Overused Running Gag: Difference between revisions

* On [[TV Tropes]] itself, there was a time where a ridiculous number of trope pages mentioned by way of example that they were one of [[The Oldest Ones in the Book]]. (This trend was referenced [https://web.archive.org/web/20080919210945/http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/You_have_two_cows/25 by Uncyclopedia].) This is because over 95% of recorded human history is older than the "book," which was apparently written in 1950 (when television gained popularity in the USA). It became common to see tropers avoid the repetition of that unwieldy trope name by putting it in a [[Pothole]] under some phrase like, "You know what that makes this..." Splitting [[The Oldest Ones in the Book]] into sub-indexes such as [[Older Than Dirt]], [[Older Than Steam]], and [[Older Than Radio]] has done a lot to reduce the annoyance, both because of the variety and because anything that ''isn't'' [[Older Than Dirt]] is newer than much of the book.