Verbal Ticked
Crackotage: Movie night is my favorite night. I think it is my favorite night!
Silent Rip: Are you even trying anymore?
The Verbal Tic version of Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping. A character with a weird speaking habit, such as rhyming all the time, using pseudo-archaic terms, outdated slang, or just any weird speech habit, starts to trip up after trying to keep up the speaking habit for a while. One common example is a constant rhymer who starts to trip up on his rhymes as the story progresses, either making nonsense rhymes, or forgetting to rhyme. Almost always played for laughs.
Note this is not a complete failure to keep up a verbal habit from the beginning, like Delusions of Eloquence. Nor a single attempt, like Mixed Metaphor. This is when the character is established to have the habit, but starts to falter as time goes on.
Related to Buffy-Speak and Sophisticated As Hell, which can overlap if the person is known for big words, but starts to trip up after a while. Similarly, instances can fall into Mixed Metaphor, Metaphorgotten, Ice Cream Koan, and several other 'failed' attempts at verbal tics.
Comic Books
- In Asterix and Son, a (male) Roman sneaks into the Gaulish village dressed as a nanny, in an attempt to abduct a child. 'His' speech is always prefaced with (Falsetto) to signify his disguise. When he got mocked for being clobbered by the baby, (Who had gained super strength from the potion) his (Falsetto) dropped to snap at the mocker.
- In I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League, Blue Beetle is shocked when Etrigan, a rhyming demon, says something that doesn't rhyme. He was also surprised at a weak, reaching rhyme earlier.
Literature
- Igors in Discworld are expected to lisp, and almost all of the 'classic' ones do so. Though sometimes they lose it when under stress or trying to explain something complicated.
- Or simply expressing a sentence with excessive sibilants. Possibly because their master protested being sprayed with spittle.
Live Action TV
- Monty Python's Flying Circus, with the Man Who Speaks Only In Anagrams:
Palin: Ah, Ring Kichard, yes... but surely that's not an anagram, that's a Spoonerism.
Idle: If you're going to split hairs, I'm going to piss off.
- A Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Monster of the Week references it (but doesn't fall into it) when a Ranger is resisting his hate spell.
Hate Master: "Would you give in already!? Doing this is no snap! It really isn't easy talking all the time in rap!"
Video Games
- Jaiver, one of the COs from Advance Wars: Dual Strike, doesn't quite speak in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe, but certainly uses a lot of archaic terms and references to honour and combat. Near the end of the game, he starts to flub it up.
Ho, Sir Clone of Sir Kanbei! I challenge your honor on the...er...field of honor!
Let my sword and shield save the day from villainy most...villainous! Huzzah!
- Subverted in Banjo Tooie. Gruntilda speaks in rhyme for the entirety of the first game and during a portion of the second game's opening cutscenes before her sisters force her to stop rhyming. She then speaks entirely normally for the rest of the second game without even going through a period of decay, implying that her tendency to rhyme before was entirely manufactured, if not well manufactured.
Web Animation
- Crackotage, one of the Cheat Commandos from Homestar Runner, usually speaks in rhyme. As the page quote shows, though, he starts to get lazy after a while. He stopped rhyming entirely after being fired from the Cheat Commandos, and started again after he got his job back, implying that he thinks of it as part of his job (ignoring the fact that rhyming was what got him fired in the first place).
Western Animation
- In one episode of The Fairly OddParents, Timmy outwits a sickeningly sweet Alien Invasion by making them so angry they start fumbling their rhymes, which breaks Cosmo and Wanda from their hypnosis, letting Timmy make a wish to help the allergic-to-cute Yugopotamians defeat them.
- In Megas XLR, T-Bot, an obvious homage/parody of Mr. T, speaks constantly in rhymes. ("Feared as the baddest, the maddest, the worst you ever haddest bot in the quadrant!") His second-last line isn't quite as impressive.
T-Bot: T-Bot doesn't know failure! Will, uh... Lock you... In a trailer!