For various reasons, people can develop an (irrational) hatred, trauma, or phobia for a certain hobby, profession, food, object, or basically anything else (or sometimes EVERYTHING else). Perhaps the object in question was associated with a controversial character who has brought pain and misery to the hater. Or the hater has had a bad personal experience with the thing they hate. Or something bad happened to them for which there is no real, tangible cause or clear culprit, but they still want to blame something, so they misblame the object as a proxy. Whatever the reason, they want nothing more to do with it.
Which can be quite a problem for everybody if the person in question is in a position of authority and can thus enforce their dislike of the object on others. It doesn't matter how flawed their reasoning is or how many people actually love the thing the authority figure hates; when this trope comes into play, it gets banned. This ban can be on any scale, from a company run by a Bad Boss, to a city run by a Mayor Pain to even a whole country under the rule of The Caligula.
Music tends to be a common subject of this trope (X controversial character liked music and/or was a musician, therefore music is banned).
Of course, Tropes Are Flexible, and sometimes the prohibition can actually make sense, but more often than not the party imposing the prohibition is clearly overreacting. Without fail, there'll be a (usually young) rebellious character that indulges in the forbidden pleasure, often calling out the authority figure for stewing on trauma. This can sometimes be the reason for No Music Allowed.
See also The Scottish Trope.
No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Much of the things that the Almighty One forbids in Ah! My Goddess (lying, gaining an angel through external means, forgoing goddess duties to stay on Earth) are all things associated in one way or another with Urd, who is The Anti-Anti-Christ.
- Gundam:
- In the period between Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn and Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative, psycho-frame technology was banned due to the events of Unicorn's finale where a fully awakened Unicorn bends reality, showcasing the ridiculous power of both the technology and Newtypes.
- In the period between Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, the Junius Treaty is created with one of its rules being that N-Jammer Canceller technology is forbidden for military purposes to prevent the usage of nuclear weaponry.
- H2: Senkawa High School's principal forbids the creation of a school baseball team, despite baseball being an extremely popular sport in Japan. It's revealed that the reason for his visceral hatred of baseball (at one point he snatches a newspaper from a fellow passenger on a train and crumples it up simply because the back page happened to have an article on baseball) is that when he was younger, his alma mater somehow made it to a regional tournament... and was destroyed in a humiliating Curb-Stomp Battle. The defeat was one thing, but he despises baseball because ever since then that defeat is all his former school is known for, despite all the successful graduates it produced.
- HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!: Blue forbids all Cures from falling in love due to falling in love with Queen Mirage back when she was a Cure 300 years ago and he felt that, as God, he couldn't fall in love with one singular person. This allowed her to be brainwashed by Red and forcing Blue to lock her and the Phantom Empire in the Axia Box.
- Ōoku: The Inner Chambers: The future shogun Iemitsu was raped by a court samurai who didn't know who she was (though she quickly killed him, the damage was done). When she became shogun, she set up the "secret swain" edict where the man who took the shogun's virginity would be executed the morning after, as she could not imagine that it might go differently for other women. The edict goes unquestioned until Yoshimune looks into why they need to kill a man when they're in such short supply, and repeals it when she discovers the reason.
- In Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter Robo, research into and usage of Getter Energy is banned after Musashi Tomoe wipes New York City off the map detonating Getter Robo's core to destroy the Dinosaur Empire.
Audio Plays
- Torchwood (Big Finish): In "Changes Everything", it is revealed that coffee is no longer served at the Hub, with Ng being very insistent that they only serve tea when Tyler asks for a cup of coffee. Whilst not explicitly stated, it is heavily implied that the death of Ianto Jones, who was associated with coffee due to his excellent skills in making it, is why coffee is no longer served.
Comic Books
- This is why Batman doesn't carry a gun, nor stand for vigilantes that kill, like The Huntress.
- In Outlawed, teen superheroes are outlawed after a battle between the Champions and a group of mercenaries results in "innocent bystander" Kamala Khan being crushed by falling debris (the public is completely unaware that Khan is actually Ms Marvel, who has a healing factor.)
- In Teen Titans, time-travelling supervillain Sungirl mentions that Martians are hated in the 30th century because of some unspecified crime committed by Miss Martian.
Fan Works
- Charlie's Angels (Kkat): It's revealed that the reason Sera forbid rain in Heaven when she was in charge is because she witnessed the devastation of The Great Flood firsthand, and didn't ever want anything that seems like a repeat of it.
- Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus: Goh hates the idea of friendship because of one boy not arriving in time like he promised (actually the boy in question got sick and arrived one day too late and felt guilty for not getting to say goodbye to Goh). He also hates anything to do with Ilex Forest or having "another friend" (in this case a second Pokémon for when he wants Mew in the palm of his hands) to the point that he screams at Chloe Cerise, his Only Friend, to shut her face up.
- A couple of stories in The War of the Masters state that Romulan ale is illegal in the Federation because of a trade embargo due to the cold war with the Romulan Star Empire.
Films — Animation
- Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas: The Beast initially forbids the celebration of Christmas in his castle, since it was the night that the Enchantress cursed him, but he starts to warm up to the idea when he realizes it could be an opportunity to demonstrate that he cares for Belle.
- In Coco, Imelda banned all music from the Rivera family due to Imelda's husband Héctor leaving Imelda and their daughter (the titular Coco) to pursue a career as a musician (or at least, that's what Imelda thinks). In the present day, Abuelita, effectively the one with the reins of the Rivera household, fiercely works to maintain the ban, setting the plot of the movie in motion. When the truth comes out — that Héctor was murdered by his supposed friend Ernesto de la Cruz (who then stole his music and didn't even tell Héctor's family that he was dead) because Héctor wanted to quit show business and return to his family — the family lifts the ban as they give Héctor the respect he was denied for so long.
- In The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, King Triton bans music from Atlantica because a music box is the only thing he has left of his wife (and Ariel's mother), Queen Athena, who was killed by humans.
- Moana: After Chief Tui sees his best friend drown in the ocean right before his eyes, he becomes an extremist about not allowing his people to explore the ocean. While the Motonui people had abandoned that practice for a long time already because of the Heart of Te Fiti legend, in Tui's case his extreme anti-wayfinding rules are directly stated to stem from the trauma of losing his friend, rather than the Te Fiti legend.
- The 1970 Christmas special Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town by Rankin/Bass starts with the corpulent Burgermeister Meisterburger stepping on a child's toy, hurting his foot. This incident leads to a town-wide ban on toys, the chagrin of the children notwithstanding. It's at the point where Kris Kringle is declared an outlaw for gifting town toddlers with toys, which compels him to take the pseudonym Santa Claus.
Films — Live-Action
- In Fantastic Beasts, taking place in the 1920s-30s, American witches and wizards are banned from any fraternization with No-Majes, including intermarriage, under Rappaport's Law, due to the trauma of the Salem Witch Trials and the near-outing of American wizards by Bartholomew Barebone in 1790. According to Word of God, this was eventually repealed in 1965, but within the films, it causes problems for the main characters since No-Maj Jacob Kowalski, who becomes Newt's friend and Queenie's love interest, is not allowed to know anything. He is forced to have all memory of magic erased at the end of the first film. Queenie's desire to be with him causes her to break the rule, restoring Jacob's memory, forcing him to move to Paris, and temporarily siding with Grindlewald, who promises to repeal the ban so they can be together.
- Footloose: In the original, the son of a reverend with enough political power in a small town dies in a car crash while listening to rock music, and thus the reverend bans all sorts of music because he sees it as responsible for his son's death. In the 2011 remake, dancing is banned from the town because five teenagers (including the mayor's son) were killed in a car accident while driving home drunk from a dance club.
- In Jersey Girl, Ollie forbids his daughter from watching Will Smith movies since the traumatic incident that led to losing his job as a talent agent happened while at a Will Smith press conference.
- V for Vendetta: The film opens with V conducting a terrorist attack in which he hijacks the government's street speakers to play Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, then blows up the dome of the Old Bailey. In the emergency government meeting that follows, Chancellor Sutler orders that 1812 Overture be put on a blacklist, as he never wants to hear it again.
- When Good Ghouls Go Bad features a town that has banned Halloween because a kid that died on a kiln accident some years prior (who was a goth and a loner (and Loners Are Freaks)), supposedly managed to create a curse that would trigger if the town continued to celebrate this holiday (and because of such a horrible death, more cool heads decided to keep quiet). Turns out that, yeah, there was no curse and the kid died as a result of a Deadly Prank from the local Jerk Jock, who was the one who created the "curse" rumor as an attempt to milk the tragedy and screw up one of the protagonists.
Literature
- In one of Aesop's Fables, a fox loses his tail and proclaims that all foxes should abandon them as they serve no purpose. Then another fox sees that he has no tail, and the tailless fox is soundly mocked for his loss and his trying to hide it.
- The Bas-Lag Cycle: The city-state of New Crobuzon bans all "thinking machines" after Perdido Street Station, where a group of A.I.s creates a Deus est Machina and tries to start a Robot War.
- In Dune, computers are forbidden after the Robot War known as the Butlerian Jihad that nearly enslaved humanity.
- Harry Potter: Played with in the case of The International Statute of Secrecy; the 1692 law, banning wizards from revealing magic to non-magical folk without reason, came about due to severe friction between magic and non-magic folk, leading to issues like persecution, abduction of wizarding children, and witch trials which, while they rarely managed to kill a real wizard, still caused a lot of problems for wizards and muggles alike.
- The Isis Trilogy: By the time of The Guardian of Isis, life on the Isis colony is bound by many quasi-religious taboos, including that the mountains around the colony are forbidden because they belong to the satanic "That Old Woman". Eventually it comes out that one of the colony's founders invented both the taboo and the "That Old Woman" myth because he had a teenage romance with the woman in question that ended embarrassingly for him.
- The Machineries of Empire: Fingerless gloves are incredibly taboo in the Kel military, albeit not outright illegal, because they were part of the uniform of the infamous General Shuos Jedao, who massacred millions of his own troops. (Until then, they were just a sign of an officer on secondment to the Kel.) Kel Cheris exploits this upon going rogue, publicly cutting the fingers off her gloves for maximum emotional impact.
- The Tale of Despereaux has the Queen discover a rat named Roscuro near her soup bowl. She overreacts, falling over backwards, and dying of head trauma. The King then outlaws soup, which heretofore had been a staple of the kingdom, and declares open season on rats. The animated adaptation by Framestore has the Queen die of shock instead from realizing Roscuro was in her soup, collapsing face-down into it. The King then decrees a moratorium on soup.
- In Wizard's First Rule, Darken Rahl proclaims a Dystopian Edict banning fire. Many reasons are given by his followers, the chief one being the fact that Rahl's father was killed by a fireball.
Live-Action TV
- One episode of Adventures in Wonderland sees the Red Queen ban all forms of humor after injuring her funny bone (which in Wonderland is apparently literally tied to someone's sense of humor).
- Merlin (2008): Season 1 initially establishes that King Uther banned all magic, even healing magic, from Camelot because some sorcerers were abusing their power. "Excalibur" reveals that Uther actually banned magic out of revenge, since a ritual to give him a son and heir, Arthur, resulted in his beloved wife Ygraine's Death by Childbirth, due to the Old Religion's law of Equivalent Exchange. Merlin, as the main character, secretly uses magic to save both Arthur and Uther on multiple occasions throughout the series.
- Roseanne: "My Name is Bev" features a highly-localized example with Bev, Roseanne and Jackie's obnoxious mother who often meddles in their lives. After being arrested for driving drunk, Bev's forced to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where she realizes that she actually is an alcoholic and decides to quit drinking. At first, Roseanne and Jackie are thrilled, since they think she genuinely wants to get help—until Bev starts demanding that everyone around her abstain from alcohol as well, since she claims it's too intense to be around; she also starts decrying booze constantly and shaming anybody who enjoys it. Whenever someone protests, she's quick to guilt-trip them by using her new label. Things come to a head when Bev tries the same trick with Roseanne, who instead calls her out for trying to use the illness as another way to control people.
Bev: I'm an alcoholic, Roseanne. Don't you realize what that means?
Roseanne: Yeah, I know exactly what that means, Mom. It means you drink, like you always drank—only now you're calling yourself an alcoholic because you think that way you don't have to take responsibility for anything that you do. - Star Trek:
- Genetic Augmentation and Transhumanism were forbidden by law on Earth after the Eugenics Wars of the 21st century, in which Khan Noonien Singh, and other augmented humans terrorized Earth. When the Federation was created, Earth's ban on genetic modification became Federation law, even though other founding members of the Federation used genetic engineering without any problems. It was so important to humans, they insisted, and there wasn't much pushback from the other founding members.
- Star Trek: Picard: In Season 1, the creation of Synths was banned within the Federation after a number of androids went rogue and destroyed the Utopia Planitia Shipyards. The ban was rescinded after it was proven that the androids had been hacked by the Romulans.
- Star Trek: Discovery: In the 32nd century:
- The aftermath of the Temporal War resulted in a complete ban on all technology that incorporated time travel.
- Wormholes damaging subspace resulted in a complete ban on the creation of wormholes.
- Ni'var prohibited the use and development of its SB-19 experiment, thinking that it was responsible for causing The Burn, a cataclysm that destroyed millions of warp-capable starships. They also refused to discuss the experiment with anyone, even after Commander Burnham promised to use the data to prove that the Burn had a different cause (that cause turned out to be something that nobody could have predicted).
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech: Much of the Clans' code is due to the founder of the Clans, Nicholas Kerensky, having had to grow up in hiding on Terra after it was conquered by Stefan Ameris, who would have killed him for being related to Alexandr Kerensky. After living in hiding for a decade and then fleeing the Inner Sphere after the war was over, Nicholas banned families (since he never really bonded with his), private ownership (everything belongs to the Clan as a whole), and for unexplained reasons he banned contractions from Clan speech (with several notable exceptions, like "aft" for affirmative, "neg" for negative, and "batchall" for battle challenge). He also enforced the Clans' rules for single combat based on this, citing the death of his brother Andrew due to having been ambushed by multiple enemies, though later sourcebooks would claim that the Clans started the practice of dueling on their own and he merely codified it.
- Warhammer 40K:
- The Inquisition forbids the use of most Warp-related artifacts and sorcery because of how easy it is to fall to Chaos. Doesn't stop many Inquisitors from doing so (because it actually does get results), which usually ends with them being hunted down by former colleagues. If they don't fall to Chaos first.
- The title of Warmaster has fallen from use in the Imperium, as the last person to hold it was Horus, who betrayed the Imperium and gave Chaos their greatest victory in millennia. This being said, it has still been used at least seven more times since, though that really isn't all that much in over ten thousand years. Inversely, Abaddon, the Dragon Ascendant to Horus that also means to be a Superior Successor to him, has no qualms as being titled as this.
- Following The War of the Iron Men, Artificial Intelligences (henceforth known as Abominable Intelligences) are universally banned in the Imperium. All automation is either done by extremely limited computers, lobotomized cyborgs called Servitors, or Machine Spirits (which the franchise flip-flops on whether they're secretly A.I.s or not).
- The Eldar forbid themselves most pleasures, as the Chaos god Slaanesh was birthed from millennia of Eldar hedonism. This is actually a perfectly valid and indeed the smart strategy, as Slaanesh is empowered by desire, hedonism and excess and steals their souls if they fall. Conversely, the Dark Eldar indulge as much as they want... when in the Webway, where Slaanesh can't reach them.
Video Games
- Baldur's Gate III: In Act 1, a large group of tiefling refugees are passing through the same area as the party. They originally lived in the city of Elturel, but after the city was sucked down into the Nine Hells before being saved, the tieflings were blamed due to their devil ancestry and slightly devilish appearance, and were banished from the city as a result. In fact, they had nothing to do with the events and were just as traumatized by them as everyone else.
- In the Mass Effect universe, the Citadel has several policies based on past incidents, often passed for self-serving reasons:
- Activating mass relays without prior authorization is outlawed due to an unauthorized activation causing the Rachni Wars.
- The Krogan were stripped of their ability to procreate for centuries as a punishment for the Krogan Rebellions... which were the result of the Citadel uplifting the Krogan to serve as infantry in the Rachni Wars.
- The Yaahg were banned from Citadel space for killing Citadel ambassadors.
- Artificial intelligence was banned from Citadel space after the Geth took over the Quarian homeworld. This also conveniently allowed the Citadel to ban Quarians from having an embassy so that they wouldn't be able to petition the Citadel for aid.
- Humans were banned from joining the Citadel Council due to the carnage that was supposedly unleashed by David Anderson during his efforts to become a Spectre. This also conveniently prevented the System Alliance from ordering an investigation of the actions of Turian Spectre Saren Arterius.
- No Straight Roads: NSR Records is banning all Rock Music in Vinyl City because the CEO, Tatiana, is actually a former Rock Star who, due to her band breaking up and the genre collapsing as a result due to her setting such a high bar, decided it isn't viable anymore.
- Played for laughs in Streets of Rogue. The Mayor has placed a strict ban on chicken nuggets due to once having suffered a stomach ache from them. As a result, chicken nuggets have become a rare and valuable trade good for the Resistance, and the player can use them to purchase upgrades at the Home Base.
- In Super Robot Wars 30, Super AI robots are banned after the Gutsy Galaxy Guard rebelled against the United Nations to chase after the 13 Masters of Sol. The creation of the Brave Police was to prove they were still safe and once 3G is completely rescued, the government's move to rescind the ban as, in actuality, it was a cover story.
Visual Novels
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice The defense culpability act was passed after the murder of the ruling queen by a defense attorney. It was only a ban in spirit, since it made the job way too risky for anyone to do it.note Of course it was a corrupt power grab and said murder was far from what the public was told.
Western Animation
- Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!: Invoked in "Halloween"; the Baba Yaga has been terrorizing towns across America since Freddy was a child, arriving on Halloween night to scare people and causing the towns she attacks to ban Halloween going forward for fear of another attack. Mr. and Mrs. Clune themselves avert the trope; they just hate that modern celebrations of Halloween have abandoned their Gaelic roots.
- The Fairly OddParents!:
- Timmy's wishes-gone-wrong in "Christmas Every Day" and "Love Struck" resulted in new rules being added to Da Rules forbidding said wishes ('I wish every day was Christmas' and 'I wish men and women lived in separate societies', respectively). Following the events of "Cosmo Rules", a new rule was added saying that nobody below Jorgen can write in Da Rules.
- Until Poof came along, fairy babies were banned because the last one was Cosmo.
- The Legend of Korra: When Katara co-founded Republic City with Aang, Sokka, Zuko, and Toph, one of the laws that she had passed was a ban on bloodbending, due to her traumatic experience using it to stop Hama from killing Aang and Sokka in "The Puppetmaster" during the prequel show, Avatar: The Last Airbender.
- Miraculous Ladybug: There is a longstanding prohibition on Miraculous users falling in love with each other because Jeanne, the holder of the Ladybug Miraculous in the 15th century, fell in love with Gibb, the holder of the Cat Miraculous at the time. As it happened, they were on opposite sides in The Hundred Years War, and their affair led to them being captured and sentenced to death for treason against their respective countries. While they managed to escape execution, they both decided that they needed to renounce their Miraculous, and ever since, the prohibition has been put in place to prevent something like that from happening again.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Luna Eclipsed", Princess Luna temporarily bans Nightmare Night since it's a celebration that honors Nightmare Moon, Luna's Omnicidal Maniac Superpowered Evil Side.
- Oscar's Orchestra: Thadius Vent was humiliated at a childhood piano recital when he tried to fool the audience using Oscar, a self-playing piano, only to be exposed as a cheat when Oscar continued playing while Thadius was taking a bow. Thadius took this so badly that when he grew up to become dictator of New Vienna, he outlawed all music and musical instruments.
- South Park: In "Something You Can Do with Your Finger", the gang forms a boy band called "Fingerbang". Randy Marsh reacts to this with irrational emotional heat, and absolutely forbids Stan from having anything to do with it. He is reluctant to explain why, but later in the episode, confesses he was once part of a successful boy band himself and feels emotionally scarred by the experience; he is simply trying to protect his son.