, not the hair. Come to think of it, the hair, too.) All businesswomen wore suits with gigantic shoulder pads. (Again, see Popular History.)
  • Whenever a fur coat is mentioned by type, the majority of them are mink. Others are mentioned, but not quite as often, and usually just to highlight whether the fur is less expensive (such as rabbit) or more expensive (hello, chinchilla and sable) than mink. Leopard furs are worn only by Tarzan, Jane, the Flintstones, hookers, and porn stars.
    • This is so common that when Joe Namath infamously wore a coyote fur coat to the 2014 Super Bowl, several news outlets called it a "mink coat" - even though coyote fur looks nothing like mink.
    • If someone in a cartoon (and sometimes in other media) has a fur stole, it will almost always be the full fox with the head, legs and tail still attached or some variation thereof. This is often played for laughs, as in an episode of the 1980s reincarnation of The Jetsons in which Jane's mother wore one and when she tossed her head back in disgust the fox did the same.
  • Common male hairstyles in fiction:
    • Buzz cut (for "patriotic" Americans and military personnel)
    • Mullet (if the character is a redneck or a hockey player. 80s-90s punks never wore these.)
    • Fifties-style pompadour (if the character is a snobbish redneck)
    • Mop-top or bowlcuts (for nerds)
    • '80s Hair (for rock musicians, bikers, and the occasional urban redneck).
  • Common female hairstyles:

    Geography 
  • Central America is one country. In fairness, it was, for a while. About 180 years ago.
  • Canada is a small country consisting only of Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and rural Quebec (and possibly the Yukon, although that's as likely as not to be part of Alaska instead), despite which everyone will talk like they're from Newfoundland, which none of these places are anywhere near. It's always winter, with lots of snow, even though Vancouver has warmer and less snowy winters than, say, New York.
  • The only islands in the Caribbean are Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, and The Bahamas (which aren't actually even in the Caribbean).
  • The Bahamas are one place (despite the hint in the name). The Cayman Islands get a mention as the only place besides Switzerland to have an offshore bank account, though no one seems to know where they are.
  • Haiti is the only French-speaking area outside of France itself and maybe Quebec. Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, and Saint Barthelemy do not exist. And Haiti's history only goes back 50 years, despite it being independent for over 200.
  • South America consists solely of Brazil, where they speak Spanish, and Generic Banana Republic Dictatorships led by either a Nazi sympathizer, drug lord, or corrupt military commander.
  • Asia consists of Eastern Russia, India, China, Japan, and Korea, unless the work is about The Vietnam War. (If it is, Vietnam itself does not exist except as a backdrop for American characters.)
    • There's no such thing as Central Asia... except for Kazakhstan.
    • The Korean War is precisely the same thing as the Vietnam War. Koreans will be portrayed as living in straw huts, and they certainly don't have three major cities—Seoul exists, but it looks like the poor parts of Shanghai. Pyongyang is only whichever Kim dictator's weird little palace/bunker. Busan is purely apocryphal. Incheon? What's that?
    • The Southeast Asian archipelago only really exists in Western media whenever tourist vacation spots are discussed — Bali in particular — or someone wants to make a point about crippling poverty. This is despite the fact that Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world (after the US, India, and China).
  • The Middle East consists of Israel plus any country that the US is currently at war with. Everywhere ends in -stan. (In actuality, the suffix -stan comes from the Indo-Iranian languages, and is mostly used in Central and South Asia.)
  • Speaking of South Asia, it only consists of two countries: India and Pakistan, who hate each other's guts. India is by far the more likely of the two to be referenced, and the term South Asia is often seen to be synonymous with India. Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladash do not exist, despite Nepal being partially home to Mount Everest and Bangladesh being the 8th most populous country in the world, with more people than Russia
  • In the Western imagination, only four states exist in India: Maharashtra (Bollywood musicals), Bengal (Mother Teresa and crowded, dirty slums), Punjab (bearded men in blue turbans)note , and Madhya Pradesh (heavily forested region where The Jungle Book takes place). Kashmir will be known only to diehard Led Zeppelin fans, or if the news you're listening to covers the latest Indo-Pakistani conflict over it.
  • If your characters visit Europe, they will only go to England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Greece, the Netherlands and/or Austria. And they will always visit the capital cities, but then suddenly deviate into other countrysides typical for that country as if they are only a few miles away from the capital. The only exception is Italy, because besides Rome, you can also visit Venice, Tuscany, Milan, Pisa and the Isle of Sicily.
  • When you visit Paris the Eiffel Tower HAS to be present somewhere in the background! And Arc de Triomphe. If your characters visit other landmarks it will be the Louvre and only to see the Mona Lisa.
  • Scotland is the same country as Ireland unless the author is from the UK. Northern Ireland doesn't exist even if the author is from the UK except in works specifically about the Troubles, the same is true for Wales only without the exception, and for a long time Cornwall didn't exist even in this trope entry. There is no such place as the North of England either unless the author is from the UK, and North East England, with notable aversions, is only ever inhabited by "Geordies" {even if they're from Durham or (gasp) Sunderland}.
  • There are no distinct countries in eastern Europe (or central Europe, because it's part of eastern Europe) except for Western Russia and maybe Poland. All non-Western Europeans are either Slavs or Greeks; there are no Estonians, Balts, Magyars, Romanian Latins, Albanians, or Turks.
  • Africa is Egypt, South Africa, and a Generic Tinpot Dictatorship headed by a corrupt, violent Oxford University graduate. If you want a jungle setting, there are Congo and Cameroon, and maybe the island of Bioko (or Fernando Pó, in older works, unless it's misspelled "Fernando Poo", as it commonly is, and therefore gets laughed at). For savannas, there Tanzania, Kenya, and if you are lucky, Botswana.
  • There is no Oceania, except on the rare occasion that Australia exists. New Zealand doesn't exist at all. (However, if it does, it's known only for producing Rachel Hunter, Peter Jackson, Russell Crowe, and Lorde.)
  • The Pacific Islands consist of Fiji, Hawaii, occasionally Samoa, and more often some undefined beach with lots of grass skirts. You can just forget about Papua New Guinea.
  • All Deserts Have Cacti since all Westerns were filmed at Kirk's Rock.
  • Iceland is a frozen rock with lots of Eskimos and one Björk somewhere near the North Pole. And now, also that darn flight-impeding volcano that no one can spell, much less pronounce. If you're lucky, Reykjavik will get a mention.
  • The only place in Indonesia are Bali (home of dancing girls in Pimped Out Oriental Dresses) and Java (home of tigers, prehistoric humans, and - apparently - coffee).
  • Jane Austen's geography of England is quite varied. You learn something about Bath and also that many English counties end in -shire. Derbyshire of Pride and Prejudice is probably the most famous as Mr Darcy's Big Fancy House Pemberley is situated there.
  • In the United States, you can travel from Chicago to Disneyland or Philadelphia to the Grand Canyon in about three hours. The Midwest? What's that?
  • The only cities in China are Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. This is interesting since China is the most populated country in the world. Chongqing, Guangzhou (Canton), and Shenzhen are almost completely unheard of despite having populations of over 10 million, which by comparison is bigger than New York City's by millions.
    • In Hong Kong, the only places that exist are Central and Tsim Sha Tsui on the two sides of Victoria Harbour, and Mongkok, Wan Chai or the now demolished Kowloon Walled City if you're lucky. The New Territories? The other parts of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon? The Outlying Islands? Unless you're actually from Hong Kong (or are a mainlander who crosses the border often), never heard of them!
  • The only places in Japan are Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Mount Fuji, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki (the latter two due to a little historical event you might have heard of).
  • California is the third largest state in the U.S., the second largest in the continental U.S., and has the highest population of all. Yet, the only places in California are Los Angeles and San Francisco according to fiction, maybe Orange County or San Diego if the writer's trying to be different. Also, California is either populated entirely by The Beautiful Elite (which is entirely white) or black and latino Gangbangers. The middle class that makes up the vast majority of the state is rarely mentioned. The farms of the Central Valley note  and the entirety of Northern California do not exist.
  • The 2 regions in Belgium are Flanders and Wallonia and someday they will be separated because the border between the 2 regions clearly separates them already. One can pity the fact that the small region of the German speaking population, consisting of Eupen etc. almost never gets mentioned ever and also that sometimes the population of Brussels is taken as a separate region as well. The line in between Flanders and Wallonia is also purely artificial. The French speaking fandom actually wanted a line that segregated the 2 cultures well and even demanded a segregation based on voting, but the Dutch speaking fandom wanted to create the line on pure artificial merits because thanks to the fact that Dutch speaking people collaborated more with the Germans than with others during World War II such a thing would give a very unfair view of Dutch culture. Eventually they settled to create a purely artificial border between the two.

    Historical Periods 

    Military 
  • If you need famous military people all attention will usually go to those in highest rank, namely the generals. Just see Military Personnel, to get an idea.
  • World War I:
    • World War I has a very short list of characters. Archduke Ferdinand, Gavrilo Prinzip, Nicholas II, Wilhelm II, George IV, Alfred von Schlieffen, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, Erich von Falkenhayn, Paul von Hindenburg, Erich Ludendorff, Georg Bruchmüller, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf,Joseph Joffre, Philippe Pétain, Aleksei Brusilov, Alexander Kerensky, Vladimir Ilyanovich Lenin, Sir Douglas Haig, Sir Arthur Currie, Sir John Monash, Lawrence of Arabia, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. That's it.
    • There were no War Crimes in World War I except The Armenian Genocide. None. No gratuitous killing of POWs, no ethnic cleansing in places like Russian-occupied Galicia and Podolia, no deportations of populations like in Alsace (by the French), and no stripping places like Russian Poland and Ukraine of food to feed the German homeland with near-disastrous consequences. Nope.
    • World War I was the Western Front. And not just the Western Front, the French bit of the Western Front. And not just the French bit of the Western Front, the English-speaking corner/third/half/two-thirds of the Western Front.
      • The Italian section of the Western Front (Italy/UK/US/France vs. Germany/A-H), the Eastern Front (Russia & Romania vs. Germany/Ottoman/Austria-Hungary/Bulgaria), the Balkans, Africa, and the Middle East. didn't happen.
      • Except for Lawrence of Arabia, but it's rarely mentioned that this was part of World War I.
      • Except in Australia, where World War I was the Gallipolli campaign of 1915. And maybe France. Despite the fact that more Australians fought (and died, for that matter) in France than in Turkey.
    • World War I was just the UK vs. Germany. And maybe the Americans and rest of the English-speaking Empire.
      • France wasn't in World War I, except as a geographical expression. Never mind that she lost more soldiers than any combatant save Germany and Russia, held up the entire Western Front practically by herself for two years, and a third of it for the two years after that.
      • Russia wasn't in World War I, except as a place for the Germans to transfer troops from in early 1918. Never mind that she lost more soldiers than any combatant save Germany and held up the entire Eastern Front practically by herself for four years.
    • All British WWI brass were upper-class, incompetent, and indifferent as to their failures or the resulting loss of life. For that matter, the British WWI Brass? Sir Douglas Haig, Sir Arthur Currie, and Sir John Monash. That's all three of them alright.
    • The Important operations of World War I were The Marne of 1914, Somme of 1916, Passchendale of 1917, Kaiserschlacht of 1918, and Hundred Days' Offensive of 1918. The French weren't in any of those, of course, just like they weren't in anything else either. And yes, we too have never heard of these 'Verdun', 'Nivelle', 'Brusilov', 'Caporetto', or 'Vittorio Veneto' things.
  • World War II:
    • There's a very short list of events and people which make the cut. The invasions of Poland and France, Battle of Britain, (as of very recently) Battle of Stalingrad, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, The Holocaust, Hitler's suicide and Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Key people in this event are Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Erich von Manstein, Erwin Rommel, Benito Mussolini, Hirohito, Hideki Tojo, Isoroku Yamamoto, Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, Zhukov (maybe), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, Henri Pétain (maybe), George S. Patton, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bernard Law Montgomery, Chester Nimitz and Douglas MacArthur. Some war victims and resistance heroes like Anne Frank, Sophie Scholl, Raoul Wallenberg, Janusz Korczak... may get a mention too, but mostly in their countries of origin. Expect the French, Polish and other continental resistance movements not to get a mention elsewhere.
    • In American shows and movies all of the Allies are Americans and the Axis consists of either mindless umlaut-sputtering Nazis or sadistic Japanese killers. Definitely no Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, or Yugoslavs. And 'the Russians' (don't call them 'the Soviets', you'll only encourage them) and the British? Yeah, well, they were there and hold on until the Americans came to help them and take over, while they both apparently just laid back on their backs. Nothing much happened anyway until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The Allies fought some naval battles with the Japanese and then after D-day everything just seems to have resolved itself though there were some bumps in the road like the Battle of the Bulge and the atom bomb on Hiroshima (never mind Nagasaki).
    • There were concentration camps, as presented for example in Schindler's List. The Holocaust only took place in the camps, and the only death camp was Auschwitz. Which is always mentioned without its second name, Birkenau. Any and all Holocaust survivors/victims are Jewish. Not Soviet, Polish, Slavic, homosexual, Gypsy, handicapped, or communist: they were all Jewish. Or maybe those other guys were in there for some reason, but probably not a lot. Also need a Big Bad working in a Nazi concentration camp? Dr. Josef Mengele. Who else?
    • German military commanders? Erwin Rommel, Erich von Manstein, aaaand Heinz Guderian. That's all three of them alright. The latter two of which totally didn't deserve those silly 'war crimes' accusation things they got at Nuremberg, by the way.
    • Military fiction and documentaries set on the battlefields of WWII usually revolve around a select few well-known battles:
      • If it is about US forces it is usually Normandy and The Bulge. Italy? Maybe. North Africa? Eeeenope.
      • British get El Alamein and Market Garden. Italy... maybe. Singapore? How about no. Burma? Never heard of it.
      • The Soviets get Stalingrad and Kursk. Moscow and Berlin? Maybe. Kiev and Bagration? Yeeeeeah no. Leningrad, Hungary, and the rest? Don't even bother.
      • The only land battle of the entire war which didn't happen in Europe was El Alamein. Shanghai, all five battles of Changsha, and the Burman stuff? Didn't happen.
      • The invasion of Poland is often mentioned, but never depicted (except in Family Guy). The invasions of Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries never happened. There was no fighting in the Balkans either, and the only resistance movement was French (and occasionally Polish, but certainly never Yugoslav or Greek, except in Alistair MacLean books). Even in Family Guy, the invasion is depicted in seconds with no resistance. No Polish soldiers are ever seen.
      • No Canada and Juno Beach during Operation Overlord, even though it was one of the two (of four) okay landings which salvaged the initial mess. It's all Utah and Omaha, since all the Americans died. A movie about Dieppe, where the Canadians were simply cannon fodder, is a rare sight. Dieppe hasn't been likely shown outside of Canadian TV.
    • It's rare to find stuff about the Pacific Theater that was made within the last 20 years or so. Both the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series took 5 games before either of them had a campaign set in the Pacific. Most likely because if all 10 games are put together, every major event in the European theater from 1941 onward was already done.
    • When the Pacific Theater does get portrayed, the entirety of it was apparently Pearl Harbor, sometimes Midway, something about a flag on Iwo Jima, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Leyte Gulf, the largest sea battle in history, apparently never happened. And it is a fight solely between Japanese and Americans. The Chinese, Indochinese, Indonesians, Philipinos, and Australians weren't there and did nothing. Unless it's an Australian production, in which case it was just the USA and Australia.
      • The Enola Gay was the only plane involved in the bombing of Hiroshima. The Great Artiste and Necessary Evil did not accompany it, and by extension the Great Artiste was not accompanied by the Bockscar and Big Stink for the Nagasaki bombing.
  • The American Civil War:
    • It lasted three days, in 1863, and the entire war started and finished near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Also, all Confederate soldiers wore gray uniforms.note 
    • Other battles that might get mentioned are Bull Run (and always the first battle there, and only because some picnickers foolishly came along to watch the show), Antietam (because it almost looks like and sounds like "Vietnam", which is just cool), and Appomattox (because that's where General Lee surrendered - and don't be surprised if people mispronounce it so that it rhymes with "tomahawks", when it's actually "appa-matticks").
    • The only naval battle during the war was between the Monitor and the Merrimac (which never had its name changed to CSS Virginia when it came into Confederate hands).
    • Even among Civil War buffs, knowledge of the war often remains restricted to Virginia and a few specific Western battles like Shiloh and Atlanta. Other campaigns - Grant's Siege of Vicksburg, Union landings along the Carolina coast, the capture of New Orleans and subsequent campaigns in Louisiana, constant fighting in border states like Missouri and Kansas, the entire naval war - are generally ignored. And anything west of the Rio Grande? Totally ignored. Only the hardest of hardcore buffs know about the Battle of Glorieta Pass in New Mexico Territory, or can tell you what the political scene was like in California at the time (pro-Union around San Francisco, pro-Confederate everywhere to the south).
  • The Crimean War is remembered, if at all, for the Charge of the Light Brigade. In other words, a small portion of an indecisive skirmish (Balaclava) gains more attention than the huge, decisive battles at the Alma, Inkerman and Sevastopol, let alone Russia and Turkey's brutal fighting in the Caucasus or various naval campaigns. For American readers, it would be like if Ball's Bluff or North Anna River were the best-known battles of the Civil War.
  • The Anglo-Zulu War ended after the Brits won at Rorke's Drift, right? Actually that and Isandlwana were just the first round: six months of fighting with far larger battles lay ahead.
  • Custer's Last Stand remains far more recognizable than any other battle or massacre in the 100+ years of American Indian Wars.
  • Western accounts of The Russian Revolution tend to ignore or downplay the 1918-1921 Civil War.
  • The Vietnam War and The Korean War are the only wars that happened in their respective countries. Never mind the fact that they had other conflicts with certain nations with major consequences in the long run. If one considers Ho Chi Minh (or his followers, after he died in 1969) to have been the main actor in the Vietnam War, then that war lasted for more than thirty years (first against the Japanese, then against the French, and then against the Americans).

    Ideology 
  • All Marxism is a crude pastiche of Leninism, Stalinism, and/or Maoism. Meanwhile Luxemburgism, Left Communism, Marxist Humanism, Council Communism, Eurocommunism, Trotskyism, Democratic Socialism, and all the other various forms, many quite vehemently against the tendencies that began with Lenin, don't exist. If you tell people (especially in the US) about them, they refuse to believe they are any different from Leninists, Stalinists, etc. Lenin himself is often mixed up with Stalin. In truth, Lenin's policy differed strikingly from Stalin's and Lenin fiercely opposed Stalin's line in his final years, telling his supporters to get rid of Stalin as the man was starting to scare him. After Lenin's death, then again, Stalin loved to imply that he and Lenin had been great friends.
  • The most important facet of Fascism is racial and national persecution as well as the notion of the race purity. Fascism was also founded by Adolf Hitler and the only fascist country was the Third Reich. Maybe Italy if you're lucky, but only as somewhere for Benito Mussolini to come from. Nothing ever happened in Fascist Italy! Notably averted with Life Is Beautiful, a movie about an Italian Jew that starts off comedic and ends heart-wrenching.
  • It's ironic that "fascist" is synonymous with "racist" since Mussolini's movement didn't have an explicitly racist ideology. Mussolini didn't even believe in Hitler's ethnic cleansing since the Italian dictator felt that non-European peoples should be conquered and "converted" to European culture (which made his ideas little different from 19th century imperialists); it was Hitler who introduced the ideas of racist ideology, ethnic cleansing/extermination, and enslavement. Franco's fascist government (particularly the diplomatic service) didn't share the Nazi's racial ideologies, though Franco himself didn't mind them too much either. Franco was ok with serving them, such as by cataloging the Jews in Spain on Hitler's orders, but on the other hand, he was fine with his government's resources being used to to protect or evacuate Jews in Nazi-occupied countries (much to the chagrin of the Nazis) as well. In the end, tens of thousands of Jews escaped Nazi Europe through Spain.
  • Media would have you believe that all 'Aryan Race/Aryan Union' ideology was Hitler's doing. In actuality, it was all Himmler's doing (Hitler actually laughed at him for that), and was worse than Hitler. The July 20 Bomb Plot held Himmler's assassination just as vital as Hitler's.
  • All Capitalism (a Marxist term) is based on crony-ism and obsessed with money, even though Adam Smith pointed out in The Wealth of Nations that wealth is goods and services, not gold or silver. It is also industrial, even though America was a wholly agrarian nation at the founding.
  • There's a widespread misconception that capitalism is a conservative economic principle, when in fact it always was - and still is - liberal. (Admittedly, the current habit of automatically associating liberalism with leftism and/or socialism, which is especially a U.S. thing, has done a great deal to confuse the issue.) More than that, capitalism (at least if it's free-market capitalism) can be said to be subversive and even countercultural, as economist Thomas Frank discusses in his book The Conquest of Cool.
  • Much of what is now called "Stalinist" actually started with Lenin. Stalin's main additions were the cult of personality, adoption of supposedly "rightist" attributes (patriotism, pre-revolutionary military dress) and considerable paranoia. Things like the secret police, political repression, and prison camps all came from Leninism.
  • Don't expect anyone to realise that the USSR was never, in fact, communist. While it adhered to a communist ideology as an ideal, it never achieved communism.
  • Don't expect racist/supremacy movements to be anything other than "White supremacy". Black supremacy, Asian supremacy and whatnot simply do not exist, and if by some fluke they are acknowledged, they will be dismissed as harmless due to their relative lack of power and influence in the Western world.

    Philosophers 
  • Aristotle: Made a lot of scientific theories without proof which are all debunked nowadays. Also gave us the Golden Mean Fallacy.
  • Confucius and Laozi are the only Chinese philosophers to gain fame in the West. Their theories are basically Koan one-liners.
  • The phrase "I think, therefore I am" indicating that René Descartes popped into existence long enough to make one pithy comment, which states that only people who think can be proven to exist — and then, only to themselves — then disappeared again.
  • Diogenes lived in a barrel, looked for "good people" and snarked at Alexander the Great.
  • Karl Marx: Often seen more as a writer than an actual philosopher. Known for his big beard.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche. Usually referenced by being a Nietzsche Wannabe. Also, everyone knows he had an epic mustache and went mad later in life. Said "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Also said God is dead at one point, which is often used out of context. Popularly known as a racist and/or anti-Semite, when he was generally neither (his sister on the other hand...)
  • Plato wrote something about a cave.
  • Ayn Rand, if the character mentioning her is supposed to be edgy or in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialist who was together with Simone de Beauvoir and said that Hell are the others. Smoked a pipe and was cross-eyed.
  • Socrates drank hemlock and died. Also he knew that he knew nothing. He definitely didn't come up with the Socratian method (known in some circles under the bizarre name "sea-lioning").
  • Voltaire. Wrote Candide and supposedly said that he would fight for people's right to say things he disagreed with. Even though he never said that.

    Politics 
  • American Presidents:
    • George Washington: Has golden/wooden teeth (which he had neither), chopped down a cherry tree (which he never did), couldn't tell a lie (yeah, right), father of the USA. On the quarter and $1.
    • John Adams: Signed the Declaration of Independence before becoming president and was obnoxious and disliked.
    • Thomas Jefferson: Did a lot of important stuff that most people don't remember. On the nickel.
    • James Madison: Signed the Constitution, got us through the War of 1812.
    • James Monroe: Had a "doctrine".
    • John Quincy Adams: Son of John Adams. Allegedly "stole" the election from Jackson. Had sideburns.
    • Andrew Jackson: Revolution general known for establishing national banks and hostility towards Indians. On the $20.
    • Martin Van Buren: Was Dutch. Had pointy hair sticking out of his sides.
    • William Henry Harrison: Died after thirty days in office. Apparently didn't have a political career beforehand.
    • John Tyler: First to become president after another's death.
    • James K. Polk: President who fought the Mexican-American war and got Texas.
    • Zachary Taylor: Died from eating rotten cherries.
    • Millard Fillmore: Took over from Taylor. Didn't do much else other than admit California and ignore the slavery issue.
    • Franklin Pierce: Continued to worsen the slavery issue.
    • James Buchanan: President who failed to stop the nation's split.
    • Abraham Lincoln: Had a beard, a high hat, born in a log cabinnote , shot in a theater, Civil War, held a four score and seven years ago speech at Gettysburg. On the penny and $5.
    • Andrew Johnson: President following Lincoln, was impeached and nearly thrown out of office.
    • Ulysses S. Grant: Civil War general who had a corrupt presidency. On the $50.
    • Rutherford B. Hayes: Won by one vote. First to use a telephone.
    • James Garfield: Got shot and killed a few months after taking office. Shares his name with a cartoon cat.
    • Chester A. Arthur: Replaced Garfield, most elegant-dressed president.
    • Grover Cleveland: Served two non-consecutive terms.
    • Benjamin Harrison: The guy sandwiched between Cleveland's two terms.
    • Grover Cleveland: Served two non-consecutive terms.
    • William McKinley: Former namesake of a mountain. Best known as the guy whose assassination led to the presidency of...
    • Theodore Roosevelt: Hunter who believed in carrying a big stick, turned the country into a global superpower, had a mustache, teddy bears were named after him.
    • William Howard Taft: He was the heaviest President of all time, and so fat he got stuck in the White House bathtub.
    • Woodrow Wilson: President during World War I, his wife secretly ran the country after he had a stroke.
    • Warren G. Harding: Highly corrupt president who died in office.
    • Calvin Coolidge: Never said anything, ever.
    • Herbert Hoover: Single-handedly caused the Great Depression. Has a dam named after him.
    • Franklin D. Roosevelt: Wheelchair user during World War II who said we had nothing to fear but fear itself. Held fireside chats on the radio. On the dime.
    • Harry Truman: Bombed Japan. Defeated Dewey.
    • Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Ike", former WWII general who got the nation through the height of the Cold War and the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Created highways.
    • John F. Kennedy: Went to bed with Marilyn Monroe, claimed to be a Berliner (not a jelly donut), had a missile crisis on Cuba and was shot while driving in a car by someone we still haven't identified properly.
    • Lyndon Johnson: Passed civil rights and welfare laws but got the USA deep into the Vietnam War.
    • Richard Nixon: Made V-signs with his hands, was not a crook, and got caught for burglary in the Watergate hotel, but was pardoned and now lives on as a head in a jar in the year 3000.
    • Gerald Ford: Only non-elected president in US history. Fell down a lot and pardoned Nixon.
    • Jimmy Carter: Peanut farmer who failed to get hostages out of Iran, until the day Reagan was inaugurated. Wimp who was attacked by a swimming rabbit. Did "malaise" speech (which didn't mention the word "malaise"). Has risen to much greater stature in his post-presidency for his humanitarian work.
    • Ronald Reagan: Will mention Nancy at some point, forget what he was talking about, fall asleep, say Tear down this wall, nuke the USSR or say "Well". Interesting case too of someone whose political career has overshadowed his movie career.
    • George H. W. Bush: Said "read my lips, no new taxes", Gulf War, enemy of Homer Simpson.
    • Bill Clinton: Did nothing for eight years but play saxophones & have an affair with an intern. And he didn't inhale. And his wife was the real president and she ran again in 2008 and 2016.
    • George W. Bush: A dumb Manchild who got rid of Saddam, but plunged the USA into an endless war in Iraq.
    • Barack Obama: First black American president. Getting universal healthcare (dubbed as "Obamacare") and getting rid of Bin Laden, all the while getting constantly obstructed by Republicans.
    • Donald Trump: A billionaire businessman who writes a lot on Twitter. That's all we'll say about him for now.
    • Joe Biden: The current president, had the biggest amount of votes, delivered millions of vaccines, promises to work on infrastructure, used to have a stuttering problem, and is always sleepy. That's all we'll say about him for now, too.
    • There are over 40 presidents to date, but which ones will be mentioned in pop culture? At the very least, Washington, Lincoln, the current one, and the previous three or four at any moment in time. Jefferson,note  the Roosevelts, Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan are also likely to come up. If you need more, you'll likely get Adams, Madison, Jackson, Grant, Wilson, and everyone from Truman on. The others... not really.
  • All Vice Presidents will be "recent" ones; think the ones in the last 50 years or so: Spiro Agnew, Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Mike Pence, and Kamala Harris. The only other ones worth noting are the ones who later became presidents (Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Arthur, Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, Nixon, LBJ, Ford, Bush Sr., and Joe Biden). The only other notable ones are famous for something unrelated to their vice presidency (Aaron Burr for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, George Clinton sharing his name with a funk musician, Elbridge Gerry for being the namesake for "Gerrymandering", John C. Calhoun for his pro-slavery activism, George Dallas for being the namesake of the Texas city, John C. Breckenridge for running against Lincoln for president, Adlai Stevenson I for being the grandfather of Eisenhower's Democratic opponent in 1952 and 1956 Adlai Stevenson II, Charles W. Fairbanks for being the namesake of the Alaska city, Hubert Humphrey for being the namesake for the Metrodome and Nixon's opponent in 1968). Some people are able to work out that LBJ must have been Vice President at some point if he became President when JFK was shot; however, that logic doesn't extend to Lincoln; after Lincoln was shot you'd think there just wasn't a President.
  • A lot of Americans believe that the Secretary of State is next in line for the presidency after the Vice President, but it is actually the Speaker of the House of Representatives, followed by the President pro tempore of the Senate. The fact that Secretary of State Alexander Haig was apparently under that assumption following the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan did not help matters.
  • American First Ladies:
    • Martha Washington: The first First Lady.
    • Dolly Madison: Saved a painting of George Washington from being burnt down. Got a brand of snack cakes named after her.
    • Mary Todd Lincoln: Known mostly because her husband is one of the best known presidents. Constantly depressed/had mental health issues.
    • Eleanor Roosevelt: The First Lady all presidential partners have to live up to.
    • Jacqueline Kennedy: JFK's widow, who later married a guy named Onassis, which is why she's also known as "Jackie O".
    • Betty Ford: Created a medical center.
    • Nancy Reagan: Wanted everyone to just say no, consulted fortune tellers
    • Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dominant or bitchy, depending what side you're on. Being the first female presidential nominee for a major political party.
    • Michelle Obama: Being the first black First Lady.
    • Melania Trump: Was a model, had a cool (as in "icy") demeanor, spoke in a thick Eastern European accent (being Slovenian-born).
  • America's enemy of the moment (or America itself, Depending on the Writer). A full list of America's enemies throughout history:
  • Dictators? A tricky category, because to some people these statesmen may actually be benevolent leaders (usually by people who didn't experience their terrors themselves). For instance, Julius Caesar and Napoléon Bonaparte are technically dictators, but in some parts of Europe regarded in high esteem. Also leaders of democratic nations are generally not viewed as dictators by definition. To people whose countries have been invaded by their troops they may appear more as dictatorial powers. With all this mind, the popular choices are always:
    • Nazi dictators: Adolf Hitler. After all, he was the only one. note 
    • European Fascist dictators: Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco. If you're lucky, you'll get Antonio Salazar (Portugal), Ante Pavelic (Croatia), Ioannis Metaxas and Georgios Papadopoulos (Greece), Ion Antonescu (Romania), Jozef Tizo (Slovakia), Ferenc Szalasi (Hungary), and Vidkun Quisling (Norway)
    • Latin-American Fascist dictators: Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), Juan Péron, Jorge Rafaela Videla (Argentina), Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier (Haiti), Manuel Noriega (Panama), Fulgencio Batista (Cuba), Rafael Trujillo (the Dominican Republic), Alberto Fujimori (Peru), and the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua.
    • Asian Communist dictators: Mao Zedong, Pol Pot (Cambodia), Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), and The Rulers of North Korea (Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un).
      • Other Asian dictators: Hirohito and Hideki Tojo (Japan), Ferdinand Marcos (The Philippines), Sukarno and Suharto (Indonesia), Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan), Saparmurat Niyazov and Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow (Turkmenistan), .
    • European Communist dictators: Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin (considered more dictatorial than any other Russian head of state during the Cold War), Nikolae Ceaucescu (Romania), Enver Hoxha (Albania), Josip Broz Tito and Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia), Walter Ubricht and Erick Honecker (East Germany), and Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus).
    • Latin-American Communist dictators: Fidel Castro and his brother Raul are the most famous. Also of note are Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. To a lesser degree Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.
    • African dictators: Idi Amin, King Leopold (who was the Belgian King) and Seko Seko Mobutu (Congo), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Ahmed Sekou Toure (Guinea), Hastings Banda (Malawi), Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), Gnassingbe Eyadema (Togo), Teodoro Obiang (Equatorial Guinea), Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Central-African Republic), Haile Selassie and Mengitsu Haile Mariam (Ethiopia), Paul Biya (Cameroon), Paul Kagame (Rwanda), ...
    • Arabian/North African/Middle Eastern dictators: The Three Pashas (Ottoman Empire), Ataturk and Erdogan (Turkey), Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Shah Muhammed Reza Pahlevi of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ali Khamenei, Ilham Aliyev (Azerbaijan), Hafez and Bashar al-Assad (Syria), Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Omar al-Bashir (Sudan),...
    • Mad Roman emperors: Caligula, Nero, Tiberius, Commodus, Caracalla.
  • The only Ancient Greek states are Athens and Sparta, which only existed during the Persian wars, and the Empire of Alexander the Great. Also, Sparta didn't exist until 300 came out. Hellenism does not exist at all. Greek history after the Roman Empire is too insignificant to merit mention.
  • Ancient Egypt:
    • Cleopatra VII and Tutankhamun are the only Egyptian pharaohs. Ironically, although she was the last pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra was ethnically Greek, which is usually overlooked.
    • Queen Nefertiti, whom most people wouldn't recognize by name, but would recognize from a certain statue of her. Incidentally, Nefertiti just happens to be King Tut's stepmother. And his mother-in-law.
    • Ramses II: Hooray, Ramses the Great is known as well... though outside of history circles, mainly just as "The Pharaoh from the Exodus." (And the Pharaoh from The Ten Commandments.) Even though the Pharaoh in Exodus isn't named and there are three Pharaohs in The Ten Commandments.
  • Ancient Rome:
    • Caesar, Augustus, Nero, Caligula and Claudius. Constantine the Great is known to Christians for making Christianity the state religionnote . Hadrian is known for Hadrian's Wall. Marcus Aurelius, Caracalla, Elagabalus, Commodus, and Tiberius also regularly pop up in lists of daft Roman Emperors.
  • England (and it really is just "England"):
  • France:
    • France had only one president, Charles de Gaulle, mostly remembered for his activities during World War II and long presidential term during the 1950s and 1960s. And his height makes it impossible to overlook him.
    • The current head of state, whoever that is, might get mentioned (currently Emmanuel Macron).
    • Marie Antoinette (who liked cakes more than bread and was the only person who died in the guillotine... besides her husband). She was Austrian and married the King of France, which to be fair some films and books do mention.
    • All the Kings of France were called Louis (which is usually limited to XIV, XV, and XVI), except for Charlemagne, Charles VII and Napoleon.
  • Grand Duchess Anastasia (who will be called a "princess")
  • German monarchs? Kaiser Wilhelm II. Apparently there was never a Wilhelm I.
    • Chancellors? Otto Von Bismarck and Adolf Hitler. Maybe Paul Von Hindenburg will get a mention, and more recently Angela Merkel.
    • Prussian monarchs? Frederick the Great.
  • Austrian emperors? Franz Joseph.
  • Russian tsars? Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, and Nicholas II.
  • Holy Roman Emperors? Otto the Great, Frederick II, Charles V, and Frederick Barbarossa.
  • Spanish monarchs? Ferdinand and Isabella and Philip II.
  • Ottoman Sultans? Suleiman the Magnificent.
  • Persian kings? Cyrus the Great.
    • Xerxes I, if you're a fan of 300. Or you're Edward Lear.
    • Darius III, but only as the enemy of Alexander the Great.
  • Chinese emperors? Qin Shi Huang. Maybe a Puyi or Wu Zetian if you're especially lucky.
  • Princess Grace (in works from before her death in 1982)
  • Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (even though he's not the true leader of Iran; that would be the Ayatollah).
    • For Westerners, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the Iranian boogeyman during his day. Most of us rarely think about his successor (Ali Khamenei as of this writing).
  • Australian Prime Ministers? Harold Holt and Whoever is currently in office (The Current PM is Anthony Albanese) and Mabe John Howard, Robert Menzies and John Curtin.
  • Applies to Strawman Political. The only conservative character we ever seem to see is either the "Bible-thumper" or the Corrupt Corporate Executive. The "paranoid libertarian" conservative (most famously seen in Dr. Strangelove) was a popular stock figure during the Cold War and has recently been making a comeback.
  • Any character noticeably more left-wing than average and created after the 1960s will most likely be either a New-Age Retro Hippie or a Dirty Commie. The Bourgeois Bohemian has been showing up with increasing frequency since about the late Eighties.

    Science 
  • The biggest problem with studying the origins of life and the universe is the ludicrously small reference pool of 1 (we only know of one life-bearing planet, and one universe that sprang into being).
  • Most people have heard of Carbon-14 dating (and 9 times out of 10, it doesn't even work like it does on television). It's the default dating method in the public conscious. What most people are not familiar with is Uranium-Lead Dating, which is much more accurate and has a much wider range of dates (1 million to 4.5 billion), Rubidium-Strontium, another form of dating closely related to U-Pb Dating, or the others: Uranium-Thorium, Potassium-Argon, and Samarium-neodymium, all of which are older, more reliable, and have a wider date range than radiocarbon.
  • Asked to name a periodical for scientists, the average American will name National Geographic (which isn't one) or maybe Scientific American (which is, if you're feeling generous). Asked to name a scientific journal, they might come up with the AMA Journal or, if they were science geeks in school, Nature.

    Scientists 

    Technology 
  • To most people, the only modern phones are those by Apple and Samsung. If you're lucky, you might know someone who has an Android phone by Motorola, or Google's Nexus line of Android phones. If you're even luckier, you might know someone who owns a Windows Phone but isn't a Microsoft employee.
  • Ride-hailing apps? Uber. And sometimes, Lyft.

    Universe in Science Fiction 
  • Ask someone to name all the planets in the solar system, and they'll eagerly respond with "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (which will always be giggled about), Neptune, and Pluto" (which is now technically a "dwarf planet"). This is largely thanks to popular mnemonics such as "My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas" or even the deliciously meta "My very excellent memory just served up nine planets." Ask someone to name all the moons in the solar system, and..."Well...there's 'the Moon'...and...uhhh..." (no mention of, say, Titan, or Phobos and Deimos). Documentaries and other media tend to have a handful of go-to facts about each celestial body.
    • One of the most well known facts about Mercury is the massive temperature difference between its day and night side, due to the lack of an atmosphere to hold on to heat.
    • Venus is extremely hot (even hotter than Mercury, due to its thick greenhouse-gas-filled atmosphere) and has a day longer than its year. Despite this, a combination of its similar size to Earth and the existence of a zone of relatively comfortable conditions in its upper atmosphere have made it an appealing target for science fiction stories involving aerial colonies.
    • Astronomically speaking, The Moon is best known for causing the bulk of Earth's tides, and for being tidally locked. The resulting "dark side of the Moon"note  thus remained a subject of mystery until it was finally seen by humans for the first time in 1959. The side that is visible from Earth is known for having what looks like a face on it. Finally, thanks to the Apollo program, it's the only celestial body other than Earth that humans have visited in person.
    • Mars is nicknamed the Red Planet due to the most easily identifiable fact about it - it's red. It's also generally assumed to be the most hospitable planet in the solar system other than Earth, and so is one of the most common (if not the most common) subject of stories about extraterrestrial life and colonization. Also helping is the fact that its day length is only slightly longer than Earth's, making Earthlings particularly well acclimated in this regard.
    • Although the asteroid belt as a whole is well known, the only specific asteroids that exist are the ones on a collision course with Earth. The one exception is usually Ceres (despite now being a dwarf planet), because it's the largest asteroid and - as it will always, and proudly, be pointed out - it's "as big as Texas." Trojan asteroids (i.e. ones located outside the actual asteroid belt and instead co-orbiting with one of the planets) will rarely be mentioned.
    • Jupiter itself is known for its size and for the Great Red Spot.
      • Io is known for its volcanic activity and resulting colorful surface.
      • Europa is considered one of the prime candidates in the Solar System for extant extraterrestrial life, due to its presumed subsurface ocean.
      • Ganymede is known for being the largest moon in the solar system.
      • Callisto is somewhat overshadowed by the other Galilean moons, despite the fact that it would probably be the easiest one to colonize due to its relative lack of radiation from Jupiter. It is, however, somewhat well known for being covered in craters.
    • Saturn is best known for its highly photogenic ring system.note  Other than that, it's the only planet that's less dense than water, and any work that mentions this will make sure to point out that it can therefore "float in a bathtub", despite the obvious problem of obtaining such a large body of water.
      • If Mimas gets any mention, it'll be due to its coincidental resemblance to the Death Star.
      • Enceladus is known for its subsurface ocean, although to a slightly lesser extent than Europa.
      • Titan is by far the most well known of Saturn's moons. It's the only solar system world with an atmospheric density similar to Earth (albeit with a vastly different composition) and the only one with stable bodies of liquid. It's also a frequent subject of science fiction, in part due to the potential of it naturally becoming habitable in the very distant future, after the sun turns into a red giant.
      • Iapetus is known for its very distinct black and white sides.
    • Other than its name, Uranus is known for its extremely high axial tilt. It's also the first planet that's generally assumed to be too dim to be seen by the naked eye.note 
    • Neptune is mainly distinguished by its deep blue appearance. Other than that, it's known for the Great Dark Spot (albeit less so than Jupiter) and for the extremely high wind speeds that pervade the entire planet.
      • Triton is known for its retrograde orbit, being the only large moon to travel in the opposite direction compared to its planet's rotation.
    • Since 2006, Pluto has been primarily known for its demotion from planet to dwarf planet,note  and the resulting jokes about its newfound second-class status.
    • The Kuiper belt, which includes Pluto, is less frequently featured than the asteroid belt, and if anything is best known as the reason that Pluto is no longer considered a planet. Mentions of centaurs, the scattered disc, and other populations of objects in the outskirts of the solar system are even rarer.
    • The only comet is Halley's (which always gets mispronounced "Haley's" thanks to a certain pioneering 1950s musical group). If Hale-Bopp is remembered, people will mistakenly say it crashed into Jupiter in 1994 (that was actually Shoemaker Levy 9, while Hale-Bopp was the bright comet of 1997).
  • If it's not just stars, the background is either the Crab Nebula, or the Horsehead Nebula.
  • The only stars anyone visits are Rigel, Alpha Centauri, Antares, "Orion", and the "Belt of Orion" (the latter two of which aren't even individual stars). "Alpha Centauri" is always one star. Alpha Centauri B does not exist, or so would have you media believed. Neither does Proxima Centauri, despite being closer.
  • Betelgeuse is popular, but only because it sounds funny (and has a Monster Clown from Beetlejuice indirectly named after it).
  • When it comes to stargazing, the only stars are Polaris, the Big Dipper (a constellation known only by its nickname, which Polaris will be thought to be in) and Sirius... and that last one only occasionally (and often confused with Polaris when it does get mentioned). The only non-zodiac constellation known by its proper name is Orion.
    • The Big Dipper (also the Plough) will be called a constellation, despite only being a part of the actual constellation Ursa Major, containing barely a third of the stars and less than a quarter of the area of the whole thing.
  • The only galaxies are the Milky Way and Andromeda. Perhaps justified, as those are two of the only known galaxies lucky enough to have names that are not cryptic (Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte), or numbered (Andromedas I through X), with the exception of the Triangulum galaxy. Admittedly, that last one really should be used more often because its name is awesome.
  • The only crewed space missions ever were "John Glenn's flight" (Friendship 7), Apollo 11, Apollo 13, the Challenger disaster, maybe the Columbia disaster, and whatever one is going on right now.
    • The only individual astronauts to be discussed by name are Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Sally Ride, and Christa McAuliffe. The last two will often be confused because there haven't been many female astronauts, and McAuliffe wasn't an astronaut but a teacher who went on one ill-fated trip.
    • Yuri Gagarin is the only Russian who ever went there.
  • The only robotic space missions ever were the Voyagers and Pioneers (which may be conflated), some form of Mars rover, and whatever ones have recently been in the news.
  • Sputnik 1 is the only satellite ever to rate a name, which usually won't include its number in fiction. Often it'll turn up intact decades after launch, despite the real one's having burned up in the atmosphere after only three months in orbit.
    • In Western fiction, it's often also Russia's sole achievement in space exploration besides Mir.
      • And dog-killing.
    • The Hubble Space Telescope is the only astronomical satellite that exists, and any particularly-impressive space image will be attributed to it, even those beyond the actual Hubble's capabilities.
  • Light-years, and to a lesser extent, parsecs, are the only units of astronomical measurement (Astronomical Units, or AUs, are reserved solely for "hard" Sci Fi). Any alien race capable of star travel encountering humans will instinctively know how long a light year is, even if there's no way they could know how long a year is on Earth. Add to that "hours" and "days". (Sometimes aliens acknowledge that their hours and days differ, though.) Even a depressingly large number of human beings mistake light years for being a measurement of time instead of distance.
  • If aliens visit Earth, they'll almost always be from Mars (or, if they're female aliens, from Venus). If you are watching TV in the 1950s. No aliens are ever from Mars any more.

    Universities 
  • The USA has the sum total of four colleges or universities or whatever you're calling them: MIT (the nerds); Harvard (the smart kids); Yale (the rich kids); and Brown (the Butt-Monkey). They also know of Princeton, but only because of its association with Einstein.
  • The only British universities are Oxford, Cambridge and the London School Of Economics.
  • The only Catholic university? Notre Dame - and just for football.
  • No one ever thinks of Nalanda Mahavihara in northeastern India, founded around 400 A.D. — even though most historians consider it the world's oldest university.
  • Any other college, and there's nothing there but a football and/or basketball team.
  • It has its own trope: Ivy League for Everyone.

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