Metaphorgotten / Western Animation

Mixed metaphors in western animation.

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• American Dad!:
  • In the episode "Star Trek":
    Steve: Creative writing is hard, I can't do it.
    Stan: Can't? We don't live in Ameri-can't, Steve, we live in Ameri-ca. No, no wait, we live in Ameri-can. No, wait, that's not right, we are Ameri-can. Where was I going with this? [...] If I Ameri-can't teach you about it, I have a friend who Ameri-will.
  • In the same episode:
    Roger: Sorry pal, you're going to jail, where they're gonna take your cherry (Beat) jello away... in the lunch line... after you're raped in the showers.
  • In "Meter Made";
    Stan: Francine finally had what she wanted. She was married to a somebody, and she was enjoying a taste of the good life. Unfortunately, I didn't count on her having an appetite. The appetite of a good life elephant. ...does that make sense? It doesn't need to, I was a meter maid.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender gives us this gem:
  Azula: That's a sharp outfit, Chan. Careful, you could puncture the hull of an empire-class Fire Nation battleship, leaving thousands to drown at sea... because... it's so sharp.
  Chan: Um... thanks.
• In Ben 10: Alien Force, Ben’s Appoplexian form, Rath, does this twice.
  • In his debut episode, "Con of Rath"
    Rath: A man's food is his castle!
    Ocatagon Vreedle: I believe what you done there is mixin’ what you might call metaphors.
  • And in "Above and Beyond"
    Rath: You want a piece of Rath? You got a piece! But you just bit off an eye bigger than your stomach can chew!
    Manny: That made no sense.
    Rath: (Beat) I KNOW!
• Central Park:
  • In Season 1 "Hat Luncheon", Paige tells her children when life gives you lemons you have to take it in stride, and if you get the lemons talking there's a story inside. Molly and Cole tells her that her metaphor is broken.
  • In the Season 1 finale "A Fish Called Snakehead", Birdie tries to describe Dick Flake buying a dead snakehead from a fish market and using it to claim he caught it in the lake.
  Birdie: It's like if a doctor couldn't find your appendix, so they bought somebody's else from an... an appendix store and waved it around and told... Well, you get the idea. That's not a good doctor, Dick!
• From Chowder:
  "You see, Chowder, food is like life. And sometimes we bite off more life than we can chew. And then we're just puking life all over the walls, the ceilings, the expensive carpets..."
• From Clone High:
  George Washington Carver: Your clone mother may have been a guide, but I am lost in your eyes.
  Sacagawea: And your clone father may have been a peanut scientist, but I wanna have sex with you.
  (they begin making out on the debate table)
• Darkwing Duck was a master of this. It was part of his introductory spiel. "I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the [silly metaphor taken too far and in too much detail relating to how he stops evil]! I am DARKWING DUCK!
• From Family Guy:
  Peter: Forget it Lois, your brother is toast! Warm, buttery toast.
  Fat Guys: mmmm....
  • In one episode, Peter wins a trip to a brewery and remarks "It's like I died and went to heaven. But then they realized that it wasn't my time, and so they sent me back to a brewery."
  • A metaphor slowly degrades when Peter goes on Blind Date in an early episode:
    Girl: I'm an ice cream cone; how are you gonna eat me?
    Bachelor 1: I'd invite my friend Rudy over and we'd give you a double dip!
    Bachelor 2: I'd lick off all the cream and give you my special whipped topping!
    Peter: Well, I'd try to eat you really fast before I got flaccid.
  • Peter ruining Lois' production of The King and I
    Peter: "Theater is a living breathing creature! It has wants and needs and you're not man enough to satisfy her!"
  • In "Be Careful What You Fish For", Peter mentions that he's figured out how to kill two birds with one stone. He pulls out two baby birds and a rock and uses the rock to crush the birds simultaneously, then comments "The key to that, Lois, is big rock, small birds."
• Freakazoid! has a few.
  • There's this gem:
    Freakazoid: Duty calls! Hello, Duty! I'm coming!
  • Which is followed up later in the season by this joke:
    Freakazoid: It's time to face my destiny! Hello, Destiny! I was just visiting your friend, Duty! He says very bad things about you!
• Futurama does this a lot.
  • "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" has:
    Fry: Amy, you know how you like chocolate, but then you get tired of it because it wants to hang out all the time?
    Amy: Huh? You don't like chocolate?
    Fry: Could chocolate let me finish?
  • Also, from The Beast with a Billion Backs, about Fry's girlfriend's other boyfriends:
    Zoidberg: If there's a delicious cake, isn't it better to have one slice than none at all, even if four other guys eat the other four slices, and they're all thrusting their sweaty, naked bodies against the cake?
  • Later in the same movie:
    Fry: I'm so madly in love with Yivo. I feel like a schoolgirl with a crush on Justin Timberlake, and then she moves into a giant house on his head.
  • Zapp Brannigan can rarely keep track of his own metaphors, with them usually being followed by a groan from Kif.
    "In the game of chess, you can never let your opponent see your pieces."
    "If we hit that bullseye, the rest of those dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."
    "It was almost the perfect crime, but you forgot one thing: Rock crushes scissors! ...But paper covers rock... And scissors cut paper! Kif, we have a conundrum. Search them for paper, and bring me a rock."
  • "Love and Rocket":
    Fry: How can you date a ship, anyway? It'd be like me dating a really fat lady and living inside her, and she'd be all like "whoooosh!" (spaceship flight noises)
  • When the Professor is being taken away by robots for being too old, he gives the classic "Goodbye, cruel world!" as they depart. Then says goodbye to his "cruel lamp", followed by his "cruel drapes" with their little velvet tassels, "cruel though they may be."
  • This example from "The Devils Hands Are Idle Playthings."
    Bender: Though you may have to metaphorically make a Deal with the Devil. And by "Devil" I mean "Robot Devil", and by "metaphorically", I mean "get your coat."
• Daffy is sometimes guilty of this in The Looney Tunes Show.
  • The Merrie Melodies segment "Giant Robot Love" is an extended version of this in song, as Daffy attempts to compare being in love to a giant robot.
• The titular character of Milo Murphy's Law is prone to this:
  Milo: Well, people have used the "j" word. But you know what they say: "Sticks and stones can damage your vital organs, so always wear body armor."
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In the Season 5 premiere, after the Mane 6 lose their cutie marks, Applejack is unable to make anymore "countryisms", so she is reduced to saying things like "This door's shut tighter than a... summer of piglets in...", before giving up.
• The Patrick Star Show: In "Bummer Jobs", to remember how to tie his tie, Cecil recites a phrase about a sea bunny and a barracuda going in different places. Patrick tries to recite it himself, later on, but doesn't remember how it goes:
  Patrick: And the bunny and the barracuda go out for coffee and the boat gets a flat!
• In an episode of Phineas and Ferb, the title-characters decide to act like they're in a film noir for the day, and many of the parody narration sequences drift into this territory.
  Phineas: The sun beat down on the city like a hammer. A relentless, hot, beating hammer hammering down like a big metaphor that was... hot.. for some reason.
  Candace: Stop with the narration!
  • In "Misperceived Monotreme", Dr. Doofenshmirtz delivers this gem when confronting what he thinks is Perry but is really just an ordinary platypus:
    Doofenshmirtz: Oh, I see what you're doing. You're messing with my head, trying to get into my mind, walk around in there, rearrange the furniture, maybe repaint the kitchen...
• Professor Frank, of Brad Neely's The Professor Brothers series, often delves into these. At a prospective TA interview:
  "I don't know, little dawg. Maybe we'd better all start learning and loving martial arts, because after the bombs drop, and it's us against us, and we all wished with our terrible-smelling last breaths that we had those warm fur coats, and we're all going around hissing and kicking at each other and trying to trap rabbits so we can crack their heads, just like all the Lennies used to do that we used to protect them from! I mean, who's going to survive that shit, Gabe?"
• Robot Chicken: In a sketch about G.I. Joe and the Weather Dominator, a retired Duke compares his experience being forced by Cobra to fight mute ninja Snake Eyes ("in a desperate attempt to raise concession sales") as "As if the Nazis put the war on hold to make Eisenhower fight a mute dude in a ninja outfit."
• Robotomy: "Field of Screams": When trying to convince Thrasher that he needs to act like an "alpha dog", Blastus tells him to bark as a way of hyping him up. This then leads to him criticizing his barking, then telling him to sniff the ground, and finally the both of them forgetting what they were doing and just going around on all fours, barking, and sniffing things.
• Ruby Rocket Private Detective is based on this trope, particular its relationship to stereotypical noir-speak. Example here.
• From The Simpsons:
  • There's this example from "New Kid On The Block":
    Homer: Son, a woman is a lot like a, um... a refrigerator. They're about six feet tall, 300 pounds... they make ice... umm... (spots his can of Duff) Oh! Wait a minute! Actually, a woman is more like a beer. (holds up the can of Duff) They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one! (he proceeds to chug the whole can) But you can't stop at one. You wanna drink another woman! (he gets up and pulls another can of Duff out of the fridge and opens it; cut ahead to several cans later, with a visibly drunk Homer) So I sez, "Yeah? If you want that money, come and find it, 'cuz I dunno where it is, ya baloney! You make me wanna wretch!" (he abruptly passes out, snoring)
  • In "And Maggie Makes Three": "If horse racing is the sport of kings, then surely bowling is...a very good sport as well."
  • In "Bart-Mangled Banner": "Son, don't rock the boat. Don't even get in the boat. Just buy some ice cream and walk around the pier. But don't use their bathrooms; they are filthy.
  • Still another time, in "Lemon Of Troy":
    Shelbyville resident: [to Homer] You must be stupider than you look!
    Homer: Stupider like a fox!
  • In "Girls Just Wanna Have Sums", when Lisa considers to disguise herself as a boy to do advanced math, and imagines being surrounded by numbers and math symbols:
    ≥ sign: Do it Lisa! You'll be greater than or equal to boys!
    Number 8: Even though you're only eight (flips over to side to become infinity sign) your possibilities are infinite!
    Number 27: (Beat) Twenty-seven!
  • In "Secrets Of A Successful Marriage", when Homer is teaching a class at the learning center.
    Homer: A good marriage is like an orange. First there's the skin, then there's the sweet, sweet innards... (devours the orange)
    Apu: I don't understand.
    Groundskeeper Willie: If I wanted to see a man eat an orange, I would've taken the orange-eating class!
    (cut to an orange-eating class)
    Hans Moleman: The eating of an orange is a lot like a good marriage.
    Abe Simpson: (slams fist on desk) Just eat the damn oranges!
• Amber in the Sofia the First episode "Two to Tangu" (partly subverted in that her statements were based on actual events):
  "This is what happens when you try something new. You end up lost in a strange kingdom picking dates out of your tiara. And then your flying carpet runs away from you."
• Space Ghost Coast to Coast had this little gem.
  Space Ghost: Dames are like mustard: they taste great on a sandwich. But when you're not eating a sandwich... they just sit there in the fridge... on a shelf... in a jar... labeled... mustard.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy VI: The Motion Picture", SpongeBob starts to despair about his lack of movie-making skills and Mermaid Man tries to cheer him up thusly:
    Mermaid Man: Listen kid, this reminds me of Episode 902. We were surrounded: the Kelp Thing was to our right, and there was broccoli on the side. But if there's one thing I remember, it's how to forget! The rain in Spain stays mainly on the... SPACE! The final countdown! Skip to the... skip to the... loo, my darling! Loo! [dramatically collapses in SpongeBob's arms] Now get out there, and let's finish this movie, kid.
  • Mermaid Man also does this in his debut episode, when his plea for SpongeBob to leave him alone ends up turning into a marriage ceremony.
    Mermaid Man: Listen up, you villains, I wanna eat my meatloaf! If you don't get out of here, then by the power invested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife!
    Orderly: [bursts in] What is going on in here?!
    Mermaid Man: [pointing to SpongeBob] You may kiss the bride!
    [SpongeBob is rolled out of the retirement home and all the way to his house]
    Patrick: Did you reunite our heroes?
    SpongeBob: No, but I'm married.
  • In the episode "No Weenies Allowed", Sandy subjects herself to this with her own metaphor being completely lost on her.
    Sandy: SpongeBob's acting jumpier than a rattlesnake in a pickle barrel! Wait, what?
  • In "The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom", Patrick tries to help SpongeBob get over his fear of Halloween.
    Patrick: SpongeBob, don't you know the old saying? "The only thing you have to fear is... yourself!"
• From an episode of TaleSpin:
  Molly: What's snow?
  Wildcat: (holds up a bowling ball) Ya see this?
  Molly: Yeah.
  Wildcat: Well it's... completely different.
• The Tick ends practically every episode veering off into one of these. This is also the origin of his battle-cry, "Spoon!".
  Tick: Thank you for teaching us all that love is thicker than most bodily membranes. But not quite as sticky. And that a heart full of love is better than a body full of people. Merrilly, the feet that carried us on the heart's path today will be the feet that soak in the steaming brew of happiness tomorrow.
  Tick: You know, when a tomato grows out of your forehead, it gets you thinking. What do we know about anything? Life is just a big, wild, crazy tossed salad, but you don't eat it. No sir. You live it!
• Titan Maximum has this gem when Gibbs is about to destroy the shields protecting Mercury:
  "It'll be like kissing your sister! If your sister was the fucking sun!"
• Scott, the villain of Total Drama Revenge of the Island:
  "I feel like I'm a kid in a candy store, filled with suckers! And I'm gonna... Uh... I'm gonna... Like, break 'em and stuff!"
• The Venture Brothers:
  • There's:
    Phantom Limb: Revenge, like gazpacho soup, is best served cold, precise, and merciless.
    The Monarch: Yeah, you can never have too much precision in your soup.
  • Mr. Doe and Mr. Cardholder are also fond of using this trope, frequently rebounding the metaphor off each other until the original intent is unrecognizable.
    Mr. Doe: That's a joke.
    Mr. Cardholder: Regular cut-up.
    Mr. Doe: Should give him a reality show.
    Mr. Cardholder: I'd watch it.
    Mr. Doe: I'd watch it twice.
    Mr. Cardholder: Even if Flava Flav was in it.
• The PBS show WordGirl, an affectionate parody of its own genre, has this immortal line when the titular character catches one of the main villains robbing an ice-cream truck.
  WordGirl: The only ice cream you'll be eating is the ice cream of JUSTICE! [Beat] [just as heroically] ...That sounded better in my head!
• Young Justice: In the season 4 episode "Tale of Two Sisters", the Team is discussing the possibility of Cassandra taking after her father Vandal Savage and not be a defector from the League of Shadows. Terra remarks how the falling apple doesn't bounce far from one's head. Arsenal replies that a bent tree can easily lead to a bent twig, while Red Arrow says that the apple can still be on the branch and turn rotten. Arrowette asks if they're still talking about Cassandra, as she is now both confused and hungry.

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