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A metaphor is like a train, a high speed train that takes you from concept A to B, easily derails and is funny when it does.
There's nothing wrong with using a metaphor to explain the situation, but make sure it doesn't derail on you later. Trying to hold to an established metaphor while including added information that doesn't fit it at all... well, that's sillier than wearing a trash can on your head while artistically comparing two unlike concepts.
In other words, a good comedy trope.
Also, metaphor wouldnt be the appropriate word as they're not supposed to explicitedly tell us that X is "like" Y, but the title wouldn't have worked like that.
Handily Truth In Television (As our Troper Tales will attest). See also Dissimile. Compare Analogy Backfire, Sidetracked By The Analogy, Shaggy Frog Story, Disorganized Outline Speech. Because this often uses realistic diction, it can also subvert Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic. Buffy Speak uses this a lot.
Examples:
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Advertising
- An interesting advertisement for promoting foster parenting:
Foster father: (consoling post-breakup foster daughter) "Honey, dating is like... the stock market. There's highs, and lows... and highs... Um... And... (mumbles) alwaysremembertobuylow..."
Announcer: "You don't have to be perfect to be a good foster parent."
Film
- In 28 Days, one of the recovering addicts in the rehab center tries to explain how everyone has to walk their own path.
- The educational short Drugs Are Like That really doesn't know what the metaphor it's going for is. Drugs are compared to legos, cookies, swimming, toys, and pacifiers. Then they say that the human body is like a perpetual motion machine that the characters make out of Legos (!!) and that moving one piece causes it to explode — "Drugs are like that!" This is all narrated by Anita Bryant.
- Hot Shots:
Topper: My father used to say that not playing to win is like sleeping with your sister. Sure she's a great piece of tail, with a blouse full of goodies, but, it's just illegal. Then you get into that whole inbred thing. Kids with no teeth who do nothing but play the banjo ... eat apple sauce through a straw ... pork farm animals.
Block: Jesus, Harley!
Topper: I think you get my point.
- More quotable if you stop after "it's just illegal."
- Worth a mention is Don Cortino's toast to his daughter and son-in-law in Mafia!, where he seems to literally forget the ending of his simile.
Don Cortino: Man is like a piece of cheese. (Long pause. Drinks.)
- Magicians briefly has two spectators muse on the sight of two magicians, who formerly had a successful and well-respected Double Act going before one slept with the other's wife and the other accidentally decapitated said wife during a trick with a guillotine, reuniting for the first time in four years to perform together:
Spectator 1: It's like Israel and Palestine.
Spectator 2: ... Entering a magic competition together.
- One of the common Rocky Horror Picture Show callbacks replies to Riff Raff's lines:
"Say goodbye to all of this..."
Goodbye, all this!
"And hello... to oblivion."
Hi, Oblivion! How's the wife and kids?
Your wife, my kids!
- In Animal House, the Dean says:
It's time someone put his foot down around here, and that foot is me.
- The 40-Year-Old Virgin tells us how to woo women: You plant a seed, you wait for that seed to grow into a plant, and then you fuck the plant.
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
First Hitman: Well now, here we all are. Ike, Mike and Mustard.
Harry: What the hell does that mean?
Second Hitman: You know, I'm with him on this one, man. That's pretty fucking obscure.
First Hitman: Horse shit, I hear that all the time!
Second Hitman: You do?
First Hitman: Yeah, sure.
Second Hitman: Where, at the 1942 club?
First Hitman: Hey, just 'cause you didn't get in...
Second Hitman: Motherfucker, I could've gotten in!
(later)
First Hitman: You wanna know who we are? I'm the frying pan, see? And my boy over here, he's—
Second Hitman: Mustard. I'm Mustard, baby.
Literature
- From Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere:
Mr Croup: Still, you can't make an omelette... Mr. Vandemar: ...Without killing a few people.
- Considering Mr. Vandemar is a cannibal (he eats Talking Animals) this could actually be taken literally for him.
- Since Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar seem to be some sort of animal spirits (or something) in human guise, it could even be considered Carnivore Confusion.
- This troper took them literally. That's probably a "true" metaphor for Croup and Vandemar. I don't think they can do anything without killing at least a few people.
- Tom Holt regularly includes some kind of brutal dysjunction of "omelettes and eggs". Did you know that it is possible to make omelettes without shredding chickens, but it doesn't make as good television?
- This is frequently seen in Discworld novels, due to the extreme literal-mindedness of many of the characters.
- From John C. Wright's Fugitives of Chaos
... Three decks of balcony and bulkhead were crumpled and staved-in as if a tree had fallen on them. It would have had to have been a redwood tree, I suppose, and made of iron. Perhaps dropped from orbit. Never mind the tree; it looked like a bomb had gone off.
Live Action TV
- Buffy examples:
- In the episode "Superstar": Anya attempts to explain the idea of alternate universes to Buffy through a somewhat... silly metaphor involving seafood; it doesn't pan out, but Buffy catches on regardless. Later, Buffy asks Anya to explain the concept to the rest of the Scoobies, but Anya is still hung up on the shrimp metaphor and it falls flat.
- That one becomes a more reliable Running Gag, as it turns out that Anya's hypothetical "world with nothing but shrimp" actually exists. As Illyria says in Angel, ". I tired of that one quickly."
- Joss Whedon must love this. Yet another example from Buffy has Buffy slaying vampires and annoyed at her mother's new boyfriend:
Buffy: I mean, people are perfectly happy getting along, and then vampires come, and they run around and they kill people, and they take over your whole house, they start making these stupid little mini pizzas, and everyone's like, 'I like your mini pizzas,' but I'm telling you, I am... Giles: Uh, uh, Buffy! I-I believe the... subtext here is, is, rapidly becoming, uh, uh, text.
- Not to get excessive with the Buffy examples, but Willow has a particularly beautiful bit in the Season Four premiere:
- AND THEN there's when she's explaining how she sent the troll king to the dimension of trolls, but can't be sure because "Sending things to different dimensions is like trying to hit a puppy by throwing a live bee at it, except that's a stupid analogy so forget I ever said it"
- There is an entire subset of this trope involving the "if music be the food of love" quote from Shakespeare.
- Coupling: Susan's father is talking to Steve about Steve's habit of whistling. He believes it to be a sexual metaphor, which leads to him saying this: "If music be the food of love, then masturbation is just a snack between meals."
- Also when Steve accidentally sees Sally naked, and she starts a metaphor of how she is like Australia:
Sally: Far away, vastly uninhabitated, and filled with areas of great danger.
Steve: Oh. I thought it was about having a lot of convicts.
Sally gives Steve a "The hell?" look.
Steve: No, I understand. I'm welcome in your Melbourne, or your Sydney...
Sally: Yes.
- (Also called a "map of Tassie" in Australia.)
- Patrick discussing monogamy while pretending to be involved with Susan as part of competing with a rival.
Patrick: I don't share my woman. It's like finding the right tennis racket. Once you've got one you really like using, you keep on using it until it falls apart and you have to get a new one. Only more emotional.
- This being Patrick, it's arguable that he didn't forget the metaphor at all, and means what it sounds like he means.
- John Hodgman on The Daily Show: "It is true that the Internet is not a series of tubes. A better metaphor would perhaps be a net. Or perhaps a network of computers. Or an Internet."
- Used at least twice in the horror parody Darkplace. Most episodes end with Doctor Rick Dagless giving a conclusion to the story in monologue form. One of the most memorable is the classic first episode ending:
Dagless: The doors of Darkplace were open. Not the literal doors of the building, most of which were closed. But evil doors. Dark doors. Doors, to the beyond. Doors that were hard to shut because they were abstract and didn't have handles. They were more like portals really.
- Also used during the first episode at a funeral.
The Padre: Larry Renwick will be remembered for his wit, and laughing eyes. And for being above-all a good friend. I'm sure we all feel that he exploded too young, but, the Lord moves in mysterious ways. Sometimes, he'll come in at an angle. Other times, he can hover, then swoop. Sometimes he can even come in from beneath, like a worm, or mole. The Lord, it's his call how he chooses to maneuver.
- There's a great one in the spin-off series Man to Man with Dean Learner:
Dean Learner: It's like that philosophical question: If a tree falls in the forest, and I'm not there, and it makes a sound, but I don't hear it, but someone records it and plays it back to me at a dinner party, does that mean I'm still in the forest? And if I am, then why can't I just take a piss in the garden rather than queuing for the toilet? And that's if the toilet even exists; I've been trying to use it all fucking night. I'm starting to doubt the existence of the toilet quite frankly at this stage of the proceedings. Get a portaloo is what I'm saying. If you're going to have a party of that size, get a portaloo. 'Cause I don't want to spend my entire fucking evening in the corridor. And if philosophy can solve those questions, then it's worth it. But thus far it can't. So I'm fucking busting, and what's Plato doing about it? Nothing."
- Doctor Who has David Tennant do this quite a few times, one of them becoming the Trope Namer for The Timey Wimey Ball trope. Though the comedy of that example kind of fell flat because the rest of the episode is absolutely terrifying.
- Timey Wimey Ball actually dates back AT LEAST to Peter Davison's run. Variations of the same sort of thing definitely date back to William Hartnell, the FIRST Doctor back in 1963.
- In The Fast Show, this was Swiss Toni's main schtick:
Answering the phone, Paul, is very much like making love to a beautiful woman. You... pick up... the receiver... speak loudly and clearly... oh, and always state your name... (To himself) You're losing it Toni...
- Jayne pulls one in the Firefly episode "Out of Gas", where he comments that there's nothing worse than a "lowdown dirty deceiving...deceiver".
- Eddie Izzard's bit about romance among beekeepers? "I like my women how I like my coffee... COVERED IN BEES!"
- Followed later by "I like coffee hot and strong. Like I like my women: hot and strong. ...With a spoon in them."
- As well as another Izzard comment on beekeeping:
"My father was a beekeeper, his father was a beekeeper before him, and I wanted to follow in their footsteps. And those footsteps went like this: 'AAAAAAAAAAAH I'm covered in beeeeeees! HELP!'"
- This was done Once An Episode on Home Improvement with Tim trying to repeat Wilson's metaphorical advice from memory, and... failing. Doesn't help that he probably didn't understand it in the first place.
- Nah, he seemed to understand it fairly well, considering he always did a pretty good job of putting it in his own words after miserably failing to recite it directly as Wilson said it.
- "You know Mark Twain? Scared to *death* of the Village People."
- One of the many varieties of snark available on House is the intentional Metaphorgotten. Example from season four: Cuddy is badgering House to hire a new team to replace his old one. His response?
House: You have sex before you get married. You test-drive a car before you buy it. I can't hire a team based on a ten-minute interview. What if I don't like having sex with them?
- Another example, this time a subversion:
Stacy: If I wasn't married to Mark, I'd be on you like red on rice. House: But rice isn't... oh, you.
- In season five, after House drives Cameron to resign as Cuddy's temporary replacement (Cuddy wanted to spend time with her new baby), Cuddy secretly marks the elevators "out of order", forcing House to use the stairs.
House: Elevators keep crashing. Is Mercury in retrograde, or what?
Cuddy: Elevators can be capricious. Sometimes it just seems like they're out to get you.
House: Why do you think the elevators would be out to get me?
Cuddy: I don't know. Maybe they wanted to take time off to spend with their little dumbwaiter. But then they had to leave it at home with an elevator sitter because you drove the replacement elevator to quitting because you're incapable of listening to anybody but me. That's just a theory.
- From Jeeves And Wooster:
Spode: You are a butterfly, who trifles with a young lady's affections and casts her aside!
Bertie: Do butterflies do that?
- From the Legend Of The Seeker episode "Sanctuary" comes the line, "That swindler's as blind as . . . something . . . that can't see well." Of course, it's entirely plausible that the midlands don't have bats.
- My So Called Life, "Life of Brian" involves Brian, Graham, Angela, Delia the new girl, and a metaphor involving wallpaper that covers (pun intended) most of the episode.
- Done roughly Once An Episode on NCIS with Ziva, whose native language is Hebrew, and thus frequently fouls up most any idiomatic English expressions, most frequently metaphors.
- In Peep Show, Jez is railing against his aunt's decision to give his religious uncle a secular funeral during his eulogy, except that he tries to compare Jesus to the Irish musician Enya, capped off by claiming "Enya died for our sins".
- Shawn Spencer in Psych frequently comes up with metaphors. Problem is, they either make no sense in relation to what he's talking about, or he veers off in his meaning and... loses it.
Shawn: Pack it in, pull the plug, shut it down, leave the dead meat in the freezer, and put on your Sunday best, 'cause it's Arbor Day, baby!
- It's not just Shawn. In the episode There's Something About Mira, Mira's mother offers us this gem:
"I like my men like I like my wine. White and hairy."
- Which gives Shawn the opportunity to reply with
That makes no sense. No whatsoever.
- Pushing Daisies: Olive and Chuck are discussing their plan to get Chuck's aunts to start swimming again.
Olive: Phase 2 has experienced a hiccup. Chuck: The kind of hiccup that goes away if you drink a glass of water or hold your breath? Olive: No, the kind of hiccup that keeps you up for days on end ‘til you go crazy and you give away all your cherished mermaid mementos and refuse to get back in the pool again.
- Pushing Daisies is absolutely filled with this sort of thing and related tropes, due to the eccentric speech patterns of most of the characters.
- Comedian Lewis Black on his Red White and Screwed tour would like you to share his outrage about Bill Clinton's marital infidelity:
Lewis Black: "Is oral sex adultery? Yes! There is no fucking question! If curling is an Olympic sport, then oral sex is adultery! And oral sex should be an Olympic sport! Why? Because it's harder than curling, and if you're any good at it, you deserve a medal!
- The Celebrity Jeopardy sketch in Saturday Night Live:
Sean Connery: What's the difference between you and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck, and I can't remember how it ends but your mother's a whore.
- Seinfeld had Frank Constanza saying to his son's boss: "You couldn't smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a dame ... I lost my train of thought."
- When George's mother catches him masturbating and insists he see a psychiatrist, he complains "If everyone who did... that had to see a psychiatrist..." then veers off realizing he has no idea how to end that thought. At prompting from Jerry he just says "Whatever!"
- The fifth episode of Spaced — Daisy goes off on an extended metaphor comparing her relationship with her boyfriend to owning a sandwich maker. The two characters listening come up with valid interpretations of it.
- In a later episode, when discussing the possibility of Tim getting back with his unfaithful ex-girlfriend, resulting in a Lame Comeback:
Tim: This is something that I've always wanted! You have things you want — you're always going on about going to Asia and seeing the Taj Mahal.
Daisy: I do want to go to Asia! I do want to see the Taj Mahal! The difference is, the Taj Mahal didn't sleep with its boss behind my back and break my heart!
Tim: Yeah, well... it might if you go to Asia.
- Plus, from the same episode, Tim's classic comparison between waiting for a possible reunion with his ex-girlfriend and masturbation:
Tim: I just had a moment of clarity, you know, I woke up. It's like... you know when you have an orgasm on your own? [Daisy looks increasingly disgusted and uncertain during the following:] You know, you're sort of lying on the sofa watching some porn movie you bought on a drunken lonely night in Soho, and you're lying there and everything's going really great, you're getting totally turned on by these absurdly graphic images, everything seems so right, and suddenly - phht! Bingo! You wake up. And you're lying there sweating, desperately looking for the tissue which you know is still in your pocket, and the remote control which is somewhere on the floor, and it's like walking in on yourself, you know? It's just like "What you doing?" That's how I felt tonight feeling my heart miss a beat everytime the door opened. "What the fuck are you doing?"
Daisy: Well... that's love, isn't it? Load of old wank.
- An episode of Spin City had Michael and Caitlin arguing over their delayed Relationship Upgrade, using recent negotiations between two city departments as the metaphor. Later on, when they make up, Michael tries to continue the metaphor by stating that "the department would really like... to have sex with you."
- Also in Spin City, we have Nikki explaining how she got into accounting: "Numbers are uncomplicated. Numbers don't lie. And they don't say they're coming over and then never call, so you go out for a coffee and see them walking up the street with another woman..."
- A variation on this crops up in an episode of Stargate SG-1 where Daniel starts explaining that week's problem with the Stargate using a "phone call" metaphor. It's valid, except he's explaining to Teal'c. He quickly switches over to using General Hammond as his sounding board.
Jackson: [to Teal'c] What do you get if you try to dial your own phone... no, wrong person to ask — (turns to General Hammond) What do you get if you try to dial your own phone number?
- Another episode has Daniel complain that by offering heavy water (which they use for nuclear power) to a civilization, they're exacerbating the war:
Daniel: Their world is on fire and we're offering them gasoline!
Teal'c: We are in fact offering them water.
Daniel: I was being metaphorical!
O'Neill: Well stop it! It's not fair to Teal'c.
- Teal'c gets a lot of these in the early seasons. For example, his response to Daniel's suggestion that they hide out until a Goa'uld attack "calms down" is: "Things will not calm down, Daniel Jackson. They will in fact calm up."
- Another:
Teal'c: Undomesticated equines could not remove me.
O'Neill: It's wild horses, Teal'c.
- This is more of a subversion since Teal'c got the idiom wrong on purpose in order to try and take Jack's mind off the spectacular pain he was in.
- It's notably averted once with Mitchell, who took an analogy that would normally wind up here and actually carried it through to the end. Daniel was suitably impressed.
Prior: We are the beacons on the road to enlightenment.
Mitchell: No, you're dark-side intergalactic encyclopedia salesmen. Unfortunately, the home office hasn't been quite upfront with you.
Daniel: Nice work on the metaphor.
Mitchell: Thanks.
- Star Trek The Next Generation: This sometimes happens to Data.
- Many episodes of Star Trek Voyager, as SF Debris points out in his reviews. Star Trek often relies on metaphors to help the audience make sense of the Technobabble, and it works in many cases, such as when Geordi compared altering the frequency of a type of energy being siphoned by a giant baby alien as "souring the milk." However, in an episode of Voyager, while trapped in a black hole, Torres realized a ship they were looking at was a time delayed reflection of their own ship and compared it to being trapped under the ice in a lake and looking up to see your own reflection. Fine so far, but then Janeway asks what Torres would do in that situation, and she says she would swim around looking for cracks. So they proceed to look for cracks in the event horizon of the black hole.
- On an episode of Stella:
Michael Ian Black. I like my coffee the way I like my women: Strong, black, and proud.
- Titus: (holding a glass of water) If sex were water...Tommy hasn't had sex in two years. (shrugs and takes a drink)
- In an episode of Yes Prime Minister, Prime Minister Hacker's political adviser makes a case for being returned to her usual office (which she has been unceremoniously removed from due to the machinations of Sir Humphrey) by using some objects on the table, including a teacup, an ash-tray and a saucer, to construct a rough map of the interior of 10 Downing Street to prove its strategic worth. Hacker agrees, and summons Bernard to have the adviser moved to her office "between the tea-cup, the ash-tray and the saucer." Bernard, who was not present during the initial metaphor, is as confused as you'd expect.
- Narrowly averted in an episode of Warehouse13.
Ms. Frederick: You took a shot in the dark.
Arty: We hit that target dead center!
Ms. Frederick: With a small caliber bullet!
Arty: His caliber is very lar— *Skips a beat* You know what, I'm done with this analogy.
- How I Met Your Mother gave us this one:
Barney: I can’t hit on women in my own bar. Remember the old Barney? He was a lion. The king of the jungle; stalking whatever prey he chose. Going in for the kill.
Ted: You’ve got a whole meatlocker at home full of corpses, don’t you?
Barney: Now look at me. Declawed. Neutered. What was once my jungle is now my zoo and I am forced to mate with the same old lioness again and again and again, while families pay to watch.
Ted: Yeah, this metaphor has really fallen apart.
- Ugly Betty - "You'll always be compared to that first motorcycle. Especially when it's shoving its tongue down your girlfriend's throat."
Radio
- A Running Gag in Nebulous is that the eponymous professor will take his Technobabble metaphors to breaking point and beyond. For example:
Nebulous: The whole of the universe is unravelling into a massive coincidence like a badly knit cardigan caught on the wire of coincidence. A whole sleeve has already gone, and now the collar's starting to unravel. Un-knit 1, un-purl 1, un-knit 1, un...I'm drifting..
Nebulous: Doctor Klench is chap who came to a crossroads in life and took a turning marked evil. He put his foot to the accelerator and he’s not stopping. Not for pedestrians, not for a picnic, not for a toilet break, not… I’m drifting.
- Interestingly, Professor Nebulous always realizes he's doing it, and stops himself with the remark, "I'm drifting."
- Frequently played with on Adventures In Odyssey, since TV Genius Eugene interprets all metaphors as Metaphorgotten. For example, when he gets offended when his future father-in-law calls Katrina's engagement ring a "mere trinket."
Eugene: Trinket? Mr. Shanks: Now, no offense, Eugene, but let's call a spade a spade. Eugene: Frankly, Mr. Shanks, if I had given Katrina a shovel, then we could call a spade a spade.
- Almost all of Humphrey Lyttelton's explanations
of how "One Song To The Tune Of Another" works in I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue do this, and the derail always ends the same way. For example:
Humphrey Lyttelton: Each member of a team is presented with a song from which the words have been omitted and replaced with the lyrics of a second song from which the tune has been discarded. Still not clear? Try to imagine you have two electric lamps but in one of the lamps the light bulb has failed. You could swap it over for the good one. It doesn't matter why one of them has failed, although it is almost certainly because you bought them cheaply from some dodgy market trader — their light bulbs are certainly good value but they do have a habit of going out if handled badly — they are not built to withstand rough treatment such as putting electricity through them. To be fair they probably work well enough where they come from, some sweatshop in Uzbekistan no doubt, where if the mains supply goes above 7 Volts they classify it as a power surge. Finally, in those places even a dead light bulb is considered something of a luxury compared with what they normally have. I know what you are thinking—what could possibly be more dim than a dead light bulb? At the piano we have Colin Sell.
Theater
Music
- From Tim Minchin's beat poem Storm: "I'm becoming aware that I'm staring / I'm like a rabbit, suddenly trapped / in the blinding headlights of vaccuous crap."
Video Games
- In Apollo Justice : Ace Attorney, Spark Brushel's metaphors are so convoluted that it's difficult to know whether they fall under this trope, Mixed Metaphor, or something else entirely.
- Kang the Mad, a character from Jade Empire, is a master of this trope. When asked how he can remote control his flyer: "Well, it's much like the dilemma of the centipede. If he relaxes and lets things happen, he can walk naturally all day long, his hundred legs not missing a step. But, if he thinks too hard about the complexity of what he's doing, those legs might crash into the teahouse and kill everyone. A valuable lesson."
- Whether or not he's doing it on purpose is debatable.
- Minsc says: "Lead evil by example, and one day it will no longer go tracking its great muddy bootprints across our lilywhite tiles of justice. Boo will have CLEAN WOOD SHAVINGS, you evil bastards!"
- The trailer of CnC Generals has the narrator say this:
- The enumeration of the aforementioned words is accompanied by scenes of the weapons they refer to wreaking havoc on troops and buildings.
- Noitu Love 2 has what I consider to be an example of this. At the end of Xoda's Story Mode, the final Boss and our heroes talk about the Villain's evil plan, where Almond says it is Playing God, but the villain retorts that they will Become God, and then goes back to the Heroes' statement, pronouncing, proudly, something along the lines of "It will be Just like playing with myself." I don't think they thought that through...
- Fawful from Mario And Luigi Superstar Saga tends to alternate between this and his own brand of engrish.
"Princess Peach's sweet voice will soon be the bread that makes the sandwich of Cackletta's desires! And this battle shall be the delicious mustard on that bread! The mustard of your doom!"
- Ghostbusters the Video Game has Egon's hilariously convoluted attempt at comparing the mandala that's causing all the ghost activity to a city bus line. Ray responds "You were going strong right up until the passengers got trapped inside the bus station."
Web Animation
- "If I had to choose a word to describe myself, that word would be 'Fluffy Puff Marshmallows'. Or Homestar. Either one, really. They both fit!"
- "My Internet is crawling along... like... something... funny. That crawls along."
- Strong Bad's attempt to compare emails to fish also counts.
Webcomic
- Used in this
Order Of The Stick comic
Armourer: ...you can't make an omlette without permanently deafening someone.
Black Mage: You can't make an omelette without...um...destroying a forest. Or something.
- Penny Arcade also has its share of silly metaphors and analogies.
Frank : When you make an omelette, sometimes you've got to kill a few people.
- They take another crack at it here.
Sometimes, the fruit is just fruit.
- And again
-
Victim: He beat me with a hammer until I went blind!
Police Officer: You know what else is blind? Justice. But Justice didn't get beat with a hammer. Justice is always blind. That's regular for Justice.
- Antihero For Hire, when the main character is describing the battle between him and his enemies.
Dechs: It's like a game of chess. It's their turn, and their strike can come at any moment from any direction, completely invisibly, and from multiple fronts all at once...
Wrench: Um, have you ever actually played chess?
Dechs: That's not important.
- From Sluggy Freelance:
Torg: It is a giant elevator to Hell with ghosts in the gas tank!
Riff: Elevators don't use gas tanks.
Torg: Right, bad analogy. How about... It's an inverted toaster popping the bread of us onto the "two eggs up, and a side of bacon" plate of Hell! With ghosts in the gas tank!
- Or:
Torg: Life is like a sandwich. Sometimes you eat it, and sometimes it eats you.
Riff: What kind of sandwich are we talking about here?
Torg: Pitbull salad sandwich.
- Ozy And Millie does this periodically. One example:
Avery: What are you, some kind of a Grammar Nazi? Millie: Yup. I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain, and now it's on to Grammar Poland and Grammar World Conquest! ... Ozy: Would this, ironically, make you an "analogy Nazi"?
- From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Woman: "Steve, you and I...we're like apples and oranges. I'm the oranges, and the oranges are doing your brother."
Also this strip shows how being absent-minded in the middle of a metaphor can have traumatic consequences.
- pictures for sad children attempts to explain how time travel works
:
Professor: Imagine time is a long corridor. At the end of the corridor there is a curtain. Are you with me so far? Behind the curtain there is a man. The man holds a black egg. A cat hatches from this egg. The cat screams with the voice of a man.
Web Original
- Comprises almost the entire Zero Punctuation at The Escapist
preview movie.
- This example from lonelygirl15 episode "Go For It :)", when Emma and Sarah are at the Grand Canyon:
Sarah: Welcome to the world's biggest metaphor. See, the, uh, cliff, it's like your power thingie (if it's real) and the canyon is your life, if you choose to accept it.
Emma: So you're saying I should jump?
Sarah: Um, bad metaphor.
- From Creative Juices' D&D PHB PSA's comes Steven of Tyler's description of a dragon:
Steven of Tyler: Well it was this dragon! This goddamn dragon. As large as a.. as large as a tree. A tree that was at least three times a normal tree's height.
- Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series has one too.
Joey: Remember, you treat a duel disk just like a woman. You fasten it to your arm and place trading cards inside it at regular intervals.
- Yugi's grandpa also gave us this disturbing example in a flashback:
Grandpa: Playing card games is just like making love. You do it on a table, and you feel deep shame after it's finished. Also, the older you get, the less fun it is. So remember, always wear a condom when playing card games.
[end of flashback]
Yugi: [looking at deck] Hmm...I should probably wash my hands after using these.
- This Youtube video
starts out with an apple and an orange representing two gay people who want to get married, and the potato representing someone who doesn't want them to do so. Then the guy says "But the potato is also a closet homosexual....," and turns the whole thing into a Shaggy Frog Story with fruit. And a potato.
- Another good example from Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog:
Penny: You're not really interested in the homeless, are you?
Dr. Horrible: No, I am, but... it's a symptom. You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on, consumes the human race. The fish rots from the head, so they say. So I'm thinking, why not cut off the head?
Penny: [pause] Of the human race?
Dr. Horrible: It's not a... perfect metaphor.
Cpt. Hammer: It's not enough to bash in heads/You've got to bash in minds !
- This entire Something Awful article
.
Western Animation
- In a Robot Chicken sketch about GI Joe and the Weather Dominator, a retired Duke compares his experience being forced by Cobra to fight mute ninja Snake Eyes ("in a desperate attempt to raise concession sales") as "As if the Nazis put the war on hold to make Eisenhower fight a mute dude in a ninja outfit."
- From The Simpsons:
Homer: Son, a woman is a lot like a refrigerator. They're six feet tall, 300 pounds... they make ice... umm... (Spots his can of Duff) Actually, a woman is a lot like a beer! They look good, they smell good, and you'd step over your own mother to get one! (Chugs his can of Duff) But you can't stop at one. You wanna drink another woman! (Chugs another can)
- And another time: "If horse racing is the sport of kings, then surely bowling is...a very good sport as well."
- From Futurama:
Fry: Amy, you know how you like chocolate, but then you get tired of it because it wants to hang out all the time? Amy: Huh? You don't like chocolate? Fry: Could chocolate let me finish?
- Freakazoid gives us this gem:
Freakazoid: Duty calls! Hello, Duty! I'm coming!
- The Tick ends practically every episode veering off into one of these.
- From Chowder:
"You see, Chowder, food is like life. And sometimes we bite off more life than we can chew. And then we're just puking life all over the walls, the ceilings, the expensive carpets..."
- And who has to clean up all that life?
- Schnitzel?
- That's right. Schnitzel.
- Ruby Rocket is based on this trope, particular its relationship to stereotypical noir-speak. Example here.
- Gwen from Ben 10 has a good one:
"Making steel is like baking a cake; mess up the recipe, and Element X won't bond to it!"
- From Family Guy:
''Peter: Forget it Lois, your brother is toast! Warm, buttery toast. Fat Guys: mmmm....
- The Venture Brothers gives us this one:
Phantom Limb: Revenge, like gazpacho soup, is best served cold, precise, and merciless. The Monarch: Yeah, you can never have too much precision in your soup.
Real Life
and
John and Mary had never met. They were like two humming birds who had also never met.
- "The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't" is an obvious reference to Hitchhiker's Guide and the Vogon ships...
- Tribute or rip off? It's potato/potato anyway.
- From CNN: "The campaign season is like the hurricane season," said Bill Schneider, CNN's senior political analyst. "Florida lies directly in its path. Hurricane Obama hit Florida, and Hurricane McCain. Tropical Storms Biden and Palin made landfall in the Sunshine State. The impact? Over the last two weeks, Barack Obama has been gaining support in Florida."
- Tim Schafer is really good at this. Since this is really long, just click here
and read the first question and answer.
- Much of the humor of Jack Handy's "Deep Thoughts" is derived from this trope.
- Entries for the Bulwer-Lytton
fiction contest frequently contain these.
- The Inbetweeners: "Women are like fairground rides, son. Fucking mental..."
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