Metaphorgotten
![A preacher quotes "for dust you are, and to dust you shall return", and then expresses how cool becoming dirt would be.](http://static.miraheze.org/allthetropeswiki/c/c7/Oglaf_dirt_metaphorgotten.png)
"A good story is like a good bowel movement: it's only really satisfying once it's ended. Because if you just keep going, then eventually your body runs out of shit and moves on to pushing all of your internal organs out of your sphincter, until only a foul-smelling shell remains, and anyone who wants to get in on your incredibly long poo gets turned off, because they need to have gone through all of the poo up to that point to have the necessary context and this is where the analogy is breaking down somewhat." |
A metaphor can be like a train, taking you from concept A to concept B, maybe at high speed, maybe derailing, and definitely serving overpriced sandwiches.
There's nothing wrong with using a metaphor to explain the situation, but make sure it doesn't derail on you later. Trying to hold to an established metaphor while including added information that doesn't fit it at all... well, that's sillier than wearing a trash can on your head while artistically comparing two unlike concepts.
In other words, a good comedy trope.
The trope generally follows one of two paths. As seen in the page quote, the metaphor begins with a solid concept but quickly degenerates into a repetition of the actual situation only projected onto the metaphorical concepts. "You can't make an omelette without [something much more unpleasant than breaking a few eggs]" seems to be particularly popular, perhaps because it lends itself well to Black Comedy. It is also possible for the metaphorical concept to distract the speaker so that the metaphor is forgotten.
Handily Truth in Television. Has a lot of overlap with Dissimile. Compare Analogy Backfire, Sidetracked by the Analogy, Shaggy Frog Story, Disorganized Outline Speech, and I Like My X Like I Like My Y. Because this often uses realistic diction, it can also subvert Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic. Buffy-Speak uses this a lot.
Advertising
- A PSA for promoting foster parenting:
- A mobile phone service promoted their smartphones with this line:
"It's like having your cake and sending email with it." |
- Norton Internet Security will protect your unicorn from Dolph Lundgren. And your chicken from Dokken.
Anime and Manga
- In one of the "Supplementary Materials" strips written for Azumanga Daioh's tenth anniversary, Chiyo-Chichi gives Sakaki the following advice: "Keep moving forward. Then turn left at the second corner."
- In another strip, Osaka compares her heart to a sea. It's big, deep, and has octopuses and stuff in it.
- In Yellow, Taki and Goh get into an argument about whether Taki or the women who go after him are "like moths to a flame." Amusingly this leads to an attempted kiss on Goh's part and this exchange:
"What are you doing?!" |
- In Persona 4 Yuu uses a giant, $35 beef bowl to begin an analogy to relate the need to never give up on their pursuit of a fairly vague goal. Other members of the group pitch in and add to the increasingly narmy metaphor. When it's Yuu's turn again, he says, "And my bowl isn't empty yet."
- Gintama, being a Gag Series, takes this trope and runs with it.
Comic Books
- Bookhunter: Agent Bay preps the police for a dragnet, and ends his speech with:
Film
- In 28 Days, one of the recovering addicts in the rehab center tries to explain how everyone has to walk their own path.
- The educational short Drugs Are Like That really doesn't know what the metaphor it's going for is. Drugs are compared to legos, cookies, swimming, toys, and pacifiers. Then they say that the human body is like a perpetual motion machine that the characters make out of Legos (!!) and that moving one piece causes it to explode -- "Drugs are like that!" This is all narrated by Anita Bryant.
- Hot Shots:
- Magicians briefly has two spectators muse on the sight of two magicians, who formerly had a successful and well-respected double act going before one slept with the other's wife and the other accidentally decapitated said wife during a trick with a guillotine, reuniting for the first time in four years to perform together:
Spectator 1: It's like Israel and Palestine. |
- One of the common Rocky Horror Picture Show callbacks replies to Riff Raff's lines:
"Say goodbye to all of this..." |
- In Animal House, the Dean says:
It's time someone put his foot down around here, and that foot is me. |
- The 40-Year-Old Virgin tells us how to woo women: You plant a seed, you wait for that seed to grow into a plant, and then you fuck the plant.
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Dennis uses a couple of these in Surviving Eden:
- Pretty much everything Biff Tannen tried in Back to The Future.
"That makes about as much sense as a screen door on a battleship!" |
- His future self actually berates him on this point.
- Ditto for his great-grandfather Mad Dog Tannen.
"I'll hunt you and shoot you down like a duck!" |
- Although Fridge Logic says that people shoot a lot more ducks than dogs, so maybe it's reasonable.
- And somebody called Mad Dog talking about shooting dogs, would at least sound strange.
- In The Boondock Saints, Doc tells the invasive Russian mobsters to leave, in a possible Shout-Out to the Back to The Future example above:
"Why don't you make like a tree... and get the fuck out of here!" |
- The bartender and his patrons did this a lot in that scene, though the latter were making fun of the former.
"People in glass houses sink ships!" |
- He speaks almost exclusively in these. The hilarity is compounded by his Tourette's.
- The opening narration of Out Cold has Stumpy comparing Bull Mountain to a woman, then switching over to a discourse on skiing injuries that has nothing to do with women, then ending on a note that would make his soliloquy a good comparison of a woman to the mountain, but making absolutely no sense the other way around.
- In The Other Guys, after pointing out the flaws in Terry comparing himself to a lion going after a tuna, Allen continues to spin a scenario where the school of tuna build an apparatus that lets them go on land and hunt down the lion's family.
- From 13 Going on 30:
Tom-Tom: Okay, you can wipe off the "doe-eyed Bambi watching her mother get shot strapped to the back of a van" look from your face! |
- In The Social Network, Sean Parker uses the metaphor of a fisherman having his photo taken with one big Marlin instead of 15 trout. Eduardo goes into all the technical details, like how much a Marlin could weigh in real life and how strong the fisherman would have to be, while an irate Jesse tells him that he's Completely Missing the Point.
- In Lucky Number Slevin:
- Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls:
Ace: I shall slip amongst them, like an unseen... thing! |
- "...But you're not a worker bee. You're a renegade killer bee."
- In Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star, right after Bucky is told he isn't big enough downstairs to be a porn star, Antonio the diner owner offers to be in porn, saying "I'm hung like a cocker spaniel", at which point Miles Deep, the porn director, says, "A cocker spaniel isn't a big dog." "Yeah, but it's warm, and cuddly, and loyal, and has warm eyes." "Your d!ck has warm eyes?" "You know what I mean!"
- The Odd Couple II: Oscar and Felix painfully go through several different metaphors, before Oscar says he can't remember what they started out talking about.
- Loaded Weapon 1 does this in a battle of wits, then points it out.
Literature
- In ancient history, a non-comedic version of this is referred to as a "Homeric Simile". This is based on instances in The Iliad and The Odyssey where the narrator starts off comparing two things, then continues into minute details that are seemingly unnecessary. For instance, if someone was feeling happy, the story might say:
- Tom Holt regularly includes some kind of brutal disjunction of "omelettes and eggs". Did you know that it is possible to make omelettes without shredding chickens, but it doesn't make as good television?
- This is frequently seen in Discworld novels, due to the extreme literal-mindedness of many of the characters. Sometimes, of course, taking the metaphor a little too far actually works.
Time was something that largely happened to other people; [Lu-Tze] viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle. |
- From John C. Wright's Fugitives of Chaos
- In the Douglas Adams novel So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, hitchhiking alien Ford Prefect has a dream in which he encounters a new life form emerging from a polluted New York river. When the creature asks him what life is like he responds:
- Lemony Snicket seems to have an affinity for strange and humourous metaphors of this kind.
- The Beatrice Letters has, "The day was as cold and bitter as hot chocolate if it had been put in a fridge for several hours and filled with vinegar."
- In The Penultimate Peril, there is: "Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter."
- From Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts:
- Among the concepts used by the Oulipo, who were basically the Dadaists of the literary world, is the pataphor. It is described as being like a lizard whose tail has grown so long that the tail breaks off and grows a new lizard. "Look, Bob," said Alice, "what a strange lizard." "Indeed," replied Bob absently, beginning to grow impatient with this interminable safari.
- From the Eighth Doctor Adventures:
- "Pleased with his metaphor, Fitz attempted to extend it."
- Even Anji has been guilty of this. Very guilty.
- Lampshaded by Patton Oswalt in his essay "Dating a Stripper is a Recipe for Perspective" from Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me:
"But even the sweetest apple plucked from the tree of love can become a rotted, flyblown failure full of disease, maggots, and yelling. |
- This trope occurs regularly in William Langland's 14th Century Narrative Poem, Piers Plowman, which is famous for its abstruse allegorical method which consistently stretches metaphors way further than their comfortable limits. See, for instance, the explanation of the Trinity as Hand (fingers, palm and fist) and Candle (taper, flame, and wax) in Passus 17 of the B text.
- In Jeeves and Wooster Bertie sometimes falls into this while narrating. Very Good, Jeeves! gives us this gem:
Live-Action TV
- Angel, like Buffy below, inevitably inherits this.
Fred: You're like the MacGyver of Wolfram and Hart! |
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer examples:
- In "Ted", Buffy lets her annoyance at her mother's new boyfriend creep into a strategic discussion about killing vampires:
Buffy: Vampires are creeps. |
- Willow has a particularly beautiful bit in the Season Four premiere:
Willow: But here, the energy, the collective intelligence, it's like this force, this penetrating force, and I can just feel my mind opening up -- you know? -- and letting this place thrust into and spurt knowledge into... That sentence ended up in a different place than it started out in. |
- Coupling does this a lot.
- Susan's father is talking to Steve about Steve's habit of "soloing" (singing in the shower). Steve takes it as a sexual metaphor, which leads to him saying this: "If music be the food of love, then masturbation is just a snack between meals."
- Also when Steve accidentally sees Sally naked, and she starts a metaphor of how she is like Australia:
Sally: Far away, vastly uninhabited, and filled with areas of great danger. |
- Patrick discussing monogamy while pretending to be involved with Susan as part of competing with a rival.
- Though, this being Patrick, it's arguable that he didn't forget the metaphor at all, and means what it sounds like he means.
- In the Douglas Adams-inspired detective comedy Dirk Gently This dialogue:
Suspect: "Are you sayin something's fishy, Mr. Gently?" |
- Used at least twice in the horror parody Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.
- Most episodes end with Doctor Rick Dagless giving a conclusion to the story in monologue form. One of the most memorable is the classic first episode ending:
- Also used during the first episode at a funeral.
- There's a great one in the spin-off series Man to Man with Dean Learner:
- Doctor Who does this quite a few times, especially in episodes written by Steven Moffat (which, given the length of the Coupling section above, is perhaps unsurprising).
- One of them is the Trope Namer for the Timey-Wimey Ball trope. Though the comedy of that example kind of falls flat because the rest of the episode is absolutely terrifying.
- "The Time of Angels" has:
"A needle that looks like hay, a hay-like needle of death. A hay-like needle of death in a haystack of... er, statues. No, yours was fine." |
- And from the second-last episode of that season, on the virtues of buying another half hour's breathing space...not so much meta but definitely phorgotten: "There are fruit flies live on Hopperton 6, that live for twenty minutes and they don't even mate for life." *pause* "There was going to be a point to that. I'll get back to you."
- From "Victory of the Daleks", in reference to the Daleks: "There isn't a sincere bone in your body (without pause) There isn't a bone in your body."
- In The Fast Show, this was Swiss Toni's main shtick:
- Eddie Izzard has a bunch of these.
- His bit about romance among beekeepers? "I like my women how I like my coffee... COVERED IN BEES!"
- Earlier in the same sketch, "I like my women how I like my coffee... in a plastic cup."
- Followed later by "I like coffee hot and strong. Like I like my women: hot and strong. ...With a spoon in them."
- As well as another Izzard comment on beekeeping:
- His bit about romance among beekeepers? "I like my women how I like my coffee... COVERED IN BEES!"
"My father was a beekeeper, his father was a beekeeper before him, and I wanted to follow in their footsteps. And those footsteps went like this: 'AAAAAAAAAAAH I'm covered in beeeeeees! HELP!'" |
- On Glee, the new football coach, Shannon Bieste, does this quite a bit:
Shannon: You watch your tone with me, missy. You crap on my leg, I'll cut it off! |
- Also, Sue "threatening" Will:
- This was done Once an Episode on Home Improvement with Tim trying to repeat Wilson's metaphorical advice from memory, and... failing.
"You know Mark Twain? Scared to *death* of the Village People." |
- One of the many varieties of snark available on House is the intentional Metaphorgotten.
- At one point in season 4, Cuddy is badgering House to hire a new team to replace his old one. His response?
House: You have sex before you get married. You test-drive a car before you buy it. I can't hire a team based on a ten-minute interview. What if I don't like having sex with them? |
- Another example, this time a subversion:
Stacy: If I wasn't married to Mark, I'd be on you like red on rice. |
- In season five, after House drives Cameron to resign as Cuddy's temporary replacement (Cuddy wanted to spend time with her new baby), Cuddy secretly marks the elevators "out of order", forcing House to use the stairs.
House: Elevators keep crashing. Is Mercury in retrograde, or what? |
- From Jeeves and Wooster:
Spode: Because he's a butterfly, who toys with women's hearts and throws them aside like soiled gloves! |
- My So-Called Life, "Life of Brian" involves Brian, Graham, Angela, Delia the new girl, and a metaphor involving wallpaper that covers (pun intended) most of the episode.
- In Peep Show, Jez is railing against his aunt's decision to give his religious uncle a secular funeral during his eulogy, except that he tries to compare Jesus to the Irish musician Enya, capped off by claiming "Enya died for our sins".
- In the episode where Sophie has her baby Super Hans compares it to seeing the channel tunnel. "And then imagine a fuckin huge baby coming out of there!"
- Shawn Spencer in Psych frequently comes up with metaphors. Problem is, they either make no sense in relation to what he's talking about, or he veers off in his meaning and... loses it.
- One example:
Shawn: Pack it in, pull the plug, shut it down, leave the dead meat in the freezer, and put on your Sunday best, 'cause it's Arbor Day, baby! |
- Or from the Disco episode:
- It's not just Shawn. In the episode There's Something About Mira, Mira's mother offers us this gem:
"I like my men like I like my wine. White and hairy." |
- Which gives Shawn the opportunity to reply with
"That makes no sense. None whatsoever." |
- Pushing Daisies is absolutely filled with this sort of thing and related tropes, due to the eccentric speech patterns of most of the characters. One typical example comes when Olive and Chuck are discussing their scheme to get Chuck's aunts to start swimming again.
- Comedian Lewis Black on his Red White and Screwed tour would like you to share his outrage about Bill Clinton's marital infidelity:
Lewis Black: "Is oral sex adultery? Yes! There is no fucking question! If curling is an Olympic sport, then oral sex is adultery! And oral sex should be an Olympic sport! Why? Because it's harder than curling, and if you're any good at it, you deserve a medal! |
- The Celebrity Jeopardy sketch in Saturday Night Live:
Sean Connery: What's the difference between you and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck, and I can't remember how it ends but your mother's a whore. |
- Seinfeld:
- Frank Constanza says to his son's boss: "You couldn't smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a dame ... I lost my train of thought."
- When George's mother catches him masturbating and insists he see a psychiatrist, he complains "If everyone who did... that had to see a psychiatrist..." then veers off realizing he has no idea how to end that thought. At prompting from Jerry he just says "Whatever!"
- Spaced:
- In the Pilot episode, Tim gives his cheating ex-girlfriend an elaborate metaphor for why he's leaving her.
Tim: You can't dangle the bogus carrot of possible reconciliation in front of my face whilst riding some other donkey. |
- When Daisy discusses her recent breakup with her now ex-boyfriend:
- Tim's classic comparison between waiting for a possible reunion with his ex-girlfriend and masturbation:
- When Tim tells Daisy he thinks his ex might want to take him back:
- Spin City:
- At one point, Michael and Caitlin are arguing over their delayed Relationship Upgrade, using recent negotiations between two city departments as the metaphor. Later on, when they make up, Michael tries to continue the metaphor by stating that "the department would really like... to have sex with you."
- Also in Spin City, we have Nikki explaining how she got into accounting: "Numbers are uncomplicated. Numbers don't lie. And they don't say they're coming over and then never call, so you go out for a coffee and see them walking up the street with another woman..."
- Titus has:
Titus: (holding a glass of water) If sex were water...Tommy hasn't had sex in two years. (shrugs and takes a drink) |
- In an episode of Yes Prime Minister, Prime Minister Hacker's political adviser makes a case for being returned to her usual office (from which she has been unceremoniously removed by the machinations of Sir Humphrey) by using some objects on the table, including a teacup, an ash-tray and a saucer, to construct a rough map of the interior of 10 Downing Street to prove its strategic worth. Hacker agrees, and summons Bernard to have the adviser moved to her office "between the tea-cup, the ash-tray and the saucer." Bernard, who was not present during the initial metaphor, is as confused as you'd expect.
- Narrowly averted in an episode of Warehouse 13.
Ms. Frederick: You took a shot in the dark. |
- How I Met Your Mother has several of these.
- There's:
- When Marshall and Lily are trying to decide whether or not they should try to conceive a child:
- Barney anticipating finally having sex with Nora:
- Ugly Betty has: "You'll always be compared to that first motorcycle. Especially when it's shoving its tongue down your girlfriend's throat."
- Gossip Girl does this a few times.
- This dialogue snippet:
- Blair, after having been lured away with Chuck on an all-night trip to find Georgina, which ended with Blair driving off in Chuck's limo after finding out he didn't need her to come along in the first place:
Serena: It doesn't make sense! |
- The TV Show The Office is notorious for using derailed metaphors:
- In the episode "The Coup," Michael describes Dwight's attempt at betrayal and loses track of his point:
- One episode has Dwight attempting to explain his relationship with Michael:
- Jim in "The Delivery, Part One", re: Pam's decision to not leave for the hospital to deliver her baby until the contractions are five minutes apart:
Jim: "So the plan was seven minutes, but we're calling an audible. Because that's her call. 'Cause she's the quarterback. I'm just the left tackle who happened to get her pregnant." |
- The Inbetweeners: "Women are like fairground rides, son. Fucking mental..."
- Better Off Ted does this a lot.
- When Linda is meeting an ex-boyfriend for coffee:
Linda: I gotta go meet Don at the Who Cares What People Think Café, where if someone sees something that they want, they just have it, and it's the best thing they've ever had. Because that meal's been practicing yoga for seven years. In case you missed it, by "that meal" I mean me. I'm bad at metaphors, but I'm great at sex. |
- There's also:
Veronica: It's time for this fawn to strap on a machine gun, spread its wings and fly! |
- Although, this is technically not a metaphorgotten; the end of the episode revealed that Veronica honestly didn't know what a fawn was, and was just stringing ideas together as she came up with them.
- Technically this was in a newspaper, but when asked about his cancelled quiz show The Rich List, Andrew O'Keefe came out with this gem, comparing it to his other show: The Rich List is like a dear cousin sadly taken before its time, never to return I'm afraid. Unlike Deal or No Deal, which is like the bachelor uncle who shows up to every family function without fail and drinks everything in sight and gets all the kids dancing and hyper before taking off into the night in his '65 Mercedes convertible which could use a little TLC."
- Series 6, episode 5 of Hustle gave us obnoxious, management-speak-spouting mark Mervyn Lloyd:
- That Mitchell and Webb Look gives us this announcement about an upcoming football match:
Announcer: Coming up mid-week! The giants of Charlton play host to the titans of Ipswich...making them both seem normal-sized! |
- Shaun Micallef was fond of this on The Micallef Program.
- One particular example that springs to mind, from an opening monologue:
- It's common to his role as "Fabio, the handsomest man in the world", along with Disorganised Outline Speech.
- He's described his more recent show Talkin Bout Your Generation as "QI meets Its A Knockout, goes out with each other for a few weeks, then QI gets dumped and takes up with Spicks and Specks, but awkwardly runs into Its A Knockout again a couple of months later and they have an affair. Spicks and Specks finds out, shoots Its A Knockout in a jealous rage and goes to jail"
- Father Ted: When Mrs Doyle pleads with Ted not to replace the broken tea-making machine, by espousing the pleasures of making tea by hand:
- From the Firefly episode "Ariel":
Mal: (looking through the window) The next time you decide to stab me in the back... Have the guts to do it to my face.[1] |
- In The Big Bang Theory, the Casanova Wannabe tries to kiss The Chick while she was trying to make him better. She hits him. When his friends ask what happened, his answer goes along the lines:
"How could you even get a bull in a Chinese shop? The doors would have to be huge. And even if you managed to get him in there all he would do is start wrecking... oh." |
- Also:
Gwen: Look, just forget about this okay. It's not your fault, you were just the straw that broke the camel's back. |
- In The IT Crowd:
- Douglas has a very good one.
- Moss has one when Roy criticizes his plan in Series 2:
"Prepare to put mustard on those words, for you will soon be consuming them along with this slice of humble pie that comes direct from the oven of shame, set at gas mark 'egg on your face'!" |
- In Black Books, when an illiterate thug reminds Bernard he only has a few days to teach him to read:
Danny: "...if I can't read by Friday, you'll both be brown bread. Buttered. With Harry. On the boat." |
- Michael's speech right at the end of Queer as Folk: "People are like snowflakes: every one special and unique... and in the morning you have to shovel them off them driveway."
- In The George Lopez Show, George is telling his niece to stop being soft. He says this:
"You gotta keep your heart hard, like... like a lobster. Then the only way for people to get in is to crack your shell and get at your meat with a tiiiiiiiny little fork." |
- Corner Gas has a few.
- One example:
- Another one:
Hank: Check and mate! The hunter has become the hunted! The fox has become the...fox...who is...catching himself... |
- Xena: Warrior Princess, "The Royal Couple of Thieves":
Autolycus: Yeah, you see, a woman's chastity is like a new hat. A beautiful thing that's... |
- From The Thick of It:
Dan Miller: If you're gonna make an omelette, you're going to have to have some frank and honest discussion with the eggs. |
- That '70s Show has a tendency for their characters to go into these, especially Kelso and Jackie.
- Community:
- In this sequence on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert tries to explain a metaphor made by John McCain comparing Middle-Earth to the debt ceiling debate, using The Lord of the Rings figurines. Each one he brings out strains the metaphor a little more, until:
One more thing. [brings out a full-scale sword replica] This, of course, is Aragorn's sword Andúril, Flame of the West, reforged from the Shards of Narsil, given to me by Viggo Mortensen. Now, this has nothing to do with the metaphor; I just want to remind everyone that I have this. |
- Remember, Nation. If you love something, set it free and if it comes back it's yours forever. If it doesn't come back, find something that looks exactly like it and make it wear the dress.
- In Stargate SG-1, O'Neill at one point gets into a sort of metaphor battle with a village leader. When O'Neill says "Birds of a feather," the leader doesn't get it, having not heard it before. O'Neill tries to explain that it's about "flocking" and "togetherness", before admitting that he isn't sure himself.
- Michael's very first line on Burn Notice slips into this.
Know what it's like being a spy? Like sitting in your dentist's reception area twenty-four hours a day. You read magazines, sip coffee, and every so often, someone tries to kill you. |
- Though arguably, he's not derailing a metaphor—he's literally saying that being a spy is like sitting in a waiting room where someone occasionally tries to kill you.
- The Daily Show:
John Stewart: It's a great day when the president of the United States says on national television that gay people should no longer be regulated to only planning other people's weddings. It's not right. It's like putting a cat in charge of the Goldfish Toss game, it's not fair. You're just torturing the cat; just let him eat the fish or move him to Down a Clown. That's a better game for the cat. What are we talking about, I forgot already. |
Music
- From Tim Minchin's beat poem "Storm": "I'm becoming aware that I'm staring / I'm like a rabbit, suddenly trapped / in the blinding headlights of vacuous crap."
- Whilst "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver" by Primus consists of euphemistic metaphors, the entirety of the song seems to be an example of metaphorgotten:
Wynona loved her big brown beaver |
- "Like a River" by the comedy-folk group Modern Man is pretty much "Metaphorgotten: The Song".
Newspaper Comics
- A 1984 installment of Matt Groening's Life in Hell included a few supposed quotations about love by great philosophers from history. They all follow this trope and become increasingly bizarre and ridiculous, finally finishing with this one: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." - Nietzsche
- In a Garfield strip, Garfield says Odie's bark is worse than his bite, but that his breath is worse than his bark.
Radio
- A Running Gag in Nebulous is that the eponymous professor will take his Techno Babble metaphors to breaking point and beyond. For example:
- Interestingly, Professor Nebulous always realizes he's doing it, and stops himself with the remark, "I'm drifting."
- Frequently played with on Adventures in Odyssey, since TV Genius Eugene interprets all metaphors as Metaphorgotten. For example, when he gets offended when his future father-in-law calls Katrina's engagement ring a "mere trinket."
Eugene: Trinket? |
- Almost all of Humphrey Lyttelton's explanations of how "One Song to the Tune of Another" works in I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue do this, and the derail always ends the same way. For example:
- Marcus Brigstocke gives us the Tax Cake.
Recorded and Stand Up Comedy
- Aziz Ansari has a bit on his special Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening, talking about how a immigrant doctor friend of his was able to bypass the greencard process by going to Alabama, which is an "underserved" state.
I was like, whoa, that's kind of a weird deal. The government's like, "Oh yeah, you can come to the United States! C'mon, c'mon! Yeah, you, c'mon, c'mon!...but you gotta go to Alabama". It's kinda like a girl going "Yeah, you can see me naked, but you can only look at my left elbow. And my left elbow is racist." |
Theatre
- From Passing Strange: "...They mimic the phallo-centric narrative of 'verse, chorus, verse, chorus, climax, fade out, smoke a cigarette, turn over, snore all night and never call me again--'"
- "You know, absence really does make the heart grow into a state of mind which somehow transforms what you once could not stand about your family into a somehow quaint pleasure-giving construct."
- The other thing Our American Cousin is famous for.
- Cyrano De Bergerac: The baker Raguenau, obsessed with poetry, tries to combine the poetry with the cooking when talking to his cooks at his bakery. Of course, the cooks don't understand anything he says:
Raguenau (ceasing to write, and raising his head): Aurora's silver rays begin to glint e'en now on the copper pans, and thou, O Ragueneau! must perforce stifle in thy breast the God of Song! Anon shall come the hour of the lute!—now 'tis the hour of the oven! |
- For the Avenue Q song "The More You Ruv Someone":
Christmas Eve: Love! |
Video Games
- In Red Dead Redemption Edgar Ross attempts to explain civilization and outlaw behavior by using the metaphor of a man admiring a flower and shooting another man because he might not like the flower. Somehow, according to Edgar, it's a perfect metaphor, when he then goes on to tell John Marston that although the rules aren't perfect, they aren't so bad after all (like, the rule of you don't kill others just because they may not like the same things you like.) This only serves to confuse the hell out of John (and the player.)
- The Ace Attorney series does this periodically.
- In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Spark Brushel's metaphors are so convoluted that it's difficult to know whether they fall under this trope, Mixed Metaphor, or something else entirely.
- In Ace Attorney Investigations, Shi-Long Lang pulls out many wolf-related aphorisms that progressively make less and less sense, and eventually Edgeworth starts wondering what the hell he's talking about.
- Godot is also prone to doing this with coffee.
- Kang the Mad, a character from Jade Empire, is a master of this trope. When asked how he can remote control his flyer: "Well, it's much like the dilemma of the centipede. If he relaxes and lets things happen, he can walk naturally all day long, his hundred legs not missing a step. But, if he thinks too hard about the complexity of what he's doing, those legs might crash into the teahouse and kill everyone. A valuable lesson." Whether or not he's doing it on purpose is debatable.
- In Dragon Age 2, one of Isabela's side conversations with Merrill about how she manages her Sexy Walk:
Isabela: "It comes to you. Usually at night. It's like a lover...or maybe a burglar. Either it ravishes you or makes off with all your jewelry. And you have to run it down and stab it in the heart. And...That metaphor got a bit away from me, didn't it?" |
- In Baldur's Gate, Minsc says: "Lead evil by example, and one day it will no longer go tracking its great muddy bootprints across our lilywhite tiles of justice. Boo will have CLEAN WOOD SHAVINGS, you evil bastards!"
- And in the sequel, Minsc has this gem: "I trust those who prey on children no farther than they can be thrown, even if I manage to throw them pretty far, and throw them I shall!"
- In Noitu Love 2, at the end of Xoda's Story Mode, the final Boss and our heroes talk about the Villain's evil plan. Almond says it is playing God, but the villain retorts that they will become God, and then goes back to the heroes' statement, pronouncing, proudly, something along the lines of "It will be Just like playing with myself."
- Fawful from Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga tends to alternate between this and his own brand of Engrish.
"Princess Peach's sweet voice will soon be the bread that makes the sandwich of Cackletta's desires! And this battle shall be the delicious mustard on that bread! The mustard of your doom!" |
- There's a pink Bob-omb in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, found in Herb T.'s Cola Bar underneath Rogueport, who really wants to be an informant like Wonky. Unfortunately for him, most of his "information" just turns out to be this. For example:
"I know stuff too! Seriously! Like... Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Because, you know, then all the other baskets get jealous. I don't even like eggs!" |
- Ghostbusters the Video Game has Egon's hilariously convoluted attempt at comparing the mandala that's causing all the ghost activity to a city bus line. Ray responds "You were going strong right up until the passengers got trapped inside the bus station."
- Garrus is sometimes guilty of this in Mass Effect 2. His crowning moment, however, comes from the romance option with him.
Garrus: You know me; I always like to savor the last shot before popping the heat sink. |
- Grim Fandango has this gem, courtesy of Glottis: "Manny, until now we scraped along the ground like rats, but from now on, we soar! Like eagles! Yeah, like eagles.. on POGO STICKS!"
- Nanashi no Game, of all things, gives us one courtesy of Professor Ohyama:
- Valkyria Chronicles Largo loses his squadmates when he gets a little incensed over the imperial blockade preventing vegetable shipments from getting through.
- In Touhou 12.8: Great Fairy Wars, the Fairy Trio gives you this lovely little trinket at the end of the C-1 route:
Luna: We three together make one. |
- HK-47 has one of these in Knights of the Old Republic 2:
- If you value your ability to think logically and avoid falling over in paroxysms of laughter, do not allow Otacon to attempt to explain proverbs. Here's a good example from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty:
- Portal 2:
- Cave Johnson has a notable metaphor regarding life giving you lemons...
- To be fair, he used the original metaphor properly beforehand. This was more a Rage Against the Heavens attempt to subvert the metaphor altogether.
- Wheatley also uses an odd misguided metaphor just before trying to kill you
Wheatley: Well... Good. Good. Finally, a nemesis worthy of my vast intellect. Holmes versus Moriarty! Aristotle versus MASHY-SPIKE-PLATE! |
- In the prequel comic Portal 2: Lab Rat, GLaDOS drops the following line to Aperture Science employee Doug Ratmann, whom she is trying to convince that her attempts to kill him are a delusion brought about by his schizophrenia:
GLaDOS: I'd ask you think think outside the box on this, but it's obvious that your box is broken. And has schizophrenia. |
- Valve's writers seem to love these. From the Team Fortress 2 site, we have this
Dervin: Yet know that for evil to triumph, it is enough that good men know not the masterworks of Lord Derwin, novelist extraordinaire. |
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner' has: "If I had to choose a word to describe myself, that word would be 'Fluffy Puff Marshmallows'. Or Homestar. Either one, really. They both fit!"
- Strong Bad's attempt to compare emails to fish also counts.
Web Comics
- Common in The Order of the Stick.
- This comic has:
Armourer: ...you can't make an omelet without permanently deafening someone. |
- Elan's pre-battle pep talk contains a few.
- It must run in the family... Elan's father carries on the tradition.
Tarquin: You can't make an omelette without ruthlessly crushing dozens of eggs beneath your steel boot and then publicly disembowelling the chickens that laid them as a warning to others. |
- Penny Arcade also has its share of silly metaphors and analogies.
- This comic has:
Frank: When you make an omelette, sometimes you've got to kill a few people. |
- Sort of averted when Tycho angrily and sarcastically finishes Gabe's "When life gives you lemons" metaphor:
- Antihero for Hire, when the main character is describing the battle between him and his enemies.
- From Sluggy Freelance:
- There's:
- Or:
Torg: Life is like a sandwich. Sometimes you eat it, and sometimes it eats you. |
- Also, "Gunman Stan McKurt" with his snack digressions.
- Ozy and Millie does this periodically.
Avery: What are you, some kind of a Grammar Nazi? |
- From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:
- In this strip, we see how Metaphorgotten makes a poor confession strategy.
Woman: "Steve, you and I...we're like apples and oranges. I'm the oranges, and the oranges are doing your brother." |
- Also this strip shows how being absent-minded in the middle of a metaphor can have traumatic consequences.
- "Son, a good woman is like a deep fried chimpanzee"
- Also featuring Overextended Metaphor Parrot.
- Pictures for Sad Children attempts to explain how time travel works [dead link]:
- Used frequently in 8-Bit Theater.
- Black Mage's examples are especially noteworthy as he has a tendency to derail his metaphors into him reveling in the memories of past atrocities, such as here and here.
- In this 8-Bit Theater strip.
Black Mage: You can't make an omelette without... um... destroying a forest. Or something. |
- The Way of the Metagamer, here, when discussing the Continuity Snarl between the Discworld books Pyramids and Small Gods.
- Least I Could Do uses this occasionally, always played for laughs. One example here:
Noel: Kate, I'm really sorry about this. He just followed me here. He's like a puppy...that you just want to strangle. And then neuter to protect future generations. |
- This Count Your Sheep strip.
Laurie: Is that still a metaphor, or are you trying to tell me something? |
- This Sheldon.
- This strip from Real Life Comics.
- Gunnerkrigg Court: "Better to have loved and lost than to be... dead or something."
- Questionable Content has fun with this from time to time. For example.
- Bobwhite: Cleo's mom tries to tell Cleo that sometimes one can't really be in control of their own life. Then she gets a little distracted. "Anyway... what was I saying? Something about how sexy your father is?"
- Spamusement tells us that life is like a coin: small, round, and 95% zinc.
- Homestuck: "Here, stick this in your pipe and bleed to death slowly."
- Dinosaur Comics: T-Rex gets him metaphor deconstructed for him; its the second metaphor that's an example of this trope. Named in the RSS as "SOMETIMES your friends will ruin what you thought was a really great metaphor/relationship"
- El Goonish Shive has this gem:
Justin: It'd be like if an orange only liked other oranges and their orange partner got jealous of a bunch of old apples the other orange used to date. |
- Schlock Mercenary has metaphors that run off the rails - or run out of the rails - now and then ("Congratulations, sir! Another sentence slain!"). Also here and on the next page. There were talks of "revoking metaphor privileges" of other characters, too.
- Occasionally inverted. Captain Landon checks metaphors with which he meddles. That's where you remember who he is and that picking up a habit of never, ever, being sloppy may well be a side effect of raising to Captain in the Internal Affairs of a semi-monastic police force in the capitol of United Nations of Sol. Returned on the next page, with his treatment of another metaphor being shot down (Sorlie is an engineer who started in spaceship design).
- bird and moon, "Flappy Valentine":
- Freefall, when the resident alien Sam Starfall is speaking with the leaders of a space station that has fulfilled its original purpose:
Web Original
- Zero Punctuation: Given Yahtzee's love of strange metaphors, this trope was bound to show up occasionally.
- This comprises almost the entire Zero Punctuation at The Escapist preview movie.
- His bizarre metaphors also extend to the articles he writes alongside his reviews:
- It's also used during the review of Splinter Cell: Conviction.
- From the Painkiller review:
"It's pure mindless fun, like wrestling an excitable dog in a paddling pool full of disembodied breasts. *beat* Don't think too much about that simile, I certainly didn't." |
- From the Dark Void review:
"I wonder if the Geneva Convention covers torturing metaphors." |
- From his Skyrim
- From his Xbox 360 Review:
- From his review of Ghostbusters the Video Game:
- This example from Lonelygirl15 episode "Go For It :)", when Emma and Sarah are at the Grand Canyon:
- From Creative Juices' D&D PHB PSA's comes Steven of Tyler's description of a dragon:
Steven of Tyler: Well it was this dragon! This goddamn dragon. As large as a.. as large as a tree. A tree that was at least three times a normal tree's height. |
- Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series has a few.
- There's:
Joey: Remember, you treat a duel disk just like a woman. You fasten it to your arm and place trading cards inside it at regular intervals. |
- Yugi's grandpa also gave us this disturbing example in a flashback:
Grandpa: Playing card games is Just Like Making Love. You do it on a table, and you feel deep shame after it's finished. Also, the older you get, the less fun it is. So remember, always wear a condom when playing card games. |
- This YouTube video starts out with an apple and an orange representing two gay people who want to get married, and the potato representing someone who doesn't want them to do so. Then the guy says "But the potato is also a closet homosexual....," and turns the whole thing into a Shaggy Frog Story with fruit. And a potato.
- Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog has several examples in addition to the page quote.
- For example:
- In the same work, the lyrics of "Everyone's a Hero".
Cpt. Hammer: It's not enough to bash in heads/You've got to bash in minds! |
- This entire Something Awful article.
- In Vision of Escaflowne Abridged:
- In an episode of Klavin On The Culture about racism, Andrew starts comparing celebrities to BioShock (series) mutants and completely forgets where he was going with it.
- Wizard People, Dear Reader made extensive use of these. Professor McGonagall's voice, for instance, is described as "chilling, like a piano made of frozen Windex".
- "Vulvas are much like snowflakes. [dead link] No two are identical and when it gets really cold they flutter down from the sky, getting caught in your eyelashes."
- Cracked.com uses this:
- In The 6 Most Utterly Insane Attempts to Kill a US President: "Richard Lawrence blazed his own trail as the first person to attempt to kill a U.S. President while being crazier than a bag of agitated cobras injected with some sort of... crazy serum. For cobras."
- In 7 Popular 'Chick Flicks' That Secretly Hate Women: "Hollywood filmmakers like their women like they like their coffee: shrill, stupid and submissive. And usually not black."
- Steve Bucholz on gay marriage in Are Bert and Ernie Gay?: "On the Internet, people have gotten so gay for gay marriage, that things have even gotten a little gay, if you know what I mean. (Do you? I'm seriously asking. I've kind of lost track.)"
- The Angry Video Game Nerd gives us this little gem:
If there's any game that puts you in a bad mood, it's Castlevania III. Putting this game in your Nintendo is like running open-armed out into a rainstorm of piss! You wanna go balls to the wall? Well, there's one way to go balls to the wall and that's to stick your dick in an electric outlet! You wanna play shit tennis with an orangutan while shoving your head up a hyena's asshole? Well, good luck. |
- A fairly common occurrence, for somewhat obvious reasons, on Overthinking It.
Occupy Wall Street is kind of like Newsies, only with less singing and dancing. And vastly different historical contexts. |
- Josh Sundquist makes one of these in one of his vlog posts, "Hot Girl on a Silver Platter:"
Josh: A hot girl walks up and she's like "Here is a silver platter! I am on the silver platter! I am the sil-" I...I don't know, this metaphor's breaking down. |
- The following exchange from episode 39 of Red vs. Blue:
Caboose: I know where you can find O'Malley! He lived inside my helmet for a while, maybe he left an address to send his mail. We were like roommates. |
- This Very Wiki, from the Vitriolic Best Buds page.
- In A Very Potter Sequel Ron attempts to cheer up Hermione, who's worrying that she's too much like Umbridge, by comparing her to Spiderman. It's pretty clear that's not what he's really talking about when he mentions Spiderman's 'enormous breasts.'
- Let's Player raccow occasionally has these.
raocow: "Sometimes, you just have to look a gift horse in the mouth and say 'What the hell am I look at here? I'm not a dentist.'" |
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender gives us this wonderful example:
Azula: That's a sharp outfit, Chan. Be careful, you could puncture the hull of an empire-class Fire Nation battleship, leaving thousands to drown at sea. |
- In a Robot Chicken sketch about G.I. Joe and the Weather Dominator, a retired Duke compares his experience being forced by Cobra to fight mute ninja Snake Eyes ("in a desperate attempt to raise concession sales") as "As if the Nazis put the war on hold to make Eisenhower fight a mute dude in a ninja outfit."
- From The Simpsons:
- There's:
- And another time: "If horse racing is the sport of kings, then surely bowling is...a very good sport as well."
- And yet another time: "Son, don't rock the boat. Don't even get in the boat. Just buy some ice cream and walk around the pier. But don't use their bathrooms; they are filthy.
- Still another time:
Shelbyville resident:' [to Homer] You must be stupider than you look! |
- When Lisa considers to disguise herself as a boy to do advanced math, and imagines being surrounded by numbers and math symbols:
≥ sign: Do it Lisa! You'll be greater than or equal to boys! |
- Homer teaching a class at the learning center.
- Futurama does this a lot.
- "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" has:
Fry: Amy, you know how you like chocolate, but then you get tired of it because it wants to hang out all the time? |
- Also, from "The Beast with a Billion Backs", about Fry's girlfriend's other boyfriends:
- Later in the same movie:
Fry: I'm so madly in love with Yivo. I feel like a schoolgirl with a crush on Justin Timberlake, and then she moves into a giant house on his head. |
- Also:
- "Love and Rocket":
Fry: You can't date the ship, Bender! That would be like me dating a really fat woman, and living inside her, and she'd be all 'whoooosh!' (spaceship fight noises)" |
- When the Professor is being taken away by robots for being too old, he gives the classic "Goodbye, cruel world!" as they depart. Then says goodbye to his "cruel lamp", followed by his "cruel drapes" with their little velvet tassels, "cruel though they may be."
- This example from "The Devils Hands Are Idle Playthings."
Bender: Though you may have to metaphorically make a Deal with the Devil. And by "Devil" I mean Robot Devil, and by "Metaphorically", i mean get your coat. |
- Freakazoid! has a few.
- There's this gem:
Freakazoid: Duty calls! Hello, Duty! I'm coming! |
- Which is followed up later in the season by this joke:
Freakazoid: It's time to face my destiny! Hello, Destiny! I was just visiting your friend, Duty! He says very bad things about you! |
- The Tick (animation) ends practically every episode veering off into one of these. This is also the origin of his battle-cry, "Spoon!".
- From Chowder:
"You see, Chowder, food is like life. And sometimes we bite off more life than we can chew. And then we're just puking life all over the walls, the ceilings, the expensive carpets..." |
- Ruby Rocket is based on this trope, particular its relationship to stereotypical noir-speak. Example here.
- From Family Guy:
Peter: Forget it Lois, your brother is toast! Warm, buttery toast. |
- In one episode, Peter wins a trip to a brewery and remarks "It's like I died and went to heaven. But then they realized that it wasn't my time, and so they sent me back to a brewery."
- A metaphor slowly degrades when Peter goes on Blind Date in an early episode:
Girl: I'm an ice cream cone; how are you gonna eat me? |
- Peter ruining Lois' production of The King and I
Peter: "Theater is a living breathing creature! It has wants and needs and you're not man enough to satisfy her!" |
- The Venture Brothers:
- There's:
Phantom Limb: Revenge, like gazpacho soup, is best served cold, precise, and merciless. |
- Mr. Doe and Mr. Cardholder are also fond of using this trope, frequently rebounding the metaphor off each other until the original intent is unrecognizable.
- Professor Frank, of Brad Neely's The Professor Brothers series, often delves into these. At a prospective TA interview:
- Darkwing Duck was a master of this. It was part of his introductory schpiel. "I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the [silly metaphor taken too far and in too much detail relating to how he stops evil]! I am DARKWING DUCK!
- Gorillaz interviews pull this card from time to time, like in this little exchange from "We are the Dury":
Murdoc: I mean, it can be very distracting to have six or seven decomposing zombies stuck up your chimney flue. |
- American Dad:
- In the episode Star Trek:
- In the same episode:
Roger: Sorry pal, you're going to jail, where they're gonna take your cherry (Beat) jello away... in the lunch line... after you're raped in the showers. |
- In "Meter Made";
- In an episode of Phineas and Ferb, the title-characters decide to act like they're in a film noir for the day, and many of the parody narration sequences drift into this territory.
Phineas: The sun beat down on the city like a hammer. A relentless, hot, beating hammer hammering down like a big metaphor that was....hot...for some reason. |
- In "Misperceived Monotreme", Dr. Doofenshmirtz delivers this gem when confronting what he thinks is Perry but is really just an ordinary platypus:
Doofenshmirtz: Oh, I see what you're doing. You're messing with my head, trying to get into my mind, walk around in there, rearrange the furniture, maybe repaint the kitchen... |
- The PBS show Word Girl, an affectionate parody of its own genre, has this immortal line when the titular character catches one of the main villains robbing an ice-cream truck.
Wordgirl: The only ice cream you'll be eating is the ice cream of JUSTICE! *beat* (just as heroically) ...That sounded better in my head! |
- Daffy is sometimes guilty of this in The Looney Tunes Show.
Real Life
- The Style Invitational column in the Washington Post twice challenged its readers to submit "painfully bad" analogies. Notably torturous entries included:
- and
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. |
- "The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't" is an obvious reference to Hitchhiker's Guide and the Vogon ships..
- Tim Schafer is really good at this. Since this is really long, just click here and read the first question and answer.
- Entries for the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest frequently contain these. As do Lyttle Lytton Contest entries.
- George H. W. Bush was known for using the metaphor "a thousand points of light," in his political speeches. However, it's not commonly remembered that this was supposed to be a metaphor for Americans joining volunteer organizations.
- That's a rare example of the metaphor being remembered quite well by the person who was speaking it, but forgotten (in the waves of parodies) by the audience.
- Famously:
George W. Bush: "Fool me once, shame on...shame on...you? Fool me, ya can't get fooled again." |
- Obama's extended "car in a ditch" metaphor and its various incarnations. What?
- John McCain dropped his analogy right in middle of saying it when asked if Bill Clinton was an appeaser towards North Korea:
McCain: If it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it's appeasement. |
- To quote a gem from a 2011 article on the bankruptcy of Borders Group Inc.:
“The superstores were viewed by the independent bookstores as dinosaurs that came to kill them — and they did,” said Al Greco, a book publishing expert and professor of marketing at Fordham University's Graduate School of Business Administration. “Today, it looks like the big bang has hit and now the dinosaurs are in peril.” |
- Dissociated Press is a way of generating reams of metaphorgotten prose.
- "Girl Banter Win" [dead link] The last insult on this Failbook entry.
- Here's a classic, "drive-'em-nuts" joke: Ask someone, "What has pointy ears, lives in the Southwest, howls at the moon, and is filled with cement?" They'll be completely baffled. Then tell them the answer is "A coyote." When they retort that coyotes aren't filled with cement, reply that that part was "just to make it hard." (For a dirtier pun, replace "filled with cement" with "masturbates constantly.")
- German Communist Thälmann (active during the Weimar Republic) was infamous for this. One of his (translatable) goofs: "The hour of the moment has arrived!"
- Jon Stewart's tribute to Bruce Springsteen at the Kennedy Center Honors; "I believe that Bob Dylan and James Brown had a baby. Yes! And they abandoned this child...as you can imagine at the time...interracial same-sex relationships being what they were..."
- An commenter, explaining how vaginas are a valuable commodity:
- Just about every news anchor seems to have had varying degrees of this in the wake of the Goldman-Sachs investigation. Every metaphor they use to describe the fraud seems to either break down fast, or not make sense from the start.
- ↑ Also known in some circles as the "Last Reacharound".