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I Like Those Odds

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Fry: I like those odds!
Futurama, "Fry and the Slurm Factory"

Sometimes in Sarcasm Mode, other times a Badass Boast. This is when the chances of survival, or the level of opposition, are presented to a character and he is apparently at a disadvantage. He responds that he wouldn't have it any other way or that it is actually in his favor. Often, they'll remark that they've beaten worse odds without breaking a sweat. For an added bonus, he might boast about giving himself a handicap just for fun. A variation is when a character initially seems to be complaining about how unfair the odds are, but is actually saying the odds are unfairly stacked in their favor.

Sometimes comedy will use this for somebody who doesn't really care how poor the odds are and will just go ahead with it anyway despite being told how terrible their chances are. Alternatively they may not be listening, or they'd actually prefer the failure. Or they might just be too stupid to understand how bad the odds really are.

This often works out for him due to the Law Of Conservation of Ninjutsu. Sometimes though, odds come through.

Compare Never Tell Me the Odds!, Million to One Chance.


Examples

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    Anime and Manga 
  • As part of the big flashback in Negima! Magister Negi Magi, The hero is saving the princess; meanwhile, the rest of Ala Rubra has to hold off the forces overseeing the execution, leading to this exchange:
    Head Mook: Do I have the necessary forces? You Fool!. The guards for this event are more numerous than those you see here. There are two entire fleets stationed over a surrounding area of tens of kilometers, not to mention elite troops numbering around 3,000. You may be powerful, but even you cannot...
    Jack Rakan: Like I said. Are you seriously telling me you think that's gonna be enough?!
  • One Piece:
    • In Skypiea, when the Straw Hats decide to go after the City of Gold:
      Zoro: We're in enemy territory and vastly outnumbered. Those are my kind of odds!
    • We have this little gem from the Enies Lobby arc:
      Marines: Hey, Straw Hat Luffy... how many dozens of your cohorts did you bring? Ha ha ha. There are 10,000 soldiers on Enies Lobby!
      Luffy: Yeah... I'm by myself. Get out of my way!
    • A couple of hundred chapters later, when the crew finally enters the New World, all of them do it:
      Usopp: This weather is the worst!!
      Brook: Yohoho!! There's a thunderstorm in the skies!!
      Robin: The wind's a gale!!
      Franky: The sea is raging!!
      Nami: The needle's completely off!!
      Chopper: I can see a red sea!!
      Sanji: The surging sea of flames!!
      Zoro: Looks like the entrance to Hell.
      Luffy: PERFECT!!!
  • Kumagawa of Medaka Box lives and breathes this trope. Born Unlucky, he feels uncomfortable when the odds aren't stacked against him.
    Kumagawa: This is perfect. I have always fought with cards like these. I have never been blessed by luck or coincidence; I have fought without relying on miracles or fate. You say I've lost the moment I was dealt? That's just the same as always.
  • When Naruto's potential Big Bad, Uchiha Madara, is confronted by all five Kages of the Great Nations? He comments this will be a worthy challenge for him. He lives up to it by toying with them all through the battle, even with their stellar performances all they manage to do is destroy 25 of his Wood Clones using Susanoo when working together. When he goes full power... it crushes all their hope.
  • In the Cowboy Bebop episode "Jammin' with Edward," Jet observes the data retrieval mission they have to do and describes it as "like trying to play baseball without a bat." This remark gets Spike pumped up and ready to take off.
  • Inverted completely before the Final Battle in the Battle City arc of Yu-Gi-Oh!. Kaiba calculated when he gave Yugi the Fiend's Sanctuary card that it would increase Yugi's chances against Marik from 3% to 20%; and he still doubted Yugi stood much of a chance. Kaiba told Ishizu that he only helped Yugi to prove her wrong about the bond between then when he lost. (At least that's what he claimed. And Yugi did win, the card helping a great deal.)
  • In the The Saga of Tanya the Evil there's a saying of Victory or Valhalla which exactly what it says, you either win or fight to the death. There's no third option. The main character, Tanya Degurechaff always answers such odds with a variation on this line, which is a mix of Badass Boast and empty bravado.

    Comic Books 
  • Done by the narrator in Batman & Captain America:
    Narration: What follows can barely be called a fight. The duo of costumed crimebusters have hurled themselves into a confined space where the opposition outnumbers them by four to one. Thus, if any descriptive term were to be used in this confrontation, it would not be "fight". "Massacre", perhaps... but for Batman and Captain America, this is hardly a fight!
  • As a student, Largo Winch once got in a fight with a bunch of upper-class douchebags, and when asked what he had to say for himself, he admitted to using an unfair advantage like a true coward by outnumbering them: "They were only three."
  • Inverted in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, because young Scrooge is just that badass.
    Guy #1: Let's see—are there enough of us to handle him?
    Guy #2: For Pete's sake, there's two dozen of us!
    Guy #1: You're right! Smitty, go round up another ten men!

    Fanfiction 

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Cassidy's immortal line "For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble", in the face of the Bolivian Army Ending.
  • The ending dialogue of 300. "The enemy outnumber us a paltry three-to-one: good odds for any Greek!"
    • Considering the abuse the Persians took when they outnumbered the Greeks hundreds or even thousands-to-one for the bulk of the movie, without the context of differing tactics, it would be surprising to the viewer that they didn't just kill their commanders and run.
  • Star Trek:
    Kirk: I take it the odds are against us and the situation is grim.
    Picard: You could say that.
    Kirk: If Spock were here he would call me an illogical, irrational human being for taking on a mission like that... Sounds like fun.
    • And again in Star Trek (2009):
      Cadet: There's four of us and one of you.
      Kirk: So get some more guys and then it'll be an even fight.
      [Kirk is subjected to what Captain Pike would later describe as an epic beating, but not without getting a few hits in.]
  • The film of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King has Gimli do this when it's announced that Gondor's army will attack the Black Gate to provide a distraction for Frodo and Sam.
    Gimli: Certainty of death, small chance of success... what are we waiting for?
  • In Ghostbusters, when Egon suggests crossing the streams on their proton packs to take out the enormous Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, something he previously said would vaporize them, he suggested there was "a very slim chance" they would survive. Peter immediately likes the odds.
  • In Batman Begins, Ra's al Ghul motions for two of his henchmen to fight Batman as he makes his getaway. Batman says, "I can't beat two of your pawns?", to which Ra's says, "As you wish", and motions for two more henchmen to join the fight.
  • In the Kurt Russell movie Soldier, Russell's superior is having his Soldier in a fight with one more "evolved". The evolved soldier's superior says they're not fair odds and asks the enemy leader to bring two more.
  • The Three Musketeers (1993). The Musketeers comment amongst themselves that five soldiers against the three of them is hardly fair. D'Artagnan, missing the point, tries to point out that there's four of them.
    Porthos: Five of them and three of us, hardly seems fair.
    Aramis: Perhaps we should offer them a chance to surrender.
  • Dumb and Dumber:
    Lloyd: I want to ask you a question... straight out, flat out... and I want you to give me an honest answer. What do you think the chances of a guy like you and a girl like me... ending up together?
    Mary: Well Lloyd... that's difficult to say... you really don't...
    Lloyd: Hit me! Just give it to me straight! I came a long way just to see you, Mary. The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?
    Mary: Not good.
    Lloyd: You mean "not good" like... one out of a hundred?
    Mary: I'd say more like... one out of a million.
    Lloyd: [Beat] So you're telling me there's a chance? [another beat, then beams happily] YEAH!! [nods and smiles] I hear ya.
  • In The Right Stuff, as Alan Shepard is recruited as an astronaut:
    Shepard: Sounds dangerous.
    Recruiter: It's extremely dangerous.
    Shepard: Count me in.
  • October Sky
    O'Dell: God’s honest truth, Homer. What are the chances a bunch of kids from Coalwood actually winning the National Science Fair?
    Homer: A million to one, O’Dell.
    O'Dell: [Beat] That good? Well why didn’t you say so?
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
  • Invoked by name in Young Guns when the cavalry surrounds the "Regulators":
    Doc: Billy, we're good, but this is getting ridiculous.
    William H. Bonney: I like these odds...
  • Interstellar: Dr. Mann, who's been marooned on a distant world for years, mentions 50-50 odds are the best he's had in all that time. In a dark subversion, he's trying to murder the hero at the time, by smashing the hero's space helmet with his head, at the risk of smashing his own faceplate.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Subverted; upon being told that there are a thousand Sovereign against the five Guardians, Drax says that those are terrible odds.
    Drax: These odds are terrible... we need new odds!
    Peter: What?
  • In The Magnificent Seven (1960), one gunslinger hears a job-offer and inverts this as a rather dry take on a Flat "What":
    O'Reilly: How big's the opposition?
    Chris: Thirty guns.
    O'Reilly: ... I admire your notion of fair odds, mister.

    Literature 
  • The entire House of the Dzur in the Dragaera novels. Tazendra gets most of them on the page, but that's just because she's the most prominent Dzur character.
  • Discworld:
    • In The Colour of Magic, Hrun the Barbarian declares he'll fight both dragonlords at once:
      Liartes: That's pretty uneven odds, isn't it?
      Hrun: Yah. I outnumber you one to two.
    • In The Science of Discworld the wizards are informed that the chances of the new thaumic reactor (they're planning on using to heat the building) from going critical and blowing up the entirety of creation is 50-to-1. They think that this is entirely reasonable since "I wouldn't bet on a horse at those odds". Apparently an inch of ice on the inside of your bedroom window gives you a very personal perspective of risk.
      • Might also be a reference to the Trinity nuclear nest (see Real Life, below).
    • Moist Von Lipwig of Going Postal and Making Money likes to invoke this trope for the purposes of entertaining the crowds that invariably appear around him. For instance, a stable owner who took offense to something Moist said about his horses decided to get back at him by bringing him the most evil-minded, vicious horse he owns. Moist's response? He asks the grooms to take off the horse's saddle, because it'd just slow him down.
    • In Interesting Times, Twoflower points out that there's only one possible outcome when seven old men take on the thousands-strong army that's surrounding them: They'll win. Otherwise, the world's just not working properly.
      • In The Last Hero, those same old men, the greatest barbarian heroes the world has ever known, find themselves facing a single city guard armed with an ordinary nonmagical sword. A man who knows exactly who they are and what they've done, but still stands against them to try to save the world. They don't like those odds at all.
  • In The Vicomte de Bragelonne, d'Artagnan proposes to raise his own army of forty men and restore Charles II to the English throne (for profit!). Planchet, who is putting up half the money, protests: "Forty against forty thousand! That is not enough. I know very well that you, M. d'Artagnan, alone, are equal to a thousand men; but where are we to find thirty-nine men equal to you?"
  • In Starfighters of Adumar:
    Wedge: Tycho, what are we facing?
    Tycho: A hundred fifty, more like two hundred, easy. So, fifty to one odds.
    Wes: Not too bad.
  • In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, when Mike tells the main characters that the chances of having a successful revolution are of 1 in 7, they immediately cheer. This is because (a) it's still much better than they had estimated with their inexact human brains, and (b) a Loonie (a Moon inhabitant) is always willing to take a risk if the odds are better than 1 in 10.
  • Halo Expanded Universe
    • Halo: The Fall of Reach: “Four of us,” Blue-Two whispered over the link. “And a thousand of them? Piss-poor odds for the little guys.”
    • Subverted in Halo: First Strike, where Blue-Two/Kelly admits rough odds of 10,000-to-1 are a bit much even for three SPARTAN-IIs.
    Joshua: We can handle 100-to-1. Maybe even 500-to-1 with a little planning and support.
  • In Towers of Midnight Birgitte tells Mat that the odds of getting back from the Tower of Ghenjei are one in a thousand. Mat responds by taking out "two dozen" coins and predicting that when he throws them every single one will land heads up (1/16,777,216 chance if there were exactly 24). They do, and Mat remarks that "One in a thousand is good odds, for me."
  • Battle Ground (2020): Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, has the following to say about her realm being invaded by an army of her people's ancestral enemies, commanded by a being that pimp-slaps Physical Gods, wears armor that is powered by her belief in her invulnerability and wields weaponry that can burn armies as soon as they enter visual range.
    Mab: We outnumber them one Mab to none. That will suffice.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Done twice in Angel, the second time in the finale.
    Gunn: I'll take the 20,000 on the left...
  • A Running Gag in the 1960s Batman (1966) series, as the Dynamic Duo faces hordes of Mooks. In one episode it got inverted: Either the Riddler or the Joker said to Batman, "There's six of us and only two of you. But we're not afraid!"
  • Inverted in a Burn Notice episode. Russian Black Ops, when discussing if they should surrender note that "He's Michael Westen, there are only four of us!"
    • And again in "Where There's Smoke":
      Michael: It's one of you against four of them!
      Fiona: Don't feel bad for them, Michael.
  • Castle has this exchange in the episode "Still", when Beckett is trapped on a pressure-plate bomb that's set to go off in mere minutes;
    Beckett: Castle, please, you have to leave me, there's no reason for both of us to die.
    Castle: Oh, I didn't come here to die, I came here to defuse the bomb. There's still a chance.
    Beckett: Yes, a one-in-one-hundred-thousand chance!
    Castle: Great, while there's still a chance, I'm not giving up.
  • CSI: NY: In the opening of season 1's "Crime and Misdemeanor," a sheet-wrapped victim is delivered to a laundry facility that handles linens from hotels all over the city. Det. Flack snarkily comments that there are only about 70,000 hotel rooms in NYC. Our hero's response?
    Mac: I'll take those odds.
    • 10 minutes into the episode, the team has it narrowed down to the correct hotel. Cut to them entering the right room.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Creature From the Pit": Romana estimates their odds of success at 740,384,338 to one against. The Doctor claims that this is his lucky number.
    • In "Doomsday", this comes up when the Daleks declare war on the Cybermen.
      Cyber-Leader: We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?
      Dalek Sec: Four.
      Cyber-Leader: You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?
      Dalek Sec: We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek! You are superior in only one respect.
      Cyber-Leader: What is that?
      Dalek Sec: You are better at dying!
      • And then promptly gets turned around:
        Rose: Five million Cybermen, easy. One Doctor? Now you're scared.
    • "The Day of the Doctor" has an inversion. Gallifrey is under attack by a billion billion Daleks. If the Daleks knew there were three Doctors on the planet, they'd call for reinforcements. The thirteen Doctors save Gallifrey and destroy the Daleks.
  • Farscape: While John isn't exactly happy about it, he does believe they can beat the bad odds since they have before.
    Crichton: This Eidelon education program... What are the odds it'll work?
    Aeryn: Not good.
    Crichton: "Not good" is the best odds we ever get.
  • In Friends, in the chapter where the guys buy many lottery tickets as there is a lot of money on the jackpot, Ross says he won't join, because it is "42 times more likely" that they will be struck by lightning. Chandler answers that, as they are six, it would be only 7 times more likely. Joey says the trope verbatim.
  • In The Mandalorian, the Mandalorian gets into a standoff with the stormtroopers guarding the Client.
    Stormtrooper: We have you 4 to 1.
    The Mandalorian: I like those odds.
  • Merlin (2008): In his eponymous episode, Gwaine helps Merlin and Arthur in a bar fight simply because they were hugely outnumbered and "I kinda like the look of those odds."
  • Power Rangers RPM: In episode three, faced with a small army of Mecha Mooks that have just taken down the other three rangers, all Dillon has to say is "Venjix should've sent more."
  • Stargate Atlantis, "Critical Mass":
    Colonel Caldwell: I warn you, as a Goa'uld, I now possess the strength of many men.
    Ronon Dex: It'll be a fair fight then. [wins handily]

    Tabletop Games 
  • The quote for the Killer archetype in Feng Shui: "Forty of them, one of me. Looks like the odds are about even." Of course, Feng Shui was the first RPG to incorporate rules for Mooks...
  • In BattleTech, the flavor text for the Stalker II Battlemech says that a pair of Stalker II pilots challenged a Clan Wolf Star Captain, who said he'd fight them with his two Binaries, a force consisting of ten light Battlemechs and twenty light vehicles. After a brief pause, one of the Stalker II pilots said "Well, we can wait if you want to bring up more 'Mechs." The Stalker I Is lost the fight, but only barely.

    Toys 
  • BIONICLE:
    Kongu: Five of us, 5000 of them. I like your idea of fair odds, Hahli.

    Video Games 
  • Play a video game. It's one 'you' against a million enemies or so. You take the job and you invariably win.
  • In the ship level of Command & Conquer: Renegade, a prisoner Havoc just freed asks him if he intends to take on the ship's crew alone.
    Havoc: Don't seem fair, does it? Maybe I'll shoot with my left hand.
  • Mass Effect:
  • Guild Wars: Nightfall has this in the first mission, when you get a good look at the opposing forces:
    Player Character: There sure are a lot of them.
    Koss: No, there are three of us, note  and only two corsair ships. We outnumber them!
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, Leon and Cloud do this during their Back-to-Back Badasses moment while surrounded and vastly outnumbered by Heartless.
    Leon: Think you can handle this many?
    Cloud: Well, might be tough if one more shows up.
    Leon: Then that'll be the one I take care of.
    Cloud: What, you're fighting, too?
  • From Halo 3:
    Elite: Brute Ships. Staggered Line. Shipmaster, they outnumber us three to one!
    Rtas 'Vadum: Then it is an even fight.
    • Note that said "even fight" proceeds to end in an overwhelming victory for the Elites.
  • In Jagged Alliance 2, every mercenary has a special line when they can see 3 enemies simultaneously, usually suggesting retreat, or something like, "I'm fighting a losing battle here!" Magic takes the opposite stance, exclaiming, "This is when I'm at my best!"
  • In Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a conversation you can listen in on has a Stormtrooper inform a Purge Trooper that reinforcements will not be able to reach them, only for the latter to respond that it just means there will be less people to get in their way. In combat one of their lines if they’re the last man standing expresses this as well.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog has one from its Missing Trailer Scene:
    Shadow: Discovering the secrets of my past will be nearly impossible. [hoists and cocks gun] I'll take those odds. [Stuff Blowing Up behind Shadow]
  • Super Robot Wars Compact 2: It doesn't matter how long the odds are... Kyosuke Nanbu doesn't mind betting on them.
  • From Sly 2: Band of Thieves:
    Murray: Outnumbered... fighting impossible odds... it's perfect!
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2, you arrive at an inn just as a fight is about to break out between Khelgar, a lone dwarf, and four thugs. When you point out that four against one isn't fair odds, Khelgar agrees... and asks the thugs if they've got any friends who might like to join in.
  • In World of Warcraft, in the lead-up to the Frostfire Ridge's final story quest, the Frostwolf Orcs are about to make a stand against impending invasion by the Iron Horde. As they leave for battle, Durotan makes this announcement:
    Durotan: Come! To Thunder Pass. We are outnumbered 50 to 1. They don't stand a chance!
  • In Stories: Path of Destinies, Reynardo acquires a Lost Superweapon, the Skyripper, that has a 1 in 128 chance of destroying the universe if used. Thanks to Artistic License – Statistics, he thinks that this means that he can use it once to win the war and be totally safe, the odds only go up if he uses it a bunch of times, despite multiple characters pointing out that this is wrong. It doesn't end well.
    Reynardo: One in 128. What are the odds?
  • In an old two-page ad for Final Fantasy VI, the first page shows a cute little moogle surrounded by a horde of scary monsters, saying "It doesn't seem fair, does it?" Next page: a cute little moogle surrounded by piles of monster corpses. "Who says life is fair?"

    Webcomics 
  • Homestuck:
    Upon reflection, Redglare showed the foresight of a true seer in thieving my arm before the trial. It permitted a fair fight.
  • Arthur, King of Time and Space:
    • During the Roman campaign:
      Cador: The Roman vessels outnumber us three-to-one.
      Lancelot: Only three-to-one?
      Cador: Don't they learn?
    • Sir Dinadin, who is far from a coward, but more of a realist than many of his compatriots, has sometimes wondered if he's the only knight who can count. When he and Sir Tristram are challenged by two evil knights, he snarks that Tristram is probably disapointed they aren't outnumbered.
  • Girl Genius showing Jäger Generals in action:
    General Goomblast: [facing half a dozen of the Wulfenbachs' Stealth Fighters with poisoned weapons] Feh. Diz hardly seems fair.
    Soldier: C'est la guerre, general.
    General Goomblast: [disarms a soldier and flicks his weapon into another's chest] Hy dun mean for me.
  • Played with in Schlock Mercenary, during a training exercise, here:
    Commander Pel "Ebby" Ebbirnoth (on speaker): Red team is joining blue. The Captain and the Commodore are the new red team. I am updating everyone's I.F.F. accordingly.
    Captain Kaff Tagon: Those are my kind of odds. Ready, dad?
    Ebby: Also, do NOT trust your I.F.F.! I cannot revoke Captain Tagon's authority to alter it, and as you all know, our Captain is a devious, ruthless cheater.
    Tagon: These are no longer my kind of odds.
  • In the Penny Arcade cheesy-80s-action-movie-but-with-table-tennis Paint the Line 2, after Tycho is missing presumed dead, Gabe is told that he has to play the final doubles match on his own. His response? "This ain't really fair now, is it? I mean ... there's only two of 'em."

    Web Video 
  • In Leeroy Jenkins Video, Jamaal says basically this after being told the party's chances of survival. He notes that the odds are better than usual, which says a lot considering that Abduhl estimated (at best) a 32.33note % chance of survival. Unfortunately, this is the Trope Namer for Leeroy Jenkins for a reason.
  • Sword Art Online Abridged:
    • Rosalia shows up with 7 mooks to try and rob Kirito and Silica of an item they just collected. Kirito confidently offers to let the mooks take the first hit. The mooks appeal to Rosalia that it's probably a trap (pointing out that Kirito thought he was facing Laughing Coffin and yet still showed up without any reinforcements), but Rosalia sends her 7 level 45 mooks to attack anyway. Cue Kirito displaying his level 78 stats and revealing that he's wearing enough HP-regenerating equipment that his health is regenerating faster than the mooks can damage him.
    • Kirito is on the receiving end of this when he challenges Heathcliff to a duel. When Asuna points out that his health has never been reduced to yellow status (IE, below half), Kirito completely brushes her off. It doesn't end well for him.

    Western Animation 
  • Mighty Max has Norman say "Six against one, hardly fair. I'll fight with my eyes closed."
  • In the first episode of Megas XLR, a large number of Glorft surround Megas and Kiva's mech. Coop's response is to agree that the fight isn't fair... and smashes Kiva's mech. "Now it's fair."
  • The Simpsons:
    • Inverted in "Lisa's First Word": Krusty the Clown vows (on TV) to "spit in every fiftieth burger", and Homer replies, "I like those odds!"
    • Also, Chief Wiggum uttered the exact phrase "I like those odds" when he asked if he had a chance of taking the bait out of a dangerous trap, and his smarter sidekick Lou warned him "It's a million to one, chief." Wiggum's tone also seemed more like naive confidence than devil-may-care boasting, and in that case, one possible interpretation is that Wiggum misunderstood Lou's remark and thought he meant that the odds were a million to one in favor of success.
    • In "Bart the General," when Bart's looking for a guy with military experience to help him deal with a bully:
      Bart: Grampa, I think this guy's a little nuts.
      Grampa: Oh, yeah? Well, General George S. Patton was a little nuts. And this guy's completely out of his mind! We can't fail!
  • The Penguins of Madagascar
    • "Roger Dodger" has:
      Private: So, after Rico trounces the rats inside Roger's body, we switch them back?
      Skipper: Exactly. It's 100% foolproof.
      Kowalski: More precisely, it's 2.7% foolproof. There's a 97.3% chance that this will backfire and result in a horrific abomination that will be an affront to the most elemental laws of nature and the universe.
      Skipper: I like those odds.
      • Considering Skipper's idea of a perfect future is a post-apocalyptic wasteland involving irradiated mutants, he probably did like the high odds of facing an abomination. Incidentally, Kowalski is pretty much right.
    • A similar exchange in "Snakehead":
      Kowalski: I have an idea, but I'm not sure how safe it is.
      Skipper: I like it already!
    • And of course there's "In the Line of Doody":
      Kowalski: *after revealing his latest invention of an upgraded jetpack with weapons and a Nitro Boost* It's all untested but I'm 51.7% certain it won't erupt in a gaseous fireball the size of a dwarf sun.
      Rico: Oooh...
      Private: That's slightly over half!
      Skipper: *putting on the jetpack* Well those are odds we can most likely live with!
  • In Family Guy: Something Something Something Dark Side:
    C-3PO/Quagmire: Sir, the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are 2 to 1!
    Han/Peter: Never tell me the o... well that's not bad.
  • Justice League, "Starcrossed, Part 3": Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern are heading straight for the Thanagarian mothership (and the dozens of smaller ships around it).
    Wonder Woman: Pretty bad odds.
    Superman: Yeah, they don't stand a chance.
  • Jonny Quest episode "Monster in the Monastery". After Jonny and Hadji tell Dr. Quest and Race that there are nine enemies left in the monastery, Race says to Dr. Quest "That makes the odds about right, sir". Two men, two kids and the Raj Guru (who's basically a non-combatant) against 9 armed men, and the odds are "just about right"? Sure, Race takes out eight of the guys while Benton and the boys take the last one. Or they would have if the yeti hadn't beat them to it.
  • G.I. Joe Extreme featured this a lot. "The odds are a million to one. Just the way we like it."
    • In the original series episode "My Brother's Keeper,":
      Sgt. Slaughter: Outmanned. Outgunned. I love it!
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) has Leonardo fighting thirteen ninjas.
    Donatello: [watching through a window] Thirteen to one?.
    Michelangelo: That seems pretty unfair. I mean, there's only thirteen of them.
  • In the Teen Titans (2003) episode "How Long Is Forever?", Starfire tells Nightwing that the time-traveling thief they are up against believes in You Already Changed the Past and that history cannot be changed.
    Nightwing: So it's impossible? ... Good. If memory serves, we've done the impossible before.
  • At one point in the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Spirit World: Winter Solstice, Part 1", Iroh is kidnapped by Earth Kingdom soldiers. Zuko tracks him down and frees him. At that moment, the soldiers say that they have the firebenders outnumbered, and Iroh replies: "Ah, that's true, but you are clearly outmatched." Sure enough, the two of them proceed to wipe the floor with the soldiers in a matter of minutes.
  • Futurama:
    • In addition to the page quote, Fry also uses the phrase in a completely straightforward manner in the episode "Overclockwise": He intends to kill himself by barrelling over Niagara Falls, and asks the barrel salesman what are his odds of survival.
      Salesman: Slim to none!
      Fry: I like those odds!
      • He still survives...
    • In "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", Bender's memory chip has been sent to Bureacracy headquarters, but the central filing room is filled with thousands of identical containers. The head bureaucrat, Bureaucrat 1.0, allows Hermes to search for the chip, but tells him he has to find it by closing time, 5 PM. Leela points out he'd have less than 4 minutes, to which Hermes simply says "Requisition me a beat." before looking.
  • In Miraculous Ladybug specials called Miraculous Ladybug SP01 "Miraculous World New York – United HeroeZ", have Sparrow (American Heroine) dryly jokes this:
    Sparrow: Okay, on one side there's me, my basic training, and zero weapons. On the other side, an army of superpoweful heroes gone insane. {sees Majestia attempt to move the moon} Sounds evenly matched.
  • A Batman 75th anniversary tribute video by Darwyn Cooke features Bruce and Terry facing off against a Batman robot. At the end of the short, they are confronted by seven more Batman robots (representing various historical versions of the character):
    Terry: Seven against two — pretty bad odds.
    Bruce: For them....

    Real Life 
  • A quote credited to Chesty Puller during The Korean War at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir:
    "They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can't get away from us now!"note 
  • Possibly apocryphal, but the story goes that the researchers working on the Manhattan project calculated an approximately 2% chance that the technology could cause a chain reaction that would combust a significant portion of the Earth's atmosphere. Obviously it didn't, but apparently they liked those odds.
  • A customary brag in the Society for Creative Anachronisms goes something like thus:
    "So there I was, no shit, eyeball deep in the elephant grass, scorching desert heat, and raining sideways. There were a million of them, and only one of me, and I was armed only with a rusted dagger. [Beat.] It was a good day to be me."
  • Robin Olds, in his memoirs, recounted an engagement where he and his wingman stumbled across a large mass of German fighters that were still forming up to attack an American bomber formation. Rather than call (and wait) for reinforcements, Olds dove into the middle of the Germans, followed by his wingman. The ensuing dogfight resulted in several German fighters shot down in return for both of the Americans escaping unharmed. Olds later pointed out that, since the Germans had not finished forming up yet, they were confused, and every German pilot who couldn't see an American plane anywhere had reason to fear the American was behind him, causing further chaos. In contrast, the two American pilots knew exactly who the friendlies were and who the targets were.
  • During the Falklands War, the Argentine Air Force could get far more planes into the combat area than could the British, who could only send two squadrons of Sea Harriers. Despite the prospect of being heavily outnumbered during air-to-air combat, the RN pilots were feeling optimistic because of the target-rich environment.
  • Korean Admiral Yi, upon being told that the fleet had been nearly obliterated in a prior battle and was about to be decommissioned, and the Japanese had a fleet of over 130 warships on the way, reportedly said this before winning the Battle of Myeongnyang:
    "I still have twelve ships under my command."

 
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Best odds I've had in years

When Mann tries to break Cooper's helmet faceplate with a headbutt using his own faceplate, Cooper tells him he has a 50-50 chance of killing himself. Mann simply replies that those are the best odds he's had in years.

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5 (5 votes)

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