How sweet it is
If you did a wick check, you should show the results instead of just saying what you got. We're not psychics.
I'll clock this thread. If I don't see a wick check, the thread will be closed.
Edited by Berrenta on Jun 5th 2019 at 9:23:55 AM
she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report
It was a couple months ago and the misuse was fairly obvious, so I started the thread early before re-doing the wick check. I'll do it again.
603 wicks, so minimum 50 checks; I went with 55, or ~9% of wicks, in case of meta examples or random mentions of the trope.
The Random Number God was unkind, it somehow didn't give me anything from Series/, which has 6% of the wicks.
"Correct" here means not referencing the actual Church of Scientology.
"Misnamed Scientology" means substituting Happyology for Scientology in the text when referring to Scientology itself.
"Sinkhole" is potholing a reference to Scientology to this trope.
- In Dead Space, by the time of the third game, some Unitologists have taken up arms and are activating Markers everywhere they can.
- Synthiotics/New Realism in the cyberpunk miniseries Wild Palms had two versions, really both extensions of the same authority, that of the Church's founder, Senator Kreutzer: one was a well-dressed bunch of thugs in suits who beat up and silenced people (they worked more or less directly for the Senator's crypto-fascist political organization, the Fathers); the other was a group more closely affiliated with the Senator's religious role as founder of Synthiotics: They dressed like naval sailors and accompanied young demagogue Coty Wyckoff.
- Bender from Futurama is sometimes this. His occasional religious conversions have been fleeting, but he gives his son Ben a "Bot-Mitzvah" at the Church of Robotology in "The Bots and the Bees," and claims that his pastor helped him work through his grief when Fry is thought to be dead in "Fun on a Bun."
- My Dad's Tapes: One of the videos centered around interviewing a woman who had escaped from the actual Church of Happyology...
- In Underground by Mayfair Games (published in 1993), the U.S. in 2021 is dominated by two political parties, the Plutocrats, founded by H. Ross Perot (the movement that would become the Reform Party in the real world), which had the position that whatever is good for the rich is best for the entire country, and the Republicrats (a centrist union of the Democrats and Republicans which generally exists to oppose whatever the Plutocrats want). European politics are dominated by the ARC Party run by the Church of Happyology, which runs the European Union as a single-party dictatorship.
- At the very end of Dead Space 3 Isaac and Carver meet the leader of Unitology who is holding Ellie hostage, threatening to kill her. To dissuade him, Carver gives him the MacGuffin, allowing the maniac to free the Eldritch Abomination, potentially dooming the entire humankind. Now, what about using the damn stasis? You know, that power that allows them to almost freeze the target for an easy kill?.
- Finally, another form of it is combined with religious abuse: a religion or sect or guru demands monetary donations or time that could be spent elsewhere to the extent that the donations or lifestyle damages the givers' financial well-being, and/or demands exorbitant donations for advancing in the religious system, faith healing, initiations, or similar. The Church of Happyology is infamous for this, but there have been many other less well-known examples too.The main villain of Chihaya Mifune's confidant turns out to be doing this, as the leader of a Church of Happyology style New Age cult; as well as making people pay extortionate amounts for seminars, he has Chihaya embroiled in a business of selling "Holy Stones", supposedly mystic orbs capable of changing a terrible fate that are actually worthless balls of table salt in reality.
- In "The Joy of Sect," Reverend Lovejoy is seen spreading petrol over the floor of his church after everyone converts to Movementarianism. "I never thought I'd have to do this again."
- Doubly so if it's a Scientologist, as they view the two as one and the same. Since its inception, the Church of Scientology has held that psychiatry is nothing more than a crooked racket of drug-pushers (it was one of L. Ron Hubbard's big Berserk Buttons, as psychiatrists were instrumental in opposing his Dianetics self-help system), and therefore, people who use medication to treat mental illness are junkies who are kept addicted by their greedy doctors. Tom Cruise infamously landed in hot water for this when he criticized Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants.
- A Credits Gag for the South Park episode "Trapped in the Closet" had everybody's name as "John Smith" or "Jane Smith". It's mainly to poke fun at a specific religion's reputation for lawsuits against anyone who pokes fun at them. It is by no means a measure to protect the people who worked on the episode from having disproportionate retribution leveled on them by a sociopathic cult. That would be silly.
- Occasionally, this is the form that an Ancient Conspiracy would take. Distinct from the Corrupt Church, in that instead of being a legitimate religion that went bad, the Path of Inspiration is by design rotten to the core; the Scam Religion, in that the Path's leaders are true believers, not con artists; and the Religion of Evil, in that the religion is not openly evil. The typical high-ranking member is a Straw Hypocrite. Usually has a Dark Messiah as the figurehead, whose outright evil is part of The Reveal. May overlap with Hollywood Satanism, especially in Conspiracy Theories. May also include references to, or parallels with, the Church of Happyology.Runaways: The Church of Gibborum is a Church of Happyology that appears to be a friendly charity organization that worships a cosmic "Spectrum" of color and light. The current leader, Leslie, is using it to sacrifice runaways to revitalize the immortal Jonah. Leslie's daughter, Karolina, is a main character and portrays the religion positively despite the dangers of the church itself. It's repeatedly implied that Leslie's father founded the entire church to worship Jonah in the first place, though he's normally spoken of in metaphor, so most people don't know the real purpose.Dead Space features the Unitologists...and their Marker, which unleashed a horde of zombies when the Unitologists began not only studying it, but worshipping it (and the guy who found it). More generally, they're aiming for an Assimilation Plot—but interestingly, they don't keep that part a secret. They just don't tell people that the assimilation involves getting murdered by bloodthirsty zombies and bonded to an undead necromantic Hive Mind.Morninglight from The Secret World is part Church of Happyology, part Mansonesque hippie cult. And they secretly worship an Eldritch Abomination (although most members are blissfully unaware of that fact) .
- In Ultima VII, ignoring all of the Copy Protection tests, joining the Fellowship is accompanied by a verbal test administered by Batlin. It handles like a situational examination, with Batlin performing a pragmatic spin on even rather good answers, and, ultimately, you are encouraged to join the Fellowship regardless of how you answer.
- You know, there's also at least one religious movement known to be really touchy about its public image that has a tendency to sic lawyers and protesters on anyone who says even remotely unflattering things about it.
- Grand Theft Auto V has the Epsilon missions. The vast majority of them are not fun or challenging; they're tedious, time-consuming, scattered all over the map, and require you to spend exorbitant amounts of money to advance in. One requires you to wear a set of robes for ten days straight; the only way to conceivably complete it is to continue going to bed without ever switching to another character. Another mission requires you to deliver five rare cars; if you don't know where they happen to spawn, then it's a huge case of Guide Dang It!. The most infamous mission requires you to run five miles in the desert. And just to rub salt in the wound, the missions are notoriously buggy; saving at the wrong time can make them impossible to complete. The silver lining is that this is one of the only side quests in the game that actually gives you a sizable monetary reward should you actually complete it.
- A less literal version of this is pretty much universal in any religion concurrent with or predating early Christianity. While it wasn't usually a literal book due to low literacy rates even among priests, secret rituals and prayers giving the priest greater influence on various things were pretty much par for the course, especially in early Hinduism and the Roman mystery cults. Some current religions still work like this.
- Michael Altman from Dead Space supposedly founded the Church of Unitology. However, he was actually simply a geophysicist who found the Black Marker, and people started worshiping it and called him their Messiah. In an interesting twist at the end of Dead Space: Martyr, he was killed by government agents to make him appear as a Martyr, fueling the flames and allowing them to get rich off donations. They succeeded.
- Church of Happyology: The Coil has heavy shades of this.
- Church of Happyology: The Fifth Church, who wrote this book. This article is their first proper introduction to the SCP canon.Church of Happyology: Mentioned in passing; William and his friends were kicked out of the Fifthist Church.
- Church of Happyology: The Numistic Order gives this impression, though their products actually have concrete benefits.
- Church of Happyology: The Morninglight qualify in just about every respect. Among other things, they're supposedly a self-help group, but behind the scenes they're actually a fanatical religious movement; their tenets are based on a scam or hey were up until the Dreamers took over the cult; they worship their leader as a messiah; they're notoriously protective of their public image; and last but not least, they take a very dim view of defectors.
- Late to the Punchline: When Sitara talks about "cornholing
" New Dawn, she has to explain to Josh the word means "where the corn goes after you eat the corn". It takes him nearly a minute to understand what the word means when it's used as a verb:
Church of Happyology: Is a member of the New Dawn, although he is beginning to have doubts about the religion.
- Church of Happyology: In some ways The Order of Ancient Mysteries comes off as a sort of pre-WWII version of this in Midnight Theatre, which is a bit odd considering Gaiman's upbringing...
- Fit it into a different section so it doesn't count as a Real Life example. A website is popular among certain controversial groups of people you don't like? If there is a trope for villainous or otherwise negative portrayals of said group, add it to its Web Original section. An actor got caught in a sex scandal? Put all the details in the appropriate Sex trope's film section. Dislike a musician's religious beliefs? Put them in the music folder for Scam Religion and Church of Happyology (and add these tropes to the musician's page). Alternatively, just create an "Other" section and add your examples there.
- Church of Happyology: The Reformed Luciferian Church.
- Church of Happyology: Victor's church comes across this way, even though it's probably supposed to be of a standard Christian denomination (despite serious mentions of Victor bringing bad karma and negative energy by being related to a homosexual). The congregants believe that Victor's brother being gay will somehow turn their children into homosexuals, and the priest encourages Victor to kill Arthur in order to get into heaven. Even Arthur, who isn't a fan of religion, regards this as being one monumentally screwed-up church.
- The whole segment about what Happyologists believe with a disclaimer literally saying: "This is What Scientologists Actually Believe."
- During various lawsuits, the Church of Scientology tried to have various documents that had leaked taken out of circulation through copyright claims. However to prove that the documents were the same, Scientology had to provide copies of their own secret documents, which would then be summarized on public record. In this fashion many of Scientology's wackier beliefs were made public, including the infamous Xenu myth. The church has experienced a huge decline in new membership since these revelations.
- Bless the Child is notable because it was one of two projects from the year 2000 (the other being I Dreamed of Africa) that Kim Basinger chose to follow her Academy Award winning performance in L.A. Confidential three years prior. Unfortunately, Bless the Child wound up bombing at the box office (it only made $29,381,494 against a $40 million budget) and collecting only a 3% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 17/100 rating on Metacritic. As a movie, Bless the Child tries very hard to be a supernatural horror film with heavy religious overtonesnote (in the vein of The Omen), but it failed on every single level. For starters, the movie in general is very predictable, cliché ridden, and even sometimes downright boring (coupled with Kim Basinger's often emotionally passive performance). The religious aspects of the movie are completely over-the-top, yet shallow. It keeps insisting on double-telegraphing its biblical references.
- When a new Church of Happyology religion is set up in Springfield, Reverend Lovejoy delivers a sermon condemning it as nothing but weird rituals and chants designed to take money from fools. He then tells the congregation to recite the Lord's Prayer 40 times, "but first, let's pass the collection plate."
- Church of Happyology: The Rosicrusophists and their screenwriter/prophet Dr. Frank Wood are clearly not based on any highly litigious cult from the Los Angeles area.
- Church of Happyology: In 065 - Lost Yesterday. Remo squares off against Poweressence, a cult founded by a sci-fi author that gains followers through "Free Character Tests".
- Church of Happyology: Contessa's religion, Contessology to pray for whatever's left of Veronica's virtue.
- Church of Happyology: The video for "Cavalry Captain" is made to look like an old, worn VHS tape used as a recruitment tool for a cult called "Decemberism", with Colin playing its filthy rich leader.
- It appears to be a New Age spiritualist self-help book from the Church of Happyology. But then we get to the chapter "Do Not Look Away From The Book", which includes such lines as "Some helpful advice that will save you in your coming weeks:" and "Love the archons. When you hate them, they see you." By Chapter 10 ("You Cannot Wake Up") the book has become pure Black Speech. Did we mention reading it brainwashes people and drives them crazy? Or that it can alter reality (and not in a good way)? And that the Foundation had to use Laser-Guided Amnesia on the entire Earth again? And then there's the intercepted broadcasts. Anyone think Peppy was going to introduce SCP-993 (see above)? And how about that American Idol broadcast?
- The Vu-Age Church is a combination of this, televangelism, the 700 club, and cryonics. It exists solely to bilk its followers out of as much money as possible, though.
- Church of Happyology: D.L. Diamond's cult resembles this.
- The questlines dealing with The New Dawn are a reference to Project Chanology, Anonymous' own attempts at dealing with the Church of Happyology.
- Church of Happyology: Earthbound's HappyHappyists make an appearance with Meowe substituting Carpainter.
- The Fifthist Church, a Church of Happyology expy with a Cosmic Horror twist.
- "Trapped in the Closet", and the views of the destructiveness and nonsense of Scientology. They were willing to alienate a long-time cast member and fan favorite to get the message out. Although Isaac Hayes didn't want to leave the cast, he was pressured into it by Scientology and was in tears when he went to Matt and Trey to break the news. He had enough of a sense of humor to say "they've done that to every religion"; Scientology did not.
- Church of Happyology: The Enolsis Foundation. In this setting, of course it has a horrible secret.
- Just For Pun: Many, including Fnord Motor Company, the Church of Violentology, the Triliberal Commission, the Religious Reich, and so on.
- Church of Happyology: Extremely thinly veiled in the form of the Church of Panography (which is actually a front for a Banisher cult called the Militant Auditing Division). They even have magical items called "Suppressive Thetan Energy Auditing Devices" to detect mages, and a celebrity member who has ADHD, is an outspoken critic of psychiatry, is infamously prone to manic outbursts, was set up with a young actress willing to have his child to help his image (whom he's very adamant about really, really being in love with), and is secretly bisexual.
- Something: So, a Scientologist?
- Path of Inspiration: Church of Happyology, and other cults.
- North of St. Petersburg is the city of Clearwater, best known for being the headquarters of the Church of Happyology at the Fort Harrison Hotel, now known as Flag Land Base.
- Church of Happyology - Mind Inc. is a self-help organisation which tests every new member with an electronic reader. This is so that they can pick up on any latent Psychic Powers to exploit. Them being actually just a front for the psychic villain organization PSI, which is planning to Take Over the World certainly doesn't make it better.
- WMG: Erin is a Cullenist.
- WMG: The plot of The Big O has something to do with Scientology.
- Church of Happyology: In one livestream of FTL, Jack tells a story of how he and his film crew were accosted by members of the church while filming in L.A.
- Blasphemous Boast: In one of the episodes where dave_o is present, he, Diabetus, and slowbeef get into talking about how they consider the Church Of Scientology to be a Scam Religion. It gets to this trope when dave_o suggests that Joseph Smith beat L. Ron Hubbard to the punch.
- An article ('4 Religions You've Got All Wrong (Because Of Hollywood)') in April 2015 received a ton of backlash because one of the topics focused on was the Church of Happyology. The article spoke very positively of the religion, glossing over a lot of the issues and crime the church has been involved with, which is especially baffling because Cracked has repeatedly run articles dealing with people who have left the church talking about the cult abuse they experienced. Some believed the article was made to appease Church of Happyology representatives who threatened to sue Cracked due to a negative article written about the religion a few days earlier. The article was removed from Cracked the same day it was published.
- Critic-Proof: The Church of Happyology has been accused of buying lots of books to keep it on the Best Sellers' list. That, and the church's attitude towards criticism, have made the book this.
- While their mockery of major religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are usually tongue-in-cheek; they've been out to shit on Scientology ever since the church started lashing back at them over their parodies and the whole Issac Hayes controversy. And while they have depicted the holy scripture of Mormonism as being ridiculous and Joseph Smith looking like an insane crackpot, Mormons are usually shown as being genuinely nice people.
Main/: 13 Correct, 3 Misnamed Scientology, 4 Sinkhole
Characters/: 8 Correct, 0 Misnamed Scientology, 0 Sinkhole
Others: 18 Correct, 7 Misnamed Scientology, 6 Sinkhole, 1 other misuse
Total: 39 Correct, 10 Misnamed Scientology, 10 Sinkhole, 1 other misuse
65% correct. If Characters pages are excluded, 60% correct.
How sweet it is
Thank you. Shutting off clock.
she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report
That's hardly the pervasive misuse that you claimed. We can probably just clean up misuse.
Cleanup and maybe rework the description to make it clearer what this trope is.
I think a description rework is definitely in line.
Also the "don't say Scientology" joke on the page should be dropped, as that's what's causing the misuse to begin with. Potentially even recreate the Useful Notes page, as the Project Chanology stuff, which was what was causing the issue to begin with, has mostly stopped.
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Ack, I'm responsible for one of the misuse-wicks, I'm sorry to say. I used it because I really didn't know if I was allowed to straight up say the cult was Scientology or not, so I used the next-best-thing and figured it would be alright. Looks like a lot of people had the same thought.
I'm all for re-opening the useful-notes page, to find somewhere else for these wicks to go.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
That's why I opened this to begin with, and it's proving my point. People are confused as to whether we can talk about Scientology on this wiki. Saying "we can, except for this one page where we have to work around saying it" just creates a mess.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yeah, that joke needs to go. While self-demonstrating articles are always nice, when I first read the page (a long time ago) I had no idea what it was supposed to be.
Edited by RamenChef on Jun 6th 2019 at 1:49:17 PM
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I agree with the idea to drop the joke, partially because it's causing on-site problems, and partially because it isn't really that funny.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Agreed as well.
If we recreate the useful notes page, it would be locked to prevent trolling/arguing/whatever.
Short-Term Projects herald
Drop the joke, restore the Useful Notes page to take those wicks, and pray that this won't be identical to Did Not Do The Research's complaining shifting over to Critical Research Failure.
Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Yeah, drop the joke. It just makes everything more confusing; like, I legitimately thought when reading the page that mentioning Scientology was just...banned everywhere. That seems to be what a lot of people also thought/think. The joke is actively causing problems.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
I'd like mod input on un-PRLC-ing the UsefulNotes.Scientology page, whether it's to be recreated there or at UsefulNotes.Church Of Scientology. I believe the reason for the concern has passed, but there are some who may disagree.
As for a crowner, I think we all agree that the misuse should be removed, so the only questions here are about the joke and the Useful Notes page.
Edited by RallyBot2 on Jun 6th 2019 at 2:19:01 PM
I think another question is whether the trope has to exclude actual uses of the church.
Examples in a work might cite the COS explicitly or just a parody thereof, but they will be used in the same manner. That to me means they should be the same trope.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I think that would be preferable to making references to actual Scientology a separate trope. Separating that from this, while otherwise having identical usage between them, would lead to Church of Happyology becoming "[trope about actual Scientology], but for parodies of Scientology".
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 7th 2019 at 3:57:41 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
, This is a subtrope of Parody Religion, which the Church of Scientology is not. Real religions cannot be Parody Religions by that trope's definition. (Of course, we're already in TRS, so if you want to try to redefine that aspect of the trope...)
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I'm pretty sure Septimus was implying that the Parody Religion subtrope status would be removed if the definition is tweaked to include his proposal.
In addition, my previous post was intended to be a comment on his proposal, not a definitive statement on my position in this thread. As I said in my first post, I mainly think the description's joke has to go.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 7th 2019 at 3:40:38 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Um, I was only talking about this trope. Parody Religion was not a consideration at all (and no, expanding this trope to cover both Scientology and imitations thereof does not entail getting rid of Parody Religion).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I didn't say anything about getting rid of Parody Religion. I meant that if Church of Happyology is expanded to cover actual Scientology, it would no longer be considered a subtrope of Parody Religion, but rather a separate trope.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 7th 2019 at 4:46:12 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
This trope, at present, is about parodies of Scientology as a subtrope of Parody Religion. All examples of a subtrope have to be examples of the supertrope by definition. Therefore, if it were redefined to include Scientology itself, it would have to no longer be a subtrope, as Parody Religions must be fictional.
Direct criticism of Scientology or the CoS is not a trope and we would be ill-advised to have it as one because of their lawsuit-happy nature.
![[nja]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/user_ninja_2074.png "[nja]"){kind=small}
Edited by RallyBot2 on Jun 7th 2019 at 5:40:56 AM
Ah, Ok. That would definitively happen in this case.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
So we have for potential discussion/crowners:
- Should UsefulNotes.Scientology be brought back? (it's currently PRLC)
- Should the Church of Happyology page drop the "don't mention Scientology by name" joke? (also being unlocked as the joke is the reason for the lock)
Since both of these involve unlocking locked pages, we'll need a mod to okay them before we can even think about a crowner.
This is one of the most misused tropes on the wiki. I did an informal wick check a while ago and nearly every single example was misuse.
The trope is supposed to be "parody of the Church of Scientology, used so the real guys don't sue." It is a subtrope of Parody Religion.
Actual usage of the trope is almost invariably "the actual Church of Scientology."
I believe the confusion is due to the trope page itself having the practice of omitting the word "Scientology" entirely for some reason, resulting in examples for works that themselves use the name having to be censored on said page. This creates confusion as to what to do elsewhere on the wiki, resulting in the misuse.
UsefulNotes.Scientology has previously been created, locked, and then cut when (according to Permanent Red Link Club) "the fighting didn't stop."
Edited by RallyBot2 on Jun 5th 2019 at 6:21:19 AM