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A common insult. Sometimes "grandma" is replaced with something else, usually "sister". Bonus points for following it up with "...and she's dead!" Although it can be amusing if she is not only alive, but Right Behind The Speaker.
See Never Mess with Granny, Cool Old Lady, and Apron Matron, for when there is some truth to this statement. See You Fight Like a Cow and My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad for similar insults.
Anime & Manga[]
- In the Toonami version of Dragonball Z, a virtual Sayan warrior (conjured by Mr Popo's training room) uses this line to ridicule the secondary characters' power levels.
- Bleach: Ishida uses the same line when ridiculing Ichigo on the bad quality of the path he makes while crossing through the Garganta (at least in the Hungarian version). This may not be entirely unfounded though, even though we don't even know if Ishida has a (living) grandma, or if she was a quincy.
- One of the Big Bads from Digimon Adventure was a rock-music ape named Etemon. He stood about half the size of the highest-level-to-date protagonist Digimon, but even when blasted by needles from a ten-foot-tall walking cactus with fists, he tossed it away with, "Is that the best you can do? I've seen sharper needles in Granny's knittin' bag!"
Comics[]
- Peanuts has one strip where Lucy shouts "You throw like my grandma!" during a ball game, only to then turn and apologize to said Grandma who is watching the game.
- Garfield has one strip where he was watching tv and there was a monster. The monster was so slow a character said "My Grandmother could outrun that mon-". Garfield then mentioned that "Maw-Maw went with her track shoes on".
- In a late 80s issue of X-Men, when Freedom Force (aka the former Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) receives two less-than-wanted new teammates, Pyro comments "You ask me, my old gran in Woomaloo could take those two."
Films — Live Action[]
- A variation occurs in Spy Kids 2: Island of Dreams: (just to be safe) When Donnagon and the kids' father Gregorio fight one another for the Transmooker device, during the fight, his wife Ingrid tells him to do the Suplex. He does, but it ends up rather hilarious. Then, the grandma of the kids groans that she could do better than that.
Films — Animation[]
Miguel: You fight like my sister! |
Lampwick: Ah, you smoke like me grandma! |
- B.O.B.'s Big Break, supplemental short on the Monsters vs. Aliens DVD:
General Monger: You throw like my nine-year-old niece... that I may or may not have. |
Literature[]
- Used at least once in Captain Underpants.
- Was that before or after one of the protagonists' grandmothers became a superhero?
- One Kenan&Kel book has Kel being insulted at basketball with the phrase, "My dog is better than you." Kel, though, is too amazed at the thought of a basketball-playing dog to be insulted, however, and the bully has to explain the taunt.
Live-Action TV[]
- The exchange in Star Trek where Scotty tells Chekov that Scotch Whisky is a man's drink, and Chekov replies that it was invented by a little old lady from Leningrad.
- In the Quantum Leap episode "Running for Honor," Sam leaps into a track runner, and fails to live up to the guy's previous performance:
Sam: (looking at his time) Is that good? |
Stuart: Hey Sheldon, ready for bowling tonight? |
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Faith, Hope and Trick
Faith: My dead mother hits harder than that! |
- In Stargate Atlantis the only reason John Sheppard knows Rodney McKay has a sister is because he uses this trope. After they reconcile, he switches out his sister for something even more demeaning: "My four year old niece can do better than you!"
Sport[]
- Following a tour of Pakistan in the 80s, English Cricketer Ian Botham remarked, "Pakistan is the kind of country every man should send his mother-in-law to for a month, all expenses paid." Payback came in the 1992 World Cup final between England and Pakistan, where, after dismissing Botham, Imran Khan asked, "Why don't you send your mother-in-law out to bat? Surely she can't do much worse."
- Also something of a meme involving Geoffrey Boycott, who often says things to the effect of "My mum could bat on this pitch".
Video Games[]
- Appears in the "sports" game Chaos League as an insult by one of the two guys commenting the game.
- Variant: In Warriors Orochi, Badass Grandpa Shibata Katsuie occasionally taunts "You can't outfight my corpse!"
- Insult Arm-Wrestling in Escape from Monkey Island features this potential exchange:
"My ninety-eight-year-old grandmother has bigger arms than you." |
- In the same game, after Guybrush passes the medical exam for the diving competition, he's told, "You'd have to be a palsy ridden grandmother to fail." Indeed, when you show your certificate to Marco, he tells you "I've seen palsy-ridden grandmothers with better scores than yours!"
- Also, Guybrush has a rather ingenious one near the end of Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2: The Siege of Spinner Cay, only "grandma" is replaced with "possibly dead mother":
Guybrush: My possibly dead mother could shoot a cannon better than you can! |
- In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, if the player chooses to fight in the arena, one of the NPCs informs your character, "My grandma can beat you and she's dead!"
- In Ultimate Spider-Man, there's a level where the player controls Venom who has been unleashed on Manhattan to chase down Electro as part of a demonstration of Venom's abilities. Expect Electro to constantly pelt you with lame insults if you're even ten yards behind him, including "My grandma can move faster than you!" And no, there is no way to prevent hearing this a dozen times except to turn off the sound.
- Obscure Genesis game Ex-Mutants does this if you die too many times in the auto-scrolling levels. If you play as one character, he says "my grandmother could do better", and if you play as the other, she says "[the first character's] grandmother could do better".
- The response that you will get in Alundra 2's Indy Escape minigame if you didn't score enough points.
- When missing a shot in Backyard Basketball 2004, Barry Dejay sometimes says: "My grandma can shoot better than that. And she's got cataracts."
- An available audio taunt in Age of Empires II is "My granny can siege better than that."
- While Silent Thunder: A-10 Tank Killer II's Commander Garrett doesn't say it, botching a mission may result in the dialogue box reading, "my four year-old could have done better than that".
Webcomics[]
Western Animation[]
- Bart and Lisa of The Simpsons used a variant of this on the players when they were at a minor league baseball game:
Bart: You throw like my sister! |
- In Futurama, "The Beast with a Billion Backs":
Leela: Come on, Bender! Your Grandmother could push harder then that. |
- In the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Carnival Knowledge" Rocko is having a difficult time knocking down the rigged bottles at the carnival booth, Slippy the sleazy owner says "oh come on my grandmother can throw better than that and she knocks 'em down no problem".
- In the Musical Episode of Daria, Kevin (The QB) is trying to break down a door:
Daria: My great aunt could do better, and she's dead! |
John Stewart: That all you got? My grandma hits harder than that! |
- American Dragon Jake Long: While watching an Ogre Bowl game, Fu Dog said his grandmother could play better than that and she was 1400 years old. Said grandmother, who was also at the stadium watching the game, told him she's only 1392 years old.
- Extreme Ghostbusters: An old friend of Garrett was playing basketball and teasing his adversary with the 'grandma can play better' insult. Soon after the adversary replied that she was not there, Garrett was passing by and his friend told the adversary Garrett could play better. Since Garrett was wheel-chair bound, the adversary accepted the challenge. Garrett won.
Other[]
- In one Ulpan Or Hebrew lesson, the books instructs the student in how to say "My grandmother drives better than you!" in a traffic jam/road rage situation. Made even funnier if you are familiar with Israeli drivers.