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It Will Never Catch On: Difference between revisions
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Oftentimes, be it a medieval setting or anything else where things we know about have no business existing, something abundantly familiar to our modern audience is put forth as a hypothetical. The punchline is that no one thinks it could possibly be popular, allowing us to laugh at how wrong people's predictions of the future really are, and pat ourselves on the back for being so clear-eyed.
Compare [[Call Forward]] and [[Who Would Want to Watch Us?]], which is specific to TV shows, and [[Historical
People reinventing things that ''did'' catch on didn't know [[
{{examples
== Anime & Manga ==
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== Fan Works ==
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!:
** It became [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] when, during the debut panel for the ''5Ds'' dub, the voice of Yusei was revealed to be Frank Frankson (Tristan's VA from episode 11 on).
* From ''[[Hercules|I Won't Say It]]'', during a staff meeting in the Underworld:
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* Here's a memorable exchange from ''[[The Lion King]]'' (which, may or may not be in modern times, since we never see any humans)
{{quote| '''Pumbaa''' ''[looking up at the night sky]'': Hey, Timon, ever wonder what those sparkly dots are up there?<br />
'''Timon''': Pumbaa, I don't wonder; [[Know
'''Pumbaa''': Oh. What are they?<br />
'''Timon''': They're fireflies. Fireflies that, uh....[[Buffy
'''Pumbaa''': Oh, gee. [[Genius Ditz|I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away.]]<br />
'''Timon''': Pumbaa, with you, [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|everything]][[Gasshole|'s gas]]. }}
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** ''Blackadder The Third'' mixes this with [[Values Dissonance]]:
{{quote| '''[[Kent Brockman News|Vincent Hanna]]:''' Has your party got any policies?<br />
'''[[Cloudcuckoolander|Ivor Biggun]]:''' Oh yes, certainly! We're for the compulsory serving of asparagus at breakfast, free corsets for the under-fives, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and the abolition of slavery]].<br />
'''Vincent Hanna:''' Now, you see, many moderate people would respect your stand on asparagus, [[I Take Offense to That Last One|but what about this extremist nonsense about abolishing slavery]]?<br />
'''Ivor Biggun:''' Oh, we just put that in for a joke! See you next year! }}
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** The trope is lampshaded by the iris out of the episode being a classic television test pattern.
* On ''[[Arthur (Animation)|Arthur]]'', Muffy tries her hand at fashion design. Her chauffeur Bailey, off-hand, comes up with the idea of multicolored plastic shoes with holes in the top. Muffy says it's too ridiculous to work.
* In an episode of ''[[Batman:
* In the TV [[Christmas Episode]] of [[Ice Age]], Manny assures Sid that Christmas trees will never catch on, instead using Christmas rocks.
* ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'': There was one episode set at the time television was being recently invented. ''Brain'' didn't believe it would ever replace the radios.
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* Michael Eisner, CEO of [[Walt Disney|The Walt Disney Company]] at the time, remarked in response to an early preview of Johnny Depp's portrayal of (Captain) Jack Sparrow in ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'', ''"He's ruining the movie!"''. Depp was nominated for an Oscar for that role. Eisner had several moments like this, and that's the primary reason he's no longer the CEO.
** More or less at the same time, an unnamed Disney casting director told [[Selena Gomez]] that she would never have [[Wizards of Waverly Place|her own show]] and that she "wasn't strong enough to be part of the Disney company".
** [[Walt Disney]] himself was rejected by the CEO of MGM because his concept of [[Mickey Mouse|a big, talking]] [[Eek!
** Disney had to fight to get ''[[Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (Disney)|Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs]]'' produced. Both his brother and business partner Roy Disney and his wife Lillian attempted to talk him out of it, telling him that "nobody wants to watch a movie about dwarves." And the Hollywood movie industry referred to the film derisively as "Disney's Folly" while it was in production.
*** There were plenty of reasons to scoff: At the time, dwarfs were mostly associated with carnival freakshows, the only other feature-length animated film ever made (a German production) had been a tremendous flop, and ''Snow White'' was monstrously expensive - the film's cost overran the expected budget by ''400%'' and production incurred debts that were, at the time, higher than the total value of Disney's studio.
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** Another twist: Fox gave Lucas the [[The Merch|merchandising rights]] to his movie because, well, the rights to making odd posters and tie-in books weren't worth much. This movie became the reason you can get everything from action figures to promotional toothbrushes now, an industry that can bring in more money for a production than the film itself.
** In an interview, Mark Hamill shared an anecdote about sitting in a movie theater and watching a preview for the first Star Wars film. After the thunderous John Williams score died down and the announcer told viewers, "Coming soon...," a heckler in the audience shouted back, "Yeah, to late night television in about a month!" Heh, don't bet on it!
* Some believed that ''[[Twilight (Literature)|Twilight]]'', with its [[Purple Prose]] and [[Family
** Then again, the style of books that it was a part of ("Sexy vampire dudes seducing [[Hollywood Homely]] women and getting away with it", nowadays called Vampire or Gothic Romance) had been on-and-off popular for about 40 years, so it might have been the case of ''Twilight'' being published at just the right time.
** The films themselves also faced this. Early plans for the Twilight film were not accurate to the book, it was far more action-y because it was believed that a film so heavily geared toward girls wouldn't be successful. They ended up sticking to a script more faithful to the book, and considering how much money they've made from that (not to mention the merchandise, you can find anything from clothing to bedsets to band-aids with the characters' faces on them) they probably don't regret that decision.
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* In 1958, a high school student named Robert G. Heft designed a new variation of the United States flag that had 50 stars to account for the addition of Hawaii and Alaska as states. He received a B-minus as a grade, but made an agreement with his teacher that the grade would be upped to an A if it was accepted by Congress and made the official flag. Heft's design was selected from over 1,500 designs submitted, and his grade was adjusted.
* As mentioned in Live Action TV (and [http://www.cracked.com/article_18807_how-xerox-invented-information-age-and-gave-it-away.html this] ''[[Cracked]]'' article), Xerox is infamous for this in the computer industry. While they pioneered the personal computer long before Apple and IBM, their sales strategy was flawed and ultimately backfired. As a result, several of the technologies developed at their research facility PARC - the graphical user interface, the mouse, networking, e-mail, laser printing and other equally important pillars for today's computer industry - were dismissed and abandoned so other companies could build a billion dollar empire around those technologies. Why? Because the East Coast-based management of Xerox Corporation weren't interested in anything that had no direct application to photocopying. You may bang your head against the wall now (they sure did).
* In 1996, Nintendo of Japan actually said this about [[Pokémon Red and Blue (Video Game)|a certain pair of games]], even writing it off as a loss. This was due to the rather unremarkable initial sales, in a market where 80% of the sales are made in the first two weeks. ''Instead'' it kept selling steadily, and [[Cash Cow Franchise|17 more main games, four]] [[Spin
* Subversion: The head of MGM showed ''[[M (Film)|M]]'' to his writers and directors and asked why the hell they weren't making movies like that...but also admitted that, if somebody had pitched ''M'' to him, he would've turned it down.
* ''[[Back to The Future (Film)|Back to The Future]]'' was passed on by practically all the major studios for not having raunchy enough humor <ref>This was the era that brought films like ''[[Animal House]]'' and ''[[Fast Times At Ridgemont High]]''</ref>, while Disney passed it on for being ''too'' raunchy by their standards <ref>because of the subplot where the young version of Marty's mother is attracted to him</ref>. It was only after the box office success of ''[[Romancing the Stone]]'' when [[Amblin Entertainment]] started expressing hope in [[Robert Zemeckis]]' and Bob Gale's science fiction comedy...which would later become the highest-grossing movie of its year.
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* In one of his interviews, [[Arnold Schwarzenegger]] had told the audience that when he first voiced his desire to be a Hollywood actor people told him he would not catch on because of his hard-to-spell-read-and-pronounce-last-name, and because of his Austrian accent. On his first feature film ''Hercules in New York'' he was credited as "Arnold Strong" and his lines were dubbed over. But once he got the chance, he got to define [[The Ahnold|the action star stereotype]], people had begun to expect buffed up men to have Austrian accents, and his name has become anything but forgettable - so unforgettable that people voted for him to be the [[Fan Nickname|Governator]] of California!
* Patrick Stewart was so convinced that ''[[Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' would fail that for the first six weeks of shooting he refused to unpack any of his suitcases.
* This was the prevailing attitude towards ''[[Power Rangers]]'', Haim Saban's idea for adapting action footage from [[Toei Animation]]'s ''[[Super Sentai]]'' shows for American audiences. It took him years to convince a network to give it a chance. It wasn't much of one, the show (which used footage and costumes from the recently-ended [[So Okay
{{quote| No one will ever take them down... the power lies on their si-i-i-i-i-iiiide!}}
** Of course, that's only considering when the damn thing finally got on the air. There are sources that say Saban had been attempting to adapt Sentai all the way back to ''Bioman,'' eight years prior.
** [[The Nostalgia Critic (Web Video)|The Nostalgia Critic]] admits that he thought this about ''[[Power Rangers]]''... then goes on to add "And that's why I'm not in the stock market."
* This could be said for [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]. When the first episode of the first season came out, many people said "Argh, ''another'' [[Tastes Like Diabetes|saccharine-sweet]] 22-minute-long toy commercial?!". It was later green-lit for a third season, ''before the second season even aired.'' The [[Periphery Demographic]] is HUGE!
* The phone, of all things, was mocked by most people when the idea was presented back in the day. People said that it would never "catch on".
* The television was deemed an "idiot's" machine when it was released by most people, and that it was a crap idea. People mocked it with one of the most quoted phrases being: "The television is a radio with pictures. Why even bother? In another 5 years, no one will even remember the television." Guess what became the most popular electronic just 20 years later?
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