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:
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
LRLEO tag:
%%The following restrictions apply: [list restriction(s) here]
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
Notes:
- This thread is not for general discussion regarding policies for Real Life sections or crowners. Please take those conversations to this Wiki Talk thread.
- Do not try to overturn previous No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only decisions without a convincing argument.
- As mentioned here, the consensus is that NRLEP warnings in trope page descriptions can use bold text so that they stand out.
- The [[noreallife]] tag 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
Angry babby
Skimming those sections...
Ass Kicks You and Orifice Invasion mostly describe animal defense techniques and, in the former case, cultural dances. I think they're fine. There's a sexual example or two on the former that could be cut, though, about BDSM.
Gasshole just mostly describes various instances of people farting and burping, which feels chairsy compared to the trope's actual definition. Either clean it or list it as Gossip and Stereotypes.
Ass Shove feels concerning, yes.
Excrement Statement doesn't seem problematic in execution, but I wouldn't mind it being cut on the basis of being really gross.
Dung Fu is mostly animal examples and a few specific human examples. It's also gross but since it's mostly nature, it doesn't gross me out as much as the above, which is mostly about human shenanigans.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
So, to make sure:
-Excrement Statement and Dung Fu: cut everything there as an ROCEJ violation.
-Gasshole and Fartillery: cut everything as People Sit On Chairs or troping real people.
-Ass Kicks You: cut anything sexual (such as BDSM related stuff).
-Ass Shove: likely crowner.
Unless otherwise advised by tomorrow, will proceed as outlined above.
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Huh? How did you get "ROCEJ violation" out of the first two?
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
What label do you prefer? Or are you against cutting this?
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
I don't particularly care either way, but something being gross isn't ROCEJ, and I'm not sure what about Mew's post made you immediately jump to "so we should cut them".
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Angry babby
Oh I forgot Fartillery. I think valid examples can stay but there's a lot of ZCE and misuse for anything related to farts too.
Also we shouldn't cut the entire section of anything without a crowner unless it's misuse — I was saying we can crowner the things that are just too gross to list IRL.
Edited by mightymewtron on Jun 26th 2022 at 4:00:35 AM
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
I'm getting very confused here.
Maybe I'll just do the usual cleanup I've been doing previously, where I post the folders with comments, and forego the idea of a crowner.
Question — where does the line get drawn regard squicky content on individual entries? Or does it even apply? Squicky content is listed above as a reason to cut entries.
You'll never find out who I am
The real life example on Inner Monologue is general.
Check out my forum game: Rate the above YMMV.
Agreed, it's general. It can get cut as far as I'm concerned.
Angry babby
You already brought that up, and I told you it might not count as "general" as it's a specific symptom of a disorder. I bring this up as a previous instance of "general examples" were found to not actually be general as they discussed specific items.
As for the "squicky content" thing, it's subjective what counts as too "squicky" for a RL section, so that's why we add things to crowners.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Help me out here, as I’m still confused. Things can be crownered for squicky content, correct? But if I’m doing a line-by-line cleanup, that’s not a valid reason for removal of an entry?
The Real Life folder for Animal Espionage has three alleged examples (which can be cut) and one example that appears not to have been successful. For sure the three alleged examples can go, less sure of the other one.
- Vultures are claimed to have been used by Israel to spy on Saudi Arabia. The vulture allegedly had transmitters attached to it. Lebanon would later hold a different bird on the same charge. This is far from the only accusation of such activity. Alleged example. Cut.
- The CIA tried this with a cat once to listen in on some Soviet agents' conversation through a radio receiver in its tail. The cat however ran into traffic and got ran over. Example appears to have been unsuccessful. Not sure if it should be cut or not.
- The town of Hartlepool, England supposedly once found a monkey as the sole survivor of a shipwreck during the Napoleonic Wars. Believing the monkey to be a French spy due to its French uniform (having seen neither a monkey nor a Frenchman before) after trialling it on the beach, they hanged it. Hartlepudlians have had a seriously bad case of Never Live It Down as a result, with some embracing the term "monkey hangers" and others cringing. Alleged example. Cut.
- The RAF is alleged to have trained falcons in World War II for animal counterespionage, specifically to deal with German messenger pigeons. Alleged example. Cut.
Animal Talk is a trope that best I can tell deals with humans not being able to understand Civilized Animals or Nearly Normal Animals, though the animals are able to understand each other. The examples in the Real Life folder all look like misuse, involving things like animals able to communicate via body language with humans, communication within species boundaries, and general animal communication trivia. Cut all.
- While human-like language is unique to humans, many forms of animal communication do function cross-species. Many mammals (humans included) express emotions such as fear, anger, pleasure, disdain, aggression, happiness, and challenge using similar body language and facial expressions. As a result, mammals of different species are able to communicate with each other to some extent, and with us, if we're observant enough. As anyone with an animal companion will tell you, its entirely possible to hold simple two way "conversations" with an intelligent animal you are familiar with.
- All body language doesn't (necessarily) cross species, however, even species as closely related as humans and chimpanzees. A chimp who "smiles" at you is not actually happy—the expression is what's known as a "fear grimace" (akin to a human Slasher Smile, Psychotic Smirk, or The Un-Smile) and means that the chimpanzee feels threatened (and a threatened chimp, especially a male, is likely to attack). Chimps do smile, but only expose their bottom teeth or no teeth at all.
- Many primates have been taught a primitive form sign languages and can easily communicate basic ideas with humans...and even teach this language to their kids. Calling this "language", however, is questionable. One of the more famous examples is Koko the gorilla, who "speaks" a kind of pidgin version of American Sign Language, sloppily and with so many idiosyncrasies that even people who themselves know ASL cannot understand her and have to rely on her handler to translate, much like a very young child who can only be comprehended by their family. It's been suggested by a number of authorities that most of the more coherent statements Koko has been "quoted" as making are somewhere between 'wishful thinking' and almost entirely made up by her handler; the handler interprets vague gestures generously and selectively chooses which gestures are assigned meaning and which are just, well, gestures. There's clearly something like an attempt to communicate going on, but calling it 'language' is definitely a stretch.
- Some primates, mostly famously Kanzi the bonobo, have been taught to communicate using a series of symbols called Lexigrams on a keyboard. Kanzi has been known to string together multiple lexigrams to describe new things.
- One animal that may in fact have a language of its own is dolphins, who communicate via a series of clicks and whistles. It's not easily decipherable, but said sounds have been observed in repeated patterns, and, crucially, each dolphin in a pod has its own series of sounds - ergo, dolphins have names. There is one alleged event where a dolphin pup and her mother had a telephone conversation, and the communication seemed to be clear between them.
- This has been confirmed in orcas. Different populations in different parts of the world have different "languages", and lost, orphaned, and stranded orcas can be identified as being part of a certain pod by their calls. Orcas that speak different dialects can't communicate verbally.
- One of the more interesting examples of animal "language" is whale song, frequently cited as an excellent demonstration of a Starfish Language. Analysis demonstrates that there are complex structures of harmony and repeating patterns within the tones resembling both language and symphonic composition, with many species demonstrating regional dialects and "musical styles". While the most widely known use is males singing for mates, this behavior is seen in both males and females, and is not limited to courtship behavior, but seems to be used as a means of long-range communication.
- Cats are capable of extremely complex communication. While adult cats in the wild normally don't meownote they do communicate intentions and emotions through body language, posture, soft trills, growls, hisses, and yowls. In addition, domestic cats meow even into adulthood, which is thought to be a retained behavior because humans respond to it. Many cat owners even find that more intelligent cats tend to develop "words" (meows with particular inflections, tones, and trills) for things like "Hello!", "my food bowl is empty", "No", "Pay attention to me", "please share your lunch with me", "I'm worried about you", etc. All of this is not quite language, but it is significant in that it demonstrates that cats make successful, intentional, untrained efforts at communicating ideas both with each other and with a distantly related species, humans.
There's a small Real Life folder for Uplifted Animal. The trope is about Talking Animals who use some kind of Applied Phlebotinum like translation collars to communicate with people. Neither example touches on this. Cut all, shoehorning and misuse.
- Catholics and some other theistic evolutionists have claimed something like this regarding evolution. They believe that when hominids grew sufficiently advanced, God placed souls in them (often a specific pair, from which Adam and Eve were inspired, has been claimed), making them humans with what they feel are attributes which wholly set them apart from other beings. Obviously, this is not proven (and likely unprovable), nor part of evolutionary theory, but a reconciliation of it to Christian doctrine.
- To a certain extent, we inadvertently did this with dogs. While they're nowhere near full sapience, convergent evolution made them more acclimated to living among humans across the span of our almost 40,000-year-long relationship. Not only did they develop the ability to digest more carbohydrates as the Agricultural Revolution progressed so they could keep eating the same things as us, but studies have shown that they actually possess a greater degree of theory of mind than other animals. Your dog knows what you are thinking and feeling, and can use that information to console or deceive you. Wolves can't do that, not even our closest genetic relative the chimps can do that. There's a chance dolphins can, but we have no way of knowing.
There's a Real Life folder for Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal. One concerns a hoax, one is general example about mascots and fursuiters, and one is nattery trivia. Cut these three. The last is a specific mascot example — is there a folder where this can go?
- In 1959, there was actually a group called the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals or SINA, a hoax perpetrated by comedian Alan Abel until 1962. Buck Henry played its president, G. Clifford Prout, while Abel played the vice president, and its goal was to clothe all animals. One of its mottos was "A nude horse is a rude horse." Apparently, lots of people fell for it and tried to donate money for the cause.
- Many college mascots are animals clad only in a sweater bearing the school's initials. Likewise, a good chunk of fursuiters either wear a shirt or shorts/pants. Sometimes the article of clothing is part of the costume, as in the costumer never bothered to make legs or a complete torso for it (both to keep costs down and make it less hot to wear), letting the clothing hide this fact.
- In at least one case, Winnie the Pooh's half-clothed nature was considered Serious Business when a conservative Polish council opted to exclude him from a playground on that basis.
- Goleo, the mascot of the World Cup 2006 doesn't wear pants.
Beast with a Human Face is a very specific trope that covers animals with human faces, such as sphinxes. The Real Life examples are shoehorn misuse, involving animals with human-like markings on various parts of their body, animals with human-like teeth, and carnival freak show hoaxes. Cut all.
- Blobfish typically look like fish in their natural environment. However, when taken out, their low-density flesh droops down and give it a very fat ugly big-nosed big-lipped human-like face.
- Heike crabs (Heikea japonica) have markings on their shells resembling human faces and are not eaten for this reason. The legend from which they get their name is that these crabs contain the spirits of the samurai who threw themselves into the sea when the Taira were defeated at Dan-no-ura, a famous battle which actually took place in ancient Japan.
- The Human-faced Carp is a type of hybrid breed specifically to have what looks like a human face. What look like human eyes are actually the fish's nostrils.
- The Pacu, a large pirahna relative, has eerily human-like teeth which are mainly used for crushing nuts. Same goes for the sheepshead, Archosargus probatocephalus. The deep-sea squid Promachoteuthis sulcus has lips which also bear a strange resemblance to human teeth.
- In most Mexican and Latin American amusement parks, it is common to find freak shows whose main attractions are creatures with human faces but the body of an animal, such as alligator women◊. Being cheap freak shows, these are all fake.
- The man-faced stink bug◊ has markings on its back that coincidentally resemble a human face, similar to Heike's crabs. It's been likened to a grumpy uncle.
Bee People is a trope about intelligent fictional societies that have a hierarchy similar to those of bees (queen, workers, drone). The Real Life folder has examples involving real life animals that live in groups that lack intelligent sentience, which looks like misuse. Cut all.
- Weird Real Life example: the naked mole rat is one of the only mammals to exhibit eusocial behavior (the other one is the Damaraland mole rat). The queens keep the other female rats infertile with no desire to reproduce by having a community restroom chamber filled with her own urine, which contains suppressing hormones.
- Some social mammal groups (African Wild Dogs, meerkats) also restrict all breeding privileges to the top female of the group, but only because the boss females chase off any daughter who dares to breed, and/or kill their daughters' litters. On the other hand, more common among social mammals — including many human societies throughout history — is the Gender Flip by which a group's patriarch uses force to maintain exclusive breeding rights with the females in his harem. Some humans even came up with a gender-flipped version of sterile worker bees in the form of the eunuchs who patrolled royal harems in countries like Imperial China and Ottoman Turkey; likewise, animal husbandry often involves a similar tactic of neutering the males except for a designated breeding population that mates with all the females.
- In addition to bees themselves, termites have been eusocial for even longer than bees, and have far more complex castes and collective behaviors than either bees or ants.
- Some aphids have a life cycle with elements of this trope, in that a single female will found a colony by surrounding herself with daughters for defense. The twist is that they're all parthenogenetic clones of herself, so if she dies, her oldest daughters will just start popping more clones to keep the colony going.
Bird People has a Real Life folder that contains speculative examples having nothing to do with real life. Misuse, cut all.
- Probably the closest thing nature has ever produced to this trope would be the therizinosaurs, plant-eating theropod dinosaurs which looked vaguely humanoid and had "wings" with clawed fingers. They weren't intelligent, though.
- In the early '80s, Dale Russell, curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museum of Canada (now the Canadian Museum of Nature), proposed that, if the dinosaur genus Troodon hadn't died out, it could have evolved into a sentient humanoid creature, christened "Dinosauroid" by Russel. Since then, the Dinosauroid (in appearance vaguely resembling a scaly Grey alien) has been criticized as being implausible, because it is too anthropomorphic. Also, Science Marches On, and now we know that Troodon's appearance probably had more in common with birds than with reptiles. Thus, when paleontologist Darren Naish and artist Nemo Ramjetnote revisited the concept during The Noughties, the result was decidedly less humanoid◊ and veered into Bird People territory.
Peacock Girl has a Real Life folder, and they're all general examples. Two of them might be moved to the Theatre folder commented out if that's appropriate. The others should be cut.
- Several outfits worn by female dancers during the carnival season in Latin America sport giant fan tails from huge feathers.
- Vaudeville and cabaret dancer outfits from the 30s and 40s sometimes had this instead of a traditional skirt. This was considered incredibly scandalous at the time (or rather, butts were considered scandalous: partly due to the anal sex taboo). sometimes they were actual peacock feathers. Move commented out to Theatre folder.
- Plenty of Hallowe'en costumes, usually cheap, with various justifications.
- Skating and ballet outfits often have this, the ballet ones tend to be more outrageous since aerodynamics is more of a consideration for skaters. Though the two types of outfits are frequently enough completely interchangeable. Some ballets feature birds as characters or characters that become birds, or whatever: so you're likely to see this in Swan Lake, The Firebird, etc. Though many people consider it better if the costumer takes things a bit less literally, because the look is not seen as particularly tasteful. Move commented out to Theatre folder.
Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth has a Real Life folder with a single general example. Cut.
- Most major extinction events end up as this; the smallest life forms tend to survive easier and in some cases became dominant later. This is what happened to mammals after the extinction of dinosaurs, for example.
Cthulhumanoid has a Real Life folder with a single shoehorned example about star-nosed moles. Cut.
- It is mole-shaped rather than humanoid, and it uses the appendages solely for their highly sensitive sense of touch, but the star-nosed mole has a nose with twenty-two small tentacles.
I wonder if Canine Companion should be made NRLEP for being Too Common. Way too many people have had dogs as pets.
I'd like to apologize for all this.
Opinions on the Feather Fingers real life section?
- Since we're on the subject of avian "hand" anatomy, this is a major point of contention among Paleoartists: Did Maniraptors have truly opposable thumbs or what? It's thought that some of them did, like Bambiraptor, but the others are a puzzle. And this is quite relevant to this trope, as most Anthro artists unquestionably assume that they did. Seriously, though, about the only thing anyone agrees upon is that the "kangaroo hands" in Jurassic Park are all kinds of wrong. A good reference for this can be found here (with super-cute illustrations).
- The primary feathers on some birds (most notably hawks and other raptors) can be very fingerlike, but this is an illusion due to how the feathers are shaped and/or positioned. The feathers may look like fingers, but they're functionally useless for grasping.
- Bat wings are the closest to this trope in reality; they're essentially elongated fingers with membrane between them.
- Similarly, Yi qi, a small dinosaur from Jurassic China, is probably the closest thing to a real avian example of this trope, its wings being batlike in configuration.
- Pterosaurs downplayed this trope — their wings were made up of elongated pinky fingers, with the rest of their fingers being free and fully functional. The exception was Nyctosaurus, which only had the single wing finger and had no other fingers at all.
I support a crowner for Canine Companion as Too Common. If it doesn't pass, there are certainly some general examples that could be removed.
Feather Fingers is a very specific trope, one where bird wing feathers are used like fingers in some way or dogs/cats/etc. use their dewclaw like a thumb (for grasping and the like). None of the examples address the trope — they all look like shoehorns to me. That probably doesn't even need a crowner, as they can likely all be cut as misuse.
How sweet it is
Safe to call Battleaxe Nurse.
she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report
Filthy casual
Hmm. Battleaxe Nurse references Bedlam House. What are people's thoughts on that having a real life section?
Edited by TheUnsquished on Jun 28th 2022 at 5:09:51 PM
(Annoyed grunt)
If it gets crownered, that’s fine by me.
Logic Girl
This is a weird entry on Tooth Fairy, and the only Real Life example:
- Putting a tooth under a pillow at night actually does work. You don't even have to fall asleep. Money will simply appear under the pillow soon after. Some non-believing parents however replace the teeth with money themselves while the child is asleep.
the Retromancer
I think this can be removed, and the description can be appended with something like "Similar to Santa Claus, the parents in Europe and USA reenact the legend while children are asleep."
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Angry babby
Sorry to kill all your fantasies, everybody.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
...man, I so want to post "at least one troper apparently literally believed in the literal Tooth Fairy" in the 'Entries that make you go LOL" thread over in Yack Fest, but I kinda feel like it'd be too mean-spirited.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I removed it. I could have been more blunt due to how ridiculous it is, but left it at "See discussion. This trope is impossible in real life."
Edit: I checked to see who added that and discovered it was someone I bounced for ban evasion, so it could have been handled by the Ban Evader Reversion Thread regardless.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 29th 2022 at 6:22:29 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.Any more opinions on Canine Companion being too common?
I'd like to apologize for all this.
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.
Had mentioned Fartillery, Dung Fu, and Excrement Statement as crowner possibilities given their ROCEJ subject matter issues. The same is true of Ass Shove, Gasshole, Orifice Invasion, and possibly Ass Kicks You.
They have other issues such as shoehorns, troping real people, and such, but crownering may be appropriate.