# Dead or nearly dead tropes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 25, 2025, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797 "2025-02-25T23:14:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 16
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/301 "2025-03-05T04:08:26Z")
**Nitpick:** It’s not a split infinitive. It’s a type 3 (separable) phrasal verb. “Put out that cigarette!” = “Put that cigarette out!” Both are acceptable. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/302 "2025-03-05T04:29:58Z")
**Corollary:** A tough woman suddenly becomes attractive and likeable once she drops the “bitch” act. Examples: Carol Burnett’s woman Marine on _ **Gomer Pyle, USMC** _, Margaret Houlihan on _ **MASH** _, and Elaan of Troyus on _ **Star Trek: TOS** _. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/303 "2025-03-05T05:17:41Z")
Just saw it in the brand-new _One Hundred Years of Solitude._ ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/304 "2025-03-05T05:59:10Z")
> [@Zyada](#): > > Nearly dead trope because tuberculosis is rare nowadays. Only in first-world countries. For a while Covid-19 took its place as the single leading cause of death from an infectious agent, but now TB is back, baby! > **[Tuberculosis (TB)](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis)** > > Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria that most often affect the lungs. TB is curable and preventable and is spread from person to person through the air. ---
**Author:** ![dirtball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dirtball/32/18772_2.png) [@dirtball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dirtball)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/305 "2025-03-05T11:18:32Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Just saw it in the brand-new _One Hundred Years of Solitude._ Fair enough. It could very well be just the luck of the draw that I haven’t run across it lately. ---
**Author:** ![Author\_Balk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Author\_Balk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Author_Balk)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/306 "2025-03-05T16:29:21Z")
I don’t think anybody syncronizes watches anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/307 "2025-03-05T16:38:51Z")
Gender/roll swapping for humor is almost dead. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/308 "2025-03-05T17:00:00Z")
That’s a interesting observation. It seems to have been replaced with gender/casting swapping. But not for humor, necessarily. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/309 "2025-03-05T21:38:47Z")
Now I’m envisioning an episode of _The Simpsons_ where all the characters are depicted gender-reversed without comment or explanation. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/310 "2025-03-05T22:48:31Z")
That would be … fascinating. And very funny if they really ran with it. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/311 "2025-03-06T04:15:42Z")
A trope that I hope fully enters this category (it’s far less common that it was at least, but I’d say say it’s closer to sitting up and saying “I’m not dead yet, I think I’ll go for a walk”): > **[Earth All Along - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarthAllAlong)** > > In a Speculative Fiction story where our heroes have crash-landed their spaceship on apparently alien planet, maybe with time travel, wormholes, or portals being involved, they long to return back to Earth. After they spend the story trying to … It hasn’t been moving or food for thought since at _least_ the 80s, and hasn’t been original or at least, not overused for at least a decade before, but I want it on it’s deathbed. It is still at least _more_ rare in speculative/science fiction, but the borefest _65_ proved it had legs yet. And it was barely even a twist. Sadly, a parallel trope of Ancient Aliens/Ancient Humans is far more alive and flourishing, and doing great work (/s) at fueling racism, bigotry, and conspiracy theories every day. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/312 "2025-03-06T04:45:53Z")
I agree. The trope is nearly dead, or needs to die. In the TV Tropes sreenshot you linked, I see the classic Statue of Liberty ruin from Planet of the Apes, which as a kid blew my mind. Whoah! But that was probably the last best time for the trope. Everything has a season. > [@ParallelLines](#): > > It is still at least _more_ rare in speculative/science fiction, but the borefest _65_ proved it had legs yet. And it was barely even a twist. My wife and I watched this in the theater, I’m embarrassed to admit. Terrible movie. How did they screw up the dinosaurs so bad? I’m no paleontologist, but the designs of those dinos were weird and stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/313 "2025-03-06T05:48:49Z")
I think that Stargate did a great version of this one of the later episodes of season 1 a problem happens when Carter and O’Neill discover they’ve ended up on what appears to be an ice planet. It’s actually a 2nd stargate on Earth in Antarctica It plays more with the “planet of hats” trope than with Earth all along ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/314 "2025-03-06T06:07:43Z")
An outtake from that episode: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/EriZ9ruZq1E/hqdefault.jpg "Stargate SG-1 Macgyver Gag") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EriZ9ruZq1E) ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/315 "2025-03-06T12:25:35Z")
Well, _that_ was funnier than anything that actually aired on the series. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/316 "2025-03-06T12:34:19Z")
> [@solost](#): > > In the TV Tropes sreenshot you linked, I see the classic Statue of Liberty ruin from Planet of the Apes, which as a kid blew my mind. Whoah! But that was probably the last best time for the trope. Everything has a season. I never got that bit, to be honest. Even when I watched it for the first time as a little kid, I assumed from the start they were on Earth. After all, the place had apes, humans, trees, horses and so on and so on. Why would anyone think it was an alien planet? ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/317 "2025-03-06T13:46:44Z")
I was raised on Star Trek, where every alien planet the crew visited had English-speaking, human-looking aliens (other than being green or blue and maybe having antennae). So the concept of a planet with humans, trees, horses and English-speaking apes didn’t seem too far-fetched by comparison. Or, maybe you were just a much smarter kid than I was 😏 ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/318 "2025-03-06T13:47:40Z")
Because we thought that all of that was convention to facilitate the narrative as in many other movies. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/319 "2025-03-06T14:04:55Z")
So what you’re saying is that just because a planet looks like Earth onscreen, it didn’t actually look like Earth, it was just a convention, like having people in the future wear contemporary haircuts. If we had actually been there and looked closely, we would have noticed that it was really an alien world - or in this case, that it _wasn’t._ So my question is this: why didn’t Charlton Heston notice? He was an astronaut, a pretty smart guy, and probably well-educated. Why didn’t HE realize that the planet he was on just wasn’t alien enough? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797/320 "2025-03-06T14:23:02Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Why didn’t HE realize that the planet he was on just wasn’t alien enough? They finally made a monkey out of him. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797.md?page=15) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-or-nearly-dead-tropes/1014797.md?page=17)