Pothole Magnet

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


As the title implies, this index is for pages that have been subject to memetic potholing. This has a tendency to happen to tropes that have a Stock Phrase as their title, but it can happen to other tropes as well.

Normally, this is all in good fun, but Pothole Magnetism does, indeed, have its dark side. There have been tropes that have died horrible, painful deaths due to Pothole Magnetism gone mad. In less extreme cases, it can cause a trope to be renamed.

See also: Overdosed Tropes, Tropes of Legend.

Examples of Pothole Magnet include:
Former Pothole Magnets that had their wicks cleaned up
  • Understatement: Formerly used by editors to point proudly at their own understatement - or, worse, sinkholed into lines which demonstrated the polar opposite of understatement. Was incorrectly potholed on over 8700 pages before a concerted effort to clean it up was made between August and October 2011. When the clean-up was done, the correct wicks numbered about 600. A second clean-up begain in May 2012 when incorrect potholes began to increase the total wicks above 900 again.
Tropes that have been renamed due to misguided Pothole Magnetism
  • Accidental Nightmare Fuel: Originally, this trope was simply called Nightmare Fuel. This has led an absolutely massive amount of potholes involving things that the Troper who posted them found scary.
  • The "Artistic License - X" tropes were like this because they used to be known as "You Fail X Forever" and "X Does Not Work That Way."
  • Comically Missing the Point: Formerly known as Completely Missing The Point. This caused the trope to be misused as a pothole for any statement that missed the point.
  • The End - or Is It?: Its original title was simply Or Is It?, which attracted misuse as a Stock Phrase and Verbal Tic. The old name is now a deliberate redlink.
  • If You Know What I Mean: Formerly known as Nudge Nudge, and before that, If You Know What I Mean. Because of that, double entendres that pothole to this article were more common than grass. This led to a cleanup effort dedicated to removing these sinkholes.
  • "No. Just... No" Reaction: Formerly known merely as No. Just... No, renamed because it was often potholed for when tropers' responses to something were a strong "NO", when it was supposed to refer to In-Universe instances of the Stock Phrase in reaction to a Squicky moment.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Was originally named This! Is! SPARTA! Statements. Like. This. Are almost guaranteed to be potholed to this article. Even entries that should have been potholed to the movie 300 were potholed to this trope.
  • Serial Escalation: Originally Beyond The Impossible. It got a rename due to massive misuse as a pothole for anything that seemed impossible.
  • Stealth Pun: Originally Incredibly Lazy Pun. The old name saw a lot of misuse as a generic pun pothole, resulting in the trope being renamed and the old name being permanently redlinked.
  • Translation Train Wreck: Formerly known as Do Not Want. The article was cut and moved due to pothole misuse for things tropers found squicky.
  • Unexplained Recovery: Formerly known as I Got Better. The old name attracted a lot of misuse as a pothole for people or things "getting better" in general.
  • Zero Context Example: Formerly known as X, Just...X, after a common format associated with this type of example. This, however, had the unfortunate side effect of having tropers potholing these examples to the page, despite the fact that the article's very purpose was to discourage them. This led to the article being deliberately redlinked, and later, renamed.
  1. There aren't actually that many.
  2. That's sarcasm, you idiot!