Note: If a newly launched trope was already given a No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only designation while it was being drafted on the Trope Launch Pad, additions to the proper index do not need to go through this thread. Instead, simply ask the staff to add the trope via this thread
.
This is the thread to report tropes with problematic Real Life sections.
Common problems include:
- Conversation on the Main Page
- Flame Bait
- Squicky content
- Impossible in Real Life
Real Life sections on the wiki are kept as long as they don't become a problem. If you find an article with such problems, report it here. Please note that the purpose of this thread is to clean up and maintain real life sections, not raze them. Cutting should be treated as a last resort, so please only suggest cutting RL sections or a subset thereof you think the examples in question are completely unsalvageable.
If historical RL examples are not causing any problems, consider whether it would be better to propose a No Recent Examples, Please! (via this forum thread
) for RL instead of NRLEP. If RL examples are causing problems only for certain subjects, consider whether a Limited Real Life Examples Only restriction would be preferable to NRLEP.
If you think a trope should be No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only, then this thread is the place to discuss it. However, please check Keep Real Life Examples first to see if it has already been brought up in the past. If not, state the reasons and add it to the crowner.
Before adding to the crowner:
- The trope should be proposed in the thread, along with reasons for why a crowner is necessary instead of a cleanup.
- There must be support from others in thread.
- Any objections should be addressed.
- Allow a minimum of 24 hours for discussion.
When adding to the crowner:
- Be sure to add the trope name, a link to where the discussion started, the reasons for crownering, whether the restriction being proposed is NRLEP or LRLEO (and in the latter case, which subject(s) the restriction would be for), and the date added.
- Announce in thread that you are adding the item.
- An ATT advert should be made as well (batch items together if more than one trope goes up in a day).
In order for a crowner to pass:
- Must have been up for a minimum of a week
- There must be a 2:1 ratio
- If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple extra days to see if any more votes come in
- Once passed, tropes must be indexed on the appropriate NRLEP or LRLEO index
- Should the vote fail, the trope should be indexed on KRLE page
Sex Tropes, Rape and Sexual Harassment Tropes, and Morality Tropes are banned from having RL sections so tropes under those indexes don't need a crowner vote.
As per Real Life Troping, we never trope unscripted real life sports — so sports tropes where RL examples would only apply to those scenarios don't need a crowner vote.
Crowner entries that have already been called will have "(CLOSED)" appended to them — and are no longer open for discussion.
After bringing up a trope for discussion, please wait at least a day for feedback before adding it to the crowner.
NRLEP tag:
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
LRLEO tag:
%%The following restrictions apply: [list restriction(s) here]
%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800
Notes:
- This thread is not for general discussion regarding policies for Real Life sections or crowners. Please take those conversations to this Wiki Talk thread
.
- Do not try to overturn previous No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only decisions without a convincing argument.
- As mentioned here
, the consensus is that NRLEP warnings in trope page descriptions can use bold text so that they stand out.
- The [[noreallife]] tag no longer works. This is a deprecated tag that was introduced many years ago — originally, it would have displayed a NRLEP warning banner when you edited the page. Per word of admin
as of 2025, any replacement for this system will not use markup, so these tags can be removed.
- If a newly launched trope was already given a No Real Life Examples, Please! or Limited Real Life Examples Only designation while it was being drafted on the Trope Launch Pad, additions to the proper index do not need to go through this thread. Instead, simply ask the staff to add the trope via this thread
.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 3rd 2025 at 6:31:00 AM
I proposed having Steel Ear Drums crownered because the trope is impossible in real life and all of the real life examples are aversions of people suffering from hearing loss from loud sounds.
Once Upon A Time.![]()
![]()
Real life doesn't have aversions (or subversions, deconstructions, etc), those can be cut.
![]()
We can just cut any aversions or general examples of Steel Ear Drums without having to crowner.
I'm pretty okay with crownering Nightmare Face, as do a lot of people.
Are we okay with crownering Outliving One's Offspring as well?
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose meSteel Ear Drums is impossible, so i vote to crowner. OLO as well for gossip and poor taste.
false flag operation is supposed to be a morality trope. in addition, it's real life section is long and has some rocej examples.
Why is it a morality trope? It doesn't make moral judgement.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallOk, so we have:
- Nightmare Face - Gossip and Stereotypes
- Outliving One's Offspring - Too Common (I know it can fit under multiple tropes, but the world is a cruel place and it happens all the time, also Too Common is consistent with the extra large RL sub-page)
- Steel Ear Drums - Impossible in Real Life
I'll let this sit here for a bit before hollering a mod to crowner them, unless there are objections.
Linking discussion posts like this?:
Edited by laserviking42 on Sep 11th 2022 at 9:42:27 AM
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
I still think we could use tropes like Please Wake Up and Outliving One's Offspring to springboard the "other" category we discussed at the last thread, tbh (and I'd personally start linking to the discussion posts instead of or alongside of the categorizing).
On a side note, I ran across Gold Fever on a wiki walk today. I don't feel it should be crownered, but the RL section is a bit wonky, so I'd like to run this cleanup by the thread before I hack and slash.
Note that Gold Fever is a trope for characters, when confronted by riches, decide to screw each other over in order to get the most loot. With that in mind:
- While not to the point of full-on mania, gold and silver stackers (people who collect the precious metals for investment as well as a hobby) are a very dedicated group, and often set out with the goal to get as much of the stuff they can get their hands on, for varying reasons. With the rise of the internet, it’s not unheard of to see stackers proudly showing off their latest hauls of tens or even hundreds of ounces of silver on sites such as YouTube, and it’s hard not to feel a bit of the gold fever rising as a viewer, either!general example, cut
- In 1306, English forces besieging Scottish rebels at Kildrummy Castle managed to bribe a royal Scottish blacksmith named Osbourne who, in exchange for all the gold he could carry, set fire to the defenders' food supply. Once the castle was taken, the disgusted English betrayed Osbourne, and paid him by melting the gold and pouring it down his throat.keep
- Hernan Cortez and other conquistadors conquered the New World in search of gold (and new lands), which was why myths of El Dorado, the fabled City of Gold, were so persistent. The funny thing is that Cortez went bankrupt multiple times in his life and died heavily in debt, while Spain grew rich from its colonies but squandered that wealth in continental conflicts and eventually lost its empire to overreach. The less funny thing is the millions of dead natives this conquest entailed (mostly due to Old World diseases, though the Spanish did encourage the spread of these plagues).keep
- Of particular note is the Philippines: Spanish records note that the native Filipinos were covered in golden jewelry. This wasn't unusual for the wealthy, but when it turned out that common people like maids and farmers also owned a surprising amount of gold and silver, that's when this trope really set in.natter, indentation and general, cut
- During the Gold Rush in the mid-nineteenth century, some people would go to absurd lengths to defend a staked claim. It was most famous in California, but other gold rushes had them too, even the Yukon gold rush.feels too general to me, cut
- Mere rumors of gold could spark a mass exodus of towns. This nearly happened to San Francisco once gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill when the locals flocked to the countryside but before those from the east arrived at the port to seek their own fortune via the long boat trip around South America - its population crashed to just 250 people in that intermittent period.tangential at best, cut
- Amusingly, the people who profited the most during the Rush weren't the miners, but the people who exploited the miners' need for goods and services. Considering that the basic unit of currency at Gold Rush boom towns was "a pinch of gold dust", the staples of life could get quite expensivenothing to do with the trope, general, cut
- The Gold Rushes of the 1850s in New South Wales and Victoria are credited as the most important moment in the development of the Australian colonies. Victoria's population grew up a factor of seven in a decade, and by 1880, Melbourne was one of the largest and most important cities in the British Empire. The allure of gold was so great that men would reportedly throw down their tools, abandon their families, and travel hundreds of kilometers in the days before anything more reliable than the bullock train for even the slightest chance of striking it rich.general example, cut
- In 1868, the Treaty of Fort Laramie ended Red Cloud's War and created the Great Sioux Reservation in Montana and Wyoming. In 1875, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, prompting a wave of illegal white immigrants. In 1876, the Great Sioux War began. In 1877, the fighting was over and the United States took control of the region, and any remaining Sioux were shipped out to other reservations.general example, cut
- In the late 1990's, a Canadian mining and geology company called Bre-X claimed to discover what was assumed to be the largest gold deposit in history on the Indonesian island of Borneo. The problem was that Bre-X was not nearly large enough of a company to fully extract the amount claimed to exist. Cue months of deals and brokering over which company would have the privilege of assisting with the extraction as everybody involved attempted to attain a piece of the action. These shenanigans involved such figures as former President George H. W. Bush, Indonesian President Suharto and former Canadian Prime Ministers. As for the actual gold, however...this is a well known case of fraud, but I don't think it applies to the trope, cut
- Due to the state of economy in the 2009-2013 time frame, there's been something of a gold fever in the investment market, as gold is seen as a reliable investment when stocks are going down. As a result those who had good deposits of the stuff before the 2009 recession are easily raking triple profits to what they paid for it in the first place. In August 2011, the price of gold rose higher than the price of platinum. Even after the gold crash of 2013, it only hit a low of $1200 per Troy ounce, which was still 1.5 times the price it had in 2008.nothing to do with the trope, cut
- Akin to the Discworld example mentioned under Literature, some people in the United States are seriously advocating a return to the gold standard. This, despite the rather obvious problem (among many others) of not having enough actual gold to do it.nothing to do with the trope, cut
- During an appearance on Opie & Anthony, Louis C.K. mentioned that he kept gold coins for emergencies, but said he was uncomfortable owning more than a few at once, because he was apprehensive about this trope coming into play.I'm iffy on this one, I'll leave it to the crowd
- In the late 2010s and early 2020s, there was a digital equivalent of a gold rush: crypto. For some reason or another, cryptocurrency was gaining alot of value rapidly, leading people to hoard computer hardware that could, ironically enough, "mine" it. The best bang-for-buck hardware to mine said crypto? Video cards. This led to scalpers buying up whatever video cards they could to sell back. This became especially bad during the COVID-19 pandemic where supply was strained and scalpers armed with bots kept video cards existing only on paper for most people. Worst yet, the scalpers would turn them around and sell them back on the open market for easily 2-3 times their original cost.general example, cut
If there's no objections (or other examples to be brought up), I'm going to clean out the discussed examples and sections for IJustShotMarvinInTheFace.Real Life
CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floorsabout false flag operation. it is moral because it states it's about villains committing acts and blaming it on other people.
Don't stop at the laconic. It's false. The description says nothing about villains, it's just an ordinary military and espionage strategy.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
That's not very helpful, it would be better if you had examples of such things instead of just being vaguely "most of them"
I did take a look at the section, there is quite a bit of natter and general examples that could do with a scrubbing. Perhaps start there first?
Also we have a thread for ROCEJ
issues too.
The reason I'm asking is because it's much easier to discuss if the problems are brought to the forefront rather than something other people have to find themselves.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI'm not saying it's not obvious, but that I don't have the time to do a deep dive of my own and since you're the one who wants the page to be cleaned it's just fair if you explain which examples need cleaning.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wallnamra, I have to say that was quite a rude statement. You have a habit of making vague requests on here, and whenever you're asked for specifics, you either make another even vaguer statement or resort to petty insults like the above.
It would really help if you made specific statements and requests (not to mention, learn to use capitalizations).
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose meWouldn’t False Flag Operation count as being too controversial rather than being a morality trope?
Once Upon A Time.![]()
i resemble that remark
a False Flag Operation isn't inherently evil and if the description says that it is we might need to take a look at it. heroes can use them against villains too, for instance to instigate infighting among allied foes.
Edited by ChloeJessica on Sep 11th 2022 at 7:42:28 AM
Crown Description:
Vote UP to cut real life examples; vote DOWN to keep. Anything marked DONE has been resolved. In order for a crowner to pass:- Must have been up for a minimum of a week
- There must be a 2:1 ratio
- If the vote is exactly 2:1 or +/- 1 vote from that, give it a couple extra days to see if any more votes come in
- Once passed, tropes must be indexed on the appropriate NRLEP or LRLEO index
- Should the vote fail, the trope should be indexed on KRLE page

Edited by Hello83433 on Sep 11th 2022 at 2:37:45 PM
CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors