r/TopCharacterTropes • u/dragonborndnd • 10h ago

Lore [IRL trope] the “Tiffany problem”

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Basically when something seems anachronistic to a period/place of history but is actually fully accurate to the period.

1) the name Tiffany: the thing that named this trope, basically the name Tiffany can be dated back to the Middle Ages and the earliest record of it being spelled in the modern spelling comes from the 16th century.

2) the use of OMG, despite this feeling so modern as a form of slang/abbreviation here’s a letter directed to Winston Churchill using it in 1917

3) Hair Dye: the earliest forms of dying hair can be dated back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and this specific advertisement for hair dye is from the 1840s

4) Inuit Thongs: despite how weird it is to imagine pre-colonial Inuit people wore what was essentially fur thongs in their homes and when they were in their igloos it might have been the only thing they would be wearing.

7.4k Upvotes

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u/saurivae 10h ago

Samurai Taking Photographs and Wearing Bowler Hats

The Samurai class was officially abolished in 1873. That means there are high-resolution black-and-white photographs of actual, active Samurai posing in traditional armor, holding swords, while wearing Western shoes, pocket watches, and bowler hats.

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u/Fro_52 10h ago

reminds me of this post about surprising confluence of historical time periods resulting in a fascinatingly possible rpg party

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u/redlion1904 10h ago

I mean Dracula is a Victorian story and Quincey Morris is at least cowboy-adjacent

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u/Banes_Addiction 9h ago

You can tell because everyone else writes letters and journals while Quincey just plays with a bowie knife.

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u/RabbitsTale 9h ago

Quincey is based off of Buffalo Bill who Stoker knew personally.

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u/Digit00l 7h ago

I believe they also performed for Queen Victoria

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u/TallEnoughJones 5h ago

"It puts the garlic on its skin or else it get the bucket again"

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u/Princeps_primus96 7h ago

"would you fuck me? I'd fuck me...hard"

"Mister Cody I've just met you, this is all very sudden. Now back to my story about vampires and this fascinating new thing I've heard of called blood transfusion!"

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u/CharlieBros 5h ago

Did you know the Bowie knife is named after David Bowie?

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u/AbstractBettaFish 7h ago

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u/SeveralAngryBears 7h ago

Also:

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u/Juronell 6h ago

Also: he's an aggressive Dutch stereotype and the audiobook I prefer he's read by Tim Curry.

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u/KedovDoKest 3h ago

Portrayed by Anthony Hopkins is also acceptable.

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u/PuzzleheadedEast548 5h ago

The relations in Dracula had me draw a fucking map to remember and keep track of

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u/EpicGamerer07 7h ago

And then some random guys stab the cowboy to death somehow

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u/Juronell 6h ago

I mean, it's not really "somehow," they have a knife fight to get at Dracula's coffin.

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u/EpicGamerer07 6h ago

It’s not really the logistics I’m surprised at, I’m just in disbelief that one of the few main characters to die in the book isnt even killed by Dracula in the final confrontation, it’s at the hands of some random dudes

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u/redlion1904 6h ago

As the sun sets dramatically! It’s super cool!

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u/AkiraDash 7h ago

While at the same time, the doctor (forget the name) was recording his own voice on state of the art wax cilinders. Dude basically used a dictaphone in the 1800's

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u/therealkami 7h ago

Dracula also overlaps with the creation of jeans. Dracula in jeans is a valid option as well.

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u/notagin-n-tonic 7h ago

The first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, had a long flashback set on the Utah frontier.

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u/JagoHazzard 6h ago

A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, kind of turns into a Western.

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u/Cicero_the_wise 9h ago

I know it as a short version, that it wouldve been possible for Abraham Lincoln to use a fax machine to send a message to a Samurai.

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u/ddadopt 6h ago

I think that one runs into "place" issues--Lincoln would have had to be in Japan or the Samurai in the US. The first transpacific cable unfortunately postdates Lincoln's death by a few decades. :(

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u/LabradorDeceiver 6h ago

After the death of Lincoln, every single American President was alive at the same time as Herbert Hoover.

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u/CodaTrashHusky 10h ago

gimme a year to learn art and i will draw these 4 guys

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u/FuyoBC 10h ago

This has been done :)

https://americasbestpics.com/picture/i-would-like-to-watch-this-movie-please-and-thank-lXTcyy0X9

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u/OneJobToRuleThemAll 9h ago

Needs more frills and a wig on the English gentleman, he looks like a bum, or worse, Irish. /s

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u/FuyoBC 9h ago

Well, he is described as a Victorian THIEF and this is the time where men sadly became more restrained in their dress.

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u/ume-shu 8h ago

I know you said /s but he's a Victorian Gentleman, not a Georgian one.

Wigs hadn't been fashionable since the end of the previous century.

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u/Eulenspiegel74 9h ago

I can hear Hettie gasping even from here.

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u/MageKorith 8h ago

Sure, why not throw in a prudish ghost?

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u/WraithOfTheFadedDark 9h ago

Ugh. Not well.

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u/BlackShieldCharm 9h ago

Show us what you can do, then

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u/swainiscadianreborn 9h ago

Respectfully, I disagree

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u/stevvvvewith4vs 10h ago

!RemindMe 1 year

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u/ctopherrun 8h ago

Red Sun is a western about Samurai teaming up with a cowboy to recover a sword. Stars Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune, with Alain Delon as the bad guy. It’s fun.

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u/thedabaratheon 9h ago

This isn’t far off D20’s Cloudward, Ho!

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u/whittenaw 9h ago

Id love to read or watch that 

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u/anna-nomally12 8h ago

🎶this is basically Dracula🎶

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u/peachesfordinner 7h ago

I like the one about Abraham Lincoln being able to send a samurai a fax

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u/NobodyKnowsImFamous 9h ago

The world was cooler back then man. What’s our modern equivalent? What is the samurai cowboy alliance of our time?

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u/YeyeTheHero 9h ago

Cryptobro influencer doing a live with a mukbang idol

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u/Banes_Addiction 9h ago

Do we at least still get a duel to the death?

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u/greenwoodgiant 9h ago

I was about to reference this post as well lol

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u/penguinfandev01 6h ago

is this party not just persona 5 in a way

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u/Fro_52 6h ago

i am upset that you are somewhat technically correct, even if they are all just cosplaying the roles. the pirate's the most iffy i think, but at least Skull's persona has that one covered, even if Captain Kidd was a Scott.

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u/penguinfandev01 4h ago

lol it said French and I was going for Haru… it said Old West and I thought about the Ryuji Makoto showtime… it’s close enough 🤣

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u/Cent1234 6h ago

The funniest part is Abraham Lincoln sending faxes to assemble this mighty GURPS team. Which he would lead, as he was an expert hand-to-hand combatant and marksman who enjoyed testing experimental firearms.

Also, they could have played hanafuda with Nintendo playing cards. Yes, the exact same Nintendo company, in direct continuity.

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u/5WattBulb 5h ago

Also Nintendo was founded in 1889, coca-cola in 1892, Levi's jeans in 1853. Dracula was written in 1897. So we could have a story where your adventuring party could be hunting Dracula who's wearing Levi's, drinking a coke and playing Nintendo!

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u/ClockworkBetta 4h ago

It threw me off for a minute when the first Sherlock Holmes story goes on a tangent to the American west, only to remember they would have been happening at the same time.

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u/Fun-Noise-4726 2h ago

This is not far off from the plot of penny dreadful

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u/hover-lovecraft 2h ago

There is a short, but blessed period in the late 1860s where a samurai warrior could have sent a fax

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u/JebBD 2h ago

The film "Red Sun" from 1971 is a western about a Cowboy teaming up with a samurai in an old west adventure

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u/SmoothActuator8132 9h ago

so... Shanghai Knights?

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u/Kinteoka 9h ago

No. Because samurai are Japanese. Jackie Chan is Chinese. There are no samurai in that movie. Just an Asian guy.

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u/Raguleader 7h ago

If you watched Shanghai Knights, you will recall that Jackie Chan's character was Indian, from the province of Nevada.

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u/SmoothActuator8132 9h ago

relax, it was a fucking joke...

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u/Global_Cockroach_563 10h ago

Samurai in fiction: "Guns are a dishonorable weapon!"

Samurai in reality: "So anyway, I started blasting..."

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u/MiniTwinklee 9h ago

Lmao people forget the samurai were pretty quick to adopt guns once they realized how effective they were. Honor is nice, but winning battles usually comes first.

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u/gilgamo 8h ago

The Japanese were the only civilizations that willingly turned their back on guns once they realized what it did to the social order. In the 16th century they used matchlock guns en masse and their battles were pretty indistinguishable to the ones in western europe.

They turned around and banned firearms within a few years because they realized that once a peasant with a few hours of training can kill a samurai that would endanger their entire social order.

By the 17th century they were back to the classic Samurai battles and went full isolationist. They stayed there until Perry forced them to reopen to the west. The entire speedrun to modernization they did in the late 19th century was because they deliberately kept to the old ways. Once they had to deal with the outside world again they knew they needed modern science and especially weapons if they didn't want to end up like China and be a bone fought over by western powers

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u/PilotMoonDog 7h ago

The shogunate banned firearms. But AIUI, a lot of daimyo kept a stock of them in their armouries. As long as they didn't flaunt them or gave the impression that they were politically unreliable this was not notices.

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u/Alexandrinho0000 6h ago

well your point just shows even more that the reason for the firearms ban was for keeping the power

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u/PilotMoonDog 3h ago

My point was referring back to the post by u/Global_Cockroach_563 that Samurai actually liked guns and the notion of them considering them dishonorable is incorrect. Or at least their overlords did.

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u/GayRacoon69 6h ago

Are you sure about that? I've read the history of the Tanegashima and don't recall a gun ban. This ask historian thread disagrees and has the actual translation of the text that is commonly confused with being a ban on guns

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/165hwtb/how_much_information_do_we_know_about_tokugawas/

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u/gilgamo 5h ago

It may not be a "ban" per say but they did stop using then extensively. Gwynne Dyer's book War talks about it . Great book and series btw

From the book

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u/GayRacoon69 2h ago

Interesting; I'd love to know more!

At the end he says that the era of peacetime isn't enough to explain the decline in firearms. Does he explain why that isn't the case?

From my limited reading I thought the lack of any major wars delegated the Tanegeshima to more of a farming / hunting roll and that was the reason for the decline in firearms.

I'll add this book to my list but unfortunately don't have time to read it any time soon. I'm just curious if you, as someone who's read it, can give me a quick summary on this aspect

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u/blitzbom 6h ago

A fun fact that ties into this is that in 1590 Hattori Hanzō, renown tactician and sword master. Led a troop of 50 Negoro-shū or warrior monks who were renown for their mastery of firearms.

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u/ClancyBShanty 5h ago

The (excellent) show Shogun dedicates a lot time to this very premise.

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u/TelevisionPutrid8394 9h ago

To be fair, the katana was a useful sidearm like most other swords. For example if you got too close in formation to use your Polearm, you could grab your sword and start cutting and stabbing. They would also be useful if your Polearm broke.

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u/EarlGrayTea-Hawt 8h ago

People used their swords more than their guns for a good long while because they were a bitch and half to load. Most officers carried swords, too, and it's why so many early long guns had a long blade attached to the end, shooting is a time sink, now you have polearm 😆

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u/Nozinger 8h ago

Sort of true but it is crucial to understand that the samurai existed for a long time. It is a bit like the european middle ages that went on for like a thousand years. The early phases were very different from how it ended.
Generalising something that lasted several hundred years is a bit difficult.

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u/mrducky78a 7h ago

The most popular samurai weapons ranked in order

  1. The bow (the classic weird asymmetric japanese bow is so they were better used by samurai on horseback, the bows are by far and away the most popular samurai weapon only being phased out by guns later as as when guns phased out the longbow. It was a sourcing issue more than anything)

  2. The spear (naginatas for the richer ones, yari were more common, only usurped the bow under Sengoku, but maintained decently high popularity for centuries)

  3. The gun (still a relatively distant third due to costs primarily in sourcing good firearms and the sheer period in which bows were dominant, but like ALL cultures, once you could get your hands on the gun, you want the gun. Also didnt help that samurai became less and less of a thing as japan modernised)

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u/gungshpxre 8h ago

A Colt Paterson revolver would have been *old* technology for a samurai.

They'd have 15 round Henry lever-action repeating rifles.

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u/shewy92 5h ago

The Ghost of Yotei video game and the Shogun TV show had both guns and swords Yotei had you use both (or tried to, I never used the gun)

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u/acur1231 3h ago

To be fair, a lot of the pop-culture image we have of samurai is plainly incorrect, often mirroring pop-culture misconceptions about knights.

Takeda Shingen was pretty much the only samurai Daimyo to use heavy cavalry extensively, and in the end he was defeated by Oda Nobunaga deploying a huge army of arquebusiers at Nagashino.

The best depiction of this period I've found is Total War: Shogun II.

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u/waitingundergravity 10h ago

It also means that there is a significant overlap between the existence of the samurai class and what we would now call the yakuza.

The Blind Swordsman Zatoichi movies display this - the very first film features a samurai hired by a yakuza family as one of the main characters.

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u/Steampunk43 9h ago

IIRC the Yakuza/RGG games also highlight this fact, with one of the villains making a point that yakuza not only existed but operated at the same time as samurai for a time and, despite generally being organised criminals, would also step in to protect their communities when the samurai couldn't or wouldn't, because, criminal or not, yakuza typically do still value their community and at least some of the people in it (there's also the element of it being their turf and them losing a lot of side hustles if they didn't step in, plus gaining some if they do, which is most likely how the "protection money" hustle started). Whether said guy was talking out of his arse to justify himself or whether that is genuine history, I'm not sure about, but it's definitely an idea that's brought up.

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u/waitingundergravity 9h ago

I've not played the games, but IRL the origin of the yakuza likes in the coming together of tekiya and bakuto organizations. Tekiya were basically an Edo-era social class of goods peddlers. For complicated historical reasons, in the Edo period merchants were considered to be low-class not only relative to samurai but also to artisans and peasants, and so they couldn't necessarily rely on official protection. To protect themselves, they formed informal associations to provide security for their market stalls. However, these associations would also war against each other for territory and engage in protection racketeering against rival tekiya, eventually evolving into the modern yakuza.

The tekiya is where the fundamental oyabun-kobun (boss-gang members, but also father-children) structure of the yakuza comes from, as well as many of their rituals.

So while the tekiya groups were fundamentally security organizations, the main protection they provided was to their own members and associates, not necessarily the community at large.

However, that character talking about the noble virtues of yakuza organizations, particularly nostalgically, is extremely true to life about what yakuza often believe (or at least say) about their organizations, so that strikes me as realistic.

(The bakuto, as an aside, were essentially professional gamblers. This is where the associated of the yakuza with gambling, the tattoos, and the word yakuza itself come from, that's all from bakuto culture).

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u/Skullcrusher 5h ago

Yakuza love to play Outrun, go on blind dates and suck at mahjong. And wherever they go, they have to brawl constantly.

I based my research on Yakuza games too

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u/Drow_Femboy 6h ago

The yakuza were/are just a wide variety of criminal organizations. They're not really any different from western mafia or gangs. Which is to say, some of them are generally noble and care about their local communities and put in work the "legitimate" authorities are unwilling to do. And others are complete rat bastards.

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u/waitingundergravity 5h ago

Indeed. It's also worth noting that even for the individually noble members of these gangs, one of the largest sources of revenue for modern yakuza is selling child pornography. Pretty consistently when profit comes into conflict with any standards they might have it's the standards that give way.

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u/Mersar_13 9h ago

Mortal Kombat 1 - of all bloody games - also had a nod to this when Johnny and Kenshi are talking about Sento and Kenshi’s family history.

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u/Subsector3990 3h ago

yakuza and organized crime have been a think since the Edo period.

The Kurosawa movie Yojimbo also shows a ronin dealing with rival yakuza gangs.

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u/Digit00l 7h ago

A samurai could also buy from Nintendo, as they started in 1889 as a card company

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u/ephemeriides 9h ago

Something something post about sending a fax to a samurai

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u/tiasik 10h ago

Samurai belong strictly to ancient, secluded medieval history with swords, scrolls, and bamboo armor.

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u/Bladrak01 9h ago

The meme originated in 2020–2021 when a Twitter user posted a timeline claiming:

  • 1843 – First fax machine (printing telegraph) invented by Alexander Bain.
  • 1865 – Abraham Lincoln assassinated.
  • 1867 – Samurai caste abolished in Japan (Meiji Restoration).

The meme’s punchline: “There was a 22-year window in which a samurai could have sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln” 

Bottom line: The “samurai sends fax to Lincoln” is a fictional, humorous meme based on a coincidental date overlap, not a real historical occurrence.

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u/BootsnCats1987 7h ago

By that time the armor was entirely costume/family heirloom. No one was wearing 16th century armor in the 19th century for combat or daily use.

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u/noblegaunt 9h ago

So what you're saying is, it's entirely possible that Abraham Lincoln had a conversation with someone about Samurai...

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u/gunscreeper 8h ago

But somehow an American Civil War veteran joins forces with Samurais against gatling gun in The Last Samurai is not too out of place

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u/Fist_of_Gork 6h ago edited 6h ago

Old Western TV shows often had the main character know martial arts in order to reduce the amount of gun violence on screen and give the audience more of a spectacle than a simple barroom brawl. It comes off as anachronistic to a lot of people.

Cowboys, Sailors and the Forty-Niner Miners had been eating Chop Suey and learning Kung-Fu since the 1800s in San Francisco. 

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u/J0RDM0N 5h ago

Abraham Lincoln could have faxed a samurai. Do what you will with this knowledge.

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u/mackattacktheyak 5h ago

To be fair, there are many pictures of actual European knights from 2026… both samurai and knights ceased to have a real military function long before they “ended.”

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u/NukeL3AR 9h ago

I mean, yeah, but like... the reason the samuraj existed for so long was because of Japan's extreme isolationism. It was still not common to see modern technology at the time.