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* [[Grey and Grey Morality]] is when both sides of the conflict are neither good or bad. Just because a hero has [[Anti-Hero|some flaws]] and the villain has some [[Anti-Villain|redeeming qualities]] doesn't mean the setting is Grey and Grey in terms of morality.
* [[Guide Dang It]] now gets used for any puzzle that's the least bit difficult, not just ones that aren't possible to solve without a strategy guide or walkthrough. A true [[Guide Dang It]] situation would be one where you look up the solution and, after doing it and analyzing it, proceed to exclaim "HOW THE FUCKING HELL ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO KNOW TO DO THAT?" If the clues are there and you just missed them or misinterpreted them, it's not an example.
* [[Guilty Pleasure]] means liking something yet feeling guilt or embarassmentembarrassment for liking it, because it's considered outside the mainstream, it's lowbrow, or because the one who likes it is out of the demographic. The definition got twisted to slightly above [[So Bad It's Good]] (when many of the examples on that page are interchangeable), and ultimately to [[Complaining About Shows You Don't Like]] but more specific. Almost every example was not an actual example, and people used it as a page to complain about things they thought were [[So Bad It's Good]], even if what they were complaining about was critically acclaimed, or just animated shows and kid's shows in general. It got so bad and opinionated that the page was regulated to in-universe examples.
* A [[Hand Wave]] is an explanation that is too flimsy to hold up under scrutiny, not any brief explanation and most definitely ''not'' "explanations that don't appeal to you".
* [[Harder Than Hard]] refers to when a game has a hard difficulty followed by at least one difficulty above it. It does not simply mean a hard mode that's much harder than the normal mode, or an extreme case of a [[Nintendo Hard]] game. Similar case with [[Easier Than Easy]].
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]] is when an often-used character actor appears in a supporting role (the whole point is that you know the actor's face, but NOT''not'' the name—hename — he's "that guy!") but it's often used for big actors as well.
* [[Hey, It's That Voice!]] is meant to be used for when a voice actor uses the same voice for characters from different series. Instead, it's often used to note that two characters have the same voice actor, even if they don't sound similar.
* [[Hot Mom]] and [[Hot Dad]] are supposed to refer to moms and dads who the other characters find attractive. Tropers tend to use it to mean "character I think is hot who happens to be a parent".
* [[Ho Yay]] is about homosexual ''subtext''. At one point, even ''[[Brokeback Mountain]]'' had it, which was wrong because the characters are explicitly gay.
** It's also now used for any two guys who are best friends at all - which is the trope [[Heterosexual Life Partners]].
* [[Humans Are the Real Monsters]] (once "Humans Are Bastards") is supposed to be about how humans are complete jerks and worse '''compared to other sentient species'''. Humans being horrible people in general does not count as this trope.
* This is why ''[[I Am Not Making This Up]]'' no longer exists on this wiki, what with everyone potholing anything vaguely weird into it.
** [["Not Making This Up" Disclaimer]] is being misused in the same vein, albeit on a much smaller scale.
* [[Incredibly Lame Pun]] is about puns that ''in-universe'' characters find lame. Tropers think it's "[[Pun]], ''any pun'', no matter how subtle or clever it is."
** And originally, it wasn't even a trope at all, just a page to make metatextual [[Pothole|Pot Holespothole]]s to as a band-aid fix to the problem of puns being potholed inappropriately to [[Incredibly Lazy Pun]]. Now the [[Incredibly Lame Pun]] page has over 5,700 Wicks, most of them probably from metatextual [[Pothole|Pot Holespothole]]s.
* [[Unexplained Recovery|I Got Better]], despite having a warning against using it for cases of [[Character Development]] or actual "getting better" outside inexplicable attacks of Death, still gets potholed a lot, but since the [[Trope Namer]] line was ''not'' about death, the trope itself might be a case of this. It has been eventually renamed to [[Unexplained Recovery]].
* [[Insane Troll Logic]] is for logic that is incredibly demented to the point where it makes no sense at all. Too many people try to cram [[Logical Fallacies|flawed logic]] into the trope as opposed to the nonsensical logic that it is supposed to reflect.
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** A good chunk of examples are straight up jokes that were deliberately written to be funny, or are examples of intentionally over-the-top comedic acting. In fact, just about any [[Narm]] example from a comedy is probably this.
* [[Nightmare Fuel]] was originally supposed to be about things from media ''[[What Do You Mean It's for Kids?|aimed at children]]'' which are ''unintentionally'' scary. Then it started getting filled with "anything that scared me as a child, even if I wasn't supposed to see it at that age." Now, most of the examples in [[Nightmare Fuel]] have drifted so far that it might as well be a redirect to the [[Horror]] article, but with whininess.
** In the same fashion, High Octane Nightmare Fuel originally refersreferred to something that was specifically meant to scare the viewers. Reading through some of these pages for different works, one will mainly come across things like characters making scary faces, getting killed off in an unusually violent (but not necessarily horrifying or frightening fashion), to plot developments that while shocking, are clearly not meant to actually scare the audience, and of course, fan speculations and hypothetical what if scenarios that didn't actually take place and have no chance of happening in canon.
** Bowing to the inevitable, All The Tropes now redirects "High Octane Nightmare Fuel" to "Nightmare Fuel", which here has the definition that "High Octane Nightmare Fuel" used to have.
* People tend to confuse [[No Ending]] with [[Left Hanging]], [[Bolivian Army Ending]], [[Gainax Ending]], [[Cliff Hanger]], [[Sequel Hook]], and nearly every other ending trope on the wiki except for [[Grand Finale]].
** And in the same vein, a [[Cliff Hanger]] does ''not'' constitute a [[Bolivian Army Ending]].
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* "The core idea of [[Poe's Law]] is that a parody of something extreme can be mistaken for the real thing, and if a real thing sounds extreme enough, it can be mistaken for a parody," as the first few lines of that page explain. However, examples have a tendency to be more about works or personalities that are either extreme or at least reviled in general, without the "mistaken for a parody" part. This usually leads to [[Complaining About Shows You Don't Like]] while ignoring the trope definition.
* A [[Pothole]] is when a link is [[Pothole|hidden in the text]]. Directly displayed links that use <nowiki>{{brackets}}</nowiki> or [[CamelCase]] are not [[Pothole]]s.
* [[Precision F-Strike]], as the description says, only applies to characters who don't swear often, if at all. Maybe-''MAYBE''-if the swear is supposed to obviously be part of the drama of a significant moment. Of course, it gets applied to characters who swear all the time, and to moments that aren't the least bit dramatic. And that's not even getting into the number of pages where any single use of the word "fuck" is [[Pothole|Pot Holed]]d to this trope.
* Rape The Dog was designed to be clearly and qualitatively different from [[Kick the Dog]], but the original distinction became muddled to [[Kick the Dog]] [[The Same but More|But More Evil]] and we had to [[Shoot the Dog|put it down]]. The replacement is [[Moral Event Horizon]]. The final proof of its total abandonment of original concept is the belief of many that [[Moral Event Horizon]] is actually a step above Rape The Dog.
** [[Complete Monster]] was also added because the original definition of Rape The Dog was so muzzy, it appeared to many Tropers to apply to characters who already ''lived'' beyond the [[Moral Event Horizon]] and had no need to cross it. On that trope, it refers to a villain who's so evil that they couldn't ''be'' more depraved. Admittedly there are multiple ways of going about that, but when every character who was even slightly mean to someone else is labelled a "complete monster," the trope begins to lose its meaning.
* [[Real Women Never Wear Dresses]] has developed many, many problems. It gets potholed incorrectly all the time, despite its straightforward title. Moreover, it's usually accompainedaccompanied by whining and soapboxing about what female characters should and shouldn't be. Most of the (potholed) examples could be summed up as "Complaining About People Not Liking Damsel Scrappies You Like". The trope was originally about feminine clothes/mannerisms/hobbies being considered weak or annoying. Apparently a lot of people think it is about backlash against female characters who '''are''' weak (but not necessarily 'girly').
* [[Recycled in Space]] means a show that is recycled from another show with a gimmicky premise added to make it seem different. An example would be ''The Suite Life of Zack and Cody''(show about twins living in a hotel) and its spinoff ''The Suite Life on Deck'' (show about those same twins on a cruise ship). However, far too many examples are either 1)Shows that are in the same genre that share characteristics 2)"Show X is Show Y in space" where Show Y was actually made after or at the same time as show X 3) Examples where Show Y is so obscure/did so poorly that it's a moot point 4)Shows that the editor doesn't like or 5)Show X is a show that Show Y has a [[Fandom Rivalry]] with.
** There's also the subset of people who take the trope name literally and use it to refer to any work set in space.
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* [[Scary Black Man]] is exactly what it sounds like, an intimidating black guy. The definition seems to be relaxed to refer to any minority character or even in some cases characters that just barely qualify for [[Ambiguously Brown]], whether they're scary, intimidating, or not.
* [[Schoolgirl Lesbians]] is often used to describe any lesbian relationship, regardless of how seriously the relationship is actually treated, or how old the characters are.
* [[Scrub]] and [[Stop Having Fun Guy]] refer to gamers who impolitely impose their ruleset on everyone who plays with them. Poor skill level alone does not equal a Scrub. [[Challenge Gamer|High skill level]] and a tendancytendency to [[Complacent Gaming Syndrome|play on tournament settings, however un-"fun" they are to more casual players]] alone do not equal a Stop Having Fun Guy.
* [[Seasonal Rot]] refers to one particular season of a show that is judged in hindsight to be markedly inferior to other seasons. Way too many people are using the term to mean "I don't like the current season." It also does not mean "got less good over time," which is [[Jump the Shark]].
* A [[Shout-Out]] has to be intentional on the part of the creators. It is not a coincidental similarity between works. Before you succumb to the urge to write "Looks like a [[Shout-Out]] to", consider how likely it is that the creator of Work B is familiar with Work A. In fact, if you don't ''know'' it's a [[Shout-Out]], probably best not to mention it.
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** Another problem was confusion with [[Evil Plan]] because of poor word choice at the article's start. It has since been corrected.
* The [[Your Mileage May Vary|YMMV]] tab is for stuff in the [[Your Mileage May Vary|YMMV]] index as well as [[Audience Reactions]]. Some people misuse it as listing objective tropes that they [[Tropes Are Not Good|think make something they don't like sound good]], or [[Tropes Are Not Bad|the other way around]].
** There are some odd and oddly pervasive instances of a sentence or phrase unambiguously gushing or complaining about a show but potholing to YMMV, likely the result of [[Justifying Edit|stealth justifying edits]]. This doesn't work even when one ignores the fact that potholing YMMV in the middle of an example ''at all'' is not supposed to happen. (For that matter, [[Justifying Edit]]s are not supposed to happen, either.)
* [[You Suck]] had to be renamed to [[This Loser Is You]] because people kept thinking it was for instances of a video game mocking the player for being terrible at the game, when it's really about an [[Audience Surrogate]] portrayed in a negative light.
* [[Zeerust]] refers to ideas of "futuristic" that, while still futuristic-looking, have a "retro" look to them. Back in the Troper Tales days, people wrote Troper Tales about how they prefer their older electronics to modern-day ones, which is completely different.
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