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Boxing is a lot like ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
—Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
A Dissimile is like when you eat a banana, but, instead of peeling it you compare it to another thing that is not entirely unlike it. Also, instead of eating it, you deconstruct the comparison. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a banana, either, or any other kind of fruit for that matter. Actually, it is nothing like eating a banana.
In reality, a Dissimile is pretty much Lampshade Hanging, except that instead of pointing out the fact that you're using a trope, you're making a comparison between two completely unlike things that don't deserve to be compared in the first place, and trying to justify it by making ridiculous exceptions that make your whole point completely moot. Also, there are no lampshades, so you can't hang them anywhere.
This can take several different forms:
- "This is just like X, only without <insert Long List of the defining features of X>."
- Variation: may include at least one dissimilar addition alongside the subtractions (see Jack Handey quote above) or consist entirely of them.
- Optional postscript: "Come to think of it, it's not like X at all."
- Or, sometimes, the opposite: "But other than that it's just like X!"
- "This is just like X! And by 'X', I mean, 'Y'."
- Occasionally followed up by "And by 'Y' I mean 'Z'." ...and so on.
- May involve parallel replacements, as in "This is just like W X, and by 'W', I mean, 'Y', and by 'X', I mean 'Z'."
- "You know what X is like? That's exactly what this isn't like."
- Alternatively, "This is just like X, except not," or, "This is just like X, only different."
- "It's just like X - <list of defining features of X that have nothing to do with Y>"
Often used as a comedy trope, but it has been known to show up in dramatic situations as well. Usually, characters will use dissimiles to make themselves look like a smartass, or because they derive amusement from raising someone else's hopes and then quickly dashing them. It may also show up as part of a pattern of Buffy Speak.
A Dissimile is basically the same thing as a Phlebotinum Analogy, except that it isn't like a Phlebotinum Analogy at all.
Compare The Other Wiki's article on this [1] . Except without being played for laughs. And the person never realizes they've made a Dis Simile. Okay, so it isn't exactly this at all.
On the other hand, a Dissimile often has a lot of overlap with Metaphorgotten. Also compare with Analogy Backfire. See also Talks Like A Simile.
Examples
Anime
Comic Books
Film
- The Film Stuart Little 2:
Snowbell: (after Stuart's car overheats) I'm telling you, Stuart, it's a sign. This is just like the Burning Bush — except it's a carburetor, and... I'm not Moses.
- Elf:
Jovie: Thanks, but I don't sing.
Buddy: Oh, well, it's just like talking, except longer and louder, and you move your voice up and down!
- The Green Mile:
John Coffey: (describing his last name) It's just like the drink, only spelled differently.
- ¡Three Amigos! has Lucky's speech to the villagers of Santo Poco:
Lucky Day: In a way, each of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous guy who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo!
- Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle:
Kumar: How were Katie Holmes's tits?
Goldstein: You know the Holocaust?
Kumar: Yeah.
Goldstein: Picture the exact opposite of that.
- If I recall correctly, they're discussing a scene from The Gift; the loveliness of Katie's breasts is offset slightly by the fact that it's piggybacked onto the same scene where she's brutally murdered.
- The Muppets Take Manhattan
Bill the Frog: How about this? Ocean Breeze Soap: It's just like taking an ocean cruise, only there's no boat and you don't actually go anywhere.
- In UHF, George tries to convince his friend Bob to help him run the UHF station he recently became manager of.
George: "It's just like working in the fish market, except you don't have to clean and gut fish all day."
- The commentary tracks for some of the Saw movies involve a running gag among the crew, wherein when someone describes something that isn't true or foolishly naive, they will remark, "That's a great idea. If by 'great', you mean 'the stupidest fucking thing ever', then yeah, it's 'great'." Or some variation thereof.
Literature
- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy has quite a few of these, with perhaps the most famous being: "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." Another contender is the description of the Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer's output as "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea".
- Another example would be Ford Prefect's answer to Arthur Dent's question in terms of the origin of the universe, describing a situation where one would fill a bathtub with sand, pull the plug and film the sand falling down the drain, then watching this film in reverse...which, he then states, is not at all an accurate description of the origin of the universe, but really fun to watch.
- Another one that deserves to be here: "Life is like a grapefruit." "Er, how so?" "Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast."
- Common in Discworld.
- In Thief of Time, Lobsang describes repairing history after the Glass Clock is activated as basically "Imagine a thousand invisible puzzle pieces scattered all throughout time and none of them fit together right. Got that? Okay, it's nothing like that, that was just a vague analogy that might give you an inkling."
- "No, but it's a lie you can understand," gets used occasionally.
- Ponder Stibbons' version he describes an analogy as being very helpful in getting people to understand complicated magic while being, in every meaningful sense, wrong.
- This quote from The Light Fantastic:
Sunlight poured like molten gold across the sleeping landscape.*
* Not precisely, of course. Trees didn't burst into flame, people didn't suddenly become very rich and extremely dead, and the seas didn't flash into steam. A better simile, in fact, would be "not like molten gold."
- This troper can't recall which book, but in one of them it's noted that an ancient ruler outlawed simile and metaphors, and any writer or casual speaker not careful with his phrasing would rapidly find himself a good deal shorter. About a heads worth, really. (So someone describing a woman as having a face that launched a thousand ships had better have empirical evidence that the object of desire did indeed resemble a winebottle.)
- That's "The Light Fantastic".
- Sourcery:
Have you ever been bitten by a snake?
No.
Then you know exactly what it felt like, it wasn't like a snake bite at all.
- In the Discworld spin-off books The Science of Discworld, the phrase "lies to children" is used to refer to analogies or descriptions that are completely wrong, but prepare the listener for the real truth.
- Pratchett is very fond of this one. Nation has one man describing a horse thusly:
Well, you know hogs? ...well, they are not like hogs. But if you took a hog and made it bigger and longer, with a longer nose and a tail, that's a horse. Oh, and much more handsome. and much longer legs.
So a horse is not really like a pig at all?
Well yes, I suppose so. But it's got the same number of legs.
- In one of his books, Scott Adams once said that "Computers are like tangerines, in that it's hard to make an analogy about either."
- Humor columnist Dave Barry used this from time to time. From his home repair book The Taming of the Screw:
"A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system, except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires, it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing system is nothing at all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can kill you."
- Umm...can't water kill you too? I think it's called DROWNING
- Funny story: in electrical engineering, they teach you about voltage and current in electric circuits by saying they're like head and flow rate in piping networks. In mechanical engineering, they teach you about head and flow rate in piping networks by saying they're like voltage and current in electric circuits. And you know what? They are. The math is the same. Except that resistance is much harder to calculate in piping networks than it is in electric circuits. And since water supply is always DC you don't need complex numbers to describe it. Also, ...actually I'll stop there...
- Dave Barry actually uses this *very* often, and in all its variations. Examples: Writing "giving a new meaning to the word fun" with a footnote that reads "not fun". Or saying that a car has the same maneuverability and handling as a municipal parking garage, only "without as much pickup". In fact, the latter is one of his favorite jokes: insulting A by saying it has as much B as C, where C doesn't have any B at all, and then *further* insulting A by saying that C has more D, where C doesn't have any D either.
- The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski points out that "There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe..."
- In Stephen Fry's first novel, The Liar, one character remarks that a good bottle of wine is like a good woman 'apart from the fact it doesn't have arms, legs or breasts. Or can't bear children. In fact a good bottle of wine is nothing like a woman come to think of it'.
Live Action TV
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 is also fond of these, usually something to the effect of: "Many people compare this scene to the chariot race in Ben Hur. They'll say, 'Ben Hur was a great film. This film totally sucks.'"
- In the first episode of How I Met Your Mother, Ted chickens out of dating a local news reporter. Then, when he sees her reporting on a guy who was about to jump off a building, but also chickened out, Ted gets his courage back and says:
Ted: I'm going to do what that guy was too scared to do and take the plunge! Okay, it's not a perfect metaphor, because for me taking the plunge means getting married and having kids, while for him it's ... death.
Barney: Actually, it's a perfect metaphor.
- Space Cases: In the Freaky Thursday episode, android!Suzee says, "Don't worry. Inside, I am still the same Suzee... except, extremely different."
- Myth Busters has a couple quotes, usually done for humor:
Grant Imahara: It's like sewing on a button, except this button is tongue-shaped and made out of meat.
Jamie Hyneman: It's kind of like watching grass grow, except there's an explosion at the end.
- Band Of Brothers does this in second to last episode, Why we fight, while the men are on patrol in the woods.
Frank: Hey George.
George: Yeah?
Frank: Kinda reminds me of Bastogne.
George: ... Yeah, now that you mention it. 'Cept of course there's no snow, we got warm grub in our bellies, and the trees aren't fuckin' explodin' from kraut artillery, but yeah, Frank, other than that it's a lot like Bastogne.
- Alexei Sayle's Drive, a series made by a comedian to promote safe driving, includes an explanation of how it's often hard to realise how fast you're driving because cars are so comfortable these days, more like your lounge than a car, except smaller and without a television and you can't get up to make a drink and the decor's not as nice and can I stop now this is a shit comparison.
- Corner Gas: When Wanda is rejected for a credit card after being told she was pre-approved, Hank attempts to console her.
Hank: It's okay, Wanda. I got one of those "pre-approved" letters in the mail too.
Wanda: And they rejected you too?
Hank: No, they gave me a credit card. But other than that, same sad story.
- Half-used, half-subverted on The West Wing when Donna opines that "a dry wit, like a fine martini, is best enjoyed..." and then realizes she's got nothing.
- The Daily Show reported on a feud between two iPhone fart apps. The guy who made the first one and is suing a later and more popular version compared his efforts to Jackie Robinson integrating baseball, to the evident disbelief of Wyatt Cynac. Because designing an app that makes fart noises is totally like pioneering civil rights.
- From Scrubs,
Kelso: I'm going to some medical boondoggle in Cleveland. And by medical boondoggle I mean golf weekend. And by Cleveland I mean Hawaii.
- Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe describes Sonic The Hedgehog as "rolling at high speed through a jolly cartoon world just like real hedgehogs don't".
- On NCIS, Abby had this to say about a victim's prayer beads: "It's like a rosary, but different."
- On The Colbert Report, curling is described to be like horseshoes, but your horse died and you're trying to get over your sorrow by playing curling.
Music
- Musician-comedian Bill Bailey's jokes often turn out this way. For example, in Tinselworm", he mentions his meteoric rise to fame over the past 22 years, "... if that meteor was being dragged by an elderly arthritic donkey across the Mojave Desert."
- The line "I'm a shooting star leaping through the skies/Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity" from Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" might as well have made a comparison to a badger travelling through time like a teacup defying the laws of entropy.
- Well, a tiger that can defy the laws of gravity might very well be able to travel like a shooting star. Anything that can defy the laws of gravity could, but that's beside the point.
- A stand-up comedian (I think it was Russell Howard) pointed out that a tiger defying the laws of gravity would just be roaring with fear as it wouldn't know what the hell was going on.
- 'Defying' doesn't mean 'beating'. You can defy gravity by jumping off a cliff, but I wouldn't expect you to float.
New Media
- The most popular definition for fire and Play-Doh on Urban Dictionary are actually recursive examples.
- It also describes fire as "the coolest thing in the world". Um...
- This Cracked.com article offers, as a possible empirically derived scientific definition of "love", "[the exact opposite of] that feeling you get when you've been locked in a tiny dark space alone for a year."
- In his Top 11 Nostalgic Shows countdown, the Nostalgia Critic says the Ghostbusters were like firefighters, "except instead of putting out fires, you were chasing ghosts."
- On his Live Journal, obscure author Gideon Defoe (The Pirates! series) came up with this one:
"Kennington can seem vaguely post-apocalyptic at the best of times, but with all the lights out it’s like a proper 1980’s BBC 2 dystopia. But with hoodies instead of triffids. Hoodies don’t make that sinister ‘tap tap tap’ noise, and they have mace instead of the poison stinger thing, so the analogy breaks down there, but otherwise it’s exactly the same."
- The Cinema Snob counters the description of Lady Terminator, which says the movie is “like Kill Bill, but with oodles of sex” with this:
“Yeah, it’s just like Kill Bill. If Kill Bill was a 1984 James Cameron film called the Terminator. And who uses the word oodles?”
Newspaper Comics
- In one strip of Dilbert, Dogbert describes time: "It's like a donut shot out of a cannon and spinning at the speed of light, only without the donut and the cannon.".
- In a Garfield strip:
Garfield: Life is like a birdbath. It's make of concrete, filled with water, and uh... birds like to splash in it. Boy, that was dumb. Life isn't anything like a birdbath. Life... It like a sock monkey...
- In Zits, Pierce says his family life "is like a symphony. But there aren't any musical instruments, and the musicians just yell at each other."
StandUpComedy
- Larry The Cable Guy gives us this one: "I met this gal a while back, looked like Shania Twain. Only a little shorter, and, uh, the face was different. I was drunk, it looked like Shania Twain."
Video Games
- Kingdom Of Loathing has this in the description for the Queen Filthworm:
Have you ever been out in a rose garden on a nice spring day, wearing clothes fresh from the dryer and really expensive cologne, and then you walk under a window ledge with a freshly baked apple pie cooling on it? Well, her smell is the exact opposite of that.
- KoL enjoys this trope immensely. Another couple of examples:
This is a lime. Like a lemon, it's shaped like a lemon. Unlike a lemon, it's a lime.
This is a balloon. Like most balloons, it's shaped just like an Easter Egg. Unlike most balloons, it's also colored just like an Easter Egg.
- "Dwarf Fortress: like chess, only with short people that can catch on fire like rags soaked in tar, and booze..."
- The instructions for Crystal Crazy describe black holes as: "Rifts in the space-time continuum that instantly transport you from one place to another. Actually the time bit isn't really correct. Neither is the continuum bit. Or the rift. But it sounded good."
- From a section of little monologue given by Cortex in Crash Twinsanity:
Cortex: Three years I spent alone in the frozen Antarctic wastes! And I missed you! And so, I've organised a little gathering; like a birthday party, except... the exact opposite!
- In Midtown Madness 3, each loading screen shows the race map and a caption. One caption says "It's like a square, only it's not."
Webcomics
- "It's like a free sub! Only it's buttsex!"
- Schlock Mercenary:
Reverend Theo Fobius: What a coincidence. That's almost exactly what I didn't have in mind.
Schlock: If by 'hair' you mean 'plasma', and 'dryer' you mean 'cannon', then yes. Yes, it is.
- In 1/0, Barnacle describes war as "Sort of like being friends. Only, it's completely different, and with more suffering."
- For that matter,the description of the comics states "1/0 is a paradox, in a way 0/1 isn't".
- This Loserz strip (warning: language), and this more NSFW one.
- This is a great example from Daisy Owl
- Here is an example from Real Life Comics.
- Gunnerkrigg Court. After introducing a large artificial habitat room, containing a grassy field with a large cherry tree, the author notes below the page:
Tom Siddell: My school had one of these. No wait, they had a bike rack.
- Cyanide And Happiness takes this trope to uncomfortable lengths in this strip.
- Dominic Deegan: "It's like the Bikta sanctuary, only smaller and without the killing."
- As Pokey The Penguin once said, chess "IS LIKE BALLET ONLY WITH MORE EXPLOSIONS!"
- In Basic Instructions: "So it's like American Chopper except that it's different in every way."
- In the prequel of Order Of The Stick, Elan explains that the paladin he follows is about to clean a city of its villeny and scum like a huge handbrush. He then goes on explaining why a paladin isn't exactly like a handbrush
Western Animation
- Futurama, "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", Inversion:
Bender: You may metaphorically have to make a deal with the Devil. And by Devil, I mean Robot Devil. And by metaphorically, I mean get your coat.
- On "Clone High" JFK talked using these all the time.
- In a Robot Chicken parody of Care Bears, "Bedtime Bear" delivers the line, "You all know what time it is, it's bed-time; and by bed I mean 'ethnic' and by time, I mean 'cleansing'."
- One episode of Tale Spin has Molly asking Wildcat to describe snow. He picks up a bowling ball and and says "You see this? Well, it's nothing like that."
- In one Family Guy episode, Peter wins a trip to a brewery and remarks "It's like I died and went to heaven. But then they realized that it wasn't my time, and so they sent me back to a brewery."
- Chris also says in another episode "This is just like that sitcom My Two Dads only no one's laughing... Oh, wait, that's exactly like My Two Dads."
- Similarly, in American Dad, one of the characters describes a run-down bar as something to the effect of "filled with the most pathetic miserable people on the Earth. It's like Applebee's, but with a bar. Oh, wait, Applebee's has a bar. It's like Applebee's.".
- "I feel just like a kid in a candy shop having sex with a bunch of guys!"
- In Phineas And Ferb, Dr. Doofenshmirtz occasionally says something along the lines of, "Ah, Perry the Platypus. How un-X/not X it is to see you. And by un-X/not-X, I mean completely X!
- The Simpsons.
Homer: Marriage is a lot like an orange. First, you have the skin, and then the sweet, sweet innards...
Homer: You see son, a woman is a lot like... err [looks around, notices the fridge]... a refrigerator. They're about six feet tall, 300 pounds... they... make ice... uhhh...[looks at his beer can] oh! Actually, a woman is more like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one! [drains his beer] But you can't stop at one, you wanna drink another woman! [runs to the fridge]
- And from esteemed attorney Lionel Hutz -
Lionel Hutz: He's had it in for me ever since I kinda ran over his dog... Well, replace the word "kinda" with "repeatedly" and the word "dog" with "son."
- Clerks The Animated Series: Jay agrees with Dante asking him if Caitlyn is running a kissing booth for charity, "only it don't cost nothin' and it's not for charity. And there's no booth. And it's more than just kissing. And you don't have to be a guy. Dude, she's cheating on you."
- Kim Possible: when a pair of movie stars hang out with Kim and Ron, Kim's parents have this classic exchange:
Kim's Dad: Hon, you know how I feel about show folk.
Kim's Mom:Oh, they're just like you and me...except they're wealthy, beautiful, and live by no recognizable moral code.
Web Animation
- Bubs from Homestar Runner email virus, after shooting Strong Bad's computer with a shotgun: "It's in a better place, Strong Bad. Or rather, it's in the same place, but now it's got a big hole through it."
- Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw likes to litter these around every once in a while, such as in his opening phrase for his review on The Witcher:
"What would you get if you took the corpse of J.R.R Tolkien, ground it into a fine powder and snorted it off the doughy breasts of a prostitute suffering from Tourette's syndrome? Well, first you'd get a throatful of dead writer, then the police will probably want to talk to you, and you'll no doubt make an enemy of Mrs. Tolkien. What you probably won't get is The Witcher, because it's a video game and more easily acquired from your local electronics retailer, you idiot."
Web Original
- Everyone besides for Caboose does this.
- Tales Of MU narrator Mackenzie Blaise has strayed into these.
Slow-dancing in the water with Steff was just like a dream... only, instead of having people walking on my face and calling me filth, I was slow-dancing in the water with Steff.
- And another:
You ever play one of those fighting games where there’s always the one guy who’s like seventeen tons of walking muscle, and if he manages to hit you it does massive damage but it’s laughably easy to avoid his attacks because they move so slowly? That’s almost exactly what getting suckerpunched by a fucking ogre isn’t like.
- Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series episode 4:
Joey: Wow, an entire island all to ourselves. It's sorta like that book Lord Of The Flies only with a lot less subtext and a lot more card games!
- The Salvation War managed a good one when describing Hell:
"Well, its not boiling blood." Captain Keisha Stevenson looked at the scene through her electro-optics. It was one of almost pastoral beauty, the angry, gray and red sky, the yellow-green river, the blackened-red grass, the shining black demons on guard around the bridge. Thinking over the definition of pastoral beauty, she decided that she had an unexpected talent for irony.
- From the Lets Play of UFO Aftermath:
Booya: It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Except instead of a gun you're using dynamite. And the fish aren't particularly smart either. With a bad sense of pattern recognition. And the dynamite has some sort of fish seeking technology.
Others Present: ...
- From I'm A Marvel... And I'm A DC, "Wolverine & The Comedian":
Wolverine: Maybe you ain't so bad after all, Blake. In fact, you kind of remind me of myself at your age. Except, you know, I'm a mutant. And I've got ethics. And I'm not a psychopath. Or a rapist. You know, maybe you remind me of someone else.
- Wizard People Dear Reader made extensive use of these. Professor McGonagall's voice, for instance, is described as "chilling, like a piano made of frozen Windex".
- "Vulvas are much like snowflakes. No two are identical and when it gets really cold they flutter down from the sky, getting caught in your eyelashes."
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