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Four Is Death seems to need cleanup.

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Aquillion Since: Jan, 2001
#26: Aug 22nd 2024 at 10:18:33 PM

13 and 7 are also just larger numbers that have fewer associations. And even then, if you look at their trope pages, they tend to be pretty unambiguous - situations where the number is directly highlighted somehow or clearly treated as "special."

4 is a low enough number that it comes up constantly in random ways, and this shows up a lot in the examples.

I do think that there are definitely some western invocations (even 4:44, which someone mentioned above, makes me squint - why would they choose that specific number?) But it's a trope that attracts a lot of misuse, so it's definitely worth squinting harder at western examples.

Though there's also a lot of misuse in the eastern examples due to overlap with stuff like the Elite Four - which shows that IMHO the problem isn't the cultural boundaries, it's just that four is a very common number and death happens a lot and therefore these things tend to randomly overlap pretty often. Whereas 13 rarely gets any focus unless it's specifically about that one trope.

(And ofc the Elite Four is another eastern trope that has also found its way into the west, especially in videogames, which complicates things further.)

Edited by Aquillion on Aug 22nd 2024 at 10:20:09 AM

Adept (Holding A Herring) Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
#27: Aug 23rd 2024 at 12:46:56 AM

Four has been considered a "physical" or "material" number since Ancient times (based on the four cardinal directions, four classical elements, etc.)—as opposed to the "spiritual" number of three—so even without a direct Eastern influence, I don't think one should immediately suspect an example as random coincidence (i.e. the association of Four Is Death may be based from the concept that all physical/material things will eventually die)

Sid-Starkiller Since: Jan, 2021
#28: Aug 23rd 2024 at 9:09:25 AM

[up]That is absolutely reaching and you know it. The specific thing we are talking about is Four Is Death, not Four Is Significant In Some Way But Not Related To Death. Anything put on this trope unrelated to death WILL get deleted as misuse.

Ookamikun This is going to be so much fun. (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
This is going to be so much fun.
#29: Aug 24th 2024 at 4:59:54 AM

Specifically, four is death primarily because of its Chinese name, and even seven gets tied with it due to it also sharing the same word with four.

Adept (Holding A Herring) Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
#30: Aug 24th 2024 at 7:07:14 AM

[up][up]If you read my earlier post, you know that I'm not favouring examples where the number 4 is given any significance outside of death.

However, I'm just saying is that it's possible for other cultures to independently come up with the Four Is Death association for reasons other than linguistics.

There has been some discussion to disqualify entries simply because the work came from a Western culture, even when there is an obvious 4 = death association (e.g. the 4:44: Last Day on Earth or the Doctor Who examples), which I disagree with.

Edited by Adept on Aug 24th 2024 at 9:12:33 PM

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#31: Aug 24th 2024 at 10:52:15 AM

[up][up]

and even seven gets tied with it due to it also sharing the same word with four.

What? That's not true at all. In most Sinitic languages as well as other languages influenced by Chinese like Sino-japanese, Sino-Korean, and Sino-Vietnamese, the words for "four" and "death" are near-homonyms separated only by different tones.

Seven is pronounced completely different. Even the Chinese word for ten sounds more similar to four than seven. There is a linguistic inverse in that 3, 6, 8, and sometimes 9 sound like Chinese homonyms for health and wealth (it's pretty common to see Chinese businesses with phone numbers full of 8's), though in Japanese 9 (ku/kyu) sounds like their word for pain (kutsuu).

Speaking as someone of that culture, Sinosphere folk culture has a particular bugbear about basing a lot of its casual superstition on soundalikes and linguistic puns that don't really make their way into Western culture. But as examples like 4:44 show, Western media is capable of invoking a form of it anyway via convergent evolution, so in my opinion it's fair to include Western examples, but only as long as the association with death or bad luck extremely blatant.

Edited by AlleyOop on Aug 24th 2024 at 10:57:57 AM

minseok42 A Self-inflicted Disaster from A Six-Tatami Room (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
A Self-inflicted Disaster
#32: Aug 24th 2024 at 12:52:28 PM

[up][up][up] The word for 7 sounding similar to four is only in Japanese (shichi/shi). Japan is not all of Asia, nor is all of Asia the same as Japan.

Edited by minseok42 on Aug 24th 2024 at 12:53:09 PM

"Enshittification truly is how platforms die"-Cory Doctorow
AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#33: Aug 24th 2024 at 5:13:15 PM

Yeah, and even then it's not really considered all that similar. Because 7 can also be pronounced nana, while four has the alternate pronunciation of yon to "neuter" the dangerous implications.

Ookamikun This is going to be so much fun. (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
This is going to be so much fun.
#34: Aug 25th 2024 at 11:47:02 PM

Ahh so it was a Japan-specific sub-thing then. it's why they prefer nana over shichi.

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