I'm Not Doing That Again

I can never go that fast again. If I do... I don't think I'm coming back

—Flash, Justice League Unlimited

"Please don't do that again."

"I agree."

—Pyro and Wolverine in the second X-Men movie, after Jean Grey performs maneuvers to evade missiles.

A stock phrase used after the hero has done some daring do that obviously was very painful and/or taxing. In saying this, the Hero is acknowledging that he is not open to repeating the experience as he tries to recover.

It's a form of Lampshade Hanging to the kind of exaggerated heroics often displayed in action shows. Can also be used tongue-in-cheek in response to a particularly absurd suggestion.

Contrast with Wasn't That Fun?.

Examples of I'm Not Doing That Again include:

Advertising

• In a particularly Squick-y example from a Quizno's commercial, a talking oven tries to coax a guy into doing some unnamed act. The man looks down at his crotch and says, "I'm not doing that again. That burned."

Film

• Used in the movie Jackass: Number Two, during the "Medicine Ball Dodgeball (in the dark)" stunt. After asking how it turned out after getting beaned every which way with medicine balls, Chris Pontius says, "That was fun. Let's never do that again."
• X-Men The Last Stand: Bobby after being phased though the ground and back out again.
• Mortal Kombat: Johnny Cage has a bad day during filming because the stuntmen kept screwing things up and didn't want to redo the scene again.

Jokes

• A doe walks out of the woods and says, "That's the last time I do that for two bucks!"

Literature

• Gets used several times in Animorphs, usually involving Marco.

Marco: That was fun. Let's never, ever, do it again.
Tobias: Ever.
Ax: Repetition of that activity would be a very bad idea.

• • Ax also used this Stock Phrase ("I will not do this again") in a more dramatic, Shoot the Dog context, when the plan involved him capturing Chapman and interrogating him in the To the Pain style for hours on end.

Live Action Television

• Jack Harkness casually drops this in while referring to pregnancy in the Torchwood episode "Everything Changes".
• In one episode of WKRP in Cincinnati Herb gets talked into pretending to be gay and hitting on another guy. The attempt fails, and when he gets back: "I am never doing that again! I get enough rejection from women!"

Video Games

• Taken to an extreme by Sharwyn in Neverwinter Nights: "Dying was unpleasant, to say the least. Let's not do that again, shall we?"
• In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, if you take Flurrie through the plumbing via the toilet in Chapter 3 when you're taken into a more dilapidated locker room than the one you were in at first, she requests that she never does that again.

Web Animation

• Strong Bad says this after he removes his mask to prove that it is, in fact, his face, and that there's nothing but bone, muscle, and veins beneath it. Naturally, he does this while sitting in a high-backed chair, so the audience only sees a tiny, tiny sliver and hears the screaming.

Web Comics

• Goblin Hollow: A teleportation incident here ^{[dead link]}

Western Animation

• In a "Frogger" episode on Saturday Supercade, Frogger used his tongue to prevent a fatal accident. Unfortunately, the only thing he can latch onto is a cactus and afterward, his tongue is painfully perforated with cactus needles. Cue trope title.
• In one Justice League episode, Metamorpho apparently sacrificed his life to stop a monster. Fortunately, Metamorpho is able to reconstitute himself with a satisified but weary comment, "I'm not doing that again."
  • And when the Flash finally hits top speed to defeat the Big Bad and the rest of the Justice League pulls him from the brink, we get the page quote. Earlier in the same episode, this is his reaction to the way he took out his evil, Braniac-generated doppelganger (punching through its chest and vibrating until it exploded, knocking him for a loop in the process).
• In the Challenge of the Go Bots episode "Et Tu, Cy-Kill?" Leader-1 ends up having to fly in jet mode, at jet speeds, through a huge corridor filled with stone columns, dodging all of them. Afterward he transforms, falls to his knees, and says, "I couldn't do that twice."