7,831
edits
Shoehorned First Letter: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
prefix>Import Bot (Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.ShoehornedFirstLetter 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.ShoehornedFirstLetter, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
HLIAA14YOG (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| (9 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|"It must be American. Who else would think 'extra' starts with an X?"|[[Dracula|Mina]] [[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen|Murray]] on the [[Fireball
Sometimes a character will need to come up with a word that starts with a certain letter, but wants or needs to say one that doesn't qualify. The solution: stick the necessary letter in front of the desired word and call it a day! Often done to make a word fit into an [[Fun
Compare [[Xtreme Kool Letterz]].
{{examples|Examples}}▼
== Anime and Manga ==
* Subverted in ''[[Code Geass]]'', where FLEIJA stood for "Field Limitary Effective Implosion Armament". Yes, they didn't even bother to stick anything to the "J". The shameful thing is, the reason for the name is to keep within the [[Theme Naming]] of the series, and the accepted fan-made acronym of FREYA (standing for Fusion REaction Yield Armament) works just as well.
== Comic Books ==
* In one of ''[[The Simpsons (Comic Book)|The Simpsons]]'' comics, Homer tells Bart about the "Three S's of fishing". The last one is ''ssssbait''.▼
== Comics ==▼
▲* In one of ''[[The Simpsons]]'' comics, Homer tells Bart about the "Three S's of fishing". The last one is ''ssssbait''.
* Inverted in ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''. Calvin's [[Girls Have Cooties|anti-girl club]] needs a snappy, memorable name. He and Hobbes eventually come up with "'''G'''et '''R'''id '''O'''f '''S'''limy Girl'''S'''", or G.R.O.S.S.▼
== Film ==
* In the ''[[Three Stooges]]'' short "Sing a Song of Six Pants", the stooges are trying to guess the name of the owner of a suit when they know his initials are TH. They come up with [[Teddy Roosevelt|Teddy Hoosevelt]] and Thomas Hedison.
* In ''Dance Flick'', after one character says there's no 'I' in 'team', the other character suggests some synonyms, none of which have 'I' either, until he gets to '''i-''nsemble'. For his efforts, he is responded with a [[Lampshade Hanging]] that he mispronounced the word to make it sound like it had an 'I'.
== Literature ==
Line 28 ⟶ 24:
* In ''[[The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass]]'', Adrian has to come up with a sermon based around three alliterative bullet points starting with H, but can't think of a third one and keeps getting absurd unrelated suggestions.
* On one [http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-january-25-2007/alphabet toss] between ''[[
▲== Live Action TV ==
▲* On one [http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-january-25-2007/alphabet toss] between ''[[The Daily Show (TV)|The Daily Show]]'' and ''[[The Colbert Report (TV)|The Colbert Report]]'', Jon Stewart made fun of [[Stephen Colbert]] for playing the letter "Z" on ''[[Sesame Street]]: All-Star Alphabet'', leading to this exchange:
▲{{quote| '''Stephen:''' Yeah, you know what "z" stands for, Jon: ''[[Revenge|zrevenge]]''!<br />
▲'''Jon:''' See you in a minute, Stephen!<br />
'''Stephen:''' ''I will have my zvengeance!'' }}
* During a game of "90 Second Alphabet" on ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway
* Challenging the rest of the family to guess the name of a big-band leader with the initials "EC", [[All in The Family|Archie Bunker]] said the answer was "Xavier Cugat". When Mike told him that "Xavier" begins with an "X", Archie insisted that "No human being begins their name with an 'X'!" and that Xavier was spelled "E-G-Z-A-V-E-R".
* One episode of ''[[
{{quote|
'''Mike:''' ..."Knowledge" with an "N"?
'''Crow:''' Yeah, else it would be WALKATHOK, and that doesn't work. }}
== Newspaper Comics ==
▲* Inverted in ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''. Calvin's [[Girls Have Cooties|anti-girl club]] needs a snappy, memorable name. He and Hobbes eventually come up with "'''G'''et '''R'''id '''O'''f '''S'''limy Girl'''S'''", or G.R.O.S.S.
== Theatre ==
* The musical ''[[Plain and Fancy]]'' brings on a little girl in the middle of "Plenty of Pennsylvania" to list something growing in Pennsylvania for every letter of the alphabet. She stumbles toward the end of the alphabet with "un-i-ons" and "X-plants," and for the final letter weakly suggests "zpinach" and "zauerkraut" before triumphantly emerging with "zucchini."
== Video Games ==
Line 52 ⟶ 48:
** The "up" and "down" spells are respectively Y and Z, justified in universe by Y being the initial of the wizard who invented the up spell and Z being the initial of the unpronounceable [[Eldritch Abomination|Lord of the Underworld]].
* A series-wide example, the ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' series tends to change almost any word that starts with a hard C to a K.
* The ''
▲== Web Comics ==
* ''[[Penny Arcade]]'', in [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/6/11/ this comic] about ''[[Kirby]]''.
{{quote|
'''Meta Knight''': Yorganism?
'''General:''' Y is kind of a tricky letter. }}
== Web Original ==
* This is how ''[[Fobbies Are Borange]]'' got its name. A Starmen.net forum member suggested a mnemonic to tell apart two [[Palette Swap
* From [[Peachi]]'s ''[[Persona 4]]'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20120304085225/http://hiimdaisy.livejournal.com/27081.html comic]:
{{quote|
'''Chie:''' [[Trademark Favorite Food|Fsteak]].
'''Shadow Teddie:''' Excellent. }}
* [[TV Tropes]]: [[Pstandard Psychic Pstance]] is named according to this trope, as is [[Psmith Psyndrome]], in a different way.
* [[Homestar Runner]] attempts to write an acrostic poem about Marzipan, and uses foodstuffs to begin each line. On "i" he tries to get away with "inchiladas".
* [[
== Western Animation ==
* Used as a [[Running Gag]] on ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', with Krusty. He's so far had a "Krusty Komedy Klassic" [[What an Idiot!|(at the Apollo theatre in Harlem)]], a Krusty Kharity Klassic, Kamp Krusty, etc.
== Real Life ==
* Almost all software written for [[UNIX|KDE]] has the name with "K", preferably as the first letter. If there's no synonym, "K" may replace "c" or "q". Failing that, it's shoehorned. Killbots, Karbon, Konqueror, KoolDock, Okular, Klear, KBattleship...
* A joke: [[Zorro]] saves a [[Dumb Blonde]] from an unspecified danger. Then he asks: "Do you know who saved you?" She answers in the negative. He points at the Z: "That's the first letter of my name!" She says: "Ohhh, now I get it! Thank you, [[Superman|Zuperman]]!"
* Sometimes seen in posters, books, etc. of the alphabet where each letter is accompanied by a word that starts with that letter. If "x" isn't represented by "xylophone" or "X-ray", it'll be "ox" or "axe".
* The "three Rs" of Education: Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. Only one actually starts with an R when spelled properly. At least writing kinda has the excuse of sounding like it does, but arithmetic has no such excuse.
** In a similar vein: [[
* Something very common with crosswords is that people will change the letters in a word in order to make it fit.
* The Ku Klux Klan is an unfortunate example.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]
[[Category:Language Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Trope]]
| |||