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"I see this guy Marty tryin' to carry a big ol' sofa up the stairs all by himself. So I, I say to him, I say 'Hey, you want me to help you with that?' And Marty, he just rolls his eyes and goes Noooo, I want you to cut off my arms and legs with a chainsaw!' —Weird Al Yankovic, Albuquerque
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... and you'll Get a Stupid Answer.
You know how obnoxious Captain Obvious can be. You just want to yell at them and say, "Any blind idiot can tell what's going on!" But then there are those Captains Obvious who can not only tell what is going on, but ask a stupid question just to verify.
This is not only when that question is asked, but to the frustrated individual this is their chance to strike back with a non-sequitur, either in a Deadpan Snarker retort or full on Mind Screw confusion. A specific variation of Sarcasm Mode.
While examples on this page are of In-Universe instances of this type of exchange, this is certainly a staple of MS Ting by pointing out where people are being oblivious to their dialogue (or being repetitive in them). For example: "This is a map to Hammunaptra." "The Hammunaptra?" "No, the one in Jersey."
Bill Engvall's "Here's Your Sign" routine was dedicated to these exchanges. Mad Magazine also had a section called Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions written by Al Jaffee.
Of course, if you decide to avert the inevitable sarcastic retort by not seeking explicit confirmation that your friend with the house full of boxes is actually moving, nine times out of ten it will turn out (after a generous helping of Poor Communication Kills) that he is just having the house fumigated.
An attempt to maneuver someone into asking a stupid question for the purpose of delivering a snappy answer is What's a Henway? When the stupid answer is, in fact, correct, it's Don't Be Ridiculous.
Comedy[]
- While the overall premise of Bill Engvall's recurring "Here's Your Sign" routine is that stupid people should wear signs advertising the fact, his experiences in encountering people who qualify often take this form.
Comic Books[]
- Peter David likes these. For example, this exchange from Madrox, after Jamie was knocked unconscious and has now woken up, clearly in the same room with the same people:
Jamie Madrox: How long was I out? |
Comic Strips[]
- Garfield
- When Jon first meets Liz:
Jon: By the way there, doc, what's your name? |
- In another strip:
Jon: Are you going to sleep all day, Garfield? |
- Don't Some People Ask the Biggest Fool Questions? uses this trope extensively. In one example, Gerald is building a dog house:
Man walking by: Hello, Gerald, building a dog house? |
Fan Works[]
- In Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, there are a number of cases:
- "Seriously, who reads this stuff?" "You."
- When told that a sixth-year Gryffindor had deliberately cast a Dark curse on a sixth-year Slytherin - a curse he knew nothing about except that it was "for enemies" - Harry is unable to stop himself from asking "Are you serious?" No, Quirrell is in a bad mood today for no reason.
- When Bellatrix Black incredulously says "I'm... alive...?", Harry is tempted to say "no" just to see how she reacts.
- In Through a Looking Glass Darkly, Jack provides some choice answers.
Jellybean: Did you have that on you the entire time? |
- Dragon Ball Abridged episode 14: Freeza and his thugs are attacking the Namekian village holding one of the planet's Dragon Balls.
Namekian: What do you want from us? Why are you slaughtering our people? |
Films — Animation[]
- Occurs twice in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, both times with the title character talking to Benny the Cab: "Benny, is that you?" "No, it's Eleanor Roosevelt!", and later "No, it's Shirley Temple!"
- From Chicken Run:
Mr. Tweedy: What is it? |
Films — Live-Action[]
- In the Flemish movie Moscow, Belgium, Matty is calling to her daughter from the bathroom.
Vera: Mom, are you taking a bath? |
- Then there's this exchange in Analyze This:
Paul Vitti: I couldn't get it up last night. |
- From the sequel:
Jelly: Can you handle [a gun]? |
Reporter: What, Hildy, you still here? |
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is absolutely ridden with this trope, coming from several characters, though it's a particular specialty of Gay Perry. For example, after Harry finds a corpse dumped in his room:
Perry: OK, first thing's first: we gotta move her somewhere. You got gloves? |
Fake Santa: That'll be 200. |
Hanks: The president of what? |
- In Live Free or Die Hard, John McClane pulls off a particularly badass stunt to throw off his pursuers while protecting Matt Farrell
Farrell: Did you see that!? |
- The Dude of The Big Lebowski is a master of this.
Treehorn's Thug: (holding a bowling ball) What's this? |
- A conversation about Dottie's husband in A League of Their Own:
Jimmy Dugan: Does he know how good you are? |
- Occurs in one of the few moments of levity in Changeling when reporters bombard Gordon Northcott with questions as he is dragged into custody by the LAPD.
Reporter: How did you avoid capture? |
Literature[]
- The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy
- Zaphod is asked if he's THE Zaphod Beeblebrox. "No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox. Haven't you heard, we come in six packs?".
- Zaphod does this a lot, but it's especially heavy in that episode. Right after that:
Receptionist: But sir, I umm, it was on the sub-ether radio this morning, er... it... er... said you were dead. |
- Animorphs, during a time-travel scenario involving George Washington crossing the Delaware:
Rachel: No way. George Washington? |
- In Magic Strikes, Kate Daniels is in a strange kitchen trying to make coffee, only someone has rearranged all the labels on the containers so she can't find anything.
"Looking for something?" Dali came up from the hallway. |
- Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds: Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. Watson how one of the invading machines was going after him. Watson exclaims "And you escaped!", to which Holmes replies "No, Watson. I was caught and killed by the machines."
- Welkin Weasels: Heastward Ho!
"Catching up on our reading, are we?" |
- In the Agatha Christie novel Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, a boy comes across a scene with a wrecked car whose front-end is smashed into a stone wall with an injured woman hanging halfway out of the car. The boy asks, "Has there been an accident?" prompting another character to say, "No, the lady ran her car into the wall on purpose." Though as a matter of fact, the lady did run her car into the wall on purpose.
- The Dark Tower book Wizard and Glass has a villain ask his second-in-command how many of their men are armed. The second asks, "With guns?" prompting the villain to reply, "No, with pea-blowers, you damned fool."
- Referenced but averted in the Discworld short story "The Sea and Little Fishes". When Granny Weatherwax is trying to be "nice", Nanny is surprised to see her looking at a pink cardigan. Nanny's reaction is "You're not going to wear that, are you?" She would have been reassured to get the reply "No, I'm going to eat it, you daft old fool", but instead Granny just says "You don't think it would suit me?"
- From Rivers of London, when Peter compares magic to jazz:
Peter: You know how jazz is all about improvising on a melody? |
Live-Action TV[]
- From Corner Gas when Brent walks into Oscar and Emma's living room while they're putting up Christmas decorations:
Brent: Whoa, what are you doing? |
- House
- The title character is of course a repeat offender:
Cuddy: Chase and Cameron are together? |
- And in "House Divided", when he comes into the O.R. wearing Cool Shades and holding a boombox playing "Fight the Power":
Foreman: What are you doing? |
- In "Euphoria":
House: There's a bullet in his head. |
- The Golden Girls
- Dorothy is made of this kind of sarcasm.
Dorothy: Have you ever given a eulogy? |
- One memorable incident has Rose give it back.
Dorothy: (seeing Rose coming out of her room with a bucket in each hand) Oh Rose. Is your roof leaking too? |
- Another Dorothy moment:
Dorothy: It's dirty dancing, just like in that movie. |
- From the Frasier episode, "Martin Does it His Way":
Frasier: Roz, that was quite a flattering description. Just out of curiosity, were you just helping that lady with her fantasy, or do you really see me that way? |
- The West Wing
- Repeatedly on , mainly by C.J. in response to moronic press questions, but everyone else as well:
Mandy: Who was the last president to commute a [death] sentence? |
- And another:
C.J.: There's an article I want you to read in the New Yorker. |
- ICarly
- In "iQuit iCarly", Spencer enters singing and dancing with joy:
Spencer: I won the boat! I won the boat! I won the boooat! |
- And also this:
Carly: iCarly. |
- And this:
Carly: What's the temperature in here? |
- NCIS: None of the photographs were picked up by Abby's facial recognition software.
McGee: You ran all the faces? |
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- In one episode, Dawn finds her sister sitting on her bed, reading a magazine and asks:
Dawn: What are you doing? |
- In the episode "When She Was Bad":
Xander: Hey, did you guys hear that Cibo Matto is going to be at the Bronze tonight? |
- Used epically in an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, after Dick learned his girlfriend slept with his nemesis Dr. Strudwick once.
Dick: I can't get his face out of my mind! |
- Friends
- In one episode, Joey is upset at his co-star Wayne, who is about to have him fired:
Wayne: Joey, I'll get you your job back if you help me out. |
- Chandler did this a lot. After calling his Girl of the Week:
Chandler: I got her machine. |
- When they're playing poker and Rachel wants to leave:
Chandler: Rach, Rach, we gotta settle. |
- In Sherlock, after the police find a dead woman who has scratched "RACHE" into the floorboards with her fingernails:
Lestrade: So she was writing 'Rachel'? |
- To those who have read the original Sherlock Holmes short story upon which this episode is based (A Study in Scarlet), this is a gloriously subversive application of this trope—since in the story, the police believe they are looking for a "Rachel" before Holmes points out that "Rache" is German for "Revenge", which proves decisive.
- In The Jack Benny Program, Jack can't get a busy receptionist to talk to him, so he calls her from one of the other phones on her desk. She says Mr. Lewis isn't available, but she can have him call Jack back...
Receptionist: Are you at home, or are in you in Palm Springs? |
- Doctor Who
- "Amy's Choice":
Dream Lord: If you die in the dream world, you wake up in reality. [...] Ask me what happens if you die in reality. |
- Later in "Let's Kill Hitler":
Rory: Okay, I'm trapped inside a giant robot replica of my wife. I'm really trying not to see this as a metaphor. |
- In The Shakespearian Code
Martha: (thinking about Harry Potter) You mean the films? |
Rimmer: Lister, is that a cigarette you're smoking? |
Music[]
- The song "Foolish Questions".
- Referenced (although not a true example of the trope) in Tom Lehrer's "New Math" while explaining how to solve a math problem in Base Eight:
Now instead of four in the eights place |
Puppet Shows[]
- Used in Muppets in Space, when Gonzo sits upright in bed quickly, accidentally launching Rizzo the Rat out the window.
Gonzo: (hearing Rizzo climbing back in) Is that you, Rizzo? |
Tabletop Games[]
- Paranoia supplement "Acute Paranoia", adventure "Outland-ISH". The Troubleshooters try to find out the source of a drug affecting ISH sector by questioning the residents.
Troubleshooter: How did all these people get drugged? |
Web Animation[]
Church-in-Sarge's-body: Uhh... Who ya talking to red? Me? |
- And another one...
Grif: Fuck off, Blue, a ship just crashed on one of our guys. |
- The classic one...
Donut: What state were you named after? |
Web Comics[]
- In Holiday Wars, "Ask a Stupid Question" is personified as a character who only speaks with stupid questions. An example of this can be seen here.
- Penny Arcade
- This strip.
- Also this one.
- The Order of the Stick: Elan asks a lot of stupid questions to which Roy gives snarky answers.
- In an Arthur, King of Time and Space strip, Merlin responds to Lancelot's "Do you think this is wise?" with "Why, no. I woke up this morning and decided to do the least wise thing that occured to me."
Web Original[]
- Not Always Right. Good God.
- And in a similar vein, this post from the Live Journal community "customers_suck".
Western Animation[]
- A backwards example where Skipper gets sick of a stupid answer and returns with a stupid question happens in The Penguins of Madagascar, Sting Operation.
Skipper: What do you make of it, Kowalski? |
- Justice League Unlimited
- Solomon Grundy gives Superman a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that involves—among other things—punching him through several buildings, smashing him between two cars, and tossing him through the supports of a suspension bridge. After that last one, Superman climbs out onto a pier, not only bruised and battered but dripping wet as well, and:
- Although in fairness to Green Lantern, sometimes Superman will just shrug that off like it's nothing.
- A variant when Batman and GL are chasing a villain through a time tunnel:
Green Lantern: No-one can see the beginning of time! It's a universal law! |
- In the Elefun and Friends short "A Tangled Tale", Elefun follows a kite string all the way to China, where he and his friends see a panda trying to launch herself across a river using a piece of bamboo. The bamboo gets stuck halfway, leaving her dangling and leading to this conversation:
Elefun: Whatcha doing? |
- Jimmy Two-Shoes, Beezy on Heloise's new machine:
Beezy: What is this, dandruff? |
- A Running Gag in Danny Phantom would be one of the characters falling, being attacked, thrown or mauled. Cue someone else asking uselessly:
"Are you okay?" |
- Happens twice in quick succession in the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "Over a Barrel":
Rainbow Dash: Pinkie Pie, you asleep yet? |
- Animaniacs, episode "Temporary Insanity". The Warners are fighting to answer the phone first, causing Mr. Plotz's office (and Mr. Plotz himself) to be wrapped in a telephone cord.
Mr. Plotz: When will all this insanity end?! |
- From Beast Wars:
Cheetor, recently having gotten a flying Mid-Season Upgrade he's itching to use: You mean fly? |
- From Rocky and Bullwinkle:
Natasha: Boris, did you get blown up by your own bomb again? |
- That last one is a slight subversion, as he isn't being sarcastic, just rueful.
- The animated Punky Brewster episode "Growing Pain" has Glomer growing in size due to an allergy to pepperoni pizza. He is taken to a gym where he attempts to use a weights machine but is catapulted back and wedged within the bars of the machine:
Punky: Glomer, are you okay? |