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:
- Conversation on the Main Page
- Flame Bait
- Squicky content
- Impossible in Real Life
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:
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
LRLEO tag:
%%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
Yes, exactly. You can't say a real-life person is a villain or even an antagonist, because that requires some sort of narrative perspective. The examples also don't make it clear who would be an enemy and who wouldn't be, so we can't really use that perspective anyway.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
You posted that as I was editing my previous post regarding calling Cool Plane tomorrow, but anyway, I think that sounds like a solid reason for making it NRLEP.
Edit: Also, I'm thinking we should probably retire this crowner when it reaches maybe 20 entries. It's not quite there yet, but since the crowner is over a month old, I thought I'd mention that as a side note.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 2nd 2022 at 8:40:28 AM
I got a rock for Halloween.So should I add the trope to the crowner or not?
Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!
I added it, and I called Cool Plane in favor of NRLEP as well.
Edit: Cool Plane is indexed on NoRealLife.Too Common alongside Cool Car, and I dewicked and cut both CoolPlane.Real Life and RealLife.Cool Plane.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 3rd 2022 at 9:52:18 AM
I got a rock for Halloween.Stay in the Kitchen is almost nothing but general examples. The trope is extremely common irl so I think it can be crownered.
Once Upon A Time.With regards to Cool Plane, perhaps something similar to how Cool Guns was reorganized per forum here
could be done. Real life section only covers planes with notable media appearances to avoid being ZCE themselves with a short blurb with relevant information. I think the page is worth keeping, since many real life planes show up in fiction, but it can be cut down given all the natter. Not many are going to view passenger planes as cool, but planes with prominent media and cultural appearances definitely deserve the cool rating.
Some examples would be Starscream's F-15 and F-22 modes and Yellow Squadron's Su-37s. And of course, Top Gun and the F-14.
Edited by Morgisboard on Apr 5th 2022 at 4:03:54 AM
AMA about my unfinished writing projects
We already decided to forbid real life examples for Cool Plane. The word "no" in the name of the No Real Life Examples, Please! category means there are no exceptions.
Anyway, calling Benevolent Boss in favor of NRLEP.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 5th 2022 at 6:09:18 AM
I got a rock for Halloween.The examples you listed are fictional works that happen to feature real planes; those are fine because they're discussing fiction and not real life. We're only forbidding examples that are directly about real life, such as examples that are directly about the planes instead of appearances in fiction.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 5th 2022 at 6:59:05 AM
I got a rock for Halloween.
Agreed. I'm not currently in a place right now where I can effectively judge the examples so I'll hold off for now but when I am I'll elaborate.
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Yeah, I'm going to concur with that, as the InsistentTerminology.Real Life page is just massive. The core concept of the trope is people insisting that you word something in a specific way. As you can imagine, in Real Life, this is very very very common. So common that there are about half dozen super vague examples on the page explaining the concept of "framing the debate". Another half dozen all talk about Northern Ireland, the Troubles and the various groups there. Do you want to know how fans get super specific when slotting their favorite works into a genre? Well, again, there are a many examples doing just that.
There is no organization, so several of the examples are repeats of earlier examples. There are countless third level indents, complete with nattery back and forths as tropers with no sense of irony start to insist on terminology. In short, it's an unholy mess and should go.
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose meDon't forget about the ROCEJ violations. Tons of dicey political examples there.
Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper WallJust added to Tech Bro:
- Subverted by Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, who frequently tries to cultivate this image for himself but fails to come across as authentic due to his multiple ethical controversies and the inexplicable Uncanny Valley feeling he evokes in people, resulting in the common joke that he's a reptilian trying desperately to fit in. Even his own employees are creeped out by him and refer to him as the "Eye of Sauron", which he takes as a compliment.
My negative feelings about Zuck aside I've removed it for troping a person as a character (and a bad one at that) and for misuse of Subverted Trope. Leaving it here in case anyone wants to rewrite it to be more neutral.
Yeah, Zuckerberg being the epitome of Uncanny Valley is more of a meme than anything we can put on the work page.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
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

I think what WarJay was saying is that it's more of a narrative trope than a morality trope, since real life doesn't have a pre-scripted narrative with protagonists and antagonists.
Edit: Also, Cool Plane should be safe to call tomorrow, and for whatever reason it has a redirect that not only has the namespace and trope name reversed (i.e., RealLife.Cool Plane instead of CoolPlane.Real Life, with the latter being the norm and this page's primary name), but also has more wicks than the main page, with 63 compared to seven for the main page, so getting it out of the way will require a bit of dewicking, but nothing major since making it NRLEP would mean all of them have to go.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 2nd 2022 at 8:35:48 AM
I got a rock for Halloween.