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 mods 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 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 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
%%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
%%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 doesn't currently work. 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. However, there's been some staff conversation (Feb 2024) about what a new technical solution might look like, so we'd advise against deleting these from pages, at least until we have a decision as to whether it'll be fixed or replaced.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 8th 2024 at 10:49:13 AM
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11577: Jun 11th 2022 at 5:06:23 PM
The trope Xenophobic Herbivore has a Real Life folder. Xenophobia as I understand it is a fear of strangers with a strong basis suggestion of prejudice. This seems problematic, as animals don't reason and think this way. Being territorial isn't the same thing — and if one were to argue that it were, this would be too common to include. I'm inclined to cut this as misuse. The folder is here:
Real Life
To most herbivores, anything they're not familiar with is a potential threat to themselves or their young. Smaller herbivores will typically try to run from larger potential predators, while larger herbivores might not react or they might take action to eliminate the potential threat to their offspring.
- Horses need to be trained very extensively not to spook at surprises, horses trained for combat situations especially so. And even then they'll instinctively kick anything that walks up behind them.
- The animal that causes the most injuries to zoo workers per year is the zebra. Zebras have temperaments similar to donkeys but with all of their nice traits replaced with aggression, fear, and unpredictability. They are extremely difficult to tame and efforts to domesticate them have always ended in failure. Captive zebras have even been known for attacking people without any warning for seemingly no reason.
- Many small pets, such as budgies and mice, need to be hand-tamed (which depending on the individual animal can be quite a task). They're little prey animals so humans are instinctively dangerous to them.
- Hippos take this to an extreme. They may only eat plants, but they are also extremely aggressive, territorial, and their jaws can bite a crocodile in half. Oh, and they can easily outrun humans, even on land. It's telling that Steve Irwin, who famously considered wrestling with crocodiles fun and regularly handled extremely venomous creatures, considered the most dangerous thing he ever did to be crossing a river full of hippos.
- Another related example are swans. While they are normally herbivorous, they are outright aggressive and will break anyone's bones. Despite their reputation, they are one of the most territorial birds.
- Moose. Many people assume that because they usually move slowly and eat trees, they must be docile, but their sheer size and enormous antlers are matched only by their tempers. They are known to be quite aggressive, especially in mating season or if calves are present, and will charge, batter, and kick to death anything that doesn't give them a wide berth. The number of people attacked by moose in North America each year is larger than black bear and grizzly bear-related attacks combined.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11578: Jun 11th 2022 at 5:20:53 PM
The Hyena is a trope that describes "A character for whom every thing is funny, and everything is worth a laugh. They see the funny side of everything, and you can expect this character to laugh regardless of whether he just got hit with a pie or missiles are raining down from above. They'll laugh through sun, rain, sleet and snow, and they usually do it so much that it becomes a sort of Catchphrase for them."
It has a Real Life and Other folder. There are a couple shoehorns involving real life animals and a couple others that should go into a different folder. Both are here with comments:
Real Life
- Dutch celebrities Gerard Joling and Gordon, especially as portrayed here. They're either singers or live action TV personalities. Move to whichever folder is most appropriate. Also not sure if they're an example, as I'm not familiar with them.
- British-Jamaican television chef Rustie Lee has a very loud, very distinctive laugh, and she can't seem stop herself doing it all the time. Move to Live Action TV. Also not sure if she's an example, as I'm not familiar with her.
- Spotted hyenas really do make a sound that's eerily similar to human laughter. It's one of the main reasons they're so creepy. They produce the sound when they're stressed, as seen here, making them an example of Tension-Cutting Laughter as well. Misuse. Cut.
- Hyenas also make a creepy squealing sound when they are very happy, though this doesn't sound as much like laughter and is rarely heard, usually only when meeting a friend they haven't seen in a long time. Misuse. Cut.
- Some foxes make laughing sounds when they are happy. Here is one viral video of an a pet arctic fox appearing to literally roll on the floor laughing in response to a human laughing. Since foxes tend to scream a lot no matter what they are feeling it can be difficult to tell the difference between happy and angry sounds. Misuse. Cut.
Other
- Santa Claus is usually depicted as having a distinct laugh that he breaks into frequently, usually written as "Ho, Ho, Ho." Move to a new folder, Mythology. Might also be misuse.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11579: Jun 11th 2022 at 5:43:21 PM
The Pollyanna is a trope described as follows:
Blithe Spirit Wide Eyed Idealist characters who undergo various hardships, losing almost everything they hold dear, and yet seem never to lose their sunny disposition. Think Happy Thoughts may be how these characters do this.
It has a Real Life page that has lots of issues. In all cases, these are troping real people as if they’re fictional characters, which isn’t allowed. And in all but one case, there’s misuse. It should all go. I've posted the page here as a folder, with comments:
Real Life
- Despite being diagnosed with Parkinson's, actor Michael J. Fox continues to work as much as he can and maintains an inspirationally positive attitude. Bad experience, but not sustained trauma chain. Misuse. Cut.
- Artist Frida Kahlo: in her childhood, she suffered from Heine-Medin disease, which resulted in a deformation of her leg. At the age of 18, she had a serious accident which required her to spent several months in a hospital, which is where she started painting. She miscarried two children, her second one being aborted around the time when her mother died. Her husband had an affair with her sister Cristina, and another partner of hers, a Russian politician, was murdered in her residence. Later, her father died of a heart attack, and she'd undergone seven spine surgeries, which further led her into having to use a wheelchair. Despite her horrible life, shortly before her death, she created a painting which she titled "Viva la vida". Curiously, her earlier works were rather pessimistic. Has the sustained trauma chain, but only one optimistic work of art. Misuse. Cut.
- Aaron Burr lost most of his family early in his childhood, was physically and psychologically abused by the survivors, left home at thirteen, may have been sexually abused by a tutor when he was 13-16, fought in the American Revolution during which he nearly died many times and eventually had a heat stroke so severe it permanently wrecked his health, spent his entire political career being set up, attacked, and gaslit by his own party, endured over a decade of psychological abuse by his boss (whom he had nearly worked himself to death for in the election of 1800), had his entire country turn against him due to a nearly twenty-year-long state-sponsored character assassination, was nearly assassinated, lost his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and grandson, spent four years in complete poverty being chased around Europe by the American government, and was notoriously very cheerful and optimistic pretty much all the time, to the point at which it made people very uncomfortable. Would be okay except it’s troping a real person like a fictional character. Cut.
- Many saints are reported to be like this. They praise the goodness of God and die happily, even if they are going through incredibly painful diseases or ordeals. For example, St. Maria Goretti. General example. Cut.
- Anne Frank.
'"I keep my ideals because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."note
- This is Bob Ross's shtick. When he left the military, he vowed to never be "mean" again. He had hiccups in his life such as divorce, death, and cancer but that didn't stop him from painting happy trees. In his own words: "I got a letter from somebody here a while back, and they said, 'Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy.' That's for sure. That's why I paint. It's because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news.". "Hiccups in his life" isn't sufficient trauma. Misuse. Cut.
- Doug Walker is an eternal optimist, and shrugs off the numerous creepers, stalkers and hatefests he gets with a paraphrased "I could be starving or off fighting in a foreign country, problems coming from being an internet reviewer pale in comparison". Most any famous person nowadays has such problems. Misuse. Cut.
- Oddly enough, Lia Marie Johnson is this too, as she has been through her share of heartbreaks such as bullying at school, and her parent's divorce, but she seems to have a generally positive, and upbeat attitude. Not sure this is sufficient trauma. Misuse. Cut.
- Lisa Kudrow claims that Phoebe from Friends was based on a friend of hers like this. Her parents forced her to drop out of college - because it was making her irreligious - and she had to work in a nursing home to make ends meet. The friend never let herself get down about it, and "found things to love" about her lifestyle. Bad experience, but not sustained trauma chain. Misuse. Cut. If it's okay, move to Live Action TV.
- As a child, Adam Devine was hit by a cement truck and broke, amongst other things, both his legs. He was confined to a wheelchair and body cast for the majority of two years and it took him years before he could fully walk around. Throughout the whole ordeal, Devine remained positive and refused to believe that he would never walk again. During those years bed-ridden at home, he would ring up his local radio station, and do impressions of others. As a result, Devine stated that the accident was the event that made him want to do comedy. Bad experience, but not sustained trauma chain. Misuse. Cut.
- At the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge, General Eisenhower was concerned about the Germans attacking the US forces. However, Eisenhower soon remembered that an attacking enemy is far easier to destroy in battle. As such, he told his generals, including General Patton, to cheer up: Nazi Germany had in fact given them a prime opportunity to destroy the German Army and speed their defeat. For his part, General Patton quickly realised the same thing from that pep talk, and was eager to go and do precisely that. This doesn't constitute either sustained trauma chain or continual cheerfulness. Misuse. Cut.
- Drew Barrymore has been described as having a seemingly irrepressible sense of optimism, in spite of her horrible childhood and other struggles. ZCE. Cut.
Edited by BoltDMC on Jun 12th 2022 at 12:46:56 PM
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11580: Jun 12th 2022 at 2:20:18 AM
Urban Segregation has a large Real Life folder. Not sure if this counts as Too Common or not, as every city I’m aware of has good and bad sections of town.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11581: Jun 12th 2022 at 2:30:11 AM
Skyscraper City is a very specific trope, defined as:
In a fictional and futuristic world, there is a certain way to show a city's prosperity and ambition: build it high. The city will contain almost or even literally nothing but buildings that dwarf the Burj Khalifa.
There's a large Real Life folder here. Besides the usual natter and aversions and bad indentation, none of the examples illustrate the absolute nature of this trope. No real city I'm aware of consists of nothing but super-sized skyscrapers. I'm thinking this is full-on misuse and the whole folder should go.
Real Life
- The most developed cities often end up having a rather high ratio of tall buildings to land area, although most would be puny in a typical sci-fi setting.
- United States of America is perhaps the Trope Codifier of this trope in Real Life.
- New York City (especially Manhattan) and Chicago are arguably the Trope Makers and have had this as their reputation since the 1930s.
- Lampshaded by Jimmy Fallon in one of his "Thank you" notes.
"Thank you...New York, for being the only city in America with enough tall buildings for Spider-Man to do his thing. Could you imagine if Peter Parker was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico? LAAAME!" - An Aversion is Washington, D.C. which had a height restriction on buildings that makes the Washington Monument the tallest building in the city. A popular myth is that the law specifically restricts any building from being taller than the monument, but this is not the case as the law grandfathered all buildings taller than the restricted height... the Washington Monument was the only structure that qualified at the time of the law's enactment. The fact that the most common buildings in D.C. Establishing Shots are all on the National Mall (a park running 1.9 miles from the Capitol Building in the East to the Lincoln Memorial in the West, with the Washington Monument in the center (in front of the White House). Additionally, the White House is notably one of the smallest State Residences in the entire world and doesn't have much in the way of room for long walking conversations as is common in many TV shows set in the building. There are plenty of skyscrapers in the edge cities that make up the D.C. metropolitan area, with Arlington, Virginia (right across the Potomac from DC proper) and Tyson's Corner, Virginia being two notable examples.
- San Antonio, Texas is an interesting subversion because the ground is perfect for building skyscrapers, and the ones that are there are fairly impressive, but the city has mostly grown outward, rather than upward. The Frost Bank building is the first skyscraper to go up in thirty years. These are known as "sprawl cities" where there simply isn't that much of an incentive to stay confined.
- Philadelphia provides an interesting Double Subversion: Its City Hall was the tallest pre-skyscraper building in the world (and remains the world's tallest masonry building), but after that actual skyscrapers in the city studiously remained shorter than City Hallnote under a weird developers' gentlemen's agreement. The result was that for the better part of the 20th century, Philly's skyline was weirdly flat for an American city. However, after Liberty Place (deliberately built way taller than City Hall) was built in the 1980s, Philadelphia developers built taller and taller in Center City basically without limit. The result is that the skyline is dominated by postmodern and neomodern buildings built since 1985, even though Philly is one of the oldest big cities in the U.S.note
- Other examples of American Skyscraper cities include Las Vegas, Seattle, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and Denver.
- New York City (especially Manhattan) and Chicago are arguably the Trope Makers and have had this as their reputation since the 1930s.
- Ever since China's economy started to rise rapidly in the The New '10s, it has now become a second trope codifier. Examples of Chinese cities full of skyscrapers include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing, Beijing, Nanjing, and countless others.
- Rest of Asia:
- Before there was China, there was (and still is) Japan. Of course, Tokyo is a quintessential example of a skyscraper city, lending its likeness to countless fictional skyscraper cities in various fictional works across Anime, Film, and others.
- Hong Kong, due to its mountainous terrain, is considered the tallest city in the world, having more skyscrapers than New York, and the most in the world at 355.
- Singapore is especially noteworthy. Its strategic location and tight land space means that much of the global trade passes through its ports, giving it tremendous amounts of money, leading to a skyscraper city.
- Similar to Hong Kong in that it's a port city with a lot of mountains limiting horizontal expansion, Busan in South Korea also has a lot of skyscrapers, even more so than the capital Seoul which has more than twice as much population.
- However Seoul is unparalleled in the amount of high-rise building it has, far outstripping Moscow, the city with the second most high-rises, by a whopping 20,000 buildings.
- Really any city in the Asian Tigers. Don't forget Taipei and Macau.
- Another notable region in Asia is the Gulf. Money gained from Oil and Natural Gas has given the countries of this region a massive boost in building infrastructure, leading to the building of impressive cities at breathtaking speeds. Examples include Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Manama, Kuwait, Riyadh, and Jeddah.
- And now with increasingly rising economies in South and Southeast Asia, countries in these regions now also have examples of skyscraper cities. Notable examples include Kuala Lampur, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, and Mumbai.
- Europe is notorious for being mostly an aversion of this trope, with only a few exceptions who play it straight:
- A noteworthy aversion is London, which has a similar population to New York City note but only has the same number of skyscrapers (defined as buildings over 150m in height) as relatively tiny Boston. This is because of an issue that fictional examples of this trope often gloss over: The suitability (or lack thereof) of the terrain to hold a building's weight. London is on marshy, low-lying ground that couldn't support a Manhattan-style skyscraper until architectural technology caught up, and the first true example wasn't started until the '90s. Politics also play a part in this, as each London borough has different height restrictions on how tall buildings can go (this is why Westminster is skyscraper allergic despite covering a large portion of Central London). But with more and more skyscrapers being built recently, London has become a straight example of this.
- Paris Zig Zags trope. When the Montparnasse Tower was completed in 1973, it was immediately considered by locals as such an ugly and disgusting eyesore, that when the local politicians proposed a maximum height limit on the city's construction codes, the people's approval was nearly unanimous. However, this only applied to the department of Paris, not to the departments outside of the Beltway, skyscrapers are most definitely profitable, and there were lots of people willing to build lots of them; as a result, if you walk from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe and then continue walking straight until you leave the department of Paris, as soon as you cross the Beltway you'll enter the Skyscraper District of La Défense.
- Another notable aversion is Moscow, which is in the same bailiwick population-wise, but has even fewer skyscrapers than London, if for a different reason. Moscow sits on sturdy clays underlain by stable basalt plate, so geology was no object. The reason was simply economical: back in the Communist era, when all land belonged to state that enforced strict building and zoning regulations, there simply wasn't much incentive to build up aside from the occasional prestige project — free land was a commodity Russia never had a shortage of. Only in The New Russia, after the land market appeared in The '90s, skyscrapers became economically viable, and even then they are often criticized as built more for prestige than out of genuine necessity.
- Other European cities with a sizable number of skyscrapers include Frankfurt, Milan, Warsaw and Istanbul.
- As for the rest of the world, look out for São Paulo in Brazil, Panama City in... Panama, and Sydney, Melbourne, and Gold Coast in Australia.
Edited by BoltDMC on Jun 12th 2022 at 2:32:06 AM
namra
Since: Sep, 2021
#11582: Jun 12th 2022 at 1:56:01 PM
okay seriously, i think we need a serious discussion on military tropes. just now i found mildly military, which has loads of rocej violations and a bloated section. in fact, i think a wiki talk discussions about real life examples in general is necessary.
Edited by namra on Jun 12th 2022 at 1:56:12 AM
the Retromancer
#11583: Jun 12th 2022 at 2:09:11 PM
Feel free to start it.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
namra
Since: Sep, 2021
#11584: Jun 12th 2022 at 2:13:19 PM
thanks. something seriously needs to be done. i think we need better rules for real life examples.
Ferot_Dreadnaught
Since: Mar, 2015
#11585: Jun 12th 2022 at 4:07:51 PM
Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale, under the SciFiWritersHave.No Sense Of Units :
- In 2014 Anton Purisima tried to sue Au Bon Pain for 2 undecillion dollars. This is roughly what you would get if you turned the entire mass of the sun into 1000 dollar bills.
RL seems misuse as it it's not sci-fi writers making such mistakes in their works. But there currently are many non sci-fi works under this so...
Is this a place to ask or does it need a dedicated cleanup/TRS to discuss this?
#11586: Jun 12th 2022 at 5:05:45 PM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
What exactly do you think the problem with Mildly Military is, and why do you think we need to chainsaw the entire Real Life section instead of merely removing the general/iffy examples?
namra
Since: Sep, 2021
#11587: Jun 12th 2022 at 8:05:01 PM
merely removing some examples won't work. they will simply reinstate them.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11588: Jun 13th 2022 at 3:35:44 AM
FWIW, I agree with you. The military pages Real Life folders are all a nattery, bloated, shoehorned mess. What you need to do is recommend a crowner for this and a reason for it (take a look at earlier posts on this thread to get some ideas).
I do support a crowner for this. If it fails (which I suspect is likely), a clean up can be initiated similar to what I’ve been doing on this thread.
You can always follow pages to keep an eye on them and clean up messes/send out notifiers as they crop up. I do this. When someone makes an edit, the page comes to the top of the list and you can see what was changed or added or deleted.
Edited by BoltDMC on Jun 13th 2022 at 3:36:07 AM
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11589: Jun 13th 2022 at 5:09:11 AM
Ferot, agree that the example is misuse. The person isn’t as best I can tell even a Science Fiction author. Cut it.
The “Other” folder there has two general examples. Given that Examples Are Not General, that folder can also be cut.
Let us know if the problem is more pervasive.
Edited by BoltDMC on Jun 13th 2022 at 5:12:14 AM
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11590: Jun 13th 2022 at 5:17:35 AM
I did see some Real Life or Other folders under other sections of Science Fiction Writers Have No Sense Of… that look problematic. I’ll take a look at them shortly.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11591: Jun 13th 2022 at 10:42:49 AM
From the Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale subpages.
Real Life folder: all examples are natter or otherwise not this trope and none involve Sci Fi. Cut all. Notes added.
Real Life
- The "How Can Santa Deliver All Those Toys?" question might seem to run into this trope, however it's more due to a combination of globalization and Time Marches On. In the original stories, written in the 1500s Netherlands, Sinterklaas only delivered presents to kids in its home country, meaning he only had around 200,000 kids to visit. Still quite a lot, but far less than millions of children around the world. Natter. Not this trope. Cut
- This went the other way the week of 8 November 2011, when the asteroid 2005 YU55 came past Earth. While 201,700 miles is indeed close on a solar system scale, it's still a good distance away and of no threat to Earth. Not this trope. Cut.
- To a certain extent, this applies to even near-future and modern stories. As number 3 of this Cracked article notes, even the modern dogfight takes place well outside of visual range. Natter. Cut.
Other folder: many of the sub-bullets under the Freeman Dyson examples belong in other folders., while others are natter or general examples and should be cut. The other examples are not this trope and should be cut. Notes added.
Other
- Freeman Dyson's idea of the Dyson Sphere, a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely surround a star and capture most or all of its energy output, when typically misrepresented by journalists and sci-fi writers as a solid shell completely enclosing its star. To do this, one would require a solar system's mass' worth of building material that's stronger than anything we have so the thing doesn't collapse in on itself. Dyson himself had a sense of scale, was fully aware of the impossibility of a solid shell and had in mind "a loose collection or swarm of objects travelling on independent orbits around the star."
- Cricket magazine had an even worse example in one of their stories. Not only was there a solid Dyson Sphere, but "a small strip around the equator was far enough away to support life." General example. Cut.
- The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics" featured a Dyson sphere with land, water and a sustained atmosphere (judging from all the green) on the entire inside surface. Despite the fact that the surface had open doors. Move to Live Action TV.
- Even if you could build a solid Dyson sphere, nothing would "stick" to the inside surface, because there is no gravity gradient inside a hollow sphere. Nor would the sun have any particular reason to stay at the center of the sphere.note Natter. Cut.
- To compound their sins even worse, there is a visible curvature to the surface of the sphere as the Enterprise passes through the door — on a sphere with about a 100 million km radius.note To their credit, the episode does say the structure should be impossible. Natter. Cut.
- Receives a lampshade in Schlock Mercenary, where aliens who habitually make Dyson spheres of a canvas-like material kept inflated by light pressure from the enclosed starnote have a nickname for it that translates as "This was expensive to build." note Move to Webcomic.
- In the Star Trek novel Inferno (book three of the Millennium trilogy) O'Brien is trapped in a Pah-wraith hell featuring a solid-shell Dyson sphere. The sheer impossibility of the thing slowly but surely drives him insane. Being an illusion the whole time, it gets a pass on any sort of physical possibility. Move to Literature.
- Desperately Seeking Ranma has the team visit one in chapter 85. The setting involves high technology AND lots of magic, with the sphere’s inhabitants being effectively a precursor race. Minor aversion, though: even they don’t know where the thing came from, nor where all the mass could have come from either. Move to Fanfiction.
- For years, the assumption among paleontologists was that Quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur with a thirty-foot wingspan, long limbs, and a long neck to match, weighed less than a hundred kilograms, or not a whole lot more than a human. This is how big they were. It's not at all implausible that something much heavier than the original estimate can fly, and then we can have had animals tall enough to look giraffes in the eye without having their interiors be blimps. Not an example. Cut.
- Part of the problem was that until Mark Witton started doing images such as the one linked to, most recreations of pterosaurs didn't have them in context with anything humans could instinctively relate to. Seeing that image and one suddenly realizes the 100kg (220lb) estimate is completely absurd. Not an example. Cut.
- "Mining ore from alien planets" is arguably this trope, with dozens of examples across all media (for instance, it's what the prawns in District 9 did for a living, and it's what the Anunnaki in Zecharia Sitchin's Ancient Astronauts theory bred humanity for), because since metals are, well, heavy, they tend to sink into a planet and would require fancy machinery to dig them back up. Then there's the issue that taking into account how spread out precious metals would be on a planet (it's why gold is precious, after all - if they can be found by anyone digging in their backyard they wouldn't be) and the logisitics of transporting those metals (and your mining machines, if you want them back), and yeah - asteroids are way more practical to mine from. Or moons like Titan, which have lots of petrochemicals without all the inconvenient shaved apes or deep gravity well. Natter ("Arguably"). Cut.
- Mining of the planets themselves is, though, far less ridiculous, if you have both the technology and the demand for operations of such scale. The asteroid belt combined peaks at about only 5% of the mass of the Moon. The Moon itself has a mass of only about 4% of the Earth's core. In short, the Earth's innards have much, much, MUCH more raw resources in them, than anything that can be mined out there, even if you assume that every asteroid is purely made out of metals and valuable minerals and nothing else, not even ice. So if you need A LOT of materials, then it is reasonable to not pick up crumbs, but go directly for that freight train fully loaded with bread. That said, this is only the case if the civilization in question is able to dig that deep, likely by cracking the planet itself open—many depictions of it have them doing your typical surface mining operations. Natter. Cut.
- A similar but even more ridiculous idea is harvesting water. At first, it might seem like Earth is the only place we know of with water, but that's just liquid water. Taking all the bodies within the solar system, all of their ice and water vapor has the combined volume of 1.3 billion cubic kilometers, which is 20-50 times more water on and inside Earth. Jupiter's moon Europa alone contains twice as much water as Earth, and with only 13% of the gravity to make transport easy. And that's not even considering ocean planets, all the other planets out there that contain huge amounts of water, and even nebulae that contain enough water to fill the Earth's oceans octillions of times over. General example. Cut.
- There is a real life cookbook called International Cuisine (1983) which has an (apparently serious) recipe for "stuffed camel", which involves cooking an entire camel and stuffing it with various other animals and foodstuffs (including 20 chickens!). One of the ingredients listed is "110 gallons of water", presumably to boil the camel in. The problem is, 110 gallons is only about as big as a mid-size aquarium, which is a "little" small to boil an entire camel (let alone one stuffed with a bunch of other things). The book also makes another underestimate in saying it serves a "crowd of 80-100". A dromedary camel weighs about 1000 lbs or so, assuming it only weighs half that after removing it's head, legs, and internal organs, that would still be at least 5 lbs of camel for each person! It's a cookbook. Not an example. Cut.
Other folder: one entry no longer is extant, the other is not an example. Cut all. Notes added.
Other
- The roleplaying site Mega Man MUSH once had a memorable example of this in its news files for the various character stats, describing what the specific numbers for each stat would represent. In the news file for the Velocity stat, where 1 signified "less than 5 mph (8kph)", 5 meant "60-150 mph (97-241kph)", and 9 was specified as "767 mph (1235kph, Mach 1, speed of sound)", 10 was defined as "escape velocity". Hilarity Ensued when someone pointed out exactly how fast escape velocity is: 11.2km/s, or over 40,000kph, thus leaving a drastically large gap between ratings 9 and 10. The phrase "once had" means it doesn't have anymore. Not an example. Cut.
- Some Flat Earthers claim the fact you can't see the Earth turning in satellite footage is proof the Earth is flat and doesn't move. When someone asked a question along these lines on Quora they responded by recommending they look at an analog clock and see if they can see the hour hand moving (the answer, assuming your clock is not broken and/or you are not fiddling with the thing, is no), and goes on to note that the Earth takes twice as long to make a full revolution as the hour hand does. Not an example. Cut.
Edited by BoltDMC on Jun 13th 2022 at 10:44:51 AM
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11592: Jun 14th 2022 at 5:15:42 AM
More cleanup.
Grim Reaper has a small Real Life folder that tropes real people like fictional characters. That's not supposed to be done. The first and last examples are shoehorns anyway. Cut all.
Real Life
- If you happen to see The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore with a crew in your neighborhood well... sorry for your loss. One commercial has Cantore showing up at a beach on a nice summer day for vacation. Everyone there, knowing who he is, starts evacuating the beach as soon as they lay eyes on him.
- Back in the late 80's, a prankster with a twisted sense of humour was arrested for hanging around old people's carehomes dressed up as the Grim Reaper.
- Josef Mengele was known as the "Angel of Death". Given that he was an Ax-Crazy Nazi Mad Scientist, it was rather appropriate.
Genius Loci has a small Real Life folder. The trope is supposed to be: "A Genius Loci is a location with a mind. A sentient planet, country, island, city, or street." Cut these as misuse in general — see interspersed comments in bold.
Real Life
- On a micro scale, any living creature (including a human) can be a physical location. Your fleas and dust mites probably think ''you're'' a walking planet, or at least a small continent! Humans are one of the few creatures that carry two distinct species of dust mites due to having two distinct locations of hairs. And then one's stomach flora is unique to each individual. General example. A stretch to consider anything living a potential "location." Things like dust are not sentient. Cut.
- Though not sentient (at least not that we know) there are some areas with organisms or groups of organisms that have grown to be truly massive. Not sentient, shoehorned. Cut this and all sub-bullets.
- The Great Barrier Reef is the largest superorganism on earth. Covering approximately 344,400 square kilometers of ocean.
- Pando is a single Quaking Aspen. Aspens can spread by growing new trunks from their roots, creating a new "tree" that's just another part of a huge organism. It has taken this ability and used it to a ridiculous extent. It covers 0.43 square kilometers of land and weighs 6,000 tons.
- A large specimen of Honey Mushroom has been discovered in Oregon's Malheur National Forest. The fungus in an area of 8.9 square kilometers has identical genetics, though there is some debate as to whether it's all connected together or not. If it is all connected it would be a single organism weighing as much as 550 tons.
- The Great Barrier Reef
- The metaphysical philosophy of Panpsychism says that the entire universe is sentient to some degree. Shoehorned hypothetical. Cut.
- A scientific theory known as the "Gaia Theory" or "Gaia Hypothesis" proposes the idea that Earth's biosphere functions as a huge superorganism. Not sentient, shoehorned. Cut.
Spacetime Eater has a small Real Life folder. The trope is for living entities that feed "on existence itself." Neither example is a living thing. Cut, shoehorning.
Real Life
- Black Holes, while not alive, are so dense and massive that spacetime itself is distorted in an infinite curvature, resulting in a gravitational pull that consumes everything, even light.
- In such a place, gravity is so strong that several laws of physics are either bent or outright broken. It's not entirely inaccurate to call them holes in reality itself.
- A Vacuum metastability event, also not alive, would fit the bill quite well too. The thing would expand at the speed of light devouring the entire Universe and once within it changing the laws of physics and the physical constants... just to have everything collapsing inmediately in a gravitational singularity.
Sentient Cosmic Force has a small Real Life folder. It's not clear to me how either example qualifies. Cut.
Real Life
- Many physicists have this view of reality, including the late John Archibald Wheeler and Carl Sagan. The thing about this is, however, humanity is part of the Sentient Cosmic Force. We're the universe's way of knowing itself.
- Older than You Think — this is the view of Georg Hegel, a thoroughly boring (if influential) eighteenth century German philosopher.
- The principle of cosmophysicism is the idea the universe has a mind divorced of theism.
Sufficiently Advanced Alien also has a small Real Life folder. The three examples are speculative, not "real life" in terms of the posited aliens. Cut.
Real Life
- Physicist Frank J. Tipler advocates Omega Point theory, in which it is necessary that Sufficiently Advanced Aliens (or Sufficiently Advanced Humans) are not merely indistinguishable from gods, but become/create (it's complicated) God.
- The idea of "Omega Point" as the point of ultimate human perfection was originally conceived of by French Catholic priest and evolutionary biologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin!
- Arthur C. Clarke stated that if we ever find intelligent alien life they would be "apes or angels, but not men." The reasoning being that humans spent the vast majority of their history in the stone age, but since the discovery of agriculture just 10,000 years ago technological advancement has accelerated at an almost exponential rate. So the statistical likelihood of contacting a technological species before they hit The Singularity is virtually nil.
- Former Israeli Space Sercurity Chief Haim Eshed said that "a Galactic Federation" exists, with them being waiting for humanity to develop to understand what space and spaceships are, but have not told humans yet because the idea would cause mass hysteria. This implies that these aliens are far beyond what general humans are capable of doing.
Naturally, Insufficiently Advanced Alien also has a small Real Life folder. One example is speculative, the other involves two groups of humans. Shoehorned, cut.
Real Life
- When the Maori conquered and all but wiped out the Moriori people they used a ship far beyond their own tech level, namely the stolen European brig Lord Rodney. This is what allowed the invasion.
- If Insufficiently Advanced Aliens show up on Earth and are surprisingly wimpy, they are maybe only probes or scouts. After all, the Mars rovers we sent are not armed with nuclear missiles.
Space Orcs has one Real Life example that is conspiracy theory speculative. Misuse, cut.
Real Life
- One commonly held belief in Internet circles is that, should contact ever be made with alien life and humanity becomes part of galactic civilization, then we'll be the Space Orcs compared to everyone else. It's not without precedent — we're super-persistent pursuit predators, we're able to continue functioning even after taking extreme damage, we're fairly strong for our size, and we have pretty much zero sense of self-preservation. We consume various poisonous substances just to experience their mind-altering side-effects for fun. When certain plants tried to protect themselves from being eaten by producing a chemical that makes them literally painful to eat, we said "Yes! More of that, please! The more painful the better!" and started seasoning our non-painful foods with it. Not to mention that Humans Are Warriors isn't a trope for no reason.
Edited by BoltDMC on Jun 14th 2022 at 5:18:46 AM
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11593: Jun 14th 2022 at 4:47:27 PM
Never Learned to Read has a good-sized Real Life folder. All the entries either trope real life people like fictional characters (which isn't allowed) or are general examples. Cut. Comments interspersed:
Real Life
- This map◊ from The Other Wiki's article on literacy shows the percentages of countries' populations that are functionally literate. Fortunately, the description mentions that some of the countries in the red have improved a bit since the map was made. General example. Cut.
- The Mongols and Vikings are well-known for this, largely due to the fact that historians know very little about their true cultures and values because of their inability to record their own histories in anything but their own languages. The vast majority of information we have about them in the West was written by Christians and Muslims, both of whom were terrified and disgusted by these barbarian invaders, which makes the actual beliefs and practices of the Mongols and pagan Vikings difficult to understand or even extrapolate on. General example. Cut.
- On a related note, one descendant of the latter, Akbar, third emperor of the Mughals, is thought to have been dyslexic, as he was unable to read despite successive attempts to teach him. That didn't stop him from being revered by Indians as "Akbar The Great" for managing to triple the size of the Mughal Empire, and being a wise, tolerant ruler who ruled very fairly over the people, not to mention that he managed to get Hindus and Muslims to get along with each other. None of the Mughal Emperors after him managed to live up to the standards he set. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- While the trope itself has become somewhat clichéd, there are obviously people in real life for which this is true. Also worth considering are cases where someone is dyslexic, and thus has a situation where although they are attending school and being taught literacy, it eludes them until the condition is identified. That said, a shockingly high percentage of people in the US are functionally illiterate. That is, they can read just barely enough to get by but anything more is beyond them. General example. Cut.
- Lance Henriksen is one particularly famous example - he dropped out of school before sixth grade and was illiterate until the age of 30 when he started acting and taught himself to read his scripts. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- There was a widely successful Junior-Major league hockey coach in Quebec who revealed he was illiterate when he retired. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- American Idol Season 3 winner Fantasia Barrino was functionally illiterate for years into her performing career; she would perform songs from memory and would make excuses such as being "Southern" when faced with dense materials like contracts. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Maria Teresa "Mariettina" Goretti was said to be illiterate, which wasn't very uncommon in the times and place she lived (rural Italy in the very early twentieth century). She allegedly still gained the knowledge she needed to get the Holy Communion purely by hearing and memorizing what the local Passionist priests taught her. It's actually a kind-of common backstory among Christian saints, especially those who come from low-class backgrounds. Again, understandable due to the lack of advance in proper education until a relatively short time ago. In fact, a lot of people only learned to read or write if they joined the clergy (or attended a church school), but even then (like the above) it wasn't always so. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- American baseball star Shoeless Joe Jackson had to work 12-hour shifts in a textile mill from the age of 6 or 7 to support his family, and so never went to school. He often had his wife sign his signature for him (meaning memorabilia he autographed himself is very valuable), and when he ate with his team in restaurants, he had his teammates order before him and order the same thing as one of them rather than asking someone to read the menu for him. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Brazilian eco-martyr Chico Mendes was illiterate until the age of 18, having been deliberately kept so by the owner of the plantation he worked on, in an attempt to prevent him from learning what exploitation meant. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- This trope was the norm for most of the world until the Industrial Revolution. Most people worked in jobs in which literacy wasn't necessary, which took up so much time that they didn't have the leisure time needed to pick up an unnecessary skill. Up until the invention of the printing press, this was compounded by the fact that there simply wasn't much reading material available. The single largest group of people with the time and inclination to learn to read in Medieval and Renaissance times was the clergy. This is why bookkeepers are sometimes known as clerks (a word derived from cleric). General example. Cut.
- Adam Carolla was functionally illiterate most of his life. When he started working at KROQ radio when he first got his break into showbiz, he forced himself to learn to read because he couldn't read copy off the cuff and got tired of having to memorize everything for hours ahead of time. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- In Antebellum America, plantation owners generally tried to keep their black slaves illiterate, lest they get their hands on abolitionist publications. Some states even passed laws against teaching slaves to read. General example. Cut.
- Illiteracy was widespread even in late Tsarist Russia, which was just beginning to modernize in the style of Europe and still had a large population of illiterate peasant farmers. At the time of the Communist revolution in 1917, only twenty-four percent of Russian adults could read and write, although the percentage was much higher in the youngest generations, who had benefited from public education. After the revolution, the new Communist regime also continued to promote literacy. Consequently, illiteracy as a mass phenomenon had virtually disappeared by the 1950s, when the last of the old, illiterate generations passed away. General example. Cut.
- In a zig-zagged example, in the obscenely poor country of North Korea, the requirement for being classed as literate is the ability to write the words "Kim Jong Il", the Eternal President, and your own name. Consequently, North Korea has a 99.9% rate of literacy; the highest in the world. General example. Cut.
- Vangelis cannot read musical notation. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- In an extreme case, teacher John Corcoran taught for 17 years while being illiterate. He was able to get this far through getting passed from grade to grade, and got through college by cheating on every test. When he began teaching, he would get a few students to be his aides and take attendance for him. His own wife didn't realize he couldn't read until he had trouble reading stories to their daughter. He was finally inspired to learn to read by then-Second Lady Barbara Bush's campaign for adult literacy, and he now runs a foundation dedicated to literacy. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Because he was performing in vaudeville as a child and wasn't provided with consistent tutoring while touring, Sammy Davis Jr. was almost completely illiteratenote until he joined the Army at 18. He was taught to read by a fellow soldier. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Eddie Shack was a popular NHL player from 1957 to 1975 and was later a successful advertiser and businessman. He was poor and often ill as a child, and after he became a success started up literacy programs. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Spanish transgender media personality Christina "La Veneno" Ortiz Rodriguez never learned to read, and while it didn't hamper her work in the media, it created huge problems for her later in life. Namely, her then-boyfriend framed her for arson and insurance fraud as she couldn't read the contract he tricked her into signing, and because she never officially changed her name and gender marker on her identity papers, she was incarcerated in a male prison, which was every bit as horrific for her as one might imagine. Real life person troped like a fictional character. Cut.
Tabs
Since: Jan, 2001
#11594: Jun 15th 2022 at 1:28:13 PM
Does anyone have a suggestion for the descriptions of No Real Life Examples, Please! and subpages that clarifies that decisions are made by consensus on this thread or on TLP or rarely mod fiat? There are a few additions to one of the indices that didn't get discussed here, and I assume it's because there's little/nothing indicating they should've.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11595: Jun 15th 2022 at 2:06:19 PM
Blind Without 'Em has a good sized Real Life folder full of general examples as well as real people being troped like fictional characters. Best I can tell, this applies to every entry. Cut. Comments interspersed:
Real Life
- Everyone's individual prescription differs, but one constant is people with decent vision's impression of blind without 'em. For most people, having your glasses off is just blurry, but not necessarily to the point they can't operate in general. While walking down the street a person without their glasses may not be able to read "stop" on a stop sign, but they can see the big, blurry red thing and can tell they're at an intersection, so the fact that it's a stop sign isn't much of a logical leap. The blurriness is just like an out-of-focus camera, only it's stereoscopic — some blurs are closer than others. General example. Cut.
- Nearsightedness (Myopia) is when you can focus on things that are close to you, but the farther away things are the more blurry they become. This is the most common reason for vision correction. General example. Cut.
- Farsightedness (Hyperopia) is when you can't focus on things right in front of your face — but your distance vision is clear. This is more rare than nearsightedness. General example. Cut.
- Astigmatism is a defect in the shape of the lens or cornea that prevents a sharp image from being projected on the retina, making vision blurry regardless of distance - although they may also have a 'sweet spot' where everything is clear. The unusual shape of their eyeball also makes it very difficult to prescribe contact lenses for them. General example. Cut.
- Nearsightedness (Myopia
- That said, while you may be able to function to some extent without your glasses, actually finding the dropped glasses can very easily invoke this trope. They're small, often dark-coloured, and blend in with so many things. Many people who have very bad eyesight without their glasses try to keep a spare or old pair in a drawer where they can be easily found to expedite finding their lost current pair of glasses. General example. Cut.
- It's very common for people to have different vision levels in each eye. In extreme instances, the brain will respond by ignoring the signal from the weaker eye, resulting in functional blindness in one eye. General example. Cut.
- One of the tests required to obtain a driver's license in practically every jurisdiction is a vision test. If you require the use of glasses or contact lenses to pass the test, your license will make note of that fact (usually with a code appended to your license number, or a printed endorsement on the license stating "Corrective Lens" or something similar). For a driver with vision restrictions, driving without correction constitutes a moving violation and will get you ticketed. General example. Cut.
- Shows up every season of Canada's Worst Driver; it's mentioned only when a driver fails to fullfil this. General example. Cut.
- Christopher Lambert has Myopia and is almost entirely blind without his glasses. Since he cannot wear contacts, he is often forced to act while unable to see anything clearly (making the fact that almost all his roles require fighting or some form of strenuous physical activity all the more impressive). This is also the reason behind his trademark intense gaze as he is really just trying to see what's in front of him. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Actor James Spader has such poor eyesight that in any film where he doesn't wear glasses—which is most of them—he can barely make out the face(s) of the other actor(s) in the scene with him. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- It's actually surprisingly common for people who need vision correction but don't have contact lenses to go without their glasses, if they don't like the way they look with them on. It's the little things that usually tip off the people around them - not noticing obvious signage, etc. General example. Cut.
- In a surprising aversion, most glasses-wearers (particularly those with Myopia) see better while underwater without their glasses; plus, in most cases, also see better than "normal"-visioned people. This has to do with the different refractive index of water vs air. This is part of the issue with why prescription goggles are far less popular than prescription sunglasses. It's also why many competitive swimming clubs have a timing clock installed underwater, in addition to one sitting on deck—many swimmers have a far better chance of reading a time clock 10 yards away on the bottom of the pool than a clock sitting on deck at the same distance. General example. Cut.
- Harry Truman had wanted to attend the Military Academy at West Point as a young man, but his eyesight was so bad they couldn't take him—he could hardly see a thing without his glasses (his left eye was so bad it was beyond the threshold of legal blindness). When World War I started, he wanted to join the Missouri National Guard, but realized that he'd face the same problem—so he memorized the eye chart before being told to take his glasses off and ended up a captain in the artillery, i.e. the branch of the Army dedicated to shooting at things really far away. He was actually quite successfulnote . Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- John Kipling had extremely poor vision without his glasses, and was turned away from the Army in WWI. At his insistence, his father, Rudyard Kipling, pulled strings to get him a commission anyway. He died at the Battle of Loos. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Katy Manning (Jo Grant in Doctor Who) wore thick glasses when off camera. On camera, she was prone to crashing into the scenery or other actors. You know how the Doctor always takes his companion by the hand and runs with her? It started with Jo Grant, because Jon Pertwee needed to guide his essentially blind co-star. At one point, Roger Delgado does the same, which ends up looking like a Pet the Dog moment for the Master. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Corporation, is blind in his left eye and has little peripheral vision in the other Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Famously, Theodore Roosevelt knew how blind he was without his glasses and had multiple back up glasses attached to his coat when he took his volunteer Rough Riders to Cuba so that he'd always have a backup in case he lost his current pair. His eyesight was so poor that, even with glasses, he could only reasonably read large fonts, a fact that wound up saving his life when a thick pocketbook containing a campaign speech slowed an assassin's bullet enough to protect his vital organs. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Film composer Franz Waxman scalded his eyes when he was three years old, permanently impairing his vision and forcing him to wear thick glasses for the rest of his life. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Elijah Wood. Even though his round, bright blue eyes are his most striking facial feature, he's horribly nearsighted and is never without glasses or contact lenses. The irony has not escaped him or his The Lord of the Rings co-stars, as explained in this behind the scenes video. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- American tenor Jan Peerce, who sang with the Metropolitan Opera in the mid-20th century, was so nearsighted that, whenever he was offstage, he had to wear glasses with lenses that were, in his own words, "as thick as the bottom of Coca-Cola bottles." Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Johnny Depp's Cool Shades are actually specially tuned glasses to help correct his incredibly poor vision in his right eye. He's essentially blind in his left eye glasses or no glasses. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Stephanie Beatriz of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is very nearsighted and also has severe astigmatism, but can't wear contact lenses. Because of this, she can barely make out the faces of her co-stars while acting and confesses to often missing her mark because she has trouble making it out, despite the crew using bright-pink tape to try and make it stand out as much as possible. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Ananda Mahidol/Ananthamahidon/King Rama VIII of Thailand was extremely short-sighted. This was one of the facts that made suicide an unlikely explanation for his mysterious death — when his body was found he wasn't wearing his glasses, but his eyesight was so bad he couldn't have accurately aimed and fired a gun without them. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Chinese swimmer Fu Yuanhui got famous during the Olympic Games for twice not discovering her results until the post-run interview. Given that when receiving her medals she worn glasses, it became clear Fu couldn't read the scoreboard from the pool. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
Drill Sergeant Nasty has a Real Life folder full of general examples as well as real people being troped like fictional characters. Best I can tell, this applies to every entry. Cut. Comments interspersed:
Real Life
- Some driving instructors tend to be that way, turning into Backseat Drivers from hell as the student gets the hang of it. When you learned driving under such conditions, you can concentrate on driving even in situations of high stress and distractions. Driving instructors were taught how to safely use vehicles that lacked a lot of modern safety features because those didn't yet exist or weren't yet common or required. Someone teaching a teenager how to drive may have first driven a car that didn't have power steering or power brakes. General example. Cut.
- British Football (soccer) legend Sir Alex Ferguson is known for the "hairdryer treatment", which consists of yelling at useless players mere inches from their face. In the words of Jaap Stam "it might sound like a beauty salon...it really really ain't." In one infamous incident, Ferguson kicked a loose football boot right across the dressing room, in a towering rage. It hit golden boy David Beckham full in the face, causing cuts and bruising. While Beckham shrugged it off as one of those things — at least in public — he left the club soon afterwards "by mutual consent". Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Nuns in Catholic Schools are often depicted, even in modern settings, as stern no-nonsense disciplinarians armed with nothing but a 12-inch ruler and the will to break said ruler on the slightest infraction of the rules, and most adult-age Catholic school students will jokingly take any torture or abuse better cause nothing compares to "Sister Mary Francis in the Second Grade". It should be pointed out that in real life, this character is largely a Dead Horse Trope as a shrinking and aging sisterhood along with several church scandals and lay laws have phased out the physical abuse and teaching nuns in general (most catholic schools these days have a majority of lay teachers when compared to priests and nuns who teach). The Trope persists mostly because of this Trope and Nuns Are Funny. General example. Cut.
- There are multiple examples in Ice Hockey: Sub-bullets are all a Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- One of the most (in)famous is veteran National Hockey League coach Mike Keenan, nicknamed "Iron Mike" for his strict discipline and short fuse. NHL veteran Jeremy Roenick, one of his former players, describes him as "the NHL's last great asshole coach''. Roenick describes playing for Keenan like "camping on the edge of a volcano", but says that it made him a better player. That said, Keenan is also known around the NHL for his George Jetson Job Security, having coached eight teams and been ignominiously fired from many of them. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Another famous NHL example is Scotty Bowman, who one player described playing for as "a little slice of hell." Bowman was well-known for his mind games and feuds with star players. He once described his coaching style as there being nine guys on a team who'll love the coach, nine guys who hate them and nine guys who could go either way, with the secret being to keep the nine guys who could go either way away from the ones who hated him. Bowman's players put up with it because he's the winningnest coach in NHL history, holding the all-time record in both regular season coaching wins and Stanley Cup championships. You might despise Bowman if you played for him, but you had a pretty good chance of getting a Stanley Cup ring out of the deal. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- One of the most (in)famous is veteran National Hockey League coach Mike Keenan, nicknamed "Iron Mike" for his strict discipline and short fuse. NHL veteran Jeremy Roenick, one of his former players, describes him as "the NHL's last great asshole coach
- Attorneys who teach in universities are often known for being this, as Social Darwinists who chew out students for not memorising laws verbatim or making even the tiniest logical fallacy in argumentation. Thus law school is often joked about as having high dropout rates. Some lawyers still justify it as necessary because the humiliation one may suffer in class is nothing compared to the intensity of real-life courtroom drama, and a lawyer's mistakes can ruin a person's life, so they'd better learn quickly through brutal honesty. General example. Cut.
George Jetson Job Security has a Real Life folder full of general examples as well as real people being troped like fictional characters. Best I can tell, this applies to every entry. Cut. Comments interspersed:
Real Life
- Roman Abramovich of Chelsea FC is almost as bad as Mr. Spacely. Current manager Thomas Tuchel, who has been in the post since the middle of the 2020–21 season, is the thirteenth different manager since 2004. The rundown: Claudio Ranieri, José Mourinho, Avram Grant, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Guus Hiddink, Carlo Ancelotti, André Villas-Boas, Roberto di Matteo, Rafa Benítez, Mourinho again, Hiddink again, Antonio Conte, Maurizio Sarri, Former player and club legend Frank Lampard, and Thomas Tuchel. It's hard not to feel sorry for di Matteo - Abramovich's actions showed that he didn't want him as the manager, and only after Pep Guardiola made it clear that he was taking a sabbatical did he appoint di Matteo as the manager. Abramovich constantly interfering didn't help, and di Matteo was out by November. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Similarly, the position of Real Madrid manager was practically a game of hot potato during the mid-late 2000s "Galáctico Era". Between Vicente del Bosque's departure in 2003 and José Mourinho's appointment in 2010, Los Blancos practically had more than one coaching change each year, with nine coaches note going through the Real hot seat in just SEVEN YEARS. These rapid changes of management proved to be extremely detrimental to Real's success, as the club managed to snare a grand total of only '''two major trophies''' in that time period, despite hosting the likes of David Beckham, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Raúl, and Fabio Cannavaro. note Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- And the 2018–19 season—a poor one by their normal standards, which saw them finish third, not making any kind of challenge to champions Barcelona or second-place Atlético Madrid—saw Real go through three managers. First, Julen Lopetegui was sacked at the end of October after a string of poor results, ending in a 5–1 humiliation at Barça. Santiago Solari then righted the ship to some degree but didn't do enough to keep from being shown the door in March. Real then brought back former manager Zinedine Zidane. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Ralph Bakshi is known within the animation industry for this, especially on the Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures show. John Kricfalusi in particular has stated that he lost count on how many times Ralph fired him from the show. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Kricfalusi himself is also widely known within the animation industry for receiving this trope. Various accounts have mentioned how he was fired from various animation studios and networks, most notably his being canned by Nickelodeon from Ren & Stimpy. In the process, he burned multiple bridges and had difficulty getting hired. One commenter on Peter David's blog even said that Kricfalusi was fired by Marvel Comics almost immediately after they started publishing a comic adaptation of Ren And Stimpy, most of which ended up being written by Dan Slott. Notably, Kricfalusi was fired multiple times from brand-new studios that he tried to start in the 2010s, both before and after the sexual assault allegations against him came to light. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Kricfalusi himself is also widely known within the animation industry for receiving this trope. Various accounts have mentioned how he was fired from various animation studios and networks, most notably his being canned by Nickelodeon from Ren & Stimpy. In the process, he burned multiple bridges and had difficulty getting hired. One commenter on Peter David's blog
- Sarah Jayne Dunn, English actress was fired from Hollyoaks in October 2021 due to an OnlyFans page that was rather too NSFW for their liking and her character Mandy Richardson Put on a Bus, but looks likely to return as of 30 November 2021. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Henry Ford did this often with a very large number of paranoia-driven dismissals. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Heinz Guderian, who refined the blitzkrieg strategy. Hitler fired him twice. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- If former employees are to be believed, working at Apple under Steve Jobs was like this. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Chuck Jones was almost fired from the Warner Bros. animation unit because his Looney Tunes cartoon "The Dover Boys at Pimento University", his first attempt at a more stylized animation form, was considered too weird by the WB suits. The company wasn't able to find a replacement for Jones, so they kept him on the payroll. Decades later, Jones was caught working on the UPA film, Gay Purr-ee, in violation of his exclusive contract with Warner Bros. and was fired permanently. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Mike Keenan is the Ice Hockey world's poster boy for this trope. He's known for his Hair-Trigger Temper, Drill Sergeant Nasty coaching style, attempts to (non-lethally) be The Starscream to his bosses, and particularly for getting fired on three separate continents. His antics are one of the main reasons he's either been fired or resigned before he could be fired from many of the coaching jobs he's had in National Hockey League. He later coached hockey teams in Russia and China, only to again be fired from both jobs. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Sergei Korolev (the head of the Soviet space program during much of the US-Soviet race to the Moon) was notorious for telling a subordinate they would be fired and then asking where they were the next day. Eventually, the engineers got used to this and just continued to show up for work. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- New York Yankees manager Billy Martin, whom owner George Steinbrenner fired in 1979. And 1983, 1985, and 1988. At the time of his death in 1989, he was preparing to pick up the managing reins again for the 1990 season. Years later, it came to light that despite his many firings Martin was never once taken off the Yankees payroll. Taken further at one point during a press conference announcing his return as well as on a 1978 Miller Lite commercial: Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
Steinbrenner: You're fired!
Martin: You haven't even finished hiring me yet. - When working with Jack Hobbs, Spike Milligan would sack him regularly, and the collaboration would be going on as if nothing had happened the next day. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Richard Williams has been known to fire numerous animators for not living up to his (admittedly high) standards of fluid, perfect animation. Some of the revolving-door staff on The Thief and the Cobbler were fired before ever setting foot in his studio. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Arguably the most notable example in football (soccer) is Maurizio Zamparini, chairman of the Italian club Palermo from 2002 to 2018, except for a few months in 2017. Since 1987 he has made (as of the end of his final spell at Palermo in December 2018) 67 managerial changes, including 43 while in charge of Palermo. Several managers have been hired and fired multiple times. In the 2012/2013 season alone he fired Giuseppe Sannino after three weeks, replaced him with Gian Piero Gasperini, who was in turn turfed out in favour of Alberto Malesani, who was fired 19 days later and replaced by... Gian Piero Gasperini. Gasperini's second spell lasted less than two weeks before he was fired and replaced by none other than Giuseppe Sannino, the coach from the start of the season. Zamparini's last managerial changes at Palermo began with hiring Bruno Tedino in 2017, followed by swapping Tedino and Roberto Stellone three times. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Watford FC under the Pozzo family has become this, with 14 managers in the fold note since the Pozzos took over the club in 2012. (This amounts to more than one manager per year!) Success is not even a guarantee for job survival as Watford manager, as Jokanovic was canned after helping Watford earn promotion to the Premier League and Sánchez was let go despite leading the Hornets to a comfortable mid-table finish (a remarkable feat for a newly-promoted club) and the FA Cup Semifinal. Watford fans don't really mind this, as the club has been relatively successful (especially compared to Luton) under the Pozzos. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- These firings can be chalked up to the Pozzos' ambitions and their desire to turn Watford into a world-class club akin to Man United, Liverpool, Chelsea etc. After all, a midtable finish is not enough when you have talented players like Miguel Britos, Odion Ighalo, Juan Zuñiga, Sebastian Prödl, Troy Deeney, and Roberto Pereyra. Not helping is the fact that other clubs have accomplished more with less big-name talent (*cough* Leicester City, RB Leipzig *cough*) Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Amazon.com, while not noted for its firings, tends to have absurdly high rate standards (pick rate at 100% is an estimated 1200 picks per day which turns out to be a pick every 1/2 minute). Given that most workers are temps until "converted" this means potentially every new worker has this type of job. On the bright side, they are a good holiday employer. General example. Cut.
- American Apparel randomly requires its employees to submit full-body photographs to its HR departments. Anybody who isn't pretty enough is labeled "off-brand" and released from the company. Why were they hired in the first place? Female employees can be (and have been) fired when they refuse owner Dov Charney's sexual advances. However they are quickly learning that this is a bad business model as they are currently filing for bankruptcy now. General example. Cut.
- Any freelancer can attest this is Truth in Television. General example. Cut.
- Digital media startups are notorious for this, as The Onion pointed out in the headline "Media Company Looking For Ways To Get Rid Of Veteran 24-Year-Old Employee". General example. Cut.
- Similarly, many American Football teams can go through numerous head coaches, coordinators, and players every season. Especially true for perpetually under-performing teams where you're lucky to get more than a year or two to show improvement or it's out the door and on to the next team. Many professional sports have players/coaches who've changed teams so often that they are considered "journeymen", only hired to be So Okay, It's Average placeholders until better talent comes along. During training camp and even late in the season, it's not uncommon to have a player be cut or waived and then resigned a couple days later, depending on how the season is going. General example. Cut.
- Many companies in the US implement what is known as at-will employment. That is, the employer can fire the employee for any reason or no reason at all. However, the employee can also leave the company for any reason or no reason. Neither party needs to have a just cause for termination of employment.
Interestingly, the USA has a few reasons why someone can't be fired: a specified employment contract, race, religion, gendernote , disability (as long as it doesn't interfere with your job), and a few others. Except for those, you can be fired for any reason, since almost everyone practices "at-will employment" (which in practice means that if they do fire you for those reasons they just won't admit it). Boss doesn't like your haircut? You can be fired. 12.3 percent of wage and salary workers are members of a union, which makes them harder to get rid of...but also makes it harder to get rid of bad coworkers and employees.
This is a very American trope, as many European countries have laws that make firing someone on a whim nigh-impossible. It's not unheard of for multinational corporations doing a corporate-wide layoff to let US employees go several months before their European counterparts, because it takes that much longer to jump through the hoops required by the legal system there. General example. Cut. - Very much truth in television before unions were invented. Not that it was the only problem with employment back then. However, working in Asia is practically working under this plan, and the worst part is getting a lunch break is impossible due to the seemingly fast pace workplace and coworkers which will leave you in the dust if you even consider getting a bite for a minute. General example. Cut.
- The White House under Donald Trump looked like a repeat of The Apprentice (see Live-Action TV above) with aides being fired or forced to step down for a tiny insult. Wikipedia even has a page outlining the more notable firings. One Communications Director was fired before his first day. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated the latter's poor reaction to criticism directly led to his firing. Unsurprisingly, Trump reacted negatively to Tillerson's comments. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- On February 6th, 2018, English Championship football team Leeds United appointed Paul Heckingbottom as their manager. He was their tenth manager in five years. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Ever since they rejoined the NFL in 1999, the Cleveland Browns had trouble finding a starting quarterback until they drafted Baker Mayfield first in 2018. A notorious jersey had the names of the 29 starting QBs before Mayfield. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Similarly, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers placekicker position has played out like a virtual re-enactment of Final Destination since 2009, when they cut reliable yet aging kicker Matt Bryant in a cost-saving move. Since then, injuries, poor performances, and just plain old misfortune (in the form of a career-ending Staph infection) have cause the Bucs to churn out THIRTEEN kickers (Mike Nugent, Shane Andrus, Connor Barth, Lawrence Tynes note , Rian Lindell, Patrick Murray, Kyle Brindza, Connor Barth (again), Robert Aguayo note , Nick Folk, Patrick Murray (yet again), Chandler Catanzaro, and (as of now, at least) Cairo Santos) in just the span of ONE decade. To rub salt in the Bucs' wounds: Matt Bryant, the guy they cut due to his increasing age, has blossomed into a reliable kicker for the Atlanta Falcons during that same time period, and is still kicking at a reasonably high level up to now (as of December 2018). Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- The Mafia has been romanticized by Hollywood as being well-dressed, surrounded by women, and driving expensive cars. However, a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs as a mafioso's life is actually monotonous, boring, and sometimes horrendous. They must have good rackets in order to avoid being a long-term problem for their bosses and kick a portion of said earnings upstairs. Anything they do is "put on record" or "registered" with their capo so that they'll profit from these rackets and plan further schemes. At the same time, they must avoid law enforcement heat. In recent years, thanks to increasing pressure from the law, mobsters turning informer, and long prison sentences, many mobsters can only manage to barely scrape by. General example. Cut.
- The world of academia has become very much like this - graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and other early-career people are usually employed on casual or short fixed-term payment contracts that terminate very swiftly, with no official mechanism for renewal or extension, and no prospect of ever getting a permanent position. This allows a large turnover of people at the whims of supervisors and department heads. Graduate (doctoral) students especially, many of whom fall into a sort of quasi-employment state between student and faculty, are often in the position where their funding (i.e. where any stipend/salary comes from) can be cut at any time by a disgruntled supervisor unless there's some sort of external contract involved. And everyone in academia is conditioned from the start to think that this all somehow acceptable, and actually good for you. General example. Cut.
- Goes all the way in the other direction once a teacher gets the magical, oft-spoken about holy grail that is "tenure". Once you have that, it's next to impossible to fire them for anything short of truly egregious (as in, actually illegal, and sometimes not even then) misconduct. As a result of the extremely high job security employees with tenure have, you get the above situation of employees without tenure having extremely low job security. General example. Cut.
I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure has a Real Life folder full of general examples as well as real people being troped like fictional characters. Best I can tell, this applies to every entry. Cut. Comments interspersed:
Real Life
- This trope is used by most totalitarian regimes: General example. Cut.
- The Nazis often threatened to kill not only those who tried to resist them, but also their entire families if they tried to defect. This included anyone found harboring Jews in their homes. Erwin Rommel killed himself specifically to avoid this fate after he was found to be complicit in the plot to kill Hitler. General example. Cut.
- Successful escapes from Nazi death camps were punished by having ten randomly selected remaining prisoners executed, often locked away and starved to death. (i.e., Saint Maximilian Kolbe became a martyr for exchanging places with one of these prisoners.) General example. Cut. also Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- It's the reason that people in show trials confess to imaginary crimes — if they don't, their families will pay the price. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and the "People's Court" of Nazi Germany, among others, were particularly notorious for it. General example. Cut. also Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- A story making the rounds in the US intelligence community is about some Chinese exchange students in Soviet Russia, involved in a prank gone wrong. The boys were arrested, and interrogated by the KGB. The interrogation lasted for hours, and the KGB could get nothing. Finally, the Soviets contacted the Chinese Embassy for assistance. A Chinese agent walked into the room, said something to the students, and left. Afterward, the students confessed everything, received whatever punishment was due them, and were sent back to China. Later, the KGB agents wanted to know what the Chinese agent had said to get the students to cooperate. A Chinese translator translated as follows: You will tell the Russians what they want to know. In exchange, you will be killed. If you do not tell the Russians what they want to know, you will still be killed. In addition, your villages will be massacred. General example. Cut.
- North Korea reportedly has a series of "family camps" where the families of accused political dissidents are imprisoned for being related to the accused. General example. Cut.
- People in Socialist Czechoslovakia were blackmailed to collaborate with the regime or at least pretend to support the Communist Party through their family, which meant mostly children. Will you not vote? Your child can kiss a good school or a university goodbye. Especially dissidents' children had to forget about studying or getting a decent job. But hey, considering that in the Eighties the intellectual elite was formed by dissidents, they got to hang out with the most intelligent people anyway. General example. Cut.
- Border guards in Totalitarian regimes, particularly one that border far richer nations like North Korea and East Germany, are usually soldiers with families. The implicit threat to the guards is that if the guard jumps the border their families will be killed, imprisoned or otherwise punished in retribution. General example. Cut.
- Many of the Latin American drug cartels would harm families or loved ones to those who reported their activities to the police, and even to their own members if they cheated their organization or started informing to the police. General example. Cut.
- The original "decimation" — killing one tenth (randomly selected) of a Roman military unit fits this trope well. What was even worse was that those randomly selected soldiers were killed by their own comrades! It was eventually stopped, however; the punishment ruined the unit for any further purpose. General example. Cut.
- In ancient Rome, if a slave killed his or her master, all of that master's slaves would be executed. The idea being that anyone would be willing to risk their own life for freedom, but few would be willing to put the lives of dozens or even hundreds of other slaves at risk. General example. Cut.
- When Frederick the Great as heir apparent attempted to flee Prussia with his friend and rumoured lover, Hans Hermann von Katte, he was made to watch from prison while Katte was beheaded. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- In ancient China, a person who committed a capital offense, such as treason, would not only have himself punished, but his family as well. The list of which family members get involved varies from dynasty to dynasty, as does the cutoff age below which children are exempt. The largest list involves the criminal himself, his parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, siblings, siblings-in-law and uncles and their spouses. In the single most extreme case, the offender's students and peers were added to the list. The purpose of this long list was to serve as a major deterrent to capital offenses, and encouraged family members to keep tabs on each other and make sure they didn't commit any crimes. General example. Cut.
- The idea of the whipping boy is that misbehaving young princes cannot be physically disciplined by anyone but the king, due to the Divine Right of Kings, and it was impractical to constantly make requests of a reigning monarch to personally oversee his child's discipline, so a child of lesser status (usually still a noble of some level, but not outright royalty) would be disciplined in their place, with the hope that this would make the young prince feel guilty. Specifically, the child chosen for this would be a lifelong companion to the prince, and was often one of the only — if not the only — same-age friends the prince had access to, so this method was often an effective tool for teaching royal children that their actions do have consequences and that those consequences will hurt others. The fact that they were forced to watch as someone who had become a close friend get punished for his own actions tended to serve as a deterrent in short order. General example. Cut.
- In Malaysia, penalties for drunk driving involve not only automatic jail time, but a provision that spouses of married drunk drivers also face incarceration. General example. Cut.
- This technique is frequently used in sports and military training, although to a less severe punishment; if one member of the group fails whatever test the trainer imposes, such as running laps under the time limit, the whole group has to do it again. The idea, as in many other cases, is that the individual will go all-out so that their teammates aren't punished. General example. Cut.
Make an Example of Them has a Real Life folder full of general examples as well as real people being troped like fictional characters. Best I can tell, this applies to every entry. Cut. Comments interspersed:
Real Life
- A common police tactic to break up protests is by arresting a few people. This video of the Occupy Wall Street protests is a good example. General example. Cut.
- This was explicitly involved in the trial of hacker Aaron Swartz (that led to his suicide), the Department of Justice arguing for a disproportionate sentence to, in their own words, "send a message". Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Maggie Thatcher did this to Thames Television towards the end of The Troubles. The 1990 Broadcasting Act which instigated the franchise round that destroyed the original Thames? That was Thatcher's not-so-subtle way of punishing Thames for broadcasting "Death on the Rock". Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Even Conservative commentators have remarked that her treatment of the miners and their union, after the long bitter Strike ended, was needlessly vindictive, and provoked deep, bitter, and lasting resentment, which adds to the undeniable fact that vast swathes of the North, Wales, and Scotland are no-go areas for the Conservative Party. Her management of the Strike itself suggests an exceptional degree of ruthlessness and state force was condoned to beat the miners into submission. Let's say her death was cheered and celebrated in many former mining areas. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Played with when Ronald Reagan invoked the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 against the Air Traffic Controllers union in 1981. When the union violated a court injunction to end their strike, he summarily fired over 10,000 workers who'd refused to resume work. It became a much more common practice for companies to avoid giving in to the various labor unions. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- This is actually the main gist of two Chinese proverbs: "Kill one to warn a hundred", and "Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkeys". General example. Cut.
- After Admiral John Byng was defeated at the battle of Minorca (1756), he was arrested, court-martialed, and executed for "failing to do his utmost". His fate put the fear of God into the Royal Navy's Officer Corp as they now realized that "not trying hard enough" is a capital offense. And some historians considers it a reason why Britannia would go on to rule the waves. This episode caused Voltaire to comment, "In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others" (Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres). Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- This was employed by various conquering empires, such as the Romans or the Mongols. Those who surrendered were treated leniently, but those who dared to resist were mercilessly put to the sword or worse and stories of their grisly fate were deliberately spread widely by the conquerors themselves: General example. Cut.
- During the Second Punic Wars, many Sicilian cities rebelled to Rome, with the indecise joining Hannibal's side when the survivors of Cannae engaged in this and, after Rome's greatest living general Marcellus was put in their command, became too sadistic even for Roman standards. Then the imprendible Syracuse fell to the Romans and the conquerors did them unspeakable things, and the Sicilians fell back into line... And bribed the Senate to have Marcellus and the survivors of Cannae sent anywhere but back to Sicily (the Senate gave back the bribe and sent Marcellus to fight Hannibal and the survivors of Cannae to Spain anyway); Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- After the Third Servile War, the Romans crucified six thousands of the rebel slaves. It apparently worked, because the Third Servile War was also the last; General example. Cut.
- When Genghis Khan sent a diplomatic caravan to the Khwarazmian dinasty of the Persian Empire, the Persian border governor decided to kill the ambassadors and steal the caravan. Genghis demanded restitution, but the Khwarazmians humiliated his ambassadors. Genghis decided to take his revenge... And now you know why you've never heard of the Khwarazmian Empire. In other words, there is a very good reason why Central Asia is seen as backwards in comparison to its neighbours. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- This trope was employed in a broader sense as well, with cities that the Mongols intended to conquer, as they were told to Join or Die. Those that joined were generally treated quite well — the cities that refused, however... General example. Cut.
- Later, the Abbasid Caliphate of Bagdhad refused to fully submit to the Mongols and become a vassal state. Before the Mongols, what is now Iraq was a fertile land and Bagdhad was one of the most important cities of the known world; after them, it took hundreds of years before the area recovered, demographically speaking, the country is still a desolate wasteland, and the city never regained its predominant position in the Islamic world. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- In The Napoleonic Wars, Denmark possessed a huge naval fleet, but tried to be neutral in the whole war against Napoleon. Britain didn't take kindly to that. Not at all. General example. Cut.
- Blizzard Entertainment sued a Private Server Owner for a whopping $88 million, you can't help but think that this trope is invoked.
- Petrus Killings in Indonesia back in the '80s. Long story short, local thugs and gang ringleaders would be hunted down, executed without trial, and their bodies left in sacks for the masses to find and scare the others. General example. Cut.
- It's been said that the extent of Nero's persecution of the Christians, an act that earned him the title of the Anti-Christ in the Revelation of John, was to seek out the first Christians to admit to any role in setting the Great Fire of Rome and then publicly burn them at the stake in accordance with the law, both in an ultimately failed attempt to quell rumors that he himself had started the fire and to help ensure that a fire of such a massive scale could not happen again — whether the fire was intentional or an accident, no one at the time was able to believe a fire as massive as the Great Fire of Rome could be anything but arson. Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- After he refused to go into combat with his unit in 1944, Private Eddie Slovik became the first, and to date only, American soldier to be executed for desertion since the American Civil War. Slovik had expected to receive a light prison sentence and dishonorable discharge, but the Army higher ups imposed the death penalty as a warning due to desertion becoming a serious issue among American troops in Europe. He was executed by firing squad on January 31, 1945.* Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- Part of the reason why Punitive Damages is also called Exemplary Damages. General example. Cut.
- The infamous Glencoe Masscare was performed by the English-Scottish crown toward the MacDonalds of Glencoe, who had been a month late in making an oath of loyalty to the King after the First Jacobite Rebellion. However, other clans had outright refused to take the oath at all, but faced no such punishment, as the MacDonalds were merely intended to be an example to the others, and were singled out for being an easy, weak target, and ancestral rivals to Clan Campbell, who were the crown's Highland loyalists. General example. Cut. and suggests Real Life person being troped like a fictional character. Cut.
- In The Mafia, it's common for mobsters to clip someone they found out was The Informant and stuff dead canaries (or mice) in their mouth as a sign that they "sung" (or "squealed") to the police. If a mafioso got too greedy, their corpse would be stuffed with dollar bills in their mouth as a sign their greed caught up to them. General example. Cut.
- A major purpose of public humiliation punishments, both in the past and in the present, wasn't just to deter the wrongdoer from repeat offenses; it was also meant to deter anyone else with the message of "you'll be punished this way too". General example. Cut.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11596: Jun 15th 2022 at 4:29:40 PM
Kids Hate Vegetables has one entry in its Real Life folder, a general example that can be cut.
Real Life
- There is evidence to suggest that this may be an evolutionary trait. Vegetables tend to be bitter, and poisonous plants are also bitter. In our ancient days as a species, small children would not know what plants were poisonous or not, and having this aversion would help keep them from eating toxic plants.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11597: Jun 15th 2022 at 4:50:09 PM
Xenophobic Herbivore, The Hyena, and The Pollyanna have been taken care of.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11598: Jun 16th 2022 at 4:37:26 AM
Lethally Stupid has three general examples and one person being troped as a fictional character. Cut, see interspersed comments.
Real Life
- In regards to technological health; a script kiddie is a person who uses existing computer scripts or code to hack into computers, lacking the expertise to write their own. Such people are often considered more dangerous than a hacker, because at least a hacker has some idea of what they're doing. On the rare occasions that they manage to destroy something important by pure accident, a hacker usually has sufficient knowledge to fix whatever it was they broke, even if they have to resort to a scorched-earth format-and-reinstall. A script kiddie, meanwhile, has no idea how the system actually works; they just use someone else's code and expect it's going to work. When something happens that they didn't mean to, they'll have no idea what to do, and could potentially cause irreparable damage. General example. Cut.
- The Goiânia accident, while partly the result of people not knowing the risks of fooling around with radioactive materials, is also the result of plain stupidity, stupidity that left a final death toll of 4, plus 249 contaminated survivors, and over 112,000 people in the city of Goiânia checked for radiation sickness. When scrappers broke into a derelict hospital and stole a radiation source from a radiotherapy machine containing radioactive cesium chloride, things already started to go wrong when the two men began to suffer nausea and began vomiting while disassembling the device. The second of the two men kept going at the machine while the first went to seek treatment, and he eventually smashed his way into the device and got some of the cesium chloride out. After selling the device to a nearby scrapyard, things only got worse, to sum it up. General example. Cut. Also misuse, as this is mainly ignorance and not so much stupidity.
- General Custer, a 7th Cavalry General who lead his men into a massacre with absolutely no battle plan whatsoever. Infamously, not only did he get himself killed, he got all of his men killed as well. Troping real person. Cut.
- Driving under the influence, whether of alcohol or drugs. Impaired judgement plus a few thousand pounds of metal traveling at high speeds equals high probability of tragedy for anyone unfortunate enough to be in the idiot's path. General example. Cut.
Who Would Be Stupid Enough? has a real life example that tropes a real person and is misuse (the trope is specific, referencing when someone says the name of the trope and in fact the worst comes to pass, which didn't happen here). Cut.
Real Life
- World War II: Despite it often claimed that Joseph Stalin was taken by surprise by Operation Barbarossa (Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union) because of a naïve belief that Adolf Hitler could be trusted or because of hubris, in truth Stalin had several reasons to think an invasion was unlikely. Among the most pertinent was the fact that he was aware that the Axis powers were heavily engaged against the Allies in Africa... but most importantly he didn't think Hitler was stupid enough to start a war on two fronts.
Unwitting Pawn has a Real Life folder that tropes real people and has a general example. Cut, see interspersed comments.
Real Life
- Napoleon III, who got played by every second-rate power in Europe, and some overseas. He certainly WAS one to Bismarck, but that was because Bismarck was Bismarck rather than because Napoleon III was gullible. Indeed, he actually came out on top of most of his battles (Mexico and the war of 1870 were the exception, not the rule), and most of the time he was being "played" by said second-rate powers, it was largely because he grasped more or less what they were doing and sympathized enough to go through with it anyway (Italy 1859 is the most obvious example, but the Belgian revolution and the Crimean War came in close seconds). If anything, he fell victim to trying to be someone he wasn't and had the misfortune to run up against the most ruthless and skilled ruler in Europe in charge of the largest and best military on the continent. Troping real person. Cut.
- A popular (at least, in modern Russia) conspiracy theory says that Adolf Hitler was one either for the US and the UK, because they used him to conquer most of Europe, attack the USSR, be defeated and occupied from both sides, with purpose of making Europe weak and controlled by the USA, or for Josef Stalin, who manipulated him into starting the war, defeating France and continental allies, and then Stalin planned to attack and crush him, but Hitler attacked first. Both theories has many facts behind them, but whether they are true is still Riddle for the Ages. Troping real people. Cut.
- Henry Morton Stanley helped to explore the Congo and claim it for King Leopold II of Belgium. Henry, like many others, was under the assumption that the Congo Free State would be run for humanitarian purposes. He had no idea that Leopold II was using him to set up a genocidal dictatorship. Troping real person. Cut.
- Supposedly, the only relatively foolproof reason for letting yourself be recruited as a spy is to do it for the money. Any other motives (freedom, nationalism, the workers' revolution, whatever) expose you to being played as an unwitting Double Agent, mole, or agent provocateur by the people you oppose. This is NOT a "useful idiot," which is when (usually overt) support for a third party's nominal, moderate, public goals is cynically manipulated by the latter to advance their more closely-held, radical and secret goals. The "idiot" part comes from them being The Quisling without realizing that's what they're doing. They claim to love their country/faction/family/4-H club, but their actions and words say otherwise — and they'd never believe you if you pointed it out. General example. Cut.
- On the TV show Never Mind the Buzzcocks, a guest uttered a stream of swear words, which were bleeped out. The guest then informed the production team that they had just broadcast the Morse Code for a certain four-letter word. Troping real person. Cut.
- Nearly everyone involved in the Malet coup of 1812, aside from Malet himself and the Abbé Lafon. Even those who helped prepare the coup — including a law student who should have known better — had no idea of what Malet and Lafon were really plotting. As General Lahorie put it, "We were conspirators in spite of ourselves." Troping real people. Cut.
The Chessmaster has a large Real Life page. All but two examples trope real life people, and the two that don't are ZC Es. Cut.
Real Life
- William III of England, also known as King Billy, was a grandmaster at it. He was so good that scholars are only recently starting to realize to what extent. When his throne and birthright were taken from him by a changing system of government, William had to settle for the role of General of the Dutch army. Despite his inexperience, he managed to defend the country against a joint invasion by France, England, and several German states in 1672, using such tactics as flooding entire regions, cutting them off. Arlington (an envoy of Charles of England) offered to make William Sovereign Prince of Holland if he surrendered, and when William refused, Arlington threatened that William "would witness the end of the Republic's existence". Several years later, the Dutch Republic was however completely liberated and at peace with its neighbours. William, who was now accepted as King, decided he needed to weaken England and France some more. He did this by invading England and starting what was patriotically known as the Glorious Revolution through ingenious use of propaganda. In short: William used one superpower as a pawn against another superpower. As the Independent puts it:
"William's coup ranks in conception and consequences alongside the 1944 Normandy landings as one of the master-strokes of world history. He not only harnessed England to the anti-French cause but changed her into a constitutional monarchy where royal prerogative was subordinate to common law, thereby ensuring Dutch freedoms, allowing the foundation of the Bank of England and Dutch-style financing by long-term loans."
- The Athenian politician Themistocles.
- The Roman Emperor Augustus fits this trope very well. He was able to manipulate and/or play Mark Antony, Julius Caesar's assassins, the Roman Senate, Cicero, Lepidus, just about ANYONE who he needed to overcome in order to gain complete political mastery in Rome. It worked like a dream, and in the end, he reigned as unquestioned master of the Roman world for over forty years, his dynasty continued for a further fifty, and the system of government he created outlasted him by almost three centuries.
- Richard Nixon was quite the chessmaster; he just forgot what happens when you let a minor pawn get up the board.
- Bill Clinton fits this trope in his handling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and his subsequent impeachment. What was intended to be Clinton's downfall instead lead to the downfall of his main political rival, Newt Gingrich.
- William Pitt The Elder can be credited for founding The British Empire with conquests in the Seven Years War. He was Britain's and maybe the world's greatest Chessmaster of the eighteenth century. Although that was more a case of exploiting a situation created by other politicians and rulers, a simple matter of shoring up one continental ally (Prussia) and concentrating Britain's own military efforts against France and her overseas empire. As a chessmaster, Pitt actually was outshone by Count Kaunitz, Maria Theresia's chief minister, who with a little help from the ineptitude of Frederick the Great (who managed to alienate France by an somewhat rash alliance with Britain) brought about the "Reversal of Alliances" before the Seven Years' War and managed to preserve the anti-Prussian alliance of several powers with greatly divergent interests (for starters, France had continually been at war with the Habsburgs for centuries) throughout most of the duration.
- Mayor Cory Booker, depending on your Alternate Character Interpretation, and invoked indirectly by Ice-T ("Who is playing whom?"). After Conan O'Brien made a joke about Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Booker banned Conan from Newark Airport as a joke (which, required the TSA to clarify the counter-joke that no, a mayor cannot actually do that due to some people believing it to be true and being outraged). This resulted in a back and forth exchange between the two and ended up involving various other mayors of New Jersey (who sided with Conan... probably a trope) as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (acting as The High Queen and telling the two to works things out as Conan had, she claimed, been acting differently due to a Real Life head injury). It resulted in the two airing out their 'grievances' on-air... which involved Mayor Booker and six of his family as well as a few other New Jersey residents getting flown out to California for Conan's show, Conan and Universal giving a 100K donation (half Conan's personal money and half he got Universal to match... cause he's awesome that way) to his charity, and a Newark joke box in which 500 dollars will be put in whenever Conan makes a Newark joke (which may or may not remain in continuity). To quote Conan, "Boy, that was a really expensive joke!"
- Sun Tzu wrote a good guide on how to be the Chessmaster called The Art of War. Although the primary focus groups are generals and monarchs, nearly all of it can be generalized to any chessmaster activity.
- Ironically, Sun Tzu's theories were almost all entirely influenced by go, which emphasizes misdirection and maneuvering while de-emphasizing direct contact.
- Niccolò Machiavelli's book The Prince is another guide to this trope (or else a parody of such politicians). While Sun Tzu focused more on military strategy, Machiavelli focused more on political strategy and how to use them in order to gain power and how to keep it for a long time.
- The I Ching is a great book for Chessmasters. ZCE. Cut.
- Louis XI, King of France. Began his reign with a weak and small kingdom and a really powerful neighborhood (Charles le Téméraire, duke of Burgundy). He never fought Charles directly, hiring other countries (Switzerland, Flanders...) to finally kill him. When he died, Burgundy was a part of his kingdom. To be fair his kingdom was a bit stronger and more powerful than it had been under his predecessors (it was only his father who saw the English presence in France reduced to just Calais) and that Louis was helped to a large degree by Charles of Burgundy being his own worst enemy ("téméraire" means "reckless, rash" as well as "bold"). Also, the larger half of the duchy of Burgundy ended up in the possession of another powerful neighbor, the Habsburgs.
- Otto von Bismarck, who orchestrated several wars among Europe to manipulate the populace and political power to unite the German states into the nation that exists today. to quote Extra Credits, "Such was the mind that would use Europe for a Chessboard, and redraw the map forever."
- Ruben Amaro Jr., general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, just might be one of these - a one-year process of trades and signings left him with four of the best pitchers in baseball on his squad prior to his leaving the team in 2015.
- But it's not like there isn't a team that hasn't beaten all of them in the playoffs.
- You could say that Sabean was a chessmaster during 2010. He made all the right moves during 2010 to win the World Series.
- But it's not like there isn't a team that hasn't beaten all of them in the playoffs
- Red Auerbach, legendary coach and general manager of the Boston Celtics, was notorious for his Chessmaster tendencies (particularly in the form of elaborate trades with other teams). So much so that the process by which he acquired Larry Bird for the team was later banned by the NBA.
- Many good basketball coaches fit the profile, but while legendary Phil Jackson is more famous to be an Old Master figure, it fits San Antonio's Gregg Popovich to the T. To the point that he got fined by the NBA because his management strategy (forcing some of his players to take a break) was supposed to be bad for business.
- Josef Stalin, at least in the way he orchestrated his rise to absolute power within the party apparat against rivals considered a great deal more brilliant or popular than himself, by forming various alliances against one rival, and then turning on his erstwhile ally after that rival had been eliminated.
- Before his rise to power, Stalin was viewed as a petty clerk attending to meaningless paperwork, but nobody stopped to think of the extreme command he was developing of obscure laws. In some ways, his most potent ability was actually to Rules Lawyer his opponents.
- Cardinal Richelieu of France was a startling example of this trope in action. The man was the world's first Prime Minister, having used and then sacrificed his (relationship with) a queen on the way, and raised up alliance after alliance during the Thirty Years' War. He's the main reason that France became as powerful as it did.
- Adolf Hitler started out as one, getting the people of Germany to give him the power, and the nations of Europe to just give him several nations before the war even started, but his ability to control the board quickly vanished after making one horrible choice after another. The British actually stopped their plans to kill Hitler because they figured out somebody who was competent would take his place.
- Hitler was a brilliant politician and diplomat who became convinced that he was also a brilliant military leader; he wasn't. He was able to take Austria and Czechoslovakia without firing a shot, and then cut a deal with Stalin to isolate France (France was allied with Britain, but the British lacked significant land power), allowing Hitler to take Poland and France quickly and easily. The problem was that after the success of his military campaigns against Poland and France, and the early successes against Russia after Hitler broke his deal with Stalin, Hitler became convinced that he was also a brilliant military leader, and so abandoned diplomacy. All he had to do to win the war was either make peace with Britain before attacking Russia, persuade the Japanese to also attack Russia or both. If he had continued his diplomatic campaign, he might have won.
- Benjamin Franklin spearheaded the early American response to British surveillance during the American Revolution by devising a system of counter-surveillance, securing aid, playing a role in privateering expeditions against the British, and waging a public relations campaign on behalf of the patriots. He also played the role of The Chessmaster during his and John Adams's diplomatic tour of duty in France, where Franklin's political savvy and understanding of how to play the game of court politics allowed him to secure French support for America during the Revolution.
- Magic Johnson and the other owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers pulled off a series of well-timed waiver claims to land a trade in August the Red Sox best players
- The Byzantine Empire in legend has this as a hat. Even the real Byzantine Empire was very good at it. ZCE. Cut.
- Sultan Abdulhamid, nicknamed "The Crimson Sultan" by the French, is an entirely forgotten member of the Ottoman Monarchy. In his age, the Empire was little more than a wreck, its economy ruined and battered, yet he re-furnished it to survive another 2 decades. His extensive efforts to reduce debt and corruption, launching the first submarine and torpedo test shot in history, setting up thousands of schools and charities in an Anatolia untouched by previous sultans, a series of "firsts" in history, was overlooked by its resistance of Zionism (he kicked Theodor Herzl out when he heard the offer to buy Israel out of Ottoman land) and brutal suppression of every uprising due to nationalism. He organized a colossal spy network reaching into Europe and thwarted countless attempts at assassination and manipulation. Had he an Empire with perfect economy, heavy military, and solid demography, world conquest might not have been a distant possibility.
- Ivar Boneless, if the Icelandic chronicles are correct. Having the handicap of missing his legs (or suffering from brittle bone-disease) he was not exactly the warrior type having to be carried around. Instead he embraced the wisdom aspect of Odin (and certainly the "Father of Treachery" aspect) and executed a Roaring Rampage of Revenge by turing King Ælla's people against him and carved a blood eagle on the king.
- A common saying is that the best-laid plans never survive contact with the enemy. Bernard Montgomery, British Field Marshal, scoffed at that. At the Second Battle of El Alamein his meticulous plan, which depended on anticipating Rommel's notoriously impulsive maneuvers, was carried out to near-perfection. He also correctly predicted the length of the battle and how many casualties the allies would take, ensuring that his forces had sufficient logistic and medical support, something that Rommel always struggled with.
- Brazilian history had the figure of the Duke of Caxias. A man who fought in no less than seven wars, and never lost any of them. A tactical genius both in the battlefield (being always two steps ahead of his enemies, able to conquer any type of field, pulling outflanking moves out of his sleeve) and out of it (perfecting espionage tactics ahead of his time, acquiring allies by charisma and sowing disorder among his foes). It can be said the reason the Empire of Brazil lasted a century was, in great deal, due to his influence.
- Matty Fox, a former Universal executive, would use his skills in dealmaking to help make Sherlock Holmes a popular small screen figure. In fact, his machinations helped save the Rathbone/Bruce series from being lost forever — the agreement between Universal Pictures and the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called for the destruction of the films as soon as the agreement expired in 1952. Such shell companies as Motion Pictures for Television, Western Television Corporation, and Associated Artists Productions (which would become famous in its own right) ended up paving the way for the Rathbone/Bruce films to gain fame on television; the rights would eventually change hands multiple times, first being acquired by Leo A. Gutman, Inc. and then by King World Productions and eventually by CBS, with a restoration funded between 1993 and 2001 by UCLA, Warner Bros., and Hugh Hefner.
- Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa, has proved to be one. Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Nelson Mandela, proved to be a reliable (if problematic) president, but was unpopular in his own party because of his autocratic style, while many of the ANC voters did not connect with him. Mbeki was cold, clinical and a well-educated intellectual while Zuma (who never finished high school) polled more favourably overall with traditionalist blacks. When Zuma became his heir apparent, Mbeki (who was aiming for a third term) fired Zuma, who was being investigated for fraud and rape at that time (which Zuma eventually, with the help of the party, got dropped). Zuma used the unpopularity of Mbeki to his advantage, alleging a political agenda against him by Mbeki (which was proven true) and managed to secure the nomination as the leader of the ANC Party. Mbeki was recalled as president in September 2008 and Zuma was elected in 2009 as president of South Africa. Though corruption has been a problem as far back as Mandela's term, it spiraled out of control under Zuma, whose administration was rocked by scandal after scandal. After securing a second term in office Zuma eventually sacked Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene on 9 December 2015 without support of his cabinet in order to finance deals that would (in theory) enrich a select group of people through government contracts and tenders. The move caused chaos in the markets, especially when Nene's replacement, Des van Rooyen, proved he was not up to the task. Less than a week later he was forced by the ANC to replace Van Rooyen with Pravin Gordhan, who held the post before. 'Nenegate' fired off a massive campaign against Zuma organised by NGO's, private citizens, opposition parties, business leaders and even former allies and party stalwarts. It was here that his chess-skills became clear. During his seven years in office, Zuma has put close supporters of his in power of the mechanisms that would get him recalled like Mbeki, and has used this to cling onto power despite ANC supporters, the ANC in parliament and many former allies having turned against him. He survived several attempts to impeach him, has survived every attempt to use the court to unseat him but also began a very subtle campaign against his enemies within his own party, particularly Pravin Gordhan whom he tried to unseat with trumped-up corruption charges (which is ironic, given that the 700+ charges of corruption against him may be re-instated through court action by an opposition party). Even in August 2016, during the bi-elections, his leadership has cost the party a large chunk of votes and control of the country's biggest metros. As of November 2016, he's still in power, and it's a testament to how good he is with political chess that he hasn't been unseated.
- With Zuma having resigned on February 14, 2018, it remains to be seen what (if anything) will be next in his political career.
- Thieftaker General Jonathan Wilde exploited the lack of a police force in early 1700s London to become filthy rich. As a public figure, he was a beloved hero known for taking down even the most dastardly of thieves and return the stolen goods to their owner. Less publicly, he was the master of every small-time crook and gang in London, giving them a part of his earnings in return for them giving up their stolen goods to him. His biggest mistake, however, was executing a dissenter who was even more popular than he was.
- Otto von Bismarck is depicted in a contemporary political cartoon playing against the Pope in chess and winning. He didn't get the nickname "Iron Chancellor" for nothing; he will be attached to the term Realpolitik for a long time to come. (Since he didn't exactly operate in the shadows, he has Magnificent Bastard status, though).
- This may count as a subversion, as the picture refers to Bismarck's kulturkampf against the Catholic Church's influence in Germany. Which he actually was forced to back down from due to masterful rallying of Catholic middle and working classes by the Church.
- This woman. Don't swipe her dessert.
- Barack Obama's administration is often discussed in blogs and the media using chess metaphors. When he appears to exhibit inaction or waffle on an issue, some will feel he is falling short on a campaign promise, while others suspect he is pursuing a Chessmaster resolution. Pundit Andrew Sullivan is particularly devoted to the concept.
- For example, the defense authorization act included provisions apparently authorizing the indefinte detention of US citizens. This could be an about-face on civil liberties, or a "political chess" play to move the issue from the military legal system to the civil system where it may be struck down for good by sympathetic judges Obama himself had appointed.
- Many also say this about Donald Trump's various actions. Are his tweets and public statements the product of an out of control maniac, or carefully planned 4 dimensional chess? As in the example above, the answer you get largely depends on which side of the political fence the person being asked stands.
- For example, the defense authorization act included provisions apparently authorizing the indefinte detention of US citizens. This could be an about-face on civil liberties, or a "political chess" play to move the issue from the military legal system to the civil system where it may be struck down for good by sympathetic judges Obama himself had appointed
- Don't forget dear Tsar Ivan. Apart from Peter the Great he is said to be Russia's most cunning monarch ever, and this really has its reasons. To be fair, he is actually a gal of a Magnificent Bastard, from which even most fictional examples could learn their fair share. Is it even a surprise that he was also a spectacular and passionate chess player?
Edited by BoltDMC on Jun 16th 2022 at 4:38:27 AM
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11599: Jun 16th 2022 at 4:40:54 AM
Skyscraper City has been taken care of.
namra
Since: Sep, 2021
#11600: Jun 16th 2022 at 3:54:59 PM
trauma conga line's real life section should be removed immediately. it is a narrative trope.
Edited by namra on Jun 16th 2022 at 3:55:08 AM
Projects: Long Term/Perpetual:
Real Life Maintenance - NRLEP/LRLEO Crowner (19 Feb 2024)
18th Feb '24 11:27:30 PM
Crown Description:
Vote up to either forbid all real life examples (No Real Life Examples Please) or forbid real life examples for specific subjects (Limited Real Life Examples Only); vote down to Keep Real Life Examples. To add a trope to a No Real Life Examples Please index or the Limited Real Life Examples Only index, its crowner option must meet the following criteria:- Stable 2:1 ratio needed for NRLEP or LRLEO
- Must have been up for a minimum of a week
- If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple of extra days to see if more votes come in.
Total posts: 15,945
The Real Life folder for More Teeth than the Osmond Family has been trimmed.