Older Than They Think/Web Original

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The Internet culture... well, this article summed things up better than we do.
  • The Nigerian Prince scam goes back at least as far as the 16th century. It was called the Spanish Prisoner scam back then and send out through regular mail, but everything else is exactly the same.
  • In-universe (or possibly lampshaded) example. The Nostalgia Critic did a review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, he basically acted out all of it like he did in his review of the original Transformers Live Action Adaptation. That first review was the basis for the later character of Chester A. Bum. At the end of the second review, Chester A. Bum leaned into frame and said, "Dude, did he just steal my act?"
    • Possible actual example: during his Animaniacs tribute, the Critic appears to attribute The Smurfette Principle to The Nostalgia Chick. TV Tropes had an article on the topic long before she touched it, and they didn't invent it out of whole cloth either.
    • The Critic didn't actually coin the phrase "You know, for kids!", which he says whenever something suggestive happens in a kids' movie. It's a quote from The Hudsucker Proxy.
  • Possibly the example with the shortest amount of time, Lanipator had to put up a disclaimer that he did not steal the "Neighborhood Watch" joke from Naruto the Abridged Series. In fact, he used it first, and Naruto Abridged used it as a homage to him. Which should be obvious, considering the neighborhood watch van is clearly from Yu Yu Hakusho (given its art and color style)
  • Thuddingly literal example: almost any comedy video on YouTube that references current pop culture will have comments added years later about how the reference is so dated or played out, in the delusion that all videos they haven't seen yet must be new. Direct parodies seem to suffer from this most heavily.
  • Many people that hear the Microsoft Sam voice being used for anything instantly associate it with Master Chief of the Arby n' the Chief series.
  • Long before the internet-famous Longcat, there was a similarly long Siamese cat in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus eating Killer Cars and normal buildings (would that make it a Tacgnol Esemais?).
  • Rule 34 was around before the internet. By several decades, even.
  • Some YouTube commenters think that Deceased Crab was the first person to ever do a Let's Play. While DC was one of the first to put video LP's on YouTube, he wasn't the first LP-er by a long shot.
  • Retro gaming video review show is nothing new when The Angry Video Game Nerd debuted back in 2004. Classic Game Room has been doing so for 5 years! Yes, from 1999, back in the 20th century!
  • YouTube Poop was preceded by some of the YTMND fads (for an example, You Forgot Poland) which featured random pictures, lots of Sensory Abuse and became more elaborate as the time went by.
    • Interestingly, an Ur Example of Youtube Poop can be found in Daffy Duck in Hollywood, a 1938 short in which Daffy edits a film reel to produce this.
  • The Hampsterdance music is a sped-up sample from Disney's Robin Hood, laugh and all.
  • The earliest confirmed use of the acronym "OMG" was in a 1917 letter by a British admiral, according to the Oxford dictionary.
  • In Echo Chamber's seventh episode, Dana comments that Walk and Talk is "like West Wing", prompting Tom to reply that no, Kenneth Branagh did it first.
  • While the trollface meme as we know it did indeed begin with the famous comic, the facial expression itself of the squinted eyes and the smile turned up at a corner is a trademark of Ernest P. Worrell. It took off in the context of trolls from the movie Ernest Scared Stupid, in which Ernest makes the face while teasing an actual troll, but it isn't always used when he's trying to annoy someone, and it predates the comic.
  • Shit Pickle and Super Ultra Mecha Death Christ 2000 first appeared in an animated short film by James Rolfe called The Wizard of Oz 3: Dorothy Goes to Hell. However, they're usually thought of as characters from The Angry Video Game Nerd, where they made cameo appearances.
  • If you say the word "trope" outside of a trope wiki, you may get attacked by TV Tropes' Hate Dumb or just assumed to be a troper.
  • The "at" symbol (@) has existed since at least the 1300s. [1]
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