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Real Life section maintenance (including NRLEP and LRLEO) (New Crowner 9/20/25)

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Note: If a newly launched trope was already given a No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only designation while it was being drafted on the Trope Launch Pad, additions to the proper index do not need to go through this thread. Instead, simply ask the staff to add the trope via this thread.

This is the thread to report tropes with problematic Real Life sections.

Common problems include:

Real Life sections on the wiki are kept as long as they don't become a problem. If you find an article with such problems, report it here. Please note that the purpose of this thread is to clean up and maintain real life sections, not raze them. Cutting should be treated as a last resort, so please only suggest cutting RL sections or a subset thereof you think the examples in question are completely unsalvageable.

If historical RL examples are not causing any problems, consider whether it would be better to propose a No Recent Examples, Please! (via this forum thread) for RL instead of NRLEP. If RL examples are causing problems only for certain subjects, consider whether a Limited Real Life Examples Only restriction would be preferable to NRLEP.

If you think a trope should be No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only, then this thread is the place to discuss it. However, please check Keep Real Life Examples first to see if it has already been brought up in the past. If not, state the reasons and add it to the crowner.

Before adding to the crowner:

  • The trope should be proposed in the thread, along with reasons for why a crowner is necessary instead of a cleanup.
  • There must be support from others in thread.
  • Any objections should be addressed.
  • Allow a minimum of 24 hours for discussion.

When adding to the crowner:

  • Be sure to add the trope name, a link to where the discussion started, the reasons for crownering, whether the restriction being proposed is NRLEP or LRLEO (and in the latter case, which subject(s) the restriction would be for), and the date added.
  • Announce in thread that you are adding the item.
  • An ATT advert should be made as well (batch items together if more than one trope goes up in a day).

In order for a crowner to pass:

  • Must have been up for a minimum of a week
  • There must be a 2:1 ratio
  • If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple extra days to see if any more votes come in
  • Once passed, tropes must be indexed on the appropriate NRLEP or LRLEO index
  • Should the vote fail, the trope should be indexed on KRLE page

Sex Tropes, Rape and Sexual Harassment Tropes, and Morality Tropes are banned from having RL sections so tropes under those indexes don't need a crowner vote.

As per Real Life Troping, we never trope unscripted real life sports — so sports tropes where RL examples would only apply to those scenarios don't need a crowner vote.

Crowner entries that have already been called will have "(CLOSED)" appended to them — and are no longer open for discussion.

After bringing up a trope for discussion, please wait at least a day for feedback before adding it to the crowner.

NRLEP tag:

%% Trope was declared Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease via crowner by the Real Life Maintenance thread: [crowner link]
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800

LRLEO tag:

%% Trope was declared Administrivia/LimitedRealLifeExamplesOnly via crowner by the Real Life Maintenance thread: [crowner link]
%%The following restrictions apply: [list restriction(s) here]
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800

Notes:
  • This thread is not for general discussion regarding policies for Real Life sections or crowners. Please take those conversations to this Wiki Talk thread.
  • Do not try to overturn previous No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only decisions without a convincing argument.
  • As mentioned here, the consensus is that NRLEP warnings in trope page descriptions can use bold text so that they stand out.
  • The [[noreallife]] tag no longer works. This is a deprecated tag that was introduced many years ago — originally, it would have displayed a NRLEP warning banner when you edited the page. Per word of admin as of 2025, any replacement for this system will not use markup, so these tags can be removed.
  • If a newly launched trope was already given a No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only designation while it was being drafted on the Trope Launch Pad, additions to the proper index do not need to go through this thread. Instead, simply ask the staff to add the trope via this thread.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 3rd 2025 at 6:31:00 AM

Zyffyr from Portland, Oregon Since: Apr, 2010 Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
#9151: Jan 6th 2021 at 2:24:46 PM

While I am in favor of listing Open Secret on too common grounds, I do have to question the 'conspiracy theory' assertion. I suppose I may have missed one while reading through the list, but I genuinely can't see anything that meets a reasonable definition of a conspiracy theory.

mightymewtron Word Up from New New York Since: Oct, 2012 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
Word Up
#9152: Jan 6th 2021 at 2:27:47 PM

[up] It's more that I worried it could encourage conspiracy theories as it lists revelations and then boasts about how obvious they were before the government came out about them. Example:

  • In 2014, we all learned the shocking truth about the NSA: they spy on people. Electronically! Lots of people had a suspicion or already knew that they were being spied by the NSA and other entities (from various nations in the world). The part people didn't know was the extent of the various programs of surveillance and data storage, which was (and is) relatively massive.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
laserviking42 from End-World Since: Oct, 2015 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
#9153: Jan 7th 2021 at 11:01:02 AM

What does everyone think about adding Mis-blamed to the list, for being far far too common in real life? It's supposed to be for fans wrongly assigning blame for failures in works, yet the Real Life folder is almost entirely about how many people get blamed for something that isn't their fault. Not to mention most of those examples are super general and vague.

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
LaundryPizza03 Maintenance? from Texas Since: Aug, 2020
Maintenance?
#9154: Jan 7th 2021 at 11:15:43 AM

[up] If Mis-blamed is supposed to be about fans reacting to works, then yes. Real Life does not have an audience.

I'm back!
laserviking42 from End-World Since: Oct, 2015 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
#9155: Jan 7th 2021 at 11:45:56 AM

[up] The first line of the description reads "Fans sometimes blame the wrong people, and thus misblame somebody. Comes in multiple varieties:"

Actually the whole thing prob needs a TRS on it, but the RL entries can be dealt with here. I'll add to crowner.

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
GastonRabbit C'est la vie. (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
C'est la vie. (he/him)
#9156: Jan 7th 2021 at 9:50:43 PM

I've been sick, so I was probably incredibly tired when I made my previous post (I'm still tired and sick, but not as tired as I have been). I may have misread "conspiracies" as "conspiracy theories" when I read the post mentioning Open Secret (which I admit is embarrassing). I'm retracting that post because it was due to a mistake regardless.

That said, they seem shoehorned. Open Secret requires examples to be widely known before they were revealed. Combovers certainly count, but information that was previously confidential wasn't nearly as obvious as the scalp of a balding man.

As I've previously said in this thread, misuse alone isn't a reason for making a trope NRLEP (barring things that are impossible in real life).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 7th 2021 at 12:06:17 PM

I got a rock for Halloween.
LaundryPizza03 Maintenance? from Texas Since: Aug, 2020
Maintenance?
#9157: Jan 7th 2021 at 10:14:38 PM

Hmm... someone at the No Recent Examples, Please! thread asked if Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster is a morality trope or should otherwise be made NRLEP. He notes that it is a subtrope of the NRLEP Manipulative Bastard.

I'm back!
GastonRabbit C'est la vie. (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
C'est la vie. (he/him)
#9158: Jan 7th 2021 at 10:23:33 PM

[up]Subtropes don't automatically inherit the classifications of their supertropes. An example I often point to when bringing that up is the fact that Character Derailment is Flame Bait while its subtropes usually aren't.

Looking at the page, all of the examples are about people who died years ago and are being discussed for historical reasons. If people start adding examples for living politicians, then it would be a matter for No Recent Examples, Please!, but I currently don't see anything wrong with that page.

Edit: The Abraham Lincoln example is a ZCE, so I commented it out. It says he did something with his cabinet, but it doesn't say what he did.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 7th 2021 at 12:49:13 PM

I got a rock for Halloween.
SomeLibre WELCOME BACK MOTHERFUCKER from [SERVICE UNAVAILABLE] Since: Dec, 2020 Relationship Status: Chat, is this real?
WELCOME BACK MOTHERFUCKER
#9159: Jan 8th 2021 at 3:02:46 AM

Nature Is Not Nice has a RL section.

  • This is one of the basic lessons of military survival schools.
  • Grizzly Man and Into the Wild (see the Film folder above for more details) are respectively a documentary and drama regarding the true stories of the lives and deaths of Timothy Treadwell and Christopher McCandless, two naive men who both died (albeit from very different causes) in the remote wilderness of Alaska due to their ignorance.
  • There is at least one scientific study that implies that most animals are actually happier in good zoos and captivity, assuming all their needs are met. Wild animals have consistently been found to have higher levels of stress hormones, and being that life in the wild is a constant fight for survival where animals are subject to disease, malnutrition, predators, parasites, fights with others of the same species, and receive no medical treatment when injured, etc, it makes sense. Animals in zoos that follow a good standard of care generally consistently live longer than they would in the wild. There are plenty of bad zoos, however, where the animals are unhappy.
  • This is why the majority of people believe pets should always be kept indoors, apart from the dangers they can pose to the environment if non-native. Indoor-outdoor cats consistently live a fraction of their total lifespan, only two to five years or less when they could live twelve to twenty or more because they are exposed to the same dangers as wild animals are (predation, fights with others of the same species, getting hit by cars, aggressive dogs, getting lost from home, etc.) It has been shown letting cats out freely dramatically increases the chance of getting high vet bills. In addition, the idea that pet cats can easily survive in the wild after being dumped is a myth. If they never had any opportunity to learn to hunt while living as a pet, they will not suddenly magically learn how after being thrust into the wild just because of being cats, and will usually die if not taken in by another person. Declawed cats especially do not fare well when allowed outdoors, as they're robbed of their main defense against predators and hostile members of their own species.

Cassie | they/them/he | Help needed for filling out entries on the Series X SCP category
mightymewtron Word Up from New New York Since: Oct, 2012 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
Word Up
#9160: Jan 8th 2021 at 3:14:59 AM

[up] Sounds too common to me. Can just be consolidated into a Truth in Television note in the description if there isn't one already.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
laserviking42 from End-World Since: Oct, 2015 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
#9161: Jan 8th 2021 at 4:26:33 AM

[up][up]I would support adding Nature Is Not Nice to the crowner as too common.

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
SomeLibre WELCOME BACK MOTHERFUCKER from [SERVICE UNAVAILABLE] Since: Dec, 2020 Relationship Status: Chat, is this real?
WELCOME BACK MOTHERFUCKER
#9162: Jan 8th 2021 at 5:15:57 AM

    Secret Ingredient 
  • Truth in Television. Just a pinch of the right herb or spice can work wonders on a meal, it's no surprise some may want to monopolize on it. However, usually the secret ingredient will be something simple, like a dash of herbs de provence, or a bit of lavender, rather than something exotic. Since the average consumer has an exaggerated impression of the secrecy, however, a company can deny revelations by spiteful former insiders or an attention seeker who just happens to get it right.
  • KFC's "eleven herbs and spices" (which, for the record, are probably something like ground oregano, chili powder, ground sage, basil, marjoram, pepper, salt, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, and monosodium glutamate). The actual "secret" to the flavor, however, is more about KFC's particular technique for pressure-frying the chicken.
  • The "secret formula" for Coca-Cola.
    • However, a 2011 episode of This American Life seems to have cracked the secret.
    • Coca-Cola has one more advantage than its secret recipe, however. They're the only company legally able to import great numbers of de-pharmaceuticalized coca leaves, which are still used as flavoring a century after cocaine was removed from the recipe. Ironically, this means that the ballyhooing about the secret ingredient is rather pointless; even if someone did know the formula, they wouldn't be able to recreate it, especially on a large scale.
    • In 2006, Pepsi was approached with an offer to sell them Coke's recipe - which they immediately reported to Coca-Cola, arranging a sting with law enforcement.
  • A comparable level of secrecy surrounds the recipe for Scotland's favourite soft drink, Irn-Bru. One of the ingredients is known to be quinine of all things.
  • Cooking show chef Emeril always adds a dash of "essence". Bam! However, given how Emeril Lagasse has made the recipe for "essence" publicly available, this is less a Secret Ingredient and more a Trademark Ingredient.
  • The "history of the company" plaques in Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers restaurants are titled "Everything But What's in the Sauce."
  • The secret sauce on a McDonald's Big Mac. Lots of restaurant spices in general, actually.
  • Oysters Rockefeller were invented by Jules Alciatore in 1899 for the family restaurant Antoine's. While knock-off versions exist, the genuine recipe is still a family secret.
  • Mitrofan Lagidze, the creator of Lagidze water, was once accused of using some secret ingredient by Joseph Stalin himself. Lagidze proceeded to make his famous drink right in front of Stalin, after which the latter was forced fo admit this trope isn't always the explanation.
  • Chartreuse. An alcoholic drink distilled from 130 different kinds of plants, flowers and herbs. It is produced only by Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse cathedral and the exact recipe is a secret known to only two monks at a given time. Supposedly the original recipe was derived from a manuscript listing a method to prepare the elixir of life.

    And Some Other Stuff 
  • In Louisville, Kentucky, they put up huge billboards indicating ingredients used to make methamphetamine. One of which was lithium rechargeable batteries. The billboards say something along the lines of "They use this to make meth. Report suspicious activity to the LMPD (Louisville Metro Police Department) immediately."
  • An infamous 1979 case, US v. Progressive, Inc., concerned the publication by The Progressive magazine of the basic working principles of a thermonuclear bomb, a curious trick of physics involving using the radiation generated by the trigger blast to compress the fusion material. The magazine won the lawsuit despite the fear that it would lead to the proliferation of fusion bombs around the world, but in fact the description was missing several components, including one material known as FOGBANK that appears to have been an aerogel of sorts (actual function unknown outside US nuclear weapons research) in warheads. note  It was discovered in the 2000s that the recipe that the US government had used to make the stuff in the 1970s and 80s was faulty, and had relied on a contaminated ingredient to work; the result was that work on updating the US nuclear arsenal stalled while they figured out what the Some Other Stuff in question actually was. It ended up taking the engineers at Los Alamos about 11 years and more than $100 million to figure out how to recreate the stuff.
    • This is evocative of both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the movie Medicine Man, where the secret ingredient was an unknown contaminant.
  • There are various editions of The Anarchist's Cookbook floating around the web that have had the recipes edited so that they're more likely to blow the aspiring terrorist's hands off than actually function as intended.

    I Ate What 
  • Methanol. It kills. It is so easily confused with ethanol (good old hooch) that European Union has strict restrictions on sale and distribution of methanol. Denaturized spirits are not rendered undrinkable in EU by adding methanol as in US, but by adding regurgitant and Bitrex (extremely bitter tasting compound)note . Even if you survive methanol poisoning, there are good chances you are blinded for life.
  • There are several medical conditions that invoke this trope:
    • Urophagia, where people drink urine, ostensibly for health purposes.
    • Pica, a medical disorder where people regularly eat non-foods like clay, coal, soil, feces, and chalk.
  • Writer Jack London once gave a friend who had been out running a glass of kerosene instead of water, causing the friend to suffer burns in his throat. It was presumably by accident.
  • Some kids unfamiliar with sheep/goats may remark how many free olives/chocolate cereals/maltesers are lying on the ground.
  • Saginaw Cheerleaders Prank Teammates With Urine-Tainted Soda
  • On the set of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Eli Wallach burned his throat when he accidentally drank a bottle of acid that had been improperly labeled by the Italian film crew. (It was originally a drink bottle, hence the confusion.)
  • There was a PostSecret card that described how the writer, as a child, gave his/her nemesis hamster poop in a Tic Tac container and claimed they were a new chocolate flavor.
  • A minor, little-known hazard of spelunking, as many deep caves' environments are protected by strict rules that forbid anything — even human waste — from being left behind. Don't mistake the bottle marked "P" for a beverage.
  • There is an urban legend in the UK about somebody getting sacked by McDonald's for having A Date with Rosie Palms in a burger.
  • If one was to travel to exotic locales, this may be something that one might say in response to trying some exotic cuisines. Cracked.com has a list of rather delectable dishes.
  • This Cracked.com article might, just might, convince you to switch to organic foods.
  • They didn't truly drink it, but for a while before toothpaste was invented, some people purposely used urine to clean their teeth, after noticing that it was actually efficient in doing so. They didn't know at the time that it wasn't the urine, but the ammonia in the urine that did the job; indeed, ammonia is still a common ingredient in some toothpastes.
  • Just Google "horsemeat scandal". Of course, most of the victims remain blissfully unaware of what they've been eating, and horsemeat isn't actually harmful to human health... is it?note note 
  • In The 24 Hours of Le Mans, the drivers of closed top cars have two bottles, one for windshield washer fluid and the other for their sport drink. Sometimes the crews get them confused, and mix them up, leaving the poor driver with a horrible tasting drink during their stint and very clean teeth afterwards (fortunately, the washer fluid's not harmful, just disgusting).
  • A weatherman in Connecticut ate cat vomit on live TV from his shoe, thinking it was Grape Nuts.
  • Gordon Ramsay once freaked out Jeremy Clarkson with this trope after teaching him how to properly clean a lobster. Jeremy did not take it wellnote .
  • As noted in the Fight Club and South Park entries above, there is a reason many say be nice to the waitstaff, as those incidences of food tampering have been Truth in Television. Usually, nowadays (in the case of the former), the waiter/waitress goes to jail for messing with the food/beverages and or the restauraunt gets shut down and, sometimes, they don't. One case of this from 2003 had a woman finding a condom in her clam chowder (after it came back from being reheated) and the incident traumatized her so badly that she can't eat soup, seafood, and has even had problems with intimacy.
  • In a similar but otherwise unrelated vein, never take anything that isn't yours in the communal fridge. One woman got fed up with this and responded with a prank (Read here).
  • Italian serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli, aka "The Soapmaker of Correggio", would dispose of her victims' bones and blood by using them as ingredients for homemade sweets, which she would then serve to her unwitting family and friends.
  • There have been several cases of kids being poisoned from eating laundry pods because they look like delicious candy. Because of this people have joked that they are a Forbidden Fruit. It is now a meme.
  • This is why you're not allowed to eat in the chemistry lab.
    Johnny was a chemist's son
    But Johnny is no more.
    What Johnny thought was H2O
    Was H2SO4.
  • The body is programmed to think "Clear, thin liquid=water", which is why you should always clearly label things. Horror stories abound of people unwittingly drinking paint thinner or cleaner because they saw what looked like a bottle or glass of water.
  • Salmiakki. It is ammonium chloride mixed with black licorice, being simultaneously sweet, fiery and salty, and ingesting it increases salivation. Salmiakki is considered a confectionery in Finland and eaten also elsewhere in Scandinavia, Netherlands and northern Germany, but people outside those countries usually find salmiakki distasteful and heavily overlapping with Foreign Queasine. A Scandinavian practical joke is to happily eat salmiakki, then offer it to a foreigner...
    • According to Wikipedia, ammonium chloride is used in fertilizers, dry batteries, cold mixtures, detergents, and cough medicines. It is also used in galvanizing steel, soldering, and dyeing. You can manufacture it at home by mixing ammonia with hydrochloric acid. I wonder why foreigners don't find such a multi-use confectionery tasty? (A Finnish talk show host.)
  • If you regularly steal someone's lunch, don't be surprised if they feed you something gross one day. Especially if you have any severe food allergies or the person you're stealing from uses chewing tobacco. Or you might discover that they like really spicy food.
  • Usually, it's not a good idea to eat something from the wild if you're not a professional at identifying edible food in the wild. Often, you're warned not to eat any berries or mushrooms you come across (especially since it's easy to confuse edible mushrooms with similar-looking ones that are toxic). Better to refrain than try it and learn when it's too late. As the old saying puts it: "All fungi are edible, but some fungi are only edible once."
    • A Tumblr user posted how they found a tree with strangely large cucumbers hanging from it. They took one home to try it, but disposed of it (by throwing it into their neighbor's hot tub, but that's besides the point) after being disgusted by the taste. The user later learned from comments that it was actually kigelia, a poisonous fruit. Of course, they panicked, but apparently ended up fine.
    • When Instagram influencer and food blogger Johna Holmgren (who is not a certified nutritionist or health professional) published a cookbook called Tales from a Forager's Kitchen, people quickly started calling out the book for being full of recipes containing ingredients that are inedible or toxic when eaten raw, including morel mushrooms (can be confused with false morels, which are lethally poisonous), elderberries (eating large amounts of elderberries can make some people sick), and acorns (which are very bitter if not leached to remove a chemical called tannin). The book was quickly pulled from shelves to avoid lawsuits.
  • On July 16, 2012, a Burger King employee on 4chan anonymously uploaded a photo of his feet in two plastic bins of lettuce, accompanied by the statement "This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King." It took some disgusted 4chan users a mere 20 minutes to use Exif data to track down the location where the photo was taken, call the Burger King restaurant at said location, and get the rogue employee fired.
    • The scandal became the subject of a popular meme after a video about mysteries solved by 4chan was uploaded by the popular channel Top15s in late 2017, with the scandal itself being referred to as "Burger King Foot Lettuce".
  • On The Ultimate Fighter, most early seasons featured an escalating prank war between the fighters. It culminated in one fighter whose California rolls kept getting stolen from the fridge got revenge by masturbating onto one of them, which was promptly eaten by the food thief. From this point on, food theft and contamination became much more rare.
  • The U.S. being more lax with food additives than Europe can result in Europeans having this reaction when reading American food labels.

    Insubstantial Ingredients 
  • Many jury-rigged objects (particularly Alleged Cars) are often described along these lines — "held together by spit and hope", say, or "chewing gum and prayers".
  • Stripperiffic outfits have a similar composition. "Double-stick tape and a wish" are a popular combo.
    • A top being held up by decency or the stares of every man in the room.
  • Much of the Made of Index on this very wiki.
  • In real life, it's a common cliche to say that love is the main ingredient in someone's cooking.
  • Homeopathic remedies from moonlight. Or, in the most commonly encountered form, the memory of medicine or poison.
  • In accounting, there is such a thing as Intangible Asset; a class of assets that has no physical form and non-monetary in nature, but it does have value, can be exchanged and traded. For instance, purchasing Google would cost significantly more than another obscure company, even if both companies possess exactly the same amount of physical resources. You're spending that higher amount for the reputation Google had built over the years, which is known as Goodwill in accounting.

    To Serve Man 
  • Truth in Television among some members of the animal kingdom; some animals do kill and eat humans occasionally, inverting our usual sense of security as an alpha predator at the top of the food chain. Usually, these are big cats, bears, wolves, hyenas, crocodiles, etc. who prey on humans either opportunistically, or because they're starving and unable to eat their regular prey.
    • There are a number of modern predator species/populations who have included humans as a regular part of their diet. These include the polar bear, the large crocodiles of Africa and Australia, the tigers of the Sunderbans, a population of lions in Rwanda who learned to prey on refugees during the civil war, and chimpanzees, who regularly hunt monkeys, and have been known to steal and eat human babies, sometimes being as bold as to snatch them right out of their mother's arms.
    • There's this one particular crocodile in Africa named Gustave. He's easily distinguished by the dozens of scars on his face from many, many failed attempts to kill him. He seems to have developed a taste for humans, and, rumour has it, his known body count is in the hundreds.
  • The idea that humans are somehow unpalatable or repugnant to most predators is probably a myth. We are unlikely to taste much different than your average monkey or ape, which are part of the regular menu for many predators. Instead, living predator species for the most part have learned that humans are dangerously persistent prey and not worth the effort. It may also not be that humans taste bad, rather we generally don't have much meat compared to other similar-sized animals. Combined with having guns and stuff, humans are not very good prey. It's not really worth all the trouble. We also look a lot bigger than other animals of our body weight, due to our vertical posture. A predator that'd happily take down a human-sized quadruped is likely to hesitate before tackling a creature that towers over its usual game.
    • One particularly famous example of size intimidation are mountain lions. Simply opening up and spreading your jacket convinces an aggressive mountain lion that you suddenly doubled in size, and can scare them off.
    • However, their are still many predators that will attempt and sometimes succeed to kill and devour humans. Even with guns, would you really want to go out in the wild where dangerous animals lurk?
  • Real Life aversion: While great white sharks do attack human surfers, such cases are generally thought to be mistaken identity, as they virtually always spit them out after a single exploratory bite. Seals and other marine mammals, the shark's staple diet, have much thicker subcutaneous fat than humans, so a quick taste is enough to convince a great white that our flesh is too lean to be worth consuming.
  • Abundant fossil evidence indicates that early human ancestors were regularly food for any number of large carnivores, including big cats, hyenas, and eagles. One species, Dinofelis, a leopard-sized saber-toothed cat, may have even been a hominid specialist. This continued up to at least the time of Homo erectus, the discoverer of fire and the first human species to legitimately be a competent major predator in its own right.
  • Many parasitic invertebrate species like mosquitoes and lice consume human blood as a regular part of their diets, making them real-life vampires of sorts, but obviously too small to eat a live human whole.
  • An Australian cookbook has a typo listing "freshly ground black people" as ingredients for a recipe. "To Serve Man" jokes ensue.
  • Modern advances in technology and biology have resulted in machines that can "taste" — use to detect rotten food, authenticate wine, and the like. During a public demonstration of one such machine, a curious and amused reporter stuck their finger into the machine's 'mouth'. The machine's response was that humans taste like salted bacon.
  • Carl Sagan, in Pale Blue Dot, has a footnote about this during a part of the book where he refutes various arguments against watching for other life.
    "Surprisingly many people, including New York Times editorialists, are concerned that once extraterrestrials know where we are, they will come here and eat us. Put aside the profound biological differences that must exist between the hypothetical aliens and ourselves; imagine that we constitute an interstellar gastronomic delicacy. Why transport large numbers of us to alien restaurants? The freightage is enormous. Wouldn't it be better just to steal a few humans, sequence our amino acids or whatever else is the source of our delectability, and then just synthesize the identical food product from scratch?"

    Tastes Like Purple 
  • Considering you're currently reading, you're mentally hearing what you're visually processing.
  • One of the primary reasons for the hallucinations caused by psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms and LSD. One sense can bleed into another. Components of things that we normally consider one sense, like the ability to recognize shapes and recognize color which together are components of sight, can also bleed into one another, making colorful objects bend and warp or monochromatic objects in complicated shapes appear to have color.
  • Truth in Television:
    • People with synesthesia effectively have wires crossed in their brain, causing signals sent to one of the senses, e.g. hearing, to be interpreted by other senses as well. Such people may literally see sounds, or taste or hear colors. Synesthesia can also be temporarily induced by psychedelic drugs.
    • Or numbers have a color. For example: five could be blue.
    • There is some overlap between synesthesia and "perfect pitch"; some people with perfect pitch identify certain keys with particular colors (what keys goes with what color, however, appears to be idiosyncratic to each individual).
    • Bouba/kiki effect. When asked to assign the names "kiki" and "bouba" to two shapes, the vast majority of people, across cultures, will assign "kiki" to the spiky shape and "bouba" to the round shape.
    • It's well-known that our sense of taste is heavily influenced by our sense of smell. But other senses can influence the way we taste things, too: try putting blue food colouring in a glass of lemonade and asking a friend to guess what flavor they're drinking.note 
      • Or try a glass of Crystal Pepsi.
    • Mountain Dew Voltage, a soft drink with a distinct deep blue color. Many comments have been made by drinkers that it "tastes like the color blue would".
      • For the curious, it tastes like blue electricity, with a distinct aftertaste of watered-down cough medication.
  • Comedian Lewis Black remarked that NyQuil comes in two flavors: Red and Green. And they're the only substances on Earth that actually taste like Red and Green. He then goes on to note that these are Christmas colors, and together they make a mean eggnog.
  • People regularly assign temperatures to flavors, regardless of the temperature of the substance itself. For example, mint tastes cold while cinnamon tastes hot and chocolate tastes warm. Chefs must keep this in mind with combining ingredients.
    • Molecules like menthol (found in mint) and capsaicin (the molecule that give chili peppers their bite) found in ingredients cause temperature sensation by bonding to the temperature receptors in the tongue thus causing a food to taste "hot" or "cold".
    • Behold xylitol, the sugar analogue which tastes cold (and sweet). Holding a lump of ordinary sugar in the mouth causes no temperature change, or perhaps a slight warming sensation. Holding a lump of xylitol in the mouth causes the tongue to feel cool as it dissolves, and the heavy association of "cold + sweet = minty" can even cause a slight minty taste to be detected. For this reason, it's commonly used in things which are mint-flavored, such as gums: the two "cold" tastes have synergy.
  • Some artificial flavors have become heavily associated to the artificial colors they're usually paired with. Thus, "bubble gum" flavor is commonly called "pink" flavor, and the stuff that used to be laughingly called "cherry" in soft drinks is increasingly just being sold as "red."
    • Kool-Aid in the 70s and early 80s had several red varieties with different names that were largely indistinguishable either by appearance or taste. The one exception was Punch, which was cloudy and had a distinct (and vile) taste as well.
    • This is best seen in the weird phenomenon known as "Blue Raspberry." The only real way to describe the flavor is... "blue."
      • Blue raspberries do really exist in nature, but they taste very little like the candy flavor.
      • Powerade averts the "blue raspberry" phenomenon by identifying the blue flavor as "Mountain Berry Blast". It's really just a labeling difference, though. The stuff still tastes like blue.
    • Circus Peanuts candy has an orange-the-color-but-not-orange-the-flavor taste. It's distinctive but hard to describe if you don't know the history of the candy. Take a guess then reveal the spoiler: It's supposed to be banana-flavored.
  • Yellow Chocolate.
  • There is a certain fruit, native to South America: the Acca sellowiana, or feijoa. It is commonly described as tasting like the color purple.
  • Blue Moon ice cream, served almost exclusively in the American Midwest. Ice cream aficionados disagree on exactly what it tastes like but "blue" is not an unheard of description.
  • Black licorice tastes like the color black.
  • Things that are grape flavoured never taste like grapes, and if things actually do, they are probably rare and not purple-coloured. They never taste like anything except perhaps purple, and by most accounts, purple is apparently flavoured of "death and the tears of small children", particularly the cough syrup.
    • Inverted in Japan: most grape-flavoured things there actually taste like grapes... Japanese varieties of them, who taste noticeably different than, for example, most European ones. Japanese candy also often comes in "muscat" flavors which completely averts this and tastes like familiar green grapes.
    • This is more complicated than it sounds — there are several species of grapes, and Vitis vinifera — the species that produces most wine and table grapes — definitely doesn't taste like that. However, the American black grape, V. labrusca, sort of tastes like it, a flavor known for some reason as "foxy"; the common "grape" flavor is based on the "Concord" variety originally bred in the town of the same name in Massachusetts and most commonly used for grape jelly. (Labrusca grapes can make wines, even good wines, but they taste rather strange to people who've never known anything other than typical vinifera wines; one labrusca-vinifera hybrid, Ravat Blanc, makes a wine that tastes rather like pineapple juice.)
  • Orange. Color between yellow and red, or the most ubiquitous citrus fruit flavor? Yes.
  • Ultimately, this is the reason for things like Blue Raspberry and White Cherry flavors existing. The dyes used in purple and near-purple foods (including bright red, which actually was made with purple and yellow due to the complexities of light and pigments) have distinct flavors of their own - mostly bitter and pungent. While there are many types of food colorings available today, at the time that blue raspberry came out there was only one food-safe purple food dye - cabbage juice, hence why candies made with it taste like compost.
  • Jeppson's Malört has been described as tasting like "pencil shavings and heartbreak" and "a burnt condom filled with gasoline".
  • All the syrups in standard Hawaiian shaved ice have the exact same flavor. It's the color that makes people think the red syrup tastes any different from the green or blue syrups.
  • The only accurate descriptor for the taste of the Scottish soda Irn Bru is, according to most people, that it tastes like orange. Not the fruit orange; the colour orange.
  • Stand-up comedian James Acaster did a routine where he says he'd be hard pressed to find any way to describe the flavor of Dr. Pepper (his favorite soft drink) other than saying "It tastes like a sexy battery."

Bonus for Tastes Like Purple: Adam Ragusea uses the word "purple" as the one word to describe the flavor of the cactus fruit he ate.

EDIT: Is it okay if I add Nature Is Not Nice to the crowner myself?

Edited by SomeLibre on Jan 8th 2021 at 8:19:51 PM

Cassie | they/them/he | Help needed for filling out entries on the Series X SCP category
BigJimbo Since: Dec, 2017
#9163: Jan 8th 2021 at 11:09:09 AM

The page for The Weinstein Company has a link to the page Jerkass in this sentence:

"[...] these articles swiftly changed his public perception from harmless Jerkass to actual violent criminal [...]"

What should we do with it?

laserviking42 from End-World Since: Oct, 2015 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
#9164: Jan 8th 2021 at 1:54:20 PM

[up][up] Go ahead and add Nature Is Not Nice

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
SkyCat32 The Draftsman of Doom (Five Year Plan) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
The Draftsman of Doom
#9165: Jan 8th 2021 at 2:04:45 PM

Re: Harvey, maybe change it to "from harmless—if meddlesome and sleazy—executive, to a full fledged sexual predator".

PlasmaPower Piece of Cake. Since: Jan, 2015
Piece of Cake.
#9166: Jan 8th 2021 at 3:54:47 PM

[up]Honestly, I think that paragraph about the whole controversy could be stand to be rewritten. It's about of a Wall of Text, and it felt like it was written in an accusatory and opinionated tone.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jan 8th 2021 at 7:58:57 AM

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!
GastonRabbit C'est la vie. (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
C'est la vie. (he/him)
#9167: Jan 8th 2021 at 4:20:09 PM

[up][up][up][up]Remove it. Jerkass is already NRLEP, so you don't need to run real life examples through this thread.

I'd just remove that whole part for troping real people instead of works, rather than simply rewording it to remove the Jerkass wick. There was a Wiki Talk discussion about creator scandals in 2019 and the verdict was that TV Tropes isn't the place to discuss them unless the creator's work is affected, such as with Overshadowed by Controversy examples.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 8th 2021 at 6:23:43 AM

I got a rock for Halloween.
laserviking42 from End-World Since: Oct, 2015 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
#9168: Jan 8th 2021 at 5:19:59 PM

[up][up][up][up][up] It sounds like an issue for the ROCEJ thread tbh. If this was on the trope pages under RL examples, I'd say yes cut it, but the actual Creator page, prob best to discuss it over at ROCEJ?

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
SomeLibre WELCOME BACK MOTHERFUCKER from [SERVICE UNAVAILABLE] Since: Dec, 2020 Relationship Status: Chat, is this real?
WELCOME BACK MOTHERFUCKER
#9169: Jan 9th 2021 at 12:10:04 AM

Here lies a slew of tropes relating to ingredients and consumption that have RL examples. There may be more.

Cassie | they/them/he | Help needed for filling out entries on the Series X SCP category
BigJimbo Since: Dec, 2017
#9170: Jan 9th 2021 at 4:53:57 AM

About the Weinstein page, I just changed it to Sky Cat 32's proposed sentence.

AHI-3000 Since: Jul, 2014 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
#9171: Jan 9th 2021 at 2:21:13 PM

So I just discovered the existence of TheReasonYouSuckSpeech.Real Life. Does anyone think we should keep this page, or does it have too much potential to attract controversy?

laserviking42 from End-World Since: Oct, 2015 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
#9172: Jan 9th 2021 at 2:29:50 PM

[up] It definitely seems like flame bait, not to mention people telling other people off in real life is really really really common

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
PlasmaPower Piece of Cake. Since: Jan, 2015
Piece of Cake.
#9173: Jan 9th 2021 at 4:27:07 PM

Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster was brought up in the No Recent Examples thread, but I honestly think real life examples should be removed all together for being a morality trope. It's a subtrope of Manipulative Bastard which itself is NRLEP.

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!
Albert3105 Since: Jun, 2013
#9174: Jan 9th 2021 at 6:19:51 PM

What is the inherent morality in being an Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster?

Edited by Albert3105 on Jan 9th 2021 at 9:20:18 AM

PlasmaPower Piece of Cake. Since: Jan, 2015
Piece of Cake.
#9175: Jan 9th 2021 at 6:34:30 PM

Well, it's typically used to refer to someone being evil. That and Manipulative Bastard, which is what it's a subtrope of, is NRLEP too.

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

Projects: Long Term/Perpetual: Real Life Section Maintenance
20th Sep '25 9:57:50 AM

Crown Description:

Vote UP to cut real life examples; vote DOWN to keep.

Anything marked DONE has been resolved.

In order for a crowner to pass:

  • Must have been up for a minimum of a week
  • There must be a 2:1 ratio
  • If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple extra days to see if any more votes come in
  • Once passed, tropes must be indexed on the appropriate NRLEP or LRLEO index
  • Should the vote fail, the trope should be indexed on KRLE page

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