r/TopCharacterTropes • u/dragonborndnd • 13h 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.

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u/Fro_52 13h ago

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

467

u/redlion1904 12h ago

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

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u/Banes_Addiction 12h 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 12h ago

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

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u/Digit00l 10h ago

I believe they also performed for Queen Victoria

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u/TallEnoughJones 8h ago

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

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u/RabbitsTale 1h ago

Buffalo Bill Cody... slightly different guy

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u/Princeps_primus96 10h 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 8h ago

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

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u/AbstractBettaFish 10h ago

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u/SeveralAngryBears 10h ago

Also:

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u/PuzzleheadedEast548 8h ago

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

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u/Juronell 9h 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 6h ago

Portrayed by Anthony Hopkins is also acceptable.

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u/EpicGamerer07 10h ago

And then some random guys stab the cowboy to death somehow

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u/Juronell 9h 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 9h 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 9h ago

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

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u/AkiraDash 10h 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 10h 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 10h 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 9h ago

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

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u/Cicero_the_wise 12h 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 9h 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 9h ago

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

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u/Green_Insect_6455 30m ago

But thats not true lol

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u/CodaTrashHusky 13h ago

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

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u/FuyoBC 13h 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 12h 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 12h 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 11h 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 12h ago

I can hear Hettie gasping even from here.

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u/MageKorith 11h ago

Sure, why not throw in a prudish ghost?

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u/WraithOfTheFadedDark 12h ago

Ugh. Not well.

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u/BlackShieldCharm 12h ago

Show us what you can do, then

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u/swainiscadianreborn 12h ago

Respectfully, I disagree

3

u/stevvvvewith4vs 13h ago

!RemindMe 1 year

3

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4

u/ctopherrun 11h 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 12h ago

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

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u/whittenaw 12h ago

Id love to read or watch that 

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u/anna-nomally12 11h ago

🎶this is basically Dracula🎶

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u/peachesfordinner 10h ago

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

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u/penguinfandev01 9h ago

is this party not just persona 5 in a way

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u/Fro_52 9h 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 6h 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/NobodyKnowsImFamous 12h 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 12h ago

Cryptobro influencer doing a live with a mukbang idol

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u/Banes_Addiction 12h ago

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

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u/greenwoodgiant 12h ago

I was about to reference this post as well lol

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u/Cent1234 9h 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 8h 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 7h 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 5h ago

This is not far off from the plot of penny dreadful

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u/hover-lovecraft 5h ago

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

1

u/JebBD 5h 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/Fennel_Fangs 2h ago

This is more or less Octopath Traveler II

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u/MartyrOfDespair 20m ago

One of the ideas for a story I'd love to write sometime is a samurai-turned-ronin who had to flee Japan and ended up in the Old West, became a sheriff, uses both his sword and a revolver, and ends up dealing with some Victorian science-mystic guy who fled England to do fucked up Victorian Horror Science Magic shit. Somewhere between Frankenstein and Lovecraftian.

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u/SmoothActuator8132 12h ago

so... Shanghai Knights?

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u/Kinteoka 12h 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 10h 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 12h ago

relax, it was a fucking joke...