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* [[Innocent Bigot]]
* [[Protocol Peril]]
* [[Raised
* [[Your Normal Is Our Taboo]]
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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Space Runaway Ideon]]'', when humans first encounter [[Human Aliens|Buff Clan]], they try to call a ceasefire by raising a white flag. Unfortunately, in Buff Clan culture, a white flag means the resolve to fight until death. [[Poor Communication Kills|Much bloodshed ensues]].
* Played for humour in ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou
* Major part of the background of the Skypiea arc of ''[[
** That part of the backstory however ends on a better note. It's when the geyser starts acting up that things go awry for real.
* Interestingly subverted in ''[[
* Played for laughs in [[Ouran High School Host Club]]: commoner Haruhi's life is so different from her ultra-rich schoolmates that they might as well live in different countries, and the experience goes both ways (witness the hosts' befuddlement over "commoner wisdom" such as instant coffee.)
* In the Ramen & Gyoza volume of [[Oishinbo]], one of Shiro's superiors takes some out-of-town Chinese colleagues to his favorite noodle shop; only to have them stop dead when they see the restaurant, accuse him of deliberately insulting them, and threaten to break off relations with the Tozai News. Turns out the restaurant's name uses an old Japanese word for China that many Japanese see as no worse than old-fashioned, but the mainland Chinese consider highly insulting. Good thing Shiro has the connections to set things right.
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== Fanfiction ==
* In [[
** In the Water Tribes, a truce is decided upon by the women, who get together and decide that their men have wasted enough time and effort fighting, or are needed back home. Once they've determined that the men are rested and recovered, the truce is revoked and they go to war again.
** In the Earth Kingdom, the local King (or the Earth King, if it's a big enough deal), will declare a truce only as a final ceasefire, when either they or the enemy is thoroughly crushed. Truces aren't temporary... they ''end'' the war, and breaking the truce starts a new one.
** In the Fire Nation, the ranking officer can call for a truce at any time, but they will ''hold'' that truce without fail. They ''will not'' break a truce, but will revoke it and inform their enemy of the revocation before they attack.
** The Air Nomads don't ''have'' truces. They may stop fighting, or work together with an enemy for a while against a common foe, but there's nothing binding about it, and they can change their minds whenever they want, without informing anyone. This has led to them being generally liked but not trusted, and in ''Embers'', has led to '''HUGE''' problems between the nations.
* As a Crossover, the Naruto/Justice League Crossover [[Connecting the Dots
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Avatar (
* [[The Last Samurai]]
* Detective/action movie ''[[Black Rain]]'' contains a ton of this when two [[NYPD]] detectives catch a rogue [[Yakuza]] member in New York and have to escort him back to Tokyo. In ''some'' ways the film is more even-handed than some works, as it shows the detectives feeling out of their depth and threatened by a different culture, but it also shows how they seem to the Japanese, which ranges from the Japanese police viewing them as bumbling amateurs, (one of the detectives being a xenophobic [[Cowboy Cop]] while the other is a [[Life of the Party]] sort) who let the Yakuza captive escape, to many others seeing them as [[Funny Foreigner|Funny Foreigners]].
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* ''Red Sun'' involves samurai coming to [[The Wild West]], and includes a scene where Charles Bronson's cowboy character laughs at a samurai and says that he's wearing a dress.
* ''[[East Is East]]'' is about a Pakistani father struggling to come to terms with his sons being drawn more to British youth culture than his own Islamic values.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Outsourced (
* ''[[The Gods Must Be Crazy]]'' uses this as its central theme. The main focus is on the Bushman Xi venturing out into the world of modern South Africa, and getting into many misunderstandings due to his not knowing anything about its society's workings, and vice-versa. Said misunderstandings range from hilarious (accidentally sticking up somebody) to serious (getting locked up in prison).
== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[Around the World
* In ''[[Cloud of Sparrows]]'', Emily asks Heiko what a geisha is, and is shocked when Heiko explains that the closest English word would be 'prostitute'. Heiko considers her profession an honourable one, and can't understand why Emily freaks out so badly.
* This is a big theme in most of Dave Duncan's books, but particularly the ''[[Seventh Sword]]'' series where a pacifist from present day America is launched into a fantasy world with a samurai style warrior culture. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
* [[Robin Hobb]]'s ''Soldier Son Trilogy'' is a showcase for this trope.
* In [[Dan Abnett]]'s ''[[
* In [[Harry Turtledove]]'s ''[[Worldwar
* ''[[Shogun]]'' has plenty examples of this being about an Englishman in 1600s Japan. A rather blatant example is when certain Japanese taking care of him, after being commanded to cater to his every need, politely ask him if he'd like sex with one of the girls looking after him. When he declines embarrassed, they ask if he'd prefer a man.... and then whether he'd prefer a boy!
* A minor example occurs in Chen Yi's house in ''[[Conqueror|Lords of the Bow]]''. Khasar tries to figure out chopsticks, before getting frustrated and shoving them into a bowl of noodles so they stand vertically. To the Chin, this is quite insulting.
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** In ''At the Earth's Core'', David Innes fights for Dian. He does not realize that after it, he could take her hand to claim her as his wife, take her hand and let go to free her, or do nothing to [[Made a Slave|make her his slave]]. He does nothing. She is ''not pleased.''
* In Chris Roberson's [[Warhammer 40000]] [[Blood Ravens]] novel ''Dawn of War II'', when the [[Blood Ravens]] are looking for aspirants among refugees, one speaks to the old woman who is in charge of one group, to try to get a boy from her. She contemptuously refuses to speak to him because he hasn't show her his face. He considers and unhelms rather than use force. That granted, she only asks whether the boy will have a chance to survive if they take him, and being told so, tells him to take him.
* This is a huge, ''huge'' aspect of ''[[
* Both averted and subverted in a scene in Frank Herbert's ''[[Dune]]''. A young Paul Atreides receives "watercounters" (a symbolic currency) as a result of [[Trial
** It is nothing compared to earlier introduction of Stilgar to Duke Leto's staff. Stilgar [[Crazy Cultural Comparison|spat on the table]] -- what, among water-obsessed Fremen, was regarded as a gift of one's bodily water.
* In [[Patricia C. Wrede]]'s ''Thirteenth Child'', when Brent tells Eff that the feathers are a symbol of how high they can fly without magic, Eff declares that you can't fly without magic. He laughs and says he sees he will find this very educational in more than one respect -- he meant metaphorically.
* In [[Wen Spencer]]'s ''Endless Blue'', Turk and Paige get into a furious argument when Turk discovers that she is partly descended from genetic modified Reds and Blues; Turk himself is a Red, traumatized by his upbringing in a society where Reds are property.
* In [[Anne McCaffrey]]'s ''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]'' series, much is made of the differences in culture that have evolved between Hold, Craft, and Weyr over the centuries since the original settlement of Pern. Holds are charged with the management of the land and contain the majority of the population, supplying food to the more specialized Crafts and Weyrs. By nature they are highly conservative and resistant to change. Crafts are the professional tradesmen, operating on an apprenticeship system and preserving the skills of the Pernese people. Weyrs are the dragons and their riders, charged with fighting off the periodic Thread incursions that would otherwise destroy most of the organic life on Pern. There's also a very significant culture clash in the main series between the modern dragonriders and the Oldtimers that Lessa brought [[Time Travel|from the past]] to battle Thread.
* ''[[
* A girl rescued by the [[Five-Man Band]] in ''[[
* In ''[[The Secret Garden]]'', Mary expects to be dressed by the servants since she had been in India "It was the custom." The English maid finds the notion silly.
* In the second book in the [[Petaybee]] series, the ordinary Petaybeans take issue with the customs of the cult that raised 'Cita.
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* [[New Jedi Order]] is all about this on an epic, [[Anyone Can Die]] scale. To elaborate, the two sides of the conflict are the familiar galactic civilization from the movies and the [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Yuuzhan Vong]], who each see the other's society as repulsively, irredeemably evil (the fact that the Vong are a religious extremist, totalitarian dicatorship obsessed with both feeling and inflicting pain is understandably offputting, while to them the galaxy's rampant use of machines and especially droids is as horrifying as if they'd been using ''zombies'', and a hideous slap in the face to their gods to boot). {{spoiler|Of course, it's eventually revealed that the Vong's [[Complete Monster]] of a leader set the whole thng up as part of a (literally) insane plan to become a god, which ''nobody'' was happy about}}.
** In the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]], this is one of the main sources of conflict between the Mandalorians and the Jedi. Besides being a [[Proud Warrior Race]], Mandalorians are extreme [[Mama Bear|Mama Bears]] and [[Papa Wolf|Papa Wolves]] who treat protecting family as sacred as their love of battle. They find the Jedi practice of taking Force-sensitive children away from their families for training and the Jedi philosophy of forming no attachments to be repulsive.
* In John Barnes ''A Million Open Doors'', when the hero, from a planet founded on the ideals of the mideval troubadors by way of the 18th century Romantic movement becomes an assisstant to the envoy to a culture dominated by Rational Christianity, best described as the love-child of John Calvin and [[
* From [[The Kingdoms of Evil]]: Everyone and everywhere.
* The war between the [[Steampunk]] and [[Psychic Powers]] fueled Sharonans and the [[Magitek]] powered Arcanans in [[David Weber]] and Linda Evans ''Hell's Gate'' series stems from this. Also on Arcana itself the three main civilizations are a [[Proud Warrior Race]], a caste system with magicians on top, warriors in the middle and everyone else as serfs and a mildly hedonistic republic.
* In [[Jorge Luis Borges]] short story '' "Averroe's Search" '': This is the cause why Averroes, an islamic philosopher, had [[Pop Culture Isolation]] and never could understand the terms ''tragedy'' and ''comedy''. [[Truth in Television]] too.
* Elizabeth Bathory vs. all Slovakians in ''[[
* The Clans and the Tribe in the ''[[
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* This happens quite a lot in the ''[[
** Happened to the crew in ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise
** The ''[[Star Trek:
*** Data's uniform was mistaken for pajamas when he went back in time to the [[Wild West]].
** ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
* On ''[[Babylon 5]]'' a cultural misunderstanding was the cause of the Human/Minbari war - to the Minbari, opening the weapons hatches on your ship is a polite greeting; to Earthlings, it's a declaration of war.
** It's a little more complicated than that. Sheridan warns his superior officer that sending a captain with a bad record of [[First Contact]] situations to meet an advanced, mysterious race is a bad idea. He is ignored. When the Minbari fleet approaches the Earth Force fleet, their powerful scanners jam half the systems on the human ships and are misconstrued as a weapon. The opened gunports are simply the last straw to the aforementioned Captain Jankowski, as, with their sensors jammed, they are unable to tell if the weapons are armed (i.e. they would detect an "energy spike"). Minbari leader Dukhat realizes opening gunports in front of a new race is a mistake but doesn't have time to order them closed.
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** Strange, as any martial artist knows that footwork is at least as important as everything else. Someone like Teal'c should definitely know that. On the other hand, he probably never tried to "float like a butterfly."
* In the last episode of ''[[MASH]]'', Klinger proposes to his Korean girlfriend by saying he'd like her to wear one of his wedding dresses. She is initially shocked that he wants her to wear a funeral dress.
* One story from [[Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction?]] featured a man finding himself in the Wild West. He is accused of walking around in his underpants, even though he is wearing sensible sneakers, hiking shorts, and a t-shirt.
* Behind almost every plot and joke in [[Outsourced]], which is based on the premise of an American manager heading up a call centre in India.
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== Webcomics ==
* [[Harkovast]] features numerous clashes and misunderstandings between the different cultures, particularly in [http://www.drunkduck.com/Harkovast/index.php?p=724690 this] chapter.
* In ''[[Templar, Arizona]]''. Mose is betrothed to an 11-year old girl whom he only knows from letters and photographs. His friend-with-benefits Tuesday is utterly apalled by this.
* In ''[[Endstone]]'', [http://endstone.net/2010/11/18/4-42/ deer don't kiss.]
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In the ''[[
* In ''[[Samurai Jack]]'', The Scotsman and his family repeatedly mock Jack's outfit, saying he is wearing a basket on his head and a dress, and mock his katana for being small compared to their claymores. When Jack tries to greet them by bowing, they ask him why he bent over and stared at the ground. On the flip side, Jack cannot stand bagpipe music and most Scottish cuisine.
** Which was quite out of the norm for the character. Having trained under many masters and nations around the world in his youth, Jack was shown to be quite open to the lifestyle's and customs of the peoples he encountered. Perhaps the music and food was just that bad?
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** Or since Jack is from the past and is now in the future, customs may have possibly changed.
** Alternatively, perhaps Scotland was one of the few places he didn't go to, considering it's hard to go further from Japan than there.
* In ''[[Batman:
* The House of Mouse episode "Mickey and the Culture Clash", where Mickey reads a letter in the newspaper saying Minnie wants a more 'sophisticated' boyfriend. He tries to be more fancy, but then finds out it's all a trick by Mortimer so he can steal Minnie away from Mickey.
* Pretty much the premise behind ''[[Mike Lu and Og]]'': Her urban city ways against their strange island customs.
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