Not Actually the Ultimate Question
Where the Ultimate Answer is not actually 42.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are out camping. Suddenly, Holmes wakes up Watson in the middle of the night. |
A scene opens. Two characters stand by each other in silence. Then, one character breaks the silence by asking a vague, multi-meaning question such as "Why are we here?"
The other character then answers by going into a long monologue about the meaning of life, the existence of God, everyone's place in the world, how it is all one big mystery, and no one may ever know for sure.
Only that's not what the first character was asking. He meant something simpler, like "What did we come into this bookstore for?"
In a variation, it's obvious from the first that the question is about something specific, and the very act of treating it like a big question in the first place makes for a joke.
Mostly seen as the first lines of the first scene or a new scene. This can also be used as an exposition shortcut.
Compare and contrast What's a Henway?. Frequently a form of Comically Missing the Point.
Anime and Manga
- Episode 5 of Yuru-Yuri starts with one character being invited out in the middle of the night by her love interest and dragged all over town by her and others to line up in front of a huge building (each cut has her give a bemused "eh?" in hilarious contrast to the calm, collected others). She finally asks, "Just when are you going to explain this to me? What on Earth am I doing here?"
Kyoko: You're here to find that out! |
Comic Books
- Lampshaded in The DCU Elseworlds JLA - Secret Society of Super Heroes:
Bruce Wayne: So, why am I here? |
- Used in Green Lantern: Agent Orange. Hal Jordan has been stuck with a blue ring, which is messing with his green ring, and keeps asking, "What do you hope for?"
Hal: World peace? |
- Calvin and Hobbes uses this in one strip to contrast between Calvin's tendency to think philosophically and Hobbe's to think more literally:
Calvin: Why are we here? |
Film
- Used in Field of Dreams:
Ray Kinsella: What do you want? |
- In the film Dunston Checks In, an orangutan gets loose in the Majestic Hotel.
Mrs. Dubrow (Hotel Owner): Where did he come from?! |
- In Airplane! II: The Sequel:
Steve McCroskey: Jacobs, I want to know absolutely everything that's happened up till now. |
- A Running Gag in The Muppet Movie.
Bernie the Agent: You with the banjo, can you help me? I have lost my sense of direction. |
- From Michael Leigh's Naked:
Louise: How did you get here? |
Sessions: Are you alone? |
- In the 1968 version of The Love Bug, when Jim and Carole find out that the VW Bug has a mind of its own, and it won't let either of them exit the car, Carole tries to call for help from some hippies in the van parked next to them:
Carole: Help, I'm a prisoner! I can't get out! |
- Inverted in Loaded Weapon 1. Instead of answering philosophically, she keeps telling him irrelevant nonsense:
Why did you come to my home? |
Literature
- This is very common in the Discworld books.
- In The Light Fantastic, it's mentioned that the greatest philosopher of the Disc was asked at a party "Why are you here?" He needed three years for the answer.
- In Equal Rites, when a young girl is asked (after arriving unexpectedly) where she came from, she answers that Granny won't tell her that yet.
- In Eric, when at the end of time Astfgl the demon lord speaks with Death, resulting in the following exchange:
"Have you seen anybody?" |
- In Reaper Man, when Death is asked: "Why are we here?", he says: "I do not speculate on cosmic matters."
- In I Shall Wear Midnight, when Esk is asked "Do you know what the time is?" she replies "It is a way of describing one of the notional dimensions of four-dimensional space. But for your purposes, it's about ten forty-five."
- This happens in a serious and plot-relevant way in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series. The protagonist asks for "directions to the garden," which is misinterpreted as a request for ultimate enlightenment by an entity capable of obliging.
Live-Action TV
- An episode of Goodness Gracious Me had two teenagers in a Hindu temple, one of whom asked the other "why are we here?" After the second gave a long philosophical speech the first asked "No, why are we here? We're Sikhs."
- In a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch, Dennis Moore, who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, is asked by his latest victims "What do you want? Why are you here?" He takes this as a philosophical question despite the fact that he just swung into their window to steal their possessions for the third time.
- Deconstructed in Babylon 5, where the point is to ask these questions until the questionee starts revealing things that are actually relevant:
Morden: What do you want? |
- And also inverted by the episode "Comes the Inquisitor", in which the titular inquisitor interrogates Delenn with questions of this type, responding to mundane answers with Electric Torture:
Sebastian: Do you know why you're here? |
- Shows up in the Angel episode "Sanctuary". Faith has agreed to stay with Angel and start atoning for her (many) sins:
Faith: (in kitchen) So, how does this work? |
- The Friends episode "The One With The Two Parts":
Rachel: So Pheebs, what do you want for your birthday? |
- Leverage has a classic example:
Nate: Soph. Where are we at? |
- An interesting aversion/variation occurs in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy:
George Smiley: Why did Lacon send you for me? |
- The Doctor Who serial "City of Death" (written by Douglas Adams) features the following exchange:
Romana: Where are we going? |
- Also, in the Seventh Doctor story "Dragon Fire", the Doctor distracts a guard by engaging him in a philosophical discussion, until a second guard arrives, gun in hand:
Guard 2: Where did you come from? |
- Inverted in a comic scene from Xena: Warrior Princess, in which Plucky Comic Relief Joxer is helping the heroines and "king of thieves" Autolycus track down Joxer's long-lost brother Jett.
Autolycus: (watching Joxer's antics from a distance): Why is he here? |
Mal: Try to look beyond what she is now, and see what she could be. |
- In the Mad Men episode "The Gypsy and the Hobo", Don and Betty take the kids trick-or-treating following Don's confession of his past identity
Neighbor: Let's see what we've got here; a hobo and gypsy (looks up at Don) and who're you supposed to be? |
- Inverted in Everybody Loves Raymond. Ray's daughter Ally asks 'Where do babies come from?'. He responds with a typical, awkward birds and the bees talk, but it turns out she was wondering about the meaning of human existence.
- In Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda: Trance has just inexplicably broken into Dylan's prison cell and offers him water. Dylan asks, "How?" Trance replies: "Well, when two hydrogen atoms love each other very much, they find an oxygen atom and..."
- Pops up in Mystery Science Theater 3000 during The Incredible Melting Man.
Actor: What did go on here, Doc? |
- Space Cases has an example where Thelma gets asked the wrong question, and sure enough, ends up starting with the Big Bang...surprisingly enough, she gets to the end after a scene switch!
- In an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, Jennifer reluctantly became the host of a radio advice show. One exchange from her show:
Caller: What is the meaning of life? |
Charlie: [giving Locke the drugs] You really think you can find my guitar? |
Zack: Arwin? Why are you here? |
Music
- An old musical joke:
Question: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? |
- Alternately, if you live in NYC the answer is "Take the 'F' train to..."
- And one can get to Nashville by singing through one's nose.
Newspaper Comics
- Inverted in a Calvin and Hobbes strip.
Calvin: Why do you suppose we're here? |
- Used in a FoxTrot strip, with Paige asking her father why they have fireworks for the Fourth of July. Roger muses on the celebratory symbolism behind the tradition before Paige corrects him; why do they have fireworks, as they duck an out-of-control rocket Jason had lit that zooms over their heads.
Radio
- A variant occurs in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when the ship has just landed in a weird, icy cave. Zaphod, waxing philosophical: "We could really... we could really be in this cave!" Arthur, unimpressed: "We are in this cave."
- And a few minutes later...
Arthur: Why are we here? |
- We already know that the Answer to the Ultimate Question is "42". So, in a more plot-relevant sense, "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?" is Not Actually the Ultimate Question. Especially since six times nine is 54. Except in base 13. Douglas Adams does not write jokes in base 13.
- Hamish And Dougal subverted the page quote utterly.
Dougal: Look up in the sky, Hamish...tell me what you see. |
Web Comics
- Adventurers!, after Khrima's rival Garshask captures his general Argent:
Argent: What do you want!? |
- Arthur, King of Time and Space, here.
- Played with in Penny Arcade, here.
- In DMFA, most questions of this type are met with The Talk.
- A variation appears in A Girl and Her Fed when the Fed asks, "Is that a human arm?"
- Homestuck inverts this here:
"It is important because it will help us begin to understand why we are all here." |
- In Captain SNES, The Eater of Dreams learns that "What are you doing here?" may not be the best question to ask an angel of resurrection.
- In PHD, the nameless guy's roommate asks him 'Why are we doing this?' Nameless goes into an extended rant about how terrible grad school is and confesses he has no idea why he's there. The roommate says, 'No, I mean, why are we doing the problems from the wrong chapter?'
- In The Order of the Stick, when Elan receives a flying carpet from General Tarquin:
Tarquin: At any rate, I'm happy to put at your disposal any or all resources of this kingdom. |
Web Original
- The first episode of Red vs. Blue shows two characters on top of one of the Blood Gulch bases. One asks the other, "Do you ever wonder why we're here?". The other expectantly responds with a brief speech about whether or not we were created, or just popped into existence. What the asking character actually meant was "Why are we here in a box-canyon in the middle of nowhere?"
- And then it's played with and returned to in a later episode.
- Similarly, the Blood Gulch Chronicles series ends with another character asking the same question, and the other gives a rant about how hate should be a personal thing, not a product of prejudice. The other just wanted to know why they were standing in the open sun when they could stand in the shade. It even gives a Shout-Out to Halo and how they'd be fighting aliens if Master Chief hadn't blown up the Covenant armada single-handed.
- And given a Double Subversion, combined with a Call Back in Revelation, Chapter 18. Sarge asks each and every one of the remaining Reds and Blues why they are here. Grif begins reading his lines from Season One, when Sarge cuts him off and explains that he meant to ask an even more meaningful question - why are each of the Reds and Blues still in this group, when they could be off somewhere else? He then delivers a Rousing Speech that brings the both teams together and makes them ready to kick ass.
- Played with in the Bri TA Nick sketch Everything, in which Brian really does want to hear everything.
Western Animation
- In an episode of The Tick (animation), Tick is knocked into orbit by a rampaging Proto-Clown. When he asks "What am I doing here?", a manifestation of his subconscious thinks he means this in the existential sense and sends him to a Journey to the Center of the Mind. After much weirdness, Tick finally has the answer: "I'm here because... a big clown hit me!"
- The Real Ghostbusters episode Drool the Dog-Faced Goblin had this conversation:
Winston: Egon, why are we here? |
- A minor running gag in House of Mouse is that Horace would respond to any question in such a manner, at least the first time. (He'd always use three statements, too.)
- The first episode had this:
Mickey: What's wrong? |
- Done once in Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy
Eddy: Where did you come from!? |
Video Games
- In Normality, when you are about to be captured later in the game, the Dialogue Tree allows you to respond to the question "Why are you here?" with "That is a question that has puzzled philosophers for thousands of years.".
Real Life
- The story about how Che Guevara became Fidel Castro's right hand man goes like this: Che, Castro and a bunch of other people are having a dinner party, and one of them innocently asks Castro what he was doing in Argentina. Cut to five hours later where everybody but Che has left the table and Castro is still talking.
- Jay-Z misinterpreting Nardwuar the Human Serviette's "Who are you?"
- There's a story told about a German philosopher (which one varies). He was wandering round a park, deep in thought, and he walked right into a flowerbed without noticing. The park-keeper shouted "What are you doing there?" and he replied "What are any of us doing here?"
- Robber Willie Sutton, when asked why he robs banks, answers "because that's where the money is".