Shown Their Work/Web Original

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Diane Castle from Whateley Universe, writer of the Ayla stories, includes a lot of details that are related to things Ayla should know about. This includes everything from details on restaurants, to discussion of literature. Oh, and lots and lots of business information.
    • Oh brother. In the latest Aquerna novel, Anna needs to get her squirrels back into hibernation. Someone did a ton of research on which types of squirrels hibernate, and the biochemistry of hibernation, and synthesizing H.I.T., which turns out to be a real chemical that really has been tested and found to induce hibernation in squirrels. It's worked into the story without an Info Dump, but it's all there.
    • A number of the authors of the Whateley Universe have done this, from details of computer science to statistical algorithms to a discussion of the physics involved when a PK superboy punches a density-changer who has already gone super-dense.
  • Stuart Slade, author of The Salvation War and The Big One, is a military statistician and frequently throws in details about weapons, battle strategy, and injuries caused in the battle (occasionally going into High Octane Nightmare Fuel territory, such as the effects of Sarin gas).
    • Sometimes this veers into Reality Is Unrealistic territory, as after the USS Normandy (CG-60) incident in Pantheocide (Book 2 of The Salvation War) and the ensuing discussion, he admitted that "I was dancing on the extreme edge of what can be said about SPY-1 and AEGIS in public," referring to the real-life radar and naval combat systems respectively that were used in the story, to the point of handwaving certain statistics as being classified in-universe.
    • The description of the nuclear warhead on the Gryphon "Glickem" is practically Description Porn that could be mistaken for a blueprint for a nuclear device... good thing some key details are deliberately omitted.
    • How about the slight mention of the classified "aurora"?
  • Gametrailers has a tendency to go into insane amounts of research for their "Pop-Up Block" segments, which analyze trailers using context clues. For ~Assassin's Creed~ 2, for instance, they looked up the names of the masks several characters wore. In English, and the Italian. Would the average user need to know these facts? Probably not, but they're in there anyway.
  • One of the main characters of The Pains is an electrical engineer. The author uses the correct terminology, in the correct context. Think what you want about the insane "Mindpixel" ramblings later on, but Mr. Sundman's portrayal of circutriy is spot-on.
  • Encyclopedia Dramatica is surprisingly accurate, in its own twisted way, and if talking about a person on the Internet the page will be filled with fotenotes, images and links about that person's net drama. This is usually how they get out of legal trouble when threatened with a libel lawsuit. "Do you deny any of the information in this article?" "Well, no, but..." "Then you can't sue for libel. Good day, sir."
  • For all the flak The Other Wiki gets for its "anyone can edit" model, its guidelines call for either extensive footnotes or extensive "[citation needed]" tags. Their "good" and "featured" articles are prime examples of this trope - unless, of course, the article was promoted before the standards for quality articles became so strict.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd does the research on every game, system, etc. he reviews.
    • Out of character, James Rolfe shows a ton of work in his movie reviews. He's especially knowledgeable about the horror genre.
  • A small group of people on NationStates (mostly comprised of members of NSD--though one does not necessarily mean the other) love to showcase their work in roleplay posts and especially designs. This is taken Up to Eleven in several designs, the Ur-example being the Nak íl, then surpassed by the Lince [dead link] (it takes up most of that page). If you have time to read all that, I pity you.
  • The gamemaster ("Serris") of the forum based RP, Darwin's Soldiers apparently does his research when it comes to the sciences. Not to mention weaponry.
  • 46524 This thread shows a lot of effort and research to show that Twilight, no matter what the fans say, and what happens in the book, a lot of the actions in the book are wrong and the Vampires in the series don't even qualify as Vampires, Our Vampires Are Different notwithstanding.
  • Orion's Arm, extensively, critics of the setting's assumtions are advised to bring a solid familiarity modern science.
  • Frequently in New York Magician. There's one arc that opens with a detailed account of firefighters fighting a gas fire. Instead of just "they pour water on it", Michel's narration notes the use of foam as a suppressor, and using water mainly to douse any flames that escape the foam. This does beg the question of why a financial guy would even know so much about firefighting, but one can presume he simply looked it up between the end of that story arc and writing it down.
  • TV Tropes often falls into Did Not Do the Research, but those are usually corrected. The Useful Notes pages are an obvious example, but one can learn a surprising amount of useful facts just by going on a Wiki Walk here. Now, head over to Television Is Trying to Kill Us, Media Research Failure, or You Fail Indexes Forever and learn what television doesn't know.
  • Small Problem has had a few posts discussing the science of being tiny, including this one about the Square-Cube Law.
  • The Transformers Wiki in general applies this by listing continuity errors within episodes, even pointing out obscure Mythology Gags. Very obscure.
  • Derek the Bard does a lot of research about the books he reads.
    • Especially in regards to vampire mythology, as detailed in the Anita Blake video.
    • Explains the history of The Iliad in episode 20, as well as recommending other, more obscure classical Greek stories to Lupa) and reciting a passage from it.
    • Runs down the history of James Bond in episode 21.
    • And during Pulp Month, with regards to the medium itself and the history of the period.
  • Law and The Multiverse: A blog about speculating on how real world law would apply or be interpreted with Comic Book Superheroes. Both contributors are licensed attorneys.
  • The titular debate in "An Earnest Discussion" is, in fact, a legitimate debate over the use of motifs in film. Not bad for an amateur Widget Series that runs on Rule of Funny.
    • Writer/creator "Curly" Jeffers is a known lover of trivia and academia.
  • Before every Death Battle the hosts Wiz and Boomstick give information about the characters that are going to fight; since the main point of the show is to decide the winners with research, this is very important.
  • the people behind Die Anstalt really know their psychological theories, from Gestaltzerfall to pathogenetic points of view to theta wave synchronization.
  • The Nostalgia Critic does a lot of research on movies he reviews - the most recent example at this point would be that before reviewing Patch Adams, he researched history and work of real Patch Adams, just so he could leash at the movie for how disrespectful for the source material to the point of taking Adams' real life male friend who was murdered, changing him into female Love Interest with being molested in childhood as a backstory it is.
  • Let's Player Proton Jon has been doing this with his recent LP of Superman 64.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Shown_Their_Work/Web_Original?oldid=1871904"