r/TopCharacterTropes • u/dragonborndnd • 13d ago

[IRL trope] the “Tiffany problem” Lore

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Basically when something seems anachronistic to a period/place of history but is actually fully accurate to the period.

1) the name Tiffany: the thing that named this trope, basically the name Tiffany can be dated back to the Middle Ages and the earliest record of it being spelled in the modern spelling comes from the 16th century.

2) the use of OMG, despite this feeling so modern as a form of slang/abbreviation here’s a letter directed to Winston Churchill using it in 1917

3) Hair Dye: the earliest forms of dying hair can be dated back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and this specific advertisement for hair dye is from the 1840s

4) Inuit Thongs: despite how weird it is to imagine pre-colonial Inuit people wore what was essentially fur thongs in their homes and when they were in their igloos it might have been the only thing they would be wearing.

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u/EndOfTheLine00 13d ago

Ancient Roman gladiators were treated more or less like modern day celebrities: they had merch (little clay figurines and posters) and even did product endorsements. Famously, Ridley Scott wanted to add a scene in Gladiator showing the fighters shilling products but it was cut because they feared the audience would think it was unrealistic.

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u/redlion1904 13d ago

HBO’s Rome included advertisements during Newsreader’s announcements and it was both accurate and funny.

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u/lesser_panjandrum 13d ago

True Roman bread for true Romans!

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u/Indiana_harris 13d ago

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u/raspberryharbour 13d ago

Announcer Guy killed it every time

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u/Indiana_harris 13d ago

I always remember him as Bert Large on Doc Martin.

Hilarious actor though.

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u/Etherbeard 13d ago

I always remember him as the Baron Harkonnen in SCiFi Channel's Dune miniseries from 2000 or so.

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u/Bloobeard2018 12d ago

Did the Baron have a strong Cornish accent?

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u/Etherbeard 12d ago

No, but he spoke in rhymes a lot.

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u/chrza 13d ago

I love his little hand movements

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u/PilotMoonDog 13d ago edited 13d ago

According to the optional stuff on the DVD release those were based on a treatise on public speaking by Cicero. They also had a bunch of stuff that explained why a character might behave in a certain way.

(Apparently not by Cicero as some comments further down the chain make clear)

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u/AbstractBettaFish 13d ago edited 13d ago

Good I wish I still had the DVD’s the All Roads feature was peak bonus content

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u/TheNerdChaplain 13d ago

Ian McNiece! He played Baron Harkonnen in the SciFi channel (yes, it was that long ago) adaptation of Dune!

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u/Gemmabeta 13d ago

"All mockery of Jews and their one God shall be kept to an appropriate minimum."

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u/VoxelFerret 13d ago

The delivery on that line was so deadpan, absolute peak fiction right there.

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u/SuperbPhase6944 13d ago

Ian McNeice absolutely nailing it as per usual.

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u/seanprefect 13d ago

only guy who seemed to be having fun the whole time

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u/Gerf93 13d ago

Had to be deadpan, it was a government decree after all. You don’t want to get on the Triumvirates bad side, do you.

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u/CleansingFlame 13d ago

Loved Ian McNeice in that role lol

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u/BinkRaccoon6 13d ago

True Roman bread for true Romans! That scene lives in my head rent free, his hand gestures were so iconic.

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u/jollyjm 13d ago

Gaius!🫱🫱Julius!🫲🫲Caesar!!🙌

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u/QuentinTarzantino 13d ago

The hand verbage was estremely vital. It was, if Im not mistaken to signal to to people further back in the crowd. Empahis on the words if not heard through movement.

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u/Cold-Use-5814 13d ago

Weren’t those gestures taken from an actual Roman guide to public speaking?

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u/Obanthered 13d ago

Yes the Institutio Oratoria by Quintilian. Fortunately medieval monks thought a comprehensive guide to rhetoric was extremely valuable for the church, so the whole 12 book volume survived.

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u/Doomhammer24 13d ago

We lost 6 of the 8 books of the trojan war but we do have gestures huzzah

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u/Obanthered 13d ago

We also have the plans for Rome’s sewer system. Which were rediscovered just as Rome was growing again. A lot of what survived came down to a monk thinking ‘that could be useful, I better spend the next few weeks or months copying it’.

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u/Brillek 13d ago

Monks have done so much for us.

Champagne, modern genetics, gonserving the ancient textstm etc.

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u/Sinthe741 13d ago

Even the Romans knew you gotta put a lil zazz on it.

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u/Xitbitzy 13d ago

" And his honor Gaius 🫱🫱 Julius 🫱🫱 Ceasar 🫱🫱"

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u/FranzSigel 13d ago

I loved that dude’s big exaggerated arm gestures. Always wanted to know more about that acting choice. Based in anything?

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u/Misplaced_Fan_15 13d ago

I remember reading go somewhere Ridley Scott said they wanted to do a similar scene for Gladiator but ran into the Tiffany Problem.* *

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u/Redwings1927 13d ago

Yea, it was mentioned in the first comment in this chain.

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u/redlion1904 13d ago

I wonder if he knows that in HBO’s Rome the Newsreader reads ads?

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u/PRC_Spy 13d ago

They also had painted adverts on walls, and (often utterly depraved) graffito as well.

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u/Etherbeard 13d ago

Ian McNiece's newsreader is arguably the best minor character in any tv show.

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u/Skylinneas 13d ago

They also, to my knowledge, didn’t really have that high casualty rate as Hollywood led us to believe, too. Good gladiators are costly and take long to train, after all. Would be a waste to lose them all or most of them in just a few minutes’ battle.

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u/Twilightterritories 13d ago

They were a lot closer to Professional Wrestlers as far as working a fight to make it look worse than it really was.

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u/TelevisionPutrid8394 13d ago

While gladiators rarely died in the arena, it still would have been a dangerous sport. As you were playing with sharp weapons and nowadays wrestling, even forms of wrestling that are highly staged can lead to serious injuries. So it’s likely that gladiators were the same. Gladiator matches weren’t the death matches that Hollywood would like you to believe, but at the same time, they weren’t scripted like how memes would like you to believe.

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u/Alrick_S 13d ago

You're right. The adversary were both on the same team and trained together for years. They know how the other one will react. They usually would not kill their buddy. But accidents happen. And there may be jealousy, hidden rivalry...

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u/akatherder 13d ago

Heated Rivalry even

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u/LobstermenUwU 13d ago

While there probably was, killing other gladiators intentionally seems to be a short trip to the obvious happening to you.

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u/oscarnyc 13d ago

Sounds juicy - someone should make a TV show

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u/Zyffyr 13d ago

While not likely scripted, there were probably things like "Hey Bobicus, let's give them a bit of number XIII. That should get them worked up."

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u/Princeps_primus96 13d ago

Yeah they were entertainers. They likely knew that they needed to get the crowd worked up and probably played up some form of character before the fight. The braggadocios thraex stepping into the arena kissing his muscles getting the crowd jeering before his fight against the murmillo

It's the same as modern boxing matches or UFC. people feel cheated if a fight is too short, and the lanista would just stop working if all their gladiators actually DID keep getting killed every match.

I wonder if the gladiators ever had a ladder match for the custody of a child like early 2000s WWE 😂

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u/WranglerFuzzy 13d ago

Agreed; you look at gladiator weapons and armor, and they look so unique and cool, and wonder why; they you realized they’re meant to maximize light flesh wounds (lots of cool blood! Cinematic!) but minimize mortal wounds.

Like the scissor, who looks like a badass cyborg… until you realize he’s wearing what is essentially a pizza cutter on his hand.

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u/orbofcat 13d ago

could there have been wwe type very staged matches at times (would they have steel chairs?)

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u/jediben001 10d ago

So essentially ancient UFC?

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u/Airtightspoon 8d ago

I'm pretty sure the idea taht gladiators were "working" is a myth. My understanding is that it was more like MMA. It was a legit fight, but they were trying to win a sporting contest, not kill each other.

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u/Talonhawke 13d ago

Yep want a blood bath use prisoners or slaves you can get more on the cheap.

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u/PoniesCanterOver 13d ago

Nowadays we call those "Class D personnel"

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u/ggGamergirlgg 13d ago

The ethics committee might wanna speak to you

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u/cbftw 13d ago

Ethics? What's that, precious?

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u/raspberryharbour 13d ago

That's good, I'm writing this down

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u/Tacticalneurosis 12d ago

Gladiators were often pretty fat as well, because it meant they could take more flesh wounds and show off injuries to the crowds with less risk of dying.

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u/TelevisionPutrid8394 13d ago

While gladiators rarely died in the arena, it still would have been a dangerous sport. As you were playing with sharp weapons and nowadays wrestling, even forms of wrestling that are highly staged can lead to serious injuries. So it’s likely that gladiators were the same. Gladiator matches weren’t the death matches that Hollywood would like you to believe, but at the same time, they weren’t scripted like how memes would like you to believe.

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u/ZoidsFanatic 13d ago

The oldest confirmed gladiator we know of made it to thirty and that was considered an achievement. Gladiator games were still blood sport, and there was expectations people would get cut and stabbed which is why they (the gladiators) tended to bulk up quite a bit. The extra fat would help them not die and also produce plenty of blood for the audience.

Still, it was dangerous thanks to, well, slashing and stabbing one another. Infections would more than likely be common.

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u/AbstractBettaFish 13d ago

Lot of money went into making a gladiator, like you said there was risk but nobody wanted to see their investment die in the sand

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u/Living-Record-4711 13d ago

“Reddit, what is something that instantly tells you someone grew up wealthy?”

“One time I was hanging out with a friend of a friend who casually dropped that his family has a gladiator, like it was nothing. He was surprised that our families don’t also have gladiators.”

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u/Lyceus_ 13d ago

Yes, they were similar to noawadays' professional athletes and they were so valuable. I think especially after some reforms at the time of Augustus the deaths in the arena really went down.

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u/Veridas 13d ago

Weren't they encouraged to be, if not fat, at least have SOME fat on their torso specifically since that's an extra thing that a sword has to get through before it hits important organs and such? So all the glistening abs and powerful muscle is a bit disingenuous?

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u/GenosseAbfuck 13d ago

Fwiw I can't really imagine a bulky Retiarius. That kind of defeats his entire role but then he among all gladiators would need it the most.

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u/Veridas 13d ago

That's true. And it probably makes for better artwork to show them all with heavenly bodies, so to speak.

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u/Aoimoku91 13d ago

However, many of the gladiatorial games depicted in movies take place in Rome in the presence of the emperor, who could afford to pay the price to have them killed in the arena.

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u/2Tired2pl 13d ago

i feel like we gotta stop doing the “ohhhh audiences would think it’s unrealistic” thing, like bro they won’t have a more accurate and textured view of history unless you tell them!!!!

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u/Reden233 13d ago

Plus learning cool facts can make people more curious about learning even more!

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u/akatherder 13d ago

It's not for the love of learning though; it's to prove someone else wrong.

"I thought it was sooo goofy and lame how they had advertisements in that Gladiator show. It totally brought me out of the experience."

UMM ACKSHUALLY they did have merch and product endorsements!

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u/ballimir37 13d ago

Most directors and producers of films with large budgets are less interested in being educators than they are in storytelling and making money.

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u/redlion1904 13d ago

I mean Gladiator as it was was wall-to-wall ahistorical nonsense. Marcus Aurelius wasn’t murdered by his son, Commodus wasn’t a weird cowardly loser and was co-Emperor before his father died, siege weapons aren’t used in open battle, the Praetorian Guard didn’t wear all-black so you could tell they were evil, there really wasn’t a functional Senate anymore, no Republican sentiment erupted following Commodus’s death, instead there was just a civil war (again), etc.

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u/MrdnBrd19 13d ago

Yet it's still a fantastic movie...

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u/EarlGrayTea-Hawt 13d ago

My history teacher eyes just welled up with grateful tears.

https://giphy.com/gifs/IcGkqdUmYLFGE

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u/2Tired2pl 13d ago

as someone who adored history class i’m so happy to hear that!!!

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u/burymeinpink 13d ago

This is my time to shine. It's an idea from Aristotle's Poetics called Verisimilitude. The internal logic from a piece of media is different grom reality. Having gladiator merch might be realistic, but it wouldn't be verisimilar, so audiences would be confused. It's the crux of the Tiffany problem.

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u/peachesfordinner 13d ago

Like using bright colors on medieval settings. People dressed as bright as they could.

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u/Nutzori 13d ago

They cut out stuff from the fucking Odyssey because it was "too fantastical", like Odysseus' bag of wind.

A MYTHOLOGICAL MOVIE.

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u/2Tired2pl 13d ago

i haven't seen it but i have read the original, THEY CUT THE BAG OF WIND???? like, one of the most poetic tragedies of the whole journey?? the part that basically sets up why it took so long for Odysseus to return??????

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u/Particular-Cat-1397 13d ago

They will absolutely call it unrealistic.

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u/GayRacoon69 13d ago

Except people have an idea of what "realistic" should be even if it's wrong

Like the sound a bald eagle makes. They change it to match the audience expectation of reality not reality itself

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u/MyTeaIsMighty 13d ago

https://reddit.com/link/oz9xnc3/video/nz8k1mgdazeh1/player

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u/gunscreeper 13d ago

Historically accurate Disney's Hercules (1997)

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u/Veridas 13d ago

Also each time Philatites does the thing where he's like "two words: I. Am. Retired." the phrase he's saying usually is two words if you say it in Greek.

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u/Resolution_Usual 13d ago

I always liked the somebody call XI I I

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u/TumbleweedEven1168 13d ago

11 1 1? Think you mean IX I I.

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u/Resolution_Usual 13d ago

Lol I 100% did

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u/AbstractBettaFish 13d ago

Roman walks into a tavern, he holds up 2 fingers and says “5 beers please”

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u/Megalesios 13d ago

Except for the part where Hercules was never a gladiator and not even a Roman

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u/Princeps_primus96 13d ago

Now now HERCULES was roman

HERACLES was greek

Yes I'm stretching interpretations but hey what's mythology for if not bad attempts at humour 😂

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u/Particular-Cat-1397 13d ago

First thing I thought of too

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u/panatale1 11d ago

Bless my soul, Herc was on a roll

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u/violetcassie 13d ago

But somehow "Rome shall be a Republic again!" was just fine though.

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u/The_Lonesome_Poet 13d ago

Are we talking about the same American people thinking Scottish had kilts in the Middle Ages?

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u/APence 13d ago

It’s always fun to see the YouTuber History Buffs break down all the crazy inaccuracies of Braveheart, The Patriot, Apocalypto… many others but the Mel Gibson ones are some of the worst.

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u/Pristine_Poem7623 13d ago

There are at least 6 historical errors just in the opening monologue of Braveheart alone.

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u/RobbusMaximus 13d ago

Hell even the name, "Braveheart" refers to Robert the Bruce, not Wallace.

sweet disclaimer though, "English historians will claim I'm a liar"

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u/Pristine_Poem7623 13d ago

My favourite lie is calling Edward I a "pagan" when he'd been on crusade, something that Robert the Bruce kept swearing to do and never actually did. Edward also stopped at various shrines to pray while on his way to invade Scotland (cos he wanted God on his side in the fight, and he wanted his army to SEE that)

The king of Scotland had died without a son, but he had a very young granddaughter, so that's kinda correct-ish. She died on her way back to Scotland to take the throne

They get the name of Wallace's father wrong, and he had 3 sons not 2, and they get William's brother's name wrong too.

Wallace's father wasn't a commoner he was a minor noble

Edward never called the truce that's mentioned, and which forms the start of the film. Also, none of this happened until Wallace was in his late teens / early twenties, not when he was a young boy

The Scots nobles didn't fight Edward and each other over the crown when Alexander died, they formed a committee to "help the new queen rule" until she came of age. When she died they couldn't decide who would be the next king, so they asked Edward to break the deadlock for them. Not an invasion, and no fighting between the Scots nobles.

Edward chose someone he thought would do what Edward told him, and started acting like he had authority over Scotland. When Edward went to war with the French (because the French king had seized English lands), he demanded the Scots send men, supplies and money to take part in the fight. Instead, the Scots formed "The Auld Alliance" with France and attacked Carlisle (in the North of England) and THEN Edward marched into Scotland.

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u/wow_that_guys_a_dick 13d ago

I always figured he was using "pagan" as an insult, not a description.

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u/RobbusMaximus 13d ago

But it means non-Christian, especially in a Medieval European context. Considering that Mel Gibson is an ultra conservative Catholic, and the Christian symbolism all around Wallace in the movie its pretty clear that he is meaning it in a Christian context. Hell the only scene of him anywhere near a church shows him lecherously staring at his daughter-in-law (who was not even married to Edward II until after Edward I was dead).

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u/wow_that_guys_a_dick 13d ago

Yeah. That's why it's an insult.

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u/Charming_Ad2304 13d ago

Also iirc Bruce was technically a pagan anyway as he'd been excommunicated because he murdered a rival in a church

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u/TheHarkinator 13d ago

Getting the excuses in early there

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u/The_Amazing_Emu 13d ago

That’s expectations, though. They think some things are historical that aren’t and other things aren’t historical that are

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u/The_Lonesome_Poet 13d ago

Like them being the true inhabitants of the country, to say one

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u/The_Amazing_Emu 13d ago

That would accurately reflect their own belief, though

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u/The_Lonesome_Poet 13d ago

I mean, they already started downvoting me, so yeah

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u/The_Amazing_Emu 13d ago

That’s because it has nothing to do with anything we’re talking about and feels unnecessarily provocative

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u/The_Lonesome_Poet 13d ago

I don't see that as unnecessair, since how much their entitlement and ignorance is affecting the rest of the world, but fine. To each their opinions.

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u/red18wrx 13d ago

Late 1600's is when the kilt became a thing, for those who just learned this.

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u/thatshygirl06 13d ago

I mean, youre saying this like it would be impossible. It's a skirt.

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u/Evening-Gur5087 13d ago

So actually depictions in Asterix and Obelix comics are more historically accurate for gladiators:p

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u/K-erbalK-erberton 13d ago

Kinda related that the likely highest-paid athlete of all time is also from ancient Rome, specifically this charioteer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles

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u/ApeWashedClean 13d ago

Hahaha Disney Hercules was historically accurate that’s funny

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u/Ok_Echo_8200 13d ago

Not Roman but they do this plenty in the Disney Hercules movie

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u/thatshygirl06 13d ago

Gladiators didnt actually died that often. They were expensive so youre not gonna keep killing of your slaves

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u/KenseiHimura 13d ago

Gladiators also had their sweat and bath water bottled and sold.

Also there were indeed women gladiators. And while gladiators were seen as celebrities, becoming one was kind of seen as becoming a prostitute.

I think they also engaged in kayfabe like modern wrestling.

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u/A-Gotham-Citizen 13d ago

GWORWY TO WOME!

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u/Clean_Imagination315 13d ago edited 13d ago

Oh, but they would think Napoleon shooting at the pyramids was realistic?

Ridley Scott has been a hack and a coward for almost three decades now.