Hold Your Hippogriffs

The Dwarven way of saying "killing two birds with one stone".

Gabe: This jackass just said that something can go "through a ferrocrete bunker like a neutrino through plasma." I get it, man. It says Star Wars on the cover. I know I'm reading about Star Wars. It's like, do they not have butter in space? Or hot knives to cut it with?
Tycho: Listen, don't get your mynocks in a... sarlacc.

— Penny Arcade, "San Diego Sketchbook: On Vibroblades"

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The author uses a popular and/or modern phrase in a work of Speculative Fiction, and adjusts it to the setting by replacing certain concepts with their more-or-less appropriate counterparts. Works as a sort of Shout-Out to make the reader/viewer more at home in the world, while at the same time highlighting the difference; it can also be used to disguise swears. Can backfire if the adjustment comes off as too arbitrary (e.g., if the proverb refers to concepts that should exist in the speculative setting as well).

At times these are specific to an exact scene, too. The replacement concepts can be tailored to characters and current action, rather than being a common phrase of its own. A cop with an antagonistic relationship to his Imperial liaison can sardonically say the liaison's investigation team got past security like X-Wings through a Death Star. In this way it can overlap with Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?, though it can refer to past moments anywhere on the spectrum of awesome and suck.

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Related to Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp" and Future Slang in as much as they're all about creating immersion through language use. The difference is that Hold Your Hippogriffs is, for one, not about words but phrases; for another, Hold Your Hippogriffs doesn't always create new words, although it can. It's also related to Flintstone Theming, but with fewer puns.

Supertrope of Oh My Gods!. Compare Space "X", a lazier version where "Space" (or another relevant series concept like "Wizard") is just put in phrases to make sure you know a Space X is different, and [Popular Saying], But... which also alters common sayings, but to create humor instead. Not related to Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff". The inverse of this, when a word is replaced due to never having the chance to exist, is Orphaned Etymology.

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It should be noted that many, but not all those following examples, mostly apply for their original language, as it's very difficult to pull this off in foreign translations, especially when dealing with complex idioms without equivalents in the target language.

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Examples Subpages:

• Fan Works

Other Examples

Anime and Manga

• Pokémon:
  • "Hold your ^Horsea horses!"
  • "I'm so hungry I could eat a ^Horsea horse!"
  • "Maybe if you weren't such a big fat ^Swinub pig, we'd get to the boat on time!"
  • "When the ^Swinub pigs fly."
  • "That Pachirisu is faster than water off a ^Wailord's duck's back."
  • "Hi-^paw five!"
  • "Cut the ^Mankey monkey business."

Asian Animation

• In the Korean series Noonbory and the Super 7, the characters are divided into two groups - the good guys, known as the Borys, and the bad guys, known as the Gurys. These names are used in words like "every^bory/gury body" and "some^bory body".

Comic Books

• Marvel Comics: This is especially ridiculous in the Marvel Apes comics; "a ^human's  monkey's uncle" is an idiomatic phrase, except there are no humans in the Marvel Apes universe. Literally none. A few characters are mutated into human-like forms, but humanity is by and large nonexistent.
• René Goscinny liked using this trope in his comics:
  • In Asterix, typical French curses involving God are transformed into those which involve Roman and Gaulish deities. There's also phrases like "a big girl's ^tunica  blouse", a sign which tells people to "wipe their ^caligae  boots", "in their good tablets"...
  • Lucky Luke's intellectual horse says, when crossing a river, "And the ^veterinarian  doctor told me not to bathe immediately after ^pasturing.  eating."
• MAD's Golden Age parody "Mickey Rodent" had Darnold Duck turn to Mickey and call him a "dirty rat," with the word "rat" crossed out and "human" inserted.
• Judge Dredd: When Judge Giant seemingly sides with Cal's SJS in Judge Caligula, one SJS Judge comments that he knows what side his ^soyloaf bread is ^{synthi-spreaded} buttered, since Future Food Is Artificial.
• My Little Pony IDW: In Issue 79, following Sunset and her band's performance, Cranky Doodle Donkey calls out "Enchorse!" instead of "Encore".

Comic Strips

• Sally Forth: The Martian Snorky does this from time to time.
  "There's more than one way to gobl a knog!"

Films — Animation

• Balto:
  • "That's 'cause you're looking at the ^bowl  glass half empty."
  • "It's not exactly a one-^dog  man show, Dixie."
  • "I'm sticking here until I'm sure you can stand on own ^four  two feet.
  • "Balto, I was so scared, I got ^people  goose bumps!
• A lot of Disney's humor is based on this trope:
  • Aladdin:
    • "Don't stand until the ^rug  plane has come to a complete stop."
    • "Wake up and smell the ^hummus.  coffee." (Quite bizarre, given the significance of coffee in Arabia long before the west.)
    • "Mr. Doubting ^Mustafa.  Thomas."
    • "^Allah  God forbid you have any daughters."
    • "That two-faced son of a ^Jackal!  bitch!"
    • "Hold onto your ^turban,  hat, kid!"
    • "It never fails, you get in the bath, and there's a ^rub , knock at the ^lamp.  door."
    • "In a ^Gomorrah  New York minute!"
  • Hercules
    • "Holy ^Hera!  Hannah!"
    • "So, is this an audience or ^{a mosaic?}  an oil painting?"
    • "Wanna buy a ^sundial?  watch?"
    • "The honest-to-^Zeus  God truth."
    • Thebes is called the "Big ^Olive.  Apple."
    • "Keep your ^toga  pants on, pal!"
    • "Someone call ^IX-I-I!  9-1-1! (Technically, these are Roman numerals, but oh well...)"
    • "That's it, I'm moving to ^Sparta!  Canada!"
    • "He's just another ^chariot  ambulance chaser."
    • "...but I could see through that in a ^{Peloponnesian}  New York minute."
  • The Little Mermaid:
    • "You're not getting cold ^fins  feet now, are you?"
    • "Don't be such a ^guppy!  chicken!"
    • "As long as you live under my ^ocean  roof, you will obey my rules!"
    • "You give them an inch, they ^swim  walk all over you."
    • "The ^seaweed  grass is always greener / In somebody else's ^lake!  lawn!"
    • "Somebody's gotta nail that girl's ^fins  feet to the floor."
    • "Look what the ^catfish  cat dragged in."
    • "Leave no ^shell  stone unturned, no ^coral  corner unexplored!"
    • "It's time Ursula took matters into her own ^tentacles!  hands!"
  • The Lion King (1994)
    • "This child is getting wildly out of ^wing.  hand."
    • In an initial recording, Zazu actually said "out of hand," before changing it.
    • "I'm so hungry I could eat a ^{whole zebra.}  horse."
  • The Lion King 1½
    • "Don't let the ^branches door hit you on the way out!"
    • "The problems of a couple of wacky kids like us don't amount to hill of ^termites  beans in this nutty circle-of-life thing."
  • The Lion King II: Simba's Pride
    • "It's every ^lion  man for himself out here."
  • Pocahontas
    • "It's enough to make your ^sap  blood boil." (said by Grandmother Willow)
  • Mulan
    • "Who ^spit  pissed in her ^{bean curd?}  corn flakes?"
  • Brother Bear
    • "Get a ^cave!  room!"
    • "Don't make me turn this ^formation  car around!" (said by a goose after another member of the flock asks "Are We There Yet?")
  • Dumbo
    • "Girls, girls, listen. Have I got a ^trunk  mouth full of dirt."
  • Zootopia:
    • (During the Gazelle concert in the closing credits) "Put your ^paws  hands up!"
    • "Ladies and gentle^mammals men!"
• Osmosis Jones:
  • "You're pulling my ^membrane!  leg!"
  • "You saved my ^cytoplasm  ass back there."
  • "I should be out in the ^veins  streets fighting ^disease!  crime!"
• Happy Feet: "Can you speak plain ^penguin,  English, please?" and "I'm speaking plain ^penguin.  English."
• Toy Story has "Son of a ^{building block!}  bitch!" and "Save your ^batteries.  breath."
  • Toy Story 2: "If the ^boot shoe fits."
• A Bug's Life:
  • "It's a ^bug dog-eat-^bug dog world out there, Princess.
  • "Ladies and gentle^bugs!  men! ^Larvae  Children of all ^stages!  ages! ^Rub  Put your ^legs  hands together for the world's greatest bug circus!"
• Cars:
  • "Ladies and gentle^cars  men..."
  • "His ^{undercarriage}  underwear is showing."
  • "Float like a ^Cadillac  butterfly, sting like a ^Beamer  bee (a Beamer is a common nickname for a BMW)."
  • ^Tractor  cow tipping.
  • RustEze Medicated ^Bumper  lip Ointment.
  • "The loser will be stripped of all modifications and become... ^STOCK!!!  naked"
• Planes adds in a few more:
  • "I'll leak all over you if you don't watch your ^intake!  mouth"
  • "Oh for the love of ^Peterbilt  Pete"
• Hoodwinked!: "Well well, someone ^hibernated  slept on the wrong side of the ^cave  bed."
• Finding Nemo: "It'll be a piece of ^kelp  cake."
  • "Aww, you guys made me ^ink  pee"
  • "Cause you're about to eat my ^bubbles dust!"
• How to Train Your Dragon: "^Odin  God help us."
  • How to Train Your Dragon 2: "The sun is shining, ^{Terrible Terrors}  birds are singing on the roof..."
• Horton Hears a Who!: "That's why my little Rudy is ^pouch  home-schooled.
• Shrek 2: "Well, it looks like we're up ^Chocolate  Shit Creek without a ^{popsicle stick}  paddle/shovel."

Films — Live-Action

• Planet of the Apes:
  • "^Human  Monkey see, ^human  monkey do."
  • Considering that the whole franchise was a commentary about racism, you can't forget a line like "The only good ^human  Indian is a DEAD ^human!  Indian!"
• Alexander manages to naturally do this, replacing phrases like "By God!" with "By Zeus!" or "In the name of the Gods!" instead of the singular, and other such things using ancient Greek-era things in place of more modern phrases and outbursts. A few times, it tends to get too clunky and usual, with things like "By Athena's Justice, this girl has spirit" that tend to be less artificial and more sticking out like a sore thumb.^note The actual pagan Greeks sometimes used the singular "God" to mean something like "the divine" and a very few (mostly philosophers) were even monotheist.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan had "What beams you into this neck of the woods?"
    • The "old Klingon proverb" that "death is a dish that is best served cold" is actually Pashtun in origin.
  • In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, McCoy says Spock is "not exactly ^firing working on all ^thrusters cylinders".
  • Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Had Kirk mentioning "Moon over ^{Rigel 7}  Miami" as a potential campfire sing-along. When this movie was later riffed, Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy mocked the use of this trope with such song titles as I Left My Heart ^{On Tau Ceti Five}  in San Francisco and I Have Thirteen Eyes For You.
  • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country had one of the military men threaten that if the Klingons declared war, "we'd clean their ^{chronometers.}  clocks."
• At the climax of Oh, God! You Devil, when the Devil (George Burns) loses his nerve in a poker showdown with God (also George Burns), God comments, "I put the fear of ^me  God into you."
• The Lord of the Rings "As the ^Nazgûl crow flies." Justified, since they are actually talking about Nazgûl flying there.
• In Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan says that his hunt for General Grievous on Utapau "May just be a wild ^bantha  goose chase."
• Lampshaded in Solo: A Star Wars Story:
  Han: Beckett, did you hear me? Are they on us?
  Tobias: Like rashnold on a kalak.
  Han: ... I don't know what that means.
  Tobias: Like a gingleson's pelt.
  Han: What? Are they or aren't they?
  Tobias: Yes, they're still on us!
• In Masters of the Universe, Gwildor the Thenurian twice uses the same term in different situations:
  • "I'm not ^{a Torktum}  an idiot, you know!"
  • "I don't believe it! I've got a lot of serious work to do! You're acting like ^Torktums  idiots!"
• Black Panther:
  Shuri: Did he freeze?
  Oyoke: Like ^{an antelope} a deer in headlights.
  • Later, before the final battle, when Shuri arranges for Ross to fly the Royal Talon Fighter by remote;
    Shuri: Don't worry, it's just like riding a ^hoverbike bicycle!
    Ross: Wait, you have hoverbikes?
• Racing Stripes
  Horse:Go home, ^{four left hooves}  two left feet!
• Noelle: "Oh my ^garland God!" (Also doubles as Gosh Dang It to Heck!.)

Jokes

• People will jokingly ask "What do atheists say during sex?" or what phrases they use to replace "Oh my God." and "Jesus Christ" and the answer is, in the joke at least, something like "Oh my science." or something to that effect.
• A joke saying among Tabletop Gamers is "If I had one XP each time I heard that, I'd be level 20".
• Another one is, when posting opinions on some D&D forum, is to finish it with "My two coppers^note  My two cents".
• A minor one among Tom Lehrer fans in the Pokémon fandom. There's a small meme where a certain song of his gets referenced as "Poisoning Pidgey in the Park".

Literature

• From Life, the Universe and Everything: "Wouldn't stand a ^whelk's snowball's chance in ^{a supernova}  hell." Much to Arthur Dent's confusion.
• In The Integral Trees by Larry Niven, several characters use the expression "feed the tree," which means, "The words you are saying are a commonly used form of natural fertilizer."
• The Trope Namer is Harry Potter; several of these expressions we hear from Mrs. Figg after she's revealed to be a Squib:
  • "Hold your ^hippogriffs!  horses!"
  • "What's got your ^wand  knickers in a ^knot?  twist?"
  • "No use crying over spilt ^potion.  milk."
  • "The cat's among the ^pixies  pigeons now."
  • "Wasn't enough room to swing a ^kneazle.  cat."
  • "Might as well be hanged for a ^dragon  sheep as ^{an egg.}  a lamb."
  • "Fell off the back of a ^broom.  truck."
  • "Son of a ^Bludger!  bitch!"
  • "A ^{poisonous toadstool}  leopard can't change its spots."
  • "God rest ye, merry ^hippogriffs  gentlemen" being sung by Sirius at Christmas in Order of the Phoenix. (This may very well have been Sirius messing with the words for his own sake, since he was attending on Buckbeak at the time.)
  • "Just yanking your ^wand.  leg."
    • This one might fall into Accidental Innuendo territory as well.
  • "Get off his high ^hippogriff.  horse."
  • "Which came first, the ^phoenix  chicken or the ^flame?  egg?"
  • "It's like losing a ^Knut  penny and finding a ^Galleon  pound."
    • Justified in this case, as wizards have their own currency and know nothing of Muggle money.
  • “The fire is lit but the cauldron is empty.” ^note  The porch light is on but no one’s home
  • In fact, in the Film, the band in one movie does a song pretty much entirely of this trope.
  • They also tend to refer to Merlin in addition to God. Which makes sense, one supposes.
  • Speaking of swearing by Merlin, "Merlin's pants!" could very well be a stand-in for "Holy shit!", considering the following:
    • "Pants" is British slang for "rubbish";
    • Another term for "rubbish" is "bullshit" or simply "shit"; and
    • When Hermione uses the term, Ron realizes she's got her wand in a much tighter knot than usual, for her to be saying that (also consider that he is himself guilty of swearing loudly numerous times throughout the series).
    • Speaking of Merlin's pants, quoth Ron: "How in the ^{name of Merlin's pants}  holy name of shit have you managed to get your hands on those Horcrux books?"
    • Ron is also cut off in the middle of asking why "in the name of Merlin's saggy left-" (cue interruption by his mother) he is required to tidy his bedroom ahead of his brother's wedding.
  • Rita Skeeter also once makes reference to a "bring and ^fly  buy sale".
  • Harry once tells Rita Skeeter that he wouldn't touch her "with a ten-foot ^broomstick pole."
  • In Order of the Phoenix McGonagall refers to Harry, George and Draco getting into a fistfight as "muggle dueling".
  • In The Deathly Hallows, when Ron introduces Harry, under disguise via Polyjuice Potion, to Muriel, as "cousin Barney", Muriel responds with: "Another Weasley? You breed like ^gnomes rabbits."
• Codex Alera:
  • "Go to^{the crows}  hell!"
  • "Oh ^{Great Furies}  God."
  • "He's a ^slive  snake."
• In the Discworld books, most of the examples of this trope are simply their setting-appropriate equivalents. E.G.:
  • "...guaranteed to have fallen off the back of ^{an oxcart.}  a lorry" (Guards! Guards!)
  • "He's going to go totally ^{Librarian poo.}  apeshit." (The Fifth Elephant and The Truth)
  • "...as the ^{high priest}  bishop said to the ^{vestal virgin.}  actress." (Witches Abroad)
  • "Crysophrase, he not give a ^coprolith  shit about that stuff" (Men at Arms) and "I'm in deep ^copro,  shit, right?" (Thud!). (Trolls are living rock, and a coprolith is fossilised animal dung.)
  • "Been there, done that, bought the ^doublet.  T-shirt." (The Fifth Elephant)
  • Men at Arms has "...some Watchman blundering around upsetting things, like a loose ... a loose ^{siege catapult.}  cannon."; "...up ^{the Ankh}  shit creek without a paddle"; "Does a ^{dragon explode}  bear shit in the woods?" (although the original version is also in use); and "Like a fish needs a ... ^{a thing that doesn't work underwater}  a bicycle, sir."
  • "Don't come the raw ^trilobite  prawn with me." (Moving Pictures; from a rock-eating troll)
  • "When the ^midden  shit hits the ^windmill.  fan." (Thief of Time and The Fifth Elephant)
  • "How many trolls does it take to change a ^{lamp wick?}  light bulb?" (Sourcery)
  • A weird one that started out as a Nanny Ogg malapropism in Carpe Jugulum, and then somehow became the accepted version of the phrase in later books is: "The leopard does not change his shorts." In Unseen Academicals, this phrase's complete meaninglessness gets lampshaded.
    • Another common mangled saying is "the worm is on the other boot", a mash-up of "the worm has turned" and "the boot is on the other foot".
  • The tendency of Honest Johns in UK media to call everyone "squire" (CMOT Dibbler does this) gets extended to other Discworld cultures, with a camel merchant who calls Teppic "emir" in Pyramids, and Disembowel-Meself-Honorably calling Rincewind "shogun" in Interesting Times.
  • Klatch's role as the "generically foreign" country to Morporkians means we get "Excuse my ^Klatchian  French" and "That isn't ^Klatchian Scotch mist, lad" (both by Ridcully in Soul Music).
  • A few aversions are lampshaded early on, when he notes that the use of the phrase "gypsies" is anomalous, given that there is no such thing as Egypt, but some words of place-name origin need to be kept for coherency's sake, so he's not calling them Djelibabies, as technically appropriate as that would be.
  • "This is a hell of a way to spend ^Hogswatch!  Christmas!" (Hogfather)
  • "Now we're cooking with ^charcoal!  gas!" (Interesting Times and others)
  • Trolls refer to "legends from the ^sunset  dawn of time." Either because they're nocturnal (according to The Light Fantastic), or because they think we go through time backwards (according to Thud!, based on a line in Reaper Man).
  • "Evil Emperor. Evil Empire. It did what it said on the ^{iron maiden}  tin.(Unseen Academicals)
  • Also in UA, a dwarf doesn't think much of moonsilver, but says micromail is a "different ^{pocketful of rats} kettle of fish entirely".
  • "Couldn't expect to get away ^Feegle  scot free" (Snuff)
  • There's more than one way of choking a ^dangdang  cat than stuffing it with ^pling  cream." (Thief of Time) (dangdangs and pling, if you're wondering, are never mentioned in any other context.)
  • In a discussion on alt.fan.pratchett., Terry Pratchett said that building the clacks network was "not ^{dragon wizardry}  rocket science." (See The Last Hero for why they're the same thing.)
  • In Raising Steam a dwarf says the grags can "stick it where the sun ^{shines too much} doesn't shine". An elder dwarf describes another younger dwarf as "still wet behind the ^helmet ears".
  • "It's gone ^wahoonie pear-shaped." (Various books)
  • "The real ^{Mac Feegle} McCoy." (Nanny Ogg's Cookbook)
  • In Feet of Clay, the Ankh-Morpork nobility know which side of their ^biscuit bread is ^{spread with pate} buttered.
  • Ancient Ephebians (i.e. Greeks) in Eric say "You play ^discus ball with me, and I'll play ^discus ball with you."
• The vampire culture in The Saga of Darren Shan: "In this ^night day and age"
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe and Legends books:
  • "Out of the ^{reactor core}  frying pan and into the ^supernova.  fire."
  • Playing ^{Sith's/Dark Side's}  Devil's Advocate. Started in the X-Wing Series, but other novels picked it up later.
  • Better the ^Moff  Devil you know than ^{Emperor's new envoy.}  Devil you don't.
  • He was as green as ^{the foam}  grass on Lomiin-ale.
  • The Star Wars Holiday Special is largely cringed over and ignored, but a few things have worked their way into canon. Boba Fett, Chewbacca's family, and Life Day.
    Wedge: [after a very agreeable breakup, and having said that he hopes she'll still consider him a friend] Meaning you can still call on me. Send me messages. Send me ^{Life Day}  Christmas presents.
  • "These guys went through the estate's defenses easier than ^{Rebels go through a Death Star}  joke about cheap food of any kind / hot knife through butter."
  • It's not the work of ^{Venthan Chassu,}  Rembrandt, but it beats bare walls.
  • Less chance than a ^flame snowflake ^{on Hoth.}  in Hell.
  • If one person calls you ^{a Hutt,}  drunk, laugh it off. If two people call you ^{a Hutt,}  drunk, start to wonder. If three people call you ^{a Hutt,}  drunk, ^{buy a drool bucket and start hoarding spice.}  go home and lie down. (Stackpole invents a lot of these.)
  • You look like something the ^poom  cat dragged in.
  • How many Corellians does it take to change a ^glowpanel?  lightbulb?
    • None. If the Light's out you can't see them cheating at ^Sabacc.  poker.
  • Speaking of which, there's no such thing as a "poker face." Instead, you'd have a "Sabacc face." Likewise, "dejarik" (the game Chewie and R2 play in A New Hope) is substituted for chess.
  • She took to it like a ^sarlacc  duck to ^sand.  water.
    • That one is strange, since they do have ducks. And water. And because not all sarlaccs live in deserts.
  • If ^{The Force is with us, it's definitely The Dark Side.}  it weren't for bad luck, we'd have no luck at all.
  • This looks like a ^dew  milk-run.
    • Also used: a "blue milk-run".
    • For those who don't know, a "milk run" is aviation speak for a routine, uneventful journey. Among bomber crews, it means an easy mission with neither flak nor enemy fighters.
  • Stick the ^vibroblade  knife in and ^{modulate the oscillation rate.}  twist it.
  • The airspeeder dropped like a ^{freefalling Hutt.}  rock.
    • The same character a few pages later said the same speeder "dropped like a rock", so "freefalling Hutt" was probably just for color.
  • As the smugglers say, we were putting all our ^spice  eggs in one ^freighter  basket.
  • Don't ^{plot a course into that black hole}  go there.
  • I get the ^holo  picture. (In general, "holo" or "hologram" are used in any context that calls for "photograph" or "video.")
  • I'll walk away, shedding my crimes like a ^Trandoshan  snake sheds its skin.
    • In that case it was deliberate—a criminal offered to hand over some crucial info in exchange for immunity from prosecution, money, and a way off planet, and was amused when an old enemy was sent to pick him up. He knew she needed the info and was too honorable to go against the deal, so he used this phrase to remind her that he had let the Trandoshan who had murdered a friend walk free.
  • This really came out of the ^{asteroid belt.}  blue.
    • Alternately, it came out of the black, as in deep space.
  • "Like a ^neutrino  hot knife through ^plasma.  butter."
    • A similar but less arbitrary example from one of the Young Jedi Knights books: Lando says that a certain diamond drill can cut through durasteel just as easily as a laser can cut through Sullustan jam. It's not explained what property of Sullustan jam requires lasers to cut.
  • A particularly egregious one: What time is it when an ^{Imperial AT-AT Walker}  elephant steps on your ^{wrist chronometer?}  wristwatch? Time to get a new ^{wrist chronometer.}  wristwatch.
  • Wedge Antilles is said to have ice water in his veins and cold-space lubricants for blood.
  • "And then ask yourself if that doesn't make you look a bit like a ^{dewback's cloaca} horse's arse."
  • "He's a few ^starships  cans/sandwiches short of a ^fleet.  six-pack/picnic.."
  • Tending children is like herding ^{Gammorean slime cats}  just plain cats.
  • Set in ^durasteel stone. See page quote here.
  • At least one of the Essential Guide books has "A game of ^felinx cat and ^rodus mouse". This despite the fact that a quick look on Wookieepedia reveals that both cats and mice exist in-universe.
  • It's dangerous to change ^dewbacks  horses in the middle of a ^{sand dune.}  river.
  • The Han Solo Trilogy: Expressions like "The rat's in the kitchen" have been modified with "vrelt" (apparently a similar creature) instead of "rat" and so on.
  • From Scoundrels: "Mind games, unfortunately, were a ^{multidirectional spacelane} two-way street."
  • From the Revenge of the Sith novelization: “They say when ^{the Force}  life closes a ^hatch  door, it opens a ^viewport  window.”
  • From Coruscant Nights, Den Dhur notes that trying to find Jax Pavan is “Like looking for a needle in a ^sleestax  haystack.”
• The Redwall books love these, as well as creative insults, the best being "If brains were bread you'd have starved to death before you were born!":
  • Some examples include "the ^leaf  pot calling the ^{grass green}  kettle black" and "I'll bet you an apple to an acorn" (the equivalent of "dollars to donuts").
  • "If wishes were ^{fishes, there'd be no room in the river for water.}  horses, beggars would ride."
  • "There's more than one way of ^{frying a frog.}  skinning a cat." Weird, you'd think Ferahgo would love to talk about skinning things...
• From Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross, we have "Never bring a ^tazer  knife to ^{an artillery duel}  a gun fight", and the ReMastered philosophy "^Upload  Kill them all, ^{the unborn god}  God will know ^its  his own."
• The Hollows has several, such as "You look like the ^{vamp who drained the cat.}  cat who got the cream."
• Lots in the Star Trek Novel Verse:
  • Like a ^targ  bat out of ^gre'thor.  hell. (Klingon)
  • "If life hands you ^ungaberries,  lemons, you've got to make ^detergent.  lemonade." (Ferengi)
  • "Played me like a ^{Syn Lara.}  violin." (Trill)
  • "The ^Bloodwing's  lion's share", and "like ^h'vart  cats in an alley." (Both Romulan)
  • "The ^pin  straw that broke the ^{zipthar’s wing}  camel's back".(Human colonists on Deneva)
  • "The ^sauce  icing on the ^slugsteak  cake (Ferengi)
  • "Nervous as a tiku in a kava reap" (Bajoran)
  • One that's almost the same: "Plenty of other Suckerfish in the River".
  • "If Ice Bores kill your Ailicorne, make Ailicorne steaks". (Andorian). There are also the Andorian axioms "Absence makes the heart forget" and "What goes around comes around...but with a sharper knife".
  • The Ferengi morality tale of "The Boy Who Cried Audit"
  • "Like Honge on fresh meat" (Cardassian). Also the Cardassian saying "the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy, but may prove useful".
  • "Sap and fog", for when Nasats are being dismissive.
  • "Screw with the Mugato, you're getting the horn".
  • "In a Tribble's eye!" (Which didn't need to be said, because McCoy uses the phrase "In a pig's eye!" in the original series).
• Dragaera:
  • In Issola, Lady Teldra makes a reference to Vlad engaging in "gray humor". This is the equivalent of what we would call "black humor"—the difference is that in the series, black is the color of magic and gray is the color of death.
  • They also have "how many X does it take to sharpen a sword?" instead of Light Bulb Jokes.
• Warrior Cats does this quite a bit:
  • "When ^hedgehogs  pigs fly!"
  • "Don't be a scaredy-^mouse!  cat!"
  • "Don't get your ^whiskers  panties in a ^twist.  bunch."
  • "That's a load of ^fox-dung!  bullshit!"
  • "You're ^crow-food!  dead meat!"
  • "Cloudtail's ^mew  bark is worse than his ^scratch.  bite."
  • "We shall kill two ^prey  birds with one ^blow,  stone, as it were."
  • "Who ^{made dirt}  pissed in his ^fresh-kill  Cheerios?"
  • "You look as if you've lost a ^rabbit  pound and found a ^shrew  penny."
  • "No use ^wailing  crying over ^{lost prey}  spilled milk."
  • "Leopardfur can ^{go chase her own tail}  go fuck herself." (A similar expression, "Bluestar can go eat snails!" is also seen.)
  • ^{"Great Star Clan!"}  Holy crap!
  • "If I catch you on my territory, you'll wish you'll never been ^kitted born."
  • "You're two sides of the same ^leaf coin."
  • "Have you got ^{bees in your brain} bats in the belfry?"
  • "We're living in a ^{den of twigs} house of cards."
  • "Don't be such a smart-^ears ass."
  • "We're wasting ^moonlight time."
  • "That goody^-four-paws -two-shoes."
• A clever and appropriate use in Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers novel, "...on the bounce." Its meaning ranges from along the lines of 'don't waste time' to 'stay alert', depending on the context it's used in.
• Rosalie hisses "Over my pile of ashes" in Breaking Dawn.
• In Insurrection one drow said "putting the cart before the lizard".
• In Safehold, "kill the ^wyvern goose that ^fetched laid the golden ^rabbit egg."
  • Fridge Logic: But why would you kill the wyvern out of greed? Does it puke up the rabbit after fetching it? And they have chickens on Safehold, so why not geese? Why not just use another bird in place of the goose? Arrgh!
  • Also, "between the ^doomwhale Devil and the deep blue sea."
  • They also curse by Shan-Wei and put "Shan-Wei" instead of "Devil", as she's the local Satan figure, ("Go to ^{Shan Wei's Hell}  Hell!") and use Langhorne (greatest of the archangels) instead of God ("^Langhorne God bless you" or "For ^Langhorne's God's sake!").
• The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov: "built like a ^{force-field latrine} brick outhouse." (If you're wondering about the practicality of a force-field latrine, note that that's the point of the original metaphor.)
• The Automatic Detective loves this trope — among others, Mack, as narrator, once says that "Grey had me by the ^directives balls", and use of "exhaust port" (as per the Transformers example) is a common stand-in for "ass" in all manner of expressions.
• In Dora Wilk Series non-human characters use it a few times. Most notably, Dora puts "Goddess" instead of "God" in any place ("Oh my Goddess!", "For Goddess' sake!" among others) and Olaf (a werewolf) curses by "difficult change" instead of other light curses, whether they make sense in Doraverse or not.
• Guardians of Ga'Hoole does this a few times:
  • Most common is the use of "gizzard" in place of things like "know in my heart" or "bad feeling in my gut".
  • "Are you ^yoinks crazy"?
  • "Racdrops" is a common swear, short for "raccoon droppings".
  • "Glaux" is used in place of "God" i.e. "Great Glaux!".
• H. Beam Piper: one book replaced "hot knife" and "butter" with "fast neutrons" and "toilet paper".
• In the Honor Harrington novels, characters from planets other than Earth (most of the cast), typically substitute native fauna into their metaphors, such as "We've got the hexapuma^note tiger by the tail" or "If you had the sense God gave a near-turkey". A few technological metaphors show up - "adding hydrogen^note gasoline to the fire".
• The Ciaphas Cain novels have a few examples:
  • The series is fond of the phrase "going ^ploin-shaped pear-shaped, a British idiom equivalent to "going very wrong"."
  • In the first novel, Ciaphas notes that it's ^{credits to carrots} donuts to dollars, which means "very certain" that he and his troops will be mobilized to stop the Tau.
• The Race in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series do this a lot. Examples:
  • "On the other ^{fork of the tongue} hand".
  • "Getting under his ^scales skin".
  • "Keep an ^eye-turret eye on him".
  • "You must be ^egg-addled crazy!".
  • "You are yanking my ^tail-stump chain."
  • They also constantly swear "by the spirits of Emperors past" (cast down eye-turrets).
• In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel Harvest of Time, the Master says "^Skaro Rome wasn't ^destroyed built in a day".
• "A Brush with Life", a short story in Dragon magazine about a boy who's miniature figure of a Barbarian Hero comes to life when he paints it, and demands a female companion. When the boy paints a woman warrior and she likewise comes to life, she informs the barbarian that "Some women have as much use for a man as a ^{sea serpent} fish has for a ^chariot bicycle."
• Star Darlings:
  • "Cool as a ^calaka cucumber"
  • "In the ^starlight spotlight"
  • "First ^stars dibs"
  • "Marches to the ^signal beat of her own ^pulsar drum"
• In Dragonsong, from a seaside hold, "Every ^{storm brings in a little driftwood} cloud has a silver lining.
• In The Machineries of Empire: "For ^{the sake of fox and hound} God's sake".
• Seeker Bears:
  • "Have you got ^honey wax between your ears?"
  • "They're all hiding in the trees like dumb scaredy ^birds cats."
  • "Your brain is full of ^feathers fluff."
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • "The song is sung, the wine is spilled, the ^wench cat is ^pregnant out of the bag."
  • "Who pissed in your ^soup cereal?"
• Bravelands:
  • "He talks a lot of ^{monkey dung} bullshit."
  • "Out of my way, ^monkey bird brains!"
• Neptune's Brood
  • The opening section, which drops the reader right in the middle of the complex interstellar economy that will get explained later, has a travel agent explain tickets to a certain planet are no longer available for love nor ^favours money.
  • The captain of the Space Pirates (who are actually space privateers, and are actually actually very proactive freelance insurance underwriters) explains that they're a necessary part of the economy, so governments turn a ^{damaged photoreceptor} blind eye to them.
  • It's noted that if the ruler of a posthuman oceanic colony suppresses civil liberties too much, her subjects will simply vote with their ^fins feet.
• Tailchaser's Song:
  • Cats say "Your ^Furriness Highness" and "Regal ^Softness Majesty" to the queen.
  • At one point Tailchaser says that he's "made a ^m'an ass of myself". For reference, a "m'an" is a human.
  • "I wasn't ^{whelped just sunlast} born yesterday, you know!"
• In the picture book Rise and Shine Bunny, the mother tries to wake her son with "Now sweetie, the early ^bunny bird gets the ^{sweet clover} worm".
• Survivor Dogs:
  • "Paw" gets used as an equivalent of "hand"/"foot" in sayings. For example, "on one ^paw hand".
  • "Hurry up, or we'll be here until ^{the Moon-Dog goes to sleep} the sun comes up."
  • "The foxes could go to ^{the Earth-Dog} Hell as far as he was concerned (...)"
  • "They are hunting us, Lucky, and unless we keep on our ^paw-tips toes and moving, they will track us down."
  • "I've got a good feeling in my ^fur bones today."
  • "Watch your ^muzzle mouth, Moon."
  • "We should make a camp for ^no-sun tonight."
• This is actually an occasional plot-point in The Cosmere. Worldhoppers can use Connection to speak the native language of whatever world they are on, but it translates idioms literally, often causing them to sound quite ridiculous.
  • Mistborn does this a lot with metal based sayings. For example, someone is ^Zinc Silver-tongued because zinc Allomancers have Emotion Control powers, making them very persuasive.
    • Take it with a pinch of ^copper salt. Burning copper gives the user and everyone around them immunity to emotional Allomancy.
• A minor Running Gag in Good Omens is that Crowley, a demon who has lived on Earth so long he's more like humans than other demons, by habit uses the regular expressions. Then he thinks that as a demon, he should do this trope instead, especially when he runs up against semi-religious sayings, but never likes what he comes up with.
• Aeon 14:
  • The Woman Who Seized an Empire plays with When Life Gives You Lemons... between 5th millennium Fish out of Temporal Water Katrina and her 9th millennium lover Juasa.
    Juasa: Stars... this is surreal. Yesterday you were slaving in the fields. Today you're promising me a starship.
    Katrina: I've made some lemonade.
    Juasa: What? What does lemonade have to do with anything?
    Katrina: When life gives you lemons... Nevermind, I guess it's an old saying. I thought that one would have stuck.
    Juasa: Sounds a bit like, "when the universe flings mass at you, you accrete it into something useful".
    Katrina: That's so awkward.
    Juasa: Yours just sounds weird. What does fruit have to do with daily life?
  • Know Thy Enemy has the protagonist, who was born on an ocean world, remark "Two fish, one spear."
• How To Be Comfortable In Your Own Feathers has birds refer to being comfortable in one's own feathers, instead of one's own skin.
• Welkin Weasels:
  • "We'll have the last ^{click of teeth} laugh."
  • "We must avoid this place like the ^mange plague."
  • "Now there's a ^{rafter rat} wolf in ^{wood mouse's} sheep's clothing."

Live-Action TV

• Played with on America's Got Talent: The Champions when ventriloquist Darci Lynne brought her puppet Petunia to the stage. Seeing the size of the audience, Petunia repeated, "Oh my ^carrots Lord!"
• Babylon 5 manages to combine this with Yiddish as a Second Language when Ivanova says to Sheridan, "What am I, chopped ^flarn liver?" ("Lines of Communication")
• Bottom: In a scene cut from the episode "Gas" featured in the Fluff collection: “^{There are} There is more than ^{three ways} one way to ^{kill a monkey} skin a cat.
• In the sixth episode of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Aughra describes guiding the people of Thra as "like herding ^Fizzgig cats."
• Doctor Who:
  • Not uncommonly, Time Lords — a two-hearted race — use allegorical phrases related to the heart, but with "hearts" instead. "Heartsbeat", "broke my hearts", "I haven't the hearts", etc.
  • "Robot" has the Doctor complain that "it's a free ^cosmos  country" as well as refer to his "heartsbeat".
  • "The Face of Evil": The Doctor's unimpressed by a broken communicator — "Dead as a ^Dalek  doorknocker".
  • "The Unquiet Dead": Charles Dickens: "What the ^Shakespeare?  dickens?". Oddly enough, the phrase "what the dickens" actually appears in Shakespeare's writing and has nothing to do with the author Dickens at all ("the dickens" = "the Devil"), but it would be even odder for Charles Dickens to say "what the dickens". Referenced two seasons later when Shakespeare says "What the Chaucer?"
  • "The Name of the Doctor": After the Doctor is conned by Clara's young charges, he mutters "Why those little... ^Daleks monsters!"
• Game of Thrones:
  • "When I was a child, an uncle asked: what gift I wanted for my ^{name day} birthday."
  • Tyrion claims "If I had a gold dragon for every time..."
• In Krypton, with its Uterine Replicator, Dev-Em warns someone "Tell anyone about this, and you'll wish ^{the Genesis Chamber never spat you out} you were never born."
• M*A*S*H: On at least one occasion Klinger announced, "Piece of ^baklava cake!"
• Characters on Star Trek: Discovery sometimes use a Vulcan expression: "^Isik Penny for your thoughts." It's also a Running Gag that nobody knows what an isik is.
• Star Trek: Enterprise:
  • Phlox referred to Archer's Freudian slips as "Pillarian slips".
  • He also referred to an old saying: "When in ^Fellebia Rome, do as the ^Fellebians Romans do.
• The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Amok Time" has one whose mundane equivalent isn't very common: "He's as tight-lipped as ^{an Aldeberan Shellmouth} a clam."
• Star Trek: Voyager has "I didn't want to be a third ^nacelle.  wheel" (ships in Star Trek almost always have an even number of warp nacelles, usually 2)
• In The Suite Life on Deck: "Well I guess we're both up ^{the Ganges}  shit creek without a paddle!

Print Media

• MAD #208, "Cattlecar Galaxica":
  Adammit: That was real brave of you to rescue me, Athinner! I'd like to thank you properly! How about dropping by my sleep bay and—
  Athinner: Not tonight! I have a Cranium Megahurt!
  Adammit: Hmmm! Some things never change — even in SIX millenniums!

Roleplay

• Red Dawn +20: Chebrikov Ate Sugar.
• In AJCO there is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it example during a conversation between Kube (a Plant Alien) and Vinnie (reared by Plant Aliens):
  Kube: [pushes Vinnie back into bed] Easy there, ^tigerlily!  tiger!

Tabletop Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Mirage, "Alarum":
  "One timely cry of warning can save nine of surprise." —Sidar Jabari
• Common in Vampire: The Requiem, e.g. "^Tonight,  Today, the world has changed."
  • And in Vampire: The Masquerade, where the end times are referred to as "The final nights". Or in Hunter: The Reckoning where one vampire prince references the eponymous hunters as The Final Knights.
• In Transhuman Space: School Days, Denise considers Ian to be ^sysadmin president of his own fan ^community club.
• Warhammer 40,000: Ever since Lorgar the Horus Heresy, people have replaced the word "God" with "Emperor". Said emperor is not amused because it means that everyone people started worshiping him when he explicitly commanded this not to happen. People also swear by the Golden Throne, which the Emperor's living corpse sits on and is sustained by.
• An article in Dragon magazine has a veteran dungeoneer complain that when novices start out they take "everything but the ^{bucket from the well} kitchen sink".
• The dogs in Pugmire worship the lost race of Man, and are therefore prone to exclamations such as "Man damn it!" and "I swear to Man."

Theatre

• The Little Mermaid:
  • "As long as you live under my ^reef  roof..."
  • "She was ^seaweed  sugar and spice and everything nice..."
  • "That girl's on ^sandbar  cloud nine!"
  • "Ariel and someone, ^{swimming in the sea}  sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G."
  • "And then the ^squid  shit will hit the fan."
  • "How could she just suddenly completely disappear into thin ^water  air?"
• Wicked: "Wait one ^clock-tick  second."

Toys

• Transformers:
  • "Do you ever think you could be ^programmed  destined for something bigger?"
  • "Stick it in your ^{optic sensor}  eye!"
  • "My ^afterburner  foot."
  • "That's murder on my ^{audio receptors}  ears!"
  • "^Processor  Mind over matter."
  • "Megatron?! The cruel and vicious Decepticon leader who eats Autobot ^protoforms  babies for breakfast?!"
  • "I've got one ^servo foot in the ^{scrap heap}  grave."
  • "Human! It's the Matrix or your ^{protoform batch initiators}  parents!"
  • "You'll have to pry it from my cold, ^{offline servos}  dead hands!"
  • "I'll tear out your ^optics  eyes!"
  • "It's a ^{no-processor...er}  no-brainer." (this one even they find weird to say)
  • "Go to ^{scrap heap} hell!"
  • "Aww, hexagonal nuts."
  • "You can stuff it up your ^{exhaust pipe}  ass."
  • "What, is my ^gearbox  package hanging out or something?"
  • "Don't just stand there with your ^pistons  cocks in your ^servos  hands!"
  • "Don't just stand there with your ^cockpits  mouths open!"
  • "Brilliant my ^{sine function}  ass."
  • "Kiss my ^skidplate  ass!"
  • "Whoa! What crawled up your ^tailpipe  ass?"
  • "Go stuff it up your ^{reactor linkage}  ass!"
  • "Brilliant, my ^{boron compressor}  ass!"
  • "Blow it out your ^actuator  ass!"
  • "Tell him to blow it out his ^{exhaust port}  ass!"
  • "That restaurant where the waitresses go around without ^{torso plates}  shirts?"
  • "^{Bearings of chrome steel.}  Brass balls."
  • From an episode of Transformers Cybertron:
    Override: What are we, ^{roast energon} chopped liver?
• BIONICLE:
  • "Hold your ^Rahi,  horses, I'm coming!"
  • "All my friends went to Po-Koro, and all I got was this lousy ^rock.  T-shirt"
  • "Like ^Matoran  children opening presents on ^{Naming Day.}  Christmas."
  • "It's a load of ^{Rock Steed droppings!}  BS!"
  • "I have a feeling we're not in ^{Karda Nui}  Kansas any more!
  • "He clapped his hands over his ^{audio receptors.}  ears."
  • "Kill two ^Gukko  birds with one stone."
  • "The ^{metal claw's}  boot's on the other foot now!" (This one was lampshaded, as another character tells the speaker that what he just said makes no sense.)

Video Games

• The Discworld game:
  Sleazy Guy: Care to buy ^{an hourglass?}  a watch?
  Rincewind: Where'd you get those?
  Sleazy Guy: Fell off the back of a ^{donkey cart,}  truck, sir!
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: "Is Linebeck shaking over there?! He's such a ^cucco  chicken!"
  • One of the CDi games has "I'm so hungry, I could eat ^{an octorok}  a horse!"
  • Daruk, Champion of the Gorons in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, often uses rock and mountain themes in his speech, being a denizen of Death Mountain with the rest of his people. For instance, in Link's memory of him testing out Vah Rudania, he makes a comment that Zelda "can't quite see the ^range forest for the ^peaks trees".
• Final Fantasy
  • Wakka instructs Tidus over the course of Final Fantasy X to hold his chocobos. The Chocoboy of Final Fantasy VIII instructed Squall to do the same. There's also Wakka's "son of a Shoopuf!" and another character's "...my shoopuf!"
  • In Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, at one point Fran is being accosted by a group of sky pirates, including a "foul-mouthed moogle" who lets out an apparently profanity-laden sentence ending with "and your chocobo too!"
  • In Nautilus in Final Fantasy XIII, there's a boy who asks his parent to give him a "chocoback ride."
  • Final Fantasy Type-0 has a random NPC trainee who comments that "Confidence is exactly what I'm lacking. I go in thinking I can do it, but when push comes to shove, I always chocobo out..."
  • "Hold your chocobos" also gets used a couple times in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.
• In Granblue Fantasy, Io drops one in a cross-fate episode with Ryan.
  "It's not over 'till the Primal Beast sings!"
• Mass Effect 2 features an advertisement for a movie about "Blasto, the first hanar Spectre", whose trademark phrases are "This one has no time for your solid waste excretions" and "Enkindle THIS!"
  • Mass Effect 3 features many excerpts from the movie, the humor of which often stems from this trope.
  • When you first meet Legion, Tali mentions that a single geth would have no more intelligence than a wild varren. It makes more sense since varren are basically Space Dogs, and 99% of the characters, humans included, probably never saw a real life dog before.
  • Quarians in general use the term "Keelah" in place of "God" ^note  though literally it's probably closer to "ancestors," given what the codex says about quarian religion., and "Keelah se'lai" is said at the end of certain discussions, including the hearing in front of the admiralty board. Replace it with "God be with you", and it's a perfect fit.
    • Mass Effect 3 reveals it to effectively mean "The homeworld which I shall one day see.", which is similar, given how mythical their homeworld is to the Quarians by this point.
    • Similar to the above, asari usually say "By the goddess!", while turians use "Spirits!"
  • Inverted early on, at one point Vega brings up a more traditional "shooting fish in a barrel", which is a completely alien concept to Garrus.
  • And most people would describe someone ballsy as having "a quad", as the krogan have four testicles.
  • Mordin Solus, your salarian teammate in 2, thinks his former CO was "a bit of a cloaca". Salarians are amphibians, wherein the cloaca is both anal and reproductive orifice, so he's basically calling him an asshole and a dick.
  • Romancing Garrus will have him tell you at one point that your outfit "has my ^mandibles  jaw on the floor."
  • Also averted in the case of figures of speech involving bullets.
    Renegade Shepard VI: I find the best advanced battlefield strategy is to have more bullets than the other guy. [Beat] Technically, it's thermal clips, not bullets, but who says "I filled him with 5 detachable heat sinks"?
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda has "does a pyjak scratch its butt?" and "roast your quads over a low fire". A quest involving salarians has one claiming another could be pulling information out of his cloaca.
• Dwarven curses in the Dragon Age setting include "Go take a long breath out of a short shaft," which from context and phrasing probably means "Go die in a hole."
  • It might be a modification of "go take a long walk off a short pier", or even "go suck a prick", basically, "shut up" or "go f*ck yourself".
  • The above saying most likely refers to the breathing of lyrium dust in the mines. Lyrium is basically the setting's magical macguffin, but it is very toxic to mortal beings. Breathing lyrium dust can, even in the best of circumstances, reduce you to a gibbering idiot, at worst, well...you don't want to know.
  • They also use "Nug-humping" where a modern person would probably use "Motherfucking."
  • In addition, there's the phrase "by the maker", as well as a few references to Andraste throughout both games.
• The Mega Man Battle Network series has quite a few of these, primarily in the first three games, where the translators were using Woolseyisms:
  • "I was ^programmed  born ready!"
  • "You scared me half to ^deletion!  death!"
  • "Prepare to meet your ^programmer!  maker!"
• All over the place in Homeworld: Cataclysm. Some are reasonable, some are quite grating.
  Kuun-Lan Fleet Command(agitated): Join the ^Kiith  club!
• Tales of Monkey Island has got LOADS of them, though a few examples are:
  • "Davey J. Nipperkin doesn't go handing over his secret sources to every Tom, Dick, and ^Guybrush  Harry that washes ashore!"
  • "Anyone up for a quick game of Five Card ^{Draw-and-Quarter?}  Draw? Follow the ^Monkey?  Queen? ^Mêlée  Texas Hold 'Em?"
  • "The Club has a strict 'No ^Feet,  Shoes, No Service' clause."
  • "Talk to the hand, sicko, 'cause the ^pirate  face ain't listenin'!"
  • "Accidentally, my ^{dorsal fin!}  ass!"
  • "Does someone have a ^cannon  gun to your head?"
  • "...but that guy is ^cannon  trigger-happy!"
  • "Just my two ^{pieces of eight,}  cents, sir."
  • "^Blowholes  Heavens to Betsy, could it be?"
  • "Hold onto your ^pantalones!  pants!"
  • "Your honor, ^{pirates and wenches}  ladies and gentlemen of the ^gallery...  jury..."
  • "...he seemed to think I could make a pretty ^{piece of eight}  penny off of your untimely execution..."
  • "Time is ^grog,  money, Captain."
  • "^Malevolence  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Guybrush Threepwood."
  • "Tore through here like a ^cat  bat outta hell, off into the jungle."
  • "Mo' money, mo ^{ability to solve puzzles.}  problems."
  • "That witch is nothing but trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with ^V,  P, and that stands for ^Voodoo.  pool."
• Hatoful Boyfriend has repeated uses of "every^birdie  body".
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, a Hutt remarks, "You say ^keelpunah  tomayto, I say ^keepunah  tomahto."
• When playing SimAnt, if the "Funny" captions are turned on, ants will often share gems such as "I've worked my ^{mandibles to the chitin}  fingers to the bone."
• In Xenoblade, you'll occasionally get phrases like "What on ^Bionis Earth?"
• After the CPU Breaker is defeated in Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, Ram exclaims that she's "so hungry she could eat a horsebird."
• Used by specific characters rather than the world at large, but the third season of Sam & Max: Freelance Police has a few.
  Papierwaite: And why should I give a ^{hellbeast's hangnail} rat's arse what happens to your partner?
  Papierwaite: I couldn't give ^{three figs} a toss!
  • And a Dummied Out line has Skun-K'ape saying "You're ^{swinging on frayed vines} skating on thin ice, magician".
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: "What ^{in OBLIVION} the hell is that?!"
  • Speaking of said Oblivion, the Adoring Fan: "By Azura! By Azura! ^{By Azura!} Essentially an OMG squee"
• In Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2, one voice choice for male player characters has the following "swear" emote: "You two-faced son of a ^kobold bitch!"
• Space Quest:
  • The Have a Nice Death message for stepping onto the surface of Ortega in Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon without protective clothing and melting is: "It's so hot you could fry a Vorlian phlegmsnake egg."
  • "It's not over 'till the fat lady Orat spits" is a Have a Nice Death message from Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers.
• Fire Emblem Awakening: In the barracks, one of your soldiers utters "I'm so hungry I could eat a ^Pegasus  horse."
  • Another character states "It's time for ol' Gangrel to get a dose of his own ^vulnerary  medicine!"
• In one of it's many, many moment of pure parody, Liberal Crime Squad has Liberals and Moderates (who are all Atheists of course) say, when confronted with the shocking truth of the evil conservative regime, "Oh my ^Science  God! Is there anything I can do to help?"
• In Nevertales 3: Smoke and Mirrors the inhabitants of Taleworld, a parallel reality composed entirely of book-worlds, say things like "May the Author keep you."
• In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Ciri offers Geralt ^{an oren} a penny for his thoughts.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon:
    • Well, I'll be an ^Aipom's monkey's uncle!
    • I was being such a scaredy-^Delcatty cat...
  • Pokémon Sword and Shield has more of these than previous Pokémon games as a part of the series' Earth Drift. One example is Sonia mentioning the phrase "^{Nickit in wooloo's clothing} wolf in sheep's clothing".
• In Disgaea 5, after Zeroken blows using the Ultimate Demon Technique, Final Skill on Bloodis, Seraphina angrily yells at him "What in the ^{Human World} hell are you doing?!"
• In the good ending of Cuphead, after defeating the Devil and incinerating the Soul Contracts, Cuphead and Mugman race each other for home, with Mugman shouting out, "Last one there is a ^{leaky cup} rotten egg!"
• With Splatoon being the marine life-based World of Pun that it is, squid/sea life counterparts of phrases show up every now and then.
  "Hold on to your tentacles!"
  "You gotta be squiddin' me!"
  "HOLY CARP!"
• In Spyro: A Hero's Tail, one of the elders says "(...) like ships in the ^sky night".
• In Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, Bowser says Antasma's screaching sounds like a beached ^Blooper whale.

Visual Novels

• Reigning Passions: In Amara's first season, Lyris tells the heroine, "No need to get your branches in a twist, Your Highness."

Web Animation

• RWBY features an example in the episode "Family", where, after an awkward period of silence that follows Yang laughing at an insult from Taiyang about her missing arm, Oobleck quietly speaks up:
  Oobleck: Are we finally talking about the ^Goliath  elephant in the room...?
• In Battle for Dream Island, objects tend to say whatever created them in place of "god". Example:
  Pin: Oh my pin factory!

Web Comics

• Footloose: "You've got about as much chance as ^{Hinckley had with Foster}  the ugly stepsisters had with Prince Charming."
• Skin Deep has at least one: "What's got your ^{feathers in a turn?}  panties in a twist?" (oddly enough, said to someone who doesn't have feathers.)
• Vexxarr gives us this version. BellSouth has the Bleen Empire by the Golgi Apparatus.
  • Well, whatever glorts your gizzel...
• "I'm such a plague-head!" from My Milk Toof.
• Digger
  • "Hold your ^moles,  horses, I'm coming."
  • "Never laid ^eyestalks  eyeson one before."
  • "I don't give a ^{gnawed shoot.}  rat's ass."
  • "Don't ^salt  shoot the messenger."
  • " I'll make him regret the day he ^{slid out of his mother's pouch.} was born.
• Our Little Adventure has a few:
  • "For the love of the gods" replacing "For the love of God"
  • "For Stellina's sake!" replacing "For Christ's sake!"
  • "What in the three hells" replacing "What the hell"
  • "What on Manjulias" replacing "What on Earth" (at least when the creator remembers to change it.)
• Homestuck plays this for laughs with the trolls, as part of the Expospeak Gag that is their biology and culture:
  • "You can glub ^{to the content of your collapsing and expanding bladder based aquatic vascular system} to your heart's content."
  • Karkat explaining a troll romance novel "THEIR DYNAMIC IS THE ^{GRUBLOAF AND TUBER PASTE} bread and butter OF THE OVERALL ARC."
  • "I made my ^recupracoon bed and now I have to ^{wriggle around in its slime} lie in it."
  • "LET'S JUST AWKWARDLY ^{STRAFE ALONG THE PERIMETER OF THAT HUMONGOUS, STINK-BELCHING TRUNKBEAST IN THE ROOM}  ignore the elephant in the room."
• The Order of the Stick:
  • A fiend exclaiming "What the ^{Home Sweet Home} Hell is going on?"
  • A dwarf explaining that past history is all "water ^{over the tunnel} under the bridge."
  • A dwarf again: "I think I can kill two ^bushes birds with one ^{stone axe} stone." (Dwarves in OoTS all believe trees are plotting against them.)
• Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic:
  • The webcomic came up with several variants of the old ones:
    Charlotte: This broad is a few components short of a cantrip.
    
    Arachne: Hyena chick isn't hunting with a full quiver of arrows.
  • Clover adds more variations.
    Clover: Not the brightest candle in the chandelier!
    Not the sharpest bolt in the quiver!
    Not the quickest rabbit in the hutch!
• The godlike A.I. in Schlock Mercenary has a rather twisted sense of humor (this one seems to spread in the fandom):
  Schlock: ...How did Petey get a gestalt^note  (i.e. full dump of AI) off of a battleplate?
  Kevyn:' I didn't ask, and all he said was "in for a penny, in for plutonium".
• Girl Genius has a few, based on steam power and clockwork, such as "Get ^wound bent!" and "runing around like headless ^constructs chickens".
• Starslip Crisis parodies this hard, sometimes by adding needless adjectives to a phrase and sometimes by just putting "space-" in front of a word. (As in "Oh, space-hell!")
  Cutter: Today I kill two Salaxian birds with one Hethomorian laser-stone.
• In El Goonish Shive, Chika explains to Amanda what might be the reason Amanda doesn't remember answering a particular Q&A question previously.
  Chika: You were pretty ^shrunk drunk at the time, but...
• In "A Brief Moment of Culture", Jeffrey Channing Wells's Very Long Narbonic fanfic, Artie the superintelligent gerbil reflects "Mell was playing in my ^{dust bath} sand box now".
• Gaia:
  • "Go jump ^{into the Void} in a lake!"
  • "What in ^Bhaal's God's name?!"
  • "Dear ^Gaia God!"
• Housepets!:
  King: "Son of a ^{charming young woman} bitch!"
• Played with in Skin Horse. Sweetheart is a talking female dog. And because she's a bit uptight, she doesn't like to swear. So she calls Violet Bee "that rhymes-with-^bitch witch".
• Darths & Droids: In one strip, an Imperial officer says "What am I? Chopped ^splanch liver?" (The splanch being a Running Gag of Bizarre Alien Biology in DMM's work.)
• Awful Hospital: Happens every so often between all the sapient lifeforms.
  Maggie: Hold yer horseflies, lemme buzz the place...
• Because there are several gods in Unsounded of relatively equal importance, people usually say "gods" instead of "god," i.e. "oh gods" or "godsdamned." Though earlier comics sometimes use the singular form. Oddly, "hell" is used as an expletive even though no one seems to believe in such a place.
• Discussed in The Bird Feeder #203, "Bird Talk," as Terry wonders whether they ought to use more bird-like jargon like "Gull!" when frustrated or "Great Auk!" when shocked.

Web Original

• This Very Wiki will sometimes alter trope names to fit the work that the page is dedicated to. Especially the Just For Fun page for Daring Do, where all the tropers are supposed to be sentient horses, zebras, griffons, etc. This can also extend to altering the category names or even the "This work contains the following tropes" header.
• The Bastard Operator from Hell declares himself to be "up a thinwire without a terminator" in one story.

Web Videos

• Diva the demon in Musical Hell uses "What the Here?" among many others. Sometimes, inverting the side ("Speak of the angel..."). It backfires when Diva calls Donna "goody two hooves", as she replies "I don't have hooves!"

Western Animation

• In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Top Duck", Scrooge calls Launchpad, "a chip off the old ^propeller  block"
• The Little Mermaid:
  • Disobedient children get ^beached  grounded.
  • Also:
  Triton: What ^{under the sea}  on Earth is going on?!
• The Jetsons:
  • "That's the way the ^{satellite spins.}  cookie crumbles."
  • "Jumping ^Jupiter!  Jehosephat!"
• The Flintstones:
  • "That's the way the ^{boulder bounces.}  cookie crumbles."
  • "Just a ^rock  cotton pickin' minute.
• Pac-Man, the Animated Series: "Over my ^chomped  dead body!''
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show: "That's the way the ^{meatball bounces.}  cookie crumbles."
• Futurama has "You sound like a broken ^MP3.  record." and Is the Space Pope ^Reptillian  Pope Catholic?
• Transformers does this a lot, replacing certain lines in stock phrases with robotic related terms, especially when talking about body-parts. It also uses this technique for Getting Crap Past the Radar.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends:
    • In "The Magic Coins, Part 3", when Megan starts dictating terms to the guy holding everyone over a deep pit and the ponies start wondering if she's gone nuts, Heart Throb asks her if she's slipped her bridle.
    • In "Fugitive Flowers, Part 1", when they see the flowerbed Posey prepared for them, a florie comments that with it "we'd be back on our ^roots feet in no time!"
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Get your ^muzzle  nose out of those books."
    • "You little ^foal!  fool!"
    • "What the ^hay?  hell/heck?" It's also a common Real-Life substitute.
    • "Every/Any/Some/No^pony  body" is quite possibly the most commonly used substitution in the show. Griffons and hippogriffs tend to use "anygriff" and "evergriff" instead. Starting in season eight, words such as "everycreature" are used, largely in reference to the Young Six.
    • "Old ^{pony's/mare's}  wives' tale."
    • "Goody ^four two-shoes."
    • "Well, well, well, it seems we have some ^{neeeigh-sayers}  nay-sayers in the audience!"
    • "It's time to ^pony  man up and confront Zecora!" "Pony up" is also Real-Life slang for "pay up," which could hilariously change the line's meaning.
    • "^{Fillies and gentlecolts}  Ladies and gentlemen."
    • "Nopony else gives a flying ^feather fuck!"
    • "Who in the ^hoof hell/heck is that?"
    • The UK trailers have "lend a helping ^hoof hand".
    • "You... get down here... this instant... young... ^colt! man!"
    • "Well, wallop my withers."
    • "^Wings Feet, don't fail me now!"
    • "What ^{in Equestria} on Earth is going on in here?"
    • "Gabby Gums is my bread and butter, and I'm not gonna let you ^{goody-two-horseshoes} goody-two-shoes take that away from me!"
    • "You're ^bucking beating a dead... ^tree horse".
    • "Hold on to your ^hooves hats!"
    • Several reference Princess Celestia, Equestria's Immortal Ruler, such as "as ^Celestia God is my witness..." and "sweet ^Celestia Jesus!" These get lampshaded in "Celestial Advice" when Twilight, panicking over all of the trouble Starlight could get into after graduating, exclaims "I can't just send her off to Celestia-knows-where!" and then blushes as Celestia remarks that she didn't know she was an expression.
    • In "Flutter Blutter", Fluttershy expresses frustration at how her parents let her brother Zephyr "trot" all over them.
    • In My Little Pony: Best Gift Ever, when Pinkie arrives at the cottage where the Gift Givers — a trio of oracular reindeer — live, the elderly doe who greets her crankily exclaims "By Blitzen's beard! It took you long enough!"
• Maryoku Yummy: "^Yum's Mum's the word."
• Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers: Upon having to fight their way out of a Earth-government facility, running from the Space Navy, and learning they're headed for Tortuna. "Out of the ^{blast furnace,}  frying pan, and into the ^converter!  fire!"
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In the episode "The ^Algae's Grass's Always Greener": "A rolling stone gathers no ^Algae!  moss!"
  • "What was first? The ^oyster chicken or the ^pearl egg?"
  • "That ^trilobite  dinosaur didn't know an oboe from an elbow!"
• A number of phrases on Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends (which focuses on the adventures of sentient insects and other bugs), but most particularly "hold your horseflies!"
• The main character in Widget the World Watcher likes to replace words of common sayings by something space-based.
• The Buzz on Maggie: "Oh, ^bug God".
• Adventure Time:
  • "Oh, my ^{Grod/Glob/Gob} God!"
  • "What the ^math heck/hell/fuck?"
• South Park has these in the "Go God Go" episodes, in the atheistic future, things like "Oh my ^science God!" and "What in ^science's God's name?".
• ReBoot used computer jargon to get crap past the radar:
  • "Me and good old Frisket just kicked Megabyte's ^bitmap butt!"
  • "If you ask me, they're just covering their ^ASCIIs asses."
• Monsuno uses "Aw, ^crag crap." several times. At one point Chase refers to someone as "A pain in my ^Core butt/ass."
• Pound Puppies (2010) uses this a few times.
  • "Rebound" gives us Squirt's line "You scratch my ^belly back, I scratch yours."
  • In "McLeish Unleashed", Lucky's reaction to the changes Milton Feltwattle makes to Shelter 17 is "Oh my ^Dog God, he is serious!"
• Both Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra have multiple references to the Mix-and-Match Critters that inhabit their world that match this trope perfectly.
  • "He's not a one-trick poodle-pony."
  • "That weasel-snake!"
  • Aang is such a pacifist, he even helps "the spider-fly stuck in its own web."
  • At one point in Korra, Mako advises his brother Bolin to handle a breakup quickly, "like pulling off a ^leech bandage." While this was a bit of Self-Deprecation about how Mako didn't do just that in his own breakup last season, it wound up being a poor choice of words on the creators' part as they had to reassure viewers that Mako was not in fact calling his ex-girlfriend a leech.
  • Prince Wu answers an obvious question with "Does a ^{platypus-bear} bear poop in the woods?", though he cuts himself off before he finishes it.
  • The finale combined this trope with Varrick's Catchphrase during Varrick and Zhu Le's wedding: "You may now ^{do the thing} kiss the bride."
• 3-2-1 Penguins!:
  • "For the love of ^herring God! Would someone please turn that off that infernal noise!"
  • "Jumping ^Jupiter Jehoshaphat!
• Dragons: Race to the Edge:
  • The episode "Family on the Edge" has Heather say "a ^dragon leopard doesn't change its ^markings spots" (Fishlegs feels compelled to point out that some dragons do). Later Astrid takes about "the ^Rumblehorn elephant in the room".
  • In an earlier episode, "Have Dragon, Will Travel", we have this exchange, using the same simile for two separate expressions:
    Fishlegs: Can I help it if I'm an optimist? I'm a ^yak-bladder glass half-full kind of guy!
    Astrid: Hate to burst your ^yak-bladder bubble...
  • The yak-bladder reference returns in "The Wings of War part 2" when Hiccup shows that he has nearly completed building an advanced version of the Dragon Eye.
    Hiccup: Friends, my ^yak-bladder cup runneth over.
• In Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars, a Rebel technician says "Never look a gift ^tauntaun horse in the ^{oral cavity} mouth."
• According to Darkwing Duck in "Life, the Negaverse, and Everything," Negaduck isn't "^duck man enough" to confront him himself.
• On PB&J Otter, according to Peanut in the song "The Ballad of Johnny Pompalope," folks on Lake Hoohaw say "You're the ^pompalope apple of my eye" and "A pompalope a day keeps the doctor away."
• Mysticons: "The ^{rubies are} grass is always ^brighter greener on the other side of the ^mine fence."
• On Vampirina, ghouls and goblins tell each other ^{hold your zombie horses} hold your horses. They also wish each other ^{nasty dreams} sweet dreams.
• Aladdin: The Series
  • Episode The Prophet Motive: “Hey, what am I? Chopped ^{camel meat} liver?”
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • In "Dooku Captured", Weequay pirates offer Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker drinks, and Obi-Wan tells them: "Nothing too strong. He’s (Anakin) ^flying driving."
  • In "Mystery of a Thousand Moons", Obi-Wan tells Anakin: "There’s more than one way to skin a ^{womp rat} cat."
• Splash and Bubbles:
  • "Leave only your ^finprints footprints behind!"
  • "What in the ^{big blue ocean} world just happened?!"
  • "I thought we were playing surprise fish, not ^{scare-the-gills-off-of-me} scare the crap/shit out of me fish!"
  • "I can't put my ^fin finger on it."
• Star Wars Rebels: In “Always Two There Are”, Ezra tells an Inquisitor “You’re like a broken ^{protocol droid} record” while being interrogated.
• The narrator from Jellabies has a tendency to insert the word "jelly" into certain words and phrases, resulting in stuff like "jelly good" ("very good") and "jellytastic" ("fantastic").
• Rubbadubbers

  Tubb: Easy peasy ^shampoo lemon squeezy!

• Adventures of the Gummi Bears
  • The Magnificent Seven Gummies: "Well, I'll be ^bounced darned/damned."
• Amphibia: Parodied in the season one finale "Reunion", when Captain Grime compliments Sasha by saying "As usual, you are playing ^Flipwart chess while everyone else is playing ^{Bog Jump} checkers." Except Sasha isn't a native of Amphibia, so the metaphor goes completely over her head.
  Grime: Well, see, Flipwart and Bog Jump are games. Flipwart is, of course, far more complicated and— [fed up] I'M TRYING TO SAY YOU'RE SMART!
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command:
  Buzz:"We've got bigger ^sclerf fish to fry."
  Ambassador Major:"Two ^zarkfleems chicken in every pot, a ^jetpack car in every driveway!"
  Alternate Universe!Booster:"You couldn't hit the broad side of a ^{Jo-Adian barn} barn, which is VERY big by the way!"

Real Life

• There was a story in Readers Digest about a student of medieval history who explained she was far too busy to do something by saying "I've just got too much on my ^trencher  plate."
• Some foreign proverbs translated into your language (which have an equivalent) can look like this. For instance, the English proverb "The grass is always greener on the other side" becomes "The cherries in your neighbor's garden are always sweeter" in German. (Die Kirschen in Nachbars Garten schmecken immer süßer.) Wiktionary has a list of this proverb in a variety of languages.

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