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You don't say.
"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious." — George Orwell
"Thanks for stating the completely obvious, by the way."
"No problem. It's nice to have a purpose."
He strives to be Mr Exposition... But there's something wrong with his exposition. Most of the time, whatever he has to say should already be obvious — both to the viewers and to any other character with half a brain. After saying anything, another character might state "Gee, you think?" or "No shit, Sherlock!"
In other words, Captain Obvious states the obvious. This means that his statements are self-evident.
In some cases justified because Captain Obvious is also a Ralph Wiggum, or so puzzled by something he can't help but state, well, the obvious.
To be fair, amateur translations of anime/manga/visual novels have been known to make a fairly valid statement into something like this — it's not the characters being stupid. Professional translations as well, although less frequently.
When what they say is prime fodder for a sarcastic quip, they just had to Ask A Stupid Question.
See also As You Know, This Just In, Shaped Like Itself. Sometimes, may be demoted to Commander Contrarian, a commander who disagrees. It Makes Sense In Context is what fans will say when other people bring it up.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Try and count all the times someone says "He's no ordinary swordsman!" (or something similar) every time Kenshin disappears because he's moving so fast or knocking 6 enemies down at a time.
- The narrator and characters suffered badly from this in the early parts of Jojos Bizarre Adventure, making the whole thing read like a Silver Age comic book at times. One example that has undergone Memetic Mutation is a panel of Speedwagon looking afraid while the narrator says "Even Speedwagon is afraid!"
- Inuyasha has an entire cast of Captains Obvious, with characters gleefully re-stating something that was just mentioned by another Captain Obvious. For example, if a character is returning from being away, they'd show the character approaching, then one character would say something like "Hey, it's Character Name" then someone else would say "Character Name is coming back!" and "It's good that Character Name is back now!", leading to a whole chorus making sure that the audience knows exactly what's going on, regardless of how obvious it is.
- Every time Kagome muses that Inuyasha is half-demon and "half demon means... half human, right?" as if it's a stunning new revelation in the first ten or so episodes, take a shot. It took her quite some time to wrap her head around it.
- Tekkaman the Space Knight's dub. In the original version he rarely speaks, but in the English version...
- Used very often in Yu-Gi-Oh, usually when a monster is destroyed or a magic/trap card is used, so it happens virtually every move. Contributes to the show's Inaction Sequences.
*Monster explodes*
Duelist: Your monster has been vanquished!
- Mocked in Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series.
Téa: Now we're at the museum!
Yami: I know.
- Or:
Tristan: In a few hours the sun will rise!
[Later, as the sun rises.]
Tristan: See, I was right about the sun!
- That's actually what he said in the anime. Well, the first part anyway.
- A bit of context: Téa and Tristan were stowed away on the boat to Duelist Kingdom. During the night, they had to sleep up on the bridge, out of the way, rather than in the warm suites inside the boat. Téa was complaining about how cold it was up there at night, and Tristan delivers the above line. The way he says it suggests that he was mocking her for complaining. Note that this whole exchange was different in the Japanese version.
- And, from the movie:
Anubis: Shut up! You're going to die! And then you'll be dead! Because I killed you!
- Tetsuro in the new Guyver series sometimes falls into this. When he's not constantly shouting "son of a bitch!".
- Manta from Shaman King has a tendency for this. It gets rather grating after a while.
- The Bronze Saints from Saint Seiya: Hades chapter have a tendency to repeat, WORD FOR WORD, what someone else just said.
- Spoofed in Bobobobo Bobobo:
Guy Boy: I'll defeat you so bad you'll be defeated!
Narrator: Yes, he knew Hatenko's secret weakness! That defeating him would...defeat him!
Dengakuman: Wait, hold on! That's MY weakness!
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann had an odd enforced version when Team Dai-Gurren were throwing rocks at Viral and his men:
Viral: Damn barbaric humans! Can't you beat us fist-to-fist you cowards?
Kamina: This rock is my fist!
Viral: A rock is a rock. It's not a damn fist!
Kamina: Is stating the obvious the best you got, dumbass?
- Suzumiya Haruhi:
[A giant cricket appears in front of them]
Kyon: What is this?
Koizumi: A camel cricket.
Kyon: Got it. Thanks, Captain Obvious...
- From Slayers: Super-Explosive Demon Story:
Mook Disguised as Old Man: I have transformed these ordinary woodland creatures into astral-side demons! Cool, huh?
Gourry: This isn't a regular old guy, Lina!
- Gourry is the Captain Obvious of Slayers. His role as such as repeatedly lampshaded and he constantly gets smacked by Lina for this (sometimes before he's even said anything).
- Given that he thought the fact that Xellos is a mazoku/demon was obvious, it seems safe to say that Gourry's conception of what is and is not obvious is...not the same as everybody else's.
- The quote from Naruto shown at the article opening. In that scene, Might Guy has brilliant lines such as "You surely are... someone I met before". This is fairly in character for Guy. Ironically, the latter is actually a subversion, as the villain is using a body duplication technique that's based on another body, and that one's rhythms are slightly different from the villain's own... so while Guy can see the bad guy, his instincts tell him that it's someone else. And he's right.
- There's also when he looks at Gaara's gourd: "Nobody has noticed yet... but... that gourd is suspicious!"
- There's also the Asuma vs Hidan fight. "Is he immortal?" "No shit, Sherlock!"
- To be fair, there are so many different abilites that it could have been regeneration or something. So it might be obvious if you discount any other possiblity.
- Bleach: during the Kenpachi vs. Nnoitora fight. "He's got more arms!" Thank you, Ichigo. We'd be lost without you.
- Urahara temporarily surpasses Ichigo's stupidity in the new Zanpakuto Rebellion arc, when the zanpakuto start rebelling against the shinigami. After several fight scenes, the new enemies completely devastating the Soul Society, Ichigo coming to his own (correct) conclusions, multiple InfoDumps, Urahara gives us this little gem: "From the report, it seems that the majority of zanpakuto in Soul Society have begun to act against their shinigami."
- Fuu Hououji from Magic Knight Rayearth is (in?)famous for this sort of thing, to Hikaru and Umi's frustration.
- In the Digimon Tamers dub when Takato and Henry are going on about how the Monster of the Week is destroying the city, Rika remarks "What are you two, the obvious brothers?"
- Lampshaded in Code Geass. When Tamaki makes a remark like this, we get a little moment of contrast between C.C. and Kaguya in their responses to it:
Kaguya: Actually, that's an apt way of putting it.
C.C.: You're sure developing a useless ability there.
- And of course, from Fate Stay Night, "People die if they are killed", as seen above. Shirou Emiya's statement of the obvious was actually taken out of context. Sure, blame the fansub, but in context, he was trying to explain to Saber how it was immoral for him to keep Avalon within him to keep him alive, thus his statement above was born. Didn't stop Four Chan and, by extension, the intarwebs from mocking Shirou.
- This
 ◊ example from Shakugan no Shana:
Kazumi: It's called a school festival. It's a festival organized by the school.
- Again, this makes sense in context, the context being the Japanese language. The Japanese have a word for "festival", a word for "school", and a totally different word for "school festival". Sometimes obvious isn't as obvious as it appears...
- Some days, it seems like the only reason Luna is around anymore in Sailor Moon:
[monster creates sea pillars and attacks Sailor Moon with them]
Luna: Careful, Sailor Moon! That monster can attack with water!
- The first Pokemon movie should have a medal for the number of times the words "Mewtwo is a clone of Mew!", or something to that affect, are repeated.
- Hell, the later seasons of Pokemon are FULL of this. Characters frequently point out things that anybody watching the show can see.
- Maybe they're adding the dialogue for those who are blind?
- Kazuma Kuwabara in Yu Yu Hakusho tends to say things like, "This is dangerous!" while a tunnel is collapsing on top of the Idiot Hero's Nakama.
- Ikuko of Angel Densetsu manages to get some pretty hilarious moments with this. Bonus points for the DeadpanSnark.
- Yui from K-On: "Fun things are fun."
- An early episode of Fist of the North Star has a drill instructor explaining to his men that "God's Army is the army of God". The line makes sense in Japanese, since he's explaining what the name "God's Army" means (Kami no Gun), but its pointlessly redundant in English.
- In Gankutsuou, a character looks at an envelope and reacts to it with: '13 Rue De Dauphine? That's M. Noisier's house!' (Name and address deliberately changed to protect the fact I can't remember them.) He then turns the envelope towards the camera, and there's a small, blurry address line; but the name 'M. Noisier' is perfectly legible in large letters across the centre of the envelope.
Comic Books
- Several issues of The Mighty Thor back in the 60's had an advanced alien race send a "recorder" android along with him to an unknown galaxy to observe information. He said almost everything that was going on in the panel. Granted he was a recording android and everything, and he was probably making notes to himself, but still...
[Thor and the android get sent into a vortex of "biochemical molecules"].
Recorder: Observation: We have been plunged into a vortex of rapidly regrouping bio-versal molecules!
- Every Silver Age comic book character from every writer and every publisher, everywhere. Even the random bystanders. (See Luckily My Powers Will Protect Me.)
- In the 1980's Astro Boy, a cyborg called Inspector Holmes is shot in the only human part of him: his head. Astro's reaction? "You shot him! In the helaad! His head was the only part of that was human! You shot him in his head!"
- When the protagonist of CrossGen's Mystic finally caught on that her very obvious beau was one of the bad guys, he got one back at her:
Darrow: You always did have a fine grasp of the painfully obvious.
Film
- Legolas in the Lord Of The Rings films, who was first titled "Captain Obvious" in Legolas: The Very Special Diaries. In fact, almost every line from Legolas:
Legolas: Orcs!
Legolas: Goblins!
Legolas: A scout!
Legolas: Crebain from Dunland... Hide!
Legolas: Something draws near... I can feel it.
Legolas: Have you heard nothing Elrond just said? The ring must be destroyed!
Legolas: That is one of the mearas, or else my eyes have been cheated by some spell.
- And one of the most infamous lines:
Legolas: The red sun rises. Blood has been spilled this night.
- And can we forget this iconic line?
- This isn't as stupid as it sounds - in the book it was long unclear whether the orcs would turn towards Mordor or Isengard, and guessing wrong would be disastrous. Legolas made the statement as soon as he saw the band of orcs in the horizon, heading towards Isengard.
- To Aragorn, who has just survived a battle, fallen off a cliff, and been half drowned before being rescued from a muddy shore by a horse:
Legolas: You look terrible.
- This may have been wit on his part.
- This one becomes particularly hilarious for anyone who has seen Father Ted, because it was exactly the same response that Dougal had to someone explaining they need to draw their attention away:
"Legolas:''' A diversion!"
- Oddly enough, the one time it would've been both accurate and useful for him to shout whatever noun has entered his line of sight, Legolas refrains from informing everyone that "Ai! A Balrog! A Balrog has come!"
- Pippin also had his moment, too.
Pippin: Merry, the tree is talking.
- This can be forgiven, at least partly. Its more likely he was just throwing out some mental sewage, due to the shock of being abducted by a walking, talking tree.
- How many scenes in Return of the King did Sam say "we're almost there" again?
- Let's be fair: he was mostly saying that to try and keep Frodo's spirits up. Didin't work too well, but still...
- Everyone who takes a look at it, says out loud: "Mordor". As if it could be anything else! (However, it does make a little more sense when you think about it. 1) You're faced with freaking Mordor. You kind of have to say something. 2. You're faced with freaking Mordor. What can you say?)
- Ric Olié from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, notorious for lines like "Enemy fighters straight ahead!" or "Coruscant... The entire planet is one big city."
- It doesn't start with him, either. The very first scene with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan has battle droids arrive and turn on their force fields. A second later, Obi-Wan says, "They have shield generators!" This is perhaps three to five minutes after the opening text crawl ends.
- And you have forgotten Anakin's line while he is fleeing:
Anakin: This is TENSE!
- The Star Wars parody That Prequel Movie gives Ric Olié lines of this type, but sprinkled with extra ridiculous.
Olié: Invading droids can mean only one thing. An invasion... of droids.
- C-3PO demonstrates his usefulness:
[ground shakes violently] C-3PO: Sir, it's quite possible this asteroid is not entirely stable. Han: "Not entirely stable"? Well, I'm glad you're here to tell us these things! Chewie, take the Professor into the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
- Even Vader gets 'em:
- It's a trap!
- Parodied in Austin Powers with Basil Exposition, who as well as the more useful kind of filling-in, on occasion displayed a tendency to state the blindingly obvious as well ("Thanks, Basil."). In particular, a deleted scene from the first movie has him helpfully pop up at the end to inform Austin and Vanessa that they've survived the destruction of Dr. Evil's secret base and have found themselves in a raft for some reason.
- At the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a collection of grails are found along with an immortal knight who explains that only one is the Holy Grail and that "for as the true Grail will bring you life, the false grail will take it from you". After drinking from one of the grails, Donovan rapidly ages, becoming a skeleton in the span of about thirty seconds. Just in case Indy and Elsa didn't get the idea, the knight says "he chose... poorly."
- Indy himself gets to be one at the end of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: "Their treasure was knowledge. Knowledge was their treasure." You can see how he got to be a professor.
- Parodied or perhaps justified in the movie Dumb And Dumber when Harry asks a lady who has also stopped at the gas station, "Skis huh? They yours? ...Both of them?"
- Referred to by name in Dude, Where's My Car:
Mr. Pizzacoli: They said "the Photon Accelerator Annihilation Beam," you fool!
Chester: Hurry, activate it, dude!
[a small panel on the Transfunctioner reads "Photon Accelerator Annihilation Beam"]
Chester: I think that's it, dude.
Jesse: Thank you, Captain Obvious!
- The cop in the passenger seat of the paddy wagon in The Dark Knight has this role.
- The movie versions of X-Men are rather found of these.
Storm: Do you know what happens to a toad when it's hit by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else.
- More annoying is the fact that they missed the perfect joke, as mentioned on the dvd-commentary.
Storm: Do you know what happens to a toad when it's hit by lightning? It croaks.
Jean: Cerebro isn't targetting mutants anymore. Storm: Who is it targetting? Jean:Everyone else
- The So Bad Its Good Street Fighter movie had its moment when it's revealed that Guile came Back From The Dead... somehow.
Sagat: Guile's... alive?
M. Bison: OF COURSE!!!
- Brendan Frasier has a bad habit of yelling whatever's going on. "Mummies!", "We're still falling!", "Lava!"
- In Fighting (or at least its trailer), one of the characters has the brilliant observation that "the only way I'm gonna lose is if somebody beats me". This is made all the more hilarious by the fact that the actor delivered it as though it were a really badass line.
- In Reservoir Dogs, there's the line about Mr. Blue:
"Either he's dead or he's alive. Either the cops got him or they didn't."
- Evolution — A little-known movie about aliens that come to Earth inside a meteor, after which they evolve into a menagerie of outlandish creatures attempting to adapt to Earth's environment and pose a threat to humanity. When an aggressive alienoid dragon/bird creature gets barfed out by another dying alienoid dragon's mouth and flies away:
Harry: "It's flying away? Is that a bad thing?"
Ira: "Only if you're a human being."
Literature
- Every fantasy adventure book ever. "Watch out for his sword!" "(Insert Villain here) is assaulting the castle!"
- And any regal looking man who sits on the throne will introduce himself like this. "I am King (Name) of (Country). I rule over this country with benevolence."
- Car magazine AutoWeek frequently features quotes stating the painfully obvious accompanied by a picture of a Captain America lookalike in their "But Wait, There's More..." section.
- In The Dilbert Principle, Scott Adams lists Master of the Obvious as one of the roles to take in a meeting. The Master of the Obvious gets lines such as "You need customers in order to have revenue!" and "We want a win-win solution."
- In CS Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the entire race of Dufflepuds are prone to this, with such astute observations as water is powerfully wet.
- In the fable The Emperor's New Clothes, the kid who points out that the emperor is nekkid plays this role. In fact, he's the smartest person in the crowd because of his ability to state the obvious.
- Actually he was just too young to know that sometimes you have to play along with something stupid.
- The Harry Potter books have a few (most are lampshaded in-universe however), one being Harry saying "Ghosts are transparent."
- Cedric: The cup is a portkey.
- The Chinese translation says that Slughorn is saying Ron's name wrong when we can all tell that from the dialogue.
- "You can't break Unbreakable Vows."
- "Hermione, Neville's right...you are a girl..."
- In the second Midnighters book, Madeleine accuses Dess of being one.
Dess: You're a mindcaster.
Madeleine: And you have a fine grasp of the obvious.
and
Dess: You've been mindcasting this to me while I was asleep.
Madeleine: I expect that you must earn top marks at school, young lady. There are always rewards for those who state the obvious frequently and with conviction.
- Twilight. Just read any of Bella's dialogue really.
- Just read any of the sentences at all. "I'm sorry," he apologized.
- Mulenz, a supporting character in the Ciaphas Cain short story The Beguiling, was like this, to Cain's mild annoyance. "No wonder they made him an observer, I thought, nothing gets past this guy."
- In The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, this is humanity's hat.
One of the things that Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and restating the very, very obvious. As in: "It's a nice day," or "You're very tall," or " So this is it. We're going to die."
Live Action TV
- Counselor Troi on Star Trek The Next Generation does this a lot. An alien will appear on the viewscreen and rant, rave, posture and threaten the Enterprise. Troi will lean over to the Captain and murmur, "I sense hostility..."
- Troi was following in the footsteps of Leonard McCoy of Star Trek The Original Series, who spat contemptuously at the medicine of previous eras, and yet, despite the miraculous 23rd-century technology that he possessed, seldom gave a diagnosis more detailed than "He's dead, Jim!"
- Data had his Captain Obvious moments too, as even the dead-serious TNG crew couldn't help but notice sometimes...
Data: [picking up a robotic arm] It appears to be a robotic arm. Worf: Very astute.
- Well, as a robot he's supposed to be super logical. When asked "What do you make of this?" he answered with the only thing he should've been able to answer with at that point.
- Also, in multiple Trek series, an enemy ship will go to warp, while the Enterprise (Voyager, Defiant, etc.) is damaged, busy, or just not fast enough to keep up. After watching this happen, someone will always say "they're gone," even if they've also just reported the enemy ship's departure. Once every third episode, you were liable to see a situation like this:
[Zip! Phoom! Villains disappear as everyone watches on insanely big viewscreen.] Paris: "They went to Ultrawarp Factor Eleventy-Zillion, Captain. [Pause] They're gone."
- It they were looking at the status of long-range sensors, it might make sense. As in, the are not looping around for another attack.
- Shows up in the Stargate Verse lately as well: Someone will always say "they're gone" after another ship departs via hyperspace window.
- Babylon 5 spoofed Troi's solemn pronouncements with a similar moment where supercharged telepath Lyta Alexander simply commented, "Captain, they're pissed."
- Spoofed after a fashion in Galaxy Quest (is there anything that movie missed?) with Sigourney Weaver repeating everything the computer tells them, making her every bit as useful as Troi. It's even Lampshaded ("Look, I got one job on this lousy ship — it's stupid, but I'm gonna do it anyway!!!!"). Then again, the computer would not respond to anyone else, so she still had her uses.
- In Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan, when the Enterprise is trying to contact Regula One, Spock has this insightful comment, "There are two possibilities. They are unable to respond. They are unwilling to respond."
- In the original series episode "The Changeling", a space probe called Nomad, convinced that its mission is to destroy all "biological units", mistakes Kirk for its creator. This buys the crew some time until Kirk lets slip that he is a biological unit. Nomad declares it needs to "reevaluate" and floats off. Spock's response?
- In "The Savage Curtain", Kirk is told "if you and Spock survive, you return to your vessel. If you do not... your existence is ended
- Kirk also has a tendency to repeat what was just said. From "Amok Time"
Kirk: By Vulcan biology, do you mean the biology of Vulcans?
- Here's another then.
Kirk: Insufficient data is not sufficient, Mr. Spock.
- In Star Trek Voyager, a female Q pegs this trope as a trait of the entire Vulcan species.
Female Q: The Vulcan talent for stating the obvious never ceases to amaze me.
- Samantha Carter, in her position as Stargate SG-1's designated Ms. Exposition had more than a few moments of this. Which was somewhat amusing during the first two seasons, where she actually held the rank of Captain.
- In the season seven episode Birthright, Part 1, Bra'tac and Teal'c walk through a battlefield filled with dead Jaffa. Teal'c notes that there were two Goa'uld there with their respective armies. Bra'tac replies "This meeting did not go well." Really? Because when I see dead guys, I assume things were going great!
- Parodied in Fawlty Towers:
Basil: Next contestant on Mastermind; Sybil Fawlty, best category; the bleedin' obvious!
- Jack from Days Of Our Lives has his moments.
Jack: Now that he's dead, there's no way he could be alive.
- In one sketch on the comedy-improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway, Colin Mochrie was given the job of playing a superhero named, literally, Captain Obvious. "I'm standing. I'm looking around. That's air going into my lungs..."
- "So, you're here to kill me," says Arthur Petrelli in Heroes, after his son's been pointing a gun at his face for a minute or so.
- "Gabriel, you're here."
- No one is going to mention Tracy's— no wait, Nikki's— er, Jessica's (I mean really, who knows any more?) line to Matt early in the series? "Didn't I throw you through a window?" No, Jessica, that never happened.
- Carter alternates between this and Cloud Cuckoo Lander in Hogan's Heroes.
- Plenty of comedic mileage on Red Dwarf:
Holly: A stasis leak is a leak, right, in stasis. Hence the name 'a stasis leak'.
Rimmer: (trying to save his past self) I've come to warn you, in three million years you'll be dead!
Past Rimmer: Will I really?
Cat: (examining an arrow) Yep, this came from a bow alright.
- Many of the headlines featured on The Tonight Show, such as this gem: "Starvation leads to health hazards". (Leno's reply: "Really? I find I'm feeling hungry all the time.")
- Once on Air Farce Live: seen here
Lisa LaFlamme: Dr Blide, are you sick?
Dr. Blide: Am I sick? Oh! Stop the press! The Nobel Prize for Medicine goes to Lady Obvious!
- In CSI, upon finding a severed head in the trunk of a car, Grissom delivered a particularly groan-worthy one-liner:
"[...] six to eight hours ago, somebody lost his head. And then... somebody lost his head."
- A particularly egregious example occurs in the X-Files episode "The Erlenmeyer Flask," in which a microbiology expert explains the rudiments of genetics — material taught in any high school's freshman biology class — to Agent Scully, a fully qualified doctor. While some viewers of the show might have needed the refresher course, Scully absolutely should not have, and turning her into The Rick for this kind of material just does her a disservice.
- Subverted and lampshaded often, severely, and, on occasion, simultaneously on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the best example likely being when Spike is nearly tearing his hair out by the unbleached roots telling the Scoobies over and over that the Hell Goddess Glory just turned into Joyce's caregiver Ben. They miss the point every time.
- Darn that memory spell... What makes the situation funnier is that the other Scoobies (save for the comatose Buffy) actually get it near the end of the first go-around with a little help from Spike:
Willow: So... Ben and Glory... a-are actually the same person?
Xander: Glory can turn into Ben, and Ben turns back into Glory.
Anya: And anyone who sees it instantly forgets.
[About a half a minute later]
Giles: Excellent. Now. Do we suspect there may be some kind of connection between Ben and Glory?
- It kind of makes you wonder how many times he tried to get them to figure it out if he considered bitch-slapping Xander upside the head worth the pain.
- "I know we're too young to get married but guess what? We're getting older every year."
- A major part of Demetri Martin's stand-up routine ("Large Pad"), and by extension, Important Things.
- Likewise, a recurring gag in Bill Engvall's stand-up. "Here's your sign."
- Subverted in the 1992 Australian mini-series Phoenix, a fictionalised account of the car-bombing of a Melbourne police station. Some hours into the investigation, Inspector Jock Brennan asks forensic scientist Ian "The Goose" Cochrane what he's come up with.
The Goose: There was a bomb in that car, and it went off.
Jock: Are you having me on?
The Goose: Look, it could have been a mortar shell. The bomb could have been under a manhole cover and the car had nothing to do with it. There are solutions besides the obvious, you know.
- Jock is so furious he tries to get his superiors to throw The Goose off the case, only to be told that he's the Number One expert in post-bomb analysis in the Southern Hemisphere, so he'd better shut up and listen to him.
- Mythbusters often has someone reiterating what they've been doing, just in case you missed it. It alternates between individuals.
- Probably because there is a sizable segment of viewers who watch just for the kaboom. They need to be reminded how it works.
- Inadvertently inverted by one-time BBC snooker commentary: "For those of you watching in black and white, the blue's the one behind the pink."
- Dr. Huang from Law And Order Special Victims Unit is frequently found guilty of committing this trope.
- Firefly: "It's a post holer. You dig holes for . . . posts." Well, yes, Kaylee.
- House has this exchange:
Tritter: You're rude.
House: Wow. You're, like, a detective or something.
- Battlestar Galactica ("Daybreak") after Cavil's forces realise Boomer has taken Hera back to the Colonials.
Cavil: Time for us to go on the offensive.
Simon: We must be cautious. Too much force could risk killing the child.
Cavil: Really? You think? Please continue stating the perfectly obvious; it fills me with confidence.
Music
- Weird Al's Albuquerque.
- The Beatles, in Come Together, gave us such enlightening information as "He's got feet down below his knees" and "One and one and one is three". You don't say.
- The Talking Heads' song Once in a Lifetime has the lyrics "there is water at the bottom of the ocean." Obvious statement much?
- So Yesterday by Hilary Duff states that "If the light is off, then it isn't on" and "You can change your clothes (if you wanna)". No, really?
- Forever Young from the second Care Bears movie includes the line, "You'll be with me until/The sun shines through the night./It never will."
- Clearly someone's never been to the North Pole.
- In "Bad" by U2, Bono sings at the top of his lungs, "I'M WIDE AWAKE! I'M WIDE AWAKE! I'M WIDE AWAKE!" then softly croons the brilliant corollary, "I'm not sleeping." Yes, I gathered that.
- The song "All Or Nothing" by Whitesnake includes the line "My heart is burning/And the fire is hot".
- The classic 60s love song "Baby I'm Yours" (first recorded by Barbara Lewis) has the narrator say that he/she is "yours" until a number of impossible events happen (until the stars from the sky, until 2+2 is 3), then helpfully elaborate "In other words, until I die/the end of time/eternity."
Newspaper Comics
- In Non Sequitur a recurring character named "Obviousman" swoops in dressed like a superhero to point out the (usually snarky) obvious to the oblivious. He is rarely thanked.
- The narration box often labels items in Dick Tracy that don't need to be described. After 90 years it's still informing readers of his watch-phone, and in 2009 it helpfully pointed out that a game of solitaire was indeed solitaire. (The game had nothing to do with the plot, naturally.)
- Spider-Man's narration box bangs the reader over the head with the obvious almost as often.
Professional Wrestling
- Professional wrestler-turned-WWE-commentator Tazz is in the habit of calling his broadcast partners "Captain Obvious", when they sum up something that the viewers just saw fifteen seconds ago.
- TNA commentator Mike Tenay does the same thing whenever the wrestler Rellik is mentioned ("That's 'killer' spelled backwards.") Eric Young later started parodying Mike Tenay on this, referring to Rellik as Rellik-that's-killer-spelled-backwards, as if the entire thing was the guy's name.
Close Professional Wrestling
Tabletop Games
- The 4th Edition Dungeons And Dragons Monster Manual has an infamously hilarious example where it requires a DC20 Knowledge (nature) check to learn that bears attack with their claws. Memetic Mutation has extended similar gems of wisdom to fire (DC15: Fire is hot), water (DC25: When immersed in water, organisms with lungs cannot breathe) and bees (DC20: BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES).
- Given the other creatures inhabiting the typical Dungeons & Dragons world, a less educated person might be forgiven for thinking that bears attack with death rays from their eyes.
Radio
- Inverted and parodied in The Bob and Tom Show's recurring "Mr. Obvious" skits. The premise in them is that Mr. Obvious, a the host of a radio call-in show, attempts to help today's caller with what looks to be a difficult problem until the caller reveals enough facts about his problem to make it clear that he has no clue, he can't afford to buy one, and he refuses to rent-to-own, and that the caller would have solved his problem by himself long ago if he weren't so bloody dense.
- Subverted in the "Sump Pump" episode, where the terrified caller tells Mr. Obvious that there's a bear under his house, and every time it rains he can hear it growling. Mr. Obvious has to explain that this is just the sump pump, pumping water away from the foundation. So the caller crawls under his house to see ... followed by animal roars and screams of pain ... followed by dial tone. "Um ... well, that's all the time we have for today ..."
- Often used in the British Paul Temple serials, and although it can be slightly jarring at times, since it's radio.....
*Whilst in a burning building* "We'd better get out of here!"
*Gunshot* "He's been shot!"
*After finding someone face-down in a river* "They're dead!"
Theatre
- Shakespeare's characters sometimes don the captain's braid, but often it's because of the limitations of the Elizabethan stage. To paraphrase another page on this wiki, if your actors are in the middle of a swordfight but they're only pretending to be using swords, it's probably helpful if the victim grabs at his chest and cries "O, I am slain!" so the audience knows what happened. Also, if your only set decoration is a big sign that says "Castle of Elsinore", the characters are going to have to provide a description of the castle in their dialogue if you want the audience to visualize it.
- The Musical version of The Wedding Singer actually contains the lyric "People called him the wedding singer. He sang at weddings and so the name was that."
Video Games
- Shirou in Fate Stay Night and the infamous "People die if they are killed!" What he's saying is that people should die if they're killed). Leaving aside mistranslations, this is the guy who also says things like "having sex means getting naked". Arguments for Asperger's syndrome have been made.
- Many characters in the Sonic The Hedgehog series, most notably the robot assistant from Adventure 2, Omochao.
Omochao: Keep your health meter above zero!
- Alyx Vance in the Half Life 2 episodes has a tendency to announce out loud every single thing she encounters, including the player's actions, new monsters, and Dr. Kleiner's screencasts. Sometimes her excessive talkativeness reaches the level of Stop Helping Me.
- Navi from The Legend Of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time is considered quite annoying for repeatedly bugging the player to tell him/her the most obvious things (or things she's already recently said.)
- And even things that have /already/ happened. For example, standing on a ghost ship, reaching land, hopping off, and being greeted by "The ship is sinking! We have to abandon ship!"
- Ciel in Phantom Hourglass significantly ups the ante, especially in the cutscenes following the introduction of the first two spirits.
Leaf: I am Leaf, the Spirit of Power. Blah blah blah.
Ciel: Look, Link! It's the Spirit of Power, Leaf!
- And how could we forget Ezlo? Run into a closed door, he will tell you that it's closed. Every time, even if it was an accident. Open a Warp-Mark. He will tell you, that the explosion always frighteens him. Every time. Come near a small tornado, which you obviously have to jump in to. He tells you to jump in and remarks what a great idea of his this is. God, this guy is annoying!
- In Metal Gear Solid, while searching for one of the male hostages, the main character, Solid Snake, looks down through an air vent and upon seeing a female exclaims "A woman! Not him...".
- A SURVEILLANCE CAMERA?!
- This is actually repeated nine in-universe years later but averts the usual Narm and may even be a Tear Jerker, as when Snake returns to Shadow Moses he encounters the same camera... and then the long-dormant, frozen over camera falls from its wall mount.
- Snake also has the tendency to say "LIQUID!" or "Liquid?" every time he appears or when someone else starts about him.
- "We've managed to avoid drowning!"
- To be honest, 'drowning' is just taking water into the lungs, not dying from taking it in.
- In Halo, after you come across a huge cave made out of metal with symbols engraved on it in a canyon which has been obviously cut out of the ground, Cortana says "This cave is not a natural formation. Someone built it, so it must lead somewhere."
- On top of that, the cave is on a Halo, which is obviously not a natural formation itself.
- In fairness to Cortana, the Halo ringworld, while an obviously artificial superstructure, does have an ecosystem grafted on top of it, with wind and rocks and rivers and all the things that can make a "natural" cave.
- From here:
Q: Will you need to have to have an internet connection to play Star Trek Online? A: Yes.
- Yahtzee complained about a "puzzle" in The World Ends With You which is so painfully obvious any child who knew basic arithmetic could solve it, but nevertheless, to get on with the story, you had to talk to an NPC and have them explain the solution to you.
- That was more a case of Joshua acting as Captain Obvious just for the sake of annoying Neku, who knew the answer — the reason the story couldn't continue was the fact that Neku was now partnerless, and taking Joshua with him solved that problem.
- Increasingly, Phoenix Wright's inner monologue tends to spell out gags and hints in other characters' dialogue.
- A certain NPC from late in the game The Suffering will tell the player to blast the remains of the fire demons or they will revive. But as long as this NPC is alive, they will blast the remains for you. In a more subtle way, the player can unlock diary and scrapbook pages (or even ticker tape) detailing the lay of the land. Much of this is after learning all relevant facts.
- Tsutomu in Gotcha Force. His habit of notifying you "This will hit!" after it hits the target is beyond baffling. He even says "Well, it's obvious!" at times, which still doesn't do anything to stop his steady stream of obvious comments. You half-expect him to say "I'm breathing oxygen!" at any moment.
- Crypto in Destroy All Humans! 2.
[The mothership explodes, Killing Pox and scattering the weapons all over Earth]
Crypto: "Uh-oh, that can't be good."
- Description of the Cursed Shield in Final Fantasy VI
Is cursed.
- The Soldier in Team Fortress 2
Announcer: Intruder Alert! Red Spy in the base!
Soldier: A Red Spy is in the base?
Announcer: Protect the briefcase!
Soldier: We need to protect the briefcase!
- Subverted in Devil May Cry 3, where Jester says the following line to Dante:
"You're not going to shoot me, are you? If you do, I'll die, you know."
- Much later, Dante and Vergil do defeat him, but the one who actually kills him is Lady, his daughter.
- In Microprose's Magic The Gathering game, each town has a Wise Man who dispenses advice. Occasionally this advice is genuinely useful, other times it's related only to the back story — and sometimes, when another village has given you a quest, he'll say "I see the people of [village] have asked you to [quest]".
- Lampshaded in W H40k: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade:
Ork sidekick: Boss! We're getting shot at!
Warboss Gorgutz: Ain't you the master of the obvious?
- Barry Burton in the original Resident Evil though the GameCube version tones it down. Did you know that weapons are especially powerful against living things?
- Come to think of it, Ingrid Hunnigan from 4 is guilty of this, one of the many things lampshaded by the Lets Plays. "You need to get out of there." "You need to find out how to open that door."
- The opening level of Army Of Two includes this gem: "You can die in combat."
- Nall from Lunar: The Silver Star. He stated the obvious so often that the game's strategy guide came very close to making a drinking game out of it.
- From a gameplay hint in Lego Batman: "Toxic waste is poisonous".
- Chuck from Backyard Football, in the tutorials. In the actual commentary, he's much smarter.
Web Animation
- Teeg Dougland from the short-lived Limozeen cartoon in Homestar Runner.
Singer: You know those guys from that band, Limozeen? Well they turned their tour bus into a space machine! They're still Limozeen... Larry: We're still Limozeeeen! Singer: But they're in space! Larry: But we're in space!? Teeg Dougland: (walks in) I'm afraid I've got some bad news, boys. You're in space.
- Much of the dialogue in the Miramax version of The Thief And The Cobbler is this, mainly because it was half-heartedly thrown in for the sole purpose of Lull Destruction. For example, we know Tack's in love with the princess because he makes her face out of thread in a very effective scene. Yet somebody decided he also needed to sing a horrible Award Bait Song song about it!
Web Comics
Web Original
Western Animation
- From the Futurama episode "The Honking":
Leela: The tracks lead here!
Fry: Thanks, eagle eye.
- From the movie Bender's Game:
- In the Scooby Doo episode "Spooky Space Kook", the gang enters a building which has a large sign that says "Machine Shop". Upon entering...
Daphne: It looks like a shop!
- Scooby gave us any number of "no fucking duh" moments.
- Subverted in Avatar The Last Airbender:
Toph: Wait. It's a trap!
Katara: Really? No kidding. Is that why we're sitting in a wooden cage right now? Gee, how'd you figure out it was a trap?
Toph: Not for us, Katara. We're the bait. He wants Aang.
- In Kim Possible after they spot a lot of helicopters:
Ron: Okay, that looks suspicious.
Kim: Thank you, Captain Obvious.
- Drakken has them to, after Kim and Ron escape from being chained to a wall without being guarded, he gives this insight:
- Flash in Justice League after seeing the stuffed T-Rex in the Batcave
Flash: "That's a giant dinosaur!"
Alfred: "And here I thought Batman was the detective."
- Oh, boy. Transformers Armada. These kids probably had a lot to do with the Transformers fandom's dislike of human characters in general. A great deal of the time, their role in an episode was to spend half an hour giving statements like this:
Optimus: [Gets hit, falls down]
Alexis, [to Rad and Carlos, who are standing right next to her and watching the same fight] Oh, no! You guys, Optimus is down!
Rad: Oh, no!
- The line from an episode of South Park, which Cartman delivered like it was a huge exposition.
Cartman: If we're still alive in the morning, then we'll know that we aren't dead.
- Wasn't Cartman who said it, it was Randy, one of the many, many too dumb to live adults.
- A line from American Dad:
Hayley: They think you're Kevin Bacon!
Roger: Yes, Hayley, I understand things that happen around me.
- Timon and Pumba The Series — Timon and Pumba volunteer for a circus act and must follow orders from an odviously psychotic clown who puts them in ever more dangerous predicaments. After avoiding death numerous times, Pumba makes this comment. Pumba: "What I still don't know is, why is he called Mr. Meanie?" Timon: "......"
- In the Luke I Am Your Father Reveal on Codename Kids Next Door:
Number 1: But if you're my uncle, then that makes Grandfather my grandfather!
Father: What are you — President of the Obvious Club?
- "I am a BANANA!"
- One episode of The Simpsons had Homer attempting to play "Horse Whisperer". His advice? "When the race starts, run real fast!"
Real Life
- Los Angeles reporter Ric Romero became a punchline on Fark.com after reporting on the "new" phenomenon of blogging in October 2005 (almost a year after blogs led the way in the media storm that basically ended Dan Rather's broadcast career). He's an easy "go to" name whenever someone else in the media reports breathlessly on something "new" that is already Common Knowledge.
- During testimony she gave to a Congressional committee on smoking, a teenaged Brooke Shields commented, in all seriousness, "Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."
- U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, nicknamed Silent Cal, was one of the best Deadpan Snarkers we've ever had in the Oval Office, had this to say: "When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results."
Reporter: "What did the preacher have to talk about, Mr. President?"
Coolidge: "Sin."
Reporter: "Well, what did he say about it?"
Coolidge: "He was against it."
- Clark Kellogg: "Your shooting percentage goes down significantly when your shot is challenged."
- Mercenary commander "Mad Mike" Hoare included a short essay on leadership in his book on the Simba rebellion in the Congo. In it he mentions the importance of reacting immediately when the bullets start flying, even if it's an obvious order like "Take cover!", as it makes the commander sound like he's on top of the situation. Having achieved this of course, the commander's next orders had better be more useful.
- Spencer Perceval, the only British Prime Minister to get assassinated, had the last words "I am murdered." Yeah, the man with the gun who just shot you was a good clue to that.
- In 1949 the BBC reporter John Snagge commenting the Boat Race opposing Oxford and Cambridge said : "I can't see who's in the lead but it's either Oxford or Cambridge".
- Not Always Right has several stories of the Captain Obviouses of the real world
- Brazilian sports narrator Galvão Bueno. "Went to the ground and fell!", "Inverted the ball to the other side!", "There are only three possible results: win, loss or draw"...
- College football commentator Brent Musberger. He has his own drinking game.
- Allergy warnings.
Can of sardines: Contains fish.
- Honest-to-God truth (check it out if you don't believe it): Wal-Mart brand (Great Value) salmon actually says, on the back of the can, "Allergy Warning: Contains Salmon".
Jar of peanut butter: Contains nuts.
Cheddar: Contains milk products.
Can of "Pumpkin": Ingredients: Pumpkins. That's all it says.
Bottle of Aspirin: Do not use if you are allergic to aspirin.
- There are a lot of scientific experiments like this. A major university has confirmed that "things are harder to see if they're far away". The reason that these exist is because sometimes obvious truths can be experimentally shown as untrue; Relativity is a good example.
Other
- The Onion is fond of using this for humor, as in their article "Investigators Determine Air France Disaster Caused By Plane Crash".
- The Onion's parodying, in part, the tendency of real news media to keep repeating the same threadbare information again and again as a breaking story develops, since they have nothing substantial to report at the moment, but they have to keep covering the story. For example, one MSNBC expert's analysis of a dark spot in a photograph was "it's definitey... definitely something that's ...there". He was probably trying to say it's not a spot on the lens, but still...
- Thank you, Captain Obvious.
- Obviously, this guy was hanged by Captain Obvious for his crimes against the obviousness.
- A Very Potter Musical: "You think killing people might make them like you but it doesn't. It just makes people dead."
- The internet has a pivotal role in the lives of American teenagers. No shit, Sherlock.
- From the first sentence of That Other Wiki's article on the Seville Cathedral: "The Cathedral of Seville...is the cathedral of the city of Seville"
- Any time you see the phrase "this is likely a reference to..." on That Other Wiki, get ready for an eye-rollingly obvious statement.
- Also from That Other Wiki: "Ion exchange is an exchange of ions".
- One of Miller's "Real Men of Genius" ads is dedicated to athletes-turned-commentators and mentions their giving such critical information as "The team that scores the most points will win the game". Followed by the rock singer intoning "I did not know that!", and not sounding like he's in Sarcasm Mode.
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