Funny / The Princess Bride

• The entire Miracle Max scene.
  Valerie: Bye-bye boys!
  Miracle Max: Have fun stormin' the castle!
  Valerie: [muttering to Max] ...Think it'll work?
  Miracle Max: [muttering to Valerie] It would take a miracle.
  Both: [cheerfully, normal volume] Buh-bye!
  • "Get *back*, witch!" "I'm not a *witch*, I'm your *wife* - but after what you just said, I'm not even sure I want to be *that* anymore!" "You never had it so good."
  • When first greeting them, Miracle Max tries scaring them off by threatening to call the Brute Squad.
    Fezzik: I'm on the Brute Squad!
    Miracle Max: [takes in all of Fezzik] You ARE the Brute Squad!
• Vizzini's death scene: He laughs maniacally, then suddenly freezes mid-laugh, a grin permanently frozen on his face, and falls over, dead.
  • Not only does he fall over dead, he falls uphill.
  • Prior to it, we got this brilliant gem:
    Man in Black: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
    Vizzini: Wait 'til I get going! ...where was I?
    Man in Black: Australia.
    Vizzini: Yes, Australia. And you must have suspected I would have known the powder's origin, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
    Man in Black: You're just stalling now.
    Vizzini: You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?! [continues stalling]
  • His distraction:
    Man in Black: [smirks] You're trying to trick me into giving away something. It won't work.
    Vizzini: It has worked! You've given everything away! And I know where the poison is!
    Man in Black: [calmly as ever] Then make your choice.
    Vizzini: I will! ...And I choose [gasps] what in the world could that be?
    [he switches the cups while the Man in Black turns around to look]
  • Vizzini says the biggest possible blunder in the world is "getting involved in a land war in Asia," a very topical joke when the novel was first written in 1973 which has managed to stay perfectly understandable in all the years since.
• When the Albino wakes up Westley, first by speaking in a stereotypically raspy voice for an Igor, and then clearing his throat and speaking with a normal English accent.
• The justly-named "Impressive Clergyman" from the infamous wedding scene arguably stole all the attention during the heroes' storming of the villain's castle. "Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togevvah tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam..." Note that while the Impressive Clergyman's obviously fake speech impediment is Played for Laughs, Andre the Giant's very real speech impediment is not.
• Near the end of the movie, Westley instructs Buttercup to tie Humperdinck to a chair. There's a cut to Inigo racing down the hall, while offscreen Westley says "Make it as tight as you like"... followed by an agonized grunt from Humperdinck.
• The entire scene where Fezzik and Inigo are rhyming each other's sentences.
  Vizzini: No more rhymes now, I mean it!
  Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut?
  Vizzini: Dyeeeeargh!
• This scene:
  Westley: Give us the gate key.
  Yellin: I have no gate key.
  Inigo: Fezzik, tear his arms off.
  Yellin: Oh, you mean this gate key. (hands it to them)
  • The first scene with Yellin and Humperdinck has some great physical comedy. Yellin enters Humperdinck's chambers, kneels next to Humperdinck's chair and puts his hands on the arm. Humperdinck looks down. Yellin promptly removes his hands.
• Buttercup throwing herself down the hill.
  Buttercup: You could die too, for all I care. (pushes "Man in Black" down a hill)
  Westley: (tumbling down a very steep ravine) AAAAS YOOOUUU WIIIISH!
  Buttercup: ...Oh, my sweet Westley... What have I done?
  (Buttercup proceeds to throw herself down the hill)
• Inigo's first encounter with Count Rugen, after the former dispatches four guards in a manner of seconds.
  Inigo: Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
  Rugen: (gets into battle stance)
  (Beat)
  Rugen: (runs for his life)
  • Continued in his and Inigo's fight to the death:
    Inigo: HELLO! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father! Prepare to die!
    Rugen: STOP SAYING THAT!!!
• From the Fire Swamp:
  • When they're just about to enter:
    Buttercup: We'll never survive!
    Westley: Nonsense! You're only saying that because nobody ever has.
  • When they've just entered:
    Westley: [pausing and looking around] It's actually not that bad.
    Buttercup: [looks at him in disbelief]
    Westley: Oh, I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely.
  • The moment is perfectly ruined by the sound of a tree falling in the background immediately after Westley is finished. The look Buttercup gives him is priceless.
  • The R.O.U.S.'s.
    Buttercup: What about the R.O.U.S.'s?
    Westley: Rodents of unusual size? I don't think they exist.
    [A ROUS immediately attacks him]
    • Interesting thing about this moment: Westley already saw one a few moments before that conversation so that Tempting Fate response was an attempt to calm Buttercup down, but that ROUS had to attack at that point.
    • The timing of the ROUS attacking him is such that it's as if the ROUS was timing Westley's False Reassurance to Buttercup in order to jump him.
• As Buttercup is about to commit suicide by stabbing herself in the heart:
  Westley: There is a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours.
  • Also a Heartwarming Moment.
• When Inigo comes into the bedroom after Buttercup has tied up Humperdinck:
  Inigo: Where is Fezzik?
  Westley: I thought he was with you.
  Inigo: No.
  Westley: Well, in that case... (falls over since he can't hold himself up)
  • Made perfect by his mildly-annoyed little grunt as he does so.
  • Followed immediately with a tied-up Humperdinck's:
    Humperdinck: I knew it! I knew you were bluffing! I knew he was ...[meekly, as Inigo puts his sword in Humperdinck's face] ... bluffing...
    • Even better he says this in spite of the fact that he surrendered when Westly threatened him.
• With the Grandson and Grandfather, after further reading has revealed that Buttercup marrying Humperdinck was All Just a Dream:
  Grandson: See, Grandpa, I told you she'd never marry that rotten Humperdinck!
  Grandfather: Yes, you're very smart. Shut up.
  • Even funnier when you remember that this is Columbo, a man known for solving riddles, telling a kid to shut up.
• The hilariously anticlimactic "guide my sword" scene.
• THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!
  • "HURRY UP! MOVE THE THING! AND… THAT OTHER THING!"
• Inigo's horrible accent. The accent makes Mandy Patinkin's lines even funnier than if he said them without it.
• "Let me 'splain ... No, there is too much. Let me sum up."
  Westley: ...I mean, if we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.
  Inigo: Where we did we put that wheelbarrow the albino had?
  Fezzik: Over the albino, I think.
  Westley: Well, why didn't you list that among our assets in the first place? ...Oh, what I wouldn't give for a holocaust cloak.
  Inigo: There, we cannot help you.
  Fezzik: [produces a holocaust cloak] Will this do?
  Inigo: (in disbelief) Where did you get that??
  Fezzik: At Miracle Max's! It fits so nice, he said I could keep it!
  Westley: (exasperated) All right, all right. Come on, help me up.
• The battle between Fezzik and the Man in Black is one prolonged crowning moment of funny, starting with Vizzini giving Fezzik his instructions:
  Vizzini: Finish him! Your way!
  Fezzik: Oh, good, my way. Thank you, Vizzini... what's my way?
  Vizzini: Pick up one of those rocks, get behind a boulder. In a few minutes the man in black will come running around the bend. The minute his head is in view, HIT IT WITH THE ROCK!
  [beat]
  Fezzik: ...My way's not very sportsmanlike.
  • Made even funnier on a meta level when you remember that at the time, Andre the Giant was still actively wrestling as a heel.
  • When Fezzik suggests he and the Man in Black fight fairly with no weapons:
    Man in Black: You mean, you'll put down your rock and I'll put down my sword, and we'll try and kill each other like civilized people?
    Fezzik: (brings up giant rock) I could kill you now.
    Man in Black: (slowly sets his sword down) Frankly, I think the odds are slightly in your favor at hand fighting.
    Fezzik: It's not my fault being the biggest and the strongest. I don't even exercise.
  • Fezzik's Combat Compliment as they fight to a stalemate:
    Man In Black: Look, are you just fiddling around with me or what?
    Fezzik: I just want you to feel you're doing well! I hate for people to die embarrassed!
  • When the Man In Black manages to straddle Fezzik from behind and get him in a sleeper hold, it takes a while for it to take effect as they carry on conversing while Fezzik slowly loses consciousness.
    Fezzik: I just figured why you give me so much trouble.
    Man In Black: Why is that- [Fezzik slam him against a rock] Do you think?
    Fezzik: I haven't fought just one person for so long. I'm used to fighting groups; Battling gangs for local charities, that sort of thing.
    Man In Black: Why should that make such a- [Fezzik slams him against a rock again. Groans] difference?
    Fezzik: [Almost losing consciousness] Well, you use different moves when you're fighting half a dozen people, than when you only... Need to be worried... About one... [Down for the count]
    Man In Black: I do not envy the headache that you will have when you awake, but till then, sleep well... and dream of large women.
• Inigo and the Man in Black talk.
  Inigo: I do not mean to pry but..do you by any chance happen to have six fingers on your right hand?
  Man in Black: Do you always begin conversations this way?
  • Note that Inigo does not deny it.
• Prince Humperdinck gets a few of his own:
  She is alive, or was an hour ago. If she is otherwise when I find her... I shall be very put out.
  • Then this exchange with Rugen, which is also oddly heartwarming.
    Rugen: Ah. Are you coming down into the pit? Westley's got his strength back. I'm starting him on the machine tonight.
    Humperdinck: Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work, but I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it; I'm swamped.
    Rugen: (With complete sincerity) Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, then you haven't got anything.
• When Buttercup tries to escape her captors by jumping overboard:
  Vizzini: Jump in after her!
  Inigo: I don't swim.
  Fezzik: I only dog paddle. (motions)
  Vizzini: [screams in frustration]
• The Nightmare Fuel of a shrieking eel about to chomp Buttercup's face is instantly defused by Fezzik calmly reaching down and knocking it plumb out with a bonk on the head.
• When Inigo has Rugen on the run, the Count eludes the Spaniard briefly by running into a room and locking the door behind him. Inigo, in a full panic that Rugen might get away, starts running and ramming himself against the door, trying to break it down, and screaming for Fezzik to help him out. Fezzik calmly walks up, stops Inigo from hitting the door, and punches it off its hinges with one fist. Then calmly turns and walks away as Inigo resumes the chase.

  Inigo: *nearly shrieking* "He's getting away from me, Fezzik! PLEASE!!"

  • The chase music stops when Inigo reaches the locked door but lets out a little musical sting every time he fruitlessly throws himself at the door.
  • What adds to the scene is, right after he bashes the door down, Fezzik holds his hands out as if to say, "After you, sir." Then, when he walks back to where he left Westley, Westley isn't there, and Fezzik just looks around as if to say, "Now where did he go?"
• The entirety of Westley's "To the Pain" speech to Humperdinck, for how over-the-top his description is, commenting that Humperdinck would be "wallowing in freakish misery forever", and the various insults he throws at him, including such gems as "you miserable vomitous mass" and "you warthog-faced buffoon".
  • The look on Humperdinck's face after the last one (actually the first Westley said to him), followed by him visibly struggling for control as he says "That may be the first time in my life a man has dared insult me."
    Westley: It won't be the last.
• This priceless exchange after Vizzini cuts the rope to keep the Man in Black from completing the climb up the cliff:
  Vizzini: He didn't fall!? Inconceivable!
  Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
• While a drunken Inigo is waiting for Vizzini, who he doesn't know at the time didn't survive his encounter with the man in black, at the designated rendezvous point, the brute squad intercepts him. He promptly cusses out the brute squad.
  Guard: Ho there!
  Inigo: I do not budge. Keep your joder.^note in his Iberian Spanish accent, the d sound is softened to a th sound, making it sound like "ho there"
• During the duel between Westley and Inigo, the first time Inigo is disarmed, he flinches with a fearful expression. However, Westley politely motions for him to go pick his sword back up with a little shake, as though saying, "Well? Go get it, then!"
• The book has a hilarious scene that didn't make it into the movie. After passing through a gauntlet of deadly animals to get to the Pit of Despair, Inigo and Fezzik reach an empty hallway going straight to a door. The narration explains that the emptiness is designed to lull intruders into a false sense of security so they'll immediately go for the doorknob and awaken the venomous spider inside, which will bite and kill them. Great detail is devoted to how deadly this spider is. However, Fezzik is so frightened by nothing that he bolts and smashes through the door, "not even bothering with the niceties of the knob." Inigo goes to follow him, but notices a tiny spider skittering out from the wreckage of the door, which he promptly crushes with his boot.
• Prince Humperdinck smells the poison which has been previously established to be completely scentless, and immediately and correctly identifies it.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Of course he could identify it. It didn't have a smell.
• Something about the confident, plain delivery of Vizzini's line about his intelligence:
  Vizzini: Heard of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato?
  The Man in Black: Yes
  Vizzini: Morons.
• There's something deeply funny about Inigo's Moon Logic as he explains why the agonized screaming that just rang out across the land must be the Man in Black... the fact that, despite the completely vacuous argument, he happens to be right anyways.
  Inigo: Listen. Do you hear? That is the sound of ultimate suffering. My heart made that sound when Rugen slaughtered my father. The Man in Black makes it now.
  Fezzik: The Man in Black?
  Inigo: His true love is marrying another tonight. Who else has cause for ultimate suffering?

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