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• I know this question is asked all too often, but why the hell would a channel called CARTOON NETWORK show LIVE ACTION? this just really pisses me off.
• Why do we give a crap about what the Kardashians are doing?
  • Bile Fascination?
• What would happen if Izzy from the Total Drama series became normal?
• You wash teatowels with a washer, right? And what would you use to wipe the washer if it got dirty? IT'S A CYCLE.
• Why are so many things only put with savoury stuff? Pasta, potato chips, lettuce, rice, couscous... I know it's traditional, but geez people, think outside the triangle. Sweet pasta sounds really nice! The same thing in reverse with pancakes and porridge...
• In a game where the goal is to fail, and you fail, that means you succeed. But that means you don't fail, so you fail to fail. But the goal is to fail so you succeed so you fail and...
• If you like being cynical you're not truly cynical because you're optimistic about cynicism.
• Is it legal to hunt down dragons with nuclear weapons?
• If There is no such thing as notability, then why do we have all those rules about what counts as a trope?
• If a slinky went all around the world, what would happen when the person in the middle let go?
• I think that they should have just carved Excalibur out rather than getting the local warrior to pull it out. At least that way the kingdom would go to the guy with the most friends.
• I always feel sorry for dragons, I mean heaven knows how long it takes them to get that gold back to their lair without any hands.
• Wouldn't it be cool if you had a song stuck in your head, and that song was about having a song stuck in your head, and then you wrote a song about it that gets stuck in peoples heads.
• You may be relieved to know that eggs are not, in fact, chicken fetuses.
• Why is there a 'correct' way to put on socks? Cause I've been putting on socks forever and there's never been anything wrong with them. Is it just for people good at putting on socks to express their superiority?
• Going by the logic of old Russin Reversal jokes, wouldn't you be safer? In Soviet Russia, you murder murderer, mug mugger, kill drunk driver in accident, the list goes on. a pperson could possibly even obtain immortality.
  • The problem is that seemingly inane things suddenly becomes dangerous. For instance, tree cuts you, car crashes you, and cow eats you.
  • And presumably immortality obtains you.
• Why is it whenever I look at fire, I think it's beautiful, until I think about how it's simply a natural chemical reaction of converting the various chemical compounds in wood into carbon, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and whatever the hell's in the smoke? It practically ruins the beauty of fire for me, and I love the beauty of fire, but it almost never fails to pop into my head.
  • The fire did not burn everything (most likely by a shortage of oxygen, the half burned stuff becomes smoke
  • Quick tip: never invite someone to sit by your rapid oxidation process. It never works.
• Could a cop with multiple personality disorder do Good Cop/Bad Cop with himself?
  • Possibly. The idea is that the suspect opens up to the "good" cop. If the suspect could be made to think of them as separate people then it could work. The real question is how someone with Multiple Personality Disorder would get on the force (claiming to be a member of the MPD perhaps?).
    • Someone with Multiple Personality Disorder couldn't get on the force, however someone who was multiple, but not disordered wouldn't have a problem as long as they didn't tell other people they were multiple (since if they did most people would automatically assume they were disordered.
• In a comic series that is still in the conceptual phase, I thought of a way of implement a mirror universe and a distaff universe, and just about every other type of alternate universe: A 'universe' as we imagine it (A defined set of planets and other existences) is actually a 'plane of existence,' each of which encompasses a different fictional universe and its alternates, and one of them is us. These planes of existences are akin to sheets of papers in a stack, so they can be parallel to each other. What I mean to say is that each stack of planes is a universe. While the characters and planets may not exactly be the same across each plane, there are some characteristics they have in common that define them as a universe, i.e. they have a planet Earth and humans and stars and etc. There may or may not be some sort of extradimensional being who exists for the sole purpose of shuffling these planes together, which may allow for travel between these planes of existence. These planes are also time-independent, so what travelers may believe to be their plane in the past may actually be a different plane in a different time than the travelers come from. Is any of this worth deeper exploration?
  • Yes. Yes, It is worth more exploration.
    • It's kind of been done already, until this happened...
• You ever have a really crazy chain thought? During March Break, I not only convinced myself I'm crazy, but I also convinced myself that I'm reeeallly in an asylum and that the entire world as we know it isn't real—I was just imagining it. Then I got a hold of myself three days after, realizing I felt very very sorry for my future enemies if I was doing this to myself. Surely I am not alone in this?
  • Not in the slightest. I once convinced myself I was literally nothing in the course of half an hour.
  • Yeah, my friend was talking to me about schizophrenia and managed to convince me the same thing.
    • That's called Med School Syndrome.
  • Once I woke up in the middle of night thinking that I was actually a robot and had just realized it, and I had to accomplish my mission. Eventually, I fell asleep. Once I awoke, I realized how stupid (and weird) that was.
  • Happened to me a lot when I was a wee lad. Used to have this crazy idea that the world was a completely different place for each individual. Meaning, through my POV, the world was populated by humans, and people spoke English, French, etc. But from the eyes of other folks, all the humans I saw may have been dolphins, or rats, or aliens or whatever. Used to get me pretty damn paranoid - Are my relatives really treating me nicely because of their "humanity"? Or is this just the alien's way of buttering up kids before devouring them?
  • I was conivinced for almost an hour that I had created the whole universe, being the only real one in it, and if I thought hard enough, I could destroy everything, or that if I died, the whole universe would disappear.
  • This is probably going to sound a bit lackluster compared to that stuff you other guys did, but whenever I hear a sound and nobody else is reacting to it, I almost immediately jump to the conclusion that nobody else can hear the sound and that I'm having an auditory hallucination and am therefore crazy. Nine times out of ten, this turns out not to be the case.
    • What about the remaining 10%?
  • One night I couldn't sleep. In the morning, I decided that the last night must've been a dream. But then I noticed how I'd moved the door during the 'dream'-it was still how I had moved it when getting a drink. Therefore, it wasn't a dream.
  • After reading the Cthulhu Chick Tract, including the prayer to the Elder Gods, I went to bed, waking up the following morning, absolutely sure that I had been violated by Cthulhu in my sleep. I consider this to be a success because the tract said that, after saying the prayer, you are to drive yourself to insanity. And, really, would a sane person believe that they were violated by Cthulhu in their sleep?
• I sometimes wonder: where does a series of complicated chemical reactions end and life begin? How do we even know it begins or ends? One argument against the Turing test (basically that a computer was intelligent if it could convince a human it was a fellow human) was that if you were to learn how to pass different boxes of English/Chinese words around you could translate Chinese to English and vice versa like a computer but clearly wouldn't know Chinese. The counter argument went that you were part of a system that could. With this in mind, how can we be sure that our interactions with each other as a society don't form an intelligence with the same sence of "self" we have as a collection of neurons?
  • So that's where patriotism comes from!
  • That depends on your definition of life. If you count life as something that can end (i.e. it is life when death can occur) then life begins when chemical reactions are self-sustaining - i.e. plants developing systems to draw nutrients from the ground. "Life", on the other hand, can also be defined as self-awareness, i.e. being aware of one's existence and place in the world. But then, that begs the question of animals, who certainly are more sentient than plants - horses trust one rider but not the other, the family cat prefers Dad to Mom - etc. Dogs are certainly aware of their place in the world thanks to pack structure, but are they truly sentient - and how is sentience defined? Is it being able to predict future consequences of past or current actions? Is it merely being aware of the difference between death and life? Where's the line? And where's my Ibuprofen, because this is giving me a headache?
    • This idea is actually coming to fore in the scientific community. Those who study microbial life and its impact have begun referring to larger organisms (specifically humans in this case) as "super-organism". That is, what we consider "our" bodies contain about ten times more microbial cellular tissue than "human"; thus, we are the sum of a massive community of individual species. Kinda makes you wonder what the Milky Way is thinking about right now...
  • Actually, you have hit upon the very topic that Hindu philosophers were debating nearly 2000 years ago. Buddha essentially made a philosophical breakthrough when he attained Moksha under the Bodhi tree, which resulted in Hinduism forking off into Buddhism. Buddha's breakthrough was that the "self" doesn't exist. Everything is the world is Maya(illusion). What we perceive as plants or animals or humans are really collection of organisms, and plants, humans, animals together can be considered as one organism. The sense that we have of us being differrent than other people is illussory. Traditionally, Buddhism has restricted itself on applying this philosophy to the question of sufferring. However, as Buddhism is becoming more and more popular in the West, a lot of people are going "Hmm.. there is something here that might have wider implications"
• Why is "positive" associated with good and "negative" associated with bad? Neither is good or bad in theory or in application, as far as I can tell. (Also, I am assuming that the words originated from the polarities.)
  • It's more likely they share a common root. Positive means the presence of something, negative means the absense (they got polarity mixed up, so negative is the presence of electrons rather than the other way around as it should be).
    • Err, no. Electrons carry a negative charge, yes, but the "absense" of electrons doesnt automatically mean a positive charge. Protons carry a positive charge.
  • It's because "positive" and "negative" charges as relate to electricity don't actually mean anything. They could have just as easily been called black and white charges, up and down charges, left and right charges, etc. They were chosen because they are opposite charges who nevertheless attract one another (the absence of something desires the presence of something) and because they can then use the same terminology as positive and negative numbers. The "good" and "bad" connotations came long before they were applied to polarity (think pre-Renaissance).
• It seems to me that the reason we never convirm supernatural or magical occurances is because once we study and understand something "supernatural", it ceases to be supernatural: we understand it, we've charted it, we've studied it. Therefore, it's not magic anymore, it's science.
  • congratulations, you are several steps closer to reinventing "the god of the gaps" wherein the supernatural is always something science doesn't know enough about...yet. With that yet getting smaller and smaller as we learn more and more about the universe.
    • fucking magnets, how do they work?
• Ok this troper's random thoughts have been piling up so she's blurting it all here.After dark is actually more of an after light. I finally understand what goth truly is. the keboard I'm using at shool to type this is missing the esc key and it's annoying. and finally, what's been confusing me for awhile, what is the proper plural of bigfoot?
  • "In order: Yes. Good for you. Bad luck. Sasquatches.
  • I think Bigfoot is a proper name. You know, like Pegasus!
  • Maybe Bigfeet?
    • sasquatch seems to be it's own plural form of..er..bigfootses.
• OK, has anyone else besides me played Final Fantasy VI, encountered this◊ sprite, and have to work to not mistake his horns for angry eyes or Kamina-shades? It was years before I realized that his eyes were those yellow dots further down the head.
  • I saw the entire right wing as its head.
  • I saw it as a 404 error.
• I realized today that I have three variations of popular personalities that most girls in anime have living in my house. They belong to my cats. One of them is a Keet, even though she's a girl, and I'm half sure she's got a little bit of Yandere mixed in her as well when she isn't grabbing to be the center of attention, she's picking fights with the other two. My second cat I swear is a type A Tsundere, because she ignores me all day but when everyone goes to bed and the other cats are around, she wont leave me alone. And if I quit petting her, she bites my ankle, and is also prone to fighting with the other two. My third cat is Tall, Dark, and Bishojo, or at least as much as a cat can be when she's white and orange. She wins most of the fights. I'm just incredibly glad I don't live in an anime that involves Cat Girls, or else I would be in serious trouble.
• Is it weird that when my dog wakes up from a nap, and I notice that his warm, dry nose smells like Fritos, I kind of enjoy it?
• Why do people muse?
  • Too much free time now that saber-toothed tigers are extinct and we don't have to chase our dinners down/beat them to death anymore.
• If 4Chan takes your soul, and websites like this, and Cracked.com, xkcd.com, so on and so forth, take your life, what happens to you if all you do is frequent those websites? I do so all the time, so... How am I still in existence?
  • There are three components: mind, body, and soul. If something happens to your mind, you'll simply vanish like a popped soap bubble.
  • So, then, I'm a zombie? Wait, a sentient zombie? I'm confuzzled.
  • You die of thirst, sleep deprivation, and starvation, in that order.
    • yes, but if something takes your life you automatically die
    • But don't you see? TV Tropes can't take your life because you've been dead all along.
• If comic-book villians are as smart as they are to come up with such diabolical schemes to "take over the world" or "take over Gotham", why don't they realize after multiple failed attempts that they're perpetually fucked and give up? I understand that a lot of them are persistent and don't have defeatist attitudes, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
  • Dr. Light did this once during the "NO KRYPTONITE" period. He essentially gave Superman a split personality, which thought Superman was trying to kill him, getting him to grab a magic wand and give it to some crooks, who he hired to take out Superman. (He "explained" this by saying that he'd realised he had the success rate of an overcooked squirrel, so would be letting other people do the legwork. This was way before he became Dr. Rape.)
• Is it just me or does paper sometimes smell like shellfish?
  • It's not just you. Sometimes smells just... mix. Sometimes my chin smells strangely like vomit. And some cleaning solutions have the scent of something... um... less than wholesome.
    • How could you know what your chin smells like?
    • Hey, what a coincidence. My chin smells like vomit sometimes too. Usually after I've vomited.
    • Either I found a mislabelled bottle, or vanilla essence smells like cold medicine.
  • Sometimes, sweat smells like skunk. I think cilantro tastes like soap. When I file my fingernails, it smells a little like burning hair. Bleu cheese smells and tastes like pure, inedible mold. Certain kinds of dark soil smell kind of sweet and almost chocolatey, especially the soil under hemlock trees.
    • Skunks have a modified sweat gland at the base of the tail that produces their stink. Hair and fingernails are both made of keratin; when you file your nails, it causes friction that makes some of that keratin oxidize, producing the burnt hair smell. Bleu cheese is made with mold. Not sure about the cilantro or the soil though.
• When a character has the power of time control, what kind of range does that have? If it doesn't span the entire universe, then we could have a serious issue on our hands, couldn't we?
  • This troper is a Dwarf Fortress player. His initial reaction was "If this works, how can we use this to kill goblins and elves?"
• What would happen if you were asked, "Would you kindly live forever?"
  • Not sure if that would undo the laws of life and death themselves... but what would "Would you kindly live?" do to you?
    • Fail to kill you for at least a few seconds, probably.
• For all of my random thoughts, there are some when asked, I always get conflicting answers. One of them really seems simple enough to answer "Does an invisible person have a shadow?". I've never gotten a concrete answer from that.
  • If you can see the shadow they cast, I don't think they count as invisible since you still have a way to see them.
• Who is Number 1?
  • You are number 6 (punctuation intentionally left out.)
• Why do I identify myself as a Cloudcuckoolander but I can't actually type out my musings here? I do it in real life, and online all the time, but when I get to this page my mind goes blank.
  • I had a really good response to this, but I forgot it when I started editting this page. Maybe it's a curse all Cloudcuckoolanders experience. Maybe it's a curse that will slowly spread over the entirety of humanity as society collapses all ar— Ooh, a penny!
• Some people say my electro music just repeats the same phrase over and over again. I like it though—it's like a mantra.
• Some people say my electro music just repeats the same phrase over and over again. I like it though—it's like a mantra.
• In the Bible, after Cain kills Abel, it says, "And he went forth into the land of Nod, and there he knew his wife". Where did she come from? God lets us know when he makes people, so why did he drop the ball here?
  • The Bible commonly leaves out any females that are born in family lines. Cain's wife was his likely one of his sisters, given to him as an inheritance so his line wouldn't die out. That is the explanation given in the Talmud, sort of like an annotated and extended version of some books in the Old Testament: Cain and Abel each had a twin sister, and Cain married Abel's twin and vice versa.
    • Eeeewwwww. Simplest explanation: the primitive people who wrote the thing knew squat about genetics.
    • second simplest explanation is that it's a frikkin' fairy story (and it doesn't make you a better person by having an invisible friend)
    • third, in-universe acceptable answer is that there were 2 periods of creation, the first when god made all animals first and "mankind" last, the second (genesis 2) being when god made two humans specifically to put them in the garden, namely Adam and Eve (you did know there are two genesis/creation accounts? no? ...beats me why people claim to be christian when atheists know their myths better, but still...). In this interpretation, any members of humanity from the first creation are not burdened with original sin and would have non-squickily provided the unnamed chattel^w wives.
    • you're welcome.
    • Correct me if I'm wrong, but if God created Adam and Eve with perfect DNA (by which I mean, barring mutations, none of their children could have genetic disorders), then wouldn't the odds of Cain's kids having genetic disorders also be extremely low?
    • Indeed. Incest is a problem today because people who are of the same family tend to share the same DNA sequences, which means the chance of negative traits (and negative mutations) being passed on is significantly high. By comparisson, two sterling samples of DNA should be able to interbreed for several generations with little to no effect, and by that time the family tree branches should be far enough apart. Of course, I'm no geneticist...
    • Of course, this just proves that Adam and Eve were the smartest people who ever lived.
    • Does this mean that reptiles are genetically pure? I know for a fact that they can interbreed for quite a few generations before any genetic defaults emerge, but...crap I just forgot...
  • Do Adam and Eve have navels? If they don't, then they're—at the very least—anatomically different from every other homo sapiens who ever lived (and it could be argued that they're not the same species as us). If they do, then:

1. Were they born? Who were their parents?

• that's not funny, because either they a) didn't exist or b) weren't born, they were made. endless fields where humans are not born but...wait, wait, sorry, keanu isn't jesus.

1. Did God put "navels" there, just so their kids wouldn't wonder why they looked different? Or...
2. As a Mind Screw to anyone reading this?
   • by the way, you are now breathing on manual.

• If a war took place, and Frank West wasn't there to cover it, did the war really happen?
  • Yes. Frank West wasn't on Cybertron, and there's no denying there was a war there.
• If you mixed Large Ham and Bad Bad Acting at the same time, what would the result sound like?
  • Kenneth Branagh and Hayden Christensen have a lovechild with severe colic.
• Why does the word "ginger," as a description of hair or fur, mean red/orange when ginger, the spice, is pale tan?
  • Because British people are weird.
  • Perhaps it's got something to do with the taste of ginger being hot/spicy?
  • Maybe they're looking at gari?
  • It could be based on the color of ginger root — the skin instead of the edible part. For some reason, I always assumed people meant "cinnamon-coloured" and were somehow confused about their spices.
• In the Beginning was the Word. OK, no problems there. But logically that means the Word is a preposition. How come you get to start everything with a preposition, and you aren't allowed to finish one damn sentence with one?
  • Proposition ≠ Preposition.
  • "Word" is an obvious-but-misleading translation of λόγος, i.e Logos. Theologians and philosophers have been throwing fits and tangling themselves into mental pretzels over this one for approx. 2,000 years.
• If you lost your willing suspension of disbelief in "Real Life", what would happen to your mind? What happens if you become so cynical that you twist the nature of your mind and approach idealism from the other end? In the end, is idealism or cynicism a smarter life choice?
  • In answer to the first question, you learn to defy gravity by speaking in a language that sounds like you have a problem in English. Which is probably what happened to Homsar.
  • You'd find the white rabbit.
  • You'd become Haruhi Suzumiya
    • Oh Christ...
  • You call yourself a Nihilist and start wearing leather.
    • But why leather?
    • Why NOT leather?
  • You become aware of that which goes beyond human comprehension.
    • Alternatively, the cake won't be a lie.
  • Human Instrumentality
• I had red velvet ice cream and then sampled someone's vanilla ice cream. Why does that mix taste EXACTLY like ham?
  • It's color logic. Assuming the red velvet ice cream was red and the vanilla was white, it makes pink. And what's pink? Ham. You should be glad it didn't taste like flamingo.
• If a red house is made of red bricks, and a blue house is made of blue bricks, and a green house is made of glass, then should I not paint my house green?
  • Just don't throw any stones.
  • Having extensively played Dwarf Fortress, it's possible that the green house is in fact made from green glass. This would also mean that the red house is made of realgar blocks, and the blue house is made from cobaltite or kimberlite blocks. If you're a little more lax about what's red and what's blue, you can substitute more plentiful bauxite and microcline blocks.
  • What is an "outhouse" made of?
    • Recycled closets.
    • Three strikes?
    • To give a serious answer to an obviously humorous question: Wood or sometimes bricks.
• Did bad guys in Medieval England hold their longbows sideways to look cool? Is that where someone got the idea for crossbows from? And isn't a crossbow held sideways just a regular bow anyway?
  • Yes, until the bolt falls off.
    • there were no gangsta archers. I'm pretty sure, although they did invent flipping the bird.
    • Actually, the Greeks used the finger long, long before the Battle of Agincourt, although they pointed with it. Simply holding it up was a warning (ie don't make me use this).
  • Crossbows are much more akin to pistols than to bows. They hold the tension of the bow for you, so you can have it ready to fire and still have a free hand (though this depends on the size/weight of the bow and your own mighty/weak strength).
    • They would only be semi-automatic if you didn't have to, ya know, reload them after each shot. And you also have to wind the bow up again.
  • Somebody should make a movie where the hero fights bad guys while dual-wielding autoloading crossbows. It should be medieval so the hero can wear chainmail and a cape while diving slowly through the air. Also things in it should explode a lot. Kinda like the character's fantasy version of Hamlet in Last Action Hero. "To be or not to be..." <BOOM> "...not to be."
    • you mean like Van Helsing?
    • On that note, How the hell does an automatic crossbow even work?
    • Gas operated.
    • What? Where does the gas come from? Gah!
    • Actually there really is such a thing as a "repeating crossbow" which used a single, lever-opperated mechanism to both pull back the string and place the bolt (which was kept in a refillabe magazine of bolts permanently afixed to the top of the bow area), which is believed to have been invented by the Chinese in the 4th century B.C. Its still a two-handed weapon (one hand on the trigger, the other on the lever) but it has a much higher rate of fire. There's also an alternate design that used a hand-crank hooked up to something similar to a bicycle chain-drive allowing an even higher rate of fire. And no, it still could not be wielded Gangsta Style.
• Why wasn't there a trained medic amongst "all the king's horses and all the king's men" that could put Humpty Dumpty back together again? Would you need a chef for that instead? And are horses even allowed to practice medicine?
  • Urban Legend says Humpty Dumpty was a royalist cannon during The Cavalier Years. It sat on a wall, fell down, was broken. The king's men couldn't put it back together again. (since it would have had to be re-cast from scratch)
  • Who decided Humpty Dumpty was an egg anyway? It doesn't say anywhere in the rhyme.
    • Originally, the rhyme was a riddle and the answer was that humpty dumpty was an egg. This is so well known now that few know it was ever an answer.
  • Still, though, why the hell would they need the "King's horses" to help put him back together?
    • Maybe they mean cavalry troops. Although how they could help is anyone's guess.
    • As I understand it, the line in modern terms would read 'all the king's knights and all the king's servants'. That doesn't scan, though.
    • The tale I was told was that Humpty Dumpty was an accused traitor who was sentenced to hang. At the last minute he was proven innocent and a mounted messenger was sent galloping to stop the execution. Of course they were too late.
  • You're right: it doesn't. Perhaps the fragility of an egg is symbolic of whatever delicate, broad ideal Humpty Dumpty is supposed to represent...
    • And eggs are a fertility symbol... Humpty Dumpty didn't use protection! Wow, I never thought of it that way.
  • Really, you'd need a champion jigsaw-puzzle assembler. Though that doesn't consider Mr. Dumpty's internals.
    • Considering medics and jigsaws didn't exist in the Dark Ages, Dumpty was a lost cause.
  • I saw at least one story in which it was admitted that bringing in the horses did indeed just make things worse. The king apologized for that afterward.
• What are they going to call the sixty-fourth installment of the Super Mario series? Someone obviously wasn't thinking ahead.
  • Super Mario XVI's Multiverse.
  • Alternately, they'll call it Super Mario Not Sixty-Four. Same formula with the 128th.
  • Super Mario 4D 3: Quantum
  • Super Mario Sixty-Four is the sixty-fourth Mario game. Super Mario 64, on the other hand is a game for N64.
• If Square-Enix ever decides to stop making Final Fantasy games, what will they call the last one?
  • The Final Final Fantasy?
    • Before "Final Final Fantasy" would be "Penultimate Fantasy".
  • If going backwards it would end at "First Fantasy".
  • Maybe the simple approach: No, Really, This Is The Last One.
  • WHO ARE WE KIDDING!?
  • Final Crisis
  • Grand Finale Fantasy? Distant Finale Fantasy? Deadly Distant Finale Fantasy?
  • Ultimate Fantasy sounds kind of cool.
  • Last Fanstasy
  • Following the apparent convention of gaming companies, they'll be defiant (and clueless) to the last breath, prompting them to release Final Fantasy 50 and then turning around and going "what the hell happened" as the company spirals down in flames...
  • I would think it'd be called "The End of the Fantasy".
  • Well, Final Fantasy wasn't intended to become the massive cash-cow it is now. It was more the last attempt by Squaresoft at a game, hence "Final". Tbis is why the Dead or Alive series is named, as it was a Dead Or Alive scenario based on the game's success.
  • If it's "The End of the Fantasy", they'd have to call it "Reality".
  • First Fantasy
• If Disney keeps making Pirates of the Caribbean movies, what the hell are they going to do when Johnny Depp reaches 65? Will they come up with titles like Pirates of the Caribbean: Alzheimer's Sets In?
  • Well, they pulled it off with Indiana Jones...
  • Would Alzheimers even be noticable in Jonny Depp's portrayal of Jack Sparrow?
    • You mean Captain Jack isn't supposed to have Alzheimer's yet?
    • he probably caught it, then caught a different godawful STD which killed it.
    • Wait what? You can't CATCH Alzheimer's. It's not an STD.
• Who came up with the idea that vampires should sleep in wooden coffins but can be killed with wooden stakes? If they roll around in wooden coffins, couldn't they get splinters in the chest or back? Couldn't splinters count as tiny stakes?
  • Splinters don't go straight through the heart, though.
  • Aside from Buffy's instant-immolation-and-self-cleaning-vampires, staking seems like it would take a *lot* of effort. I mean, people have a rib cage and sternum for a reason! A human probably couldn't roll a splinter straight into their heart, either... or even roll onto a stake and have it go all the way in.
  • No idea, but how's this for a weapon for when the fantasy monsters begin turning up? Two back-to-back guns, with a dual trigger array, one loaded with silver rounds and the other with wood-tips. There's a flamethrower mounted on one side, with additional fuel tanks and an attached light on the other side (the light has UV included for added vamp-killing). The bayonet is steel with silver insets, and the stock contains an acid vent.
    • This pertains to my interests and I wish to subscribe to your weapon catalogue.
    • Eh, sounds a little unwieldy to me.
    • No, no, wait! Let's have a tank with all of that stuff on it.
    • I think Rifts already does.
• In Anime, almost everyone has pointy hair. Artistic style aside, how would their hair stay pointy? The characters are never seen with hair gel, and what about bed-head? And wouldn't it interfere in the environment around them, like when someone sits behind them at the movies?
  • Not everyone has pointy hair; the real question is why colors like green and purple are so common.
    • Pointy hair is easy to draw, and makes for a neat visual. Also, a lot of characters with pointy hair are supposed to look as though they have bedhead. As for colors, it makes it really easy to tell characters apart without having to put in a lot of effort to actually focus on details like facial structure.
  • I've heard plaster can support anime-style hair.
  • All anime character's scalps create hair gel. It is scientific FACT!
    • Not all. It is, in fact, canon that Shobu Kirafuda's hair gel is store-bought. (Or, at the very least, not secreted from his scalp; the product is mentioned and named, though how it is obtained is not gone into, though it can be assumed that someone purchased it; the Kirafudas don't seem like the shoplifting type.)
  • It's not actually hair. It's feathers. Anime characters are evolved from birds. What you're actually seeing is a crest produced by what, in their prehistory, would have been the crest of an alpha male or alpha female. That's also why the ones with the pointiest and brightest hair tend to the The Determinator.
• Why is it that "look right through me" and "see right through me" mean completely opposite things? Who came up with the English language anyway?
  • The English.
    • That explains a lot.
  • Also, "oversee" and "overlook" have roughly opposed meanings.
  • Because seeing isn't necessarily looking. Looking is active; seeing is passive.
  • Hey, while we're at it, why does one tend to see more fields on a road trip and more roads on a field trip? Headscratchers.
  • A wise guy is roughly the opposite of wise man.
  • A house burns up while simultaneously burning down. In addition, you have to be sitting down in order to be sitting up.
  • Why do we drive on a parkway & park in a driveway? Wrap your mind around that!
    • Because you touch yourself at night.
    • also, santa claus is your parents.
  • Stupid nouns modifying other nouns. A house cat and a cat house are completely different things somehow!
• If the 10th Doctor is Barty Crouch and Edward Cullen is Cedric Diggory, then wouldnt it stand to reason that Barty/The Doctor being a part of Cedric Dickery's Death in the "Goblet of Fire" means that he is/they are the reason he's dead and thats the reason he was able to become undead in the first place? Think about the crazy Time Lord powers and Magic at work...
• If tortillas in Spain are more like fritatas, what do they wrap burritos and such in?
  • Also, if "tacos" is a slang word for "curse words" in Spain, then why is an ever-popular Mexican food called a "taco?" Does that mean they're eating swear words?
    • In south america, when you eat tacos, you are eating Shoes, Swear words and/or traffic. YES
    • Eef I were to make you a chalupa, I would have to go to the lumber yard and orter feefty board feet of southern yellow pine in one-by-twlelve slats because a chalupa EES! A! SMALL! BOAT! Eet ees A SMALL BOAT!
• Why is it always "how much wood could a woodchuck chuck?" It works with other bisyllabic words. I'd like to hear "How many monks could a monkey key?", or something, occasionally.
  • How many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol Horde got bored?
    • ARRRGH! THAT WAS MINE DAMMIT!
  • How much Norris would a Chuck Norris chuck if a Chuck Norris could chuck Norris?
  • How many nuns could a nunchuk chuck if a nunchuk could chuck nuns?
  • How many tropes could a troper trope if a troper could trope tropes?
  • How many piranhas could a Piranha Plant plant if a Piranha Plant could plant piranhas?
    • And besides, a woodchuck would chuck as much wood as he could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
  • How many cans could a cannibal nibble if a cannibal could nibble cans?
  • How much buffalo could a Buffalo buffalo buffalo?
  • How many falcons could Captain Falcon captain if Captain Falcon could captain falcons?
  • How many wabbajacks could a wabbajack jack if a wabbajack wabbajack wabbajack wabbajack . . .
• In Batman: The Animated Series, why does Gotham's sky always have a reddish hue? Do Gotham's various industries produce so much smog that polluted air molecules give the sky its color? Or is it a way of showing God's displeasure with the sinfulness of Gotham? The world may never know...
  • They say the fucking smog is the fucking reason you have such beautiful fucking sunsets.
  • Because it looks cool, why else?
  • It's the Aurora Borealis. At every time of year. At every time of day. In that part of the country. Localized entirely within Gotham.
  • For the same reason the sky in Haibane Renmei is green. And sometimes yellow. And so forth.
  • Red Sky At Evening is a trope. I'm trying to remember what else I've seen it in.'
    • And for that matter, why is it always evening/night in Gotham?
    • Because bats only go out at night, duh.
    • Presumably for the same reason it's always daytime in Metropolis.
    • Are Metropolis and Gotham the same city at different times of day?
    • I once heard that Gotham was supposed to be New York at night and Metropolis was supposed to be New York during the day.
    • I thought Gotham was New York and Metropolis was Chicago...
    • Flip those. Metropolis is generally accepted to be Manhattan. Gotham is usually acknowledged as being either Chicago, or somewhere in New England (usually Boston).
  • Boring but obvious answers: 1) Light pollution from streetlights and such. (Lots of dark alleyways, though.) 2) Rule of Drama.
    • As a follow up the second point, the backgrounds in BTAS were actually airbrushed onto black construction paper. This was apparently a completely new idea and some people even took it so far as to say they'd invented a new genre of art, calling it "dark deco."
  • The whole series takes place during Crisis on Infinite Earths?
• Who the hell is Rubik, and WHY did he invent that damn cube? Was he trying to drive half the world insane?
  • A math professor trying to get his students to understand 3-D space. The real question is, where are all these amateur inventors getting access to plastic manufacturing plants??
    • I don't know how they do it, but if said amateur inventors didn't get access to plastic manufacturing plants, then we would not only be missing Rubik's Cubes, but other entertaining things as well, like Frisbees.
  • Maybe he invented it so that it could be a plot point in The Pursuit of Happyness to show the stock broker person how brilliant Will Smith's character was.
• Wouldn't the world be just so much more fun if cars were made of rubber? It would definitely make a spectacle out of car crashes!
  • For that matter, our city has buses called "Silberpfeil", meaning "silver arrow". So... if a werewolf's hit by one of those, does it die?
    • For that matter, could you kill a werewolf by throwing a Coors Light can at it?
    • He'd duck. The question is, what would happen if he drank it?
    • He'd go "Bleargh!" and beat your stupid ass until you gave him a good beer.
  • But then the phrase "Burn rubber" would lose all meaning. Also, less relevantly, the cars would probably not work.
    • I would think it would gain even more meaning.
• Osaka is so like me.
  • I know, right? Weird.
  • My brother told me that once while we were watching Azumanga Daioh for the first time and i actually went through the Seven Stages of Sorrow.
    • There are usually only five. What are the other two? ...Ah, screw it, I'll just google it... And... It turns out there's a version with seven. Is it bad that I'm disappointed you didn't make two up?
  • Wow... I'm not alone... So, did you ever spend a night (inspired by AzuDai) thinking about what order you would kill your friends if you were a serial killer?
    • I don't have friends for precisely that reason. I'm indecisive. Past that, though, I'd say a good policy would be "First alone, first killed".
    • I did it just now and it took me five seconds.
    • Well, I certainly am now...
    • I actually spent some time discussing this, going over what order it would happen and how each would be done. Then I realized that I was discussing this with my friends, five minutes later.
    • I actually had a dream that consisted of nothing but killing all my friends. I told it to them, they found it funny. It was pretty funny. Hehe. Good times...
    • I discussed it with my friends once while we were in middle school before actually seeing the show, they didnt think it was as funny as i did.
  • Near the end of the series, Osaka decides to become a schoolteacher. How much does tuition at the Cloud Cuckoo Land Academy cost?
    • Your soul. Or a 12-inch pizza and regular Pepsi, I forget which.
• Would there ever be a practical use for a "Boomerang grenade" or for that matter a "Bug zapper/bird feeder" that switches its function automatically at regular intervals?
  • The Boomerang Grenade will probably be sold by Nietzsche fanboys trying to reduce the amount of idiots in the world.
  • And I applaud them, when I'm not counting myself among them.
  • The Bug Zapper/Bird Feeder thing just sounds like it would be hilarious to watch.
    • For Science!, naturally.
  • The Boomerang Grenade could be useful if it could be repeatedly primed and deactivated, and exploded not after a certain time interval but upon a strong impact. This way, it would only detonate if it hit its target, but you could try again if you missed... almost exactly the purpose of a normal boomerang.
• What would happen if River Tam ended up with the God Hand?
  • More importantly, would she have any faults after recovering from her little mishap?
• Why would we NOT want to be conformist? We're surrounded by people. Our social groups give us support, and new things to enjoy. Sure, there's the whole issue of "if everybody else jumped off a cliff," but this can make it very easy to have a lot of friends and relatively few enemies. As for avoiding conformity... well, there are a number of reasons for it. I'll say it's human curiosity and the need to find new things that people can enjoy. If you can bring something to others that they've never seen before and can still enjoy, then you will be appreciated for it.

  • And then there are those people that strive to be "non-conformist" and hang out with other such non-conformists, effectively becoming conformist to a preconceived notion of non-conformity...

  • Well, if you're constantly looking to others for your opinions and preferences then you're not really an independent person, are you? If you don't do anything by yourself and require other people's attention to work, that would be a pain in the assC this can make it very easy to have a lot of friends and relatively few enemies. As for avoiding conformity... well, there are a number of reasons for it. I'll say it's human curiosity and the need to find new things that people can enjoy. If you can bring something to others that they've never seen before and can still enjoy, then you will be appreciated for it.
    • And then there are those people that strive to be "non-conformist" and hang out with other such non-conformists, effectively becoming conformist to a preconceived notion of non-conformity...
  • Well, if you're constantly looking to others for your opinions and preferences then you're not really an independent person, are you? If you don't do anything by yourself and require other people's attention to work, that would be a pain in the ass for the others. Additionally, your opinion can't be trusted, because not only is it not made from an independent point of view, it also means you can't be arsed to think, but can only copy-paste someone else's opinion. Thirdly, you are always alone with your thoughts, always, so someone who can't be alone with their thoughts probably means they've got some sort of mental illness. Fourthly, maybe those people who aren't conformist go: "Aw man, I worked hard to be self-reliant, and I'm better that way, so screw those that didn't put the effort in being independant!"
  • This troper's instinctive reaction to all discussions of conformity/nonconformity: Be Yourself.
    • Problem with that is the implicit assumption, inherent in too many people who use that phrase, that it's impossible to "be yourself" and still agree with the mainstream. "Free thinkers," "Realists," and "Progressives," have the same problem.
  • This troper has a theory that the amount of time a person spends trying to be nonconformist is inversely proportional to how interesting and unique they really are.
    • Makes sense. The more time you spend conforming to nonconformity, the less you have to spend of developing your own interests.
  • Ask this question of a gay, black, hispanic, asian, middle eastern, jewish or muslim person in America. Or, if you like, a white person in Japan or a christian in Iran. Hell, go ask the kid (unless you were that kid) from back in school, how much fun it was to be the weirdo. Nobody appreciates how hard it is to be different until they are. And sometimes, they still can't apply their experience to other people's hardships and heartbreaks. Sad, innit?
    • As an teenage Asian Atheist Anarchist sci-fi nerd living in America, I can say from experience that the trick is to just not care about what other people think about you. This is actually much harder than it looks (most people who try it eventually fall into playing up the shocking, which is just a different kind of careing what others think of you), but once you get the trick, it really does work. It's not really something that you can learn from someone else, though; you just have to figure it out on you own.
  • My hunch is that nonconformists make more money. Or maybe they have the shot at doing so; in other words, they get to experience the more extreme aspects of life. Also, how many people think of themselves as conformist and just accept it?
• If all of the water on Hoth is frozen, how can it ever snow? How does the water get back into the air?
  • Maybe it's magic snow, like on that Buffy the Vampire Slayer Christmas Episode, "Amends."
    • Much easier than that: it's not snowing. It's like a sandstorm, except with snow. The snow is blowing at you, driven by the wind. The layer of snow never thaws and refreezes, and nothing ever walks on it, so it's reasonable to assume that it is fairly 'powdery', allowing the wind to carry it.
    • Hoth has seas. Look closely at the southern hemisphere when the movie starts.
    • More to the point, is there an extremely warm planet in the Star Wars 'verse called "Coldth"?
    • Only if it's in the Bible, like all the other planet/country names George Lucas used.
• When all is said and done, will we look back on this and laugh?
  • Most definitely!
    • Why wait? Laugh now. Muahahaha... hahaha... HAHAHAHAHA!
    • Heh heh heh. . . . . wait. . . . I don't get it
• Why the heck do we think about this stuff? Do we just have too much free time on our hands?
  • Exactly. Without the need to spend all our time seeking food or shelter, we can think about other things.
    • We think, therefore we are.
    • we think we think, therefore we think we think we are
    • Alternately, we are; therefore we think.
    • We are human, therefore we think.
    • ...but even if I'm very busy, I can't seem to stop thinking on multiple tracks, always!
    • I don't think, therefore I am not?
    • That raises an interesting point. If someone apologises, claiming that "I wasn't thinking", are they admitting to a brief period of nonexistence, or at least non...human...ness?
• If Fate Testarossa and Fate Averruncus were to fight, would said fight be called the "Duel of the Fates"?
• In the seventy years since the Superhero has been part of Western (and, increasingly, other) popular culture, why do we never hear of people in Real Life dressing in costume and trying to fight crime? (Yes, this troper is aware of "safety/environmental mascot" costumed "heroes," but that's not what he's talking about.) My theory is that people have tried it on occasion, and gotten themselves either killed or injured and/or committed, but police and/or hospital staff have suppressed all such incidents in order to discourage copycats.
  • There are a few people who dress up funny and wander around the city. As far as this troper knows, they don't accomplish anything significant; they seem to focus on relatively minor things like helping motorists and encouraging people not to drive drunk. Most of them seem to have Myspace pages.
  • There has been at least one real supervsive ordnance.
• Why is Superman called Superman? I mean, he's not a man, and when compared to his own race, he really isn't all that super. And how does he hide the cape under his normal clothes?
  • Firstly, he's not. He's called Kal-El. He was just dubbed Superman by, I assume, the residents of Metropolis (can a comic nerd please confirm?), and how would they know he's an alien? Secondly, it's not all that bulky a cape, but I agree that he'd have to dress very carefully to conceal it.
  • What do you mean he's not a man? The bulge between his legs disagrees with you.
    • What is a man? A miserable bulge between his legs!
  • What I'm more interested in is how he is so damn super that he can conceal his identity without the need for a mask, unlike other superheroes.
    • He subconsciously uses Super Hypnosis, amplified by his glasses, which hypnotizes people into just seeing Clark Kent, and not Superman. And this hypnosis can be transmitted by TV. I Am Not Making This Up. That was the actual explanation.
    • Cool. So why does he not use this super hypnosis to just stop crime without any fighting?
    • Maybe he just likes to beat people up?
    • Ooh. You just cleared my mind. It's like that tree falling in the woods...
• What would happen if Shiki bumped into the Aizen's Couch? Would the world exist after such a confrontation?
• Brought over for your perusal: What would happen if Jack Bauer mentioned Candle J..."that guy"?
  • Jack would try to jack Jack but Jack would fend Jack off with a jack. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, but Jack can't jump a jack (unless it's a jumping jack) and thus would be entirely jacked up. Jack and Jack would then settle their dispute with a game of jacks.
    • And spend the rest of the night jacking each other off? Oh God, that was low.
• Does the Swedish Chef's puppeteer really know what the Chef is supposed to be saying or is he just smashing garbled syllables together and making the Chef do explanatory hand gestures? Or is it some weird combination of both?
  • Well, some of his dialogue vaguely resembles English, so I'm guessing there's some kind of script, unless the puppeteer ad-libbed that too...
  • Word Of God: Jim Henson said in an interview that the Swedish Chef routines that came out best were the ones he and Frank Oz (who did the arms) didn't rehearse.
• Would it be possible to glue 2 magnets together on the poles that repel each other? If so what would happen? Maybe the glue would "fail" resulting in the magnets "flying" apart? Would it have military potential? Perhaps as a "quiet" mine or grenade?
  • If you were to create a glue that could bond magnets powerful enough to cause injury when expelled away from each other, yet decay at a constant, known rate, then I'm sure you could find a better use for it. Also, they'd be dangerously lethal to build compared to conventional explosive ordnance.
  • You could do it with a strong enough glue, or perhaps by welding. They would just stick together until the bond weakens or is destroyed. You could use some chemical or acid released onto the connection between the magnets using a trigger or timer. Although they could get past many explosive detection tools, the powerful magnetism would tip off airport security. You could use it to attack a lab that regularly uses supermagnets and wouldn't find it suspicious.
    • You wouldn't be able to weld the magnets together. Ferromagnetic materials lose their properties if their temperature is too high. And the temperature required for welding far exceeds that limit. Perhaps you could keep the magnets together with some manner of catch or clip that, when released, would send it shooting off at the target. But, again, you'd need something really freakin' strong for it to work with lethal force.
• If Death Note, Code Geass, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, XxxHOLiC, and other series that run on Gambit Pileups were to combine, would the result be called the Mother Of All Pileups?
  • This troper dares anyone, anyone at all, to write a good crossover with all of those. And throw in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni just for kicks.
    • Bonus points for adding The World Ends With You to the mix.
    • How about adding Nabari No Ou as well, for the confusion over the exact definition of Kira that would result?
    • And while you're at it, how about mixing in a dash of ASOIAF. Just imaging the epicness of the Plans that Littlefinger would employ in order to get into Misa Amane's pants.
    • ...well, shoot. Now this troper's going to be devoting the next few years or so reading through all of the above, tracking down every little detail about them, and finding out how they could mesh while staying in canon. On a side note, I'm getting excited picturing Death Note's shinigami meeting TWEWY's shinigami.
  • And throw in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory just to see what happens.
  • Would this be complete without the likes of David Xanatos himself and a little Neon Genesis Evangelion(Just for the Mind Screw?).
• A few months ago, I was thinking randomly of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where the Enterprise's crew had their minds erased, and Riker ended up sleeping with Ro. The question I had in my head was "do they still use condoms in the 24th century?"
  • They probably have contraceptive implants, like the ones mentioned in Honor Harrington.
  • Deep Space Nine mentioned contraceptive injections. I'm sure they have a great "morning after" injection, but what about STDs?
    • Their medical technology fluctuates. Sometimes, all it takes is a little pill to regrow a bone or a kidney.
• If Video Games are the new movies, and Nintendo is Disney, what does that make Square?
  • Pixar.
  • What? No. Valve or Blizzard is Pixar. Square is more like...Lucasfilm. In ye olden times, it was amazing, but the newer the work, the more special effects-driven and contrived it is.
    • Valve is totally Pixar. Releases often enough, always has special features, appeals to all kinds of people, has yet to disappoint. If Blizzard were Pixar, we'd only have Toy Story 1-3 and it would have taken 5 years between each one.
    • Good sir, I believe Lucasarts would be Lucasfilm.
• If Haruhi met Azula, would Azula rape Haruhi, or would Haruhi rape Azula?
  • Yes.
  • Each other?
    • This is just begging to be made into a fanfic. ?
    • Someone obviously forgot Rule 34 - it already is one.
    • Well, I didn't just want to say "ZOMG LINKS PLZ", since I figured that would be rude. That said: ZOMG LINKS PLZ. (And if it's even slightly WAFFy, that's even better. :D)
    • A WAFFy double rapefic featuring Haruhi and Azula? On that note, I have just come up with proof that reality is no longer real. STATEMENT: Should such a fic exist, reality itself would be so overwhelmed by the awesomeness that it would just give up and die. STATEMENT: Apply Rule 34 liberally, and there you have it. STATEMENT: Everything is true. STATEMENT: Everthying is false. STATEMENT:[[supersecretspoiler:fnord]]
    • OH SHI- works for the final statement as well. :D
  • That could never happen, because Haruhi is Azula! She can't rape herself. She's tried.
  • On a related note, what would happen if Haruhi met the other Haruhi?
    • The world would explode in an awesomeness bomb.
• Okay, so I was just thinking—now, I know what you're going to say, but, please, bear with me, okay? And don't hold your breaths, this might get long... Anyway, as I was saying, I was just thinking about no-one less than Santa Claus. Oh yeah, speaking of which, you should stop reading by now if you're under 13 years old, value your childhood Chistmas memories and/or cannot take a joke. It all started out as a quite innocent train of thought revolving around how the spreff Santa is able to remain intact while giving out all those presents. I mean, he, a seriously overweighted man, has to deliver TONS of presents to uuhm... 6,78 million divided with so and so, carry the 2... Ridiculously many households in just about 48 hours. Quite frankly, he'd be burned to a crispy Santa puff in a few mili-seconds from the friction. So, how does he remain intact? My first answer was that it must be something about his coat. Maybe some fire resistance spell or something like that. But if the answer really lies within the paranormal, maybe it has more to do about Santa's own nature rather than his accessories? Maybe HE is resistant to really high tempratures? But, I thought, there's only one creature that is capable of surviving such infernal heat. And then I suddenly came to realize the shocking truth (I think): Santa Claus is actually an incarnation of the Devil sent to corrupt the souls of innocent children with material wealth (that's also why he doesn't give presents to bad kids, their souls are already his). Farfetched? Think about this for a second: "Santa" is an anagram of "Satan". In any case, in order for him to continue this business, he has to remain unnoticed, which is why he only comes when you have gone to sleep. Do you know where the red colour on Santa's coat comes from? It's the blood from children who wanted to catch a glimpse of Santa and had to pay with it with their lives... When I reached this particular point in my train of thought, I came to realize the shocking truth, again (I think): Santa Claus is a necromancer who empowers a satanic ritual, which grants him immortality, with the blood and souls of innocent children! This also explains the circumstances concerning Easter. Y'know, the whole "Jesus rose from the dead" stuff. Santa resurrected Jesus in order to fulfil some ulterior motive in his plan... At this point you might be wondering: "So, where does this leave the Easter Bunny?", whereupon I'll ask you: "Are you kidding me? That's one of the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered rodents you've ever set eyes on! It has a vicious streak a mile wide and big, nasty, pointy teeth!" ... Or something like that. Yeah.
• Over the years, it seems I've been rather steadily growing more paranoid. After a point I always get used to it and find a way to combat the paranoia and keep on living (which is how I can continue on without constantly worrying if we're all some celestial being's game of SIMs). Recently, however, I had a rather scary thought that, because I'm cruel and evil, will share with you all. When you close your eyes, how do you know if something is there? How do you know if there's constantly something following you around that only enters our world when you close your eyes, even for a brief moment, but is gone when you can see again? I actually haven't quite figured out the possibility of whether or not they're good or bad, hypothetically. I generally choose not to think about it. Either way, food for thought
• Given all the strange things that can be eaten in roguelikes, could you possibly form a bomb in your stomach by eating the wrong things? (or for that matter could this happen in real life?)
  • I've heard that you're not supposed to swallow hydrogen peroxide solution because of this — apparently it generates a lot more gas in a shorter time than, say, soda.
    • But does it make you go boom all firey-style?
• "Elk" makes a surprisingly good Unusual Euphemism. "what the elk?", "get the elk out of my house", and so forth.
  • I've found that "dunch" works as well. "Would you stop being such a dunch?"
• Is it me, or does BIONICLE feel like a recycled version of Transformers?
  • I think by the time such talented people get to work on something like that, it's all been done before. Kind of like how harry potter is luke skywalker...
• If Grover Cleveland had lost the Presidential election in 1884, would Grover from Sesame Street have the same name? If not, what would they have called him? I'd have voted for "Rutherford". Why isn't there a Muppet named Rutherford? I'm going to write to Sesame Street and tell them to create a muppet named Rutherford. But then he may be confused with The Amazing Mumford. Maybe Mumford has a brother named Rutherford. And their family name is Sedgewick. Actually, I'm going to start introducing myself as Rutherford Q. Sedgewick. "Rutherford Q. Sedgewick, at your service." I'd probably have to start wearing a monocle, though. Maybe I'll get corrective surgery in one eye and get a monocle for the other.
  • The only Muppet to serve two non-consecutive terms.
    • Did any other muppet serve one non-consecutive term?
• If Death Note paper was used as printer paper, would the person whose name was printed on it die soon afterwards?
  • No the rules of the Death note say the name has to be directly written onto the page. On the other hand using the paper in a typewriter might work.
  • Not to mention that a person has to think of the victim's face when writing down the name.
  • Supposing an Author wrote down the name of one of their characters on Death Note paper (whilst thinking of their face)? Would the fictional character get 'killed' (or forgotten, or deleted)?
  • On a related note, what happens if you think of two people with the same name when you write that name in the Death Note?
• If I get one of those evil monkey paws that grant 5 wishes but make them evil, can I get around them by using my first wish to wish my next four wishes don't turn out badly?
  • You can, but then you can't use those four wishes. And that's if you're really lucky. Now, if you're going to get lucky of that when your next four wishes will turn out horrifying!
  • Esentially, you'll die or otherwise be rendered incapable of using your remaining wishes.
  • Here's what happens if you do that: Your four wishes turn out okay. But your first wish turns out evil, so you get exactly what you want but you deliberately make evil wishes.
• You ever notice that you'll meet guys named Christoph, and guys named Christopher, but never anyone named Christophest? What's up with that?
  • I don't know why this happens, but just to even it out, I think I'll refer to Christopher Eccleston as "Christophest" now because he's my favorite Christopher.
  • If you named a kid Christophest, somebody else could name theirs Evenmorechristophest and then poor Christophest would be living a lie. Even worse, multiple Christophests would have to kill each other in order to claim their birthright.
    • Sounds like a script. Someone should get on that.
    • THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!
  • Christophest would be a good name for a christian rock festival.
  • You also never meet anyone named Christophesque or Vaguely Christophish, but nobody cares about that, do they?
• If Mythbusters, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Top Gear all got together and did a special episode (no, NOT a Very Special Episode), how much damage would the resulting awesomeness do to the space-time continuum?
  • The combined power of resulting nerd endorphines would cure cancer.
    • Add Good Eats to the mix (somehow) and we could also end world hunger!
  • Shit Fucking Blows Up Everywhere Forever
• The Scoobies' dreams in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Restless" reminded me of dreams that I've actually had. Willow's dream about the Death of a Salesman production that wasn't, Spike's random appearance in Giles's dream, and Xander's tendency to keep ending up in his parents' basement are all similar to dreams I've had. Should I be frightened by these striking similarities? More importantly, why is Buffy the Vampire Slayer the only series that captured the randomness of dreams?
  • Yes. Joss has hacked into your brain. Tremble in fear, then sue the hell out of him. Why is Hell in Joss Whedon in the first place?
    • Many years ago, a young boy named Alan Moore used to beat up Satan for his lunch money. In order to end the daily beatings, the Devil bribed Moore with genius in exchange for leaving him alone. Not to be out done, Joss Whedon proceeded to beat up Satan as well, except he wouldn't stop until the Devil offered him genius and overlordship over all of hell. In his Infinite Wisdom, Joss decided to store hell inside his own body. Joss works in mysterious; do no question the will of Joss.
• If the Joker met Angelus, which would they do first: destroy the world for the fun of it or have hot, angry sex?
  • Why not both at the same time?
• If a guy turned into a woman, but ended up flat-chested, would he be disappointed?
  • For that matter, how does a person's appearance resulting from a magic Gender Bender correlate to their original form? Does a musculous hunk turn into a musculous butch, or a correspondingly super-feminine chick with giant breasts? Does a feminine guy turn into a tomboy or a bimbo? I can't rest without knowing the answer!
    • You people put a little too much meaning into your flesh sacks.
    • Well, in my case, I wouldn't mind not being well-endowed; big boobs seem like they'd just be a pain. (And fwiw, I'd probably turn into a tomboy.)
  • For that matter, if I'm a girl who by way of Gender Bender ends up a boy, what determines my, um, y'know? And do I become a correspondingly feminine male, or am I as proportionally masculine as I am typically feminine now?
    • Probably depends on who transforms you and how they do it.
  • I think I'd probably be disappointed, but I'd probably get online to blog about it and be distracted soon enough.
  • I'd be way too busy masturbating while looking at myself in the mirror to consider any of this. Unless my sexual preference got flopped, too, in which case my very comfortable bromance with my closest pal might suddenly feel very, very strange.
• Is it just me, or do certain old S/A/W-produced songs (specifically this one) sound like they could have come from from a Magical Girl anime's soundtrack?
• Love feels warm and cuddly and welcoming. Crushes feel like "I'm coming off a caffeine buzz and need to sleep..."
  • Unrequited longing feels like it's about to rain, and keeps being about to rain, but never actually rains.
  • Those are actually both amazingly good definitions...
• I used to wonder if our shadows and our reflections were actually the us of another dimension of some sort, and then I landed on the train of thought that what if they're not the same dimension. Then I had a an almost completely UNRELATED thought: What if our shadow and reflection are actually sentient beings connected to our souls or something? And why cant they leave?
  • I used to think this too. Am I my reflection's reflection? What happens when my reflection becomes a vampire? Would I die, or just cease to exist?
• Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?
  • Because a parkway used to be a road that went through a park, aka fields, trees, etc. and it was acceptable to drive faster on it. Meanwhile, a driveway was a road that went through a residential area, between houses, so you had to drive slowly and make frequent stops.
  • Because shipments can go places that cargo can't.
• Why is it called a Salad Chef? Do they even cook anything?
  • Because "chef" comes from the Latin word "caput" meaning "head," as in "head of the department." So the salas chef is the head of the department of salad. The word "chief" comes from the same source.
• How come SpongeBob SquarePants can live in the sea, but can't get into a tub of water without soaking everything up?
  • From what I've heard any "water" that appears in SpongeBob is actually slightly denser stuff. I don't know if this answers your question but it's worth mentioning.
• Why hasn't Robin Williams been on The Simpsons yet? Think of the opportunities for jokes about Homer and The Genie! I mean, this is assuming the writing staff isn't made of the same Robin-haters who write Futurama.
• There is no "I" in "TEAM," but there are three in "INDIVIDUAL."
  • There is no "I" in "TEAM," but there is a "U" in "SUCK."
    • Yeah, well there's no 'U' in team, either! So, if I'm not on the team, and you're not on the team, then NOBODY'S ON THE GODDAMNED TEAM! The team sucks!
  • There's no "U" in "talent."
  • It's just a pity about the F'in management.
    • There's no "f" in "management".
  • You can rearrange "TEAM" to get "AT ME."
  • Three "I"s...like Id, Ego, and Superego?
  • There's an I and a WIN, although not at the same time, in CHAINSAW. Significant!
  • There's an "E" in Maine.
  • There is an "I" in "victory."
  • There's no I in TEAM, but Team is an anagram of MEAT, and MEAT is in MEATPIE, and there is an I in MEATPIE.
• Why are cinnamon flavored candies red? Cinnamon is brown.
  • Well, cinnamon is sort of auburn, which has a bit of red in it, and I think that little, brown, non-chocolate candies might make people think of hamster pellets or something.
  • Cinnamon-flavored candies are usually slightly hot or spicy, and that taste usually is associated with the color red.
  • Jelly Bellies have cinnamon, cherry, and Hawaiian Punch flavors. All three are nearly the exact same shade of red. This has led to some rather unpleasant surprises.
• Just who decided that raspberry-flavored items are to be blue? The closest I've ever come is turning cranberry scones blue. Oh, and the Dead Smurf cake, but it's obvious where the blue came from there.
  • Well, blue raspberry-type berries exist, and red is already occupied by cherry and strawberry.
    • And, as mentioned above, Cinnamon.
  • Raspberry-flavored tootsie-roll pops are sort of a dark-reddish-purple.
• Could a mysterious hermaphrodite be said to hail from parts unknown?
  • No, we the one thing we do know about a mysterious hermapherdite is what parts it has (both). A mysterious person of Ambiguous Gender, on the other hand...
• Since you can't spell retreat without treat, why do people say it like it's a bad thing?
  • Yay! An extra treat!
    • Um, no. Think about what the prefix "re-" means for a second.
• The sequel to Galaxian is Galaga, right? What happened to Galara? We're missing the second element!
• Reading the IKEA Erotica page is rather...eerie when you realise that most of the furniture in your bedroom is IKEA... * shudders* (And yes, I know that's not what the trope is. It still makes me wonder, though.)
  • Then read the IKEA Weaponry page for a change.
    • * reads both at the same time* * BOOM*
    • I can't read two differant articles at the same time. I'd need to switch back and forth between the two, which would ruin the effect. Although I did see a program on a guy who had the two hemispheres of his brain connected to each other incorrectly, and he could totally read two pages at the same time. One with each eye.
• Why can't I win The Game?
  • Because you don't read xkcd.
  • You need to purchase the strategy guide.
• Why are sweatpants so damn comfortable?
  • If you lounge in sweatpants, are you failing to use them in the manner for which they're designed?
  • If sweatpants came in aerosol form, and you lounged in them, would that be a violation of federal law?
• Why is "Believe" spelled with a "lie"?
  • If you take out the 'lie', it becomes 'beve'. 'Bevelle' starts with 'beve' and it's practically a city built on lies. So basically, 'believe' is a lie within a lie. If you lie about a lie, you might be telling the truth, and belief is when you think you know something, solid facts and logic be damned...and some people's beliefs have turned out to be true after all.
  • Anyways this cake is great, it's so delicious and moist.
  • Does anyone else find it both hilarious and disturbing that the word laughter is in slaughter?
    • You can't spell manslaughter without laughter!
    • Someone obviously consulted the Joker when developing English.
    • Laughter House with an "S"!
  • You can't spell dysfunctional without "fun".
  • And awesome ends with me.
    • So does the world. Holy crap...
  • Live backwards is eviL. So evil always wins?
    • No, if you live the wrong way (against whatever observer's moral code of choice), you are are evil. Therefore, everyone is evil, and the only way to make a perfect world is to destroy all observers.
  • As my brother always says: you can't spell 'problem' without 'Rob'.
• So have you ever been to An'W, or whatever it's called? You know that cute little chicken that's the chubby chicken mascot? This troper is quite sure that this chicken is openly participating in the genocide of it's race. It's advertising 'Hey! We taste good! Not sure? Eat my little brother Timmy, and you'll become addicted!' Ah, Nightmare Fuel at it's best.
  • Maybe chickens support us eating some of them to curb overpopulation and thus improve quality of life for the rest of us.
  • The Jolly Green Giant disturbed me in the same way. Being solidly green, as a child I always imagined he was some sort of sentient vegetable man... who encouraged us to eat other vegetables. Kind of like a veggie genocide.
    • I'd imagine he thinks of carrots the same way we think of chickens, actually, so it probably wouldn't be such a big deal for him.
• If you had superpowers, would you act Cloudcuckoolander-y to throw villains off?
  • Why do you assume we wouldn't be trying to throw heroes off? I don't want to run into a burning building to save children! I don't even like children! Or burning buildings, for that matter...
  • I do that now. I use what I call The Calwellian Method (named after myself, obviously) to confuse people whenever they start a conversation I want no part of. The goal is to make the people sorry for ever bringing their topic up in any way necessary. The more times it's done, the more people are likely to think twice before talking to you before you approach them.
  • Obfuscating Insanity, anyone?
  • Deadpool says yes. He also says many other things, but if we listed them here, they'd take up the whole page. Deadpool needs his own talk show.
    • Oh HELL yes.
• Why do dirty socks smell like corn chips?
  • What the hell kind of corn chips have you been eating?
  • Dammit, you're right... they smell of Fritos that have been left out for too long, IMHO.
• Do you suppose Transformers would be disturbed by seeing broken-down vehicles on the side of the road? When we see corpses lying out in the open, we call the police.
  • Since the vehicles in question aren't sapient, I'd imagine it'd be more like seing a dead or wounded animal. In which case, they should probably call a vet... Or a tow truck.
    • This is probably the reason they will never be in a Super Robot Wars game. Talk about Nightmare Fuel...
• Whenever I try to type the object of Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero? into Gaia Online's im service, it crashes. I believe this to be significant.
  • Prinnies are inherently dissonant to internet chatting. Everyone knows you spell "d00d" with zeroes.
• You know how there's Moe Anthropomorphism for computers and wikis? I think there should be Moe versions of closing logos. Columbia Pictures is already a beautiful woman, so we can just chibi-fy her. MGM-tan can be a Moe lion(ess). However, it's very interesting to think of the history of Viacom-tan, because the designs should not only reflect the different logos, but also the company's personality through the years (from just another distributor to a huge media conglomerate who likes to bully YouTube-tan).
• Theory: Originally, Ninjas and Mimes were one and the same kind, by some called Mimjas while others called them Nines. They were both the silent and unseen holders of real ultimate power and worshipped the Flying Noodle Monster. However, when the Pirates arrived in the native land of Mimjas/Nines, which I, btw, feel is important to point out as NOT being Japan, the Mimjas/Nines actually hail from a state south of Nirvana... Anyway, I digress... So, the Pirates arrived in the land of Mimjas/Nines and started spreading the word of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but some of the Mimjas/Nines thought that the Pirates were trying to corrupt their faith and turn their deity, the Flying Noodle Moster, against them, and so they launched a surprise attack on the Pirates and things were looking really dire for the Pirates when one of the Mimja/Nine clans turned on their comrades and sailed from the shores of the native world together with the Pirates. Of course, the Mimjas/Nines that were left would certainly not let the traitors get away and leave them with the disgrace, so they took pursuit... It's a little unclear what happened after this, but apparently the two fractions of the Mimjas/Nines cut their ties and even renamed themselves to Ninjas and Mimes respectively, and the Ninjas, having grown suspicious and alert by nature from their bretheren's betrayal, settled down on the islands of Japan to await the hour of vengeance. As for the Mimes, the Pirates put them ashore in Italy where spaghetti is made. However, having listened to the Pirates and assimilated their teachings into their former ones, the Mimes were enlightened and entered a state of pacifism, rejecting the real ultimate power in the process. They would not dwell in Italy as the ever looming threat of the Ninjas' counter attack put the Italians, the unbridled masters of pasta, at risk, and so the Mimes chose to emigrate north, to the country of France. This way the Mimes would remain close enough to the pasta, yet not endanger the Italians with their and the Ninjas' presence... And that's how the eternal conflict between Pirates, Ninjas and Mimes begun. And should the thought occur to you as to why you've never heard of the Ninja/Mime conflict before, remember this: They are both masters of silence.
• Why aren't they working on a car that runs on Nightmare Fuel? There's so much of it here that they're practically sitting on a gold mine.
  • Then we'll eventually be facing Peak Nightmare Fuel.
    • And then Nightmare Fuel Unleaded...
    • Well, there is one example in fiction - it's known as Promethium.
  • It's a little known fact that H.R. Giger briefly worked for BMW in their attempts to make a Nightmare-compatible catalytic converter in the 1960s. The prototype was a marketing disaster, since few people want to drive a vehicle that sounds like babies screaming. The only Nightmare-fueled vehicle ever built was eventually sold to the Institute for Advanced Eldritch Studies at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts as a gift for the Dean of Otherworldly Admissions.
  • Why not make a car that runs on Fetish Fuel, then? There's plenty of the stuff to go around
    • Darn decency laws.
  • Paranoia Fuel. Traffic tickets would be a thing of the past since everyone would be afraid that the cops would see your every move. Keep moving. Don't make waves. Just keep following the rules so they don't pay attention to you.
• In a food court at the local mall, there's a shop called Great Steak with an open lot next to it. I want to lease that lot and open a store called Greater Steak.
  • Is there another lot next to that? Be careful, if they ever go out of business, Greatest Steak might hone in on your territory.
    • Aw, I was going to open up a chain of "Pretty Good Steak," but now I'm thinking it won't ever take off.
  • Are you really comfortable having that much at stake?
• I wish that I could be a villain. The world deserves it. But then who would hold all the doors open for the nice old ladies? Speaking of which, how do sea cucumbers reproduce, and has anyone shipped Might Guy and Orochimaru yet? I want to hold a sports tournament for gastropods. Fight tha powa! That reminds me of Tim Hortons. I want to go to the bookstore. (Ladies and gentlemen, that was approximately twenty seconds inside of my head.)
  • I bet you actually are a villain. You just have the good sense not to let anyone onto it. Good for you.
  • So this troper isn't sure about Gai/Orochimaru, but she did find a Kisame/Hinata pairing. Checking fanfiction.net...there isn't one... but Rule 34... oh dear. Well, this troper will have to fix that for you. I should be distirbed, but all I hear in my mind is this is an earsplitting Squeee... * I need help.*
• If the proper singular word for "media" is "medium", why is "mediums" used to refer to more than one spirit medium?
  • It's a trick. There is actually only one spirit medium. You may note that "mediums" is an anagram of "I summed."
• Half of everyone I've ever met have called me varying capacities of "weird". So why is this page not twice the length it is now?
  • Because it is twice the length it was then. You just got here late.
• 3:00 AM thought: Defeat Means Friendship could be Deconstructed in Hannibal Lecture form by the proper species of villain. They'd have to be the sort who doesn't enter into direct combat (to keep them from ending up "befriended" themselves), with a reputation for honesty:
  • "You seem to make so many of your so-called friends on the battlefield. After thrashing them to within an inch of their lives, you suddenly offer them 'kindness' and 'mercy.' Presumably to satisfy your deluded morality. But, really, is it as kind as you believe it is? Has it never occurred to you as odd that they seem to rarely, if ever, betray you, despite having been humiliated at your hands? The reason is simple... they can't betray you. Call it friendship if you like, but they are simply your slaves. Why, what would they do without you? Return to their old ways, back to the causes that they betrayed to preserve their own survival? Perhaps some of them could live a normal life, I suppose, but without you, they are broken men and women. You have no friends, merely slaves and sycophants bound to you by their own weakness..."
  • The hero's reaction (and, indeed, the amount of truth in the villain's words) would, of course, depend heavily on the context's place on the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism.
    • Ideal: The Hero's True Companions make a Big Damn Heroes Shut Up, Hannibal!.
    • Cynical: When the hero is battered, beaten, and nearly dead, he calls to his "friends" for help. One by one, they look at him, turn their backs, and walk away. As the hero's vision fades, he realizes that he really is alone. Fade to black.
    • This has been written into something, right?
    • I certainly hope so. If not, someone needs to get on it.
• How come anonymity makes people act weirder?
  • Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is your friend.
  • Shame on the road is written off.
• This Troper has just seen a Glade Air Wick ad featuring owls...and it's set in the day time!!! What the hell are a family of freaking owls doing up in the day?!? Aren't they nocturnal creatures? Were there some rare "Day-Owls" that they're not telling us about?
  • They have insomnia?
  • As a matter of fact, there are.
• If Batman were to play baseball with Robin, wouldn't he be using a batbat?
  • And when he makes pancakes, he mixes up some Batbatter.
• They're called boxing gloves, but they're actually more like mittens. What's up with that?
  • More to the point, how do people manage to box with those typing braces on their hands?
• Isn't omniscience a good example of Blessed with Suck? If you know everything, you can't enjoy a good mystery novel because you know how it ends.
  • No, we are tropers, we are only interested in the tropes. the reason why omniscience would be Blessed with Suck is we would then know all possible tropes and all examples of them, so we could not edit this wiki since it would be complete. What would we do with our free time then! What Then!
    • Well, according to the Control Theory (I learned this in sociology), we would probably all start robbing banks and stuff due to an overabundance of free time in which to do it.
• Is it possible to be nonconformist if a lot of people are trying to be nonconformist? Wouldn't nonconformity then be conformity?
  • Everyone is a conformist, whether they admit it or not. The trick is conforming to your own ideals, rather than to ideals that others force upon you.
    • You didn't evolve in a vacuum, all of your ideals came from someone else. Where is the basis for differentiating between 'your' ideals, and those that were 'forced' upon you? Considering the degree to which your thought processes are influenced by your upbringing, you can't even say the ideals you prefer are really your own. Conformity and non-conformity are both meaningless, we are all perfectly deterministic robots.
    • Let's put this rather more optimistically and in plain English: Be Yourself.
    • I conform to that which I wish to conform to and refrain from conforming to that which I wish to refrain from conforming. You are all perfectly welcome to conform to me as you could hardly do better then with such a shinning example as myself.
• Know what I want to see? A game show hosted by a Little Miss Snarker. Kind of like The Weakest Link except Anne Robinson is 12 years old.
  • Better idea: a game show hosted by a Deadpool Loli.
• Why is the British equivalent of the F. B. I. called "Scotland Yard" if it's mainly in England, not Scotland?
  • Because where it was originally was the house where Scottish royalty stayed when visiting London. See That Other Wiki.
    • Why was England having Scottish royalty solve crimes for them?
    • It wasn't. There hadn't been any Scottish royalty (that is, royalty that was purely Scottish, without also holding an English crown) since James VI and I in 1603, and the crowns of the two realms were merged in 1707 (thereafter, there have technically been no English or Scottish royalty per se, only British). Scotland Yard only became involved as the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service (Not a British equivalent to the FBI, although HOLMES*
      Home Office Large Major Enquiry System
      , the equivalent to FBI databases]] is based in New Scotland Yard along with the current Met senior management) in 1829, with the passing of the Metropolitan Police Act.
• When President Obama addressed the G-20 Summit on 2 April 2009, CNN called it "a plan to rescue the world". In essence, they're asking Obama "The world has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough president to rescue the world?"
• How do you commit a double suicide?
  • You can't. At least not alone. You need two people for it to be double.
    • I don't think so. A double homicide is not two homicides by two people.
    • No, but it is two homicides. One person killing him/herself is only one suicide.
  • Have split personalities.
    • Why didn't I think of that?
    • That would only work if both personalities agreed to die. Otherwise, it would be one suicide and one murder.
    • A "double suicide" would be one person killing two... of themselves, right? So it could happen in a story that involved time travel/paradox, especially if the story subscribed to the idea of multiple realities. Killing your younger self could result in the simultaneous death of both your younger self and the present self who was doing the killing, thus becoming what is, in essence, a double suicide.
    • On that note, you would also be killing all of your selves in between your past and present self. What would that be called? multi-suicidal?
• People go on about how Twilight is sexist/misogynistic/full of Family Unfriendly Aesops, but did they ever stop to think that maybe that's the point. Maybe Stephenie Meyer is actually a nihilistic Magnificent Bitch who is trying to convince teenage girls that emotionally abusive relationships are desirable, not because she actually believes it, but simply because she likes fucking with peoples minds. Moreover, she deliberately fills her book with Purple Prose and other poor writing practices in order to discourage non-moronic people from reading them and realizing what she's doing to their less-intelligent peers.
  • Yes, we have thought that, and no, she's just an idiot.
  • Stephenie Meyer, we know you're reading this! And we know. and we know that you know. This troper, however, will let your plans slide, as it saves the good guys for her.
  • I'm more concerned that Meyer is attempting to build a cultish following of loyal and violent Edward-lovers for the purpose of destroying the Mormon church that shunned her, or something equally silly. Those girls are frightening.
    • Come on, if I had an army of inane Fan Girls to do my bidding, I think I'd set my sight higher than destroying the LDS.
  • This troper desperately clings to the theory that either Smeyer is the GODDESS of troll, or the Twilight series is a Springtime for Hitler that she decided to just roll with.
    • The latter situation could be possible: It was written somewhere in Meyer's site that the original idea for Twilight came from a dream she had.
• Hypothetical situation: a man and woman are in love. the man is a kind, selfless person, while his wife is a psycho killer. they both live out full lives and die at the same time, the man going to heaven, the woman to hell. the man can't be happy, can he? his dearest wife is in hell, but dhe can't join him, and she can't join him. Heaven is the plane of happiness, but how can he be happy without his wife? yes, the hypothetical man is that devoted.
  • One theory states that you forget your "Earthly existence" when you move on to wherever it is that you may move on to. So the hypothetical man would forget his hypothetical wife. And one would suspose he had no knowledge of his wife's crimes, unless he's really forgiving, and once he found out that she wasn't with him, presuming he remembered her, and found out what she had done, he might not miss her all that much.
  • Jesus answered this one in the Bible (to a different question but same answer), in Heaven, there are no husbands or wives.
    • Ok, so the person you really, really care about is suffering for eternity, and you're supposed to be placated with the excuse "Well, she's not your wife any more!"?
    • My explanation is that if the man is truly kind and selfless, he wouldn't marry a psycho killer that he knew to be a psycho. So either he wouldn't marry her, or he wouldn't have known, and after death he might realize that she was deserving of hell.
    • There's also always the idea that hell is a state you choose to exist in. If hell isn't somewhere you're sent by God, but rather your conscious choice to reject God, then you might not even understand the extent of your own suffering. Also, if the man chooses God and the woman rejects God, he might feel that, even if she still loves him, she shouldn't be allowed to join him until they are united in belief. Just a little C.S. Lewis-ish food for thought.
• What would happen if Pinocchio said, "My nose is going to grow"?
  • As long as he did not make the statement deliberately in order to decieve someone else, most likely nothing would happen. If he personally thought that the statement was a lie, that would probably still count enough for the nose to actually grow.
    • Noses are all about intention; that's why people can't help following them.
  • Well, he is probably aware that there's only so long that he can go without lying, so it's not untruth to assume that at some point his nose will grow.
    • What if we amend it to "My nose will grow as a result of my saying this sentence."?
    • Then the enchantment controlling that fail-safe would crash, most likely breaking the nose in the process, and the Blue Fairy would reboot it and heal the nose. Or maybe not - I'm not quite sure how benevolent the Blue Fairy is.
    • She's kind of sadistic, in the book. She punishes Pinocchio for insisting that he's ill and doesn't want to get out of bed by saying all right, you're ill — in fact, you're dying! — and calls in the undertakers to measure him for a coffin. So, I'm not sure she'd "reboot" the enchantment without some punitive consequences, first.
• If a group of Ents were to make a movie, would it say "No plants were harmed in the making of this film" or something to that effect?
  • Only if no one stepped on the grass.
• I have this cat that knows Grammar Systems Theory and I know it wouldn't actually care that we're on fire right now...
  • You should get that checked up.
• Am I Someone? Are you? Does that mean we have a responsibility to do Something, when we see the chance? ...If it does, can we be True Companions?
• I hate rabbits. Looking into their wide-spaced blank eyes brings out this weird sadistic impulse in me. You know, the kind that starts with smacking something against a hard surface and locking it in a very small cage to glower at it. I've never actually done anything worse than think about it, not being a total psychopath. ...Am I alone?
  • You think you're alone. But in the dark, you can sense them around you: thousands of rabbits, twitching their noses at you... and they can see perfectly because of all those carrots!
• Does anyone else think the Volkswagen Carefree Maintenance symbol looks a lot like the Laughing Man logo from Ghost in the Shell? I doubt VW would like the association.
  • I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those new Beetles.
• Crispin Glover + Morgan Freeman = Crispin Freeman?
  • What about Morgan Freeman and Gordon Liu...? I'd believe humanity's hope for the future rested on a mute Blackinese master of Crowbar-Fu.
• Is the Meow Mix jingle the ailurophobe's equivalent of the Jaws theme?
  • All day long, I've had that Narmy Loggins & Messina Unspeakable Thing with the title no one knows going through my head. Now it's the Meow Mix jingle instead. Thank you! Really, I mean it!
• How big of a knife am I allowed to carry around with me in my purse until I'm considered not simply prepared, or paranoid, but actually aggressive?
  • It depends. Anything smaller than a steak knife that isn't a switchblade = prepared. This is also true for machetes, unless you live in an area with a lot of gangs, in which case it means you are probably Hispanic. Kitchen knives and butcher knives = Ax Crazy. Anything bigger than that, like a sword or something = LARPer. I suggest the butcher knife, it really makes a statement.
    • I'd be wary of accidentally cutting my hand open or something. Is there something like a removable guard for butcher knives? (This troper knows an extremely annoying classmate of hers who brought one of those ginormous kitchen knives with her out running and predictably fell on it. Ow.) But that thought is extremely encouraging. It'd help if when I took it out, I verbally made like Barry the Chopper. I've been told I have a fairly fun impersonation of someone mentally whimsical.
    • I notice you didn't say that your classmate (who you specificly said annoyed you) falling on the knife was an accident.
    • Ouch indeed. Also, meat cleavers with rounded frames are pretty difficult to self-impale with. If you still want to take precautions, either dull the blade or get a sheath for it. Though any sidewalk crazy will tell you they won't wait for you to pull the knife out of your purse and then pull the sheath off. I know I won't.
  • This troper carries around a box cutter in his left pocket. Not because of security or anything, just that his job involves opening a box for new routers before configuring them, sealing them back in, and sending them out. Even if it's for his job, people already view him as Ax Crazy anyway.
  • Here's a better idea I got out of a David Eddings book: get a spoon and sharpen the handle. Then put together a fake wooden handle. (A metal handle might be a better idea if you intend to take it on a plane). The spoon goes into the handle, providing a concealed weapon.
• How big is your purse?
• Is there such thing as a Bluetooth Fairy?
  • Try it and see if he/she leaves a quarter for you.
• Is my eye damage thing becoming an issue?
• You know what I'd like to see? A game that features a deconstruction of Save Points by having the characters (or even just the main character) aware of each death and mistake that leads to booting an old save, remembering cutscene events and boss battles, having vague memories of being trapped in some kind of limbo when the game is off for a very long time, and just generally being horribly aware of the Groundhog Day Loop situation they're involved in. It could even involve some form of Sanity Meter, so that the characters start going crazy if they die and reboot enough times.
  • SBCG4AP episode 5 has Strong Bad aware each time he dies and goes to a checkpoint (one part of the game.) Does that count?
  • Animal Crossing. Mr. Resetti appears when you reset; weeds will grow and people will move in/out of your town during your days absent...
• We know that it's possible to have something that can be so bad that it wraps around and becomes good, but what about something so good that it wraps around and becomes bad?
  • So Okay It's Average?
  • My guess: Something that is just so mindblowingly awesome that the viewer loses his/her Willing Suspension of Disbelief, and is simply unable to accept that something that awesome could possibly exist. So instead of simply enjoying the show, they spend all of their waking life trying to rationalize what they have just seen; either by going through numerous mental contortions in order to try and force themselves to come to terms with the transcendental awesomeness that they have just experienced, or by desperately trying to find some, nay any, fault in it. Either way, it slowly comes to pervade the viewers consciousness, eventually becoming the only thing that they are able to think about. Once that happens, madness is not far off.
    • I think that's what happened when I watched Suzumiya Haruhi.
    • Or, you could have a work that was so sublimely perfect that the joy of experiencing it overshadowed every other thing in someone's life. Things like your job and family are meaningless and empty shadows of true joy. The realization that your life has peaked and nothing else you will ever experience will be as good as that moment could lead to spiraling depression and eventual suicide.
    • See also Awesomeness Withdrawal, aka "What the hell are we supposed to do to stay sane in the year and a half between Transformers Animated ending and Transformers Prime premiering?"
  • I think we used to have a trope about something being so good, it's judged on a higher standard than it would otherwise be, so while a fantasy novel may be really good compared to its current competition, it could still pale in comparison to, say, Discworld.
  • Happens all the time with music. Acts like Dream Theater, or Yngwie Malmsteen, and even Classical music in general, are sometimes described as being so perfect they're boring.
• A troper wants to insert herself into a story of her own. However, this troper wonders if there is a variation of Mary Sue that isn't an Anti-Sue, an attention whore, or Suetiful. Near as far as I can tell the character is just a little more hopeless version of her Real Life counterpart, and is there mostly for the ride. She does advance the plot, but other than that it seems she's given about equal attention as the other characters, or as much as can be done while having the whole story played out from her perspective. Is there a subcategory of Sues that deals with something like this?
  • Author Avatar?
• I know it's out there, but what would Alice and Bob porn look like?
  • It'd probably look like porn.
  • Eve would keep trying to spy on them, so they'd have to lock the door with PGP.
• What do anthro turkeys eat on Thanksgiving Day? It is possibly that there still would be a non-sentient turkey-like bird, but I imagine that they would be Squicked out from eating one.
  • It's not unheard of for humans to kill and eat apes.
• What eats anteaters?
  • The Giant Anteaters has only two natural predators -- pumas and jaguars.
    • You're no fun.
  • Ignore Mr. Encyclopediapants over there. The true predator of anteaters is the mighty Anteatereatingant.
    • But then what eats the Anteatereatingant? And then what eats that? Is the end result of that a twenty-page document repeating "Anteatereatinganteatereatinganteatereatinganteatereatinganteatereating..."?
    • Ants. Ants eat anteatereatinganteatermajigs.
• When you give someone flowers, aren't you just saying, "Here, have some half dead hermaphrodites I just snapped out of the ground and will surely die. Because I LOVE you"?
  • You say that like it's a bad thing.
  • Yeah, flowers become a little less romantic when you think of them as severed plant genitals. But they're PRETTY plant genitals!
  • I like it when they're still planted in a pot of earth and growing, myself...
• What would a Black Lagoon/Creature from the Black Lagoon crossover be like?
  • Black screen for 2 and a half hours.
  • The Creature tries to abduct either Revy, Roberta or Balalaika to be its mate. This does not end well for the Creature.
• Given the fact most senshi are female and most Kamen Riders are male what would be the sex of the person with the Kamenrider Sailor Crystal?
  • Futanari.
• Would a Plusle be accurately described as a "Cat+ mouse"?
• Is there a support group for Tetris addicts?
  • If there is, I'm sure you'll fit right in.
    • But then wouldn't you disappear?
• Is it possible to fit a soul in a computer? I mean, if a soul doesn't exist on the physical plane, and neither does the internet, and there's plenty of room for all kinds of useless junk in computers, why not a soul? (Big thank you to Neuromancer for that one.)
  • Um, but the internet is just a big network of computers that constantly swap data between each other, meaning it does exist on the physical plane. William Gibson has some funny ideas about computers, and you probably shouldn't take anything he says on the topic too seriously . As for you're question about whether or not you could store a soul on a computer, well, that all depends on how you feel like defining the word soul.
• 5:30 a.m. immediately after the alarm clock went off: "American peaches don't need water." And I was actually thinking about an orange grove I saw in Italy at the time, after a dream about my teachers running some kind of fascist kidnapping organization with blue jumpsuits and holding cells that were literally just bathroom stalls without the toilet. As to how the American peaches fit in there; I haven't a clue. Is that just part of the randomness of dreams, or would that have ended up making sense eventually?
  • No dream ever makes sense. For example, if someone is able to explain Ned Kelly knocking down a pyramid and the kettle inside blaming me, please contribute.
    • You didn't stop him, did you?
    • Was the pyramid sitting on top of something? Otherwise, it's sort of difficult to imagine knocking it down.
  • This Troper has recently woken up at night, written down the phrase "Rumble Juggler" and gone back to sleep. I think I may have been onto something....
  • This Troper did that with "Bleach-brown substance abuse," "Creationist movie theaters," "Every teenage boy needs sailor lights!" and "Sometimes I like to get off with other men, but not behind trees because they resemble gym machines."
    • Freud would have a field day with those last two.
• This troper is starting to get freaked out be her constant nightmares. I mean, it's good for story ideas, but somethings always off. There's always something weird that happens to make it downright hilarious or outright terrifying, sometimes both. My recent dream? the zombie apocalypse happens, and my weapons(two wooden baseball bats and 2 hand guns) turn into wanter guns filled with shaving cream and two kiddy plactic bats. oh, and the zombies were wearing black and white smiley face masks. I've also had several dreams where my cat has tried to kill me. This is what you get when you cross a nightmarefuelstationattendant and cloudcookerlander.
• Someone on Animesuki has a signature where Fate Testarossa is the primarch of the Blood Angels Legion. As a Blood Angels player and a Nanoha fan, I must know! How does this work?! Haruhi as the Immortal Emperor definitely fits within the boundaries of acceptable reality.
  • Alicia was originally the primarch. Precia's meddling with her genes during the cloning allowed Fate to have superhuman powers and strength. Later on the God-Emperor found Fate, and since she's the closest to the genes of the Blood Angels, she was appointed.
• If the minds of Ash Williams and Ash Ketchum were to merge into one mind,what kind of effect would that have?
  • See Apocalypse How Class X-2.
• My thought in my spare time: If live spelled backwards is evil, does that mean our existance is a sin? Also, if lived is devil backwards, is that what we become when we die?
  • The good die young. I'm going to live forever.
  • No. It's a trick of perspective. Say you're a doctor and you help people heal; in reverse, you're making them worse.
  • Is this the same line of thinking as Judge Death? Existence is a sin...the punishment is death!
  • No, because spelling words backwards doesn't always reveal their true nature.
  • Just realized doctor backwards is rot cod.
• If life could exist in two dimensions, would it experience time? If so, wouldn't that indicate the fourth dimension is in fact the first dimension? Or should I get out more?
  • No, it's the zeroth dimension. Either that or we actually have twelve or fifteen or whatever dimensions, and we only notice four because that's a stable solution to the complex partial differential equations underlying reality or something. Wait, no, it's still number zero.
• Does Mephiles love me? I mean, it's right there in his name.
  • It could be a rebus puzzle...Phil in Mees! That's it! That...means frak all.
    • Isn't that an anagram, not a rebus?
• Does God believe in Himself?
  • Maybe, but I don't.
  • No, he believes in you who believes in him! But he is desperately afraid of drills.
• What would happen if God said, "Cancel project Genesis"?
  • Sussudio would have been released a decade earlier.
  • But Kid Chameleon would never have been released at all.
• What if every time someone wrote a story, a new universe was created?
  • You would need to establish the Protectors of the Plot Continuum in order to deal with all the 'Sue-fics.
  • On a related note, what if every thought someone had created a new universe?
    • What if it really does?
  • 90% of them would be Crap.
  • This is the way I was taught to think of myself as an author in college. Every author is as a God and his works are his universe, subject to all of the rules he decides to impose on it. How many authors are atheists yet think of themselves in this way?
  • I firmly believe that this is how it works. The trick is actually getting into the alternate universe you've created. So far no one's figured it out, but I do believe I'm on the verge of a breakthrough...
  • My personal brainchild of a Massively Multiplayer Crossover setting (never to be actually threaded with some kind of plot) states that all fictions are real. Corollary: All realities are fictions. Therefore, our reality is just part of a bigger conglomeration of multiverses (yes, plural. Y'see, since many fictions often span more than one "dimension" or "universe", we can say they're all part of a single "reality", which encompasses all of that fiction's creation). Since in general, most fictions are self-contained (including, clearly, the one we inhabit), there's no way to traverse between realities unless someone from a "higher-order" (that is, the reality partnered to the relevant Cross Over fiction) came and messed with. Moreover, any and all self-insert fics create a character that's you but not you that comes from said higher-order reality (but not * your* reality, since the self-insert, being a product of your mind, must be from a lower-ranked reality). Of course, this leaves the interesting question of free will. Which is rendered completely moot 'cause no matter what changes in a fiction or reality happen, somewhere, someone is making said change apply on the corresponding reality(ies)/fiction(s), so it's hard to know if the writer's the puppet or puppeteer and you shouldn't even care 'cause the writer has no idea you're real (even if the fiction applies plenty of Fourth Wall destruction) and neither can actually affect each other (sorta). Of course, since nobody thinks complete settings, anything that wasn't thought of exists as a Schroedingers Cat until it's brought into thought, in which case the realities branch into the newly-formed reality and the original, still Schroediger-ian one. Finally, this means the rules of any particular reality are completely and utterly arbitrary. (I like to think crossover characters actually get to pull a bit of their rules with them, so they get to play with their powers/gadgets/whatever)
  • Interestingly, this is kind of half my personal religion. The God either sits at the top of the reality chain or is outside the circle (depending whether the whole chain of creation has an end or not). And "our" reality is paired with someone's Sim Universe fic. (Which explains the source of crime, disaster and everything else: True Art Is Angsty!)
  • Read The Neverending Story. It operates more or less on your crossover theory, and plays with some pretty deep thoughts on the nature of world interaction, when and how it's good or bad, what its purpose is.
  • As a chronic dreamer, I find myself thinking that when an author creates a work, be it a TV series, a book, or a videogame, it creates a bare-bones history of a universe somewhere out in that mind bogglingly-large expanse known as the omniverse. The universe is vastly more detailed and "lifelike" than what is portrayed (For instance, a character in a videogame doesn't have a "static" walking gait that never changes; they stumble, take slightly larger or smaller steps, etc. from time to time.) Each universe has its own laws of physics and such, as defined by the author, so while magic may not be possible here, it could be normal in another. Also, the official story for a game is only an interpretation of a historical event, which could explain things like games with karma meters and multiple endings. I also believe that every universe has a way to get to another through magic, technology, or some other form, and that it may be, after enough evolution, possible for a sapient being to create personal "pocket universes" for themselves to inhabit for whatever purpose suits them. Whether any of this is true, only time will tell.
• If all of television (or at least American television) is a product of Tommy Westphall's imagination, then who's his Marty Stu?
  • Horatio Caine?
  • My money's on his father.
• What happens if you combine an earworm with a brown note?
  • Billy Mays becomes a musician.
  • Well, first we start to go mad, then we go mad, and after that we go a little crazy, then we go mad twice more...
  • An Ear Note! No, wait...
  • A Brown...Ear... hm...
  • The potential for endless suffering. A certain Mister B. R. Cyrus once nearly perfected the combination, and the misery still plagues the world today.
• Who's willing to bet that God and Satan look exactly alike?
  • George Burns played both religious figures in the third Oh God! movie. To bad they didn't do the same for Bruce Almighty because two Morgan Freemans in one film would be awesome.
  • They don't look exactly alike: one looks more alike than the other.
  • Have you ever seen them in the same room? Think about it!
• My laptop has somehow established a wireless connection with the TV. If one or both somehow becomes sentient, am I screwed?
  • No, because neither of them have any limbs. If they did, though, then, yeah, you're screwed.
• Do rats get offended at the phrase "ratted out"?
  • No, but they'll tell on you for saying it!
• What happens when sneakers don't sneak anymore? What are they called then?
  • Loafers.
  • Trainers.
• What would happen if a seagull ate a Tums but was then soon eaten by a bear...would the bear's stomach explode too?
• What would Brian Boitano do if he was here today?
  • I'm sure he'd kick an ass or two.
  • That's what Brian Boitano'd do
• What would happen if Deadpool allied himself with Squirrel Girl, Ralph Wiggum, Bart Simpson, Luna Lovegood, and Dora Winifred Read?
  • I for one welcome our new Crazy Awesome overlords.
• Why is it that, in the movies, when a man goes without a shirt it's called a "Shirtless Scene," but when a woman does the same thing it's called a "topless scene?"
  • It's something to do with breasts. Don't ask what.
  • I believe it has to do with the fact that women can take off their shirts and be wearing a brassiere or a bathing suit top, tantamount to a man removing his shirt and leaving on his undershirt. Bare breasts = entirely without a "top".
    • Great, now every time I hear the phrase "topless scene", I'm going to think of the lower half of a woman walking around by itself. Thanks.
    • Headless Body in Topless Bar◊
• Is it just me, or do characters played by Jewel Staite seem to have an above average chance of hooking up with whoever happens to be the shows resident Woobie? This has happened on at least three occasions on at least three diferent series (Firefly, with Simon; Stargate Atlantis, with Dr. McKay; and Dead Like Me, with Mason).
  • Well, to be fair, Mason's probably the least woobiesh of the Dead Like Me cast, having lost nothing upon death and generally bringing most of his post-death misery on himself. And he and Straite's character didn't stay together anyway. Also, consider her relationship with Eric (Wonderfalls), who was the woobie specifically because of what she did to him and became less so after he decided he was done with her. And I don't recall her having a romantic relationship with anyone on Space Cases. In short—probably just a coincidence between the last two shows.
• How much bigger a Gary Stu would Crow of Yugioh 5D's have to get before he caused the entire universe of Yugioh to collapse onto itself like a black hole?
  • It already did. And that's how we wound up with Xyz Monsters.
• If cats always land on thier feet and toast always lands butter side down, what would happen if you taped a buttered peice of toast to a cat and then dropped it onto the ground?
  • No, that's not a problem - either way, you either get a cat landing on their feet (and the toast isn't landing) or toast landing on its butter (and the cat isn't landing). The tricky part is if the cat jumps on a piece of buttered toast, their feet get stuck in the butter, and that combination slides off the table...
    • The cat'd grind a conveniently-placed railing, perform any more acrobatics as needed and get loose in the process.
    • What would probably happen if you tried either of those is you'd have a pissed-off cat that smelled vaguely of toast.
• Lesson from personal experience: never Zerg Rush a necromancer. If you fail, you've just given her everything she needs to Zerg Rush you right back.
  • Moot point: Failing a Zerg Rush never ends well...
  • Not to mention, you're mixing your Blizzard games.
• If an unstoppable force hit an immovable object, and it smashed right through the immovable object and continued going, would we be able to sue the immovable object for false advertising?
  • I'd first sue them for breach of contract.
  • Isn't it more likely that the unstoppable force would ricochet off the immovable object and keep going in another direction anyway?
  • No, cause the smashed immovable object would remain in the same place.
• Why does the adbot put ads for Torah scholarship on my watchlist, despite there being nothing related on there?
  • It does that to you to?
  • Funny, you don't look Jewish. (Right punchline, wrong joke)
• If a person could be uploaded into a computer, would they be Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, or Mega?
  • Mega.
• Want to go crazy? You can have conversations with fictional characters by asking yourself how they would respond to your statement. Problems start to crop up when you've practiced enough to come up with their reactions without bothering to ask the question or stop to consider their answer. I've done it, and I know other amateur writers who hold two-sided conversations with fictional characters due to spending just that much time getting inside the character's head. So how much practice before it becomes an ingrained habit? How many authors ended up in asylums precisely because of that? And why do I find the idea so appealing?
  • I do this with my made up universe's characters in a way: I actually play out stories in my head involving them. If I could remember anything I had happen in them later, I would have a ton of fanfics to write... (Is it still a fanfic when it's your own characters?)
    • Not necessarily, I think, but the existence of Canon Sues seems to imply it can be...
    • I actually do this in my head with people i acutally know. People get confused when i reference an earlier converstation we never actually had. Sometimes entire scenarios play out...
    • I confuse myself by having dreams about very realistic situations or conversations. Sometimes it doesn't come up until months later, when I'm talking to a friend and discover that we didn't * really* go to that amusement park, or have that conversation about a particular TV character, or else that tree in her front yard was never * really* cut down...
    • "Is it still a fanfic, when it's your own characters?" This Troper asked himself? (All the time, he asks himself that.)
  • I do this constantly as part of my thinking process - not often with fictional characters (only in daydreams), but with real people and realistic people I made up for the purposes of the argument (which I suppose would make them fictional characters . . .)
• Once, my uncle and I had a very philosophical conversation after a day of me spending too much time browsing around the Wild mass Guessing thread. The conversation itself was somewhat long, so I wont post it all here, but it revolved basically at some point came to land where it got interesting. We were talking about dreams, and I made the general observation of the possibility that everything we know is a dream. My uncle said it was a possibility, but then countered with "Someone is dreaming all of this, but they live around us and don't realize that everything is a dream.". For a moment, I went into wondering if that was true, and what would cause something like that to happen to a person. Then I went into the train of thought dealing with the possibility that I am a dream, which had a rather literal Dream within a dream vibe to it, and made me paranoid for about half a second. Sadly, the conversation didn't get past that, because I asked "But if one of the dreams is having the dream, and this is all the dream of a dream?" Still haven't quite figured that out yet.
• If the Discovery Channel's entire current lineup were combined into one massive show, what would it look like?
  • Well, Ben Bailey would drive everyone around in the Cash Cab while Mike Rowe asks him questions about his job as host. The Deadliest Catch fishermen would answer most of Ben's trivia questions wrong and throw their nets out the windows of the cab and try to catch stuff until they get three strikes and get forced out. Adam and Jamie would get a lot of trivia questions right and keep trying different ways to blow up the cab. The "Man vs. Wild" guy would be trying to stay away from the lions, who are too busy having sex to notice him.
    • Slightly altered version: Bear Grylls would be strapped to the roof, and answer all the questions with completely random answers. Les Stroud would get most of the answers right, and would point out every possible shortcut on the way to his destination. And the people from The Colony would chase away the cab with metal poles and stuff.
• If kage bunshin no jutsu lets you create physical duplicates, would cogito bunshin no jutsu let you think twice as fast?
  • No, it would just give you second thoughts.
• If McDonald's double cheeseburgers have so many calories, why does it take three of them to fill me up?
  • Because you started browsing TV Tropes before breakfast and so it's been eighteen hours since you ate anything?
  • Less flippant answer: some of the less desirable substances in fast food have the property of messing up your fullness meter, so that even when you've had enough to eat, you don't feel like you have, and keep eating.
  • Yep. McDonald's, Burger King et al. are manipulating satiety, analogous to how cigarette manufacturers learned to manipulate nicotine levels in tobacco. (Now they call cigarettes "nicotine delivery systems". What would be the fast-food equivalent? Man Was Not Meant To Know.)
• What would happen if Spike met Edward Cullen?
  • Hilarity would ensue.
    • Yes, of course, but can you be more specific?
    • Sexy hilarity. Spike would be infuriated by Edward's Dull Surprise, and seek to elicit a proper response out of him...
    • Edward dies!?
    • Woohoo!
• When did the word "tight" start meaning cool instead of something that is causing discomfort due to constriction?
  • There are several possibilities.
  • Um, I'm pretty sure it's due to vulgar urban slang, and certain ladyparts being "tight" as opposed to, uh... dry or loose or diseased or otherwise "overused"... yeah... ugh.
• Why is there a fan in Super Smash Bros.? The game itself doesn't know?
  • Well, the whole game is, by design, fanservice...
  • Who cares?
  • The Boke and Tsukkomi Routine. Note the fan's a harisen, basically the japanese version of slaptick comedy's... slapstick.
• What if Atlus sold home products that required assembly?
  • I dunno. ** shrug**
• Do you think there have been a few really confused emo kids who ended up buying Emo Philips albums?
  • Are they really confused? I mean, look at the guy's hair! And he moans a lot.
• Why are there no LEGO Transformers kits? WHY?
  • Because Hasbro owns Transformers, maybe?
    • Curses. An actual good reason.
  • And because Lego has BIONICLE.
• On the Doorstopper page, there appears the following:
  Philosophy texts vary, but one thing you can be sure of is that if it's Kant, it's going to take some slogging. The Critique of Pure Reason sticks out in particular, mostly because several years after the first edition was published, Kant decided it needed to be rewritten and spent the next decade doing so. (Fortunately he died shortly thereafter or he might have redone it again.)

...was Kant the world's first Serial Tweaker?

• Is it just me, or does the Avatar of Khaine in Dawn of War sound like Psychotic Eldar Snape?
• Rainbow Road is like a metaphor for life. It's got its ups and downs, it lacks safety rails, and sometimes it jumps the track, but if you fall off, someone will always be there to put you back on course.
  • Not always.
• If This Wiki is the Nexus, does that mean that Facebook is instrumentality?
  • Care to explain your reasoning behind that?
    • Well, This Wiki is happy and cuddly and pretty much heaven on earth, whereas Facebook is where all your friends and family end up — even the ones you don't like (or that don't like you).
• If The Flash is "The Fastest Man Alive", but Sonic the Hedgehog is "The Fastest Thing Alive", does this mean that Sonic is faster than The Flash?
  • Depends on whether or not you consider men to be "things".
  • Well, The Flash is a thing that is alive (a human), as opposed to a thing that is not (like, say, a brick). "Man" is a subclass of "alive thing". Wait... does this mean that Metal Sonic could be faster than Sonic, since he's not alive?
    • Does this mean Metal Sonic is faster than Blurr, since they're both robots, but Blurr is alive.
  • Personally, I'm more concerned about the prospect that there could be a zombie faster than The Flash.
    • The Black Flash?
  • They could be about the same speed.
• Doesn't the name "silly putty" imply the existence of serious putty (which probably isn't called that)? If so, what do they use the latter for?
  • Bathroom sealant?
    • Educate yourself.
• Is it just me, or does the English language just sound really weird sometimes? Some words just sound like they threw together random sounds sometimes. Like "deserve", or "musings".
  • Take a peek at Richard Lederer's Crazy English. Let's face it, this is a language in which, as Fighter noted, you drive in a parkway and park in a driveway.
    • If you stare at any word repeatedly or say it repeatedly, it will look strange, no matter what.
    • Like "bowl." Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl. Bowl...
• Throw Light Yagami into Westeros. Let him keep his Death Note. He couldn't possibly make things any worse. Unless Littlefinger got the Death Note.
  • Actually the Death Note would probably simplify things.
• What would happen if a surgeon with OCD got the Healing Touch? Would time run backwards?
  • Or for that matter, what about a hyperactive Genki Girl doctor? (Never mind that she probably wouldn't be able to sit still enough to finish a single medical exam.)
• Where do mutant wizards go to school?
  • They go to both schools by using the pair of Vanishing Cabinets—one is already in Hogwarts's Room of Requirement and the just move the other one into Xavier's School for the Gifted.
  • Sweet answer! Sadly, in the Potterverse, it's more likely that they'd end up locked away in a hospital or asylum somewhere, or else ostracized and forced to live in the forest.
• So, I was wondering: I read on The Other Wiki that Chris Thorndyke's hairstyle resembles that of Sora. I've also noticed that Roxas's hairstyle resembles that of Lucas. Should I draw any conclusions from this?
  • Well, if you ever wanted to see Sonic beat up Chris...
• Is it possible to have a nice job breaking it hero moment in politics? With the Health Care Coalition's attempts at stopping Obama's health care reform, it struck me in that way that a moment like this would occur within the future. Now the question is which side would be the most effected by their efforts...
• How come the good TV Shows/manga/anime/comics/etc. often end up getting all these sequels and spinoffs and stuff and they end up raping canon and being bad and sorta just sucking, and then that's what the show is known for instead of the original good stuff? (Prime example- Yu-Gi-Oh!?)
  • That should be pretty obvious. Good media tends to make good money. Money drives executives to pressure the creators and studios for more content. Over time, content becomes derivative or just plain absurd, because the writers can't come up with more ideas, and new blood in the writing staff usually doesn't ever get caught up with the past of the series. Once it's been bled dry for money it's discarded.
    • Or, in some cases, such as Transformers, repeatedly redone from the ground up so that catching up is less of an issue.
• Should religious sci-fi fans face mecha when they pray?
  • Dope Slap
  • Really, now. Why would sci-fi fans do that? Anime fans, on the other hand...
• Why is a good try different than a nice try?
  • That one's too easy. Good Is Not Nice.
• No matter how much I learn about physics, gravity and magnetism still seem like magic to me. Silent, invisible, unfathomable forces. We only know how they work; we have no clue as to why.
  • I am still amazed that I can put food into a tiny box for 2 minutes and it comes out hot. Not to mention the magic of putting dough in an oven and getting bread. Or putting clay in an oven and getting stone. Or, you know, putting sperm cells inside a uterus and getting a miniature human being with rapid-growth abilities. The world is made of magic.
  • I've been wondering why they work for months. Maybe it's just because I know very little about physics, but don't they violate the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy?
• If our universe turned out to be a video game, which would be the better choice to worship, the programmer, the player, or the code?
  • Think of it this way: the programmer would be a deistic god, essentially plugging in the rules and leaving them to do their thing (except for patches). The code would be the equivalent of the laws of physics, so you wouldn't worship them. The player would be a theistic god, a powerful controller who makes things (good and bad) happen. Primarily the player, with a little spare reverence for the programmer.
  • Or we end up getting the Star Ocean: Till the End of Time plot twist.
• Does anyone else hear "CBC", and immediately think, "Chem-7, 'lytes..."
• If 4Kids Entertainment was one day bought out by 4chan (And subsequently renamed to "4chan Entertainment," of course), what would the resulting dub jobs be like?
  • Probably Gag Subs, constantly mocking the people watching for enjoying anime.
• What would happen if a vampire stood between a normal guy and a mirror? Would the mirror simply show the normal guy's reflection? Or would there be a vampire-shaped hole cut out of his reflection?
  • Think of all those sight gags based around unwittingly dancing/canoodling/whatever with a vampire. (One in particular.) I think you'd just see yourself standing alone, not the vampire. This only raises more questions, though. I assume clothes are also invisible. What about accessories? And wouldn't it be nasty to see yourself in a mirror making out with a vampire? Your tongue...
    • Actually, no. If a vampire was standing between you and a mirror, you'd still see the vampire, just not his reflection. Depending on the size of the vampire and the size of the mirror, you might not see any reflection at all, because, well, duh, there's a vampire in the way.
• Is a flock of Murkrow called a "murder"?
  • They would be called a Murmurder. Their eggs are Murmalaid.
• According to the lyrics for Edwin Starr's "War", "War: friend only to the undertaker". But what about Famine and Conquest/Pestilence/Pollution? Does Mr. Starr know more about the horsemen's interpersonal relationships than we do?
  • It just goes to show that nobody likes War. Not even his coworkers.
• Why are hermit crabs called "hermit crabs"? Hermits are people who live away from the rest of society and help young adventurers and stuff. Hermit crabs are crabs who don't have their own shells and have to use old discarded shells they find. They should be called squatter crabs or something.
  • Perhaps because when startled they hole up in their shells? How strange; I'd never thought of that. Or the shells are equivalent to their "cave", they find an uninhabited cave left empty by another departing hermit and jump right in. And they do help young adventurers.
  • Also, they're not hermets because they've got a lot of other creatures living on their shells. Although since none of those creatures are other crabs, I guess that makes them the Crazy Cat Ladies of the sea.
• Why do people feel the need to compare me to supervillains? I'm not particularly malicious, good with money, or prone to evil schemes.
  • Simple: Evil Is Sexy.
    • I'm a little man/And I'm also evil/Also into cats"
• Are there dogs who judge other dogs by their breeds the same way some people treat others by racial trait? For example, golden retrievers who only hang out with other retrievers?
• Is it possible to have Narm in a comedy?
  • I'm sure that the answer is the same for having Nightmare Fuel in a horror movie.
    • But if it's intentional, it can't be Narm, right?
  • Yes, if it's unintentional comedy during a serious moment in an otherwise comedic work... Or if they blow the humor so bad that the way they screwed up is in and of itself funny.
• In some languages, words have genders. This seems like ripe fodder for RuleThirtyFour to me.
  • Only if you think IkeaErotica is sexy as a literal concept... you know what, I'm going to pretend RuleThirtyFour doesn't exist for that one.
• There's a page for World War III. What are we gonna do if there's a real World War III? Are we gonna change the pages, or the stories, or history, or what?
  • Realistically, portrayls of World War III in fiction are WMGs. So... just move it to that namespace.
    • Is there a story continuum that actually includes both a World War III AND a World War IV?
  • A real-life World War III is probably unlikely... Unless the factions involved are basically the same as the first and second ones, it would probably be called something else.
• If everything was invisible, what colour would we see?
  • Since your retinas would be invisible, and therefore couldn't absorb any color, you would have no understanding of "see", and the question is therefore meaningless.
• Why does Alan Moore get so utterly pissed off whenever one of his works gets adapted into a movie? Shouldn't he be flattered? Is he just that arrogant?
  • I'm pretty sure that the Super Mario Bros Movie justifies any creator's unhappiness with adaptations of their work.
    • Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the Mario series, personally enjoyed the film and stated that not only was it a faithful adaptation of the series, but too faithful. Alan Moore is just an arrogant dick.
  • It doesn't really matter if the creator of the franchise likes it if the rest of the world thinks it's utter bollocks. But to play Devil's Advocate I suppose I could just start listing off adaptations widely considered to be awful. It's pretty long.
  • Yes. From every quote of his I've read, yes, he is.
• When God is angry, does he tell itself to damn things? And if it does, does it damn them? Because if it has someone else do it, then we've been saying the wrong thing for years. But if it does it himself, why say it? Then again, it said "Let there be Light" when there was nobody else around, so maybe God talks to himself. Weird.
  • The former part is a little absurd. It's God we're talking about, if he says "damn it," consider it damned. For the latter part, Jesus is called the firstborn of all creation, so God would have been talking to him. That also doubles as a decent sized wrench for the Trinity doctrine.
  • I'm not Christian, I believe that God was alone up there....or wherever. Either way, when God says "Damn it." does God damn it itself, or have someone else do it? It wouldn't just be damned instantly, that would make no sense. Someone has to do the actual damning.
  • God calls his attacks.
  • But of course.
  • When God gets angry, he says, "Fuck." And that's where love comes from.
  • So God invented swearing?
• Are things supposed to seen in the light? Or are they just supposed to be felt, tasted, heard, and smelt? Just because we have something, does it mean we should use it? If you are staring at a mirror in the dark, does it still show your reflection? Are the colors the same? You can't see them, so who knows? These questions haunt me.
  • Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?
• If there's a New Guinea, where the hell is Old Guinea?
  • West Africa. But why is "Guinea" also a derogatory term for somebody of Italian or Sicilian ethnicity as well as a British gold coin?
    • Then there are guineafowl, which might have originated in Old Guinea but this seems doubtful. And why do they say "poo-track"? And run across the road in groups, especially if I'm in a hurry to get past...
• Does the Translation Convention actually have Woolseyism built in? Think about how many fantasy/sci-fi universes refer to things like "What on Earth is that?" or other Earth-centric idioms and descriptors when there is no logical reason for them to be called that.
• Is it technically called necrophilia if both participants are dead? (Think along the lines of...zombies. Sentient zombies.)
  • That's just called "necrosexual".
• If living people are human beings, does that make the dead human beens? If so, would the correct term for a single deceased person be "human was"?
• Why are they called Soap Operas? The characters don't sing opera, and soap is rarely involved in plots.
  • From what I've heard the were originally sponsered by soap companies, as for the opera part I have no idea.
  • The "opera" part is a reference to the melodrama. People rarely sing in Space Opera either.
    • They should.
    • No they shouldn't.
• Why does my cat smell like wet carpet half the time, and the other half he smells like perfume?
  • You have two similar looking cats.
  • A healthy cat's skin and fur smell pleasantly perfumey. A healthy cat's saliva, not so much. I'd say don't smell your cat right after he's been bathing.
• I came up with a joke a while back: A Camp Gay walks up to a Hard Gay in a bar and says "Hey, big boy!" The Hard Gay replies "Sorry, I'm not into women." Anyone like the joke?
  • The pun's there and it's reasonably clever, unfortunatly there isn't any way one could make it sound funny through diction. Consider writing it as a sketch or a newspaper style comic strip.
• I often wonder what truly matters. Is it really important to be educated? Are we failures if we do not play life as we are dictated? When we fail out of school, are we stupid or are we brilliant? Can you adhere to the system while remaining entirely you? If we considered ourselves animals, wholly, truly ANIMALS, where would we be? Would we focus on education or would we focus on life? Would our wars have more meaning, or less? Then again, is the fact that we don't consider ourselves animals what makes us truly unique? Or the fact that we can observe that we are animals, and then completely discard the theory because We Are Superior? And following that train of thought, why is this cat on my lap, purring, while somewhere out there, a man is being eaten by a lion? Is it their upbringing? Is it their species? Moreover, why does my cat so sweet that she won't scratch/bite you, even if you step on her tail, and yet she won't allow herself within two feet of my sister's cat? How can my English teacher look at all the animals in the world and say that they don't have personalities? Or that they don't love? Why do I get so caught up in these musings when I have exams to study for?
  • Answers: If you don't want to sound like an idiot; only if you believe it; it means you follow your own rules; as long as the system preserves free will; at the top; both, the first for a society and the second for procreation; depends on who decides the meanings; not really, no other animals really think of themselves that way; speciesism is indeed unique to humans; because cats are too small to eat people; no; yes; because she's either shy or stuck-up; because your English teacher reads too many books on humans; ditto; because it's more fun to dream than to work.
• Is the contributor SAMAS the end and the death?
  • At worst, he is the sleep and the Face Doodling.
  • I thought SAMAS was a girl...
• If the cake is a lie then wouldn't that mean the cookie is the truth?
  • Cookies are too similar to cakes; they'd be mostly lies.
    • Oh god. That means that the truth is broccoli!
• Someone should really take another shot at making a Deconstruction of the stock "Space Marine" plot. Yeah, I know, Haze tried. But my suggestion? Grab a stock Space Marine, fast forward some twenty-to-thirty years, add the sort of psychological trauma you'd expect and an inability to return to civilian life, and then send the Old Soldier on one last mission, which rapidly grows complicated due to the questionable nature of Mission Control, foes that aren't any worse (or better) than the main character, and above all, his own mental instability, which leaves you wondering how much of what he's seeing is real.
  • So Metal Gear Solid IN SPACE ?
• Why is 'terrific' good and 'terrible' bad when 'horrific' and 'horrible' both mean bad?
  • Originally they were all words for bad....then someone decided to screw with English and confuse us.
• On a similar note... Why are "priceless" and "worthless" antonyms? They should, if you think about it, mean the exact same thing...
  • I would not call my best friend worthless, nor a sucker stick priceless. While they have the same root meaning, that you can't assign a value to the object, the way you reach the conclusion is completely opposite. Ergo, antonyms.
  • Priceless means "without a price". Strictly speaking there is a fairly clever pun that involves using the alternative meaning of something that is not worth assigning a value to rather than something too valuble to have a price assigned to it.
• Dwarf is a misspelling of fraud done backwards. Does this mean that dwarves are particularly honest beings (if not good spellers)?
• Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
  • Narf.
  • On that note, how did such a nonsensical sentence come into being? Is it bad English? Or deliberate trolling?
• About moving the lawn: why hasn't anyone bred grass that's naturally the height people mow their lawns to? Is short grass just that difficult to bio-engineer? Or is there a conspiracy by the makers of lawncare products?
  • I think you've uncovered a John Deere, Makita, Makuhita conspiracy here.
  • Really. There are other types of ground cover that would naturally grow to a shorter height; plus, grass doesn't actually grow all that tall. Who decided that 6-inch grass is "too tall," and 3-inch grass is "seemly?" Why do we have to mow lawns at all? Unmowed grass is so much nicer to sit on, without all the dry, scratchy cut ends.
  • I saw a commercial for a company that makes artificial, lifelike grass for lawns in desert climates once. I began to wonder what would happen if you had pets. Or even little kids, since they enjoy pulling up grass and digging in the ground too.
  • Why the hell do we need to cover the area in front of our homes with plantlife? Or have that area at all, for that matter? Why not just put houses closer to the street, and have the driveway next to them rather than leading up to them?
• If creationism ever gets the "equal time" it's pushing for, will Christian creationism be the only one accepted or will science teachers have to give equal time to Audhumla, the Great Cow of Heaven?
  • That was the basis of Pastafarianism.
  • I'd love to see Egyptian creationism taught in public schools. "So then, God, er, made love to his hand..."
• How do we know we're speaking the same languages? What if the sounds I make and the sounds and combinations of letters I make and the sounds and combinations of letters you make don't mean the same thing, but the (different) meanings of each just coincidentally match up in both our separately-interpreted languages? Or similarly, how do we know we see the same colors when the only way we share color is through our words for different colors, which don't change according to our individual experiences of them? If the color I see as red looks to you like what I see as blue, how could anyone possibly know?
  • "An n number of possible languages use the same vocabulary; in some of them, the symbol library allows the correct definition a ubiquitous and lasting system of hexagonal galleries, but library is bread or pyramid or anything else, and these seven words which define it have another value. You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?" - Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel"
  • I think I might be able to answer the part about language, at least in part. You see, each individual has a way of using language that is unique to them. It's called an idiolect, and each one involves variations of the dialect and language that is spoken. You ever hear a word or usage of a word in your language that you were unfamiliar with? The speaker's idiolect included a word in its vocabulary that yours didn't, but did once you learned what the word meant and could then use it. It works for other things as well, such as meaning, grammar, and pronunciation. I guess in a way you could say every individual has their own language, and because of connotations and ignorance, it may be the case that our thoughts in their entirety are never conveyed through language. However, if I say "I am typing on my keyboard." you'll probably come to some understanding of my current action if you speak English. I never explained what my keyboard looks like, how fast I'm typing, or who "I" am, and you may have some preconceptions about either of those things that turn out to be wrong. But at the very least we're both aware of these gaps in the information conveyed, and in whatever situation where it would be helpful to use such a sentence, hopefully enough information is communicated.
    • Whoah. From "Or similarly..." on happens to be a thing I've been pondering for a while now. In fact, I was just about to post it here. HOW...?
    • I think about it often. I'm an artist, and I have very precise ideas of color... but even just for myself, I know that my left eye sees colors more warmly, in a redder hue, and my right eye sees things in more of a cool, greenish hue. If I can't even see the same colors with both of my eyes, how can they ever mean precisely the same thing to anyone!? And is my own perception of color equally calibrated for both eyes, or when they are both open, is one of them dominating the way in which I perceive color?
    • That sort of dissonance is (at least clinically) very common, and has to do with one eye having more rods or cones than the other. My right eye sees in warmer, more saturated hues, and my left in a cool, dull fashion. I also notice that I have a tendency to close my left eye in bright sunlight, because rods are designed to function in lower light, and thus are overwhelmed by the abundance of information. Rods work best on a blue-green wavelength, which is why your one eye sees cooler colors. This isn't a function of perception, but rather a function of biology. As an artist/biologist/psychologist/philosopher/drunk, I spend a lot of time pondering things like this.
• What kind of music plays in the mind of an average Cloudcuckoolander? I imagine it would be a comibination of Beck, Mozart, The White Stripes and Picasso.
  • But Picasso wasn't a...oh, I see what you did thar!
  • Speaking for me, usually two musical tracks at once. One might just be a commercial jingle or something, while the other is more complicated music. Or, one might have lyrics while the other is instrumental.
  • Isn't it entirely possible that it's just this horrible, awkward internal silence?
    • Statistically speaking, it's more than likely one of the more powerful Ear Worms. Like the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers theme.
  • The question that everyone is avoiding is... What's an average Cloudcuckoolander? One of the defining traits is a general lack of being average. Having said that, I once had Bohemian Rhapsody continually stuck in my head for a period of two weeks.
• Isn't it weird how you can see the things in your mind even though you can't?
• When I was younger, I used to wonder if my life was just one huge dream, and that the day I 'died', I'd wake up. I was pretty meta when I was seven. I also had a brief thought recently...what if we're just organelles in some phenomenally huge organism's body? What I'm saying is that the universe is a creature and the parts we play in our ecosystem help sustain the cell(Earth) which is part of the vast cosmic network that creates the body of the Universe. I was going to tell my mom but I just thought it was too far out there.
  • If we are the bacteria making this universal organism continue, we don't seem to be doing a good job.
    • Original poster...maybe we're actually malevolent bacteria? The ones that only got that way by using up resources and just being there?
  • On the dream note, I had been wondering what if I were actually an 80-something year old man suffering from Alzheimer's and being under the delusion that I am a 20-something year old man. How would I ever know? Even if I had the type where I came back to reality and recognised people that I had forgotten, once I lapsed back into it I wouldn't remember remembering.
• Somebody should seriously make a Crossover Fan Fic of Yume Nikki and Psychonauts, if it hasn't been done already. Much fun could be had.
• I think the smell of skunk and the smell of lemons is remarkably similar. So does my son, so I'm not the only one.
  • I read about that phenomenon in a magazine when I was little! There are others. One person who was interviewed said that he stayed away from lemonade for his whole childhood — not because he minded the smell or taste, but because other people carried on about how awful skunks smelled, that he didn't want to gross them out by liking things that smelled like skunk.
• Just for one day, we should name every new item that we acquire 'Pablo'. Everything.
  • I'd ask why if you weren't completely right.
  • What if we acquire something that already comes with a name?
• I was wondering if the National Geographic society has ever got any criticsism over their work.
• If everyone here combines their power, could we possibly destroy the fourth wall permanently? And is that a good idea or not? On one hand, life would be more interesting if people could have magical powers, or pets that shoot laserbeams out of their eyes, and think about the possibilities of having fictional characters from different stories meet up... On the other hand, I don't want to release those sparkly vampires into the real world, and would all the fictional characters be able to co-exist, or could it possibly cause the end of the world?
  • We'd need signs that said "Warning! Variable physics area!"
  • Never mind sparkly vampires, do you really want to draw the the grim dark future of 41st century to our world? That would be the end of the world (unless they all turn out to be a few inches tall.)
    • That's what you're worried about. Not our planet being wrapped around Unicron?
• If I regularly find connections between my sister and Candice Flynn, a random guy on the bus and Andrew Van Wyngarden of MGMT and the conflict between Israel and Iran to the Cold War, what does that say about my sanity?
  • Have you started your Room Full of Crazy to record the connections?
• Edna Mode needs more screentime!!!!!!
  • Watch NCIS Los Angeles. Hettie is obviously her Live-Action TV version. I'm just waiting for her to say "No capes!"
• What would happen if you replaced the muffler on a car with a vuvuzela?
  • Instant furious homicidal mob chasing your car.
• If God exists, wouldn't it be an Eldritch Abomination outside our perception of reality that cannot be defined, and have no gender or name? also: swear words. I just don't think such a being would use such earthly things as language, none the less disaprove of certain words. I've been asking myself a lot of strange theological questions lately, I think i'm on the path to atheism...
  • Not to mention that if it weren't that, then it would be a buttinski alien with no right to tell us what to do. To put it simply, God inside nature = not a god; God outside nature = not worth worrying about.
  • Yeah, the concept of God is actually kinda Nightmare Fuel when you think about it. An omnipotent, omniscient being who decides absolute right and absolute wrong on a whim, is everywhere at once, created everything for some inscrutible purpose, and refuses to give any concrete proof as to what he/she/it wants or even if he/she/it exists... but can and will condemn you to eternal suffering for the slightest breach of a set of rules you're not even allowed to know. This is why I don't sleep very well.
• Has it ever occured to anyone, that maybe, just maybe Twilight is simply meant to be entertainment and not to be taken too seriously?
  • I'm cool with ignoring it entirely.
• What happens if you're a werewolf and visiting Mars? If both Phobos and Deimos were full, would you become a double werewolf (whatever that is)?
  • I think they depend on OUR moon for the transformation.
  • I want to know what happens when a werewolf visits our moon.
    • It's one small step for a wolfman, one giant leap for wolfman kind.
• It's wierd that we do simple little things like typing and such, and we just do it, yet our brains are sending millions of tiny impluses that make our muscles work. Also, our brains are EXCEEDINGLY powerful. Is the power of the brain equivalant to an atomic bomb? If so, why aren't we dead?
  • Because our brains don't explode.
    • Our heads do.
• Who invented the alphabet?
  • Haruhi.
• If someone was talking about you behind your back, wouldn't that mean they would be talking in front of you?
• If the English language has too few letters for every phoneme that we use, why not just expand the alphabet to more than 26 letters? Ch can become the letter "chay". Sh can be "Shay". You can make long E and short E different letters.
  • I think about that often. I even tried to develop a new alphabet once, for about five minutes. If there was an alphabet like that, it would probably make too much sense for the English language.
• If I were a taxidermist, I would create something even weirder and awesomer than the platypus.
• I'm convinced that the one place in the world where real magic exists is Venice, and that when it sinks under the ocean like Atlantis, that magic will be lost to us humans. Which sucks.
• This could very well be a stupid, stupid question, but would it be possible to generate a three-dimensional picture in a two-dimensional world?
  • Is it possible to generate a four-dimensional picture in our three-dimensional world? Think about that for a moment and you'll have your answer.
  • But would not the answer be yes? One can represent a 3 dimensional space in 2 dimensions (paintings). So I'm inclined to give the answer 'Yes.' Pondering further, with 3-d modeling we can render a 4-d shape (hypercube) in a virtual 3-d environment using a 2-d display, so wouldn't that eventually mean that with a true 3-d display we 3rd Dimensional Beings should be able to render a 5-th dimensional shape? Then that would mean that in a two-dimensional world, you should be able to generate a 4-dimensional picture, too.
    • What.
• If someone were to mix country-western and death metal together, what would the result sound like?
  • This troper's brother asked something like this once. We agreed that if such a thing existed, the band should be called "Mechanical Bull".
• What would science fiction look like a thousand years from now when (I'm hoping) such things as interplanetary travel, artificial intelligence, and evidence of extraterrestrial life become common place?
  • Weird.
• What if God is just a being from a higher plane where everyone creates their own world?
• If Larxene met Azula, I'm not sure if they'd be best friends or mortal enemies.
• Why would I be Sidetracked by the Analogy? I'm not a train. Or at least I don't think I'm a train. Am I a train?
  • How should I know. Look in the mirror. Unless you're a vampire (and possibly a vampire train). Or a robot who can turn into a train, though in the latter case, the answer becomes... complicated, though I'd advise you to go with "sort of" or "sometimes" if asked.
• Is there a show out there where we have a Magical Girl piloting a Humongous Mecha and using her own magical power to fuel the mecha? If not, why don't we? It would be incredibly awesome to see just how far this sort of thing would go. Also: What sort of mech would Nanoha and/or Fate pilot, if they were given the choice/ability to do so?
  • About the show, I believe you're looking for Magic Knight Rayearth
• Is it even remotely and/or theoretically possible to fly a tank?
  • We have flying tanks. They're called helicoptors. =P
    • Do we have helicopters with treads?
• What if muffins wanted to get revenge on their more tasty cousins cupcakes by establishing themselves as breakfaxt food?
• I've created something I call the "Patton Theory" that says that modern military generals wish to go back to a time (namely World War 2) where war was still glorious. Where it was patriotic and just to fight for your country. This is also one of countless reasons why I think war is utterly pointless.
• What would happen if Courtney fought Eva?
  • If Eva is angry or doesn't have her music, she wins. If Eva kisses duncan, Courtney wins. It all depends on which one is in Unstoppable Rage made.
  • Third Impact happens.
• Where did the " if you die in your dreams, you die in real life' thing come from? I'm still alive, but I've died in dreams before.
  • I've never heard that one. I believe the original line is "if you die in The Matrix you die in real life" (paraphrased).
  • To this troper, it seems like someone would have to understand what death is like for this to happen. Speaking from personal experience, I can have extremely vivid dreams on occasion, and I will wake up or the dream will change if something happens that I don't understand. For instance, I have been shot numerous times, but I get up and only feel a small amount of impact from the bullet instead of what I perceive would be excruciating pain because I've never been shot and my brain has nothing to compare the sensation to. If you died in a dream, you'd likely only wake up because you've never died before in real life and your brain can't comprehend such things. Assuming such things are possible and you dream of dying after having already died once, it may happen because you understand it.
  • So if you resurrect someone who had died and they fell asleep and died in their dreams, would they die? Does this mean that if you ever fail to keep all of your RPG characters alive at all times, they have a chance of dying randomly, with no prior warning, at any time?
• Does being green automatically enable you to defy gravity?
  • Probably not. That would be too easy.
• Lunar cows live on the "moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo"n.
• If you use a Mr. Coffee to make tea instead of coffee...does it become Mr. Tea?
  • I pity the fool who tries.
• We got to get in to get out...
• If websites and computer programs suddenly became sentient, which ones would be good and which ones would be evil? I can imagine Facebook as this really needy adolescent who only wants everyone to like it. Like the Michael Scott of social media. And of course, 4Chan would be chaotic evil.
• Is the definition of 'dictionary' in the dictionary?
  • Depends on the dictionary, I'd guess, but if it's not, your dictionary sucks. The real question is, does the encyclopedia have an article on encyclopedias?
• If I throw a book of limericks down a flight of stairs, does that qualify as poetry in motion?
  • Only if it lands in a jazz club.
• Is there a self-reference paradox that directly references a self-reference paradox?
• My brother: "The best things always happen when the camera is off or at home." Pretty accurate, actually.
• What would happen if the entire world suddenly stopped using money one day, for whatever reason, and we all had to switch to bartering?
• When are Converse shoes going to go back out of style?
• On October 31, why does everybody I know try to force me into a false dilemma where I must choose between celebrating Halloween and preparing for NaNoWriMo? Without their help, I can do both!
• Why isn't it cool to be optimistic anymore? Or to love your family and friends? Or to randomly sing and dance in public? Basically
  • You mean you're not meant to do that?
• Why do bananas taste so weird, while banana-flavored foods taste divine?
• Where do you put outgoing mail if you live in an apartment complex with a cluster mailbox? The postman won't touch anything I put in my box, so I have to walk all the way up the street to the blue box.
  • This is actually normal in Germany. Only our boxes are yellow.
  • Some cluster mailboxes at least have a designated slot for outgoing mail. No idea how widespread said concept is, like whether it's common in my state/country or not (Texas and the US, respectively).
  • Clearly, you've already found your answer: you go up the street to the blue box. Or the yellow one if you're German. Why did you even ask? Were you hoping you were wrong?
• So my friend and I went to see a movie, and we were the only two people in the audience. We talked back to the movie for a while, MST3K style, and the staff came and told us to be quiet. What the heck?
  • You were interfering with the staff's enjoyment of the movie. Shame on you.
• Weird random crossover: what if both Asuka Langley-Soryu and Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion decided to fight it out, except that The Master from Doctor Who was somehow called out to referee said fight?
  • Asuka is a bitch and Rei is a doormat. I think it'd be kinda one-sided and possibly a little disturbing.
  • What if it was a rap battle?
• If the multiverse theory is correct and there is an infinite amount of universes with every possiblility, then wouldn't there be a universe where the inhabitants have discovered how to travel to every other universe and have done so? Unless it's absolutely physically impossible for things to go between universes. In that case, wouldn't it mean that it would be impossible to prove the existence of other universes, so there's no point to postulating a multiverse?
  • Given that there are an infinite number of universes in the multiverse, you'd also have an infinite number of them that are absolutely identical up until a certain point. Sometimes, that certain point consists of the moment where those people who figured out how to travel between universes show up and muddle around a bit. It's just that we live in one of the boring ones, so far. We're the backwater hicks of the multiverse. As usual.
• I was listening to Alien Ant Farm, and thought of two things:
  • Is it an ant farm owned by an alien, or a farm for alien ants?
  • Do you suppose Unova has a band called "Alien Durant Farm"?
• Always remember! The first three letters of "funeral" spell "fun!" and if you rearrange the letters of funeral you get "real fun!"
• Telepathy would be a big step towards world peace. My rationale for this; as stated above, words are essentially ideas attached to sounds. Communication relies on other people having similar enough ideas attached to similar enough sounds to get the message across. And yet, due to any number of factors, people can grow up in the same neighborhood and have entirely different ideas attached to the same sounds. You could have a conversation with someone that makes perfect logical sense to both parties, but walk away with completely different thoughts of what was said. Ideally, telepathy would communicate 'pure ideas,' thus eliminate misunderstanding. 'Ideally' being the keyword there...
  • Yep. While we're on the topic of telepathy, I imagine telepathy would probably be Better Than Sex, because "Everybody has a secret world inside of them . . ." We no doubt get accustomed to our own, but could you imagine seeing the entirety of another person's mind? Even if it wouldn't, it's nice to think of it that way.
• You know how they say that the universe is constantly expanding? What if it's because somebody is writing more into existence all the time? What if our universe was just another fictionland for people in another universe? What if our lives are all really bad fanfics? I better stop here, or this is gonna get out of control.
• What about the whole "Having gay sex being a sin" thing? With all the murders, rapes, and general cruelty happening in the world, wouldn't God be more worried about all of that rather than the gender of who you sleep with?
  • I certainly hope so.
    • Given some of the things he's responsible for, such as the goliath tigerfish and the shrike, it's possible God is kind of a dick about certain things.
• I just realized that Fox and Joss Whedon do the exact same thing: Give you the gift of an amazing show or character respectively, and then kill it in front of you to make you cry.
• I remain convinced that people who critique modern art don't have any idea what they're talking about, but they don't want to admit this because they would seem ignorant. The same could go for wine critics, film critics, etc., but modern art is the most Egregious.
• What if we all live in a gritty fictional universe, and somewhere in the world there is an action movie hero doing badass things that we just don't know about?
• Have you ever wondered if God runs the world like a child plays with toys? He has set everything up and now He is just sitting in His palace watching us do our own thing to the world He created.
• What if every human being sees colors differently, in other words, the blue I see is not the same blue you see?
  • This was already on the page, and seems to be a common thought. I've had it myself.
• Is there a community of Japanese people obsessed with Western Animation? Do they tend to use Gratuitous English like an otaku would Gratuitous Japanese? Is there a word for these people in Japan?
• Why do dreams seem real while we're dreaming, and real life seems real when we're awake? Are they both real life, just in alternate dimensions? What if the dreams are actually real life, and our mundane waking life is just a break in-between our dreams?
  • On the subject of dreams, how come I get boring, disjointed dreams while everyone else seems to get epic adventures at night? It's not fair. Unrelatedly, I really think Bassgasm is a cool name for a dubstep producer.
• How come we have a solar plexus but no lunar plexus?
  • Maybe it's what people see when you moon them?
• If you initiate an invation against an enemy country on April Fool's Day, wouldn't that make the invasion an April Fool's joke?
• If Batman were a Klingon, what would he call his bat'leth?
  • A spoon.
• So I've been wondering about this for a while now. What happens if a male who is colorblind or has another genetic disease that only affects males undergoes a gender bender? Would she still be colorblind or whatever in defiance of all logic, or would her disease be cured? I know gender bending is "magic", so the rules of the world don't really apply, but still.
  • Depends on where that extra X-chromosome comes from. If it's some idealized X, then the colourblindness will go away. If it's an identical copy of the old X, then they're still hooped.
  • I'm assuming the X-chromosome comes from the genderbent person's own DNA, because they still have many of the same attributes as they had as their original gender, so the genetic disorder would probably still be there. However, just changing someone's chromosomes wouldn't immediately lead to taking on all aspects of the opposite gender, as it usually does in fiction. So is the new chromosome retroactively applied (as in, the genderbent person is as if he/she always had the opposite chromosome)? That seems kind of complicated.
• Has anyone else had this urge, when looking at some MST3K episodes, to reshoot one of those bad movies and make it something of a masterpiece? For instance, Space Mutiny might be about a generation ship that's taken the slow path to its destination while the rest of humanity developed FTL travel, so that the untamed wilderness they were expecting is a fully settled world with its own politics, culture, and a desire to keep the less advanced riffraff off their land; the conflict would be between those who want to forcefully land the ship on the planet and those who want to wait in orbit and think of an alternate solution (but possibly risk the deaths of their entire population due to limited resources). I'm still thinking of a decent way to do Robot Holocaust...
• Is it me or does Steve Blum look like Mike Mozart?
• One day, as a side note, my ninth-grade science teacher briefly gave us a rudimentary description of string theory. If that very basic summary were true, as-is, then spatial manipulation resembling telekinesis would theoretically be possible, because if everything is made up of the exact same stuff, that would mean the entire universe is just one big mass of tiny strings, and there are no real borders between your body and that object on that table over there. It's as much a part of you as your arm, as is the air in the space that separates it from you. All you'd need to do would be to, I dunno, concentrate or something. ...yeah, I obviously don't really understand this, but it's a fun thought.
  • The strings are all enclosed loops. They interact via the way that they vibrate but they are, effectively, their own thing. Interesting to note, though, that one of the original basic conclusions of Quantum Theory is that, because the position and velocity of all matter is dictated by a probability function, every single part of everything is technically existing in every place in the universe. Because, even though the odds are so minute as to be negligible, there is a real possibility that the electrons in your body are inside you, or somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy, or just down the road getting in some jogger's face. Mind you, the most likely location for that electron to be is less than a nanometer from its host nucleus. But it doesn't have to be.