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{{trope}}
{{cleanup|The Real Life examples need to be removed, and the remaining examples need to be split into multiple pages by medium.}}
{{smallcaps|Important Note 1:}} Copying from the main trope page:
{{noreallife|Real Life as a whole does not imply anything. Individual people imply things in their works.}}
{{smallcaps|Important Note 2:}} Just because a work has [[Unfortunate Implications]] does ''not'' mean the author was thinking of it that way. In fact, that's the point of it being ''unfortunate''. So, please, no [[Justifying Edit
==
* [[Slash Fics]] are contested for objectifying male homosexuality.
** And here's another one. Who told you that [[No Bisexuals|all characters]] in [[If It's You It's Okay|Slash fics]] are homosexuals?
** [[Ho Yay]] often assumes that nearly any affection two men have for each other is homoerotic. [[Les Yay]] often assumes that two women who are close to each other have some kind of romantic interest. (Since [[Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls]], the former is a lot more prevalent.)
** [[Foe Yay]] assumes that if two characters dislike each other, they ''must'' be attracted to each other.
** Slash and Femslash fic is also often plagued by heteronormative gender roles, even when written by LGBT individuals. Regardless of actual characterisation or personality, you'll often see characters falling into really exaggerated Seme/Uke or Butch Lesbian/Girly Girl dynamics and archetypes, which brings out a range of unfortunate implications, especially since a character's "butchness" or "femininity" is often linked to entirely aesthetic things like race, hair colour, height, sexual dominance, or how sympathetic/attractive the author wants to portray them. Yeah, there's an awful lot of offensiveness and bad messages associated with gender and gender roles in far too many F/F and M/M fics.
* The rather controversial ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic]]'' fanfic ''[[The Conversion Bureau]]'' has the rather unfortunate message of "if a new race arrives on the scene; it is acceptable, no ''good'', to force the natives to convert to the newcomer's race and adapt to their customs and rules. In the process, the natives' history, culture and identity is completely erased. And the natives must convert or be killed." Basically, the story seems to advocate genocide/forced assimilation.
* The ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' fanfic ''[[How I Became Yours]]'' has quite a bit of misogynist subtext. To make matters worse '''[[Female Misogynist|a woman wrote it]]'''.
** Almost all of the [[Action Girl]] characters undergo [[Chickification]]. Katara frequently cries and [[Wangst|Wangsts]] over the miscarriage of her son. Toph loses her [[Deadpan Snarker|sarcasm]] and [[The Ladette|tomboyish attitude]], while acting completely smitten with Aang. Worst of all is Azula, who suffers from amnesia and loses her identity as someone who is a devious strategist and powerful Firebender, yet also [[Perfectly Cromulent Word|butdened]] [[Broken Ace|by emotional issues]] to an emotional and powerless woman. All of them are completely useless without men, in spite of their having been crucial to their sides' canon victories at certain points.
** Zuko, upon finding out that Mai hid Katara's pregnancy from him in order to avoid potential political fallout, beats her, divorces her, and leaves to go after Katara. [[Designated Hero|We are meant to sympathize with Zuko]] even though he was cheating on Mai, and [[Designated Villain|Mai is supposed to be seen as pure evil]], rather than as someone who [[Shoot the Dog|takes morally gray actions for well-intentioned purposes]] and later seeks [[Revenge]] for her unjust treatment.
* In the ''[[Lyrical Nanoha]]'' fanfic ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6270588/1/ Behind The Smile]'', it's suggested that Hayate's [[Skinship Grope]] tendencies [[Cerebus Retcon|were a way of warding off male attention in middle school, because she been sexually abused in the past]]. Disregarding the fact that she had been feeling up her knights since she was nine, before she would have to keep up appearances, this bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the idea that homosexuals are only attracted to the same gender because they were sexually abused.
== Memes ==
* The meme [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shoop-da-whoop Shoop Da Whoop], presumably<ref>Looking back at this meme after a decade.</ref> for use of blackface.
==
* In the comic strip '[[Baldo]]', which takes place [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?|probably]] in southern California, the only Caucasian character is a racist counselor that believes that everybody who isn't Caucasian is a gang member.
==
* In the Epcot World Showcase in [[Disney Theme Parks|Disney World]], all of the eleven countries are in the northern hemisphere.<ref>About 90% of countries and the human population are north of the equator, however.</ref> The closest they get to the equator is Mexico or Morocco. Sub-Saharan Africa isn't represented at all because the only nation that would sponsor it was South Africa, at the time deep in apartheid and an obvious potential PR disaster. On the other hand... The Animal Kingdom Park is pretty much EPCOT - Africa.
** On the subject of Disney, what about the Small World ride? It shows a lot of stereotypes, even if it was considered [[Fair for Its Day]] when it was built.
== [[Toys]] ==
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** Arguably a much more prevalent concern with BIONICLE, and indeed with many of [[LEGO]]'s [[LEGO Themes|themes]], is the tendency to border on [[Fantastic Racism|xeno]][[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|phobia]] - all the good guys are handsome, clean humans (or, in the case of BIONICLE/Hero Factory, noble and heroic-looking humanoids), whereas every enemy is of varying degrees of being, well, not handsome, clean, heroic or normal-looking. In particular, every space theme since [[Rock Raiders]] has featured every hero as human and every "bad guy" as aliens of varying levels of twisted otherness:
*** [[Rock Raiders]]: The creatures living on Planet U, like Rock Monsters and Slimy Slugs. Granted, it ''was'' their planet, and the Rock Raiders were taking their food source, and they only hurt them when necessary (except when it wasn't).
*** [[LEGO Mars Mission]]: Humans fight over aliens for who gets to mine the Energy Crystals. The ''entire justification'' for invading the homes of aliens, capturing them and ransacking the planet seems to be that ''the humans want their shit''. Of course, the aliens in this theme are also invading Mars, but that doesn't [[Lego Life on Mars|justify anything]]. [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop
*** [[LEGO Power Miners]]: Slightly [[
*** [[LEGO Space Police]] 3: Arguably the worst, with the heroes all being clean-looking people and the villains all [[Fantastic Racism|creepy aliens.]]
*** [[Hero Factory]]: All the heroes are humanoid, while a lot of the villain are more animalistic, hunched over, or walk on all fours. Some ''are'' in fact animals, but not all of these are true villains -- in the ''Jungle Planet'' arc, they were merely enslaved by the [[Big Bad]].
==
* On one news website{{context|reason=Which one?}} one of the tags (for an article indexing articles on financial bailouts in the US, strangely enough), one of the user contributed tags is "This is what happens when you give money to 'the sons of Ham'". It's arguably made worse (or funnier) by the fact the site's owner was the author of several controversial newsletters in the 1980's regarding black crime.
* In the old Gundam.com message board you can always tell which side the [[Broken Base]] the person was on because the people who liked UC Gundam and hated AU Gundam would always end their post by saying "SIEG ZEON!" which brings to mind [[Those Wacky Nazis|the Nazis]]. This is because the Zeon Leaders use "SIEG ZEON!" in the English dub of the original series, but the dubbers apparently saw the implication and changed it, so by ''08th MS Team'' and ''0080:War in the Pocket'', Zeon Leaders started shouting "ZEKE, ZEON!" instead. Eventually, such as in recent video game adaptations, Zeon Leaders simply shout "HAIL ZEON!", presumably to stop all this confusion.
* The blog [http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/ Sociological Images] points out unfortunate implications in other media.
== Real Life (which the trope page specifically says don't add - This Troper requests a confirmation that they are RL before deleting them) ==
[[File:50f2ecb8-41d4-0664-59b3-013e288a09f4_copy_2979.jpg|frame|Gordon Brown will solve everything with OH GOD IT BURNS]]
* [
* The continuing difficulty some USA news outlets have in accepting that California-born figure-skater [[w:Michelle Kwan|Michelle Kwan]] is an American:
** MSNBC News 1998: "American beats out Kwan"
** Seattle Times 2002: [http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20020303&slug=fancher03 "American outshines Kwan, Slutskaya in skating surprise"]
** Similar comments followed [[w:Kristi Yamaguchi|Kristi Yamaguchi]] during her skating career.
*** That isn't Unfortunate Implications. That's racism.
* While promoting her TV show "All American Girl", [[Margaret Cho]] appeared on a morning talk show for a local station. At the end of the interview segment, the host, in a [[Critical Research Failure]], asked Cho to tell the people at home "in [her] native language" that they were changing over to an ABC affiliate. As Cho was ''born and raised in California'', she simply looked at the camera and curtly said in plain English, "They're changing over to an ABC affiliate."
* A sports team (of younger men) called the Cougars is occasionally liked by women over 30.
* This overlaps considerably with [[Values Dissonance]], but New Zealand has All Blacks, its national rugby team, and All Whites, its national association football team.<ref>They have a range of other colors, as well.</ref> Wikipedia used to have an article at "List of All Blacks", since moved, that was the target of controversy more than once.
** Other teams have since continued the theme, leading to occasional hilarity. The basketballers are the Tall Blacks, the wheelchair rugby are the Wheel Blacks, and so on. This was fine until the badminton team got involved and named themselves after the little thing that gets hit over the net: [[Accidental Innuendo|The Black Cocks]].
* John McCain's (in)famously blunderous quote:
{{quote|'''McCain''': [[Barack Obama|Obama]]'s not an Arab. He is a good man.}}
* The ''New York Times''{{'}} gift guide for [http://www.nytimes.com/gift-guide/holiday-2009/colorstyleguide/list.html "People of Color"]. Which is bad enough in itself, but most of those gifts would be perfectly acceptable and like by anyone. However they seem to have been chosen because they were created by "famous people of color."
* Water cannons and fire hoses are tried-and-true methods of breaking up a riot or civil disturbance. It's safe, effective, and the ammo's cheap. The police forces of most countries rely on water power to this day. But not the USA. Water power was extensively used to quell African-American demonstrations during the Civil Rights era of the '60s, and has been connected with racist police forces oppressing peaceful demonstrations ever since. American law enforcement avoids these now.
** On a similar note, the recent{{when}} protests in the UK over the increase of school tuition fees provoked a lot of discussion about how Police should handle such demonstrations in the (then) future. Though the protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, it was suggested that the police might/should (depending on the source) bring in water cannons to "quell further unrest". It was pointed out that the only times water cannons have been used within the UK was in Northern Ireland during [[The Troubles]]. The UI being that either students demonstrating (for the most part) peacefully in London were as bad as decades of violent civil unrest, or that Northern Ireland was of such little consequence to the government that it took decades of violent civil unrest before even water cannons were thought necessary.
** A good deal of modern protesters have a habit of recording an entire incident, but only posting the police's reaction to their and making it out as oppressive. Which means that they don't think what they actually did is relevant to how the cops respond. Which means they think they don't have any responsibility for their actions. Which can be rather darkly ironic when the protesters in question are demanding others take responsibility for problems, but won't take any responsibility for their own.
* Racial profiling. Yes, ''statistically'', people of Arab and Black descent are more likely to be Muslims.{{verify|reason=I was under the impression that the majority of Muslims are from southeast Asia. Perhaps this needs to be re-phrased.}} However, the innocent Muslims (y'know, the majority), as well as non-Muslim Blacks and Jews, are quite rightly irritated at being associated with one of the most negative events in modern history just because of their skin color. On the ordinary street crime level, a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by Blacks and Latinos, because said groups are more likely to be economically disenfranchised, which leads to higher crime rates, which leads to a negative image of said groups in the eyes of law enforcement, which means they don't trust the cops, which leads to a negative image in the eyes of law enforcement...
** Going off of the Muslim bit, many American people imagine Muslims as being a group limited solely to the Middle East. Thus, they freak out at the thought of any living in the United States, despite the fact that Christianity and Judaism also originated in the Middle East and have spread pretty darned global. (This is, of course, an old trend in Western culture; as [[The Cartoon History of the Universe|Larry Gonick]] once joked--as regards the Spanish Inquisition--"No weird Middle Eastern religions here--only Christianity!")
** Speaking of Islam, doesn't it also seemed to be a bit of an Unfortunate Implications that whenever people made a bigoted statement against Islam, they are called 'racists' or 'racism?' As if implying that Islam is a race, something you are born into, when Muslim people comes from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and cultures.
* There's a comforter set called the [[Othello]]. Did the designers of that not know what happens in that play?! For those that don't know {{spoiler|the climax involves Othello smothering his wife to death ''in their bed''.}} [[What Did You Expect When You Named It?]]
** There's also a set of bedroom furniture aimed a little girls. The name of the set? [[Lolita]].
* The 2010 New Labour manifesto (see page picture) looked awfully like Brown's plan was to [[Nuke'Em|take somewhat extreme steps]].
* When ''The News Of The World'' was axed, one editor said he had "worked there for 18 months, it was a wonderful paper and they had gotten rid of all the Black people". This was because the media baron Conrad Black (who is in fact Caucasian) once owned it, but clearly [[That Came Out Wrong]].
* [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ldt6y/i_am_a_ta_at_a_university_my_professor_and_i_are/ A TA sought advice from Reddit after they and their professor found definitive proof six students were plagiarizing]. All six students were Black. In fact, they were the only Black kids in the class. Due to Canadian politics, they were worried they'd be accused of discrimination. Responders suggested the papers be evaluated by a third party, with names removed. Ironically, several people suggested the post was from a race-baiting troll, under the assumption that no one in such a situation could ever be worried about looking racist when they're not.
* Many times, when an autistic person writes an autobiography, the back cover blurb will say something about it being a special insight into "the world of autism for the rest of us", assuming that every prospective buyer of the book and potential reader of the blurb, and by extension every person who reads books in general, is non-autistic.
** Alternately, autistic people are assumed not to read ''those'' books because they already know what having autism is like. Which carries other Unfortunate Implications, namely that if someone has autism that must be the only interesting thing about them and that autism manifests in exactly the same way in anyone that has it, or at least close enough that people with autism wouldn't learn anything by reading about each other.
* Elementary schools in Gwinnett County, Georgia apparently asked kids some rather offensive [https://web.archive.org/web/20140103100651/http://news.yahoo.com/fred-got-two-beatings-per-day-homework-asks-230717586--abc-news.html math word problems.] The questions include such gems as "Each tree has 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?", "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?" and yet another asks how much cotton Fredrick picks in a day. The school district claims it's to teach kids history, but if so, it's very poorly handled.
== Other Other Media and Unsorted Examples ==
* In magazines where they make a list of attractive men (like ''People'' and their Sexiest Men Alive issue.) They use the fact that he's happily married and a doting father as a selling point. Since most of the Sexiest Men Alive are happily married, it makes it appear that women only want a man if he's in love with someone else. So women only want married men, then?
* In a bit of meta-[[Scunthorpe Problem]], words that are both used innocuously and in an offensive way like "gay" and "Jew" have been subjected to online filters. This has the ironic effect of censoring (and outraging) the very people the filters were intended to protect.
* In ''Genki: An Introduction to Japanese'' one practice sentence says "My friend went to China and didn't come back".
** Similarly, there is a Russian coursebook that ''loves'' using sentences about Siberia. "Where is she?" "She is in Siberia." "We are going to Siberia in a week's time." It's hard not to interpret that as a bit of [[Black Comedy|morbid]] [[Textbook Humor]] on the writer's part, since to anyone who's familiar with Russian history, Siberia is instantly associated with [[The Gulag|one thing]].
* Typographical example: Anytime the [[wikipedia:Neuland|Neuland]] or [[wikipedia:Lithos|Lithos]] typefaces are used in reference to African or other foreign cultures, which are virtually their only appearances since the turn of the century. The use of those two is done to evoke a "primitive" or "uncultured" feel, regardless of the true situation. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120204163440/http://www.studio-gs.com/neuland.html More info on the topic.]
* In Network TV land, CBS sent a memo to fire A.J. Cook from the hit crime show ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' for supposed "creative" (aka "financial") reasons. To add further insult, Paget Brewster (aka Emily Prentiss) will have her role reduced and a new actress will be cast to replace JJ. These decisions have been seen as having sexist undertones by an enraged fanbase and through angry blogs, calls and complaints to CBS, an online petition, and even a mailing campaign. This was accompanied by an increase in [[Charlie Sheen]]'s wages for his then-on-hiatus show ''[[Two and A Half Men]]'' (which he was fired from) to 2K per episode per week. And just to add insult to injury, Sheen is a known spousal abuser who was fired for drug abuse and making derogatory comments about the production staff, making the apparent gender [[Double Standard]] even more obvious.
* The [[Mighty Whitey]] trope is itself Unfortunate because it implies that white people are automatically better at things non-white cultures can do, even if the non-white people have been training their whole life. Problem is, reaction to this trope often this carries the Implication that white people cannot/should not beat non-whites at anything from the non-white culture, ever. There are things white people should be good at, things non-whites should be good at, and there's no overlap.
* Some gay porn provides some strangely fascinating examples of this. It's terribly easy to find some where women are all [[Jerkass
** Here's some [[Unfortunate Implications]] for you: who are you calling "[[
*** They might have been referring to the fact that the Internet is relatively anonymous and that sometimes people lie... but the context implies otherwise, lumping together three groups that have nothing in common with each other or with homosexuality: men with effeminate appearances, cross-dressers, and transgender people.
* An English language race convention creates unfortunate implications. This troper was tutoring an ESL student from Korea, and she (the students) was talking about an American who moved to Seoul to open a language school. This troper asked if he was Korean, as in asking if he had immigrated and became a citizen. She responded that no, he was white (turns out is now a Korean). The implication here is that white people can never be accepted as Korean, but will always be just a white person living in Korea.
** The same thing occurs in Japan as well. There are plenty of naturalized Japanese who still get clumped together as "gaijin". The idea remains that race
* This was taken from the IMDB trivia entry for the movie ''Conviction'': Screenwriter Pamela Gray says she doesn't believe the awards or critics, she knows if her projects are well received by listening in the theater ladies' room after a showing, as if only the opinions of the ladies matter.
* The BCE/CE dating system is an example of both Unfortunate Implications and [[Political Correctness Gone Mad]] as it is meant to be a calendar system that is more sensitive to non-Christians. BCE is Before Common Era and CE is Common Era, but the dates themselves are identical to the BC/AD system based on when Christ was born. So if it's not based on Christianity, then what happened at 1CE that made it the "Common Era"? Common to whom? Is there
* The [[Five-Token Band]] trope. Usually, the white guy is [[The Hero]], and the Asian is either [[The Smart Guy]] or, if [[The Big Guy]], a [[Genius Bruiser]] who gets the "bruiser" part from knowing kung fu. The black guy might be [[The Lancer]] (though if it's in a non-Western setting, [[The Lancer]] will provide that hint of [[Perfectly Cromulent Word|indigeneity]]) or may play the role on the [[The Big Guy]]/[[The Smart Guy]] dichotomy not occupied by the Asian. If there is an American Indian, he'll be (for [[Trope Namer]] reasons) the [[Sixth Ranger]], or sometimes [[Sixth Ranger Traitor]].
* Caribou Coffee, which went through a stylistic revamping semi-recently,{{when}} had a form on their websites inviting people to submit answers to the question "What do you stay awake for?" Some of the "[[Your Mileage May Vary|best]]" answers were printed on the new cups. One of the ones that made it? "Making sure the monsters stay in the closet."
** That one is clearly [[That Came Out Wrong]].
* A
* Because of the impossibility of accurately representing the surface of a sphere on a rectangular map, the [[wikipedia:Mercator projection|Mercator projection]] unavoidably distorts the relative sizes of continental landmasses. Unfortunately, this happens to result in a situation where most maps of the world depict North America, Russia and Europe (the parts of the world populated predominantly by white people) as being vastly larger than they really are, with Africa, South America, India and South Asia looking smallish and insignificant in comparison, just because they happen to be situated
* For
* The [[Fan Dumb]] for ''[[Survivor]]'' has a tendency to trash the winner of the most ''recent'' season as the "Worst winner ever". While this may appear to be simple [[Nostalgia Filter|Hate The New]] like is common for ''any'' [[Fan Dumb]], but several seasons later, people still often state that a certain winner was a "Poor winner" or "robbed" a much more deserving winner. This happens with a much ''greater'' frequency to ''women'' who win (Unless they're either Parvati, Tina, Kim, and sometimes Sandra) than it does to ''men''.
** This attitude also spreads to ''[[Survivor]]'' themed works. A survivor webcomic has [[Fan Dumb]] who constantly berate female players for doing things that ''they praise male fans for doing''. [[Hypocritical Fandom]], anyone?
** ''Survivor Sucks'' had a topic posted that was a petition to ban Leif (who is a dwarf) from competing on basis of being a "midget", and that other contestants with disabilities (Deafness, missing limbs, etc) shouldn't have been allowed either. Is there anything saying they ''can't'' compete?
** It's no secret that Cook Islands had some [[Unfortunate Implications]] with dividing the tribes by race, and complaints that the casts were "too white". Yet ''Fiji'' featured a final five of only one white person, one Asian man, and three blacks. (One of them being [[Ambiguously Brown]]) And there were complains that they weren't ''white enough''.
* The [[Bratz]] doll lines [http://www.bratz.com/?section=bios Biography] page has exactly one character who has any ambition aside from looking glamorous RIGHT THIS MINUTE, said character is also [[Stay in the Kitchen|the only boy on the page]].
* It's fairly common to see members of a fandom referring to a [[Wholesome Crossdresser]] or [[transgender]] character as a "trap." The unfortunate implications are twofold--one, that trans-women aren't "REAL WOMEN", and two, that their sole purpose in life is to trick innocent young (cisgender) men. And of course, the reaction to discovering their trans*ness is always disgust and horror, and in extreme cases ''murder''. People can still get a lesser sentence or get away with murdering a trans person if they claim "trans panic" as a defense.
* Next time you check out at the grocery store, take a look at the covers of sex advice magazines marketed to women like ''[[Cosmopolitan]]''. Nearly all the blurbs talk about the magazines' contents in the context of "pleasing" or "serving" the ''men'', rather than the women who would be reading the publications.
* Another example of [[Fan Dumb]]... in ''[[Big Brother]] US''', after Shelly Moore decided to vote out Jeff Shroeder, [[Disproportionate Retribution|people started to make Hate-sites about her, calling her employers asking for her termination,]] and wished bad things on her daughter such as being taken away, kidnap, rape, or murder. This daughter in question was ''eight years old''.
* [[Rule 34]] is often seen as this.
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