Interrupting Meme
Who's there?
Interrupting Article.
Interrupti-- A particular form of Memetic Mutation, generally taking the form of an article, video or similar, in which the subject at hand gets flipped, turned upside-down, so I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, I'll tell you how--
...er, sorry. The subject at hand is overtaken by the meme, to the surprise and chagrin of the viewer. Sometimes these memes go as far as interrupting other memes. (One assumes that should any of these memes face off against each other, the universe would end.)
See also Bait and Switch. The original topic may be left with No Ending. If the original topic was boring anyway, the interruption may serve as a Drop the Cow moment.
Examples of Interrupting Meme include:
Advertising
- MORNING RESCUE! (Especially combined with Puella Magi Madoka Magica. And especially in the role of Big Damn Heroes.)
- Energizer batteries once featured a toy drum-playing rabbit that was still going, even interrupting other (fake) commercials.
- Old Spice similarly interrupts other (fake) commercials, claiming that it's too powerful to let an ad-break end. (It's probably supposed to run in conjunction with another Old Spice ad, but sometimes it's played in isolation.)
Anime and Manga
- On the original TV Tropes forum, any discussion could get derailed into an Evangelion discussion at any moment because EVANGELION DERAIL: This thread is now about Evangelion.
- People referencing the second Darker than Black opening will often UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ
- When discussing Puella Magi Madoka Magica, you sh-*CHOMP*
- And don't lose your head over it either, mmm'kay? ◕ ‿‿ ◕
- Kara no Kyoukai:: Touko is a dirty red bitc
Comic Books
- As of Final Crisis due to The Anti-Life Equation running through all of humanity, some fans have beguALL IS ONE IN Darkseid.
Film
- Superman Returns: Superman will nev-''WROOOOOONNNG!!!!
- Sometimes, when talking about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, people tend tWE ARE SEX BOB-OMB, ONE TWO THREE FOUR!!!
- Inception's BWOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNGGG
- It's more obscure, but The Terminator seriWHERE IS SARAH CONNOR
- Rocky Horror Picture Show: I see you shiver with anticipa--SAY IT!
- The much maligned horror film The Devil Inside has its infamous en- The events of this entry have never been fully explained. For more information visit allthetropes.orain.org.
Jokes
- This is used in the Interrupting Cow joke, as follows:
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Knock knock. |
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- With a variation involving the "interrupting coefficient of friction" - MU! (The coefficient of friction is represented by the greek letter "Mu")
- Or interrupting koal- *glomp*
- Looney Tunes: Back in Action has a deleted scene with a variation of this joke called "Impatient Cow".
- One entertaining variation that sadly only works once is the interrupting starfis- *hand in face*. Or for an even crueler variant, "Interrupting Falcon- PUNCH!
- Made popuar by The Office
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Knock knock.
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Live-Action TV
- As demonstrated above, a video or story getting "Bel-Air'd" (the topic at hand getting interrupted by the Expository Theme Tune of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) is a common form of this. Frequently takes the form of a story segueing into how the writer got into one little fight and his mom got scared, and so on and so forth. Eventually, this became so prevalent that my mom got scared, and said "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air". I whistled for a cab and when it came near, the license plate said "fresh" and it had dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought "Nah, forget it; yo home, to Bel-Air!" I pulled up to the house about seven or eight and I yelled to the cabby "Yo home, smell you later!" I looked at my kingdom, I was finally there! Sittin' on my throne as the prince of Bel-Air.
- Monty Python: Sometimes, when you least expect - NOOOOOOOOOO Obody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
- Alternately, squished by a giant cartoon foot.
- A knight in full armour who hits the person who is talking with a rubber chicken, thus ending the sketch.
- Of course, the colonel, who interrupts the sketch and ends it because it is too silly.
- And now, for something completely different...
Music
- A Rickroll can occasionally take this form.
- Especially with that year Astley Rickrolled all of America during the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.
- As the current page image shows, the Kanye West "Imma let you finish" meme is sometimes used in this-Yo Troper! I'm real happy for ya, and imma let you finish, but this is one of the greatest pages of all time! ONE OF THE GREATEST PAGES OF ALL TIME!!!!-fashion.
- Sometimes, people will start to write a post, but then their parents will open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur.
- The monster mash is occasionally used as an alternative to the Bel-Air theme song.
Professional Wrestling
- Dwayne Johnson, as the The Rock, would often bait people by asking them: "What do you think of that?"
- Well, I-
- It doesn't MATTER what you think!!
- Well, I-
- After his debut in the WWE, Muhammad Hassan would often interrupt other wrestlers promos and whatnot, with his distinctive theme music. This spread to YTMND, and became what is now referred to as "Hassaning," where his music would oftAN ALIEN, ALIEN, ALIEN, ALAYLEE....
- Stone WHAT Cold WHAT Steve WHAT Austin WHAT? Usually done by his fans when a rival talks trash about him. Hilariously transformed into a massive Take That by The Undertaker in this instance.
- This eventually became a problem as audiences began interrupting any heel promo, drowning out the dialogue for home viewers.
- Number Four: "Chris Jericho's ARMBAR!"
- X has just completed/defeated (insert REALLY difficult feat/opponent here) and is tired, exhausted, and badly beaten, savoring his hard-fought victory. You think you know me... * guitar riff* ON THIS DAY! I SEE CLEARLY! EVERYTHING HAS COME TO LIFE!
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Edge: [Running down the ramp with the Money In The Bank briefcase] I'M CASHING IT IN! I'M CASHING IT IN! RING THE DAMN BELL! |
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Tabletop Games
Board Games
- I was going on TV Tropes, thinking about how to add to the Warhammer 40,000 article, when suddenly I heard a rumbling sound. I looked around a bit, and concluded it must be coming from underneath the table my monitor was sitting on. I stood up and looked underneath the table, when, out of nowhere, a frakking Baneblade came out from under my computer, smashed it and the table, then shot up my modem and entire Chaos Space Marine army. How the hell did a 300 ton tank sneak underneath my computer? It would have to take some kind of tactical genius t- CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDD!
- It's also damn near impossible to discuss the Imperial Guard, and especially Commissars, witho-*BLAM*
- Squats (essentially Space Dwarves) are infamous among the fandom, and merely bringing up their name ca
- There is an infamously terrible unit which shall not be named because otherwise you'll turn into one and being a Chaos Spawn suck-OH GOD I DIDN'T MENAW 0 RWHIOEFEFER 9 IGHERGVJKR
Card Games
- Magic: The Gathering: Time Stop! [1]
- The Scornful Egotist is a creature spell that, despite it's flagrantly bad effect, has gathered something of a ALL HAIL THE GREAT LORD EGOTIST.
Tabletop RPG
- The Truly Immovable Rod, which would frequently *CLANG*
- WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?
Video Games
- Mass Effect's infamous Harbinger who rand Assuming direct control.
- On some Mass Effect 2 message boards, Garrus' combat shouts "HEADSHOT!" and "Impressive!", due to his enthusiastic voice acting during combat, have also become memes, though obviously not to the exte We are assuming control.
- Alongside that, Garrus also has "Can it wait? I'm in the middle of some calibrations." Even after the Romance Sidequest.
- Perhaps Commander Shepard can shed some light onI've had enough of your disingenuous assertions. SHEPARD PAUNCH!!!
- Shepard's 'I should go'. They even made a shirt [dead link] of it.
- Trombe from Super Robot Wars is so awesome that even his theme song can overpower any oth-TROMBE OVERRIDE!
- It's worth noting that this meme is not mutated from its original form at all. Thanks to an Ascended Glitch in the games themselves, every time Elzam engages in battle, Trombe will override even the most dramatic final boss music.
- With the sole exception to this rule being the Blue Danube. [dead link]
- Star Wolf's "Can't let you [Verb] that, Star FOX!"
- If talking about I Wanna Be the Guy difficulty, you might hear about GAME OVER - PRESS 'R' TO TRY AGAIN
- And if watching a Let's Play of that game: "Please stop Let's Playing I Wanna Be The Guy!"
- When playing BlazBlue, it's important to remember thaBANG BANG BANG BAAAAAANG! BANINGU DAMASHIII!
- Why did you forgGIGANTIC TAGER
- Several members of GameFAQs have started a trend where in the middle of their sentence they suddenly ge*cougar'd*
- Discussions about the Glitch Pokémon MissingNo start out well bUt sO)n b3c1e-♠◘♥‼K☺Tµî>#BÜ╕╫@⌠§-Ü
- After Rock Band 2 came out, one might fiSPOONMAN
- Killer Instinct has a memetically popular announcer who C-C-C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!
- Dwarf Fortress player cancels example, interrupted by Rhesus Macaque.
- At one point (not anymore): Urist MacDwarf cancels thirsty, killed by a carp
- Minecraft's Creepers have recently become popul-SSSSSSSSSSSSS
- TOUHOU HIJACK LOL. Note that the Touhou Hijack meme originates from Image Boards, and either migrated from there or appeared here for the same reasons.
Web Comics
- Brawl in the Family: Expecting more examples here? TOO BAD. WALUIGI TIME.
Web Original
- YTMND spawned a few:
- On 4chan and in similar circles, flash movies (usually NSFW ones) are occasionally "hooded", wherein the subject of the video has a crude MS Paint blackface imposed over them while DMX's "Where The Hood At" plays, usually just when it seems the viewer is about to see some boobs.
- The aptly-titled "WTF Boom". Here's a good example.
- It's not uncommon for someone to be in the middle of saying somethi—oh, crap! I just lost The Game!
- *is shot* is a widely popular meme, where the poster is presumably Killed Mid-Sentence for an unpopular opinion and/or overused meme. (For examples, take a look at Wild Mass Guessing and run a search on "Time Lord".)
- In The Cinema Snob review of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, during the introduction he keeps getting interrupted with the well-known "GARBAGE DAY" clip. Which makes sense, seeing as that's really all anyone knows about that movie.
- EPICROLL :the cutscene: from REPLAYING :the game:. (The original cuts off after one loop.)
- Imitating heart attacks is another popular interrupt which is found commonly on Image Boards; one particular usage, originating from Katawa Shoujo, involves finding something so overwhelmingly Moe tha-HNNNNNNNNNNG~
- On GameFAQs, suddenly... NINJAS! Hundreds of them!
- Also on GameFAQs, someone about to say something thats an obvious tro *is shot*
- In the comments on the humor blog You Suck at Craigslist, whenever the discussion turns to zomb
- Also on YSaC, there is a meme potentially related to Hypno-Toads, spawned by th- ALL HAIL HYPNO-DOGS!
- Arguing on the Internet is like running in the Special Olympics: Even if you win, you're still retarded.
- Every time someone mentions UltraFARK, Drew gives you a be+++CARRIER LOST+++
- Blah blah extremely important Social Justice Crusade stuff blah.
- But what are your thoughts on yaoi? Different in that it's more of a thread derailer.
Western Animation
- Futurama only featured The Hypnotoad as a throwaway gag, but ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD
- Those windmills will keep them coolWINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!
- Anyone speaking of Freakazoid!'s Candle Jack is likely not to finish his sentence... Hey, whaddaya know, I'm perfectly fine.
- If you've seen Up, then you probably-- SQUIRREL!
- The Simpsons: "So I says to Maybel, 'Maybel,' I says... hang on, I'll finish this later" [...] "So I says to Maybel..."
- If you hang around Family Guy long enough, you may--Oh Crap...*five minutes of epic fighting with an anthropomorphic chicken later*...anyway, like I was saying, you might see Peter getting sidetracked by some random throwback to an earlier episode.
- Mega Man: Gutsman's Ass is everywhere! DUN-DUN!!!!
- There was a minor Running Gag in Mission Hill about a guy who... Penis penis penis penis.
- Thanks to My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, any and all topics will be derailed when someone—and then I said, "Oatmeal, are you crazy?"
Real Life
- We'd talk about the vuvuzelas at World Cup 2010, but BZZZZBZZZZBZZZZBZZZZBZZZZBZZZBZZZZ
- The ZX Spectrum USENET newsgroup often has particularly embarrassing statem3w587fuN^NO&*IULYBvilu£%b6viaby5i+++NO CARRIER+++
- This is most certainly a remnant of the era of FidoNet and similar messaging networks, conected via BBSes before the advent of the Internet. Users usually connected to a BBS via a phone line (one phone line, one user) and they could usually write messages on forums directly on their terminal emulation software instead of using an off-line, separate program. When they were typing the message and the line got suddenly noisy, the software interpreted the line noise as random characters. The "NO CARRIER" was the standard modem response after an interrupted connection; whether the text ended being part of the message or not depended on the software, but it always appeared in the console of the interrupted user; hence the meme.
- This was later picked up by Slashdot.
- Attention Deficit Disorder, and the jokes about it like for example "They say I have ADD, but they don't understa- CHICKEN!" and its varia- Ooh Shiny!.
- Down around here, we call that ADHLAB -- Attention Deficit Hey Look A Butterfly!
- ↑ Unlike other counterspells, once played, Time Stop ends the turn.