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    Original post 
Note: This thread was proposed by amathieu13 and covers East Indies, Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!, and Hula and Luaus.

This thread will cover three tropes, East Indies, Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!, and Hula and Luaus, i.e. the three "subtropes" of Tropical Island Adventure, as they all have similar issues.

I started this with just checking East Indies because of its low wick count (29) despite being around since at least 2007 and poor on page examples. The issue was that Tropical Island Adventure is a trope for when islands are used for the background of an adventure because of their exotic environments, "remoteness and disconnection from the rest of the world, allowing for more fantastic elements than would be seen in a more civilized setting." However many on page examples were merely stating that a work just took place in a country from the region and didn't give any details as to the portrayal of that region. So I wanted to know how the trope was being used across the site.

The wick check (which also includes on page examples for a total of 43 wicks) confirmed my suspicions:

  • Only 4 (9%) were clear Tropical Island Adventure but in SE Asia examples.
  • 2 (4%) were actually much more similar to Holiday in Cambodia
  • Another 4 (9%) were more like Mystical India, SE Asia edition, focusing much more on the mystical and magical aspects rather than the remote, jungle adventure or crime-ridden mud village stereotype of Tropical Island Adventure and Holiday in Cambodia respectively
  • The majority (22 examples or 51%) were simply noting that a story or plot took place in SE Asia without much else.

But given how few examples actually were of Tropical Island Adventure, I wondered how the other 2 subtropes fared and decided to wick check them as well (they are included on the same page as the East Indies Wick Check, just scroll down). The results weren't good.

For Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon! and Hula and Luaus, not a single wick fit the Tropical Island Adventure definition. For Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!, usage was all over the place and mostly not tropeworthy:

Wicks Checked: 50

  • Carribbean as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure - 0
  • Stereotyical depictions of the Caribbean - 6 (12%)
  • Character/Person is from the region - 9 (18%)
  • character/person speaks in a Jamaican accent - 8 (16%)
  • something about the story references or is set in the Caribbean - 12 (24%)
  • Random bg info related to the Caribbean - 4 (8%)
  • ZCE and listings on Indices - 11 (22%)

Things were better for Hula and Luaus in terms of tropeworthy examples (the stereotypical depictions), but still a lot of different interpretations:

Wicks Checked: 50

  • Hawaii as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure - 0
  • Stereotyical depictions of Hawaii - 13 (26%)
  • Character/Person is from Hawaii - 1 (2%)
  • Refers to performing a hula specifically - 7 (14%)
  • something about the story references or is set in Hawaii - 12 (24%)
  • Other - 5 (10%)
  • ZCE and listings on Indices - 12 (24%)


There's a lot going on but in terms of possible solutions:

  • East Indies: Given the few wicks and the few correct wicks (not all of these are mutually exclusive):

  • Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!: This has a better written description than East Indies so I'm not quite sure where the disconnect is coming from, but similar to East Indies, possible actions I see:
    • Cut the trope (has 178 wicks and 1,770 inbounds so not too bad)
    • Merge into Tropical Island Adventure
    • yard the National/Regional stereotype idea described in the actual trope description: a region filled with laidback people who all want to either have a good time in the sun/water, smoke some weed, and maybe do voodoo.

  • Hula and Luaus: Since this trope has more than 10 examples that can fit under a stereotype trope, I think this one is salvagable with wick cleaning. Though it might be good to make it even clearer in the description that this trope is for stereotypical depictions of Hawai'i (and the Pacific Islands more broadly). Might also need a rename, given the number of examples that seemed to just latch on hula and nothing else, but I'm not too sure on that one.

To-do list:

wick check for all Tropical Island Adventure "subtropes"

Note, for potholes, the trope will be next to the text in parentheses and the trope it is supposed to pothole will be highlighted in green


East Indies Usage Check

Wicks and Examples Checked (43). Non ZC Es and indices (35).


     a SE Asia specific subtrope of tropical island adventure 
  • Tropical Island Adventure: Compare Beach Episode, Holiday in Cambodia, Jungle Japes, Jungle Warfare, Ocean of Adventure, Palmtree Panic and Vacation Episode. Hula and Luaus, Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon! and East Indies are Hawaiian, Caribbean and Southeast Asian-specific subtropes respectively.
  • East Indies: A short arc at the beginning of S3 of Archer has Archer get kidnapped by Ruthless Modern Pirates speaking an Indonesian-sounding language (and their bearded, nerdy white interpreter), and taking him back to their fort, where he then becomes pirate king, while his coworkers try to extract him.
  • The Sultan of Sulu: Although soon to be merged with the Catholic-majority Philippines, Sulu resembles this trope more upon American arrival, with its proximity to the Islamic-majority regions of the later Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. Sulu itself used to govern Sabah, a part of North Borneo, and still contests it with the Malaysian government today. That said, Ade's play does not attempt to "Orientalise" Sulu unduly for the sake of projecting exoticism, as its main intention is to satirise American turn-of-the-century prudishness and all the modern "conveniences" Americans thought Sulu badly needed. —this is more of a deconstruction than an aversion
  • Tintin: Flight 714: Where the action takes place, complete with volcanoes, a jungle island, and a Komodo dragon.

     same as Holiday In Cambodia 
  • East Indies: Generally averted in the many Indonesian martial arts/action movies that came out in the wake of The Raid - including The Raid 2: Berandal, The Night Comes for Us, and Headshot - where Indonesia, and especially its capital of Jakarta, are depicted as modern nations with modern cities and modern problems, including crime, poverty, and corruption. Aside from the fact that they showcase the Indonesian martial art of pencak silat, these movies could have been set in any country and they'd work just as well. The Raid is also notable for showing its hero to be a Muslim, as most Indonesians are.
    • The Raid's predecessor, Merantau, has a little bit more of this trope, however, as the hero is an outsider to Jakarta, being from a more rural area of western Sumatra, brought to the big city by the traditional Minangkabau practice of merantau (when a young man leaves his home town to gain experience of the outside world as a rite of passage). The villains of the movie run a human trafficking ring - a common trope in Holiday in Cambodia-type stories - although in a twist on western fears of the east, the human traffickers are Americans, and the only white characters in an otherwise all-Indonesian cast. The director, Gareth Huw Evans, is a Welshman who had recently moved to Indonesia when he made the movie, and was fascinated with its culture.

    treated as a mythical and magical place/highly Orientalized 
  • The Mythology Class: The ancient, precolonial and mythical lands from which the Mythology Class' mentors and guardians—Datimbang, Kubin, Tala, Aili, and Sulayman (and Nuno)—come from. The Philippines' ancestral cultures resemble much of their surviving counterparts in maritime South and Southeast Asia, and it's cultures like that which form the focus of Nicole's thesis (and of course, the Mythology Class' course content).
  • Indonesia: The final third of Eat, Pray, Love is set in Bali. It manages to avoid most of the East Indies tropes, but does feature a wise Balinese medicine man and a mild dose of White Man's Burden when Liz (a white American woman) befriends Wayan, a healer and single mother that she decides to help out by supporting her business and raising funds for her to buy land to build a house on.
  • Mystical India: See Stereotypical South Asian English, Countrystan, which is Fictional Country north and west of India, with a similar Muslim influence with a touch of Ruritania, and Holiday in Cambodia and the East Indies, which is Southeast Asia whose region was heavily influenced by pre-Islamic India.
  • Manga/CMB: Like his cousin, Shinra and Nanase went to Bali. And it's presented as a kind of traditional place with witch doctors. Which is not really far from Truth in Television, if you know where to go. Of course, the case have something to do with Leyak, the local demon.

    something about the story references or is set in a South East Asian country 
  • Crappy Trope Definitions: Tropes: Indonesia exists.
  • Kontrabando: Much of the second half of the film takes place in Jolo, Sulu, one of the southernmost Philippine islands, where much of the country's indigenous-Muslim population is based, and which shares much in cultural and religious makeup with neighbouring Indonesia. (Sulu used to be a sovereign Islamic sultanate until American colonialists appropriated control—and turned it over to the Catholic-lowlander Philippine government in Manila after 1946.)
  • King Kong: Skull Island is located here.
  • Laguna Copperplate Inscription: The pre-Philippine cultures suggested and mentioned in the plate paint a picture similar to the rest of the precolonial kingdoms across maritime Southeast Asia.
  • The First Voyage Around The World: The expedition makes its way through maritime Southeast Asia, including its transit through what later Spanish conquistadores would name the Philippines and claim for the Spanish crown. As yet uncolonised by Spain, the Philippine cultures featured here exist on a cultural continuum with the rest of maritime Southeast Asia, which boasts a mixture of indigenous-Austronesian, Indian and (most recently) Islamic influences.
  • The Phantom Ship (1837): A significant portion of the story takes place in Asia because that's where all the ships Philip sails with go. Because Philip is Dutch, Indonesia is visited too. It's where he survives a pirate attack, where Amine is lost (she reaches shore in New Guinea), where philip and Krantz get in trouble in Ternate and Tidore, where the Accursed Isle is located, and where Krantz gets killed by a tiger.
  • Amaya: The setting is before any recorded Spanish (or other European) arrival in the islands, so in consequence the local cultures shown here have much in common with cultures and societies to their south and west, in would-be Indonesia. The series is set around the end of the Majapahit Empire as well, shortly before the Portuguese and Dutch began to colonise Indonesia itself.
  • East Indies: Indio is set slightly later than Amaya, involving the same native Philippine societies now adjusting to early Spanish colonial rule, but a bit before their wholesale cultural and religious transformation into an Asian Latin Land.
  • Video Game/DEFCON - "Risk"-Style Map: The world is divided into North America, South America, Europe, Russia, Africa, and Asia...
  • Moshi Monsters - Tropical Island Adventure: Anything regarding Music Island, more specifically the Gombala Gombala Jungle. Furbert Snufflepeeps, Snuffy Hookums, Buster Bumblechops and Elder Furi got lost there and all ended up having something to do with the Hoodoos who are either joked or played straight to form a threat. The elements held by Gombala are a melting pot of cultures and places with the volcano KrakkaBlowa, the Green Hoodoos, the limbo, the "voodoo" practicing witch doctors and the Pirates.
  • Player Unknowns Battlegrounds: Battlegrounds currently has five maps in regular rotation: a massive 8x8 km Russian island called Erangel; a sprawling 8x8 km Mexican desert region known as Miramar; a small 4x4 km southeastern Asian island named Sanhok; a medium-sized 6x6 km European winter-themed map named Vikendi, a tiny 2x2 North African island named Karakin and an 8x8 grand South Korean rural peninsula called Taego. An additional training map called Camp Jackal was added in 2018.
  • Pet Gets the Keys: * Before its destruction in a fire in 2018, Europa-Park's "Piraten in Batavia" had the same scene as below, only it was in the Dutch East Indies and the pet was a monkey.
  • Tropical Epilogue: Neither of which is to say this is actually supposed to be Hawaii (which would be a really stupid place for an American to flee to...) — it's more likely to be somewhere in Latin Land, the Caribbean or Oceania in general. British media has its own variation, usually involving the Costa del Sol, a famed retreat of British gangsters, or even Blackpool, where many Scottish gangsters avoided heat. More modern works will substitute Southeast Asia.
  • East Indies: In the Discworld, the islands of Sumtrinote  are the canonical equivalent of Indonesia. A.A. Pessimal speculated that these were colonised by people from Sto Kerrig during their period of colonial expansion.
  • East Indies: The Panau archipelago in Just Cause 2 is generally an amalgamation of the East Indies and other Southeast Asian countries, deserts and snow-capped mountains notwithstanding.
  • East Indies: The Rook Islands in Far Cry 3. Although technically located in the South Pacific, the islands draws elements of mysticism, natural beauty and history from various East Indies locations.
  • East Indies: Many of Mirasol's flashbacks/visions in The Crocodile God feature her earlier incarnations as the daughter of a Tagalog datu (chieftain) in the pre-Philippine islands before Spanish colonialism, and her later lives take on different backgrounds. True to form, there's a lot of Malay and Austronesian culture evident in the setting and characterizations, such as the close relationship with the seas (and Mirasol's particular relationship with Haik the sea-god). Unfortunately, their lives inevitably get more and more traumatized after Spain's arrival.
  • East Indies: The third episode overall of Carmen Sandiego takes Carmen and her two thief friends to Java in Indonesia, where they foil a VILE plot to contaminate local rice supplies and corner local markets with their own rice exports. Naturally, being a franchise founded on geographical education, it's more accurate than other examples on this list, and features the local tradition of Wayang shadow puppetry.
  • East Indies: Max Havelaar by Multatuli (ps. of Eduard Douwes Dekker) and De Stille Kracht (The Silent Force) by Louis Couperus are two of the better-known Dutch literary works set in what was then called Dutch East India. Max Havelaar has been made into a film; De Stille Kracht into a TV-series.
  • East Indies: The Year of Living Dangerously is about Western reporters covering the 1965 civil war in Indonesia (also: Film).
  • East Indies: A Dangerous Life, its Spiritual Successor, set in the Philippines at the end of the Marcos dictatorship in The '80s.
  • East Indies: Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid is set in Borneo, but apparently missed the fact that anacondas live in South America. Borneo has its own big constrictor snakes, but they're pythons, not anacondas.

    unclear 

    ZCE and listings on indices 

Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon! Usage Check Wicks Checked: 50
  • Carribbean as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure - 0
  • Stereotyical depictions of the Caribbean - 6 (12%)
  • Character/Person is from the region - 9 (18%)
  • character/person speaks in a Jamaican accent - 8 (16%)
  • something about the story references or is set in the Caribbean - 12 (24%)
  • Random bg info related to the Caribbean - 4 (8%)
  • ZCE and listings on Indices - 11 (22%)

    Carribbean as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure 

    Stereotyical depictions of the Caribbean 

    Character/Person is from the region 
  • The Nation of Domination: The original WWF members were Faarooq, Clarence Mason and PG-13, joined later by Crush, Savio (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) Vega and various nameless Mooks, with one devoted disciple standing out by the name of D'Lo Brown.
  • Pedro Morales: One of the most iconic Puerto Rican wrestlers, the first to win a world championship in AWA, NWA and WWF, the big three. He also did commentary at the Spanish Announcers' Table.
  • Static Shock: The animated show remembers that Virgil is Jamaican, so he has a slight patois to his voice.
  • Busta Rhymes: Downplayed. He is of Jamaican descent and sometimes works this in his raps, but not to the degree of others.
  • A Tribe Called Quest: Downplayed; Phife and Tip are first-generation Trinidadian and Montserratian, respectively, and occasionally worked it into their songs, but not often.
  • Saturday Night Slam Masters: In the localization, King Rasta Mon is seemingly (as the name hints) Jamaican, though his hometown is listed as Venice, CA. And the Dominican Republic is still Caribbean anyway so whatever
  • WWE Tag Teams: They were the first tag team to be from Puerto Rico.
  • RuPaul's Drag Race Season 6 - Vivacious: Is originally from Jamaica.
  • Supa Strikas: Dancing Rasta: The Jamaican captain of the team, is prone to giving motivational speeches.

    character/person speaks in a Jamaican accent 

    something about the story references or is set in the Caribbean 
  • Corrupt Politician: Dr. Kananga, the Big Bad of Live and Let Die, is the prime minister of the fictional Caribbean nation of San Monique. When he's not running his country, he's pushing drugs in Harlem under the name Mr. Big.
  • Goof Troop: The setting of the game.
  • Creator Provincialism - Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Despite revolving around Greek gods, the first book in the series is set in the modern US. The farthest place away from the US that the series shows is when Percy dreams of seeing Rachel spelling messages in a nondescript (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) Caribbean beach (her family is vacationing there). Justified in the first book, where Percy is told that the Greek gods relocate to whoever happens to be the current Western powerhouse at the moment.
  • In an episode of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Fat Cat ships in a gang of (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) nutty fruit bats from Jamaica to use as jewel thieves, paying them with fruit. Even he is amazed at how easy it is:
    Fat Cat: Imagine, trading nectarines for necklaces! Bananas for brooches! And tangelos for tiaras!
  • Not-So-Safe Harbor: Set either somewhere in the (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) Caribbean or in Southeast Asia, though not exclusively, expect it to be set in the 18th or the early 19th century.
  • The Goldbergs S 7 E 19 Island Time: The hotel where Barry and the JTP are going is not in Jamaica, but Camaica. "It's 70 miles to the east and it's where Jamaica dumps all its garbage."
  • The Andrews Sisters: "Rum and Coca-Cola" is about American tourists in Trinidad.
    Since the Yankee come to Trinidad
    They got the young girls all goin' mad
    Young girls say they treat 'em nice
    Make Trinidad like paradise
    Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola
    Go down Point Koomahnah
    Both mother and daughter
    Workin' for the Yankee dollar
  • Sangue Serenissima: It's revealed that in the early 1700s, Hardestadt and Eliza met in Nassau when Hardestadt was a pirate captain.
  • Remember To Always Be Brave: Most of the book takes place here for the middle part, with Romanized and Native names hand in hand, especially on Puerto Rico, though Trinidad appears for and is fought over in a chapter. Zoticus and Pomona hail from Coco, Salinas, in Puerto Rico, and the military base becomes a center for the military operations for the middle part of the book.
  • Marked for Death: The finale takes place in Jamaica.
  • Jack Frost (1997): The sequel moves the titular killer snowman to The Bahamas. Must be one hell of a sunscreen.
  • Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag: Havana, Kingston, and Nassau are the primary locations, as well as southern Florida, in addition to Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Cuba and Jamaica.

    Random bg info related to the Caribbean 
  • The British Empire: The West Indies: Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!. Included Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahamas, Cuba (briefly), Guyana (actually on South America's Caribbean coast), Trinidad and Tobago, Windward Islands, Leeward Islands. This era preceded, overlapped with, and succeeded The Golden Age of Piracy and its famous legendary figures.
  • Costa Rica: Accordingly with the location and history of the country, its culture is mixed as hell; there is for example, the Province of Limón, which is a Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon! vibe of a place due to the fact the Spaniards brought slaves from Jamaica there, given how few people they could find.
  • Nilsson Schmilsson: "Coconut" was performed in a West Indian feel.
  • Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts: In (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) Jamaica, there are many stories of this nature, in relation to the deadly Kendal Train Crash which happened on September 1, 1957 when the train derailed, claiming 186 lives as a result. According to one such story, a taxi driver picked up two well-dressed women who specified a certain address to him, and on their arrival the two got out of the car and went into the house. The driver assumed they were getting money to pay their fare, but when they did not come back after several minutes, he honked his horn impatiently, grabbing the attention of an old man from inside the house. When the driver explained why he honked his horn and described the two women, the old man exclaimed, "Those were my two sisters; they died in the train crash." The driver immediately fainted.

    ZCE and listings on Indices 


Hula and Luaus Wick Check

Wicks Checked: 50

  • Hawaii as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure - 0
  • Stereotyical depictions of Hawaii - 13 (26%)
  • Character/Person is from Hawaii - 1 (2%)
  • Refers to performing a hula specifically - 7 (14%)
  • something about the story references or is set in Hawaii - 12 (24%)
  • Other - 5 (10%)
  • ZCE and listings on Indices - 12 (24%)

    Hawaii as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure 

    Stereotyical depictions of Hawaii 
  • Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!: Hula Girls in Idol Springs whose dances can bring rain.
  • Kawaisa: Not to be confused with the 50th and youngest of The United States, Hawaii—a notable Pacific Island archipelago, which is culturally so much more than just Hula and Luaus or the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, and the Kawaiisu indigenous Americans.
  • Discworld Roleplaying Game: The Brown Islands, where the natives think of surfing as a religion, and have a habit of reassuring visitors they stopped sacrificing people to the volcano ages ago, in a vague manner that suggests they can't quite remember if they'd any reason to.
  • The Brady Bunch: The show's Beach Episode takes the family to Hawaii for a vacation filled with alohas, hulas, leis, Hawaiian shirts and surfing. Greg also obtains a cursed Tiki.
  • Carnaval Festival: Hawaii is represented by three stereotypical hula girls and a few musicians wearing Polynesian masks.
  • Greener Grass: Nick's birthday party is Hawaiian-themed, which means there's a pig roast (that nobody bothered to turn, meaning one side is completely charred) and everyone wears tacky Hawaiian-patterned clothing.
  • Black Widow (1987): The main part of the film is set in Hawaii. At the airport, a girl gives necklaces of flowers to the people coming out of the plane. The volcanoes are shown. Alex and the Black Widow practice scuba diving.
  • Spike's Gambit: "A M.I.L.F. and A Luau" comes complete with hula, a roasted pig and Spike doing a torch dance.
  • Lalaloopsy Generation 3 - Mango Tiki Wiki: She's basically everything Hawaiian in one character. She plays the ukulele, wears flowers, dances the hula, loves to host luaus, and eats coconuts.
  • Ranma ½: The Kunos - Principal Kuno: Just came back from a 3-year vacation to Hawaii, and acts like a flamboyant walking stereotype of Hawaii. The man dresses in a grass skirt, "Hawaiian" shirt and sunglasses as his principal's uniform and wears a bonsai palm tree on his head.
  • Survival Of The Fittest TV 3 - Nate: He's from Hawaii. To emphasize this, his fanservice costume consists of a grass skirt and a luau... and that's it.
  • The Chief's Daughter: Even in Darkest Africa, Injun Country, or the land of Hula and Luaus, everything's better with princesses.
  • Cyclical National Fascination: Returning American servicemen from the Pacific War brought home a fascination with the Polynesian culture that flourished from the late '40s to well into The '60s. "Tiki culture" took off with the 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition and the 1948 James Michener short story collection Tales of the South Pacific (loosely adapted the following year into the musical South Pacific), and continued with the pseudo-tropical "exotica" music genre and a slew of "fun in the sun" movies set on Pacific islands. This also gave America a bunch of fruity cocktails garnished with little umbrellas. Hawaii gaining statehood in 1959 and the rise of cheap air travel gave it a second wind, embedding Hawaii in (Hula and Luaus) American pop culture as a pleasure resort (before that, it was a distant colonial outpost known for plantations, Pearl Harbor, and little else), a status that managed to outlast the Polynesian craze. The trope of the former GI running a tiki stand in paradise can still be found in some works.

    Character/Person is from Hawaii 

    Refers to performing a hula specifically 

    something about the story references or is set in Hawaii 
  • In the Navy: The Arizona stops over in Hawaii near the end, where Dorothy can make an escape.
  • Skate Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Hawaii in Tony Hawk's Underground demonstrates something similar to this effect with its use of Hula and Luaus, even though Hawaii is a U.S. state and not a sovereign country.
  • Mr Monk Goes To Hawaii: Monk and Natalie travel to Kauai. They go to a luau where the main course is supposed to be a pig cooked in a banana-leaf-covered pit, but the workers instead dig up a murder victim's body.
  • Tony Hawk's Underground: The Hawaii level in the original Underground. Overlaps with Palmtree Panic.
  • Collegiate American Football: Unless the team lucks out and gets invited to a bowl in a nice vacation spot, such as the (Hula and Luaus) Hawaii Bowl or (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) Bahamas Bowl, of course.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Played straight in the finale of season three, which takes place at a Spellman family reunion in Hawaii; Sabrina can't participate in the fun until she cracks the family secret, which reveals her twin Katrina and begins a contest to see which of them is evil. In the same episode, Sabrina learns that Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, is her cousin.
  • Deadliest Catch:
    • The 2011 series is in Hawaii. Additionally, the closing music of the preceding episode sounded like a Hawaiian-language choir — perfect background music for attacking a "cathedral of ice".
    • The 2020 spinoff Deadliest Catch: Bloodline is set in the waters off Hawaii. During a refitting of Cornelia Marie, Josh Harris and Casey McManus investigated Hawaiian fishing charts left behind by Josh's late father Phil, and went to Hawaii and teamed with veteran local fisherman Jeff Silva to focus on yellowfin tuna.
    • The Wild West(ish): 2012's edition takes place in Colorado, where the captains went horseback riding, river rafting, and a bit of bull riding (John Hillstrand broke five ribs).
  • The Enchanted Tiki Room: The show draws a lot from American tiki culture. This trope is less prominent in the more showbiz-styled Under New Management and Get the Fever! versions, but it's definitely more fitting with the Stitch version.
  • Gabriel Iglesias:
    • He recounts being mistaken for Hawaiian constantly (due to his Hawaiian shirt and size). He was perplexed and annoyed by people asking this... until he actually went to Hawaii and found out why (they all, quote, "look like swollen Mexicans" and are fluffy like him!)
    • He later did a special in Honolulu that poked fun at Hawaii life.
  • Space☆Dandy: Dandy seems to be a big fan of this, from the name of his ship, the Aloha Oe, to the decorations inside. Even the mecha that his escape pod transforms into wears a Hawaiian shirt.
  • RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars Season 7 - Jaida, Textile Work Is Feminine: Jaida's designated location of inspiration for the self-sewn "Eleganza" segment of the Realness of Fortune Ball is Black Sand Beach, (Hula and Luaus) Hawai'i, and being a master-seamstress who creates ALL of her looks from scratch, she expertly crafts a stunning, corvid-themed, asymmetric dress and thigh-high boots from multiple different textures of black fabric to stunning effect. She deservedly places in the top 2, and wins her first Legendary Legends star after an exemplary lip-sync against Trinity to Beyoncé's "Greenlight".
  • Umbrella Drink: A bright pink (or blue, or orange...) cocktail, garnished with big pieces of fruit (or lots of small ones on a skewer) and decorated with the all-important paper cocktail umbrella, possibly served in a coconut shell, a hollowed-out pineapple, a fancy curved glass or a tiki glass. This cocktail is associated with beaches and Pacific islands, especially Hula and Luaus vacations.

    Other 

    ZCE and listings on Indices 

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 19th 2023 at 12:14:04 PM

GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#1: Mar 11th 2023 at 11:44:35 PM

To-do list:

Completed to-do list items:

    Original post 
Note: This thread was proposed by amathieu13 and covers East Indies, Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!, and Hula and Luaus.

This thread will cover three tropes, East Indies, Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!, and Hula and Luaus, i.e. the three "subtropes" of Tropical Island Adventure, as they all have similar issues.

I started this with just checking East Indies because of its low wick count (29) despite being around since at least 2007 and poor on page examples. The issue was that Tropical Island Adventure is a trope for when islands are used for the background of an adventure because of their exotic environments, "remoteness and disconnection from the rest of the world, allowing for more fantastic elements than would be seen in a more civilized setting." However many on page examples were merely stating that a work just took place in a country from the region and didn't give any details as to the portrayal of that region. So I wanted to know how the trope was being used across the site.

The wick check (which also includes on page examples for a total of 43 wicks) confirmed my suspicions:

  • Only 4 (9%) were clear Tropical Island Adventure but in SE Asia examples.
  • 2 (4%) were actually much more similar to Holiday in Cambodia
  • Another 4 (9%) were more like Mystical India, SE Asia edition, focusing much more on the mystical and magical aspects rather than the remote, jungle adventure or crime-ridden mud village stereotype of Tropical Island Adventure and Holiday in Cambodia respectively
  • The majority (22 examples or 51%) were simply noting that a story or plot took place in SE Asia without much else.

But given how few examples actually were of Tropical Island Adventure, I wondered how the other 2 subtropes fared and decided to wick check them as well (they are included on the same page as the East Indies Wick Check, just scroll down). The results weren't good.

For Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon! and Hula and Luaus, not a single wick fit the Tropical Island Adventure definition. For Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!, usage was all over the place and mostly not tropeworthy:

Wicks Checked: 50

  • Carribbean as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure - 0
  • Stereotyical depictions of the Caribbean - 6 (12%)
  • Character/Person is from the region - 9 (18%)
  • character/person speaks in a Jamaican accent - 8 (16%)
  • something about the story references or is set in the Caribbean - 12 (24%)
  • Random bg info related to the Caribbean - 4 (8%)
  • ZCE and listings on Indices - 11 (22%)

Things were better for Hula and Luaus in terms of tropeworthy examples (the stereotypical depictions), but still a lot of different interpretations:

Wicks Checked: 50

  • Hawaii as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure - 0
  • Stereotyical depictions of Hawaii - 13 (26%)
  • Character/Person is from Hawaii - 1 (2%)
  • Refers to performing a hula specifically - 7 (14%)
  • something about the story references or is set in Hawaii - 12 (24%)
  • Other - 5 (10%)
  • ZCE and listings on Indices - 12 (24%)


There's a lot going on but in terms of possible solutions:

  • East Indies: Given the few wicks and the few correct wicks (not all of these are mutually exclusive):

  • Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!: This has a better written description than East Indies so I'm not quite sure where the disconnect is coming from, but similar to East Indies, possible actions I see:
    • Cut the trope (has 178 wicks and 1,770 inbounds so not too bad)
    • Merge into Tropical Island Adventure
    • yard the National/Regional stereotype idea described in the actual trope description: a region filled with laidback people who all want to either have a good time in the sun/water, smoke some weed, and maybe do voodoo.

  • Hula and Luaus: Since this trope has more than 10 examples that can fit under a stereotype trope, I think this one is salvagable with wick cleaning. Though it might be good to make it even clearer in the description that this trope is for stereotypical depictions of Hawai'i (and the Pacific Islands more broadly). Might also need a rename, given the number of examples that seemed to just latch on hula and nothing else, but I'm not too sure on that one.

To-do list:

wick check for all Tropical Island Adventure "subtropes"

Note, for potholes, the trope will be next to the text in parentheses and the trope it is supposed to pothole will be highlighted in green


East Indies Usage Check

Wicks and Examples Checked (43). Non ZC Es and indices (35).


     a SE Asia specific subtrope of tropical island adventure 
  • Tropical Island Adventure: Compare Beach Episode, Holiday in Cambodia, Jungle Japes, Jungle Warfare, Ocean of Adventure, Palmtree Panic and Vacation Episode. Hula and Luaus, Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon! and East Indies are Hawaiian, Caribbean and Southeast Asian-specific subtropes respectively.
  • East Indies: A short arc at the beginning of S3 of Archer has Archer get kidnapped by Ruthless Modern Pirates speaking an Indonesian-sounding language (and their bearded, nerdy white interpreter), and taking him back to their fort, where he then becomes pirate king, while his coworkers try to extract him.
  • The Sultan of Sulu: Although soon to be merged with the Catholic-majority Philippines, Sulu resembles this trope more upon American arrival, with its proximity to the Islamic-majority regions of the later Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. Sulu itself used to govern Sabah, a part of North Borneo, and still contests it with the Malaysian government today. That said, Ade's play does not attempt to "Orientalise" Sulu unduly for the sake of projecting exoticism, as its main intention is to satirise American turn-of-the-century prudishness and all the modern "conveniences" Americans thought Sulu badly needed. —this is more of a deconstruction than an aversion
  • Tintin: Flight 714: Where the action takes place, complete with volcanoes, a jungle island, and a Komodo dragon.

     same as Holiday In Cambodia 
  • East Indies: Generally averted in the many Indonesian martial arts/action movies that came out in the wake of The Raid - including The Raid 2: Berandal, The Night Comes for Us, and Headshot - where Indonesia, and especially its capital of Jakarta, are depicted as modern nations with modern cities and modern problems, including crime, poverty, and corruption. Aside from the fact that they showcase the Indonesian martial art of pencak silat, these movies could have been set in any country and they'd work just as well. The Raid is also notable for showing its hero to be a Muslim, as most Indonesians are.
    • The Raid's predecessor, Merantau, has a little bit more of this trope, however, as the hero is an outsider to Jakarta, being from a more rural area of western Sumatra, brought to the big city by the traditional Minangkabau practice of merantau (when a young man leaves his home town to gain experience of the outside world as a rite of passage). The villains of the movie run a human trafficking ring - a common trope in Holiday in Cambodia-type stories - although in a twist on western fears of the east, the human traffickers are Americans, and the only white characters in an otherwise all-Indonesian cast. The director, Gareth Huw Evans, is a Welshman who had recently moved to Indonesia when he made the movie, and was fascinated with its culture.

    treated as a mythical and magical place/highly Orientalized 
  • The Mythology Class: The ancient, precolonial and mythical lands from which the Mythology Class' mentors and guardians—Datimbang, Kubin, Tala, Aili, and Sulayman (and Nuno)—come from. The Philippines' ancestral cultures resemble much of their surviving counterparts in maritime South and Southeast Asia, and it's cultures like that which form the focus of Nicole's thesis (and of course, the Mythology Class' course content).
  • Indonesia: The final third of Eat, Pray, Love is set in Bali. It manages to avoid most of the East Indies tropes, but does feature a wise Balinese medicine man and a mild dose of White Man's Burden when Liz (a white American woman) befriends Wayan, a healer and single mother that she decides to help out by supporting her business and raising funds for her to buy land to build a house on.
  • Mystical India: See Stereotypical South Asian English, Countrystan, which is Fictional Country north and west of India, with a similar Muslim influence with a touch of Ruritania, and Holiday in Cambodia and the East Indies, which is Southeast Asia whose region was heavily influenced by pre-Islamic India.
  • Manga/CMB: Like his cousin, Shinra and Nanase went to Bali. And it's presented as a kind of traditional place with witch doctors. Which is not really far from Truth in Television, if you know where to go. Of course, the case have something to do with Leyak, the local demon.

    something about the story references or is set in a South East Asian country 
  • Crappy Trope Definitions: Tropes: Indonesia exists.
  • Kontrabando: Much of the second half of the film takes place in Jolo, Sulu, one of the southernmost Philippine islands, where much of the country's indigenous-Muslim population is based, and which shares much in cultural and religious makeup with neighbouring Indonesia. (Sulu used to be a sovereign Islamic sultanate until American colonialists appropriated control—and turned it over to the Catholic-lowlander Philippine government in Manila after 1946.)
  • King Kong: Skull Island is located here.
  • Laguna Copperplate Inscription: The pre-Philippine cultures suggested and mentioned in the plate paint a picture similar to the rest of the precolonial kingdoms across maritime Southeast Asia.
  • The First Voyage Around The World: The expedition makes its way through maritime Southeast Asia, including its transit through what later Spanish conquistadores would name the Philippines and claim for the Spanish crown. As yet uncolonised by Spain, the Philippine cultures featured here exist on a cultural continuum with the rest of maritime Southeast Asia, which boasts a mixture of indigenous-Austronesian, Indian and (most recently) Islamic influences.
  • The Phantom Ship (1837): A significant portion of the story takes place in Asia because that's where all the ships Philip sails with go. Because Philip is Dutch, Indonesia is visited too. It's where he survives a pirate attack, where Amine is lost (she reaches shore in New Guinea), where philip and Krantz get in trouble in Ternate and Tidore, where the Accursed Isle is located, and where Krantz gets killed by a tiger.
  • Amaya: The setting is before any recorded Spanish (or other European) arrival in the islands, so in consequence the local cultures shown here have much in common with cultures and societies to their south and west, in would-be Indonesia. The series is set around the end of the Majapahit Empire as well, shortly before the Portuguese and Dutch began to colonise Indonesia itself.
  • East Indies: Indio is set slightly later than Amaya, involving the same native Philippine societies now adjusting to early Spanish colonial rule, but a bit before their wholesale cultural and religious transformation into an Asian Latin Land.
  • Video Game/DEFCON - "Risk"-Style Map: The world is divided into North America, South America, Europe, Russia, Africa, and Asia...
  • Moshi Monsters - Tropical Island Adventure: Anything regarding Music Island, more specifically the Gombala Gombala Jungle. Furbert Snufflepeeps, Snuffy Hookums, Buster Bumblechops and Elder Furi got lost there and all ended up having something to do with the Hoodoos who are either joked or played straight to form a threat. The elements held by Gombala are a melting pot of cultures and places with the volcano KrakkaBlowa, the Green Hoodoos, the limbo, the "voodoo" practicing witch doctors and the Pirates.
  • Player Unknowns Battlegrounds: Battlegrounds currently has five maps in regular rotation: a massive 8x8 km Russian island called Erangel; a sprawling 8x8 km Mexican desert region known as Miramar; a small 4x4 km southeastern Asian island named Sanhok; a medium-sized 6x6 km European winter-themed map named Vikendi, a tiny 2x2 North African island named Karakin and an 8x8 grand South Korean rural peninsula called Taego. An additional training map called Camp Jackal was added in 2018.
  • Pet Gets the Keys: * Before its destruction in a fire in 2018, Europa-Park's "Piraten in Batavia" had the same scene as below, only it was in the Dutch East Indies and the pet was a monkey.
  • Tropical Epilogue: Neither of which is to say this is actually supposed to be Hawaii (which would be a really stupid place for an American to flee to...) — it's more likely to be somewhere in Latin Land, the Caribbean or Oceania in general. British media has its own variation, usually involving the Costa del Sol, a famed retreat of British gangsters, or even Blackpool, where many Scottish gangsters avoided heat. More modern works will substitute Southeast Asia.
  • East Indies: In the Discworld, the islands of Sumtrinote  are the canonical equivalent of Indonesia. A.A. Pessimal speculated that these were colonised by people from Sto Kerrig during their period of colonial expansion.
  • East Indies: The Panau archipelago in Just Cause 2 is generally an amalgamation of the East Indies and other Southeast Asian countries, deserts and snow-capped mountains notwithstanding.
  • East Indies: The Rook Islands in Far Cry 3. Although technically located in the South Pacific, the islands draws elements of mysticism, natural beauty and history from various East Indies locations.
  • East Indies: Many of Mirasol's flashbacks/visions in The Crocodile God feature her earlier incarnations as the daughter of a Tagalog datu (chieftain) in the pre-Philippine islands before Spanish colonialism, and her later lives take on different backgrounds. True to form, there's a lot of Malay and Austronesian culture evident in the setting and characterizations, such as the close relationship with the seas (and Mirasol's particular relationship with Haik the sea-god). Unfortunately, their lives inevitably get more and more traumatized after Spain's arrival.
  • East Indies: The third episode overall of Carmen Sandiego takes Carmen and her two thief friends to Java in Indonesia, where they foil a VILE plot to contaminate local rice supplies and corner local markets with their own rice exports. Naturally, being a franchise founded on geographical education, it's more accurate than other examples on this list, and features the local tradition of Wayang shadow puppetry.
  • East Indies: Max Havelaar by Multatuli (ps. of Eduard Douwes Dekker) and De Stille Kracht (The Silent Force) by Louis Couperus are two of the better-known Dutch literary works set in what was then called Dutch East India. Max Havelaar has been made into a film; De Stille Kracht into a TV-series.
  • East Indies: The Year of Living Dangerously is about Western reporters covering the 1965 civil war in Indonesia (also: Film).
  • East Indies: A Dangerous Life, its Spiritual Successor, set in the Philippines at the end of the Marcos dictatorship in The '80s.
  • East Indies: Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid is set in Borneo, but apparently missed the fact that anacondas live in South America. Borneo has its own big constrictor snakes, but they're pythons, not anacondas.

    unclear 

    ZCE and listings on indices 

Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon! Usage Check Wicks Checked: 50
  • Carribbean as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure - 0
  • Stereotyical depictions of the Caribbean - 6 (12%)
  • Character/Person is from the region - 9 (18%)
  • character/person speaks in a Jamaican accent - 8 (16%)
  • something about the story references or is set in the Caribbean - 12 (24%)
  • Random bg info related to the Caribbean - 4 (8%)
  • ZCE and listings on Indices - 11 (22%)

    Carribbean as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure 

    Stereotyical depictions of the Caribbean 

    Character/Person is from the region 
  • The Nation of Domination: The original WWF members were Faarooq, Clarence Mason and PG-13, joined later by Crush, Savio (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) Vega and various nameless Mooks, with one devoted disciple standing out by the name of D'Lo Brown.
  • Pedro Morales: One of the most iconic Puerto Rican wrestlers, the first to win a world championship in AWA, NWA and WWF, the big three. He also did commentary at the Spanish Announcers' Table.
  • Static Shock: The animated show remembers that Virgil is Jamaican, so he has a slight patois to his voice.
  • Busta Rhymes: Downplayed. He is of Jamaican descent and sometimes works this in his raps, but not to the degree of others.
  • A Tribe Called Quest: Downplayed; Phife and Tip are first-generation Trinidadian and Montserratian, respectively, and occasionally worked it into their songs, but not often.
  • Saturday Night Slam Masters: In the localization, King Rasta Mon is seemingly (as the name hints) Jamaican, though his hometown is listed as Venice, CA. And the Dominican Republic is still Caribbean anyway so whatever
  • WWE Tag Teams: They were the first tag team to be from Puerto Rico.
  • RuPaul's Drag Race Season 6 - Vivacious: Is originally from Jamaica.
  • Supa Strikas: Dancing Rasta: The Jamaican captain of the team, is prone to giving motivational speeches.

    character/person speaks in a Jamaican accent 

    something about the story references or is set in the Caribbean 
  • Corrupt Politician: Dr. Kananga, the Big Bad of Live and Let Die, is the prime minister of the fictional Caribbean nation of San Monique. When he's not running his country, he's pushing drugs in Harlem under the name Mr. Big.
  • Goof Troop: The setting of the game.
  • Creator Provincialism - Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Despite revolving around Greek gods, the first book in the series is set in the modern US. The farthest place away from the US that the series shows is when Percy dreams of seeing Rachel spelling messages in a nondescript (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) Caribbean beach (her family is vacationing there). Justified in the first book, where Percy is told that the Greek gods relocate to whoever happens to be the current Western powerhouse at the moment.
  • In an episode of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Fat Cat ships in a gang of (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) nutty fruit bats from Jamaica to use as jewel thieves, paying them with fruit. Even he is amazed at how easy it is:
    Fat Cat: Imagine, trading nectarines for necklaces! Bananas for brooches! And tangelos for tiaras!
  • Not-So-Safe Harbor: Set either somewhere in the (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) Caribbean or in Southeast Asia, though not exclusively, expect it to be set in the 18th or the early 19th century.
  • The Goldbergs S 7 E 19 Island Time: The hotel where Barry and the JTP are going is not in Jamaica, but Camaica. "It's 70 miles to the east and it's where Jamaica dumps all its garbage."
  • The Andrews Sisters: "Rum and Coca-Cola" is about American tourists in Trinidad.
    Since the Yankee come to Trinidad
    They got the young girls all goin' mad
    Young girls say they treat 'em nice
    Make Trinidad like paradise
    Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola
    Go down Point Koomahnah
    Both mother and daughter
    Workin' for the Yankee dollar
  • Sangue Serenissima: It's revealed that in the early 1700s, Hardestadt and Eliza met in Nassau when Hardestadt was a pirate captain.
  • Remember To Always Be Brave: Most of the book takes place here for the middle part, with Romanized and Native names hand in hand, especially on Puerto Rico, though Trinidad appears for and is fought over in a chapter. Zoticus and Pomona hail from Coco, Salinas, in Puerto Rico, and the military base becomes a center for the military operations for the middle part of the book.
  • Marked for Death: The finale takes place in Jamaica.
  • Jack Frost (1997): The sequel moves the titular killer snowman to The Bahamas. Must be one hell of a sunscreen.
  • Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag: Havana, Kingston, and Nassau are the primary locations, as well as southern Florida, in addition to Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Cuba and Jamaica.

    Random bg info related to the Caribbean 
  • The British Empire: The West Indies: Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!. Included Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahamas, Cuba (briefly), Guyana (actually on South America's Caribbean coast), Trinidad and Tobago, Windward Islands, Leeward Islands. This era preceded, overlapped with, and succeeded The Golden Age of Piracy and its famous legendary figures.
  • Costa Rica: Accordingly with the location and history of the country, its culture is mixed as hell; there is for example, the Province of Limón, which is a Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon! vibe of a place due to the fact the Spaniards brought slaves from Jamaica there, given how few people they could find.
  • Nilsson Schmilsson: "Coconut" was performed in a West Indian feel.
  • Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts: In (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) Jamaica, there are many stories of this nature, in relation to the deadly Kendal Train Crash which happened on September 1, 1957 when the train derailed, claiming 186 lives as a result. According to one such story, a taxi driver picked up two well-dressed women who specified a certain address to him, and on their arrival the two got out of the car and went into the house. The driver assumed they were getting money to pay their fare, but when they did not come back after several minutes, he honked his horn impatiently, grabbing the attention of an old man from inside the house. When the driver explained why he honked his horn and described the two women, the old man exclaimed, "Those were my two sisters; they died in the train crash." The driver immediately fainted.

    ZCE and listings on Indices 


Hula and Luaus Wick Check

Wicks Checked: 50

  • Hawaii as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure - 0
  • Stereotyical depictions of Hawaii - 13 (26%)
  • Character/Person is from Hawaii - 1 (2%)
  • Refers to performing a hula specifically - 7 (14%)
  • something about the story references or is set in Hawaii - 12 (24%)
  • Other - 5 (10%)
  • ZCE and listings on Indices - 12 (24%)

    Hawaii as Tropical Paradise back drop for an adventure 

    Stereotyical depictions of Hawaii 
  • Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!: Hula Girls in Idol Springs whose dances can bring rain.
  • Kawaisa: Not to be confused with the 50th and youngest of The United States, Hawaii—a notable Pacific Island archipelago, which is culturally so much more than just Hula and Luaus or the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, and the Kawaiisu indigenous Americans.
  • Discworld Roleplaying Game: The Brown Islands, where the natives think of surfing as a religion, and have a habit of reassuring visitors they stopped sacrificing people to the volcano ages ago, in a vague manner that suggests they can't quite remember if they'd any reason to.
  • The Brady Bunch: The show's Beach Episode takes the family to Hawaii for a vacation filled with alohas, hulas, leis, Hawaiian shirts and surfing. Greg also obtains a cursed Tiki.
  • Carnaval Festival: Hawaii is represented by three stereotypical hula girls and a few musicians wearing Polynesian masks.
  • Greener Grass: Nick's birthday party is Hawaiian-themed, which means there's a pig roast (that nobody bothered to turn, meaning one side is completely charred) and everyone wears tacky Hawaiian-patterned clothing.
  • Black Widow (1987): The main part of the film is set in Hawaii. At the airport, a girl gives necklaces of flowers to the people coming out of the plane. The volcanoes are shown. Alex and the Black Widow practice scuba diving.
  • Spike's Gambit: "A M.I.L.F. and A Luau" comes complete with hula, a roasted pig and Spike doing a torch dance.
  • Lalaloopsy Generation 3 - Mango Tiki Wiki: She's basically everything Hawaiian in one character. She plays the ukulele, wears flowers, dances the hula, loves to host luaus, and eats coconuts.
  • Ranma ½: The Kunos - Principal Kuno: Just came back from a 3-year vacation to Hawaii, and acts like a flamboyant walking stereotype of Hawaii. The man dresses in a grass skirt, "Hawaiian" shirt and sunglasses as his principal's uniform and wears a bonsai palm tree on his head.
  • Survival Of The Fittest TV 3 - Nate: He's from Hawaii. To emphasize this, his fanservice costume consists of a grass skirt and a luau... and that's it.
  • The Chief's Daughter: Even in Darkest Africa, Injun Country, or the land of Hula and Luaus, everything's better with princesses.
  • Cyclical National Fascination: Returning American servicemen from the Pacific War brought home a fascination with the Polynesian culture that flourished from the late '40s to well into The '60s. "Tiki culture" took off with the 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition and the 1948 James Michener short story collection Tales of the South Pacific (loosely adapted the following year into the musical South Pacific), and continued with the pseudo-tropical "exotica" music genre and a slew of "fun in the sun" movies set on Pacific islands. This also gave America a bunch of fruity cocktails garnished with little umbrellas. Hawaii gaining statehood in 1959 and the rise of cheap air travel gave it a second wind, embedding Hawaii in (Hula and Luaus) American pop culture as a pleasure resort (before that, it was a distant colonial outpost known for plantations, Pearl Harbor, and little else), a status that managed to outlast the Polynesian craze. The trope of the former GI running a tiki stand in paradise can still be found in some works.

    Character/Person is from Hawaii 

    Refers to performing a hula specifically 

    something about the story references or is set in Hawaii 
  • In the Navy: The Arizona stops over in Hawaii near the end, where Dorothy can make an escape.
  • Skate Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Hawaii in Tony Hawk's Underground demonstrates something similar to this effect with its use of Hula and Luaus, even though Hawaii is a U.S. state and not a sovereign country.
  • Mr Monk Goes To Hawaii: Monk and Natalie travel to Kauai. They go to a luau where the main course is supposed to be a pig cooked in a banana-leaf-covered pit, but the workers instead dig up a murder victim's body.
  • Tony Hawk's Underground: The Hawaii level in the original Underground. Overlaps with Palmtree Panic.
  • Collegiate American Football: Unless the team lucks out and gets invited to a bowl in a nice vacation spot, such as the (Hula and Luaus) Hawaii Bowl or (Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!) Bahamas Bowl, of course.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Played straight in the finale of season three, which takes place at a Spellman family reunion in Hawaii; Sabrina can't participate in the fun until she cracks the family secret, which reveals her twin Katrina and begins a contest to see which of them is evil. In the same episode, Sabrina learns that Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, is her cousin.
  • Deadliest Catch:
    • The 2011 series is in Hawaii. Additionally, the closing music of the preceding episode sounded like a Hawaiian-language choir — perfect background music for attacking a "cathedral of ice".
    • The 2020 spinoff Deadliest Catch: Bloodline is set in the waters off Hawaii. During a refitting of Cornelia Marie, Josh Harris and Casey McManus investigated Hawaiian fishing charts left behind by Josh's late father Phil, and went to Hawaii and teamed with veteran local fisherman Jeff Silva to focus on yellowfin tuna.
    • The Wild West(ish): 2012's edition takes place in Colorado, where the captains went horseback riding, river rafting, and a bit of bull riding (John Hillstrand broke five ribs).
  • The Enchanted Tiki Room: The show draws a lot from American tiki culture. This trope is less prominent in the more showbiz-styled Under New Management and Get the Fever! versions, but it's definitely more fitting with the Stitch version.
  • Gabriel Iglesias:
    • He recounts being mistaken for Hawaiian constantly (due to his Hawaiian shirt and size). He was perplexed and annoyed by people asking this... until he actually went to Hawaii and found out why (they all, quote, "look like swollen Mexicans" and are fluffy like him!)
    • He later did a special in Honolulu that poked fun at Hawaii life.
  • Space☆Dandy: Dandy seems to be a big fan of this, from the name of his ship, the Aloha Oe, to the decorations inside. Even the mecha that his escape pod transforms into wears a Hawaiian shirt.
  • RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars Season 7 - Jaida, Textile Work Is Feminine: Jaida's designated location of inspiration for the self-sewn "Eleganza" segment of the Realness of Fortune Ball is Black Sand Beach, (Hula and Luaus) Hawai'i, and being a master-seamstress who creates ALL of her looks from scratch, she expertly crafts a stunning, corvid-themed, asymmetric dress and thigh-high boots from multiple different textures of black fabric to stunning effect. She deservedly places in the top 2, and wins her first Legendary Legends star after an exemplary lip-sync against Trinity to Beyoncé's "Greenlight".
  • Umbrella Drink: A bright pink (or blue, or orange...) cocktail, garnished with big pieces of fruit (or lots of small ones on a skewer) and decorated with the all-important paper cocktail umbrella, possibly served in a coconut shell, a hollowed-out pineapple, a fancy curved glass or a tiki glass. This cocktail is associated with beaches and Pacific islands, especially Hula and Luaus vacations.

    Other 

    ZCE and listings on Indices 

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 19th 2023 at 12:14:04 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#2: Mar 11th 2023 at 11:44:58 PM

Paging ~amathieu13 and ~The Mayor of Simpleton as requested.

Since misuse is so rampant, maybe we should redirect all three to Tropical Island Adventure and move good examples there.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 11th 2023 at 1:46:02 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Amonimus the Retromancer from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#4: Mar 12th 2023 at 12:08:57 AM

[up]Maybe disambiguating between the tropes you listed could be an alternative to my redirect proposal. (We could at least move valid examples to those tropes.)

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 12th 2023 at 2:09:21 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#5: Mar 12th 2023 at 12:18:48 AM

I'm stuck between merge and cut for 2/3 of these. While I can see the point in just redirecting them back to the parent trope, functionally, none of these tropes were being used as Tropical Island Adventure subtropes. It feels weird to merge them into a trope in which examples in line with the merge target are so low, despite what their descriptions say.

Though, I still do think Hula and Luaus is salvageable with just clean-up. That said, I wouldn't be too broken up inside if the thread decides to do away with it too.

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 12th 2023 at 3:20:32 PM

Adept (Holding A Herring) Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
#6: Mar 12th 2023 at 12:19:39 AM

Disambig might be the better option then.

themayorofsimpleton Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him from Elsewhere (Experienced, Not Yet Jaded) Relationship Status: Abstaining
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
#7: Mar 12th 2023 at 1:42:30 AM

Ah, right.

I wanted to be pinged here because I wanted to point out that the trope that used to be Aloha, Hawaii! was merged with this one a couple years ago. Some of the misuse could be from that.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#8: Mar 12th 2023 at 1:53:25 AM

OK, if there are concerns that Tropical Island Adventure isn't a complete match for a redirect target, we could do the following if we redirect (in two cases, redirecting to indexes to catch inbounds; in the third case, merging with the supertrope):

Edit: Alternatively, we could redirect to Useful Notes pages about the real life locations:

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 12th 2023 at 8:13:26 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Berrenta How sweet it is from Texas Since: Apr, 2015 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
How sweet it is
#9: Mar 12th 2023 at 7:29:44 AM

[up] I'm good with redirecting to the Useful Notes pages.

If we need to yard stereotypical depictions, we could do that, too.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report
amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#10: Mar 12th 2023 at 8:35:30 AM

redirecting to useful notes is another good option

BlackMage43 Since: Jun, 2014 Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
#11: Mar 12th 2023 at 10:59:47 AM

Redirect for East Indies and Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon! sounds good, but I do agree Hula and Luaus looks salvageable as a 'Stereotypical Hawaiin' trope.

selkies Professional Wick Checker Since: Jan, 2021 Relationship Status: Star-crossed
Professional Wick Checker
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#13: Mar 12th 2023 at 10:51:21 PM

I suppose we could give Hula and Luaus another chance while redirecting the other two, per what was said about mistakes possibly being made during the cleanup of Aloha, Hawaii! (which I think was two or three years ago), which was technically merged with Vacation Episode, but redirected to Hula and Luaus.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 12th 2023 at 12:52:10 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Amonimus the Retromancer from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the Retromancer
#14: Mar 13th 2023 at 2:04:47 AM

AlohaHawaii TRS for the record. I think "Hollywood Hawaii" could be a good concept, but unsure if Hula and Luaus can be adjusted to it.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#15: Mar 13th 2023 at 3:35:31 AM

Completely missed the previous thread on Aloha, Hawaii!. And even there, the OP for that thread understood Hula and Luaus to be a trope about Hawaii shown in a stereotypical way. Given that, then it's probably time to fully commit to that idea either be reowrking Hula and Luaus into that trope or starting from scratch with a new name

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 13th 2023 at 6:36:44 AM

GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
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#16: Mar 13th 2023 at 3:44:03 AM

...Actually, now that it's been mentioned, I think Hollywood Hawaii sounds like a better name than Hula and Luaus if we give the trope another chance by renaming it and cleaning up misuse. The concerns regarding some of the misuse possibly coming later makes me more inclined to give renaming a try with it, but I still think the other two tropes should be disambiguated or redirected.

As for whether Hula and Luaus can be adjusted to Hollywood Hawaii, isn't that what it already is, especially because the trope is called "Hollywood Hawaii" in the list of common traits in examples of the tropes (yet it somehow doesn't exist as a redirect; I'll fix that (Edit from a bit later: Done))?

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 13th 2023 at 5:47:02 AM

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amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#17: Mar 13th 2023 at 4:44:28 AM

As for whether Hula and Luaus can be adjusted to Hollywood Hawaii, isn't that what it already is, especially because the trope is called "Hollywood Hawaii" in the list of common traits in examples of the tropes (yet it somehow doesn't exist as a redirect; I'll fix that (Edit from a bit later: Done))?

That was part of the point I was making in my OP, i.e. for a trope that's supposedly a subtrope of Tropical Island Adventure as its page says, the plurality of examples checked (26%) seem to point to it being more about stereotypical representations of the island. Though, even acknowledging that doesn't change the fact that the majority of its examples checked are either ZCE or misuse for any time Hawaii and Hawaii related things are mentioned. That's why my initial suggestion was to salvage the trope with clean up and possibly a rename.

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 13th 2023 at 8:13:30 AM

GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
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#18: Mar 13th 2023 at 6:02:04 AM

[up]Well, it's baffling that it's about trips there considering that's what Aloha, Hawaii! was before it was deemed The Same, but More Specific. Well, if it's not already a proper Hollywood Atlas trope, but is still frequently used as one, I think we should officially make it one (and I still think we should rename it).

I think the crowner option for redefining into a Hollywood Atlas trope about Hawaii would be accompanied by a rename option, and the rename option will require the redefinition option to have consensus to be done (since the rename idea was meant to accompany a proposed redefinition rather than being applied to the existing definition).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 13th 2023 at 8:05:31 AM

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GastonRabbit MOD Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
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#19: Mar 14th 2023 at 10:57:49 PM

Hooked a crowner because it's the 15th and we've already decided what our options are (which should be evident due to how large the crowner is even without the batch thread aspect).

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
GastonRabbit MOD Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
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#20: Mar 17th 2023 at 12:21:10 AM

Calling in favor of the following:

Note that while renaming Hula and Luaus has a 2:1 ratio, it does not have enough votes because it has nine votes and consensus requires a double-digit vote count, so we are not renaming the trope. I tried to bring more attention to the crowner by bumping the query, but since that didn't work, I'm not going to delay calling the crowner.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 17th 2023 at 2:21:46 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
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#21: Mar 17th 2023 at 12:26:59 AM

Made Sandbox.Hula And Luaus Wick Cleaning to keep track of wick cleanup for Hula and Luaus since we're not changing the name, as well as Sandbox.Hula And Luaus to rewrite the description to match the revised definition.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 17th 2023 at 2:36:59 PM

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amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#22: Mar 17th 2023 at 5:46:36 AM

East Indies has been dewicked so it can be safely merged into UsefulNotes.Asia

GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
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#23: Mar 17th 2023 at 1:49:19 PM

[up]I turned it into a redirect.

Edit: And I cut Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon!'s Laconic pending it getting the same treatment.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 17th 2023 at 3:50:56 AM

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GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
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#24: Mar 19th 2023 at 3:31:15 AM

I updated Hula and Luaus' description (didn't need to make many changes since I just needed to change it to say it may appear in a Vacation Episode instead of requiring one), and cleaned the on-page examples. A lot of examples were merely about luaus happening, but one baffling example that didn't fit that mold was about a work that takes place in Tahiti, which is a French territory and thus doesn't fit a trope about depictions of a US state.

144 wicks; not too many, and we're not cutting them all, so Sandbox.Hula And Luaus Wick Cleaning can be used to keep track of which namespaces have been vetted.

Welcome to the Caribbean Mon has 167 wicks, which is a bit more, but easier to keep track of since we're getting rid of all of them except for the Trope Report Changelog entry by either moving them to a more fitting trope or just deleting them.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 19th 2023 at 5:33:43 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#25: Mar 19th 2023 at 6:52:17 AM

I actually had a question about Hula and Luaus. Since it's about stereotypical depictions of Hawaii does that include stereotypical depictions of Hawaiians? Right now the trope is focused on individual setting aspects without describing the overall meaning these pieces come together to make; the sum of the parts, if you will. So I was going to add to the top-line something about all of this coming together to portray Hawaii as a calm, soothing paradise where people can relax their troubles away and how this extends to the people, who are depicted as laidback, go-with-the-flow carefree types. Would that be an overextension of the trope or covered under Tropes Are Flexible?

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 19th 2023 at 11:02:55 AM

14th Mar '23 10:49:11 PM

Crown Description:

East Indes, Welcome To The Caribbean Mon, and Hula And Luaus have been subject to inconsistent usage, and there have been concerns about whether all of them are tropeworthy, and if so, what can be done to make the definition(s) clearer. What should be done with these tropes?

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