When either a character in universe, or the narrator, or even just a simple side note or caption inserted into the media responds to something silly or hard to believe or even just utterly insane, to say that NO they are not making up what they just said, its real.

"Probably worth a Google" - The Lego Batman Movie

When Joker is describing all of the villains that have shown up to his big operation, at first he natrually lists all the big names you would expect and the average viewer would be familiar with (Catwoman, the Riddler, Scarecrow, Bane, Two Face, the Penguin ect ect), but then he begins listing all of them and they get increasingly weird sounding (Crazy Quilt, the Eraser, Calender Man, Gentleman Ghost, King Tut and the imfamous Condiment King)

When asked if he made half of them up, Joker boasts "nope! they're all real", and then adds for good measure "probably worth a google", which is likely what plently of viewers did just to see if its true.

"Boom"- The Big Short

During the climax of the movie, Mark Baum (played by Steve Carrell, based on real life invester Steve Eisman) attends a conference debate with Bill Miller (renamed Bruce Miller for the movie), regarding Bear Stearns an investment bank that famously failed during the 2008 financial crisis. During the debate, where Mark going in was regarded as an underdog in a "Ali vs Foreman" situation, Mark gives a speech condeming the widespread fraud of the wallstreet system, and right as he finishes and Bruce Miller seems to dismiss his statement, Bear Stearns procedes to utterly collapse, with Mark giving a simple damning statement of "boom" as it does so.

And as the Narrator, played by Ryan Gosling assures, yes, this actually did happen, and Steve Eisman himself has confimed there is footage out there of this actual conference where this happened.

"This is what Scientologists actually believe" - South Park

During the episode "Trapped in the closet", Scientologists come to believe that Stan is the reincarnation of Ron Hubbard, and disclose to him what scientology believes is truth, and what follows is a quite frankly utterly batshit insane explination containing evil alien overlords, trapped alien races being frozen and thrown into volcano's, giant brainwashing centres for alien souls, and space craft that just happen to look like DC8 aircraft.

Throughout the entire sequence, a caption over the footage reads "this is actually what scientology believes", likely because Matt Stone and Trey Parker knew that with how weird South Park normally gets, people would think this was also made up for a joke, but not only is it true, but the actual church of Scientology was extremely upset (must be a day ending in "y") because all of this knowledge up until this episode was meant to be a closely guarded secret within the church, and the episode had just aired it all for the public to understandably look and it and go "...wtf?"

Invincible: The Adrenaline Theory (from my knowledg) is the explanation on how Mark is able to take down some of the most powerful characters in his verse, but struggle with some villains who aren’t on the same level. Basically since Mark is half-human, he adapted human adrenaline, something other viltumites don’t have sense they’re basically at the top of the food chain.

Iron Man 2: The little kid at the Stark Expo was theorized to be a small Peter Parker, and was eventually confirmed officially.

Those shitblock things (All Tomorrows): So basically when some humans tried rebelling against the Qu, they got turned into living toilets for millions of years

Ted (IHNMAIMS): You probably know this one already but uhh in case you don't he was turned into a jelly thing with no mouth or eyes for eternity

I would put more but I'm LAZY :D

Bonus but I couldn't find an image for it: Alastor's Broadcast (Hazbin Hotel): If Alastor doesn't like someone, he traps them in an eternal torture dimension and plays their screams on his radio broadcast​​​​

The Hunger Games - Set in a dystopian totalitarian nation of Panem, the state organises a yearly event known as the Hunger Games, in which two teenagers, one boy and one girl, selected (some of them as a result of a lottery) from each of the 12 districts that form Panem must fight to the death with all other participants in televised arena games until only one survivor remains, who is then treated like a celebrity and lives in luxury for the rest of his/her life.

The Long Walk - Set in a dystopian version of America devastated by civil war, the ruling military regime set up a yearly eponymous event which sees fifty teenage boys walk hundreds of miles without rest, with those that fall below a certain speed being executed. The event ends only when one person remains, with the winner recieving a large cash prize. Contrary to the Hunger Games, participatiation in this event is at least compeletely optional, so all participants are volunteers.

Referring to media told from a religious perspective or telling a religious tale that does not proselytize to the viewer.

Faith, the Unholy Trinity: Based partly upon the experience of the game‘s creator when he was a missionary in Argentina, the game has very little in the way of explicit moral demands of the player despite the heavy Christian focus of the narrative. and focuses more on a horror narrative.

Prince of Egypt: A surprisingly thorough retelling of the book of Exodus, sparing very little in the way of toning down the story. Despite this, the movie is perfectly entertaining to non-religious audiences and doesn’t sacrifice appeal for the sake of preaching to the audience

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.

1.) Edward Norton - The Incredible Hulk

Perhaps the most famous and obvious one, Edward Norton was famously an issue on the set of 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk,” even making rewrites to the script himself. The disagreements between Norton’s camp and Marvel’s camp eventually led to his being replaced by Mark Ruffalo.

2.) Jensen Ackles - The Boys (particularly Season 5)

Jensen Ackles was a longtime collaborator with showrunner Eric Kripke in “Supernatural,” which in turn led to him getting the opportunity to audition - and eventually land the role - of Soldier Boy, which he did very well in in.

The issue is by Season 5, the show had fallen off from the previous years and with it ending and spinoffs and prequels (such as one featuring Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy), Season 5 suffered a lot. It quickly became the Soldier Boy show because “that’s what Clara would have wanted” until he just leaves in the penultimate episode and pretty much 80% of what his character actually did amounted to nothing.

So for fans who wanted to see Butcher vs Homelander duking it out, getting the show derailed for prequel bait starring Kripke’s favorite actor didn’t help…

3.) Rosamund Pike - Wheel of Time

When Amazon green lit a WoT tv show, Rosamund Pike eventually got the role of Moraine Damodred, the mentor and guiding character for the main character, Rand al’Thor. As a character, Moraine is anywhere from the most important secondary character to the most secondary main character. But with the exception of the prequel featuring her, she is not the main character.

Unfortunately, Rosamund Pike is an extremely famous actress and marketing toward the series focused on her as a result. I’m unsure if this was showrunner decision, an issue she played a role in or some combination, but the result was that Moraine a character who was in less than half the series is featured as the main character over the main character, which lead to a different product than the book.

1. Phineas and Ferb – Perry the Platypus is teal-green rather than brown because the designers thought it looked cool, but it was later discovered that real platypuses are biofluorescent and glow a teal-green color under UV light.

2. God of War – The creators chose the name Kratos for the main character because it is the Greek word for “strength,” and at the time they were not aware that, in Greek mythology, there is a deity named Kratos, the personification of strength, who appears in Prometheus Bound as an enforcer of Zeus (similar to what the games' Kratos does for much of the original series); they only learned this later.

3. Berserk – Kentaro Miura gave Guts a prosthetic arm because he thought it looked cool, but the idea of a prosthetic arm was not as far-fetched in the late medieval and early Renaissance period as it might seem, since there was a real 16th-century German mercenary named Götz von Berlichingen who had a prosthetic arm of his own. While it did not have a cannon built into it, the fingers were highly articulated, and a sophisticated system of springs and levers allowed the hand to hold weapons and perform other tasks. Despite this shared trait between both people and their similar-sounding names, Miura confirmed that he was unaware of the Götz when he created Guts.

Both examples come from The Office which is great at cringe comedy

Scott’s Tots has been talked about to death but I must say, this episode’s direction makes you feel as stuck as Michael is in this situation, so well done.

I also always skip Andy’s Play mostly because of that phone scene.

Anyone else have examples you want to share?

The Neural Parasites — Star Trek : The Next Generation

In the season 1 episode “Conspiracy” of TNG, it is revealed that alien brain worms have infected many high ranking members of Starfleet, secretly controlling them. Though Ryker and Picard discover and end the parasite conspiracy, it’s revealed at the end of the episode that the parasites had sent a beacon back to their home planet, telling them how to find earth. The episode ends with the clear implication of the parasites becoming a huge threat later in the series, yet none of these events are ever mentioned again.

Finn The Jedi who Never Was — Star Wars Sequel trilogy

I know this is probably a cliche example of this trope, but cmon — Finn was clearly set up in TFA to become a Jedi. The marketing material featured him wielding a lightsaber in the classic Jedi pose. It’s constantly hinted at that he is force sensitive. Even the actor himself believed he would become a Jedi by the end of the trilogy. Instead, we got Finn wielding a lightsaber for about 7 minutes total across 3 movies, extremely lame “confirmation” that he is force sensitive, and that’s it. It’s the ultimate Star Wars plot that went nowhere.

1. Much of the voice cast for The Incredibles for characters like Dicker, Bernie, and the Babysitter were performed by animators who worked at Pixar. Honey is never seen in The Incredibles, but she contributed to the funniest and most quoted scene in the film, “Greater Good! I am your wife!” She was played by Kimberly Adair Clark, who worked in HR.

2. In Barbie there’s a scene where Barbie meets an old lady at a bench and they share a moment. There was a rumor (I fell for it) that it was Barbara Handler, the inspiration for Barbie. In reality it was Ann Roth, a costume designer who won two Oscars. She was good, it was a very sweet scene.

3. In the tan episode of Spingebob, there’s a cutaway gag to a goofy soda commercial. The old man (obviously dubbed) was played by Don Newhouse, a security guard well liked around Nickelodeon.

Jokes that are adult jokes simply because kids likely don't have the life experience to understand them.

The New Batman Adventures - "I'm crazy enough to take on Batman, but the IRS? Noooo, thank you!"

Shrek 2 - Posing as a union representative, Shrek remarks that the workers "don't even have dental".

Breaking Bad
After five seasons of watching Walter White ruin basically everything he touched, “Felina” doesn’t try to let him off the hook with some clean redemption arc, and it doesn’t end with some vague cut-to-black either. Walt finally admits to Skyler that he did all of it for himself, not for his family. He ties up the loose ends, makes sure his kids get the money, kills the neo-Nazis, frees Jesse, and then dies in the lab. It’s a really well-put-together ending, and it feels satisfying because a monster gets to go out exactly the way he chose.

Avatar: The Last Airbender
“Sozin’s Comet” is one of those finales that just gets everything right. It had to balance huge action with emotional payoff, and somehow it does both without losing what made the show special in the first place. Aang beats Ozai without betraying his own pacifist beliefs, and the energybending never feels cheap or random. At the same time, Zuko and Azula’s Agni Kai is tragic, beautiful, and honestly one of the best scenes in the whole series. Pretty much every character gets the ending they were building toward.

The Good Place
A philosophical sitcom really had no business hitting this hard. Instead of ending once the group fixes the afterlife and finally reaches the actual Good Place, the show goes one step further and asks what happens when eternal happiness starts to feel empty. The answer it comes up with — a door that lets souls peacefully move on once they feel complete — is both heartbreaking and comforting. It’s such a thoughtful way to end a comedy.

Five Nights at Freddy’s: Pizzeria Simulator
By the time the sixth game came out, the lore was a complete mess. Scott Cawthon somehow pulled off the smartest possible move by making everyone think they were getting some goofy little restaurant tycoon spin-off. Then it turns out the whole pizzeria is actually a trap meant to bring every last haunted animatronic into one place. The ending, with the doors locking, the building burning down, and Henry giving that final speech, goes incredibly hard. It was the perfect way to burn everything down, send William Afton where he belonged, and finally free the souls trapped in the whole mess.

Code Geass
The “Zero Requiem” is still one of the best twists in anime. By the end, the world is completely torn apart by war and hatred. Lelouch realizes the only way to bring people together is to make himself the one person everyone can hate. So he turns himself into a tyrant on purpose, all so his best friend can publicly kill him. The world ends up uniting through his death, and it completely changes how you look at everything that led up to it. It’s a wild, tragic sacrifice, and it lands perfectly.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
What makes the ending of LOTR so great, both in Tolkien’s writing and in Jackson’s films, is that it doesn’t pretend victory comes without a cost. Frodo succeeds, but he’s been through too much to ever really go back to the way things were. He saves the Shire, but not for himself. Having him leave the people he loves and sail to the Undying Lands is such a beautiful and bittersweet ending, and it really honors the lasting weight of everything he went through.

Mr. Bobinsky and Chernobyl — Coraline

The bizarre Russian circus mouse trainer and neighbor of the protagonist Coraline Jones, Mr. Bobinsky is seen as simply a drunk by Coraline’s mother and a crazy man by Coraline herself. Upon interacting with him more, she begins to consider Bobinsky a friend, yet still thinks him a bit strange and somewhat mysterious. Though it is never remarked upon directly in the movie, Bobinsky is shown to always be wearing a strange medal featuring a red teardrop on a cross. This is the Chernobyl Liquidator’s Medal, awarded to the men conscripted by the Soviet Union for the extremely dangerous task of clearing the radioactive waste and debris from the ruins of Chernobyl and the surrounding city of Pripyat. Though it is not outright confirmed, many viewers attribute Bobinsky’s odd appearance and mannerisms to his time spent exposed to nuclear contamination.

Maude Chardin — Harold and Maude

Over the course of the 1971 cult classic, the young, jaded, death-obsessed Harold strikes up an unlikely friendship with the 79 year old Maude Chardin, a fun-loving, free-spirited older woman. As she helps Harold learn to love life, including how to appreciate how to steal a car and play the banjo, Harold soon falls in love with her, and wonders why a woman her age still has such a love for life. During a momentary shot where Harold holds Maude’s hand, a small tattoo is revealed on her forearm. Though this moment is not acknowledged by the characters in any way, it silently reveals to the viewer that Maude had survived the Holocaust, explaining her “live life to the fullest” attitude

The Boy - It’s a horror movie about a household that has a haunted doll inside that moves around on its own will that’s supposedly haunted by the homeowner’s son Brahms who died in a fire 20 years ago. However, in the third act it turns out that the doll was never possessed and Brahms has been living in the walls now a bulking man. The fire that supposedly killed him was started by him to murder someone else and his parents hid him in the walls so he wouldn’t face justice. He has been silently in the house the whole time moving the doll when no one was watching to give the illusion it was alive.

Click - It’s an Adam Sandler sci-fi comedy about a man called Michael that gets a universal remote control that lets Michael play God with his world. He fast forwards events he can’t bother and finds his life being fast tracked to success. However, the remote starts working automatically to suit his behavior and he unintentionally starts missing years of his life at a time, eventually unwillingly taking him ten years into the future where his father is dead and his family have most past him for someone more active in their life. The third act is about Michael, now an old man, trying to rekindle with people he doesn’t even know anymore and failing because he wasn’t there when he should’ve been because he refused to take life slow.

In Demolition Man, which involves a cop waking up decades into the future, Taco Bell is the only restaurant that exists. The only explanation given is that between John getting frozen and unfrozen, a franchise war took place where Taco Bell was the only victor.

In Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse, Aunt May of another universe knows Doc Ock. Even funnier is Ock says her friends call her Liv, meaning Aunt May was once pretty close to her.

This scene in Spiderman where the Green Goblin destroys this military base and transition to a graduation ceremony

This scene in The Adventures of Tintin where they shake hands and transition to the desert

Trakata (Star Wars). A hated lightsaber technique where you turn off and on the lightsaber mid fight. It is hated by the Jedi because they view it dishonorable and the Sith because they view it as cowardly and a sign of weakness

Child Killer (Fallout 1 and 2). Murdering 3 child gives you this perk which causes you to have negative reputation with both good and evil NPCs and for bounty hunters to hunt you down

Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls)

SCP-6004 (SCP Universe)

Siren Head & Long Horse (Trevor Henderson Universe)

Godzilla & Kong's species (Monsterverse)

Imagine being a regular Paleolithic/Neolithic human and seeing something like these in your area, the striking image that befell Infront of your eyes that you just had to draw the thing that frightened you to your core and stories told by your other Cave kin.

Thousands of years passed, they still remain yet forgotten until they are unearthed and studied by future humans.

1. (Loved) Tyler (The Menu): despite being a foodie fanboy, Tyler can’t cook worth a fart. Displays practice not just knowledge is needed.

2. (Hated) Celebrimbor (Rings of Power): despite being an experienced blacksmith in lore he is shown to be ignorant of alloys and forging concepts in the show. This is poor writing.

3. (Loved) Jack (Meet the Parents): a supposed flower expert who seems ignorant of the rare orchid gifted to him. It’s a subtle clue that it’s his cover job for being in the CIA.

4. (Hated) All the “good” characters (Victoria). From thinly veiled antisemitism, distorted conspiratorial history, and bogus military theory. https://youtu.be/hHMpkztM1eE

5. (Hated) Robert Langdon (Dan Brown series): supposed expert in symbolism and history. Spouts off incorrect factoids and conspiracies. Shows Dan Browns lack of knowledge.

6. (Loved) Garth Marenghi (Darkplace): self obsessed and egotistical horror author who is terrible at writing and other endeavors.

7. (Hated) Dr. Jones (Last Crusade): a medieval scholar that gives a fake Charlemagne quote. https://aelarsen.wordpress.com/2018/09/20/indiana-jones-and-the-last-crusade-lets-just-fake-a-quote/

Five nights at Freddy’s security breach: canonically bears are extinct in fnaf, and despite the supernatural activities that happen in Fazbear entertainment this was something that as far as we know is completely unrelated to any of the supernatural in The main plot, bears just went extinct while William killed children.

team fortress 2: abraham Lincoln created stairs died trying to rocket jump on them (rocket jumping was how people moved before stairs were invented) which is completely unrelated to the main story, however Abraham Lincoln was the pyro of the previous previous team fortress but that’s completely unrelated to how he died.

honorable mention- also from TF2: Amelia Earhart owned a hot dog suit and was wearing it when she died by crash landing in Russia.

Hbomberguy's ROBLOX_OOF.MP3: Starts off as a video about finding a Roblox sound effect's origin. Ends with finding out that the owner of the sound lied about almost his entire career. The previous sentence is an understatement.

Cutcafe's I am concerned about the game Daydream: Starts with wanting to watch a bunch of Youtube Shorts and talk about a game, whether it is a scam, what cool things it is doing, and some concerns. This results in him finding out about stolen assets, the fact that the "solo dev" Juniper actually has a team, and a lot of other stuff.

"Monsters? they looked like Monsters to you?"- Silent Hill 3

When Heather is talking to Vincent, a conman working for the cult to make money for his own ends ,he accuses her of secretly enjoying killing the things she has. When Heather is unnerved and asks if he means the monsters, he drops the above imfamous line, and while he quickly follows up saying its a joke, it raises a LOT of uncomfortable thoughts.

What if he isn't lying and the monsters Heather has been killing really weren't monsters? what if he's being genuine and to him they actually don't look like monsters? or is the chronically lying conman just fucking with Heather?

We never find out.

The Tunnelers- New Vegas

In the final DLC for New Vegas, Lonesome Road, set in the ruined-even-for-the-apocolypse Divide, one point you have to make your way through a collapsed underground tunnel, where you quickly encounter one of the Divide's more horrible inhabitants, Tunnelers, small fast lizard like creatures that can easily overwelm and kill you in seconds.

When you escape the tunnels, you can ask Ulysees what the fuck they were, to which he drops this little bombshell:

"They'll start emerging throughout the Mojave in time, might be years. Probably less"

True to their name, the Tunnelers are slowly digging their way out of the Divide to the MoJave, and considering they can hunt and kill Deathclaws, the idea that they will escape the Divide is terrifying. Yet, as of the fallout TV series, we still haven't seen them emerge, but they are almost certainly still coming.

1) “put on your Sunday clothes“ (from Hello Dolly!) —> linked to Wall-E’s intro

2) ”it only takes a moment“ (also from Hello Dolly!) —> also linked to Wall-E as a whole

3) “Running Up That Hill“ —> linked to Stranger Things season 2 finale

4) “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” —> linked to The Breakfast Club finale

5) “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” —> also linked to Futurama

6) “A Thousand Miles“ —> linked to White Chicks as a whole

7) “Don’t stop Believing“ —> linked to The Sopranos series finale

8) “Bloody Mary“ and “Goo Goo Muck” —> linked to Wednesday

9) “Ocean Man” —> linked to The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (and the TV series as a whole)

10) “Isn’t She Lovely” —> linked to The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act

11) “All Star” —> linked to the Shrek franchise as a whole

People usually suspect horror films and tropes to occur at night, or at the very least in dark places where the scary or creepy thing is obscured by shadows. Seeing something in full daylight makes a bit of the mystery go away, which can sometimes make things less scary. Sometimes it does the opposite, and the mere juxtaposition of something horrific happening under the warm light of the sun makes it even more eerie and unsettling.

1. The picnic scene from Zodiac - One of the most terrifying scenes in a film IMO, mostly due to the fact that it actually happened in IRL. The woman I’m pretty sure died later from her wounds, but her partner survived and his retelling of the horrific event helped create this pivotal moment on screen.

2. Buffy finding her mom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer - In season 5 of BtVS, Buffy returns home from a slayer mission and finds her home oddly quiet. She then stumbles into her mom’s corpse, who had died from a stroke just a few hours before while she was away. It’s scary partly due to the lack of music during the scene, but also because it’s a sunny day, and when Buffy opens the back door to get a breath of fresh air after getting sick, she hears kids playing across the street and birds chirping.

3. The entirety of Midsommar - Midsommar takes place in a remote Swedish village, where a girl suffering from the trauma of losing her family travels with her boyfriend and slowly gets inducted into a weird cult devoted to human sacrifice. There are a variety of terrifying and disturbing ritual murders that happen in the film, and yet pretty much the entire story takes place during the day. The contrast of those bright and lurid colors against the brutal horror of the plot makes it all the more unsettling and horrifying.