Unreadably Fast Text: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Usually a form of [[Freeze-Frame Bonus]]. Often the text will mention something about how the people who took the time to freeze-frame the text and read it clearly have too much time on their hands. A common joke is for an advert to have contract small print or medical side-effects shown like this.

 

 

== Anime & Manga ==

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' shows a paper with a very detailed description of the 2nd impact for only a second or so.

* ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]'' has several paragraphs worth of tiny text explaining the drug Accela.

* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' occasionally has pages of English text on screen that are legible but flash by too quickly to read much of. If you pause to get a better look, the first few lines are on-topic [[Surprisingly Good English]] and the rest are meaningless gibberish.

** In episode 1, a computer monitor briefly displays names of cast members of ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]''.

** In episode 7, there is a brief shot of a control panel. The text on the buttons consists of musical references, especially to the band [[Emerson, Lake & Palmer|Emerson Lake and Palmer]].

** In episode 5, a computer screen shows what's supposed to be a list of people associated with the Criados space station, but it's actually a list of famous musicians (including [[Stevie Wonder]], [[Bruce Springsteen]], etc.)

* The opening to ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' has background text all over the place. Even if it's not always scrolling too fast to read, there's too much of it to catch in the time it's on the screen.

* ''[[The Tatami Galaxy]]'' sometimes is hit by this, as the narration of the characters, particularly the protagonist, can get [[Motor Mouth|very fast very quickly]].

* ''[[Sonic X]]'' featured this during the [[Sonic Adventure 2]] adaptation, in understandable English. It managed to get replaced by blocks in place of text in the International Release, possibly due to usage of the words "Christ" and "Damn".

* ''[[Code Geass]]'' has a scene in an early episode where Suzaku is studying for a history textbook. It's only shown on screen for a few seconds, but it sheds some light on the series' alternate history.

 

== Films -- Live Action ==

* At one point during the credits of the Leslie Nielsen film ''Wrongfully Accused'', the words "People Nobody Cares About" appear, followed by a list of names scrolling far too quickly to read.

* Towards the end of Election, a paragraph of a quick-moving newspaper reads "If you've paused the film to read this entire article, your time would be better spent renting 'Citizen Ruth' from your local video store."

 

== Live Action TV ==

* Speaking of Dharma: [[Chuck Lorre Vanity Plates|Chuck Lorre's "vanity plates".]]

* After a [[Cliff Hanger]] season finale, ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' started its third series with a [[Star Wars]] style prologue [[All There in the Manual|explaining]] why the main character's children were gone, one of the supporting cast had [[Gender Bender|turned female]], and a one-off character from the previous series was now a regular, with [[The Other Darrin|a different actor]]. None of this was actually remarked upon in the show.

* One episode of ''[[Brass Eye]]'' had the single-frame screen text "Grade Is A Cunt" as a [[Writer Revolt]] about [[Executive Meddling]].

* ''Charlie Brooker's Newswipe'' did this in a recent episode; in the middle of a very fast-moving list of the countries attending the G20 summit, "Bottom Land" is listed, followed by "No, not really. We made that one up and you bothered to pause this to read the phrase "Bottom Land"; what a dismal little prick you are"

* During the sixth episode of ''[[Nathan Barley]]'' (a collaboration between [[Charlie Brooker]] and [[Chris Morris]]), there is a brief shot of a police sign appealing for witnesses to a crime to step forward. [http://i.imgur.com/TmD1v.jpg The small text at the bottom of the sign] both contains a [[Freeze-Frame Bonus]] joke (on a subject that anticipates Morris' later project ''[[Four Lions]]''), and [[Take That, Audience!|insults the viewer for being sad enough]] to pause the DVD to check if the shot contains a [[Freeze-Frame Bonus]]:

{{quote|"What are you reading this for your obsessional deviant DVD bandit sodsplit."}}

* ''[[Fist of Fun]]'', a mid-90s BBC comedy show, did this with jokes designed to be only viewable if you recorded the show and paused the video. One of these was an advertisement for the Lee and Herring Video Repair Shop, suggesting you visit if you broke your video player by pausing it too many times.

* [[Jon Stewart]] of ''[[The Daily Show]]'' often highlights this for some of his informational graphics, suggesting people will go use their TiVo to go back and read all of it later.

** On ''[[The Colbert Report]]'', after several episodes of listing "Super Pac" donators in a news-ticker form at the bottom of the screen, they decided to cut to the chase. Colbert told viewers to "get [their] TiVo remotes ready" and then listed ''all'' the remaining names in a matter of seconds, in a screen-filling stack of text rows scrolling by at breakneck speed.

* An episode of ''[[Trailer Park Boys]]'' has Julian reading a note aloud. The camera shows the contents of the note as he reads it, but then pans down to show additional text for a split second. The text says "[[Take That|If you're freeze-framing this on DVD, you're fucked!]]"

* The opening credits for ''[[Tokumei Sentai Gobusters]]'' has some text that flies by during a [[Montage]], [[Freeze-Frame Bonus|freeze-framing]] reveals it to be a portion of text from [[That Other Wiki]]'s article on [[Super Sentai]] (specifically, the part discussing each of the series in brief).

 

== Video Games ==

* In ''[[Xenogears]]'', ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'''s Lucca Ashtear makes a cameo to dispense a tutorial to the player. When asked, she delivers several pages' worth of info in about half a second, then asks the player if they got that.

* In ''[[Super Mario RPG]]'', the gardener in ''Rose Town'' spews several almost unreadably fast messages after you bring him the seed and the fertilizer, accompanied by the music going double-speed (and Mario becoming dizzy and falling down afterward). The same happens when finally his dreams come true and see their grown beanstalk, the one that give you access to the [[Infinity+1 Sword|Lazy Shell equipment]]. In total, he does this [[Rule of Three|three]] [[Running Gag|times]].

* ''Wangan Midnight: Maximum Tune'' has a bunch of scrolling text in its [[Attract Mode]] video. Upon closer inspection, it's a bunch of random characters, most of which are on the home row of a QWERTY keyboard.

* In a ''[[Mario Party]] 4'' minigame, Bowser gives a list of fruits (with repeats), and players take turns bringing fruits to him. Choose a fruit he didn't list, or bring him a fruit more times than he listed, and you lose the game (and your coins). At first, the list scrolls by slowly, but quickly becomes unreadably fast, turning the game into a [[Luck-Based Mission|game of luck]].

* ''The World Ends With You'' had this on Another Day, where one of the crew members, er, could "go on for days."

* ''[[Persona 3]]'''s opening flashes an entire paragraph of French philosophical text onscreen for a few seconds. Then came [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGDHKyVJtu8 the PSP remake's opening], which takes the trope to a ridiculous extent.

{{quote|So this big galoot here, right? He’s all like, I have no seeeat! No seeat! And he won’t shut up! But he won’t stop, and we’re all, we just can’t do it, buddy, OK? So we have no idea what to do. And this lug’s getting surlier. He’s not going away. And he has no seat! Nothing! Not a chance! So we do some solid thinking and totally fail. No big seats! I mean, we got small seats! We can do a small seat, sure, but this guy’s huge, so he’s not gonna fit in a small one! Please! And it's kinda bugging me, 'cause I'm on my feet all day! I mean, I'd LOVE to sit in ANY seat! It’s like, hey, pal, how about you try our job just once, y’know? It’d break him in two seconds! I work hard, Boss! Really hard! And this dude sits through life?! So spoiled! It makes me ill! All the suffering in the world, and this guy’s seating problem is urgent? Nooooooo! (beat) Ooooo!}}

* The beginning of ''[[Metroid Prime]] 3: Corruption'' features a reading from some sort of life-support machine log. It starts of with a simple status update, but as the eponymous [[The Corruption|corruption]] starts spreading, the text glitches, pauses, then suddenly start scrolling at an unreadable rate before everything goes black. If viewed in slow motion, most of it is gibberish, but there is the occasional readable phrase, like "Wii Format" and some German.

* The credits of ''[[Cat Planet]]'' go comically fast<ref>since nobody cares about credits anyway</ref> set to equally fast music. {{spoiler|You can press alt in windowed mode to stop them.}}

* ''[[Mars Matrix]]'''s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B24RLK3yosU&t=6s arcade opening movie] is full of scenes that flash a paragraph of backstory for less than a second. The stage result screens also give you your next mission in a very fast marquee.

* ''[[Puyo Puyo|Puyo Puyo Sun]]'': Beat Draco's course (only 3 stages long and very easy) in single player mode, and the game will mock you for not playing the harder courses by scrolling the credits and music at warp speed. Compile loooooved making fun of their players.

 

== Web Original ==

* ''[[Zero Punctuation]]''

* ''[[The Demented Cartoon Movie]]'' has a moment with a guy who's about to get blown up with a horrendously long speech bubble that lasts only a second. Fortunately, the movie itself comes equipped with a "pause" button.

* In [[Atop the Fourth Wall|Linkara's]] review of ''New Guardians'' #2, he mocks the "genetically superior beings" concept of the comic using a clip of [[Adolf Hitler]] ranting. The second time he uses the clip, a piece of text pops up the split second before resuming the review. The text reads: "[[Sarcasm Mode|Yeah, I can see why Germany would want to follow this shouting, drug-crazed lunatic.]] [[Easter Egg|ZOMG Easter Eggs!]] [[Shout-Out|Hi]] [[TV Tropes]]!"

* In the [[The Nostalgia Critic]]'s tribute to Siskel & Ebert, the Critic assures us that not all critics dislike certain religions.

 

== Western Animation ==

{{quote|"Federal law provides severe civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized reproduction, distribution, exhibition of copyrighted motion pictures in any medium (Title 17; United States Code, Section 501 and 506). The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigates allegations of criminal copyright infringements. They will hunt you down like the dirty monkey you are and force you to wear a moose skin and ride a greased pig while singing folk tunes. They are forcing me to ride the piggy as I write this. The piggy is smelly!!"}}

* ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' has one episode where Brain flicks through a slide-show very fast. If you play it in slow motion, the slides read, "I am now controlling your mind. See, I have made you use the freeze-frame on your VCR."

* ''[[Family Guy]]'' has a newspaper that read "DVDs Paused to Read Newspaper Gag".

* Used in ''[[The Simpsons]]'', notably in the episode "Homer Bad Man", where Homer is accused of sexual harassment. A tabloid news program covers this and [[Manipulative Editing|makes Homer look bad]], but eventually corrects their story, listing it alongside [[The Long List|a long, unreadably fast list]] of other corrections.

** And in the episode "Bart's Comet" where the eponymous comet is headed straight for Springfield:

N. Vyolet Diaz }}

** And in ''Two Bad Neighbors'' when Bart shreds Bush Senior's memoirs: a scrap of paper flits past the screen with the words "VP Dan Quayle" and "embarassment."

** Used in "The Simpsons' 138th Episode Spectacular":

** Used more subly in the [[Couch Gag|"Maggie supermarket scan"]] gag; the register readout will sometimes change. In "The Simpsons' 138th Episode Spectacular" Troy McClure mentions one episode where it read "NRA 4 Ever".

* ''[[Futurama]]'' has a lot of background jokes on signs that can only be read this way. Many of them written in made-up alien languages that [[Genius Bonus|have to be decoded]] to make any sense.

 

== Theater ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Paratext]]