History Main / ForgottenTrope

* '''Crappy postal service''': Mail in the mid-20th century was far from being a reliable service, with many jokes about letters either going to another place or arriving not days or months, but years or ''decades'' late. This problem became less common after the inception of the ZIP code in the '60s, and since the '90s the prevalence of e-mail has rendered the trope inoperative, except perhaps on certain political talk shows.

* '''Going Calling''': Prior to the invention and proliferation of the telephone, if you wanted to talk to your friends in real time (as opposed to sending a letter), you had to actually visit them and talk to them face-to-face. Women (and it ''was'' almost [[AlwaysFemale always women]]) had a system where they would [[DropInCharacter show up unannounced at each other's homes]], generally in the late afternoon, in order to speak to their friend/sibling/etc. (Often, though not always, the lady of the house.) And they would meet in the parlor and chat, sometimes for hours, sometimes just for a few minutes. If she wasn't home, then the "caller" (that is, the one who attempted to visit) would leave a unique "calling card", which was sort of like a modern-day business card, except for personal (rather than business) use, with her name and home address on it, sometimes also indicating a day of the week on which she would receive guests. It was expected that whoever she tried to "call on" would go to her home and call on ''her'' ASAP. (Not doing so was considered ''extremely'' rude, which was SeriousBusiness; there was at least one case where a woman noticed a house on fire, and considered alerting the homeowner... but then remembered that the lady of the house had not reciprocated a call, so she just continued on her way!) Men were also permitted to call on women, but not vice versa, though married women were permitted and expected to distribute their husbands' cards along with their own. [[TechnologyMarchesOn As more and more homes became equipped with telephones, it was no longer necessary to go to people's homes just to chat, and so the custom died out.]]

*** Edward comes to Mrs Jennings' house to leave his farewell card when he leaves London. (In RealLife, such special cards were often identified by having the initials P.P.C., an abbreviation for ''[[GratuitousFrench pour prendre congé]]'', written on a corner.)

*** Edward comes to Mrs Jennings' house to leave his farewell card when he leaves London. (In RealLife, such cards were often identified by the presence of the initials P.P.C., an abbreviation for ''[[GratuitousFrench pour prendre congé]]''.)

*** Edward comes to Mrs Jennings' house to leave his farewell card when he leaves London.

* '''Going Calling''': Prior to the invention and proliferation of the telephone, if you wanted to talk to your friends in real time (as opposed to sending a letter), you had to actually visit them and talk to them face-to-face. Women (and it ''was'' almost [[AlwaysFemale always women]]) had a system where they would [[DropInCharacter show up unannounced at each other's homes]], generally in the late afternoon, in order to speak to their friend/sibling/etc. (Often, though not always, the lady of the house.) And they would meet in the parlor and chat, sometimes for hours, sometimes just for a few minutes. If she wasn't home, then the "caller" (that is, the one who attempted to visit) would leave a unique "calling card", which was sort of like a modern-day business card, except for personal (rather than business) use, with her name and home address on it, sometimes also indicating a day of the week on which she would receive guests. It was expected that whoever she tried to "call on" would go to her home and call on ''her'' ASAP. (Not doing so was considered ''extremely'' rude, which was SeriousBusiness; there was at least one case where a woman noticed a house on fire, and considered alerting the homeowner... but then remembered that the lady of the house had not reciprocated a call, so she just continued on her way!) Men were also permitted to call on women, but not vice versa. [[TechnologyMarchesOn As more and more homes became equipped with telephones, it was no longer necessary to go to people's homes just to chat, and so the custom died out.]]

** The ''Literature/LittleHouseOnThePrairie'' series has a whole chapter about calling cards in one later book in the series. They're shown to be a trendy must-have for young adults who get them custom-made at a shop in town and exchange them with each otherArseni

** The ''Literature/LittleHouseOnThePrairie'' series has a whole chapter about calling cards in one later book in the series. They're shown to be a trendy must-have for young adults who get them custom-made at a shop in town and exchange them with each other.

* '''Going Calling''': Prior to the invention and proliferation of the telephone, if you wanted to talk to your friends in real time (as opposed to sending a letter), you had to actually visit them and talk to them face-to-face. Women (and it ''was'' almost [[AlwaysFemale always women]]) had a system where they would [[DropInCharacter show up unannounced at each other's homes]], generally in the late afternoon, in order to speak to their friend/sibling/etc. (Often, though not always, the lady of the house.) And they would meet in the parlor and chat, sometimes for hours, sometimes just for a few minutes. If she wasn't home, then the "caller" (that is, the one who attempted to visit) would leave a unique "calling card", which was sort of like a modern-day business card, except for personal (rather than business) use, with her name and home address on it, sometimes also indicating a day of the week on which she would receive guests. It was expected that whoever she tried to "call on" would go to her home and call on ''her'' ASAP. (Not doing so was considered ''extremely'' rude, which was SeriousBusiness; there was at least one case where a woman noticed a house on fire, and considered alerting the homeowner... but then remembered that the lady of the house had not reciprocated a call, so she just continued on her way!) [[TechnologyMarchesOn As more and more homes became equipped with telephones, it was no longer necessary to go to people's homes just to chat, and so the custom died out.]]

* '''Going Calling''': Prior to the invention and proliferation of the telephone, if you wanted to talk to your friends in real time (as opposed to sending a letter), you had to actually visit them and talk to them face-to-face. Women (and it ''was'' almost [[AlwaysFemale always women]]) had a system where they would [[DropInCharacter show up unannounced at each other's homes]] in order to speak to their friend/sibling/etc. (Often, though not always, the lady of the house.) And they would meet in the parlor and chat, sometimes for hours, sometimes just for a few minutes. If she wasn't home, then the "caller" (that is, the one who attempted to visit) would leave a unique "calling card", which was sort of like a modern-day business card, except for personal (rather than business) use, with her name and address on it, and sometimes also the day of the week on which she would receive guests. It was expected that whoever she tried to "call on" would go to her home and call on ''her'' ASAP. (Not doing so was considered ''extremely'' rude, which was SeriousBusiness; there was at least one case where a woman noticed a house on fire, and considered alerting the homeowner... but then remembered that the lady of the house had not reciprocated a call, so she just continued on her way!) [[TechnologyMarchesOn As more and more homes became equipped with telephones, it was no longer necessary to go to people's homes just to chat, and so the custom died out.]]

* '''Going Calling''': Prior to the invention and proliferation of the telephone, if you wanted to talk to your friends in real time (as opposed to sending a letter), you had to actually visit them and talk to them face-to-face. Women (and it ''was'' almost [[AlwaysFemale always women]]) had a system where they would [[DropInCharacter show up unannounced at each other's homes]] in order to speak to their friend/sibling/etc. (Often, though not always, the lady of the house.) And they would meet in the parlor and chat, sometimes for hours, sometimes just for a few minutes. If she wasn't home, then the "caller" (that is, the one who attempted to visit) would leave a unique "calling card", which was sort of like a modern-day business card, except for personal (rather than business) use, with her name on it. It was expected that whoever she tried to "call on" would go to her home and call on ''her'' ASAP. (Not doing so was considered ''extremely'' rude, which was SeriousBusiness; there was at least one case where a woman noticed a house on fire, and considered alerting the homeowner... but then remembered that the lady of the house had not reciprocated a call, so she just continued on her way!) [[TechnologyMarchesOn As more and more homes became equipped with telephones, it was no longer necessary to go to people's homes just to chat, and so the custom died out.]]

* '''Unisex RomanceGame''': In the late 90s and very early 2000s, there was a subgenre of RomanceGame that proliferated on Japanese consoles that allowed the player to choose the gender of the protagonist, with their love interests changing to match. In spite of their unisex target audience, these games were overwhelmingly played by women due to the otome market being in its infancy and there being no shortage of bishojo games for male audiences. With the massive success of otome game GenrePopularizer ''VisualNovel/TokimekiMemorialGirlsSide'' in 2002, developers realized they were better off cutting the male protagonist option entirely in favor of targeting women exclusively, leaving the Unisex Romance Game a mere footnote in the history of Japanese otome games. The closest the contemporary Japanese game industry has to these sorts of games are ones where you can choose the protagonist's gender with romance only being a side feature, such as ''VideoGame/StoryOfSeasons'' or ''VideoGame/SummonNight''. Note that this is only a forgotten genre in Japan, ever since TheNew10s Unisex Romance Games thrive in the western indie scene, and they usually have more [=LGBT=] inclusive options. The general agreed upon term for this type of game is "amare".

* '''Unisex RomanceGame''': In the late 90s and very early 2000s, there was a subgenre of RomanceGame that proliferated on Japanese consoles that allowed the player to choose the gender of the protagonist, with their love interests changing to match. In spite of their unisex target audience, these games were overwhelmingly played by women due to the otome market being in its infancy and there being no shortage of bishojo games for male audiences. With the massive success of otome game GenrePopularizer ''VisualNovel/TokimekiMemorialGirlsSide'' in 2002, developers realized they were better off cutting the male protagonist option entirely in favor of targeting women exclusively, leaving the Unisex Romance Game a mere footnote in the history of Japanese otome games. The closest the contemporary Japanese game industry has to these sorts of games are ones where you can choose the protagonist's gender with romance only being a side feature, such as ''VideoGame/StoryOfSeasons'' or ''VideoGame/SummonNight''. Note that this is only a forgotten genre in Japan, ever since TheNew10s Unisex Romance Games thrive in the western indie scene, and they usually have more [=LGBT=] inclusive options.

* YouCantGetYeFlask: With the decline of text-based adventures and technical limitations not being a limitation to parsing, the difficulties of issuing commands via text is very much a thing of the past. Parodies themselves have also died down. Postumous blow was dealt with the advancement of language models that can understand the context of the input.

* '''The Fox Network as "a hard-core sex channel" (in the words of [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Marge Simpson]])''': Well into the 1990s, media commentators would commonly refer to "the Fox edge" -- the willingness of the "fourth" network owned by Rupert Murdoch to air programming depicting sex, violence, and general antisocial behavior with a frankness hitherto not seen on American television. ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'' set the template in 1987 with the sociopathic Bundy family, and they were followed soon enough by ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' (who themselves weren't above poking fun at this trope). Indeed, later in the '90s when Fox premiered ''Series/AllyMcBeal'' (a show about a quirky female attorney), they joked that for once they were going to focus on a woman's mind instead of her body. Although by then, NBC and to a lesser extent ABC began relaxing their S&Ps regarding sex, and CBS (the network most traditionally associated with "family values") caught up in terms of sensationalism in the early 2000s, primarily with ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' (the TropeCodifier for all the reality shows that followed), and after hitting a nadir in the mid-late 2000s, Fox toned down these aspects in tune with its competitors. Add to that how premium cable and on-demand services go even further than broadcast TV ever can, and [[OnceOriginalNowCommon how its earlier series seem less risqué as time goes on]]. The notoriously right-wing stance of Fox News Channel has also made Fox's former image a little ironic.

* '''Unisex RomanceGame''': In the late 90s and very early 2000s, [[https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/[=%=]E7%94[=%=]B7%E5[=%=]A5%B3[=%=]E5%85[=%=]BC%E7[=%=]94%A8[=%=]E6[=%=]81[=%=]8B%E6[=%=]84%9B[=%=]E3%82[=%=]B2%E3[=%=]83%BC[=%=]E3[=%=]83%A0 there was a subgenre of]] RomanceGame that proliferated on Japanese consoles that allowed the player to choose the gender of the protagonist, with their love interests changing to match. In spite of their unisex target audience, these games were overwhelmingly played by women due to the otome market being in its infancy and there being no shortage of bishojo games for male audiences. With the massive success of otome game GenrePopularizer ''VisualNovel/TokimekiMemorialGirlsSide'' in 2002, developers realized they were better off cutting the male protagonist option entirely in favor of targeting women exclusively, leaving the Unisex Romance Game a mere footnote in the history of Japanese otome games. The closest the contemporary Japanese game industry has to these sorts of games are ones where you can choose the protagonist's gender with romance only being a side feature, such as ''VideoGame/StoryOfSeasons'' or ''VideoGame/SummonNight''. Note that this is only a forgotten genre in Japan, ever since TheNew10s Unisex Romance Games thrive in the western indie scene, and they usually have more [=LGBT=] inclusive options.

* ScalesOfJustice: The imagery shows up when talking about the judicial system, but it's not associated so much with courtrooms and trials anymore. However, there is still a statue of Justice, with scales, atop the Central Criminal Court in London, so the image may crop up in passing in stories set there.

* ArcadePerfectPort: As home consoles and PC hardware caught up with the arcades, the arcade port was not seen as superior way to play the game. Nowdays, arcade ports are rare and usually simultaneous with release of other platforms.

* '''Revues''', in the first half of the 20th century, were plotless shows that combined song-and-dance numbers with SketchComedy, the latter often showcasing top vaudeville performers. As stage productions, revues were essentially ephemeral, with only BreakawayPopHit songs being intended to potentially live on after the show closed. The ''Ziegfeld Follies'' was New York's longest-running revue series, running from 1907 to 1957, and at its height had an AllStarCast reputation extending all the way down to its ChorusGirls. In the mid-1920s, revues accounted for nearly half of all new musical shows produced on Broadway. The hitherto annual productions of the ''Ziegfeld Follies'' and its major competitors started became increasingly sporadic after that, though the genre's popularity held up until the 1950s when it rapidly faded with the rise of the VarietyShow. During the UsefulNotes/RiseOfTheTalkies, many movie studios produced revues, even going to the then-unusual expense of filming them in color. (One of these was ''Film/KingOfJazz'', which was turned into a plotless revue during production after beginning filming as a Paul Whiteman {{Biopic}}.)

* '''The "exculpatory preface" before a controversial film''': During the early 1930s, when UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode was not effectively enforced and was being regularly flouted, filmmakers felt obliged to immunize themselves against charges of corrupting public morals ("exculpate" means "absolve from blame") by including this, essentially a disclaimer that was held on the screen for a few seconds or so before any picture with a sociopolitical or "edgy" message began. The exculpatory preface insisted [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial (often disingenuously)]] that the following movie was ''not'' a propaganda piece and was not intended to endorse a social or political point of view that might upset people. Perhaps the most notorious of these was the preface bumpering the scandalous 1932 horror film (with a coded civil-rights message) ''Film/{{Freaks}}'', which is ''several paragraphs'' long and tries to justify the vigilante justice wreaked by the circus freaks in the film. Traces of this custom still turn up occasionally on television, especially when a program is introduced by a "this-does-not-reflect-our-personal-views" disclaimer, or it appears at the end of any TV show with political or otherwise controversial content -- but for the most part, the popular media do not fear censorship any more and respect their audience's collective intelligence, reasoning that [[DontLikeDontRead anyone who is offended by a program can just change the channel or turn off the TV]].

* '''American sports comics and stage magic comics''': In between UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks and UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks, a number of non-superhero genres were popular. While some, like crime, horror, romance, monster, and western comics are fondly remembered, still continue, or are occasionally revived, a few others have been entirely forgotten, such as the brief vogue for sports comics and the even briefer vogue for comics about stage magic (think of Moloch the evil magician from ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' as a contemporary ShoutOut to this subgenre). This is partly because the institution of the [[UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode Comics Code Authority]] in 1954 following the publication of ''Seduction of the Innocent'' [[GenreKiller killed off the more violent or lurid examples of these comics for nearly a generation, and some of the genres never recovered]].

* '''Gimmicked "interactive" filmgoing experiences''': UsefulNotes/ThreeDMovie [[PopularityPolynomial has come back a few times]], but what did not was everything else, up to and including systems of pulleys and winches that slung "ghosts" around the cinema to "heighten the experience", Smell-O-Vision (plus copycat [=AromaRama=] and Creator/JohnWaters' scratch-and-sniff variant "Odorama"), special visors that let you see or not see monsters on the screen, and an elaborate system that gave viewers in the audience joybuzzer-style "electric" shocks so that they would think they were under attack from the movie's monster.

* CheatingWithTheMilkman: Milkmen used to be fairly common when either dairies held ''de facto'' monopolies over certain territories or there was a "milk council" regulating the trade. Greater competition and the fact milk doesn't have the importance it once had in the average diet have made it more practical to just buy it from the store. In modern tellings, the milkman may be replaced by [[PizzaBoySpecialDelivery another visiting laborer]] (plumber, maid, pool boy, delivery driver, etc). Related to milkmen were ice men, who were ultimately supplanted by electric refrigerators in the late 1940s.

** In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'', Ren and Stimpy try to rob a bank to get into prison ([[ItMakesSenseInContext because it was advertised as a]] LuxuryPrisonSuite. During the robbery, Stimpy says "Give us a full tank of gas. We're taking this bird to Cuba".

* CheatingWithTheMilkman: Milkmen used to be fairly common when either dairies held ''de facto'' monopolies over certain territories or there was a "milk council" regulating the trade. Greater competition and the fact milk doesn't have the importance it once had in the average diet have made it more practical to just buy it from the store. In modern tellings, the milkman may be replaced by [[PizzaBoySpecialDelivery another visiting laborer]] (plumber, maid, pool boy, delivery driver, etc. Related to milkmen were ice men, who were ultimately supplanted by electric refrigerators in the late 1940s.

* JiggleShow: This television subgenre from The70s and The80s, popularized by shows such as ''Series/CharliesAngels'' and ''Series/{{Baywatch}}'', featured busty women in situations that prompt plenty of bouncing. The subgenre has fallen off in the years after- and with the expansion of the Internet in the 90s and 2000s, [[TheInternetIsForPorn you can probably guess why]].

* '''Honest Televangelists''': After just about every televangelist was caught up in a sex or financial scandal in the late 1980s, changing the cultural tropes just about overnight. A modern televangelist is typically portrayed as a SinisterMinister / GreedyTelevangelist heading a CorruptChurch at best, and as a PedophilePriest at worst. Even modern works such as ''Series/TheRighteousGemstones'' that make attempts to humanize such individuals still portray them as corrupt and hypocritical.

* LongFormPromo: The rise of cable prompted broadcast networks to move away from this practice, with the subsequent rise of streaming being the final nail in the coffin.

* '''The "10-20-30" melodrama''': a long-extinct genre of theatrical productions which originated many of the stereotypical characters and over-the-top practical effects now more typically associated with early silent films like ''Film/ThePerilsOfPauline''. The "10-20-30" name was derived from the cheap ticket prices charged for these productions -- 10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents. Interestingly, the name itself became obsolete during the very heyday of these melodramas ("15-25-35" would have been more accurate.) Titles such as ''The Still Alarm'' and ''Bertha, the Sewing-Machine Girl'' would remain beloved punchlines of New York theatrical critics into the middle of twentieth century, long after their popularity had faded into obscurity.