Sophisticated As Hell

'Yes, well, legibility and correct punctuation might not be "street"... but that's how I roll, motherfucker.'

"You just used 'obviate' and 'ain't' in the same sentence."

—Harry Dresden, Ghost Story

Language is linear. Use and context establish tone, with an expectation for its continuation. When one suddenly uses a register, dialect, or vocabulary at a significant distance from that previously employed, the effect is fuckin' weird.

There's a certain humour in playing with different levels of language use, and the common trick is to mix "sophisticated" language (such as Spock Speak or Antiquated Linguistics) with "unsophisticated" language (such as the Cluster F-Bomb or Totally Radical) with the necessary awkwardness on both sides. Common examples include:

  • A quote (mis)attribution ("In the words of the great Oscar Wilde, STFU n00b").
  • Suggesting a "technical", "professional", or obscure foreign term, followed by slang or profanity ("Your engine is what we in the business describe as 'completely screwed'." "He's what Freud used to call 'spooky'." "As the French say, you, my friend, are le utter cock.") or following a lengthy formal or descriptive analysis.
  • Slang speech or vulgarity is quoted in an official capacity or environment ("Following the officer's formal warning, the accused threatened to 'pop a motherfuckin cap' in the officer's posterior").
  • Slang delivered innocuously in a formal speech, especially from someone upperclass.
  • An attempt at Jive Turkey slang couched in academic or formal terminology, often drifting into Totally Radical.
  • A normally formal character resorting to profanity due to intense circumstances. (see:Precision F-Strike).

A subtrope of Bathos.

Compare Buffy-Speak, Jive Turkey, Delusions of Eloquence, Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick. Not to be mistaken by name for Wicked Cultured. Precision F-Strike is a subtrope of this trope done well. With Due Respect is a common way of getting to this trope.

Contrast with Expospeak Gag, where a slangy phrase is disguised in excessively formal language (although they can overlap if the speaker then "clarifies" what they were saying, probably while raising an eyebrow).

Examples of Sophisticated As Hell include:

Anime and Manga

Eda: What the hell's your problem?! Don't you know what Jesus said in Luke 11? "Don't trouble me. The door's locked" — got that, bitch?

Shigure: We have just witnessed what I like to call misdirected rage. I believe the technical term is "being an ass"...


Comic Books

Spider: Watch it, or she'll defenestrate you. And you wouldn't want anything to happen to your fenestrates, would you?

  • Calvin and Hobbes has done this at least once. Bill Watterson commented that he liked Calvin's ability to precisely articulate stupid ideas using smart language.

Hobbes: Whatcha doin'?
Calvin: Looking for frogs.
Hobbes: How come?
Calvin: I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul.
Hobbes: Ah, but of course.
Calvin: My mandate also includes weird bugs.

    • Calvin's eloquent poem about a spider's web which abruptly ends in "Eew, look at that spider suck out that bug's juices!"
    • Another one when Moe attempts to demand money:

Calvin: Your simian countenance suggests a heritage unusually rich in species diversity.
Moe: What?
Calvin (hands over quarter): Here you go. (To reader) That was worth 25 cents.

    • The poem "A Nauseous Nocturne" does this throughout without breaking style somehow:

HEY! WAKE UP YOU STUPID CRETIN! YOU GONNA SLEEP WHILE I GET EATEN?!
 Suddenly the monster knows I'm not alone!
 There's an animal in bed with me! An awful beast he did not see!
 The monster never would've come if he had known!
 The monster, in his consternation, demonstrates defenestration
 And runs and runs and runs and runs away.

  • In the Hellblazer comic "Regeneration," we get this little line in a flashback:

Plague Doctor: By the order of His Majesty, Charles Stuart, King of England, Scotland and Ireland in this Year of Our Lord 1665, I am authorised to assess the people of this household. Now open the fucking door.

  • Oyuki-chan from Empowered does this all the time (which is why she's quite commonly referred to as "████ing Oyuki-chan"). The reason for this habit is not clear yet.
  • In The Invisibles, Baron Guedhe, aka, Jim Crow, delivers this powerful one liner.

Jim Crow: Don't you know? I'm Papa Gay-Day. I'm Baron Samedi, Baron Piquant and Baron Cimitière. I am Death. And you ass is mine.

Behold Hercules. He's... angry. His brother, Ares, didst shoot him up with hydra blood. Hydra blood doth do wonky things to Herc. So whilst Amadeus Cho (with pup in tow) attempts to steal yon ship of stone... Herc's beating the holy-living snot out of anyone he can find.

  • The British adult-humour comic Viz does this on occasion.
  • During the Fear Itself storyline, Thor (who, as an Asgardian, makes prevalent use of Antiquated Linguistics, remember) delivers one to the Hulk, who is possessed by one of the Serpent's hammers and has become Nul, Breaker of Worlds, while fighting him and |The Thing, who was similarly transformed into Angrir, Breaker of Souls, and whom Thor had just taken down.

And him I liked. But you? You were always a giant pain in the ass.

  • An ultimatum from Bruce Banner in an alternate universe where he took over Australia:

To whom it may concern from the government of Australia. With the recent international unpleasantness behind us, I hope that you can all come to understand that it is in the best interests of both your own nations and the greater world community to cooperate with us in all business matters. Or Hulk will smash.

  • Jesse Custer, occasionally, in Preacher. "But enough Theology. I'm gettin' a hankerin' to knock some motherfucker's teeth out."
  • In Fantastic Four: True Story, the villain Nightmare is attacking the concept of fiction, sending his demons into fictional realms to destroy the principal characters in famous literary works. At one point the FF fight off a horde of demons who are attacking the Dashwood sisters. The Thing combines this trope with his customary Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner (but getting his Jane Austen books confused), announcing, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!"


Commercials

  • There was a series of commercials for a classic-rock radio station which included unlikely people (a very old man, a nun, a school teacher) reading rock lyrics deadpan. Hilarious. This happens quite often. A local radio station had people reading out the lyrics of pop songs, sometimes ironic to the situation, other times just not what you expect. (i.e. An elderly gentleman saying, "With a rebel yell, she cried 'More! More! More!' ")
  • T-Mobile had a commercial in which a couple calls up a librarian when they have a dispute about the lyrics to "Pour Some Sugar On Me." Cue librarian, in an absolutely deadpan voice, reciting, "Pour some sugar on me. I'm hot, sticky sweet."
  • Similarly, a Canadian commercial for Nortel had, while the music for the song played in the background and was apparently not heard by the characters, a Nortel executive calling a press conference...and his speech being the lyrics of "Come Together". Mixing up the funkiest lines from every verse, even.
  • A Schick commercial pairs this with Totally Radical (and you can see it from there), where an old scientist is officially testing the razor to see if it really is "off the heezy".
    • "Off the heezy, indeed!"
  • A little old lady in a hot sauce ad: "Frank's Red Hot. I put that shit on everything!"
  • Rock radio stations seem to get this a lot. The UK digital radio station Planet Rock has a charmer: "If music be the food of love.... stand by for a good rogering"
  • The Blaxploitation spoof I'm Gonna Git You Sucka had a TV ad playing it up like a Merchant-Ivory motion picture - an upper-class-British-accented narrator reads it as "I Am Going To Get You, Sucker".


Fan Works

  • The opening paragraphs of John Biles' late-2008 My-HiME fic The Sword of the Lord start off sounding like a work by H.P. Lovecraft—until the Narrator (Nao) relaxes into her normal pattern of speech:

In the dark corners of the world, things are breeding, ancient things, which ruled this world before man. There are things within only a few miles of some major cities that, if set free, would turn the blood of men to ice and fire, which would shatter the thin veneer which is all that holds mankind separate from its savage ancestors.
Their power is rising, and the stars moving into place. Their prophecies speak of their inevitable victory, that the time comes when mankind shall be as the Great Old Ones, 'free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy'.
I have felt it myself, the call of the darkness that seeps into your soul when it seems there is only pain and death in the world, the temptation to cast all rules aside and live only for your own pleasure, your own vengeance. Power without responsibility inevitably leads to the abuse of power, a spiral down into the darkness.
That's why, these days, I kill these motherfuckers and take their stuff.

  • From Tiberium Wars "Yea verily, though I charge through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am driving a house-sized mass of "fuck you.""
  • Nobody Dies one-ups the preceding example with "For though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil. Not now. For I AM 35,000 tons of FUCK YOU."
  • Aeon Natum Engel and Aeon Entelechy Evangelion are full of these. One of the milder examples from the former:

Parapsychics were treated in a manner similar to that members of socially unacceptable subgroups had been in a less enlightened time, with the fear of the different and of the unknown. The metaphor was imperfect, due to the fact that gays, for example, lacked the ability to set people on fire with their mind.

Sirius: Moony, I am getting the distinct impression that you are not hip to my jive. Are you or are you not hip to my jive?
Remus: What in the name of all that is holy are you talking about?

"WOE. WOE. WOE UNTO THE DARK LORD. THE POWER HE KNOWS NOT, THE WHITE KNIGHT, HAS ARRIVED. EXPERIENCE AND INNOCENCE IN ONE, HE WILL PROVE THE BETRAYED INNOCENT AND PROVE THE BETRAYER GUILTY. THE LIGHT IS STRENGTHENED WITH KNOWLEDGE. THE DARK IS WEAKENED WITH REASON. WOE UNTO THE DARK LORD FOR THE WHITE KNIGHT HAS ARRIVED AND HE WILL SURELY KICK. HIS. ASS."

"THOUGH I FACE THE SHADOWS OF THE WARP,
I SHALL FEAR NO EVIL, I SHALL FEAR NO FOE!
FOR I HAVE MOAR DAKKA THAN YOU, BITCHES!"

  • My-HiME's Natsuki tends to use quite a bit of profanity when she's narrating in Windows of the Soul, often while talking philosophically about her and Shizuru's experiences and state of mind.
  • Hunting the Unicorn, in spite of the soul-crushing misery prevalent in its focus on Kurt and Blaine, has the Warblers master this.

"Yeah, I vote in favor of fucking that. Blaine's just being stupid."
"All in favor of repressing that statement with inexplicable kazoo music?"
"According to what I learned in Psych, inexplicable crying means that something's been fucked over!"

  • This is the first and only language of 30 "H"s, which uses it to utterly spectacular effect. To wit:

Dumblecop: Is it a sin, should a man feel like faggarting a sun or a thousand? Why should the suns heave through the void, if not to be skewer't bypon ourn fagpoles?

  • In a more innocent example, Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality mingles highbrow ornate language with overly excited childish babble during a visit to Hermione's parents, just to mess with them.

"Gosh! This is a big house! I hope I don't get lost in here!"
"Well met on this fairest of evenings, Miss Granger. I present to you my father, Professor Michael Verres-Evans, and my mother, Mrs. Petunia Evans-Verres."
"Mum, Dad, this is Hermione! She's really smart!"
"I'm afraid, Miss Granger, that you and I have been exiled to the labyrinthine recesses of the basement. Let us leave them to their adult conversations, which would no doubt soar far above our own childish intellects, and resume our ongoing discussion of the implications of Humean projectivism for Transfiguration."

Personal Therapy Progress Notes - Sgt. Ryan Nerucci - Session 3
Session Objectives:
Explore feelings of resistance towards disclosure about the subordination incident of October 6. Encourage seeking help from outside sources (comrades, unit commander, base chaplain, grandmother)
Session Synopsis:
Attempted to demonstrate the social supports mind-map building exercise. Exercise prevented when client initiated self-disclosure about childhood incidents and resisted redirection. When he mentioned his aunt as a possible source of support, he affected a show of extreme grief and began a long story from when he was three, about losing a tricycle he loved and his aunt's dog running away. Client attempted to apply psychodynamic principles to this incident, saying, "I think my Oedipus complex is for dogs." Eventually agreed he should call his grandmother on the weekend.
Clinical Assessment:
Client is fucking with me.

"If thou art the unknighted son of two servants while Sir Arcanus here is the first-in-line heir to a landowner, wouldst thou be able to... enlighten me on something thou hast forgotten? A form of address, perhaps? Maybe befitting conduct? ... Or how about knowing thy bucking place?"

  • Yet another Harry Potter example, from chapter 14 of the Potter/Fate/stay night crossover Ex Umbra in Solem: Saber asks Harry to come back with her to Camelot. Harry agrees and sweeps her up in a hug:

She stiffened beneath his grasp, before remarking wryly, "If you do come with me, then you will have to forego this familiarity."
"Verily, I say unto thee, fuck that," Harry said.


Film

Brother Maynard: "And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayst blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy.'"... "Once the number three, being the third number be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch toward thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.'"

Bruce: "...is that a technical term?"
Meridian: " 'Subject suffers from acute obsession with possible homicidal tendencies'. Does that work better for you?"
Bruce: "So...what you're saying is, this guy's a total whacko."

  • In Snatch, Brick Top defines nemesis as "a righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by a 'orrible cunt. Me." He also has a version of the first variant. "In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary... come again?"
  • Terminator has this exchange:

Sarah: So is Reese crazy?
Silverman: In technical terminology...he's a loon.

  • Steve Martin in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: "I've got culture coming out of my ass." It's also a science pun. The line is carried over to the musical version.
  • Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby starts with a black screen illuminating the quote "America's about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed." and then in a few seconds appends "-- Eleanor Roosevelt"
    • Then later, Ricky Bobby quotes the "late, great Colonel Sanders" with "I'm too drunk to taste this chicken." Which has no bearing on the conversation at hand (and is lampshaded by his rival).
  • A great example of this occurs in the movie Constantine, in particular the conversation between the angel Gabriel and the title character. Pretty crass language for an angel, half-breed or not:

Gabriel: John. You are going to die, because you have been smoking thirty cigarettes a day since you were fifteen. And you are going to go to hell because of the life you took. You're fucked."

  • Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: "The internet is a communications tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another."
  • Michele's formula for the glue on Post-its from Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. Given Michele's character and unsophisticated language she uses throughout the rest of the film, the last thing we expect from her is a plausible, highly detailed answer. We later find out this was only her dream of what happened. At the real reunion they get humiliated for claiming to have invented Post-its:

Michele: Actually, I invented a special kind of glue.
Christie: Oh, really? Well, then I'm sure you wouldn't mind giving us a detailed account of exactly how you concocted this miracle glue, would you?
Michele: No... Um -- Well, ordinarily when you make glue, first you need to thermoset your resin... and then after it cools, you mix in a, um, epoxide. Which is really just a fancy-schmancy name for any simple oxygenated adhesive, right? Then I thought: maybe -- just maybe -- you could raise the viscosity by adding a complex glucose derivative during the emulsification process. And it turns out, I was right. [chuckles]
Girl: Huh? I don't believe it! You must be the most successful person in our graduating class!
Michele: Uh-huh... and you're not. Bye.

    • Lisa Kudrow herself certainly qualifies; who would seriously have thought that the portrayer of two of the greatest ditzes of our time, Michele Weinberger and Phoebe Buffay, would have a chemistry degree?
  • The Big Lebowski gives an inverted example: "Nihilists? Well, fuck me. I mean, say what you will of the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it's an ethos."
  • A dialogue from The Toxic Avenger Part 2:

Apocalypse Inc. Chairman: "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be..." Shakespeare.
Homeless Woman: "Fuck You". David Mamet.

  • Real Genius: "I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, '...I drank what?'"
  • Blazing Saddles has a narrative song provided by the god-fearing citizens of Rock Ridge at their church. It ends thus:

Now is a time of great decision
 Are we to stay, or up and quit?
 There's no avoiding this conclusion...
 Our town is turning into shiiiiiiiiiit....

  • In WarGames, the general in charge of NORAD delivers this opinion: "Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks." To which McKittrick responds, "I don't have to take that, you pig-eyed sack of shit!"
  • Hollywood in general is very fond of mixing Bible and bathos—especially Psalms 23:4. You know the one. Here's from Deep Blue Sea:

Preacher: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, because I carry a big stick and I'm the meanest motherfucker in the valley!

  • Versions of the "walk through the valley of death" verse appear in many films about the American military, including Apocalypse Now, Casualties Of War and Jarhead.
  • Billy Connolly's character gets a moment of this in The Last Samurai:

"With all due respect, sir, shove it up your ass."

Elizabeth: Captain Barbossa , I am here to negotiate the cessation of hostilities against Port Royal.
Barbossa: There are a lot of long words in there, Miss; we're naught but humble pirates. What is it that you want?
Elizabeth: I want you to leave and never come back.
Barbossa: I'm disinclined to acquiesce to your request.
Elizabeth: *confused stare*
Barbossa: Means "no".

    • Jack Sparrow also loves this trope, mixing pirate slang like 'mate' 'onesies' and 'savvy' with vocabulary like 'miscreants' 'superfluous' and 'ecumenically.'

Jack: Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer one of these ships, pick up a crew in Tortuga, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weaselly black guts out.

  • Dustin Hoffman's character in Outbreak indicates that he is disinclined to acquiesce to a military officer's request not to interfere in the bombing of a small town:

"With all due respect, sir, fuck you, sir."

  • In Gone with the Wind, Rhett end a seemingly polite statement with what was, at the time, a Precision F-Strike: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
  • Kill Bill: "As your leader, I encourage you, from time to time and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic. If you're unconvinced a particular plan of action I've decided is the wisest, tell me so! But allow me to convince you. And I promise you, right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo ... except, of course, the subject that was just under discussion. The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or American heritage as a negative is - I collect your fucking head. Just like this fucker here. Now...if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say, now's the fucking time!"
  • In Mel Brooks' High Anxiety, a discussion on penis envy in a psychological conference is, due to one psychologist bringing his children, conducted using such technical terms as the peepee, balloons, and hoo-hoo.
  • In This Is Spinal Tap, Nigel plays a quiet classical piece on the piano, then reveals that it's called "Lick My Love Pump".
  • Rush Hour
    • It degrades into this whenever Detective Carter tries to be official.

Det. Carter: Ladies and Gentlemen, can I have your attention please? We have just received a threat on the building. We ask if you please exit the building as soon as possible and please do not panic.
Beat
Det. Carter: Din't you hear what I jus' said?! Get yo' shit an' get out the door!

    • Or his lovely farewell to the villainess from the sequel

Carter: We coulda been a good couple, we coulda had somethin' special...but you are one crazy ass bitch!"

  • Ghostbusters: "Sir, what we have here is what we call a non-repeating phantasm, or a class-5 free roaming vapor. Real nasty one, too."
  • My Fair Lady, when Eliza visits the Ascot Racecourse and tries to have sophisticated conversation without having yet learnt what kind of vocabulary, grammar and topics are appropriate in the context.

My aunt died of influenza -- so they said. But it's my belief they done the old woman in.
Come'on, Dovah! Move your bloomin' arse!

Grasshopper: This is an outrage! You are a disgrace to your Phylum, Order, Class, Genus and Spe...
Centipede: Say it in English!
Grasshopper: You, sir, are an ass!

Flynn: I know not who you are, nor how I came to find you, but may I just say... Hi. How you doin'? The name's Flynn Rider. How's your day goin'?

  • This example from 50 Cent's film Gun.

50: P90 Carbine uses 5.7mm. Designed to penetrate Kevlar helmets, vests and CRISAT protection. (Fires the gun into a vest and laughs) Extremely low recoil. Virtually no muzzle climb resultin' in every shot on target. (Fires repeatedly) That's the shit right here.

  • An inverted example from Scary Movie 3: "How in the hell do you wake up dead? 'Cause you're alive when you go to sleep. You're telling me you can go to bed dead and wake up alive? You can't go to bed dead. That shit would be redundant!"
  • Most of the jokes from Your Highness involve the characters speaking in pseudo-English fantasy-speak peppered with modern swear words.
  • Ernest Scared Stupid has Old Lady Hackmore indulging in this upon her first appearance:

"You will bring down the curse on us all! Woe unto you, O ye seed of Worrell! Get out of here and don't come back!"

  • Ron Pearlman's character Johner in Alien: Resurrection: "Don't push me, little Call. You hang with us for a while, you'll find out I am not the man with whom to fuck!"
  • Common in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, especially with Everett. "I'm the goddamn paterfamilias!"
  • In How the West Was Won: The Rivers, the settlers (including mountain man Linus Rawlings) triumph over a gang of Indian rustlers that nearly robbed them, or worse than merely robbed them. As the survivors burn the casualties in a massive funeral pyre, Zebulon and his party offer this humble prayer to the Most High:

Zebulon Prescott: And now, let us pray: O Lord, we thank Thee for our salvation. We commit the souls of our dead to Thy gentle keepin'. We pray for a speedy recovery of our wounded. And now, another matter: O Lord, without consulting with Thee we have sent Thy way some souls whose evil ways passeth all understanding. We ask Thee humbly to receive them... whether You want 'em or not. Amen.

I recognize the council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it.


Literature

  • Although not that really dirty example, Book three in the Harry Potter series has a very good one when Snape tries to read the Marauders' Map:

"Mr. Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business."
"Mr. Prongs agrees with Mr. Moony, and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git."
"Mr. Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor."
"Mr. Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball."

    • In the immortal words of Professor Minerva McGonagall...

Professor Snape has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk.

"And again I say unto thee: Bite me."
"I ooze class from my every orifice."

    • After being called a smartass, Harry responds "The wisdom of my ass has never been in question."
    • One of his allies, essentially the modern version of The Paladin:

"You hit that. You" —he scrunched up his nose, digging in his memory— "tapped that ass. Presumably, it was phat."

    • Even funnier when you realize the guy saying it has a thick Russian accent, and is black.
    • Harry has one favor he can call in, and he's using it to get a pursuer off him long enough to escape:

"And wouldst thou have jelly within thy doughnut?"
"Nay, prithee, but with sprinkles 'pon it, and frosting of white."

  • Much of Douglas Adams's work plays off this, often using overly formal tones to describe something mundane. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, however, often sounds more chummy than an encyclopaedia should. (This is said in the series to be part of its appeal.)
    • "Here the man in blue crimplene accosted us once more but we patiently explained to him that he could fuck off."
    • "The policeman told Arthur exactly where he could put it, but Arthur could only assume he was speaking metaphorically."
  • The Gaunt's Ghosts novel First and Only has this from Commissar Vay to Major Brochuss, who is about to have Vay, Gaunt and Milo beaten to death in an abandoned area of the city they're in:

"After due consultation with my colleagues I can now safely say, burn in hell you shit-eating dog."

    • More amusing is that Vay had seconds before said that Gaunt "was never a diplomat, and that insulting them is not going to help their mood." During their escape Gaunt replies, "You're right, Vay, I never could've been that diplomatic."
  • The First-Person Smartass narration of The Chronicles of Amber tends to veer from the modern colloquial to the formal and slightly archaic and back—sometimes in the same paragraph. The fact that all the Amberites are centuries-old interdimensional travellers might justify some of this, as they travel between areas where the language is more or less formal, and might pick up mannerisms from all manner of different eras.
    • Steven Brust's Dragaera series was influenced by the above, and also uses this a lot. Vlad and the other Jhereg sometimes alternate between somewhat courtly language and typical "wiseguy" talk, probably because they are simultaneously aristocrats and members of that world's equivalent of The Mafia.
  • Happens quite a lot in the Discworld series, particularly any book set in Ankh-Morpork, with characters alternating between formal English and street vernacular in order to make better jokes and or points. The Patrician screwed this up (as, in fact, he often does when attempting to employ slang, despite having majored in languages in school) by threatening someone with the "sisal two-step" (when he meant the hemp fandango;[1] a clerk quietly corrected him).
    • Many people notice something quite comforting about Lord Vetinari, such as the fact that they can't see any weapons around, or, indeed, his apparent inability to grasp the nuances of slang and euphemism... until they remember that he was educated at the Assassin's Guild, at which point the thought turns on them, and turns out to have plenty of teeth and a full eight limbs tipped with razor-sharp claws.
    • And often a paragraph written in standard florid fantasy style ends with a word like "bugger".
    • FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC.
    • "No, sir! You may put it where the sun does not shine, sir!" ("Where, that little cave in Slice? Why would I put it there?")
    • Vimes is particularly good at this. At the end of 'Feet of Clay' when the religious leaders all call for the destruction of the golem Dorfl, he carefully considers their opinions, gives it a lot of thought, and gives Vetinari the following response -- "Arseholes to the lot of 'em, sir."
    • And, in a surreal and hilarious variation: the Abbot of the History Monks, not having mastered the art of just not dying as Lu-Tze has, is instead forced to rely on serial Reincarnation for immortality. So when we see him in Thief of Time, he's a baby that intersperses his eloquent, scholarly speeches with outbursts like "wanna wanna wanna BIKKIT!"
    • Mr Nutt in Unseen Academicals describes to an increasingly bewildered magazine writer his philosophy of football, the behavioural psychology of teams, and the fact that quantum suggests you cannot know the position and velocity of the ball at the same time, before concluding that it's his job to present this metaphysical conundrum to the players in an appropriate paradigm, such as "Whack it right down the middle, my son."
    • Mr. Tulip in The Truth is an inversion of this. He's typical Dumb Muscle material, except when he comes upon a work of art, when he suddenly becomes a sophisticated connoiseur. However, even when going on about a well-crafted candlestick or rare painting, he still uses the word "-ing" all over the place.
    • Hogfather: "The philosopher Didactylos suggested an alternative hypothesis: 'Things just happen, what the hell?'"
  • This was almost a trademark of Mid-20th Century wit, raconteur and poet Dorothy Parker:

But now I know the things I know
 And do the things I do
 And if you do not like me so
 To hell, my love, with you!

    • Her poem "Comment":

Life is a glorious cycle of song,
 A medley of extemporanea.
 And Love is a thing that can never go wrong,
 And I am Marie of Roumania.

    • "Theory":

Into love and out again,
 Thus I went and thus I go.
 Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
 Well and bitterly I know
 All the songs were ever sung,
 All the words were ever said;
 Could it be, when I was young,
 Someone dropped me on my head?

    • "Coda":

There's little in taking or giving,
 There's little in water or wine:
 This living, this living, this living,
 Was never a project of mine.
 Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
 The gain of the one at the top,
 For art is a form of catharsis,
 And love is a permanent flop,
 And work is the province of cattle,
 And rest's for a clam in a shell,
 So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
 Would you kindly direct me to hell?

    • and "Love Song":

My love runs by like a day in June,
 And he makes no friends of sorrows.
 He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
 In the pathway or the morrows.
 He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
 Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
 My own dear love, he is all my heart --
 And I wish somebody'd shoot him.

  • T. S. Eliot wrote "The Triumph of Bullshit", a poem addressed to his critics (which he never released to the public). It was a ballade (a classical form of poetry) and It started with "If you think my poems are" and continued in a flowery manner, describing all the criticisms that might be made of his writing style. The last line of every verse was "For Christ's sake stick it up your ass."
  • The Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus did a few similar ones.
    • Latin has an astonishing variety of dirty words, and being a highly inflected tongue, this makes it uniquely suited for this kind of poetry, at which Catullus was legendary. Catullus 16 is so explicit that it wasn't fully translated into English until relatively recently; the opening line loosely translates as "I'll jam it up your ass and down your throat", but any translation loses the true flavor of the original. (Though one interpretation, "I'll sodomize and Clintonize you", does rise to the level of a decent Woolseyism.)
  • Thomas Pynchon has a lot of fun with this in The Crying of Lot 49. "Otherwise he will, with great reluctance, hand his ass to him."
    • Pynchon does this all the time, really. It's part of his whole "mixing high culture with low culture" schtick.
  • In Only You Can Save Mankind, the normally eloquent Captain of the Scree Wee fleet pulls this while explaining why she wanted Johnny to bring them a crapload of fast food and breakfast cereal.

Captain: Normally we eat a kind of waterweed. It contains a perfect balance of vitamins, minerals, trace elements to ensure a healthy growth of scale and crest.
Johnny: Then why-
Captain: But, as you would put it, it tastes like poo.

Let's set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming the environment with rough copies of themselves, or through more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate. After about three billion years of this sometimes zany, frequently tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, Godfrey Waterhouse IV was born [...] to Blanche, the wife of a congregational preacher named Bunyan Waterhouse. Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo -- which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.

  • W.E.B. Griffin's Brotherhood of War series includes the motto for the 73rd Heavy Tank Battalion commanded by one of the main characters. It eventually showed up ("translated" into polite military jargon) as Your participation is encouraged and expected. Our disappointment will be made manifest by the violent insertion of sporting equipment into the rectal cavity." The original wording? " You will play ball with the 73rd, or we'll stick the bat up your ass."
  • The Poet Martin Silenus in Hyperion is both the most eloquent and sophisticated narrator in the book, and by far the one who cusses most. Best exemplified here:

Martin Silenus: The right hemisphere was not without some language -- but only the most emotionally charged units of communication could lodge in that affective hemisphere; my vocabulary was now down to nine words. For the record, here is my entire vocabulary of manageable words: fuck, shit, piss, cunt, goddamn, motherfucker, asshole, peepee and poopoo. A quick analysis will show some redundancy here.

  • Francisco d'Anconia in Atlas Shrugged is described as speaking precise and cultured English, deliberately mixed with slang. It makes him feel like the most sophisticated character in the novel, which he is.
  • Ciaphas Cain's mighty reputation as a galaxy-bestriding warrior, a liberator of worlds and a Hero Of The Imperium led to a cult worshiping him, whose holy text we see quoted as thus:

Then the prophet spake: saying "Frak this, for my faith is a shield proof against your blandishments."

—Alem Mahat, The Book of Cain, Chapter IV, Verse XXI
  • From Good Omens: '"Your fate will be whispered by mothers in dark places to frighten their young," said Hastur, and then felt that the language of Hell wasn't up to the job. "You're going to get taken to the bloody cleaners, pal," he added.'
  • This is the entirety of every Robert Rankin book ever written. His style consists of nothing but the juxtaposition of childish or coarse words with grand-sounding, Biblical phraseology.
  • Similarly happens in John Dies at the End, especially with the sequel (which is/was only half finished, and found on the website) which has a the opening chapter musing upon the nature of the universe then finishes with something along the lines of "...so, the 5 words that have made people break down and run screaming at their very mention..." and starts the next chapter with "So there I was, naked."
  • In one of the Spellsinger books: "I'll have you know, me elephantine kitten, that my language is as fucking refined as anyone's!"
  • One of the Expanded Universe Star Trek: The Next Generation books finds Dr. Pulaski being a dipshit to Data again, that ends with a crack about humans not being able to "file [the conversation] away somewhere" like he can. Data responds (to paraphrase):

Data: I believe, Doctor, you know precisely where you can store it.

    • Geordi and Wesley, who had been growing steadily more furious on Data's behalf, are caught up short with surprise.
  • One Dave Barry column, trying to provide exceptions to the common belief that All Men Are Perverts, suggested that U.S. Supreme Court Judges "think about important constitutional issues" rather than sex. This was illustrated by an alleged court transcript that had Chief Justice Rehnquist saying, "Whoa! Get a load of the torts on that plaintiff!"
  • Isaac Babel's character Benya Krik, a (sort of) Neighbourhood Friendly Gangster comes across this way, on account of speaking the Odessian (urban Ukrainian) Jews' «dialect» of Russian taken to an extreme, with a healthy dose of aristocratic street criminal badassery added. The dialect is sort of like Yiddish as a Second Language would be in American English, but with a lot of wit and an unusual/elaborate phrasing. This comes through in the English translation, such as in one of Benya's extortion notes:

"Monseieur Eichbaum.... I would be grateful if you could place twenty thousand rubles by the gate of the number 17, Sofiyefskaya Street, tomorrow morning. If you do not, something awaits you, the like of which has never been heard, and you will be the talk of all Odessa. Sincerely yours, Benya the King."

  • From Will Grayson, Will Grayson: "As it sayeth in Leviticus: Dude shall not lie with dude."
  • Any book by Mary Janice Davidson. A very proper-spoken Merfolk King started using "motherfucker" every other word after watching Deadwood. It was the first time he'd ever seen surface entertainment and he assumed that's how people are supposed to talk on land...
  • Stephen King's Under the Dome has Phil "Chef" Bushey, a drug addict who believes himself to be a prophet and does this with every other sentence:

"In the Garden of Eden there was a Tree. The Tree of Good and Evil. Dig that shit?"

  • The Quantum Gravity series: Glinda has been explaining the story of Zal's life previous to his coming to her realm, and her description included a major point, which was hearing a particular song on the radio. It "confirmed everything [he] hated about [his] own people." After a fair amount of persuasion, Zal manages to convince her to sing it.

"...At first I was afraid, I was petrified..."

    • Later, after showing Zal something that is described poetically and absolutely terrifying to the point that he is actively working to hide his fear.

"You see? way too busy."

We remain convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in order to minimize casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our brains.

  • Abundant in The Subject Steve. "One could argue that fuckedness is a vague concept, indefinable, and thus a meaningless point of departure for any sort of cogent analysis." is one example.
  • In The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, the protagonist ghostwrites a letter to an English aristocrat from her extremely abrasive lover:

Being extremely busy, I'm not sure that you can currently suck my dick. However, please feel encouraged to fantasize about such a development while sucking on a cucumber, a carrot, an eggplant or any other elongated roundish object you might find appropriate for that matter. With kind regards, Alexandre Fenrir-Gray.

  • In New Watch the protagonist describes a humongous fireball thrown at them: "It was a premium-class fireball, in terms of commercial managers. It was a Tzar-fireball, poetically speaking. A biologist would call it an Alpha-fireball. A very composed mathematician would note that it is a three meter-wide fireball. It was a "shit-your-pants-it's-so-scary" fireball!
  • P. G. Wodehouse loved this trope. The Jeeves and Wooster series runs on it, due to the Cloudcuckoolander narrator's attempts at literary style.

He had been clearing away the breakfast things, but at the sound of the young master’s voice cheesed it courteously.

This particular blunder is known as deus ex machina, which is French for "Are you fucking kidding me?"

  • In Vortex, after Oscar insinuates to Treya that she's not worthy of Isaac's attention: "That was insulting, so I used an expression Oscar might not have encountered in his formal training: "Fuck you," I said".


Live Action TV

  • In an episode of Designing Women, Julia is enraged at a college professor who's dating her son. When she talks about their first meeting, Julia, still as polite as she always was, simply says, "I think you're full of crap."
  • Jack Handey had a tendency to do this in his "Deep Thought" segments on Saturday Night Live. Speaking with a deeply philosophical tone, accompanied by contemplative music in the background, he would deliver the strangest thoughts imaginable (because hey, free dummy). It was even released in book form. Well you see, I've got these sacks...
  • The Ladies' Man segments from SNL also used this trope. Leon Phelps was notorious for mixing sexual slang with romantic euphemism in an occasionally idiotic manner.
    • Or as the movie put it: "What is love? What is this longing in our heart for togetherness? Is it not the sweetest flower? Does not this flower of love have the fragrant aroma of fine fine diamond? Does not the wind love the dirt? Is not love not unlike the unlikely knot it is enlikened to? Are you with someone tonight? Do not question your love. Take your lover by the hand. Release the power within yourself. You heard me, release the power. Tame the wild cosmos with a whisper. Conquer heaven with one intimate caress. That's right, don't be shy. Whip out everything you got, and do it in the butt."
  • Comedian Dylan Moran embodies on this trope to begin with, and his character Bernard Black on Black Books uses this trope every time he opens his mouth. Here is a particularly awesome example. Here's a partial transcript:

Bernard writes (After receiving a letter of rejection to the book he sent in): Dear Mr. Chusington Howell Foxfarthing, thank you for returning my manuscripts and your enclosed nasty, niminy-piminy little note. I am afraid your letter is most unsuitable for me at the present time, as I've just spent the entire weekend writing the novel which you have summarily rejected. I can only presume it is company policy to reject all manuscripts not submitted in ten-foot high braille. And yes, I am aware that it is traditionally bad form to respond to any kind of criticism or rejection, but in this, as in all else, I am an innovator, therefore I may freely address you as piss midget. Still there's time to change your views and I think you will when we meet, and meet we most assuredly will when I sock out your eyes and use them as stoppers for my ears to muffle the screaming you make as I headbutt you into a fine paste. I do hope you will not be disheartened by your sudden, violent death. Yours Faithfully, Bernard Black.

  • Deadwood uses this a lot, mixing philosophic descriptions and complex compound sentences with the Cluster F-Bomb. One fan, posting to Television Without Pity, gave a lengthy and dead-on imitation of the show's style, ending with, "On a personal note, having immersed myself in the world of Deadwood, I have found my own manner of speech and written communication (though perhaps not in this instance) improving and, what is more, proving to be most intellectually refreshing, as I now spend a little longer searching for the right word or the right turn of phrase instead of just spitting up the first fucking thing that springs to mind."
    • "My bicycle masters boardwalk and quagmire with aplomb. Those that doubt me... suck cock by choice."
  • Glee pulled this with Bryan Ryan. "I've grown weary of your insults, Will. They sting. And they make me want to punch your face."
    • Also, Becky's Inner Monologue is delivered in upperclass accent which often clashes with what she uses it for: "I, Becky Faye Jackson, am the hottest bitch in McKinley High School. Not only am I co-captain of the Cheerios, I'm also president of the Perfect Attendance Club and have a participation award in rhythm gymnastics. If you are wondering why I sound like the Queen of England, it's because it's my mind and I can sound like whoever I want, so lay off haters!"
    • Also with Ken Tanaka: "As most of you statistically minded people know, that sucks!"
  • Law and Order has an episode where a rock star is accused of rape. His lyrics with indications of misogyny are read in court with a deadpan tone, and repeated in Ben Stone's closing arguments.

"One more time on the kitchen floor, your tank's on empty but I want more / I get what I want, it's a one way trip / You ain't a lady, you my bitch."

    • A later episode has Jack McCoy doing the same thing with the lyrics of a rap artist. watch it for yourself
  • Dead Ringers spoofed the "hip" BBC remake of Robin Hood by making all the characters speak in this manner: "Robin of Sherwood, I do fear that the Sheriff wishes to pop a cap in your ass".
    • The radio version did it with announcer Charlotte Green's refined accent applied to pop songs: "BBC Radio Four, I'm Charlotte Green. My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and they're like, it's better than yours, Damn right, it's better than yours. More on that story later."
  • Friends, "The One Where No One's Ready":

Chandler: So, in the words of A. A. Milne, "Get out of my chair, dillhole!"

  • Ally McBeal: "Let the record show: Dammit."
  • A Bit of Fry and Laurie does this sort of thing quite frequently.
  • The Firefly episode "Jaynestown" opens with Kaylee and Simon having a talk about language. Kaylee claims the proper, well-dressed doctor never swears, and Simon says he does when "it's appropriate". Kaylee counters by saying that it's not supposed to be. A few minutes later, upon seeing a statue in the town square dedicated to Jayne, the ship's muscle and resident Jerkass, he can only manage, "Son of a bitch."
    • Also, Simon maintains his lack of swearing when confronted with Jayne having torn apart his entire infirmary (looking for duct tape) and all he can manage is to call Jayne a trained ape (without the training). Closest to a Precision "B" Strike, if only for the specific character.
  • Rumpole of the Bailey gets one of these.

Horace Rumpole: [angrily] And I would advise you, Ballard, if you can find a taxidermist willing to undertake the work, to get stuffed!

  • Used various times in The Wire. For example:

Bubbles: You're equivocating like a motherfucker, man;
Proposition Joe: I do carry some burdensome niggers...;
Cheese: This one ho was pullin' guns out her pussy! Shit was unseemly, yo;
Bodie: Man, better go on before I lose my composure out this bitch!
Proposition Joe: It ain't easy, civilizin' this motherfucker.
Mouzone: Let me be emphatic. You need to take your black ass across Charles Street where it belongs.
Carv: Did you just use word 'habitat' in a sentence?
Bubbles: Y'all the one's supposed to be constabulatin'.

    • The infamous gangster board meeting scenes in the 3rd season. Conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order no less.

Poot: Does the chair recognize we gonna look like some punk-ass bitches?
Stringer: Adjourn your asses.

  • British impressionist Rory Bremner does a great bit with newsreaders reciting music lyrics in the same manner they read the news.
  • Mad Men:

"I wanna tell you something because you're very dear to me. And I hope you understand it comes from the bottom of my damaged, damaged heart. You are the finest piece of ass I ever had, and I don't care who knows it."

  • On Demetri Martin's Comedy Central special, one of his bits went, "I wonder what the most intelligent thing ever said was that started with the word 'dude.' 'Dude, these are isotopes.' 'Dude, we removed your kidney. You're gonna be fine.' 'Dude, I am so stoked to win this Nobel Prize. I just wanna thank Kevin, and Turtle, and all my homies.'"
    • His special "If I..." centers around a Socrates quote: "The unexamined life is not worth living," to which Demetri ammends "...man."
  • The marines in Generation Kill get quite a few moments like this, with "Poke" Espera being the most frequent user.
  • House has this line:

Chase: Hey, Foreman. Yo mama's so fat, when her beeper goes off, people think she's backin' up.

    • Which is doubly funny when you realize that it's in response to an insult hurled by Foreman at Chase about a minute earlier, and Chase is just now coming up with an insult to throw back.
      • And funnier still when you see Foreman's expression.

House: Well, like the philosopher Jagger once said, "You can't always get what you want."

      • And later on:

Cuddy: I looked up your philosopher Jagger, and it turns out that if you try sometimes, you get what you need.

The Minister of Technology today met the three Russian leaders to discuss a £4 million airliner deal. None of them went in the cage, or swung on the little wooden trapeze or ate any of the nice millet seed, yum, yum.

    • In another sketch, a play titled "Gay Boys in Bondage" was apocryphally attributed to William Shakespeare.
  • This exchange from the The X-Files episode, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", after relating the story of Rocky the mechanic encountering Lord Kinboat, inhabitant of inner Earth.

Dana Scully: ...now Rocky is what we refer to as a fantasy-prone personality.
Jose Chung: Oh, Agent Scully, you're so kind. He's a nut! I don't know what I found more disturbing about his "manifesto" -- his description of the inner earth alien sex orgy, or the fact the whole thing was written in screenplay format!

You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war in Europe, two superblocs developed: us, the French and the Russians on one side, and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other's deterrent. That way there could never be a war. ... You see, there was a tiny flaw in the plan. ... It was bollocks.

Rob! Why have you elected to attack my apparel? I have these appurtenances and I look grand, and fine, and pleasant. Whereas you look like you've robbed C & A in an 'urry.

    • The Big Fat Quiz of the Year also frequently features this by having high-brow presenters reading from or describing something low-brow, such as Dr David Starkey describing Jedward as if they were a medieval legend, Sir Ian McKellen reading nonsensical passages from the "auto"biographies of minor celebrities, and Jon Snow describing the events of a song ("It transpired that she was just 'bluffing with her muffin'... witnesses later described her expression as 'unreadable'") as if was a news story.
  • Alastair Cookie of Monsterpiece Theatre does this a lot, saying things like "Anyway, me digress."
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "I have finesse! I have finesse coming out of my bottom!" And countless, countless other examples.
  • Dr. Sweets from Bones talks exclusively in this manner.

Caroline: Use your fully grown-up words.
Sweets: I assure you I will be totally, awesomely mature on the stand.

  • The Daily Show used to have a segment entitled "Great Moments in Punditry as Read by Children," which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: little kids reading transcripts from Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olbermann, and their ilk. Sadly, the segment hasn't been seen in years. And then, during one of the show's greatest highlights (namely, the "Go Fuck Yourself, Bernie Goldberg" piece), a man named Toppington von Monocle (with top hat, tails, teacup and monocle) comes on to refute the claim that their audience is unsophisticated... by quoting the Catullus quote above. Particularly funny because it comes off as fake but is in fact exactly what it says.
  • The Young Ones scene in which Neil's flatmates help him write a letter to his bank manager asking for a loan. Alternating between subservient pleading and resentment for The Man, it's a strong contender for the show's funniest moment.

Darling Fascist Bullyboy,
Give me some more money, you bastard.
May the seed of your loin be fruitful in the belly of your woman,
Neil

  • Alex Trebek is prone to this on Jeopardy!, seamlessly shifting from his highly sophisticated tone to dry, self-deprecating humor and swift pop culture references.
    • Even funnier, any time there's a "Guess the Song by the Lyrics" category. With the rise of hip hop and pop music, there have been a few howlers when he would read rap lines in his completely dignified voice.
  • Sam from The West Wing has this wonderful line about The Declaration of Independence:

"We jumped out from behind bushes while the British came down the road in their bright red jackets, but never has a war been so courteously declared. It was on parchment with calligraphy and, "Your Highness, we beseech you on this day in Philadelphia to bite me, if you please."

Rimmer: Two weeks?
Captain Hollister: (fixes him with a look) That's enough.
Rimmer: Two smegging weeks?
Captain Hollister: I said that is enough!
Rimmer: (salutes) With respect, sir, you've got your head right up your big fat arse.

    • From Back in the Red:

Holly: In computer jargon, my plans have all gone tits-up.

    • From Holoship, Lister's priceless dialogue with the officer from the holoship who comes to investigate Red Dwarf. The conversation takes the form of relaying technical messages back to their respective ships and includes such gems as:

Binks: [...] What have we here? A human being -- or a very close approximation. Chronological age, mid-twenties; physical age, 47. Grossly overweight, unnecessarily ugly -- otherwise, would recommend it for the museum. Apart from that, no value or interest.
Lister: Lister to Red Dwarf. We have in our midst a complete smeg pot. Brains in the anal region. Chin absent -- presumed missing. Genitalia: small and inoffensive. Of no value or interest.
Binks: Binks to Enlightenment. Evidence of primitive humour. The human has knowledge of irony, satire, and imitation. With patient tuition could, maybe, master simple tasks.
Lister: Lister to Red Dwarf. Displays evidence of spoiling for a rumble. Seems unable to grasp simple threats. With careful pummeling, could possibly be sucking tomorrow's lunch through a straw.
Binks: Binks to Enlightenment. The human seems to be under the delusion that he is somehow capable of bestowing physical violence to a hologram.
Lister: Lister to Red Dwarf. The intruder seems blissfully unaware that we have a fairly sturdy holowhip in the Munitions cabinet, and unless he wants his derriere minced like burger meat, he'd better be history in two seconds flat!

    • In another episode, Rimmer is trying to convince Kryten to help him with a dangerous and immoral intelligence-enhancement procedure.

Rimmer: Wasn't it St. Francis of Assisi himself who said, "Never give a sucker an even break"?
Kryten: Well if he did, sir, it was strictly off the record.

  • The Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Werewolf" invokes this trope when antagonist Yuri (not exactly a model of sophistication himself) berates a romantic rival.

Yuri: I mean, he's got no class at all.
Crow: [imitating Yuri's thick accent] Theh cheessball'ss got no frriggin' cless!

Chief Whip: In politics you have to learn to say things with tact and finesse, you berk!

Bishop Brennan: You will address me with my proper title, you little bollocks!

    • (Though the Sex Pistols trial established that "bollocks" was an archaic term for young priest - hence both funny and accurate.)
  • Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory often delivers insults in Expospeak. To wit:

"I'm polymerized tree sap and you're an inorganic adhesive, so whatever verbal projectile you launch in my direction is reflected off of me, returns to its original trajectory and adheres to you."
"I am given to understand that your mother is overweight... Now of course, if that is a result of a glandular condition and not sloth and gluttony, I withdraw my comment."

    • Also from Sheldon: "Oh, gravity, thou art a heartless bitch!"
    • Sheldon commonly says "To use the technical term" and follows up with saying slang, like "Bitchin'"
    • From Leonard: "The Homo habilis man discovering the opposable thumb says what?"
    • This exchange from season 2.

Sheldon: We no longer live at 2311 Los Robles, we live at 311 Los Robles. *Holds up number 2 fixture*
Leonard: You changed the address on the building? What about mail?
Sheldon: No worries, I explained our predicament to our letter carrier. He was sympathetic. His exact words were "Got your back, Jack. Bitches be crazy."

    • Leonard's mother has one shining moment of this during her second appearance.

Penny: Come on, I mean, you're not upset that your marriage is over?
Beverly: Well, initially, I did feel something akin to grief and perhaps anger, but that's the natural reaction of the limbic system to being betrayed by a loathsome son of a bitch.

    • In the quoting variant, Sheldon responds to Zack's evaluation of their laser in "The Lunar Excitation":

Zack: Whoa! Is that the laser? It’s bitchin’.
Sheldon: Yes. In 1917, when Albert Einstein established the theoretic foundation for the laser in his paper Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung, his fondest hope was that the resultant device be bitchin’.

Reid: Statistically, 67% of serial arsonists are male, 78% of them are white, and few, if any, are ever caught.
Prentiss: Few, if any? You don't know the statistics on that?
Reid: 23%. I'm trying to be more conversational.
Prentiss: Oh. It's not working.

  • Chappelle's Show always did these with the "A Moment in the Life of Lil' Jon" sketches:

Airport Receptionist: Well then, Mr. Jon, you're all set.
Lil' Jon: OKAAAAAAAAAY! ...Pardon me, madam, will this be reflected upon my frequent flier miles?
Receptionist: Did you book your flight online?
Lil' Jon: ...YEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHH!

  • QI is simply bulging at the very seams with such occurrences. Examples are too numerous and high in quality to relist from memory, so read the [2] page.
  • The Impressions Show with Culshaw and Stephenson, a Spiritual Successor to Dead Ringers, featured a sketch where celebrity chefs are characters in a Jane Austen-esque period drama. Gordon Ramsay frequently uses the trope: "Unhand that young girl, you intercoursing bosom!", "Fornicating hell!"
  • In Supernatural, Archangel Lucifer and Archangel Gabriel finally meet and talk over their grievances. Quite appropriately tired of his older brother's "antics", the Gabester turns Lucifer's entire fall into this, with such lines as “Lucifer, you're my brother, and I love you. But you are a great big bag of dicks" and "Look at yourself... Boo hoo, Daddy was mean to me, so I'm gonna smash up all his toys."'
    • Castiel also counts. He usually speaks quite formally (but not as formally as portrayed in fanfiction), and then, after an elaborate Enochian chant, he delivers this line: "Come and get me, you little bastard."
      • That time he called Raphael his "little bitch" and Michael an "ass-butt".
  • The Mitchell and Webb Situation had a sketch revolving around this. There are some posh people in a bar, one of them has just brought the drinks.

Posh man: You know, that makes me so angry. I was standing at the bar waiting to be served, and there was a woman there taking her drinks away. And she spilled her G & T on my wrist. You see, my sleeve is quite wet. I mean, if I was any kind of man I would have glassed her.
Posh woman: Oh, you should have done, darling. You should have cut her face.
Posh man: I know, but I get so embarassed.

Jesse: I gotta pay taxes now? What the hell's up with that? That's messed up, yo. It's Kafkaesque.
Skinny Pete and Badger exchange confused glances.
Skinny Pete: ...church.
Badger: ...right.

  • Castle used the quoting variant:

Beckett: 'Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.' F. Scott Fitzgerald said that.
Castle: Then it must have been Ernest Hemingway who said, 'Man, I sure could use a drink right about now.'

  • The Carol Burnett skit, "Loan Shark", featuring Carol, Harvey Korman and Sammy Davis, Jr., features a lot of wacky back and forths between snobbery and jiving...
  • Deliberately invoked by a rap producer on CSI, who segued smoothly from business-school formality to street smack and back again in the same paragraph, showing off how he can operate in both worlds.
  • Quoth Deputy Andy, on a recent[when?] episode of Eureka: "My software dictates that I should verbally acknowledge my physical damage: Ow!."
  • The Two Ronnies used this in the serial "Hampton Wick": "Make love elsewhere!"
  • Done in The Fast Show with the "Cockney couple" who spoke in outdated Cockney slang with upper-class accents. On one occasion they go to Newcastle and pick a fight with a pair of "Geordies", only to be challenged by a "Yardie", all equally as upper-class as them.
  • In an HBO special, Bill Maher gave this public service moment in which he provided hard-core rap lyrics "translated faithfully into White".
  • An unusually serious example occurs in the documentary Forensic Files when a prosecutor has difficulty using words to describe the level of derangement of the defendant.[3]

Gowdy: He is the most sexually deviant - forgive my lack of psychiatric finesse - maladjusted, screwed-up-in-the-head defendant that I have prosecuted in my fifteen years as a prosecutor.

  • Lloyd Lowry in Breakout Kings: "You have a psychosexual disorder that manifests itself in deviant behaviour, so in short you are...disgusting."


Music

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me down to lie. Through pastures green He leadeth me the quiet waters by. With bright knives He releaseth my soul. He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places. He converteth me to lamb cutlets. For lo, He hath great power and great hunger. When cometh the day we lowly ones, through quiet reflection and great dedication, master the art of karate; lo, we shall rise up, and then we'll make the bugger's eyes water."

Oh ladies, pleasant and demure
 Sallow-cheeked and sure;
 I can see your undies

  • The Capitol Steps do this with a single word in a faux-Shakespearean reenactment of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign: "Yo-eth!"
  • And then there's Nine Inch Nails with their ode to existential crisis in the form of loneliness, "Closer", whose chorus starts: "I wanna fuck you like an animal!" Charming.
  • This is arguably the amusing part of covers which drastically change the genre of the original song. There's something bizarre about hearing Alanis Morissette's "My Humps" with a soft piano backing, Jonathan Coulton's "Baby Got Back" [dead link] on acoustic guitar, and everything by Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine, who take songs like the aforementioned "Closer" and then play them with jazzy, lounge-style instrumentals.
    • For a specific example of Richard Cheese, it's hard to get more Sophisticated As Hell than a lounge Limp Bizkit medley of "Nookie" and "Break Stuff" in a lounge singer delivery:

"Hope you know I pack a chainsaw. I'll skin your ass raw."

    • In a similar vein, Ben Folds' piano ballad cover of "Bitches Ain't Shit"
    • And Dynamite Hack's acoustic cover of "Boyz-n-the-Hood"
    • Or for something a little more obscure, Emm Gryner's vaguely Tori Amos-esque piano-ballad versions of songs such as "Pour Some Sugar On Me."
    • For that matter, Tori Amos' cover of Slayer's "Raining Blood". Even Slayer were weirded out by it. (Also, her cover of Eminem's "'97 Bonnie & Clyde".)
    • "Weird Al" Yankovic's polka medleys—two- or four-line snippets from several songs redone in a polka style and duct-taped together—are another good example.
    • The Chaser's War on Everything once featured a "lounge version" of Cannibal Corpse's "Rancid Amputation." Hearing is believing.
    • Honest Bob and the Factory-To-Dealer Incentives covered "Head Like A Hole" by Nine Inch Nails, complete with a talkdown in the middle.
    • Max Raabe and Palast Orchester cover modern pop songs in 1920s band style.
    • The Gourds' bluegrass version of Snoop Dogg's "Gin 'n Juice", and in a similar vein, an album of bluegrass covers of Metallica, yclept Fade to Bluegrass.
    • This, combined with Lyrical Dissonance, is what makes up most of the humor in the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue game One Song To The Tune Of Another. The moody, low opening to "Scarborough Fair", and the solemnly sung line "Everybody was kung fu fighting..." make for a jarring combination.
  • Cole Porter fit this in quite nicely with his penchant for name-dropping. The verse of "Just One Of Those Things" attributes slangy break-up lines to legendary lovers, after inverting the trope by quoting Dorothy Parker (see above) as having said "fare thee well" to her boyfriend. In "Hey, Good Lookin'," the line "as Elizabeth Barrett Browning once said" immediately precedes the refrain (and Title Drop).
  • "First Impression" by Ice-T.
  • The Offspring's song "When You're In Prison" is in the style of a 1930's radio crooner (complete with crackles and static), and features lyrics such as:

Oh don't be no one's bitch, be no one's bitch
 It's bad for you
 Oh don't be no one's bitch, be no one's bitch
 They won't help you make it through.

  • Tim Minchin's beat poem "Storm" does this with a Shakespeare quotation: "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw perfume on the violet, is just fucking silly. Or something like that."
    • And in "The Pope Song", he inverts this, with a lyric that is mostly obscenity but occasionally bursts out with far more sophisticated language:

I don't give a fuck if calling the pope a motherfucker
 Means you unthinkingly brand me an unthinking apostate.
 This has naught to do with other fucking godly motherfuckers
 I'm not interested right now in fucking scriptural debate.

Lehrer: I find that if you take the various popular song forms to their logcal extreme, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene, or, as they say in New York, sophisticated.

  • The Coup, "We Are The ones"

"Now philosophically, you'd be opposed
 To inhaling coke via mouth or the nose
 But economically, I would propose
 That you go eat a dick as employment froze"

Did my last keg stand like General Custer
 And I'm assessin' the damage like a claims adjuster
 I ain't your Daddy but I'll call you son
 Yeah I get metaphysical like fuckin' John Donne

  • The pseudoquote variant occurs in the opening lines of "If You Knew Susie", a song popularized by Eddie cantor in 1925: "I have got a sweetie known as Susie/ In the words of Shakespeare, she's a wow!"
  • Poet Saul William's "Coded Language" (set to music by DJ Krust) is full of this—though in a far more subtle way:

Whereas, breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diaspora community to its drum-woven past.
 Whereas, the quantized drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to calculate the ever-changing distance between rock and stardom.
 Whereas, the velocity of the spinning vinyl -- cross-faded, spun backwards, and re-released at the same given moment of recorded history, yet at a different moment in time's continuum -- has allowed history to catch up with the present.
We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.

  • This trope is common in Nerd Core, naturally.
  • The title of PDQ Bach's "Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion".
    • Also: The Short-Tempered Clavier: Preludes and Fugues in all the major and minor keys (except for the really hard ones).
  • OutKast had a skit called "Good Day, Good Sir" that included this. One gentleman is listening to a string performance, and remarks, "Ah such sweet sound: The Fiddler on the Fucking Roof"
  • The Most Unwanted Song, among other things, features a rapping opera singer.
  • Graham Lewis of Wire has a strong middle-class Received Pronunciation accent. Especially in conversation, even his most casual use of a swear word has this effect. It is somewhat amusing.
    • Sort of like listening to self-motivation verbal exercises of the Ax Crazy. No offense.
  • Michael Flanders, of Flanders and Swann fame:

It has in fact been calculated that in this country alone, over 30% are sub-clinically neurotic. Or, as a psychiatrist would say, "stark staring bonkers."

  • Robert Christgau's tone shifts quickly in his reviews. While it is generally consistent within a review, he sometimes does exhibit this trope, as in his review of Iggy Pop's remaster of Raw Power: "Strict constructionists and lo-fi snobs charge indignantly that by remixing his own album Iggy has made a mockery of history and done irreparable damage to a priceless work of art. This is really stupid."
  • Brental Floss's Good Example:

He's a good example (He's a good example, bitch.)
 Teaches integral and critical decision making, sucka!
 He's a good example (He's a good example, bitch!)
 And he'd never say something like, "Fuck you, mothafucka!"

  • D'Mite's infamous "Read A Book": Practical advice on education, hygiene, parenting, and economic success heavily interlaced with snarled profanity.

Read a book, read a book, read a motherfuckin' book!
 Not a sports page, not a magazine
 But a book, nigga!
 A fuckin' book, nigga!

Well I wrote all the songs for tonight's extravaganza,
 So there's a touch of class in every line of every stanza.
 When I'm not writing songs, I hang around doing bugger all

  • This is the whole point of Falco's "Rock Me, Amadeus!"
  • Mozart wrote two canons whose titles can be loosely translated as "kiss my ass." Believe it or not, this is actually a quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his drama about the storied German mercenary Götz von Berlichingen.
  • Ludwig Van Beethoven Beethoven's the Signor Abate canon. The first two lines are a prayer in Italian from a sick man asking the Abbott for his benediction. The third line is in German, and means "If you won't, then to Hell with you."


Newspaper Comics

  • The Dog in Footrot Flats mixes Large Ham poetic language with New Zealand slang all the time. He's like a G-rated Hunter Thompson.
  • A lot of the narration in Krazy Kat.

Again, within the konfines of Kokonino an act of arrant wickedness has been konsumated - In other words - to use a sapient "runyonic" komment - a Kat's kabeza has been kompletely "ka bammed".


Theatre

  • The protagonist in W;t[sic], an English professor struggling with terminal cancer, notes that her vocabulary has "taken a turn for the Anglo-Saxon" after a violent spell of vomiting. "God, I'm going to barf my brains out... If I actually did barf my brains out, it would be a great loss to my discipline."
  • In Bob Carlton's Forbidden Planet musical adaptation, Return to the Forbidden Planet, the robot Ariel consults Miranda as to her attempts to win over the Captain by saying, "Ah, Mistress, that will never work, for in that dress you'll miss. He'll not be swayed by haute couture." "Honestly?" "No shit!"
  • In the stage musical version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the first verse of Freddy's song "Great Big Stuff" runs:

I thought I'd seen it all,
 I thought I knew the score.
 But coming here, I've found a world
 I'd never seen before.
 Now I know where I belong --
 A life of taste and class
 With culture and sophistication
 Pouring out my ass.

  • Eliza in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, after learning how to speak with perfectly correct English diction, still occasionally shifts into slang (Higgins has to explain her use of "done her in" as an example of "the new small talk") and profanity ("Walk! Not bloody likely").
  • The Chicago number "Class", in which Velma Kelly and Mama Morton lament the decline of modern morals, is this trope from start to finish.

Whatever happened to, "Please, may I?"
 And "Yes, thank you?"
 And "How charming?"
 Now, every son of a bitch
 Is a snake in the grass
 Whatever happened to class?

  • The Reduced Shakespeare Company's The Complete Works of William Shakespeare runs with this trope frequently. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. So piss off!"
  • In Aristophanes' play The Birds, Iris the goddess of the rainbow summons bolts of lightning to strike down the blasphemers in properly grand poetic language. When nothing happens and she herself is shooed off by Pisthetaerus, she dissolves into tears and childishly expressed threats in nursery talk: “Just wait till my father hears about this: he’ll stop your insults” (lines 1585-6); this makes the trope Older Than Feudalism.
  • LOLPERA describes itself as "an epik clash between low-brow humor and high art; a 'gesamtkunstwerk' that asks important questions about this our modern world: Can we find meaning in the meaningless? Will what we create ultimately destroy us? Can we really has Cheezburger?"
  • "Nelson" from A Day in Hollywood, A Night in the Ukraine (a song about early film star Nelson Eddy sung from the point of view of his frequent co-star Jeannette McDonald) is (mostly) very Golden Age of Hollywood in style and language, but emphasizes her ... dissatisfaction with him with the occasional touch of this trope:

A symbol of virtue and class --
 America's sweethearts, my ass.


Textbooks

  • American History by Alan Brinkley describes a list of grievances passed by the first continental congress in a fashion that he could have taken from this page (pg. 122):

[The First Continental Congress] addressed the king as "Most Gracious Sovereign," but also included a more extreme demand for the repeal of all the oppressive legislation passed since 1763.


Video Games

"I assure you, my good man, Nemesis is most definitely 'down with the street'. Word up, my homey, as it were."

Human. Relinquish the Totem of Entropy. Do not relinquish it, and your ass is MINE.

"Would you kindly get to Ryan's office and kill the son of a bitch?"

Seifer: That was undeniable proof that we totally owned you lamers!

  • In Fallout, when the Vault Dweller manages to sneak into the Thieves' Guild hideout, he's greated by their well-spoken leader, Loxley. After some pleasant introductions...

Loxley: Quite pleased to make your acquaintance, actually... for now. Let's get the other bit of politeness taken care of, shall we? What the bloody, bloody, bloody hell are you doing here?!

  • The Heretic manual does this, possibly by design but also rather jarringly, as it alternatingly and simultaneously tries to sound appropriate for a high fantasy setting ("They stood solemnly, surrounding seven candles, each flame tied irrevocably to the flow of Earth's breath") and to assure people this is a game for those who want to see blood and guts ("Watch 'em scream and burn -- it's great!") Sometimes the styles blend together so that you can't draw a line between them, but it still sounds odd. "These hideous abominations of the dark world move bloody fast and possess deadly sharp blades for appendages."
  • In Mass Effect, one assignment has a reporter asking Shepard probing questions, and one of the possible answers to her questions makes Shepard say "I have had enough of your snide insinuations." before punching her roughly in the face.
    • She's back in Mass Effect 2. This time you tell her "I've had enough of your disingenuous assertions" and punch her again.
    • Say what you will about him, but Udina does a nice job of borrowing Kevin Rudd's "political shitstorm" line in the second game if you picked Anderson over him for the council seat in the first.
    • Only when talking to Matriarch Aethyta can a person hear "anthropocentric" and "bag of dicks" in the same sentence.
  • In Ace Attorney Investigations, the usually sophisticated Miles Edgeworth informs an opponent that:

Edgeworth: I believe the proper phrase here is, "you fail."

    • Edgey does this occasionally in the main series too, and since he's otherwise serious, it generally results in a Crowning Moment of Funny. Most memorably: "What the hell was that wriggling piece of plywood?!" That line can be heard here.
      • It doesn't help that he has a british accent, as evidenced by his objections and take thats.
    • Lang has a moment of this. Usually he shares his wisdom by quoting Lang Zi. And then we got this, after he lost a battle of wits to Edgeworth:

Lang: Lang Zi says... Just go already!

  • A number of the Spy's domination taunts in Team Fortress 2 count. "I'm looking at your X-ray, and I'm afraid YOU SUCK!"
    • How about the "Meet the Engineer" video?

Engineer: Hey look buddy, I'm an Engineer, that means I solve problems. Not problems like 'What is beauty?', because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy.

  • The titular character of Bayonetta is quite fond of this trope. Her English accent only adds to the fanciness.

Bayonetta: If you get in my way, I will, how do the Americans put it? Oh yes. Bust a cap in yo' ass.

Korgan:"I was here, alas I'm gone / I've left my name, to arouse thee on / Those who knew me, knew me well / Those who didn't, can ride my stinking dump, straight to hell!" Haha, masterstroke!

Lars: The time has come for you to shut the hell up, Lionwhite!

Fenix: Do not let the fact that I am 368 years older than you dull your impression of me, young Raynor. I can still -- how do you Terrans say it? -- 'Throw down with the best of them.'

  • Street Fighter Alpha's Gen has this victory quote: Ancient words of wisdom... "you suck".
  • Quoth Kingdom of Loathing's King Ralph, when you defeat the naughty sorceress and free him from imprismment: "Well done, adventurer! You laid the smack down on that skank with admirable derring-do and panache."
  • American McGee's Alices Cheshire Cat sometimes does it.

Cheshire Cat: "It's impolite to keep royalty waiting, but the price of good manners may be too high; This queen is a real BITCH!"
Cheshire Cat: "You are properly fortified to kick some ass."

Conquest. The story of human history. Since time immemorial, great leaders have risen from humble beginnings to . . . do shit.
A Saints movie is in development. Johnny Gat and Shaundi are pop-culture icons. And Pierce... Well, who gives a fuck about Pierce?

  • While sneaking around a base in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you can find an e-mail about a lack of office chairs. It continues like this:

In the meantime, please refrain from using expensive lab equipment as a makeshift sitting apparatus. If you must insist on using a non-sanctioned sitting apparatus, please consider the tensile strength of materials present in the object in question in comparison to your own mass volumetric density.
In other words, stop breaking shit with your fat asses.
xoxo
The Management


Webcomics

  • T-Rex From Dinosaur Comics does this a lot, such as describing literary or logical techniques in textbook levels of detail then describing them as "awesome". When discussing logic:

T-Rex: For example, "T-Rex is a pretty sweet dude because he's always so friggin' awesome!" This is actually formally valid: If the premise is true and I'm friggin' awesome, then it follows that I'm a pretty sweet dude. However, I've provided no logical support for my "T-Rex is awesome" premise, but only made a conclusion (T-Rex = pretty sweet) which relies on the premise being true.

"And the Knight of Blood so embraced the Bard of Rage, and in each other's arms they were aquiver. And with righteous pap and blessed shoosh he did quell his brother's fury. For the Knight looked upon his Bard all acting up and completely losing his shit and he did resolve to calmeth his Juggalo ass right the fuck down. And so calmed down his juggalo ass was and would continueth to be for all time. And the Knight in totally settling a murderous clown's ludicrous shit down proper said, Let there be Moirallegiance: and it was so. And between moirails would flow bounteous mirth, and they did hug bumpeth plentifully, and honks of reconciliation echoed far and true into the darkness upon the face of the deep."

    • In terms of individual characters, though, special mention must go to Alpha timeline Bro and his auto-responder.

TT: Now that your obsequious preface has been established as indisputably entertaining for all the right reasons, and intentionally so,
TT: Let's bear down on these dire as shit needs you've got.

    • From DS's auto-responder

"It seems you have asked about DS's chat client auto-responder. This is an application designed to simulate DS's otherwise inimitably rad typing style, tone, cadence, personality, and substance of retort while he is away from the computer. The algorithms are guaranteed to be 93% indistinguishable from DS's native neurological responses, based on some statistical analysis I basically just pulled out of my ass right now."

Winston: Kindly remove your bloody hands from the duchess at once! You... coufounded... vacuous... malodourous... NINCOMPOOP COWBOY!

  • Beserker from 8 bit theater when not beserking he wears a monocle and speaks with a British accent when beserking he...is considerably less eloquent. "Beserker the greatest conversationalist of our age, also everything he says is scary.
  • In Something*Positive, Mike's therapist informs him "Mike, you are what we in the profession call "fucked up"."
  • This Super Stupor strip.

Arch-Angela: Take thine critique and place it firmly up thine shitting place; for verily, yours is the glory of being adrift shit creek.

Quest Giver: Hail, Grey Warden. Your master once made a promise. Will you abide by that promise?
Player: Word. I'm always abiding by shit.

Gabe: I propose that you, sir, are the junkslut.

Dominic and Luna: "DRAGON DRAGON OHMYGOD OHWOW DRAGON DRAGON!"

      • Shortly thereafter, they visit Olde Tucklebruck Island and Luna tastes some of the native halflings' famous beer. After impressing the innkeeper with her connoisseurship and eloquent commentary on the beer, he lets her try his finest, most prized brew: "The Orion." Her response?

Luna: SWEET LEAPING BASTARD MONKEYS IT'S GLORIOUS!

    • I think special mention should go to the Wild Edge's slimes who seem brainlessto those who can't speak their language, but...

Slime 1: Fine meal this evening.
Slime 2: Quite so.

Miko: My master has ordered their execution for deeds they have committed against his interests. Soon, they shall taste the bitter fruits of their deeds.
Weasel: Awesome.

    • Vaarsuvius: I may be in error, but I believe the appropriate proclamation is, "Sneak Attack, bitch."
  • Aetheria Epics inverts it with the black mage gang at Eastveil Academy:

Max: "Go ahead, man."
Vol: "Sure, bro. Ahem...'Twas not 3 midmornings ago that the momentous encounter took place that would forever change our most illustrious organization..."

Bob: In faith let us one final time review the plan!
You Rothgar and your men will over there cower like cowards and the children of cowards. Here I wait with my laser ray. Grendel will enter and I'll, y'know...I'll zap him.

    • Later,

Bob: Good your majesty, I wish not to be a dick about this but no fucking way.

  • Butler in PvP delivers a memorable one to Brent. After Robbie sends Butler to do his work at the magazine, the staff begin abusing the priveliges, especially Brent. When Robbie eventually asks Butler to come back, Butler says he will as soon as he does one last thing. He promptly walks into Brent's office and says quite calmly, "You, good sir, may go to hell."
  • Gunnerkrigg Court: Kat's official sharpness classification for Coyote's Tooth? Really damn sharp.
  • Hark! A Vagrant: "So old. Old as balls."


Web Original

Take that, you insufferable f*cking simpleton!

      • Or even better...

Gohan: I'm going to eviscerate you and use your gastro-intestinal tract as a condom while I fornicate with your skull!
Nappa: ...What?
Gohan: I'm gonna skull-f*ck you!

And then all the servants quit. Sorry--the feelings of the domestics inasmuch as the domestics could afford to have feelings were inevitably altered towards the desirability of the wages paid thereunto by the appearance of A FUCKING VAMPIRE.

I believe it was Sigmund Freud who once said, “Sometimes horrific things just fall out of your mouth before you can muster up the strength to stop them. That’s just the worst, man, for real.”

can you use the term "i shit you not" in an English essay or is that unprofessional?
nonononono, never use "I" statements in formal essays.
One shits you not.
Also acceptable: This author shits you not
It's best to avoid the "general you." "One would not be considered shitted," is probably the best way I could think to word it formally.


Western Animation

  • In Transformers Animated, after the defeat of the Headmaster, who usually talks in l33t/gamer speak, the usually scientific Professor Sumdac comments, "I believe the phrase is 'total 0wnage, n00b'."
    • Transformers Generation 1 has Computron, after defeating the Decepticon Terrorcons, say "Estimated probability of Terrorcon victory over Computron: 4.1 percent. Scoot!" The Decepticons make a break for it, as do the other bad guys, the Quintessons.
  • This exchange in the Simpsons:

Gangsta: Yo boy, this class is tight. You go from slopper to proper.
Bart: Cool!
Socialite: Welcome to my etiquette class, The Proper Young Man.
Bart: But the black man said ...
Socialite: Are you accusing my husband of misleading you? Good gracious, I should bust a cap in your ass.

    • The socialite woman's reaction to Homer pushing her aside to catch an elevator: "How dreadfully rude! I do hope someone stabs him in the eye."
    • Then there's Lisa's description of Mr Burns as a "monopolistic, self-aggrandising... umm... stinky-pants!"
    • A tamer version shows up in a Treehouse of Horror episode. Homer finds himself in a mysterious 3D realm (or as he says "has anyone seen Tron?") this happens:

Homer's Brain: "Oh glory of glories! Oh, heavenly testament to the eternal majesty of God's creation!"
Homer: (Out loud) "HOLY MACARONI!!!"

    • In an episode where Homer and Marge have to choose between vacationing in Florida, or attending an elderly relative's birthday:

Homer: As the Bible says, "Screw that!"

    • When Bart and Lisa are confronted with the task of overloading the power grid in 'Scuse Me While I Miss The Sky...

Lisa: Now we merely push this switch to "overload". (she reaches then hesitates) ...Yet once we do, we'll be breaking the law. Can good truly come from civil disobedience? Gandhi thought so, but-
Bart: Gandhi also said "less talk, more rock"! (throws the lever)

Phineas: So, brother of mine, what endeavor shall we engage in today?
Jeremy walks up to Phineas and Ferb
Phineas: Hey, Jeremy. What's the haps, big guy?

  • From the 1949 Droopy short "Outfoxed":

Droopy: Hello, Mr. Fox. Now can I catch you?
(Very) English Fox: Ah, as they say in America... (Brooklyn accent) Are you kiddin'?

    • This is followed up by a visual version of this trope, where the prospect of a steak dinner causes the fox to launch into a series of wild takes before returning to his usual deadpan expression.
    • Truth in Television: The most esteemed British actors, both then and now, tend to be quite familiar with the idioms of American speech.
  • One episode of Mission Hill had Kevin get in trouble for using an inappropriate word at school, and his brother Andy was called to discuss the situation. The prim and proper principal wouldn't say the word out loud, instead writing it on a piece of paper. Unfortunately, the principal's elegant, cursive handwriting—of the word "douchebag" -- sent the two brothers into a laughing fit as a kind of written version of this trope.
  • Dexter's Laboratory had a series of back-up shorts called "The Justice Friends" where three superheroes (based on Captain America (comics), the Hulk, and Thor) lived together as roommates. The one based on Thor was called "Val Hallan" and he spoke in a mixture of Shakespearean and Totally Radical.
  • The Dapper Crackhead in Boondocks. (Starts about a minute in.)
  • In one Foghorn Leghorn cartoon, after Leghorn plays a practical joke on the farm dog, the dog answers, "There is but one course for me to follow. I'LL MOIDER DA BUM!"
  • In one episode of Futurama, Bender joins the Robot Mafia and finds himself ordered to take part in a heist that involves robbing the Planet Express ship of its cargo. To keep Fry and Leela from finding out that he was one of the robbers, Bender doesn't enter the room until they're blindfolded. He then switches a dial that makes him go from a "robot" voice to "king", essentially giving him an English accent while talking the same way.

Bender (as Nibbler clings to his leg): I say, get the hell off!
Fry: That guy sounds familiar...


Other

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: "No chance, you unreasonable dicks."

"'Oops I Did It Again' marks the end of Britney Spears's transition from her 'sweet Catholic ingenue' phase to her 'impetuous skanky youth' phase."

A group of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute scientists working with nanolayers (molecular chains of carbon molecules with elements such as silicon, oxygen or sulfur) accidentally found that heating nanolayers of commercially available glue sandwiched between copper and silica, it created a bond that one researcher called "As strong as a motherfucker."

"What, exactly, is the Internet? Basically it is a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a "modem" can make a noise like a duck choking on a kazoo."

  • This is one of many tropes that FATAL provides an example of how not to use. The historically and mythologically accurate scholarship is interspersed with vulgarity that would make a drunken frat-boy wince, with a note that this was added for humorous effect. "Experience an accumulation of gas in their rectum" indeed.
  • The A.V. Club column "IMDBates" examines internet flamewars with the same detail and language one might use to document a trial. For instance "Reducing [the Joker] to such a base interpretation of "Omigod he's hawt!!!" robs him of his effectiveness, and reveals a shallow understanding of the film. Plus, all you ladies are sicko pervs."
    • This trope in general is what makes The Onion hilarious, with its deadpan, well-articulated descriptions of banal/vulgar/stupid things. One memorable example, from Elementary Schooler Clearly Just Learned to Swear; "In the past two days, Schweder has composed a ribald song titled 'Shit Shit Boobies,' covered three sheets of notebook paper with scatological malediction, and attempted to tell a joke about 'a girl who saw a boy's pussy'."
    • Of all the mastery of this trope in The Onion, perhaps the most memorable is the columnist Smoove B:

Lay your body down, and I will show you love. I will drape you in the finest black silks. I will travel to the finest Asian nations to attain this silk. Then, I will run my fingers through your hair. I will caress your body slowly and whisper in your ear while I do so. I will tell you such things as, "You are the most beautiful woman in the world" and "Your skin is like the most expensive Swiss chocolate money can buy" and "Your eyes are like windows to paradise," and other romantic things that will make you tremble with desire. I will hit you doggy-style.

  • Humorist Lore Sjoberg, author of among other things The Book of Ratings, combines Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and formal diction (often rather more formal than his topic would seem to merit) with slang and profanity.
  • Uncyclopedia does this when assigning appropriate quotations to Oscar Wilde. Well, for some definition of "appropriate".
    • A Wiki Vandal created the "Fisher Price" page with nothing but the four words "go eat shit fuckers". Through Wiki Magic, this has now become "Fisher Price: A Retrospective", a seriously-presented essay over 3500 words long, interpreting this comment with references anything from Taoism to aliens and environmentalism to oral sex and claiming that "It is considered by many art critics to be one of the greatest literary achievements of our time."
  • Badass of the Week runs off this trope.
  • This is Lieutenant Rzhevsky's (a recurring character of Russian joke stories) preferred manner of speech.
  • It's fairly common to start a rendition of The Aristocrats joke in a sophisticated manner. The punchline itself is sort of an example, with performers of unspeakable acts describing themselves as aristocrats (or in some versions of the joke, "sophisticates").
  • This is actually used as a call-in contest by a radio station in Edmonton, Alberta. The announcer, in a complete monotone, gives a line from a popular song (but not a signature line, such as from the chorus) and the caller has 10 seconds to get the song. Because of the complete lack of context in rhythm and tone, it's actually damn hard.
  • Discussing the semantics of the phrase "Shut the fuck up": "The main syntactic problem is to determine whether the fuck is being used as an pleonastic (semantically empty) direct object of shut or as a pre-head modifier of the preposition phrase (PP) headed by up."
    • There are some other instances but mostly interfixing in English occurs in very specialized circumstances. Despite that, it follows rules. For instance it always occurs on word boundaries, rather than morpheme boundaries. We all possess very clear intuitions regarding the validity of 'im-fucking-possible' and 'impossi-fucking-able'.
    • Furthermore, while our minds are able to recognise the point where the bound morpheme ends and the free morpheme begins (as evidenced in the above example, considering that most interfixes in English do tend to be of a similar nature) there are cases where a word may be one lexical morpheme where a few of the letters resemble a derivational morpheme (or may be mistaken for an allomorph of a derivational morpheme), leading people to either add an interfix at that juncture or to replace a portion of the word with the interfix. For example, I could take the word ridiculous and replace the letters dic with an interfix of cock, resulting in a new word—ricockulous—used like so: That's fucking ricockulous! Indeed, such a practice is quite ricockulous.
    • Similarly, the Wikipedia article for "fuck."
    • Crossword Solver too. It has an article for You Guys Suck Dick. Definitions. 1. "Fuck You."
    • The wikipedia page for Fucking, Austria is also quite hilarious because of this. Especially the quote from the mayor; "What is this big Fucking joke?"
    • The page on 16, considered the filthiest poem in any language, is hilarious because of this - especially the section patiently deconstructing the sexual puns in the poem.

Likewise, parum pudicum refers to Catullus, and can mean "wanton" or "fellator". Thus, in explicit modern English, the pun suggests that "just because my verses are little and soft, doesn't mean that I'm the same, that I'm some hussy cock-sucker who can't get it up". This may be translated more delicately with the analogous English pun, "that I've gone all soft".

Paul Merton: (On Boris Johnson) It's just a disaster, isn't it? He's going to go off and do something surprising and extraordinary, and people are going to go: "Oh no, he's a fucking idiot."

Aristotle transformed the landscape of western thought with his revolutionary theories of philosophy and science, which was an amazing achievement although the bulk of his theories are already discovered to be nigh-incomprehensible bullshit.

Not to mention my whole Moist storyline
Where he gets caught selling blow at a rest stop and serves time
And then he gets out and tries to get his shit together and teaches art to underprivileged kids at the local high school, but things take an interesting turn when an old gambling buddy comes to collect. See it's his former life coming back to haunt him. You can't outrun your past. See? Get it? That's the point, Joss. It's compelling! What's going to happen to these kids?!

  • The always-deadpan Steven Wright rarely curses, but when he does...

"When I was a kid, my parents would always follow up bad words by saying 'Pardon my French.' Well, recently, I was walking down the street, and this old lady comes up to me and asks, 'Do you speak French?' 'Certainly,' I said. 'Can you say something in French for me?' 'Fuck you, you fucking asshole.' I caught the teeth as they went flying out of her mouth."

HULK TRY TO OPEN MIND, SMASH EPISTEMOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS WHICH LIMIT HULK'S THOUGHT, BUT HULK WILL NEVER GET CAT-CALLING.

  • "As Voltaire said: Fuck off." is said in the Swedish Youtube video "Knappnytts Guide till OS-grenarna."
  • Margaret Cho:

"They need to read the Scriptures; where it says in Matthew, chapter 4, verse 17, it says: 'Shut the fuck up.'"

  • I'D SAY EAT SHIT, BUT THAT WOULDN'T BE HELPFUL, HOW ABOUT SOME PAN-SEARED SALMON ON BABY ARUGULA
  • The Joesph Ducreux/Archaic Rap meme uses this, in which the photo accompanies rap lyrics written in a more clinical manner (though it never actually does use a section of modern terms). The Bayeux Tapestry meme does it similarly, but not only on rap lyrics.
  • Every other definition on Urban Dictionary.
  • Juggalo News.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd can go from properly explaining the game to cursing like a mad man without effort. The most notable example in his re-revist to the Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde on NES when he explains that the game is symbolic and represents mankind's struggle between good and evil... before concluding that the game just fucking sucks. Another variation of this trope concluded his review of Godzilla for the Game Boy: "The best way to sum this up is to recite a very famous quote from William Shakespeare: Fuck it."
  • Some articles on Encyclopedia Dramatica are this way. The page on psychedelic mushrooms refers to "a gradual escalation of losing your fucking mind."
  • Alamos's guide to playing a druid in WoW is written in language that bears strong resemblance to lolcat-speak. Once, when confronted by a heckler for his inability to write proper English, his response was several paragraphs of extremely sophisticated language defending his guide, which at the end reverted to his previous style:

"While you may not be able to see the humor in the posts, realize that they are not the product of a trite or idle mind. Above all else, realize that Alamo is loves you and is want even some shiny paladins as can be friends with him, even if they is can makes him run slow now!"

  • While celebrity gossip blog Dlisted is already informal in tone, it has a category whose name, "What A Fucking Lady", invokes this trope and documents (among other things) many examples of celebrities' profane or otherwise un-ladylike language inserted into an otherwise innocuous interview for a respectable publication.
  • Wyatt Cenac's comedy special has a joke about how he saw a comment on a YouTube video of a cat jumping in and out of a box that said about the cat, "That nigga is adorable". He then says the only way the cat could be considered a "nigga" was if it either jumped in and out of a Newport cigarette box or if the box represented the duality of living in a homogenized society while trying to hold on to your fragmented cultural identity, and because those worlds are constantly clashing you must jump between them...like a nigga cat.
  • This parody of a physics lab report.

"Abstract: The exponential dependence of resistivity on temperature in germanium is found to be a great big lie. My careful theoretical modeling and painstaking experimentation reveal 1) that my equipment is crap, as are all the available texts on the subject and 2) that this whole exercise was a complete waste of my time."

  • This inevitably turns up when Media Watchdogs report on swearing on TV. Example: However, on this occasion there were 115 examples of the most offensive language i.e. “fuck” and its derivatives, in the first 40 minutes of the programme.
  • If I may quote from The Other Wiki's article on the "Online Disinhibitation Effect":In psychology, the online disinhibition effect, also known in popular culture as John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (GIFT), refers to the way people behave on the Internet with less restraint than in real-world situations.
  • In an episode of the radio show Hamish And Dougal, Tim Brooke-Taylor attempts to flirt with Mrs. Naughtie. Her response is "Och, you and your silver-tongued bullshit."


Real Life

  • People suffering from bipolar disorder may showcase this to a certain extent, but most of the time not in mid-sentence.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger here, in which he politely informs California State Legislature that they are idiots. Oh, and the first letter of each line reads 'FUCK YOU'.
    • There's also the phrasing that makes his intention obvious, e.g. "kicks the can down the alley" and "overwhelmingly deserve".
  • There was an article about swearing that mentioned how forced this trope can be in reality. "At one point in college a friend of mine pointed out that we had started cursing a lot when we were having intellectual conversations, as though trying to prove we were still cool. Talking about, say, "motherfucking post-structuralists" began to seem annoying, a facile combination of high and low that now seems like it belongs on Stuff White People Like. So as not to be assholes, we were forced to cut it out."
  • This actual answer to a threatening letter from an American company to the Swedish bitTorrent site ThePirate Bay ended with

As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe.
Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here.
For your information, no Swedish law is being violated.
Please be assured that any further contact with us, regardless of medium, will result in
a) a suit being filed for harassment
b) a formal complaint lodged with the bar of your legal counsel, for sending frivolous legal threats.
It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ....... morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.

  • Similarly, in the libel case of Arkell vs. Pressdram (the company that publishes Private Eye), Arkell's lawyers sent Private Eye a letter informing the Eye that "Our client's attitude to damages will depend on the nature of your reply". Pressdram sent a letter back which read "We would be interested to know what your client's attitude to damages would be if the nature of our reply were as follows: Fuck off". Ever since, Arkell vs. Pressdram has become a Running Gag for Private Eye; anyone who presses what Pressdram regards as a baseless law suit gets the reply, "We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram"
  • This House Concurrent Resolution (no. 29) put forth by the Idaho State Legislature, commending Jared and Jerusha Hess for the writing and production of Napoleon Dynamite. The turning point comes long about page 2, line 4, though one should at least start with line 2 on the same page: "WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote 'Nay' on this concurrent resolution are 'FREAKIN' IDIOTS!' and run the risk of having the 'Worst Day of Their Lives!'" It was passed 69-0, one member absent, by a voice vote.
  • In 1976, Alabama State Attorney General Bill Baxley re-opened Birmingham's 16th Street Church bombing case (the basis for Spike Lee's 4 Little Girls and a turning point in the American Civil Rights movement). He received threatening letters from the state's still-powerful Ku Klux Klan chapter. Baxley's full written response, on official state letterhead:

My response to your letter of February 19, 1976 is -- kiss my ass.

  • The 1985 resolution in the Ohio General Assembly that made "Hang On Sloopy" the state rock song (there's a reason why you hear it at every Ohio State football game) had lines such as:

WHEREAS, Adoption of "Hang On Sloopy" as the official rock song of Ohio is in no way intended to supplant "Beautiful Ohio" as the official state song, but would serve as a companion piece to that old chestnut
WHEREAS, If fans of jazz, country-and-western, classical, Hawaiian and polka music think those styles also should be recognized by the state, then by golly, they can push their own resolution just like we're doing
WHEREAS, "Hang On Sloopy" is of particular relevance to members of the Baby Boom Generation, who were once dismissed as a bunch of long-haired, crazy kids, but who now are old enough and vote in sufficient numbers to be taken quite seriously
WHEREAS, Adoption of this resolution will not take too long, cost the state anything, or affect the quality of life in this state to any appreciable degree, and if we in the legislature just go ahead and pass the darn thing, we can get on with more important stuff
WHEREAS, Sloopy lives in a very bad part of town, and everybody, yeah, tries to put my Sloopy down

    • If you're not a big fan of the song, you might disagree with that "affect the quality of life in this state" thing.
  • In 1984, Joschka Fischer, then member (for the Green party) of the German Parliament, addressed the President of the Parliament with "Mit Verlaub, Herr Präsident, Sie sind ein Arschloch." Translation: "With respect, Mister President, you are an asshole."
  • Some correspondence during the Battle of the Bulge of WWII as described in Stephen E. Ambrose's "Band of Brothers," and recounted in a later interview with Lt. General Henry Kinnard, then a Lt. Colonel serving on the 101st Airborne Division staff at the time.

To: the USA commander of the encircled town of Bastogne; from: the German commander; there follows a four-paragraph message demanding an "honorable surrender to save the encircled USA troops from total annihilation."
To: The German commander; "NUTS!" -- The American commander

    • Incidentally, this story was told, and later emulated, in an episode of Jericho.
  • There are some who feel that if they attack us, that we may decide to leave prematurely. They don't understand what they're talking about. There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, "Bring 'em on."—President George W. Bush
  • Lenny Bruce performed after being arrested for obscenity in Chicago and complained about testimony in his case consisting of a policeman reciting his act.
  • Dennis Miller, full-stop.
  • In An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots In Charge, John O'Farrell discusses the effect that Norman domination of Saxon England would have hundreds of years down the line:

That is why you will never hear a BBC newsreader saying, 'Several British beaches have lost their blue flags after EC inspectors detected unacceptably high levels of shite. The Prime Minister described the decision as "bollocks."'

  • Barack Obama's speaking style is practically built on this. The man can switch from talking like the Harvard-educated master orator that he is to down-homey simplicity so fast it gives English majors whiplash. From the 2008 Alfred E. Smith charity event: "If I had to name my greatest strength, it would be my humility. My greatest weakness: it's possible that I'm a little too awesome."
    • Autotune The News has exploited this fact beautifully.
    • Him quoting swear happy classmate "Ray" in the audio book of Dreams from my Father is hilarious because he maintains his standard "educated" tone while doing so.
  • Attend any gathering of philosophy students, especially if there's alcohol involved, and you'll hear this trope in spades. Actually, it even makes its way into the classroom sometimes (the pattern of speech, not the alcohol, although that also occasionally happens, too); I myself have described our position of verificationism were correct as being "epistemically fucked" in a graduate-level seminar.
    • Many university students display this. It may come from the double nature of the college years: one one side, the university teaches you an academic manner of speaking, introduces you to general culture, and gives you an advanced education which probably involves a large amount of technical lingo. On the other side, students are all young adults in the modern world, who witness an ever increasing amount of rather vulgar pop culture. And don't get me started on the kegging parties/orgies. As a result, a discussion between two students can move from quoting Plato and Hemingway to extreme profanity in a heartbeat.
    • Computer Scientists are even worse; our entire jargon is based on this kind of thing. The result of an "infinite recursion causing total memory allocation," for instance, may be that your system will proceed to "barf."
      • Biologists get so few of these, although some of the more proper lecturers find the Sneaky Fucker strategy awkward to explain.
        • Whaddaya mean few? Half of the proteins out there are named either for laughs or after a videogame character. Pikachurin, Sonic Hedgehog, Coitus Interruptus, CRAP... The list goes on. There's even an R2D2 protein. And yes, every one of those is both real and intentional.
      • Actors. "Billy, I love you. I was too scared to say it before... but I'm saying it now. I love you." \*attempts to put his head in her lap* "Jesus Christ, you're heavy!"
      • And historians. "The Papal Curia saw no other way to solve the crisis they had gotten themselves into but to choose a new and unaligned pope. The current pope was more than a little put off by this and kindly told the Curia to 'fuck off and let him do his shit'".
      • For one where it's enforced, English majors. The students tend to be rather quiet and introspective (by definition, they tend to be bookworms), and usually are very sophisticated-sounding (thanks to a massive vocabulary and the knowledge of how to use it.) However, they frequently have to deal with some rather crass authors, such as Shakespeare, Chaucer (read The Miller's Tale or The Reeve's Tale sometimes, bawdy humor abounds) or Hemingway (the Memetic Badass who claimed that one valuable skill everyone should learn to do is "Develop a built-in bullshit detector.")
      • Or even law students. "It is my humble opinion that the learned trial judge's position was complete bollocks."
  • Only one American publication I know of is more skillful at employing this trope than The Onion: The Weekly World News. Nearly every paragraph of an average issue uses it, usually to great effect. In fact, this deeply misunderstood and underappreciated institution produces top-notch journalistic satire, not to mention a deliciously surreal view of American life that would please Charles Fort and Aleister Crowley as well as John Waters and P.T. Barnum. For decades, behind a smokescreen of anonymity, in a newsroom where awards, fame, and journalistic integrity meant nothing at all, young writers with nothing to lose, mature writers who just wanted to blow off steam, idealists who refused to play the game, burn-outs who played the game too hard, Hiassenesque Tough Guys who got screwed by the corrupt system, and pale, tense young men who believed every word have produced a weekly journal of the U.S.'s greatest hopes, its darkest fears, and above all its strangest and most inexplicably haunting dreams. To lump The Weekly World News in with the vicious, puerile, hate-mongering tabloids that surrounded it in the checkout line is to disregard a true American original. From jazz to rap, from Willie Nelson to the Residents, from comic strips to the American Beauty rose, American art has always grown best when its roots are dirty. Furthermore, Batboy could kick your ass.
  • Since we're including journalism here, Hunter S. Thompson was the undisputed king of this. He could mix in one ecstatic run-on Biblical pronouncement, scholarly analysis, down-home country expressions, and a magnificent Cluster F-Bomb in a way never surpassed.
  • In The Unknown Marx Brothers, a cooperative real-life example of this pops up when Dick Cavett relates an anecdote (and it definitely helps to hear him tell this in his calm, mannered delivery) about Chico Marx being a notorious womanizer, and a crude one at that. He is to meet Tallulah Bankhead, "a great aristocratic beauty", at a fancy party of some sort, and everyone's worried about Chico making an embarrassing pass at her and causing a scene. He promises he'll behave. The day comes, he meets her, they converse pleasantly, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Chico then tells Tallulah "You know, I'd really like to fuck you." She replies, "And so you shall, you old-fashioned boy." Cue Cavett's interviewers cracking up.
  • That Guy With The Glasses.com has Fanfic Theatre and Lyrical Poetry, which are Exactly What It Says on the Tin, taking a highbrow approach to lowbrow entertainment.
  • Jeffery Skilling, a former Enron executive, while applying for Harvard Business School, one of, if not the most formal schools in the country, was asked if he was smart. His answer? "I'm f***ing smart."
  • According to The Other Wiki, even respected scholars refer to the tendency of semi-anonymous members of online communities to act more vulgarly and aggressively towards each other as the "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory". In addition to potentially being a misapplication of the word "Theory," the vocal dissonance is fucking hilarious.
  • Kevin Rudd, Australia's former PM (07-2'10), is guilty of this. Whilst explaining his reasoning behind the Government's latest actions with regards to the financial crisis, he broke his normal Spock Speak and actually said there'd be a "political shitstorm" in response to his plans. On national television, uncensored. The real kicker? The opposition parties, being Dangerously Genre Savvy, actually accused him of employing this very trope so as to improve his polling among the workers. May also be a Precision F-Strike.
    • Not really that remarkable. Australians swear quite a bit more than Americans, and Labor party members even more so.
  • Similar to the Law and Order example in the TV section above, when Moral Guardians Jack Thompson sued 2 Live Crew in the 80s, part of his prosecution included reading the group's lyrics to jury members... who then asked if it was all right to laugh during the trial. Needless to say, Jackie Boy didn't win this one.
  • Five Thirty Eight (a political statistics blog) had this beautiful sentence when talking about denial of climate change:

"There's just one little problem with this story, which reappears every so often in conservative discourse on the environment. Specifically, it's a crock of shit."

  • Alex Kozinski, a Judge (currently Chief Judge) on the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, is famous for lacing his opinions with this trope. The most famous came in the 2002 case Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc., arising over Mattel's accusation that Aqua's song "Barbie Girl" turned Barbie into a sex object. Kozinski's opinion began as follows:

"If this were a sci-fi melodrama, it might be called Speech-Zilla meets Trademark Kong."

    • And then ended as follows:

"The parties are advised to chill."

(Kozinski found for MCA, which is why you can still find "Barbie Girl" on the market).
It is astounding that he didn't see fit to point out the absurdity in implying that Barbie hasn't always been a sex object. Perhaps it was too easy.
  • Billy Connolly once recounted a conversation in which he was told that a mutual acquaintance had been informed by a doctor that "His heart's fucked". Billy proceeds to give his vision of the scenario, ending with the doctor telling his patient to "Fear not", as they shall "Amble into Glasgow, you and I, to the Royal Infirmary, where I believe that they have just taken possession of a "Defuckulator". Linksky
    • He did it again, when explaining that smelling of piss is not an attractive feature, stating you'd never hear Tolstoy saying the following:

I saw her first at Red Square, with the light glinting off her hair. I'd never forget it as I came closer. The delicate but definite smell of urine. It drew me like a magnet. Oh, Natasha, I love you, you big squirt of piss.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are...[a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

  • George Takei has this policy when it comes to homophobia and anti-gay sentiments in the media. Remember, it ok to be Takei.
  • The Irish parliament gives us this little exchange

Deputy Paul Gogarty: I respected the Deputy's sincerity and I ask him to respect mine.
Deputy Emmet Stagg: The Deputy does not seem very sincere from what he has been saying.
Acting Chairman: Deputy Stagg will have his opportunity in a few minutes.
Deputy Paul Gogarty: With all due respect, in the most unparliamentary language, fuck you Deputy Stagg. Fuck you.

  • News coverage during the 2008 Hurricane Gustav, which looked like it was going to be a much bigger deal than it actually turned out to be, had a prize quote from the Mayor of New Orleans:

Mayor Nagin: [after explaining that he usually tries to reassure the populace in these situations] You need to be scared. You need to be concerned. And you need to get your butts out of town. Right now.

  • This is an actual page in a textbook, and probably this trope in its purest form.
  • Tends to happen in Debating competitions, particularly at the university level. Probability of it tends to increase with the experience of the speaker and the quantity of alcohol consumed by participants. Although personal remarks about an opposing speaker are never acceptable, ever. Their argument may be a load of **** ing **** but they are always your honourable friend.
      • Actually, this varies quite a bit from country to country (Ireland in particular is renowned for having more leeway when it comes to jokes in general, even when they focus on the personal failings of opposition speakers), although this does mean that at international tournaments like WUDC, the highest levels of decorum are expected.
  • In Dirty Jokes and Beer, Drew Carey cites a number of examples of this, including "Please note the excessive use of "hell" and "damn" found on pages 4, 20, 21, 22, 28, 38, 40, and 52, and reduce this number by half."
  • Similarly, the BBC's "Green Book" from the 1940s on acceptable comedy material is loaded with this trope.
  • This bit from Neil Gaiman's journal:

Look, this may not be palatable, Gareth, and I keep trying to come up with a better way to put it, but the simplicity of things, at least from my perspective is this:
George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.

I've seen a lot of depressing and puerile comments about how "incredible" the girls tits are, as though a pair of tits has never been seen before. This kind of schoolboy leering and sniggering is what brings You Tube down and prevents it from being the cultural breakthrough that it should be. I'm so frustrated by it that the only thing that will cheer me up is buttering up two melons and bringing myself off between them as though they were Jamelia's very own shining, wobbling tits.

  • The editor's note on this page.
  • Christopher Hitchens has truly mastered this trope.
  • A truly epic critique on the Erotic Literature page of 99chan, which can be found in its entirety here, comment 6511 (very NSFW)

It is less than nothing, it is a paragon of terrible. I have never regretted reading something more than this... Don't take this story down. Leave it up, like the skeleton of a pirate with a sign hung around its neck. "Abandon all desire to fap, ye who enter here."

  • According to The Other Wiki, freshmen members of the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets (known as fish) are required to answer any questions asked of them by upperclassmen with certain prescribed answers. If the freshman doesn't know the answer to the question, the required answer is as follows (spoken very rapidly):

Sir/Ma'am, not being informed to the highest degree of accuracy I hesitate to articulate for fear that I may deviate from the true course of rectitude. In short, sir/ma'am, I am a very dumb fish, and do not know, sir/ma'am!

  • Roger Ebert uses this from time to time in his film criticism. A famous example:

"Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks."

  • Salman Rushdie is a mild case, from time to time. Sometimes in interviews, sometimes in writings.
  • A recent contestant on America's Got Talent juggled stun guns. Before the act, he said "It's a scientific fact that if I catch two of these on the wrong end, it will suck"
  • Biologists, in published works and scholarly lectures, refer to individual animals that copulate outside their established pair-bonds and/or dominance hierarchies as "pursuers of status- and frequency-dependent secondary reproductive strategies". Anywhere but formal lectures or articles, they're referred to in off-the-record scientific discussions as "sneaky fuckers".
  • "You know, Minister, I believe that in the long view of history, the British Empire will be remembered only for two things. The game of soccer. And the expression 'fuck off.'"
  • Houston Texans running back Arian Foster tweeted "This is an MRI of my hamstring, The white stuff surrounding the muscle is known in the medical world as anti-awesomeness."
  • William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal met for a debate during the DNC in 1968. What began as a debate descended into an insult-fest made of this trope. Its nadir was this exchange:

Vidal: As far as I'm concerned the only sort of...pro...crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that-
Buckley: Now listen you queer (pronounced quee-ah), stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered. Tell the author of Myra Brack-Breckenridge to go back to his pornography and stop making any allusions of Nazism to somebody who was in the infantry in the last war. (At this point, he's leaning out over his seat and shouting)

  • This police report. Many police reports have probably fallen under this trope.
  • Rapper Ice Cube did this short film on American Mid-Century Modern designers Ray and Charles Eames for the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art. His praise of the Eames' use of local environment and land in their house design:

This is goin' green 1949 style, bitch!
 

  • Peter Cook. The following one-liner about a Sex Pistols concert is commonly attributed to him: "And there you have it. The first recorded instance of the fan hitting the shit."
  • 419 Scam e-mails often have this; the writers usually seem to have only a vague grasp of how the words they use work, even when they manage to imitate quite complex official or other language. (See also: Delusions of Eloquence.) It might even sound authentic for a moderately long stretch of text, and then you'll suddenly run into an Internet shorthand like "pls", or something similar. (Of course, there's also enough Rouge Angles of Satin and Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma to go around.)
  • Just because something is machine readable does not mean that its denotation is not street. This really gives a whole new meaning to the word "sophisticated". Wikidata has the following triples: Q8402 P31 Q2122. Cunnilingus is an instance of oral sex. Q2122 P279 Q608. Oral sex is a subclass of human sexual activity. Q5873 P279 Q608. Coitus is a subclass of human sexual activity. Q608 P279 Q1190058. Human sexual activity is a subclass of physical intimacy. Q608 P349 00570251. Human sexual activity has NDL identifier 0570251. Q608 P910 Q7214518. Human sexual activity is the main subject of bedroom farce. Also, Lojban attitudinals. For example, ki'ai .zanru. "Defecately!", iocu'i e'e mu'o fa'o "Can it, I've got this." and oiuivi'oro'u "Yyess, dark hellmistress.".
  1. ↑ i.e., being hanged
  2. ↑ fucking
  3. ↑ The criminal in question had raped his three-month-old daughter, so he killed a stranger because he wanted to go to prison for murder, not rape.
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