Your funny mishearings

We have a thread about mondegreens, but this is for when it isn't a song lyric. It can be from either fiction or real life. I've got a few that inspired me to start this:

• "El Dorado never answers my e-mails" from my dad— El Dorado is our cat!
• Also from my dad, "This may be embarrassing, but my lifestyle involves a naked cat."
• Once, my mother said, "I've got a cake in the oven", but I misheard "cake" as "bun"!
• Once, my dad said something about Elon Musk, but I thought he said, "Egon Musk", and I thought, "That's his last name?!"
• Several from Star Trek:
  • Once I thought I heard Riker call Geordi the N-word.
  • I thought I heard one crewman say, "Any nuclear radiation on Hobbes?" to which another replied, "No, not on Hobbes".
  • I misheard Spock's line "in trouble" as "in tribble".
  • I once thought I heard Neelix call two aliens Maurie and Elaine.
  • During a fight scene in Voyager, I thought I heard someone yell, "Don't shoot Laverne!"
  • I thought I heard an alien kid call Chakotay daddy.

One time when I was maybe 3 or 4 years old, I was riding with my mom and Grami to see my great-grandma who lived out of town. While my mom was talking to Grami, she said the word “blah” seven times in a row, which was immediately followed by something that sounded like “wood sheep”. Shortly after, I thought she said something about a “useman” (with the “S” sound in that word sounding like the one in “snake”).

Since then, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, wood sheep! ... And the useman...” has been a favorite non-sequitur of mine. I have also used the phrase “wood sheep” to refer to when young children don’t understand what adults are saying.

Edited by MisterToodleoo on Nov 13th 2021 at 11:57:08 AM

There's one of Waluigi's Mario Kart 8 lines I kept hearing as "Oh my god", looking it up it's actually "Here we go" or something (from the lines listed in mariowiki at least)

Edited by Zanreo on Nov 15th 2021 at 10:27:11 AM

• My brother mutters to himself a lot. I misheard something he muttered to himself as "You licked me" and I asked just to be sure that's what he said and he replied "No". I still have no idea what he actually said.
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone:
  • I misheard Hagrid's line "A car crash? Lily and James Potter?" as "A car crash? Lillian James Potter?" and thought that must be Harry's mother's full name.
  • I heard Hermione's line "I checked this out from the library for a bit of light reading" as "I checked this out 'cause the library forbidded light reading". I figured by "light reading" she meant reading with a lantern. Then when Ron said "This... is light" I thought he was pointing out the daylight. Yeah, I'm dumb.
  • Not so much a mishearing, but more me being confused by the accent. I thought the goblin said "Lump, please" instead of "Lamp, please" and I wondered what he would need a lump for.
• Superman: The Movie
  • I misheard Zod's line in Superman: The Movie "Both you, and then one day, your heirs" as "Both you, and then one day, your ass".
  • I misheard "swell" as "sweat".
• I misheard the "Libertad" chanting from Scarface as "Leave or die". I thought it was unfair that they still killed him even though he did leave.
• I misheard "It's play time" from Spider Man as "It's pee time" and thought Bonesaw meant he was going to make Peter wet his pants in fear.

There are more but I can't think of them right now.

Back in my later elementary school days, when I first heard Luigi saying "the bagel" in a YouTube Poop, I misheard it as "the big". (In case you're wondering, the video where I heard it was an older version of "Arthur and the Teletubbies". The version that's currently on YouTube doesn't have that clip in it.)

Edit: Red link.

Edited by MisterToodleoo on Jun 29th 2023 at 10:50:17 AM

• From one of my mother's podcasts, I don't remember what the actual line was, but I misheard it as "You remind me of spores".
• From a TV show, I thought I heard someone yell, "Not the nerd!"
• I misheard a song with the lyric "You don't take me seriously" as "Geo, take me seriously!" and was wondering who Geo was.

I watched Die Hard with my family last night and misheard "But Karl's up there" as "A cow's up there".

When I was young, when I heard a version of “The People in Your Neighborhood”, I misheard a spoken line.

Actual Line: “No, there’s no fire at all.”

My Mishearing: “No, there’s no fire hall.”

I have kind of an amusing work story from today that fits this topic: So, I work at a home improvement store, and we occasionally have customers whose first language is Spanish, enough so that workers who are comfortable communicating in Spanish can wear a button that says as much in the language. Anyway, I had a customer come up to me, and I thought he asked me if I spoke Spanish - I didn't so I tried calling someone who did over the intercom. Then I had to cancel the page, as it turned out he was asking where if I knew where the Spic 'n' Span is, as in the cleaning product brand.

One of my old jobs always had a country music station playing as background music - for a while the station was running an ad that I thought was selling tickets to see Tina Fey - I figured she'd be doing some kind of one-woman show or reading from her memoir or something, but I wasn't sure if country music listeners were her demographic. When I heard the ad again during a lull in business, I paid more attention and realized they were saying Tim and Faith, as in Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.

Edited by MikeK on Jan 21st 2022 at 5:32:51 AM

Remember one time I caused one.

• Me: I saw a fox outside
• Store girl: Was anything in it?
  • I'm about to say: Umm... lungs? a stomach a liver...
• What I do say: No no as in "what does it say..."

Here’s something from Larry-Boy and the Rumor Weed.

Actual Quote: “...why didn’t you call him with the Larry Signal?”

My Mishearing: “...why didn’t you call him with the Larry thing, though?”

Edited by MisterToodleoo on Aug 20th 2022 at 6:39:40 AM

I used to think that at the end of every level in New Super Mario Bros., Mario said "Texas on ice!"

Just last Saturday, someone misheard my Grami saying “an order of spaghetti” as “the order is for Betty”. As a result, the name “Betty” was written on the paper that came with my pizza and Papa didn’t get any spaghetti.

I think I already said this one from Dumb and Dumber in another thread, but it's interesting to me how both my mishearing and what the actual line is both make perfect sense in context: the actual dialogue refers to "those guys who whacked Mental", but until I saw it with closed captioning I always heard "those guys who act mental". The character saying this thinks Lloyd and Harry intentionally killed, or "whacked", another character nicknamed "Mental", but she also thinks they're using Obfuscating Stupidity, or "acting mental".

Edited by MikeK on Sep 26th 2022 at 11:30:57 AM

Last Tuesday, when a promo voiceover said "CSI: Vegas", I misheard it as "CSI: Babies".

Edited by MisterToodleoo on Oct 27th 2022 at 3:36:39 AM

There's a currently-airing commercial for Transformers Earthspark toys that ends with the sentence, "Each figure sold separately." Pretty standard toy commercial ending, isn't it? Well, there are times where I've suddenly heard that sentence while I wasn't paying attention to the TV, and when this happened, I misheard the word "figure" as… something very shocking.

What makes this weirder is that when I was watching the Canadian premiere of Total Dramarama: A Very Special Special That's Quite Special, my TV briefly blacked out during that line so that it went, "Ea— separately." Because of this, I actually thought that the station had censored the line due to the mishearing! However, it did not black out when I rewound the broadcast to check it, and the blackout doesn't appear in my DVD recording of the special (so the commercial plays normally). I guess that coincidental blackout must have come from my TV monitor!

In the Pokémon: The Original Series episode "The Tower of Terror", when Jessie yelled, "You mangy alley cat!", I misheard that as "You bitchy alley cat!" I had to replay that part a few times to make sure I heard that right.

Here are some lines I misheard in Toy Story 2, which I started watching at the age of 3:

Mishearing: "Owl's coming."

Actual Line: "Al's coming."

Mishearing: "Two words: spot make."

Actual Line: "Two words: Sputnik."

Mishearing: "You can't brush Arctic."

Actual Line: "You can't rush art."

Also, when Hamm says "crime doesn't pay" near the end, I thought he was saying something about crying, since that's what Al was doing in the commercial that Hamm was reacting to.

Edited by MisterToodleoo on Apr 28th 2023 at 8:04:28 AM

Kinda reminds me, when I first heard a promo for Young Sheldon, I heard "Young Skeletons". Which I decided would either be a show about baby animate skeletons, or a Good Name For A Rock Band.

Definitely one I've talked about before, but in the opening scene of Monsters, Inc.:

Mondegreen: "It could let in a giraffe?"

Actual line: "It could let in a draft?"

(Edit: got mondegreen/actual line backwards. Fixed.)

Edited by punkcrow on May 1st 2023 at 11:35:00 AM

In the The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Geshundfight", I misheard Blossom's line "We've gotta take you back right away and lock you^note The Amoeba Boys up" as "We've gotta take you back right away and fuck you up". Even my dad misheard it as that and he was like, "What the hell?!" That's far from the only misheard line I've had courtesy of Blossom; when she said, "Oh my gosh!" in "Boogie Frights", I misheard it as "Oh my god!" And in "Him Diddle Riddle", when she said, "Aba-kiss my foot!", I misheard it as "Aba-kiss my butt!" Evidently, Blossom is not good at enunciating.

In my elementary school days, when I watched this video with two PBS Kids Sprout clips, I misheard Chica's name as "Digger" the first time it was said. Therefore, when the name was said clearly in the second part of the video, I thought it was a different chicken.

There was this time we were playing a game together as a family, and at one point my dad said "The platypus fought the corgi for the hat, and won."

What my stepsister and I heard at first, though, was "fucked" as opposed to "fought".

(As for what the context for that even was, I had brought two plush toys - a platypus and a corgi - to the table as we were playing the game. I put a hat on one of them, and then kept switching between them for no apparent reason.)

In the "Stop Touching Me Elmo" scene from South Park, I initially misheard the line "Elmo puts his hand on your knee and says fun things" as "Elmo puts his hand on your knee and says fuckface". Which confused me, as Elmo didn't say "fuckface" at any point (though he did say other risque stuff).

When I heard the beginning of the Siskel & Ebert review of Surviving Picasso in the background of a home movie on YouTube, I misheard "art student" as "archduke". When I checked that part in an upload of the episode itself, I finally understood what was said.

Edit: While mishearing the phrase, the only other thing I considered it might be was "archdude", and that makes even less sense!

Edited by MisterToodleoo on Jul 22nd 2023 at 3:51:10 AM