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The Old Country
- 111 statements
- 20 feature instances
- 10 referencing feature instances
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Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })So, you want to introduce a European immigrant to your North American-based show. You want the character to get up to lots of Fish out of Water fun as his crazy traditions clash with modern American life, marvel at the amazing wealth of Americans and contrast it with the poverty of his homeland, and provide incisive Whoopi Epiphany Speeches about how different life was back in his one-tractor peasant town, all while talking in an outrageous accent. So, their homeland needs to be poor, backward, simple, oppressive, rustic and pastoral, with crazy traditions and, of course, a distinctive accent. There's just one problem - if you claim this geographic hodgepodge is a real country, you'll get a lot of complaints from nationals of that country, either because you've totally misrepresented their traditions, or because you've just described them as a bunch of uneducated peasants. So, the best route to take is to ignore the country issue altogether: Whenever you need to have your character talk about his origins, have them call it "the old country". Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })The old country is usually a Ruritania or Überwald, with splashes of Bavaria, the Mediterranean, the Former Soviet Union, Scandinavia and Scotireland. Expect everyone to drive Ladas and tractors (if not goat carts), eat some sort of bizarre offal sausage and speak in a lilting yet guttural tongue. May be a case of Where the Hell Is Springfield? but you can guarantee they're never from France or England, where many Americans and Canadians descend from and see as cultured already. In fact, it's possible to play this trope straight with continental Europeans settling in England, which was the most advanced (but maybe not cosmopolitan) nation on Earth until America overtook it in the first half of the 20th century. Note that this has definitely not been Truth in Television since World War II, where the Soviets and Americans dominated both sides of Europe, and being Cosmopolitan Empires, kinda drifted or even forced the traditional cultures and rural sides to act accordingly. By The '60s, most of Western and Northern Europe was as urban, well-off and cosmopolitan as the United States with its pop culture dominating. Those from Commie Land still played it kinda straight but in a "we're political refugees" kind of way and by The '90s, post communist eastern and central Europe (with a couple of exceptions) is doing a lot better now and is relatively Americanized. And naturally, the people that come from such developed countries are not going to be poor, unlettered stereotypical 19th century Central European Jews. Thus, the trope is largely played for laughs in a modern setting with the immigrant's European homeland for some reason being stuck 200 years ago as opposed to the modern Americanized nation that it would be today. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_3'); })Examples: |
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Dropped link to Eagleland: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
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| The Old Country | isPartOf |
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| The Old Country / int_1fed53cb | type |
The Old Country | |
| The Old Country / int_1fed53cb | comment |
A recurring character on Late Night with Conan O'Brien was Gustavo, an arrogant European who constantly insisted that Europe was superior to America in every way. In each of his appearances, Conan asks what country in Europe he's from, but Gustavo always refuses to answer, usually claiming that Americans would be too stupid to have heard of it. This is the closest he's come to giving any details on his country: | |
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| The Old Country / int_2275c659 | type |
The Old Country | |
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House and Scrubs have both featured doctors, struggling with their Worthless Foreign Degrees, who merely came from the old country. | |
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| The Old Country / int_22d87fc9 | type |
The Old Country | |
| The Old Country / int_22d87fc9 | comment |
Fez's homeland gets this treatment on That '70s Show. | |
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| The Old Country / int_240c8daf | type |
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Borderline instance on an early episode of Jeeves and Wooster, where Prof. Kluj and his wife have strong emotional reactions to anything that reminds them of the old country. Only borderline because the professor does explicitly name it as Romania in one scene (and describe it as "dump"), but mostly it's just referred by nonspecific descriptions. | |
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Parodied on The Simpsons - see the page quote. | |
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| The Old Country / int_31c31084 | type |
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Tish's family in The Weekenders. Again, it is just called The Old Country and nobody knows which one. When a television report was done on Tish, they said experts were unable to locate on a map or even pronounce the country. Presumably it no longer exists... | |
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| The Old Country / int_468bebb0 | type |
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Uberwaldians living in Ankh-Morpork in the Discworld novels occasionally call it "Zer Old Country", usually when complaining about the absence of psychotropic scenery on the Plains or in gratitude that in the city they're unlikely to be killed without at least being given a reason. | |
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| The Old Country / int_6e907c1 | type |
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There's a short story in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman in which a modern-day grandfather tells his teenage granddaughter a folk tale from the old country and then hints at the end that the tale's hero was, in fact, himself as a young man. Also, apparently their entire family are werewolves. | |
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| The Old Country / int_7038c36b | type |
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Pierre, on Danger 5. While the other members of the eponymous Multinational Team of spies represent the major Allied powers of World War II - the USA, UK, and USSR - plus Australia, Pierre is simply "from Europe", and seems to be a mishmash of French, Italian, and Spanish stereotypes. | |
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| The Old Country / int_79e59d25 | type |
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| The Old Country / int_79e59d25 | comment |
Ruby Pair: This is how Tenn refers to the country she and Zim claim to have emigrated from. When Dib pushes for a name, Zim blurts out "Oldcountrystan". | |
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| The Old Country / int_a0500a06 | type |
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| The Old Country / int_a0500a06 | comment |
Didi's parents, Boris and Minka Kropotkin, on Rugrats are like this, particularly Boris. Apparently, in the old country, a woman gives birth in the potato fields, puts the child on her back and keeps going. He also claims they grew up "sleeping with the goats," but at this point, Didi state that Boris actually came from a very well-to-do and "he wouldn't know a goat if it bit him." By the Hanukkah-episode, it's confirmed that Didi's parents are actually from Russia. |
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| The Old Country / int_a8729c90 | type |
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| The Old Country / int_a8729c90 | comment |
The Fairly OddParents! has Ustinkistan. Timmy's maternal grandparents hail from this place. We see the country is a bleak and barren territory where the main exportation are turnips and everything is made of that plant. Even fairies can only grant turnip-related wishes. The country also celebrates Yaksgiving, a holiday that must hold a record in terrible Yak-related injuries. | |
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| The Old Country / int_b4d8d7b6 | type |
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The titular character in Borgel by Daniel Pinkwater claims to be from The Old Country (more recently, he lived in The Old Apartment in The Old Building in The Old Neighborhood). His Old Country is in Another Dimension instead of Europe, but otherwise is very much a parody of this trope; everyone there is so poor they all sleep in ditches and use dead skunks for clothing, they speak a language that sounds like someone preparing to spit, and Borgel has a number of stories from there which are generally total nonsense. | |
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| The Old Country / int_d46cc708 | type |
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Rolf from Ed, Edd n Eddy claims to be from "the old country," which is a land of strange folk tales, ghastly traditions involving seafood, and lederhosen. Perhaps he's actually from Cloudcuckooland. An old photo of him (in black and white of course) shows mountains and Bavarian looking clothing, but his skin tone is Southern European (or Romani) and his customs come from all over. Rolf is based (and exaggerated) from childhood experiences of the show's creator, Danny Antonucci, himself the child of Italian immigrants, dealing with the culture shock that sort of upbringing provides. One of the later episodes implies that Rolf and his family are probably from somewhere in Northern Europe, possibly Scandinavia. |
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In Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, this is where Gunther's family is from. Apparently it is set somewhere Norse by Norsewest, where the people still follow the old ways. One episode takes place there, and it is indeed called The Old Country. | |
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| The Old Country / int_da3a2b69 | type |
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| The Old Country / int_da3a2b69 | comment |
The Munsters reboot had Grandpa often musing on "The Old Country" with all its traditions of ghosts, vampires, werewolves, possibly Romania but never stated so. | |
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| The Old Country / int_e1ec0e62 | type |
The Old Country | |
| The Old Country / int_e1ec0e62 | comment |
In Grand Theft Auto IV, the homeland of protagonist Niko Bellic is not named, and he and his cousin refer to "the old country". However, they speak Serbo-Croatian in-game and Niko is quick to correct people that he's definitely not from Russia due to being born in the Balkans. Due to being based off a Serbian character from the Yugoslav wars film Behind Enemy Lines and having fought in that war, the wiki treats him as Serbian. The entire plot of the game is essentially the transition to Eagle Land from this. |
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| The Old Country / int_e25322af | type |
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Homestar Runner: Early versions of Coach Z's biography described him as "a crazy man from another country", which seems to have been an excuse for his ridiculous, vaguely-Midwestern accent. In the Strong Bad Email "secret recipes", another of Strong Bad's clumsy lies has him claim that his family's from "Bumdumbourge", near "Totalslava". He recalls his dear old "poopaw" telling him to "Come down off that smokestack and eat your The Chekt!" |
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The Old Country | |
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The original All That had a recurring character named Ishboo (played by Kenan Thompson) who fit this trope. His home country was actually called "Foreign Land", meaning that the actual name of the country was Foreign Land. From the look of their flag, the country looks like Antarctica. |
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| The Old Country / int_ee6c1abc | type |
The Old Country | |
| The Old Country / int_ee6c1abc | comment |
In the Strong Bad Email "secret recipes", another of Strong Bad's clumsy lies has him claim that his family's from "Bumdumbourge", near "Totalslava". He recalls his dear old "poopaw" telling him to "Come down off that smokestack and eat your The Chekt!" | |
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