History Main / DisSimile

* ''TalesOfMU'' narrator Mackenzie Blaise has strayed into these.

** Another contender is the description of the Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer's output as "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea".

* ''Film/FaceOff'':
-->'''Castor Troy:''' It's just like looking in a mirror, only... not.

* [[http://www.cracked.com/article_17039_9-real-life-mad-scientists.html This Cracked.com article]] offers, as a possible empirically derived scientific definition of "love", "[the exact opposite of] that feeling you get when you've been locked in a tiny dark space alone for a year."

** Stephen regularly uses variations on this trope.
-->'''Stephen''': Welcome to {{QI}}, the closest modern equivalent to lions versus Christians.

-->'''Stephen''': I love the way your mind works, Alan Davies … and I use the word "works" quite wrongly.

-->'''Stephen''' (in response to Rory [=McGrath's=] IncrediblyLamePun): When I said "eye", I meant E-Y-E, and you thought...possibly for comic effect, but if so, disastrously, er, that I was saying "I"...It was one of these laughable misunderstandings, and I use the word "laughable" quite wrongly.

* A minor running gag in ''{{QI}}'': sometimes when Stephen Fry goes off on a tangent, he'll end the tangent by using a word to describe something. For example, calling something a "laughable misunderstanding". He'll then finish with:
-->'''Stephen:''' ...And I use the word 'laughable' quite wrongly.

* "This is just like X, only without (an element or list of elements crucial to X)."

* There's an old joke where a wise rabbi says, "Life is like a fountain." When asked why, he thinks for a long time, and finally says, "All right, life isn't like a fountain."

--->Sunlight poured like molten gold across the sleeping landscape.[[hottip:footnote:Not precisely, of course. Trees didn't burst into flame, people didn't suddenly become very rich and extremely dead, and the seas didn't flash into steam. A better simile, in fact, would be "not like molten gold."]]

--->I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with wheat.[[hottip:*:Kara: Isn't that just...bread?]]

-->'''{{Wolverine}}:''' Maybe you ain't so bad after all, Blake. In fact, you kind of remind me of myself at your age. Except, you know, I'm a mutant. And I've got ethics. And I'm not a psychopath. Or a rapist. You know, maybe you remind me of someone else.[[hottip:* :Sabertooth]]

* One textbook about Chinese culture contains a passage explaining that, to Chinese people, life is like a hotel: one only stays there temporarily, [[LogicBomb one has to stay at the hotel forever]], the hotel's interior is actually countless smaller, separate hotels that operate independently of each other, and those who break a given hotel's arbitrary rules are killed. In other words, ''nothing like any hotel that has ever existed.'' (Hopefully.)

* One textbook about Chinese culture contains a passage explaining that, to Chinese people, life is like a hotel: one only stays there temporarily, [[LogicBomb one has to stay at the hotel forever]], the hotel's interior is actually countless smaller, separate hotels that operate independently of each other, and those who break a given hotel's arbitrary rules are killed. In other words, ''nothing like any hotel that has ever existed.''

** And the description of [[http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Crystal_skeleton_vodka Crystal skeleton vodka]]: "You hang the skeleton from the ceiling and kiss it like it's Spiderman, you're Mary Jane, and instead of kissing her, Spiderman vomited an entire skeleton's worth of vodka into Mary Jane's mouth."

* Eggman's P.A messages in ''VideoGame/SonicColors'' are full of these whenever he tells visitors to enjoy something that's [[BlatantLie complimentary.]]

** That latter one works, actually, for certain definitions of "the end." [[DontExplainTheJoke By which I mean the Earth exploding millions of years from now.]]

** In the Discworld spin-off books ''The Science of Discworld'', the phrase "LiesToChildren" is used to refer to analogies or descriptions that are completely wrong, but prepare the listener for the real truth.

** Pratchett is very fond of this one. Nation has one man describing a horse thusly:

** In ''Discworld/GuardsGuards'', the description of Where the Dragons Went is "It would put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly and proud and arrogant."

->'''Xero''': ''(on the subject of the opening cinematic)'' This is like a bad episode of Franchise/{{Gundam}}.
->'''Adam''': Except even cheesier.

* Do you know [[http://notalwaysright.com/vaguely-unfamiliar those things that are like books but not books]]? Or what's [[http://notalwaysright.com/all-the-worlds-a-book a dictionary, but not a dictionary and a box]]? NotAlwaysRight knows.

* A partial example in a 1994 ''{{Batman}}'' comic book, when three punks are confronting Batman. Their leader points his gun and brags that in just a few seconds, Batman will look "like a plate of spilled Spaghetti-O's!" And then, after an awkward pause: " - without the plate!"

* ''{{Webcomic/Freefall}}'', on [[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff2200/fc02112.htm this page]]: "Why, we're like {{Batman}} and {{Robin}}. Well, if Batman and Robin were poor and engaged in petty crime."

* "You know what X is like? That's exactly what this isn't like."

* LarryTheCableGuy gives us this one: "I met this gal a while back, looked like Shania Twain. Only a little shorter, and, uh, the face was different. I was drunk, it looked like Shania Twain."
** "When I woke up she looked like MarkTwain!"
* MitchHedberg makes the following observation about bananas and traffic lights:

* ''CharlieBrooker's Gameswipe'' describes ''SonicTheHedgehog'' as "rolling at high speed through a jolly cartoon world just like real hedgehogs don't".

* Eggman's P.A messages in ''SonicColors'' are full of these whenever he tells visitors to enjoy something that's [[BlatantLie complimentary.]]

Compare TheOtherWiki's article on this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_analogy]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelming_exception]]. Except it's [[SeriousBusiness not always played for laughs]]. And the person doesn't have to realize they've made a Dissimile. But aside from that, exactly like TheOtherWiki's article.

** In the Eleventh Doctor novel ''Touched By An Angel'', the Doctor says the Weeping Angels are attracted to Mark like a moth to a flame, and is then shocked to realise that this makes sense. "[[LampshadeHanging My analogies ''never'' make sense!]] I must write it down. Rory, write it down for me!"