Grandfather Clause

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"This comes as no surprise: It's a cliche that Superman's glasses are the most laughably ineffective costume ever, but who cares? Changing that part of the mythos would be like taking the stars off the American flag. So screw Suspension of Disbelief: Superman predates it. He's got a free pass to be wearing the same completely unbelievable disguise 70 years later."

Cracked.com, on why Superman continues to get away with Clark Kenting.

A character uses a Trope which may be Cliché, discredited or even dead at this point, but is allowed because it's tied into the character's legacy. Using the trope during the creation of any more recent character however, is noticeably avoided. If the character's use of the trope slowly starts to disappear, they may have outgrown it.

It has a high chance of occurring with "classic" characters, but not necessarily their sidekicks. This usually happens with tropes that the character is tightly tied into, making it difficult to separate them from it, and where the basic idea of the trope isn't so stupid that the fans will be turned off by it. Attempting to take away one of these tropes may force the character into a Dork Age, or at least necessitate an Author's Saving Throw. Compare to The Artifact, where it seems like the creators have misgivings about them.

No relation to the Grandfather Paradox.

Examples of Grandfather Clause include:

General

  • Serendipity Writes the Plot can mesh with this trope fairly often. Sure, if the same work were created more recently, the director probably would have taken advantage of better special effects technology or whatever. But the results of the old limitations frequently end up an inseparable part of the work anyway.
  • The lack of feathers on dinosaurs (or at least the ones that would have feathers) in media is probably because of tradition and the fact that that is how most people think of dinosaurs in spite of the recent scientific evidence.

Advertising

  • The French "Banania"-brand powdered chocolate and its infamous stereotypical black guy. It had been removed for some time in the late eighties/early nineties, but it's back (albeit in more cartoony style).
  • Commercial jingles are also considered silly in modern times, except for products and services whose jingles are part of their legacy.

Anime and Manga

  • Another example of Clark Kenting: most Magical Girls can't get away without at least tinting their hair and parting it differently nowadays, but people actually complained that Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon made the girls look different when de-transformed, because the original Sailor Moon didn't do it. Of course, this problem doesn't exist in series where Magical Girls don't have secret identities to begin with. This was handwaved once in the Sailor Moon anime television series. The dub seems to bank on the familiarity of the audience with Superhero logic, explaining the characters in uniform look like their past (otherwise identical) incarnations.

Comic Books

  • Clark Kenting in its original use is a major example, and tends to remain an iron-clad disguise that fools everyone. Although it has been handwaved in various ways, most of us just accept it after seventy years of Superman. Most superheroes created in the last twenty years have to maintain a more realistic disguise, especially since lately the chance of someone being a superhero seems much higher. It helps that most modern ongoing continuities go out of their way to have at least one incident where Clark Kent and Superman are seen together with the help of shapeshifting friends like Martian Manhunter.
    • Richard Donner, director of the first Superman movie, commented in an interview that in said film Clark Kent was originally going to work at a television news station like he did at the time in the comics, but they went with him as a newspaper reporter because it was much more a part of the public consciousness.
  • Batman is the only character still allowed to get away with naming all his gadgets after himself (Batcave, Batmobile, Baterang). Likewise, the current Robin was for decades the only straight-up Kid Sidekick left in The DCU until Convergence's Cosmic Retcon gave Superman his own biological son. This is usually justified as balancing out Batman's inner darkness, although the latest incarnation of Robin, Damian Wayne, may very well be darker than Batman.
  • Underoos on the outside have fallen out of style for super heroes since the '60s.
    • The DCU seems to have done away with them entirely as of the New 52.
  • Capes too have similarly fallen out of style as part of hero costumes.
  • Green Lanterns do not always have a weakness to yellow things, but Sinestro just wouldn't be Sinestro without a yellow ring that is strangely effective against them. This has since been justified with the Retconned existence of a spectrum of emotion (Red: Rage, Orange: Greed, Yellow: Fear, Green: Willpower, Blue: Hope, Indigo: Compassion, Violet: Love). He and the rest of the Sinestro Corps are literally using fear as a weapon.
    • This leads to a lesser-known retcon. Green Lanterns used to be selected because they were men without fear. However, if current GL's didn't experience fear at some level, then Sinestro's ring would be useless against them unless there were others around whom Sinestro could manipulate.
      • Well, since Sinestro's ring has no vulnerability to green, his ring wouldn't be any more useless against Green Lanterns than their rings are against him, even without the weakness.
  • Doctor Doom just wouldn't be Doctor Doom if he didn't refer to himself as "Doom" all the time. And besides, if your name was "Dr. Victor von Doom", wouldn't you do it too?
  • Any character whose origin involves exposure to radiation. For new characters, Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke. Spider-Man is the main exception, since "bitten by an unnatural spider" was the main point and whether the spider was radioactive or genetically modified (or appointing him as the avatar of the spider totem) didn't really matter. Likewise, the movie version of The Hulk averts this somewhat by combining radiation with several other factors—the gamma rays only break down his cells, the Nanomachines try to repair them, and his genes weren't really normal to begin with.
    • Peter Parker's job as a freelance photographer for the Daily Bugle has also been under fire in the past decade, with the rise of cameras and video in phones as well as the decline in the print media industry. Recent adaptations feature this aspect of the character less and less and those that do are largely done so because of the legacy with a bit of lampshade hanging for fun.
  • The Martian Manhunter in DC Comics (and especially Justice League) is a man from Mars. Advancing science has long since discredited the idea, but he continues on, sometimes with retcons added, such as the explanation that he comes from the distant past, when Mars was more habitable. Note that this, too, has become outdated. The dates given (in the TV series) for Mars' habitability are too recent.
  • Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon is a Yellow Peril character who could never be created nowadays, but while various adaptations have made him white or green, they never can completely hide his origins, if only because they can't get rid of his obviously Chinese name. Witness how the attempt by the new Sci-Fi Channel series to "modernize" him has backfired ridiculously. Something a bit similar applies to many other supervillains like Iron Man's The Mandarin. Now and then people try to make them more presentable, but usually they revert to type pretty soon.
    • Mandarin managed to abandon his Yellow Peril persona successfully some time ago. So at least he has moved on.
  • Some characters rely on using an Iconic Item to be identified, like The Fourth Doctor's scarf, or Indiana Jones' hat; however, when said character has a Limited Wardrobe it becomes an Outdated Outfit by 20 or so years after their debut, like Jimmy Olsen's bow tie (Clark Kent did eventually ditch the fedora). Especially Egregious if the series is set in the "present day". An especially bad case of this is the Swedish army-farce 91:an Karlsson, which started in 1932. The title character's blue uniform was outdated already at start (resembling the uniform the author wore when he served) and has been kept largely the same ever since, despite changes to camo since then. Especially Egregious as all other characters have switched uniforms pretty much at the same pace as their counterparts IRL.
    • The famous Jughead Jones of Archie Comics still wears a stylized version of an old-time inverted fedora beanie as his trademark hat. This was actually a fashion among teens and mechanics of the 1940s (when the character debuted), but has since been something that just makes him a stand-out kook.
  • The Mexican comic character Memin Pinguin falls under blackface in modern times, but due to its popularity and impact in popular culture since being created in 1945, it is accepted there.
    • Also do notice that even nowadays political correctness on racial issues isn't such a big deal in Mexico.
  • The Marvel family's transformation phrase probably falls under this. Back when the series was created, comics were brightly coloured and silly and everyone had fun. Now that comics are a serious medium and not really appropriate for kids, seeing modern characters yell 'Shazam' in huge dramatic letters might be narm if it weren't for this... and the fact that lightning bolts never stop being cool.
  • It would be extremely difficult to make an unironic hyper-patriotic American character and present him as a paragon of virtue and heroism and be taken seriously today. Captain America pulls it off, though, because he has the weight of history on his side (in more ways than one). It helps that his patriotism has been tested and modified into his famous motto, "I am loyal to nothing...except the [American] Dream."
    • For that matter, the "boy scout" hero in general is virtually extinct (except when used as a joke) aside from Captain America, Superman, and Captain Marvel.
    • To the point where every hero is so messed up and their motivations so personal and complicated that idea of heroes who are heroes just because they're decent people who don't want to waste their great power has become unique and thought-provoking in-universe.
      • Another point is that Captain America is not loyal to the American government; his patriotism isn't "My country right or wrong". Put another way, if America decided to sponsor an anti-democratic coup somewhere, he'd not help (and might hinder) its efforts, because democracy is considered an American value.
  • Tights in general. Modern superheroes still tend to wear them, but outside of comic books and animation, most adaptations will attempt to get around them unless the outfit is iconic that the character is drastically altered without it. For example, compare Spider-Man's outfit versus that of the villains in the first two films. Some characters, such as Batman, have their tights altered into a hardened suit of armor so that the character will continue to seem intimidating.
  • In Spirou and Fantasio, Spirou wore a ridiculous old-fashioned bellhop uniform for decades, even though it had been a long time since he actually worked as a bellhop. Modern version of the comic tend to avert, justify or lampshade this, though: for example, in the Le Petit Spirou strip comic we find out that Spirou already wore a bellhop uniform when he was a small child, and his mom, dad, and grandpa wear it too, though the reason for this family tradition is never really explained.
  • One of the main jokes in Brazilian comic Monica's Gang is the protagonist being pestered by her male friends...even though in recent years it would be considered bullying. (though the reply is what you would expect when bullying a Hair-Trigger Temper Pint-Sized Powerhouse) It possibly only remains without complaint of the Moral Guardians because the comic is running since the 1960s.
  • Depicting the Green-Skinned Space Babe solely as the hero's love interest or as a Shameless Fanservice Girl with little understanding of modesty would be seen as distasteful at best, and heavily sexist at worst due to the changing standards both in how women should be depicted and on the issue of sex in general. Starfire is still allowed to get away with this role because she was one of the first of these types of characters to be prominently featured, when most alien heroes were male, and because her romance with Nightwing is widely acknowledged as one of the things that made the Teen Titans so successful, so not having her would be a major change in direction.
  • Having a male hero who casually flirts with women on a regular basis and depicting him as a Nice Guy would be looked at very badly today due to the greater awareness of sexual harassment. Nightwing still gets away with it, both because he is so iconic in the Teen Titans that it would be impossible to change without considerably compromising the Titans, and because despite his flirting, he is consistently depicted as remaining strictly loyal to whoever he is dating.
  • Having an Intrepid Reporter be a superhero's love interest is so old that it has been both lampshaded and mocked, and has fallen severely out of favor due to how old and expected it is, to the point that using it now is seen as incredibly unimaginative, with most new superheroes with an Intrepid Reporter supporting character not having the reporter be the love interest. Lois Lane, Iris West, and to a lesser degree Linda Park, still get used in this role as the love interests of Superman and Barry Allen and Wally West because Lois and Iris are too iconic to the point that trying to remove them would be an immense change and would be poorly received, while Linda was responsible for Wally's character arc that would make Wally into such a popular character.
  • The Most Common Superpower has become extremely outdated, and giving superheroines large boobs has both been lampshaded, mocked, and the frequent subject of criticism due to unnecessarily sexualizing superheroines. Most modern superheroines now have moderate or average busts. However, older heroines like Wonder Woman, Zatanna and Power Girl still keep their large busts because they were created at a time when there were not any issues with it. Power Girl is especially notable because it is acknowledged by everyone that it would be impossible for her to be given her extremely large bust today, but it is now so well known with the character that any attempt to decrease it has often led to fierce criticism.
  • Several superheroine outfits, such as the Leotard of Power or miniskirts have come under criticism for showing off too much skin, being Impractically Fancy Outfit, and for unnecessarily sexualizing superheroines who wear them, with more newer superheroines wearing less revealing costumes. However, older heroines like Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Zatanna and others are still allowed to wear them because many of them either made them popular in the first place, or having them not wear them would be such a major change in the character that it would be poorly received.
  • The Anti-Hero trope has fallen under particularly harsh criticism in recent years, but especially the many that emerged in the Nineties and first half of the 2000's, due to their willingness to use lethal force, carry firearms, often heavily sexualized bodies and the many disagreements they had with more typical heroes. Many of these characteristics have become discredited or under harsh scrutiny and thus the majority of them were either written out, killed off or turned into villains, and it would be very hard for them to be depicted as heroic today. The two main exceptions are Rose Wilson, aka Ravager, and Jason Todd once he was resurrected as the Red Hood. Rose was one of the very few Asian American heroines who did not fall into being Captain Ethnic, or being too reliant on Asian American stereotypes, instead being a genuinely complex character barring the middle period of the 2000's Teen Titans run. Jason Todd as Red Hood not only had plenty of valid points about Batman, that many fans actually agree with, but was consistently depicted as being motivated by a genuine desire to clean up Gotham, but do a better job than Batman, making him much different than most forms of anti heroes in that they only look out for themselves. Unsurprisingly, both have still been prominently featured, with a lot of their worst traits removed and being turned into genuinely kind people.
  • The Dating Catwoman trope has come under increasing scrutiny, as it effectively traps the heroes in deeply problematic, and potentially abusive relationships. Nevertheless, Catwoman, Talia al Ghul, and Black Cat are still widely used in comics and other media as love interests, both because they were the original characters to name and popularize the trope, and because they are so significant that altering them would cause severe continuity issues. It helps that more modern works considerably tone down their villainous actions and make them nicer, effectively making them official allies of their love interests rather than thieves they need to catch.
  • The origin story of Connor Kent, aka Superboy is that he is always a clone of Superman and Lex Luthor which he uses to then angst about, especially since it leads to drama with Superman. Nowadays, cloning or creating clones is a favorite use of villainous organizations and has been so heavily done, especially at DC, that any attempt to try to pull this plot twist off on a more modern character is very likely to elicit groans or accusations that the writers are just taking a lazy option, and the ensuing angst is frequently the subject of criticism for being repetitive and unoriginal, to the point that clones of major characters often get killed off during whatever event they get introduced in, and after a moment of realization, the characters react to the clone with nonchalance. However, Connor and Clark generally get a pass because Connor was one of the first clones to be given his personality and story arc and because it shows that Superman is not truly flawless and gives him more personality, whereas before the story, Clark is frequently depicted as an Ideal Hero with very little real personality.
  • While not truly dead, the circus has fallen out of severe favor due to its rarity, and the Circus Brat is effectively nonexistent in newer characters. Nightwing can still get this origin without being the subject of mockery for being so outdated, because he debuted when the circus was at its height. It certainly helps that more recent depictions generally use the circus in the past tense, insinuating it shut down or that Dick has left it behind.
  • Domino Mask as an ironclad disguise has fallen severely out of favor, given that the only things they cover are the hero's eyes and still leave the rest of the face fully visible, meaning it would be rather easy for someone who has an even cursory knowledge of the secret identify to realize who a superhero is, and more modern heroes are either transformed, or have other things to go along with the mask to keep their identities secret. However, heroes like Robin, Nightwing, and Green Lantern can still get away with it, since they were the ones who popularized the use of the mask in the first place.
  • While not dead, the Stage Magician has been in quite a decline for several decades, to the point that trying to use this as a plausible way to make money or cover as a secret identity would be met with ridicule today. Zatanna is one of the few magical heroes who can still have this origin plausibly, as her being a stage magician is something she was introduced as by following in her father's footsteps, and also because she is one of the few DC heroes to be known publicly without a Secret Identity.
  • The backstory for Kraven the Hunter is that he is a Russian refugee from the Russian Revolution, as his family fled from Volgograd as the Russian nobility was slaughtered. This backstory was still plausible to believe when Kraven debuted in 1964, since he was always portrayed as a middle aged man, but it has since become utterly impossible for someone to still have witnessed that event firsthand and still be alive. Nowadays, trying to use this backstory would not fit just because of the sheer amount of time that has passed, but Kraven still gets a pass since he is often depicted with powers often vastly prolonging his lifespan. Very tellingly, in the Insommniac Spider-Man video game series, in Spider-Man 2, upon finding the Chamelon's apartment, the Chamelon directly refers to leaving Volgograd, and during a part of the main story, Spider-Man finds a letter written by Kraven that also refers to fleeing the Russian Revolution, which is highly notable since most media often won't allude to Kraven's backstory simply because of how outdated it is.
  • While not truly dead, the Farm Boy has been in severe decline in the West ever since the 80's and 90's, to the point that most new heroes who get introduced are explicitly introduced as being from the city, often having never left it. Superman is one of the very few heroes who can get away with this backstory without being subject to mockery, since Clark debuted when this backstory was at its absolute apex. The fact that Clark has repeatedly been depicted in more modern adaptations as having left the farm and now lives only in Metropolis does help make Clark at least keep up with the times, but stories often don't shy away from depicting Clark as either visiting the farm frequently, or inheriting it from Jonathan and Martha Kent as a reminder of his roots.
  • Depicting a city as a Wretched Hive and being dependent on superheroes to stop crime has fallen severely out of favor, simply because crime rates in cities have fallen so dramatically since the 90's, to the point that most modern comic books often have to have a big event or supervillain rampages in order to justify a superhero presence. Gotham City and Bludhaven are generally the exceptions since they are notoriously stated to be extremely corrupt in universe and also because they debuted at times during both the 1930's and the 80's when cities depicted as being in horrible conditions were deemed to have some basis in reality.

Film

  • Not many film franchises go on long enough for this to kick in. Up until the later Pierce Brosnan films, however, it was in full force for James Bond - we knew the premises were ridiculous, the baddies were Card Carrying Villains, the sexual politics were absurd and the Bond One-Liners were worthy of an enormous Collective Groan... that's the point. It's James Bond, as formulaic as it seems. Then the late 90s incarnations flipflopped between Darker and Edgier and tongue-in-cheek Indecisive Parody, Die Another Day collapsed under the weight of its own Continuity Porn, and the Continuity Reboot kicked the whole thing squarely into part post-Bourne part novel Bond.
  • Any film genre based on a historical period will probably run afoul of this trope eventually. The Western, for example, documents a time period that lasted 40 or 50 years at the most; going back to the earliest years of the silent era, countless Western movies have now been made over a period more than twice as long. If we are to take every single Western seriously, then, that half-century from 1840 to 1890 was an impossibly action-packed time. But as long as there are still Western fans out there, new adventures will continue to be generated.
  • In the horror genre, one of the most notable casulties of shifting social norms is the Death by Sex, since in the 80s, during the AIDS scare, and the backlash to the Sexual Revolution, simply having a character either try or want to have sex was enough to have them marked for death, regardless of their actual personality. However, more recently this trope has fallen under harsh criticism not only for the implicit Double Standard regarding female sexuality, but also because someone dying just for having or showing an interest in sex came off as a severe case of Disproportionate Retribution. Now, it is increasingly common for the trope to be mocked or parodied than played straight, and most new horror films don't hesitate to have characters who have sex survive. Only the oldest horror franchises that made the genre, like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and others have kept the trope straight, and even they have to flesh out the characters to give them more personality.

Literature

  • A number of old Sci Fi stories retain some energy in their now old and tired plot devices by presenting them with an innocent earnestness from the time when they were new inventions. This one, for instance.
  • The entire Cthulhu Mythos falls under this trope. It has serious Unfortunate Implications, is filled with Purple Prose, and suffers horridly from Science Marches On and Zeerust. The fans want it that way.
  • It would be hard to imagine someone less renowned than Agatha Christie getting a pass with modern readers when so many Unfortunate Implications are in her works. Christie toned it down later in life, but her personal prejudices clearly made it into her writing, and indeed sometimes become part of the charm. When reading her novels, watch for characters who aren't blueblooded but are trying to pass as high class; shortlist them.
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe avoids real world swear words both for rating and verisimilitude (many less harsh swears reference real world things not in the Galaxy Far Far Away). However since Han Solo says "I'll see you in hell!" in The Empire Strikes Back all phrases with hell (go to hell, to hell with, what the hell ect.) are fine.

Live-Action TV

The Doctor: "Every time the TARDIS materializes in a new location, within the first nanosecond of landing it analyzes its surroundings, calculates a twelve-dimensional data map of everything within a thousand mile radius and determines which outer shell would blend in better with the environment... and then it disguises itself as a police telephone box from 1963."

    • Jack Harkness' WWII-era Memetic Outfit is an in-canon example of this — though we do first meet up with Jack in the '40s, he's actually from the 51st century. He keeps the braces-and-greatcoat look through all of his appearances on Who and into his spinoff, Torchwood. ("Period military is not the dress of a straight man.") In a flashback to British India in 1909, he wears the uniform of a British Army captain of that era.
  • Today, by virtue of being a Superhero, The Lone Ranger is the only Western hero who can get away with all the more outrageous Western cliches such wearing a white hat, riding a white horse, or Blasting It Out of Their Hands without irony.
  • Stargate Command in Stargate SG-1 eventually advanced its technology to the point when it would be possible to retire the "Engaging Chevrons" padding, but by that point it became a tradition (and in "Heroes", it was mentioned that the personnel liked Walter doing his job). Stargate Atlantis, by virtue of being a new show, had a chance for a fresh start and didn't use it—which was, of course, given a Lampshade Hanging in the very first episode.
  • Actual Sentai series, such as Super Sentai or Power Rangers, are the only shows allowed to use the Super Sentai Stance with any attempt at seriousness. Any other work that tries to use the stance had better be lampshading or making fun of it unless the producers want viewers to cry foul.
  • Star Trek gets far more leeway than any other non-parody sci-fi show with many of the tropes it popularized because they are seen as intrinsic to the show's history: Planet of Hats, Proud Warrior Race Guy, Techno Babble, Space Is an Ocean, Humanity Is Superior and all manners of Phlebotinum Abuse to name just a few. It is almost easier to name the Speculative Fiction Tropes Trek can't get away with by claiming "that's the way it worked for Kirk."
  • Using a singer or a band's song in a modern film or tv series set in the present day largely fell out of favor in the mid- 2000s, and have been very rare ever since, due to more concerns over copyright and legal issues in getting permission to use them, especially if the song is recent, or if the band or singer stopped performing. However, films and tv series set as a Period Piece will generally get a pass since it helps to identify the time period, and often also for accuracy. Furthermore, the fact that the songs that are used are often already well known makes it easier since the songs are more well known, and therefore the threat of copyright or legal issues is considerably diminished as a result.

Music

  • Any song written before 1970 with the reference of gay meaning jolly, fun, etc. is perfectly acceptable because it meant something different at the time. These days however if somebody used it in the same context it would be hard to take them seriously and might suggest something about the singer or songwriter's sexuality.
  • Similarly any song written before 1970 can get away a man calling a woman their "little girl" without complaint. However if a modern song tried that it would probably suggest unfortunate implications of pedophilia.
  • Many acts with long discographies still use styles, gimmicks, and techniques which modern performers could not employ with a straight face. Being Kiss or Wayne Newton is a great way to have an extremely long career. Imitating them is a great way to be ridiculed (Yes, it's not fair. But until a time machine is invented, that's the way it will be).

Newspaper Comics

  • The Beetle Bailey characters have worn the same solid olive green (sometime's Sarge's is tan) uniforms since the strip began in 1950, no matter what the situation. Just during war games they put on helmets instead of caps.
  • Jon Arbuckle of Garfield is still wearing his "powder-blue Oxford shirt" and modest 1978 sideburns most of the time (though this could be due to Limited Wardrobe or Disco Dan).

Professional Wrestling

  • Professional wrestling has more or less abandoned the idea of outlandish gimmicks (and most who do are Put on a Bus in less than a year), but The Undertaker has been "The Deadman" for nearly twenty years, and when they tried to change that, it was met with negative reaction.
  • Certain finishing moves become mundane after a while; for instance, the basic DDT is used by many wrestlers, but generally no new guy is going to be able to use a simple DDT as a match ender. However, stars that used it as their finisher before it everyone started using (and kicking out of it), such as Tommy Dreamer, Raven, and especially the move's inventor Jake "The Snake" Roberts, still used it as a finisher.
  • Sometimes, a wrestler's theme music becomes so identified with the wrestler himself that changing it just wouldn't work. Shawn Michaels may have remained attractive, but "Sexy Boy" didn't really fit his gimmick in the last few years of his career. Not that anyone complained.

Theater

  • More objectionable bits in The Mikado are often bowdlerized out (most consistently, a character's assertion that "the nigger serenader and the others of his race... would none of them be missed"), but the basic premise of mostly Caucasian actors in whiteface, kimonos, and black wigs in a gross (albeit allegorical) mockery of Meiji's Japan, remains intact. It should be noted that The Mikado is satire at its finest, using a patently absurd version of Japan to mock contemporary British culture.
    • It is recorded that when Prince Fushimi Sadanaru of Japan (a relative of the Emperor and a confidant of Crown Prince Yoshihito, who became Emperor Taisho) made a state visit to Britain in 1907, all productions of the Mikado were shut down for fear of offending him. This proved to be a mistake, since the Crown Prince had looked forward to seeing it. The Mikado is still very popular in Japan; evidently, the fact that the society is obviously more British than Japanese makes it easier to get Gilbert and Sullivan's point.

Video Games

  • Most platformer heroes have stopped using the Goomba Stomp (or at least downplayed it considerably), but jumping is so much a part of Mario that he almost always has it as his primary ability in his games. Even when the games are RPGs. There's a reason the trope is called Goomba Stomp.
  • Speaking of Mario, don't forget the plot. While other veteran computer game series have been trying to make their plots deeper and more complex, the Super Mario Bros. series is still about the same Italian plumber rescuing the same princess from the same turtle-dinosaur creature. The RPGs, being games with a higher Story to Gameplay Ratio but having essentially the same plot, make fun of this.
    • To elaborate, every Mario RPG so far, sans The Thousand Year Door, has started with Bowser kidnapping, trying to kidnap, or at least planning to kidnap the princess. So far, only the original Paper Mario has had the main plot focus on this.
      • And in Thousand Year Door, he objects to someone else doing it because it's his gimmick (and his love, but that's beside the point).
        • And in Super Mario RPG...well... Bowser gets kicked out of his castle by an even worse enemy and joins you -- and Princess Toadstool does, too!
  • Even the latest games today often ask you to "Press Start", before dropping you into the game or bringing you to the main menu interface, whether or not pressing other buttons would do the same thing. It's averted more and more often these days, but it's still tremendously common. Indeed, it can feel pretty weird to get to the title screen of, say, Super Paper Mario, and be told "Press 2", or having HeartGold and SoulSilver say to "Touch [the touch screen] to Start" despite the fact that pressing start works just fine.
  • Command & Conquer is so well-known for its Full Motion Video cutscenes that when Generals didn't include them, there was a backlash (granted, the lack of FMV wasn't the only difference between Generals and the old games). Now FMV are largely discredited, however C&C gets away with it due to the series' history. The new installments of the Tiberium and Red Alert franchises have brought in all number of really familiar actors, engaging as much Ham-to-Ham Combat as possible (e.g. J. K. Simmons, Tim Curry, and George Takei as the leaders of the factions in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3). Indeed, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has taught us that when your game has amphibious man-cannons that shoot trained attack bears with parachutes you can get away with literally anything.
  • The classic Mega Man series exists on this trope. 9 and 10 feature all of the cliches that are featured in the rest of the series, including the eight robot masters, getting weapons from defeated enemies, moving on to Wily's fortress, Wily hijacking the plot, and even the 8-bit graphics and sound. Somehow, it works.
  • The Metal Gear series started as a ridiculous Action Hero game in the mid 80's. Starting with Metal Gear Solid in 1998, the series started to take itself seriously and both became a lot more grim and disillusioned as well as getting known for it's highly complex plot and deep and well written characters. Many of the mini bosses are so ridiculous they could be straight out of Batman and Robin and many of the sequences could be from cheap 80's action movies, but since those elements have been part of the series from the beginning, they were kept, similar to James Bond movies.
  • Some game players feel that games that give you a set amount of "lives" invoke this trope.
  • An even more outdated concept, still occasionally in use, but becoming increasingly rare, is the level countdown timer, which had become pretty much obsolete by the mid-90s. Even games that are heavily grandfathered, such as the Mario series, have largely dropped the countdown timer, often for justifiable teams.
  • The score counter, while not being used as much as it once was, occasionally continues to pop up in newer games (although not necessarily always in the traditional way).
  • Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine gets away with the Undead Horse Tropes of Real Is Brown, A Space Marine Is You, and a virtual cliche storm in part because the setting helped codify some of those tropes and was using others back when the NES was high tech. These tropes aren't quite dead yet, but they're being mocked and derided openly. Cory Rydell and Grey Carter explain fan reactions here.

Web Comics

Western Animation

Homer: And that horrible act of child abuse became one of our most beloved running gags.

    • It helps that The Simpsons is not only a cartoon, but gave up even the pretense of being a "realistic working-class sitcom" ages ago.
  • Most modern cartoons have largely stopped using wacky sound effects en masse, starting in the mid to late 2000s; it had almost entirely disappeared by the 2010s, save for a few shows that might use them once or twice as an allusion to their roots. Even the franchises that got their start using them have largely abandoned them. The sole exception to this has been the Scooby-Doo franchise, as even its most recent installments repeatedly use the old wacky sound effects. This would under normal circumstances place the franchise horribly out of date, but ever since the franchise debuted half a century ago, all of its iterations, barring the live-action films and even they used them a few times as an allusion to the franchise's roots, have used the old sound effects to play for comedy, meaning any addition not using them would be immediately noticeable.

TV Tropes and All The Tropes

  • Many tropes on this wiki and The Other Tropes Wiki keep their names because people are used to them, even though they do not meet various criteria for descriptive names; some were created before those criteria were codified, while others probably just flew under the radar and became widely linked and well-known before anyone thought to apply those rules, but in any case the name is too strongly associated with the trope to be changed even though it's "bad". Here are some of the more notable ones:
    • If the Narm article were to have been created only recently, it would have been renamed very quickly.
    • Same thing about a very old trope, Gilligan Cut. It's neither exclusive to Gilligan's Island, nor the only cut used there.
    • The Scrappy: Even though character-named tropes are heavily frowned upon since not everyone will get the reference, The Scrappy has held on since it's one of the most heavily-linked tropes on the site.
      • Luckily it sounds sort of like "The Scrappy". Also it gives the sense of something being the scraps that you toss aside.
    • Xanatos Gambit. Yes, we know that not everyone's heard of the original David Xanatos, but since Xanatos Gambit is a Trope of Legend and the term has percolated through the rest of the internet, it's not getting renamed. Other Xanatos tropes have been renamed.
    • The Dragon: Not indicative of what that trope is at all, but it is one of the most linked tropes on the site. (Its usage in this context also predates the site.)
    • One-Winged Angel: A Trope of Legend. The name is a reference to Sephiroth's theme song from Final Fantasy VII.[1] It's not obvious by the title it's about a villain transforming. It resisted a attempt to give it a more descriptive name largely because of its large number of Wicks and this trope.
    • Underground Monkey: "It's a monkey, but it lives underground" is hardly a good way to imply "video game developers create a whole family of mooks by adding little modifications to a mook, hence getting a lot of enemy-variety cheaper". This trope stayed under the radar for too long, and since basically all video game use it, it's been linked by lots and lots of articles. Most tropers believe the abysmal amount of work required to change the name of this trope is just not worth it.
    • Roger Rabbit Effect: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is not the first movie to blend animation and live-action, but it's one of the most well-known, so its name remains.
    • Epileptic Trees: This term doesn't make any sense at all for people who have never seen Lost, but it isn't likely to get a name change anytime soon.

Real Life

  • Named after the common phrase for laws that grant exceptions based on past history. It's even a verb: "To grandfather" something means to not enforce a new regulation on something that was already in existence at the time the regulation was enacted for entities in that category, while new entities in that category would be subject to the regulation.
    • In turn, that phrase came from Jim Crow laws requiring things like literacy tests to vote but granting an exception to anyone whose grandfather was eligible to vote. Since all whites had eligible grandfathers, and few blacks did (the American Civil War having been that recent) and the literacy tests were made very hard (and often rigged), it effectively meant "whites can vote and blacks can't" without outright saying so.
      • This also had the "added benefit" of not allowing fresh immigrants to vote, another thing that the same type of people who created the Jim Crow laws were in favor of.
  • "Inter Caetera" - Papal Bull of 1493 split between Spain and Portugal the territories for colonization, but since the purpose was to stop the ongoing squabble, rather than create new reasons for conflicts, it included:

 ...with this proviso however, that by this our gift, grant, and assignment no right acquired by any Christian prince, who may be in actual possession of said islands and mainlands prior to the said birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ, is hereby to be understood to be withdrawn or taken away.

  • This can also be used legitimately for good reasons and does not always have legal force. A club may decide to change membership requirements such that some of its long-standing members may no longer qualify, but they can be grandfathered in. For example, a fraternity may decide to only accept pledges who possess a certain GPA, but may retain members who were allowed in earlier. Likewise, a club whose membership is growing too quickly may decide to raise membership fees to raise revenue for the larger traffic and to reduce its applicants, but retain existing members at the cost they signed up for. Imagine a popular golf club which was growing too quickly, so members could not guarantee a tee time and the conditions on the course were wanting for a lack of maintenance. Likewise, a company offering a service in high demand may decide to raise prices, but may be legally required or find it prudent to grandfather existing clients in at their original rates, especially if they count on old clients to refer their new ones. This can also be used to keep key personnel during a transition. For example, a company providing emergency medical services may decide to hire only full paramedics in the future, but may grandfather in veteran EMT-Intermediates and Basics while they acquire the EMT-P credential.
  • The Monaco Grand Prix is one of the most dangerous races in Formula One history. Had it been proposed today, safety regulations would not allow it to be built. However, since it was one of the oldest grand prix in existence, it's still in the championship.
  • For fans of American Football, and the NFL in particular, do you think anyplace in Wisconsin at all could pay for a franchise? Yet most Americans know of the city of Green Bay, and its Packers.
    • The Packers are a further example - they're publicly owned as a stock (one that has many more restrictions than most, but still classified as one). The NFL doesn't allow teams to sell shares of NFL teams anymore, but the Packers are still allowed to do this,[2] ensuring that the Green Bay Packers are unique in their league in regards to the ownership situation.
  • Also true of British and Irish international sports teams. Virtually every sport works by the rule of one team per country, and when countries split (USSR, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) or unite (Tanzania, Germany) the teams follow. But Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland have their own teams in almost all sports, even though the countries are the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, because they began most international competition. The divided loyalties of Northern Irish people (see Stroke Country) complicate matters further.
    • Soccer (and futsal) is a rarity, in that Ireland is split Republic/North (the NI team stubbornly styled themselves "Ireland" until 1950), but there are separate Scotland/Wales/England/NI teams. Great Britain teams went to the Olympics 1904-72, but when amateurs left the Olympics, so did Team GB. They reformed for London 2012.
      • There was a separate NI cricket team at the 1998 Commonwealth Games (the Republic of Ireland is not part of the Commonwealth).
      • NI volleyball team play in the European Small Nations division.
    • At the Olympic Games, there is "Great Britain" and "Ireland", and athletes from Northern Ireland can compete for either—even some from a Unionist/Protestant background, who feel stronger allegiance for Britain, have competed for Ireland because Team GB wouldn't take them.
    • In cricket, there is "England" (which represents England and Wales), Scotland and Ireland.
    • Unsurprisingly, Gaelic games use a single Irish team, who play Scotland in compromise rules shinty-hurling, and Australia in international rules football (a clumsy fusion of Aussie Rules and Gaelic football).
    • There is a single GB team in korfball, kabaddi, hockey, ice hockey, handball, volleyball, Aussie rules, but NI players are with Ireland.
    • In basketball, there are separate "Great Britain" and "Ireland" teams—the GB team was only formed in 2005, and England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland still play each other.
    • In rugby, Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales have separate teams. Northern Irish unionists object to both the Irish tricolour flag and the Republic's anthem "Amhrán na bhFiann", so a special "Four Provinces" flag and a special composed anthem ("Ireland's Call") is played. Conversely, Irish players objected to the name "British Lions" for the four-team selection, so they're now the "British and Irish Lions".
  • A rare non-British/Irish example is the West Indies cricket team, who represent 10 independent countries (Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago), 3 Crown dependencies (Anguilla, Montserrat, British Virgin Islands), the US Virgin Islands and Sint Maarten (the Dutch half of St Martin) -- 15 Caribbean "countries" in all, competing internationally as a single team. In fairness, all of these save Guyana, the US Virgin Islands, and Sint Maarten were all going part of the West Indies Federation, which was a single country 1958-1962.
  • The prefix e- for computer-related thing will get you ridiculed now. Only e-mail and perhaps ebooks can really get away with it. Perhaps this is because i is the new e.
  • A literal Grandfather Clause: Most people in the Western world younger than 70 years of age will be harshly reprimanded or at least mocked for Values Dissonance, while those in the twilight of their lives are viewed with tolerance (and sometimes condescension) for holding identical attitudes because "they don't know any better."
  • The Coconut Effect: It would be very easy to record real horses... but people are so used to the sound of coconut halves banged together that it wouldn't be recognized for what it was and would "sound wrong."
  • Pets. There is a well-defined set of "normal" pet animals which have been part of human existence for years (if not millennia), and legislation and custom are always written around the assumption that people are entitled to buy and own these animals. Outside that well-defined set, just watch the people start to stare and the legal compliance issues start to mount.
    • Case in point -- Ferrets. They're the 3rd most popular pet in the US, yet you never see them in the media and laws and regulations prohibiting their ownership abound.
  • The NHL mandated that new players wear helmets in August 1979, but allowed players that were already playing without them to continue to play helmetless. Craig MacTavish was the last non-helmeted player to play in the NHL (he said it was "a comfort thing"). He retired in 1997.
  • Major League Baseball retired the number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson, the first black player to play in the major leagues, in 1997, but allowed players who were already wearing that number to continue using it. Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees was the last remaining active player to still wear that number, retiring in 2013.
  • Major League Baseball requires at least 325 feet of distance along each foul line to the nearest obstruction...except for fields that had shorter distances prior to 1958. The exception only applies to Boston's Fenway Park.
  • Another MLB example: The spitball was banned in 1920, but pitchers who specialized in throwing spitballs were allowed to keep doing so for the rest of their careers. The last spitballer was Hall of Famer Burleigh "Ol' Stubblebeard" Grimes, who retired in 1934.
  • Similarly to baseball, but more recent: in 2007 the International Cricket Council ruled that the distance from boundary to boundary of an international ground must be at least 150 yards square of the wicket and 140 yards straight (measured from centre of pitch), that square boundaries must be at least 65 yards (which allows the pitch to be a little off centre, because a cricket ground has several parallel pitches to allow grass time to recover), and that no boundary can be more than 90 yards from the centre of the pitch. However, all grounds that were built before 2007 are allowed to have shorter boundaries. A few grounds, such as Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand, fall well short of the minimum.
  • An almost literal one: Germans enjoy visa-free access to Israel... except those old enough to have been of legal age during World War II (born before January 1, 1928). They have to get a visa and submit extra paperwork to prove that they weren't members of the Nazi party and/or participate in Nazi atrocities.
  • A good chunk of taxonomy is like this. Early on it often ran on herbariums and/or superficial generalizations. And modern criteria require that a taxon has to include all species deriving from a common ancestor (i.e. no arbitrary stitching or splitting). So now whenever biologists who actually study the species in question (or occasionally paleontologists) find evidence of divergent or convergent adaptations, something have to be shuffled. But when taxons are too old and big to shuffle, and/or there's no clear solution, they just remain as is.
    • Reptiles class lacks the dinosaur-descended birds (together forming the sauropsides) and the therapside-descended mammals (all together forming the hyperclass of the amniotes). From a scientific point of view, reptiles as a class have been discredited, but reptiles are still taught as a biological class vis-à-vis to the other three among the tetrapodes.
  • Despite the United State's rejection of titles of nobility after the revolution and his citizenship requiring it, Baron von Steuben continued to be a baron simply because Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand Steuben is too damn long.


  1. (Despite the fact that he had seven wings).
  2. Although they do have to get NFL permission before issuing any new stock