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Dead Unicorn Trope

228 statements
28 feature instances
26 referencing feature instances

Dead Unicorn Trope	type	FeatureClass
Dead Unicorn Trope	label	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope	page	DeadUnicornTrope
Dead Unicorn Trope	comment	A plot, character, or story element which is parodied or mocked as overused, even though it wasn't in broad use to begin with. The result is a strange metacontextual trick where viewers congratulate themselves on the death of something that never lived (hence the title). The Butler Did It and Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000 are two of the most well-known examples. Related concepts: Beam Me Up, Scotty!, where a commonly quoted statement never existed in that form (at least by whomever it was attributed to). Shallow Parody, where a work is spoofed for qualities that it doesn't actually have or are grossly inflated. Windmill Political, where a political threat is rallied against that doesn't actually exist. Newer Than They Think, where a seemingly "age-old" trope has actually existed for a much shorter time than is frequently assumed to be the case. This Index Is Not an Example, where an iconic line or scene named or inspired a trope, but is in and of itself not a straight example. Lost in Imitation, where tropes and other plot devices actually originated in later adaptations of a work. Outside Joke: where something's only amusing if you don't know anything about the subject. Unbuilt Trope: where a Trope Maker or Ur-Example play with said trope(s) before later works play them straight. A note for adding examples: Do not add examples to this index simply because you have personally never heard of them. Younger tropers should be especially careful of adding tropes that date back before their births: tropes such as the white wedding dress signifying virginity or the purported stupidity of Polish-Americans were real tropes at one point. Beware of your own small reference pool. Do not add examples just because they were never Truth in Television; they might still have been used seriously as tropes. Another note: This trope is not about ideas or practices that the media depicts as being or having been common place, even though nobody seems to have ever actually done that (such as Droit du Seigneur); it's about parodies and deconstructions of tropes that never seem to have been played straight in the first place. Take Tinfoil Hat for example: few people can say they've ever met an actual conspiracy theorist who wore one of these, but the trope still doesn't qualify as a dead unicorn, as it is indeed played straight in the media quite frequently. If, however, we lived in a universe where fictional characters only ever Lampshaded the fact that conspiracy theorists don't actually wear these, even though no work had ever presented them as doing so, then it would qualify. Not (usually) related to actual dead unicorns. Compare Cowboy BeBop at His Computer and Common Knowledge. Contrast Undead Horse Trope, where the trope continues to be frequently played straight in spite of an abundance of parodies and subversions that would normally discredit it.
Dead Unicorn Trope	fetched	2024-03-04T09:14:25Z
Dead Unicorn Trope	parsed	2024-03-04T09:14:25Z
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Dead Unicorn Trope	isPartOf	DBTropes
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_1a51d671	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_1a51d671	comment	Frankenstein: The codified form of The Igor first appeared in Mel Brooks' parody, Young Frankenstein, rather than either the Universal Horror films or the original novel. Brooks' Igor was a Composite Character of two figures: Fritz, Dr. Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant in the first Universal movie (who fulfills the basics of the trope, but wears modern clothing, not hooded Medieval peasant garb), and Ygor from the third and fourth movies, a non-hunchbacked (though broken-necked, which caused him to carry one shoulder higher) schemer who wanted to reanimate the monster for his own personal gain.
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_1a51d671	featureApplicability	1.0
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_1a51d671	featureConfidence	1.0
Frankenstein (Franchise)	hasFeature	Dead Unicorn Trope / int_1a51d671
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_27b0262b	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_27b0262b	comment	MythBusters wound up doing this a lot, busting myths that weren't really myths to begin with. This was especially an issue in later seasons, when they had fired their folklorist and had to do episodes on more obscure myths, leading them more to finding out what is possible than setting the record straight. Specifically: While tackling the myth that steel-toed boots could actually sever toes instead of protecting them (busted, by the way), Adam commented about "samurai movies" where the tip of someone's boot would be cut off, but the toes are intact right behind where the tip was severed. This occasionally appears in comedy, but its appearance in a "samurai movie" is highly dubious at best (not least because the typical samurai costume includes sandals). They tested the claim that Japanese armor was better because it was made of lacquered wood — except it wasn't. They used leather, and later lacquered iron (metal was expensive in Japan, and iron rusted easily in the humid climate). Or, to put it another way, there was such a thing as wood-crafted ceremonial armor, but mistaking it for the real thing is akin to thinking that European knights rode into battle in ruffled collars and ring-covered hands.
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_27b0262b	featureApplicability	1.0
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_27b0262b	featureConfidence	1.0
MythBusters	hasFeature	Dead Unicorn Trope / int_27b0262b
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_297f346	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_297f346	comment	The notion that characters in The Western wear hats that are Colour-Coded for Your Convenience (heroes wearing white hats and villains wearing black hats) was never really a thing, except for children's shows and the occasional B-movie. All the way back to The Great Train Robbery (1903) hat colors were fairly evenly distributed, and once films went to color most characters had brown hats in any case. Shane is probably the only big budget western that plays it straight.
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_297f346	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Western	hasFeature	Dead Unicorn Trope / int_297f346
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_2bca217e	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_2bca217e	comment	The idea that every princess ends up with Prince Charming originates from 1987's Into the Woods, a Deconstructive Parody in which the Charmings are portrayed as vain, impulsive womanizers. In fact, no character named "Prince Charming" appears at all in any traditional fairy tale; the closest they come is the Charming King in The Blue Bird. There is a Prince Charming in the Disney Animated Canon, but he's just one of many royal love-interests to appear throughout the franchise, and there's nothing indicating he was ever interested in any heroine other than Cinderella. Beauty and the Beast (1946) also has a character named Avenant, which is French for "charming", but he's not a prince, doesn't end up with Belle, and isn't actually charming in the slightest.
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_2bca217e	featureApplicability	1.0
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Into the Woods (Theatre)	hasFeature	Dead Unicorn Trope / int_2bca217e
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_2c082d05	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_2c082d05	comment	Many parodies and pastiches of Jason Voorhees, villain of the Friday the 13th films, show him wielding a chainsaw, even though his favorite weapon in the movies is just a machete. Indeed, he has never used a chainsaw for any purpose — the closest he came was using a circular saw once (and interestingly, a chainsaw is used against him in the second movie). Most likely, his attributes are being mixed up, intentionally or otherwise, with those of Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_343ad13c	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_343ad13c	comment	Everyone knows that most â€œelevated horrorâ€� films are about a depressed person or grieving family being haunted by a monster that is a metaphor for trauma. Except, this idea was popularized by The Babadook, which leaves the nature of the titular creature ambiguous enough that viewers can interpret it as either a direct metaphor for grief or a monster that feeds upon it. While personal tragedy is often used as a plot element in modern horror, such as in films like Midsommar or A Quiet Place, quite rarely are its antagonists directly metaphorical to grief or trauma.
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_343ad13c	featureApplicability	1.0
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_36887b1b	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_36887b1b	comment	When The Smurfs came out, the Internet acted like its premise of "beloved cartoon characters get sucked into the REAL WORLD" was already a clichÃ© and the premise of every live-action reimagining of a classic cartoon. Except it had only happened twice before, in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle and Fat Albert, which hardly anyone actually saw and most such critics forgot even existed. (And those films were a lot more Roger Rabbit-like in their approach, as the characters are explicitly extracted from cartoon-land into a world where they are already recognized as cartoon stars.) The premise would eventually get played completely straight in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), to a mostly positive response.
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_36887b1b	featureApplicability	1.0
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_47a6a4d6	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_47a6a4d6	comment	Silent Movies: The Dastardly Whiplash was barely ever used, much less in its iconic form, in silent film. It was mostly used in vaudeville and stage melodramas of the day, which was where the overuse really came about and led to all the parodies of the concept, even though the trope was already discredited by the time the 1930s hit. The only significant use of the trope in silent movies was in The Perils of Pauline, but even that example is quite different from the standard whiplash stereotype. The image of a silent movie villain who leaves a woman Chained to a Railway isn't real. The trope has origins in Victorian theatre, but there it was dashing Two-Fisted Tales heroes who'd get tied to the tracks, and it would be women who rescued them. (Though most sources are rather insistent that some of the lost footage from the aforementioned Perils of Pauline does indeed contain an instance of Pauline getting tied to a railroad and getting rescued by the male hero.) Silent films are popularly portrayed as having Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness in their word cards, mostly to evoke an archaic feel. While occasionally words might pop up that aren't commonly used anymore, most silent films were very visually-driven, kept the dialog very simple, and only used word cards to move the plot along. (Which is probably what you'd want out of a silent movie, come to think of it.)
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_4d30cecb	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_4d30cecb	comment	Many parodies of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner portray the Coyote's failures as due to Complexity Addiction. In the actual cartoon, the vast majority of his plans to catch the Roadrunner were pretty straightforward, and his failures were generally just due to being Born Unlucky.
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_4d30cecb	featureApplicability	1.0
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_5ada53ed	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_5ada53ed	comment	James Bond: The notion that in the films the villain always tells Bond what his evil plan is is not entirely accurate, as often Bond already knows or has figured out what the plan is already, and the villain is just filling in some details (usually for the benefit of the audience). Indeed, on several occasions it is Bond who actually explains the evil plan to the villain, often to stroke their ego, distract them to buy time, or get them to drop their guard. The notion that "the main Bond girl works for the villains until she falls in love with James Bond" has only happened once, with Pussy Galore from Goldfinger. While Bond has slept with evil henchwomen before (Thunderball, Goldeneye, Die Another Day), the aforementioned Goldfinger is the only case where he slept with a henchwoman who changed sides as a result. (Bond did sleep with May Day, who later changed sides, but these events were not related.) The rest of the time, they were either completely innocent but just happened to get involved with the villain's plans (Honey Ryder, Christmas Jonesnote if you consider her, not Elektra King, to be the Bond Girl of the film), on Bond's side to begin with (Kissy Suzuki, Tracy Di Vincenzo), working for the villain but having no idea what their plans were (Tatiana Romanova, Octopussy) or effectively a slave of the villains (Domino, Solitaire). Even in Goldfinger it had less to do with Bond sleeping with her and more to do with Goldfinger lying to her about using "sleeping gas" on Fort Knox when it was actually lethal nerve gas. Speaking of Goldfinger, that movie contains perhaps the most frequently parodied and referenced scene in the entire James Bond franchise. The one with Bond strapped to a table with a laser beam aimed at his crotch about to slowly bisect him. And nearly all of those feature the villain leaving Bond in the Death Trap that he then easily escapes. See Bond Villain Stupidity. Nothing like this happens in the actual movie. In the movie, Goldfinger has Bond dead to rights and stays in the room to watch. Bond only "escapes" because he manages to convince Goldfinger that he's of more use alive and he turns off the machine. Even then Goldfinger thinks Bond is probably bluffing, but didn't want to take the chance and Bond stays his prisoner the rest of the movie until the army eventually rescues him. Mocking the notion that James Bond would stick out like a sore thumb because he wears a tuxedo everywhere. Except Bond doesn't do that; throughout the films he only wears a tuxedo to places where it would make sense to wear one (such as a luxurious casino), and otherwise dresses appropriately (if perhaps more stylishly than average) for the places he's going.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_5d4da367	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_5d4da367	comment	From Yume Nikki, the "Vomit-Chan" meme never happened. At no point in the game does Madotsuki ever throw up; the piece of fanart that inspired this meme was entirely the invention of a guro artist.
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_5d4da367	featureApplicability	1.0
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_691be369	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_691be369	comment	The X-Files: The idea that Mulder is more accident-prone and/or incompetent than Scully. They're equally competent, though Scully is a doctor and Mulder is not. This may have stemmed from the fact that he's a bit of a goof, but he's good at what he does.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_81692f99	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_81692f99	comment	Star Trek: As this article explains, the original Captain Kirk in The Original Series was a thoughtful and highly intellectual diplomat who preferred to avoid violence whenever possible and was unquestionably respectful towards women. However, the pop-cultural image of him as a brash, gung-ho womanizer has been widely parodied and homaged, including in the 2009 J.J. Abrams reboot.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_8258e260	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_8258e260	comment	Mario and Luigi are often criticized for being "stereotypical Italian plumbers". In North America, where Mario is generally assumed to be an Italian-American or adjacent thanks to various adaptations, ethnically Italian immigrants would be stereotyped as blue collar in the early 20th century (see also Ethnic Menial Labor); but the idea that they'd be plumbers specifically is not common at all.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_86312631	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_86312631	comment	The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: A gender-based scenario was mentioned in which mostly girls get to ride on dragons. The thing is, that while there are books with female Dragon Rider characters (e.g. Dragonriders of Pern), there doesn't seem to be any series in which that was an exclusively female activity—it's closer to exclusively male in the Pern books,note Only the very few gold (queen) dragons exclusively bond with females, and at the start of the series even they don't actually ride (later, and in the past, greens would sometimes bond with women). and the Pit Dragon Chronicles likewise features males making that bond, and all of these books were written before the Guide was published. It is worth noting, however, that Jones wrote it after reading umpteen Tolkien-esque, Tolkien-length submissions for The Encyclopedia Of Fantasy (1997). Jones was probably not referring to any published books when she wrote this.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_86f6da00	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_86f6da00	comment	The video game adaptations of the live-action Street Fighter movie were never actually titled "Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game", they were simply titled Street Fighter: The Movie. In fact, the movie itself is simply titled Street Fighter, with no subtitle to indicate it was an adaptation. However, it's not uncommon to find web coverage of the games refer to either of them "Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game", likely for disambiguation purposes.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_8e8086c3	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_8e8086c3	comment	Speaking of Goldfinger, that movie contains perhaps the most frequently parodied and referenced scene in the entire James Bond franchise. The one with Bond strapped to a table with a laser beam aimed at his crotch about to slowly bisect him. And nearly all of those feature the villain leaving Bond in the Death Trap that he then easily escapes. See Bond Villain Stupidity. Nothing like this happens in the actual movie. In the movie, Goldfinger has Bond dead to rights and stays in the room to watch. Bond only "escapes" because he manages to convince Goldfinger that he's of more use alive and he turns off the machine. Even then Goldfinger thinks Bond is probably bluffing, but didn't want to take the chance and Bond stays his prisoner the rest of the movie until the army eventually rescues him.
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_8e8086c3	featureApplicability	1.0
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Goldfinger	hasFeature	Dead Unicorn Trope / int_8e8086c3
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_959e314b	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_959e314b	comment	The Fire Emblem Heroes fandom often depicts Reinhardt with an evil or creepy grin (such as here◊), presumably to show how powerful he is in-game. Truth is, he is a very serious Anti-Villain (all his official art does not have him smile) who despises the motivations behind him and is quite conflicted toward his sister Olwen's path.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_986cb669	type	Dead Unicorn Trope
Dead Unicorn Trope / int_986cb669	comment	Parodies of Bambi almost always portray the title character as a weak, helpless creature who gets instantly crushed by anyone that feels like fighting him. In the actual movie, while it does start with Bambi as a helpless baby, he toughens up considerably after his mother's death, and the climax is him winning a fight against another large stag for mating rights.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_9f89a5f0	comment	PokÃ©mon: It's been ingrained in the public consciousness that PokÃ©mon Trainers traditionally start their journey at 10 years old. Though the anime notes that 10 years old is the minimum age of an officially registered Trainer, the only actual PokÃ©mon protagonist who is canonically 10 years old is Ash Ketchum from the anime. Most others have a Vague Age, and many are implied to be teenagers. The closest are the protagonists of PokÃ©mon Red and Blue and PokÃ©mon Sun and Moon, both of whom are 11 years old. This hasn't stopped most parodies and fanfics from making their protagonists 10 years old. Downplayed as, while the protagonists aren't always that young, it is established in Sun and Moon that 11 is around the age most children start their journeys, meaning that the fanon is only a year off. Every Trainer seems to get their starter PokÃ©mon handed to them by a PokÃ©mon Professor. While the player character gets their first PokÃ©mon this way in most mainline games (as does Ash in the anime), this is generally a unique situation, as the professor lives nearby and (in the Kanto, Johto, and Unova games) are a family friend. Meanwhile, the Hoenn and Sinnoh games have you borrow and steal a PokÃ©mon from the local professor, respectively, with them letting you keep it. This special situation is also highlighted by you receiving a PokÃ©dex, a piece of tech that is explicitly stated as being something most trainers don't have; you're getting one to help said professor with their research. Various NPCs state that their first PokÃ©mon was either self-caught in the local area, or a gift from a family member or an established trainer: the Hoenn games show a local Gym Leader (your dad, in this case), loaning out his PokÃ©mon to help a local boy to catch his first, while the player character gets their starter PokÃ©mon from an established trainer in the Alola, Galar, and Paldea games.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_9ff4a8d9	comment	Most parodies of Godzilla and other classic kaiju films tend to mock concepts that never actually existed in the genre. Perhaps the most stubborn myth is that the miniature cities destroyed by the monsters were constructed quickly using cardboard and not really meant to be convincing. In reality, the miniatures in even the worst Godzilla films are easily the most expensive and time-consuming element of the production (just one of these sets could take up to 35,000 man hours to build), as they were lavishly detailed and built using the same materials as real buildings, mostly wood and plaster. The high cost of this could be mitigated with reliance on Stock Footage (a scene from Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster of Rodan destroying a city could be reused in Invasion of Astro-Monster, for example) or else by setting a scene out in the wilderness instead (the climax of Godzilla vs. Megalon is set in a field somewhere). Also, the commonly-mocked scene of a crowd of Japanese pedestrians running down the street while pointing back at the monster and yelling "RUN! IT'S [NAME OF MONSTER]!" rarely, if ever happens in a real kaiju movie despite being nearly universal in parodies of the genre.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_a0e1af96	comment	When a story needs a parodic name for a hypothetical superhero, it'll more often than not be in the pattern <adjective> <verb>er, with the adjective and verb part alliterating. E.g. Avid Avenger, Purple Pugilist, etc. Just about the only well-known real superheroes whose name actually follows this formula are Martian Manhunter and Silver Surfer. However, other Superheroes may have nicknames in this style (e.g. Superman being nicknamed Big Blue (or the Big Blue Boy Scout), Batman being nicknamed the Caped Crusader, Iron Man being nicknamed the Armored Avenger, The Incredible Hulk being nicknamed the Green Goliath), making this misconception understandable. See Superhero Sobriquets for more details.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_a8729c90	comment	Parodies of The Fairly OddParents! commonly feature Timmy saying "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" just before his wish goes wrong. This has never happened on the actual show. The idea comes from a conflation between the show itself and "Timmy TV", an in-universe reality show that Timmy starred in, where the executives forced him to adopt "What could possibly go wrong?" as a catchphrase in an attempt to boost ratings.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_c43df4d8	comment	Doctor Who, being a Long Runner and pop culture phenomenon in Britain, generated a lot of misconceptions of how things typically went: Not many of the Doctor's companions actually twisted an ankle, and very few were helpless screaming women. In fact, Susan is the only one that comes to mind who did either, and even she shared the TARDIS with another female companion, Barbara, a strong-willed teacher who Minored In Ass Kicking. The Second Doctor used Victoria's screaming to defeat a foam monster, and even then it was subtly pitched as a send-up in Victoria's last story to something she had seldom done. That said, the producers seemed to think this was the case, and new companions were often promoted in the Radio Times with promises that they wouldn't be screaming girls like in the old days. Mel in particular was introduced as an "homage" to 1960s companions, but she more resembled a B-Movie scream queen than anything that had appeared in the series before. The Doctor travelling with only a female companion is also Newer Than They Think. In the 1960s, he tended to fill his TARDIS with rotating man/woman pairs, with an occasional "child" character to round out the team; the sole female companion only became the norm in the mid-late 1980s, although for a period in the late 1970s there was only one human(oid) companion and a robot dog. The line about Daleks being unable to climb stairs was trotted out right up until their return in 2005, even though it was implicitly obvious they could in the 1960s and actually shown on screen in the 1980s. In fact, in the Daleks' second appearance (in the Dalek Book) they were shown flying with transpolar discs. People often misremember Doctors' personalities. William Hartnell is remembered overwhelmingly as being grumpy and a Token Evil Teammate when he spent more of his tenure being silly, grandfatherly, and giggling about one of his schemes. Patrick Troughton is remembered as the giddy, recorder-playing fool he was in "The Three Doctors" rather than the often detached and authoritative character he was. Tom Baker is much more associated with his CloudcuckooLander Invincible Hero characteristics despite spending most of his tenure as a gothic, detached Byronic Hero who could be as disturbing as he was silly. And Peter Davison is often decried as being a boring Nice Guy despite being a Deadpan Snarker Determinator who was much more likely to just shoot the monster than most other Doctors. Much of this is down to gimmicks being remembered better than a whole portrayal, or disproportionate weight given to certain eras and scenes. Robert Holmes is stereotyped as always using Obstructive Bureaucrats as lead villains. He only had them as lead villains in "Carnival of Monsters" and "The Sunmakers", both of which use settings where this would be unavoidable (customs officials and a taxation dystopia). Usually, his lead villains were more dynamic types — even in "The Deadly Assassin", which was much criticised for turning Gallifrey into a bureaucratic parliament, the bureaucratic Time Lords are Lawful Neutral at worst, and the villainous Time Lords are a slick and ambitious man of action and a hissing zombie. The idea that the Doctor always goes to Victorian Britain, or someplace with Steampunk "Space Victorians". He really didn't go there all that often in the Classic series, and they didn't make a big deal about it until Season 14 ("The Talons of Weng-Chiang", which used every Victorian London trope in the book). By Season 23's "Timelash" and Season 26's "Ghost Light", the Doctor had become self-aware that it was a bit of a clichÃ© — except it wasn't, really. The Revival series embraced this idea with gusto, in particular having the Eleventh Doctor retire to Victorian London at one point on the grounds that it's a "default" setting. Perhaps the Doctor's Victorian fashion sense gave the idea that he hangs out there more often than he does (or Britain is full of Victorian buildings and the BBC has plenty of the clothes already, so it's cheaper than Aztec period Mexico or early medieval England). The Classic show is often stereotyped as unemotional, whether to criticise it for being nerdy and sexist, or to praise it for its lack of soap opera Glurge. In fact, the Classic series often focused on the relationship between the Doctor and his companions, and it was often modelled after British-style Soap Operas in format and Emotional Torque (all the better when you don't have a big special effects budget). The Fourth Doctor, who had a particularly long tenure and was emblematic of the era, was less emotional and more distant than the others, and that's probably what enforced the stereotype (that and his longest-tenured companion being a Robot Dog), but this was still a character trait of that specific Doctor and mined for its own emotional storylines when his companions try to connect with him. The Classic show wasn't entirely sexless until it became an Enforced Trope in the '80s, by which time the Doctor's asexuality was already a meme. The Doctor did not kiss his companions, and the show was not focused on romance at all, but UST was omnipresent and innuendo was common. Each of the first four Doctors got at least one story where they would be allowed to flirt with a pretty girl or be distracted by one; Implied Love Interest relationships and Ship Tease moments between the Doctor and his companion were common throughout the '70s;note Especially between the Fourth Doctor and his companion Romana, since Tom Baker really did have a relationship with Lalla Ward. The tabloid fodder that the relationship proved to be was one of the reasons the No Hugging, No Kissing rule was enforced in the '80s. The other was that Peter Davison was much closer in age to his co-stars Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton, making jokes and innuendo about hanky-panky in the TARDIS much more likely. To avert it, a mandate was enacted forbidding Davison to so much as lay hands on his female companions unless it was unavoidable. and the First Doctor was introduced with a granddaughter (which implies certain actions that produce children) and got engaged to a Girl of the Week in one story. The idea was not supposed to be that the Doctor had no sexual feelings — just that the show wasn't about that sort of thing, and so it wouldn't make sense to include a Token Romance. Nevertheless, fandom memory holds that the Doctor was Not Distracted by the Sexy (and possibly without the relevant parts) until the Revival series decided to make him into a Chick Magnet, and jokes to this extent have been made on the show. A disproportionate amount of this came from fans latching onto the Fourth Doctor's notorious "You're a beautiful woman... probably" line in "City of Death", which in context seems more likely to be deliberate mockery of the Countess's villainous attempts to distract him with sexiness than actual asexual innocence. A lot of these misconceptions (as pertaining to the classic series at least) are likely a result of its legendary problems with Missing Episodes (a substantial amount of the stories featuring the First and Second Doctors either partially or wholly do not exist), the lack of repeats outside of a handful of stories here and there, and the fact that it was already a Long Runner by the time home media made it possible to even start circulating the tapes, much less keep doing so. This meant that lot of received wisdom based on hazy recollections was able to build up and be passed off as fact well before the classic series was rebroadcast or released on home media to a sufficient degree to allow people to fact-check this stuff. As an illustration, note how most of the above examples refer more to the First to Fourth Doctors — the Fifth Doctor's era coincided with the rise in popularity of VHS, meaning people were able to create more accurate archives and increasingly purchase the old stories — but on the flip side, people who had grown up with the show were now involved in making it and were basing what they were doing on their flawed recollections of stories they often hadn't seen since they were children. On the other hand, the Revival series is often seen as "reversing" his asexuality into becoming The Casanova. While there is kissing, more often than not he's on the receiving end (and is bewildered by it when he is); in fact, his disinterest in all the people coming on to him has made him look even more like a weird alien asexual. Part of it is that since the love interests are much more forward to him, there's the question of an actual Relationship Upgrade, which he has to reject (partly because It's Not You, It's My Enemies, and partly because he's Really 700 Years Old and it just wouldn't work out). He did get married to River Song, but she described it as a one-way relationship ("you don't expect a sunset to admire you back").
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_cf3e7a82	comment	Superman has a lot of so-called clichÃ©s that parodies and homages love to send up, but which rarely (if ever) happened in actual Superman media: The trope of Clark Kent changing into Superman in a phone booth was only ever used straight twice, in the Superman Theatrical Cartoons of the 1940s and the Atari 2600 game. Superman did it once in the comic books of the same period, only to note how difficult it is to change costume in a phone booth, meaning this was deconstructed when it was new. All future uses of the trope are parodies or Lampshade Hanging. In fact, it would be kind of stupid for Superman to change costume in a glass phone booth where anybody could see him, and indeed phone booths in the 1940s were made of solid wood — yet every parody or homage will use a modern glass phone booth. Brian Cronin sets the record straight in his "Comic Book Legends Revealed" blog here. The parodists love to make Lois Lane out to be the dumb girlfriend who can't tell that Clark Kent and Superman are the same person and is easily fooled by a pair of glasses. (This even made it into actual Superman media: on Lois & Clark, time-traveler Tempus told Lois the question everyone in the future asked about her was "How dumb is she?") In the comics, Superman used Clark Kenting to extreme effect to maintain his disguise, and Lois is usually the first to figure out that Clark Kent is Superman (or at least is more certain of it than anyone else), forcing Superman to go to greater lengths to throw her off the scent. After the 1990s, most continuities have her completely in the know.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_d5ddd6c1	comment	It's been ingrained in the public consciousness that PokÃ©mon Trainers traditionally start their journey at 10 years old. Though the anime notes that 10 years old is the minimum age of an officially registered Trainer, the only actual PokÃ©mon protagonist who is canonically 10 years old is Ash Ketchum from the anime. Most others have a Vague Age, and many are implied to be teenagers. The closest are the protagonists of PokÃ©mon Red and Blue and PokÃ©mon Sun and Moon, both of whom are 11 years old. This hasn't stopped most parodies and fanfics from making their protagonists 10 years old. Downplayed as, while the protagonists aren't always that young, it is established in Sun and Moon that 11 is around the age most children start their journeys, meaning that the fanon is only a year off.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_d6c9c0a4	comment	Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: The "Standalone Complex" is a reference to this phenomenon, defining it as an activity meant to be a copycat of an original that doesn't exist.
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Dead Unicorn Trope / int_e26d37ec	comment	Tetris is often viewed as an overtly political work created by the Soviet Union to spread their culture and ideology to the first world. Truth is, the Russian and Soviet music and imagery were not in the original, but added by American and Japanese developers for marketing and style after they got the license — the original game was just a Tech-Demo Game to test out the Elektronika-60 hardware. It had no music or advanced graphics, let alone any Soviet politics or propaganda — see it originally played here. WARNING Contains loud beeps. Turn your sound down, especially if you are using headphones! In fact, some of the added imagery was misaimed — once ELORG was made aware of these (such as Mathias Rust landing in the Red Square, after breaching nearly all of Soviet air defense) they were mad as some of those images like the stunt were major embarrassments at the time.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

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