Defensive "What?"

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Man, that White Magician Girl is hot. What I wouldn't give to have twenty minutes alone with her and a packing crate of spam. [Beat] What?

Basically, when someone says or does something outlandish or offensive for whatever reason, only to realize that everyone is staring at him, while he evidently didn't think whatever he said was that odd.

Could be because he just said the dumbest thing anyone has ever heard in their lives, because it was horrifically offensive, or maybe even because he just spouted an unexpectedly inspired bit of brilliance and doesn't realize it yet.

Related to Big "What?" and Flat What. Can be used to Lampshade Hanging an Out-of-Character Moment. Often overlaps with Funny Background Event.

Examples of Defensive "What?" include:

Anime and Manga

• This is Chiri's reaction in Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei when the rest of the class reacts to her treating "juicing her sister" as something completely natural.

Film

• The Big Bad Wolf says this when Shrek finds him sleeping in his (Shrek's) bed in the first movie.
  • And again in the second movie when Prince Charming finds him in Fiona's bed.
• When Gideon kicks Ramona down a flight of stairs in the climax of Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, Scott and Knives give him an appalled look and he responds with this. Then they beat him to a pulp.

Literature

• In Monstrous Regiment, Jackrum gets defensive after laying out the bouncer in the camp seamstresses' tent.

Jackrum: What? What! He was coming in here with his club! Polly: [knowingly] And why was he doing that, Sarge? Jackrum: [approvingly] Oh, you-- all right, I'd just given Madame the old 'quietus'...

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5: When the station fails to explode or disappear.

Ivanova: No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a Boom tomorrow. Beat, as Sinclair and Garibaldi wordlessly walk away. Ivanova: What? Look, somebody's gotta have some damn perspective around here! Boom. Sooner or later. BOOM!

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In one case, used to lampshade that Xander was the one to know some key bit of information.

Xander: What, I can't have information sometimes? Giles: It's just somewhat unprecedented.

• Norm Peterson did this at least once on Cheers.^[context?]

Music

• Jennifer Lopez does this in the 2001 music video for "I'm Real".

Jennifer Lopez: What?!

• Alicia Keys also does this after the piano break in the music video for "Girlfriend".

Video Games

• In the Meet the Spy video for Team Fortress 2, the BLU Soldier delivers one of these after shooting the BLU Spy.

Soldier: What? It was obvious, he's the RED Spy!

• Mass Effect's Kaidan, when having his infamous Covert Pervert moment. "It does sound like something that you'd find on an extranet fetish site. [beat] ...what?"

Web Comics

• Tedd of El Goonish Shive frequently finds the need to use these. Here and here are good examples. Catalina Bobcat gets one here, oddly enough Susan seems to be a cause of these.
• Black Mage in 8-Bit Theater does this a lot, whenever he's caught doing something awful.
• As does Fuzzy in Sam and Fuzzy. Probably goes with Sociopathic Hero territory.
• Belkar Bitterleaf from The Order of the Stick also does this quite a bit, especially when caught doing or saying something entirely in-character for him, like murdering an innocent gnome for his pack mule. Definitively a Sociopathic Hero trait.

Western Animation

• In the premiere episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, this is Pinkie Pie's reply to the others' stares after she eats a cupcake smothered in hot sauce.
• In The Venture Brothers, when Phantom Limb tranquilizes Brock for insulting Dr. Girlfriend.

"What? I'm a supervillain."

• Robot Chicken lists the top ten things co-headwriter Doug Goldstein could have done with the $12,000 he blew on his timeshare. One example is putting a dollar in $12,000 g-strings. When he is seen doing just that with a male dancer, he gives a defensive "what?" before explaining he ran out of chicks.