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alt title(s): Aposiopesis
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Fair retaliation.
A character is so angry, pissed off, or shocked that he is literally unable to form a coherent sentence. Other strong emotions are sufficient to render a person unable to speak proper English (or whatever language is being spoken at the time), but shock, anger, and pure rage are the most common. It usually takes a little while for him to recover, at which point he explodes into rage normally.
Sometimes Truth In Television, you little...Ooh, you — I mean, what did... I... YOU AAARGH!
The technical name for this rhetorical device is "aposiopesis".
Sometimes combined with a Curse Cut Short (or, alternatively, with a Cluster F Bomb). Also compare Sarcasm Failure.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- In Mafalda, an angry mother is so angry that she starts dropping vowels and entire words, and as such starts yelling only isolated words. The quote below does not mean anything: she's dropped so many vowels that it's been rendered complete nonsense. In parentheses is the intended meaning as translated by Mafalda.
Raquel: ¡Sunescán! ¡Dalúna buso! ("¡Es un escándalo, un abuso!" meaning "It's a scandal, an abuse!" uttered by an angry mother coming back from market).
- The quote above can be rendered intelligible if read with typical Argentinian intonation.
- And even more so if you go to the market in Argentina when the prices are rising.
- Captain Haddock in the Tintin books often unleashes a tirade of disjointed insults and random words at the subject of his anger. A selection can be found here
.
- One Popeye strip had Roughhouse so fed up with Wimpy's constant mooching that he had to be constrained to the hospital. He spends his recuperation growling and muttering Wimpy's catchphrases, such as "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." or "I'd like to have you to a duck dinner. You bring the duck."
Popeye: Wimpy's got his goat so bad he's almost crazy!
- In one The Simpsons comic book, Homer is seen slamming into Skinner's office when Bart's in trouble, saying "Too angry to finish sentence I-!"
- Calvin's dad, after dropping a heavy Christmas present on his foot: "Slippin' rippin' dang fang rotten zarg barg-a-ding-dong!"
- A darker version occurs in the post-One Year Later Superman story arc, "Up, Up and Away". Big Blue has just destroyed Lex Luthor's latest scheme and, powerless, miles above Metropolis, the two are sent plummeting to the ground. Despite giving an impressive speech moments beforehand, as they fall Luthor can only stare at Supes and growl:
Lex: I hate you. God I hate you.
Film
- Rocco's reaction to the Copley Plaza Massacre in The Boondock Saints has this trope written all over it. It has the added component of a Cluster F Bomb for added entertainment value.
Connor: Well, that certainly illustrates the diversity of the word.
- Seriously performed in the movie version of The Shining to chilling effect. Ax Crazy Jack Torrance is stalking after his son Danny; when he hears the snowmobile driving away, thus notifying him that Danny escaped him, he is reduced to bellowing like a wounded animal shortly before freezing to death.
- Samir in Office Space.
"This...is a FUCK!"
- In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Andy walks in on a fight between his love interest Trish and her daughter Marla, who delivers the most perfect teenaged girl meltdown — replete with crying, name-calling, door-slamming, and incomprehensible screeching.
Trish: ... I-I didn't hear anything after "liar"! [to Andy] What did she say after "liar"?
Andy: [in awe] She sounds like a tea kettle.
- Bon Cop Bad Cop: "Shit de fuck de shit de merde de shit de c?ce de TABARNAK!"
- That is sacre, a uniquely French Canadian form of swearing combining common English and French curses with bastardized forms of terms from Catholic liturgy ("calice", "crisse", "tabarnac", etc.). These are strung together with the French practice of stringing random swear words together with "de" (think The Merovingian's demonstration of French profanity), and the result sounds like Angrish. Ironically, to French Canadians, "fucke" and "chit" are rather mild swear words, to the point where during a punk riot in Montreal, French-language newscasters solmenly read off Cluster F Bomb lyrics from an English-language punk album on the evening news.
- The father in A Christmas Story was particularly famous for letting loose a stream of incoherent noises when angry (which he often was).
- Harry in Home Alone mutters a string of nonsense syllables whenever he's infuriated, which often happens when Kevin is up to mischief. Reportedly, numerous retakes were required as Joe Pesci (being...well, Pesci) kept accidentally slipping in genuine obscenities.
- In Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy, Dr. Cooper is horrified at the side-effects of his new drug and goes on a sputtering rant that veers into random directions, such as late fees for his rental of Rear Window.
- A Fish Called Wanda: Otto's been called stupid one too many times, and can't exactly find a coherent insult, so he just rattles off a bunch of trite swears.
Otto: You pompous, stuck-up, snot-nosed, English, giant, twerp, scumbag, fuck-face, dickhead, asshole.
Archie: How very interesting. You're a true vulgarian, aren't you?
Otto: You're the vulgarian, you fuck.
- Robin Hood Men In Tights features the Sheriff of Rottingham, who upon getting very upset, minces his intended sentence into something truly illegible.
- Mervyn: King illegal forest to pig wild kill in it a is!
- In the old Tracy and Hepburn vehicle Adam's Rib Spencer Tracy's "Adam" tends to invert the pronunciation of words when he is flustered or upset.
- In Bad Boys 2, the Captain, upon learning the DEA is operating in Miami without consulting him, has a brief fit of apoplectic rage ("...CHRIST! FUCK!") before Marcus gets him to calm down.
- Last Action Hero. Slater's boss kinda becomes a Running Gag throughout the movie for regressing into this trope. Finally, after Slater blows up more of the city than usual, he becomes so incoherent the only distinguishable words are Turn In Your Badge.
- In A Knight's Tale, Wat delivers the following warning to Geoffrey Chaucer, getting more and more angry, redfaced, and incomprehendable as he goes: "Betray us, and I will fong you, until your insides are out, your outsides are in... your entrails... will become your extrails... I... will w... rip... all the p... ung... Pain! Lots of pain!"
- Clue: Mrs. White's description of her feelings about Yvette.
I hated her so much ... flames ... flames ... on the side of my face - breathing - heaving breaths ...
- In What About Bob, Dr. Leo Marvin rudely removes his newest patient (and biggest fan) from his automobile, but is far too angry to form proper words. He tries to say, "Get out of the car!" But it comes out rather incoherently.
- In Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy, Ron Burgundy is so upset after his dog, Baxter, is punted off a bridge that he calls a fellow newsman, hysterical. Who replies, "I didn't understand one word you said."
- Gallo getting locked in a pod "for his own safety" in Pandorum unleashes some pretty vicious syllables at Payton that don't seem to correspond to any human language except that used by Yosemite Sam in a frothing rage.
- In The Loop, following the crisis in the Meditation Room, Malcolm Tucker loses his temper in such a way that he is briefly reduced to partial incoherency. In the middle of one of his legendary threats, no less.
You... you repeat... one word of what you've heard here, I'm gonna fuckin' take your leg off, and I'll... fuckin'... the shin bone! I'm gonna take the shin bone, I'm gonna break it... in two and I'm going to fucking stab you... to fucking death with it... right, so just... go away- go away!
- Lucia (Lisa Kudrow) in "The Opposite of Sex" is one of the most articulate characters in the movie, but when her frustration occasionally gets the best of her, her speech devolves into a string of spat-out obscenities and monosyllables: "Fine! Goddammit! God! Fuck! Shit!"
Lets Play
Literature
- Mr. Wilkins in Jennings, especially the earlier books.
- Harry Potter's uncle, Vernon Dursley. All the time.
- The most memorable quotations are "He made a sound like a mouse being trodden on" and "Mimble wimble".
- Glen Cook plays with this in his Garrett, P.I. novels, having characters who are furious and/or recovering from a blow to the head speak in Angrish ... or seem to, as in one case it's revealed that the gibberish-speaker is actually cussing fluently in Elvish.
- Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast!!
Live Action TV
- In one Malcolm In The Middle episode, while Lois is relating to Francis some horrific deed Reese has committed (again), Hal can only sputter rage-filled nonsensical phrases in the background.
- Oliver from Green Acres often mixes up words when he's angry.
- Steve occasionally reduces Carl to this state on Family Matters.
- Grover the Waiter occasionally drives Mr. Johnson to this state.
- Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, will regularly lose control of his jaw and gibber something brief, incoherent, and clearly either angry or disbelieving before reasserting self-control.
- Perhaps the best example was when the media were hammering New Jersey. After a point, he simply named the segment "Hey C'mon That's Not...Why Would You...Whoa!"
- "Yeah, well, you're the sad, because...TWAT! You're such a little...FUCK! SHIT!"
- The Russo dad on Wizards Of Waverly Place, so much that it's become almost a catchphrase. Lampshaded in one episode where Justin claims that they can always tell their dad is angry when he begins speaking this way. The final word in the sentence is always "ALEX!"
- Speaking of Rebel Russo, she tries to provoke this in Justin. Durring the Stevie Saga, she replaces his jazz band with rock, just to see him explode. Its even better because Justin knows she's doing it, which him even angrier.
- On Will and Grace, Jack when he's in angry "howler monkey" mode is a particularly shrill version of this.
- Something hiding from me you are?
- Jamie from The Thick Of It, the ultimate Violent Glaswegian lapses into Angrish regularly.
- Surely the best example is Glenn's meltdown
?
- I figure the "what do you know about Hitler" thing is frustration that he's been replaced with Olly types who lack real education and experience, but who knows.
- On The West Wing, a show known for its witty, even verbose dialog, Toby Ziegler was arguing with a woman who continually interrupted the conversation with descriptions of shocking and offensive artwork. As she began to cite an artist who "specializes in placing genitalia in anatomically incorrect..." Toby cut her off with a rare outburst of angrish.
Music
- Joe Strummer works himself up to this in The Clash's "The Right Profile."
He said go out and get me my old movie stills
Go out and get me another roll of pills
There I go again shaking, but I aint got the chills
Arrrghhhgorra buh bhuh do ARRRRGGGGHHHHNNNN!!!!
- John Cale is fond of the trope. Take "Leaving It Up To You", which is a smooth (if slightly menacing) midtempo rock song up until the end of the second verse, and then it all starts to get... weird.
And it's sordid how life goes on when I could take you apart
And if you give me half a chance, I'd do it NOW!
...I'd do it NOW! RIGHT NOW, YA FASCIST!
I know we can all feel safe - like Sharon Tate!
Or we could give it all, we cou-gi-give-gi-giveitAAAAAAAALL!
- Jim Morrison in "The End":
Father, I want to kill you... Mother, I want to AHHHRAARAAAGH!"
- He says he wants to fuck her in the uncensored version.
- Several of John Lennon's songs engage with Angrish and primal howling; particularly the tracks on Plastic Ono Band, released after he'd tried Primal Scream therapy, enter into this, particularly "Mother" ("Mama don't gooooOOOOOOOOOOWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!!"). "Cold Turkey" also degenerates into feverish sounding screams, reflective of someone with a nasty heroin addiction experiencing particularly bad withdrawal pangs — not coincidentally, Lennon was going through a nasty heroin addiction...
- Pretty Lush by Glassjaw ends the bridge with Daryl Palumbo yelling "You fnn...nng...nngah!"
- Many heavy metal songs.
Radio
Stand Up Comedy
- Bill Cosby: "Did you ever make your mother so mad that she forgot your name? 'Come here, Roy — I mean Ralph — Roquefort — Rutabaga — what is your name, boy? And don't lie, 'cuz you live here and I'll find out!'"
- My father once got his mother so mad that she called him by the name of his two older brothers and his dog before she got his name right.
- My mother does that on a regular basis even when she's not mad. It rubs off.
- Also from Bill Cosby: "I used to think my father was an idiot, because the man could never complete a sentence ... Now I understand ... Had it been a grown person, you'd have cursed: 'What the (foul filth foul foul filth filth filth foul foul), and you're (filth and foul)!' But you talk to your child, you censor yourself, and you say 'What the — Get your — I'll bust — Get outta my face!'"
- Lewis Black often ends up bursting into Angrish in his stand-up routines.
Theatre
- A character in Judith Thompson's Lion In The Streets says to another character, if memory serves, "shut up, you fat!"
- King Lear's less than articulate threat 'I shall do such things......I know not what they are but they will be the terrors of the earth'.
Truth In Television
Video Games
- Team Fortress 2: In the "Meet The Spy" video, this is the "BLU Scout"'s (fake) reaction to seeing pictures of the RED Spy with the his mother. Or rather, this is the RED Spy's (actual) reaction to seeing that the BLU Spy got hold of pictures of him with his "petit chou-fleur". Or both.
- *** * T WHORE!
- Kirby Super Star. Revenge of Meta Knight. Heavy Lobster. Paint Ability. Try it.
- ...looks like I'll explain. When you hit Heavy Lobster with it, his entire body gets covered in paint and his eyes stop working. He flails around erratically and the crew of the Halberd break into angrish trying to comprehend how easily Kirby pwned Heavy Lobster.
Web Animation
- Strong Bad devolved into a pretty hilarious example of this when his new computer (the Comp?crashed on him as soon as he turned it on. Luckily for him, it was all just a joke. According to the wiki, it was a little bit like:
- Yusuke has difficulty even thinking coherently after Kotomaru shows off his secret power in Girlchan In Paradise.
Webcomics
- XKCD provides the page image in a strip
when a daughter asks her father about how lame Rickrolling someone is:
Daughter: Did your generation really use this to troll people? So lame. You know, you guys sucked at pranks.
- Bob And George, where Future Alternate Mega Man (it's a long story) fights Bob during the events of Mega Man V. Mega Man, using Gyro Man's powers, finds a way to penetrate Bob's supposedly indestructible flame barrier. Bob is very angry about this, but says nothing; Mega Man calls him on it, suggesting he's "inarticulate with rage."
- PS 238 has a character implanted with a chip which replaces any profanities he voices with random other words. If he tries to launch into a Cluster F Bomb, he instead starts singing showtunes.
- 8-Bit Theater.
Black Mage: Ffffffffffffffff Fighter: I think he sprung a leak.
Black Mage: Arghble!
- This is like a second language for Black Mage.
Fighter: Don't you understand? With gravity slain, we can now fly! * flies* Thief: Huh. Red Mage: But he. You can't. Love, hate, clouds. * falls over*
- The follow up to this
strip, in Three Panel Soul, has Jez... rather annoyed .
- Matt of Dork Tower demonstrates
.
- Blur The Lines brings us these gems
:
Jesus... Fuck! I... people... can't... fuck!
Wife... ass... video... fuck... Bad! Bad!
Graaa!
- All of trolls in Homestuck have a particular pattern in the way they type in chat logs, and Vriska in particular uses the number 8 in place of "B" and homophones of 8. However, she tends to go a bit overboard with their use when she's flustered.
AG: Or you know, if you're so h8gh 8nd might8 an8 th8nk you're so gr8at, m8y88 you c8uld oh I d8n't kn8w........
AG: TRY AND ST8P ME FROM DO8NG B8D THINGS????????
Web Original
- Linkara provides the below quote in his review of Neutro one when it is revealed that the two scientists that assembled Neutro are testing his capabilities by, among other things, demolishing entire cities. He is understandably appalled.
Linkara: He's... They're... They're... They're testing Neutro by blowing up cities!?
- The Nostalgia Critic had one of these when reviewing Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog during a scene in which the bumbling robot Grounder blows into his hand and makes a pumpkin:
Nostalgia Critic: What!? What? Buh? Pumpkin!? What!? Pumpkin?! What?
- Also seen in his mute review (he'd yelled at it so much while watching that he lost his voice) of The Good Son, where he holds up a sign that reads "INAUDIBLE RAGE". Let's not forget the part where he started yelling in sound clips of random violence.
- Let's not forget his reaction to the third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, where he seemingly goes mad.
- "A BAT CREDIT CARD?! YOU BASTARDS! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU ALL! (inaudible ranting)"
- Lampshaded in the AVGN and NC review of Ninja Turtles: Coming Out Of Their Shells in which the Nerd points out that he's too angry to make a coherent description as to how ugly Splinter looks in the special.
- From Dragonball Z Abridged:
Nappa: I can fly...
Vegeta: Wha? Wha? Buh? (Sighs) Yes, Nappa, yes you can...
- Eventually, Vegeta just has an aneurysm.
- Hopefully a not a "funny" one.
- A hilarious one, actually.
Vegeta: I just had an aneurysm from all the stupidity.
Nappa: Gee Vegeta, I didn't know you were that stupid.
- The eragon-sporkings lapsed into this after a particularly bad piece of Moral Dissonance from Eragon — specifically, after he left two people to be eaten by the Raz'ac so that he'd know whether they were in the area, then after they were eaten assuaged his guilt by saying that they couldn't defend everyone. Then regained speech long enough for a rant including "MY HATRED FOR YOU SEETHES LIKE THE ROTTEN UNDERBELLY OF A BLOATED ZOMBIE CORPSE" before lapsing back into Angrish.
- Superdickery.com: here
.
- Mark Reads Twilight
uses the head-smacked-on-the-keyboard kind of Angrish, especially in Twilight's later chapters.
Book: "Bella." Edward's voice was very soft. Alice and Emmett looked out their windows. "If you let anything happen to yourself—anything at all—I'm holding you personally responsible. Do you understand that?"
Mark: SADL;KFJASDF;JKLASDJKL;SFADJKLXZVCMN,XVCLKSHADFJK789243$#Q%#%%$#
- This
Facebook entry devolves into Angrish.
- The Angry Video Game Nerd, in his review for Home Alone 2 devolves into this.
AVGN: Shitty games! All my life, shitty fucking games! I hate shitty fucking games! And I hate shitty fucking Christmas 'cuz shitty fucking Christmas means more shitty fucking games!!! Humbug! Bah! Fuckin' humbag (gibberish).
- From Pointless Waste Of Time:
A hypothetical Andy Wachowski, having just been informed by Joel Silver that Warner has greenlighted The Matrix 7: "KILL YOU. BULLETS IN YOU AND KILL. SO MUCH ANGRY. JUST."
- In The Agony Booth forums, one poster during a discussion of Southland Tales alternated between sensible statements and "Who the which now?"
- Strong Bad frequently lapses into angrish for one reason or another. Compy Catalog
is one of the funnier examples: Strong Bad's verbal meltdown as his brand-new computer suddenly suffers a BSOD (and not the heroic kind) is priceless.
Western Animation
- Donald Duck from the Classic Disney Shorts lives and breathes this trope.
- This gets a nice lampshade in Mickey Donald Goofy The Three Musketeers, when Donald tries to warn Mickey that Pete's evil... Donald says the entirety of the warning, with Pluto and Mickey watching, the camera turns to them, they do a double take to each other, then Mickey says, "Donald, I have no idea what you're saying."
- In the "dueling pianos" scene of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," the typical Donald incoherent rant is lampshaded by Daffy ("Can anybody understand what this duck is saying?" and "This is the last time I work with someone with a speech impediment!") and also birthed an urban legend
that at one point Donald refers to Daffy as a "God damn stupid nigger."
- Dr. Drakken from Kim Possible often drops into this when mocked by his sidekick.
Shego: Dr D!
Drakken: WHAT!?
Shego: (deadpan) You've stopped using words.
- This has happened to SpongeBob from Sponge Bob Square Pants a few times.
- Likewise, it's happened to Squidward as well.
- "No, Squidward, we've already played Babble Like An Idiot!"
- Cartman's speech goes south of this when he doesn't get his way.
- Also, the angry townspeople's chant of "Rabble rabble rabble!" whenever anything goes wrong in the town.
- Looney Tunes: Inflicted upon Daffy Duck by Bugs in Duck Amuck.
- Dr. Robotnik does this a number of times on Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog, usually expressing frustration that Scratch and Grounder screwed up again or that Sonic has foiled his latest evil scheme. In fact, he was one of the former images for this trope.
- DOY! SHOU!
- And sometimes he gets so angry he becomes reduced to jumping up and down and growling like a demented gorilla.
- Hilarious example on The Simpsons,
Homer: [grabbing Marge] Jergiddaberdareddaarra!
Marge: Homer, what is it? Slow down!
Homer: [slowly] Jer gidda berda redda arra.
Marge: Think before you say each word.
Homer: You broke a promise to your child!
- Also from the Simpsons, in a flashback when Edna Krabappel breaks up with Moe.
- And don't forget Ned Flanders. His psychologist even explains that a treatment he received as a child to make him behave better(spanking) worked too well and so, whenever he felt anger, he could only express it by spouting a chain of incoherent made-up words.
- "Well I'll be darn-diddly-arned."
- Avatar The Last Airbender: After Mai and Ty Lee's Heel Face Turn in the third season, Azula is too stunned to form a coherent sentence, as seen in her initial reaction:
Azula: You both fools!
- Also, Sokka, when Aang and Toph wake him up from some well-earned rest. He gets up in his sleeping bag, hops over to Aang, babbles unintelligibly at him, hops over to Toph and babbles at her, then hops off, jibbering something that sounds like, "I'm talking and using words!"
- Zorak in the Space Ghost Coast To Coast episode "Flipmode". (Sorry to be vague, the scene's a bit difficult to sum up)
- Futurama does this in the episode 'Jurassic Bark'. Prof. Farnsworth is angry because nobody's listening to him about not going into the lava to retrieve Fry's fossilized dog, and eventually shouts "PROFESSOR! LAVA! HOT!!"
- When Bender has his eccentric personality forcefully removed and downloaded to a diskette, Fry can only manically exclaim "But, Bender! Need brain!... For think!" to the bureaucrat who did it.
- The Peanuts Easter special has Peppermint Patty speak Angrish after she tells Marcie to get the eggs ready to be decorated and she fries them. Peppermint Patty falls back on the good old fashioned "AAAUGH!" when Marcie cooks eggs in the waffle iron, attempts to toast or bake them and finally make egg soup.
- Played straight and mocked often on Animaniacs. In one example the Warner Brothers (and sister Dot) were driving a wacky producer up the walls with their antics, prompting this response to a bit of Offscreen Teleportation:
Producer: Hoyle! How'd you... with the going... you were there, but now you're here, for me to see... How'd ya do?
Yakko: What'd he say?
Wakko: * mocking* Hoyle! How'd you... with the going... you were there, but now you're here, for me to see... How'd ya do?
Yakko: Thanks.
- In the Fast Forward episode "Timing Is Everything", Donatello gets the shocked version when he and Splinter go back in time to the accident that produced him:
Donatello: Was that... did we just... were those... us?! Did I just see... my own creation? Aaah!
Splinter: Deep breaths, my son, deep breaths.
- It's revealed as a gag in Chowder that Schnitzel's normal speech of "radda radda radda" is just a long stream of angrish due to always being tense and frustrated.
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