(she/her)
It wasn't a rock
We already do have a YMMV version of misheard phrases. It's called Lady Mondegreen.
EDIT: Looking at a lot of the Audience reaction wicks, a lot of it can either be chalked up as Ascended Memes and/or can safely be transferred to Lady Mondegreen. And one of the wicks under "Other Misuse" (NonIndicativeName.Other Media) is as a matter of fact actual proper use. That was a song lyric deliberately misinterpreted, much the same as many videos of the same genre. I don't find anything wrong with the page itself that the moving of wicks can't fix.
Edited by GrafVonTirol on Dec 31st 2021 at 5:28:57 AM
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (all editions) progress: 426/1089 (39.12%)
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I don't think anything's wrong with this in its current state, aside from the fact that people are misusing an IUEO trope as an Audience Reaction.
I'm against making this YMMV, because pretty much any string of words can be misheard in pretty much any way, meaning YMMV examples would probably end up being tropers' personal mishearings.
I don't have a problem with limiting it to song lyrics as long as it stays IUEO, though; I just don't think it's necessary.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 31st 2021 at 6:23:20 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
❀ Mint, Nuts, and Waffle ❀
It’s completely surprising that this trope is still being used for Audience Reactions, even though the trope is In-Universe Examples Only.
For now, I suggest moving all Audience Reaction uses to Lady Mondegreen, and while I don’t like the idea, a rename might not hurt to indicate the trope is In-Universe.
(EDIT: Lady Mondegreen is supposed to be for characters? I might need to do a wick check for that reaction.)
Edited by callmeamuffin on Dec 31st 2021 at 7:32:24 PM
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Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Mondegreen Gag? Misheard Lyrics Gag? Misheard Words Gag? (Is this limited to gags, or can there be serious uses as well?) Throwing some things out there.
TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
Mondegreen is the established term for mishearing but no we don't want a list of all cases where someone misheard something.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
You'll never find out who I am
But Lady Mondegreen is for when a character is nicknamed by fans after a mondegreen.
Calendar enthusiast
As it stands, we are misusing the term mondegreen. Mondegreen, on its own, refers to the phenomenon
described in Lady Mondegreen. Furthermore, Main.Mondegreen itself describes an audience reaction, with one sentence at the end of the description saying "BTW this is only for in-universe examples." It would be for the best to merge Mondegreen and Lady Mondegreen into one trope, called "Mondegreen", because that is the existing term.
As for the question of audience reaction vs in-universe examples, I would say the audience reaction is tropeworthy because, again, this is a pre-existing term used outside the wiki. As for in-universe examples, the simplest option is probably to make a new trope for them, something like Mondegreen Gag or Mondegreen Joke. Alternatively, if they stay on Mondegreen, the examples section could be split between regular and in-universe examples, like how Have a Gay Old Time splits examples between straight examples and intentional jokes.
Edited by VampireBuddha on Dec 31st 2021 at 4:51:44 PM
Ukrainian Red Cross
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
IDK where all those audience reaction examples came from... ~Heavy Metal Hermit Crab and I (mostly him though) tackled the YMMV wicks after this was made IUEO. It bothers me that people haven't taken the hint...
I guess an audience reaction version wouldn't be the end of the world, but I'd rather it go to Sugar Wiki or JFF if we have to do it. Not because that area is a "dumping ground" but because I think it could make a decent game similar to things like I Read That As, and if we let it be the reaction of individual tropers I think it would fit the spirit a little more than if we only allowed "common" mondegreens.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
It wasn't a rock
The way I see it, a YMMV mondegreen trope (whatever it may be by the time we're done here) should have some sort of standard attached, like if it's widespread enough or even receives acknowledgement from at least one party involved in the original (eg "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" or "There's a bathroom on the right").
Edited by GrafVonTirol on Dec 31st 2021 at 10:50:30 AM
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (all editions) progress: 426/1089 (39.12%)
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
There should be a separate trope for Soramimi, which is Mondegreen, but between different languages.
An example of a Soramimi is The Runaway Guys mishearing the German phrase "So ein Mist!" uttered by Wario as "D'oh, I missed!" in Mario Party games. Even Wario's voice actor, German translator Thomas Spindler of Nintendo of Europe, commented on the Soramimi on YouTube.
Source: https://www.mariowiki.com/Thomas_Spindler
Edited by Nen_desharu on Dec 31st 2021 at 2:07:09 PM
Kirby is awesome.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Mondegreen Gag and Mondegreen Joke don't sound too bad. As Septimus said, "mondegreen" is a preexisting term for mishearing one thing as something else.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
You'll never find out who I am
I like the ideas of renaming it Mondegreen Gag and making a JFF page called Mondegreen.
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the Retromancer
"Character misheard something" sounds meaningless. "Character misheard something and Hilarity Ensues" may worth something.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Blapper of Water
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
on renaming. That's a "big project" and I think we ought to do "small project" solutions before "big project" ones.
The current description is written in such a way that it merely describes the phenomenon of mondegreen, but it doesn't actually tell us what the trope is. So tropers read the description and think they've found an example because they personally experienced their own mondegreen. When in reality the trope is about when a character, in-universe, mishears something. But, again, the description doesn't mention anything about characters mishearing anything. In fact, the word "character" isn't used at all until the compare/contrast section.
I think we ought to fix the description, clean up the wicks, and keep an eye on it.
There is a second issue in play here, but it isn't specific to Mondegreen. A lot of tropers, apparently, equate YMMV with "opinion" or "subjectivity," so there'll be an objective trope described in a way that hints at an opinion and tropers (old and new) will insist that the example belongs on the YMMV subpage. This recently happened to me with an example of Satire. There's a similar issue with Trivia subpages and tropes related to casts and writers, but that doesn't seem as prevalent.
Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
Problem is, as has been stated on other threads, a lot of Tropers don’t bother to read descriptions. That’s why we even had to rename some tropes.
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.
Blapper of Water
In this case the description does not describe what the trope is, so I think that is not a fair point to make.
I fundamentally disagree with the assumption that nobody reads trope descriptions and that nobody tries to write their examples with the description in mind. It does not make sense to say that the description is completely ignored, even by "most" tropers. I find it faulty logic to conclude that the only solution is to rename a trope.
Additionally, I do not think it is fair to tropers in general to say this about "most" tropers.
Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
I mean, we do have evidence. Tons of it. I had to even unlaunch a trope because the faulty title made everyone misuse it on day goddamn one, even though the description, laconic, and examples were all extremely clear about what the trope was. Everyone I talked to admitted that they never read the description even if adding examples to the actual trope page.
Now admittedly in this case the description is bad, but the point we're trying to make is that changing the description alone almost never helps unless we're conforming to the misuse.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Blapper of Water
Oh okay, then don't only change the description. I'm not suggesting, nor have I suggested, only changing the description. Fixing a description is only ever one part of the solution.
In this particular case, you cannot just say "nobody read the description" because the description does not describe the trope at all but rather only the phenomenon of mondegreen. There is no way for anyone to know what this trope is unless they participated in the TRS / clean-up efforts. (And it's complicated by the fact that it's a real-world phenomenon and not something originating with TV Tropes.)
[EDIT: Looking over the wick check again, there looks to be some "ascended mondegreen" which may be a separate trope if there's a lot of examples like that, which might help curb the misuse on this trope.]
Edited by WaterBlap on Jan 1st 2022 at 12:37:13 PM
Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
That's true. I think a benefit of a title change though, despite the work that comes with it, is that it would clue people in that something has changed. If you keep the title the same people are more likely to continue misusing it just out of ignorance, but changing the title makes it that much harder to be ignorant.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Here it helps to go to past TRS threads: This one in 2011 made this trope objective and before that it was "famous mondegreens"
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
...Um, well, yes, er... I see the issue here. It took just a few posts before Shimaspawn began the chainsawing. I'm sure that's just how TRS worked back then, but nowadays that thread seemed unacceptably rushed and lacking in input. No wonder this trope is such a mess today.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
Agreed on that front. The bad TRS thread likely contributed to the current state of the trope.
Man this site was a mess back then. No wonder we have so much work to do today.
TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
Blapper of Water
IIRC, the annual deletion of database histories made long-lasting cleaning efforts extremely difficult, and mods were more engaged with TRS / clean-up efforts than regular tropers were. Pretty much any TRS thread from that era is liable to have long-lasting pains like hairline fractions throughout the — actually I don't want to have that thought lol. Anyways you'll notice people in that thread weren't completely repulsed by Troper Tales yet.
Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty
Crown Description:
Should Mondegreen be turned into a Definition Only Page after the tropes it was split into at launch, or should we stick with the original definition of turning it into a disambiguation page? Vote up to turn it into a definition-only page; vote down to keep it as a disambiguation page.
After Unicorndance pointed out in this comment
that characters mishearing lines doesn't really seem like a trope, I decided to do a wick check.
Francine: [from other room] Who, Klaus?
Stan: No, the President.
Francine: Klaus is here with me!
Klaus: I'm in here, Stan, I'm fine! Thank you!
Boomstick: Orgasm what now?
And she's like, "Why would I want to eat liver?
I don't even like liver."
I'm like, "No, I said 'delivered'."
She's like, "I heard you say liver."
I'm like, "I should know what I said."
She's like, "Whatever... I just don't want any liver."
Aisha: Well, that too...
- AscendedMeme.Hololive: Many English-speakers have noted that, in her Im.Scatman video
, Fubuki sounds like she's singing "Beat up a pineapple." Come February 2021, she releases a video
where she beats up a pineapple.
- AscendedMeme.Music: Jimi Hendrix's famous song "Purple Haze" contains the line " 'scuse me while I kiss the sky", but is frequently misheard as " 'scuse me while I kiss this guy". At a handful of later live performances, Jimi would actually use the misheard line for this song - and afterwards (probably) pretend to kiss one of his band members while playing the riff. note
- AscendedMeme.Video Games:
- Street Fighter X Tekken is rife with these. One of Balrog's win screen quotes has him clear up that his line back in SFIV was "MY FIGHT MONEY!", not "MY BIKE MONEY!"
- The song Second Heaven from beatmania IIDX has the line "Somebody screeeeeeam!", which the Japanese fandom Mondegreen'ed into "San-bai ice cream!" ("3-scoop ice cream!") A remix of the song appears in the Spin-Off game Sound Voltex Booth, and said remix's cover art
depicts a character holding a 3-scoop ice cream cone.
- Part of the lyrics to Omega's theme were commonly misheard as 'A chicken tender, ready to fry'. In an April Fools video parodying the Amazon Echo adverts, we see Omega playing that very part of the song as a woman is frying chicken in a pan.
- Bowdlerise.Music:
- NWOBHM band Tank have an odd subversion. The booklet in the 2005 reissue of Honour and Blood blatantly changes the lyrics of many of the songs to remove violent or controversial content. However, the actual audio remains unaltered aside from the remastering, leading to numerous situations where what the booklet says is clearly not what Algy is actually singing. While some of the changes may well be a case of the people making the booklet trying to write out the lyrics by ear instead of looking them up and ending up with a Mondegreen, others definitely seem to be deliberate, such as the removal of all references to Islam in "The War Drags Ever On" (which plays the "all Muslims are terrorists" card so hard that many people would be shocked to learn that it was written over a decade and a half before 9/11).
- When it was first recorded in 1982, "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake had the line "Like a hobo, I was born to walk alone". The much more famous 1987 recording replaced "hobo" with "drifter", to avoid the inevitable mondegreen "Like a homo".
- DrinkingGame.Bemani: Take a shot every time someone plays a VENUS song.
- Take another if someone sings along to "Wow Wow VENUS".
- Take yet another one if they chant "Wow Wow PENIS".
- English to Foreign: Italian Through Vietnamese: Soundwave -> Barkhan ("dune")note
- Film.Young Frankenstein: Likely intentional, given the movie's director. The last word in the following sentence could be heard as "chat" or "shit":
Kemp: I think the thing for me to do is to pay a visit to young Frankenstein, und to have a nice, quiet schet.
- Machinima.Pinkie Pies Exciting Adventure:
- The Cameo: In the animated blooper, a few non MLP/TF2 characters make appearances. Walkie from the Kirby series as a microphone for Pinkie, Freddy and Foxy from Five Nights At Freddy's serving as cameraman and boom operator respectively, and Dr. Robotnik/Classic Eggman in his Sonic Generations look making an appearance fully for humorous effect with a "PINGAS!" to boot.
- Main.Beam Me Up Scotty: See also Dead Unicorn Trope, Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer, Mondegreen, Viewer Name Confusion, God Never Said That, and Wrongfully Attributed.
- Main.Mandela Effect: Related to Mondegreen, a trope about mishearing song lyrics or poetry lines.
- Main.Viewer Name Confusion: Compare Mondegreen, Title Confusion, Beam Me Up, Scotty!, and Spell My Namewith An S.
- MythologyGag.Live Action TV:
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: The revival also references a rather infamous mondegreen of the original lyrics of thr theme: But his bosses didn't like him/so they shot him into spaaace
Tom: [To the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme] But the cowboy didn't like him, so he shot him in the faaaace!
- Newsletter.News 202105: Guess what? It's gonna be May
, and we're on issue 5 of the Trope Report revival!
- Radar.Animaniacs: In "Wakko's America
", Wakko gets a Daily Double in classroom Jeopardy!. When asked if he wants to wager all of his money or part of it, he answers with "I'll blow the wad!" As he said it, the facial expressions on Yakko and Dot made it seem like even they weren't sure they'd get away with it.
- 'Course, it could have been missed because "blow the wad" is also real gambling slang.
- Even outside of gambling, it's a standard English idiom, and the term comes from the way old firearms would have to be reloaded.
- It also might have made it because Wakko's delivery of the line and accent make it a little hard to discern exactly what he says after "the".
- Radar.My Gym Partners A Monkey: In "The Little Mermonkey", there was an accidental Mondegreen, where Jake intended to say "Adam's got a crab", but due to a voice acting mishap that apparently no one noticed, it sounded like "Adam's gotta crap." The reactions of the rest of the pack made it even more hilarious.
- Radar.Rock Band: A rather confusing example: "Feel Good Inc." is included and is censored... for the most part. There's a part near the end of the song where De La Soul is singing-according to the game's lyrics-"Don't stop, get it get it", but some sources claim that he's singing a Precision S-Strike. Basically, it's unclear if the game is exploiting a Mondegreen or not, especially when you consider that it's the same situation when they play the song on the radio. note
- SouthPark.Tropes K To Q: Timmy's "lib-a-lah!" was so commonly heard as "livin' a lie" that it was later used for an actual Timmy and the Lords of the U
nderworld song and became part of Jimmy's comedy routine in "Cripple Fight!".Crow: Meta!
I think we should make this YMMV and limit it to misheard spoken dialogue.
Check out my forum game: Rate the above YMMV.