Must be Monday. New podcast! Just click on the fancy logo below.
SubpagesMain
Quotes
|
|
|
|
You Wouldnt Hit A Guy With Glasses
|
Common Stock Phrase, and a Tempting Fate trope: Whenever any fictional character tries to invoke this, the odds are pretty good that he's about to get hit. Occasionally, the attacker will immediately pull the glasses off, and then sock his opponent. It should be noted that broken glass in a man's eyes is a brutal way to blind him for life and the glass could tear up the attacker's knuckles.
Compare Wouldn't Hit a Girl, contrast Hold My Glasses.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- In Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin requests that Enishi remove his glasses before they fight. Enishi refuses and they fight. Eventually, Kenshin lands a hit to the face and breaks the glasses, scolding Enishi for not taking them off when he had the chance.
- In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, Kenichi insists Odin take off his glasses before Kenichi finishes beating him up. Turns out the glasses were acting as a sort of Power Limiter; without them, Odin is nearsighted, and his martial artist's sixth-sense supercharges to make up for the deficiency, allowing him to "see" through all of Kenichi's attacks with ease.
Comic Books
- Early in the John Byrne Superman comic reboot, Superman faces a gang which includes a violent, glasses-wearing, heavily armed female member spouting revolutionary phrases. She tries the double-powered "You wouldn't hit a lady with glasses, would you?" Superman gently removes her glasses and flicks his finger, knocking her cold. He then says, "A lady? No, but then I've never met a lady who carries dynamite under her coat."
- In one X-men comic, some drunkards tried to pick a fight with (civilian-dressed) Cyclops. He said the page quote, so one of the mobs removed glasses from him. This didn't end well.
- In the long Bash Street Kids story entitled All for fun and fun for all, which appeared in The Beano back in the early 2000s and was mostly recently reprinted in the 2009 Bash Street Kids Annual, Spotty dons 'erberts glasses in an attempt to get Teacher not too push him into a river. In the spirit of this trope Teacher ignores this and pushes Spotty in the river.
Film
Literature
Live-Action TV
- Batman
- In "The Bookworm Turns", Batman cites this trope as he prepares to battle the Bookworm's Mooks, requesting that they take off their glasses, which they oblige. Batman takes a moment to deliver An Aesop to Robin: "Never hit a man with glasses." Which is Hilarious in Hindsight considering Michael Keaton's Batman would avert this trope 20 years later (and to a guy who definitely deserved it, no less).
- In "It's the Way You Play the Game" a mook named Leo confronts Batman.
Leo: You wouldn't hit a man with glasses, would ya?
Batman: You're not wearing glasses.
Leo: I'm not? [Prepares to punch Batman]
Batman: [Punches Leo first] Laugh that off, Leo!
- In the Quantum Leap episode "The Cam-ikazi Kid", Sam leaps into a dorky teenager who is harassed by bullies. He protests, "You can't pants a guy with glasses!" The bully replies, "What glasses?", takes the glasses, and pantses him anyway.
- Malcolm in the Middle had Reese remove a kid's glasses and punch him when he tried this excuse.
- Implied in The Rockford Files episode "The Kirkoff Case": Rockford puts on glasses and pretends to be an insurance agent; when the disguise fails and he starts getting roughed up, he protests, "Didn't you notice I was wearing glasses?"
- Subverted in Get Smart when Smart, 99, and The Chief are captured by KAOS agents and ordered to make a phone call for something. Smart notices that the agent covering them and closest to them is wearing glasses and he knows that the Chief can sing a note high enough to shatter glass. So, he makes up a story that the Chief needs to sing a certain note as part of a code on the phone, and the Chief sings that note to shatter the lenses of the KAOS agent's glasses, allowing Smart to tackle him. Thus their survival depended on specifically hitting a guy with glasses.
- Family Matters: Narrowly averted in the Season 1 episode "In a Jam," where a bully torments the glasses-wearing Urkel into giving him his lunch money. When Urkel stands up to the thug (who is more than twice his size), the bully — aptly named "Bull" Watson — threatens him with harm if he refuses again. When Urkel stands his ground a day later, Bull grabs Urkel by the collar and cocks his fist ... only for Eddie to show up in the proverbial nick of time to distract Bull and get him to reconsider. (Bull eventually gets a fist to his stomach, causing him to back off.)
- In contrast, in later seasons after Urkel invented his Transformation Chamber, Urkel's alter egos (most notably, Bruce Lee Urkel) were non-eyeglass wearing. This is always after the ruffians for the episode beat up the glasses-wearing Urkel.
- At least once on an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, a criminal syndicate corners the glasses-wearing, elderly C.D. Parker (Noble Willingham) in an effort to intimidate him into getting Walker to drop his investigation. When C.D. tries to get them to back off by saying they shouldn't hit a guy with glasses, one of the crooks removes his glasses, breaks them ... and then beats him to a pulp. (Of course, Walker gets his revenge in the end.)
Music
- At one MTV Video Music Awards show, someone booed Eminem on stage as he was accepting an award. Eminem, immediately assuming the heckler was Moby (whom the rapper dissed in his song and video for "Without Me", and who was cracking jokes with Jon Stewart about Eminem on a guest appearance on The Daily Show at the time), responded, "I will hit a man with glasses."
Newspaper Comics
Professional Wrestling
- WWE SummerSlam 91 featured WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion
 Mr. Perfect vs. Bret "The Hitman" Hart. When Mr. Perfect's manager "Coach" stood by the ropes and tried to motivate his man to get up, Hart knocked him down. Both announcers were aghast that Hart would hit a man with glasses.
- On the last night of Season 4 of WWE NXT, Daniel Bryan was talking with his rookie, Ensemble Dark Horse Derrick Bateman backstage before a tag team match. Danielson recalled that he'd punch Bateman if he got eliminated (which he did, the prior week). Bateman reaches down and immediately tries to invoke this; as soon as he straightens up, Danielson decks him. But seeing how he would go on and win the match for his team, Danielson's actions turned into a Wangstless version of Get A Hold Of Yourself Man.
Daniel Bryan(To Bateman): Now get up. Because you've got a NXT Rookie Reunion Tag Team Match tonight, an I want you to win! And I don't want you to win for me, I want you to win for you! I want you to win for chicks! I want you to win for America! AND I WANT YOU TO WIN FOR CLEVELAND!
- In the late 1980s/early 1990s WWF, the character of Brother Love was a bespectacled Southern preacher who — during his Talk Show with Fists "The Brother Love Show"— was clearly alligned with the villians and did everything to antagonize the faces. Several times, he attempted to get involved in the action, almost always leading to him gettting socked by the good guys. The most frequent people who struck Love (both while he was wearing his glasses, and also after they were knocked off) were the top two faces of the WWF at the time: Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper has gotten a few licks in, while the Hart Foundation (the tag team of Bret "The Hitman" Hart and Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart) once clotheslined Love after a match. Every time, the announcers — save for the heelish Jesse "The Body" Ventura and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan — supported hitting this guy with glasses every time.
Video Games
- In the standard ending of Donkey Kong Country 3, Cranky insults the protagonists' performance, and they surround him, apparently to beat him up. As they close in, Cranky puts on a pair of glasses and says the line.
Web Original
Western Animation
- One Bugs Bunny cartoon in which this appeared was Hare Splitter. Bugs (as a baseball bat) also does it to Count Bloodcount (as a vampire bat) in Transylvania 6-5000. Since he knows what's coming, the Count quickly puts on a pair of glasses when he sees what Bugs transformed into; Bugs hits him anyway.
- In Scrap Happy Daffy, Daffy Duck uses this against a goat. When the goat goes to attack Daffy's rear, a pair of glasses appear on his tail feathers too.
- Bugs once put on some glasses to prevent his rival in love from hitting him. It didn't work.
- Similarly to the comics example, in one episode of the X-Men cartoon, some toughs in a bar are getting belligerent with Cyclops. He tries to play it cool and says the line, but one of them says "So? take 'em off.", grabs Cyke's shades, and things start to go downhill from there.
- In one episode of DuckTales, Gizmoduck tries to persuade an attacking security robot not to hit him by putting on a wig and saying, "You wouldn't hit a lady, would you?" When that doesn't work, he adds a pair of glasses to his disguise and asks, "What about a lady in glasses?" He gets punted.
- In Jackie Chan Adventures, Jackie is looking for a sheep's spirit using a pair of magic goggles. When he becomes surrounded by Shadowkhan, Jackie says this phrase.
- In the Futurama episode "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", Bender is caught cheating in a game of poker using X-ray glasses. When he's cornered, he nervously states, "Hey...you wouldn't hit a guy wearing X-ray glasses, would ya?" Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work.
- Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines: Dick Dastardly once has the squadron wear glasses. When he tried to hit Muttley, the trope has been invoked and it worked.
- In the Danny Phantom episode "Splitting Images":
Danny: (in Poindexter's body) You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses! (dodges Poindexter's punch) You couldn't hit a guy with glasses! (dodges again) In fact, you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!
Poindexter: (in Danny's body) Ugh! Hold still!
- The Simpsons: Milhouse tried to use the trope to avoid being beaten by Nelson. Nelson reacted by removing the glasses.
- In the Scooby-Doo episode "Jeepers, It's The Creeper" Velma tries this on the Creeper. He responded by removing her glasses, then Velma kicked him in the shin and grabbed them back.
- Jeckle invokes this to the bull in the Heckle And Jeckle cartoon "Bulldozing The Bull."
Jeckle: I say... you wouldn't hit someone in glasses, would you? (the bull headbutts him into the air)
Jeckle: (to us) I believe he would!
- In Mr. Bug Goes to Town, Swat tells Mr. Beetle that he shouldn't hit him because he's wearing glasses (he does).
|
|
