Unintentional Period Piece cleanup

Cut. The Dixie Chicks went by that name for a long time and only recently rebranded. I actually forgot they even changed their name.

One I think is a pretty clear cut:

• The original Yakuza released and is set in 2005, and 4 chapters in Kiryu is handed a 2000s-era brick cell phone by Date to keep in touch. This becomes more of an intentional period piece in the 2016 remake, Yakuza Kiwami, which also adds a substory revolving around a flip phone.

The game very explicitly takes place in 2005; the LAD games take place roughly in real time, and 1 even has a prologue in 1995. It's not unintentional.

A recurring example is also crossover fighting games like Smash. Do those really count?

Sounds like it should be cut.

Saw on YMMV.Drawn Together.

• Some of the animation styles parodied by the characters also date the series: Ling-Ling is a parody of Pikachu, down to his design and flashing lights during his battles (referencing the "Dennō Senshi Porygon" incident), while Spanky is a parody of early internet flash animation. The former series would be all but dead in popularity by the 2010s, while flash animation was rendered moot when Adobe discontinued the flash player software.

I think this part is a pretty clear cut. The Pokémon anime is nowhere near dead in popularity nor is parodying Pikachu close to being a UPP.

Slash and burn

Not just that, but Phonýmon as depicted in the Pokémon GO Era and later is far from being a Discredited Trope or an Undead Horse Trope, though Phonýmon as depicted pre-Pokémon GO is becoming a Discredited Trope.

It is in fact an Evolving Trope.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Nov 30th 2023 at 5:09:15 AM

I see the entry is now entirely gone including the part about Spanky Ham. That one seemed valid to me however.

I have some questions about a few entries:

Rick And Morty S 1 E 7 Raising Gazorpazorp:

• Unintentional Period Piece: This episode premiered one year before Dan Anderson's passing in 2015.
  Considering people can't live forever, he would eventually die at some point and thus the episode would become dated, it's an unavoidable issue, so I don't think this counts.

Bobs Burgers S 5 E 8 Midday Run

• Unintentional Period Piece: Gene and Louise try to trick Ms. Schnur out of the office by telling her that Penny Marshall is in the parking lot, looking for a new best friend. Marshall died in 2018.
  Same as above, it would become dated no matter what.

Bobs Burgers S 9 E 13 Bed Bob And Beyond

• Unintentional Period Piece: Queen Elizabeth II being part of Gene and Louise's version of the movie sets this before 2022. Alternately, her inclusion could also be interpreted as just one of the many inaccurate/incorrect interpretations the pair make about England.
  Again, the Queen would have died and been succeeded at some point regardless.

Strong Bad Email E 50 Fifty Emails

• Unintentional Period Piece: The error message Homestar tapes onto Strong Bad's computer has the Windows 95/98 scheme.
  This would be a case of Technology Marches On except for the fact that Windows XP was out by the time this episode released, so it is technically a dated refrence when it aired.

Friends S 4 E 9 The One Where Theyre Going To Party

• Unintentional Period Piece: Joey has never heard of The Lord of the Rings. While the books had always been famous, it makes sense that Joey wouldn’t have heard of them. However, just a few years later, the franchise would become a lot more well known to the general public.
  I feel even with the popularity of the movies you could still make a joke about a character not knowing what LOTR is.

The Simpsons S25E4 "Yolo"

• Unintentional Period Piece: While the episode’s plot doesn’t date it, the title alone is what gave the episode’s airdate away.
  People still use the phrase "Yolo", even if it was the most popular in the early 2010s, it still has usage today.

Homicide Life On The Street S 3 E 17 In Search Of Crimes Past

• Unintentional Period Piece: In today's world, there's no way anyone would be able to bring a gun inside a police station.
  Uhhh, I'm pretty sure that bringing a gun inside a police station was frowned upon in the 90s too.

The Friends example is valid, but could be better described. (Joey isn't familiar with the name Gandalf and implies that it's something only absolute nerds would be interested in, which does date it to a time before the movies came out and it became one of the world's biggest IPs, and nerd culture in general became mainstream.) The "X died at some point" examples should always go, however.

I still think the Spanky Ham portion from that example can be readded.

Eh, I guess you could still make a joke about only nerds liking LOTR today, many "nerdy" hobbies sometimes get made fun of by people for being solely "for nerds" even though they are mainstream. (like anime, card games, video games, etc)

I would say the Friends joke still doesn't count. Joey know that The Lord of the Rings is, he just hasn't read it.

The Friends one is still nitpicking about one detail rather than the whole work (episode, in this case) being full of period-specific details, so it's automatically misuse on that ground.

The Duke Nukem 3D entry at the moment is a massive wall of text. I tried giving it a sweep but I'm not sure if I cut any important parts from it.

Edited by SkylaNoivern on Dec 24th 2023 at 1:09:33 AM

Yeah, didn't see this thread existed when I complained about UPP in the negativity thread, even though those aren't really the same issue. This one is about misuse and overuse of UPP, and a related issue is that UPP is widely considered to be a bad thing that detracts from a work.

I also would like to point out that Technology Marches On, that is described here as the rightful repository for "characters don't use cellphones/the Internet!!!" is also misused. Most of the trope's description says how TMO is about obsolete techonology being presented as cutting edge/hyped/gushed about.

Though there is one contraditory paragraph that mentions "They could have solved it with cell phones!" as a "somewhat related" issue, but to me they're nowhere near the same, and speculating how a movie would go if the characters had access to future tech seems to be extraordinarly pointless and very unrelated to the work. At best, these issues are "Fridge Logic" instances, except not at all logical.

Edited by renenarciso2 on Dec 25th 2023 at 6:38:35 AM

Persona 4:

• Unintentional Period Piece: Released in 2008 and taking place in 2011

• Television, and the influence it can have on the populace, serves as one of the underlying themes of the plot. With the rise of the Internet and smartphones only a few years later — just around the time the game actually takes place — as the main source of entertainment and news for many people in first-world countries, especially for those at the high school age all of the main characters are at, this may seem slightly outdated. It's very noticeable that the Internet is pretty much never mentioned by anyone, and there's nary a computer to be found in the game world. One that's even remarked upon in-game is the rise of HD TVs when most of the characters are still using old standard-definition sets, a few lamenting that they'll eventually have to upgrade. A wall of fancy widescreens sits in the electronics section of local department store Junes, a contrast to the old sets the characters own. Funnily enough, the game itself was released on a mostly SD console a couple years after its HD successor had already come out. Kanji's family upgrading to an HD TV is actually a minor plot point in the sequel, which was released in 2012 and takes place in the same year.

• On a similar note, a major subplot in the game, as well as a major factor in a number of other subplots and social links, is the opening of a department store chain, the aforementioned Junes, in town and its various effects on the local economy. In 2008, this was a hot topic, even in the US with the rise of "big box retailers" and "Megastores" like Wal-Mart, Target, and others. A decade later, while the Big Box and Megastore age has not died completely, online retail through sites such as Amazon, Ebay, Alibaba, etc. has taken a huge chunk in the business of physical stores, to the point that larger chains such as Macy's, JC Penney's, K-Mart, Sears, and Toys R Us have either closed a huge number of stores or been forced into bankruptcy.

• The characters all rock simple flip-open cellphones, used solely for calling and texting. This is more of a US dating - though the US adopted smartphones quickly after the iPhone debut a year before the game released, Japan's adoption rate was far slower, and many Japanese citizens were still using flip phones well into the mid 2010s. Notably, the 2011 anime adaptation of the game retcons this a little, as some characters now use smartphones and there's even a song on the OST that makes an iPhone joke:
  "iBreak! Just might be the new app on your smartphone."

Everybody not having a smartphone in 2011 is perfectly plausible, and this entry even admits that it's being US-centric on the topic. This article shows that in 2011, only 15% of Japan's population had a smartphone.

• Kanji's possible homosexuality is a major facet of his character, and his personal dungeon is a bathhouse with deliberately exaggerated Hard Gay overtones. While a hot button issue and the source of much social commentary and humor (which the game provides both of) at the time, only a few years later the idea of major and entirely-sympathetic gay characters in fiction would barely raise an eyebrow.

I think all four of these are invalid examples of UPP, but want to check here.

As someone who grew up in a rural area, the entry is quite city-centric and shoehorn-y.

Edited by alnair20aug93 on Dec 26th 2023 at 9:18:57 PM

Completely agree; I've removed it.

Just for fun, I went to a random YMMV page on UPP's 'Related' tab to find something, and found this gem on Puss in Boots (the fairytale, not Shrek):

• Unintentional Period Piece: Puss' deception would instantly fail if attempted in today's day and age. If the miller's son had presented himself as the so-called Marquis of Carabas, the king would easily be able to do a background check to discover that he isn't nobility, as well as the fact that Carabas itself isn't even a real place.

A 17th century fairytale is an Unintentional Period Piece because the King doesn't boot up the police database to do a background check? It's not like identity fraud doesn't exist today.

There should have been time to discuss that before removing it.

The other one is might be shoehorning, but I couldn't tell if it counts as Values Dissonance too.

Edited by alnair20aug93 on Dec 26th 2023 at 9:33:55 PM

I have a few entries with questions:

Scrubs S 1 E 12 My Blind Date:

• Unintentional Period Piece: A doctor working a 24 hour shift used to be common, but we've since realized that people can't function like that and it's best for patients that their doctor be well rested.
  Wasn't this still considered unhealthy at the time the episode aired?

Riders Radio Theater

• Unintentional Period Piece: All those George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle jokes from the early episodes wouldn't make any sense to someone who wasn't alive in the late 1980s.
  Again a president related example as Bush would obviously not remain president forever.

Ethan Suspended

• Unintentional Period Piece: Set in the sort of neighborhood that's been the prime terrain for gentrification since just about around the time the book was written.
  Not every neighborhood has faced gentrification, it's still possible to be the only white student at a majority black school today.

YMMV/Fat

• Unintentional Period Piece: Despite the Next Sunday A.D. setting, the book name drops several celebrities who would have been at the height of their fame when the book was released in 2006, such as Chad Michael Murray and Lucy Pinder and the technology level is consistent with a time period just before the advent of the smartphone.
  This book is explicitly set around the mid-late 2000s though/the then current present, they just didn't specifically say the year.

Game Informers Replay

• Unintentional Period Piece: Due to the fact that the cast members often talk about whatever they feel like, they often bring up things either happening to them or in the world currently. One example being when semi-rare cast member Matt Helgeson brought up a fire that was going on in Minneapolis during an episode of Super Replay.
  These videos are essentially let's plays so I'm unsure here.

Seen on YMMV.The Simpsons S 12 E 6 The Computer Wore Menace Shoes

• Unintentional Period Piece: Comic Book Guy's reaction to Mr. X's fake news is "There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling!" Starting around the 2010s, emoticons were phased out almost completely, with emojis taking their place. The fact that CBG uses emoticons instead of emojis dates this episode to sometime before the 2010s.

I feel this doesn't fit the definition of UPP at all. Emoticons are still around, even if emojis are more used.

Agree that it should go. Yet another "episode references something that was common when it aired" entry.

Yeah, emoticons are very much still around.

Does PewDiePie: Legend of the Brofist count, given only two of player characters, Markiplier and Jacksepticeye, still play games?

Marzia was never a gamer but she deleted her channel, Pewds and Ken do reaction videos, and Cryatotic has left Youtube due to poor behavior.

Edited by randomtroper89 on Feb 10th 2024 at 8:55:26 AM

I think that the Yugioh music to duel by soundtrack needs to be on here because it resonates the early 2000 rock vibe with a hint of Disney/Broadway type in it.

Edited by dms2345 on Feb 10th 2024 at 5:53:45 AM

It's pretty much a time capsule of 2014-2015 Pewdiepie.

Whether that is intentional determines if or if not it is an example.