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"Celestia might banish you from Equestria! Or throw you in a dungeon! Or banish you, and then throw you in a dungeon in the place that she banishes you to!" —Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "A Bird in the Hoof"
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A sub-department of the Department of Redundancy Department that produces lists. While listing pretty much anything, the third item (typically the third, as per Rule of Three, but it can be longer) on the list will be a combination of two or more previous items. Sometimes, this makes sense. Sometimes, it's just confusing, or outright impossible, or impossibly confusing, or quite possibly confusingly impossible.
Sometimes this happens as a consequence of Stereo Fibbing.
This is almost always played for laughs, and prone to creating Ninja Pirate Zombie Robots. ("Zombies? Werewolves? Ghosts? Haunted werezombies?" etc.)
Compare Shaped Like Itself and Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick.
Not related to "Scotch Egg" a Web Animation created by Weebl's Stuff in salute to actual breaded eggs.
Advertising[]
- It's a pillow... it's a pet... It's a Pillowpet!
- Chunky's a soup! It's a meal! It's the soup that eats like a meal!
- In one of Anthony Sullivan's commercials for some cleaning product, as he was cleaning the carpet, he said the stuff he was using was good, "if you have kids, if you have animals, if you have kids that act like animals."
- In a Reese's candy commercial that was airing on several cable channels in July 2019, the announcer muses, "Cups. Chips. Cups with chips!"
Anime and Manga[]
- In one episode of Soul Eater, Death the Kid realizes that a person he assumed was a tourist is actually a witch, then wonders if she wasn't a witch tourist.
Comic Books[]
- Gear: The cats are dismayed to discover that Gear is not very smart.
Cat soldier 1: He's not a hero... he's dumb! |
- In Don Rosa's Uncle Scrooge story "Cash Flow", a bank of switches on the money bin's security system allow for the release of "Big Dogs", "Mean Dogs", and "Big, Mean Dogs".
- A variant, of sorts, occurs in the Darkwing Duck comic. Darkwing encounters, at various points in a storyline, guard dogs, guard flamingos, and guard dogs riding guard flamingos.
- In another instance, Negaduck recites a shopping list consisting of "chainsaws, flamethrowers, flaming chainsaw-throwers..."
- In the Kingdom of Loathing comic, Jill's dad tells her to not talk to "boys, or strangers, or strange boys".
- In a What the Duck comic, a duck attempts to find the right camera setting. In addition to several other settings, there's "Moving Water mode, Pregnant Woman mode, Pregnant Woman In Moving Water mode..."
Fan Works[]
- The fanfic Desperately Seeking Ranma has a moment when, in a Shout-Out to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Nabiki muses on "the things, the people, and the things that are also people" she's seen during her vacation off Earth.
- The Team Fortress 2 video End of the Line has a kitten store, an orphanage, and a kitten orphanage.
Film[]
- In a scene in Scary Movie 4 parodying The War of the Worlds, Tom is discussing the alien invasion with a man holed up in house. Then the man throws this line out there:
This ain't a war, anymore than there's a war between men and maggots. Or, dragons and wolves. Or, men riding dragons, throwing wolves at maggots. |
- In Up in Smoke, Cheech tells a border guard that he and Chong have been in Mexico "A week. I mean a day," before settling on "a weekday."
- Pirates of the Caribbean:
"Shoot him!" |
- Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. Kage orders the fried chicken, the steak, and the chicken-fried steak.
- Dodgeball has this when White Goodeman introduces his dodgeball team.
"Blade... Laser... Blazer..." |
- Also lampshaded near the end with a character remarking, "They got Razor, Tazer, a whole bunch of 'azers"
- Dog Soldiers: "Spiders. And women. And... spider-women."
- When Pike brothers in Blind Fury realize that things are going to go very wrong, they give us this response:
Lyle: Shit! |
Bill: This armor's heavy. |
- "They're Zombies!" "No! They're strippers!" *Ka-click!* "No, they're Zombie Strippers!"
- In Walk Hard, Dewey is seen in rehab while his nurse is asking for blankets to give him. First, she asks for more blankets. Then, she asks for less blankets. Then, she asks for more blankets and less blankets.
- From Kung Pow! Enter the Fist:
Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for killing. Like badwrong, or... badong. Yes, killing is badong. |
- From the original Arthur:
Arthur: Hot baths are wonderful. Girls are wonderful! |
Rhodey: Why do you sound out of breath? |
Andy: Everybody and their mums is packing 'round 'ere. |
- The Last Sharknado: It's About Time:
Girl: Tornado! |
Literature[]
- In one of the Nightside books, Pew is searching through his occult equipment for a healing spell: "Dowsing rod, pickled penis, dowsing rod made from a pickled penis ..."
- A staple of Dave Barry's numerous lists. He generally has a list of three or four things, starts mixing and matching two at a time, and culminates with all of them together.
- In the children's book The Pirate and the Penguin, the eponymous penguin complains that the south pole is boring, so his friends remind him of all the fun things there are to do, like daydreaming, yoga, and daydreaming about yoga.
- In an essay from his book When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris discusses the kinds of people who buy different cigarette brands. Camels, in his view, were for "procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry."
- In Zen Ghosts, Karl can't decide whether to be a pirate or an owl for Halloween. Stillwater, his panda friend, suggests going as an owl-pirate, but Michael protests that there's no such thing. Though not mentioned in the story, the illustrations show that Karl took Stillwater's advice.
- Isaac Asimov was often criticized for the absence of extraterrestrial life and sexuality in his works. So he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens, sex and alien sex.
- In the Discworld book Wyrd Sisters, the witches are forced to kidnap the infant prince and give him to a troupe of travelling actors. The problem is, they don't know his name. When asked, Granny says "Tom", Nanny says "Jon", and Granny covers it up by saying it's "Tomjon".
- In Harold's Fairy Tale, Harold encounters an enchanted garden that's barren. The king tells him this is due either to a witch or a giant, but he doesn't know which. Harold later finds that the trouble is being caused by a giant witch.
- Hank the Cowdog:
Drover: She had pretty brown eyes... |
Live-Action TV[]
- In The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Zack and Cody enter high school and Cody notices the posters for clubs: chess club, robotics club, robots-who-play-chess club. "Checkmate," he says in his impression of a robot.
- The Daily Show
"Pot! Gay Marriage! Gay-pot-marriage!" |
- From Friends, Joey talks about how he wants girls, but also wants sandwiches. He decides he wants girls on bread.
- When listing off the number of categories of towels Monica has, Joey and Chandler note that she has "fancy", "guest", and "fancy guest."
- House, Season 7 Episode 8: "You don't want to propose at a wedding; emotions running high, people on edge. You want to try somewhere like a Buddhist temple. Or an aquarium. Or a Buddhist aquarium."
- On Mock the Week:
Frankie Boyle: I get you a boy, Brown, I get you a girl, I get you a boy/girl! Four arms, four legs, it's like making love to a man spider! |
- From Drake and Josh we have when they wanted to know Megan's next prank
Josh: It could be explosives! |
- When Lewbert resumes his position as the doorman in iCarly, Spencer shows him what he missed.
Spencer: Okay, I've separated your phone calls into three categories. Death threats, from your mother... and death threats from your mother. |
- When Kenan and Kel found the map for a treasure.
Kenan: Think about it Kel, it can have gold, or coins, OR GOLD COINS! |
- Monty Python's Flying Circus:
- "Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam..."
- Upon discovering a dead bishop on the landing, a family considers calling the church or the police before calling the Church Police.
- From The Colbert Report: the Kennedy assassination, Bigfoot, why Bigfoot assassinated Kennedy...
- On another episode, leading up to his interview with Maurice Sendak: "Anybody who knows me knows that I don't like children, or books, or children's books."
- With Jimmy Fallon: "Remember that time we rode that bicycle built for two? Remember that time we rode that ferris wheel? Remember that time we rode that bicycle built for two on that ferris wheel?
- During one segment of "Threatdown", Stephen listed the top five threats as robots, bears, robots, bears, and robot bears.
- On Game of Thrones, Tyrion asks Bronn what he wants. "Gold? Women? Golden women?"
- On another episode, Tyrion says, "We've had vicious kings, and we've had idiot kings, but I don't know if we've ever been cursed with a vicious idiot."
- On Married... with Children, when Al mistakes a random scientific concoction of Kelly's for shampoo, it gives him a full head of hair. Upon seeing himself in the mirror, he proclaims "I'm a hunk! I'm a dude! I'm a hunky dude!"
- On That '70s Show, when Red recalls the moment he used "dumbass" for the first time.
Red: I mean, he's kind of... he's an ass. And he's dumb. He's a... (Angelic Chorus) ...dumbass! |
- Wheel of Fortune On one episode, there was a contestant who could imitate Forrest Gump, and another who could imitate The Road Runner. Host Pat Sajak then asked the former to imitate Forrest Gump as the Road Runner. He did.
- The categories used on the show. Among them are Fictional Character, Family and Fictional Family.
- Look Around You takes the trope as far as possible with the Anti-Cobbles cream, which contains cream, potassium, nitrates, potassium nitrates, and nitrate of potassium nitrate.
- The Nine Lives of Chloe King has Alek talking about the effects of the Mai's poison:
"Paralysis, death, paralysis and death." |
- One Monk episode has the titular character in a panic to get rid of his multiple phobias upon finding out his insurance company won't cover individual therapy sessions anymore. The first three phobias he lists are "Bees", "Blenders" and "Bees in Blenders".
- Big Time Rush
Carlos: It's like a vacation! With singing! It's a sing-cation! |
- In a later episode, James tries to bribe Carlos...
James: I'll get you a monkey! |
- One of the Leverage promo videos for season 2 features the writers' room Jumping the Shark in the most ridiculous way possible. One of the writers lists all the important points they want to hit: "Zombies, aliens, babies, and zombie alien babies."
- On M*A*S*H, after Klinger shows Col. Blake a letter he claimed to receive announcing that his father was dying, Blake produces a stack of (equally fake) letters that Klinger had produced in the past:
"Father dying, last year. Mother dying, last year. Mother and father dying. Mother, father and older sister dying. Mother dying and older sister pregnant. Older sister dying and mother pregnant. Younger sister pregnant and older sister dying. Here's an oldie but a goodie: half of the family dying, other half pregnant." |
So what are you guys fighting today? Vampires? Zombies? Zompires? |
- From Laverne and Shirley:
"We know what the people want: They want SEX! They want VIOLENCE! They want VIOLENT SEX! They want SEXY VIOLENCE! They want VIOLENCY SEX! ...I'm getting hot." |
- From an episode of Castle:
Beckett: What was so special about our victim that our killer wanted to erase his identity... ? Don't say spy. beat Or mob hit. |
- Conan O'Brien recently[when?] referred to YouTube channels as being "cats", "people getting hit in the nuts", and "cats getting hit in the nuts". Andy Richter quickly added "people getting hit in the nuts with cats".
- The DVD blurb for Top Gear At the Movies begins with "Cars! Film! Cars on film! Film involving cars! You get the idea."
- A.N.T. Farm: When Chyna is trying to decide what dance to do, she asks Cameron whether to do the dougie, the robot, or dougie the robot.
- The Fast Show:
"Do you like cheese? Do you like peas? Then you'll love these! The brand new cheesy-peas!" |
- In an episode of Wings, when Lowell is informed his boat was sunk:
"My house? My boat? My houseboat?" |
- Malcolm in the Middle, when Reese tampered with Malcolm's chemistry experiment and created a new color by combining blue with yellow and decided to call it "blellow" (green).
- Honorable Mention goes to The Electric Company, whose iconic silhouetted-faces bit takes this trope to the phonetic level. "Th." "Ing." "Thing." "Br." "Ing." "Bring." And so on.
- On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy and Willow are debating whether or not to celebrate Thanksgiving:
Buffy: It is a sham. But it's a--sham with yams. It's a yam sham! |
- On Dead Like Me, Daisy describing George to George's (Millie's) co-workers:
Daisy: I'm looking for a girl. She's about yay big, brown eyes, pretty... angry... pretty angry, actual—Oh! That's her. |
Magazines[]
- One Rolling Stone magazine's review on Kylie Minogue's X says she has "songs about sex, dancing and sexed-up dancing."
Music[]
- From Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant":
"Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the Army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly-looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers!" |
- The spoken middle section of The Foremen's "Hard Time to Be a Man":
"Now, this bar graph represents the thought processes of the average American male in 1957. We see, in descending order of importance: sex, sports, cars, and sex in sports cars." |
- In their famous "Four Chord Song" sketch, Axis of Awesome take a line from Five For Fighting's "Superman (It's Not Easy)" — "I'm more than a bird, I'm more than a plane"—and instead of continuing, follow up with "I'm a birdplane!"
- This is actually part of a song of their own (a parody of Superman) known, fittingly, as "Birdplane".
- "Somethin' 'Bout a Truck" by Kip Moore. Each verse begins "Somethin' 'bout a…" (truck, beer, girl, kiss), and then the chorus begins, "Somethin' ' bout a truck in a field / And a girl in a red sundress with an ice cold beer to her lips / Begging for another kiss".
Newspaper Comics[]
- In one Garfield strip:
Garfield: Oh no, a wrinkle! Oh no, a gray hair! OH NO, A WRINKLED GRAY HAIR!!! |
- Another:
Jon: Good coffee... hot coffee... gooooooood hot coffee. |
- A Bloom County strip has a salesman from the Universally United Writer's Bunch Syndicate offering comic strips to Opus, who was working at the Bloom Beacon:
I got what you want! Strips about divorce! Strips about babies! Strips about plumbers! Strips about Divorced Baby Plumbers! |
- In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin is talking about his difficulty in deciding on a hobby. He couldn't choose between collecting stamps or collecting bugs, so he decided to collect stamped bugs.
- Used in a Curtis strip:
Mom: I'm thinking about doing something different. |
- Beetle Bailey: Zero observes that Beetle appears to be crying. Killer says that he must just have the flu, because he's too tough to be crying. Beetle says that anyone would cry if they had such a bad flu as his.
- Doctor Fun in "Caution: cartoonist at work":
Cartoonist: Yuppies! Cats! Dead cats! Dead cat yuppies! 101 uses for a dead cat yuppy! |
Professional Wrestling[]
- The opening lines of Super Crazy's entrance music during his WWE tenure: "I am super! I am crazy! I am Super Crazy!"
Tabletop Games[]
- In one of the Babylon 5 RPG sourcebooks, a trader from the pacifistic and community-oriented Abbai race is explaining why she always checks the cargo she's hired to carry thoroughly: because there might be something "awful" in there..."Like weapons, or drugs. Or weapons and drugs!"
- One Shadowrun sourcebook contains a section on "Armor and Clothing". The first sub-section in the next page is "Armored Clothing".
Theater[]
- Older Than Steam: A variation turns up in Hamlet:
Polonius: The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral... |
There is a frog, a large and terrible frog |
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: the traveling actors have a huge repertoire:
"We can show you rapiers!" Cue a man and woman fencing "Or rape!" Cue the woman jumping on the man's crotch. "Or both!" (Cue the woman raping the man while fencing another man.) |
Video Games[]
- From Jade Empire:
Kang the Mad: Next time I hide something, I'm packing explosives around it. Explosives shaped like silver bananas! Stops thieves, monkeys, and monkey thieves in one fell swoop. |
- In MadWorld, when it's time for a special event, the announcers say:
Howard: It's my favorite time of day again! |
- A few in GLaDOS's Cake Recipe (usually involving toxic waste or rhubarb).
- In one scene in Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Homestar Ruiner, Homestar is in Strong Bad's house trying to make some sweets as a token of apology to Marzipan.
Strong Bad: Sounds like a plan. How's it going? |
- Strong Bad also has lines in Poker Night At the Inventory that alternately play this straight and invert it:
Strong Bad: That's not as good as the time I had a straight flush and a full house in the same hand! A FLUSH HOUSE! [1] |
- Big Head uses this trope to hilarious effect several times in about a thirty-second speech in Shivering Isles.
- Generations II & III Pokémon family. Azurill, Marill, Azumarill. Unusually, Azurill was introduced after the other two.
- Pokémon Black and White family. Klink, Klang, Klinklang.
- From Final Fantasy V:
Gilgamesh: Enough expository banter! Now, we fight like men! And ladies! And ladies who dress like men! For Gilgamesh... IT IS MORPHING TIME! |
- Chrono Trigger enemies encountered in a particular zone: Roli (a kind of wheel or ball), Poli (a kind of gnome), Rolipoli (a Poli balancing on a Roli).
- In Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Emil and Marta are going off about what they can do to Alice. Marta's suggestion is to tie her up in a sack and throw her into Lenore Harbor, and Emil says she's too soft and to tie her up to the peak of Mount Fugi. When Zelos comes around, his idea is to do both.
- In Soul Calibur III, Nightmare's Hannibal Lecture to Sigfried is this, alongside his usual amounts of ham and narm.
"You will never run away from your sin! You have no right to live! It is a sin for you to be alive!" |
- In Fable II, if your renown isn't high enough when you meet Reaver, he'll suggest you go "rescue some travelers, or slay some beasts, or slay some travelers... the details are unimportant."
- In Katawa Shoujo, during the Act 1 scene "Mind Your Step", Hisao and Lily run into Rin in the middle of town at night, and this thought occurs to Hisao:
Hisao: [Rin] looks like a zombie. Or a statue. A statue of a zombie. |
- During their nightly maintenance, rather than letting you log in, Kingdom of Loathing encourages visitors to listen to Radio KoL - with a warning that it's "not intended for children or the easily offended. Or easily offended children."
- In Devil Survivor 2, Makoto Sako says this after deactivating the seal on Shiva:
Makoto: All right... what's going to come out? A monster? A snake? ...A monster snake? |
- In The Secret of Monkey Island, when you ask the pirates what they have in their barrel, they respond:
Pirate 1: Jam / Pirate 2: Rum |
- In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, there's this:
Deadpool: Wait, we're going to fight Dr. Doom? No one told me we were going to fight Doom! I want my lawyer! I want my mummy! I want my lawyer's mummy! |
- In Fire Emblem: Awakening 's English localization, Olivia says this to Henry, when she sees him next to a wounded dog:
Olivia: I know you! You're that creepy guy who likes blood and magic and... blood magic! |
Web Animation[]
- Homestar Runner: While critiquing fan costumes one year, Strong Bad describes the amount of effort that went into one as "both A, amazing; B, depressing; and C, amazingly depressing."
- In the email "bedtime story", Strong Bad combines this with a Portmanteau: "I'm not your freakin' babysitter! Or your dad. Or your... dadbysitter."
- In "The House That Gave Sucky Treats", Strong Bad gives this insult if you give him an apple while trick-or-treating: "What are you, a dentist? Or a hippie? Or some kind of hippie dentist?"
- In another email, entitled "web comics", Strong Bad describes web comics as being "all about video games, gamernerds, webgeeks, dorknerds, gamewads, nerdgames, webwebs, and elves."
Web Comics[]
- In one page of 8-Bit Theater, Red Mage is freaking out about the security of their barracks; that is, their tents.
We're defenseless! We could be wiped out by a horde of orcs or a legion of undead! Or, terror of terrors, a legion of hordes of undead orcs! |
- In another, the Light Warriors are discussing how their situation could be worse.
Fighter: We could be on fire. |
- Narbonic: When Helen's considering the best way to destroy everyone at her high school reunion...
Helen: The only question is the method. Poison? Explosives? Acid? |
- This Penny Arcade strip.
Tycho: No, seriously... What are you doing in there? |
- What's New with Phil and Dixie has a (slightly) longer version in a strip comparing Fantasy to Sci Fi.
Sci Fi Barfly : "Look! Mutants!" |
- Ctrl+Alt+Del has Ethan debating on whether to drink beer or soda, and promptly invented Beersoda.
- Memoria, here: diamonds and strippers and diamond strippers and stripper diamonds.
- In The Order of the Stick strip #125 Belkar lists several halfling games: "Throw the Rock, Throw the Stick, Throw the Rock and then the Stick Shortly Thereafter..."
- From the Basic Instructions on how to eliminate clutter:
Missy: "It's like living in a thrift store." |
- Jake from Homestuck likes movies, skulls, and movies with skulls in them.
- In this Scenes From A Multiverse strip, when discussing the perks of interdimensional rock stardom:
Interviewer: You had it all! Money! Groupies! Moupies! |
- Knife. Gun. KNIFEGUN.
- Something*Positive: "What should we do first? Strip club? M.M.A.? The zoo? Stripper M.M.A. cage matches at the zoo?"
- Tweep: "There are no cannibals or psychos or psycho cannibals in town."
- This Wondermark:
I'm defending my thesis tomorrow. I have to prepare. |
- The sequence "Robots? Clones? Robot clones?" has come up multiple times in Sam and Fuzzy.
- Girl Genius played it with Tarvek. He drags out of fire a pile of important (as in: "How to: stop Mind Control Zombie Apocalypse") research notes and two injured allies, when he sees a wasp eater trying to attract his attention - he exclaims "What now?! More jägers? Orphans? Jäger orphans?"
- Errant Story had exasperated Jon grumble about "Fucking elves. Fucking mages. Fucking elf mages!"
- Friendship is Dragons, page 1390:
Shining Armor: Whoever made that threat is serious and crazy. |
Web Original[]
- The Nostalgia Critic did this several times.
- He sums up Tom and Jerry: The Movie thusly: "It sucks ass. It sucks balls. It sucks ass balls!"
- This is the origin of Santa Christ. While reviewing The Star Wars Holiday Special, The Critic calls first for Santa to save him, and then Jesus Christ, and then Santa Christ.
- When he begins his review of The Wizard (film) by explaining that "Video Games Rock, Video Game Movies Blow, and therefore Movies about Video Games Blow Rocks".
- From his review of the Little Nemo animated movie:
Professor: I'm a professor. I'm a genius! You can call me Professor Genius. |
- The Angry Video Game Nerd is prone to this as well.
- Bastard Operator From Hell:
Boss: Excellent, ten days since the last accident. |
- A review of the PS2 game Ring of Red on the website RPGfan had the following to say about the game's troop mechanics:
Sending them out a second too early might convince the computer to spray them with shrapnel, flammable liquids, or even the dreaded shrapnel drenched in flammable liquids! |
- He's not kidding. Your mechs can in fact be armed with Incendiary shells (burninate a single squad), Shrapnel shells (hit both squads), or Incendiary Shrapnel (burninate both squads).
- One review of Versus described it as "the only movie that successfully combines yakuza, swords, guns, yakuza with guns and swords, zombies, zombies with guns, zombie yakuza, and zombie yakuza with guns and swords."
- In the Friendship Is Witchcraft episode "Dragone Baby Gone", Fluttershy's stats are:
Skills: Clubs, Spikes, Clubbing Spike |
- When Allie from Hyperbole and a Half proves that her boyfriend is either a serial killer or an alien:
"Yesterday, you bought me Haagen Dazs milk chocolate ice cream bars for no reason. I interpreted this to mean either a) you are fattening me up so that you can kill me and eat me or b) you are covering something up. You are probably covering up the fact that you are trying to fatten me up to kill me and eat me. " |
- The patriotic items Green Lantern brings to the I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC video featuring him and Captain America include an apple pie, an American flag, and an "apple flag pie" (which has a crust resembling the flag).
- In one of the movie trailer parodies, this one parodying Inglourious Basterds, Deadpool plays the sergeant. He gives us "And the skrull will grow to fear the pain they will feel at our hands, and at the edge of our knives, [camera switch to Wolverine] and the edge of the knives that come from our hands."
- This Memebase picture (read from bottom to top).
- On the Riff Trax of Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince, we get
OK, what has Draco sent them this time? A bird? An apple? A horrible bird apple that pecks your eyes out with each delicious bite?!? |
- Zero Punctuation, on Team Fortress 2: "If I did have to criticize it, and I do, I'd say there isn't much variety in the maps. You get to decide between territory control in a desert environment, territory control in an industrial environment, or, just to mix things up, capture the flag... in a desert-industrial environment."
- Yahtzee also describes the subject matter of every rap song as, "guns, whores, and whores getting shot with guns."
- And his list of ways one can kill enemy mooks in the second video game installment of The Force Unleashed: you can hit them with a lightsaber, reflect their blaster shots back at them, throw your lightsaber at them, microwave them with force lightning, force push them into walls, throw them at their mates, or "lift them up, throw your lightsaber at them, microwave them with force lightning, then throw whatever mess remains at their mates."
- From Phelous and Obscurus Lupa's review of Julie & Jack:
Phelous: watching the opening credits And what is this music with it? Makes it seem like a wedding video intro. |
- Again in Phelous's review of Octopus 2:
"The chief isn't hearing any of this octopus story. It was either a squid or a terrorist. Or a terrorist squid! Ooooh!" |
- Diamanda Hagan 's fourth Emanuelle review has this about what women are interested in;
"Love! And PINK things! And babies! And pink babies! Made from love!" |
- Christopher Torres, who designed the web animation Nyan Cat, said that after one person requested him to draw a Pop-Tart, and another requested a cat, he created a cat with a Pop-Tart for a body.
- The Xzibit meme in general, poking fun at Pimp My Ride and their extravagant car modifications, though this may be the Most Triumphant Example (involving herds, yo-yos and dawgs).
- Some Cracked.com authors love this one.
- "Animals that could take over the world if they wanted to"
- "So when a camera, or a phone, or a camera phone doesn't heed our commands..."
- In "5 Terrible Things We Only Know Because of the Internet", Felix Clay describes the Internet as "full of hilarious gifs and cats and gifs of cats."
- Cities that get a lot of tourism are characterized using this in "5 Stupid Travel Myths Everyone Believes":
- By simply walking around, you'll ... see the way they drive (manically), the way they urinate in the street (freely), and the way they urinate while they drive (frothily).
- In "6 Mysteries of Ancient Religions (Easily Explained)", Luke John Smith wrote that "Heron of Alexandria [...] could sculpt impossible statues that cried, bled, cried blood (the next logical step)".
- There's an example in the description of Knight Errant trope on This Very Wiki.
"[K]nights have declined in popularity, but the Knight Errant is still around in full force — instead of knights, they are now often cowboys, samurai, or Samurai Cowboys." |
- A fine example popped up as the subheadline to a news article put up by The Register on September 28, 2015:
NASA announcement of MAJOR MARS DISCOVERY imminent: WHAT can it be? |
- In the original web-based novel The Dwayne Diaries, after the captain questions who would ever need ten boats, Cthulhu says he could use the money for "A mansion, or a yacht, or a mansion on a yacht, whatever!"
Western Animation[]
- The Simpsons episode "Burns' Heir":
Mr Burns: I suggest you leave immediately. |
- Or this one from the episode "Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie":
Homer: If you've been good, pizza. If you've been bad... uh... let's see... poison. |
- After Homer's driver's license gets suspended.
Homer: I am so screwed. I can't drive to work, I can't drive to the store, and I certainly can't drive to the store at work. |
- Animaniacs: "Do you like beans? Do you like George Wendt movies? Do you like eating beans with George Wendt?" Thus begins a survey that goes on to add a few more unique questions and combine them all in every conceivable way.
- Tiny Toon Adventures: "Whoa, it's a salmon! It's as big as a moose! Hey, maybe it's a salmon moose!"
- On Garfield and Friends, Garfield comes up with a Top Ten List of things he hates to find on the dinner table. Raisins are the Running Gag of the list, including serving as #3, #2 is Nermal, and #1 is "Nermal with raisins".
- In Wade, You're Afraid, while thinking that the bull is loose, Wade says "Oh, terror! Oh, danger! Oh, terror and danger!"
- Family Guy: In the episode where Peter owes the Mafia a favor:
Peter: What are you gonna make me do, whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? 'Cause I'm married. |
- Tuff Puppy: Kitty tries to convince people not to eat the muffins the Big Bad has offered.
Kitty: They could be poisoned! They could be bombs! They could be poisonous bombs! |
- And in Dog Daze, Keswick, who falls for the hypnotism e-mails that Dudley fell for, ends up playing them all at once:
Keswick: I'm a pretty pirate princess who's late for the woodpecker ball, HA-GI-GI! |
Officer Squid: Please! I have a house, and children, and pets, and a toilet, and toilet children... |
- Also, when GIR is denied taquitos and a clown with no head, he asks for clown taquitos.
- Dave the Barbarian:
- What is it!? A monstrous ogre!? An ogreous monster!?
- "What is it? A spider? Is something burning? Is it on me? I don't see it! Is it invisible? Are invisible spiders crawling on me and burning!?"
- King of the Hill, when Dale tries to figure out the new persona Bill adopts for his job at a hair salon.
Dale: Pirate! Waiter! Pirate waiter! |
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "A Bird in the Hoof", Twilight freaks out and wildly speculates about what could happen to Fluttershy if Princess Celestia finds out she took her royal pet. Apparently she could be banished from Equestria, thrown into a dungeon, or banished, and then thrown into a dungeon inside the place she's been banished to.
- Justified in that being banished to the moon AND imprisoned in it is exactly what happened to Princess Luna when she originally became Nightmare Moon.
- In a strange example of having only one listed item, Pinkie Pie worries if her unfamiliar "Pinkie Sense" in "Feeling Pinkie Keen" means Fluttershy "exploded...and then exploded again!".
- "Can you do that? Can you explode twice?!"
- Another moment is in "Party Of One", when Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash engage in some Stereo Fibbing.
Pinkie Pie: (referring to a made-up bear that Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash have said that they're house sitting for) He's vacationing at the beach? |
- Applejack provides one in the season two premiere in her attempts to wrap her head around the fact that it's raining chocolate milk:
Applejack: Rainbow Dash, what's going on with this rain? I mean, chocolate milk? I mean, chocolate milk rain? |
- During the musical number in "May the Best Pet Win":
Rainbow Dash: The bat would be awesome, but the wasp I'm digging too. Do you have something in a yellow-striped bat? |
- Histeria! Samuel Johnson is pitching his dictionary to a book publisher, who thinks a book full of words and their definitions would be incredibly boring. "People want swordfights! They want giants! They want horses! They want...giant horses having swordfights!"
- In an episode of Almost Naked Animals, Octo says that he's never seen hotel owner Howie check in a guest, clean the hotel, or clean a guest who was checking in.
- In The Looney Tunes Show when Bugs Bunny finds his personal items destroyed.
Bugs Bunny: AHH! My glamour shot! AHH! My tennis trophy! AHH! My glamour shot of my tennis trophy! NOOOO! |
- In Phineas and Ferb, Doofenshmirtz's invention of the week in "The Chronicles of Meap" was a static electricity generator that could steal balloons. His targets were clowns, children, and clown children.
- Another from Doof, regarding his solar-powered Evaporator-inator in "De Plane! De Plane!": "Its green and evil! I call it 'greevil'."
- In the same episode, Candace says there's been a lot of talk about diving, snakes, and diving with snakes.
- In "Excaliferb", Malifishmirtz says that he's not scared of anything except unicorns, whales, squids, and Pegasus. Down comes the Pegawhalesquidicorn.
- Another from Doof, regarding his solar-powered Evaporator-inator in "De Plane! De Plane!": "Its green and evil! I call it 'greevil'."
Malifishmirtz: Wow, what were the odds? |
- In an episode of Harvey Birdman, Phil has just been killed, and Harvey want's to avoid telling his daughter Judy. He looks out the window for an excuse and sees a billboard about taking a vacation. Which partially peels away to reveal one about going on honeymoon.So Harvey tells Judy her father is on a Vacaneymoon.
- From the 2010 Pound Puppies episode "Dog on a Wire":
McLeish: I hate conventions, and I hate the circus, but most of all, I hate conventions where they take you to the circus. |
- Happens twice in one episode of Rugrats ("When Wishes Come True"):
Lil: [about Angelica] She should turn into mashed peas! |
- And when the babies think twice about making a wish that may end up turning someone they know into a rock:
Lil: Or eyeballs! |
- SpongeBob SquarePants: As Squidward is justifying quitting his job...
Squidward: I can be anything I set my mind to! I can be a football player! Or a king! Or a spaceman! |
- In a Sheep in The Big City commercial about a literal family restaurant:
Waitress: You never call! You never write! You never call saying that you're gonna write about calling. |
- Ron in Kim Possible: "This is beyond sick and wrong! This is wrongsick!"
- Done indirectly in an episode of American Dad, where Stan is afraid that the terrorists are in league with another group, possibly the vampires or gays. He then tells Hayley to plug her butt with a clove of garlic.
- A visual version happens in another episode. In an Imagine Spot, Stan threatens Francine first with a chainsaw, then with a leopard, then with the leopard holding the chainsaw.
- Played straight in Dungeons And Wagons, where Steve and his friends are playing an MMORPG in the vein of World of Warcraft or EverQuest. When Haley and Jeff break up, he starts playing the game too, and comes to idolize Steve's character "Agathor." When Haley joins the game and kills Agathor with his Weaksauce Weakness, Jeff builds him a shrine in the game, with the epitaph: "Here lies Agathor--Warrior, Friend, Warrior-Friend"
- In Johnny Test, when Dad gets trapped in a Tinymon game, he says "I blame Johnny! No, the sisters! No, Johnny and the sisters!"
- In Codename: Kids Next Door, Numbuh 2 accuses Tommy, his younger brother, of stealing candy and soda from his room and demands an explanation:
Tommy: I was thirsty! No, no, I was hungry! No, no, I was thirsty! No, I was hungry! |
- An episode of Johnny Bravo has him walking to the store repeating "loaf of bread, stick of butter, carton of milk..." and switching them up ("loaf of butter, stick of milk, carton of bread" etc.) By the time someone stops to talk to him, he replies that he's on his way "to get a loaf of buttermilk."
- In the Dexter's Laboratory episode D&DD:
Dee Dee: So, you're walking through the forest... |
- In an episode of Archer:
Malory: You don't look like a whore. An idiot, maybe. Or both. Yes. A whorediot. |
- In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, when the Avengers hold a pizza party to celebrate the induction of Carol Danvers:
Tony Stark: Okay, So, I'd like to make a toast. Well, less of a toast, more like a welcome. A "welcome toast." |
- From Daria:
- On South Park, the boys are doing the school news and want to give it higher viewership. They realize they need to add lots of sex and lots of action, and wind up renaming it Sexy Action News.
- The 2017 reboot of DuckTales often combines aspects of the original comic and the first cartoon. which makes for some meta cases. For example:
- In the original duck tales comic, Flintheart Glomgold was South African. In the original cartoon, he was Scottish. In the 2017 reboot, he is a South African pretending to be Scottish.
Real Life[]
- Counting in binary from zero upward. Zero, One, One-Zero...
- Babylonian numerals probably count as well - while they used a base sixty system, their numerals were built from base ten and base six subglyphs.
- Really, all numerical systems are like this. Binary is just the most obvious example because it only uses two digits.
- In spoken French this is especially blatant. The teens past sixteen are ten-seven, etc. When you pass sixty-nine, suddenly there's no seventy, just sixty-ten, sixty-eleven... Then eighty becomes four-twenties, and then the nineties are four-twenties-and-ten, four-twenties-and-eleven... all the way up to four-twenties-and-ten-and-nine!
- Not counting Belgium and some areas in France, which use more reasonable numbering for 70s, 80s and 90s.
- China is similar; the numbers after ten are ten-one, ten-two, ten-three, etc.
- Pashto is also like this. Eleven is one-ten, twelve is two-ten, and so on.
- So is English: Ten, eleven, twelve, three-ten, four-ten, five-ten, six-ten, seven-ten, eight-ten, nine-ten. We've just changed the spelling ("ten" to "teen", plus a few other tweaks) to hide that fact.
- Listing compass directions: north, east, northeast, north-northeast, north by east, northeast by north...
- The commonly combined Ninjas and Pirates into Ninjapirates. Or pirate-ninjas.
- Venn Diagrams.
- Averted when the circles don't overlap, such as in this particular xkcd strip.
- The last decades of military aircraft development have brought us things like stealth planes, drones, and now stealth drones.
- An old joke, boiled down to its essence: "Pretty or ugly?" "Pretty ugly."
- Which works in multiple languages, including Mandarin Chinese and German.
- In Chinese, combining the word for "Spear" with the word for "Shield" makes the phrase for "Paradox". See it for yourself.
- Which works in multiple languages, including Mandarin Chinese and German.
- In Jonathan Lethem's Pep Talk for NaNoWriMo 2011, he mentions "the epiphanies and pratfalls. The epiphanic pratfalls," in stories.
- Wikipedia's list of morphine-like chemicals includes dextrorphan, methorphan, and dextromethorphan.
- Laws are written this way to prevent Off on a Technicality.
- One of the orientation videos at Boston University, when listing rules for dorm life, states: "No smoking. No gambling. No waterbeds. No smoking on waterbeds while gambling."
- Taking the trope literally: Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs.
- ↑ Provided by The Cheat, likely.