Take That/Other Media

Miscellaneous
"Keith: "Tucker?!? NOOOOOOOOOO!!!""
 * Type the word "Santorum" into Google. Go on. (NSFW)
 * For those a bit behind on the news in the Gay Community...Rick Santorum once stated that two men having sex was equivalent to "a man having sex with a dog". Dan Savage took issue with this and basically created the meme.
 * Dan Savage also tried to create a definition for "saddlebacking" (in reference to the Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, owned by Rick Warren) with considerably less success.
 * Uwe Boll's online video in response to the petition to stop him forever contains completely unwarranted attacks on directors Michael Bay, Eli Roth, and George Clooney. Say what you will about their directing skills, but Uwe Boll has no right to criticize them. This is also the video in which he claims to be "ze only genius in ze whole fucking business".
 * Ironically, he may have a point—since his films were financed by the German government, he profited even when the movies suck. Germany closed that loophole though; Boll kept trying to make movies, but for some reason investors were no longer interested, and he does not understand why.
 * Showing an uncharacteristically pointy side, radio comedy team Bob & Ray reacted to New York Magazine critic John Simon's negative review of their stage show by incorporating him into their skits as "The Worst Person in the World"—a character who never spoke, just made rude noises while other characters commented loudly on his uncouth manners. Broadcaster Keith Olbermann later picked up the concept, sans specific attack, and used it in his Countdown.
 * And Olbermann has used several Take Thats in his feud with Bill O Reilly. A classic was when O'Reilly announced he was starting an online petition to get Olbermann's show off the air. Olbermann had a segment showing the entire production crew and staff of Countdown, including himself, cheerfully signing the petition to show how seriously they took it. And MSNBC's other shows got in on the act as well: Dan Abrams and Tucker Carlson are shown signing it.

"But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo while passing on the opportunity to participate in Million Dollar Baby, Ray, The Aviator, Sideways and Finding Neverland. As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks."
 * Olbermann's impression of Rush Limbaugh (often heard during the Worst Persons segment) also owes a lot to the Bob & Ray character, particularly the slurping noises.
 * Try typing "Google" into Yahoo!'s search engine. On top of your search results, which obviously and inevitably would include a link to Google itself, is the message "You could go to Google. Or get straight to your answers here" along with another search bar for Yahoo.
 * Kingdom of Loathing usually uses Affectionate Parody, but the items related to the Furry Suit contain a number of surprisingly vicious swipes at the Furry Fandom. Not least of which is that the tattoo you can receive by wearing it is the "Loser Tattoo".
 * Hippies and hobos aren't treated kindly either. All hippies have bad body odor and do drugs, and hobos are all lazy, stupid booze-drinkers.
 * On the other hand, all frat boys use "bra" as a Verbal Tic, drink more beer than is probably humanly possible, and have an unhealthy obsession with paddling.
 * Film critic Roger Ebert is very, very skilled at the Take That. He's published two books that consist entirely of reviews of movies he hated (Your Movie Sucks and I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie). If we listed all the great Take That lines from his reviews, we could easily double the size of this page, but here's a sample.
 * When Ebert referred to Vincent Gallo's movie The Brown Bunny as the worst film in the history of the Cannes film festival, Gallo called him "a fat pig with the physique of a slave trader". Ebert's reply is pure gold: "It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of The Brown Bunny."
 * Technically that response is a modification of a line attributed to Winston Churchill: "Madam, I may be drunk, but you are ugly, and I shall be sober in the morning."
 * Gallo publicly wished Ebert would get cancer again. Ebert did. Gallo, not apologizing, said he wished for a different cancer than Ebert got. Ebert's reply was that he had no time for this- he just got back from an exam where an image of his colon was on a TV for 90 minutes- "which was still better than The Brown Bunny."
 * Ebert also commented about a feud between Rob Schneider and another critic, Patrick Goldstein. After Patrick made a remark about Columbia Pictures financing Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo while having turned down every single one of that year's Best Picture nominees, Rob Schneider took out full-page ads in two magazines insulting Patrick Goldstein, for not having won anything himself. Ebert's comment is, once again, priceless:

""6. That doctrine which maintains a change of the substance of bread and wine, into the substance of Christ's body and blood, commonly called transubstantiation, by consecration of a priest, or by any other way, is repugnant not to Scripture alone, but even to common sense and reason, overthroweth the nature of the ordinance, and hath been, and is, the cause of manifold superstitions, yea, of gross idolatries." This is an attack on Catholics."
 * Of course, Schneider then went on to invert this trope entirely by sending Ebert flowers and a get-well-soon card while he was in hospital.
 * And Ebert said that while Schneider may make terrible movies, he's a nice guy.
 * Ebert strikes again by thanking Bill O'Reilly for including the Chicago Sun-Times in his "Hall Of Shame", claiming to be in a Bill O'Reilly Hall of Fame would be a cruel blow to any newspaper. He goes on to compare him to "Squeaky The Chicago Mouse" in response to the latter's claim he was more powerful than any politician, and such an eloquent Take That has to be seen to be believed.
 * Archaeologists have found ancient Greek sling shots with "Take That" written on them.
 * This survived until at least after World War 2 when bomber crews would paint messages on the their explosive payloads.
 * Ubiquitous in political campaigning - any specific examples would either double the size of this page fairly quickly or lead to a massive Edit War.
 * In Häxornas försvarare by Jan Guillou, a book about the witch processes in seventeenth-century Scandinavia, the author explains that while at one point the study of witches was considered a credible science, all the information that went into scholarly treatises on the subject had been uncovered by the scholar a) reading what other people had previously written on the subject and b) making stuff up. He further states that understandably, no modern field of science uses this odd form of research, "except of course for national economics."
 * Acclaimed travel writer Bill Bryson has made his birthplace a running Take That gag. The first line of The Lost Continent: "I was born in Iowa. Somebody had to be."
 * [[media:macvpc-icon.jpg|The icon that a Mac uses to represent a PC on the network.]]
 * Most unsubtle and unwitty example ever: This video, which is the full match of the first clip you see in the infamous "MAHVEL BAYBEE!" video, manages to throw in a random "FUCK AR-CAY-NAH HEART, NIGGER! FUCK ARCANA HEART!" at the end of its utterly non-sensical commentary.
 * PC Gamer regularly takes cheap shots at console gamers. One was when they recommended the Xbox 360 controller for Games For Windows games, with the hasty disclaimer "don't worry, no one will think you're a console gamer". When a reader wrote in and called them on it, they said it was a "friendly rivalry".
 * If this is PC Gamer of Future Publishing then it definitely is a friendly rivalry, since Chandra Nair, one of their writers, used to work for Cubed, a Game Cube magazine.
 * Not to mention that Chandra Nair went on to also become editor of Official Nintendo Magazine before leaving the industry completely.
 * Not to mention that Future owns Official Xbox Magazine, as well as Nintendo Power. And speaking of Future, they own both MacLife and Maximum PC. They love taking pot shots at each other.
 * Matthew Wright, presenter of Channel Five's The Wright Stuff is fond of making gags toward presenter Jeremy Kyle, such as calling him "Jeremy Vile" and getting out of the house whenever his show comes on.
 * The creators of Demoscene productions are typically very direct about their Take Thats, often outright saying "fuck you" to the people and companies they don't like.
 * Adult Swim often runs bumps that are derogatory towards its viewers.
 * There also seems to be a long running gag about the network's simmering contempt towards their Anime block. Bumps regularly criticize it, commercials show their Narm moments and episode descriptions on their website tend to read like "Vampires, robots, big hats!".
 * There's a division in staff between Adult Swim's western-styled comedy department, writers of all the bumps since the action programming stopped featuring them (and producers of PHF'), and the Action department, who programs Adult Swim's anime and are anime fans.
 * Whether intentional or not, the Library of Congress filing system (using two letters, then numbers) lists any books on, about, or including the Bible under the letters "BS."
 * The Library of Congress Classification system was first developed in 1897. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for "BS" meaning "bulls--t" is 1969. Unless you're accusing then Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam of psychic powers, it's purely a coincidence.
 * It's actually cited from as early as 1912 now. And in 1884 the initials "B.S" were used colloquially to the emulsion of little value that results from petroleum oil evaporating and leaking through roof of the tank.
 * The numerous Red Box kiosks, scattered throughout multiple grocery store chains in the US, advertise $1.00 overnight rentals, but Red Box will charge the customer's card an additional $1.00 for each additional day the item is kept. In response, the movie rental chain Hollywood Video introduced a program called True Dollar, to their existing Powerplay rental program, that offers $1.00 rentals with no due dates.
 * The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith:

"(To the tune of "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah"): They mauled the Balmain Tigers, Slew the Dragons from St. George, The Seagulls and the Mounties next Were crushed with mighty force They humbled Parramatta And the Berries in due course They wear the RED & GREEN
 * This video of Australian Rules Football team the West Coast Eagles' theme song includes the Eagles mascot giving cross-town rival the Fremantle Dockers' mascot a wedgie.
 * A famous one happened when Carlton played Essendon in 1991. The previous year, Essendon had lost to the much-hated Collingwood in the grand final, giving Collingwood their first premiership since 1958. During that time, Carlton had beaten Collingwood in grand finals in 1970, 1979 and 1981. Carlton rubbed it in by having their banner read, "If you lose to Collingwood in a grand final, you're a bloody idiot."
 * Lee Unkrich, the director of the third Toy Story movie responded to fan reactions of the movie via twitter. Here's what he said to the critics who didn't like it.
 * This video. "The work ethic of music majors is often disappointing."
 * In early 1979, NBC was falling behind in the ratings war against CBS and ABC. In an attempt to get back those ratings, NBC initiated its "Proud as a Peacock" campaign. One of those was a song telling about how great NBC was. However, they knew how bad they were in the ratings and ended up making this parody to mock the network and its-then current owner.
 * SpongeBob SquarePants (and shows like it) got hit hard in an episode of Adventures in Odyssey. Local teen Connie Kendall wants to pitch an idea to a TV station (it's a Thomas the Tank Engine Captain Ersatz), but first we see what a guy named "Nigel O. Dion" has. IT winds up being a SpongeBob pastiche where everyone is free from values and SpongeBob's parents are idiots. "Nigel" openly expresses how agressively kid friendly it is. Connie's show talks about how we need to have authority or things would go wrong, and "Nigel"'s show is rejected because it's another one of "too many" shows that teach kids to "mock and taunt authority" and make them "glib, selfish, and rude". (Although the actual SpongeBob isn't a little kid and in fact loves his parents very much.) "Nigel" leaves them saying they're unreasonable and stuck in the "19th century".
 * Ironically, a lot of Nickelodeon's shows aren't really like that. (Shows like that are on Cartoon Network.) But then again, Focus On The Family isn't on very good terms with Nickelodeon...
 * In Rugby League the South Sydney Rabbitohs' song goes as far as to list all the teams Souths beat in grand finals:

(CHORUS)

They plucked the Western Magpies, Slashed the Newtown bag of blue The Eastern Suburbs rooster crowed, And then was conquered too The greatest name in any game Within South Sydney grew They wear the RED & GREEN \\"

"(picture of a dog is shown) "The smiling dog to my right is not from the dog show, he's from Sochi, Russia. And he's probably dead now.""
 * During coverage of the Winter Olympic Games at Sochi (footage taken from "Putin's 15 years: A presidential retrospective (RT)"), Keith Olbermann of ESPN2 had this to say:

Roleplay

 * In We Are Our Avatars, there was several toward Twilight; one notable one is that "Edward" is an insult among Vampires.
 * Even more to Sonichu, to the point where Chris-chan occasionally appears, often doing horrid things. Even Bernkastel hated him....
 * In addition, One More Day is occasionally jabbed at.
 * Mega Man, Duo, and Bass occasionally throw insults at Mega Man 8, citing the story as a poorly written, annoying, cheap cash in.
 * Lip and Osaka (both Midna's characters) throw a Take That at in-thread advertising at one point.
 * Charles Roberts having two IC MSTs and two of the Avatars coming and forcefeeding his computer down his throat.

Tabletop Games
"Runner: I heard that if they catch a ship, they rape everyone aboard to death, eat their flesh, and sew their skins into their clothing -- and if you're lucky, they do it in that order. Second Runner: What the hell have you been smoking?"
 * In both Warhammers, the entire Ork race are a Take That at football hooligans even though fans tend to think of Orks as really funny but its kind of obvious its a take that when you realize they are to bricks what dumb as a brick is to normal people.
 * The expanded Real Men, Real Roleplayers, Loonies, and Munchkins list is littered with Take Thats directed at the likes of Star Trek, comic books, Gary Gygax, and whatever else the contributor wasn't personally fond of by attributing them to Munchkins—which, by extension, is probably an indicator of fan-hating.
 * WoTC released a few animated shorts before the release of 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, they focused on very specific monsters and races in terms of how 4th Edition would affect them. One of the shorts was about the red dragon and contained a very amusing reference to the "Edition Wars" in which traditionally whiny fanboys ranted about the suckiness and evil of 4th Edition. Said reference showed a forum being trolled by an actual troll that was promptly buried under a large pile of dragon excrement by the red dragon as it flew overhead.
 * From a supplement to White Wolf's Mage: The Ascension: "This same century also sees the birth of many of the modern 'gypsy' stereotypes, which... lead to the fanciful romanticization of 'True Romany' as singing, dancing, scarf-wearing vagabonds. This stereotyping is perpetuated throughout the 20th century through works of popular fiction, cheap horror movies, 'medieval' or 'Renaissance' re-enactment societies, and badly researched role-playing game supplements." The same company had earlier released World of Darkness: Gypsies, a supplement playing on exactly those stereotypes, considered Fanon Discontinuity by everyone who's read it for Unfortunate Implications.
 * A whole chapter of a Vampire sourcebook was a giant Take That to the infamous Dirty Secrets Of The Black Hand.
 * After the Secret Service raid on their premises was deemed to have been unlawful, Steve Jackson Games printed a card for their Illuminati: New World Order CCG depicting a Secret Service agent wearing the insignia of the Nazi SS.
 * A justification for the raid given was that the book whose manuscript they seized, GURPS Cyberpunk, was a handbook on computer crime, especially hacking. The result? They made Hacker shortly afterward, a board/card game focusing on computer hacking.
 * Another, less malicious, Steve Jackson Games example, Car Wars featured an America that was mildly post-apocalyptic, having survived a limited nuclear engagement with Communists. The worst hit spot in Central United States? Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where main rival game designer TSR games had their headquarters.
 * The Shadowrun Sourcebook Runner Havens has the following gem during a discussion of Hong Kong pirates:


 * The bizarre Egg of Coot, a ruler in the Dungeons and Dragons Blackmoor setting, was a jab at Gregg Scott, an individual who'd previously given Dave Arneson some flak.
 * Palladium Books include a description of an alignment system which includes a statement against neutral alignments, a feature of the Dungeons and Dragons based games. One sentence reads: No neutrals is one of the very few definitive, unbending rules of the game.
 * A good-aligned drow? In Golarion? He wouldn't last long—no matter how badass of a ranger he was.
 * In the Paranoia XP rulebook there constant jokey references to a certain other fantasy RPG being overly complicated, constantly calling it the Unfun RPG.

Theatre
""I'm the nominee of the G.O.P., or "Gop," But if baby, I'm the bottom, you're the top!""
 * As has been well-documented by history, playwrights Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller had a famous falling out over Kazan's decision to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, a play that compared the UAC's activities to the Salem Witch Trials, while Molly Kazan, Elia's wife, wrote The Egghead, a play about a liberal intellectual who was blind to the great threat posed to America. One of these plays is a classic. The other one is practically forgotten.
 * On the other hand, Elia made On the Waterfront, which features a sympathetically portrayed informer.
 * As a response to that, Miller wrote A View from the Bridge, which portrays an informer negatively.
 * In the musical version of Merrily We Roll Along, the protagonist is a musical theatre songwriter who in one scene says, "I saw My Fair Lady -- I sort of enjoyed it."
 * The musical 1776 features an extended Take That against New York's government: the delegate from New York spends the entire musical having to "abstain--courteously," because, as he finally explains, the members of the legislature "speak very fast and very loud and nobody pays any attention to anybody else with the result that nothing ever gets done."
 * Like much of the rest of the play... Truth In Television. Even for the time period. (It's truly scary when you realize how much of 1776 is all lifted directly from period documents (if somewhat out of context at times.)
 * Occurred during the 2008 Tony Awards broadcast, when the winner for Best Play, in his acceptance speech, thanked the producers for funding "an American show with theater actors!" This would have been much less remarkable had his award not been presented to him by Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe.
 * The lyrics to "You're The Top", a song by Cole Porter from the musical Anything Goes, contains the following jab at the Republican party of the 1930s:

"Kate: I loved Titanic! Princeton: It was all right..."
 * "Everyone's a little bit racist" From Avenue Q is a Take That to Political Correctness.
 * Also, a minor example during "Mix Tape":

"Antonio Banderas, being asked if he'll do a live-action 3-D movie after being in the animated 3-D movie Shrek 4: I've been doing 3-D for a long time. It's called theater. It was invented 3,000 years ago. (Actually, theatre was invented 2,530 years ago, but he was close.)"
 * Also, during the 2004 Presidential debate they mentioned that they would need to end the debate soon because there was going to be "A Vice Presidential debate held by Red Lobster"
 * In An interview, Princeton implied that Sarah Brightman sings like a goose
 * Since it's about theater:


 * In Angels in America, when, he compares it to a love scene from an Ayn Rand novel.

Wikis
"The Big Bang creates the universe as we know it. The protons, neutrons, and electrons that will eventually compose Transformers are formed, thereby ruining the Transformers franchise forever. A Thursday."
 * Encyclopedia Dramatica is basically a Take That Wiki, gleefully bashing everything and everyone, with the site's main target being Uncyclopedia, a parody encyclopedia and its unofficial "rival".
 * Since Encyclopedia Dramatica was originally designed as an archive of Troll activity, Take Thats are inevitable.
 * It also really crosses over into Hannibal Lecture with the article titled "You".
 * Given that both sites shamelessly mock the daylights out of everything, including each other, any serious 'war' is doomed to just make everyone involved look stupid.
 * Some tropers just love to use this. You'll find a bunch of them scattered all over the Wiki, which are Potholed to the main page. Sometimes they get ground down by Wiki Magic, sometimes not. Don't add to them or we'll murder you in your fucking sleep.
 * Trope Names that are Take Thats:
 * 1) The Scrappy
 * 2) Creator's Pet
 * 3) The Chris Carter Effect
 * 4) Flanderization
 * 5) Dan Browned
 * 6) Takahashi Couple
 * 7) Capcom Sequel Stagnation
 * 8) X-Pac Heat
 * 9) Macekre
 * Amiright and Whatfreaks seem to both be Take Thats to music in general.
 * Wikipedia itself sometimes manages to sneak these in; for example, the page for Deus Ex Machina once had a "See Also" section that points you to Breaking Dawn...
 * Another one for the Japanophobia page. The See Also? Alfred R. Kahn.
 * While both of these are now gone, Tropers can take comfort in the fact that TOW's page on Deus Ex Machina now links to (their page on) Alien Space Bats.
 * The Transformers Wiki tends to throw these at the elitist fandom, being that it's not a Wiki restricted by Serious Business, you can see how, they basically named the Ruined FOREVER Trope, and even link to our Ruined FOREVER page. There are other Take Thats, mostly bordering on the idiotic logic of the Transformers fanbase, on one of the timeline pages, they put the beginning of the universe, and it says:


 * Beyond fandom, there are plenty of Take Thats directed at certain people involved in Transformers, notably Pat Lee, Shane McCarthy and Andy Schmidt.
 * That quote was edited to not include the "Ruined Forever" part, now.
 * Their page on Wolverine describes him as "A completely unlikable asshole".
 * Their Original Page on Dan Di Dio called him Satan. Now he's just called Dr Phil.
 * Rational Wiki, being what it is, will very frequently take pot shots at various crank beliefs. Almost every article about a pseudoscience is a Take That.
 * Currently, their article about This Wiki pretty much claims that we Jumped the Shark after the changes that include giving YMMV its own section.
 * The South Sydney Rugby League team's theme song lists all the teams Souths have beaten in grand finals: