You Wouldn't Hit a Guy with Glasses

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"You wouldn't dare hurt me! You forget that I have... the glasses!"
—Milhouse Van Houten, The Simpsons

Common Stock Phrase, and a Tempting Fate trope: Whenever any fictional character tries to invoke this, the odds are pretty good that he is about to get hit. Occasionally, the attacker will immediately pull the glasses off and then sock his opponent.

Compare Wouldn't Hit a Girl, contrast Hold My Glasses.

Examples of You Wouldn't Hit a Guy with Glasses include:


Anime and Manga

  • In Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin requests that Enishi remove his glasses before they fight. Enishi refuses and they fight. Eventually, Kenshin lands a hit to the face and breaks the glasses, scolding Enishi for not taking them off when he had the chance.


Comic Books

  • Early in the John Byrne Superman comic reboot, Superman faces a gang which includes a violent, glasses-wearing, heavily armed female member spouting revolutionary phrases. She tries the double-powered "You wouldn't hit a lady with glasses, would you?" Superman gently removes her glasses and flicks his finger, knocking her cold. He then says, "A lady? No, but then I've never met a lady who carries dynamite under her coat."
  • In one X-Men comic, some drunkards tried to pick a fight with (civilian-dressed) Cyclops. He said the page quote, so one of the mobs removed glasses from him. This did not end well.


Film

  • Lampshaded by the Joker in Batman. Yes, Batman would, especially if the same man with glasses also happened to be the same guy who also murdered Batman's parents. Fun Fact: One especially stupid TV edit cuts out the entire climax after this point and goes straight to the Joker falling to his death.
  • Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. While playing dodge ball:

Simon: Glasses! Glasses! You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, would you?! [Gets hit by a dodge ball] Right in the pancreas.

  • Groucho Marx says this in Go West (and, yes, the guy would).
  • Shemp does this to avoid getting hit by Moe in the Three Stooges short "Who Done It?" Of course, Moe does it anyway without bothering to remove the glasses.


Literature


Live Action TV

  • Batman
    • In "The Bookworm Turns", Batman cites this trope as he prepares to battle the Bookworm's Mooks, requesting that they take off their glasses, which they oblige. Batman takes a moment to deliver An Aesop to Robin: "Never hit a man with glasses." Which is Hilarious in Hindsight considering Michael Keaton's Batman would avert this trope 20 years later (and to a guy who definitely deserved it, no less).
    • In "It's the Way You Play the Game" a Mook named Leo confronts Batman.

Leo: You wouldn't hit a man with glasses, would ya?
Batman: You're not wearing glasses.
Leo: I'm not? [Prepares to punch Batman]
Batman: [Punches Leo first] Laugh that off, Leo!

  • In the Quantum Leap episode "The Cam-ikazi Kid", Sam leaps into a dorky teenager who is harassed by bullies. He protests, "You can't pants a guy with glasses!" The bully replies, "What glasses?", takes the glasses, and pantses him anyway.
  • Malcolm in the Middle had Reese remove a kid's glasses and punch him when he tried this excuse.
  • Implied in The Rockford Files episode "The Kirkoff Case": Rockford puts on glasses and pretends to be an insurance agent; when the disguise fails and he starts getting roughed up, he protests, "Didn't you notice I was wearing glasses?"
  • Subverted in Get Smart when Smart, 99, and The Chief are captured by KAOS agents and ordered to make a phone call for something. Smart notices that the agent covering them and closest to them is wearing glasses and he knows that the Chief can sing a note high enough to shatter glass. So, he makes up a story that the Chief needs to sing a certain note as part of a code on the phone, and the Chief sings that note to shatter the lenses of the KAOS agent's glasses, allowing Smart to tackle him. Thus their survival depended on specifically hitting a guy with glasses.
  • Family Matters: Narrowly averted in the Season 1 episode "In a Jam," where a bully torments the glasses-wearing Steve Urkel into giving him his lunch money. When Steve stands up to the thug (who is more than twice his size), the bully—aptly named "Bull" Watson—threatens him with harm if he refuses again. When Steve stands his ground a day later, Bull grabs Urkel by the collar and cocks his fist... only for Eddie to show up in the proverbial nick of time to distract Bull and get him to reconsider. (Bull eventually gets a fist to his stomach, making him back off.)
    • In contrast, in later seasons, after Steve invented his Transformation Chamber, Steve's alter egos (most notably, Bruce Lee Urkel) were non-eyeglass wearing. This is always after the ruffians for the episode beat up the glasses-wearing Steve.
  • At least once on an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, a criminal syndicate corners the glasses-wearing, elderly C.D. Parker (Noble Willingham) in an effort to intimidate him into getting Walker to drop his investigation. When C.D. tries to get them to back off by saying they shouldn't hit a guy with glasses, one of the crooks removes his glasses, breaks them ... and then beats him to a pulp. (Of course, Walker gets his revenge in the end.)


Music

  • At one MTV Video Music Awards show, someone booed Eminem on stage as he was accepting an award. Eminem, immediately assuming the heckler was Moby (whom the rapper dissed in his song and video for "Without Me", and who was cracking jokes with Jon Stewart about Eminem on a guest appearance on The Daily Show at the time), responded, "I will hit a man with glasses."


Newspaper Comics

  • This is done in a 1982 Peanuts comic strip with Snoopy as Joe Cool:

Linus: Hey, Joe Cool! One of the guys over at the gym is looking for you. He says if he catches you near his girl again, he's going to pound you!
Snoopy (wearing six pairs of Cool Shades): He wouldn't hit somebody wearing glasses, would he?

    • From a 1960s strip, during the period when Linus was wearing glasses:

Linus (to Lucy, who is inspecting the refrigerator): If you're looking for an apple, I ate the last one.
Lucy: Boy, if you weren't wearing glasses, I'd slug you a good one!
(Beat Panel)
Linus (turning to Snoopy): Glasses are good for your eyes… They keep you from getting punched in them!

  • U.S. Acres invoked the trope in this strip [dead link]. A worm wearing glasses used this to discourage Booker from beating him. Booker was initially proud to have shown "chickens do have hearts" but later banged his head on a tree out of frustration once he remembered "worms don't have eyes".


Professional Wrestling

  • In one memorable WWE Summerslam main event, Bret Hart was turning the tide against Intercontinental Champion Mr. Perfect. When Mr. Perfect's coach stood by the ropes and tried to motivate his man to get up, Hart knocked him down. Both announcers were aghast that Hart would hit a man with glasses.
  • On the last night of Season 4 of WWE NXT, Bryan Danielson was talking with his rookie, Ensemble Darkhorse Derreck Bateman backstage before a tag team match. Danielson recalled that he'd punch Bateman if he got eliminated (which he did, the prior week). Bateman reaches down and immediately tries to invoke this; as soon as he straightens up, Danielson decks him. But seeing how he would go on and win the match for his team, Danielson's actions turned into a Wangstless version of Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!.

Daniel Bryan(To Bateman): Now get up. Because you've got a NXT Rookie Reunion Tag Team Match tonight, an I want you to win! And I don't want you to win for me, I want you to win for you! I want you to win for chicks! I want you to win for America! AND I WANT YOU TO WIN FOR CLEVELAND!
Bateman: WAAAAARRRRGHHH!

  • In the late 1980s/early 1990s WWF, the character of Brother Love was a bespectacled Southern preacher who—during his talk show segments—was clearly alligned with the villians and did everything to antagonize the faces. Several times, he attempted to get involved in the action, almost always leading to him gettting socked by the good guys. The most frequent people who struck Love (both while he was wearing his glasses, and also after they were knocked off) were the top two faces of the WWF at the time: Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior. Roddy Piper has gotten a few licks in, while the Hart Foundation (the tag team of Bret "the Hitman" Hart and Jim "the Anvil" Neidhart) once clotheslined Love after a match. Every time, the announcers—save for the heelish Jesse "the Body" Ventura and Bobby "the Brain" Heenan—supported hitting this guy with glasses every time.


Video Games

  • In the standard ending of Donkey Kong Country 3, Cranky insults the protagonists' performance, and they surround him, apparently to beat him up. As they close in, Cranky puts on a pair of glasses and says the line.


Web Original


Western Animation

  • One Bugs Bunny cartoon in which this appeared was Hare Splitter. Bugs (as a baseball bat) also does it to Count Bloodcount (as a vampire bat) in "Transylvania 6-5000". Since he knows what's coming, the Count quickly puts on a pair of glasses when he sees what Bugs transformed into; Bugs hits him anyway.
    • In Scrap Happy Daffy, Daffy Duck uses this against a goat. When the goat goes to attack Daffy's rear, a pair of glasses appear on his tail feathers too.
    • Bugs once put on some glasses to prevent his rival in love from hitting him. It didn't work.
  • In one episode of the X-Men cartoon, some toughs in a bar are getting belligerent with Cyclops. He tries to play it cool and says the line, but one of them says "So take 'em off!", grabs Cyke's shades, and things start to go downhill from there.
    • "Put 'em back on, please!!"
  • In one episode of DuckTales (1987), Gizmoduck tries to persuade an attacking security robot not to hit him by putting on a wig and saying, "You wouldn't hit a lady, would you?" When that doesn't work, he adds a pair of glasses to his disguise and asks, "What about a lady in glasses?" He gets punted.
  • In Jackie Chan Adventures, Jackie is looking for a sheep's spirit using a pair of magic goggles. When he becomes surrounded by Shadowkhan, Jackie says this phrase.
  • In the Futurama episode "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", Bender is caught cheating in a game of poker using X-ray glasses. When he's cornered, he nervously states, "Hey...you wouldn't hit a guy wearing X-ray glasses, would ya?" Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work.
  • Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines: Dick Dastardly once has the squadron wear glasses. When he tried to hit Muttley, the trope has been invoked and it worked.
  • In the Danny Phantom episode "Splitting Images":

Danny: (in Poindexter's body) You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses! (dodges Poindexter's punch) You couldn't hit a guy with glasses! (dodges again) In fact, you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!
Poindexter: (in Danny's body) Ugh! Hold still!

  • The Simpsons: In the example shown in the top, Milhouse tried to use the trope to avoid being beaten by Nelson. Nelson reacted by removing the glasses.
  • In the Scooby Doo episode "Jeepers, It's The Creeper" Velma tries this on the Creeper. He responded by removing her glasses, then Velma kicked him in the shin and grabbed them back.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Hit_a_Guy_with_Glasses?oldid=1645059"