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
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This is the thread to report tropes with problematic Real Life sections.
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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
#11751: Jul 3rd 2022 at 1:37:25 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Agreed. It should be as well.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11752: Jul 3rd 2022 at 6:59:27 PM
Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist has a Real Life folder. It tropes real people, has general examples, and misuse that doesn't illustrate the negative stereotypical aspects of this trope. Cut all, comments interspersed.
Real Life
- While in office, President Truman made frequent visits to his favorite vacation spot in the Florida Keys, and was often photographed there wearing what he called his "Key West Uniform" (Hawaiian sport shirt, white shoes, and a pith helmet). His staff would follow a similar dress code and even hold contests on each visit to see who could come up with the loudest shirt. Real person being troped. Cut.
- The Hawaiian shirt is John Lasseter's wardrobe of choice, which was parodied in DreamWorks Animation's Bee Movie. Real person being troped and misuse. Cut.
- In Hawaii itself (where Hawaiian shirts are called "aloha shirts"), this trope is played straight in that tourists can be seen with aloha shirts, and inverted in that aloha shirts are also considered business or semi-formal attire. Granted, the shirts that the locals wear tend to be of higher qualitynote and with generally darker, more muted patterns (often "reverse-printed," with the pattern printed on the back side of the fabric for a controlled bleed-through effect to mute the colors and imitate natural fading). General example, natter, misuse. Cut.
- The Batik shirt is a uniquely Southeast Asian take on this trope. Misuse. Cut.
- Hawaiian shirts are also unfortunately popular among the "Boogaloo Bois", a far-right extremist movement that has engaged in accelerationism and political violence, including the storming of the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. Misuse. Cut.
Japanese Tourist has a Real Life folder. There are general examples and misuse that doesn't illustrate the negative stereotypical aspects of the trope, as well as real life people being troped. Cut all.
Real Life
- As anyone who has worked at a tourist attraction can attest, this trope is Truth in Television. General example. Cut.
- A curious culture-bound psychological phenomenon that appears to be almost entirely unique to Japanese tourists visiting the French capital exists in the form of Paris syndrome, or "pari shōkōgun". This condition produces symptoms akin to intense stress and disappointment, even manifesting as heart palpitations or derealisation. Scientists from institutions in Japan have discovered that Paris syndrome appears to be the result of culture clash and of expecting Paris to be much greater than the fairly standard European capital city (landmarks notwithstanding) it turns out to be. Misuse, doesn't illustrate the trope. Cut all, including sub bullets.
- Apparently it even occurs in Japan. Ainu artist Bikky Sunazawa coined the term "kanko Ainu" to describe Ainu who made their money selling art to tourists from Honshu. In fact, given that Japan has a very active internal tourism industry, it's actually the other way round. The amount of Japanese tourists going to foreign destinations is many times lower than those touring their homeland, so the ones we see are actually just a tiny outflow of the innumerable hordes going back and forth at home. You have a much, much higher chance of meeting a stereotypical Japanese Tourist in Japan than abroad.
- Hilariously, going to Japan will make you into this. Everything is so different you'll want to take photos of it all.
- And Japanese people will give you a funny look if you try to NOT behave like a visiting weaboo (at least in the most tourist-oriented spots; Kaminari-mon springs to mind).
- In America, the Disney Theme Parks are probably the most popular vacation destination for Japanese tourists.
- In the United Kingdom, tourism from Japan remained strong quite some way after the bubble burst, right up until the 2008 Great Recession commenced, and is still quite prominent nowadays. Other than London, popular locations for tours to visit include Stonehenge, Oxford, York and other notable towns and cities across the UK.
- Just to illustrate a photography bit: one of the largest electronics retail chains in Japan? Yodobashi Camera. Their major competitor? Bic Camera. Japanese are indeed big on photos. Misuse, doesn't illustrate the trope. Cut.
- In an anecdote from Molly Ivins, where she visits a village in the Himalayas for humanitarian work, one of her blonde, blue-eyed travelmates is mistaken by the natives for Japanese, since, "what else would a person with three cameras be?" Nor an example. Cut.
- And then there's Toshifumi Fujimoto, a Japanese Tourist who tours ''war zones''. Real life person troped. Cut.
- Tours aimed at east Asians are set up like this, with most of the time spent on the bus and designed for the tourists to take pictures as the bus travels by, rather than actually visiting any of the locations or buying anything. Misuse, doesn't illustrate the trope. Cut.
- For many Floridians, especially those living in and around Miami and Orlando, this trope can more accurately be called the Brazilian Tourist. In the 2000s, Brazil enjoyed an economic boom, and while it has leveled off since, the country is still far more prosperous than it was before. They love Miami's beaches and clubs and Orlando's theme parks (which now print more maps in Portuguese than they do Spanish) as much as any tourists to Florida, and like their Japanese counterparts, they often show up in enormous tour groups. The main stereotype about them, however, is that they love to shop, as Brazil's protectionist trade policy combined with a booming economy has created a middle class that doesn't have the means to pay thousands of US dollars for a high-end cell phone, but does have the means to buy a plane ticket to Florida and the same phone for a few hundred dollars at one of the Sunshine State's many shopping malls, with money left over for a vacation on top of it. Misuse. Cut.
Funny Foreigner has a Real Life folder. It tropes real people. Cut all.
Real Life
- Louis Bonaparte, Napoléon's brother, was made King of the Netherlands in 1806. The only problem? He didn't speak Dutch. He did make an attempt to learn, though, famously calling himself the "Konijn van 'Olland" ("Rabbit of Holland") instead of the "Koning van 'Olland" ("King of Holland").
- Yakov Smirnoff, popularizer of Russian Reversal. Going out to eat at an American restaurant, an attendant asks him how many people are in his party. Smirnoff replies "100 million".
- Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was foreign absolutely everywhere, speaking neither French nor English very well. This was exacerbated by a defect in his mouth that made him look like he always talked out of the side of it—he got an attack of Bell's palsy when he was young, permanently leaving the left side of his face partially paralyzed. To quote the man himself: "It is true I speak on one side of my mouth. I am not a Tory, I don't speak on both sides of my mouth."
- This cracked article show us the case of George Psalmanazar, a Frenchman who in 1703 pretended to be Formosan and Japanese in Italy and England. Using Obfuscating Stupidity he pretended to be a Funny Foreigner who talked in Poirot Speak and had a lot of Crazy Cultural Comparison, playing with the Values Dissonance and Unfortunate Implications of Englishmen confirming that all foreigners were idiots.
- Former American Football placekicker Garo Yepremian, born in Cyprus to Armenian parents. While a talented kicker, he was unfamiliar with the vernacular and jargon often used in American football early in his career. Two instances of this were when he was told by his coach Don Shula that their team had lost the coin toss and Yepremian went to the center of the field to physically look for the coin, and when he kicked an extra point and triumphantly told Shula that he "kicked a touchdown."
- The real Princess Caraboo was a bit of this also.
Nouveau Riche has a large Real Life folder. It has general examples and tropes real people — and reeks of ROCEJ issues to boot given the trope definition. Cut all.
Real Life
- While celebrities of many different stripes often become nouveau riche, the hip hop scene is particularly hit with this trope due to the fact that wealth and conspicuous consumption are such an intrinsic part of many rappers' professional persona, especially in the Glam Rap subgenre.
- Michael Carroll, a British garbageman who in 2002 at age 19 won the equivalent of £16,000,000 (adjusted for inflation in 2020) and used his newfound wealth to become a minor pop culture celebrity. When he won, he said he didn't plan to spend lavishly. Five years later he was broke. Fashioning himself as the "King of Chavs", he became notorious for overly flaunting his wealth and recklessly spending money on houses, expensive vacations, drugs, parties, cars, etc. He has since returned to his pre-lotto life as a garbage collector. He said he had no regrets.
- "New Russians" was the Russian term for this in the early post-Soviet years for Russians who were suddenly incredibly wealthy, but perceived as terribly uncultured (i.e. unfamiliar with upper-class culture) and boorish. Extravagant spenders with misplaced priorities, they were the subject of a lot of typically great Russian humor, like these jokes: "Two New Russians were arguing at a bar over who had the fancier possession. One says "See this necktie? Imported silk, cost me one thousand dollars American!" The other replies, "Bah! I know a place where I can get same necktie for ten thousand dollars!"
- Parvenu — "upstart", 1802, from French parvenu, "said of an obscure person who has made a great fortune," noun use of past participle of parvenir "to arrive", from Latin pervenire, from per- "through" and venire "to come", used as a derogatory term by nobles who judged them undeserving of their new wealth. There's also the closely related arriviste, "pushy, ambitious person," 1901, from Fr. arriviste, from arriver "to arrive". The notion is of a person intent on "arriving" at success or in society, and means more "ambitious and unscrupulous".
- The Bonaparte family were this for most of the 19th century, although they said their lineage could be traced to Italian nobility. Napoleon III made marriage offers to princesses from all over Europe, but none would ever consider the Bonapartes a 'real' noble family, so he had to settle for a much lower-rank Spanish Countess. Part of his problem was that he lived at a time when moral standards for monarchs' private lives had become distinctly stricter than those of the 18th centurynote , and when he looked for a wife he had already fathered two natural children and was living with a mistress. It did not help that there were rumours, fed by opponents like Victor Hugo, that he was not the son of Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon's second-youngest brother), but the result of a marital indiscretion of his mother, Hortense Bonaparte née de Beauharnais (Napoleon's stepdaughter). It wasn't until the end of the 19th/start of the 20th century that other royal families began to accept them, by which time ironically they had no chance of ever being restored to the throne.
- A late 1890s (English) newspaper editorial complained that the English nobility was losing its class, what with all the penniless aristocrats marrying off their sons to the daughters of filthy rich American cattle-barons and tycoons.
- Molly Brown, best known for surviving the sinking of the Titanic and demanding that her lifeboat return to the ship to search for more survivors.
- There are now half a million recently-minted Chinese millionaires, most of whom are former "Little Emperors". As one might expect, they are reported to have rather crass tastes; the most disgusting (to purists) is the oft-repeated tale of mixing different fine wines in a punchbowl. The children born to the first generation of post-reform entrepreneurs are known as the "fu er dai" (second prosperous generation) and are notorious for spending huge amounts of money (given to them by their parents, of course) on fancy European cars, designer clothes, and trips abroad. Lots of Chinese publications decry that the fu er dai, unlike their parents, have all the lavish benefits of economic reform, but never had to work or suffer hardship for any of them.
- The Kennedys, often mistaken for Boston Brahmins, were actually excluded from that society for their Catholic faith. There is also a persistent urban legend that family patriarch Joseph Kennedy Sr. earned his fortune from bootlegging.
- The 'white shoe brigade', a group of businessmen in Queensland, Australia who had close ties with Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the state premier from 1968-1987.
- Anna Nicole Smith - although the degree to which she fits this trope was embellished quite a bit by just about everyone responsible for promoting her cult of personality, including Anna Nicole herself. It is true that Anna (known as "Vickie" at that time) was living a working-class existence when she posed for Playboy in the spring of 1992, but that was largely by choice: she was raised in a comfortable middle-class household, got expelled from high school for delinquent behavior, and simply entered the job market rather than trying to complete her education.
- After World War II there were plenty of Soviet jokes about Generals' wives, who received a lot of luxury items from the conquered territories. Such as the wife who, when told she couldn't wear a lacy nightie to the theater, asked where they expected her to wear such a beautiful "dress."
- John Steinbeck once said (or at any rate is often quoted as saying) that "socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
- This is rather common among sports athletes, particularly those who come from low-income families and/or turn pro with very little college experience. It's also not uncommon for retired athletes to go broke because they do not know how to properly manage the millions they made once the source of income dries up.
- The early Han dynasty was notorious for this. Their lineage originating as commoners (Liu Bang being a very minor local official before he rose in rebellion), they were notorious for their Hair-Trigger Temper and very unbecoming behaviour in general.
- The early Ming dynasty also has shades of this (Zhu Yuanzhang being a commoner as well before his rebellion).
- Around 1920 the word Raffke entered the German language; originally a Berlin coinage derived from the verb raffen ("to snatch up") and related to Raffgier ("rapaciousness"), it was applied to those nouveaux riches who had amassed fortunes unscrupulously by profiteering from World War I and the political and economic crises that followed, especially the hyper-inflation of 1923. For a while, there was a spate of Raffke jokes and Fritz Lang once described his villain Dr. Mabuse as a Raffke prototype.
- Most Germans with "old money", even if it only dates back to the 1960s and even if the source is something like a discount store tend to be very reserved figures who rarely make public appearances and whose opinions and sometimes even faces are not widely known to the public. That, of course, makes crass nouveau riche style behavior like that of Reality TV family Geiss (source of wealth: a clothing brand) stand out even more.
- Many "robber barons" of the late 19th and early 20th Century were like this, having wheeled and dealed their ways up to fantastic fortunes they were prone to showing off their money by building Awesome, but Impractical mansions or collecting "art" (usually random collections that didn't go together or have a central theme and often contained many forgeries). John D Rockefeller and Senator William A Clark were both known for this.
- There is a certain style that just instantly screams "third-world dictator" - gold plated chairs, expensive stuff without rhyme or reason and much less taste, expensive food flown in, maybe a side order of abducted singers/actors/directors to make movies for the "dear leader" (e.g. Pulgasari)? Incidentally, most of this seems to come from the fascination some third-world dictators seem to have with Hollywood films about nouveau riche types.
- Donald Trump shows all the ostentation and unculturedness of a nouveau riche despite most of his wealth actually coming from his father. It's often been said that he is "A poor man's idea of a rich man"note although there is eloquent disagreement on that point.
- It's common for social media influencers who made their money on sites like Youtube to end up being boastful braggarts who love making displays of their wealth and bragging to the public.
- Vince McMahon grew up dirt poor in a North Carolina trailer park shack with no running water. He eventually became a billionaire with the WWE and moved to Connecticut, and was apparently loathed by several Old Money Blue Bloods who disdained him for his impoverished background and making his money in wrestling, which was seen as stupid and lowbrow. Vince's regular use of Toilet Humour (including sketches where he'd wet his pants on live television or have his face shoved into a 400-pound man's rear end) and his Non-Idle Rich tendencies to compete in matches himself when he didn't have to didn't impress them either. Vince didn't appreciate their snobbery, and it's said that TripleH's early Blue Blood gimmick was a Take That! towards them.
- Genghis Khan began his life as the isolated son of a single peasant mother. By the end of his life, he owned a fifth of the world's land area. By extension, the entire country of Mongolia went from an isolated backwoods to the center of a powerful empire.
- While Manny Pacquiao may have gotten more or less acquainted with his newfound wealth in recent years, a number of people have commented on his relatives' nouveau riche antics and taste, particularly that of Pacquiao's mother Dionisia who has been the butt of jokes for her preference for Hermes brand luxury bags, especially considering the Pacquiao having been in deep poverty prior to Manny's sudden rise to stardom.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11753: Jul 4th 2022 at 8:29:57 AM
There a large Real Life folder for Toothy Bird. The examples are varying degrees of misuse that don't illustrate the trope, which involves animals that don't normally have teeth but sport them when the critter puts on a facial expression that requires them. Most all examples involve extinct bird species that had teeth on a normal basis, or current life forms that don't have teeth but rather some kind of pseudo-teeth normally. Cut all.
Real Life
- Archaeopteryx, one of the earliest birds to appear in the fossil record, had teeth, making it the Ur-Example. These were lost, along with certain other features like bony tails, in the Neornithes, the group that contains all modern birds. Other toothy birds (the "Enantiorns") also existed during the Mesozoic. The reason only toothless birds exist today is because a few species of toothless birds survived the K-T extinction versus none of the toothed species.
- It should be noted that toothy Mesozoic birds would have had toothy snouts rather than the cartoony, toothed beaks. Even in the ones that did have beaks and teeth (Ichthyornis and Hesperornis, for example), the beak and teeth did not occupy the same space. Because the beak is a keratinous structure like hair, feathers, scales and nails, it is anatomically impossible for (actual) teeth (an enamel-based structure) to grow on the beak. Another early bird, Aurornis, was comparatively more bird-like but still had a toothed snout.
- Dromaeosaurids such as Velociraptor were a far cry from their scaly, reptilian depictions in film, and in real life would have resembled this trope, basically looking like a flightless, fully-feathered hawk with a long tail and a toothed snout instead of a beak.
- Many plant-eating dinosaurs have a beak in the front of the mouth, but a set of teeth in the back. Some, most notably hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs, have hundreds of these teeth for grinding plants. It is now theorized that sauropods may have had a pseudo-beak or keratinous sheath on the mouth, giving the look of a toothy beak.
- Wacky genetics: Scientists have grown chicken embryos with teeth in hopes that it may lead to a breakthrough against baldness.
- French for "when pigs fly" is "When chicken have teeth" ("Quand les poules auront des dents"). Cue the Flying Pigs much?
- The deep ocean squid species Promachoteuthis sulcus looks like it has human teeth. Actually, it's an optical illusion created by the squid's teeth-like lips, but that doesn't make it any less creepy looking.
- Saw-billed ducks, also known as mergansers, are a weird example, as their bills have serrations on the inside edges to help them grip slippery fish. Not true teeth, but their function is similar. From the side, an open-beaked duck looks as if it has a set of minature shark teeth.
- Moa-nalo, extinct large ducks that lived on Hawaii till around the beginning of the 2nd millennium. Related to mergansers, but a different subfamily. They filled the ecological niche of goats and deer and some of them evolved impressive "pseudoteeth".
- The toothlike serrations inside a penguin's mouth, also used to grip fish, are #3 of Cracked's 7 Most Terrifying Mouths in Nature.
- Ducks have tooth-like structures on the sides of their bill called pecten, which are used for preening and straining food from the water.
- Pelagornithids were large extinct seabirds that had prominent tooth-like serrations on their beaks. They may actually share a molecular origin with true teeth, but at any rate were rather fragile and probably used to grasp extremely soft bodied prey like squids.
- Many birds are born with a single toothlike structure in the front of the beak. It's called an egg tooth and is used to break the eggshell during hatching. Some turtles and toothless reptiles/amphibians share this trait. It disappears as the chick grows.
- Whereas the modern platypus is totally toothless, its Miocene relative Obdurodon is considered unusual amongst paleontologists for having teeth. Other extinct monotremes also had teeth... but no beaks.note
- According to That Other Wiki:
The Gorilla Foundation briefly played home to a male green-winged macaw of mysterious origin who had been found inhabiting the grounds and feeding on the loquat trees, though he was not a pet of Koko's in the same way her cats were. Initially frightened of the parrot, Koko named him "Devil Tooth", "devil" presumably coming from his being mostly red, and "tooth" for his fierce-looking white beak; the human staff adjusted the name to "Devil Beak", and ultimately to "DB".
What Measure Is a Humanoid? concerns humans romantically involved with humanoid non-humans, normally portrayed as positive. The single entry in its Real Life folder looks like speculative and nattery trivial blather about humans and proto-humans like Neanderthals that doesn't address the trope's point. Cut.
Real Life
- While it remains a point of contention within the scientific community whether archaic humans such as Neanderthals and Denisovans should be considered subspecies of Homo sapiens or different species altogether, there are definite physiological differences between us to the point of it nearing the Uncanny Valley. In spite of this, one of the several reasons for their extinction is that they were partially assimilated into our genome through crossbreeding, with Europeans and Asians carrying around 2% Neanderthal DNA on average.
There's a Real Life folder for Animal Jingoism. The entries (some of them addressing fictional relationships) are either general examples (several being speculative) or lack the trope's underlying focus of mindless animosity. Cut all.
Real Life
- It's extremely common for popular culture to portray exaggerated or otherwise unrealistic enmities between prehistoric animals, especially dinosaurs:
- Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops are a famous case of this trope. Go into any dinosaur related media and you'll see this trope in action, the T. rex trying to eat the Triceratops while the Triceratops fights back with its massive horns. Truth in Television as well, since fossils of Triceratops have been found with T. rex bite marks on them, and there is even some evidence to suggest that tyrannosaurids and ceratopsids had evolved their enormous size and weaponry partly to fight each other, as the ancestors of the two groups are almost always found together and increased in size at the same rate. On the rare occasions T. rex isn't shown battling Triceratops, you can bet it will be going after either an ankylosaur or a hadrosaur instead. It will also often be depicted hunting Stegosaurus, despite Stegosaurus having died out about 80 million years before T. rex. Thanks to Jurassic Park, it has become popular for T. rex to battle against a pack of dromaeosaurs, especially with the discovery of contemporary large dromaeosaur Dakotaraptor.
- On the subject of prehistory, you can expect Allosaurus to constantly hunt either Stegosaurus or Camptosaurus or sauropodsnote , Deinonychus to Zerg Rush against Tenontosaurusnote , the flying reptile Pteranodon to be snatched out of the sky by predatory sea reptilesnote , pliosaurs or mosasaurs to bite onto the neck of a plesiosaur, Velociraptor to do battle with Protoceratopsnote , Giganotosaurus to harass Argentinosaurus in a packnote , Sarcosuchus to attack and drag Suchomimus to its doom, Spinosaurus to face-off with Carcharodontosaurusnote (or Sarcosuchus, though they didn't live at the same time), Troodon and ornithomimids to raid hadrosaur nests and flee from angry mothers, Gastornis to pursue and devour small horse-like ungulates like Hyracotheriumnote , C. megalodon to battle with large toothed whales like Livyatan, and saber-toothed cats to attack large herbivorous mammals like mammoths or giant ground sloths.
- In older works and reconstructions, Tyrannosaurus would often be portrayed as at odds with or measured against Allosaurus, due to them being the two largest well-know meat eaters at the time, despite Allosaurus being about 80 million years more ancient to T. rex than T. rex is to us. Nowadays, Tyrannosaurus will often be compared to Spinosaurus, thanks to Jurassic Park III, but the anachronism is still there (not to mention that Spinosaurus is from an entirely different continent).
- A particularly bizarre example; Ornitholestes was once commonly depicted as being a specialized bird eater (its name even translates to "bird thief"), and was often shown leaping into the air to grab Archaeopteryx out of the sky. After science marched on, this was revealed to be wrong for several reasons: 1. There's no evidence that Ornitholestes could jump like that 2. Ornitholestes and Archaeopteryx were separated by thousands of miles and 3. Research done later in the field of paleontology suggests that Archaeopteryx couldn't fly at all, meaning that even if Ornitholestes did hunt it, it would not do so in the manner commonly depicted.
- Another example similar to the above would be Megalosaurus against Iguanodon, as they were the very first non-avian dinosaurs to be discovered by paleontologists. This has dropped out of practice in recent works, as the two animals were separated by millions of years. Depictions of Megalosaurus versus Iguanodon were also highly inaccurate from an anatomical standpoint, since at the time dinosaurs were assumed to merely be giant lizards and thus quadrupeds, while the actual Megalosaurus and Iguanodon were both bipedal (though the latter walked on all fours most of the time). The one large meat-eater that would have actually hunted Iguanodon in England was Neovenator, though Baryonyx (who is ironically related to Megalosaurus) would have eaten juveniles as evidenced from fossils.
- At least five separate fossils have been found of the pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus with its wing in the jaws of Aspidorhynchus, a predatory fish, both animals having died in their struggle. Given the incredible rarity of direct evidence of species interactions, there must have been something going on between the two, at least in the Solnhofen lagoon where these specimens were buried.
- Giant squids vs. sperm whales. Any work involving sea life would show these two struggling in the depths; the giant squid grapples the sperm whale with its arms and tentacles as the whale tries to devour the squid. Truth in Television, as dead sperm whales have been discovered with pieces of giant squids in their bellies, confirming that they're part of their natural diet, and both living and deceased sperm whales have been found with scratch marks and scars on their faces made by the suckers and beaks of their prey. However most portrayals of them fighting violently are probably exaggerated, especially seeing as the squid is actually quite a bit smaller than the whale and was most likely only fighting out of self-defense. Indeed, it is believed that giant squid essentially stand no chance of actually emerging victorious from such a "battle".
- There are some predators who are indeed adapted to feed on a certain prey animal, and the prey animal typically develops defenses against the predators in order to keep themselves safe. In many of these cases, if the prey species goes extinct or is otherwise removed from the habitat, the predator species follows soon afterward.
- Lions and hyenas are probably the best real-life example, with lions going out of their way to kill hyenas and frequently steal their food note though lions will also kill and steal from leopards, African wild dogs, and cheetahs if they can catch them. Probably because killing and stealing from the competition is a good survival strategy.
- Wolves will often go out of their way to kill coyotes. This has such a effect on their population coyote numbers plummet in areas where wolves are reintroduced. Coyotes are too small to properly retaliate, but will steal from wolf kills and kill wolf pups if given the chance, which is probably why wolves instinctively kill them in the first place. Though oddly enough, wolves also sometimes mate with coyotes. Coyotes are known to kill foxes in the same way because they compete for prey, although around urban areas they may coexist peacefully because of the abundance of garbage and other food. In turn, red foxes have a tendency to outcompete and outright kill other fox species, such as arctic foxes, when their ranges overlap.
- Orcas frequently go out of their way to kill great white sharks, eating their livers for nutrients. Such attacks resulted in entire shark populations leaving the area even where it's heavily populated with seals which the sharks feed on. Some orcas even have great white shark liver as almost their entire diet.note
- While they can cohabitate somewhat peacefully if given enough space and raised together in captivity, American alligators and American crocodiles will frequently try to force the other out of their habitat or outright attack them if there is a size difference. Part of this is because while they are not at all closely related note , they do hunt similar prey and thus perceive each other as rivals. Multiple zoos do not house them together despite them cohabitating in the wild as the biggest males of the respective species will refuse to stop fighting until one kills the other, and have even been known to break into each other's enclosure to battle it out.
- One of the worst feuds in nature is between owls and crows. Owls are vicious predators that eat other birds and crows are extremely smart. Crows and owls cannot be kept anywhere near each other in zoos and aviaries as they will immediately try to kill each other even if they have never seen one another before. Lions and hyenas can be friends if they are raised together, this is not the case with crows and owls.
- Owls and eagles is also feudtastic like this.
- Donkeys don't take kindly to coyotes. Or wolves. Or domestic dogs. Most canines in fact. There even are videos of donkeys killing hyenas. Donkeys will snap their necks with their mouths.
Ear Notch is a trope portraying an animal with an ear notch as a badass from the wrong side of the tracks. The Real Life folder entries address the notching but not the badass part. Cut all.
Real Life
- Invoked for livestock as a method of herd identification. Some of the more commonly notched livestock species are pigs, sheep, and reindeer.
- Field biologists who study elephants will photograph and sketch their ears, using the distinctive pattern of notches and holes in them (along with the growth pattern of the tusks) to recognize individuals.
- For aquatic creatures it's often the dorsal fin that's notched to assist with individual member identification.
- Rats and cats can gain injuries through fights which result in ear notching. Barn cats can also lose the tips of their ears to frostbite, which still makes them survivors.
- A notch in the left ear on a cat can also mean a stray has been fixed, which is somewhat less badass. Typically, to make it obvious that this isn't merely a battle scar, the entire tip of the ear is clipped off.
- Ear notches are sometimes used to mark laboratory mice to identify them from their cage mates. [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693365, In one case,]] scientists accidentally discovered that a mutant breed of mice they were researching had astonishing regenerative abilities - because their ear notches kept healing away.
- Probably one of the most famous examples is Evander Holyfield getting a piece of his ear bitten off by Mike Tyson in an infamous match contested on June 28, 1997. When Holyfield appeared in animated form on Phineas and Ferb, they drew the bite in his ear.
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better is a trope that demonstrates how fictional animals who are closer to the human end of things express this by being bipedal. The Real Life folder has several trivia examples that are just animals who walk on their hind legs sometimes without expressing an attempt to be closer to a human ideal. Cut all.
Real Life
- Dinosaurs. They're the first bipedal vertebrates known in history.
- It gets a bit complicated. Bipedalism first developed in some Archosaur groups in the Triassic. Among their descendants were the dinosaurs and the crocodilians. Many of these groups later reverted back to quadrupedal designs. Birds descended from a group that was exclusively bipedal.
- This is generally best done by plantigrade mammals, such as apes, baboons, capuchin monkeys, giant pangolins, bears, and the extinct ground sloths, while digitigrades like dogs, rabbits, and cats are generally a little less capable of this and unguligrade animals like horses and cows even less capable of this.
- Most mammals that are bipedal, like kangaroos, wallabies, jumping mice, kangaroo rats, jerboas, and springhares, hop bipedally rather than walk that way (although kangaroos and wallabies are usually pentapedal—walking on all four limbs with the tail acting as a fifth one), and sifakas and indris stand and leap sideways on two legs.
- Cockroaches run on their hind legs.
- Some lizards rise up on their hind legs when running very fast.
- Such as the basilisk... when it runs on water.
- Such as the basilisk... when it runs on water
- Beavers walk on their hind legs to carry armloads of mud and vegetation for use in constructing dams and lodges.
- Young mice go through a "hopper" stage when they first develop the ability to move out of the nest, jumping on their hind feet as much as they walk on all fours. This is probably because early on, their hind legs have more strength and stamina than their forelegs.
Non-Mammalian Hair is a trope that involves non-humans that have hair. The Real Life folder involves animals that don't have hair but look kind of like they might. Misuse, cut all.
Real Life
- Truth in Television: Kiwa hirsuta, the yeti lobster. Although it isn't fur (which is dead), it's actual setae to filter poisonous chemicals from the water of its deep-sea-vent home.
- The later mammal-like reptiles (synapsids) are thought to have been hairy. Seeing as the mammals evolved from them, it's not really surprising. Besides, hair is just modified scales, so it's natural it evolved earlier than mammary glands.
- Many pterosaurs appear to have been covered in hair or fur-like structures. Which, interestingly enough, are thought to be more closely related to feathers, seeing as pterosaurs are archosaurs like dinosaurs and birds.
- Simple feathers are VERY hair like (the "eyelashes" of birds such as ostriches). Seeing that was one of the earliest stages of feather evolution, it is very probable some dinosaurs looked somewhat hairy rather than downy or feathered.
- Anurognathid pterosaurs took this to the extreme, having pycnofibrils (the "pterosaur fur") even on the wing membranes.
- It has been argued that notosuchians, a group of extinct crocodyllians, might have had whiskers or whisker-like scales.
- The Hairy Frog. It's not actually hair and is in fact living tissue containing blood vessels (and grows only on males). They act as makeshift gills by allowing oxygen from water to diffuse right into the arteries; a useful ability for a father frog that has to sit underwater for long periods guarding his eggs.
- Terrestrial arthropods often have short hairs as sensory equipment, although it's made from a different protein (chitin) than mammalian hair (alpha keratin). Still, some even look downright fluffy, such as tarantulas and bumblebees.
- It's obviously not hair, but the Bearded Dragon, an agamid lizard that's popular as a pet, got its name because it looks like it has a beard made of spiky scales.
- Some ambush-predatory fishes, such as deep-sea anglers and frogfish, have hair-like filaments sprouting from their surface as camouflage and/or sensory appendages. Bottom-scrounging fish species such as catfish or loaches likewise use dangling facial barbels to probe the mud beneath them for food, which can look like they're dragging whiskers through the muck.
- Check out the 'do on the white duck!
- Silkies are a breed of chicken whose feathers grow in such a way that they look far more like fluffy hair. Very adorable. Not very practical when it rains.
Removable Animal Markings involves animals who can remove their spots, stripes, etc by having them wash off, fall off, or pulled off. Neither example in the Real Life folder addresses this trope, being varying degrees of trivia that are beside the point. Cut all.
Real Life
- Deer are born with spots, but lose them upon reaching maturity.
- From Wikipedia's article on tigers:
A tiger's coat pattern is still visible when it is shaved. This is not due to skin pigmentation, but to the stubble and hair follicles embedded in the skin, similar to human beards (colloquially five o'clock shadow), and is in common with other big cats.
nw09
Since: Apr, 2018
#11755: Jul 4th 2022 at 11:17:38 AM
Opinions on AnachronismStew.Real Life? I'm not sure it's really possible for this trope to apply in real life, and any examples go better under different tropes.
mightymewtron
Angry babby
from New New York
Since: Oct, 2012
Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
Angry babby
#11756: Jul 4th 2022 at 12:41:01 PM
First example's misuse (the age gap isn't big enough), the second might count as a Discussed Trope but could be folded into Literature if necessary, third is also probably misuse, and fourth argues with itself. But I'm willing to hear out other opinions, maybe the trope's broader than I think.
namra
Since: Sep, 2021
#11757: Jul 4th 2022 at 4:24:14 PM
it has been brought to my attention that loophole abuse has some controversial examples. just to point this out, if a trope has a very long real life section, that's a sign that there is a lot of misuse.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11758: Jul 5th 2022 at 4:21:48 PM
Dye or Die is about people who have to alter their appearance by changing hair color or shaving off/adding facial hair as a disguise. The two examples in the Real Life folder do not illustrate the meaning of the trope, only concerning someone dyeing their hair. Misuse, cut all.
Real Life
- An accidental attempt. When Jennifer Morrison auditioned for House, she dyed her hair brown. When her agent later sent Bryan Singer tapes of her with blonde hair, he apparently said "Wow, this girl's great. We should test her against Jennifer."
- Juliette Danielle, who played Lisa in The Room, was blonde when she made the film but has since reverted to her natural brown. She jokes about how she went to a screening early and walked along the line, chatting to the fans who were waiting. Half of them were happy to see her, and the rest had no clue who she was.
The three Real Life folder examples for Beware of Vicious Dog are general. Cut all.
Real Life
- Truth in Television where dogs who are trained and bred to fight are concerned. Rottweilers in particular have gotten a bad reputation for being vicious because of this, despite not having any more inclination towards aggressiveness than any other breed.
- In other cases, it's just a case of irresponsible owners who never claim responsibility for their dog's indiscriminate hostility.
- Many of the notorious international criminal organizations tend to have their dogs trained and bred to fight and attack outside strangers and maul their enemies as part of their routine, making this trope even more noticed when you encounter any mobster carrying a dog. That's not to say, even the most dangerous dogs have the strongest Undying Loyalty to the mobsters and especially the mob boss, given that they are humans themselves and dogs are their best friends, even the savage ones.
Dogs Are Dumb has a Real Life folder with general examples. Cut all.
Real Life
- There is some Truth in Television to this trope. Dogs do not understand as much language as you would think. It is said that they are responding to one word of the sentence such as 'hungry' or 'walk' or 'stop'. When they respond to sentences like 'leave that little bunny alone' or 'where were you boy?' it is the tone they are responding to.
- Dogs, being animals and not humans, cannot relate events unless they are consecutive. Don't shout at a dog (or God forbid, kick it) because it pissed on the carpet while you were at work, several hours before. The dog can see that you are mad at it but it's never going to make the connection. In fact, it'll probably urinate further to reassure you that it accepts your authority.
- Experiments done on dogs and wolves show that dogs are less likely to try to come up with different solutions to a problem than their wild cousins. A dog will try a few ways of getting to an unreachable treat and then stare at its owner, while a wolf will keep on trying to get the treat long after. It's up in the air as to whether this means that dogs aren't intelligent enough to figure out how to get the treat themselves, or that dogs are intelligent enough to realise that if a human is present then they don't have to figure out how to get the treat themselves. For years scientists thought dogs were dumber than their wild counterparts. The thought was that over the millennia dogs have become complacent due to over-reliance on humans and so they don't use their brain as much as wolves. Studies have shown this to be inaccurate. Neither is quite "smarter" than the other, but dogs excel at certain things and wolves excel at other things. Wolves are more independent and analytical, but dogs' dependence on humans gives them an insight of human behavior and thinking that wolves lack.
- While it is thought dogs have some degree of empathy, critics point out that poorly-trained or aggressive dogs may lack it altogether, which is one of the reasons why they can be so dangerous towards babies, children and small animals if they choose to lash out violently - dogs can feel jealousy, and may deliberately attack or kill new arrivals (think other animals or children) to the family in a jealous rage. Cats too can feel empathy and jealousy, but from a realistic point of view, they’re more likely to express the latter through acting aloof or cool towards the newcomer, gradually warming up to and accepting them in the ensuing weeks after their arrival on the scene.
- Dogs do have proportionally smaller braincases than wolves and behave like wolf puppies well into adulthood. Brain reduction and infantilization are typical consequences of domestication. The less changed species by domestication is, precisely, the domestic catnote . Whereas dogs have been molded by millennia of selective breeding to the point that they are largely different from their wild ancestors, cats, which are thought to have become domesticated by taking advantage of their wild ancestors' tendency to follow human civilisations for scraps of food and vermin to eat, are considerably similar to the wildcats they were developed from. Though both are capable of freely interbreeding with their wild ancestors, a feral cat is significantly more likely to live long enough in the wild to bring about the next generation.
It also has a folder of aversions and subversions which are also mostly general. The one non-general example listed may not count as canine intelligence, either. Cut all.
Real Life
- Relative to most animal life, this trope is completely averted by real dogs. Wolves, from which dogs descend, are "political" animals; they are social creatures mostly safe from predation which have a complex, fluid group hierarchies. These creatures have sufficient advantages over their environment that the greatest inhibition to reproduction is each other, meaning that in order to pass on your genetics, it's not enough to just be strong or fast: you have to be smarter than your fellows as well, which selects for intelligence and social savvy over generations. This is a category shared with whales and dolphins, grey parrots, gorillas, and humans, all known for being remarkably smart.
- Christina H of Cracked (who is a cat owner herself) deconstructs this stereotype (at least as far as "dogs are dumb in comparison to cats" goes) in this article of hers.
Yes, cats themselves are pretty dumb despite what cat propagandists would have you believe. Given two pieces of string, one that gives them food all the time and one that doesn't, cats will never learn to pull just the food string, whereas anyone knows a dog will have it figured out pretty fast (but may also eat the string). Sure, dogs are stereotyped as being lovable but dumb, with cats being their cold-blooded intelligent nemeses, but between that study and everyday observations of either animal staring into a blank corner and barking or meowing for no reason, it seems pretty clear that deep down they're all rock fucking stupid, God bless them.
- In a more serious approach to the question of whether dogs are dumber than cats, the answer to this question is a difficult one. In 2017, a studio published in Frontiers of Neuroanatomy showed that dogs have 530 million neurons in their brains, much more than the 250 million cats have, which theoretically would make for more powerful brains for the canids. However, in the same ranking long finned pilot whales beat us humans in number of neurons, which means this doesn't necessarily prove dogs are smarter than cats. Measuring animal intelligence in experimental conditions is also much easier when working with dogs, as they are happy to obey any order to demonstrate their problem-solving skills where cats would just look bad at their handlers and walk away. Being social animals, dogs also have the interesting characteristic that they consider humans a problem-solving resource too: if confronted by an apparently unsolvable situation, dogs will stop and stare back at the scientists in the hopes they will help them overcome the problem. Whether this proves that they are dumb enough not to have their own experimental initiative or smart enough to try to use humans to their benefit is unknown, but it demonstrates how deep is their social intelligence in comparison to other species.
- In a recent experiment, some dogs were left in a room with a human volunteer and some food. The dogs were explicitly trained and instructed to not take the food, then after a while the lights were turned off. Many of the dogs tried to take the food when the lights went out, seemingly because the human volunteers could not see. Dogs, if only on a fundamental level, understand the concept of deception. It should be noted that dogs have significantly better low-light vision than humans.
- Stray dogs in Moscow have learned how to use the subway system.
- It's more than that. Unlike wolf packs, Moscow's stray dogs, particularly the beggar dogs, have a hierarchy where dominance is determined by intelligence rather than physical strength. Not only do they know how to navigate the subway systems as demonstrated above, but also recognize and use crosswalk signals with fatalities being a rarity. They are adept at figuring out the psychologies of each person in order to determine which technique will work best, even sending out their cutest, smallest members of the pack to garner more success in begging from them.
- This would depend on the sort of intelligence in question, dogs may have lost the ability to navigate a maze to get a treat, but they can persuade a human to solve it for them. Dogs can use people as tools.
- Guide dogs have to be intelligent enough to disobey orders when doing otherwise would put their handler in danger. They also have to be stoic enough to ignore things that would traumatize other dogs, such as loud construction equipment and walking very close to heavy traffic. They're still dogs, though, and a human deliberately distracting a guide dog jeopardizes the safety of the dog and its handler.
- Border Collies have been ranked at the top of lists and indeed, working dogs tend to be on top-ten lists as their ability to quickly learn new commands is a very desirably trait. Border Collie-type dogs are famous for their ability to learn complex patterns and perform well at dog shows as a result.
- This exceptionally clever dog observed how college students pay for snacks, and learned to go into the cookie store with a leaf to “buy” them.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11759: Jul 5th 2022 at 4:22:55 PM
Should Death Glare be crownered? It has a Real Life folder with scads of examples, many of them ZC Es. I'd think this falls under the Too Common category.
the Retromancer
#11760: Jul 5th 2022 at 4:30:45 PM
Really think "things that people do normally anyway" should be IUEO in general.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11761: Jul 5th 2022 at 4:32:26 PM
I'd be fine with a crowner for Anachronism Stew. Many of the examples look like abuse anyway. The trope description says "Please note that this is not a place to pothole any anachronism you find in a work. Those examples belong on the Trivia subpage of that work. This Trope is about the setting/environment of the work, and as such, requires multiple anachronisms affecting how the viewer of the work sees the setting," and the Real Life page seems to in fact pothole any anachronism encountered. This would seem likely to be Impossible In Real Life.
I'm also fine with a crowner for Loophole Abuse. The Real Life page is so big that it has Law and Sports subpages. Too Common would be a good rationale.
Edited by BoltDMC on Jul 5th 2022 at 4:32:52 AM
#11762: Jul 5th 2022 at 9:30:24 PM
The Klutz's real life section is two general examples, one description of a medical condition, and a bunch of troping real people. propose cut and suggest crownering as too common.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11763: Jul 6th 2022 at 3:28:58 AM
The Gerald Ford sub bullet examples can be moved to other folders such as Live Action TV and Western Animation, am thinking. The Matt Smith example can be reworded and added to Live Action TV as a Doctor Who entry. Also, the Bill Dance example can be moved to Live Action TV. Definitely cut all the rest. We probably won’t even need to crowner it.
Edited by BoltDMC on Jul 6th 2022 at 3:30:52 AM
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11764: Jul 7th 2022 at 1:05:15 AM
Can we call Canine Companion on the crowner? It seems stable and it has been up over a week. Thanks.
Also, is there anything else we can put on a crowner at this point?
Edited by BoltDMC on Jul 7th 2022 at 1:05:54 AM
(she/her)
#11765: Jul 7th 2022 at 5:21:47 AM
Called Canine Companion.
Feel free to add anything that has gotten additional feedback to the crowner.
Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 7th 2022 at 8:21:59 AM
Macron's notes
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11766: Jul 7th 2022 at 3:26:00 PM
Just added crowners for We Used to Be Friends and Meatgrinder Surgery.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11767: Jul 8th 2022 at 5:32:27 AM
Calvinball is a very specific trope where a made-up game has "rules" that seem nonsensical and not clearly presented. The Real Life folder is all misuse, involving real sports, non-sports examples, or games with non-standard and clearly delineated rules, as well as general examples. Cut all, comments added.
Real Life
- Many games and sports can seem like this to the newcomer. If you aren't introduced to the rules first, you'll see a bunch of people doing things in a ridiculous specific fashion and avoiding things that appear to be logical, like taking the ball with your hands in basketball, or using hands in soccer. It's even true if you're familiar with one sport and see another that's kind of similar but not the same (like baseball and cricket). General example. Cut.
- One particularly egregious example of this is modern olympic fencing. There are three styles (Foil, Sabre, Epee), and each has their own ruleset. Epee is the most logical to onlookers; touch your opponent to score a point, stay within the allotted space, etc. Foil adds onto this a narrower target area and the idea of "priority", where a fencer's attack can have the right of way over their opponent's simultaneous attack. With Sabre, priority is so important and it has so many more rules that it becomes a wild mess of twitching, stepping, and stabbing to the uninitiated. Real Life sport involved. Cut.
- In North Korea, basketball is played under a set of rules that creates a wildly different scoring system from what you'd see anywhere else in the world. Dunks are worth 3 points and traditional 3-point shots are worth 4 if they're "nothing but net"; shots made in the final three seconds of a game are worth 8; and while free throws are still only worth 1 point, missing one is a 1-point deduction. Real Life sport involved. Cut.
- Many children newly introduced to trading card games don't always have the full starter set or have access to the rulebook (or the inclination to read it). So they tended to try and make sense of the game themselves with what the terms and numbers mean, resulting in many variations and House Rules. General example. Cut.
- Rock–Paper–Scissors is a simple game, so naturally people who think it's kind of boring have tried to spice it up. It typically starts with just two extra symbols (often called "Lizard" and "Spock") Then a game was codified with 101 gestures, and by then, it's a total Calvinball because nobody can keep track of anything. More fun? Perhaps. Useful in dispute resolution? Not so much. Real Life sport involved. Cut.
- In the philosophical treatise Finite and Infinite Games, Professor James Carse divides games into two kinds: finite games, where the rules are fixed and the object is to win; and infinite games, where the object is to continue play and the rules change in order to prevent the game's end. It's deep philosophy, but it fits the trope, since infinite games just wind up sounding like more fun. General example. Cut.
- "Bar Chess" is an exercise in tricking other bar patrons into thinking you're playing a game. You sit in a bar, move things around (like ashtrays or beer mats), and occasionally say things like "Check" or "no, that's against the rules". You can play it outside a bar (college dining halls are great venues). The best players can get others to offer tactical advice. Not a game. Cut.
- Financial markets are often described as a form of Calvinball. The only problem with this analysis is that if the participants actually realize that it's Calvinball, the game (and thus the market) collapses. Not a game. Cut.
- Many fans of the IndyCar Series feel Brian Barnhart's liberal and inconsistent application of an admittedly ill-defined rulebook have essentially reduced the series to an automotive form of Calvinball. Real Life sport involved. Cut.
- NASCAR's Rookie of the Year rules are sometimes accused of this, as they're obtuse and poorly explained. (although a few websites have sorted them out well enough to produce unofficial reports that match the official ones coughed up by the sport's website) As of 2015, restarts have also descended into this due to poor enforcement of the rules, and possible confusion over exactly what constitutes a "jumped" restart. Gamesmanship inside the restart zone (and, by extension, the fact that it's a "zone", not a "line") isn't helping. Real Life sport involved. Cut.
- Schoolyard tag can result in some hilarious rules. The most basic rule apart from "touch someone else" is "no touch backs". It can go up in complexity to include (but not limited to) certain items of clothing, two pounds of spaghetti and a random car accident. Real Life sport involved. Cut.
- Chapayev, a popular ex-USSR board game based on checkers, which can have dozens of spoken/unspoken rulesets and houserules... yet basically goes down to "flick your pieces everywhere until you win somehow". One of the common things among casual Russian players is to turn a round of checkers into chapayev mid-game whenever they get too bored to finish the game the right way. Real Life sport involved. Cut.
- Ezra Klein of The Washington Post gave the game a namecheck when discussing the 2013 US government shutdown: Not a game. Cut.
"As the White House sees it, Speaker John Boehner has begun playing politics as game of Calvinball, in which Republicans invent new rules on the fly and then demand the media and the Democrats accept them as reality and find a way to work around them."
- Every single game with a codified set of rules once started as Calvinball. Their creators made up the rulings as they went along, sometimes beforehand, sometimes in the middle of a game, adding and removing stuff, sometimes for logical reasons, sometimes not. General example. Cut.
Gretzky Has the Ball involves real life sports or games that are described or played with rules from several other sports or games intermixed, meant to show ignorance on the part of the individual involved. There are Other and Real Life folders which can be cut or otherwise altered. These involve misuse of varying kinds that don't illustrate the trope, troping real people like fictional characters, aversions, general examples, misunderstanding of rules, non-sports examples, and a couple examples that can be kept or moved to other folders. Comments interspersed.
Other
- Private Eye has the spoof sports columnist Sally Jockstrap. A typical Jockstrap column might say how pleased she is that Michael Owen (a footballer) is playing in the Six Nations (a rugby tournament) and she hopes he scores a six (a cricketing term) against Paraguay (not one of the six nations, but at this point it hardly matters). Keep.
- Although there is a Welsh Rugby Union player called Michael Owen, which was confusing to overhear in recent commentary. Natter. Cut.
- In MADs parody of The White Shadow, the coach goes on a date with a woman who tells him, "Oh, I love basketball! I just love it when the batter kicks a touchdown basket." Keep.'
- Pretty much every depiction of poker in film or TV features a line to the effect of, "I see your bet and raise you..." In real life, this is a 'string bet' and the player would be forced to only call. Potentially justified if they're only playing informally in their kitchen (since the characters are usually not experts and are really only interested in trying to one-up each other), but on the rare occasion when it takes place in an actual casino, it becomes a problem. Move to Card Games or cut as general.
- This cake.◊ Unclear example, probably misuse. Cut.
- These T-shirts, invoking the trope for laughs. Keep.
- People who are critical of and/or dismissive toward sports and sports fandom often invoke this trope deliberately as a form of snarking. The term "sportsball" is a popular example. General example. Cut.
- "You were sportsing pretty hard out there. A lot of sports happened." General example. Cut.
- "You were sportsing pretty hard out there. A lot of sports happened."
- The Angry DM — a blogger writing about the theory of running Tabletop RPGs as a DM, GM, or whatever they call it in whatever system you use — makes a running gag of intentionally butchering sportsball metaphors wherever possible. For example, from Page 2 of "Everyone's a Leader in Their Own Way": Move to Web Originals.
"Returning briefly to the example of hockeying: a good defensive hockeyist cannot stop at simply preventing the other team's offenders from kicking the ball into the hoop. If the defender simply tackles the offender and sends the ball flying off across the court in some random direction, he has protected his net, but he hasn't really done much for the team beyond that. Instead, the defender should try to steal the ball and pass it to one of his own offenders so that offender can now try to score a check mate."
Real Life
- After the Philadelphia Eagles and Cincinnati Bengals played to a tie in 2008, Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb revealed after the game that he had no idea NFL games could end in a tie. Other players stepped up to defend McNabb's gaffe. Most notably Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger, who stated that probably half the league's players wouldn't know that rule. It's usually spelled out by the referee at the beginning of any overtime period, and if the refs don't, the announcers will. Also, NFL standings have a column for ties. Misunderstanding of rules. Not this trope. Also troping real person. Cut.
- In a 2009 game between the Bengals and the Browns, broadcaster Rich Gannon debated whether the Bengals should run down the clock before kicking an overtime field goal, so as not to allow the Browns time to return a kick. His broadcast partner helpfully reminded him that NFL overtime (under then-existing rules) is sudden death. Edges into Right for the Wrong Reasons, since while there would be no kickoff, the Bengals were running down the clock to prevent the Browns from being able to run a scoring drive of their own in the event the field goal was missed. Misunderstanding of rules. Not this trope. Also troping real person. Cut.
- Shoeless Joe Jackson had the puck in the form of House Member Christopher Shays' "In 1919 the Chicago Blackhawks Scandal...", apparently referring to the "Black Sox scandal" where players of the Chicago White Sox baseball team fixed the 1919 World Series. The Chicago Blackhawks is an ice hockey team founded in 1926. Troping real person. Cut.
- When Sarah Palin resigned the Alaska governorship, she described herself as a "point guard"...and then it got weird. The fact that she played as a point guard in high school and majored in sports journalism just adds to the absurdity. Troping real person. Cut.
- As John McCain's running mate in the 2008 presidential election, Palin appeared at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, and inexplicably stated that she was "thrilled to be here in the home state of the world champion Philadelphia Phillies!" What Palin apparently didn't understand was that baseball fans in Erie, being in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania, prefer either the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Cleveland Guardians (then known as Indians) and hate the Philadelphia Phillies. Troping real person. Cut.
- More than one retired baseball umpire has admitted he had no idea how to correctly identify and call a balk on a pitcher. For reference, Here's The Other Wiki's page on balks. Misunderstanding of rules. Not this trope. Cut.
- The book "The Stupidest Things Ever Said By Politicians" gives us this beauty of an analogy: Non sports example. Cut.
At the end of the field is a field goal and what if the referee were to move the field goal every inning and carry the ball over the finish line.
- Many boxing fans don't seem to realize that the referee and the timekeeper have no official relationship during a fight, and thus unfairly accuse a ref of screwing a fighter with a decision that didn't take time into account. The most infamous examples: Misunderstanding of rules. Not this trope. Cut.
- The "Long Count Fight" of 1927 where Gene Tunney retained the heavyweight title against Jack Dempsey. Many people felt Dempsey was robbed of a knockout win when he floored Tunney in the seventh round because referee Dave Barry spent five seconds ordering Dempsey to go to a neutral corner before starting the count. By the rules, however, this was exactly what Barry should have done since Dempsey didn't immediately do so (many also don't realize this was the first title fight ever to use the neutral corner rule). Some boxing fans have suggested Barry was supposed to have checked with the timekeeper and adjusted his count accordingly; however, there is nothing in the rules saying that's what he should have done. Misunderstanding of rules. Not this trope. Cut.
- The 1990 Julio César Chávez–Medrick Taylor fight when referee Richard Steele declared Chávez the winner by TKO with two seconds left in the final round. Since many observers believed Taylor was well ahead on points and would have won had the clock run out, they were appalled that Steele didn't check the clock and just let it run. But Steele's job was only to see if Chávez's last minute assault left Taylor unable to continue regardless of the time, and since Taylor didn't respond to Steele twice asking if he was okay, it was the right call. Furthermore, when interviewed by Larry Merchant immediately following the bout, Taylor was so out of it that he said Steele didn't even ask him any questions or try to see if he was okay. Also, for the entire time that Steele was giving him a standing eight-count and asking him if he was OK, Taylor never let go of the ropes which he had used to pull himself up, another sign that Taylor probably wasn't fit to continue fighting. Misunderstanding of rules. Not this trope. Cut.
- Brett Hull's goal that won the 1999 Stanley Cup for the Dallas Stars is regarded as one of the worst officiating moves in sports history on the claims that Hull was illegally in the goalie crease. Much of this is based on the Buffalo coach's accusation that the officials refused to review the goal because they didn't want to have to clear the ice and resume the game upon being proven wrong. While the goal itself is debatable, the officials have insisted they DID review the play and ruled that since Hull kicked the puck with his skate, he had possession and the goal was therefore legal. Misunderstanding of rules. Not this trope. Cut.
- When the NHL shortly thereafter announced that goals in the crease were no longer reviewable plays, everyone assumed they were covering their tracks because of the Hull goal, but the league had made that decision before the Stanley Cup Finals began. Misunderstanding of rules. Not this trope. Cut.
- ESPN did a preview of the EURO 2012. Apparently Argentina participates in the European championship, there are only 16 games instead of over 30, and Cristiano Ronaldo looks exactly like Ronaldo (de Lima, from Brazil). Move to Live Action TV.
- In September 2012, Old Navy released a line of licensed NFL t-shirts, emblazoned with the date of every team's last, highest playoff win. note They also made several glaring errors: Move to "Other."
- The Detroit Lions were credited with the 1957 NFC championship. Detroit was the 1957 National Football League champions. There was no National Football Conference until the 1970 merger of the National and American Football Leagues.
- The Cleveland Browns were credited with the 1964 AFC championship... which is wrong on two levels. Not only was there no American Football Conference in 1964, but the Browns were never in the AFL. They should have been credited with the 1964 NFL championship, their last championship and the last championship for Cleveland in any sport until LeBron willed the Cavaliers to the NBA crown in 2016.
- The New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs were tabbed as NFL Champions in 1968 and 1969. They were AFL champions and winners of the last two pre-merger Super Bowls.
- The most egregious error was the Houston Texans being credited with the 1961 AFC championship. Neither the AFC nor the Texans existed in 1961. The Texans didn't exist until 2002; the Houston Oilers (now the Tennessee Titans) were the AFL champions (they played the Dallas Texans, who became the Chiefs in 1964).
- American sports commentators sometimes use the phrase "an old-fashioned rugby scrum" to describe a chaotic mess with players piled on top of each other, or even an outright fight. However, a rugby scrum is structured and tightly regulated. Rucks and mauls, on the other hand, are a different story. General example. Cut.
- Subverted in December 2015: a headline on MLB.com's website reads "A-Rod Scored a Touchdown in Yankee Stadium". No, not the baseball slugger for the New York Yankees. Yankee Stadium hosts the annual Pinstripe Bowl, a college football bowl game that in 2015 was between the Duke Blue Devils and the Indiana Hoosiers. On the Indiana roster was a freshman running back named...Alex Rodriguez. Who was able to run the ball into the end zone in the 3rd quarter of the game, leading to the headline. The game's announcers did some Lampshade Hanging on his name when Rodriguez scored, imitating the home-run calls of long-time Yankees play-by-play announcer John Sterling. Move to Live Action TV.
- Averted with Gretzky's own son Trevor, who has spent several seasons playing minor league baseball. Troping real person. Cut.
- While calling a 2017 NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs, CBS announcer Jim Nantz joked that the score was “3-2 Kansas City, top of the first”. While the allusion was obviously to a baseball score, this would be impossible since only one team has the opportunity to score in each half-inning, and "top of the first" refers to the very first half-inning of the game; thus, one team has had no opportunity to score yet. Troping real person. Cut.
- Many NASCAR announcers have made the mistake of assuming it's legal to go below the yellow or double yellow line on the last lap to make a pass. General example as well as misunderstanding of rules. Cut.
New Rules as the Plot Demands says:
"However, sometimes the story isn't paying attention. This trope is where the rules of a game within a given work are made so vague or complex that there is no possible way they can be understood. Sometimes, the story just makes things up as it goes along. Hopefully, the improvisation will make sense.
This is not about the differences between rules in a work and rules in a game it's based on (the former will often be inherited from the latter), but when the rules of a work don't make sense and violate their own internal logic.
Deliberate and clear cheating which acknowledges that the characters are bending the rules, or finding some technicality to exploit, is also not this trope. The key is implausibility and being unbelievably complex."
The Real Life folder has examples that are misuse or general. Cut all. comments added.
Real Life
- Carnies have a term called an alibi, which is when someone who has apparently won a game of chance is told about a previously undisclosed rule, in order to be able to deny giving them a prize. A common example is stating that the player crossed an invisible "foul line". At least most of them are up front about not allowing underhand shots. Misuse, doesn't fit the above definition. Cut.
- The NFL has some rules that are so obscure that even coaches are not generally aware of them. Sometimes they are called attention to in playoff games, which leads to accusations that the league is manipulating the outcome to allow the more popular team to advance to the Super Bowl. Infamous examples include the tuck rule, which changed the outcome of the 2002 AFC Divisional Playoff Game, and the "Bert Emanuel" rule, so named when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had an apparent pass reception overturned by officials in the 2000 NFC Divisional Championship Game. The latter ensured that the "Greatest Show on Turf" offense of the St. Louis Rams, considered to be more ratings-friendly than the Buccaneers' stifling defense, would reach the championship, while the former extended the chances of the New England Patriots and Tom Brady's star power. A non-playoff example occurred during a 2010 game between the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears, in which a potentially game-winning touchdown catch was overturned when officials ruled that Lions receiver Calvin Johnson failed to maintain control of the ball because he set it down too quickly after catching it. Misuse. This involves judgement calls by referees. Cut this and all sub bullets.
- The problem with the NFL is the amount of nitpicky rules that the human refs are supposed to take into account along with the general vagueness of a lot of rules coupled with the limitations of the review system. For many years, the official NFL rule book was not available on the internet (now it is, along with the offical casebook), and most people aren't privy to NFL officials meetings that clarify interpretations of the rules. Most of the examples would definitely be subjective for these reasons (they may appear to be bad calls to people on the losing end or 50% of non-vested viewers while the other half will feel otherwise). An example: during a punt, the ball was rolling into the end-zone and a player from the punting team dove onto the ball, initiated contact with the ball outside of the end-zone and released contact with the ball after it was in the end-zone. It was ruled a touchback, it was challenged, reviewed and upheld. The rule that allows you to down the ball is called illegal-touching and doesn't clarify (at least in the internet rules version) whether you just have to touch the ball or have to possess the ball for it to be downed. It's interesting because for it to be considered a fumble or a muffed reception, the receiving team merely needs to graze the ball. Interpretations of the rules seem to follow along the US Justice system whereby previous interpretations continue until corrected by a higher authority.
- Illegal touching means that the ball is downed when the kicking team gains control of it and cannot be downed in such a way as to give the receiving team worse field position than when the kicking team first touched the ball. Thus, if a member of the kicking team attempts to down the ball, but it goes into the endzone off his hands, it's a touchback. If the ball is deflected toward the receiving team's endzone and then downed, the ball is placed back where it was first touched. And now for the Game-Breaker: if a ball is touched by a member of the kicking team and a member of the receiving team then gains control before the kicking team does, the ball can be advanced by the receiving team, the receiving team CANNOT FUMBLE. If the kicking team recovers a fumble or intercepts a lateral pass on such a play, the ball is downed instead of going back to the kicking team. This means that, except for the risk of throwing the ball back through your own endzone for a safety, there is no risk to attempting a rugby-style multi-lateral pass play (which, like pulling the goalie in ice hockey, is normally reserved for an end-game desperation play, but is a free option on a delayed penalty, wherein the opposing team is not allowed to gain possession).
- If a hit or tackle causes a major injury too many times, the NFL may declare it illegal, so players best keep abreast of what tackling techniques are allowed and which are not if they want to avoid fines.
- The problem with the NFL is the amount of nitpicky rules that the human refs are supposed to take into account along with the general vagueness of a lot of rules coupled with the limitations of the review system. For many years, the official NFL rule book was not available on the internet (now it is,
- NASCAR has been known to change the rulebook on the fly as needed. Sometimes it seems arbitrary, sometimes it's in response to apparent overdominance, and sometimes it's just figuring out that having people race at full speed to the start/finish line when a caution comes out is less than safe when the reason for the caution flag is a guy sitting helpless a few hundred metres in front of said start/finish line, as such an incident happened with Dale Jarrett in Loudon in 2003. General example. Cut.
- Similarly, the Formula 1 rules on pit stops, tyre management and Safety Car scenarios (just to name the most usual ones) seem to change every year, if not every few months. General example. Cut.
- As society is constantly changing, the law needs to be constantly revised, resulting in constant new laws introduced, and changes to original laws. Due to the obvious potential for abuse, many countries have a law banning or restricting ex post facto laws (also known as a Grandfather Clause), which makes laws unable to be applied retroactively (in other words, you can't prosecute someone if whatever they did was legal at the time). In some countries, new prohibitions cannot be retroactive, but repealing a prohibition is (in other words, if something becomes legal, the perpetrators are released from jail). General example and not game or sports based. Cut.
- The codes for buildings, electricians, plumbers, etc., are constantly being revised and changed to meet with new technology or to address things that were later realized to be not restrictive enough or too restrictive. Keeping up with these code changes is a major part of these peoples' jobs. Like above, there is also a Grandfather Clause which states an installation that was up to code upon installation is still up to code even if such a thing would be prohibited nowadays, unless of course it is so blatantly dangerous that it is an active hazard (knob and tube wiring, lead piping for potable water, and asbestos being three major examples of things that must be removed upon discovery). General example and not game or sports based. Cut.
Redmess
#11768: Jul 8th 2022 at 5:50:36 AM
Actually, Calvinball has no rules except for whatever you make up on the spot, and those rules can be overruled by any other rule. Needless to say, this is the sort of game that usually ends in a fight.
You also, by definition, cannot cheat at Calvinball, because you can make up new rules as you go.
I don't know what real life examples would be. It's not really a game as such, if anything, it is the antithesis to a game.
Edited by Redmess on Jul 8th 2022 at 2:59:40 PM
Optimism is a duty.
the Retromancer
#11769: Jul 8th 2022 at 5:53:10 AM
Thinking it may be difficult to come up with something else that can be NRLEP after a lot of things have been cleared up recently, ironically.
Regarding Calvinball, I think it's too common in life.
Edited by Amonimus on Jul 8th 2022 at 3:54:27 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Redmess
#11770: Jul 8th 2022 at 6:00:35 AM
How would it be too common?
Optimism is a duty.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11771: Jul 8th 2022 at 6:33:21 AM
Calvinball definitely would qualify as Impossible In Real Life, as the games are all made-up by trope definition. Though I think I can cut all the folder's examples anyway. We could try crownering it, for sure.
Edited by BoltDMC on Jul 8th 2022 at 6:34:55 AM
Redmess
#11772: Jul 8th 2022 at 6:58:12 AM
I did notice the definition of Calvinball seems to be watered down a bit with some shoehorns where there are actual rules, which does not seem to fit since Calvinball, by definition, has none.
Optimism is a duty.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11773: Jul 8th 2022 at 7:07:29 AM
That might be a Trope Repair Shop or Short Term Project issue.
TheUnsquished
Filthy casual
from Southern Limey Land
(Life not ruined yet)
Relationship Status: Married to the job
Filthy casual
#11774: Jul 8th 2022 at 7:15:10 AM
New Rules as the Plot Demands is definitely impossible in real life since real life doesn't have a plot.
(Annoyed grunt)
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#11775: Jul 8th 2022 at 7:20:50 AM
Would it be better to crowner this as opposed to removing the folder? Or can we do both? I think I can justify removing the folder contents.
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: 15,911
