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Quotes / Epic Fail

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    Comic Books 
"I would rather fail spectacularly than succeed minimally."

Black Widow: Clint.
Hawkeye: I know—
Black Widow: You have the army after you and no health and you're falling out of a crashing plane.
Hawkeye: I know, Nat.
Black Widow: It's a bass fishing simulator, Clint.
Hawkeye: I know! It just— it just happens!

    Film - Animated 
"You missed! How could you miss? He was three feet in front of you..."
Mushu to Mulan (who didn't miss)

    Film - Live-Action 
Principal: Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Billy Madison: Okay, a simple "wrong" would've done just fine.

"Bested by a girl, who never held a Lightsaber?! YOU FAILED!"
Supreme Leader Snoke to Kylo Ren following his defeat, The Last Jedi

"I believe in Santa Claus! I believe in the Easter Bunny! I believe in the Tooth Fairy! But I don't believe in you! This is battery acid, and now you disappear!"
Eddie Kaspbrak, It (1990). It doesn't disappear.

"Ah, mediocre!"
Immortan Joe, Mad Max: Fury Road

"You know, it's amazing. You are 100% wrong. I mean nothing you've said has been right."

Mike Nelson: [after mangling and freeing the Hubble Telescope from the Satellite of Love] Now, to release it... gently... like a sparrow into the night sky...
Crow T. Robot: Good night, sweet Hubble. May a flight of angels sing thee to thy rest...
[Hubble floats away a few feet, hangs there... then drops out of frame, complete with snapping wires SFX]
All: GAH!
[Hubble soars to Earth and ignites into flames]
Crow: Oh, good one, Mike!
Mike: Well, how could it do that? It couldn't possibly--

    Literature 
For pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgement — in short, for the true talent for catastrophe — Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day. Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such a ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganised enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.

    Live-Action TV 
"I can't get over that; how do [submariners] hit a mountain?"
Adrian Monk, Monk, "Mr. Monk Is Underwater"

"A spokesman said, 'This is the one thing we didn't want to happen.'"

The Doctor: Two thousand people on board, six billion below, all dead. And why? Because Max Capricorn's a loser!
Max Capricorn: I never lose!
The Doctor: You can't even sink the Titanic!

[Clara opens the cell door and barges in]
Eleventh Doctor: ...how did you do that?
Clara: Wasn't locked.
Eleventh Doctor: ...right...
[Beat]
Clara: [dumbfounded] Three of you, in one cell, and none of you thought to try the door?!
War Doctor: It should have been locked!

Skye: You think I'm an alien? Why didn't you tell me?
Coulson: I didn't want you to freak out.
Skye: Well guess what? Epic fail.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., on something Coulson's suspected for half the series.

"We don't have any fucking chicken, we don't have any more Wellingtons, we don't have any fucking lettuce! We haven't served any food! How could we be out of anything?!"
Sous Chef Scott, on a particularly bad service, Hell's Kitchen

"BZZZT! Wrong answer! That's what the kids call 'Epic Fail'."
Saul Goodman, Breaking Bad

Which brings us onto the next award, which — yes, you'll like this — it's for "Accidentally Filling Up The Petrol Tank of a Supercar with Water" Award. How, in the name of all that is holy, did you do that?
Jeremy Clarkson awarding Richard Hammond the award in question, The Grand Tour

    Newspaper Comics 
"Why can't my successes ever be as spectacular as my failures?"
Jason, FoxTrot

    Radio 
Jack Hitt: This is a fiasco, and what's really interesting about a fiasco is once it starts to tumble down the audience wants to push it further along.
Ira Glass: Oh, they get hungry for more fiasco. If the play proceeded perfectly they would've been disappointed.
Jack Hitt: Oh, it would have been a grave disappointment had not been just one more mistake after another, one more embarrassment after another. Now the reason they're there is to chronicle these embarrassments.

    Sports 
"Hey, Browns! Mike Polk, season ticket holder. Killer game in Houston today! Well thank god we built YOU. What a blessing for the community! You are wasting valuable space on our majestic shoreline, and what do we get out of it from you?! Ten miserable games a year, including two preseason games that I have to pay for, and one shitty Kenny Chesney concert! Do you understand that it is statistically harder for a team to be this consistently bad than it is for them to occasionally, accidentally be good? The probability is staggering! Did you happen to see that Packers/Chargers game today?! It's like they're playing a different sport than you are! And here's what you have to understand: We don't even expect you to be good! We just want you to be watchable! Do you have any idea how low our expectations are?! We don't expect you to win the Super Bowl, we just want you to look better than a division III high school team! And listen, I know that there are way more important things in life than football...but you are supposed to be our pleasant distraction from those things! But all we do is pay you money to put us in a bad mood every week.
...
...
...
'YOU ARE A FACTORY OF SADNESS!
...'I'll see you Sunday."

    Stand-Up Comedy 
"The Times Square Incident wasn't a terrorist attack, it was a Jim Carrey movie. The terrorist locked the keys to the safe house he was going to escape to in the carbomb. And I love that he locked the carbomb. 'Nobody's getting my iPod.' Then he left the keys to the carbomb hanging out of the tailgate of the carbomb, and built the carbomb out of fertilizer that wouldn't explode. I have been doing comedy for 25 years and I have never been that funny."

    Theatre 
"Alexander... Congratulations
You have invented a new kind of stupid
A damage-you-can-never-undo kind of stupid
An open-all-the-cages-in-the-zoo kind of stupid
'Truly, you Didn't Think This Through?' kind of stupid."
Angelica Schuyler in "Congratulations", a Cut Song from Hamilton

    Video Games 
"It's pretty impressive that you put so many ingredients into a dish and it came out tasting like nothing."
Kanji Tatsumi on Yukiko's omelet, Persona 4

"Somehow you've died during the introduction training exercise. Feel free to try again but this doesn't bode well for your mission."

"You didn't kill any of them!"
The Administrator to the victims of a Flawless Victory, Team Fortress 2

"Is-Is that even possible?!?"
Random Mii in Tomodachi Life after an account of a Noodle Incident in the kitchen.

"Not a single Golden Egg? Maybe I should have made you read the training manual."
Mr. Grizz, Splatoon 2 Salmon Run mode

"?! You didn't get a single one?! Did you do that on purpose? Well... I suppose that is impressive in its own way, but I have to say, I'm still pretty disappointed..."
Red Gearmo if you don't collect a single Purple Coin in Tall Trunk Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2

"Fixed bug: Game crashes when breaking a block"
Minecraft Snapshot 19w38b, released only a few hours after Snapshot 19w38a.

"CONGRATULATIONS! You Just Lost Your Sponsors!"
Daytona USA (Saturn version, if you run backwards into a dead end in Dinosaur Canyon)

    Web Animation 
[Caboose throws a spike grenade at the wall they are using for cover]
Washington: That was the worst throw. Ever. Of all time.
Caboose: Not my fault. Someone put a wall in my way.

Emperor: I roll to charm him as to convince him to let us hide in his carts.
Magnus: Right, roll charm skill test.
[The Emperor rolls and...]
Celestial Shaman Queen: My child, you look like dung and I hate you. Please let us hide in your carts for WE ARE FUGITIVES!''
Magnus: Your rolls are consistently amazing.
Emperor: THIS IS WHY CHAOS MUST DIE.
Tabletop Adventures Special, If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device

    Webcomics 
"Wow, Fighter. You don't half-ass screwing up, do ya?"
Black Mage, 8-Bit Theater

"Téodor, we had hoped you would shine during the cooking event, but you folded with a focus and intensity normally seen only in successes."

"How do you get a note from the teacher on the last day of school?"
Mrs. Summers, Least I Could Do Beginnings

"I hardly think you're in a position to doubt my son's dragon credentials when your job is to conceal something that genuinely doesn't exist, and you discover a way to fail at it."

Boar: Tora, something is wrong here.
Tora: Whaddya mean?
Boar: Well, for starters, you're drunk.
Tora: But I got us home, so?
Boar: That's just it...
(last panel depicts a car hanging out a window of a high-rise apartment)
Boar: The suite isn't on ground level.
Tora: Your point?

"How do you manage to make a poltergeist by accident?!"
Myla upon learning that Eric's father, Miles "Tails" Prower, created an electronic poltergeist in a failed attempt to repair a clock, during the "Scaredy fox training" roleplay of White Dark Life

Myrtle: All you see is a single word on an empty page. What I see is the first step on a glorious journey to create an epic of literary excellence!
Penny: You spelled "the" wrong.
Myrtle: You don't — that's not — look, typing is hard, okay??!

"I'M DOING 1000 CALCULATIONS PER SECOND AND THEY'RE ALL WRONG"

    Web Original 
"MagiCans were ordinary-looking Coke cans that had a mechanism inside that popped out a gift certificate or cold hard cash to the drinkee. What could go wrong with that? Short of filling the damn things with poison, the promotion was a guaranteed success. Too bad Coke pretty much filled the damn things with poison."

"One fathomnote  down, and one foot more, in sunken wrecks are found
The bones of brave and fearless men the Eerie canal has drowned."
Al Duvall, One Fathom Down

"As most of you know, the only way you get kicked out of Final! Jeopardy is if you tell Alex Trebek to eat shit and if you end up with a negative score. Well, last night, two out of three contestants ended up in the red. This is some Celebrity Jeopardy SNL skit shit... All of us are Stephanie, pretty much. We're all at -$6,800."
Michael K., "Kristin, the sole survivor of last night’s disastrous episode of Jeopardy!"

"Their best defensive back (not saying much) was injured by a pizza. Take all that into account, and somehow losing 12 games is the most tolerable experience for any Washington fan... This organization can keep an eternal dumpster fire going not matter what the elements throw at them. They are superhuman."
Drew Magary, "Why Your Team Sucks 2015!: Washington Redskins"

"Just after the birther bullshit was definitely ended, he offers to give five million dollars to charity if President Obama will release his college and passport records. Donald Trump just offered to rent the president and honestly didn’t see any problem with that. He can’t imagine anyone refusing to give up their dignity for money because for him that’s free money. Trump is so stupid, he's the first businessman to try to influence Washington with millions of dollars and fail."
Luke McKinney, "The Donald Trump Endurance Experiment" (take into account that Trump eventually managed to become the president for a while...)

"DeathOnAStick is a NetHack player. They are famous in the NetHack community for their year-and-a-half-long game on nethack.alt.org, from 2004-04-17 to 2005-11-27. They spent much of this time arduously polypiling rocks into gems and collecting pet giants to carry the abundant bags of gems for them.

After killing the Wizard of Yendor on dungeon level 1 and despite already being at Experience level 30, they drank a potion of gain level found on its corpse. It was cursed, as it turned out.

Upon reaching the Plane of Earth, they desperately checked their inventory, and indeed they were carrying no gems. At this point, they went idle for 38 seconds. A few of their entourage of giants had been close enough to be dragged into the Planes with them, but they were either killed off or left behind at the inter-plane portals. Ultimately, the only gems DeathOnAStick had at their ascension were 2 dilithium crystals."

"...Poverty Pie ...consists of the cheapest graham cracker crust you can find covered in a smattering of the cheapest whipped cream you can buy. As a side note, you never want to have someone slam one of those in your face; the aluminum foil that makes up the 'pan' is so thin that it bends into what amounts to a dagger. If you don't think I know what I am talking about, just look and my chin sometime; there's a small scar to prove my point.
Yes, I was actually injured in a PIE MATCH. Sadly, no one was there to throw up the dreaded X to abort the thing."

jncos: i didn't know it was possible for a cat to drink water the wrong way but somehow my little buddy figured it out
jncos: i'[m going to have to draw a diagram
— found (typos and all) on Tumblr

"Dreamworks? She's a five year old girl. If you can't sell a five year old girl a cartoon with horses, you have FAILED. You have failed more totally than it should be possible for human beings to fail. You have created a masterpiece of ineptitude. You broke the damn scale."
Unshaved Mouse, on his daughter getting bored by Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

"In an ideal world, an assassination should not end with you flat on your back with malaria while your target holds your gun, reads your orders to you, and then makes fun of you for being useless."
Internet Movie Firearms Database, discussing Far Cry 2

"You may make mistakes, but at least they're usually not 'we can see your mistake from space' bad"
Michael Sheetz, on the Suez Canal grinding to a halt due to a stuck vessel

    Web Video 
Gavin Free: Oh, where did [the heart] go? Where did it go?
Michael Jones: You just threw it against the wall like a wet paper towel!

"E.T.! Yes, the dreaded E.T., made almost 20 years after the supposed "worst game of all time" on the Atari 2600. But would you believe — I shit you not — this version is far worse? Imagine playing ExciteBike blindfolded, with the controller held upside-down, coated in rubber cement while seated on a wild bull."
The Angry Video Game Nerd on Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure for the Gamecube

"I lost to Glass Joe. I LOST. TO GLASS JOE."
The Angry Video Game Nerd on playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! with the Power Glove

"Let me ask you something: How'd you get killed by a motherfucking paralyzed Tailow? It's paralyzed and it's a fucking sparrow!"
JonTron, Game Grumps note 

Arin: You just lost ALL your money! You just lost ALL your money!
Jon: If I can't be the BEST, I sure as hell can be the WOOOOORRSST!

[in-between fits of laughter] "We have a video game show that we do for a living...!"
Danny Sexbang, in the middle of a long string of embarrassing deaths, Shovel Knight Co-Op, Part 18

Jay: Reba McEntire! She flubs the national anthem.
Steve: Awful, by the way. The crowd booed her, and the announcers had to cover for her. That's quite sad.
Jay: Shame they didn't bring in her non-union Mexican equivalent... [beat] Ariba McEntire. I'll get my coat.

"[The Greeks] managed to rout Darius himself and defeat his army. And the problem was that since Darius was so sure of his chances, he brought his family along with him to watch his assumed triumph. So when things didn't quite go to plan, his enemies suddenly had his wife and children as hostages. Oops."

ChipCheezum: [as the player failed to capture a Pidgey and is bringing the Pikachu's health down] Your Pikac is about to die! [gets taken out]
General Ironicus: [incredulous] It-It-It got knocked out! The Pi...
ChipCheezum: You lost at Pokemon! It's like at the beginning of the game! You got owned by a Pidge! [Ironicus just busts out laughing] Now, go select your Pok.

"INXS. [Train] were trying to sound like INXS. [They] were trying to emulate one of the sexiest bands of all time, and instead... wrote "Hey, Soul Sister"... My god! That's like if you tried to make scrambled eggs and instead you caught syphilis! How does that level of failure even exist!?"

"There are speedruns [of this game] on YouTube in under a minute. YOU CALL THAT GOOD PROGRAMMING?!"
UrinatingTree's review of the Genesis port of Dark Castle

InTheLittleWood: So my aiming's on par with Sjin's, then.
Smith: (by now clearly frustrated) Well, it's less about the aiming, and more about just-
Sjin: Seeing him.
Smith: Blatantly not seeing him walk by you.

"You know, even in my wildest dreams, I thought this couldn't possibly go this poorly..."

"This dumbass Ashford accidentally created a virus that would raise the dead trying to cure paralysis! Keep him the fuck away from science! I don't think they're on good terms!"
Phelous in his review of Resident Evil: Apocalypse

"One day the Cabal decided they'd had enough of that old Civil War-era zombie cowboy who'd been kicking around for a full century after killing their God. They decided to make a really big fucking gun that tears holes in the fabric of reality to kill things for this purpose. They somehow failed so completely and utterly at the "kill people" part that every time they tried to use it against that zombie cowboy, they actually somehow brought his friends back to life."
Let's Play of Blood II: The Chosen, on the Singularity Generator

"It's like you're watching a carpenter hammer his thumb repeatedly, while complaining about the fact that he didn't buy any nails."

Kurahashi: The time has come to settle the Jingweon incident.
Kiryu: Don't tell me you're a survivor as well.
Kurahashi: I am.
Kiryu: This is yet more evidence of the Tojo Clan's incompetence. They went there to kill everyone. But I'm not convinced they actually managed to kill anyone.

Crewmate: Captain, we have reached the island!
Captain Bones: Why do you insist on fabricating these fibs? I do not see not an inch of land within our vicinity!
Crewmate: I saw it, with my own lack of two eyeballs! Take a gander through the spyglass!
Captain Bones: [looks through telescope] ...That is a cardboard box. You are an absolute dipstick in every sense of the word, and I cannot fathom how you make a mistake like this.
"I need to find a new word other than 'inept,' because the sheer bumbling incompetence is so authentic in its out-and-out idiocy, that I'm find it difficult to even put into words how insulting and inappropriate this is. Not one, not a single one of the nitwits who wrote the script, directed the sequences, checked over the dailies of Will Arnett grabbing the dog's puppy-makers, or even anyone who had a passing knowledge of these scenes, thought that this was a bad idea enough to cut it out of the movie."

"I'm gonna call it a career killer anyway, as have most people, because Paula bombed like nothing else has ever bombed in the history of bombs. We've seen big names fail to debut at #1 and throw public fits about their low numbers, but if they had seen sales as low as Paula's, they'd melt like the Wicked Witch. If [Robin Thicke] ever has a hit again, it'll be a goddamn miracle, because Paula failed on every level possible. Was supposed to save his marriage and continue the upward momentum of his career, and all it did was firmly end both while cementing everyone's impression of him as a weird, unlikable creep."
Todd in the Shadows, Trainwreckords, "Paula"

"I'm kind of awestruck at how many levels "Swish Swish" failed on. Imagine failing to outdiss "Bad Blood", failing to outflop "Look What You Made Me Do", and failing to outchart both all in one day. That's astounding. Katy got into a fist fight, went for a gut punch only to trip and fall on her own face, and then when she got up, saw that Taylor had fired a cannon into her own face and turned that into a viral video. Katy was just not able to compete on any level."
Habitual Bee, comment on Todd in the Shadows's Trainwreckords episode on Witness

You had one job, you didn't do it right
Now Robert's gonna roast you tonight
You better not be lazy or we're gonna see it
And we'll make fun of you
RobertIDK's "YOU HAD ONE JOB" Theme Tune

    Western Animation 

Mr. Herrera: I'm going to give you little bastards just 10 seconds to come up with a sentence in Spanish, and if you can't, you're both going to the principal's office and you're both flunking! Well, I'm waiting!
Butt-head: Uhh...uh, renda pora blahblahblah Rico Suave.
Beavis: Uh, Taco Supreme!

Rarity: I didn't know you could... burn juice.
[Later, Sweetie Belle presents a bowl full of a bubbling, black liquid.]
Rarity: Ugh... Let me guess, applesauce?
Sweetie Belle: Nope, toast.

"That failure was spectacular, even for me!"
Dr. Doofenshmirtz, Phineas and Ferb

"The soup is cold and the salad is hot. How is that even possible?!"
Dr. Eggman, Sonic Boom, "Chez Amy"

"How bad you got to time your punches for a blind nigga to see you coming, Granddad?"
Riley Freeman, The Boondocks

(After Detective Crunk and a random drunk guy in an alley get blown up, the doctors attempt to rebuild him...)
Doctor: Feast your eyes!
(It's revealed that they made a small mistake and rebuilt the wino instead)
Police Captain: You rebuilt the wino?!
Doctor: Most advanced wino ever made!
Police Captain: What about Detective Crunk?!
Doctor: Oh, you wanted us to rebuild the cop.
Police Captain: Damn it!


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