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Do me hard, in the ear
Yes in the ear, your brains will die
Do me now, on the bottom
Most people think speech or song in languages they do not understand sounds strange. Some find it amusing to add their own interpretations or "translations" to such sounds, and the internet makes it easy to distribute. Thus the Gag Sub, which is much easier to create than redubs, is born.
There are basically two kinds:
- The first consists of taking a song in a foreign tongue and adding mondegreen-style subtitles, pretending the song actually consists of absurd lyrics in whatever language the subtitles are in.
- The second is adding subtitles that have nothing to do with the original dialog.
Compare Gag Dub, Redubbing, Animutation, Remix Comic. See Good Bad Translation and Translation Train Wreck for unintentional examples. Compare and contrast Fun with Subtitles.
Examples:
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Type One
Anime and Manga
Live-Action TV
- Japanese comedian and TV personality Tamori has a segment on one of his TV series called "Soramimi Hour" (soramimi being the Japanese term for a Mondegreen), where viewers are invited to submit lines from real songs, usually in English, that have been misheard as something completely different in Japanese. The misheard lines are usually acted out in little video sketches.
Music
- YouTube user Buffalax does a lot of these, particularly Indian music videos:
- He also tried his hand at a German song. Hilarity Ensues.
- A rare example of an English to English mondegreen-style Gag Sub can be found in this video,
 which translates Alanis Morissette's garbled, almost unintelligible song lyrics into plainer sounding English.
- Freezing Cold, And Ants And I Chew Soul. What's interesting here is that the actual song is gibberish in any language; It's an Italian novelty song whose lyrics are an As Long as It Sounds Foreign approximation of English.
- Many of these have been done for Caramelldansen, the original Swedish and the Speedycake Remix.
- The Japanese band Dir en grey has been subject to this quite a few times. Here's one for their song "Clever Sleazoid". Thing is, that song actually is in English, with completely different lyrics than the ones shown there. Not that it sounds like it.
- Keys Me, by Alyssa Alano is a video of Filipino actress Alyssa Alano singing Sixpence None The Richer's "Kiss Me" in a very heavy Tagalog accent.
- One version of "O Fortuna". "This octopus! Let's give him boots! Send him a car, or pizza!"
- Any YouTube video of the Final Fantasy VII One Winged Angel (no not, the transformation) will have several comments that have the lyrics interpreted into English.
- Sniper rights! Emo bear rights! Here come the pants off men...
- Soviet Russia needs an enema.
- There are also several videos with misheard Japanese lyrics to the infamous Dragostea Din Tei, this being one of the more popular ones (at least at the peak of the meme's popularity; it's a bit hard to find these days).
- Aqua's "Barbie Girl", Dutch and Russian versions, have multiple misheard lyrics.
- For French-speaking Tropers, there's a Mondegreen of The Best is Yet to Come.
Videogames
- There were various gag subs with Super Smash Bros. Brawl 's main theme. The 3rd West version is among the most famous ("I'll be the Marth, e.g. noob"). Yeah, Nobuo Uematsu is amazing, but that doesn't mean we can't have a little fun with his music, right?
- The trailer for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has had a share of gag-subbed versions on YouTube. Mustard jar, anyone?
- Earthbound gives us an English to English version happens with Pollyanna. Made better since originally the writer was originally trying to simply figure out the real lyrics. After hearing the writer gave up and typed what he heard, no matter how strange (e.i. "I believe in ramen sex").
Web Originals
Western Animation
- The infamous Finnish version of the ''DuckTales'' theme. Taco Nazi, anyone?
- "I'm going to stroke it... Your arms are BROKEN!"
- This video (and the two following it) gag sub classic cartoons in German.
Type Two
Advertising
Anime and Manga
- D.Gray Man Abridged made its own subtitles for the opening.
- Some fan subbing groups often release Gag Subs of their current anime projects. (Example: Dattebayo's "You Have Been Trolled" subs...)
- Gag subs of the first episode or two of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon were released within a day or so of their broadcast. Among other "revisions", these subs referred to the youma as tentacle monsters and characters broke the Fourth Wall several times to comment on how badly the show would traumatize children. They also included gag-subbed commercials, too, including what was apparently originally a Japanese McDonald's ad that was already somewhat weird owing to the somewhat constipated look on the Japanese "Ronald's" face... even before the pedophile joke in the subtitles came at the end. In fact, that particular gag sub also featured at least one other commercial with a pedophile joke, for children's underwear at a local department store which featured a cute little girl whose line was "translated" as "They're pedolicious!".
- An example of an official gag sub occurred in Zoku Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei's second episode. All the dialogue was turned to gibberish, and subtitles were added on, turning an already insane plot into nonsense about the Dragonballs and space aliens. Many viewers were confused by this.
- The Adventures of Nagato Yuki says what 20% of the fandom is thinking.
- The Death Note Gag Sub School Note does this both ways: it translates the show's second opening "What's Up People?!" into to something completely insane(er), and then performs a Genre Shift on the show, turning it into a school love comedy. Light becomes a complete moron who can't do basic arithmetic without the help of the titular "School Note" and talks about "going to Tokyo U". L becomes a geek who plays Dating Sims and has MC Hawking on his computer.
- Anon sub took advantage of .mkv files' ability to have multiple subtitle tracks to release a video with both a normal and a Gag Sub (for teh lulz) for the 23th and 25th episodes of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann; among other things, the Gag Sub always replaces "Rossiu" with "Boota", a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man that has the hitter yelling "Wryyyyyy", displaying the word "Canadians" whenever anyone said "ehh?", and referring to the Death Spiral Machine as the "Desu Star".
- One gag sub had a references to numerous anime (including a mildly obscure Martian Successor Nadesico quote) as well as changing every single line into a hilarious parody of the actual script, without losing anything major from the story.
- Dattebayo fansubs released an episode of Bleach subtitled in Ebonics. (i.e. African American Vernacular English)
- They also released an episode of Soul Eater that was "translated" by someone who couldn't even understand Japanese.
- The FullMetal Alchemist capsummaries from inulovinkit count, though they are done in blog format. She has recently started making videos like abridged series, but done with subtitles instead of voice acting
- Pani Poni Dash! uses this in episode 22, where a TV crew comes to film the various classrooms for a popular late night show, and class 1-C has to convince Becky to show up for it. It also frequently switched into an isometric RPG view, complete with text boxes and character portraits. By the end of the episode, it does one last RPG switch, but while the class talks about Becky finally deciding to show up, the text boxes are carrying on a completely different conversation about weight loss advice.
- Little-known anime Massugu ni Ikou had a gag sub, the first part of which can be seen here (unfortunately, it seems the other parts have been taken down). It takes a heartwarming slice-of-life series about dogs and puts a much darker spin on it, including jokes about slavery, violence, and bestiality. You heard me.
- There's a Gag Sub of Mazinger Z vs. Devilman which gives humorous names to all their attacks (Mazinger's Photonic Beam becomes "Staring contest! You lose!"), says that Mazinger's Jet Scrander was made to offset its big butt, and makes Kouji and Akira gay for each other, ending with them flying off into the sunset declaring "There's room in the closet for both of us!"
- So far the only fansubs available for Musashi Gundoh are nonsensical gag subs. Just as well, because apparently, due to terrible editing, the show still wouldn't make any sense if it was translated properly.
Films — Live-Action
- There are literally hundreds of gag subs of a scene from Downfall in which Adolf Hitler et al are arguing about absolutely any topic under the sun, almost all of them wildly anachronous by having him rant about modern inventions and events. Listing them would almost certainly devolve into a huge Wall of Text, so just look them up if you want to. The only examples that must bear mentioning are the meta-ones where Hitler gets annoyed at people gagsubbing him, of which this one is but one example. In what must be some sort of Crowning Moment of Awesome, the movie's director has admitted to cracking up at these gag subs.
The Memetic Mutation has actually gotten to the point that multiple spin-off series exist, many of which are based around putting other characters in similar situations that often affect Hitler in some manner. Among them are the Stalin Parodies (centered around Joseph Stalin and his crew), the U-Boat Parodies (which turn the cast of Das Boot from a group of sympathetic Germans trapped in a war they don't understand to a group of lovable rogues who enjoy causing trouble for Hitler), and the Gaddaffi Parodies (where Gaddafi gets put into similarily humourous situations). There's even a spin-off channel based on Kit Kittredge of all people.
- Even fellow American Girls Samantha Parkington and Felicity Merriman were no exception to the parodies, with the latter being turned from a caring Revolutionary War-era girl into a merciless Screwy Squirrel in the vein of Fegelein, from kicking Hitler in the testicle to even beheading him. Other characters from various canons were also involved, from historical people such as King Leonidas, to pop stars like Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black.
- The Collector's Edition DVD of Monty Python and the Holy Grail includes a subtitle track composed entirely of lines from Henry IV, Part II, called "Subtitles for people who do not like the film".
- More famous are the fake Swedish subtitles in the movie's silly opening credits, which start out fairly literal ("Mønti Pythøn ik den Hølie Gräilen") but then become completely irrelevant as the credits get more technical ("A Møøse once bit my sister...")
- In Top Secret!, the East German national anthem (actually based on the anthem of Shorewood High School, from which writer David Zucker graduated) is translated in the subtitles as:
"Hail, hail East Germany
Land of fruit and grape
Land where you'll regret
If you try to escape
No matter if you tunnel under or take a running jump at the wall
Forget it, the guards will kill you, if the electrified fence doesn't first."
- Brazilian team América-MG, whose mascot is a rabbit, spent most of 2011 at the bottom of the national championship. As in the last rounds it started to defeat the big teams on the top positions, the response was using Gag Subs to turn the Killer Rabbit into América.
Live-Action TV
Music
- EmoChickWOAM made one of these for Cirno's Perfect Math Class * Fan Vid set to a song by IOSYS, starring characters from Touhou.]] Because the original wasn't weird enough. To elaborate
The gag lyrics turn what was a song mostly dedicated to making fun of Cirno, and change it into her listing some rather lackluster ambitions (Living in Maine, Learning Korean, and being Vice-Manager of an Arby's.) Protesting that the backup singers sound like men, an explanation of the plot of No Country for Old Men, some racially insensitive comments, things that paint Cirno as a staunch conservative, plugs for 5 Hour Energy, the list goes on.....
Videogames
- The game Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire has an Easter Egg that removes the voice track and replaces it with a Gag Sub.
- The notorious "Whitney Lies Version" of Advent Children is considered to be more comprehensible than the actual script. Its highlight was probably the "bee noises" scene.
- Another AC parody, Advent Fanboys, turns the Sephiroth clones into Spirits Within fans trying to prove it's a good movie. Other noteworthy additions include orphan-eating commentary and auditions for a Cloud/Tifa porn video.
- This trailer for Dirge of Cerberus.
- Tasian's Lets Plays of both Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan games are both this and a Gag Dub. It's what happens when you decide to discard the plot of a Widget Series and replace it with something even more incomprehensible.
- Metroid: Other M, the reMovie, a
Director's Deleter's Cut of Theatre Mode. Amongst many hilarious changes, the Head Quarantine Officer becomes a Memetic Molester, Adam tries to get the rest of his GF team to catch him a wild Choogle as a birthday present, Madeline Bergman is an old flame of Adam's that he and Samus thought they'd killed, and Samus decides to go for a low% run just to piss off Adam, who practically begs her to use her items.
Web Originals
Western Animation
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