Symbology Research Failure: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
▲{{quote box|They stuck Russian Orthodox Church architecture on a Communist War Factory. A [[Church Militant]]'s [[Incredibly Lame Pun|nothing compared to this]].}}
This trope occurs when a creator will include religious or cultural symbols without realizing that they are religious or cultural symbols for use in a particular context. They'll have seen the imagery turning up in the art of another culture and so use it for that ethnic or fantastical flavor. They'll use a saint's name because they like the sound, or make every building look like a church because they like the pretty arches. This can confound any audience member who knows what those images really are about and wonders, "What's that doing there?"
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Not to be confused with [[Dan Browned]]. Actually, it should be, since there's no field of study called symbology.<ref>It's actually called [[Umberto Eco|semiotics]]</ref>
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
* Situations where [[Creepy Cool Crosses|crosses]] are meant to denote "gaijin" (not [[Church Militant]], just normal European war forces) in some anime/manga.
== Comic Books ==
* Parodied in ''[[Problem Sleuth]]'' where several stats are shown using very out-of-place Christian imagery, such as monstrances, communion wafers, the Gifts of the Magi, etc.
== Film ==
* Played straight in ''[[The Boondock Saints]]''. Smecker interprets the McManus brothers' habit of placing pennies in the eyes of the dead to be a payment to Charon (Greek ferrymen of the dead across the river Styx), so they can cross over and atone for what they did in life. The payment to Charon was a coin ''under the tongue.'' Placing coins on the eyes simply served as a weight to keep the eyelids from opening on their own post-mortem. Not to mention that two ''very'' Christian Irishmen would probably not participate in a pagan Greek funeral rite.
== Video Games ==
* The Soviet War Factory from ''[[Command
**
* The Kremlin wonder in ''[[
* The Kremlin wonder in ''[[
** Likewise, the [[
▲* The Kremlin wonder in ''[[Civilization]] IV'' ... is actually St. Basil's Cathedral.
▲** Likewise, the [[Useful Notes/Islam|Masjid al-Haram]] wonder in ''Civilization IV'' is actually the Dome of the Rock. (For those not in the know, the former is the Kaaba--the Black Cube--in a big mosque in Mecca. The latter is the blue and gold octagon in Jerusalem, which while cool and significant isn't half as cool or significant as the actual Masjid, which is the holiest site in Islam).
* The Kremlin wonder in ''[[Civilization]]'' V really is the Kremlin, but the little icon for it ...is actually St. Basil's Cathedral.
** That was a [[Lampshade Hanging]] / [[Continuity Nod]] to the previous games.
* [[Mayincatec]] castles in the ''[[
** Similarly, in the ''The War Chiefs'' expansion of ''[[
== Western Animation ==▼
* Seth MacFarlane is obviously a pretty big fan of [[Rule of Funny]] and generally [[They Just Didn't Care|just doesn't care]], but his use of Jewish symbols is, unsurprisingly, way off the mark. In at least a couple episodes in ''[[Family Guy]]'' he shows Jews wearing prayer shawls at the wrong times (either outside of prayer, or at nighttime services when they are not worn), and ''[[The Cleveland Show]]'' at one point, in a fantasy cutaway, shows Cleveland reciting Kol Nidre, the Aramaic annulment of vows that begins Yom Kippur, by reading it out of a Torah scroll. It is a legal declaration, not a Biblical passage, and is certainly not found in the Torah (it's not even in the same language).▼
==
* Use of San(to)/Santa ("Saint") followed by any random word to name fictional Spanish-speaking locations.
* The Kremlin in ''a great deal of American source material'' [[Running Gag|...is actually St. Basil's Cathedral]]. This is probably due to Western journalism superimposing an image of the Cathedral while announcing news relating to Russia during much of the 20th century. Perhaps ironically, ''[[Command
** It doesn't help that when you do a Google image search for "Kremlin," what shows up most prominently [[Overly Long Gag|...is actually St. Basil's Cathedral]]. It's a shame because there are some rather nice-looking churches on the Kremlin grounds.
** To clarify: The Kremlin is a fortress. With red walls and green roofs. Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed stands just outside the Kremlin. It is a colorful temple.
* The Greek capital letter L looks like a Latin A without the horizontal dash. It has the advantage of being recongisable as a letter (the wrong one) while making anything look instantly Greek. Many authors therefore use it as a substitute for A, leading to nonsensical things like the poster for ''[[Agora]]'' which actually says "LGORL" in a mix of Greek and Latin letters.
** [[The Backwards R]] is this trope applied to the Russian alphabet.
** Ancient Greek hoplites in fiction almost invariably carry the capital L on their shields. It was indeed used as such in Ancient times, but only by the Spartans - the L stood for Lakedaimonia, the homeland of the Spartans.
▲== Western Animation ==
▲* Seth MacFarlane is obviously a pretty big fan of [[Rule of Funny]] and generally [[They Just Didn't Care|just doesn't care]], but his use of Jewish symbols is, unsurprisingly, way off the mark. In at least a couple episodes in ''[[Family Guy]]'' he shows Jews wearing prayer shawls at the wrong times (either outside of prayer, or at nighttime services when they are not worn), and ''[[The Cleveland Show]]'' at one point, in a fantasy cutaway, shows Cleveland reciting Kol Nidre, the Aramaic annulment of vows that begins Yom Kippur, by reading it out of a Torah scroll. It is a legal declaration, not a Biblical passage, and is certainly not found in the Torah (it's not even in the same language).
== Real Life ==
* [[Those Wacky Nazis]] appropriating swastikas. The swastika, previous to encounters with India and Buddhism, was already a very popular symbol in the West
* FIFA though it would be a great idea to release a football bearing the flags of the countries that had classified for
* Some coins made in Britain during the Dark Ages, like those of King [
* The Saint Peter cross, also known as the Petrine cross, is called as such because Saint Peter requested to be crucified upside-down - he felt unworthy of dying the same way Jesus Christ did, having denied Him three times. It is thus used as a symbol of humility, Saint Peter himself, and the Papacy - so, when [[Death Metal]] bands and satanic cults co-opted it as a mockery of Christianity, and movies portraying demonology and satanic cults further codified it as one, it got to the point where most Catholics have shunned the inverse cross despite its previous history. While the Petrine cross is fine as is if used in a saintly context, the inverse ''crucifix'' is however widely accepted as sacrilege and thus considered a satanic subversion.
** The Petrine cross controversy also reared its ugly head when a mass held by the late Pope John Paul II in Israel was aired showing the cross in question, which prompted some to [[Everyone Is Satan in Hell|allege]] that the pontiff is a devil worshipper or even the [[Antichrist]] himself, despite [https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/fbchecks/no-upside-down-cross-used-pope-not-symbol-antichrist assurances to the contrary] by Catholics.
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This page... is actually [[w:Saint Basil's Cathedral|St. Basil's Cathedral]].
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Index Failure]]
[[Category:Symbology Research Failure]]
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