User:Damian Yerrick/crosswick worksheet

These changes were made by Damian Yerrick to the article Website/Cracked on TV Tropes between June 2012 and November 2013. The changes have been extracted in PmWiki markup from the article's history on TV Tropes and need to be integrated into the Cracked.com work page and crosswicked in the respective trope pages.

MediaWikify them
Merge them into Cracked.com
Merge them into the respective trope articles

Action Girl: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "every sexy girl is a ruthless killer."
Action Survivor: One of The 5 Most Badass Ways People Escaped from Slavery is how Eliza Harris carried several children across a river while jumping from one moving ice platform to another as if it were a Mario game. This is the true story Uncle Tom's Cabin was based on.
The Ageless: 6 Unassuming Animals That Are Secretly Immortal lists animal species that don't die of old age, such as lobsters and turtles.
All Just a Dream: The article "Why 'Saved by the Bell' is All a Dream: A Conspiracy Theory" explains why Saved by the Bell has to be an escapist dream of a character in Good Morning, Miss Bliss (the pilot that was retooled into SBTB), using clues from the Expository Theme Tune.
Anti-Humor: In 7 Animals That Are Evolving Right Before Our Eyes
Q: What did the elephant say to the poacher?

A: Dear God in heaven, please don't kill me for my ivory.

Sorry about that. Sometimes we get "joke" mixed up with "tragic imagined dialogue that could be happening at this very second if elephants had the power of speech."
Appropriated Appellation: 5 Famous Symbols that Were Created to Be Horrible Insults explains how the gay-pride pink triangle came from the Nazis, the donkey came from political cartoons dissing President Andrew Jackson, and "Yankee" came from a song written by a British army physician claiming that the rebels were aspiring to a social class they did not deserve.
The Aristocrats: The #3 plot twist cut from a Disney animated movie.
So what do you call your act?

The Aristocats!
Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
- "8 Mind-Blowing Realities of Our Future Full of Old People" describes a likely reaction to a proposed solution to the coming farm labor shortage.
  Oh hey, let's import unwhites to do our labor! Why don't we bring back slavery and dial-up Internet service while we're at it?
- The lead of 5 Heartwarming Accomplishments by Hardened Prison Inmates claims that humans are "capable of some pretty terrible stuff, like robbery and murder and Bono."
Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: #6 on If Everything Got An Adorable Mascot is Addie the ADHD tornado. "Let us help you learn to cope with... Ohh!!! Shiny!!!"
Audience Surrogate: "Make Them Look and Sound Like the Audience, Against All Logic" is #4 of 6 Tricks Movies Use to Make Sure You Root for the Right Guy.
Autopsy Snack Time: #4 of 4 Bizarrely Specific Rules That Exist in Movie Universes mentions cases in Gone in Sixty Seconds, Scrubs, and others where it appears a coroner can't enjoy his sandwich without a corpse in the room. It even links to the page on That Other Trope Wiki.
Awesome but Impractical:
- The ball tank, #2 of 6 Utterly Insane Innovations History Was SURE Were Coming and #2 of 7 WTF Military Weapons You Won't Believe They Actually Built.
- The 11 Most Retarded Fictional Weapons, including the Klingon bat'leth.
Be the Ball: The operation of the Morph Ball in Metroid is the #27 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games.
The Beast Master: In Photoplasty contest 28 Inspirational Image Memes (Revised for Honesty), #5 is "If at first you don't succeed, command an army of birds."
The Bechdel Test: Luke McKinney points out in The 4 Best Moments in the Worst Movies Ever Made that the movie based on the video game Dead or Alive "physically beats the shit out of the Bechdel test" "within the first 10 minutes".
Blatant Lies: "America's Only Humor & Video Site, Since 1958". This date refers to Cracked's beginning as a magazine rivaling Mad in 1958.
- By 2013, the "Since 1958" had disappeared from the front page. But stories still refer to it occasionally, such as "6 Ridiculous Myths You Believe About Stuff You Use Every Day" which states that locking refrigerators were banned in the United States around the time Cracked first appeared on newsstands.
Bleep, Dammit!: The titles of articles about meteors and video game endings jarringly grawlix out a certain word starting with F that article bodies use uncensored all the time. Yet an article about so-called experts gets away with an S-bomb in the title.
Blind Weaponmaster: One of Jorden Weir's 5 People Whose Major Disabilities Only Made Them Stronger is a blind sharpshooter.
Box and Stick Trap: #13 of Photoplasty 18 Things You Never Noticed in Famous Pictures (Part 2) takes Kevin Carter's Pulitzer-winning photo of a vulture stalking a crouching Sudanese child and adds a ray of hope by having the child bait a vulture into such a trap. A kid's gotta eat somehow.
Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:
- Animals that could take over the world if they wanted to
- "So when a camera, or a phone, or a camera phone doesn't heed our commands..."
- In 5 Terrible Things We Only Know Because of the Internet, Felix Clay describes the Internet as "full of hilarious gifs and cats and gifs of cats."
- Cities that get a lot of tourism are characterized using this in 5 Stupid Travel Myths Everyone Believes:
  By simply walking around, you'll ... see the way they drive (manically), the way they urinate in the street (freely), and the way they urinate while they drive (frothily).
Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
- 8 Mind-Blowing Realities of Our Future Full of Old People" compares making a home safe for senior citizens to childproofing.
  Plugs have to be covered, gates erected, breakables moved, cabinets locked, knives dulled, bullets replaced with blanks, etc.
Brown Note: According to 5 Bizarre Animal Chain Reactions Our Daily Lives Are Causing, humans' ships' sonar gives squid fatal seizures.
Bungled Suicide: 6 Insane Disney Comics You Won't Believe Are Real shows some 1930 Mickey strips where breaking up with Minnie causes him to attempt suicide several ways but fail each time.
Buddy Cop Show Where They Fight Crime
- Why Crimes Would Never Get Solved At A TV Police Station
- Called an easy way to involve a Token Minority in the #1 Weirdest Lesson '80s Movies Really Wanted to Teach Us.
Butch Lesbian: Photoplasty Famous Images, As Seen From a Different Angle has the linked-Venus lesbianism symbol on Rosie the Riveter's bicep.
Chainmail Bikini
- One of the "5 Prejudices That Video Games Can't Seem to Get Over".
- One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "the less it covers, the more it protects."
Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: In real life it isn't, according to 5 Video Game Strategies that Are Way Less Useful in Reality.
City in a Bottle: An article lists 6 isolated groups who had no idea that civilization existed.
Clothes Make the Superman: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games uses Mario's suits to make the point that "there is no problem that a change of wardrobe won't solve."
Color-Coded Armies: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "somebody being the wrong color is a perfectly okay reason to attack them."
Come for the X, Stay for the Y: In-universe. 5 Words You Use Every Day With Shockingly Dark Backstories links the word "fornication" to prostitutes finding clients in bakeries. It gives as an example the novel Satyricon by Gaius Petronius, which "talks about bakers tricking clients into coming for the bread and staying 'thither for the base gratification of wantonness.'"
Commie Nazis: An alliance between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia was narrowly averted according to "5 Insane 'What If' Scenarios That Almost Changed Everything".
Concealment Equals Cover: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "bullets can't pass through wood or cars."
Con Lang: A Northern California argot called Boontling is one of 5 secret languages that stuck it to the man. It uses English grammar but replaces many of the content words.
Covered Up: One of 6 Famous Songs Written by the Last Person You'd Expect is "Red Red Wine", written and originally recorded by Neil Diamond and popularized by UB40's cover.
Crappy Holidays: 5 Everyday Things That Can Literally Drive You Crazy links seasonal affective disorder in part to "three straight months of Christmas music."
Crazy Cat Lady:
- Parodied by Christina H., whose column is called "Let Me Tell You About My Cats."
- Pets are #5 of the 6 Things You Didn't Know You Could Get Addicted To, and this article links it to Toxoplasma gondii parasites.
- Photoplasty Famous Images, As Seen From a Different Angle shows a dozen cats on the side of the room that we don't see in James McNeill Whistler's famous portrait of his mother.
Critical Encumbrance Failure: A human being able to lift 300 kg as if it were nothing but not 301 kg is the #12 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games.
The CSI Effect: Explained as arising from the misconception that government agencies are staffed by geniuses, according to "5 Things TV Writers Apparently Believe About Smart People".
Dancing Bear: Felix Clay in 6 Horror Mashups Just Crazy Enough to Be Awesome calls The Human Centipede a "Shlock shock horror movie that was made solely for the sensationalism of saying it was actually made [...] The novelty of this movie ended with the idea of it."
Darker and Edgier:
- "3 Movies They Don't Make Anymore (But Really Should)" decries the trend of "taking popular, existing properties and bringing out the darkest and grittiest aspects they can find" seen in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, among other movies.
- In "4 Bizarrely Specific Rules Fairy Tale Adaptations All Follow", David Christopher Bell claims that recent film adaptations of fairy tales invoke this to invert Disneyfication.
David Versus Goliath (no, not Wong): Cracked cites a few cases.
- The 7 Most Badass Man vs. Beast Showdowns includes a man driving a bear by kicking in the face and a women driving a way hippo by hitting in the head with a stick.
- The 6 Most Mismatched Battles Ever Won by Underdogs describes victories by severely outnumbered forces in Persia, the Ottomans, Korea, Hungary, and the Mongols.
Death by Sex: The 6 Most Bizarre Ways to Lose Popular Video Games describes an odd Nonstandard Game Over in Mass Effect 2.
Decon Recon Switch: 3 Reasons It's So Hard to Make Superman Interesting spends a page deconstructing the boring Invincible Hero and then another reconstructing a hero faced with the Sadistic Choice of whom to save at any given moment.
Disability Superpower:
- One of Jorden Weir's 5 People Whose Major Disabilities Only Made Them Stronger is a mixed martial artist missing half of one forearm, making him a lot harder to grab.
Discredited Trope: Several articles discuss tropes deemed discredited. These include 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die) and 5 Overused Twist Endings It's Time For Movies to Retire.
Distracted by the Sexy: Men make more short-term-oriented decisions after exposure to sexual stimuli, as explained in #3 of 5 Unrealistic Movie Cliches That Are Scientifically Accurate.
Dolled-Up Installment: "5 Little-Known Sequels That Ruined Iconic Stories" expains that Charles Webb admitted that his novel Home School, the sequel to The Graduate, had the old characters shoehorned into a new story.
Double Standard: "5 Prejudices That Video Games Can't Seem to Get Over" claims that video games allow lesbian subtext but no male gay subtext.
Dream Apocalypse: In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, via 5 Horrifying Implications of the 'Star Trek' Universe, Picard is playing holodeck when one of the characters asks him: "When you're gone, will this world still exist? Will my wife and kids still be waiting for me at home?"
Duet Bonding: #2 of 5 Unrealistic Movie Cliches That Are Scientifically Accurate points out a study finding that people singing together end up synchronizing their brainwaves.
Dumpster Dive: It's a way of life in Manshiyat Naser, whose residents live off Cairo's garbage, making it one of The 6 Weirdest Cities People Actually Live In.
The Dung Ages: Debunked in "6 Ridiculous Myths About the Middle Ages Everyone Believes" and "5 Ridiculous Myths You Probably Believe About the Dark Ages".
Ear Worm: Discussed in The 6 Weirdest Cities People Actually Live In, after a bit about a city whose residents live off the capital's garbage: "Great, now we have the Sanford and Son theme stuck in our heads."
Elemental Embodiment: The #8 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games represents them as hot chicks.
Enhanced Remake: The #3 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games is that "new 16-bit microscopes may prove existence of sub-pixel particles".
Everything's Better with Monkeys:
- M. Asher Cantrell's The 10 Biggest Password Mistakes People Make cites a study claiming that half a percent of English-speaking Internet users have "monkey" as a password on an online account and suggests it may be related to the word's status as an Inherently Funny Word.
Evil Hand: Somatoparaphrenia, or the delusion that someone's limb is not his own, is discussed in The 6 Most Mind-Blowing Ways Your Brain Can Malfunction. It results from damage to the homunculus, the part of the brain that tracks where each body part is.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
- In 6 Ridiculous Tumblrs That Yahoo Just Paid $1 Billion For, Alex Hanton claims that Bruce Springsteen's Crotch and many other Tumblr blogs "stand up for truth in advertising. You click on this, you know exactly what you're getting."
- Readers retitle several movies in this manner in If Movie Titles Were Honest.
Fantastic Racism:
- J.F. Sargent calls the very existence of Fantasy Counterpart Cultures one of the "5 Prejudices That Video Games Can't Seem to Get Over".
Fastball Special: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "your unborn children make awesome weapons." The example given is from Yoshi's Island.
Fauxtivational Poster: Photoplasty contest 28 Inspirational Image Memes (Revised for Honesty) parodies Successories and other inspirational glurge posters.
Fetish Fuel: #3 of 6 New Kinds of Anxiety the Internet Gave Us is "The Confusion/Disgust/Arousal of Stumbling Upon Someone Else's Sexual Fetish".
Fifteen Minutes of Fame: #1 of 6 New Kinds of Anxiety the Internet Gave Us is "The Shock of Instant, Unintentional Fame".
Flame War: #2 of 6 New Kinds of Anxiety the Internet Gave Us is "The Dread of Stumbling into a Hornet's Nest".
Flashmob: In "College of DuPage Flash Mob Dance and Pep Rally", one of 5 Videos That Will Brighten Your Day, a half dozen people perform rehearsed dance moves, and then someone outside the group spontaneously joins in the dance fever. "Oh, life is a musical now? OK, I'd better adapt!"
Follow the Money: Levitating coins are explained as lighter-than-air currency in the #7 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games.
Fun Size: Calling tiny, trick-or-treat size candy bars "fun size", or calling any sort of eating "fun" for that matter, is one of The 5 Stupidest Lies Advertisers Expect You to Believe. It compares the practice to Little People demanding to be called "fun size".
Furry Confusion: 6 Insane Disney Comics You Won't Believe Are Real shows panels from an educational comic in an issue of Look magazine showing Dr. Mickey Mouse testing sulfa drugs on common mice.
Getting Crap Past the Radar
- 6 Insane Disney Comics You Won't Believe Are Real shows panels from a 1953 Scrooge comic book where what at first looks like a fight between Goldie and Scrooge (given the sound effects and smoke emanating from the cabin) turns out to be something "not a hangin' offense in Langry, Texas, or anywhere else".
Go-Karting with Bowser: Mario's numerous roles are evidence of a multiverse in the #15 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games.
Groundhog Day Loop: 10 Life Lessons That 'Tetris' Can Teach You
Ground Pound: Mid-air direction changes and surviving falls are the #9 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games.
Handicapped Badass: Among Jorden Weir's 5 People Whose Major Disabilities Only Made Them Stronger are a legless mountain climber and a blind pilot.
Have a Gay Old Time: In The 5 Most Absurd Superhero Names of All-Time, Maxwell Yezpitelok mentions the World War II-era comic book examples of The Gay Ghost as well as "hav[ing] never felt so queer" in Flick Falcon.
HealThyself, etc.
- The #22 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games is a medkit, and #9 is "Green Heart + Red Heart = Full Health".
- One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "first aid kits are absorbed through osmosis".
- A healing factor is portrayed as undesirable in 6 Awesome Superpowers (That Would Suck in Real Life) because the intense pain would lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Heroes Gone Fishing: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "your princess can always wait a little longer" to complete a Fishing Minigame.
High-Pressure Blood: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "a person's volume of blood often exceeds 78 liters."
Horse of a Different Color: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "if you have the right saddle, you can ride on freaking anything."
Human Mail: The 5 Most Badass Ways People Escaped from Slavery relates the story of Henry "Box" Brown, an African-American slave in Virginia successfully escaped to Philadelphia inside a crate and later bragged about how he did it. Slavery opponent Frederick Douglass was infuriated because he wanted this escape method to be kept secret so that other slaves could use it.
Humanoid Aliens: Some xenobiologists argue that convergent evolution to a humanoid form is more likely than Starfish Aliens, according to #1 of 5 Unrealistic Movie Cliches That Are Scientifically Accurate.
Hyperactive Metabolism:
- One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "eating food you find in the trash is good for you."
I Just Want to Be Normal: Not everyone does. One of 4 Things Movies Always Get Wrong About Awkward People is that people with No Social Skills necessarily want to be cured.
Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Gladstone lists 4 Douches Who Amazingly Don't Seem to Know They Suck. These include people who use a handicap tag for parking without actually needing one, people who grow weary of their customer service job, drivers who honk at other drivers merging onto a highway, and people who overreact to minor inconveniences.
In Universe Game Clock: Taking 10 minutes to climb a stairway is the #11 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games, and accelerated crop growth as seen in farm simulation video games such as Harvest Moon series and Farmville is #6.
Intimate Healing: 5 Doctors Who Just Gave The World's Worst Medical Advice retells a CBS13 Sacramento story about a doctor who saw a woman with an oversensitive gag reflex and prescribed giving fellatio to her husband. PONOS to MOOTH, indeed.
Ironic Hell: 16 Appropriate Punishments for Everyday Annoyances
Jump Physics: Mid-air direction changes and surviving falls are the #9 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: The 5 Most Popular Ways Statistics Are Used to Lie to You covers some fallacies commonly used to lie with statistics.
Life Imitates Art
- And comic books too. 5 Important Things You Won't Believe Comic Books Invented shows how Elvis Presley's appearance, Minecraft, and even ankle bracelets for monitoring criminals came from old comic books.
Limit Break: The #5 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games is that one in five men can transform under stress.
Loads and Loads of Roles: The 6 Most Mind-Blowing Ways Your Brain Can Malfunction mentions the "Fregoli delusion" that several distinct people that someone meets are one person who quickly changes clothes, named after a stage actor famous for quickly changing into different costumes.
Lunacy: #5 of 5 Unrealistic Movie Cliches That Are Scientifically Accurate explains moon fear as the result of a rise in lion attacks on the first few days after the full moon once the lions have become hungrier.
Lyrical Dissonance: The 5 Most Insane Teams in the History of Sports describes an incident in the 1990s when the Canadian Football League was attempting to expand into the United States. At one game, the Canadian national anthem was sung to the tune of "O Christmas Tree".
Mean Character, Nice Actor: Johnny Depp and others in 5 Heartwarming Stories to Restore Your Faith in Celebrities.
Method Acting: The 5 Craziest Ways Famous Actors Got into Character mentions Adrien Brody, Tom Cruise, and more.
Mirror Routine: The 6 Most Mind-Blowing Ways Your Brain Can Malfunction mentions a mental disorder called mirrored-self misidentification, in which someone looking into a mirror believes that the monster in the mirror is an intruder performing a Mirror Routine, not oneself.
Misaimed Fandom: 6 Tricks Movies Use to Make Sure You Root for the Right Guy lists tools used to prevent this reaction.
Money Spider: Monsters having internal gold sacs is one of 27 Science Lessons As Taught by Famous Video Games and one of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games.
Monumental Damage: The Statue of Liberty is the #1 Iconic Building That Was Barely Saved from Destruction because "when Lady Liberty gets destroyed, it means the apocalypse is here".
Mundane Utility:
- Tony Stark using his repulsor ray to toast bread of all things is one of several Idiotic Real World Uses of Awesome Fictional Technology.
- A later Photoplasty added more. 22 Terrible Ways We Would Use Sci-Fi Technology include using a Star Wars lightsaber to chop a cucumber, or using Doc Ock's tentacles to serve food to customers at a restaurant.
Nice Guys Finish Last: Being too nice is one of 5 Innocent Things That Science Says Make People Hate You. Hence "negging".
No Budget: A Photoplasty considers what would have happened If 40 Famous Movies Had $50 Budgets.
Not Making This Up Disclaimer
- From 5 Animal Rights Campaigns That Managed to Screw Over Animals, about the dogs rescued from Michael Vick's dogfighting ring:
  One of the survivors was put in a program called Paws for Tales, where kids too shy to read aloud to human audiences practice their reading skills in front of dogs. No, really. That's not a sarcastic fake program we made up. (And that's not a stock image. That's Jonny Justice, the actual dog we're talking about.)
Not the Nessie: Photoplasty Famous Images, As Seen From a Different Angle depicts an elephant swimming and putting its trunk above the water as a snorkel, forming the famous photo of the Loch Ness monster.
Obvious Rule Patch: Plenty of them resulted from events described in Xavier Jackson's 5 Dumb Ways People Have Won at Sports.
Older Than They Think:
- Discussed in 7 Modern Conveniences That Are Way Older Than You Think, which mentions Persian air conditioning, Roman shopping malls, Neanderthal medicine, and more.
- 6 Forms of Modern Depravity (Way Older Than Your Grandpa) shows late medieval Scottish rap battles, Japanese Edo period celebrity culture associated with the Kardashians, the FurryFandom in ancient Rome, medieval Catholic acceptance of gay marriage, and late medieval treehuggers in India.
One-Hit Kill: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "no matter how strong and powerful you are, some scrub will take you out with a death spell."
Orange-Blue Contrast:
- Why the New 'Hunger Games' Movie Is Orange and Blue discusses this color scheme in the second Hunger Games film.
Parallel Porn Titles:
- Video: Do you have what it takes to title porn?
- The 10 Most Misleadingly Pornographic Movie Titles]lists movies that could be mistaken for their own parallel porn title. It even lists which scenes could be kept unchanged.
- Girth, Wind and Fire. An article about unappealing porn titles notes that a much better title would have been Sperm, Bend & Tie Her.
Parody of Evolution: The #14 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games is an allusion to Rudolph Zallinger's illustration "The March of Progress" done with game sprites.
The Password Is Always Swordfish: Not always, but The 10 Biggest Password Mistakes People Make lists a few that several "million uncreative bastards" end up thinking of under time pressure.
Percussive Maintenance: "I've even seen people who insist that their televisions or vehicles require a special touch that only they know, a touch that usually turns out to be a pretty substantial punch or kick, which I guess makes their superpower physical abuse?"
Pet the Dog: "Give Them a Dog" is #6 of 6 Tricks Movies Use to Make Sure You Root for the Right Guy.
Pink Girl, Blue Boy: It used to be inverted. #5 of 5 Gender Stereotypes That Used To Be the Exact Opposite is that pink being for girls is a recent idea.
Poe's Law: The 5 Most Epic Backfires in the History of Bad Jokes. From the lead: "The problem with sarcasm is that you can do it so well (or so poorly) that people don't realize you're joking."
Police Are Useless: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that police cars in a BeatEmUp are just for decoration. "Only trust your fists; police will never help you."
The Pollyanna: What Pollyanna calls "the glad game" and others call "counting their blessings" is a coping mechanism that Felix Clay calls "trivializing adversity" in 4 Ways We Don't Realize We Suck at Coping With Adversity.
Porn Stash: Stashes of erotic magazines and VHS tapes are one of 7 Ridiculously Outdated Assumptions Every Movie Makes.
Power-Up Food: One of 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games is that "weakling + Amanita mushroom = bodybuilder."

* RaceLift: 
** "Make Them American, Even if They're Not" is #3 of [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19183_6-tricks-movies-use-to-make-sure-you-root-right-guy.html 6 Tricks Movies Use to Make Sure You Root for the Right Guy]].
** In [[http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/the-5-most-insulting-defenses-nerd-racism/ The 5 Most Insulting Defenses of Nerd Racism]], J.F. Sargent defends the practice of sacrificing fidelity to the source comics in superhero films.
* RealityIsUnrealistic:
** [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19999_5-true-stories-cut-from-movies-being-too-unrealistic.html 5 True Stories Cut from Movies for Being Too Unrealistic]] lists "mind-blowing moments from real life that Hollywood decided were too fantastic", such as John Dillinger taking three people hostage in ''Film/PublicEnemies'' but 17 in RealLife.
* RegeneratingHealth:
** The regeneration in first-person shooters since ''VideoGame/FaceBall2000'' is the #23 [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_388_27-science-lessons-as-taught-by-famous-video-games/ Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games]].
** One of [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_586_31-life-lessons-you-can-only-learn-from-video-games/ 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games]] is to "duck and cover and stay put until you are fully healed."
* Required Secondary Powers
** Implied by [[http://www.cracked.com/article_20241_6-awesome-superpowers-that-would-suck-in-real-life.html 6 Awesome Superpowers (That Would Suck in Real Life)]]. For example, being able to throw lightning would require immunity to effects on sight and hearing similar to those of stun grenades, and force fields would need immunity to NotTheFallThatKillsYou.
* {{Retronym}}: One of Winston Rowntree's [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-4-reasons-we-fall-in-love-with-piece-pop-culture_p2/ The 4 Reasons We Fall in Love With a Piece of Pop Culture]] is that it's "porn", which he defines as any cultural work "that you seek out to animalistically fill a specific need." He runs through a bunch of [[ItsNotPornItsAnIndex things jokingly called porn]], coining the retronym "Sex Porn" in the process.
* RivalsTeamUp: [[http://www.cracked.com/article_20195_the-5-most-insane-teams-in-history-sports.html The 5 Most Insane Teams in the History of Sports]] calls the Steagles, an alliance of longtime rival NFL teams from Pennsylvania when most of their regular players were drafted to fight WorldWarII, "too stupid even for a sports movie".
* RockBeatsLaser: "Make Them Technologically Inferior" is #5 of the [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19183_6-tricks-movies-use-to-make-sure-you-root-right-guy.html 6 Tricks Movies Use to Make Sure You Root for the Right Guy]].
* TheRuleOfFirstAdopters: One of [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_673_22-terrible-ways-we-would-use-sci-fi-technology/ 22 Terrible Ways We Would Use Sci-Fi Technology]] is using a ''Franchise/StarTrek'' replicator to make a sex toy. It wouldn't be a stretch from [[http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/scanning-the-future-of-3d-printed-sex-toys-nsfw real-life 3D printed sex toys]] though.
* RulesOfTheRoad: Several in [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_390_32-alternate-interpretations-common-warning-signs/ 32 Alternate Interpretations of Common Warning Signs]]
* SaveScumming: How time works with this in play is the #17 [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_388_27-science-lessons-as-taught-by-famous-video-games/ Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games]].
* TheScream: Photoplasty [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_581_17-famous-images-as-seen-from-different-angle/?view=article Famous Images, As Seen From a Different Angle]] shows what the figure in Edvard Munch's painting was screaming at: Franchise/{{Superman}}.
* ScunthorpeProblem
** [[http://www.cracked.com/article_20562_6-spectacularly-failed-attempts-to-be-politically-correct.html 6 Spectacularly Failed Attempts to Be Politically Correct]] tells how Microsoft banned an Xbox 360 user from Xbox Live for being from Fort Gay, West Virginia.
** Seen on ''Cracked'' itself in the comments section...
* SeenItAll: Losing the ability to be surprised by entertainment is one of [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-warning-signs-that-youre-finally-getting-older_p2/ 5 Warning Signs That You're Finally Getting Older]]. Entertainment will ruin your life [[TVTropesWillRuinYourLife with or without TV Tropes]].
* SeriousBusiness: ''Film/{{Rad}}'', where the entire culture of a town is built around BMX, is cited in "[[http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-4-weirdest-lessons-80s-movies-really-wanted-to-teach-us/ The 4 Weirdest Lessons '80s Movies Really Wanted to Teach Us]]" as the most ridiculous example of a hobby that saves the world.
* ShopliftAndDie: One of [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_586_31-life-lessons-you-can-only-learn-from-video-games/ 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games]] is to avert this by putting a basket on the shopkeeper's head. "Robbery is easier than you think."
* SmartPeopleWearGlasses: #4 of [[http://www.cracked.com/article_20332_5-unrealistic-movie-cliches-that-are-scientifically-accurate.html 5 Unrealistic Movie Cliches That Are Scientifically Accurate]] points out a study finding that intelligence and education are somehow correlated with nearsightedness in real life.
* TheSmurfettePrinciple:
** Most of the videos on the site have a single female.
** [[http://www.cracked.com/article_20657_the-6-most-bizarre-ways-to-lose-popular-video-games.html The 6 Most Bizarre Ways to Lose Popular Video Games]] describes a pub in the game ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'' as containing "Havelock the leader, Piero the geeky inventor, and Callista the woman."
* SpringtimeForHitler: [[http://www.cracked.com/article_20660_5-classic-movies-made-by-people-who-wanted-them-to-fail_p2.html 5 Classic Movies Made by People Who Wanted Them to Fail]] mentions the 1955 romantic dramedy ''Film/{{Marty}}'', starring Creator/ErnestBorgnine, which was expected to fail (and save the studio a bundle on income tax) but when its ugly actors ended up resonating as more authentic to viewers, it ended up winning four Academy Awards and a Palme d'Or. The article describes its production as having "literally started out as the plot of ''Film/TheProducers''."
* StealthParody
** Cracked has done some of their own.  For example, Robert Brockway's "[[http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-you-learn-from-lifetime-screwing-up/ 5 Things You Learn From a Lifetime of Screwing Up]]" is probably a parody of David Wong and John Cheese articles.
* StockholmSyndrome: ''Cracked'' accuses ''Disney/BeautyAndTheBeast'' of this in [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_528_23-romantic-movies-revised-honesty/ 23 Romantic Movies Revised for Honesty]] and [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19285_5-romantic-movie-gestures-that-were-actually-dick-moves.html 5 Romantic Movie Gestures That Were Actually Dick Moves]].
* TacticalSuicideBoss: One of [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_586_31-life-lessons-you-can-only-learn-from-video-games/ 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games]] is that "it may take a few tries, but life gets easier once you figure out the patterns." The example is from ''VideoGame/PunchOut''.
* TechnologyMarchesOn: [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19325_6-technologies-conspicuously-absent-from-sci-fi-movies.html 6 Technologies Conspicuously Absent From Sci-Fi Movies]] explores technologies widely available when several well-known science fiction films were first published that would have completely [[TropeBreaker broken]] their plots: bicycles, night vision goggles, unmanned combat vehicles, Wi-Fi, GPS, and cell phones.
* ThrowItIn: [[invoked]] [[http://www.cracked.com/article_20096_6-iconic-movie-scenes-that-happened-by-accident.html 6 Iconic Movie Scenes That Happened by Accident]] cites Viggo Mortensen's broken toe in ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'', among others.
* ToothyBird: The toothlike serrations inside a penguin's mouth, used to grip fish, are #3 of the [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19871_the-7-most-terrifying-mouths-in-nature_p2.html 7 Most Terrifying Mouths in Nature]].
* ToughActToFollow: [[invoked]] "[[http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-works-art-so-good-they-ruined-their-whole-genre/ 5 Works of Art So Good, They Ruined Their Whole Genre]]" calls ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', DavidBowie's ''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust'', ''Film/FightClub'', two BobMarley albums, and ''Film/AnimalHouse'' tough acts to follow in their respective genres.
* TreeTopTown: The Korowai tribe of Papua New Guinea live in tree houses 100 feet up to escape floods and predators, according to [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19286_9-houses-you-wont-believe-people-actually-live-in_p2.html 9 Houses You Won't Believe People Actually Live In]] and [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19976_6-isolated-groups-who-had-no-idea-that-civilization-existed.html 6 Isolated Groups Who Had No Idea That Civilization Existed]].
* TrumanShowPlot: ''Film/TheTrumanShow'' is called one of [[http://www.cracked.com/article_20031_6-movies-that-accidentally-recreate-real-mental-illnesses.html 6 Movies That Accidentally Recreate Real Mental Illnesses]] because its plot resembles the real-life delusion that one's life is a reality show, a mental illness investigated by doctors Joel and Ian Gold.
* TruthInTelevision: [[http://www.cracked.com/article_20332_5-unrealistic-movie-cliches-that-are-scientifically-accurate.html 5 Unrealistic Movie Cliches That Are Scientifically Accurate]] explores the real-life counterparts of five tropes that are more realistic than they [[RealityIsUnrealistic may sound]].
* TwentyFourHourArmor: One of [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_586_31-life-lessons-you-can-only-learn-from-video-games/ 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games]] is that "real men sleep in their armor."

Unacceptable Targets: One of the reasons no one laughed at your joke is "It Was About Something They Won't Laugh About, Ever".
Unfortunate Implications: 6 Spectacularly Failed Attempts to Be Politically Correct gives a bunch of examples of how attempts to avert Monochrome Casting by including Black people in promotion campaigns ended up tripping over stereotypes about fried chicken, watermelon, and wanting to be white.
Universal Adaptor Cast: Mario's numerous roles are evidence of a multiverse in the #15 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games.
Video Game 3D Leap: Parodied as the #25 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games which teaches that the third spatial dimension was discovered in 1996.
Viewers Are Geniuses: One of the reasons no one laughed at your joke is "They Didn't Have Enough Information to Get It". It states that the best practice for an Inside Joke that relies on knowledge of something obscure like Rocky IV or Battlestar Galactica Classic is to find a discreet way to explain the reference in the setup.
The Watson: #4 of 4 Realizations That Will Ruin Science Fiction for You is that science fiction needs a "straight man" to whom the setting's rules are explained.
Welcome to Corneria: "Psychology: People tend to say the same thing over and over" is the #9 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games.
Whale Egg: Pokémon coming from eggs is the #27 Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games.
What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Invoked in The 5 Most Aggressively Crazy Websites on the Internet, where Mark Hill compares Boohbah to "the findings of a scientist adding LSD to baby food."
What Could Have Been: Invoked in Photoplasty 21 Real Deleted Scenes That Completely Change Famous Movies.
Zombie Apocalypse
- Deconstructed in David Dietle's 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly). For one thing, maggots and gut flora would devour the undead.