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"Loquentia, Imbruglia, Precipitous, Saraleecheesecakea, Denouement!"

When a magical spell is invoked in a cartoon, comedy show or during a comedy sketch, the words needed to be spoken are often in-jokes, brand names, or famous surnames. Pig Latin and Canis Latinicus are also commonly used. Rhymes are common in a parody of Rhyming Wizardry. They often sound weird enough to only be spotted on a second viewing.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Every single spell in Bastard!! (1988) sounds like a mix between magic and the Power of Rock since they are all based on famous heavy metal lyrics.
  • The English Gag Dub of Ghost Stories uses these for almost all the rituals to seal the various ghosts roaming the school.

    Comic Books 
  • In Swedish children's comic Pellefant, all spells were nonsense rhymes of this kind. Interestingly, one spell was consistent: the one to undo other spells. Retura, reverta, bicka backa bick-back-buck!.
  • John Constantine has done this on occasion.
  • In one issue of New Mutants, the girls are having a sleepover with several of their regular friends. During a pretend seance, Ilyana uses the incantation from Bullwinkle (see below) with Dani providing some special effects. It makes sense: who would know better than a demon-trained sorceress what won't work?
  • Vampirella: Pendragon occasionally, depending on writer and alcohol level. (Of Pendragon, not the writer.)

    Comic Strips 
  • In The Wizard of Id, the title character's signature all-purpose spell is "Frammin' on the jim-jam, frippin' at the krotz!" Cartoonists Parker and Hart derived this from the Chris Sharp jazz instrumental, "Frimmin' on the Jim-Jam."

    Fan Works 
  • A Very Potter Musical:
    • The spells are performed not by casting an actual spell, but by saying the name of the spell. "Jelly Legs Jinx!"
    • Also subverted occasionally when characters will not even say a spell, but do a normal action such as leave a room and saying "Magic!"
  • Potter Puppet Pals features spells like "Pantaloonius Poopicus" and "Ronicus Explodicus".

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Bit of Bilingual Bonus in The Cabin in the Woods: the "ritual incantation" used by the Japanese grade-school girls to seal the Sadako-ripoff is actually a preschool song about an acorn falling into a pond and befriending a fish.
  • In The House With a Clock in Its Walls, Lewis casts a spell to find the location of the doomsday clock by shouting out the definitions of "Discover", "Location", "Secret", and "Clock" while waving his Magic 8-Ball around vigorously. It works.

    Literature 
  • Harry Potter:
    • Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has Ron attempt a spell with a rhyming incantation ("Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow") on the train ride to Hogwarts. It quickly becomes apparent to both Ron and the reader that it isn't a real spell, as Fred and George told him about it in the first place and most other spells in the series have short Latin-based incantations.
    • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
      • Harry threatens his magic-phobic Jerkass cousin Dudley with the words "Hocus pocus! Squiggly wiggly!".
      • The incompetent Gilderoy Lockhart attempts to get a swarm of Cornish pixies under control by bellowing, "Peskipiksi Pesternomi!" (suggested etymology being: "Pesky pixie, pester no me!") It does absolutely nothing, either because he just made it up on the spot or he had no experience casting it.
  • In Bored of the Rings, Goodgulf has quite a lot of these, e.g.: "Hocus-pocus / Loco Parentis! / Jackie Onassis / Dino De Laurentiis!" His magic is completely based on parlor tricks and funny incantations.
  • In The Dresden Files, Harry Dresden's candle-lighting spell is "Flickum Bicus." (Flick my Bic.)
    • And in one of the short stories, when interrogating a thug, "Intimidatus dorkus maximus!"
    • For creating an iceberg he uses "Rexus Mundus." ("King of the World")
    • For creating illusionary duplicates, "Lumen, camerus, factum!" ("Lights, camera, action!")
    • In other words, this trope can come into play, literally depending on the caster's sense of humor. Because, for safety, reasons spells are explicitly either made up words or in languages the wizard doesn't speak.
  • In Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures, all incantations are fake trappings meant to impress muggles. Quite a lot of them fall under the trope, including "Alakazam-shazam" and the perennial favourite "Walla Walla, Washington".
  • The spell in Wyrd Sisters is a parody of the one in Macbeth, with such phrases as "tongue of boot and glow-worm glimmer, stir and then allow to simmer."
    • Also from the Discworld series, the spell to summon Death (to ask him questions) is called the "Rite of Ashk Ente", pronounced similarly to "Ask Auntie".
  • In Lest Darkness Fall, Padway gets exasperated with a quack who is trying to heal him of a bad cold, and sends him running by threatening to put a curse on him and spouting a stream of random modern-day words.
  • Bruce Coville's Book of... Monsters: In The Thing That Goes Burp in the Night, John Thomas reads a bunch of terms out of an index in one of his father's medical books, making it sound like he's doing a spell that will conjure up a monster to come and get his brother.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Used in an Italian comedy, where at one point the main characters make a fake Satanic ritual, including gibberish incantations as "Satan... Satanasso... Tapioca!"
  • Doctor Who:
    • In an episode, Shakespeare, the Doctor, and Martha Jones perform a magic spell that's mostly sci-fi garble, with JK Rowling.
    • in "The Daemons", "Reverend Magister" gets his Satanist dupes to chant "Mary had a little lamb" backwards, likely after the Hollywood Satanism practice of reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards.
  • On Wizards of Waverly Place, most of the spells are either the last name of one of the show's creators and a made up word that rhymes, or exactly what the spell does, with a Latin suffix such as "ius" tacked onto the end.
  • The spell word needed to use a certain witch's Magic Wand in an episode of El Chapulín Colorado is Parangaricutirimícuaro, a tongue-twister in Mexico (and the name of a town that was once destroyed by a volcano).

    Tabletop Games 

    Theater 
  • Puffs, being a spoof of the Harry Potter series, has several parody versions of spells from the series, including "Stupidify" (Stupefy), "Olive Gardium Leviosa" (Wingardium Leviosa), "Avada Kedabra" (Avada Kedavra), "Asio" (Accio), Snake Spell (Serpensortia), "Rickmansempra" (Rictusempra), "Locomotor Legs" (Locomotor Mortis, despite having a different effect as noted in the script), and "Tarantula Jelly" (Tarantallegra).
  • In Mozart's opera Bastien Und Bastienne, the sorcerer Colas recites a "magic spell" to make Bastienne fall in love with Bastien. This aria, "Diggi, daggi, shurry, murry," is really just a collection of nonsense words and random Latin (e.g., "fatto, matto, quid pro quo").

    Video Games 
  • In Barbarus: Tavern of Emyr the magic scroll which is supposed to fix Emyr's knee injury says "Lorem ipsum".
  • In the English version of Dragon Quest XI, the spell to seal the evil ice witch Krystalinda ends up being a Mary Poppins reference. (It's Dragon Quest; of course there's a dumb pun.) As an extra gag, the caster has to pause near the end because he's not sure how the last bit is pronounced.
    Pella, mella, fell and feller! Fabula ferocious!
    Helter, skelter, bind and belt her! Anima atrocius!
    Liber claustra cabalistic! Hexpialidocious!
  • The invokation for the Create Gold spell in Dungeon Keeper 2 is "Esspressus Americanus".
  • The old adventure game Keef the Thief was full of these; e.g. two healing spells were "Bandus Aidus" and "Takus Tylenus".
  • The random words wizards speak when casting in Sacrifice include "Klaatu", "Barada" and "Nikto", though not necessarily in the same incantation or in order.
  • In the Switch remake of Super Mario RPG, Wizakoopa summons a source of infinite money with the spell "Uget watchoo peifore!" ("You get what you pay for.") (In the original SNES version, the spell was instead "Ho'okalakupua", the Hawaiian word for magic.)
  • Ashley's theme in WarioWare includes the incantation "Pantalones Giganticus!"

    Web Animation 
  • The Homestar Runner cartoon Halloween Potion-Ma-Jig has Homestar gathering ingredients for a Halloween potion, including one of three possible incantations:
    • "Loquentia, Imbruglia, Precipitous, Saraleecheesecakea, Denouement!"
    • "Bettah axe somebod-ay!"
    • "Do you even have half a brain!"

    Web Comics 

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • In a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons, Bart reads a spell from a magic book that's basically a list of odd brand names and famous surnames.
    "Trojan, Ramses, Magnum, Shiek!"
  • Done in a Robot Chicken parody of Harry Potter. Example: When Snape tries to seduce Hermione in his "magical jacuzzi", he calls it forth with the spell, "BarryWhiteus, candlelightus, girl-exciteus!" She dispells his lecherous advance with the counterspell, "Pedophilius repelus!"
  • Animaniacs:
    • A Pinky and the Brain episode had "Charlie Sheen, Ben Vereen, Shrink to the size of a lima bean!"
    • In the same vein, one of their skits "translating" William Shakespeare covered the Three Witches scene from Macbeth:
      Witches: Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.
      Yakko: Loosely translated, "Abracadabra".
      Dot: Fillet of a fenny snake, in the cauldron boil and bake.
      Yakko: "Let's cook a snake." Start with my agent.
  • There was a Bugs Bunny cartoon (Transylvania 6-5000) where Bugs meets a vampire. He starts reading a book about magic words that contain the words "Abracadabra" and "Hocus Pocus." Unknown to him (at first, anyway), "Abracadabra" turns the vampire into a bat, and "Hocus Pocus" turns him back into a person. He starts singing the words in a song, transforming the vampire back and forth (Hilarity Ensues)... then starts mixing them up in the song, "Abraca-Pocus" and "Hocus-cadabra", making half the vampire transform, i.e. a human body with a bat's head, then a bat's body and human head. Then he throws out, "Newport News!" which changes the vampire into a look-alike of Witch Hazel, and finally, "Walla Walla Washington!" which turns him into a two-headed vulture.
    • Also in the Looney Tunes realm, Merlin the Magic Mouse's magic words are "Atascadero Escondido", which are two cities in southern California.
  • The episode of The Venture Brothers "Everybody Come to Hank's" invoked this. When assisting Orpheus casting a spell, an incantation was apparently required, and The Alchemist decided to have a little fun with it.
  • In The Spectacular Spider-Man, viewers who take the time to translate Mysterio's spells from Latin will find that most of the longer ones are non sequiturs.note 
    Denique diatem efficacem inveni! (Translation: I have finally found an effective diet!)
    Credo Elvem ipsum etiam vivere! (Translation: I believe that Elvis is alive!)
    Nullae satisfactionis potiri non possum! (Translation: I can't get no satisfaction!)
    Tibi gratias agimus quod nihil fumas! (Translation: Thank you for not smoking!)
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle: "Eenie-meanie, chilly beanie! The spirits are about to speak!"
  • The Animated Adaptation of Soul Music gives words to the Rite of Ashk-Ente. These include Canis Latinicus descriptions of Death himself ("Wan Equestrus Chiv im Curlus. Homme Qui into Blotteau Hurlus"note ) and the ceremony ("Ovum Crackus, Totale Knackus"note ).
  • The Pink Panther: "Transylvania Mania" - The Inspector fights Dracula (crossovered with Frankenstein) and his Igor, who want his brilliant brain for the newest creation. The Inspector overhears the spells (teensy-weensy and biggy-wiggy, for adjusting Igors size) and uses them to dish out Amusing Injuries by the ton.
  • Subverted in the Kaeloo episode parodying Harry Potter. Kaeloo says that there are lots of spells ending in "us" and "or", but it turns out that they really sound like magic spells and aren't made up of English words.
  • The Yogi Bear cartoon "Touch And Go-Go-Go" has a magician visiting Jellystone Park. He uses his magic wand to make Yogi and Boo Boo disappear with the magic words "nome de plume" (which is actually French for "pen name").
  • The classic Donald Duck cartoon "Trick or Treat" has a witch(voiced by June Foray) brew a potion to help Huey, Dewey and Louie bedevil their uncle Donald:
    "Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble!
    Eye of needle, tongue of shoe, hand of clock that points at two!
    [aside to one of the nephews] This is the real thing, y'know, right out of Shakespeare!"
  • In Gravity Falls most incanatations (which aren't English sentences played backwards) are genuine Latin, but they slip a few jokes in:
    • One spell, involving dream visitations, snuck the phrase "Inceptus Nolanus overratus" in among the real Latin.
    • "Northwest Mansion Mystery" gives us a spell to banish ghosts that goes "Exodus demonus, spookus scarus, aintafraidus noghostus".
  • Spells in The Owl House normally don't require any sort of incantation (barring some very rare exceptions). However, Luz's attempts to get Owlbert to fly in the first episode before she's been properly introduced to how magic works in the series has her shouting "Expecto... flying? Magicus... escapicus!"

    Real Life 
  • The "magic words" Hocus Pocus were generated as a parody/modification of the Latin "Hoc Est Corpus" (This Is The Body), which was used to denote the Eucharist in Christian ceremony.
    • In Scandinavia and Russia, there is a third word for this "magical" formula. It is "filiokus" or "filipokus", and is derived from "filioque" (a theological dispute between the Orthodox and Catholic churches, involving the Holy Spirit... it's a long story).
  • As seen elsewhere: "Expecto patronum?" I thought you said "expensive petroleum!"

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