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
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- 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.
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Sex Tropes, Rape and Sexual Harassment Tropes, and Morality Tropes are banned from having RL sections so tropes under those indexes don't need a crowner vote.
As per Real Life Troping, we never trope unscripted real life sports — so sports tropes where RL examples would only apply to those scenarios don't need a crowner vote.
Crowner entries that have already been called will have "(CLOSED)" appended to them — and are no longer open for discussion.
After bringing up a trope for discussion, please wait at least a day for feedback before adding it to the crowner.
NRLEP tag:
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
LRLEO tag:
%%The following restrictions apply: [list restriction(s) here]
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
Notes:
- This thread is not for general discussion regarding policies for Real Life sections or crowners. Please take those conversations to this Wiki Talk thread.
- Do not try to overturn previous No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only decisions without a convincing argument.
- As mentioned here, the consensus is that NRLEP warnings in trope page descriptions can use bold text so that they stand out.
- The [[noreallife]] tag 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 Mrph1 on May 13th 2024 at 9:30:24 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I’m in favor of crownering Canine Companion as too common.
the Retromancer
I'd crown it for same reasons.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Filthy casual
I'd support it.
(Annoyed grunt)
(she/her)
It's on the crowner now.
Macron's notes
You'll never find out who I am
The first real life example on Talking Animal is a general example, the mongoose example belongs in Myths & Religion, and the rest are misuse. This trope is about animals who converse with humans, not just animals that are physically able to talk.
- Humans. General. Cut.
- No non-human animal is known to be capable of language, though some are capable of mimicking human speech, most notably parrots and corvids. Animal communication is very common, but animals lack the sort of sophisticated symbolic speech that humans are capable of, and show little to no comprehension of grammar. General and misuse. Cut.
- Because parrots are capable of mimicking human speech, some of them have been used to try and understand the extent to which animals can understand language. Alex the parrot was capable of responding to very simple questions, such as identifying the number, color, or shape of objects on a tray, and could respond with numbers between zero and six, but was not capable of dynamically forming grammatical sentences himself. Perhaps the greatest feat of intelligence he displayed was anecdotal; when presented an apple after learning some fruit names, he supposedly called it a "baneery", which was interpreted by researchers as a portmanteau of cherry and banana, two fruits he was familiar with. Misuse. Cut.
- Because parrots are capable of mimicking human speech, some of them have been used to try and understand the extent to which animals can understand language. Alex the parrot
- Gef the Talking Mongoose. Parapsychologists debated on whether it was an animal that could talk, a poltergeist, or a cryptid, but it was simply a case of ventriloquism. A reporter caught the daughter making animal sounds, which the father then tried to convince the reporter were coming from elsewhere. Not proven. Move to Myths & Religion.
- Hoover the seal showed an ability to mimic "Get outta here!" in a thick New England accent. Misuse. Cut.
- Wikipedia has a page on IRL talking animals. Misuse. Cut.
The Real Life folder for Fish People has natter and shoehorns and hypothetical examples. Cut all.
- The "aquatic ape" hypothesis posits that humans evolved from these, with at least one of our primate ancestors having been an amphibious creature that later re-adapted to land. The evidence for it is scant, coming down mostly to evolutionary traits that it argues are better explained by the sea than the savanna, with little in the way of fossil evidence for it. Still, it has inspired a number of writers, including the creators of Animal Planet's mermaid mockumentaries.
- Human embryos start out with tails and gill slits. A 6-week-old embryo looks less like a human and more like a fish. The tail eventually disappears (at least in most people)...and the gill slits migrate up from the neck area to the head to become ears.
Furries Are Easier to Draw has a Real Life folder. The Miku Miku Dance example can be moved to another folder, possibly commented out. The rest are general examples and can be cut.
- In some sense, this trope is Truth in Television. Furries aren't necessarily easier to draw, but it's easier to get away with flaws when drawing furries. The human brain has very specialized centers for interpreting human faces, but there is no equivalent for animals, which end up getting processed with generalized optical centers. As a result, minor flaws in human faces will be picked up on (it could be interpreted as nonhuman), whereas bigger flaws in animal faces will go completely unnoticed (some will assume it is a part of the creature and/or animal faces cannot really be too exaggerated).
- Another reason that occasionally pops up is that, except in specific cases, drawing furries bypasses most matters regarding character race. Can't decide if someone is black or white? Answer: make them a cat.
- A section of the Barefoot Cartoon Animal page speculates that one reason the trope is so prevalent is that paws are easier to draw than shoes (and many people don't notice shoes anyway).
- Generally subverted in regards to making 3-D MMD (Miku Miku Dance) models of this type. Non-human models are more difficult and complex to make from scratch, let alone animate. A certain skill level and the right software are required to pull it off, so human models are more common.
Furry Baldness has a Real Life folder. Neither example involves actual baldness, only the appearance of possibly being so (one even involves feathers instead of hair anyway). Looks like misuse to me. Cut all.
- Red ruffed lemurs and Black and White ruffed lemurs have longer cheek fur that invokes mutton chops and shorter fur on the crowns of their head that invokes a receding hairline.
- Demoiselle cranes have elongated white feathers on the nape of their otherwise dark grey head, which resembles long white hair with receding hairline.
The Real Life folder for Furry Female Mane has an inversion and two non-female specific examples which are misuse. Cut all.
- Inverted with lions. Some lionesses can have a mane, but it's very rare. Maneless male lions are more common.
- Hairless dogs can have fur left on the top of their heads, resembling a human-like head of hair. So can hairless guinea pigs or double-rex fancy rats.
- Though most don’t completely have humanlike head hair, many patterned cats appear to have a human like hairline. Notably, the harlequin (colored head markings, a colored tail, and medium or small body and leg color patches), cap-and-saddle (colored head markings, a colored tail, and a medium or large saddlelike patch), cow (colored head markings, a colored tail, and large body and leg color patches), and van (colored head patches and colored tail) white spotting patterns.
The Real Life folder for Married Animals contains a single general example. Cut.
- Some owners decided to have marriage ceremonies done between dogs. This doesn't always signify that they're mates because even neutered animals can be married.
Non-Mammal Mammaries has a Birds Real Life section. They're all qualified with phrases like "potentially justified" and "was said to have" or otherwise seem like misuse Cut.
- Believe it or not, there are some birds who appear to be a case of this trope. They are a subversion, however, in that none of them have actual mammary glands and instead what appear to be such actually serve a different purpose. For example:
- The male sage grouse has a set of inflatable throat sacs that are huge and pendulous, making them look like a huge pair of breasts. For added hilarity, the males will participate in what can best be described as Gainaxing contests in order to attract females. The actual purpose of the sacs is to amplify the birds' calls, as well as indicate that he's physically fit enough to sire strong offspring.
- The now extinct Rodrigues solitaire (a close cousin of the dodo) was said to have had a crop (a special and sometimes bulbous compartment in a bird's throat used to store food) that "resembled a woman's bosom". Granted, some think that these reports should be taken with a grain of salt.
- The male sage grouse
- Potentially justified in pigeons: They can produce crop milk, which has a similar function mammalian milk. However, it's only analogously similar, both males and female birds can produce it, it's a semi-solid, and, as the name implies, is produced in the crop (meaning the parents regurgitate the milk to feed their squabs). And some pigeon breeds have the large breasts for this trope!
It also has a Fish Real Life entry that has no mammary appendages. Misuse, cut.
- While they obviously don't look anything like breasts, there is a species of fish that feeds its young with "milk", after a fashion. The Discus fish, of South America, excretes a nutritious liquid through its skin that its babies feed on for the first week or so of their lives.
And it has a Robot example where the robot in question is not depicted as female. Misuse, cut.
- NASA's Valkyrie robot very clearly has breasts. However, this is justified in that the "breasts" house the linear actuator system that allow the robot to swivel at the waist and serve as protection in the event the robot falls forward.
The Real Life folder for Pig Man has three examples, two of which can be moved to Mythology and one which is misuse. Cut or move all.
- There is a place called The Devil's Washbowl in Vermont, that, not only has bizarre weather (it's warm year round), but is also the supposed habitat of the Pig Man.
- The Other Wiki tells us of the legends of pig-faced women, whose existence was believed as late as the early 19th century. In the typical versions of the story, a pig-faced woman is depicted as an otherwise fair, gentle and intelligent lady who happens to have been born with the head and voice of a pig, and thus can find no suitor.
- According to New Jersey urban legend, Roycefield Road in Hillsborough is frequented by an axe-wielding woman with the face of a pig, who will attack anybody that calls out her name.
Polly Wants a Microphone has a Real Life folder. The trope specifically involves talking birds that are fully intelligent and articulate. Only one example counts, the entry (without added sub-bullets) for Alex the parrot. The rest are misuse and shoehorns, where the bird talks but isn't both fully intelligent and articulate. Cut all but the Alex example.
- There are talking parrots in real life, though they're mostly incapable of true language use.
- An African Gray Parrot by the name of "Alex" was intelligent enough to not only have a vocabulary of 150 words, but also a basic understanding of them. He was capable of counting a few items and announcing their number (including saying "none" if no item matched the color or shape he was asked to count), and apparently coined a Portmanteau - calling an apple a banerry (banana + cherry)note . When he died in 2007 at the age of 31, his keeper, Dr. Irene Pepperberg, asserted that his intelligence and grasp of language was on par with a human toddler.
- Parrots and corvids (crows, ravens, magpies, and similar) are highly intelligent for animals and many species are capable of both mimicry and are fairly adept at solving problems.
- The 'magenpies' described in My Family and Other Animals certainly seem to have been able to mimic humans, and seem to have been able to link certain utterances to effects.
- There is a parrot and a crow at the Pittsburgh Avian Conservatory. The parrot cannot say anything, but the crow learned, because everybody was busy trying to teach the parrot and he wanted the attention.
- Though not only do they have short attention spans, but they can be moody and very tricky. Alex was notorious for this; while the researchers were trying to teach other parrots, he would feed them wrong answers.
- Not just moody, but sometimes actively unhelpful. He was described as having the emotional maturity of a toddler. So sometimes you'll get a right answer, sometimes no answer, and sometimes a deliberately incorrect answer, because it's more fun to watch you get frustrated than it is to get a reward.
- Wraa! Problem? Wraa!
- The Guinness Book of World Records lists the bird with the largest vocabulary as Puck, a budgerigar (or parakeet). That's right, a parakeet. His vocabulary was in the range of 1,700 distinct words, and he displayed somewhat of an understanding of context, as do many other talking parrots — it's just not a straightforward, human-like understanding of context.
- Parrots are one of the few animal species capable of recognizing rhythms and dancing to them.
- Mockingbirds are an interesting example in that they don't usually mimic human speech, but can mimic almost any other kind of sound. They've been reported mimicking everything from other birds, to cats, to car horns and ringing cell phones. The Australian Lyrebird does the same thing.
- In fact, there have been multiple instances of Lyrebirds actually mimicking complicated sounds such as police sirens, jack-hammers or airplane noises when living in a zoo, yet being unable to speak a single human word.
- Great Bowerbirds also mimic sounds they hear - from wheelie bins being dragged over gravel to dogs barking to mumbled/distant human conversation - but no coherent speech.
- Ravens have been reported to mimic the howling of wolves when they find a deer or other large prey animal trapped in snow or underbrush. The howling attracts the attention of real wolves, who come to check out the possible intruder; instead, they find and kill the deer, and the ravens get to scavenge the carcass's remnants.
- Ravens can also mimic human speech, but the extent of their abilities is not as well-known as parrots as ravens are seldom kept in captivity, except at the Tower of London—and those, as documented in the book The Ravenmaster, are not intentionally taught to talk after one nearly caused an international incident.
The Real Life folder for Predator-Prey Friendship has a couple examples that can stay. One is general and can be cut. One example is unsourced and probably should be commented out. One is a "maybe" and wrongly indented, cut. The other is hard to say, may be too general — will cut unless there's objection.
- There has been at least one case where a lioness, who had recently lost her own cubs, stole a baby antelope from its group and kept it as her own. The calf ended up dying of starvation. Unsourced. Comment out.
- Humans are on top of the food chain. Almost all animals can be eaten, though cultural preferences, laws, and personal preferences decide which a person eats. Humans regularly keep common prey animals like sheep, goats, pigs, horses, chickens, ducks, geese and rabbits as companion animals. Even those who use animals for work often bond with them. Hard to say, may be too general. Inclined to cut unless there's objection.
- Our longest-standing Predator-Prey Friendship is with dogs, and may be a two-way example: prehistoric humans probably ate wild canids (as domestic dogs are eaten to this day in certain cultures), and wild canids would've definitely preyed upon our early hominid ancestors. Listed as a "Maybe" and incorrectly indented. Cut.
- Whenever they aren't hungry or hunting, most carnivores can coexist with their prey in relative peace. General example. Cut.
- In a Tokyo zoo, a rat snake named Aochan was given a live hamster as a meal. But the two ended up being friends, to the point that Gohan (the name the hamster got) would even sleep on top of Aochan without fear. Keep.
The example in the Real Life folder for Speaks Fluent Animal lists a real politician claiming they were able to talk to a bird that reincarnated a dead human. I'm not buying — cut.
- Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, died in 2013. His death was followed by new presidential elections. Nicolás Maduro claimed that a little bird told him that he should lead Venezuela. Not just any random bird, but a bird with the reincarnated spirit of Hugo Chávez. And this is not a joke. Maduro even used a hat resembling a nest and with a little bird on it, in the last days of the presidential campaign. Again, that's no joke. That man is now the president of Venezuela. Yes, for real.
Speech-Impaired Animal is a very specific trope that involves sapient animals, normally dogs, who have trouble speaking clearly (like Scooby Doo). The Real Life folder examples either involve animals that aren't speaking or an animal that is not sapient (and where the example is speculative anyway). Cut all.
- Some members of highly intelligent species, e.g, bonobos, gorillas, dolphins, border collies, have been taught to communicate with humans via sign language or by using symbols for words. However, they don't have the same grasp of complex grammar that humans do.
- Attempts have been made to teach primates sign language. Teaching them to make signs is very possible, and several have been taught to make hand signs (usually based on American Sign Language), but they're incapable of using them in a coherent fashion that would resemble language; while they can associate a sign to an object or person, they can't string them together into grammatically correct sentences. For example, Nim Chimpsky's longest "sentence" was "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you."
- Kanzi the bonobo that is able to use a series of symbols on a keyboard which translate to English words, as well as using limited sign language, and is capable of responding to simple commands. While the success rate in responding to commands seemed high on cursory inspection, later analysis revealed that the success rate was extremely low in situations where grammar was important, indicating very poor ability to grasp grammar.
- Mishka the husky can talk, albeit not as clearly as a human.
Agreed about the Talking Animal example. I say cut all.
Lucas the Dreamer
Meatgrinder Surgery is a trope about extremely dangerous and reckless surgeries that end up being successful and the real life folder has issues with listing surgeries that either sound gruesome or dangerous but are actually safe and regulated or surgeries that genuinely are extremely dangerous and end the way you would expect.
- Brain surgery involves drilling a hole in someone's head. The drill functions exactly the same as the one you use at home; just a little fancier, a lot more expensive, and more carefully cleaned or so the patient very sincerely hopes. Plus, the anesthetic. Routine surgery. Misuse
- Amputating limbs is done with an electric saw. It also looks and acts a lot like a regular hand tool. Before those, sawtoothed knives were used for the amputations. There's a reason why in times past, one common nickname for a doctor was "sawbones". Routine surgery. Misuse
- A few prehistoric skulls have been found with trepanations, or holes cut through the skull. This was of course done with primitive implements, yet the bones show signs of long-term healing, which means the patient survived the surgery - and the procedure is genuinely useful for those with brains that are swelling due to trauma, as it can relieve the pressure. This one is fine. Keep
- Battlefield surgery until surprisingly recently could be like this. They would amputate with a saw and cauterize with a branding iron; a popular myth was that this was done with no anesthetic other than rum and opium, which weren't always given. The truth is, ether was available as early as The American Civil War, and the use of forceps to tie off the blood vessels and arteries (invented, among other places, in Ancient Egypt) had been rediscovered in the 1600s. Not that it helped survival rates much, due to the lack of mandatory sterilization of medical instruments. Battlefield surgery wasn't pretty, but it wasn't "biting the bullet" either: it was the recovery process in the hospitals that was more likely to kill you, actually, as you waited around to see if you got gangrene or not and tried not to catch anything from the sick and wounded people all around you. Surgery had realistic results, Misuse
- Before anesthesia, the surgeon needed to tie down the patient or have assistants restrain them before he operated. For added fun, there was no such thing as blood transfusion to replace what was lost in the surgery; no bottled oxygen to keep the blood that was still inside the patient capable of sustaining the body; and germ theory had not yet arrived, let alone impressed upon surgeons the vital importance of washing their hands. Oh, and in a lot of places, surgeons acquired their knowledge of anatomy from inaccurate and dated textbooks (or had to just cut in and start learning on the job) because dissecting corpses, a standard learning aid today, was illegal or at least extremely difficult. The primary talent that a surgeon used to need was speed because if you cut fast, sawed fast, and closed up fast, there was some chance that your patient wouldn't die. And some operating theatres were literally theatres in that people could pay to watch a surgery for entertainment. Although the real "dark age of surgery" is considered to be the twenty or so years between the discovery of anaesthesia in the 1840s and the recognition of germ theory and the need for antisepsis in the 1860s. In between, surgeons were able to try longer and more complicated procedures on anaesthetised patients... but they almost always resulted in massive infection and patients died in droves. Surgery had realistic results, Misuse
- The removal of wisdom teeth involves use of a luxator, a tool that looks very much like a stainless-steel chisel, to dislodge the root of the tooth. The same chisel is used to drain tooth abscesses, under anesthesia, to scrape the jawbone. It sounds and feels like using a file on the patient's mouth. Routine surgery, Misuse
- Orthopedic surgery (in layman's terms, skeletal surgery) can appear this way, with the use of power tools, hand tools, and hardware similar to those seen in a workshop (although sterile and much more expensive), as well as the use of what appears to be strenuous amounts of physical pulling and tugging by surgical staff (to ensure proper alignment of joints and bones, etc.). For this reason, it is said that an orthopedic surgeon must be as strong as an ox, and twice as smart. On a related note, the world's first chainsaws were bone-cutting devices known as osteotomes. They're scaled down and hand-cranked, but the basic concept is the same. Routine surgery, Misuse
- Several appendectomies were performed onboard US submarines during World War II by crewmates with pharmaceutical knowledge, textbooks and improvised tools .Zero Context Example
- Self-appendectomies have also been performed in isolated places and with improvised tools, for example by a Russian doctor in Antarctica and an Australian soldier in the Philippines during WWII. Zero Context Example
- On Untold Stories of the E.R. which is mostly true when the ER doctors have to perform surgery right there and then. A splash-and-slash is the modern equivalent of this. (A splash-and-slash is where they barely have enough time to splash antiseptic onto the patient before cutting them open. Only done when the patient is going to die or is already technically dead before the surgeons are even called.) Regulated Procedure, Misuse
- Cataract is a condition where the eye lens becomes clouded and results in loss of sight and treated through surgery. The earliest cataract surgery was 800 BC, using a curved needle to scrape the insides of the eye. Routine Surgery, Misuse
- Robert Liston was one of the first surgeons to adopt anesthesia into his procedures. Unfortunately, he also prided himself on the speed of his amputation procedures, often at the expense of caution and, in turn, his patients. In the most infamous example of this, he performed a leg amputation in under three minutes, during which he accidentally sliced off an assistant's fingers and slashed the coattails of a spectator. Both the patient and assistant died of gangrene after the procedure, while the spectator was literally scared to death: that's a mortality rate of 300% in just one surgery! Surgery had realistic results, Misuse
- There was a woman in rural Mexico who was having some childbirth complications. She was miles away from any hospital and had no car or phone. Her husband was away at work, and her nearest neighbors were a good distance away. So she drank some tequila and performed a caesarean section on herself, but both she and the baby were fine. This example is actually fine, Keep
- Many cultures have various forms of genital cutting/modification, often performed as a rite of passage. Often, these are performed by traditional practitioners (traditional healers/midwives, shamans, etc.) or relatives/family friends...and in this case, the implements are usually not washed or sterilized in between. (Sometimes, a mass cutting ritual takes place, where the same knife is used over and over.) Not helping matters is the fact that many times, these procedures are not performed under an anesthetic. Special mention goes to the most extreme forms of FGM/C: Type III or infibulation. (Warning: very disturbing content) Surgery has realistic results, Misuse
- The practice of "gishiri cutting," which is performed in parts of Africa for therapeutic reasons (although there is no evidence that it actually helps any of the gynecological problems it's supposed to alleviate...in fact, it tends to make them worse, or create some interesting new ones). A knife is placed inside the vagina and then drawn back out again, as many times as deemed necessary. Surgery has realistic results, Misuse
Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Jun 29th 2022 at 1:55:22 PM
Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?
You'll never find out who I am
But Odie is listed on Speech-Impaired Animal and Odie is not sapient. All he ever says is "Tada!", "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" and "Nuh uh".
the Retromancer
Don't see how it's relevant to Real Life examples, but the Team Pet multi-example (also bad indentation and ZCE) should be removed then.
If Odie is saying stuff like this, he’s got some degree of human style self-awareness. “Tada!” suggests he knows he just did something special and is drawing attention to himself, while vocalizing yes and no suggests he’s got reasoning ability beyond expressing basic instincts. The Real Life husky example doesn’t have any awareness of this sort — he’s just making noises people interpret as speech (at best, he might be a canine version of a parrot), and the primates listed don’t seem to have Odie’s level of self-awareness. If indeed Odie isn’t misuse in the first place — he’s at the dumbest end of this trope if he qualifies.
Edited by BoltDMC on Jun 29th 2022 at 9:12:14 AM
I'm actually not sure what to make of the Real Life folder for Team Pet in relation to the trope itself. This may be a function of the trope definition, which seems nebulous to me. Best I can tell, it could apply to any pet, especially an outlandish one, that is associated with more than one person and usually serves some kind of function like fighting or going to get help or rescuing someone. The tropability of this seems vague at best generally and there seems to be a lot of leeway here, which isn't the mark of a quality trope. I could be misinterpreting this, though. The folder is here, with comments:
- The Other Wiki refers to many military mascots, including goats, rams, antelope, ferrets, and even penguins. Maybe a penguin can be quite sensible, but the idea of having them as a pet isn't... Seems general, and the first sub bullet is natter. Cut.
- On the contrary to penguins, bears can prove quite useful during military operations. They can help with loading the artillery for example.
- Ships cats deserve special mention. Their is a practical use for them, they help keep the ship vermin free. But the moral boost they often provide is considered almost as useful.
- On the contrary to penguins, bears can prove quite useful during military operations. They can help with loading the artillery for example.
- Since ancient Egypt, war dogs have been used by the military even today. Sounds like a war version of K9 animals. Is this even a pet? Cut.
- Any pet kept by a family unit. General example. Cut.
- An amplified version of this is the pets kept by world leaders and celebrities; they're still personal or family pets, but often become publicized themselves. U.S. White House pets, for example, have included both common pets and exotic animals (an alligator and a Fowl-Mouthed Parrot among them) but in the modern era have usually been cute dogs and cats that truly function as Team Pets. General example. Cut.
- Dalmatian dogs, originally bred as coach escorts, became associated with firefighters more than a century ago. In those days, they functioned as living sirens, running ahead of fire wagons and barking to clear the way, then remained alongside the wagon to reassure/corral the horses, ensuring they wouldn't bolt from the actual fire. Once motorized vehicles replaced horsepower, the Dalmatians remained: primarily as mascots for firehouses, though also functioning as guard dogs and rat-catchers. Feels general. Cut.
- Owney the Postal Dog, mascot of the U.S. Railway Mail Service from the 1890s. Considered a good luck charm by postal workers, as none of the trains which this little mutt loved to hitch lifts on ever suffered an accident. This one might be okay. Keep?
You'll never find out who I am
I think the real life folder on Language Barrier can be cut. The first example is general, and the rest are troping real people.
- People with various types of aphasia essentially lose their language and ability to communicate well.
- Chris Jericho has said that when he wrestled in Japan earlier in his career, he did not bother to learn Japanese. He survived because some of the Japanese wrestlers knew English.
- From 1066 to the 1300s, England was ruled by monarchs who primarily spoke Norman and later French. Henry IV was the first to address his subjects in English (which, at that point, was very different from the English spoken by the subjects of William I), at his coronation, and it was the rebirth of English national identity during The Hundred Years War that prompted the later Plantagenets to adopt the language in an effort to appeal to their subjects.
- In 1968, it was discovered that a Philadelphia mental hospital contained a perfectly sane woman who only spoke Ukrainian. Back in 1921, Catherine Yasinchuk had been institutionalized by authorities who mistook her for a Talkative Loon babbling nonsense.
- After the RMS Titanic struck the iceberg on April 14th 1912, the Marconi wireless operators sent out CQD and SOS distress signals explaining that they were slowly sinking. One of the first ships to respond was the German cruise liner SS Frankfurt. It is assumed that the language barrier made it difficult for the Frankfurt's operator to properly translate the Titanic's increasingly frantic calls for help to his captain, and he repeatedly had to ask the Titanic to clarify her situation for the better part of two hours. At some point, the Titanic's operator (quite famously) lost his patience and essentially told him to shut up, stop jamming the airwaves and simply stay out of it:
SS Frankfurt: FRANKFURT TO TITANIC: WE ARE 100 MILES OFF. WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?
RMS Titanic: FOOL. YOU FOOL. STAND BY. STAND BY. STAND BY AND KEEP OUT. KEEP OUT.
Edited by AmourLeFou on Jun 30th 2022 at 2:59:06 AM
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I'm okay with cutting these for the reasons stated.
You'll never find out who I am
Electricity Knocks You Out has a single general real life example.
Check out my forum game: Rate the above YMMV.
Angry babby
Could easily be moved to the description.
Excellent solution — I support this idea also.
WeUsedToBeFriends.Real Life is just walls upon walls of text documenting various interpersonal dramas between real people. I don't see the point of it.
Jawbreakers on sale for 99¢
That could be crownered as Too Common.
Filthy casual
Might be a good idea.
X 14: Sorry I missed this earlier. Yes, I support crownering Meatgrinder Surgery. It's definitely Impossible In Real Life, plus Squicky Content is a valid crowner reason.
Lucas the Dreamer
To be fair I’m not sure if “The surgery doesn’t have realistic results” has to be a part of it or if it’s just “Extremely dangerous and reckless surgery”. Regardless I think it’s safe to cut the routine medical procedures since those are definitely misuse. The gruesome out-dated surgical procedures are questionable as to if they count since that’s more a case of Science Marches On.
May–December Romance is on the Too Common page. Presumably Age-Gap Romance should be as well.
I don't remember it being discussed before but if it was, we can put it on the crowner. I agree that it's too common.
Macron's notes