Misused: Urban Legend Of Zelda

I remember this issue being brought up a few years ago. A troper deleted the non-gaming examples and moved them to a TLP. The TLP was ultimately discarded and the examples were added back to Urban Legend of Zelda.

Seems like the ball was dropped because the non-gaming stuff should definitely be it's own trope.

If we remove non-video game examples, we'll also have to clean up the description so it's clear that the page is only for "Do x to get y" format urban legends in interactive works like video games. Currently the description contains sections that encroach on regular urban legend territory. That's why I'm opposed to broadening the trope, because we already have an Urban Legends page that includes non "Do x to get y"-style rumors about games.

I wouldn't skim it down THAT far. Just limit to Urban Legends about the video game medium.

Including generic urban legends about video games dilutes the nature of the trope, thus making it People Sit On Chairs. The entire problem is people shoehorning in non video game examples because they don't know that there is already an Urban Legends page. If we retain the trope name then it has to mean something more specific than "urban legends about video games".

I disagree.

I think urban legends related to gaming is specific enough that's not PSOC and limiting the trope to a spefitic kind would run afoul of Tropes Are Not Narrow.

edited 14th Mar '18 3:18:31 PM by shoboni

Would you then have us create separate pages on urban legends for every other medium?

Exactly.

The way I see it is there are 3 types,

• in universe like the Persona 4 example I brought up,
• about a work
  • Enabled or used by the creators in some way.

Real life urban legends usually will get used by some work somewhere so they would be filed under the work that uses them.

No, only on this trope because Urban Legend of Zelda is an established term especially for gaming-related legends.

Much the same way we have Vaporware as a gaming specific version of Development Hell because it's an established term.

The Persona 4 thing you brought up has nothing to do with this trope. This trope is for rumors about video games, such as the various '90s rumors about unlocking Luigi in Super Mario 64. An in-universe example of this trope would involve a rumor about a Show Within a Show that happens to be a video game.

Edit: I wouldn't complain if this trope became about rumors about pop cultural works in general, such as supposed Easter eggs that don't actually exist. What I wrote above was about something that wouldn't fit that definition either (there is no Show Within a Show involved, and anything paranormal is unrelated to this trope) and would be an in-universe example of a regular Urban Legend.

Another edit: I'm actually leaning toward having this restricted to video games; I just don't have that strong of an opinion on adding other media. I do feel that it should be restricted to rumors in the vein of the type of video game rumors originally covered if other works are allowed, because otherwise this trope wouldn't be very distinct from the regular Urban Legend trope.

edited 15th Mar '18 2:33:56 AM by GastonRabbit

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I disagree. The classic Urban Legend of Zelda is specifically about unlocking additional content in the product. Other Urban Legends are not the same concept, even if they involve videogames as a medium. For example, the following two examples are both Urban Legends about what the audience hears, and has nothing to do with unlocking additional content. Nothing about the legend really changes by being interactive or non-interactive. However, some valuable distinctions arise when we restrict it to Easter Eggs that don't exist.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Couldn't have put it better myself. ULOZ, quite simply, is a subtrope of Urban Legends. As it stands, it has too many examples of other urban legends to be anything but a redundant trope page. The only way for it to not be redundant to the Urban Legends page is to purge it of anything that does not fit the above definition.

As for Tropes Are Not Narrow: It can be narrow, as long as it describes a well-known phenomenon that is itself broad. In this case, there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of cases where games allegedly had certain secret content that they were then discovered to not have. It's a very straightforward and famous concept.

I should add that I'm leaning toward having this restricted to video games; I just don't have that strong of an opinion on making this about pop culture in general. My opinion is that if we allow other types of works, we should keep the rumors restricted to ones in the vein of the ones we listed for video games under the trope's original definition, as in rumors about things that could realistically happen, since the original definition involved a type of supposed secret that wasn't true, but wasn't something the developers couldn't have actually done if they wanted to. To go back to the Luigi in Super Mario 64 rumor I previously mentioned, it wouldn't have been outright impossible for him to be in the game in some way; he was planned for a scrapped sequel Nintendo Power once mentioned and was in multiple non-scrapped Nintendo 64 games, and was eventually in the game's DS version.

I think anything that couldn't realistically happen shouldn't be allowed even for video games (maybe it could go on the regular Urban Legend page); for example, the suicide-related examples crazysamaritan listed sound too outlandish for this trope, because that's the sort of thing the news couldn't resist covering; if the Pokémon anime causing seizures caused a panic, outright deaths definitely wouldn't go unnoticed.

Edit: If we make this trope video game-specific again, I think it should be limited to examples that are inherently specific to video games or maybe a series of games, even if they aren't necessarily related to unlockable content. Lavender Town Syndrome could have easily been about a film soundtrack; it features video games completely incidentally. Urban legends that involve video games for the sake of being about video games might as well be a video game subpage of the regular Urban Legend page because that would be The Same, but More Specific.

Another edit: Just to clarify, if we allow non-video game examples, I think that the type of work or a specific work being involved non-incidentally should still apply, as well as the legends being something that could realistically happen, but didn't. That's why I previously mentioned nonexistent Easter eggs in movies and TV shows as an example.

edited 15th Mar '18 12:57:03 PM by GastonRabbit

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

The idea that this term is widely used in the gaming community does not stand up to the most basic googling. There are barely three pages of results, and most of them are either our pages, or quoting our pages.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

If it matters, the trope used to be called Schala Lives and was probably renamed for clarity's sake. The old name was referencing rumors about the then-ambiguous (when the game was released, not when the trope was launched) fate of a character from Chrono Trigger, which was later covered in Chrono Cross. Still, the old name implies that it was intended for video games.

edited 15th Mar '18 3:07:33 AM by GastonRabbit

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

The term itself does not have to be used widely. The concept it refers to, on the other hand, clearly is an established trend, a unique phenomenon. It deserves a trope page of its own. What we name it is irrelevant.

I do want to add that I think we should keep examples of this trope cropping up in fiction, i.e. fictional games being said to have secret content that they don't actually have, or even real games showing up in fiction and being said to have secret content that they don't actually have. Of course, we'd have to note that these are In-Universe examples, but we have plenty of pages that do that, so that won't be an issue.

I agree that this would be the ideal definition of an in-universe example if we go back to restricting this trope to video games.

Edit: I'd like to add that maybe in-universe examples involving real games could involve rumors that were completely made up by the creators, instead of preexisting rumors about said real games. Alternatively, maybe a preexisting rumor could turn out to be true in-universe.

edited 15th Mar '18 2:56:28 PM by GastonRabbit

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

To be clear, I'm not in agreement with this restriction. I don't believe "video game medium" is the proper restriction for ULOZ.

Rumors of any Easter Eggs from any format that are actually untrue is what I am supporting. This would include people claiming a certain vinyl soundtrack, when played in reverse, features a different song or speech. It would include a bonus clip from a DVD, so long as the bonus content only existed in rumours.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

That would still be distinct from the regular Urban Legend trope. What I definitely don't want this trope to cover is urban legends that involve a pop cultural work or type of work incidentally and could have been put in separate contexts, because that would be The Same, but More Specific.

Edit: For the record, I said I was leaning toward returning to the original definition. I think that if we allow examples for pop culture in general, there should be more to the trope than simply listing Urban Legend examples that involve pop culture in some form. For example, I don't think anything involving the paranormal or conspiracies should count because those types of urban legends don't need to involve pop culture. The idea that The Beatles hid references to death in their music would count (in particular, backmasking is audio-specific; while supposed hidden images in movies and TV shows may involve footage manipulation, said manipulation doesn't involve playing the footage in reverse), while the rumor that Paul McCartney died and was replaced by a look-alike would be a regular urban legend that involves a musician; the latter rumor could have been about a movie star or politician instead, for example.

Another edit: I've been sick for quite a while and am just recently posting on TRS again, so my brain isn't exactly working at full capacity. To give a briefer explanation of what I think this trope should cover if we allow non-video game examples, I think that the urban legends should be inherently specific to a type of work and/or a creator of works. I think that the same criteria should also apply to video games, regardless of whether we go back to only listing those.

Yet another edit: You know what, now I'm leaning toward allowing pop culture rumors in general. I just think that the pop culture element in the urban legend (such as hidden audio in music or hidden images in movies) has to be integral for the trope to be a legitimate subtrope instead of The Same, but More Specific; in other words, legends that would work even if you removed the pop culture aspect would be the latter.

edited 16th Mar '18 8:07:52 AM by GastonRabbit

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I still stand with this two-part plan:

1)Slightly Expand Urban Legend of Zelda to include all gaming related urban legends and rumors

2)Split off the other mediums to their own trope to preserve it as a gaming term. Much like how we have Vaporware as a video game specific version of Development Hell.

edited 16th Mar '18 12:09:45 PM by shoboni

Does anyone know how we'd deal with Polybius (the alleged 1981 game) here? It's not the typical fake work, because of its rather... unique status within the gaming community.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

First mention was also WAY BACK before Creepypasta was a thing. The name cropped up in 2000 on a database of arcade games and the person to make the entry claims they have an actual rom dump of the real game.

It counts as Defictionalized either way because several fan-versions have been made. One dev even did a period correct version via Atari 2600 homebrew and made 30 functional game carts they sold at a gaming expo.

In my proposed model, it would be part of the overall Urban Legends, because the story does not feature any Easter Eggs.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

It doesn't really matter in the end, since I'm not the one making the official division, but I feel like siding with Shoboni and Gaston Rabbit on this one.

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