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Weird Aside

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During what had previously been a perfectly ordinary conversation, one character nonchalantly inserts something completely bizarre, and often disturbing, which often derails the conversation. They may do this knowingly or innocently, not realizing how strange what they are saying is. This is often used for humorous purposes (even by the very character, if knowingly) or to add emphasis to how screwed up a life the particular character had, that they think something like that would be normal or conversation-appropriate.

Here's an example:

Old Lady: "Oh, this recipe? Well, when I fought the militias in Qurac, I met this woman who taught it to me. Very sweet lady, even though her husband made that Deal with the Devil. Anyways, first you take two eggs, separate the whites and the yolks... Are you listening?"

Similar to Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick, only it's in a conversation and it's actually Bread, Eggs, Milk, Beat... wait, what? It can also be Bread Eggs Milk Squick depending on the content of the aside. Very closely related to Left Fielder.


Examples:

Comic Strips

  • Candorville has this as a Running Gag between Lemont and the "Mainstream Media" guy, who'll shout out recent frivolous events and then whisper some kind of serious news item.

Fanfiction

Film

  • Throughout Pitch Perfect, Lilly, apropos of nothing, will say things like "I set fires to feel joy" and "I ate my twin in the womb".

Literature

  • Some of the wizards in the Discworld series have a tendency to make awkward pauses in the conversation even more awkward by filling them in with random trivia. In Reaper Man, the Senior Wrangler is said to be able to "do to a conversation what it usually takes thick treacle to do to the gears of a precision stopwatch."
    • Dr. Hix has had a few of these as only the head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications can. In Unseen Academicals he derails a conversation by wondering how a human skull could be used as a football like the legends say, having perhaps more experience with skulls than the people who started the legends.
  • At one point in The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, Rachel utters the following line, earning her a weird look (but no follow-up questions) from the adults in the room:
    Rachel: Can you ask a boy with brown hair named Gaius Valiant to come see me after he finishes with his classes and being tortured by Vladimir von Dread, I have to ask him a question.

Live-Action TV

  • 30 Rock is powered by this: characters often reveal a great deal about themselves and others through exaggerated lines that are both delivered in a matter-of-fact tone and rarely get acknowledged after the fact. Tracy and Jenna, however, take the cake.
  • Doctor Who: Played for Drama in "The Family of Blood". John Smith (the human character the Doctor created and turned himself into) is holding the pocket watch that contains the Doctor's Time Lord consciousness, and talking to Martha and Joan. At one point in the conversation, the Doctor briefly takes him over, causing "John" to casually spout technobabble jargon and considerably freaking him out.
    Tim Latimer: Why did he speak to me?
    The Doctor: Oh, it's just a low-level telepathy field, you were born with it, just an extra-synaptic engram causing–
    John: [horrified] Is that how he talks?
  • Phoebe Buffay, from Friends, often begins a story with "When I was living on the streets..." or "When my mother killed herself..." - The titular friends take it in stride (after all, they already know about Phoebe's mother and life story), new acquaintances do not.
    • Also, when Phoebe was a surrogate mother she liked to freak people out by talking about having her brother's baby.
    • Chandler also had a penchant for this, especially regarding his father - though he was quite aware of how weird it was.
    • "The word you're looking for is, 'anyway...'"
  • Schitt's Creek has many moments like this and most of the characters have done it at one point or another.
    • Alexis Rose often cheerfully mentions some objectively terrifying or weird situation she had to escape from when she was a globetrotting socialite. For example, Ted remarks that she can't run in her high heels, and she responds "Tell that to me at 21, escaping the Yakuza".
    • Twyla will often casually mention a relative's prison sentence, one of her mother's many boyfriends, vaguely abusive details about her childhood or even a relative's dismemberment.
    • David mentions getting dumped by a rodeo clown who painted his face while he was sleeping and then disappeared.
  • The news segments on Top Gear often go off-topic for one reason or another, but no one derails them faster than James May.

Video Games

  • Mass Effect 3: Javik has a habit of interspersing conversations with harsh, derogatory, or downright weird facts about life in "his cycle". For instance, when James tries to invite him to play poker, he claims that gambling was punishable by execution and that his troops whiled away the hours with staring contests. He's also known for aside references to Prothean cooking (ingredients: most of the galaxy's now-sapient species). On the other hand, he admits in a conversation in Citadel that he enjoys winding up the rest of the crew by seeing what outrageous lies they'll believe about his people.

Web Animation

  • The character Sister from Red vs. Blue is known for this. She inserts all kinds of weird stuff into conversations that make people go "Wait, what?" as if it were normal.
    Sister: I thought about having a kid once.
    Tucker: Oh really? It's a lot of work.
    Sister: Yeah, it seems like it would be hard. But I thought, you know, who wants to be known as the girl who's had seven abortions?
    Tucker: Heh, yeah... wait, what?

Western Animation

  • Ed in Ed, Edd n Eddy is a natural for this trope. Such as this conversation when they're exploring how to market scams for girls.
    Eddy: We need to explore our more "sensitive sides!"
    Ed: I found my sensitive side because it has a rash!
    Eddy: (shocked groan)
  • Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is seen doing this while doing the commentary for the Running of the Leaves in "Fall Weather Friends":
    Spike: You know, Pinkie, these two ponies have a bit of a grudge match they're trying to settle, trying to prove who's the most athletic.
    Pinkie Pie: Yes! And grudge rhymes with fudge!
    Spike: Yes it... does... what?
    Pinkie Pie: And I like fudge! But if I eat too much fudge, I get a pudge, and then I can't budge.
    Spike: So... no fudge?
    Pinkie Pie: No thanks! I had a big breakfast.
    [...]
    Spike: Looks like Rainbow's doing her best to catch up!
    Pinkie Pie: I'm not sure how ketchup is going to help her in this contest. Now in a hot dog eating contest, it can make them doggies nice and slippery, but personally I prefer mustard. How about you, Spike?
    Spike: Uh...I like pickles?
  • In Superman: The Animated Series, Lobo describes how he and Supes would be tied down and tortured, and throws in a comment on how it would be enjoyable under other circumstances.

Real Life

  • Alfred Hitchcock did this in real life, especially as he was getting out of an elevator. Just as he was getting off at a floor, he'd turn to a friend and say, "So there I was with the dead body. Looking back I shouldn't have touched the knife, but, with such an amount of blood before me, I acted with poor judgement." As the elevator door shut, the other passengers would wonder what the hell had happened.
  • Ross Noble's entire routine is this. He begins practically every show by observing something strange an audience member is wearing or doing, and goes on to make a two-hour show out of it. A single show could cover Hare Krishnas, sailors, emus, and DJ Aslan before the night is out.


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