Should "It Was His Sled" and "All There Is to Know About 'The Crying Game'" be merged?

The danger in having the two as separate tropes is that it's a bit of a treadmill. It being his sled eventually becomes all there is to know about a work, and that reference work eventually becomes forgotten. We even acknowledge on the page for Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure that eventually, "even All There Is To Know About The Crying Game is forgotten (along with The Crying Game itself) except for the trope name itself, rendered a Non-Indicative Name." And at least for this troper, the treadmill has already happened. I have no clue what The Crying Game is supposed to refer to, and Rosebud being the sled is all I know about Citizen Kane. We could always pick a safer example, like Darth Vader being Luke's father in place of It Was His Sled, but that also has the problem of clashing with Luke, I Am Your Father as a trope name.

So instead, I propose just merging the two pages and grandfathering in "It Was His Sled" as a legacy title. It seems easier than constantly having to come up with new reference works for each concept.

I think so, since this strikes me as The Same, but More Specific.

This makes sense to me too. Seems like even though All There Is To Know About The Crying Game says to contrast with It Was His Sled in the post, its description then ends up feeling a bit nitpicky, and then feels like it lacks actual contrast.

In that case, I think I'll work on a draft version of a combined page, assuming "It Was His Sled" as a title for the combined trope.

Instead of working on a merged page, you should head over to TRS.... without that step your merge isn't actually going to happen.

He made a post about this here.

It's awaiting mod approval.

According to OP's logic, It Was His Sled and ATITKATCG should be merged with Non-Indicative Name. They're all separate tropes. Sled is when a spoiler is no longer a "spoiler" per se, and All There Is happens when the work is largely forgotten other than a twist or major spoiler.