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Bob has the situation under control, and is explaining it to his partner, Alice. While he initially thought everything was fine and going to plan, it's only once he stops to think about it and hears himself say it aloud that he realizes how much trouble he and Alice are really in.
Essentially, a case of in-universe Fridge Logic (or Fridge Horror) catching up to the characters, can be played for laughs or drama. Can be triggered by the listening party's Let Me Get This Straight putting a new perspective on Bob's explanation.
The Oh Crap can also be simply that there really is No Time to Explain.
The Eureka Moment is an inverse. Not to be confused with I Can Explain.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In Mahou Sensei Negima!, as the students of Mahora set up to deal with Chao's impending invasion in an hour, Setsuna starts thinking out loud:
Setsuna: So, Chamo, what if Chao sees what we're up to out here and abandons her plans?
Chamo: Then we celebrate. The festival event will be a major bust, though...
Setsuna: Supposing she delayed her plans?
Chamo: No way. It takes time to set up a spell like that, and the magical energy needs to be used at its exact peak. She could delay an hour, tops.
Setunsa: Then what about moving up her plans to trip us up?
Chamo: Erk. *long pause* That's a possibility...
*The invasion force starts appearing, over an hour early*
Fan Works Film
- Star Wars: "But if they traced the robots here, they may have learned who they sold them to, and that would lead them back... home!"
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail has a variation with the Trojan Rabbit, as King Arthur and his knights — including Bedevere, Lancelot and Galahad — watch the large wooden rabbit they've constructed be towed into the French castle from a distance:
King Arthur: What happens next? Sir Bedevere: Well, now, uh, Launcelot, Galahad, and I wait until nightfall, and then leap out of the rabbit, taking the French by surprise — not only by surprise, but totally unarmed! King Arthur: ... Who leaps out? Sir Bedevere: Uh, Lancelot, Galahad, and I. Uh, leap out of the rabbit, uh, and uh... [Sir Bedevere looks around and realizes that he forgot to explain the bit where they are supposed to climb INTO the rabbit, and said named people are not actually in the rabbit. Everyone begins to Face Palm] Sir Bedevere: Um, l-look, if we built this large wooden badger... [Gets Dope Slapped]
- Dr. Strangelove - Hell yes, the bomber has a chance to make it through!
- The Avengers: After a battle on the helicarrier that leads to Agent Coulson's death, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark discuss Loki's next move in the following exchange:
- In Small Soldiers, the designers of the Commando Elite get a call from the main character claiming that the toys have caused major damage to his house. The more mercenary of the two not only doesn't believe him but is even planning on suing because the toys weren't released yet...
Irwin: What if this kid's telling the truth? We can't have toys out on the market that may be dangerous.
Larry: [lackadaisical] How can they be dangerous? Everything on them is standard. The design is standard, the materials are standard... the mechanicals are standard. Even the... [sudden Oh Crap face] Oh.
Irwin: What's "Oh"?
Larry: What?
Irwin: You just said "Oh".
Larry: No, I said "Oh!"
Irwin: You mean "Oh" like, "That's interesting" or "Oh" like, "We're screwed"?
Larry: No. I mean, "Hey! Whoa! Oh!". Look, forget the "Oh". l'll go to legal to start on the countersuit.
Irwin: The chips! That's the "Oh"!
- From Pinocchio, when Jiminy discovers that the boys on Pleasure Island ends up turning into donkeys.
Jiminy: Boys? So that's what...PINOCCHIO!!!
- From Serenity, after they see the destruction of Haven:
Jayne: How come they ain't waitin'? They know'd we was comin', how come they only sent one?
Zoe: ...they didn't know we'd come here. Get on the Cortex. Wave the Sanchez brothers, Li Shen — anyone who's ever sheltered us after a heist. Tell them to get out. Get out now!
Literature
- In Timeline, one character is trying to convince the others that it is possible to travel to the past via a wormhole. Another character points out that it is impossible for a physical body to safely go through one. The first character retorts that the same can be said about a fax machine. The second character launches into trying to explain that the fax machine first has to convert the scanned data into a "stream of electrons", before realizing that the first character is talking about the same for the wormhole with a big "Oh shit!".
- A comedic version in the Ciaphas Cain novel The Traitor's Hand. Cain is discussing Mauve Shirt "Jinxie" Penlan with the command staff when her reputation comes up, and...
Cain: "But she's not nearly as accident prone as she's supposed to be. I'll grant you she fell down an ambull tunnel once, and there was that incident with the frag grenade and the latrine trench, but things tend to work out for her. The orks on Kastafore were as surprised as she was when the floor in the factory collapsed, and we'd have walked right into that hrud ambush on Skweki if she hadn't triggered the mine by chucking an empty food tin away..."
My brain finally caught up to what I was saying and I trailed off rather lamely. "Well, you know how soldiers exaggerate these things."
- Vimes does one of these in Jingo when he works out how 71-hour Ahmed got his name.
- In Wizard's First Rule, first book of the Sword of Truth series, Zedd invokes this on a mob that's coming to burn him for being a witch. Zedd asks them why, exactly, they want to burn him, and they say it's because of his horrible magic powers. Zedd asks them to elaborate and be more specific. As they list all the different ways that they think Zedd can throw magical wrath around, the crowd slowly realizes that attacking someone who can shoot fire out of his fingertips might not be the brightest idea after all.
- The best part? Most of it was completely off-base. He let their own imaginations defeat them. He then turns around and explains to Richard that, while magic is all well and good, sometimes a simple trick gets the job done better.
Live Action Television
- In the second season episode of White Collar called "By the Book" there is a Let Me Get This Straight moment when Peter points out the flaw in the Perfect Exchange but later when Mozzie figures it out its more of one of theses as he exclaims 'There is no middle man!'
- Firefly plays with this in the episode "Out of Gas". The crew of Serenity is in a dire situation with the life support system failing. They are in a deserted region of space with little chance of any ships wandering around there. Wash has lost all hope, when Mal suggests a way to boost the SOS signal.
Wash: What do you expect me to do, Mal?
Mal: Whatever you have to. And if you can't do it from here, then get a suit on and go outside on the side of the boat...
Wash: And what? Wave my arms around?
Mal: Wave your arms around. Jump up and down. Divert the nav sats to the transmitter. Whatever.
Wash: Divert the - Right! Because teenage pranks are fun when you're about to die!
Mal: Give the beacon a boost, wouldn't it?
Wash: Yes, Mal, it would boost the signal. But even if some passerby did happen to receive, all it would do is muck up their navigation.
Mal: Could be that's true.
Wash: Damn right, it's true. They'd be forced to stop and dig out our signal before they could even go anyplace.
[Beat, Mal waits for Wash to get it]
Wash: [Still yelling as if he's angry] Well maybe I should do that, then!
Mal: [Yelling back] Maybe you should!
Wash: Okay!
Mal: Fine!
Jayne: [enters the room] What the hell do you two think you're doing? Fighting at a time like this? You'll use up all the air!
- Blackadder, after the titular character has mistakenly executed Lord Ponsonby: "And when the Queen gets back from seeing Ponsonby, we'll... ohh, God!"
- Happens once in Frasier where the eponymous character tried to set Daphne up with his co-worker, only to later find out that there had been a slight fault in communication.
Niles: Yes, you're dating your boss.
- In the Doctor Who episode A Good Man Goes to War, the Doctor runs into this when it turns out that Amy and Rory's daughter is part Time Lord, which the supporting cast assume was a result of it being conceived on the TARDIS. He insists that it can't be possible as, between the various cosmic retcons that went on the previous season, the first time they were on the TARDIS together in this version of reality was the night after their wed - oops.
- Later in Asylum of the Daleks, the Doctor notices the humans with Dalek eyestalks were created by nanogenes that infect living or dead material. Amy realizes he said "...or dead" in a room full of dead bodies. The Doctor continues to explain until he realizes he's also in the room with dead bodies. Uh oh.
- A milder example takes place in a flashback scene in "Let's Kill Hitler", when Amy explains to Rory why he has to be gay; "In the whole time I've known you, when have you shown the slightest interest in a girl?" (Penny in the air...) "I mean I've known you for what, ten years? I've seen you practically every day. Name one girl you've paid the slightest bit of attention to... Oh my god. Rory!" (And the penny drops.)
- From the Tom Baker episode "The Pirate Planet"; the Captain used his technology to loot the planet Calufrax and had constructed a psychic-jamming device to defeat the telepathic Mentiads. The Doctor insisted that the device couldn't work because it required very rare minerals to supply power;
The Doctor: And as far as I know, they occur naturally on only one planet, and that's...
Fibuli: Captain, the crystals from Calufrax.
- That '70s Show: In one episode, Kitty drags Hyde to a jewelery store to see the ring she thinks that Red is buying for her behind her back. The jeweler shows her an engagement ring on reserve from a Mr. Forman. There's an inscription, "To Donna..."
Jeweler: You're a lucky woman, Donna. [...]
Kitty: Oh my goodness. This is from Eric to—
[She looks at Hyde in complete horror]
- Red Dwarf does this in the episode "Out Of Time". The cast are going through unreality pockets, making them believe different things. One makes them believe Lister is actually a droid. A droid less advanced than Kryten, and therefore lower ranking. Kryten takes advantage of this to give him humiliating orders. Then comes this exchange:
Rimmer: So we just crashed through an unreality pocket?
Kryten: Which created a false reality making us believe... Mr... Lister was... oh my. (cue awkward silence for a few seconds)
Cat: You mean he's not a...
Kryten: No.
- In The Blind Banker episode of Sherlock, the eponymous character is looking through an apartment and talking to John (well, sort of- John's left grumbling outside the door, can't hear a thing and might as well not be there).
John: You think maybe you could let me in this time? Oh for heaven's sake. Can you not keep doing this, please?
Sherlock: I'm not the first.
John: What?
Sherlock: Someone else has been here. Someone broke into this flat. He knocked that vase, just like I did. Size 11. He was tall. But not heavy. Long, thin fingers. Our acrobat.
John: What are you saying?
- Sherlock actually does this throughout the whole series. It's just how he operates.
- Stargate Atlantis: The Team is on another planet and has found a crashed Wraith ship. Sheppard wants to know if one of the Wraith could still be alive.
Sheppard: I'm just thinking out loud here…
McKay: What?
Sheppard: How long do you think the Wraith could feed on all those humans back there?
McKay: Well, they're capable of hibernating for hundreds of years at a time, but, I mean, think about it. Ten thousand years ago was roughly the dawn of human civilization.
Sheppard: So there's no chance that uh—
McKay: No, no, no, no, no. Are you kidding? (beat) Well…maybe.
Sheppard:(annoyed) McKay.
McKay: No. No. No living thing could survive that long under those conditions. It's ridiculous.
Sheppard: Okay.
McKay: That would require an incredible power source capable of sustaining the stored humans in suspended animation almost the entire time.
Sheppard: So it's possible?
McKay:(horrified) Oh, my God. It is possible. We've got to get out of here.
Music
- Eminem's "Stan."
I seen this one shit on the news a couple weeks ago that made me sick.
Some dude was drunk and drove his car over a bridge,
and had his girlfriend in the trunk, and she was pregnant with his kid,
and in the car they found a tape, but they didn't say who it was to.
- In Jon Lajoie's "WTF Collective", MC Uses Time Machines Irresponsibly does this:
Then I traveled in time to the night I was conceived I met up with my parents and we hung out all night Come to think of it, they didn't have any alone time... NOOO—
Theater
- Deianira has shades of this in The Trachiniae as she talks to the chorus about the "strange sight" that is the bubbling, disintegrating piece of cloth she used to smear a love potion onto a shirt she just gave her husband.
Video Games
- Starcraft: "It's a zergling, Lester. A smaller type of zerg. But one of them wouldn't be out this far unless... OH SHIT!"
- Star Control II: The Slylandro purchase a probe from the Melnorme, which would explore the galaxy, replicate itself periodically, and report back once it finds something interesting. However, in the midst of an in-depth discussion of said probes with the player, they realize that, due to an attempt to get the probes to replicate faster (by changing the priority of replication to 999, the highest setting on the dial), they have inadvertently caused their probes to attempt to procure raw materials for replication from ANYTHING they encounter, with a special priority on alien ships. This has effectively transformed their peaceful exploration fleet into a Horde of Alien Locusts.
- In Fallout New Vegas, you can meet an Outlaw Couple who think that an antique machine gun makes them dangerous enough to go on a crime spree through the Strip. If the Courier sarcastically says it's the most brilliant plan he/she has ever heard, the Bonny of the duo starts gloating about how they've got it all worked out, gradually noticing all the holes in the plan until she realizes they have no idea what they're doing and hands the gun over to you.
- In Psychonauts, after a training session gone awry in Sasha's mind, Raz asks him what would happen if one were to block off all of a mind's censor outlets, which needless to say he did because it was what he'd just done.
Sasha: Well, there would be a buildup of censor energy within that would, ah, eventually... Run, Razputin. Very fast.
- Mordin Solus' introduction and Establishing Character Moment in Mass Effect 2 begins with Mordin performing a Sherlock Scan on the newly-arrived Commander Shepard and his/her team, while verbalizing his inner monologue; assuming the player doesn't interrupt him, he determines that the characters aren't from the area, too well-armed to be refugees, too informally-dressed to be any of the local mercenaries, and that they aren't there to wipe out the Vorcha or to investigate The Plague's usefulness as a bioweapon. Eventually, he decides that they must be looking for someone important, someone with secrets... and then realizes that they're almost certainly looking for him.
- It happens again a minute later when Shepard explains that he/she was sent by a privately-funded human group to recruit Mordin. Immediately, Mordin starts sorting through a long list of possible candidates for the aforementioned group. After disregarding the Alliance, the Spectres, the Terra Firma Party, he finally realizes (with some shock) that the most likely candidate is Cerberus, a terrorist group with human-supremacist leanings.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- In the Pinky And The Brain episode "Brinky," Pinky's genetic material accidentally gets introduced into Brain's cloning experiment, essentially resulting in their having a child together.
Pinky: I'm a mommy, I'm a mommy!
Brain: Pinky, that's absurd! You are nothing of the kind. Its chromosomal makeup just happens to include both of our genetic building blo... AAAH! ...Oh my Lord, you are its mommy.
- Futurama, "A Clone Of My Own", with Prof. Farnsworth's clone, Cubert:
Fry: Nothing is impossible! You'd know that if you really took after the professor, like I do.
Cubert: You're his uncle, dummy. He takes after you.
Fry: Uh, wha?
Cubert: Wait a minute. That means I also take after you! AAAH!
- Similar to the Futurama example, one scene from The Simpsons has Homer asking why he's such a loser. Bart replies, "Your father was a loser, and his father, and his father - it's genetic, man!" (beat) "D'oh!"
- Plus, in "I'm Going To Praiseland", Ned finds out that the citizens that were having "visions" were actually the effects of a gas leak in his Christian amusement park. Homer tells Ned to ignore it because his park spreads a positive message of equality. Then comes this...
Homer: Rich laughing with poor, bullies breaking bread with nerds, orphans lighting candles over a leaking gas line—LIGHTING CANDLES?!?!?
- Inverted in the Treehouse of Horror episode, "The Island of Dr. Hibbert," when Homer is trying to argue against Dr. Hibbert's insane experiments:
- In the Halloween Episode of American Dad where Stan is trying to make his haunted house better than his neighbors by displaying live serial killers in glass cases.
Roger: Stan, don't worry I've fixed everything...I let the prisoners out!
Stan: You what?!
Roger: Yeah, Francine was right. A shark's not intimidating behind glass, but when you're in the ocean with it-
Claus: But Roger, they're going to kill us all!
Francine: AND CHOP OFF MY HEAD!
- In the Kim Possible episode "Clean Slate", Dr. Drakken starts describing how he drove all the soldiers off a military train by activating an overload alarm... and then reveals/realizes that he caused an actual engine overload rather than a false alarm.
- In one episode of Sonic Underground, Robotnik creates a potion that gives it's taker super-speed, which allows his minions Sleet and Dingo to catch Sonic. Later, Robotnik sees Sleet's feet expand to the point where he can't move.
Robotnik: Must be a side-effect. What a waste of a good invention. I wonder if the same thing's happened to- Dingo's guarding Sonic!
- Brainy Smurf in The Smurfs episode "The Sky Is Smurfing", who tries to remain calm while explaining the current situation of Mount St. Smurf erupting before he has the Oh Crap moment.
- In an episode of Xiaolin Showdown, a Face-Heel-Turned Raimundo is chasing some of our heroes around in a forest. This is what our heroes wanted, however, as a diversionary tactic so an attack on Wuya's palace could succeed. Eventually, Raimundo realizes that the chase is taking much longer than it should. He shouts in exasperation, "What's with you guys?! It's like you're not even trying to get away...because you're NOT!!! Quick, back to the palace!"
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In the episode Keep Calm and Flutter On, Discord decides he's not going to go through with the ponies' attempts to turn him good. Why should he? He's free at last, and the only things that can really stop him, the six Elements of Harmony, aren't working due to Fluttershy (one of the six Elements) giving her word that she will not imprison Discord again as a show of trust. Discord breaks this trust, saying he doesn't care if Fluttershy stops being his friend. Why should he care? She was only the first real friend he's ever had...
Discord: Well played, Fluttershy, well played...
Real Life
- Rubber Duck Debugging is a case of trying to forcefully invoke this trope in real life with a Companion Cube.
- Socratic dialogues consist of constantly asking further explanation from another person who proposes a certain theory, until said person reaches a point where their argument falls apart, thus highlighting the hidden weaknesses in their theory. Socrates himself concluded that no-one really knows anything, since the technique always tripped them up eventually.
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