Beam Me Up, Scotty: Difference between revisions

:* Éomer also shouts, "Ride, ride to ruin and the world's ending!" in the middle of the battle after he goes berserk after seeing his sister dead (or so he thinks) and the Rohirrim cry "Death" as with one voice. The movie moves these lines to the start of the battle.

:* Aragorn's [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Crowning Speech Of Awesome]] is often abridged and misquoted, mostly because of the ''Return of the King'' trailer. Ask any layman on the street what the speech was, and most who claim to remember will say "I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! Someday, the courage of men may fail, but it is not this day! This day, ''we fight!''" The actual speech is: "Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers! I see, in your eyes, the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day... an hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is ''not this day!'' This day, we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you, ''stand''! '''''[[Punctuated! For! Emphasis!|Men! Of! The West!]]'''''

* The line "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!" is a misquote of Dorothy's line in ''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]''. The actual quote is "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

** The Wicked Witch says "Fly, fly, fly!", not "Fly, my pretties! Fly!" or "Fly, my monkeys, fly!"

** Dorothy (nor anyone else) does not say "It's a twister, Auntie Em". One of the farm hands, Hunk (the "real life" counterpart of the Scarecrow) does say "It's a twister! It's a twister!"

* None of [[Enid Blyton]]'s ''[[The Famous Five]]'' books include the phrase "lashings of ginger beer". That comes from the infamous [[Made for TV Movie]] parodies by British comedy troupe ''The Comic Strip'', "Five Go Mad In Dorset" and "Five Go Mad on Mescalin". It has its origins in the Five's (or at least their human members') [[Trademark Favourite Food|penchant for ginger beer]] and the fact that their [[Food Porn|lovingly described meals]] do frequently sport [[Author Vocabulary Calendar|lashings]] of an appropriate accompaniment such as gravy or cream.

* There is no-one to say "follow the white rabbit" in ''[[Alice in Wonderland|Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]''; the line only appears in ''[[The Matrix]]''.

** Also, Voldemort's line "There is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it," is this when applied to the book, where the line was "...that there is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it," and spoken by Quirrell, not Voldemort, as part of a much longer monologue with a different tone before Voldemort even puts in an appearance.

* Coleridge's ''[[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]]'' is often quoted as "Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink"; the actual line is "Water, water everywhere, '''nor any''' drop to drink"

** The phrase WAS sometimes said by Mr. Hands, who was the narrator in the shorts.

{{quote|(In a short with Mr Bill driving a car) ''Mr Hands'' : Oh no, Mr Bill! Looks like you have a flat! Good thing Mr Sluggo has a jack....}}

* Australian talk show host Derryn Hynch never actually used the line "Shame, shame." he is often associated with, it comes from Steve Vizard's recurring impersonation of him on sketch comedy ''Fast Forward''.

* The (in)famous Bishop and the Nightie" affair on ''[[The Late Late Show]]'' never had a woman say she was "naked" on her wedding night. In February 1966, there was a segment on the show where a Mr and Mrs Fox had to answer questions about their marriage; Mrs Fox was asked what colour nightdress she wore on her wedding night; she said "Transparent," then admitted "I didn't wear any!"; after the audience stopped laughing, she changed her answer to "white." There was no outcry—only three phone complaints, and one telegram from Thomas Ryan, Catholic Bishop of Clonfert (''"Disgusted with disgraceful performance."''), who later offered extreme criticism of the show, calling on "all decent Irish Catholics" to protest. They didn't.

* Despite naming [[Recruit Teenagers with Attitude|a trope in its own right,]] the phrase "Recruit a team of teenagers with attitude" never appeared in ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]].'' What Zordon actually said was that he wanted "Five overbearing and overemotional humans," to which Alpha replied "Not that, not ''teenagers!''" That line '''was''' used in the introduction and theme song, however it was only a shortened version of the actual dialogue.

* A milder version in ''[[The Sopranos]]'': the characters rarely, if ever, spoke of a person getting "whacked"; the preferred term was "clipped".

* ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'' has a mild example. While Robin's infamous "Holy [relevant phrase]!" [[Catch Phrase]] ''did'' appear constantly, he usually ended it at that—he rarely ever said "Holy [relevant phrase], Batman!", as most people quote him. This one's a [[Justified Trope|justified]] case, though, since "Holy [noun]!" is such a generic phrase in Western culture that people might not otherwise associate it with ''Batman''.

 

* Nathan Bedford Forest never said "git thar fustest with the mostest" he said the essence of strategy was "to git thar fust with the most men."

* Confederate [[The American Civil War|Civil War]] General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson is often said to have gained his nickname by General Barnard Bee saying at the First Battle of Manassas (also called the First Battle of Bull Run): "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally around the Virginians!" However, some accounts have Bee saying, "Why is Jackson standing there like a damned stone wall?". No one was able to ask him later, as he died that afternoon.

** In fact, Her Majesty once wrote in her diary "We are VERY MUCH amused!" Yes, with those capitals.

** She did once say something similar - to a courtier who was telling a dirty joke in the presence of a group of young children. And she wasn't using the "royal we", by "we are not amused", she meant "The courtiers and I are not amused." The idea that she was constantly gloomy comes both from the fact that she spent many years in mourning after her husband died and from the fact that having one's picture taken was considered a very serious matter, and people normally didn't smile in photos (Beyond decorum, photographic plates of that era required a ''very'' long exposure. A good photograph required a pose and expression that the subject could hold for long periods). Even then there are more pictures of Victoria laughing than of all nine of her children combined.

* "I have seen the future, and it works." derives from Lincoln Steffens' 1921 statement on the Soviet Union: "I have been over into the future, and it works."

* [[Abraham Lincoln]] never said, "As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless." The quote was published 20 years after Honest Abe's death, and his secretary immediately denounced it as a fraud. But it was used a lot in the 1896 presidential election, and came to be seen as fact.

* A.E. Housman never wrote: "We were soldiers once, and young", or even anything closely approximating it.

* There's no record of [[George Orwell]] saying, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." The closest thing he actually wrote was: "Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."

:* Caine did, however, say "Not many people know that" in ''[[Educating Rita]]'', but that was an [[Actor Allusion|in-joke]] because everyone ''thought'' he said it.

* Similarly "And... why not?" wasn't originally said by Barry Norman, but from impressions of him on ''[[Spitting Image]]''.

* Jim Lovell never said, "Houston, we have a problem" during ''[[Apollo 13]]''. The actual line is "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here." The misquote is so pervasive, it has even made its way into the movie starring [[Tom Hanks]], which has been noted for being fairly accurate.

** Jack Swigert actually said that line. Lovell followed with "Houston, WE'VE HAD a problem," which was actually misquoted intentionally by NASA in the years since because it sounds better, so the movie can only be held accountable for following NASA's [[Retcon]].

** Also, he never said "E equals MC squared" as many people attribute due to that being how one would read the equation. He said [http://extra.listverse.com/amazon/recordings2/emc2.mp3 "E is equal M C square"].

** As his Wikiquote page shows, he probably didn't say "Two things are infinite: the universe and the human stupidity.".

* [[Bill Gates]] did not say, "Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one," it was Charles J. Sykes.

** Nor did Gates ever say "640KB is all the memory you'll ever need" or any variation of that. Recent info has suggested that it was actually an IBM executive that originated the quote, and what he really said was more along the lines of "We believe that 640KB will meet the current needs of our customers." Regardless of whether it was Gates or someone at IBM, they most certainly did ''not'' intend to say that "No-one will ever require more than 640KB of memory," which is what the quote tends to be twisted into meaning.

* "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." This now-common saying is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, if anyone, but the closest thing he ever wrote was this: "I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a well-beaten path to his house, [even if] it be in the woods."

** Nor did Twain say, "I've never wished a man dead, but I read some obituaries with great pleasure." That quote comes from Clarence Darrow, who also later said, "I've never killed anyone, save for idiots attributing my goddam quote to Mark Twain."

* There is no evidence whatsoever that Galileo muttered "And yet it moves" or anything like it after his trial before the Italian inquisition. The myth of him saying the phrase only appeared around a century after his death.

* Kenneth Arnold, the pilot who "coined" the term [[Flying Saucer]], never actually used the term to describe his UFO encounter. Rather, he said that they flew "like saucers skipping across water." He would later describe the shape of the crafts he saw as something similar to a stealth bomber.

* The infamous [[Wolf Whistle|"wolf whistle"]], popularly depicted in American culture as the standard response to something titillating, usually doesn't sound quite the way it does in cartoons. Animated characters often draw it out, with a pause between the syllables and a rising pitch before the pause and a falling pitch after it, making the noise sound something like "WHEEEET...whoooo!" When the whistle is uttered in real life (and it isn't usually these days, as it's interpreted as rather rude), it is often only a single-syllable whistle ("Whoooo!") or is indeed two syllables but is pronounced much more quickly and with even stress ("Wheet-whoo!").

* Similarly, the "Bronx cheer" (the sound made by humans and certain other primates to suggest derision, which is called a "raspberry" in places outside the New York area) is often exaggerated in cartoons and on kids' TV shows. Most people pronounce it quick and loud, like a fart - but in fiction it tends to be ridiculously drawn out and to decrease in volume, as if someone were slowly letting the air out of a large helium balloon. (Then again, maybe this is just to [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|Get Crap Past The Radar]].)

 

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[[Category:Dialogue]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]