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  • In Unique, Helga's past is mentioned to include fighting demons, vampires, Nazis and demonic Nazi vampires.
  • In one of the Nightside books, Pew is searching through his occult equipment for a healing spell: "Dowsing rod, pickled penis, dowsing rod made from a pickled penis ..."
  • In the original web-based novel The Dwayne Diaries, after the captain questions who would ever need ten boats, Cthulhu says he could use the money for "A mansion, or a yacht, or a mansion on a yacht, whatever!"
  • A staple of Dave Barry's numerous lists. He generally has a list of three or four things, starts mixing and matching two at a time, and culminates with all of them together. One such list, from the column "Vacation Reservations":
    "You can keep your food costs down by eating at one of the many fine roadside stands, such as the Dairy Queen, the Dairy Freeze, the Dairy King, the Frozen Dairy Queen, the Freezing King of the Dairy, the Dozing Fairy Queen, and so on."
    • In Dave Barry in Cyberspace he lists off some possible chat room topics: "Poets, Cat Lovers, Religious People, Gays, Gay Teens Who Read Religious Poetry to Cats..."
    • In Dave Barry Slept Here, the issues which George H. W. Bush's campaign commercials focused on are stated to include:
      1. The pledge of allegiance.
      2. Furloughed rapist Willie Horton.
      3. The budget deficit, and whether it could be corrected by forcing furloughed rapist Willie Horton to say the pledge of allegiance over and over. For fifty years.
    • In Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway, a chart outlining the Medieval feudal hierarchy lists three consecutive ranks as "Duke" "Earl" and "Duke of Earl."
  • In the children's book The Pirate And The Penguin, the eponymous penguin complains that the south pole is boring, so his friends remind him of all the fun things there are to do, like daydreaming, yoga, and daydreaming about yoga.
  • In an essay from his book When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris discusses the kinds of people who buy different cigarette brands. Camels, in his view, were for "procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry."
  • Classic Singapore Horror Stories has a short titled "Stepchild", whose protagonist, sixteen year old Kathy, would talk like this every now and then.
    Kathy: These are clothing that would look good in airports, restaurants and airport restaurants.
  • In Zen Ghosts, Karl can't decide whether to be a pirate or an owl for Halloween. Stillwater, his panda friend, suggests going as an owl-pirate, but Michael protests that there's no such thing. Though not mentioned in the story, the illustrations show that Karl took Stillwater's advice.
  • Isaac Asimov was often criticized for the absence of extraterrestrial life and sexuality in his works. So he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens, sex and alien sex.
  • Lemony Snicket's Unauthorized Autobiography has a photograph of three detectives named "Detective Smith, Detective Jones, and Detective Smithjones".
  • In Harold's Fairy Tale, Harold encounters an enchanted garden that's barren. The king tells him this is due either to a witch or a giant, but he doesn't know which. Harold later finds that the trouble is being caused by a giant witch.
  • Hank the Cowdog:
    Drover: She had pretty brown eyes...
    Hank: Were they pretty and brown or pretty brown? This could be important!
    Drover: Both. They were pretty and brown. And pretty brown.
  • A bit of financial-scandal gossip from Five Hundred Years After:
    Khaavren: Do you know that, when the economy is troubled, intendants are dismissed? And, in addition, when war goes badly, generals are executed?
    Aerich: Well, yes. That is the usual way of the world.
    Khaavren: Well, they have been executing intendants.
  • In The End of the World, Valkyrie is mentioned as looking at Ryan with a face that people usually reserve for "Idiots, or toddlers. Or idiot toddlers".
  • In Not Just A Witch by Eva Ibbotson, when the main character Heckie (who has the power to change people into animals) and her friend Dora (who has the power to turn creatures to stone) have just discovered that Mr. Knacksap, whom they thought was their friend, had secretly been leading them both on and tricking them into abusing their powers for his own benefit:
    Oh, Lord, don't let them get me, prayed the furrier. Don't let me become a louse. Don't let me become a statue. And please, please don't let me become the statue of a louse!
  • In Blood Rites, Harry faces a giant monkey-demon that forms from smaller monkey-demons merging together. Being both a Pop-Cultured Badass and The Nicknamer, he first calls it monkey Kong, then Monkey Voltron, and finally Kongtron.
  • In Good Omens, a group of English kids hear the rumor that in America there are ice-cream stores with 39 flavors:
    "There aren't thirty-nine flavors in the whole world."
    "There could be, if you mixed them up," said Wensleydale, blinking owlishly. "You know. Strawberry and chocolate. Chocolate and vanilla." He sought for more English flavors. "Strawberry and vanilla and chocolate," he added, lamely.
  • Discworld:
    • In Wyrd Sisters, the witches give the Hidden Backup Prince to his adoptive parents, who ask for his name. Granny says "Tom" while Nanny says "John"—they settle on Tom John, which the family renders as Tomjon.
    • In Interesting Times, when Teach dies, the barbarian heroes suggest giving him a variety of different warriors' funerals, like being on a boat set on fire, being under a burial mound, or on top of a pile of the corpses of all of his enemies. They eventually settle on "In a boat set on fire, on top of a pile of his enemies, under a burial mound."
    • According to The Wee Free Men, the Nac Mac Feegle are infamous for stealing, fighting, drinking, drinking and fighting, and stealing and drinking and fighting.
    • Unseen Academicals has "the smell of pipe smoke and old socks, and since the wizards are lax about knocking out their pipes, smoking socks as well."
  • When the picture of Alex kissing a man is leaked in Heart In Hand, the media speculates his partner might be drugged, underage, a prostitute, or even a drugged underage prostitute.
  • In World War Z, among the things that Colonel Christina Eliopolis says are being dropped into the blue zones holding out against the zombies are "tools, spare parts, and tools to make spare parts."
  • In The Song of the Quarkbeast, King Snodd comments, "Magical contests are always enjoyed by the unwashed and the destitute—and especially by the unwashed destitute."
  • When Tyler of A Bad Day for Voodoo is explaining to Kelley how Mr. Click died, she says, "Are you kidding me?", "Are you serious?", and "You can't be serious! Are you kidding me?".
  • The Dornish capital of Sunspear in A Song of Ice and Fire was named because the Rhoynar sigil was the sun and the Martell sigil was a spear.
    • In the second book, Shae, when talking about Lollys, says, "She sleeps and she eats. Sometimes she falls asleep while she's eating."
  • In 1066 and All That, the Industrial Revelation leads to the passage of a wave of Acts including Tory Acts, Factory Acts, Satisfactory Acts and Unsatisfactory Acts.
  • Journey to Chaos: During the course of A Mage's Power, Eric and Dengel have an argument after Eric kills Tahart, an orc.
    Dengel: ...Orcs are savages.
    Eric: He was a person!
    Dengel: He was a savage person.
  • Judy Jones and William Wilson's An Incomplete Education:
    Never mind the gory details of Furman, which was only the lead case among five involving rapes, murders and rape-murders.
    • What you need to know if dating a "Frenchperson."
    Be prepared to discuss, for hours on end, politics, philosophy, foreign policy, the politics of philosophy, the philosophy of politics, the politics and philosophy of foreign policy, the early films of Jean-Luc Godard, and what's wrong with the New York art scene.
  • JRR Tolkien's ''The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two'' contains a scene in which "an army of Orcs descended upon them, and wolves, and Orcs mounted upon wolves".
  • In the children's book Scrooge a shortened adaptation of A Christmas Carol, one illustration features three stamps on Scrooge's desk that read "NO", "NEVER", and "NO NEVER".
  • The title character in Jeremy Fink And The Meaning Of Life says his mom taught him to Think Happy Thoughts, her examples being butterflies, babies laughing, and hot dogs in a ballpark. So when he thinks he's about to be arrested, he pictures "babies laughing in a ballpark surrounded by butterflies eating hot dogs. Very small, tiny hot dogs."
  • In Daves Gorman's Googlewhack! Adventure Dave explains the concept of Googlewhacking to the reader by telling them to type the word "Animal" into Google and press Enter, then to type the word "Balloon" into Google and press Enter, then to type the words "Balloon Animal" into Google and press Enter. He also warns that at all three stages of process, you are likely to come across bizarre pornography.
  • From The Bad Book by Australian author Andy Griffiths:
    Q: What's brown and sticky?
    A: A stick.
    Q: What's yellow and smells like bananas?
    A: Monkey vomit.
    Q: What's brown and yellow and sticky and smells like bananas?
    A: Monkey vomit on a stick.
  • In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Lupin's first lesson for the third-year students is on how to tackle a Boggart by invoking Nightmare Retardant on the forms it takes, making it look silly. Lupin asks Neville, the class' resident Butt-Monkey, what he fears the most, and Neville answers with Professor Snape. Lupin then asks how Neville's grandmother is doing, and Neville replies that she's doing fine, and that he doesn't want the Boggart to transform into her either. Lupin's suggestion to Neville on how to turn his Boggart into a complete joke? Imagine the Boggart as Professor Snape...in Neville's grandmother's dress.
  • In Eleanor & Park, when Eleanor hears gunshots near her house at night: "gang members, she thought. Drug dealers. Rapists. Gang members who were also drug-dealing rapists."
  • Star Wars: Razor's Edge: Sneaking around an Asteroid Mining facility converted into a Space Pirate base, Sian points out that there's probably a former mine detention center repurposed as a slave pen, and Han agrees that that would make sense. The narration from his POV:
    A mine this big must have had some kind of facility to deal with the miners who stole or got drunk or did spice or got into fights about stealing and drinking and doing spice.
  • Whateley Universe: From An Imp-perfect World (Ch 2) Imp's banter:
    “I like pie,” I continued with my mouth running almost on automatic. “And whip cream. And whips. And whip cream and whips together…” I paused at that to give Chickenhawk a suggestive wink.
  • In Will Grayson, Will Grayson, from Will #2: "of course i don't say any of these things to [my mom]. moms don't need to hear that kind of shit from their kids, unless they're doing something really wrong, like smoking in bed, or doing heroin, or doing heroin while they're smoking in bed".
  • Franny K. Stein:
    • When looking inside her house in the Bad Future in The Fran That Time Forgot, Franny is described as seeing snakes, spiders and things that looked like they were half-snake and half-spider.
    • In the book The Fran With Four Brains, Igor's methods of getting his owner Franny to laugh include juggling chainsaws, alligator wrestling, and wrestling alligators with chainsaws.
  • The World of Thedas books are expansions on the lore of the Dragon Age video games. In the second volume, the in-universe dominant religion offers a scathing commentary on the works of the resident popular author, party member Varric Tethras. They generally feel that he's a terrible writer, and describe the bulk of his work as being "by and large, little more than smut, pulp, or, at times, smutty pulp."
  • The Hunger Games: In the prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Coriolanus is getting tired of all the music in his life.
    It seemed to be everywhere: birdsong, Covey song, bird-and-Covey song.
  • In the non-fiction book How to Make the World Add Up, Tim Harford questions forger Han van Meegeren's claim that he didn't do it for the money, noting that "his mansions were decorated with prostitutes, jewellery, and prostitutes draped in jewellery".
  • How to Invent Everything by Ryan North says, "While the spoken word is great, it still suffers from significant limitations. It frees ideas from their original host, but it allows ideas to be transmitted only as far as the speaker can travel, or can shout, or can travel while shouting."
  • In the novelization of The Rugrats Movie, when the adults track the babies through the forest, Rex Pester does a news report on it, and gives the readers this line:
    "Will they get eaten by a bear? Will they freeze in the night? Or will they run out of clean diapers? Perhaps they'll run out of clean diapers, freeze, and then get eaten by a bear!"
  • Lily and Dunkin: Before Dunkin's first basketball game, he worries about everything that could go wrong: he could trip, fall, miss the basket, or trip and fall while missing the basket.
  • Bastard Operator from Hell:
    Boss: Excellent, ten days since the last accident.
    PFY: I think you'll find that's a binary number.
    BOFH: And that's only because we don't count disappearances as accidents.
    PFY: Or people who don't work here.
    BOFH: Or disappearances of people who don't work here.
  • In chapter 4 of Gold Tongues, Billy tries to guess what job Petrol had before the apocalypse. First he says a lifeguard, then a soccer coach, and then a bus driver. And then he says a lifeguard who coached soccer while driving a bus.

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