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In Babylon 5, for example, a character lists famous bombings like "Hiroshima, Dresden, San Diego" with the first items in the list being real and the last being fictional. This dialog technique of casually tying the past into a fictional future seems to be common in franchises with world-building like Star Trek.

Is there a name for the trope where a character specifically lists two real, historical items and then a third fictional one? That always seems to be the pattern.

Rand al'Thor
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Wickethewok
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  • https://tvtropes.org/ – NKCampbell Aug 26 '18 at 02:11
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    To clarify, the trope seems to have characters refer to two real items and one fictional one ("Mozart, Beethoven, and Gleepgorp"). Yes, I understand the purpose of it, but just because it has purpose doesn't mean this pattern of dialog isn't a trope. – Wickethewok Aug 26 '18 at 02:44
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    @user14111 If you're writing a story that takes place in the year 3046, you wouldn't necessarily have to refer to any historical moment from pre-2000. How often does stuff come up in conversation from over a thousand years ago? This is clearly a literary device to help put things into context for the reader. Logically, the speaker in the story likely wouldn't bother referring to any event over a thousand years ago b/c there would be more relevant options that are more recent (in their mind). – Doc Aug 26 '18 at 21:13
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    @Doc, Jericho, Troy, Sodom, Gomorroh, Pompeii and (erm) Atlantis are all mentioned today as destroyed cities, and all were over 1000 years ago. Once in the public consciousness as a famous example, stays in the public consciousness regardless of time. – gbjbaanb Aug 26 '18 at 23:59
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    @NKCampbell: TVtropes is a great source of information, but it uses funny titles, so it is difficult to search a particular trope on it. Any advice on how to use TVtrope efficiently? – Taladris Aug 27 '18 at 00:43
  • @Taladris: Genuine answer, in my experience it's a matter of Google-Fu. Try a generic description of your trope, so that you increase your odds of Google registering a match with the trope's description. Or, even better, if you know a concrete example, simply look for the show/movie on TvTropes (you will often have several pages with tropes listed alphabetically, e.g. A-E, F-J, ...) and ctrl+f the concrete example until you find a hit. – Flater Aug 27 '18 at 15:11
  • @Taladris: Make that into another question with concrete examples. – einpoklum Aug 27 '18 at 17:54
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    @Doc - of course no one ever uses references that are over 1000 years old - JFC. – Hannover Fist Aug 27 '18 at 20:24
  • @HannoverFist I didn't say no one ever did, but it isn't an everyday thing. The person I was responding to seemed to believe that the only reason you would mention something from pre-2018 is because it would be weird to only mention things from 2018. My point is that's not the point at all; the writer could just as easily only mention things post-2018 and still be just fine. Using this trope is simply a literary device to give more context to the reader. – Doc Aug 28 '18 at 03:23
  • Hell, even from @gbjbaanb's list, none of the listed cities are mentioned super often except maybe Troy and Atlantis, and mostly due to pop culture, not historical relevance. Yes, when specifically talking about destroyed cities, those instances crop up, but there also aren't that many destroyed cities. When talking about wars, you'd be much more likely to discuss recent wars (Iraq, Vietnam, World War I/II, etc) than ancient ones. In 1000 years, there's likely to have been other important bombings rather than having to stretch back to WWII. – Doc Aug 28 '18 at 03:29
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    @Doc : When talking about famous conquerors, Alexander the Great and Genghis khan are often on the top of the list even today. When talking about great philosophers, there is always at least one from ancient Greece. – vsz Aug 28 '18 at 06:08
  • When hunting through TVTropes, the best way to find something specific is to look for examples, eg: you know the trope is used in at least one film or book, so you look up that entry and see if there's a mention of the trope you need. then follow that link to view the trope and any other entries you might want. – Ruadhan2300 Aug 28 '18 at 11:20
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    I think it might be Rule of three. Anyway welcome @Wickethewok. ⚡️ – Hermione Granger Aug 29 '18 at 07:06
  • How interesting that this trio thing is also common in jokes: three characters, the first two say something to set up the punchline delivered by the third character. Two is not enough, four too many although I can think of an exception where only two main characters are needed and a third would be superfluous. – releseabe Oct 29 '20 at 13:43
  • @Doc, clearly it would seem absurd that references that had their genesis over a thousand years before would keep rising, Lazarus-like, and not only still be in common use but understood by people who may not have directly read the original source. It's the writer's cross to bear in figuring out how to make such a thing work, because clearly it can't possibly be realistic – Keith Morrison Oct 29 '20 at 15:17

2 Answers2

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TV Tropes calls it "Famous, Famous, Fictional." The trope description does not cite any other name, which means there almost certainly is not another commonly used term for it. (The trope descriptions are generally quite good about citing more traditional terminology for such things.)

Buzz
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    It also mentions the Rule of Three: "The first two instances build tension, and the third releases it by incorporating a twist." That's a more general version of the same grouping. – Brythan Aug 26 '18 at 04:09
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    The quote at the top of the page calls it the "Science Fiction Law of Threes", but that term is not used any more widely than the page title. – Kelly Thomas Aug 26 '18 at 17:26
  • @Brythan: The first mention of something (i.e. the third item in the list) can logically never be a twist, as it's the first time we hear anything about it. For example: [Julius Caesar, Jon Snow, Donald Trump] would suggest a conspiracy that's currently being concocted by White House staffers or politicians. However, [Julius Caesar, Jon Snow, Glorp the Galactic Overlord] doesn't quite work as a twist as we have no knowledge of Glorp before he was mentioned in this list. – Flater Aug 27 '18 at 15:16
  • @Flater: Just because it's fictional doesn't necessarily means it's the first time it's mentioned. The TV Tropes page mentions "Orville Wright, Neil Armstrong, and Zefram Cochrane" where the latter, while fictional, is already well-known in Star Trek lore. – Medinoc Aug 28 '18 at 11:39
  • @Medinoc: My point is that when it is mentioned for the first time, it's inherently not a twist. As per OP's comment, the third element is not just fictional but also unknown (which logically has to coicide with being fictional - otherwise it defeats the purpose of the trope OP is focusing on): "To clarify, the trope seems to have characters refer to two real items and one fictional one ("Mozart, Beethoven, and Gleepgorp")." – Flater Aug 28 '18 at 11:44
  • @Flater. Jon Snow the British newsreader (real, real, real), or Jon Snow the character from A Song of Ice and Fire (real, fictional, real)? Neither matches the pattern real, real, fictional. – TRiG Aug 28 '18 at 12:25
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    @TRiG: To point of my example wasn't the real-real-fictional, but rather the pattern matching nature of known-known-unknown. By the similarlities between the first two knowns, the unknown can be inferred to follow the same pattern. – Flater Aug 28 '18 at 12:27
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    The bombings of Hiroshima, Dresden, San Diego example in the OP follows all three patterns real-real-fictional, known-known-unknown, tension-tension-twist. – Tim Sparkles Aug 29 '18 at 21:28
  • "Orville Wright, Neil Armstrong, and Zefram Cochrane" implies that Zef was "the first" in an area of flight/travel (my guess was first person to either build or travel FTL, googling proved my guess to be decently close) so I guess it works (since I know of Star Trek through general cultural osmosis, having never watched it myself) – Drejzer Nov 17 '23 at 16:18
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To compliment the accepted answer and note that one does see variations on this theme, here is an example of the trope in the form "Fictional, Fictional, Famous": in the very first sentence of Philip Pullman's novel "La Belle Sauvage",

Three miles up the river Thames from the center of Oxford, some distance from where the great colleges of Jordan, Gabriel, Balliol, ...

And here is an example of the trope in the form "Fictional, Famous, Fictional": from Season 1 Episode 16 (When The Bough Breaks) of Star Trek: The Next Generation,

TASHA: What's so interesting about this system?

RIKER: Aldea. Tasha, I'm surprised you haven't heard the stories about Aldea, the wondrous mythical world. Like Atlantis of ancient Earth or Neinman of Xerxes Seven.

Stiofán Fordham
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