You Watch Too Much X

"Dude, you're confusing reality with porn again."

— Sam Winchester to his brother Dean, Supernatural, "Heaven and Hell"

A Fourth Wall-affirming Stock Phrase said to the Genre Savvy after they point out what's about to happen. Advise your comrades against splitting up when the power goes out during a thunderstorm? "You watch too many horror movies." Suggest getting Locked in a Room gives you a great opportunity to resolve your differences? "You watch too much TV." Try to Logic Bomb the evil AI? "You read too many sci-fi novels." X is almost always the genre/medium of the work.

Similar to This Is Reality and Thinks Like a Romance Novel. Compare Not a Game, a Sister Trope expressing more anger. See also Fiction as Cover-Up. Compare I Know Mortal Kombat, when the character does have the skill the circumstance demands because they watched a lot of X.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Doraemon: Nobita and the Steel Troops has Nobita and Doraemon finding out about a Robot War about to hit planet Earth and trying to warn Nobita's mother, Tamako, only for her to scold them for reading too much manga. Attempts to contact their teacher, the local police, and authorities all lead to the same result, until a frustrated Nobita finally decides to seek his bullies, Gian and Suneo. But to his surprise, Gian and Suneo believes him (despite their falling-out prior in the story).
• My-HiME: In the first episode, after Natsuki and Mikoto's battle destroys the ferry to Fuuka Academy, Mai asks Yuuichi if the school they're about to attend is haunted or possessed by evil spirits. Yuuichi tells her that she's been "watching too many horror movies" and tries to reassure her that Fuuka's an ordinary private school (it isn't; demons are involved, but none of the main characters knows it yet).
• In Lucky Star, Kagami says something like this multiple times over the course of the series. On one such occasion:
  Konata: What, are you the kind that can make pots explode when you cook?
  Kagami: Gee, thanks...you need to stop thinking like this is all a manga.
• Lost Universe: After a daring escape scene...
  Millie: You read too many comic books.
  Kane: Yeah, they're full of great ideas!
• The Plucky Comic Relief in Darker than Black consist of a Wrong Genre Savvy Cosplay Otaku Girl and a Clueless Detective with Scully Syndrome. At one point, a character they encountered got ME'd into forgetting about someone:
  Kiko: It was like he had his memories erased or something.
  Kurosawa: You watch too much anime.
• In Bakuman。, when Mashiro and Takagi go to the editorial office with the chapters Mashiro illustrated while hospitalized so that they can get Detective Trap reinstated, Mashiro notes his uncle's three qualifications for a mangaka (conceit, effort, and luck), and notes that manga artists need physical stamina, mental fortitude, and, above all else, guts. The editor responds that his uncle read too many sports mangas.
• In The Fantastic Adventures of Unico, Unico's response to Katy's assumptions that a seemingly-abandoned cottage in the woods is a witch's house is "I think you've read too many fairy tales."
• In The World God Only Knows, Elsie's Wild Card Excuse for the weird things Keima does on his secret mission to "capture" girls possessed by the escaped souls is that he plays too many video games.
• Mazinger Z: In the first chapter of the manga, Mazinger ends up going on a destructive rampage during Kouji's first attempt to pilot it. When some concerned citizens try to tell the police about it, their claims of a "giant monster" destroying the city are dismissed with "You watch too much TV."
• It takes a lot to be more exuberant that Judai is in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, but one-shot Society of Light antagonist Kanda, who used a game show-themed deck and seriously overplayed the part, did just that. Judai commented halfway through that he thought the guy watched too much TV.
• In A Certain Scientific Railgun, Shizuri Mugino comments that Mikoto Misaka must have played too many video games because while Mikoto is powerful, she's a little naive about how a real fight works.
• Inverted in Magical Girl Apocalypse where the protagonists are told to watch more anime after they get surprised by the magical girls transforming.
• Inverted in Yuri is My Job!. Kanoko notes to herself that since her best friend Hime "never reads comics or novels," Hime doesn't understand how the salon they work at, which is based off a prestigious all-girls school like the kind featured in Maria Watches Over Us, works.
• In My Hero Academia, in the dub of Episode 107, after Gran Torino has Aizawa come to Tartarus to appeal to the part of his old friend Shirakumo that lives on inside Kurogiri, Aizawa asks, "Do you think our connection will lead to a miracle? You've been watching too many movies."

Comic Books

• Runaways:
  Alex: Maybe being on this planet gives your parents and you these...these powers, but something in your bracelet inhibits those abilities, sorta like Kryptoni—
  Chase: You've been watching too many WB shows, bro.
• Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man: As Superman and Spider-Man explore a Lex Luthor's secret lair, Peter concludes that Lex has seen too many James Bond movies.
  Spider-Man: Your pal Luthor goes in for gizmos in a BIG WAY, Supes! You ask me, he's seen too many James Bond movies.
• Many early Fantastic Four comics would feature The Thing telling Reed Richards his latest invention was "straight out of a comic book."
• Inverted in an issue of New X-Men when Kitty implies that Colossus does not watch enough horror movies.
  Colossus: Do you want me to take Blackbird Two and rendezvous with Scott and the others?
  Kitty Pryde: You mean 'split up'? Some day I've got to sit you down in front of some good horror movies, babe.
• Inverted in the MAD parody of Under Siege. The main character says he's confused why the female lead, who hates guns and killing, would shoot and kill a terrorist in order to save the male lead's life. The female lead tells him that if he ate less and watched more TV, he'd recognize one of the oldest clichés in the book.

Fan Works

• A Game of Cat and Cat: "The Hunt Begins": Naoki gets chastised for thinking that criminals are all linked in one big hierarchy due to too many movies:
  The leader put her palm to her forehead and sighed. "What do you think this is, a movie? Did you really think that just because you know how to fight, you could just pick one punk-looking chelloveck off the street, and they'd take you straight to the nearest mob boss?! Get your bleedin' rassoodock out of the sinny, you nadmenny malchick!"
  Naoki was fluent in about a dozen demonic languages, including the weird ones like Middle Avio-Raptor and Archaic Western Haunt, but he'd never heard anything like that. "…What?"
  "Get your head out of the theater, you arrogant boy," repeated the leader scornfully.
• God Slaying Blade Works has Shirou wondering if maybe Ilya is watching too much anime every now and then, usually in response to her comparing the lives of Shirou and Godoh to the protagonists of games and mangas. Even Ilya herself wonders if she should cut back when she inadvertently starts wondering which of the two is the main character during a pitched battle.
• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness Act III: According to Hokuto, Kiria got the idea for his Evil Plan to use the Chrono Displacement spell to remake history in his image from reading manga, hence why Hokuto was convinced that such a plan was doomed from the start.
  Hokuto: I blame all those manga books you kept reading. They must have warped your common sense.
• In Cinema Snob Reviews Frozen (a fan comic where The Cinema Snob reviews Frozen), it seems Snob watches too much porn, because he has trouble looking at parts of Frozen without a dirty context. For one thing, he thought Anna was going to stick the carrot somewhere else on Olaf. Then he outright surmises he watched too much when Elsa in her slinky dress was sexier than many of the naked women he's seen.
• Riding a Sunset: Charlie tells Bumblebee to stop watching Saturday morning cartoons with Otis when he won't stop making references to Speed Racer during a street race.
• Spider-Ninja: After Donatello reveals that Petra now has hybrid human-spider DNA, Mikey freaks out thinking that she's now a were-spider. Leo tells him to stop watching so many horror movies.
• In At Chirei, Yuugi's first appearance has her get Satori to take a break from her work by telling her that the corpses (used to fuel the Hell of Blazing Fires) aren't going anywhere, then correcting herself by thinking they could go somewhere, prompting Satori to tell her she watches too many movies. How they get movies in Gensokyo is not explained.
• In The Price is Right Dean grew up believing that he had psychic powers rather than magic.
  Truthfully, there had always been a deep-seeded fear in the back of his mind that he'd eventually be discovered by the government and then taken away from his mum to be experimented on. His mum blamed it on too much television, but Dean knew she worried about such a thing happening as well.
• In Harry Potter and the Power of the Coven Ariadne elbows a snorting Olympia.
  Olympia: Hey! Do great witches elbow their boon companions?
  Ariadne: You need to read fewer romance novels and less fanfiction. Boon Companion.
• Get Busy Living:
  Sirius: You done eating?
  Harry: Yeah.
  Sirius: Good, let's head to the La-Bor-A-Tory.
  Harry: You've been watching too many Muggle cartoons.
• Victoria Potter:
  Draco: Well met, Baron.
  Daphne: Well met... you've been reading too many novels, Draco. I'm pretty sure that's not how they spoke in Anglo-Saxon times.
• In Missing Persons Cormac McLaggen opens a portal that spews out skeleton warriors.
  Harry: Neal! Merlin, it's like Dawn of the Dead (1978)!
  Neal: Aww, man! This damn idiot watches too much TV!
• Long Shadows:
  Josh: The archaeological dig in Paphos dates all the way back to prehistoric times! I can't wait to see it.
  Harry: I think you've watched Indiana Jones too many times, my love.
• Of Heat Storms and The Rough Outdoors:
  Draco: Well, whatever it is you want to do, Scorpius, you go for it.
  Scorpius: So -
  Draco: Anything aside from being a supervillain. You've been watching too much X-Men.
  Scorpius: But Mystique is so cool!
• Fate/Harem Antics: When Illya complains about her flat chest, Berserker says massaging boobs makes them bigger. Illya says she's been watching too much anime.
• Harry Potter and The Blacks Family Legacy:
  Remus: I want you to use all that you've learnt, but I want a clean match. Are you ready?
  Harry: Yep.
  Draco: Ready to take him down.
  Harry: You've been watching far too much mundane TV shows.
• Planning Ahead:
  Harry: So anyway, [Voldemort's] plan was to do some gross ritual that involved capturing me in a horribly elaborate trap that any half decent school would have been able to guard against—
  Snape: Take it up with Dumbledore.
  Harry: —and then use my blood along with his dad's bones to do some creepy resurrection thing. Seriously, has he been watching too many B-grade horror movies?
• Harry Potter and the Inconvenient Condition:
  Jasper: There's several centuries of experience in that room, not to mention two of the best young medical men in the world. I seriously doubt there's anything they can't handle, up to and including demonic possession or alien babies.
  Leah: You watch way too much TV, did you know that? Jacob, Alice's visions haven't been wrong yet. It'll be fine.
• In The Boy from Azkaban after Harry's left leg is permanently injured he decides to turn the walking stick he'll need into a staff. When Blaise states that he thought sacrifices, ritual circles and days of dancing around a fire were required, Harry comments that he's been reading too much fantasy.
• Fine Then!:
  Harry: Listen fucknut. England threw me away. They snapped my wand, telling me that I couldn't practice magic in England again. A corrupt Ministry at that. What did Fudge do when it was learned that Riddle had come back? Not a damn thing. You still have blood purists running that god forsaken place, and there is no way in hell that my wife and I are going to return there. So you can take your greater good, shine it up really sparkly, turn that son of a bitch sideways and stick it up your geriatric ass!
  Remus: You watch too much Tele, Harry.

Films — Live-Action

• Pan's Labyrinth: Every time Ofelia says something about the Faun and her being Princess Moanna, Captain Vidal and Mercedes tell her she reads too many Fairy Tales.
• Sleepless in Seattle: "You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie."
• Inverted in Mortal Kombat: The Movie. In a very Genre Blind moment, Liu Kang attacks a "simple beggar" who the monks introduce as the thunder god Raiden. He promptly gets his ass handed to him, and the head monk apologizes by invoking this:
  Spare him, Lord Raiden. American life has enfeebled his mind; too much television!
• Subverted in Hot Fuzz, after Sgt. Angel tells Skinner what he thinks happened with the "accidents":
  Skinner: I think you've been watching too many films.
  Danny: [raises his hand] No, actually, he hasn't.
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: It's said that Mirage and Bumblebee like watching movies at drive-in theaters. When Bee won't stop quoting movie lines, Optimus tells him he's not allowed to go to drive-in theaters anymore. Cue sad "beep-boop" noises from 'Bee.
• The Karate Kid (1984): After the eponymous kid, Daniel, expresses his naïve notions of the origins of karate, Mr. Miyagi says, "You, too much TV." Daniel replies with "That's what my mother tells me," indicating that perhaps his mother suffers from this trope instead.
• Inverted in the John Hughes movie Some Kind of Wonderful, during the "kissing practice" scene:
  Watts: She'll probably do this. [puts her arms around Keith's shoulders]
  Keith: How do you know all this?
  Watts: [getting annoyed] ...I watch a lot of TV.
• There's a sort of inversion in Galaxy Quest:
  Guy: Did you guys ever even watch the show?
• "You've seen one too many movies." — Sidney to the killer in the original Scream (1996).
• Natural Born Killers — Mickey and Mallory appear to have the words "Too Much TV" projected onto their shirts while on hallucinogenics.
• Combined with an Aside Glance in Inspector Gadget (1999): "Somebody's been watching too many Saturday morning cartoons!"
• Silver Streak has Gene Wilder in a shoot out with the bad guys. It starts out like a regular movie shoot out, but then the gun he's using runs out of ammo in a realistic amount of time. Richard Pryor yells, "What do you think this is — a western???"
• This exchange in The Star Chamber, when Detectives Wiggan and Mackey are about to pursue Hector Andujar:
  Wiggan: You got a hunch, right?
  Mackey: Right.
  Wiggan: Instinct, right?
  Mackey: Right.
  Wiggan: You've been watchin' too much television again.
• Inverted in Bruce Almighty, where God tells Bruce to watch the Discovery Channel more often after Bruce fails to identify their location as Mount Everest.
• Mulholland Falls: Subverted. Madsen's taunts Penn's character that he'd seen too many movies when trying to shoot open the gate to the Forbidden Zone. It turned out to be the better option after all.
• In Monkey Business, Groucho Marx uses this to admonish a gangster:
  "Nice old piece of melodrama, kidnapping a girl. You've been reading too many dime novels."

Literature

• In a few of the Harry Potter novels, Ron tells Hermione, "You read too much." In this case he was talking about textbooks, so she was usually right.
• Haruhi Suzumiya: In "Remote Island Syndrome", Kyon tells Haruhi, "you read too many mystery novels" in the most varied manner at least once every three minutes, due to her constantly trying to predict a mystery just because they're vacationing on a remote island. Naturally, by the end, they have a murder mystery on their hands.
• In Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!, Mahiro tells Nyarko things like "You sound like a character from a cancelled series" and "Quit acting like this is the final episode of a TV show!"
• In Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Cabin 33 from her Saint-Germain stories, the vampire Saint-Germain says "You have been watching too many Hammer movies" to the other vampire that he confronts.
• In Don Quixote, while he never says it outright, Sancho Panza's general attitude towards Don Quixote is fairly clearly "You read too many Chivalric Romances." Even so, there are some examples that are very near to this situation, and the fact that Don Quixote read too much and that drove him to believe that he was a knight errant is the core of the novel, and is lampshaded by the narrator since the very beginning (Chapter I Part I):
  "In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits."
• The Doctor gets accused of watching too much TV (too; see below, under Live-Action TV) in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Taking of Planet Five.
  "I'd prefer reptiles: eighty-seventh-century Earth Reptiles with transforming T. rex time machines." His face lit up.[...]
  "Someone," Compassion said, "has been watching too much Saturday-morning TV."
  The Doctor shrugged. "There was a time when it always seemed to be Saturday when I was on Earth, and the children's programmes were excellent, if my memory doesn't cheat." He made folding motions with his hand and muttered something that sounded to Fitz like "robots in disguise". The Doctor grinned, disarmingly. "My third childhood is showing."
• In Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, the arrival of the alien Overlords is compared to an SF novel.
• Used a couple of times by Agatha Christie:
  • In "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding", Hercule Poirot tells Annie she watches too many films, or perhaps the television.
  • In The Murder of the Links, Poirot replies to Hastings's theory with "I think you should write for the cinema."
  • Partners in Crime:
    • Tommy's reaction to his wife's wild ideas about having adventures is "Tuppence, what have you been reading?"
    • Tommy complains that Albert has come back from the cinema attempting to imitate The Jeeves. When they take over the International Detective Agency, he shifts personas to an equally stereotyped office boy, a role he fits rather better.
    • While the main purpose of the book is to pastiche various styles of detective fiction, occasionally the couple remind each other that they can't expect things to work the same way they do in the stories.
• In the Left Behind book Desecration, when George Sebastian was captured and interrogated by Global Community agents who end up doing things like blowing smoke in his face to get him to talk, he thinks that his captors have watched too many movies.
• In Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney quickly deduces that Catherine has been reading the plot of one of her Gothic novels when he finds her snooping around his late mother's rooms, and that she's on the verge of concluding his father is a wicked murderer. As he himself read them, his guess is quite accurate, and he politely chides her for thinking that a family in civilized, modern England would act like the characters in one of those books, and she's quite ashamed.
• John Neufield's 1969 YA novel Lisa, Bright & Dark has the title character concerned that she is losing her mind (she may be bipolar). She can't get her superficial, socialite parents to listen; they say "You've seen too many movies."
• McAuslan. When his unit is posted to a desert fort and part of their remit is to put down any "native uprisings", MacNeill concludes that some staff officer has been watching The Desert Song. The natives of course have no interest in such things, as long as the soldiers aren't silly enough to antagonize them. It's the city dwellers who are affected by nationalistic anti-British sentiment.
• In Lawrence Block's The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart Carolyn states that Bernie has been watching too many Humphrey Bogart movies after he quotes The Maltese Falcon during a drunken rant.

Live-Action TV

• Are You Afraid of the Dark?: Some construction workers find a stolen Egyptian coffin in a basement.
  Worker: Aren't these things supposed to have curses on them?
  Other Worker: You watch too many movies.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer :
  • In "I, Robot, You, Jane":
    Giles: Couldn't you just stop Moloch by, by entering some computer virus?
    Jenny Calender: You've seen way too many movies.
  • In the unaired pilot, a random vampire pulls this on Buffy herself.
    "I don't suppose you'd be sweeties and attack me one at a time?"
    "You watch too many movies."
    "You can never watch too many movies!"
• Charmed: In "The Good, the Bad, and the Cursed", Prue and Cole end up in The Wild West. They enter a bar and Prue tries to order moonshine, but the bartender has no idea what that is. Cole says she's watched too many Westerns and orders whiskey for them.
• On two occasions in the third season of Chuck, Charles Bartowski has told Devon that he watches too many movies: once when he asked if someone was going to assassinate Chuck after he washed out of a training program, and again when he requested to be taken to a secret base. Of course, there actually was a secret base, and Bartowski was at least worried about the possibility of an assassination attempt.
• Dad's Army. Walmington-on-Sea is hosting the first US troops on British soil, so Captain Mainwaring asks Sgt. Wilson how he should greet them. Wilson suggests, "Howdy, partner, put it there" while offering to shake hands. Mainwaring scoffs at this, saying he's been watching too many cowboy movies. This becomes the inevitable Brick Joke when the American captain enters and holds out his hand to Mainwaring. "Howdy partner, put it there!"
• Doctor Who: In "The Sound of Drums", the Doctor says "You've been watching too much TV" when Martha asks him if the Master is his brother. Amusingly, in an early script of the Eighth Doctor TV movie, they were indeed brothers.
• The Dresden Files:
  Harry: [after killing a vampire] I always expect them to burst into flames.
  "You've seen too many movies."
• In Emergency!, in the fourth-season episode "Details," a patient at Rampart named Mr. Dando thinks (in fact, is convinced) he has stomach cancer; however, Drs. Early and Brackett tell him otherwise (in fact, 8 other patients before him were convinced in the same way). Dr. Brackett gives him the good news (Dando asked how long he had to live): "At the outside, I'd say, 30, maybe 35 years." Brackett also said, "You don't have a fatal disease." The true diagnosis, according to Brackett, is a made-up disease called "videochondriasis" (Early agrees with that when Brackett asks him). Dando asks what that is, and Brackett clarifies: "Well, in layman's terms, too much television." Dando thinks it's from the radiation from the set, but Brackett says it's from too much of a specific kind of television: "No, from medical shows." Early then asked Dando if he saw a fake medical show called Stomach Pump the week prior to Dando coming in; Dando says he did, and Brackett then says that 8 others before Dando did as well, and were also convinced they had stomach cancer. Early says that of all of them (he and the 8 others) the "videochondriasis" diagnosis was the same. Dando does not get off entirely scott-free; he did have an infected ear. Brackett prescribes him something for the infected ear, and then he and Early leave. Early then humorously suggests another kind of television: situation comedy.
• In one episode of Friends, Chandler and Joey stumble onto a cable porn channel they aren't paying for, and refuse to turn it off for fear that if they do they'll lose it forever. By the end of the episode, they start to lose their sense of reality and start expecting women to throw themselves at them for no reason, making them finally decide they need to turn off the porn.
• On the Good Eats episode centered around punch, Alton mentions that one of the five key ingredients of a classic punch (in this case, Long Island iced tea) is spice, causing his assistant to intone "He who controls the Spice controls the universe!". Alton responds by telling him to lay off the Science Fiction, to which he replies "The Spice must flow."
• In Plain Sight: "You've been watching too much Law & Order." What's weird is that the show had a mini-crossover with Law & Order: Criminal Intent, possibly establishing the latter as a Reality TV show in IPS's universe.
• In one Judge Judy case, the Judge admonishes a young defendant who was suing a police officer (who had stopped her for speeding) for emotional distress because she felt he was "disrespectful" to her with, "You've been living in L.A. too long. I think you should probably go live somewhere else."
• Knight Rider: In "Good Day at White Rock", Michael Knight runs afoul of some criminal bikers. They act like such cliched bad guys that Michael mocks them by saying they probably watched too many bad movies.
• There's an episode of The Sopranos actually titled "Watching Too Much Television". In it, Adriana comes up with the idea of getting married immediately to Christopher and thus not having to testify against him because of Spousal Privilege, after seeing the trope invoked on an episode of Murder One. However, an actual lawyer eventually explains to her that the law doesn't work in real life like on TV.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Cody, normally the sane one, hopes their parents will get back together on Christmas, like the miracle that happens in all those Christmas specials on TV.
  Zack: You watch way too much TV.
• In the Supernatural episode "Heaven and Hell", Dean's mind immediately jumps to a Pizza Boy Special Delivery scenario when Sam uses the word "daddy" in describing a case, and replies with the page quote. Note also Sam's use of the word "again", as if this is a recurring problem with Dean. A later scene veers even closer to the related trope This Is Reality:
  [Sam, Dean, Anna the angel, and Ruby the demon are in the Impala. Dean looks at Anna and Ruby in the backseat, amused]
  Ruby: What?
  Dean: Nothing. It's just an angel and a demon, riding in the back seat. [chuckles] It's like the setup to a bad joke. Or a Penthouse Forum letter.
  Sam: Dude. Reality... porn.
  Dean: You call this reality?
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street", when the power goes off in a neighborhood, a boy claims that the power could be the result of aliens who are trying to make them stay there. One of the neighbors heckles the boy for "reading too many comic books".
• In the pilot episode of Ultraman 80, the titular Ultra, posing as a humble schoolteacher named Takeshi Yamato, can sense the Minus Energy that spawns kaiju. But since there haven't been any kaiju attacks for 5 years in-universe, nobody believes him when he claims he can sense a kaiju attack about to happen - and the school's principal straight-up asks Yamato, "Have you been reading too much Manga?"

Music

• "She Watch Channel Zero" by Public Enemy from their album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
• "Doris Day" by Doe Maar, a song with the message that people should stop bickering about bad programming on TV and go out to a party and have fun.
• "I'm The Slime" by Frank Zappa from Over-Nite Sensation is an anti-television song.

Newspaper Comics

• In one installment of For Better or for Worse, Elly overhears the sex sounds from the sexually explicit Skinemax movie that Michael's watching and then comes into the living room to change the channel explaining:
  Elly: That is not for young children. I'm changing the channel!
  Michael: But mom!
  Elly: It's garbage Michael! Real relationships aren't like that!

Radio

• Subverted on Adventures in Odyssey when some money turns up missing from the register, and Eugene and Connie turn paranoid and take drastic measures:
  Whit: Hiding behind the counter with handcuffs...Eugene, you've been reading too many detective stories.
  Eugene: I don't read them at all.
  Whit: Maybe you should — then you wouldn't come up with such silly ideas.

Video Games

• During one point in Atelier Rorona, Rorona asks Sterk if knights like him do thinks like saving princess and slaying dragons. He tells her that his job is much more mundane than that, and that she reads too many fantasy books if she thinks that's what knights like him do all the time.
• In Mass Effect, Corporal Richard L. Jenkins and Dr. Chakwas are discussing the Spectres before the start of the mission. Though Jenkins' statements are remarkably prescient, he spends a lot of time talking about how Spectres are above the law and can only be policed by one of their own. Dr. Chakwas says that he is confusing the Spectres with the way they are presented in the media, and accuses him of watching too much spy fiction.
• In The World Ends with You, if you challenge Another Day Joshua to a game of Tin Pin Slammer, he'll go off on a tangent about how we all perceive the world in our own way, seeing things different from how they are. Neku's reaction? "Kid plays too much video games."
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: In one of the later Allied missions in Yuri's Revenge, the enemy forces suddenly start throwing Flying Saucers at your base. General Carville's reaction is that either they've got an Alien Invasion to deal with, or Yuri's been watching too much TV.
• In Persona 5, in Makoto's Confidant, she befriends a classmate named Eiko, then spends the latter half of the Confidant investigating Eiko's host boyfriend to make sure he isn't taking advantage of her. In her Rank 7 event, Makoto, not having uncovered any information that would confirm her suspicions about Eiko's boyfriend, asks "Was I just biased to think that all he wants from Eiko is money?" One possible response is "You watch too many soap operas," and Makoto will admit that the idea of an immoral host preying on woman does sound like it comes from TV.
• In No More Heroes, Travis Touchdown's line to Shinobu in a cutscene where she starts attacking him is this: "Something tells me you watch too many samurai movies, little girl."
• In Warframe, catching vasca-infected kavats wandering the Plains of Eidolon at night may occasionally prompt Master Teasonai to talk about occasional Offworlders trying to get infected with the vasca virus (which gives kavats obvious vampiric features like craving for blood) hoping to become immortal, suggesting they must've been reading "Too many novels, I think."

Visual Novels

• In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, after Trucy describes a spy as "somebody who infiltrates a foreign country, carries out dangerous missions, and always gets the girl", Phoenix thinks to himself "Someone's watching way too many late-night movies."
• In Spirit Hunter: NG, when Akira asks Rosé if there's anything that can assist him against spirits, such as scattering salt or using incense, she remarks that he's read too many comics and that there's not really anything to give them an upper-hand against a vengeful ghost.

Webcomics

• Samantha of Penny and Aggie, when conspiring with other girls to defeat Penny as the most popular teen in town, can only think of such ideas as cutting breast-holes in her blouses and having a boy pretend-seduce her on hidden camera. An exasperated Meg finally says to her, "Maybe we could rip off a movie plot."
• In Schlock Mercenary, when Andy was first applying for a position in Tagon's Toughs, he showed off his four arms, claiming that they would let him wield four guns at once. Thurl pointed out that since he only had two eyes, both in the front of his head, he would still only be able to hit one target, no matter how many guns he pointed at it, and then invoked this trope:
  Andy: ...oh.
  Thurl: Don't sweat it. I'll put down "very enthusiastic" and "seen too many John Woo movies". You're in.
• Times Like This:
  Matt: YAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!
  Bethany: He's been watching too much CSI: Miami, hasn't he...

Web Originals

• Sailor Nothing: After Aki makes a Diving Save and is preparing to die Heroic Sacrifice style (you can picture the Pietà Plagiarism clear as day), Shin slaps her awake, scolds her for watching too many movies, and prepares to bind up her wounds.

Web Videos

• In Kevin Smith's "True Hollywood Story" of his involvement with the aborted Superman Lives film project, he recalls how producer Jon Peters claimed that both spiders and polar bears were "the fiercest killers in the animal kingdom." Says Kevin, "And at this point, I'm like, 'This dude has way too much access to the Discovery Channel!'"

Western Animation

• Danny Phantom, in the Incredible Shrinking Man episode:
  Dash: This is a mousehole? Where's the matchbox sofa and the coffee table made from a spool of thread?
  Danny: You watch way too many cartoons.
• Rugrats: Lil's been gone for most of the episode chasing butterflies, but the others thought she'd been turned into a butterfly, so when she reappears...
  Phil: What was it like?
  Chuckie: Did it hurt?
  Tommy: Did you like being a butterfly?
  Lil: You guys have been watching too many cartoons.
  • Later echoed by Drew in the same episode when Angelica asks Lil similar questions.
• A Teen Titans (2003) episode centered on the gang being trapped in the TV world. Once they all make it out by the end, they comment that teammate Beast Boy watches too much TV. Of course, the fact he watched so much TV is basically what got them out of there.
• In the Super Mario World episode "Rock TV", as the Mario Bros. are lining up to buy a TV from the salesman (actually a disguised Bowser), they make this observation:
  Luigi: Hey, Mario, how come his lips aren't moving when he talks?
  Mario: Maybe he's been watching too many cartoons.
• Jackie Chan Adventures:
  • This exchange at the start of the Chinese Vampire episode.
  Jade: This place is like... Chinese Transylvania! Cool!
  Jackie: You have seen too many movies, Jade.
  • Jackie often dismisses his niece's concerns with the same line... And most of the time, Jade's claims are proven right.
• Justice League:
  • Green Lantern and Flash in "The Brave and the Bold", although the "zombies" are just Gorilla Grodd's brainwashed minions:
    Flash: Usually when it's this quiet, flesh-eating zombies appear.
    Green Lantern: You watch too many horror movi— [mindless zombies are heard]
    Flash: Or maybe you don't watch enough.
  • Inverted in "Wild Cards":
    Joker: I can't believe he didn't suspect a trap. See what happens when you don't watch enough television?
• During the seventh season of Voltron: Legendary Defender, the Paladins (along with a few friends) get kidnapped by Space Pirates and all get locked up in the same cell. Lance tries to find a secret exit in the wall, and Keith informs him that he's watched too many movies.
• Code Lyoko
  • In "XANA Awakens", Sissi remarks that Ulrich had took Odd's dog, Kiwi, to do some horrible science experiment — which is close to the truth since Ulrich intended to use the dog as a lab rat for the scanner to Lyoko. Odd remarks that Sissi watches too many horror movies — coming from the guy who would reference horror movies later on. Sissi makes a reference to a ritual sacrifice — another well known horror movie plot.
  • And then there's that episode where XANA made robot duplicates of Kiwi and Yumi had to explain the situation, Jim blames her behavior on too many "Japanese mangoes".
• In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) episode "A Better Mousetrap", while the Turtles are wall-crawling to catch up with the Mouser that Donatello rebuilt, we get this exchange.
  Michelangelo: Next time, we should leave the wall-crawling to the dude in red and blue tights.
  Leonardo: You read way too many comic books.
  • In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) episode "Rise Of The Dark Turtle", Donatello suffers an electrocution that causes him to become more aggressive and vicious, soon adopting the Batman-esque moniker of "The Dark Turtle". When Shredder meets Don, he remarks, "You've been watching too much TV."
• From Hey Arnold! as Arnold and Gerald discuss the problem of Gerald's changing voice affecting his singing.
  Arnold: It's not insurmountable.
  Gerald: "Insurmountable"? Man, you read too much.
• Time Warp Trio parodies the phrase in one episode by imagining its Ancient Mesopotamian predecessor: "You've been reading too much epic poetry!"
• In the Looney Tunes cartoon, "Punch Trunk", which features people's encounters with a miniature elephant and their reactions, a little girl tells her mother that there's an elephant in her dollhouse. The mother rolls her eyes and says, "Too much television," and puts her back in bed.
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!: In "Toad Warriors", Toad gets empowered by a Starman and starts swaggering and introduces himself like a superhero. Mario commented Toad may have watched too much TV.
• The Simpsons: When Marge thinks that Homer is hiding out in the basement during "Burns Baby Burns," he dismissively replies that she's "been reading too many hideout books."
• The Hair Bear Bunch: In "King Klong vs. the Masked Marvel," the bears enter Bananas the Gorilla in the title match. At the introductions, Bananas (who is masked as well) gets carried away with his species.
  Hair Bear: Bananas, Bananas! Stop makin' a monkey out of yourself. Act human!
  Bananas: Sorry, Hair. I guess I've been watching too many jungle movies on television.

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