We All Live in America: Difference between revisions
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** The vast majority of British schools have uniforms. This includes Hogwarts. (though to be fair, the descriptions of the uniforms are very vague in the book and the characters seem to wear whatever they want underneath the robes. In most illustrations in the American versions at least, Harry is frequently depicted wearing jeans and a T-shirt.) Most American schools, especially public schools, don't bother with uniforms.
*** It should be noted that even though most American schools don't have uniforms, they ''do'' have dress codes, and Ebony's typical outfits would raise a ''hell'' of a lot of red flags under a typical dress code.
** Hot Topic is unlikely to be brought
*** Not to mention the [[Magic Versus Science|problems]] [[Walking Techbane|inherent]] in wizards from the Potterverse trying to buy clothes online.
** It's easy to get mad at ''[[My Immortal]]'' but this is rather common with [[Harry Potter]] fanfic written by American fans. The "American exchange student" (or Japanese, for otaku fans) in HP [[Self-Insert Fic]] could be a trope all its own. It's to the point where some HP roleplaying communities require that all characters be born in the UK or Ireland, not just to keep with the established canon but also to remove this tendency.
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* ''[[Tom Clancy]]'s Op-Center: Balance of Power'': Aside of being actually [[Spexico]], the Spain of the book has a government just like the US one, only with a king replacing the president. Spanish ''provinces'' are apparently as powerful as US states and have their own National Guards, and congressmen (read: deputies) have their own limos and drivers (in [[Real Life]] they don't).
** No kidding. The Spanish translation is prefaced by a ''note from the translators'' basically saying "focus on the plot because if you look at the detail too much you'll go mad with rage", even taking to account that in the same note they ''confess they have made some changes to the text to make it readable''. (i.e. they were afraid that if you read the original, unchanged text, your brain would shut down while you were reduced to a [[Flat What]]).
* Japanocentric version: ''A Wind Named Amnesia'' takes place in the U.S., but in the novel Wataru refers to the fifteen-year-old Lisa as a junior high school student; fifteen is usually high school age under the American school system. (Wataru is speculated to be of Japanese origin, but that was before his memories were
** Bit of an border case - U.S. school structure is pretty consistent within a given state, but it is ultimately a decision made at the district level and there's a fair amount of variance state-to-state, plus a variety of experiments with different models. Until around the early 90's, junior high school ended at 9th grade (age 14) in quite a few places. So it was possible for someone to have a birthday during the school year and turn 15, though this may just be a case of [[Accidentally Accurate]].
* ''[[Artemis Fowl]] and the Eternity Code'' has Chicago Police Officers referring to an elevator as a "lift." And earlier in the novel, Foaly talks about "Chicago State Law," which is nonsensical in that Chicago is a city, not a State.
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** Not to mention her partner, who is allegedly British but seems to think and speak using an awful lot of American terminology. The whole thing is so dastardly pointless, because the characters would have made just as much sense being from CNN instead of the BBC.
* [[Older Than Steam]]: The Chinese Epic ''[[Journey to the West]]'' assumes that all countries have the same kind of governors and imperial courts as China and that all countries in the world recognise a monkey-faced being as looking like a thunder god (among many other We All Live In China examples).
* [[Left Behind]] has references to "Captains" and "Lieutenants" at [[Scotland Yard]]
* Likewise, the original ''Aladdin'' is often said to be set in China, as this was the most distant and magical land that most Arabs had heard of. The character's names, the genies and so forth all seem Arabian, however.
** So much so that every movie adaptation and many fairy tale books change the setting to a real or fictional Arab country.
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== News ==
* Following [[Gordon Brown]]'s calling an old lady "bigoted", which (obviously) hurt his popularity ratings, an American news station said something along the lines of "Liberal Democrat, Gordon Brown, is likely to be defeated in the polls by a Conservative Republican".
* As mentioned above, the idea that 'black' and 'African-American' are synonymous makes its way into a lot of news broadcasts.
** There was a newscast where the person was talking about some African country and kept calling the citizens of that country (in Africa) "African-Americans". Clearly, someone was doing a realtime search-and-replace on the word "black".
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*** It also makes it difficult to search for info from a game if it is called something simple (and popular in the English language) like ''[[Bully (video game)|Bully]]'' in America, and (the arguably more distinguishable) ''Canis Canem Edit'' in other countries...
* As a general rule, games which go through America before they reach Europe are not translated into British English. What makes this a true example is when the 'English' option on the language selection screen is the ''Union Flag'' in all its <s>colors</s> colours.
* ''[[Sim City]]'' does a very
** Although an American city could be reasonably expected to have all three, and will definitely have some state police in addition to the local force.
** ''[[Sim City]]'' also has the city responsible for power plants and many other things that would in most places be run by private companies.
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* Similar to the GTA example, ''[[Jade Empire]]'' features the occasional very English phrase like "buggers" to refer to a group of panicking rats, but as everyone in the game sounds Canadian save for [[I Am Very British|Sir Roderick Ponce Von Fondlebottom The Magnificent Bastard]], it comes off very odd.
** "Buggers" isn't uncommon in [[Canada, Eh?|Canada]], or at least the easternnmost portions, so it doesn't come off very odd at all in reference to nasty little buggers like rats.
* ''[[Fahrenheit (2005 video game)]]'' and ''[[Heavy Rain]]'' are set in New York and Philadelphia, respectively, but were made by a French company, and there are a bunch of telling
* ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' games are apparently set in Europe or America but the characters retain certain Japanese mannerisms such as bowing, a lot of the characters love Japanese foods, and some of the plants are native to Japan.
* ''[[Resident Evil 3 Nemesis]]'''s Raccoon City is a supposed to be a modern, Midwestern, American city, but the size of the streets and presence of extensive back-alleys and shopping arcades are clear evidence that Raccoon was based on a contemporary Japanese city. For reference, many of the streets are blocked by a single, longitudinal car across the road. When's the last time you [Americans] saw a road that narrow, especially in a city of over 100,000 residents? Further games in the series that revisit Raccoon, however, seem to retcon them to the proper width.
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* Even TV Tropes is not immune. Many articles/examples/tropes are written from an implicitly "American" point of view. It's quite a bit better than some other examples, however.
** Something similar happens on [[The Other Wiki]]. Some of their edit wars are over British vs American spellings.
* Frequently parodied on ''[[The Bugle]]'', a podcast hosted by two Brits, one an expatriate living in New York. And it sometimes gets inverted, with the large contingent of American
* Satirized (possibly?) by [[The Nostalgia Chick]]. The very first thing she's ever said to us is "I, like most of the world, am an American."
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* Same goes for Sweden, where We All Live in the three big cities, Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö, and somtimes not even the last two are counted. The country has a population of 9 million, with around two milion living in these cities. For the rest of the country, a town of maybe a hundred thousand is considered very dense. Now, consider that most entertainment advertised, and lots of the brands as well can't be found in the smaller communities, and that going to a major city can take hours if not days...
* On Twitter, "Happy Fathers Day" trended on the first Sunday of September, as Father's day in Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, & Papua New Guinea falls on that day. Cue many confused tweets asking "Happy Fathers Day? [[wikipedia:Father's Day#Dates around the world|Isn't that in June?]]"
* In the wake of the [[wikipedia:2011 Norway attacks|2011 terrorist attacks on Oslo and Utøya]] some pundits claimed that the death toll would have been much lower if the Norwegian government hadn't suppressed the people's right to bear arms. Two problems with that: one, there is no "Right to bear arms" in Norway,<ref>
* A common mistake, particularly on the Internet, is to assume that everywhere in the world runs on the same time, or at least to not include a reference to the time zone of the author.
** And assuming that summer happens between June and September everywhere in the world.
** Time zone issues happen within the US as well; Pacific Time (UTC-8) is the default setting for most of the internet since the industry is based in Silicon Valley and Seattle. Traditionally, everything else defaults to Eastern Time (UTC-5).
* Labor Day. In the US, first Monday in September. In many other countries, it refers to May
** Labour Day in Australia can create a local variation of this trope. It is celebrated on the first Monday in October in ACT, NSW, and South Australia, the second Monday in March in Victoria and Tasmania, the first Monday in March in Western Australia, and the first Monday in May in Queensland and Northern Territory.
** A similar effect occurs between Commonwealth nations regarding the Queen's Birthday holiday.
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