History Main / ItsASmallNetAfterAll

* Subverted in ''Film/{{Catwoman|2004}}'', of all places. When Halle Berry looks up "cats" on Google, she gets a ton of irrelevant hits of little old ladies dressing their pet cats in ridiculous costumes. She then tries the more specific search "cat worship"; although this does cue a creepy plot-relevant montage of cat cults throughout history, the images she gets are believably of the sort you'd expect to get if you tried to search that on Google.

* ''Film/{{Transformers}}'': Averted, Sam Witwicky's eBay handle is [=LadiesMan217=].

** "Rose", the first episode of the revival, averts this to some extent -- when she searches the [[BrandX SearchWise.net]] for "The Doctor", of course all it brings up are medical sites. ("Doctor blue box" is apparently specific enough, though.) This search in real life will result in results for the series. (Incidentally, as of 2016, the first result on Google for a search regarding "The Doctor" brings up Wikipedia's page on ''Doctor Who'' and four out of the top ten results are related to the series.) Appropriately, if you do type "Doctor Blue Box" into google, then the first result is the official defictionalized version of [[http://www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk/index1 Clive's "Who is Doctor Who?" website.]]

** In ''ComicBook/TheAmazingSpiderManJMichaelStraczynski'', when Spider-Man reveals his identity as Peter Parker to the world, the ensuing amount of people googling "Peter Parker" brought down ''the entire Internet''. Yes, even the porn sites.
** ComicBook/MilesMorales fights some guys with special uniforms. Ganke tracks them by searching in the black market that sells those uniforms. And yes, it has a web page. Villains buy things on the internet, too.

* In ''ComicBook/FinalCrisis'', it takes Oracle a series of keystrokes to shut down the Internet.
* Played with in an issue of ''ComicBook/GoldDigger'' when Charlotte the harpy inadvertently slows a fully-fledged comic book supercomputer down to a crawl by naively trying to "download the internet".
* ''Franchise/SpiderMan'':
** When Spider-Man reveals his identity as Peter Parker to the world, the ensuing amount of people googling "Peter Parker" brought down ''the entire Internet''. Yes, even the porn sites.

* The first example is subverted in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', where Bella mentions that she had to go through pages and pages of search results for vampire-related books and movies before finding any actual lore on vampires. Ironically, this is going too far in the other direction; a simple Google search shows that the first page of results has plenty of links to information on vampire mythology (including, most obviously, the Wikipedia page in the first result). ''Reasoning with Vampires'', of course, [[http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/post/1154354891 had fun with this]]. Then played straight when she's easily able to find information on human/vampire hybrids, which you'd think would just get her a bunch of Spuffy fic.

* Inverted in the Blog/DasSporking dissection of the ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' FAQ. The sporkers, Das_Mervin and Ket Makura, are baffled over the fact that Creator/StephenieMeyer seems unable to figure out how to navigate the internet to find several pictures (despite having plenty of information on how to find them) and seems to consider it a marvelous feat that anyone ''did'' find them.

* Invoked but averted in ''Manga/AzumangaDaioh'': Late in the series, Sakaki types in a search engine "cats", a super-generic search term, and gets thousands and thousands of random matches. When she types "Iriomote cat", one of the very first matches is a news article about an Iriomote mountain cat that died after getting run over by a car, [[spoiler:who also seems to be Mayaa's mother]]. But the Iriomote cat is a highly-endangered and protected species in Japan, with a wild population of under 100, so a news item about such a rare animal being killed by a car would likely rank highly in most search engines as a leading news story.

* PlayedForLaughs in the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Over Logging", in which the Internet is threatened by overuse -- and is revealed to consist of a single gigantic router. And the problem stems from [[spoiler:nobody knowing that the router needs to be occasionally rebooted]].

* ''Manga/AzumangaDaioh'' averts this one. Late in the series, Sakaki types in a search engine "cats", a super-generic search term, and gets thousands and thousands of random matches; then she types "Iriomote cat", also a rather generic search term, and it looks like one of the very first matches is a news article about an Iriomote mountain cat that died after getting run over by a car, [[spoiler:who also seems to be Mayaa's mother]]. The Iriomote cat is a highly-endangered and protected species in Japan, with a wild population of under 100. A news item about such a rare animal being killed by a car would likely rank highly in most search engines as a leading news story.

* An early episode of ''Series/LawAndOrder'' has detectives discovering the identity of a hacker because his screen name is "[=SlapShot=]" and the suspect is an NY Rangers hockey fan. Apparently, only one hockey fan in all of Manhattan had a computer with Internet access (no jokes about the actual number of hockey fans in Manhattan or in the American general public, please).

* Played with by the Wiki/SCPFoundation's [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-335 SCP-335]]: The entire Internet on 150 floppy discs. How this fit on there is unknown, which is why the Foundation is interested in the discs in the first place. It mentions in the SCP file that the disks have an infinite amount of available storage space and that they can automatically update their contents whenever the actual site changes. Also, note that the first dozen disks or so [[TheInternetIsForPorn contain all the porn on The Internet]].

* Pointedly averted in ''WebOriginal/AnotherKingdom'' (eventually printed in book form). The protagonist wants to find out more about the fantasy land he was briefly transported to, Galiana, so he Googles it and gets over a million hits, as it's a first name, a last name, and a place name. He does find the right information in a disambiguation page on Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}, it being from a novel, but there's no article so he has to check it out on Amazon.

* In Season 6 of ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'', [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Sarge]] demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of how computers actually work.

* Apparently played straight in episode 4 of ''Manga/ACertainScientificRailgun'', where some characters look up the urban legend of "The Undressing Woman" on the internet. Immediately they found several websites dedicated to the myth, but there's no mention of any other sites. However, closer inspection makes in clear that Saten doesn't just google the term, but writes in on the search bar of some web forum focusing around urban legends and conspiracy theories. Those would be less likely to show outright porn on the subject matter.
* In ''Manga/{{Chobits}}'' (set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture) a character has the username "M" which he apparently uses for everything online. That implies a small Internet indeed. ''Chobits'' also has a technical example where the protagonists visit a video platform and download a video about an incident they occurred fairly recently -- it's basically a point-and-done matter because finding said video and downloading it was finished in barely 10 seconds. [[spoiler:Turns out the incredible download speed happened because the house was wired with military-grade technology which allows truly insane leaps.]]
* ''Manga/MidoriDays'' has, in one chapter, Seiji trying to learn how to use the internet with Midori's help. So they try a search engine. [[AllMenArePerverts Seiji tries looking for porn right away]]. Later, Midori decides to look up her own name, and is surprised when she finds a search result. Try Googling your first name. You'll find a result, almost guaranteed. Though it does become justified in their surprise when that website is [[StalkerWithACrush dedicated to the actual Midori]]. In fact there were a huge amount of hits, which makes sense since "midori" is Japanese for "green" and she says as much, they only clicked that one because it said net idol Midori.
* Subverted in ''Anime/PuniPuniPoemi''. Aliens trying use the internet to learn about humanity find nothing but porn. And they're completely fascinated by it too. But given aliens [[AnalProbing normal activities]] that's not too surprising.
* ''Manga/RecoveryOfAnMMOJunkie'' uses this a good deal as part of the {{Contrived Coincidence}}s that make the story run. Protagonist Moriko gets into a new MMORPG, befriends a healer named Lily, and ends up joining her guild. Not only do both Lily and guild leader Kanbe's players live in the same city, but they've met in person without realizing it: Kanbe's player is the college student who works part-time at Moriko's favorite convenience store, while Lily's player is Yuta Sakurai, the office worker for whom Moriko starts falling. [[spoiler:And even earlier than that, Moriko and Sakurai were best friends in another MMO, which Sakurai realizes when Moriko makes an alt based off of her character from the older game.]]

* In ''ComicBook/FinalCrisis'', it takes Oracle a series of key strokes to shut down the Internet.

** ComicBook/MilesMorales fights some guys with special uniforms. Ganke tracks them by searching in the black market that sells those uniforms. And yes, it has a web page. Villains buy things in internet, too.

* In the movie ''Film/{{Eurotrip}}'', the main character's email address is blocked by his German penpal after he sends her an insulting message while drunk. Rather than do the unthinkable and simply open a new email address, he reacts in the most logical manner: he hitches a flight to Europe with his stoner buddy in hopes of getting to Berlin and telling her in person that he's sorry.

** In ''Film/FinalDestination2'', a character uses a generic search engine to search for "Flight 180", the doomed flight from the first film, and instantly finds what he's looking for. A bit justified, as it is established in the movie that the events of the first movie are well known in the movie world, though usually dismissed as an urban legend. A scene where a character finds directions to an insane asylum with a Google maps stand in ''without typing in her location'' might appear JustForFun/{{egregious}} unless the location is all cookied up. First hit on Google for "Flight 180" is a link to the Final Destination Wiki, so even in the real world it works.
** In ''Film/FinalDestination3'', one of the characters says he did some searching on the Internet. The search isn't actually shown, probably due to the fact that the character wasn't actually looking up Flight 180, but rather "premonitions." It actually wouldn't be very surprising, given that the events of the first movie are so well known in the world of Final Destination, if there was a Wikipedia article on it, which Google would place up top of a "Flight 180" search.

* ''Literature/{{Gamer Girl|2008}}'' features a MMORPG version: Maddy takes an interest in a game called Fields of Fantasy and begins playing it to seek solace from her real-life problems. She makes friends with a fellow gamer called Sir Leo. Keep in mind, this is a worldwide game, meaning that Sir Leo could hypothetically be one of several ''billion'' people: [[spoiler: It turns out that they not only live in the same town, but that he's the guy she has a schoolgirl crush on.]]
* In ''Literature/HushHush'', Nora searches for "fallen angels" and not only finds an informative site right off the bat, but finds that it also contains plot-convenient information on {{Nephilim}}. Subverted in ''Crescendo'', when Nora searches for "Black Hand" to see if there's any indication that it's some sort of underground organization and finds a lot of irrelevant hits (roleplaying, the group that assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand, etc.)
* In one of the books based on the ''Purple Moon'' series, Mavis' Internet buddy that "lives in Chicago" is actually one of her classmates. When she learns about this, she refuses to believe it. However, nobody's email address is short or interesting... but in TheNineties, [[CyclicTrope they were supposed to be]] random words slightly connected to the character and accompanied by numbers.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'': Tash Arranda in ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear'' spends a lot of time on a computer connected to the Holonet, basically the Galaxy's Internet. She messages back and forth with someone whose handle is [=ForceFlow=], and ''her'' handle is Seeker. ''Star Wars'' has thousands of technologically advanced planets, trillions of people with Holonet access. [=ForceFlow=] is also the only online source Tash can find for stories about the Jedi Knights she so idolizes, but that might be more understandable -- the Holonet is controlled and regulated by TheEmpire, which doesn't want people knowing much about the Jedi. In a later book her username is amended to be Searcher 1. Somewhat appallingly, in ''Spore'' Tash connects and the book implies there is ''one'' message board/chatroom -- and ''no one'' else is just faffing around looking for someone to talk to.

* The first example is subverted in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', where Bella mentions that she had to go through pages and pages of search results for vampire-related books and movies before finding any actual lore on vampires. Ironically, this is going too far in the other direction; a simple Google search shows that the first page of results has plenty of links to information vampire mythology (including, most obviously, the Wikipedia page in the first result). ''Reasoning with Vampires'', of course, [[http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/post/1154354891 had fun with this]]. Then played straight when she's easily able to find information on human/vampire hybrids, which you'd think would just get her a bunch of Spuffy fic.

** "Rose", the first episode of the revival, averts this to some extent -- when she searches the [[BrandX SearchWise.net]] for "The Doctor", of course all it brings up are medical sites. ("Doctor blue box" is apparently specific enough, though.) This search in real life will result in results for the series. (Incidentally, as of 2016, the first result on Google for a search regarding "The Doctor" brings up Wikipedia's page on ''Doctor Who'' and four out of the top ten results are related to the series.) Appropriately, if you do type "Doctor Blue Box" into google, than the first result is the official defictionalized version of [[http://www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk/index1 Clive's "Who is Doctor Who?" website.]]

* ''Hot Line'' (a softcore series from the '90s) has an episode about two coworkers who exchange erotic text emails without knowing each other's real identity. They finally agree upon a RealLife Meeting, get an ElevatorFailure situation along the way, then one of them lets slip some sentence from the chat and...well, they get out of the fixed elevator in a considerably better mood than one would expect.

* In a hilariously ridiculous example from ''Series/ICarly'', Freddy, Carly and Sam look up "chicks" (as in baby chickens) on the Internet. Everyone watching probably knew that anyone searching for ''chicks'' on Google probably... wouldn't find baby chickens on the first page, let alone the first slot. Made even more hilarious by the fact the site they go to is called chicks.net, a giant website all about baby chicks. And that's not even getting into the numbers of hits and comments (none of which seem to be "OMG U SUXORZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" or requests to put shoes on their head) their webcast gets.

* Averted in ''Series/MyFamily''. Ben wants to look up another dentists homepage, using the search term "oral". The results are predictable.

* In ''VideoGame/Persona3'', according to Fuuka it turns out Strega's Jin uses the screen name... "Jin".

* This trope is justified in ''VideoGame/EmilyIsAway'' and ''VisualNovel/DigitalALoveStory'', seeing as they're both set in time periods where the Internet was only beginning to expand. (''Emily'' takes place through an early-2000s instant messaging client, while ''Digital'' occurs "[[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture five minutes into the future]] of 1988" through BBS forums.)

* ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja'' parodies this. In an apocalyptic future, King Radical somehow prints out the entire Internet and builds a library of its contents. One shelf is just a small subset of a particular user's ramblings about Transformers. The impossibly large space needed for such a library is completely ignored, though there's a rope-swinging robot refrigerator named Google who helps people find things.

'''Marten''': The internet knows everything. It's like Kim Peek only rude and [[TheInternetIsForPorn obsessed with pornography]].

* Subverted by the ''WesternAnimation/{{PVP}}'' animated series when first page of search engine results for "sky" are (as they had hoped) sites about naked women skydiving.

* In one "[[DarkerAndEdgier Red Sky]]" episode of the original ''WesternAnimation/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|1987}}'', April does a quick Internet search for Landor and Merrik, two time-travelling allies from twenty years into the future, and finds that their present day counterparts are a couple of local kids. Somehow she does this with just their first names and no other info--although the names "Landor" and "Merrik" [[AerithAndBob ARE a bit unusual]]...

* According to Website/TheOtherWiki, the entirety of UsefulNotes/NorthKorea's Internet consists of an estimated 30 public-facing websites, mostly consisting of propaganda, research and foreign relations websites. With the nation's strict control of the media, it's probably safe to say everything in this trope page's opener is played straight for anyone that has access to the Internet.

* According to Wiki/TheOtherWiki, the entirety of UsefulNotes/NorthKorea's Internet consists of an estimated 30 public-facing websites, mostly consisting of propaganda, research and foreign relations websites. With the nation's strict control of the media, it's probably safe to say everything in this trope page's opener is played straight for anyone that has access to the Internet.

* ''Manga/AzumangaDaioh'' averts this one. Late in the series, Sakaki types in a search engine "cats", a super-generic search term, and gets thousands and thousands of random matches; then she types "Iriomote cat", also a rather generic search term, and it looks like one of the very first matches is a news article about [[spoiler:an Iriomote mountain cat that died after getting run over by a car, who also seems to be Mayaa's mother]]. Note that the Iriomote cat is a very endangered (due to the erosion of his habitat) species found only in Japan (and very beloved by the Japanese as one of their last wild animals) with a population of under 100. A news item about such a rare animal [[spoiler:being killed by a car]] would likely rank highly in most search engines as a very popular news story.

** "Rose", the first episode of the revival, averts this to some extent -- when she searches the [[BrandX SearchWise.net]] (see Real Life below) for "The Doctor", of course all it brings up are medical sites. ("Doctor blue box" is apparently specific enough, though.) This search in real life will result in results for the series. (Incidentally, as of 2016, the first result on Google for a search regarding "The Doctor" brings up Wikipedia's page on ''Doctor Who'' and four out of the top ten results are related to the series.) Appropriately, if you do type "Doctor Blue Box" into google, than the first result is the official defictionalized version of [[http://www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk/index1 Clive's "Who is Doctor Who?" website.]]