History Main / UnbuiltTrope

* Grant Wood's 1930 painting ''American Gothic'' was the trope maker of the AmericanGothicCouple. Contemporary and later audiences have seen it as a caricature of American countryside conservatism ({{Eagleland}}). Wood however intended the painting to be an earnest tribute to the simple countryside life, and a realistic reconstruction of UsefulNotes/TheAmericanDream.

* Two of ''Website/GoAnimate'''s most infamous trends started out as ordinary before ballooning to absurd levels:

* ''Fanfic/FalloutEquestria'' is known widely for being the TropeMaker for grimdark ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' epics, immensely long stories featuring horrible things happening to cartoon ponies that openly reject the themes of the show. However, while the fic's depiction of Equestria is a CrapsackWorld and most have given up on friendship and love, the protagonist's nature as a {{Determinator}} is what gives the fic its heart. Watcher tells her at the very beginning that living life without a virtue like friendship, generosity, or honesty makes you an empty shell with no purpose in life. The main characters from the original show are all depicted as dying horribly in the past, but it's only because they gave up on their own virtues and became convinced themselves that such gushy themes were holding them back; an understandable belief, considering they were forced into the roles of generals for Equestria's first ever war. Only one of them, Fluttershy, held onto her virtue of kindness for her entire life. People mocked and derided her for her belief that good people existed on both sides of the war, but she was the one who ultimately turned out to be right; By the end of the story, the Wastelanders have risen up in unity against a common foe, and while everything isn't suddenly better and things will never be like they were pre-war, a community is beginning to form and hope is once again commonplace among ponies. The kicker is, [[spoiler: Fluttershy is rewarded for her omnipresent kindness by living to see this.]]

* At a certain point in the 2000s/2010s Creator/{{Disney}} decided that it was done having its princesses immediately get married to a man they'd only just met with the ridiculous assertion of them being their OneTrueLove. Movies such as ''Film/{{Enchanted}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'' roundly mocked the old trope and even ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'' took a small jab at it with the final monologue. Only, this never actually happened. At the end of Disney Princess films there occasionally would be a wedding yes, but it would be taking place an unspecified amount of time after the main events of the plot. In fact, only Cinderella and Ariel have an actual wedding ceremony at the end of their movies.

** One of the earliest settings, created by Gary Gygax himself, is ''TabletopGame/{{Greyhawk}}'' - a setting which spotlighted a lot of military conflicts and citystate-based {{realpolitik}} (think the Renaissance) in its background. One of its adventures, The City of Skulls, is kicked off when the good-aligned king recruits adventurers to go on a politically motivated rescue mission (the pregenerated [[PlayerCharacter PCs]] even have political ambitions and personal grudges as their motivations for accepting the mission). This is a stark contrast to the cliché assumption of adventurers being noble, heroic figures -- or at least that their dungeon-crawls have no significant political impact.
** Early ''D&D'' has a lot of this going on, due to its true roots being in pulpy sword-and-sorcery rather than the Tolkien-esque aesthetic that many people ascribed to it. Motivations were often nakedly mercenary, characters were expected to assume meaningful responsibilities as they grew stronger, combat was grungy and lethal, and many dungeons were designed with thoughtful solutions in mind. Some of the first player characters created were Mordenkainen and Robilar, a WellIntentionedExtremist and a BloodKnight, respectively. The idea that player characters were expected to be [[HeroicFantasy straightforward heroes]] was later codified in 2nd Edition, as a reaction to [[MoralGuardians the Satanic Panic]], and has been the default assumption (to greater or lesser degrees) ever since.

** Things like turnstiles or gift shops in the dungeon, or monsters giving out T-shirts, while these days associated with April Fools' Day or parodies like ''WebComic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' or ''ComicStrip/{{Nodwick}}'', were also present in the very first Blackmoor campaign. After all, it still was a game played by young people.

** ''Cyberpunk'' also deconstructed EverythingIsOnline a mere six years after the first appliance was given online functionality[[note]] A vending machine at Carnegie-Mellon was connected to ARPANET and equipped with sensors to track what drinks were available and if they were properly chilled[[/note]] and three years before Mark Weiser's paper "The Computer of the 21st Century" that coined the term "ubiquitous computing" was published. Rache Bartmoss found out, to his horror, that a huge number of things that had no business being online, like the ESA lunar mass driver (technically used to send minerals to Earth, but could easily wipe a city off the map) and the airlocks on space stations, could be controlled from his home computer. That was when he decided that the only way out was to destroy the Internet in its entirety, though that too [[GoneHorriblyRight went horribly right.]]

* ''FanFic/TheDracoTrilogy'' [[TropeCodifier codified]] and [[TropeNamers named]] the DracoInLeatherPants trope, in which a villainous or otherwise unlikable character from canon is depicted in a more flattering light, as Draco Malfoy pulls a HeelFaceTurn in the trilogy. However, unlike most later examples, this story gives specific focus to Draco's HeelFaceTurn, explaining why he's hanging out with the good guys and why he's getting the treatment. It also uses some omniscient narration to show Draco's thought pattern, showing his change gradually towards being a better person. Many later examples would just have Malfoy be a good guy for no reason at all.

The opposite of SeinfeldIsUnfunny. Compare and contrast with DeadUnicornTrope. See AudienceColoringAdaptation and LostInImitation for the process of how an idea can gradually lose nuance with new incarnations. Sister trope of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, though sometimes they can overlap. Related to HarsherInHindsight (if it predicts a problem that won't be relevant until well after it's first shown) and HilariousInHindsight. UnbuiltCastingType is this in regards to the {{Typecasting}} of certain actors.

%%* ''FanFic/UndocumentedFeatures'' today seems ridiculous, almost like an over the top parody of the MegaCrossover. And yet it was this story that made the MegaCrossover popular in fan fiction.
* ''FanFic/TheDracoTrilogy'' [[TropeCodifier codified]] and [[TropeNamers named]] the DracoInLeatherPants trope, in which a villainous or otherwise unlikable character from canon is depicted in a more flattering light, as Draco Malfoy pulls a HeelFaceTurn in the trilogy. However, unlike most later examples, this story gives specific focus to Draco's HeelFaceTurn, explaining why he's hanging out with the good guys and why he's getting the treatment. It also uses some omniscient narration to show Draco's thought pattern, showing his change gradually towards being a better person. Many later examples would just have Malfoy be a good guy for no reason at all.

* ''Fanfic/TheSacredAndTheProfane'' would read as a DeconstructionFic of "Crowley never Fell and Aziraphale became the demon instead" {{Alternate Universe Fic}}s if it weren't the first well-known fic in the ''Literature/GoodOmens'' fandom to explore that premise, long before the TV adaptation made that plot more popular. Instead of merely flipping Crowley and Aziraphale's NobleDemon and [[GoodIsNotNice Just-Enough-of-a-Bastard Angel]] roles, the fic shows just how psychologically broken an angel like Aziraphale could become by Falling without warning and how Crowley's devotion to Aziraphale becomes much darker and sadder when Aziraphale is a manipulative demon who isn't above exploiting Crowley's affection for him to get away with heinous acts.

->''Boy, ReplacementGoldfish is kind of a weird idea, isn't it? Replacing someone you loved like that always struck you as kind of odd. The kind of person who would do that must not be a paragon of mental stability.''

->''One day you decide to read [[Manga/AstroBoy an old comic]]. In it, a scientist's son dies, and he becomes obsessed with making him anew, a perfect version that can never be beaten, at that! He's a madman! What's this... how can he [[KickTheDog yell at the little boy for not growing up]]? Did... he just [[MoralEventHorizon sell his son into slavery]]!? [[GoshDangItToHeck Mother of Pearl!]] You've never seen someone really examine the morality of Replacement Goldfish like that!''

->''So you buy the full stack of volumes and look at the production date. 1952? 1952! It [[TropeMakers pre-dates]] every Replacement Goldfish you've ever seen. How can someone turn this vision into that?''

* There is a play in which the rich, eccentric protagonist brings the plot to a screeching halt to address the real-life competition between the theater in which his show is playing, and the theater across the street. Beyond that, the play is suffused from beginning to end with theatrical metaphors, and one of the most famous sequences includes the characters onstage watching a play even as the audience is watching them. A radical new experiment in metatheater, playing now at your favorite off-Broadway location, and critiquing the excess of artificiality in contemporary theater? No – it's ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', and [[JustForFun/TheZerothLawOfTropeExamples it's been around a while]].

* ''Webcomic/DMOfTheRings'' is considered the {{Trope Maker|s}} for the CampaignComic, but it doesn't make use of the tropes a campaign comic is usually known for. Usually in a CampaignComic, the players have identities and distinct personalities that affect how they play their characters, and the game tries to parse the distinctions of the setting into gaming terms that become a theme (for example, the over-the-top ''Manga/OnePiece'' fighting antics and idiocy of the protagonists turns into a theme of absurd MinMaxing and LethalJokeCharacter builds). ''Webcomic/DMOfTheRings'' is largely built around how the setting is an awful choice for traditional gaming and how dysfunctional the group is. Even Gimli's initial introduction as TheRoleplayer is quickly forgotten.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'': The Sultan is the TropeNamer for HorribleJudgeOfCharacter, as-in nobody in their right mind would just someone like [[ObviouslyEvil Jafar]], which nowadays makes him come off more foolish than he perhaps actually is. However, the very first scene with Jafar and the Sultan together features Jafar ''hypnotizing'' him with his staff, making it clear that Jafar's ability to have the Sultan's ear is much more than the Sultan's foolishness. Outside of this so-called lapse in judgement, the Sultan is clearly a capable ruler and considerate person, so being so foolish would be pretty out-of-character for him.

** Myth/PaulBunyan and Babe the Blue Ox get in on the act, too, when they go up against a mechanized saw and an advanced steam engine in a tree-cutting contest. In many versions, Paul lost (by a quarter of an inch, in Creator/WaltDisney's [[WesternAnimation/MiscellaneousDisneyShorts version]]) and [[ButNowIMustGo headed for the Alaskan wilderness]] when he realized [[EndOfAnAge the age of the lumberjack was coming to a close]]. In other versions of the story, Paul actually won... but left anyway when he realized that age and mileage would only slow him and Babe down, whereas the machines' ability to be tweaked and upgraded meant that they were virtually immune to those factors.

** ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' (which [[TropeCodifier codified]] so many of the characteristics of modern vampires) had Drac [[DaywalkingVampire running around in the daylight]] [[note]] More specifically, daylight hindered most of Dracula's powers but did not kill him. The whole "vampires die in sunlight" thing occurred [[NewerThanTheyThink in 1922]] when the director of ''Film/{{Nosferatu}}'' couldn't figure out how to kill Orlock, so he finally just decided to have him burst into flames when the sun came up –- every vampire in fiction's been vulnerable ever since.[[/note]] and being killed by a couple of knives. He was also described as hairy (even hairy palms!), moustachioed, and rather brutish-looking, rather than the suave aristocrat he's been commonly depicted as [[Film/{{Dracula 1931}} after]] Creator/BelaLugosi; he ''could'' pull off a more handsome body, but it required magic to shapeshift and he rarely bothered. His breath stank of rotting corpse, too. There are also other ways it comes off as subversive:

*** While Dracula is a villain who dreams to TakeOverTheWorld, he has [[WhoWantsToLiveForever also grown weary with his immortality and wants to end it all]]. So he's planning to create a vampire army to march on the rest of the world, figuring that he'll either win or be destroyed trying, either outcome of which he'd be happy with.

* When one thinks of a traditional harem, they generally imagine the women in it to be sequestered away from the world at large and not doing anything except producing heirs. However, one of the oldest harems in history, that of the Egyptian pharaoh, was not like this. While the women had a dedicated space (the Eighteenth Dynasty dedicated a ''whole gigantic palace'' in the Faiyum called Merwer to the royal harem), they weren't actually secluded in the sense of being required to be apart from the world. The ladies in the harem were well integrated into the elite social life of the area surrounding the harem palace, and senior members tended to have important public roles both in the royal court (held wherever the king was, usually Thebes or Memphis) and in the priesthood (for one famous example, the [[TopWife Great Royal Wife]]--''the'' Queen--was usually the chief priestess of Amun at the temple at Thebes). The harem palace was a ''retreat'' for the royal family to escape their public duties, but its inhabitants could and did leave when they liked/needed.

* The climax of the melodrama play ''Under the Gaslight'' is that of a DistressedDude ChainedToARailway by the villain before being saved by his girlfriend. Sounds like something a parody of a Silent Movie would do to spoof subvert the classic DamselInDistress tropes.... But the play's from ''1867''.

* ''Webcomic/DMOfTheRings'' is considered the {{Trope Maker|s}} for the CampaignComic, but it doesn't make use of the tropes a campaign comic is usually known for. Usually in a CampaignComic, the players have identities and distinct personalities that affect how they play their characters, and the game tries to parse the distinctions of the setting into gaming terms that become a theme (for example, the over-the-top ''Manga/OnePiece'' fighting antics and idiocy of the protagonists turns into a theme of absurd MinMaxing and LethalJokeCharacter builds). ''Webcomic/DmOfTheRings'' is largely built around how the setting is an awful choice for traditional gaming and how dysfunctional the group is. Even Gimli's initial introduction as TheRoleplayer is quickly forgotten.

* The WebOriginal/VirginVsChad meme is commonly used as a plain "bad vs good" template where the Virgin is something they don't like and the Chad is something they do like. However, the [[https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/265/329/e83.png original comparison that started it all]] actually had a purpose which was to mock the original "Virgin Walk" post by creating its {{foil}}, the "Chad Stride". It showed how the Virgin and the Chad both exaggerate stereotypes of "beta" and "alpha" males with the former being easy to be around but boring, and the latter being fun but extremely obnoxious and undesirable to be around. Most comparisons just take the format but [[TheThemeParkVersion not really the message]].

*** The video game adaptation ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'', which is also canon, backs away from this with the revelation (or {{retcon}}) that cyberpsychosis doesn't even exist in the first place, but is rather a collective name for "mental breakdowns by people with cyberware" that the media finds easier to report. In short, it's a [[YouCanPanicNow media-driven moral panic]] brought on by [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman suspicion of people with cybernetic enhancements]]. Whether this makes it timelier or undercuts the game's themes is up to the player.

* There are many HotterAndSexier (if not outright smutty) takes on fairy tales, at least some of which are clearly intended to subvert the supposed innocence of the original story (or stories). But in addition to being darker than they're generally portrayed nowadays, many of the original fairy tales were also somewhat more lewd.

* The PrinceCharmless trope has often been used in works [[AffectionateParody mocking]] Disney movies, to highlight the [[GenericCuteness blandness]] and [[SatelliteLoveInterest lack of depth]] most Disney Princes have. However most of them [[UrExample seem to be]] [[FountainOfExpies largely based on]] Gaston from ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast''. A Disney movie where the Prince is on equal billing with the Princess and who's character arc is the main driving force behind the film.

* ''WesternAnimation/TerkelInTrouble'' is a relatively obscure Danish movie from 2004 in a similar vein to ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', but if you were to mistake it for a movie made today (discounting how the animation very obviously dates it to the early 2000s), it would be very easy to interpret it as a parody of [[spoiler:the usage of EvilAllAlong in animated movies, a trend that didn't really kick off until TheNewTens. Justin is friendly and likable at the surface, but he is in fact an AxCrazy murderer on a mission to kill Terkel for the crime of [[DisproportionateRetribution sitting on a spider]]]].
* Many [[WartimeCartoon Wartime Cartoons]] weren't mindless propaganda, but they were harsh commentaries about war itself.

* The [[HauntedTechnology "haunted video game"]] genre of {{Creepypasta}}s (e.g. ''Fanfic/SonicEXE'' and ''WebVideo/BenDrowned'') have come under fire for its StrictlyFormula plots, which means that some of the very first works in said genre retroactively subverting expectations may come as a surprise:

** The ''Literature/NESGodzillaCreepypasta'' admittedly indulged in cliches such as "hyper-realistic graphics" and the player being forced to continue playing unwillingly. However, it also subverted some of the cliches that its imitators mostly [[ClicheStorm played straight]]: [[spoiler:some of the supernatural phenomena in the cartridge was on the player's side, and it ended with a SurprisinglyHappyEnding.]]

* A lot of the review shows that arose on the Internet during the late 2000s were inspired by WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic and WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd. However, in mirroring their use of AlterEgoActing, many imitators tended to not notice that both reviewers were deconstructive parodies of the CausticCritic trope. The Nerd [[NostalgiaFilter is stuck in the past]] (the first time he reviewed a newer generation game, he was utterly bamboozled by it) and has major anger issues that seem to get worse as the show goes on, while the Critic is a bitter jerk who became a caustic critic largely because of his incredibly screwed-up childhood which was plagued with [[AbusiveParents parental abuse]]. Both are the {{Butt Monkey}}s of their own shows.
* ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'', meanwhile, is probably the TropeCodifier for caustic criticism on the Internet, especially in the video game community. But its causticity is almost always [[AccentuateTheNegative amped up to an absurd degree]] -- even while implying that he actually liked the game in question -- and Yahtzee frequently diverges into ranting about his own fans or [[SelfDeprecation himself]], or rambling incoherently. The character comes off as more of an eloquent TalkativeLoon than a critical genius. This is further exemplified by the fact that he coined the phrase "Glorious PC Master Race" ''sarcastically'' as a way of mocking elitist PC players, before said players adopted the mantle ''completely unironically''.

* The BastardBastard is one of the most familiar tropes of Shakespearean-type stories. A story where the bastard is portrayed as sympathetic, justifying his evil by saying how [[FreudianExcuse society perceives him as evil]] and he is being treated as TheUnfavourite? Sounds like a new idea? It was done in ''Theatre/KingLear'', with Edmund, the archetypal BastardBastard of fiction. Also Edmund shows he isn't entirely evil, as while dying he tries to do some good and save Cordelia.

** LadyMacbeth defined the trope for women who drive their less ambitious husbands to villainy, but the {{Trope Namer|s}} is quickly driven mad by her guilt, and the pressure of intrigue. It gets especially bad when the walls start closing in around the two of them, and Lady Macbeth realizes that her "perfect" murder wasn't so perfect. Both the guilt and the pressure drive her into insanity, culminating in her "Out, damned spot!" line in which she hallucinates blood on her hands that she can't wash off, no matter how hard she tries, which eventually makes her DrivenToSuicide when she knows she's done for.

* ''WebAnimation/InanimateInsanity''

** Balloon deconstructed the [[BadBoss "overbearing leader" archetype]] seen in other object shows, as seen with ''WebAnimation/ObjectOverload'''s Clock, [[ToughLeaderFacade as Balloon deliberately put on the appearance of being a jerk]] to try and ensure his progression, only for him to develop a ZeroPercentApprovalRating that ended with his own team mutinying against him [[ReformedButRejected and his efforts to make up for his actions falling on deaf ears]]. Again, this came from the second major object show, before many of Balloon's imitators were conceptualized.

* Taco from ''WebAnimation/InanimateInsanity'' would today can be seen as a brutal subversion of the TooQuirkyToLose {{Cloudcuckoolander}} relying on WordSaladHumor prevalent in ObjectShows such as [[WebAnimation/ObjectOverload Toaster]] and [[WebAnimation/ObjectHavoc Gold]] -- with her revealed [[spoiler:[[ObfuscatingInsanity to have been completely lucid the whole time]] and [[ManipulativeBastard exploiting her apparent silliness to curry favor with others]]]]. But as the second major object show and thus [[TropeCodifier cementing many of the tropes]] that ''WebAnimation/BattleForDreamIsland'' [[TropeMaker conceptualized]], ''Inanimate Insanity'' was free to experiment with its character archetypes.

** UnbuiltTrope/DragonBall