Tell Me Again

Aragorn: Would it kill you to pay attention once in a while? Legolas: Probably not, but why take the risk? —DM of the Rings

A subcategory of As You Know is Tell Me Again, as in when two characters are driving somewhere in a car, and the passenger says to the driver, "Tell me again why we're going to the pillow factory." The only reason the passenger asks to be told again is so that the audience can know.

Can sometimes be justified in two ways. One; there's a Xanatos Roulette going on and the character giving the explanation originally wasn't very clear. Two: For snarking purposes. The latter is particuarly common when the character knows why they're going there, but doesn't want to.

This is Truth in Television, as many real-life Deadpan Snarkers will employ option two.

Examples of Tell Me Again include:

Comic Books

• In All Fall Down, Pronto requests a recap of the Pantheon's plan in the flashback in chapter two.

Film

• Parodied in this exchange from Monty Python and The Holy Grail

Sir Bedevere: And that, my liege is how we know the earth to be banana shaped." King Arthur: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere! Tell me again how sheeps' bladders can be employed to prevent earthquakes.

• Mystery Men

Mr. Furious: Why am I doing this again? The Sphinx: When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack. Mr. Furious: And why am I wearing the watermelons on my feet? The Sphinx: [[[Beat]]] I don't remember telling you to do that.

Live-Action TV

• In the Lost episode "Namaste," Frank and Sun have paddled a canoe two miles from Hydra Island to the main island. Only after this, as they're pulling up to the dock, Frank asks, "You wanna remind me why the hell we're doing this?"
• Slightly clunkily done in Castle in which Lanie asks the police detectives to remind her who the 'Westies' are. While not entirely unlikely, you'd kind of expect a city medical examiner to have some passing awareness with The Irish Mob.

Literature

• Played straight a couple times in the Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments Series.
• Justified when Lennie and George do it at the beginning of Of Mice and Men: Lennie is mentally handicapped and highly forgetful of things that don't interest him, so he legitimately has no idea where he and George are going or why they're going there.

Real Life

• Truth in Television, sometimes. It will happen when someone is trying to understand another persons point of view but simply can't hoping that if they hear what the other person thinks again maybe they will see it differently, rarely if ever works. Often involves Politics or Religion so Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment means no further examples.

Video Games

• In Destroy All Humans! 2, all conversations end with the option of Crypto asking for a condensed version of the conversation, which often makes the characters exasperated at Crypto's lack of attention.
• At the beginning of one of the missions in Desperados, Sanchez asks Kate to once again explain the plan to him. The game justifies this by portraying Sanchez as a bit dense, noting Kate's annoyance as she has apparently explained this plan to him several times already.

Web Comics

• Exploited in a clever way in Order of the Stick. Elan's Evil Twin Nale has switched places with him without Elan's friends noticing. Nale now wants to learn some secret information that the heroes learned without tipping them off that he wasn't actually around to hear it. He gets Mr. Exposition to tell him again and is surprised at how well it works.
• Parodied in Zebra Girl, when Crystal asked Sam about Tool, here.

Web Original

• Double Subverted in the Bandwidth Exceeded video by Loading Ready Run. Graham walks into his house and is punched in the face by his roommate, Matt. Next scene: Graham and Matt are both standing in the kitchen, and Graham has a bag of frozen peas up to his head.

Graham: Okay, explain to me again... where we got frozen peas. Because I didn't buy them, and I'm certainly not going to eat them. Mat: *explanation* Graham: Oh. Well, next question: why did you hit me?

• Lampshaded in Naruto the Abridged Series when Itachi and Kisame show up to kidnap Naruto.

Kisame: Itachi, why are we looking for this kid again? Itachi: Kisame, I've already told you five times. Kisame: Can you tell me again for exposition's sake? Itachi: No. Now shut up or you're not getting any Soylent Green snacks.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons have lampshaded their need for this trope numerous times — perhaps most famously in "Principal and the Pauper":

Homer: Okay, once more. Where are we going? Edna: To Capital City. Homer: And why are you and the old lady in the car? Agnes: We're gonna talk Armin Tanzarian into coming back. Homer: And why is Marge here? Marge: I came up with the idea. Homer: And why am I here? Marge: Because the streets of Capital City are no place for three unescorted ladies. Homer: Why are the kids here? Marge: Because we couldn't find Grandpa to sit for them. Homer: Why is Grandpa here? Abe: Because Jasper didn't want to come by himself! Homer: Huh, fair enough.

• Another place where this trope was used in a good way was in the Justice League episode where the Flash and Lex Luthor have switched bodies. The Flash is pretending to be in charge of a crew of villains. Since he has no idea what their nefarious plot is, he informs them that they are to tell him how everything goes so he can "be sure they know what they're doing." They're rather annoyed at having to go over a plan that he introduced to them that very morning.