The Last of These Is Not Like the Others

Thing One, Thing Two, and The Thing.
Image by JD Hancock, used under CC BY 2.0 license.

"It's called the science of listener attention. We did repetition, we did floating opposites, and now you end with the one that's not like the others."

— Toby Ziegler, The West Wing, "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail"

A dialogue trope where a character makes a list of items, groups, or individuals and then deviates from the pattern established with the last one. Usually Played for Laughs.

In literary criticism, this is called a syllepsis, or semantic zeugma.

Typically used for comedy, the last item is normally a focus of insult or Butt-Monkey status. However, it is possible to just delight in the subversion of the theme listing.

A Sub-Trope of Non Sequitur.

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A Super-Trope to:

• And a Diet Coke: A character orders a diet soda after they just ordered a ton of unhealthy food.
• And the Rest: When several characters are deemed important enough to call them by name, except for a few unworthy others who are dismissed as the "rest".
• And Some Other Stuff: Summarizing ingredients, but keeping the last few a mystery.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Listing strong, serious examples and then a weak, trivial finale.
  • Arson, Murder, and Admiration: Naming evil things, then mentioning something complementary.
  • Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving: Naming evil things, then mentioning a good deed.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Naming nice, good, or mundane things, save for the last one, which is horrible or has a greater weight than the rest.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Naming three things, the third being a combination of the first two things.
• Clue, Evidence, and a Smoking Gun: In a crisis, two things of small importance to said crisis followed by a very big one.
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: Naming famous real-life people or things, only to have the last one be of fictional origin.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Separating your friends from one individual.
• The Triple: Two normal items followed by a non sequitur or humorous third item.
  • The Three Certainties in Life: Three things are sure to happen: death, taxes, and whatever third thing they picked to be the punch line.
• Uniformity Exception: The one member of a group that sticks out.

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Examples (In-Universe Examples Only):

Advertising

• In one Progressive commercial Flo is the band manager for The Dizzcounts, whose members are Safe Driver, Paperless, Paid in Full, Multi-Car, and Joey Fatone.

Anime & Manga

• At the start of Volume 17 of Accel World, the leadership of Nega Nebulus gives Haruyuki the following instructions for their meeting with the other Legions.
  "You absolutely cannot say a single word."
  "You absolutely have to be quiet right up to the end."
  "You absolutely must stay quiet."
  "You absolutely cannot get mad no matter what happens."
• During the tenth episode of Asteroid in Love, Yuu suggests that meteorology is more useful than astronomy or geology. Chikage rebuts that geology helps predict earthquakes and aids in mining... and "some stones have the power to make people feel happier and more at peace."
  Ao: The last one got a little pseudoscience-y.
  Mira: Agreed.
• In Bleach, at the start of the battle for the fake Karakura Town, the four pillars that switched the real Karakura Town with a replica in the Soul Society come under attack by four of Barragan's Fracciones, and four strong Soul Reapers defend them. Yumichika, Kira and Hisagi all win their fights, but then Ikkaku, who's the strongest of the four, loses just after Hisagi's fight concludes, because he was holding back his Bankai.
• Death Note: The titular note's "How to Use" mostly explains its rules and usage, except for the last three ones (revealed only in the Grand Finale), which are philosophical and relate to humanity as a whole.
• Digimon is a fan of this trope regarding lineups of minions:
  • Digimon Tamers: The twelfth and final Deva to be introduced, Antylamon, is the only Deva who does not actively attempt to attack humans. Not only that but she becomes friends and even partners with the first human she ever meets, defying her master until he sets aside his vendetta against humans. She is the only surviving Deva, and the only Deva who reforms.
  • Digimon Frontier: The fifth Evil Legendary Warrior, Duskmon, who is the last to confront the Digidestined, turns out to be Koji's brother Koichi, who, like the protagonists, can transform into a Digimon. He's the only Evil Legendary Warrior to reform and survive, though the spirits of the other Evil Legendary Warriors help the Digidestined out later.
  • Digimon Fusion: The seventh and final of Lord Bagra's Dark Generals, Apollomon, is not actually evil, he only pretends to serve Bagra as part of a plan to defeat him. Turns out, the true Dark General is Apollomon Whispered, an evil program implanted inside Apollomon that acts as a dark version separate from him but using the same body, though Apollomon is eventually able to destroy him and be free of him forever.
• Chapter 40 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War has a list of stereotypical things that can happen during summer vacation. All of them are standard and within the realms of reality... except the last one, which is "time travel or being summoned to another world".
  • The Shinomiya family creed states (emphasis added), "If you are a Shinomiya, do not rely on anyone. Instead, use them. Do not receive anything. Instead, take. Do not love anyone. There is no instead."
  • The chapters showing the lead-up to exams have various characters lying through their teeth about how hard they're trying and/or how much they care about their results, with the narrator repeatedly saying, "That was a lie." The one exception is Fujiwara, whom the narrator says is being honest.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! takes place in the fictional otome game Fortune Lover, in which the heroine can court one of four men, each of whom has a rival character. Katarina (the protagonist in the actual series) is the rival for Prince Geordo and Keith, respectively her fiance and adoptive brother, and ends up being exiled in the good ending and killed in the bad ending; the series itself is about her efforts to avoid those fates (or rather, her complete obliviousness to the fact that she already has avoided those fates). Mary is the rival in Prince Alan's route, and gets together with him in the bad ending. Sophia, as the rival in her older brother Nicol's route, is a special case, since the heroine must befriend Sophia in order to get together with Nicol.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Of the Seven Great Youma, the first six reside inside humans, while the seventh resides inside a cat.
  • In Sailor Moon R, both the last Cardian and the last Droid die differently than the others. The former is the only Cardian to not be killed by Sailor Guardians (instead being killed by the Makai Tree), and the latter is the only Droid to not be killed by Sailor Moon's Moon Princess Halation, instead by the Sailor Planet Attack.
  • In the manga and Crystal/Eternal, the Amazoness Quartet send their minions after the other four Sailor Guardians. The first three, who go after Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, and Sailor Jupiter, are circus animals turned human, the Amazon Trio. The ones who are sent after Sailor Venus to conclude this arc within the Dream Arc are knife-throwing twins, Xenotime and Zeolite, whose origins are unknown.
• In Shi ni Aruki, the Kurosus are introduced at the morgue after the death of family patriarch Tokimune. All of the Kurosus are affected in some way by the death, feeling sorrow, anger, or concern... but not Tokiko, who's shown on the far left and is happily reading the book she found near her adoptive father's corpse.
• In Yuri is My Job!, all of the salon employees assume last names that are slightly different from their real names while on the job; for example, Kanoko Mamiya becomes Kanoko Amamiya on the job. The one exception is Nene Nishidera, the last employee to be introduced; her assumed name at the salon is Nene Saionji, meaning she used to be Sumika's schwester. As you can see, her assumed last name is nothing like her real name.
• Zatch Bell!: Dr. Riddle challenges Gash and Kiyomaro to a fight against his henchmen, a group of superpowered people. He dramatically introduces each one and their powers to Kiyomaro's increased concern... then shows Big Boing, a busty blonde woman... and then introduces some more supermen. Riddle then asks Kiyomaro which among them is the odd one out. Kiyomaro glares at Big Boing for several seconds and picks her, causing Riddle to comically declare defeat and run for the hills with his group.

Comic Books

• One panel has several superheroes reacting to a warning of doom for them and anyone they've touched — the rest worry about their female significant others; Batman worries about Robin. Of course, what makes it funny is the insinuation that the last one isn't really all that different...
• Batman and Robin #10 (Jun 2012) has a subplot where a villain assembles a bunch of Mooks who have been permanently given Hideously Amusing Injuries in their encounters with Batman: a guy with a footprint across his face from a kick, another guy who has permanent ligature marks from being strung up in the air a long time, a girl who got a Batarang stuck in her ear (and enhanced it with other piercings), the guy who tried to throw a Batarang back at Batman and got it stuck in his head... oh, and the three guys who were knocked into a vat of toxic waste and fused into some kind of gawdawful monstrosity. Wait, what?
• Laff-A-Lympics: Yogi's reasons for Monty Cristo not to arrest Hokey: "He's my friend! He's my buddy. And besides, I need him to skate in the last event!"
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Every member of Villainy Inc is driven by one of the Seven Deadly Sins (Envy-Cheetah, Gluttony-Zara, Greed-Snowman, Lust-Clea, Pride-Dr. Poison, Sloth-Eviless, Wrath-Giganta), except Hypnota whose turn to villainy was driven by brain damage, paranoia, enjoyment of manipulating others and a desire for revenge.
• Kingdom Come was originally released as a 4-issue limited series. The covers of issues #1 to #3 followed a pattern: a large group at the background, lighted from below, and a central figure at the foreground, lighted from above; issue #4 features Superman alone, under a red lighting and surrounded by smoke.

Fan Works

• Happens in Chapter Five of "The Boredom of Yoto Yokodera" where Yoto remembers his day:
  Ugh, what a non-so-fabulous day. I'm late for track and field club, I still taste musty lemons on the roof of my mouth, it's raining, I got expelled from school and arrested for public drunkenness and I got soy sauce on my school shirt!
• When Bella is describing the Cullens in Luminosity:
  [N]ow I had identifications for all five: Emmett the bear, Jasper the lion, Rosalie the Aphrodite, Alice the pixie, and Edward, the one who expected something to happen with or to or near me that wasn't[.]
• The Immortal Game: When Twilight is performing a Sherlock-esque ass-kicking on Esteem and his troops, she lists the special abilities of herself and her friends as she uses the bond granted by the Elements of Harmony to copy them: Unicorn power, mastery of pegasus martial arts, unnatural strength, instant translocation, skill with blade, whatever it is Pinkie Pie does...
• In Dresden Files fic A Bird in the Hand, Ivy tells Billy's fortune:
  Ivy: You're stubborn, but smart enough to ask for aid and guidance when you are in over your head. And your car is about to be towed. They're writing up the ticket now.
• In Nerve Damage Shirou summons Arturia Pendragon, Arturia 'Alter' Pendragon, Arturia 'Lily' Pendragon and.... Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus
• In Officium Est Electionem, Feferi invokes this when trying to distract an unwanted suitor.
  After fifteen minutes of his endless, self-centered prattling, Feferi finally shuts him up by launching into her longest speech at him since he arrived. She talks ceaselessly about reforms, the election, and the likelihood of rain tomorrow.
• Red Fire, Red Planet: One of the protagonists asks the station computer to give the top five results from a list of 447 possible explanations it came up with for a tachyon burst.
  Computer Voice: Microsingularity interacting with gravity wave. Nadion inversion field. Cloaked starship entering normal space. Quantum flux—
  OS2. Kybok: Repeat the third item.
• Persephone's Waltz: Upon escaping their captor, Sayaka and Madoka break into Kyousuke's hospital room. He is understandably confused.
  "H-how did you do that? What's happened to you? ...Why are you in a cape?"
• An in-universe file on Molly Carpenter warns:
  Do not threaten subject. Do not antagonize subject. Do not refer to subject as "fairy", "Tinkerbell", or "Elsa".
• In Disorienuptials, Leliana uses the penultimate variant when slipping some very important news into the school's morning announcements. It's Played for Laughs when one of the students pretends to then be very excited about the last announcement - that there will be pudding at dinner.
• In New Hope University: Major In Murder, the "Fall Break" chapter shows twelve fairytale-like stories that allude to the twelve remaining characters' backstories and possible futures, and are generally at least a few paragraphs long. For example, one story about a princess who ripped out her own tongue is implied to be about Lucina. Eleven of the stories are about princes and princesses, but the last one simply says:
  "Once upon a time there was a pauper."
• The second chapter of The Loud House fanfiction Mall Rats is titled "Kindness, Friendship, and Shoes".
• In a Miraculous Ladybug fancomic, the characters are saying they love their favorite food (Tikki with Galette and Plagg with cheese) and then Marinette says she loves Adrien. During the awkward silence, Plagg ask if she really meant loving Adrien as her favorite food, while Tikki argues that can't be the case. Then Subverted as Marinette seems to be considering it, much to Tikki's horror.
• Crimson and Noire: In chapter 26, after Alya and Marinette tell Kagami about the old fox hero Citrine Húlí and how he's based on the Chinese fox spirit Húlijīng, Kagami and Marinette start listing the different Asian Fox Spirit from Japanese and Chinese mythology respectively, which finishes with Alya saying Feunard^note The French name of the Pokémon Ninetails. Marinette finds herself bursting out in laughter.

Films — Animated

• Atlantis: The Lost Empire:
  Milo: What else have you got in there?
  Vinny: Oh, you know: gunpowder, nitroglycerin, notepads, fuses, wicks, glue, paper clips (big ones). You know, just office supplies.
• In Back to the Outback, the Tasmanian devils that save the group are called Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Dave.
• BIONICLE:
  Lewa: But what will come out of this? Some claw-tooth monster? A new Mask of Power? A Matoran marching band?
• In The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure, after the kids nearly sink in quicksand and are saved by their angry parents, Cera asks if they all got the same lecture as her:
  Petrie: Me too young to wander fall.
  Ducky: We^note her and Spike are not grown-ups and should remember it.
  Littlefoot: There are many dangers. I must always be careful.
  Cera: Don't hang around with longnecks, beakfaces and spiketails!
  (Beat as the others stare at Cera)
  Cera: (Meekly) Well, it was mostly the same lecture.
• In Penguins of Madagascar, Skipper repeatedly subjects Dave to Accidental Misnaming. All of them are names that still start with "D", up until the end where he calls him Ramirez.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Spider-Man Noir, Peni Parker, and Spider-Ham all simultaneously give the other Spider-People (and the audience) a rundown of their Superhero Origin. Spider-Ham's is a little... unique.
  Spider-Man Noir: I was bitten by a radioactive spider.
  Peni Parker: I was bitten by a radioactive spider!
  Spider-Ham: I was bitten by a radioactive pig!
  (Noir and Peni do a Double Take at Spider-Ham's panel)
• In Wreck-It Ralph, King Candy is the last character shown in Sugar Rush and his design, name, and age are noticeably different than the rest of the characters in the game. There is a reason for this.

Films — Live-Action

• In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Andy reads out the names of some of his porno tapes, such as Hairy Twatter.
  Dave: And this is...Everybody Loves Raymond. You know, that's not supposed to be in there. It's just a good show.
• In American Graffiti, Curt, who is underage, attempts to purchase a pint of whiskey at a corner store by casually mentioning it in the middle of a list of other items that he asks the owner to get for him. It doesn't work; after the other items are bagged up, Curt is asked for proof of age.
• Oliver Warbucks does in the 1982 film version of Annie when he tells Annie that he's going to start looking for her parents:
  Warbucks: Grace!^note Grace Farrell, his secretary who brought Annie to his mansion. Get me J. Edgar on the phone! Drake!^note His butler. Get me the Chief of Police! Asp!^note One of his two bodyguards. Get me Walter Winchell! Punjab!^note His other bodyguard. Get me William Randolph Hearst! And Saunders, get me a drink!
• Batman Returns features a scene of comic relief (albeit with serious consequences later on) about a third of the way through, during Danny Elfman's "Batman Versus the Circus" suite. Batman is surrounded on the street by four members of the Penguin's Red Triangle Circus Gang: three males in clown makeup and wielding lethal or at least heavily injurious weapons, plus the Poodle Lady, a woman with only "normal" glamour makeup and not carrying any weapon at all. Batman calmly programs his computerized Batarang to hit all four criminals and releases it; it quickly cuts down the first three enemies, but never reaches the Poodle Lady because her pet poodle jumps up and catches it in his jaws. The Poodle Lady then just smirks at Batman and she and her dog run off. (Embarrassingly, this would be only the first time that evening that Batman would be outsmarted by a woman!)
• The Tagline to A Clockwork Orange:
  Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence, and Beethoven.
• Four Christmases has an example near the end of the movie. After three dysfunctional divorced parents and their siblings, they finally reach Kate's father, who revealed that he and his wife divorced because he was so committed to his job that he couldn't make the time. Also, unlike the other three parents; he is actually very remorseful of the decisions he made and regrets them daily. Surprisingly somber for a comedy movie.
• The Gay Divorcee: When Guy finally catches up with Mimi in the park, he pulls out a picnic basket and props it on the running board of her car.
  Guy: Can I offer you anything? Frosted chocolate? Cointreau? Benedictine? Marriage?
  Mimi: What was that last one?
  Guy: Benedictine?
  Mimi: No, the one after that.
  Guy: Oh, marriage?
• Played with brilliant subtlety in Ghostbusters when Peter Venkman introduces his team at the library:
  Roger Delacorte: I'm Roger Delacorte. Are you the men from the university?
  Dr. Peter Venkman: Yes, I'm Dr. Venkman, Dr. Stantz, Egon...
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2014):
  Quill: I come from Earth, a planet of outlaws: Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, John Stamos...
  Drax: Sounds like a place which I would like to visit.
• In The Naked Gun, Frank, trying to break Jane's sensory-induced hypnosis, says "Jane, since I've met you, I've noticed things that I never knew were there before... birds singing, dew glistening on a newly formed leaf... stoplights."
• An unintentional one in Plan 9 from Outer Space, though not at the end of the list.
  We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aeroplane, the telephone, the electric light, VITAMINS, radio, and even television!

For clarification, vitamins are technically not an invention, since they can and do occur naturally.

• Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment: The owner of a lamp shop closes up for the night by shutting the security gates, padlocking the doors, setting a bear trap, and placing a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Dirty Harry at the door.
• Predators is a movie about incredibly dangerous people being brought into an extra-terrestrial game preserve on another world. This vicious band of misfits is comprised of a former black ops mercenary, an IDF sniper, a drug cartel enforcer, Spetsnaz commando, a convicted murderer/rapist, a death squad leader, a Yakuza mafioso... and a nerdy, bespectacled doctor. Guess who's the most cold-blooded killer of them all.
• In The Three Stooges short "Fight Night", Moe and Larry watch Shemp in a boxing match Behind the Black:
  Moe: There goes Shemp with a left jab! There goes Shemp with a right uppercut! There goes Shemp with a haymaker! [Offscreen Crash] There goes Shemp...
• In Zoolander, while brainwashing Derek into assassinating the prime minister of Malaysia, Mugatu warns him not to be distracted by "beautiful celebrities". The training room then offers cardboard cutouts of such examples like Lance Bass, Fred Durst, Lil Kim, and...Garry Shandling.

Literature

• In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the slogan of the Party has three key concepts: "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery" and "Ignorance is Strength." The latter is the only one in which the two terms are not polar opposites.
• In A Bad Case of Stripes, the Specialists determine that Camilla does not have mumps, measles, chicken pox, or a sunburn, the latter one not being a virus.
• Animal Inn: Val's rabbits are named Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail... and Sam. (Which is apparently a retcon, since he's referred to as Peter in the first book.)
• Dave Barry Slept Here states that, at the time of the Suez Crisis, major international crises were also happening in "Hungary, Poland, Lebanon, and the quiz-show industry."
• Dave Barry, in the column "Daze of Wine and Roses":
  There were 12 sommeliers from around the country in the contest; they got there by winning regional competitions, and earlier in the day they had taken a written exam with questions like: "Which of the following appellations belong to the Savoie region? (a) Crepy; (b) Seyssel; (c) Arbois; (d) Etoile; (e) Ripple." (I'm just kidding about the Ripple, of course. The Savoie region would not use Ripple as an insecticide.)
• The Doctor Who Expanded Universe short story "Walkin' City Blues" by Joffy Brown has the Doctor describing a Femme Fatale's "glamour implants" to his companion "A subtle combination of exotic pheromones, AI wetware wit-routines, genetically-enlarged pupils, and a spray-on tan."
• In Demon Haunted World, Carl Sagan laments how people often choose pseudoscience over science when science discovers so many more cool things: Quantum Physics! The building blocks of life floating in space! Colliding continents! Ancient Syrian beer advertisements!
• Gravity Falls: Journal 3: The comments on the back of the book. The first two are genuine praises from Guillermo del Toro and R. L. Stine and the other comment is Grunkle Stan saying "This book is amazing! BUY IT TWICE!!"
• One of the sections of Gulliver's Travels is titled "A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan." Admittedly, at that time Japan was almost completely closed off to foreigners and thus almost as fantastic as said other countries.
• The Heroes of Olympus:
  The coffee shops were doing a brisk business, and street musicians filled the air with the sounds of guitar, lyre, panpipes, and armpit noises.
• In Steve Hockensmith short story "I Killed Santa Claus" the eponymous dead Santa Claus (a mall Santa who was working as a burglar and died trying to murder an elf who caught on to him) is named in the newspapers as William 'Big Buck' Thomerson, aka William Thompson, aka Thomas Williams, aka William Williamson, aka Vincente Benito de la Rosa III.
• Brandon Sanderson's short story I Hate Dragons:
  • Skip is trying to explain the pain that his ability to hear the spelling of words brings him.
    Skip: Why, just today, I've heard the word dragon spelled 'dragoon,' 'daragon,' 'dragen,' 'deragin,' and 'blarsnaf.'
    Sorceress: Er... 'blarsnaf?
    Skip: That was from Pug the cook. He speaks Lukarvian, but the word should actually be spelled 'blarsnef' in his language.
  • Also, Skip's three magical powers: hearing spelling, hearing punctuation, and smelling so delicious to dragons that they go crazy with the desire to eat him.
• In The Invisible Man, a Father Brown story by G. K. Chesterton, we get this:
  Flambeau ... received him in a rococo artistic den behind his office, of which the ornaments were sabres, harquebuses, Eastern curiosities, flasks of Italian wine, savage cooking-pots, a plumy Persian cat, and a small dusty-looking Roman Catholic priest, who looked particularly out of place.
• In The Irregular at Magic High School, the narration uses this trope. Tatsuya walks into Azusa's classroom and starts speaking to her in a very insistent manner. Onlookers comment, respectively; "Surprisingly forceful...", "So fierce..", and "That might be nice."
• It All Started With Columbus:
  The United States did not get Cuba out of the Spanish-American War, but it got Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Typhoid, and Malaria.
• In Junie B.: First Grader: BOO... and I MEAN It!, Junie B. is scared of Halloween because of five secrets that Paulie Allen Puffer told her and said that she mustn't tell anyone else. The first is that real monsters and witches go out trick or treating on Halloween, but everyone thinks that they're just in costume like everyone else. The second is that you mustn't carve pointy, sharp teeth into your pumpkin or else it will roll into your room while you are sleeping and eat your feet. The third is that bats like to land on your head and live in your hair. The fourth is that black witch cats can claw you into shreddle. The final secret is that candy corn isn't really corn. Junie B. eventually comes to the conclusion that there's no way the last one can be true.
• Discworld: The three simple rules designed by the Librarians of Time and Space to ensure those with access to L-space don't destroy the space-time continuum:
  1. Silence.
  2. Books must be returned by the last date stamped.
  3. Do not interfere with the nature of causality.
• The narrator of Midnight’s Children plays with this when he describes the Love Triangle of his childhood:
  To save time, I shall place all of us in the same row at the Metro cinema; Robert Taylor is mirrored in our eyes as we sit in flickering trances — and also in symbolic sequence: Saleem Sinai is sitting-next-to-and-in-love-with Evie Burns who is sitting-next-to-and-in-love-with Sonny Ibrahim who is sitting-next-to-and-in-love-with the Brass Monkey who is sitting next to the aisle and feeling starving hungry.
• From The School for Good and Evil: "No spitting, sneezing, singing, sniffling, swinging, swearing, slapping, sleeping, or urinating in the Flowerground."
• In the Red vs. Blue guidebook Red vs. Blue: The Ultimate Fan Guide, the Meta's character profile lists his "notable attributes" as:
  Snarling. Growling. Glowering. Skulking. Lurking. Stealing. Murdering. High tolerance for pain. Audio editing.
• Roys Bedoys: In "Let's Go Hiking, Roys Bedoys!", Mr. Bedoys tells the boys the rules they must follow. The first three are serious rules, but the last one is simply "have fun".

Live-Action TV

• The IT Crowd:
  Douglas: Ah! The IT department. Run by a dynamic go-getter, a genius, and a man from Ireland.
• 3rd Rock from the Sun:
  • When the Solomons try persuading an alien why he should spare humanity:
    Dick: You are missing the real Earth, like the happiness in a child's eye, when a loving parent tucks him in at night.
    Sally: Or the wonder of two young lovers as they stroll down the beach, dreaming of what is yet to be.
    Tommy: Or the quiet contentment of a couple in their autumn years as they sit and reflect on a life well spent together.
    Harry: Or hookers. [Beat] Cheap painted hookers.
  • When Dick's ego causes him to lose his job, the others tell him he should just apologize to his boss:
    Dick: Apologize?!?! Should the Venus de Milo apologize to the brute who tore her arms off? NO! Should The Sphinx apologize to the desert winds for eroding its nose? NO! Should Jim Carrey apologize to America for The Cable Guy? Perhaps.
• All That: The original series' Ask Ashley sketches would have the host read three questions, usually sent by people who are just extremely incompetent or sometimes Too Dumb to Live, and then drop her kindly demeanor to answer them in an exasperated manner. The third question would generally throw a curveball, e.g. the sender doesn't speak English, the sender is a vampire, the sender is a kangaroo, the sender is a professor at MIT who asks Ashley a long, biology-related question (which she somehow knew the answer to), the sender doesn't know how to send mail and shows up to ask Ashley his question in person, and on one occasion, the sender missed the point entirely and sent something that wasn't a question at all.
• Angel: This conversation about Angel's Soul Jar:
  Willow: There's lots of jars in the world — can't shatter them all. I mean, you could, but good things come in jars. Peanut butter, jelly, those two-headed fetal pigs at the natural history museum. (Wes doesn't respond) Come on, everybody loves fetal pigs.
• Barney Miller: All the disturbing newspaper headlines, according to Harris. Civil War in Angola, Oil Spills Off the Coast, Bribes Revealed, Suede and Leather Prices Going Up. ("The Psychiatrist")
• From The Big Bang Theory:
  Rajesh Koothrapali: Doctor Gablehauser.
  Eric Gablehauser: Doctor Koothrapali.
  Leonard Hofstadter: Doctor Gablehauser.
  Eric Gablehauser: Doctor Hofstadter.
  Sheldon Cooper: Doctor Gablehauser.
  Eric Gablehauser: Doctor Cooper.
  Howard Wolowitz: Doctor Gablehouser.
  Eric Gablehauser: Mister Wolowitz.
  • Also, when Sheldon temporarily becomes a Crazy Cat Lady, he names all of his cats after physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project — except for the last cat, "Zazzles", who is "just so zazzy".
• On Cheers when after much agonizing, Rebecca decides to turn Robin in for insider trading and the guys encourage her on her way out.
  Frasier: Give him hell Rebecca.
  Cliff: Yeah. Give him what for Becky.
  Norm: We're proud of you.
  Carla: Snitch.
• From Covert Affairs: After losing a lot of money at craps, intentionally And, ironically enough, almost failing to do so as she suddenly won 30.000 dollars betting on snake eyes; Auggie's astonished expression is gold, Annie is talking to the woman they're hoping will try to turn her:
  Annie: My sister's husband lost his job a couple of months ago, so they... they burnt through all their savings, I don't have anything, I don't have anyone to go to... [increasingly emotionally] I'm totally screwed, God! And if I can't leave the country, I'll probably lose my job, — I mean I have to tell them why I can't come back, and my TOOTH hurts!
• The Daily Show
  • In October 7, 2008, while analyzing the "stupid" vote, John Oliver broke it down into twelve sections: paste eaters, numbskulls, nitwits, fucktards, people whose hands get stuck in pickle jars when they eat pickles, people who lose arguments to babies, douchenozzles, tiger petters, people who jump up and down on frozen lakes, shaved gorillas who've somehow managed to acquire a driver's license, the voluntarily lobotomized, and Cubs fans.
  • In their commentaries on the television news media, they'll often show the news media's hive-mind collective latches onto a particular key-word or -phrase and repeats it incessantly by means of a montage. They'll show sometimes upward of a dozen clips of different news anchors, reporters, and pundits repeating the same catch-phrase about an item, then end it with one of the talking heads saying something ... really bizarre, though still on-topic.
  • Jon Stewart demonstrated some pre-made protest signs for his Rally to Restore Sanity, including, "I Disagree With You, but I'm Pretty Sure You're Not Hitler", "Got Competence?", "9/11 Was an Outside Job!" and "Legalize Pot".
    Jon: I don't know how that last one got in there, we didn't write it. I think this is what happens when signs breed.
• The Golden Girls, "The End of the Curse". Dorothy insists that the minks have to go. Rose counters:
  Rose: We are not giving away Fluffy, Muffy, Buffy, and Joanne.
  Dorothy: Rose, they are non-breeding minks who eat their weight in food every day—Joanne?
• Happy Endings, "Barefoot Pedaler":
  Max: (singing) Penny, Penny, Penny, you're my closest friend.
  Penny: Oh, you wrote a song about me!
  Max: (singing) Want to be with you 'til the bitter end.
  Penny: That is so sweet.
  Max: (singing) Got the biggest calves I've seen on a man.
• Kamen Rider: The Kamen Sentai Gorider special pulls multiples of this, with varying degrees of zig-zaggery. Emu Hojo (Kamen Rider Ex-Aid) finds himself in a Closed Circle mystery along with several other Kamen Riders: Kaoru Kino, Kazuma Kenzaki, Kaito Kumon, Yoko Minato, and his friend Kiriya Kujo. The group realizes that what they have in common, aside from being Riders, is that they all died...except for Emu, which makes them suspicious of him.
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: In his NRA TV segment, Oliver noted that the app had yet to be dropped on devices from "big tech companies" like Apple, Amazon, and Roku. Oliver then impersonates a Roku employee, cheering, "Get in here! Someone just called us a big tech company!'" For comparison, in 2018 Apple and Amazon had their market caps reach $1 trillion, while Roku was a relatively pedestrian $5 billion.
• One Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode had John Munch give a strange set of statements, "Yeah, and I want the troops home, the Kyoto Protocol signed, and a Tijuana oil job from Miss February." to a high school girl. He might have been playing up some I Take Offense to That Last One to the "old" part of being called a Dirty Old Man.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: They loved this trope. Many sketches feature odd lines or characters that come across as being totally out of place.
  • For instance, in the sketch where German and Greek philosophers play a game of soccer the German team also has Franz Beckenbauer playing along, who wasn't a philosopher but a famous soccer player. The commentator notes: "A bit of a surprise there".
    • The puncline to the sketch also uses it. After Socrates scores a goal the Germans dispute it, Hegel and Kant both lodge complex philosophical arguments as to why the goal shouldn't count while Marx argues that it was offside.
• Used from time to time on Our Miss Brooks. This example comes from "Hawkins Travel Agency"; Miss Brooks is trying to sell Mr. Stone on a trip to France:
  Miss Brooks (speaking with a French accent): Oh, there is nothing like Paree in the summer. The Arc De Triomphe, the Louvre Palais, the Place de Concorde... and Piccadilly Circus.
  Mr. Stone: Miss Brooks, Piccadilly Circus happens to be in London.
  Miss Brooks (speaking with a Cockney accent): Right-o governor, but if you were so nearby, you wouldn't want to miss that now, would you?
• On QI, Alan is always treated as the Butt-Monkey of the group and there are several running gags to this effect. For instance each episode has a theme for the buzzers and then Alan will always reveal his one last as something comically different; e.g., the first three together are sections of the Westminster Chimes and his is a cuckoo clock; the first three get a cowbell, a bicycle bell, a tea bell and then Alan gets Leslie Phillips going "Ding Dong!". They also are often introduced with some extraordinary adjective or other theme and then a similar twist for Alan e.g.
  Stephen (introducing the panel as "four people who look a bit like other people"): Please welcome Tony Blair (Rory Bremner)... Tommy Cooper (Phill Jupitus)... Ruby Wax (Ronni Ancona)... and... Alan Davies.
  • "Keys":
    Stephen: The city of Toronto has given its key to the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and Mickey Mouse.
• Saturday Night Live:
  • An inversion of Famous, Famous, Fictional featured Jonah Hill as a porn-ified version of Martin Scorsese, director of such shining films as Raging Boner, Gangbangs of New York, The Departed (Hymen)...and The Wolf of Wall Street.
  • The 40th Anniversary special featured a segment that paid tribute to all the cast and crew members who have passed away...and Jon Lovitz. Cut to Lovitz in the audience looking bewildered.
• Scrubs: Dr. Cox often makes long lists of things he dislikes or doesn't care about, and usually ends with, "and Hugh Jackman."
• Seinfeld has Kramer's alter-ego H.E. Pennypacker: wealthy industrialist, philanthropist, and bicyclist.
• Sesame Street is the Trope Namer, more or less. Played straight, as a teaching routine; viewers were asked, in this game of same and different, to identify the odd item out of a group of (typically) four, such as three boxes having different breeds of cats, and the fourth having a dog. At times, actions were depicted and the object was to pick the box with a different type of action (such as three kids dancing or sports activity, while the fourth kid is engaged in a sedentary activity such as reading). The song that played during all this was "One Of These Things," with the lyrics sometimes varied due to the subject.
• Supernatural: In "ScoobyNatural", Sam and Dean end up in an episode of Scooby-Doo. To be precise, they end up in a retelling of the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode "A Night of Fright Is No Delight". But things go even further off the rails when one of the houseguests ends up dead, and the Mystery Inc. gang rattle off their catchphrases... with Dean chiming in at the end.
  Velma: Jinkies!
  Daphne: Jeepers!
  Shaggy: Zoinks!
  Scooby: Ruh-roh!
  Dean: ...Son of a bitch!
• Voyagers!: While trying to cheer up/distract Jeffrey during "Cleo and the Babe", Bogg lists three examples of Manly Tears occurring during history: Napoleon at Waterloo, George Washington at Valley Forge, and General Eisenhower at Bunker Hill. Jeffrey, as intended, reacts in surprise, knowing that the third is inaccurate.
• Similarly, the US version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? introduces each of the four panelists with a related non-sequitur, ending in Ryan Styles, who gets a phrase that is comparatively more mundane, insulting, or damnation by faint praise. For example, one episode introduced Wayne, Jeff, and Colin as famous landmarks, and introduced Ryan as a Cleveland bus stop.
• Zondag Met Lubach: On the topic of daylight saving time:
  Lubach: "In what time do we want to live? Till when can we sit outside in June? Is it still dark when our kids go to school in February? What do our grandchildren think of jazz?"

Music

• Sukone Tei's ships are mostly focused on Yanderes until you get to Tension; in which she is shipped with Hatsune Miku.
• "The Genius Next Door" by Regina Spektor:
  In the morning the film crews start arriving
  With donuts, coffee, and reporters
• "We Are the World" (the original one from the 1980s, not the remake made in light of the earthquake in Haiti) had an all-star cast of musicians ... and Dan Aykroyd.^note  To be totally fair to Dan, he is a fine singer in his own right, and Quincy Jones insisted on him being on the record for all the hard work Dan had done in persuading some of the musicians to contribute to the record
• "Major Denial" by Bowling for Soup:
  Would you like to hang around and get to know me?
  Tell me things you'd like to show me?
  Tie me up like I'm a pony?
• The 1812 Overture list of instruments seems fairly ordinary until you get to the percussion section:
  Timpani, a bass drum, a snare drum, cymbals, a tambourine, a triangle, a carillon, and a cannon.
• Hank Williams Jr.'s cover of his dad's "Mind Your Own Business" featured Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Tom Petty... and New York evangelist Reverend Ike.
• A Running Gag in the Johnny Cash song "The One on the Right Is on the Left" is that The Guy in the Rear always does something to contrast the rest of the band. When the song talks about the political affiliation of the other band members it just mentions that he was a Methodist and burned his drivers license. When the other three get into a fight on stage he just says "oh, dear". Finally at the end while the other three went on to have decent non-musical careers he got drafted.
• The Monkees' album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. In what part of the year are Joneses born again?

News Broadcast

• Australia's Today Tonight ran a story in early 2007 about a man who was, quote, "an armed robber, drug trafficker, and shonky builder."

Newspaper Comics

• A Piranha Club strip has several solicitors, each for different charities: "Save the Condors", "Save the Polar Bears", "Save the Whales", "Save the Pandas", "Save the Rain Forest", "Save the Elephants", and finally "Save the Leftover Spaghetti Sauce".

Pinball

• Bigfoot's cave in White Water houses five items, discovered in this order:
  "Hey, a flashlight!"
  "Hey, a map!"
  "Hey, a key!"
  "Hey, a camera!"
  "Hey, a... COW?!"
• The Truth multiball in The X-Files has the player unscramble four messages in order: "Deny everything," "the truth is out there," "trust no one", and "Super Jackpot".

Podcasts

• When describing the Avengers, Joel Zammit of Plumbing the Death Star intentionally leaves Black Widow and Hawkeye at the end of the sentence to make a point of how out of place they are in the group.
  "As I said so many episodes ago, the Avengers is like strong guy, strong guy, strong guy, very strong guy, bow and arrow, guns."

Professional Wrestling

• On an episode of WWE Raw, The New Day showed up to protest The Dudley Boyz. Xavier Woods was holding a sign that said 'Save a table. break a Dudley.' Kofi Kingston was holding a sign that said #givetablesachance. Big E just held up a sign that said 'Booty'.
• At the 2014 edition of WWE Payback The Shield faced Evolution. The Shield's outfits were all black, Triple H and Randy Orton wore black with white designs, even the referee was in black and white, but then Batista came out in a blue outfit. It caused "#bluetista" to trend during the whole match.

Recorded and Stand-up Comedy

• An old Jeff Dunham skit with a "dead Osama" (who would eventually become Achmed the Dead Terrorist) has this when Osama describes his camp's activities.
  Dead Osama: Hand-to-hand combat training, explosives training, arts and crafts.
• George Carlin, on his early album Take-Offs & Put-Ons, during the "Wonderful WINO (Top 40 Disc Jockey)" routine:
  "Of course, they've got a great Technicolor teen tune fest for ya, a great flick to click out there with six of your super favorite stars: Sandra Dee, Peggy Lee, Brenda Lee, Bobby Vee, Molly Bee and Oscar Homolka....in Sex Bed Teen Bikini Virgin Surf Beach Ball Bash!"

Theatre

• The Complete History Of America Abridged uses this twice in the Film Noir parody:
  • An audio montage of assassination victims of the 1960s includes snippets, each followed by a gunshot, of the voices of John F. Kennedy ("Ask not what your country can do for you"), Martin Luther King ("I have a dream"), Malcolm X ("By any means necessary"), Robert F. Kennedy ("To follow in the footsteps of my brother"), and Anne Murray ("Spread your tiny wings and fly away").
  • When the Cold War ends, the Private Eye Monologue pronounces Communism dead except in China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, Angola, Mozambique, North Yemen, and Vermont.
• Cyrano de Bergerac: After Cyrano wounds Viscount De Valvert while singing a ballad in his honour, Burgundy Theater's public comments about the duel:
  (Acclamations. Applause in the boxes. Flowers and handkerchiefs are thrown down. The officers surround Cyrano, congratulating him. Ragueneau dances for joy. Le Bret is happy but anxious. The viscount's friends hold him up and bear him away.)
  The Crowd (with one long shout): Ah!
  A Trooper: Tis superb!
  A woman: A pretty stroke!
  Raguenau: A marvel!
  A Marquis: A novelty!
  Le Bret: O madman!
• In the opening scene of The Most Happy Fella, Cleo describes what her customer left on her table:
  "Seven million crumbs and a gravy spot,
  Teaspoon stuck in the mustard pot,
  Napkin on the floor,
  Ashes in the cup
  And—one Canadian dime!"

Video Games

• Borderlands and Borderlands 2 both do this when introducing the characters and their classes. In the first game, we have Mordecai as The Hunter, Lilith as the Siren, Roland as The Soldier and Brick as Himself. The next game does Axton as The Commando, Maya as The Siren, Salvador as The Gunzerker and Zero as A Number.
  • In the first game's "The Secret Armory of General Knoxx" DLC, the Crimson Lance drone enemies will occasionally quip that their contents can poison small pets, livestock, and people named Jason.
  • The Pre-Sequel! continues this tradition with Wilhelm as The Enforcer, Athena as The Gladiator, Nisha as The Lawbringer and Claptrap as A Mistake.
  • The third game does this with FL4K as The Beastmaster, Moze as The Gunner, Amara as The Siren and Zane Flynt as Himselves.
• Civilization V had the tendency to sneak a strange or humorous city name at or near the end of the long city list, one that would be seen by few players during a normal game. There were, say, "Mumbles" (a district in Swansea) for England and "Lebam" (a tiny place in Washington state) for America. There's a Steam achievement for getting the Celtic city of "Llanfairpwllgwyngyll" (a village on the island of Anglesey in Wales, and too long to be named manually). Mods often continue this trend; for instance, one based on Zootopia includes "Wilde Times" as the last city, which only appeared in an alternate draft of the script.
• Crash Bandicoot
  • In Crash Tag Team Racing, in one of Cortex's lines when he's separating from a car he's currently clashed with, he claims to be "a lone wolf, a bald eagle, a burrowing hamster".
  • In Crash: Mind Over Mutant, Coco plans to turn the eye of the destroyed Doominator robot into an entertainment system that will play games, watch movies, and dispense butter.
• Elden Ring: As the various named dragons of the setting are defeated, the Tarnished will be able to obtain incantations known as Dragon Communion incantations that conjure up the heads of these slain dragons to use their various breath weapons that all scale off of the Arcane stat. The last likely to be obtained Placidusax's Ruin is not considered Dragon Communion at all and instead scales off of Faith which is fitting in a way considering Placidusax's status of Elden Lord long before the Erdtree came to be.
  He's suave! He's debonair! He's DEAD!
• Dramatic, multi-layered example near the beginning of Final Fantasy VII Remake: Barret delivers an inspiring speech to the other members of Avalanche, reassuring them that "I'm here for you! To help take the load off your shoulders! Your fears... Your worries... Your concerns... And yes, your fees..." That last one is justified as it's directed at sword-for-hire Cloud Strife, who's Not in This for Your Revolution but is rather Only in It for the Money — which, coupled with a few other things, ultimately results in Barret deciding against taking him along for the bombing run on Mako Reactor 5, contrary to the original game's plot.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses
  • During Hubert and Edelgard's A support, Edelgard insists that Hubert not keep secrets from her, referring to the covert actions that Hubert took to eliminate Edelgard's enemies. Hubert then yields, leading to his Love Confession to Edelgard.
    "Very well. You have me beaten. I will tell you as much as I am able. From the assassins I've eliminated, to the gold I've spent on bribes...to the identity of the one I love."
  • Hubert, Dedue, and Hilda are the retainers of their respective houses' leaders. However, while Hubert and Dedue are unable to be recruited into other houses, Hilda is the sole exception as she can be recruited to other houses outside the Golden Deer, perhaps because she's far more easygoing than the two guys deeply devoted to their superiors. Furthermore, she's also the only retainer who has Support conversations with some students of other classes (and not just Church of Seiros members, whom Hubert and Dedue can support with outside their own houses), and her paralogue battle is the only one that can be done either in Part 1 or Part 2 (barring Anna's, who must be downloaded).
  • There are six great noble families in the Adrestian empire. Duke Aegir, the Prime Minister, is Ferdinand's father. Count Bergliez, Minister of Military Affairs, is Caspar's father. Count Hevring, Minister of Domestic Affairs, is Linhardt's father. Count Varley, Minister of Religious Affairs, is Bernadetta's father. Marquis Vestra, Minister of the Imperial Household, is Hubert's father. Duke Gerth, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is the only one who does not have a child at the academy.
• One of the promos for Grim Fandango had an interesting description of its main character, Manny Calavera.
• Kindred Spirits on the Roof involves Yuna playing "yuri cupid" to help various lesbian couples get together. The last couple to be introduced- track team captain Matsuri Amishima and vice-captain Miyu Inamoto- is unique in that the two are already together, but the relationship between them has grown strained.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the modern "Champions" are all related to the previous Champions who were murdered by Ganon. All except for Teba, who has no blood ties to Revali. He also is the only one of the batch who is already an adult with a family, while the rest of the lineup are teenagers or young adults at best by their people's standards; for example, Mipha's younger brother Sidon is a young adult when the game begins, and was a baby 100 years ago.
• Mario Party:
  • Mario Party 5: The minigame Pop-Star Piranhas has all the characters witness a pop dance performed by five Piranha Plants, each having come into the stage from Warp Pipes. In each round, all Piranha Plants are dancing in the same style and at the same speed... except for one which is dancing differently in either criterion or even both. The objective is to figure out which Piranha Plant is dancing differently and pinpoint it by pressing the button that is marked onto its associated pipe. After three rounds, the character who makes the most guesses wins.
  • Mario Party 6: The minigame Odd Card Out has all players participate in a spot-the-difference contest. Three cards showing the same mook (Goomba, Koopa Troopa, Piranha Plant, Shy Guy or Bob-omb) will be displayed, but in one of them the mook will show something different (for example, if the cards show a Koopa Troopa, then maybe one of them will have its eyes or mouth open, or its shell will be red instead of green). Each card can be selected with a specific button, and the first character to press the button corresponding to the different card will earn a point; the next three cards with a different mook are then shown and the process is repeated. If a player chooses a wrong option, then a Thwomp will crush them, making them lose the next round. Whoever scores two points first wins, but if nobody manages to do so after ten rounds the minigame will end in a tie.
• Mass Effect 3:
  • In Citadel, there's this little gem in the casino.
    Jonah Ashland: Look at them down there. Twenty years ago you'd have never seen a shindig like this. Humans and turians together like it's nothing. Council species all concerned about the fate of batarians... Everybody trying to have sex with the asari...
    Shepard: That's not new.
    Jonah Ashland: Just seeing if you were awake.
  • When questioned why Girly Girl Diana Allers was chosen to host the military-sponsored war program Battlespace she has this to say:
    Diana: Girly sells, Commander. It was focus-grouped. Asari identify more with a female host, salarians enjoy higher pitched voices...
    Samantha: And the turians?
    Diana: Turians are nuts! A civilization of war nerds: loyal viewers, but they send the creepiest fan-mail.
• In NEO: The World Ends with You, almost all of the fashion brands have a clear animal Theme Naming to them much like in the first game. Black Honey Chili Cookie is the one exception to this, as it serves as Product Placement for the real brand of the same name.
• The Four ghosts in Pac-Man are named "Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde".
• ""Pajama Sam in No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside'': One of the Brain Tickler questions in the Ancient Egypt category asks what the Egyptians called their sun god. The first three answers are Egyptian-sound names, while the last one is just "Bob".
• In the Professor Layton series, every game has Professor Layton's nemesis at the time- Don Paolo in the original trilogy and Jean Descole in the sequel trilogy- disguise himself as a character.^{The List(Spoilers)} Inspector Chelmey in Curious Village, Flora Reinhold in Diabolical Box, Layton himself in Unwound Future, the Triton family butler in Last Spectre, Angela Ledore in Miracle Mask and Professor Sycamore in Azran Legacy. Of those six characters, Professor Desmond Sycamore from Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy is the only character who has never appeared before or after being impersonated, due to being a past alias of Descole's.
• Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair has the This Is a Work of Fiction disclaimer, which says that "Any resemblance to real, people, events, locations and supernatural beings is purely coincidental."
• In Star Fox Adventures, there are six Krazoa Shrines. In the first five, you go through three hallways full of obstacles and complete a challenge at the end to obtain the Krazoa Spirit. In the sixth, however, the usual Krazoa Shrine theme is replaced by a very different, creepier song, and instead of three hallways full of obstacles, there is a battle arena, and when you enter it, an enemy barrier with a single enemy icon on it blocks the only way out. In this arena you face the game's Big Bad, General Scales. Or try to, before Andross intervenes, forcing Scales to give you the final Krazoa Spirit and die before you can even fight him, and thus on top of everything else, you don't really even have to do anything but walk onto the arena and draw your staff to get this Krazoa Spirit.
• In World of Warcraft there's a quest which has players delivering a package containing compressed blasting powder, a tempered mithril bomb casing, and some safety goggles. If you don't understand why this qualifies, then you don't know Goblins. They are fans of Stuff Blowing Up but are not very big on safety.
  • Of the five pillars of creation, four of them are named after Titans^note The Aegis of Aggramar, Hammer of Khaz'goroth, Tidestone of Golganneth, and Eye of Aman'thul but the fifth is named after Elune, whose nature is unknown.
  • During the Nighthold dungeon in Legion, you can come across the Secret Chambers of Grand Magistrix Elisande, a Royal Harem of handsome Nightborne Elf paramours. For reasons never explained, there is also a Gnome among them.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles, Zanza has three disciples. The third to be revealed is Alvis, who, unlike Lorithia and Dickson, is not only the only disciple to not be fought, as well as the only one to survive, but also the only one who is actually on Shulk's side rather than Zanza's, and has secretly been helping Shulk defeat Zanza so he could become the new god and change the world for the better.

Webcomics

• The Daily Derp: "Best wishes for all of you in college/work/mars"
• In Girl Genius the librarians list the various secret writings Van Rijn used in his book. Most of them are sparky stuff like phasing ink and four-dimensional cryptograms. The last one is lemon juice.
• Homestuck: The tapestries displaying the elemental symbols of the four kids hanging in the white castle read thus:
  They wait for he who would extinguish candles whilst fanning a fire.
  They wait for she who would thaw solid flesh and resolve it into a dew.
  They wait for she who would breed lilacs out of the dead land.
  They wait for he who would drop it like it's hot whilst the pimp's in the crib.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: The Seven Black Emperors all have Boss Subtitles provided by the narration, which always finishes their list of accolades and accomplishments with "and God of the Seven-Part World". And then in Breaker of Infinities we finally get Jagganoth's, whose Boss Subtitles end with "and Destroyer of the Seven-Part World".
• In Paranatural, possible reasons a given person can see ghosts are a near-death experience, prolonged exposure to supernatural phenomena, or a diet obnoxiously high in citrus.
• Real Life Comics extrapolates the generational evolution of electronic technology in popular music here: In order, characters complain about music being used without instruments (synthesizers being introduced), without actual singing (autotune), without actual people (computers procedurally generating music), and finally the ability of music to be played at all (due to oppression by robot overlords). Counts as a Famous, Famous, Fictional, among other things.
• xkcd listed all the fluids in a human body, ending with gin. Although, since it's riffing on a famous Winston Churchill speech, gin should probably be higher on the list.

Web Original

• ASDF Movie:
  Girl: I like singing!
  Boy: I like dancing!
  I Like Trains Kid: I like trains. *run over by train*
• In Bonus Stage, the last of the Cool And Unusual Punishments that Joel gets to choose from when going to hell is eating Satan's mom's spaghetti when the first two were related to watching something 24/7.
• How It Should Have Ended: Mortal Kombat has the free-for-all confrontation between Liu Kang, Scorpion, Shang Tsung, and ... a guy with a gun.
• In the fifth episode of Anyone But Me, Jonathan, Vivian, and Sophie are all late to class. Their reactions?
  (bell rings)
  Jonathan: Fuck!
  Vivian: Shit!
  Sophie: Aw.
• This quote from Shit My Students Write
  Napoleon a great leader had three main keys to his success as a leader, the terror he brought, his military, and he was a go-getter.
• From Cracked:
  • "Martha Stewart, for that two percent of Cracked readers who don't know, is a media mogul known for her cooking, gardening, etiquette, arts & crafts and pure evilness."
  • From "6 common movie arguments that are always wrong," we face a turn from the classical to pop cultural:
    -There's really only so many basic stories that can exist. The main character is trying to get somewhere (the Odyssey), get something (the legend of the Golden Fleece), win someone's heart (the Iliad), get revenge (Cain and Abel) or save the world (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure).
• On Reddit, a fan of The Dresden Files tried to compile all of the titles Harry had gained in-universe. They were all suitably regal and dramatic ^note even the 'burger king' one, which makes sense in context , except for the last one:
  Father of Two.
• The Onion published a list of those we lost in 2011. Unless you have a particular hatred for the author of Family Circus, this trope is in full effect, since boring cartoons are not akin to mass murder.
• The news aggregator website Drew Curtis' Fark.com allows viewers to submit news articles for discussion with new, (hopefully humorous), headlines, many of which follow this trope.
• When the Game Grumps were trying to play the The Legend Of Zelda C Di Games games they accidentally ordered a German version of Link: The Faces Of Evil. They tried to make it work, hoping there was a setting for English or that they could maybe bluff their way through the menus, but they couldn't get past the menu screen because, to quote Dan:
  Dan: Yeah! Our options were like "Bleurnken", "Fhyurnken", "Schvurnken", "Sturnken", and "Save"!
• The Homestar Runner cartoon "Why Come Only One Girl?" has a montage of scenes towards the end showing what might happen if any of the planned female characters were ever put in a cartoon. Cue Strong Bad...
  —Strong Bad: ...my style. (gets slapped, cut) ...my types. (gets slapped, cut) ...my stuff. (gets slapped, cut) ...The Cheat. (gets slapped, cut)
• JonTron once was putting decoration on his house, but feeling something is off with the picture he hung up: four pictures depicting John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and... ALF.
• The "differenze linguistiche" meme. It involves taking a word and translating it into different languages, with the last one, usually German or Finnish, sounding very different.
• Map Men: The episode about parts of maps that are deliberately left blank demonstrates a East German map that leaves West Berlin blank for political reasons, the Google Maps display of North Korea which is blank because no cartographers had at the time been able to get into North Korea, and a map of central Greenland... which is blank because it's a featureless frozen wasteland with nothing to map.
• Matthew Santoro:
  • In 20 Haunting Halloween Facts, Matt says, "Pumpkins also come in blue, green, and white. This is great for kids that might want to carve their favourite childhood character. Like Papa Smurf, or Kermit the Frog, or... Michael Jackson!"
  • In 20 Valentines Day facts, Matt says, "It's almost February 14th, and that means it's almost Valentine's Day! A day where people show they love each other with diamonds, roses, chocolates, and... other things."
  • In I'm Probably on a Plane or a Ship Right Now, Matt tells the audience that if he doesn't upload a vlog the day after, then it'll be because he choked on a chicken wing, he got stabbed, the ship he's going on sank, or he got attacked by a rabbit sloth.
  • In 20 Haunting Halloween Facts, Matt says, "The most common costume for male adults is a vampire. For female adults, it's a witch. For Elton John, it's a pack of fudge. [Beat] What?"
  • In 20 Jolly Christmas Facts, Matt references Michael Jackson's alleged pedophilia. He says that, according to legend, St. Nicholas would bring gifts for good children, coal for bad children, and Michael Jackson for really bad children.
  • In 20 Lucky St. Patrick's Day Facts, Matt says that a good classification for a leprechaun would be a troll, a gnome, or Seth Green.
  • In The A.D.D Test, Matt expects instant news, instant coffee, and instant porn.
• Wily Shorts:
  Top Man: I want to be in the Indy 500!
  Quick Man: I want to break the sound barrier!
  Turbo Man: I just want to sit at home and eat chips.
• In this weird story Guenevere "asked out Jimmy Wherever and Ilya Muromets and Maid Marian but they all said no and then England was at war with Canada and Russia and England."
• "If Quake was done today" (a satirical video by Kai Moosmann) begins with a parade of logos for id Tech 2, Bethesda Game Studios, Face FX, Scaleform, Speedtree, and Aldi Süd, which is not a middleware company but a German supermarket.
• Petscop: The pause menu before the Art Shift shows Resume Game, Options, Pets (for Bios about pets caught) and Book of Baby Names.
• A meme that started on Tumblr and migrated to other social media takes the form "Reblog/retweet/share if you are [minority group], support [minority group], or [extremely mundane trait]". The joke is that the last trait makes it a blatant Push Poll.
• An uninintentional, yet still funny (if not for the intended reason) example happens in the Mann Shorts video "Dungeons And Dragons: Liberal Edition". As with the Conservative Edition, everyone in the skit is a Strawman Political except the DM, who's portrayed as the Only Sane Man. At the start, he says 'All right gang, election season is approaching, so we've gotta-" and the players each interrupt by saying, respectively "Stop Russian Hacking", "Raise taxes on the rich" and... "Let the state control everything". Yes, we are apparently meant to think all 3 suggestions are equally ridiculous.
• The Warp Zone: Is "The Last Jedi" Bad? (Fanboy Court) has the Hater present three clips of particularly bad dialogue from Canto Bight from The Last Jedi... and Anakin's infamous sand rant from Attack of the Clones.
  Fanboy: OBJECTION!
  Hater: Oh. Sorry about that. I don't know how that got in there. I guess all the bad lines sort of blur together.
• Welcome to... Tumblr when it gets on the videos:
  "Do you upload videos? Great! Just make sure you upload them to YouTube, Daily Motion or xvideos.com first, because the Tumblr player is absolutely terr— s absolutely terr— s absolutely terr— ible-ible-ible-ible! Absolutely terr—"
• Zero Punctuation loves to do these in the animation. In the L.A. Noire review, there is a mention of the main character "hopping around between four different police departments", which is illustrated with four doors marked Traffic, Homicide, Vice and Biscuits.
• Zsdav Adventures: In the Út ami hazavisz (Road that leads you home) arc, Zsdav and Vinmar collect three medals. The first two are represented by ender pearls but the last one is a fireball.

Western Animation

• In the Brandy & Mr. Whiskers episode "Lack of Brains vs. Brawns", Whiskers states that he and Brandy go together like peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, and donkeys and trombones.
• Happens to Scrooge McDuck while he's reading the paper in the DuckTales (1987) episode "Robot Robbers":
  Scrooge: "McDuck Assets Top $200 Bajillion" — delightful. "McDuck Stock Reaches All-Time High" — wonderful. "McDuck Loses Construction Bid to Flintheart Glomgold"... DAH!
• In the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "Berry Scary", Bloo repeatedly calls Berry other names that rhyme with hers, up until the end where he calls her Heather.
• Futurama in "A Head in the Polls":
  Morbo: "I now present: puny human #1, puny human #2, and Morbo's good friend Richard Nixon."
  • From the pilot:
    Professor Farmsworth: Let me show you around. That's my lab table, and this is my work stool, and over there is my intergalactic spaceship, and here's where I keep assorted lengths of wire.
• The Invader Zim episode "Hobo 13" features Zim requesting extra ordnance from his leaders, The Tallest. His malfunctioning robot GIR adds a few items to the list, managing to combine Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking, Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick, and Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs.
  Tallest Purple: Plasmaran battle tanks, maim bots, death-wave cannons... A sack of taquitos?
  Zim: Just a few supplies I need to complete my mission.
  Gir: You get my taquitos yet... Taquitos! And a clown with no head... how 'bout clown taquitos?
• The Justice League episode "Secret Society" had this:
  Gorrila Grodd: [We are not in it for the money] Sinestro has a blood oath against all Green Lanterns, Parasite simply hates Superman, Giganta is totally devoted to me.
  The Shade: And the other one?
  Gorrila Grodd: Killer Frost? She just likes to kill things.
• In an episode of the French cartoon Kaeloo parodying Dora the Explorer, the main four decide to each say the same thing in a different language (Kaeloo in English, Quack Quack in "quacks", Mr. Cat in German and Stumpy in Spanish:
  Kaeloo: The grass is green!
  Quack Quack: Quack!
  Mr. Cat: Das gras ist grün!
  Stumpy (singing): Tapas! Paëlla! Real Madrid, Ibiza! Movida! Conchita, corrida!
  • The show also has a Running Gag where Mr. Cat, attempting to justify his actions, will say two things related to what he did and a third, completely unrelated statement.
• In the Pickle and Peanut episode "Busted Arm", Peanut's fake cast dissolves in a water slide, which results in a clogged pipage. While getting on the second slide, the water buildup sends him flying into a snack shack, a sign, and an acid tank. End result: He is left as a head with veins sticking out at the bottom of his neck.
• Happens in the Ready Jet Go! episode "Detective Mindy":
  Sydney: How does [the black hole] do that?
  Mindy: And how did it get there?
  Jet: And how does my hair look today? (beat) Oh...not the right time?
  • This happens again in Galileo, Galileo!, where Sean is listing his heroes: Galileo Galilei, Neil Armstrong, Albert Einstein, Madame Curie, and Patti Smith.^note All of Sean's heroes are scientists, except for Patti Smith, who is a punk singer. Even Sunspot seems confused.
  • In "Sean Has A Cold", when Jet explains why he chose Earth for his Best Buddy kite, he explains that Earth is round, has air and water, trees, and pie.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: When listing what makes her a valuable asset to The Horde, and later the Princess Alliance, Scorpia says she is "strong, brave, fierce, loyal, and she gives great hugs".
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Bart Gets an Elephant" Lisa asks someone if they're an ivory dealer, with the reply "Well, little girl, I've had lots of jobs in my day: whale-hunter, seal-clubber, president of the Fox network..."
  • In the "Treehouse of Horror IV" segment "The Devil and Homer Simpson" when Satan brings out his jury, we get two examples. Halfway through, we get Richard Nixon and Nixon objects that he's not dead yet, to which Satan replies, "Hey, I did a favor for YOU!" Then, at the end, the final members consist not of infamous historical figures, but "the starting lineup for the 1976 Philadelphia Fliers" (AKA the "Broad Street Bullies").
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Pickles", Squidward serves as the replacement fry cook when SpongeBob loses his confidence, and doesn't do a very good job of it.
    Customer: He burnt my Krabby Patty!
    Second Customer: He burnt my fries!
    Third Customer: He burnt my shake!
  • In "Imitation Krabs", SpongeBob's Bluff the Impostor attempt has him asking Mr. Krabs and Plankton (piloting a robot Mr. Krabs) three questions:
    1. What time does the Krusty Krab open?
    2. How much does a Krabby Patty cost on Wednesday?
    3. If they're discussing the Krabby Patty secret formula on the third Wednesday in January and it's not raining outside after they've gargled with vanilla pudding, what do they do?
  • In "My Pretty Seahorse", while observing the wild seahorse SpongeBob considers a number of names for her.
    SpongeBob: Because of her mysterious nature, I have decided to name her "Mystery". Hmm, now that I think of it she's also very graceful and majestic. Perhaps I should name her Grace, or Majesty, or Debbie.
• Steven Universe:
  • "Catch and Release": Steven is getting ready for bed, and says goodnight to his stuffed animals: "Good night, happy bear. Good night, sad bunny. Good night, playful kitty. Good night, ominous triangle at the foot of my bed." The "ominous triangle" turns out to be Peridot, who kidnaps Steven and tries to get him to help fix the Galaxy Warp.
  • "Back to the Moon": Steven names the Rubies based on the placement of their gems: Army (arm), Leggy (leg), Navy (navel), Eyeball (eye), and... Doc (chest).
• Superman: The Animated Series: In one of the final scenes of the "World's Finest" crossover with Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn rants as she is loaded into a police van: "I want a lawyer! I want a doctor! I want a cheese sandwich!"
• Thomas & Friends: The engines' various problems in "Victor Says Yes" are as follows: 'Arry and Bert need their valves checked, Edward's boiler is broken, Percy needs a new coat of paint, Gordon's valves are blocked, Thomas' footplate is loose, and Emily wants her buffers polished.
• In an episode of The X's, Glowface sees the family at the laundromat and thinks they're plotting against him, so he thinks all of their things are weapons in disguise.
  Glowface: Hand grenades disguised as lint brushes! Explosives disguised as detergent! Armed personnel carriers disguised as laundry carts! Killer Robots disguised as that bush!

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