Small Reference Pools: Difference between revisions

* The (former) Eastern Bloc consists of two parts, a generic [[Ruritania]] and the city of Prague. No, there isn't anything else between Germany and Russia. Maybe Ukraine as of 2022.

* [[Sydney]] is the only city in [[Australia (country)|Australia]]. Or Brisbane, if you're from the BBC. Someone might occasionally remember Tazmania for the eponymous devils, but nothing else.

* [[Iceland]] is a frozen rock [[Critical Research Failure|with lots of Eskimos]] and one Björk somewhere near the north pole. And now,{{when}} also that darn flight-impeding volcano that no one can spell, [[The Unpronounceable|much less pronounce]].

* Favorite sitcom? ''[[Seinfeld]]'' or ''[[Friends]]''.

* It's particularly unfortunate when this happens with songs about subjects the artist it'sits attributed to would never touch. Both of the above (fairly family-friendly) artists have had their names attached to stuff they'd never have written in a million years.

* If you were a fan participant of modern ''a cappella'' (a musical style which is too cheap to buy instruments) at the dawn of the millennium, you were crippled by the ignorance of the user who did the first major file-sharing for the genre: he thought the only two bands were Brown University's Brown Derbies and [[Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?|Rockapella]]. Even songs by all-female groups were attributed to them, which is amusing seeing as how [[Cross Dressing Voice|both groups are all-male]].

* Among Canadian listeners, the[[The Arrogant Worms]] get this a lot too (though still not as much as Weird Al). Again, often with stuff much racier or more offensive than the Worms themselves would ever do.

* On the same note, it seems that any goth or dark-themed music associated with goths is made by one of four artists, according to P2P networks: [[The Sisters of Mercy]], [[The Cure]], [[Bauhaus]], and [[Siouxsie and the Banshees]]. Anything female is attributed to Siouxsie; anything else to one of the other three (mostly Sisters). 'Cry Little Sister' from ''The Lost Boys'' has been attributed to the Sisters of Mercy. Movie about vampires = Must have been made by the Sisters of Mercy?

* Any country music parody tends to get attributed to [[Jeff Foxworthy]], regardless of quality, theme, or voice. Simply because the one-off "Redneck 12 Days of Christmas" was a hit, people apparently assume Foxworthy to be a singer. Hasn't anybody ever heard of [[Cledus T. Judd]]?

*** Here's one egregious example: Listen to this [httphttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKtYqh7VDEo this one] and compare that to this [httphttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i139Ew6mMFM this one.] And to think they accused [[Jerry Goldsmith]] of ripping off from an obscure (at that time anyway) anime series!!!

** Corollary #2: All instrumental TV themes are by [[John Tesh]].

* Irish musician [[Enya]], who does neo-Celtic new age music, will sometimes get credit for anything that vaguely resembles her work. For example, works by [[Loreena McKennitt]], her sister [[Moya Breannan]], or her former band, [[Clannad (band)|Clannad]]. Karl Jenkins Adeimus is attributed to her too.

* Ireland has only ever produced just two rock bands: [[U2]] and [[Thin Lizzy]] (though U2 are ''much'' more likely to get a mention than Lizzy.) [[My Bloody Valentine (band)|My Bloody Valentine]], [[Horslips]], [[The Undertones]], [[Stiff Little Fingers]], [[Boomtown Rats]] and [[Ash (band)|Ash]] apparently don't exist. (Though The Corrs and The Cranberries ''sometimes'' show up on the occassionaloccasional rom-com soundtrack, ''maybe''.)

* To judge by oldies-station playlists (at least in the UK), the only song [[Soft Cell]] ever recorded was their cover of "Tainted Love". No playlist compiler has, it would seem, ever heard of "Bedsitter", "The Torch" or "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" amongst others. (Ironically, recent covers of ''Tainted Love'' are usually covers [[Covered Up|of the Soft Cell cover, rather than of the original]].)

* Good luck on anyone knowing any song by [[Chris de Burgh]] except ''Lady in Red''. Honourable mention goes to ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000|Mystery Science Theatre 3000]]'' for referencing ''Don't Pay the Ferryman''.

* Most people associate New Wave music with a limited selection of music from the latter era of New Wave and the synthpop era. Not a lot of people know New Wave existed in 1975 - 76 or that it originated as a subgenre of punk rock. Or that a lot of punk rockers morphed into more conventional New Wave acts (cf. Classix Nouveaux, Lords of the New Church). New Wave itself had several substyles, and most of the best-remembered groups - [[The Knack]], [[The Go-GosGo's]], [[Cyndi Lauper]], [[The Bangles]]; suspiciously almost all Los Angeles bands - were highly-commercial Power Pop acts who had little or no connection to the earlier ones who gave the movement its name. Some people believe the 4four groups only had like 2-3 songs each. Most of these people only know 1one song by The Knack.

* There was only ever one Ultravox—the[[Ultravox]] — the one with Midge Ure as lead singer. Poor John Foxx. Likewise, there was only ever one [[Human League]] and that was after 2/3 of the original League left to form [[Heaven 17]] (who some people may only recognize as the guys behind "Let Me Go") and [[Phil Oakey]] had to find a way of keeping the Human League going.

** "[[The Blues Brothers|We got both kinds. We got country *''and*'' western!]]"

* Everything ever played by a military band is by [[John Philip Sousa]].

** All non-Mexican Hispanic music is Salsa, which is played by [[Tito Puente]].

** Brazilian music is [[Carmen Miranda|"that lady with the fruit hat"]],<ref>To be fair, Carmen Miranda did wear some [[Nice Hat|very nice fruit hats]].</ref> and bossa nova, which is [[Stan Getz]].

** If the [[Gypsy Kings]] exist, then they are singing in Spanish.

** To be fair, [[Brian Wilson]] actually co-wrote "Surf City," and [[The Beach Boys]] also performed "Little Old Lady." [[The Beach Boys]] and [[Jan &and Dean]] worked hand-in-hand on many occasions.

* According to pop or oldie radio stations, [[Nazareth]] have only ever made rock ballads. Ditto [[Aerosmith]], The [[Scorpions]], and [[Metallica]].

* If you look at many of the more commonplace [[The Eighties|1980s]] various artists compilations, you'll find a rotating lineup of twenty or thirty songs, usually writenwritten aoundaround 1981-1986, that ''all'' of the compilations will have. Jessie's Girl, [[Land Down Under|Down Under]], The Safety Dance, Come On Eileen, [[Tears for Fears|Everybody Wants To Rule The World]], [[Duran Duran|Hungry Like The Wolf]], Somebody's Watching Me, [[Rock Me, Amadeus]], etc. Most of those songs are white [[Hair Metal]], [[Arena Rock]] or [[New Wave]] pop, usually with an iconic video, and maybe 30% of those songs are [[One-Hit Wonder|one hit wonders]]s or novelty songs. Few dance songs, rap, country or R&B will be included. Made worse by the fact that many major 1980's1980s artists like [[Michael Jackson]], [[Prince]], or [[George Michael]] refuse(d) to license their songs to such best-of's.

** Likewise, because they are promoted heavily on Radio Disney, [[Justin Bieber]], [[Cody Simpson]], [[Willow Smith]] ([[The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air|Will's hair-whipping daughter]]) and [[Taylor Swift]] are considered Disney stars as well, though they record for different labels.

* The only [[ACDC|ACϟDC]] song is "You Shook Me All Night Long" (or maybe "Highway to Hell", if a work is dealing with the themes of Hell, violence, or rebellion, or maybe "Back in Black" thanks to ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]]'', or maybe "Thunderstruck" thanks to ''[[Battleship (film)|Battleship]]''). What's frustrating about this is that AC/DC rival the[[The Rolling Stones]] for the title of most wildly popular rock band ''in the world'', and are continuing to release new material in their classic style. Yet almost no one can name any member of the band except for Angus Young (probably because [[Catholic School Girls Rule|Catholic School Boys Rule]]).

* [[Journey (band)|Journey]] hasonly doneever something other thanrecorded "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)"?

* [[Kansas (band)|Kansas]] hasonly doneever something other thanrecorded "Dust in the Wind" and "Carry On My Wayward Son"?

* [[Sigmund Freud]] [[All Psychology Is Freudian|Freud]] (who [[Freud Was Right|who reduced all problems to sex]])

* [[Charles Darwin]] (developed the theory of evolution, and is supposedly worshipedworshipped as a god by scientists)

* The only crewed space missions ever were "John Glenn's flight" (Friendship 7), Apollo 11, [[Apollo 13]], and the Challenger disaster. And maybe the International Space Station, but only as a venue for [[Chris Hadfield|Commander Hadfield]] to sing "Space Oddity".

* [[Pac-Man Fever|Any arcade game that was wildly popular in the 80's80s.]] SpecificalySpecifically, the ones you see the most often are ''[[Pac-Man]]'', ''[[Space Invaders]]'', and ''[[Frogger]]''.

=== OtherWar ===

* Harold Ross, founder of ''The New Yorker'' magazine, would write "Who he?" on the copy whenever one of his writers used a name without explaining who the person was. He said that there were only two names you can assume everybody knows: [[Sherlock Holmes]] and [[Harry Houdini]].

* In [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/college this article], a teacher of English at a 'college of last resort' mentions that the only movie he can count on every one of his students being familiar with is ''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]''.

*** SimilarilySimilarly, Franco's fascist government (particularly the diplamaticdiplomatic service) didn't share the Nazi's racial ideologies, though Franco himself didn't mind them too much either. Franco was ok with serving them, such as by cataloging the Jews in Spain on Hitlers orders, but on the other hand, he was fine with his government's resources being used to [[wikipedia:Spain in World War II#Jews and other refugees|to protect or evacuate Jews]] in Nazi-occupied countries (much to the chagrin of the Nazis) as well. In the end, tens of thousands of Jews escaped Nazi Europe through Spain.

*** In that vein, all 'Aryan Race/Aryan Union' ideaolgyideology was Hitler's doing. In actuality, it was all Himmler's doing (Hitler actually laughed at him for that), and was worse than Hitler. In fact, the July 20 Bomb Plot held Himmler's assassination just as vital as Hitler's.

* As far as right-pondians are concerned, the USA has the sum total of four significant colleges or universities or whatever you're calling them: MIT (which is a spawning ground for nerds); Harvard (the smart kids); Yale (the rich kids); and Brown (the [[Butt Monkey]]). Left-pondians are no better; the only [[British Unis]] are [[Oxbridge|Oxford, Cambridge]] and the London School Ofof Economics.

* The ''[[Civilization]]'' series has a habit of including less successful but more famous historical characters as leaders of civilizations, when more successful but lesser-known alternatives exist, particularly if the more famous ruler has a certain archetypal image or mythology attached to them. Examples include [[Ragnar Lodbrok and His Sons|Ragnar Lodbrok]] as the Viking leader in ''Civilization III'' and ''IV'', Joan d'Arc{{verify}}<!-- |reason=MOD: Did they really mix languages and say "'Joan d'Arc"' instead of using the French "'Jeanne d'Arc"' or the English "'Joan of Arc"'? -->}} as the French leader in ''Civilization III'' and Boudicca as a Celtic leader in ''Civilization IV''. Arguably, this is pandering to the small reference pool of most players, given that some fairly obscure monarchs such as Mansu Musa (Mali) and Suryavarman II (Khmer) are included as the leaders of Civilizations that are themselves more obscure.

** There is a major aversion in ''Civilization V'', however, as the Chinese leader is not Qin Shi Huang Di or Mao, but Wu Zetian.

* For about a year in the very early 2020s, [[All The Tropes]] had a user who fancied himself a (very minor) celebrity, and had written a creator page for himself. He gave every appearance of being completely ignorant of any work made in any medium before about 2010, and routinely credited his sub-3000-subscriber [[YouTube]] channel with "rescuing" films like ''[[Alien]]'' from being forgotten with the attention they received on his channel after he "rediscovered" them. He also seemed to believe that smartphones were the pinnacle of computer development, and that anything that couldn't run on a smartphone was automatically obsolete.

* [[Quentin Tarantino]]'s movies are full of [[Shout-Out|shout outs]]s and [[Homage Shot|homage shots]]s to movies most people do not even know exist.

** Such as ''[[Goke, Body Snatcher Fromfrom Hell]]'', where he got the idea for the red background during the flight scene in ''[[Kill Bill]] Vol. 1''.

* In ''[[The Great Muppet Caper]]'', Animal is described as being upset that he missed the [[Rembrandt]] exhibit at the National Gallery. Animal corrects him; "[[Pierre-Auguste Renoir|Renoir]]."

*** Leon Czolgosz never married. Which is probably an even smaller reference pool, so . . . yeah.

* ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' and other [[Oxbridge]]-derived comedy. Hands up who had heard of [[Albrecht Dürer]] before they watched the German Python episodes?

** Sure! He's [["Weird Al" Effect|that guy that makes colouring pencils]], right?

** If they have, the only picture he ever made was [[wikipediac:File:Durer Young Hare.jpg|The Young Hare]] (and sometimes [[wikipediac:File:Duerer-Prayer.jpg|The Praying Hands]], though that is rarely attibuted to him).

** [[Odd Name Out|One of these does not belong]]. [[Felix Mendelssohn|Mendelssohn]] belonged to the Romantic, not the Classical, era.

* ''[[Fawlty Towers]]'': "That's not a racket! That's ''[[Johannes Brahms|Brahms]]''! Brahms' Third Racket!"

* ''[[Star Trek]]'' is pretty bad for this, but will occasionally surprise. The conclusion of one ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]]'' episode prominently featured [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s ''[[Vita Nuova]]''.

** Psych is an exception to this in general; some of the references will fly over the heads of people not born in the 80's80s or 90's90s, since Shawn and Gus are well-versed in more obscure media.

* Although ''[[Beakman's World|Beakmans World]]'' would a lot of times reference the more famous Famous Dead Guys, quite a few were more obscure. For example, in their segment of the microscope, they skipped using Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (the Father of Microbiology) and went for the more obscure Zacharias Jansen, who though credited with creating the compound microscope is far less well-known than Leeuwenhoek (and the FDG Jansen makes sure the kids know it in no uncertain terms).

* One ''[[Seinfeld]]'' episode was based on [[Harold Pinter]]'s play ''[[Betrayal]]''.

* The Crane brothers in ''[[Frasier]]'' easily defy this trope, often discussing fine wine and making semi-obscure references to [[Operaopera]] and [[literature]].

* In ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'', Ted is a big fan of [[Pablo Neruda]].

* Possible example: The 1966 ''[[Batman]]'' episode "The Bookworm Turns (While Gotham City Burns)" features a villain called The Bookworm ([[Roddy McDowall]]), whose crimes are based on book plots. Most of the books referenced are fairly well-known, but at one point Bookworm, having threatened to "blow up" a valuable book, surprises Batman and Robin not by exploding it, but by making a ''much'' larger copy of it. This is [[Just for Pun|obviously a pun on the "blowing up" of photographs]], and just might be a hidden reference to the Julio Cortazar short story "Blow Up" (on which, yes, the Michelangelo Antonioni film about enlarging a photograph was based). On the other hand, since that story and the movie based on it were not yet widely known when the episode aired, this might be more of a coincidence than a [[Genius Bonus]].

** Another ''[[Batman]]'' example: The very first [[The Joker|Joker]] episode, "The Joker Is Wild," had the Joker disguising himself as [[Pagliaccio]], the white-faced, sobbing clown of the Leoncavallo opera of the same name. Batman even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] this fact, mentioning to Robin that most people would picture the typical circus archetype when they thought of clowns, and Joker was counting on Batman's knowledge of opera when he sent him a Pagliaccio doll as a clue.

* The 1975 [[Alice Cooper]] song "Department of Youth" does a bit of name-dropping, with [[Donny Osmond]] and [[Dwight Eisenhower]] both mentioned (Eisenhower undoubtedly familiar to most grade-school kids, and the Osmonds fairly commonly known), but also Protestant preacher (and former baseball player) Billy Sunday and short-story writer [[Damon Runyon]], neither of whom most kids are likely to know.

* The names of ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' books often reference works of literature, at least one of which is well outside the norm: War and XPs (Tolstoy's ''[[War and Peace]]''), ''Start of Darkness'' (Conrad's ''[[Heart of Darkness (novel)|Heart of Darkness]]'') and ''On the Origins of PCs'' (Darwin's ''[[On the Origin of Species]]'')

** Strips have also referenced the novel ''Dune'', the musical ''[[Meet Me in St. Louis]]'', and hinged several key character moments on a game of [[Go]].

* ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' lives on averting this trope. Obscure mathematical jokes abound. Luckily for the majority of his readers, the extensive annotations underneath each comic explain the mathematical or scientific principle in question, often a whole lot better than your math teacher or textbook will. Extensive and accurate historical and literary jokes are also common. Unlike other such comics (I'm looking at you, ''[[xkcd|XKCD]]''), ''Irregular Webcomic'' doesn't sacrifice humor for "get out of my head" moments