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"I never really said most of the things I said."
Yogi Berra
Lines or things that people associate with something or someone, despite the fact that they are never uttered by them. Usually a mis-quotation of something that actually was said or done.
The Trope Maker is "Beam me up, Scotty", never actually uttered in Star Trek The Original Series. It was said in one of the films, but even then, it was phrased "Scotty, beam me up". (It is actually said in Star Trek The Animated Series.)
See also Dead Unicorn Trope.
Examples:
- In The Simpsons episode "Radioactive Man", during the acid flood segment, a line given by Rainier Wolfcastle is often falsely quoted as saying "My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!" When the actual line is "Ah, my eyes! The goggles do nothing!"
- "Elementary, my dear Watson" was never in a Conan Doyle book or story. Although Holmes did express similar sentiments often (he said "elementary" on a couple of occasions and frequently addressed Watson as "my dear Watson"), the actual phrase originates in the William Gilette stage-play.
- Holmes is never described by Conan Doyle as wearing a deerstalker. This came about from the original illustrations. Later ones would have him wearing the rural hat in a city, quite a faux pas.
- A popular (and today, somewhat antiquated) phrase referring to a need for a speedy escape is "Time to get the hell out of Dodge!"- a reference to the long-running radio and TV show Gunsmoke, which took place in Dodge City. Trouble is no one ever actually says those words over the course of the series. Occasionally, Marshal Dillon would instruct some bad guys to "get the hell out of dodge", but the phrase is never used as a suggestion among them.
- "Just the facts, Ma'am" came not from Dragnet, but from the various Stan Freberg parodies of the show. The phrase Jack "Joe Friday" Webb actually used on the show was "All we want are the facts, Ma'am" (and sometimes "All we know are the facts, Ma'am").
- Carl Sagan's TV appearances were famous for his distinctive pronunciation of the word "billions" — but the phrase "billions and billions" so commonly associated with him actually came from a Tonight Show parody by Johnny Carson.
- He actually named one of his books "Billions and Billions" after this quote, and explained where it came from. (He also noted that the pronunciation of "billions" came from a desire to avoid confusion with "millions".)
- The phrase "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" , despite being seen as a Techno Babble Catch Phrase of the Third Doctor in Doctor Who, was only used once in his era of the show (although he reversed the polarity of other things quite a bit). Ironically, the line was subsequently used by the Fourth and Fifth Doctors, as well as by the Third Doctor in a Reunion Show, a stage play, and numerous novelisations, because it was seen as a Catch Phrase.
- More recently, the Tenth has lamented the fact that he's losing his touch at reversing polarities.
- Movie example: "Play it again, Sam", (not) from Casablanca. The actual quote is:
Rick: You know what I want to hear.
Sam: [lying] No, I don't.
Rick: You played it for her, you can play it for me!
Sam: [lying] Well, I don't think I can remember...
Rick: If she can stand it, I can! Play it!
Earlier in the film, Ilsa (Rick's love interest) also entreats him to "Play it, Sam." The more famous variant actually comes from a Marx Brothers parody entitled A Night in Casablanca.
- Also, Woody Allen named a play and movie in which a nebbish is given life coaching by an imaginary Humphrey Bogart Play it Again, Sam.
- In Thomas Hischak's one act play Richard Blaine, The Merchant of Morocco, or, If Shakespeare Had Written Casablanca is about what you'd expect it to be, spoofs many Shakespeare lines - Including, "If music be the food of love, play it again, Sam."
- At no point in The Empire Strikes Back does Darth Vader say "Luke, I am your father." His actual line was:
Darth Vader: Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.
Luke: He told me enough! He told me you killed him!
Darth Vader: No — I am your father.
- Ralph Kramden never actually said "Bang-zoom, to the moon!" on The Honeymooners — it's actually a blend of two different catchphrases, "One of these days, one of these days. Bang! Zoom!" and "To the moon, Alice, to the moon!". Similarly, many other catch phrases associated with that show and Jackie Gleason are mixes-and-matches of bits of actual catch phrases. Also, "Pow, right in the kisser!" was allegedly a Kramden Catch Phrase in the (now lost) early variety show sketches, but did not actually appear in the regular series. (For a complete list of Gleason catch phrases, including links to sound files, see this page
 .)
- There are a few Shakespearean examples of this.
- "Lead on, Macduff", which is a common misquotation of Macbeth's "Lay on, Macduff", often used in a completely different context than how it is used in the play.
- Also from Hamlet, Queen Gertrude never said "Methinks the lady doth protest too much." It was actually "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Which isn't terribly different but is certainly drier.
- Although Hamlet undoubtedly knew Yorick very well, he never said it in so many words.
Hamlet: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it.
- Also from Hamlet, Polonius is often quoted as saying, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, but to thine own self be true." That quote comes from two different sentences in the scene where he is giving advice to Laertes.
- "Nil points!" never appears in the Eurovision Song Contest. It's actually "Nul points" (pronounced "null PWAH-ng"... it's French). And, anyway, they never say it at all because of the way they do the scores.
- Just as an aside, that has to be the most ridiculous pronunciation guide for the French word "point" that this troper has ever seen. Which makes it hilarious.
- The Haruhi Suzumiya character Tsuruya-san never says "nyoro~n". She says "nyoro", and not nearly as often as one would think. Her Memetic Mutation webcomic alternate self, Churuya, says "nyoro~n" at the end of every strip. Churuya and Tsuruya even met in the Churuya comic, saying their exact Catch Phrases, and people continue to attribute one to the other.
- None of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books include the phrase "lashings of ginger beer". That comes from the infamous Made For TV Movie parodies by British comedy troupe The Comic Strip, "Five Go Mad In Dorset" and "Five Go Mad on Mescalin".
- Tarzan never said "Me, Tarzan. You, Jane." Johnny Weismuller, star of a series of Tarzan movies, gave the phrase in an interview as an indication of the kind of dialogue he was being given, but even he didn't say that exact phrase in any of the movies. (This was probably paraphrased from a scene from the 1932 Tarzan, the Ape Man, whose actual dialogue is much more embarrassing and therefore not often quoted.)
- Two famous kids' show "bloopers" were never said, despite millions of people saying they were watching and/or listening: "That oughtta hold the little bastards" as attributed mainly to radio host Uncle Don, and "Cram it, Clownie!" as attributed mainly to a disgruntled kid on The Bozo Show.
- Real life: Queen Victoria never said "We are not amused." (Which didn't stop Rose of Doctor Who from trying to get that phrase out of her anyway. Maybe she didn't know that... or maybe she did and was trying to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.)
- In fact, Her Majesty once wrote in her diary "We are VERY MUCH amused!" Yes, with those capitals.
- Similarly, Marie Antoinette did not say "Let them eat cake". French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote that a "great princess" said "Let them eat brioche" when told peasants were starving, but wrote this when Marie was a child. In fact, it is debatable whether Rousseau meant this was an actual quote, or invented it to illustrate the divide between royalty and the poor.
- Hagrid's oft-quoted line "you're a wizard, Harry" appears only in the first Harry Potter film — in the book, his line was "Harry — yer a wizard".
- The oft-quoted scene from Crocodile Dundee rather than the misquote: "That's not a knife... This is a knife" actually goes:
Sue: "He's got a knife!"
Crocodile Dundee: "That's not a knife." (Draws large bowie knife) "That's a knife."
- This line was beautifully parodied on the Simpsons episode "Bart Vs. Australia".
Australian Man: "That's not a knife...(Holding a spoon) "THAT'S a knife."
Bart: "That's not a knife, it's a spoon"
Australian Man: "Orright, orright, you win. I see you've played Knifey-Spoony before!"
- Another parody in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel The Last Continent:
Dwarf: [pulls out a knife]
Huge Guy: "You call that a knife? This is what I call a knife!"
Dwarf: [reaches around and pulls something from behind his back]
Dwarf: "Really? No worries. This is what I call a crossbow."
- "Not a lot of people know that" is a line frequently attributed to Michael Caine, but actually originates from a Peter Sellers impression of him.
- The line "My God, it's full of stars" is never said or sort-of said in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The closest the movie gets to this line is in a moment toward the end when a starfield bursts onto the screen, but not a single word is spoken during this light show (or after it, for that matter). The line does appear in Arthur C. Clarke's novel (part of the same project), and the film version of 2010: The Year We Made Contact, which nobody remembers at all except for that line. (This is arguably a good thing.)
- In addition, the very famous and oft quoted line "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave" never appears in 2001. HAL instead offers the (less spectacular) "I can't let you do that, Dave," and later says "I'm afraid, Dave" when being disconnected.
- And before that, he does say "I'm afraid I can't do that," "I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."
- John Wayne did not say, "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" in the film Hondo. It's actually, "A man oughta do what he thinks is best".
- In the Mr. Bill sketches from Saturday Night Live the phrase is just, "Oh no!" and not "Oh no, Mr. Bill!". It's pretty strange how this misquote was started seeing as how it's said by Mr. Bill himself.
- The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre never featured the line "We don't need no stinking badges!" The actual lines are:
Bandit: "We are Federales. You know, the mounted police."
Dobbs: "If you're the police, where are your badges?"
Bandit: "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"
- That said, if someone says, "We don't need no stinking badges!", they are quoting a movie: Blazing Saddles.
- In no film did James Cagney ever say "You dirty rat!" This is a misquote of a line from the 1931 film Blonde Crazy, where he refers to another character as "that dirty double-crossing rat".
- Nor did Cary Grant ever say "Judy, Judy, Judy". Apparently, comedian Larry Storch was doing a Cary Grant impersonation in a nightclub when Judy Garland walked in. He greeted her from the stage in character and it somehow became part of the Grant mystique, mystifying even Cary, himself.
- In an acceptance speech for the American Film Institute's lifetime acheivement award, Cagney ribbed impressionist Frank Gorshin (and poked fun at the oft-misatributed line) by saying "And, Frank, I never said 'mmm, you dirty rat.' What I really said was 'Judy, Judy, Judy!'"
- Mae West never said "Come up and see me sometime." The actual line is "Why don't you some up some time, and see me." Which mostly just moves words around but really changes the emphasis.
- Many parodies, pastiches, and Shout Outs to Jason Voorhees, villain of the Friday the 13th films, show him wielding a chainsaw, even though his favorite weapon in the movies is just a machete. In fact, he has never used a chainsaw for any purpose. This may be due to the startling number of other slasher villains who do use chainsaws, or it may be simply because Chainsaw GOOD! Chainsaws are more the domain of Leatherface from the aptly named Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, and Ash, of Evil Dead.
- An odd example is Snakes On A Plane. The original trailer had Samuel L. Jackson simply saying, "I've had it with these snakes!" The more familiar profanity-laced version was initially a product of Memetic Mutation, but it became popular enough that the producers decided to reshoot the scene with the modified line, so it actually was in the movie after all.
- Another Star Trek example: The Borg are oft quoted as saying "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." Actually, their standard greeting is "We are Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile." If "futile" ever preceeded "assimilated," it was only once (most likely in The Best Of Both Worlds.)
- And the Borg did say "Negotiation is irrelevant. You will be assimilated." This may have been a grammatical influence.
- The oft-quoted Spider Man line "With great power comes great responsibility" is often attributed to Peter Parker's Uncle Ben, but the first appearance of the line was in fact just in a closing caption to the first story in Amazing Fantasy, not said by any actual character. And even then, it was actually phrased "With great power there must also come great responsibility". In later retcons of Spider-Man's origin and in retellings such as that of The Movie, the line is shortened and attributed to Uncle Ben, so while that is what is now in-continuity, the line was not originally his.
- The Spectacular Spider Man Animated Adaptation plays with this: a flashback shows Uncle Ben delivering the original line, but Peter then says the shorten version later when he decided to spare Ben's killer.
- Ultimate Spider Man played with it even more. Let's just say it was a good thing that Peter decided to shorten this one:
Uncle Ben You know your father, God rest his soul... Your father had a philosophy the he held to pretty strongly. And it's one that served him very, very well... He believed that if there were things in this world that you had to offer, things that you did well — better than anyone else...things that you could do that helped people feel better about themselves...well, he believed that it wasn't just a good idea to do those things...he believed it was your responsiblity to do those things. Don't try to be something else. Don't try to be less. Great things are going to happen to you and your life Peter. Great things. And with that will come great responsiblity. Do you understand?
- While a lower-grade, more obscure, Narmier variant, Rose never accused Raiden of having a room that was 'empty like your soul' in Metal Gear Solid. The misquote was popularised by the webcomic VG Cats and is quoted more often than the (not quite as stupid) real line.
- Australian talk show host Derryn Hynch never actually used the line "Shame, shame." he is often associated with, it comes from Steve Vizard's recurring impersonation of him on sketch comedy Fast Forward.
- "The frozen tundra of Lambeau Field" was never spoken by NFL Films narrator John Facenda; it comes from Chris Berman's imitation of him.
- The German crime series Derrick often has Derrick send his assistant Harry to get the car to drive him somewhere. Thus, the phrase "Harry, hol schon mal den Wagen" ("Harry, go get the car in the meantime") was coined, though none of the 281 episodes of the legendary show actually featured the renowned phrase. The line was finally included in a tongue-in-cheek animated special made after the live action version had been cancelled.
- Clint Eastwood didn't say "Do you feel lucky, punk?" in Dirty Harry. He said, "You'd better ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well do you, punk?" which you can see as the lead-in quote on Bottomless Magazines.
- In one of the first debates in the 2004 USA Presidential Election, John Kerry listed the handful of countries that made up George W. Bush's "grand coalition" fighting in Iraq. Bush's first response was "Well, he forgot Poland", which was eventually warped into the "You forgot Poland" meme.
- For the record, Coalition members as of September 2004 were the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Australia, Romania, Bulgaria, Denmark, El Salvador, Hungary, Japan, Norway, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Portugal, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Albania, Georgia, New Zealand, Moldova, Macedonia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, and Tonga.
- A line frequently quoted from The Bible is "money is the root of all evil". While technically a correct quote, it leaves out three important words. The full quote (from the King James version anyway) is "the love of money is the root of all evil."
- Another translation is "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil'', which is actually quite a big difference.
- Throughout Jojos Bizarre Adventure, the cry of a vampire is usually spelled "Ureeeeeyyyy!" or "Reeeeeee!" It's almost never spelled "Wryyyyyy!", but Memetic Mutation has made this the most common spelling.
- Enoch Powell's notorious 1968 speech on immigration does not actually feature the precise expression "rivers of blood". He instead quotes Virgil, who saw "the River Tiber foaming with much blood".
- A popular trend in Stargate SG-1 fanfiction is to have O'Neill call artifacts "rocks" while Daniel insists that they are "artifacts". However, such an exchange never occurs in the show itself.
- "Should work with no problems" is a quote fans often attribute to Gadget from Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers. In fact this is an amalgam of two different quotes: "Should work", indicating that the inventress was not sure if her latest gizmo would work, and "No problems". More often than not, after the utterance of one of those the invention in question would spectacularly fall apart right after activation, which made a running gag in the series.
- The line from White Heat is not "Top of the world, Ma!" it's "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!".
- In Homestar Runner, Homsar never said "I was raised by a cup of coffee!" That was actually Strong Bad, giving his idea of what an interview with Homsar would be like. Nevertheless, other appearances of the quote (such as on the official Homsar shirt) have associated it with Homsar himself.
- Strong Sad never said "I don't like food anymore" or "Some animal died" either, despite their being two of his more quoted lines. They were impressions of him done by Strong Bad and Homestar respectively, though the second quote did become a Quote of the Week spoken by Strong Sad later on.
- However, it's implied that they may have actually said those phrases in-universe.
- Mai Shiranui of the Fatal Fury and The King Of Fighters video games doesn't say "Me bouncy!" when she wins a fight; she says "Nippon Ichi!" ("Japan's No. 1!")
- Real life: Karl Marx never actually said "Religion is the opiate of the masses." The correct quote is "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
- Al Gore, possibly channeling Yogi Berra, once said: "During my time in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Through Memetic Mutation, this naturally led to Al Gore, inventor of the Internet.
- Real Life: Jim Lovell never said "Houston, we have a problem" during Apollo 13. The actual line is "Houston, we've had a problem." The misquote is so pervasive, it has even made its way into the movie staring Tom Hanks, which has been noted for being fairly accurate.
- An interesting twist happened during Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong's first words on the moon were "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." However, a garbled transmission dropped the article "a" so that to the rest of the world, he said the more famous if totally nonsensical "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Both are legitimately acceptable in documentaries.
- Not quite. This has been hacked and spun so much over the years that several versions are in circulation. The "garble/squelch" explanation doesn't fly simply because there wasn't a pause or garble in the transmission long enough to hide even a short "a". The simple truth is that Neil Armstrong was given a line to speak and fluffed it. He admitted this himself after he retired. And fair's fair, he had a lot on his mind at that moment. But with the eyes of the world on them, the PR man at NASA felt they had to explain away this inconsequential hiccup.
- Nineteen Eighty Four is about "doublethink", not "double talk" or "double speak".
- People seem to have a habit of quoting the Mushroom Retainers' line from Super Mario Bros as "Sorry, Mario, but our princess is in another castle!", when it's "Thank you, Mario! But our princess is in another castle!" Sometimes it's misremembered as "your princess".
- Clerks has Randal quoting Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with "No time for love, Doctor Jones!". But Short Round's actual line was "Hey, Dr. Jones, no time for love."
- For three years, a huge in-joke among this troper's social circle was the line spoken towards the end of the Sci-Fi Channel's Dune: "The Guild cannot condone this course of action" (accompanied with camp hand gestures). Only when we watched the show again did we realise the line was in fact "The Guild does not take your orders" (though the hand gestures remained intact). We felt rather stupid.
- The quote "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." is often attributed to Voltaire, but he never uses this himself. Rather, it is a summation of his beliefs by Evelyn Beatrice Hall.
- Norman Tebbit did not actually say "on yer bike". It was actually:
I grew up in the '30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking 'til he found it. (emphasis added)
- The exchange "Say good night, Gracie," "Good night, Gracie," now seen as the catchphrase of Burns and Allen, was not actually part of the their show; Gracie Allen simply replied "Good night" at the end of each episode. Later, George Burns said he thought the line was very funny, and he wished they had used it.
- Pride cometh not before a fall. Rather, what The Bible really says is, "Pride cometh before destruction, and the haughty spirit before a fall".
- In Batman and Robin, Mr. Freeze utters dozens of ice- and snow-related puns. "Ice to meet you" is not one of them. It was later used by Mc Bain in a Simpsons spoof.
- Subversion: an often quoted line from Cool Hand Luke is "What we've got here is a failure to communicate". Some people mistakenly claim it's incorrect since "The Captain", who first delivers the line, says it as "What we've got here is failure to communicate" (without the "a"). However, near the end of the film, Luke "repeats" the line, but this time with the "a".
- On the other hand, the line is usually quoted with a Southern drawl intended to mimic the Captain, thus falling right into this trope.
- The show Friends has maybe one actual occasion where Chandler uses any variant of the phrase "Could I be more (blank)?" without it being a parody of said speaking pattern.
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