Symbol Like a J and Backwards J Back to Back

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBackwardsR

Following

The Backwards Я

Go To

Richie: It's in Russian.
Eddie: You just put the Rs the wrong way round!
Richie: THAT'S WHAT RUSSIAN IS!

In a lot of Western posters, you see something that could be called "Faux Cyrillic" – replacing Latin characters with visually similar Cyrillic ones, to make something look more Russian. Don't expect them to be consistent with it, though.

This is because Cyrillic is based on medieval Greek completed with Glagolitic (sometimes inspired by Hebrew – ц, ш) letters, but due to reforms by Peter the Great, it has the same basic design principles as the Latin alphabet (stroke thickness and placement, etc.). This has resulted in an alphabet with letters that range from deceptively familiar to the strikingly different. The Latin alphabet itself is based – via the Etruscan/Old Italic one – on the archaic (pre-classical) Greek one, and Hebrew and Greek scripts are based on Phoenician script, so they are all related. Where the (English form of the) Latin alphabet has twenty-six letters, the (Russian form of the) Cyrillic alphabet has thirty-three.

The perpetrators ignore the fact that these letters are, in actual Russian, pronounced completely differently from the Latin characters they are supposed to represent, which results in unintended hilarity for members of the audience who can read Cyrillic script.

Below is a list of popular letters used with this trope, and their proper pronunciations:

Latin letters and the Cyrillic letters incorrectly substituted for them:

• R: 'Я' (ya). The Trope Namer. ^note This is a simplified form (via cursive) of "Little Yus" (Ѧ ѧ), an archaic Cyrillic letter that originally represented a nasalized front vowel (compare "ę" in Polish), but came to represent the sound "ya" in Russian.
• r: 'Г' (g in Russian, h in Ukrainian/Belarusian) (as in Gamma)
• N: 'И' (i), sometimes even 'Й' ("short И", equivalent of j/y)
• n: 'П' (p) (as in Pi)
• A: 'Д' (d) ^note even though (or more likely, because) the Cyrillic A is identical to the Latin A
• O: 'Ф' (f)
• W: 'Ш' (sh), 'Щ' (shch ^note well, scht like in schtick in Bulgarian)
• X: 'Ж' (zh) (pronounced like 'pleasure')
• B: 'В' (v), 'Б' (b), 'Ь' (soft sign), 'Ъ' (hard sign)
• E: 'Э' (æ), 'З' (z), 'е' (ye/e)
• U: 'Ц' (ts)
• Y: 'Ч' (ch) (said as in church)
• Io: 'Ю' (yu)

The number of Cyrillic letters that look similar or identical to Latin letters or numbers but represent slightly or entirely different phonemes doesn't help either:

• "А": (always short a, as in father)
• "В": (v)
• "Н": (n)
• "Р": (rolled R)
• "С": (s)
• "У": (oo)
• "Ё": (yo; not just a fronted/raised Е with a Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut)
• "Х": (guttural "kh", like the 'ch' in the Scottish 'loch', or the hard 'ch' in German 'Buch')
• "Ъ": (hard sign 'yer' slurs the previous (consonant) and following (iotized vowel) letter — the sound between the k and y in "thank you" is a good comparison. In Bulgarian, however, it just represents the schwa sound)
• "Ы": (no solid equivalent, roses comes close)
• "Ь": (soft sign 'yer' makes previous consonant soft. Also slurs the previous and following letter like hard sign if following letter is an iotized vowel — in this case difference between them is subtle or maybe just spelling.)
• "б": (b)

And that's only the letters that exist in the Russian Alphabet ^note And the Bulgarian Alphabet, which has all letters of the Russian one except for Ё, Э, Ы specifically. If you go to other languages written in Cyrillic, you'll find gems such as:

• "І": (i in Ukrainian and Belarusian)
• "Ј": ("y", like in "yes", in Serbian and Macedonian)
• "Ѕ": (dz in Macedonian)
• "Ү": (German Ü in Turkic Languages, such as Kazakh)
• "Ғ": (French R in Turkic Languages)

This can also happen with alphabets other than Cyrillic, such as the use of the Greek letter sigma (Σ) as an E or delta (Δ) or lambda (Λ) as an A, even though "Ε" and "Α" are actually perfectly good Greek letters themselves. (Sigma, delta, and lambda are actually the analogues of S, D and L, respectively, although delta is a "th" as in "then" in modern Greek.) Sometimes Greek letters are also used more or less correctly to write English as a substitution of real Greek language.

Compare Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut, Punctuation Shaker and Gratuitous Foreign Language. See also Randomly Reversed Letters.

---

Examples:

    open/close all folders

Суяіllіс:

    Adveяtising

• There's a UK insurance ad featuring a Backwards R and Socialist Realism style art.
• A 2013 ad for Clorox features Bud, DiЯectoЯ of KitcheИ SaИitatioИ who has a stereotypical faux-Russian accent.
• A 2009 Polish commercial for Raiffeisen Bank plays it straight and subverts it at the same time; the "revolutionary deposit" slogan is rendered into "Лokata Яewolucyjna" with the first word featuring the rather obscure (yet fitting in terms of pronunciation) "Л" character and the second one beginning with the Trope Namer.
• Dr. Jon's Shaving Soap Company has a fragrance called Propaganda. The label looks like a stereotypical Soviet propaganda poster and the product name has the backwards R as well as several faux-Cyrillic letters.
• The UK bookshop Waterstones had a promotion on their website called "The Russian Revolutions". No backwards "R"s, but "Д" for "A", a backwards "Г" for "T" and "L", and something that almost looks like a "Ф" for "O".
• The "sponsored by" advertising bumps at the beginning and end of every screening of Coronation Street feature an insurance company that uses pseudo-Russian meerkats to shill its product. The meercat colony lives in a version of Coronation Street - but with all the shop and business names and show titles rendered in pseudo-Russian with lots of backwards letters.

    Anime & Manga

• In Bakuman。, the fictional manga Reversi has a logo spell it as ЯEVEЯSI. It's not implying any relation to Russia, just a pun on how the series is about one person using demonic power to Mind Control people while another reverses it.

    Audio Plays

• The Firesign Theatre's LP How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All displays this to comical effect, with its "All Hail Marx and Lennon" poster, as seen here ◊.

    Comic Books

    Fan Woяks

• The Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 mod Red Alert 3: Paradox has the entirety of the word "paradox" written this way in its logo.
• In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, Sam Vimes of the City Watch describes the written script of Far Überwald as "that sort of strange backwards mirror-writing that makes your eyes water to look at and makes wizard-script look normal".

    Films — Animation

• In Anastasia, the train's speedometer reads SPEEФОШЕТЕЯ ("sreyefosheteya").
• Pinocchio: In the Disney Sing-Along Songs version of "I've Got No Strings", the Russian puppet's verse is rendered with a few accented characters, and every R in the verse is written backwards.

    Films — Live-Action

• Chernobyl Diaries: Or, as a person who can read Cyrillic would see, Sneyapovul Diayaies. ^note The correct Cyrillic for Chernobyl is Чepнoбыль
• Borat provides a particularly well-known use of the Cyrillic Д ('D') in place of A. ("Vordt"?) That was just the poster art. The titles in the movie itself used (mostly) correct Cyrillic. As opposed to the original TV show where the Cyrillic subtitles were nonsense ("Borat" was rendered as "Ishfke" for example) and made by simply typing on a Russian keyboard setting (which have a completely different layout than QWERTY).
  • The sequel isn't much better, being subtitled the Suvsyequeit Moviyefilm
• The opening credits of Red Heat, where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a Soviet cop.
• The Hunt for Red October displays this, including a mislabeling of the sub itself.
• Some of the signs in Repo! The Genetic Opera use the 'Я' and the 'Д'.
• The History Channel's documentary Russia: Land of the Tsars. ◊

• The Death of Stalin misappropriates Latin-looking Cyrillic letters to make Soviet propaganda posters and NKVD documents legible to English speaking audiences. As this is a farce, the intent is to reenforce the hilarity of the characters' backstabbing and political maneuvering.
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding uses the Greek variant, putting capital Sigmas in place of E's in the title.
• The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, a satirical film about the comic hijinks that ensue after a Russian sub runs aground on an island in New England, uses a backwards R, a backwards N and a hammer-and-sickle G for the title in both the poster art and the title card in the credits.
• As the film is set in Russia, this trope is used in the end credits of Devil's Pass. One example is presenting the director credit as "Diяected by Reииy Harliи".

    Liteяatuяe

• The Discworld novel Wintersmith touches on a place where bitter cold is seen as normal and murderously violent blizzards are commonplace. The elemental spirit of Winter, the wintersmith, is seen riding the snowstorm and singing in the region's native tongue, which is rendered in the text as Russian Cyrillic.

    Live-Action TV

• Promotional materials for The Americans often feature the show's title written in all caps with a backwards R. Notably averted within the show's opening titles, however, where the cast's names are accurately transliterated into Cyrillic.
• TV show Borat did the in-show titles by simply selecting Russian keyboard setting while still using a regular QWERTY keyboard. Since the keyboard layout is completely different the result is nonsense - for example Borat is rendered as "Ishfke". The latter movie subverts it by using correct Cyrillic titles.
• From an episode of Bottom, where Eddie mocks the unconvincing nature of the fake birthday cards Richie sends himself every year:

  Eddie: ...And this one's from "The Peoples of the Soviet Union in grateful thanks to Comrade Richie"!
  Richie: It's in Russian!
  Eddie: You just put the R's the wrong way round!
  Richie: That's what Russian is!

• The Cold War Updates on The Colbert Report use a title card with a mix of Latin and Cyrillic that would be transliterated as "Sold Shchaya Tsrdatz".
• Doctor Who: "Cold War", set on a Russian submarine in 1983, is called "COLD WAЯ" on the promotional poster.
• The Forever episode "The King of Columbus Circle" features the Russian-speaking Ruritanian country of "Urkesh". The signs in its consulate are in actual Russian, but on its passports the country's name is written as "Цркесч" ("Tsrkestch").
• Law & Order: Detectives find a watch in the possession of a killer's son. The son didn't bother to hide it because the watch was engraved with the initials "BP", not realizing that in the Russian language "BP" is the equivalent of "VR" which were the Russian victim's initials.
• In an episode of MacGyver we see a bottle labeled in Cyrillic: it's supposed to say "Etil Alkogol" ( = "Ethyl Alcohol"); what it actually says is "Ztil Alkogop". If it was supposed to be Russian, then it should've said "Этиловый спирт" (Etilovyy spirt).
  • And "Alkogop" means something like "drunken gang banger", which adds an extra dose of Narm into the scene.
• Revolution Z inverts this. The word for "Revolution" in the titular band's name is spelled "RЕVОЛЮЦИЯ", with a Latin R and V in a language that uses Cyrillic, instead of "РЕВОЛЮЦИЯ".
• An episode of SCTV had the premise of the station hacked by the Soviet Union, and re-branded CCCP-1 , pronounced "three-see-pee-one". The letter C in Cyrillic (pronounced "es") is the equivalent of Latin S, while P in Cyrillic (pronounced "er") is equivalent to R. CCCP actually stands for Союз Советских Социалистических Республик [transliterated to Latin: Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik], which is Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Russian.
• Similarly, Not Necessarily the News dubbed over footage of Vremya (Время, "Time") with Stuart Pankin's voice introducing the program as "Bupemmer".
• One Cold War-themed episode of The Time Tunnel includes several signs in fake Cyrillic. Most are a nonsensical mix of Latin and Cyrillic letters, including a backwards У, an upside-down Q, and even a backwards 4. These are for flavor; the one sign meant to be comprehended reads РЯОᒐEꓘꓕ А-13, with a flat-topped A probably meant to suggest a Д.
• The Discovery Channel program Wild Russia uses backwards R's when displaying the title.
• Early seasons of Mission: Impossible were fairly littered with this trope.

    Music

• KYPCK, a Finnish metal band singing primarily in Russian, in an inversion, use the Volapuk encoding in it's name, pronounced Kursk.
• Korn's logo is spelled with a backwards R. This causes unintentional hilarity for Kazakh people, who also use Cyrillic alphabet, since "коян" (koyan, the "Н" is read like "N") in Kazakh means "hare" or "rabbit".
• Type O Negative's final album Dead Again has all of the lyrics and liner notes written in Faux Cyrillic for absolutely no good reason at all (there is a picture of Rasputin on the cover, but other than that...). Just as an example, the band's name and album title are written as "TЧРЕ O ИЭGАТIѴЭ : DЭДD ДGДIИ," which – because Cyrillic doesn't have a letter shaped like "D" or "G"; "I" replaces "И" in Ukrainian and "Ѵ" is an archaic letter translatable as either "i" or "v" depending on the context – would read "TCHRYE O IE-ATIVE : -ED- D-DII."
• The band ¡Forward, Russia! are in love with this trope.
• So are the Leningrad Cowboys a.k.a. Lɘиiиɢяad Cowʙoys who aren't even from Russia. The covers of their album Happy Together and their Total Balalaika Show live video take this Up to Eleven by mimicking a Pravda frontpage complete with a font which borrows a lot from the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets plus some mirrored or upside-down letters and the German ß (sharp s) in lieu of the capital B. Only "Pravda" itself is written in real Cyrillic.
• The Welsh band Manic Street Preachers had all of the R's backwards for their album The Holy Bible ◊, perfectly fitting with the flavour of the release - this went back to normal for a few albums, then made a return for Send Away The Tigers ◊ and follow up Journal For Plague Lovers. ◊
• Franz Ferdinand did this very consciously in the video for "This Fire" off their self-titled first album. That whole album they were going for a Soviet Constructivist look, which goes remarkably well with their sound.
• BT's sixth album is titled THЭSЭ HOPЭFUL MACHINЭS. The song titles also have their E's reversed.
• Angelic Upstarts (or ДИ☭eLIC UФSTДRTS, which woud read as "DI*hammer and sickle*eLIC UFSTDRTS") did this on their Anthems Against Scum ◊ album.
• Norther, a Finnish band (Finnish uses the Roman alphabet, FYI, despite being part of Russia up until WWI), uses the Д as an A on their album N.
• Feind Hört Mit ◊ ("Enemy Eavesdropping") by Austrian band Stahlhammer uses this too: The title (keeping in mind each "M" is a flipped "Ш," "І" replaces "И" in Ukrainian and "Ѕ" is an archaic letter translatable as "dz," now only used in Macedonian) turns into "DZTDN-NASHSHYEYA : -YEIP- NFYAT SHIT" when transcribed.
• Linkin Park, or LIИKIИ PARK, in most of their early material.
• Nine Inch Nails is often written as ИIИE IИCH ИAILS in different media.
• DJ Vadim's name is usually written with a Д for the A and an inverted Щ for the M.
• In the Romanian band TNT's video "Vodka, Vodka" has the words "Vodka Дямач" in the around a red star in the back throughout the video. This is a good example, because the sound for the actual Russian word for armies, армии, is basically like the English word army (though it refers to the plural in Russian), and even the singular word for army, армия (armiya) would be easily recognizable for English-speakers as referring to an army, whereas Дямч would sound like Dyamch (that is, if the word "army" is being used at all instead of "land forces". Of course, given the Soviet-style emblem, "army" makes a lot of sense in this context). Obviously, with reading a different alphabet the cognates often won't work for non-Cyrillic readers, so unless you want it to be meaningless for most people, you need to do use this trope if you want to use Cyrillic in this case.
  • Also, the TИT in the middle of the emblem, for the band's name, TNT. TИT said out loud would sound like "teat" or "tit".
• The BEMANI J-pop band TЁЯRA ("Tyoyara").
• The Finnish Doom Metal band Курск, although their name is correct Cyrillic for Kursk, uses faux Cyrillic text on their website.
• The cover for KMFDM's Opium has the band's name written KMFДM. F doesn't exist in Cyrillic, the equivalent would be Ф. Also, XTOЯT.
• Reina Tanaka's rock band has the somewhat bizarre name of LoVendoЯ.
• One recording of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is by an orchestra conducted by "SIMOИ RATTLE". What kind of a name is "Simoi"?
• Caparezza's 2014 video "Avrai ragione tu" is a tongue-in-cheek spoof of Soviet Russia and as such is all about this trope (it also substitutes U with V, which is more a Latin type of thing).
• Future Perfect's ДFTЗЯ THЗ FДLL.
• Front 242 write the song title "KOMMДИdO ЯЭMЖ" this way. Interestingly, they also use correct Gratuitous Russian at times.
• South Korean girl group BLACKPINK's name is often stylized as BLΛƆKPIИK. it is because the backwards C AND N are considered perfect for the group.
• German rapper Olexesh (who has Slavic roots, so it's natural for him...or he really should know better!) has a logo ΦLΣЖΣSH (approximately). Call him Pflszhssh on your own risk...
• There's a doujin album by ADIEU and UtAGe titled DЯЁADИOЦGHT HAЯVЁSTA.
• NothingButNoise's Mutanten Maschine EP uses mock Cyrillic for the band name and title, but lists the tracks in legitimate Russian.
• Zigzagged by Pig with the Face of a Boy's video for Complete History of the Soviet Union, Arranged to the Melody of "Tetris", in that Lenin's name is correctly rendered in Cyrillic, but Siberia is rendered on a sign as "SIБERIД".
• This video for the short-lived animated singer Rashni is set in Russia and features this trope, for example by having signs that say МЕПА ТФТАГ ЗЕСЯЕТ АЯЕА ("Mega Total Secret Area"). The comments are full of actual Russian speakers that mock the hell out of it. Also, keep in mind that this character is ostensibly Indian and was invented by Germans.

    Tabletop Games

• The GURPS supplement GURPS Russia uses the TS and D characters for U and A respectively, plus several other substitutions ◊, in various titles and headings — in a book that's supposed to educate readers about the place... ^note Actually, it's reasonably useful as a source of info about Tsarist Russia and Kievan Rus', occasional bloopers notwithstanding.
• In Cardfight!! Vanguard, there are a series of cards that have been subjected to The Corruption, known as Reverse units. On the card, it is spelled out as Яeverse.
• The two Soviet-created characters in Sentinels of the Multiverse use the backwards R on their character cards: the nefarious Pяoletaяiat, and the heroic Cold Waя.

    Theatяe

• The logo for the Broadway production of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 uses the backwards R in its rendition of "PIERRE".

    Video Games

• The logo for the computer game DEFCON, which would actually be "DEFCOI" if the backwards N was read properly.
• The adventure game KGB was released on CD as Conspiяacy.
• Tetris was styled as "TETЯIS" in several Western releases, particularly those by Mirrorsoft and Atari Games/Tengen, just to advertise that the game was developed by a Russian. If the Я were pronounced as in Russian, that would be "Tetyais". The early computer versions published by Spectrum Holobyte and Tetris Semipro-68K for the Sharp X68000 use the proper Cyrillic spelling "ТЕТРИС", though with the C replaced with the Soviet hammer and sickle for the former case. Averted since the late 1990s, when Roger Dean designed a new logo for the newly formed Tetris Company.
  • A faux propaganda poster featuring Tetris also invoked this with backwards R's and N's and the Cyrillic letter "er" for the p in "place".
• Republic: The Revolution in addition to speaking pseudo-Russian has all in-game signs and posters written in pseudo-Cyrillic. It also uses other symbols, such as the German "ß".
• The Iron Grip: The Oppression Game Mod had a typical backwards R in its promotional logo.
• The Backwards Я has gained notoriety on the Discovery (Freelancer Game Mod) forums features this through Memetic Mutation, as in 'ШHAT SIЯ?'
  • Shnat Siya?
• Singularity heavily used this trope, including in its logo. Almost excused, when they started using real Russian at the end credits. Infamous examples include: the game's title, which is written as SIИGULДЯITУ (Siiguldyaitu) and Katorga-12 being written as KДTФЯGД-12 (Kdtfyagd-12).
• The fourth game in the Deception series, Trapt, spells the title on the cover art as TЯAPT purely for cosmetic reasons, to achieve a mirrored look that the P partially fudges.
• The 1997 version of Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? (1997) includes a scene where you meet Yuri Gagarin. The rocket carrying him has the letters CCCP on it, and your helpful friend indicates that it's an acronym... in English. The instruction book for the game includes a section detailing all the historical inaccuracies introduced to the game in order to make it easier to understand and tells what it really stands for. (Isn't this game supposed to be educational, though?)
• The Krivorozhstal Mill in Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain has its name written on the smokestacks in faux Cyrillic, with Д for R and a reversed Г for T.
• Blatantly featured in the Hearts of Iron series, including the upcoming East Vs West. Nations part of the Comintern (Soviet bloc) would feature faux Cyrillic names, which remains a source of much agony for Cyrillic-reading fans. However, there are mods that allow users to change the typeset.
• The logo of Red Alert 3: Paradox, a mod for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, switches the English letters of "paradox" with visually similar Cyrillic letters (including the backwards 'R'). The result is, obviously, gibberish, but hey, it looks cool.
• In the U.S. Gold-published computer ports of Strider (Arcade), the title screens display the name as STЯIDER. The game's first stages take place in Russia.
• Inverted with the title of KOHCTPYKTOP: Engineer of the People: the first word is a Latin-alphabet approximation to "КОНСТРУКТОР", a sequence of Cyrillic-alphabet characters that would be pronounced "constructor".
• Dragon Quest:
  • In Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride, the main antagonist, Grandmaster Nizmo, has dialogue in faux Cyrillic.
  • Dragon Quest VI: In the American release, treasure hunter Evgenya's text has a Cyrillic-looking font.
• Adventure game The Big Red Adventure is set in a parody/satire of The New Russia and of various Russian tropes, and all of the in-game messages are written in a faux-Cyrillic alphabet. Example.
• Mid-1990s British computer game publisher Rasputin Software had a logo which spelled out its name ЯASPUTIN.
• Myha is a rather weird example; its logo is written as Лyнa (which is, in fact, the Russian word for "Moon", pronounced as "Loona"), but its official title is spelled Myha, which is what the Russian characters would look like when interpreted as Latin alphabet. Weirdness come not only with the fact that Л and M don't even look remotely alike, but with the mixed phonetical/visual similarity with the word "муха", which means "fly" – that is, as an insect. Furthermore in-universe it is something of an Inverted Trope as "Myha" is how the Fantasy Counterpart Culture Russian main character attempts to write "Лyнa" with a Latin-alphabet-only keyboard and he notes in his diary that it's meant to be pronounced "Luna".
• Used in the title of The Cold Heart of Hate episode of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. Or more properly, Tне СФLD НеДЯT Фf НДTε.
• The 1987 PC strategy game of The Hunt for Red October included displays reading soиaя and иucleaя.
• Chernobylite: stylises its logo as CHERИOBYLITE, with a backwards N.

    Web Oяiginal

• TV Tropes: The image ◊ that currently illustrates the Red Scare trope. Literally, it reads: "d— uftsya -yazz-fm dyaz ^e-fi- tf ts-" ("-" means "gobbledygook", i.e. not a Cyrillic letter, and "^" is an accent).
• The USSR speaks like this in World War Two: Simple Version. It's dropped in Cold War: Simple Version because the author was sick of it.
  • That comic strip also has USSR say the line "ZД ЯОDIИU". This is clearly meant to be "за родину" (a bit of Gratuitous Russian), but first transliterated ("za rodinu") and then converted to faux Cyrillic. (The result is pronounced "Zd yaodieeu".)
• Parodied in SF Debris when Chuck comments on the U.S.S. Tsiolkovsky`s Cyrillic dedication plaque and, noting a letter that looks like 3 (the Russian Z), accuses Russia of being so poor they have to use numbers when they run out of letters. In a Genius Bonus he later subtly reveals he knows what it really means by spelling the word 'spaz' out loud as 'S, P, A, three!'
• There is actually a web page that will give you fake Cyrillic.
• In the Yogscast Civilization V challenge, Lewis Brindley is LЗЩІ? <sup>note</sup> the last letter, a backwards Z, doesn't seem to be part of the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets. of РОLДЙD, or Lzeshchi? of Roldyd. This is in spite of Polish using the Latin alphabet.
• This trope is inverted by Russian gamers, most notoriously in CS:GO. The notorious phrase "cyka blyat" is an illiterate transliteration of "сука блядь" (suka blyad`) which has the meaning of "fucking bitch".

    Westeяn Animation

• The American Dad! episode "Red October Sky" contains an odd inversion: close-ups of a propaganda poster containing the Gratuitous Russian phrase ВЕАИКИХ РАБОТ (roughly, "the great work") render it in lookalike Latin letters: BEANKNX PAGOT. Wider shots of the same poster show the phrase in Cyrillic letters.
• The Simpsons: Homer test-drives a car from Crazy Vaclav's Place Of Automobiles, a tiny, three-wheeled monstrosity made in a country that no longer exists with a Cyrillic dashboard. As Vaclav pushes the car to help it get going, he tells Homer to "put it in H" (for Neutral gear).
• Archer: When Archer is captured by the KGB and held in the Lubyanka, an establishing shot ◊ shows a sign pointing to it and the Kremlin, reading "KREMLIИ", and Lubyanka with a backwards K, which isn't even a Cyrillic letter. A later episode has Archer targeted by a KGB hit squad, who he identifies by the presence of backwards Rs on their clothing tags.

    Яeal Life

• The pre-reform orthography for Cuengh (pronounced "Shweng", but more commonly known by the Chinese name Zhuang), a language spoken in Guangxi, China, used a combination of the Latin alphabet, IPA symbols, and Cyrillic and pseudo-Cyrillic letters, including five "tone letters" whose shapes are based on Arabic numerals. The result looks a lot like mock Cyrillic. For example, Cuengh was written as "Cueŋƅ" and the full official name of Guangxi was written as "Gvaŋзsiƅ Bouчcueŋƅ Sɯcigiƅ."
  • Other Real Life example: The Cherokee syllabary, which looks like the illegitimate child of the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Georgian alphabet and l33tsp33k. Sequoyah didn't know the Latin alphabet, so when he assigned sounds to symbols, he had no idea what these symbols meant, which probably explains the occurrence of a 4 (the syllable "se").
• Padonkaffsky jargon, also known as Olbanian, the Russian version of Leet Speak with a Funetik Aksent, which originated in 2004 when an English LiveJournal user couldn't understand a post in Russian, and received the sarcastic reply "Learn Olbanian", joking that the post was written in Albanian. It is formed with the unstressed Cyrillic "o" replaced by an "a" or vice versa, and the Cyrillic "e", "i" and "ya" letters often interchanged for another, and has become a Memetic Mutation, with then-President Dmitry Medvedev jokingly suggesting that Olbanian should be taught in schools. Since the end of 00's, it went out of fashion and is now a Dead Horse Trope.
• Inverted with Volapuk encoding. To write their language using ASCII computers, some Russians used a "faux Latin" transliteration. And yes, this included R as The Backwards Я. ^* Although "91" is also used instead.
• Avoided by post-1993 Russian license plates, which use only the graphemes that look the same in the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, but they are not the same letters and the phonemes are of course different.
• There are several words in Russian languages which look exactly the same both in Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, the most notable being KOMETA (comet).
• Since so many early Soviet consumer electronics were direct ripoffs of Western designs, Russian-language pocket calculators (most notably the programmable Elektronika B3-34) would frequently put "Error" in English if the calculator couldn't make a calculation. Because the letters looked so similar to Cyrillic equivalents with different values, ^* E to "ye", r to "ge", o to... "o" Russians would read the word as "yeggog", and the art of calculator hacking became known as "yeggogologiya" ^* yeggog-ology in Russian.
  • Ironically, this precise series of calculators had exactly nothing to do with any western designs. The designers probably did this out of habit and because the Russian word for error, "ошибка", is nigh impossible to represent on a calculator's 7-segment display.
• "Khyber Pass Specials", hand-made guns (of sometimes dubious quality, due to a lack of quality materials) generally modeled after mass-produced weapons such as Lee-Enfields or AK-47s (both notably used by countries that previously fought in Afghanistan, the British Empire and the Soviet Union), will often feature engravings with Latin-Cyrilic character switches. This isn't so much that they can't tell the difference, but that they often work with incomplete engraving sets and use the closest match they can find.
• British diplomats in Moscow had a running joke among themselves, based on the Russian spelling of the universal word "Restaurant". In Cyrillic letters, this is pronounced much the same way but written "PECTOPAH". The diplomats would amuse themselves by pronouncing it as it was apparently spelt and using it as verb and noun for "evening meal" , ie Shall we pectopah tonight? or I wonder what's for pectopah this evening.
• Some CIA employee thought the cafeteria "substituting a backward R, a 'Ya', for an R" was tacky.
• The February 1990 issue of Playboy magazine featured a pictorial on "The Women of Russia", and the cover displayed the magazine's title as PLAYᗺOY with a backwards letter B — although that character does not actually correspond to any letter of the Russian alphabet.
• Game Revolution's latest logo is a red backwards R circumscribed by a 5-point star.
• The VID mask; according to Wikipedia, the actual Russian spelling of "VID" is not "BИD". As we know and as even Wikipedia noted, that's not exactly what that logo is famous for. While no, this isn't the proper uppercase "D" (it's "Д"), this might be the most acceptable deviation on this page. This two (deceptively different) ways of writing represent the same letter (and it's quite apparent from the way proper handwritten "Д" looks, uppercase letter in the upper-right corner here).
• The People's Republik, a Soviet Russia-themed bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reverses not only the R on its sign but also the L, K, and E in the same word.
• A banner at Manchester United reads, "ЯEPUБLIC OF MAИCUИIA, ЯED AЯMY". Or, to put it another way, "Yaerublis of Maisuiia, Yaed Ayamy". (So at least they got the "Б" right.)
• Due to the 2018 FIFA World Cup being held in Russia, this appeared in various media for their graphics for the tournament (mostly swapping "R" for "Я"). British newspaper The Daily Star went one further by replacing the "O" with "Ф" (as well as the previously mentioned example), therefore meaning they were covering something called the "Wefyarld Cup".
• A South Korean clothing store called Mushinsa has a line of clothing called Johnny Carson, but it is often stylized for some reason as JOHИИЧ CДЯSOИ.
• Harpo Marx toured the Soviet Union in 1933 as a goodwill ambassador. There, he was billed using a Cyrillic transliteration of his name, ХАРПО МАРКС. Being unfamiliar with Russian, he pronounced it as "Exapno Mapcase" even though, being a transliteration, it's pronounced exactly the same as in English.
• At least one production run of an Airfix model kit of the Russian Vostok/Soyuz launch vehicles came with a false-Cyrillic decal for the base, even though anybody building it as a serious model would at least recognize it as such, probably also recognize the correct Cyrillic orthography, and maybe even be able to spell Soyuz, Vostok, and perhaps even Sputnik in Cyrillic.

Иoи-Суяіllіс:

    ΛNIMΣ & MΛNGΛ

• Ayakashi Triangle:
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Episode 14 is titled "YES", but it's spelled with the symbols for the Japanese Yen, the Euro, and the Dollar: ¥€$.
• The language used by the countries of Anatoray and Disith in Last Exile consists of transliterations of English words with Greek and some Cyrillic letters, i.e. the text on the book on the opening screen reads "λαστ εξιλε ιν τηε βοττλε" - "last exile in the bottle". Justified in that it's supposed to be a distant descendant of the languages of Earth rather than an a modern language. And letters are used correctly if you take into account that Latin H comes from Archaic Greek (h)eta.

    CØMIC ßØØKS

• In The Books of Magic, Ancient Greeks talk like this "IN THΣ LДNDS ΘF ΘLIVΣ ДND LДURΣL, WHΣRΣ THΣ GΘDS WДLK" ^* yes, that's an unholy combination of Latin, faux Greek (Σ for E, Θ for O) and faux Cyrillic (Д for A). David Langford was scathing about this, and especially Roger Zelazny's admiration for it in the introduction:

  Maybe it slips by an awful lot of the audience, but how can a savvy chap like Zelazny read this nonsense as other than, roughly, 'In ths ldnds thf thlivs dnd ldursl, whsrs ths gthds wdlk'?

• Another Vertigo Comics book has a logo that reads GRΣΣK STRΣΣT. Grssk strsst?
• In Asterix and the Great Crossing, Viking speech uses Å and Ø instead of A and O. Asterix tries to speak it, but since the Vikings don't understand, he wonders if he put his strikes and little circles over the wrong letters (he put them over E and U instead). Dogmatix, however, has little trouble understanding the "WØØF!" of a Great Dane, who also learns to bark without the accent marks.
  • In Finnish translation of Asterix, the Viking speech uses Å, Æ, and Ø according to the letters' phonetic values instead merely replacing A and O. The corresponding Finnish letters would be O, Ä and Ö. Most Finns know perfectly well which phonems the Danish and Norwegian letters Å, Æ and Ø do represent and how to pronounce them.
  • Asterix once meets a Greek merchant. At least in the Brazilian Portuguese translation, whenever the latter speaks, Greek letters are substituted for Latin ones whenever possible (and all are in a different, Greek-ish font, to boot). However, both characters can understand each other perfectly.
• Pat Lee earned his "Funana" nickname by trying to spell out "Patrick Lee" with Japanese characters that vaguely resemble the English letters therein, resulting in the mess of a name that his detractors use.

    FILMS — LIVξ-ΛζTIΘN

• The poster for My Big Fat Greek Wedding says "GRΣΣK" instead of "GREEK" - therefore meaning that the film was called "My Big Fat Grssk Wedding". The sequel repeats this error.
• The Elektra film has a severe case of fake Greek. You try pronouncing "SLSKTRL" (ΣLΣKTRΛ).
• Airplane II: The Sequel's "ГrаηѕсεηδεηГаζ аіr".
  • Graisseideigaz Air?
• The Enemy of the State title swaps a few assorted symbols for English letters.
• Alexander had some advertising posters where the title was written as "ΛLΣXΛNDΣR", i.e. "LLSXLNDSR". Moreover, "Alexander" is the Latinized version of the name, which was originally "Alexandros" (AΛEΞANΔΡOΣ).
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians sprinkles text in the credits with Greek letters for added effect. This includes replacing A with Λ (lamda, sound "ll"), O with Θ (theta, sound soft "th"), and E with Σ (sigma, sound "ss") although in actual Greek the letters for A, O, and E are A, O, and E respectively. Some letters also get random crossbars, and € and ¥ (euro and yen signs) are even used for E and Y in other instances.
• Early in Kong: Skull Island we see a ship named ΛTHENΛ - probably meant to be read as 'Athena'.
• Quest of the Delta Knights, featured on MST3K, had Archimedes' Red Book titled THΣ RIΘHT WAY (THE RIGHT WAY) which would actually be read as THS RITHHT WAY. Or something. Also note the use of Latin letters such as R and W...

    LITΞRΔTURΞ

• Cloud Castles by Michael Scott Rohan has fake Greek: "Βυγγερ οφφ. Γετ τηισ φαρτινγ χλοχxωορx ηαρπψ οφφ μψ φυχxινγ δεχx. Γυεσσ τηε ωορδ Ι ωανθ ωιτη ψωυ. ^note Bugger off. Get this farting clockwork harpy off my fucking deck. Guess the word I want with you. Not so bad but what has Psi to do with Y? It didn't get translated (it was left as is, English written with Greek letters) in Polish translation...
• Democritus in The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? sometimes speaks "Greek" or English in Greek letters.

    Liνe-Λctiση TV

• Doctor Who: "The Eleventh Hour" has a laptop with a logo that looks like "MΨTH". Again, presumably we're supposed to read this as MYTH, not MPSTÊ.
• The official name of the college show on ABC Family is GRΣΣK. Of course, in the Greek alphabet, the sigma represents S, not an E. How do you pronounce "Grssk" anyway?
• The logo for The Innocents has a line across the "O", making it look like the faux-Norwegian "THE INNØCENTS".
• The title card of Kamen Rider Agito reads KAMEN RIDER AGITΩ, with an Omega instead of the O. Presumably as a reference to "Alpha and Omega" (Agito begins with an A, that could be read as an Alpha, and in each episode's closing shot, only the A and the Ω appear at first before morphing into AGITΩ), since the series is chockful of religious symbolism.
• Stargate uses the Scandinavian letter Å instead of A. Gåte is Norwegian for riddle. The reason for that is that, within the show, Earth's point of origin (the seventh symbol entered on the gate from Earth when dialing) looks like "Å" without the crossbar (it's supposed to represent a pyramid with the sun right above). It's also similar to the point of origin symbol for Abydos in the original film (but with three circles) before the show changed how the dialing worked. For reference, "Å" is pronunced closer to the letter O in English, resulting in the Atlantis Expedition actually being the Atlontis Expedition. ^note For the curious, the Norwegian and Danish letter Æ actually matches the English pronunciation of A in most cases, but Ætlæntis doesn't look as cool

    Mμsiζ

• Dream Theater's logo, which looks almost like this: DREΛM·THEλTER
• The cover for Noxious Emotion's Symbols depicts the band name and album title in faux Greek letters.
• Enter Shikari's logo during their "Common Dreads" era, which was mostly Greek characters, appeared as ΣΠTΣ℞ SHᶲKΔ℞ᶲ.
• The poster for Madonna's "Can't Stop Esther" tour was filled with faux-Hebrew, with many letters turned around or mangled in order to stand for latin characters.
• The Score (the band behind motivational songs like Unstoppable and Revolution) like this. The letter A in their 2017 album Atlas are replaced with Greek lambdas, which make the title spell out "LTLLS". This even continues in promotion of the single Legend from the same album, which replace both Es with sigmas, spelling out "LSGSND".
• µThunder, which according to his channel URL, is short for Uncharged Thunder.
• The cover of the Enigma album "The Fall of a Rebel Angel" has the group's name rendered in a mixture of Greek and Cyrillic, as "ΣИΙGΜΛ" (the I could be Latin or Greek, the G is Latin, the M could be any of the three) — or in Latin characters, "SIIGML".
• The B of the word Bach in Montreal Bach Festival's logo is replaced with a musical clef that does look like a fancy letter B, but which actually is a C-clef, which is, as its name indicates, a letter C that has evolved into a stylised shape over the centuries. Welcome to Montreal Cach Festival!
• The Norwegian comedy group Kollektivet has an entire song about the Norwegian (and Danish) letters &A Elig;, Ø and Å.

  Suck my &A Elig;-Ø-Å
  You ain't got the &A Elig;ØÅ

    Гabletσρ ζames

• Elysium, a game based on Greek mythology, has its title rendered on the box art as "ΞLΨSΦUΜ", or "Kslpssfum". In this case, the designer was obviously going out of their way to use exotic-looking letters, since the Greek alphabet has letters Ε, Υ, and Ι that weren't used.

    Viδeσ ζames

• The Half-Life logo uses the Greek letter lambda instead of an A. The lambda represents "L", so it would be read as "HLLF LIFE". This wasn't based on lamba's use as letter, but in science to represent the radioactivity decay constant. It also looks somewhat like an arm holding a crowbar.
• The Wii allows Greek letters when naming a Mii. Many players use the Greek letters for this trope. For example, a Mii going online for Mario Kart Wii might be named "ρlαγεr" (rlager) rather than "player". The Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U allow both Greek and Cyrillic letters, though fewer players seem to be using them.
• Tachyon: The Fringe's cover art replaced the 'o' in 'tachyon' with the Greek letter omega (Ω).
• Blood Stone has Greek letters interchanged for English ones. For example, the opening sequences lists the city you're in as "ΛTHΣNδ", which would actually read "LTESNd" instead of "ATHENS." ^note If you're curious, the correct Greek spelling of "Athens" is "Αθήνα".
• In The Banner Saga a mix of fake and real runes on the map to make it look Norse. The real runes are often misused, however, such as Ur (ᚢ) being used as an N and Lögr (ᛚ) being reversed. This makes the text more readable without knowledge of Germanic runes than with it.
• When Nintendo created Waluigi, they used the same trick when they created Wario, and flip the first letter of the original character's name for his cap. This means that Waluigi wears "Γ" (gamma) on his cap.
• Probably this trope's only Hungarian Rovás (runic) alphabet example, Silent Hill has the Halo of the Sun with "Alessa Dahlia Incubas Alizer" witten on it using Rovás. However, the Rovás letters directly correspond to sounds in Hungarian, rather than to Latin letters, so the inscription actually reads "Aleshsha Dakhlia Intsubash Alizer".

    ωeb Ληimatiση

• Red vs. Blue uses Ξ (Xi) in place of "e" for the title card of Reconstruction. The series has AIs named after Greek letters throughout, but none of the ones mentioned are named Xi
• Used with tongue firmly planted in cheek at Kiotr.net, a fansite devoted to the X-Men's canon pairing of Kitty Pryde and Peter Rasputin.

    ωebcσmics

• The Language of Magic in Arthur, King of Time and Space is English written in Greek letters. However, it uses them more-or-less correctly (the most obvious exception being using "τͱ" for "θ"), since the purpose is to conceal what the Parody Magic Spells are Shout Outs to, and is probably done by typing normally in the MS Symbol font.
• Foundation - The Psychohistorians: The title page displays FOUNDATION as FOVNDATION, replacing the u with a v to look Roman (the Roman alphabet was basically ours but without "U" or "W"). The "u"s of the University and Supreme Court are similarly replaced.

    ωesterη Åηimatiση

• The Amazing World of Gumball, in the episode "The Refund", attempts to do an Asian version with a Fictional Video Game titled something similar to "Cyberground 丹太丁丁乚モ ^* BATTLE II", somewhat beyond a mere Foreign-Looking Font. Unsurprisingly, nonsense when taken at face value ^{To elaborate} Google Translation: Dan too Tintin Yin holds an

  • 丹 (Mandarin: dān, Japanese: tan/ni) = (medicine) tablet, pellet or pill; (color) red; (mineral) cinnabar
  • 太 (tài, tai/ta/futo) = big, great, grand; extremely; too, too much
  • 丁 (dīng, chou/tei/chin/tou/chi/hinoto) = man; population, members of a family; cube; the fourth of the ten Heavenly stems; a surname; fourth
  • 乚 (yǐn, in/on/kaku) = hidden, mysterious, secret; to conceal; small, minute; variant form of the Kang Xi radical 乙
  • モ (mo) = Japanese katakana for the syllable "mo"

  .

Monsters University combines this with Fun with Acronyms, with some Puns mixed in, for several fraternities and sororities' names. Examples include RΩR (Roar Omega Roar), JΘX (Jaws Theta Chi) and ΣΣK (Slugma Slugma Kappa).

    尺乇卂乚 乚工下乇

• You can find a number of frat-themed t-shirts out there which misuse Greek letters. How about a bottle of BSSG ◊? Dthss thphs shphrt mlks ms lththk grlt? ◊
• There is a beauty parlour on Wandsworth Road, London, which has rendered part of its sign in pseudo-Greek as "Ναιλσ" (Nails). However, whoever did this clearly doesn't know about Greek sigma cases; even if this is a Greek word, it should in any case be "Ναιλς". ^note Sigma has two lowercase forms, one for the end of a word.
• The logo of electronics maker Rapoo. It barely looks like Latin script and more like Greek, in which case it reads "GLROO".
• Some "Greek yogurt" products do this. Cue amusement at seeing "Peach" spelled as "PSLCH".
• South Korea sells a variety of yogurt called γορα ◊, complete with TV commercials of people dancing around and yelling "Yopa" instead of "gora", which is what it would be in Greek.
• The torrent client µtorrent is placed in folders called uTorrent. Depending on who you ask, it's pronounced "you-torrent" (the "official" pronunciation insofar as the one preferred by the creator), "micro-torrent" (as in the metric prefix), "mu-torrent" (as in the µ letter, pronounced "mu"), "my-torrent" (in Sweden, where µ is pronounced "my") or "me-torrent" (in Greece, where µ is pronounced "me").
• Sequoyah invented the Cherokee syllabary partially based on the English alphabet, but as he did not read English, he arbitrarily assigned Latin letters to sounds. It has characters such as Ꭰ (read "a"), Ꮋ (read "mi"), Ꮪ (read "du") and Ꮞ (read "se"). And the native name of the people and their language is ᏣᎳᎩ ("tsa-la-gi").
• The nearly-extinct Coptic Language is written using the Coptic script. Like Cyrillic, it is based on Greek script, so it can be used for this trope too. Here is an example from Reddit:

  Ⲓ ⲥⲁⲛⲧ ⲝⲣⲉⲁⲕ ⲥⲟⲣⲧⲓⲥ, ⲃⲙⲧ Ⲓ ⲓⲟⲗⲉ ⲓⲧⲝ ⲁⲅⲣⲏⲁⲃⲉⲧ. Ⲯⲉⲝ Ⲓ ⲕⲛⲟϣ ⲧⲏⲓⲝ ⲓⲝ ⲡⲛⲣⲅⲟⲛⲟⲡⲛⲥⲁⲃⲓⲉ, ⲃⲙⲧ ⲏⲉⲯ ⲓⲧ ⲓⲟⲟⲕⲝ ⲥⲟⲟⲓ ⲁⲛⲇ ⲧⲏⲉ ⲁⲓⲣⲏⲁⲃⲉⲧ ⲏⲁⲝ ⲁⲛ ⲁⲙⲁⲍⲓⲛϥ ⲏⲓⲝⲧⲟⲅⲯ. Ⲧⲉⲥⲏⲛⲓⲥⲁⲓⲓⲯ ⲥⲟⲣⲧⲓⲥ ⲓⲝ ⲝⲧⲓⲓⲓ ⲁ ⲝⲣⲟⲕⲉⲛ ⲓⲁⲛϥⲡⲁϥⲉ, ⲃⲡⲧ ⲛⲟⲧ ⲥⲁ ⲛⲁⲧⲓⲗⲉ ⲓⲁⲛϥⲡⲁϥⲉ, ⲧⲓⲙⲉ ⲧⲟ ⲥⲏⲁⲛϥⲉ ⲧⲏⲁⲧ ⲓ ⲝⲁⲯ!

• The Mapo District in Seoul redesigned their logo, but stylized Mapo as ΜΛΡΩ, which in Greek would be MLRO on them in Greek.

---

Alternative Title(s): Mock Cyrillic, Faux Cyrillic, Backwards R, Tetris R

Symbol Like a J and Backwards J Back to Back

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBackwardsR

Share this post