Lame Excuse

I'd love to go hang out, but I have go to sit in my house by myself...

—Hyperbole and a Half

So Alice needs Bob to do some yardwork. Bob would rather continue being lazy. So what does Bob do?

Bob: Uh... I can't. I'm allergic to grass. And rakes.

The injury or disease may or may not be largely inhibiting or even real. The 'faker' may have to Maintain the Lie in order to truly get away with his/her scheme. Said liar may also be subject to Laser-Guided Karma.

An extension of this could be when it turns out to actually be a big deal.

See also the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, a Lame Excuse used to get someone else in trouble. When the Lame Excuse is simply a way for the person to excuse him/herself from the room, they typically say something like "I Need to Go Iron My Dog."

Examples of Lame Excuse include:

Anime

• In Ichigo Mashimaro, Miu, in a bid for attention, pretends to be ill briefly (while Chika really is)... but ends up actually getting a serious fever.

Comic Books

• In an issue of Runaways, a hostage shouts, "Don't shoot me! I have diabetes!"

Film

• Pocahontas: "I'd help you to dig, boys/but I've got this crick in me spine."
• Dr. Strangelove - Lionel Mandrake - "I'd love to come, Jack, but you see, the thing is, the string's...gone out...in my leg!" A literal Lame Excuse.

Literature

• Hank the Cowdog has Drover, who often complains of a bad leg when put under pressure.
• In Danny Wallace's autobiographical book Yes Man, it's mentioned that before the events of the book, he'd been making up a lot of excuses to avoid going out with friends. These included saying that he couldn't come out because he'd won a competition to meet Lionel Richie, and claiming that he'd accidentally reversed all his leg joints. In the prequel book Join Me (also autobiographical), there was an especially hilarious incident of this, where Danny was pointing at a woman on the plane and mouthing "join me", and her son asked him why he was doing this. His response? "Sorry. My leg hurts."
• In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, the father Anse claims he can't maintain his crops because sweating will kill him. It's not clear whether he actually believes this or is just using it to get out of work.
• In Stephen King's IT, Richie says he can't help dig a hole because he's "got a bone in his leg."

Live Action TV

• Arfur Daley in Minder always says his back hurts in order to get Terry to do all the hard work.
• Mr Lucas of Are You Being Served tries to fake being sick so he can go watch a movie. Among other things, he tries the trick of sticking soap in his mouth. It was supposed to go under his tongue, but he swallowed it instead. He persuades Captain Peacock to send for the medical staff, as bubbles from his hiccups float by, prompting Captain Peacock to add:

Captain Peacock: ...and a loofah.

• Basil Fawlty, the lead character of Fawlty Towers, often uses the excuse of "the old leg wound playing up" to get out of dealing with difficult customers.
• Father Ted, after Ted's offensive "Chinaman" impersonation is witnessed by a Chinese family:

Ted: And basically if I don't stretch my eyes like that from time to time I get this thing the doctor calls "Fat Eyes".
(Their car speeds away, spraying Ted with mud)
Ted: (waving at the car) I hope you wouldn't think it'd be anything of a racial nature! Thanks for being so understanding, see you again, bye!

• Subverted in Castle: After having a big fight the night before, Beckett gives Castle a frosty reception when he shows up at her desk the next day. Castle claims he's just looking for his sunglasses. Beckett sneers that that has to be the lamest excuse she's ever... she doesn't get to finish, because Castle icily lifts his sunglasses off her desk and shows them to her, leaving her with some egg on face.
  • Played with in another episode, after Beckett's apartment has been blown up and Castle has invited her in to stay the night; Castle's mother Martha encounters Beckett cooking breakfast in her pajamas, and in order to forestall the obvious alternative explanation, Beckett blurts out that she's there "on orders from the FBI." It's the truth, sort of, but it certainly sounds like a Lame Excuse:

Martha: Darling, I'm not one to judge.

• The Dead Parrot sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus is a good example that a bizarrely large segment of the audience misses. Graham Chapman Michael Palin knows the parrot is dead, so virtually everything he says is a Lame Excuse.
  • This is the whole point of the sketch; the shopkeeper's providing Lame Excuses, the customer knows the shopkeeper's providing Lame Excuses, the shopkeeper knows that the customer knows, and so on.
• In an episode of the The Muppet Show, Ms Piggy asks one of the other members of the cast to watch her dog while she's out on the stage. Each person there proceeds to invent a lame excuse to fob the task onto someone else.
  • Possibly subverted with Gonzo's excuse "Oh My God! I left an anvil in the oven!", as given the nature of some of his acts, his excuse might actually have been true. Though the question of what he was planning to do with a freshly baked anvil was never answered.
• In Top Gear's race across London, Richard finished first on a bike, then Jeremy in a speedboat, the Stig on public transport, and then, much later, James in a car. While they make reasonable excuses for James being so late such as the time lapse being misleading, they then delve into the facetious excuses to save face, such as claiming that Hammond died in a crash and that London doesn't even have a river.

Theater

• The play Sheik, Rattle and Roll has a pair of cowardly guards as characters. At one point when ordered to attack someone, one of them yells, "Oh! My gammy leg!" and clutches his leg. A second later, the other shouts, "Oh! My dandruff!" and clutches his head.
• In the musical, Next to Normal, Natalie gives a series of these during the song "Gonna be Good" so that her father will not have her boyfriend Henry stay for dinner.

Natalie: Oh Dad, Henry can't stay he's got...homework...surgery...Rabies!

Video Games

• In The Sims, if you try to call over a person you're not very close to, they'll often give one of these by way of rejection. Unless they just outright say 'no', anyway.

"I can't come, I'm waiting for the telephone repairman."

Web Comics

• Guttersnipe features this rather impressive case:

"If these ain't alkyhol, then why does they got X's on 'em?"
"Uh ... Why, because this water is highly pornographic!"

• The Noob has a guild (ZERG) running lame excuse school.

Web Original

• In the Rooster Teeth Short 'Catch', Matt tries to reverse the order they throw the ball in, because he's sick of baseballs being thrown at his head by Nathan. Joel insists they can't switch because the rotation of the earth doesn't allow for it.
• Also in a Rooster Teeth creation, Red vs Blue, the character Caboose says, "I am allergic to things I do not want to do." The way he says it with complete seriousness might even suggest he believes it himself (his intelligence is certainly faulty enough for it to seem plausible to him).
• It's my cousin. He can talk now. It's actually miraculous.
• Disney Star Wars is Dumb blog has categories "Media Excuses" and "Rian Johnson Explanation Tour" dedicated to lame excuses for Disney Star Wars not doing well to an embarrassing extent. Because if despite all the promotion and early high ratings from the professional shills, in the third week The Last Jedi "dropped to 3rd place, behind the 4th sequel in a low budget horror franchise", that's... really awkward clearly caused by other people making movies Disney did not "reboot" yet. Including the first excuses for Solo appearing even before it had a chance to "unexpectedly" sink. And later excuses for Star Wars toy sales by pure coincidence following the trend toward the sea bottom. And then, of course, whom to blame when it turns out even in Disney natural consequences of this development are not completely banished from reality by the excuses.

Web Animation

• The Leet World's Chet as he tries to avoid "black hole where fun goes to die" Asher:

Asher: "Hello, Chet and Player. Your presence is required in the living room for an educational lecture on the proper use and maintenance of your firearms."
Chet: "Uuhh, as awesome as that sounds, I have, like, this condition where blood shoots out of my eyes if I learn too much or someting, so... I gotta blaze!"

Western Animation

• In The Simpsons Bart once tries "Oh, my ovaries!"
  • Also, when Ned Flanders asks Homer to baby-sit for Rod and Tod because Ned has to sort out the liberation of Maude, who has been taken hostage in Holy Land, Homer answers: "Uh, gee, I'd really love to want to help you, Flanders, but...Uh, Marge was taken prisoner in the...Holy Land..."
• One episode of Rugrats had Grandpa do this. As a result. the babies tried to help him get better.
• Scooby Doo often pretended to be injured, hoping to get out of helping to solve the mystery at hand.
  • Referenced in the Theme Song:

"Come on, Scooby Doo/I see you/Pretending you've got a sliver/You're not fooling me/'Cause I can see/The way you shake and shiver"

• The Horrible Histories animated program featured a smart-mouth jerk attempting to get out of Grecian-style wrestling by claiming to have sprained his oesophagus.
• On Family Guy, Peter Griffin constantly takes this Up to Eleven:

"I will not be coming to work today, I was in a terrible plane crash. My entire family was killed and I am a vegetable. I'll see you tomorrow."

• Doug tried to pull one of these at Beebe's pool party because he was embarrassed about how he looked in a swimsuit, only to find out everyone else was doing the exact same thing. The lamest excuse being "It's way too hot for a swim." And Beebe, a true hostess, wasn't going to go in the pool until everyone else did. Finally, it was up to Doug to snap everyone out of it.