Opposite Day

♪ Everything is upsy-daisy
Everyone is acting crazy ♪

Not A Dude: I'm gonna punch you in the face! [prepares fist]
Not A Guy: But it's Opposite Day.
Not A Dude: OH NOOOO— [fist lands on own face]

— Definitely not asdfmovie5

Click the edit button to end this old page.

Opposite day is not the special day when everyone does the opposite of what they would normally do. On opposite day, which everyone agrees happens on a specific day of the year, you always tell the truth and do everything the same as usual.

Do not compare Just the Introduction to the Opposites. Has nothing to do with Russian Reversal, Bizarro Universe, or Mirror Universe. Closely related to NOT!... Not!

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Aversions:

Neither Anime nor Manga

• Yotsuba&! spent a chapter, Yotsuba & the Restaurant, playing the Opposites Game with Dad, Asagi, and Torako. She capped it by calling Asagi "an ugly old hag" without warning...
• In Anpanman, there is a character named Backwards Fairy who says the opposite of what he means. Baikinman has to watch what he says when he disguises himself as him.

Not Comic Books

• Iznogoud: In "The Day of Misrule" (and its cartoon version, "Nuts' Day"), masters become servants and servants become masters for a day, which makes Iznogoud Caliph until midnight. He scrambles to make the inversion permanent before then, but when he gives Wa'at Alahf his fortune and sells himself into slavery to persuade the people to rally behind him, midnight strikes and he is arrested as a runaway slave.

Not Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes has a story arc based on this and the logical paradoxes inherent to it.
  Calvin: Is there a bee on my back or not?
  Hobbes: No.
  Calvin: Good, now I— OW!
  Hobbes: (hiding in a tree) Remember, at midnight Opposite Day is over. Got it?
  Calvin: (holding a baseball bat) "Yes".

Not Film — Live-Action

• In The A-Team, B.A. wonders if it's Opposite Day when Hannibal carjacks him.

Not Literature

• The "Boy Bishop" aspect of the Day of Misrule is reflected in The Discworld Companion, which says Unseen University used to have a Boy Archancellor tradition, in which the younger students would select one of their number to take this role during Hogswatchnight, and the senior wizards would have to do whatever he said. The Boy Archancellor was usually the least popular student, due to what happened on the following day, when the senior wizards were back in charge.

Not Live-Action TV

• Our Miss Brooks: "Turnabout Day" at Madison High School, the brainchild of Walter Denton. Teachers were students and students were teachers, and Walter Denton was principal, regaled in a Osgood-Conklin style three-piece-suit. Miss Brooks wore a pair of tight jeans to school. Stretch Snodgrass taught English while wearing a dress (and carrying a football). Mr. Conklin wore a three-propeller beanie and a Mickey Mouse shirt. Mr. Conklin had wanted nothing to do with the notion; but the head of the board of education, Mr. Stone, had "ordered" it. That is to say that Walter Denton forged Mr. Stone's signature on a letter to Mr. Conklin . . . .
• There was an Opposite Day episode of Salute Your Shorts, where Ugg and Budnick switched positions; Budnick went Drunk with Power.
• You Can't Do That on Television had a series of Opposites skits Once per Episode, set up by a clever prank on one of the cast members.
• The Colbert Report has a relevant segment available online for leisurely viewing.
• The Whitest Kids U' Know had a sketch on it, here.
• One episode of World's Dumbest... features such things as a guy in a banana costume attacking a guy in a gorilla costume and a convenience store clerk stealing from a customer, prompting Mike Trainor to wonder if it's Opposite Day. He then imagines "World's Smartest Law-Abiders," featuring a man crossing the street on the green light, Frank Stallone complimenting him and saying that he must be Russian, and Tonya Harding using Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness. Trainor then decides that he doesn't like Opposite Day.

Not Web Animation

• Unforgotten Realms has an episode using Opposite day while dealing with a random encounter.
• The asdfmovie and its sequels had an opposite day, especially asdfmovie5, which provides the page quote.
• One Cyanide and Happiness short is set on the titular day. As usual for C&H, things start off innocently enough, and then take a turn for the dark and weird — culminating in some firefighters setting a building on fire.

Not Web Video

• In the Secret Life SMP, Scar's Day 4 secret task is to do the opposite of everything someone tells him to do. When Impulse and Pearl come to him asking for a favor to gift a heart towards Skizz (who had lost a lot of hearts the previous session), he hits Skizz twice instead to take a heart. When Joel and Martyn ask him to "come over here and take that helmet off" (because helmets are against the rules of the series, which he briefly forgot), he runs away and keeps it on.

Not Western Animation

• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Hilarity Ensues from The Grim Reaper's unfamiliarity with the concept. A blatant logical paradox thwarts him at the last second.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The first season includes half an episode titled after this trope, where Squidward lies to SpongeBob and Patrick about there being an Opposite Day. He hopes that this will make them behave long enough for him to make the neighborhood presentable enough so he can sell his house and move out, but inevitably spirals out of control.
• In Drawn Together:
  Wooldorf: "Foxxy does not have a brain tumor. (all sigh with relief) I too would be relieved, were it not opposite day!"
• The Simpsons episode, The Wife Aquatic has Homer believing it's opposite day. The captain of the ship that Homer is on tells the crew "It's not opposite day!" in response to Homer's shenanigans and one of the crew members responds with "That must mean it is opposite day!".
• Archer had a bit in the episode "Viscous Coupling" where Cheryl believed they were in Opposite World, resulting in her mixed-up communications interfering with Archer's plan.
• Craig of the Creek features an episode fittingly entitled "Opposite Day". In it, Opposite Day happens during solar eclipses, due to the light of day being turned into the opposite, the darkness of night. All the kids of the creek are compulsively acting opposite their true nature, such as Kelsey being a spineless pacifist instead of a confident warrior, or Kit giving away her wares for free instead of trading for them. This even extends to physical attributes becoming opposites, such as Kelsey's sword gaining healing properties, or the short girl Big Red being turned into a giant named Little Blue. After seeing the total chaos caused by this event, Craig, Kelsey, J.P. and Wren decide to end opposite day by lassoing the sun out of alignment. Wren points out that this shouldn't work due to all the laws of science broken by doing so, but Craig points out it is opposite day, so it should work because under normal circumstances it shouldn't. Which it does.

Unreal Life

• There was a Feast of Fools in medieval Europe, in which the commoners could do as they pleased, and the Lord of Misrule outranked the nobility for the day. Monasteries celebrated this Feast by choosing a young monk to be abbot for the day, eating and drinking in chapel and replacing services with songs and dancing that bordered on blasphemous. An aspect of this survived until more recent periods as the "Boy Bishop" ceremony on St Nicholas's Day. This was referenced in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where Quasimodo is mistaken for one of the revelers in a horrible mask and then crowned King of Fools due to his ugliness. In the Disney movie this is depicted with the musical number "Topsy Turvy".
• There have also been similar festivals throughout European history, for example the Roman Saturnalia in which, for example, slaves might be waited upon by their masters and other Roman cultural norms were reversed. During the Middle Ages, some of these traditions even seem to have become attached to Christmas, including those pertaining to this trope.

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