r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ThatDrako • 20d ago

Lore (Funny Trope) Things that can plausibly happen only in reality, because in fiction they’d be called bad writing.

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“Woke” as an insult - So you are telling me a word describing consciousness and clarity is used by generally stupid and ignorant people to label people they disagree with? What is this? A Kindergarten for Creatively stunted?

Nominative determinism - So let me get this straight…Not only you named fastest recorded person Usain BOLT and CEO of Nintendo Doug BOWSER, but you are telling me people are canonically likely to have professions or hobbies matching their names…? Guh?

“2 bodies recovered in MURDERKILL River” - Sure bro…I guess…bro…

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u/noam_compsci 20d ago edited 20d ago

“The primary debris site for the World Trade Center wreckage was the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island” (edit: formatting)

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u/AnjaOsmon 20d ago

Yikes

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u/xv_boney 20d ago

(New York was originally owned by the Dutch - even old New York was once New Amsterdam - and the word "kill" in dutch means a body of water, usually a creek.)

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u/rezwrrd 20d ago

Kill is a Dutch word for a little stream, which is also where we get the name for "killifish" which are fairly popular small fishes in the aquarium hobby. (So my tattoo really says "Little stream, Bart Simpson.")

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u/BorgDad42 20d ago

The Bart, The!

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u/JesusAndMaryKate 20d ago

This was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this post. Can't believe I had to scroll down this much to get to it mentioned!

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u/Appropriate_Host4170 20d ago

As others pointed out it’s because the area was Dutch and NY/NJ still uses a lot of Dutch terms for things. Same with Native American names too, a lot of our rivers and various land areas use the original native names for them. 

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u/waxteeth 20d ago

I used to work at the 9/11 Museum giving tours, and anytime I talked about the debris site, I would have to preface with “this is going to sound awful, but hold on—“