Man, that White Magician Girl is hot. What I wouldn't give to have twenty minutes alone with her and a packing crate of spam.
[Beat]
What?
Basically, when someone says or does something outlandish or offensive for whatever reason, only to realize that everyone is staring at him, while he evidently didn't think whatever he said was that odd.
Could be because he just said the dumbest thing anyone has ever heard in their lives, because it was
horrifically offensive, or maybe even because he just spouted an unexpectedly
inspired bit of brilliance and doesn't realize it yet.
Related to
Big "WHAT?!" and
Flat "What.". Can be used to
lampshade an
Out-of-Character Moment. Often overlaps with
Funny Background Event.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- This is Chiri's reaction in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei when the rest of the class reacts to her treating "juicing her sister" as something completely natural.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: When the station fails to explode or disappear.
[Beat], as Sinclair and Garibaldi wordlessly walk away.
Ivanova: What? Look, somebody's gotta have some damn perspective around here! Boom. Sooner or later. BOOM!
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In one case, used to lampshade that Xander was the one to know some key bit of information.
Xander: What, I can't have information sometimes?
Giles: It's just somewhat unprecedented.
- Norm Peterson did this at least once on Cheers.
Film
Literature
- In Monstrous Regiment, Jackrum gets defensive after laying out the bouncer in the camp seamstresses' tent.
Jackrum: What? What! He was coming in here with his club!
Polly: [knowingly] And why was he doing that, Sarge?
Jackrum: [approvingly] Oh, you— all right, I'd just given Madame the old 'quietus'...
Video Games
Webcomics
- Tedd of El Goonish Shive frequently finds the need to use these. Here
and here are good examples. Catalina Bobcat gets one here, oddly enough Susan seems to be a cause of these.
- Black Mage in 8-Bit Theater does this a lot, whenever he's caught doing something awful.
- As does Fuzzy in Sam and Fuzzy. Probably goes with Heroic Sociopath territory.
- Belkar Bitterleaf from The Order of the Stick also does this quite a bit, especially when caught doing or saying something entirely in-character for him, like murdering an innocent gnome for his pack mule. Definitively a Heroic Sociopath trait.
Western Animation
