Speaks in Shout-Outs

Unicorn: Butterfly, even one [unicorn]? Tell me that you saw only one.
Butterfly: One? "One alone, to be my own..." "Up goes downwind, up go down!" "Go and catch a falling star..."
Unicorn: Serves me right for even asking you; all butterflies know is songs and poetry and anything else they hear. I guess you mean well. Fly away butterfly.
Butterfly: "Oh, I must take the A train." "Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold and the mate of the Nancy brig." "Has anybody here seen Kelly?"

— The Last Unicorn ^note In order, the songs and poems are: One alone by Sigmund Romberg, unknown, Go and catch a falling star, by John Donne, Take the A Train by Duke Ellington, The Yarn of the 'Nancy Bell by Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, and Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly? by Florrie Forde.

This is when a character communicates almost solely by using someone else's words: it can be speeches, books, songs, movies, TV, radio, proverbs, The Bible, religious tracts, or other mass media. The reasons for this vary: they may have grown up obsessed with the source material or media, have language or memory problems that makes it impossible for them to speak normally, or their education is almost exclusively the quoted source material (that one is especially common with aliens) to the point they are unable to conceive of language or original thought outside of it. In milder cases, they may only use speech patterns, vocabulary, and other affectations, but at full tilt, they will only and exclusively communicate through quoting others, perhaps even becoming Lost in Character. This can be especially problematic if the source material is limited in scope. Imagine someone in a sci-fi setting trying to describe the week's Technobabble issues using only lines from Shakespeare.

In the case of characters who are unable rather than unwilling to speak using their own words, this trope can eventually be overcome, somewhat like learning a new language, with the character making an effort to address their problem. Those who simply choose to speak this way may also drop it, though it's unlikely as it tends to be a defining character trait for many — if they do drop it, it will usually be temporarily, when they have a pressing need to make a serious point. As to why a character would choose to liberally pepper their speech with quotes, it may be that they're trying to seem smart and cultured, the culture they grew up in encourages it, or they feel the source they quote from said it best (so why say it less poetically in your own words?).

Going off this last point, authors tend to like this character trait because when using highly symbolic and layered sources, it adds a lot of subtext and Genius Bonus for viewers. However, if instead the character speaks only through a very narrow range of pop-culture references, they tend to get dated very, very fast (and may become annoying or anachronistic). The longer one of these characters talks, the higher the probability that they say one of "But Wait, There's More!", "Offer Void in Nebraska", or "Slices, Dices, and Makes Julienne Fries".

This is a subtrope of Reference Overdosed. May overlap with Motor Mouth and Strange-Syntax Speaker, and Waxing Lyrical if the character uses song lyrics. Compare and contrast Cliché Storm, when all the lines are familiar tropes and sayings. Do not confuse with No Indoor Voice, which is when someone can only speak by shouting out. A character who makes lots of pop culture references but also speaks original sentences is not an example of this trope, but may be an example of Pop-Cultured Badass.

Something like this has been known to happen from spending too much time on This Very Wiki: TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Vocabulary.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The people in the Bing commercials (a.k.a. "Search Overload Syndrome").

Anime & Manga

• TK from Angel Beats! tends to speak in English song lyrics and titles. Possibly a parody, as it's noted in one episode that despite this, he actually speaks poor regular English.
• Occidental Otaku Susana ("Sue") Hopkins from Genshiken. 90% of what she says are Anime quotes (often quite obscure, but always relevant). This covers enough territory that only the club members (and not all of them) are sure Sue actually speaks or understands spoken Japanese in any way other than having memorized a library of quotes and their translations - which is the point: Sue amuses herself by invoking Funny Foreigner status while attending a Japanese school.
• Misogi Kumagawa from Medaka Box has this as his entire schtick, but it's played with. His character tic is that whenever he speaks, he does so with brackets, which in story is him quoting various different Shonen Jump manga. However, outside of a few blatant quotes, it's not clear which series he's actually invoking when he speaks. This is intentional on his part, as he speaks with their voices in order to invoke their coolness and badassery that he feels he himself lacks. When he drops the brackets, you know things have gone serious.
• Mikoshiba from Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun Cannot Talk to Women, and parroting Dating Sim quotes are the only thing he can speak to females that he's not familar with.
• The title of I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying comes from the fact that Kaoru never picks up on Hajime's references.
• Nyarko from Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!, being a massive otaku, usually puts at least one anime or Toku quote into every sentence she utters. Her fellow aliens Cuko and Hasta aren't quite as bad, but they still get in their fair share.
• Otaku Surrogate Konata from Lucky Star frequently makes video game and anime references that go past her friend's heads.

Comic Books

• Image Comics' Horridus is a Cute Monster Girl who was kept locked in a basement for most of her life, with a TV as her only companion. She learned to talk from it, so most of the things she says are catch phrases and advertising slogans.
• The Joker in The Long Halloween and Dark Victory. His Establishing Character Moment has him quoting How the Grinch Stole Christmas! after tying up a family on Christmas Eve and, true to the character, swiping all of their Yuletide decorations.
• Egghead, an old villain of Henry Pym. Goliath II (Clint Barton) made fun of it, while defeating him.
  Goliath: Dude, I may not be an expert in literary quotations, but something smells rotten in Denmark, and it's you!
• Batwoman: Elizabeth “Beth” Kane/Alice/Red Alice is Kate Kane's identical twin sister, who was supposedly killed in a terrorist attack along with their mother. She resurfaced years later as Alice, the new High Madame of the Religion of Crime, before seemingly falling to her death. Until the very end of the Elegy arc, she spoke solely in quotes from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Although she can speak in other ways, she still occasionally uses them.
• Other Batman villains who indulge this trope include the Mad Hatter (who, like Red Alice, uses Alice's Adventures in Wonderland quotes); the Scarecrow, who uses nursery rhymes; and minor villains Humpty Dumpty, who also gets in on the nursery rhyme action; and the Film Freak who frequently quotes dialogue from famous films. This is heavily dependent on who's writing them, though; in some cases, the Hatter and Scarecrow speak exclusively in quotes, while in others they're quite philosophical and have in-depth conversations (given that they're both extremely intelligent, it's not hard to see why).
• A truly bizarre example occurs in one story featuring The Question. The titular hero needs to speak to the "Spirit of Metropolis", and so travels to the heart of the city and begins talking. Metropolis itself responds, but since it obviously doesn't have a mouth, it instead compels various citizens to walk by at just the right time while in the middle of conversations. What The Question hears as those passerby are near him are the Spirit's answers.
• Jeff from Scud the Disposable Assassin is a patchwork monster who speaks only in quotes from movies, TV, commercials, songs, etc. Notably, while the comic's Medium Awareness has a "suggested voice cast" for most characters, Jeff has none, implying that it's actually reusing the audio from the original sources.

Fanfiction

• In Tealove's Steamy Adventure and the sequel, there's a running gag that Apple Bloom only speaks in song lyrics.
  Applejack said sheepishly: “Failed experiment. Her brain glitched and now she only talks in song lyrics. Not even sensible ones”
  “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down.” Apple Bloom said cheerfully.
• This Bites! features a baby transponder snail named Soundbite who ate the Noise-Noise fruit, letting him perfectly mimic any sound he hears. After eating Cross's iPhone and gaining access to the internet, Soundbite often quotes various forms of media to communicate. This even extends to other characters, as he can translate the language of animals into human language, but usually gives the animals the voice of a famous character such as Donald Duck or Achmed the Dead Terroist.
• Halloween Unspectacular: The second Myth Arc has Allsworthy, who names all of his plans after pop culture references and gives shout-outs with every other sentence, much to the annoyance of everyone around him.
• In the Transformers: Animated fanfic Transform and Transcend after being wounded in the final battle, Wreck-Gar is repaired using earth technology, specifically a music CD, and afterwards can only speak in lyrics from a popular parody artist. Naturally, it's a shout out to the Junkians from the G1 Movie, see below.

Film — Animated

• In Mars Needs Moms, the alien girl named Ki learned her English from watching early 1970's television.
• Wreck-Gar and all the Junkions from Transformers: The Movie just as they apparently patched themselves up with junkyard scraps, their speech was a stew of radio announcers and commercials and such. (Sample dialogue: "Stop, thief! No welcome wagon 'Hello, stranger' with that new coffee flavor for you!") The reason for this being that they intercept Earth transmissions and apparently can't get enough of them.
• Radio from The Brave Little Toaster didn't communicate exclusively through radio phrases, but he did generally talk like a DJ and occasionally did comments in the form of news reports or radio dramas.
• Ibor from Twice Upon a Time communicates through video clips playing on the TV set that makes up his head.

Film — Live-Action

• The Scarecrow in The Wiz sometimes communicates by reading quotes from the newspaper in his stuffing.
• *batteries not included: Harry only speaks in commercial taglines. He even provides the Title Drop.
• The receptionist with a British accent in Dancin': It's On! seems to speak entirely in Shapespeare quotes worked into puns.
• Number Five/Johnny Five does a lot of this in both Short Circuit movies, especially due to his exposure to television in the first film.
• In Explorers, the three kids meet aliens who pick up English From Watching Television. One did a better job than the other so the latter communicates by speaking out tv catch phrases and clips from old black and white tv recordings.
• Bumblebee from Transformers (2007) has a damaged voice box and can only communicate via his car radio. This turns him into a bit of a Deadpan Snarker. (And one of the soundbites he plays is the alien from Explorers.) His voice was repaired by the end of the first film, but in the sequels he went back to speaking in soundbites (with an explanation that he either just took another hit to the voicebox or he's playing it up).
• Weebo in Flubber uses clips from old Disney films incorporated into her regular speech.
• LV from the British film Little Voice has an incredible talent for mimicking different singers' voices. Towards the end of the movie during a particularly traumatic event, she seems to get "stuck" and only speaks in quotes from different songs and movies. Once everything gets resolved, she's back to normal.
• Variation: In the movie version of Being There, Chance the Gardener doesn't so much speak in shout outs — though his speech does reflect the trope that Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic because it's what he knows from television — as behave in shout outs. He almost unconsciously imitates physical behaviors he sees on the small screen. He can give a confident, hearty handshake to the President of the United States because he saw news footage of someone else giving the President one, and recreates the Orbital Kiss from the original Thomas Crown Affair with a woman who's in love with him when she enters the room at just the right moment.
• The Subtitles For People Who Don't Like The Movie option does this for every character in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, replacing the original dialogue with lines from William Shakespeare.
• A scene in Tombstone has Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo throwing down in Latin. While it's arguable their choice of words does have a point, the fact remains they're communicating in references, not holding an actual dialogue in Latin.
• In the 1989 film The Dream Team, the character Albert is a mental patient who loves watching TV, particularly sports, and only communicates by mimicking what he's heard on television.
• Small Soldiers. When Major Chip Hazard activates the other Commandos, he gives them a Rousing Speech that is composed entirely of famous quotes from war movies.
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country has the Klingon General Chang quoting historical figures and Shakespearean plays throughout the film, especially in the climactic space battle, where almost all his lines are lifted from Shakespeare.
• The killer in The Tripper only speaks using Ronald Reagan quotes.
• Black Sheep (1996): During MTV's "Rock The Vote" event for the Washington election, a stoned Mike Donnelly gets mistaken for his brother, gubernatorial candidate Al Donnelly, and speaks to the audience in shout-outs.
  Mike: 'Cause I'm born in the USA! You gotta fight for your right to vote! That's one small step for man, one giant... I have a dream! Power to the people!

Literature

• In The Last Unicorn, it is the nature of butterflies to speak this way, repeating only snippets of songs and poetry they've overheard.
• In Book of the New Sun, soldiers from the Ascian empire are taught speaking entirely in quotations given by higher-ups. One soldier Severian meets manages to tell a story using these quotations.
• In Brother To Dragons Companion To Owls by Jane Lindskold, the main character can only communicate via quotes from literature. It's heavily implied that she is autistic.
• In The Son of Neptune the harpy Ella has this to a degree. While she can speak in short, original sentences of one to three words each, she's prone to peppering her speech or segueing into quotes from things she's read.
  • Echo is also a variant, since she can only speak by repeating some or all of what the people around her say.
• The hermit monks on the Canaan Island in Pelagia and the Black Monk (from Sister Pelagia series) are not allowed to speak at all, but their prior may utter five words a day, four of which must be a quote from the Bible.
• The Savage in Aldus Huxley's Brave New World read the collected works of William Shakespeare many times and as a result, he peppers his conversation liberally with lines from plays like The Tempest — hence the title of the book.
• In Stranded With A Billionaire by Jessica Clare, the heroine Bronte really loves quoting aphorisms by ancient philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, etc.); the hero Logan finds this very attractive.
• In Paradise Pine series by Delia Latham, the mysterious and wise Miss Angie quotes the Bible very often.
• A Wrinkle in Time gives us Mrs. Who, the second of the three celestial beings who accompany the children on their adventure. She speaks almost constantly in quotations from writers, philosophers, playwrights, religious texts, and poetry. It's justified in that Mrs. Who is some kind of alien who doesn't take to English very easily; as such, she finds it easier to use other people's words to express what she's thinking or feeling.
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe:
  • The Doctor's conversation with Centcomp in the Doctor Who New Adventures novel So Vile a Sin. The system wasn't designed to have a voice of its own, so it speaks "in a jarring mix of words, snipped from media sources".
  'I,' she said, in the voice of a little girl. 'Know,' said a deep-voiced man with a Southern accent. 'You,' said an elderly woman.
  • The living city in the Sixth Doctor short story "Walkin' City Blues" does likewise. Except instead of choosing the right words, it picks a programme that conveys the impression of what it's trying to say.
  • The creature in the Eighth Doctor short story "Transmission Ends" has a form of telepathy in which it communicates with the Doctor by pulling appropriate images out of the Doctor's memory.
• The Planeteers: In "The Immortality Seekers", Penton and Blake encounter a Callistan dog-like creature who speaks telepathically by repeating things she's heard people say or think — a living phonograph machine, they call her. She has an editorial ability, though, and only repeats thoughts that are appropriate to a given topic or situation.
• In Too Too Solid Flesh, one of the android actors undergoes a trauma leaving her able only to speak her lines from Hamlet.
• Narrenturm: One of the madmen locked in the titular tower speaks only in quotes from the Book of Revelation.
• David from Rules finds borrowing other people's words much easier than producing his own. He especially likes Frog and Toad, and can hold entire conversations in Frog and Toad quotes.
• Clark from Experimental Film speaks almost entirely in echolalia, largely taken from movies, cartoons, and songs.
• Dogs Don't Talk: Most of Johnny's speech consists of song lyrics, usually by The Beatles.
• Dune's Gurney Halleck is taken to peppering his speech with quotations of various in-universe works, as the Duke Leto lampshades after he leaves a conference with him, having been ordered to negotiate with spice smugglers:
  Duke Leto: Gurney, take care of that smuggler situation first.
  Gurney: 'I shall go unto the rebellious that dwell in the dry land.'
  (Gurney leaves)
  Duke Leto: Someday I'll catch that man without a quotation and he'll look undressed.
• When Emmet from The Roosevelt was little, he memorized The Blues Brothers and for a few years communicated almost entirely in Blues Brothers quotes.
• Moojag and the Auticode Secret: Moojag's friend Wats' dialogue consists largely of titles of Beatles songs.

Live-Action TV

• In the Doctor Who serial "The Mind Robber" the Doctor and co are trapped in the Land of Fiction. One character is Lemuel Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels, whose dialog is all oddly context-appropriate quotes from the book. Other Public Domain Characters appear, but he's the only one that does this.
  • Also, in the episode "The Rebel Flesh", a doppelganger of the Doctor is created from the titular Flesh. In his first scene he speaks only in catchphrases from previous Doctors.
• Plato, the talking motorcycle from Team Knight Rider. His rider Trek was the same way.
• Night Court: Nana Visitor plays a homicidal crazy woman with Multiple Personalities . Her personalities are taken from various movies.
• Kung Fu: The Legend Continues: In "Secret Place", the perp of the week is a crazy man who speaks in the voices of various characters: John Wayne, Elvis, Scotty from Star Trek, Popeye, Jack Nicholson, etc. But not Johnny Carson, at least not now, because he's not on any more. The episode originally aired in 1993, when that was a recent occurence.
  Peter: I know how this guy's mind works. He's a split personality, all of them famous. He lives in the pages of TV Guide.
• Majisuka Gakuen: Kenpou's nickname refers to the Constitution of Japan and she speaks her mind by quoting a somewhat related article from it for the given situation (and quotes random articles when she's panicking).
• The Greatest American Hero: On the rare occasions the aliens who gave Ralph the super suit contact him, they manipulate the radio so that one word snippets (from commercials, talk radio, and songs) come across making up a sentence. In the pilot episode, the aliens communicate with Ralph and Bill via radio: they're in Bill's car and the aliens cause Bill's car radio to switch quickly between radio stations, as they use what's already being said on the radio to communicate.
• Whose Line Is It Anyway? had a game where the players had to improvise a scene, speaking only in well-known song titles.
  Wayne: Do you know the way to San Jose?
  Chip: Route 66!
• Bones:
  • Brennan's cousin only communicates by quoting Benjamin Franklin until Brennan convinces her to say what she thinks, not what Franklin thought.
  • In another episode, a Street Performer who portrays a live bronze statue of William Shakespeare speaks only in Shakespeare quotes; and unless your speech to him is in Shakespeare quotes he won't respond, just stand or sit completely still.
• For a while Hiro in Heroes is only able to communicate in pop-culture references due to his mind being manipulated.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Darmok", the Enterprise encounters a species who communicate entirely in metaphor, and if you don't know the reference you won't be able to understand. The most repeated example "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" means two strangers who meet and join forces to fight a common enemy. The episode proved so popular that it is sometimes shown in Communications classes as an example of how common background is necessary to understand someone.
• In John from Cincinnati, John Monad communicated almost entirely by means of repeating phrases that other characters had already said.
• In Li'l Horrors, Abercrombie Necros is a zombie who does little more than watch television. When the set is faulty, broken, or otherwise out of order, he often melts down, simply by repeating phrases often appearing on television sets without reliable signals.

Music

• Smash Mouth played with this in the chorus of "Walkin' On The Sun"
  So don't delay, act now.
  Supplies are running out.
  Allow, if you're still alive,
  Six to eight years to arrive,
  And if you follow
  There may be a tomorrow,
  But if the offer's shunned,
  You might as well be walking on the sun
• A song by a cappella rock band The House Jacks, "Good Things," has verses composed exclusively of slogans from commercials.
  You're in, you're in good hands,^note Allstate
  Have it your way!^note Burger King
  If you don't look good, we don't look good^note Vidal Sassoon
  You deserve a break today!^note McDonald's
• Soul Junk started off making noise-rock with lyrics entirely composed of verses from The Bible. However, with 1955 and subsequent albums, frontman Glen Galloway moved away from this and wrote original lyrics (though even these were heavily influenced by scripture)—this coincided with a switch to playing rap and electronic music. Then Galloway went back to the scripture-as-music approach, hard: he's made it his goal to set the entire Bible to music and record it. He doesn't plan to release most of it (he's well aware that large portions of the Bible don't make for interesting listening) but the albums 1960 and 1961 were results from that project.
• "Ralph Wiggum" by The Bloodhound Gang is a song composing entirely of quotes from Ralph Wiggum of The Simpsons.

Newspaper Cartoons

• Kim Rosenthal, who many years later would become Mike's second wife in Doonesbury, spoke only in media-derived soundbites when she was a baby.
• Shakespug, a minor character in Get Fuzzy, prefers to speak only in lines from Shakespeare's many works. It's been shown that he can speak normal English, he just prefers not to.

Podcast

• Doug Eiffel from Wolf 359 speaks mostly in pop-culture references. However, the Dear Listeners learned English by listening to his logs, meaning that the presumed Eldritch Abomination aliens also fit this trope.
  Hilbert: You can understand English?
  Dear Listeners: We have good Spidey Senses. With enough time and examples we've been able to work out the nitty-gritty's. Although there have been issues. We are still trying to figure out what you mean by "crazy wamajama."
  Beat
  Minkowski: [to Doug] Would it have killed you? Would it have killed you to speak English like a normal person?! It was literally your one job!

Professional Wrestling

• Perhaps in a bit of foreshadowing what an odd event SHINE 12 would be, Leva Bates ventured into this to get ready for her upcoming match with Christina Von Eerie, thinking if she meditated hard enough there (though more likely passed out) she would meet her spirit guide. She did, and to her bewilderment, it spoke in pop culture references.

Tabletop Games

• The kenku, a raven-like humanoid race in Dungeons & Dragons, were cursed to lose their voices and their creativity. This means that not only can they only "speak" by reproducing various sounds and quotes, they also can't get around this by writing, as they can't come up with anything new.
• One interlude in the Termination Shock rulebook features an alien whose native language is gestural using a translator that speaks in soundbites from movies, TV, and podcasts.

Theatre

• In Corsetless, the protagonist Olivia speaks only using lines from Shakespeare's plays.
• The Djinn from Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier speaks entirely in movie quotes which happen to share a word or phrase with the last thing someone said to him. This tendency spoofs the Genie Knows Jack Nicholson trope while deconstructing the Speaks in Shout-Outs trope, as Ja'far is incredibly confused by it and becomes increasingly annoyed by how difficult it is to communicate this way... though every other character finds the Djinn really funny. The only time the Djinn actually verbally interacts with someone is when he baits Ja'far into a "what's a dickfor?" joke, and it's implied that Aladdin is able to hold actual conversations with him.

Toys

• Transformers:
  • The Junkions speak only in shout outs. How much they do so depends on the continuity. Sometimes they can make coherent statements inbetween the TV speak, other times it's made out of cobbled together TV jargon. In the IDW comics, it's exclusive only to Wreck-Gar, who's expanded into non-TV shout outs sandwiched between coherent statements.
  • Beast Wars: Uprising:
    • Plasma, whose head has long been filled to capacity, tends to gibber human poetry and music to herself.
    • Goldbug, much like the film series's Bumblebee, only talks in musical quotes thanks to a damaged voice box.
    • Run-Over the Micromaster only talks in quotes from The Simpsons. Apparently in that universe, the show ran for several thousand episodes, so even four centuries later, Run-Over always has a quote handy. Excellent...

Video Games

• Many of V's lines in Devil May Cry 5 are quotes from William Blake poems.
• The Chanters in the Dragon Age series are required to only communicate with other people in the verses of the Chant of the Light (a sacred text in the series) as part of their oaths. The player can attempt to mess with them, though they manage not to slip up.
• In Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Genesis constantly quotes the in-universe play Loveless. Reactions to this vary between confusion, tolerance, and (especially in Sephiroth's case) exasperation.
• Captain Tom Paris in the Star Trek Online mission "Delta Flight". In keeping with his Canon characterization as a Fan of the Past, his dialogue is peppered liberally with 20th century pop culture references, to the point where his daughter Lieutenant Commander Miral Paris lampshades it before introducing the Player Character to him.
• In Project × Zone, when a character speaks about something, Xiaomu likes to reference something from that character's game, or reference something pertaining to their voice actor, or any random old Namco game. In the second game, she references random video games, anime, and movies.
• Kiesha Philips from the Backyard Sports series often cites quotes from songs, cartoons, and TV shows.
• Gex, being a huge TV fan, often mentions quotes from older TV shows and songs.
• In The Simpsons Game level "Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game", the various Sumo enemies all have Comic Book Guy's likeness, and accordingly, their dialogue consists almost entirely of video game and anime references.
  Fire Sumo: I burn like Cyndaquil!
  Sumo: Every light must fade, every heart must return to darkness.
  Sumo: Only a Flesh Wound! That's a quote from Final Fantasy IX! Ha ha!
  Sumo: TETSUO!
• A majority of Duke Nukem's quotes are references to action movies, especially his famous "all outta bubblegum" quote, which originated in They Live!, as well as "Hail to the King, baby" which originated in the Evil Dead film Army of Darkness.
• Albert Spindlerouter from LEGO City Undercover seems to be physically incapable of uttering a sentence that doesn't contain the title of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
  Albert: Fix that fuse box! I don't need any more Collateral Damage!
  Albert: Urgh, that gate needs repairing. Did you not hear it Jingle All the Way?
  Albert: We're behind on this job! I mean, it's already The 6th Day!
  Chase: Isn't anyone else doing any work here?
  Albert: Oh, I'm sorry if this seems like a Raw Deal.
  Albert: C'mon, c'mon! Don't you understand a simple command? Oh? No reply? Good!
  Albert: Stop walking, man! Start running, man!
  Albert: C'mon, get through there! And hurry up! It's almost the end of day!
  Albert: Don't make mistakes! We can't use an Eraser!
• Practically everyone in the world of Borderlands uses pop culture references in everyday conversation, to the point where it's become a series staple.
• In Chocobo Racing GP the guest characters from mainline Final Fantasy games tend to quote the games they originate from. Terra Branford manages to take this to an extreme where she speaks almost exclusively in quotes from Final Fantasy VI to the point that it and the other characters' reaction to it is treated as a Running Gag.
• Vez’nan of Kingdom Rush spends the final level taunting the player and speaks this way, referencing sources as diverse as Literature/Dune, Star Wars and Portal.

Web Animation

• The OMORIBOY Chronicles: All of Pitbull's lines are taken straight from his songs.

Webcomics

• In Erfworld when Jack Snipe the foolamancer is mentally incapacitated he speaks mainly in quotations, most notably those of "The Fool" in William Shakespeare's King Lear.
• Assok in The Property of Hate can only repeat things said by others present. RGB says he has no voice of his own. This may or may not be related to Assok having originally been an elephant.
• PvP has the character the LOLbat, a Batman parody who always speaks in internet memes.
• In Rusty and Co., the zombie speaks only in proverbs and proverbial cliches.
• Two Lumps: When they did a story arc based on The Wizard Of Oz, the Copycattin' Lion could only speak in other people's words.
• Played for drama in Rebecca Sugar's short digital comic Dont Cry For Me, I'm Already Dead. Jim and Alan, a pair of close brothers, loved quoting The Simpsons to each other, up until Alan got into a fatal car accident. While Alan was able to recover, he was effectively left unable to speak or move. The only time when he's able to make clear responses is when Jim quotes The Simpsons to him again, and he's able to weakly respond in kind.

Web Original

• The Sparrow Hill Road series has Gary the car, who communicates by twisting his radio dial to songs that give appropriate voice to his feelings.
• SCP Foundation
  • SCP-1502 is a small robot designed to be obsessed with Boy Meets World, and which speaks only in Shawn Hunter's quotes from the series, as well as increasingly identifying itself with the character.
  • In the "Phase 3 - Finale (Cantabile con brio)" portion of The Musical Suspects a mobile task force encounter an weaponized anomalous effect that prevents people from being able to communicate in any manner other than by singing Queen lyrics.
• In the Transformers stories for Shattered Glass, Beachcomber has a faulty processor, and after the Autobots land on Earth he starts speaking almost exclusively in song lyrics from the 60s and 70s, almost as if he were picking up a radio station.
• In commodoreHUSTLE, after Beej has every single internet meme uploaded directly into his brain by Paul, he can only speak in memes. (He gets better. Mostly.)
• The Zero Punctuation review of Hunt Down the Freeman quotes The Likely Lads theme.
• Almost anything in the SMG4 World.

Western Animation

• One of the robot network executives in Futurama talks only in TV catchphrases.
• Holt from The Cleveland Show is prone to this.
• Clara's retarded cousin Bleh from Drawn Together speaks only in reviews of the film i am sam (though, interestingly, she always includes the word "raves" when quoting the critic, even though some of the reviews she quotes are quite negative).
• Peter being mugged by movie critic Gene Shalit on Family Guy.
  Gene: Don't Panic Room, I'm not going to William Hurt you. I only want your Tango & Cash. So just Pay It Forward, and we'll all be Happy Gilmore.
  Peter: ... What?
  • Also in "Running Mates" when running for school board president, this is Peter's opening statement:
  Peter: Uh, this is it. This is life. What you get, so go ahead and have a ball. 'Cause the world don't move to the beat of just one drum; what might be good for you may not be right for some. You take the good, you take the bad, you take 'em both and then you have... My opening statement. Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog.
• Ned's Newt has about every other thing Newton says. His transformations provide a quick tip as to what the shout out is to.
• A variant appeared in one episode of Dilbert- when he and his coworkers ventured into an enormous shopping mall, they encountered a group of "mall natives" (per Wally, they had been early morning powerwalkers who just stayed there), who only talk in the names of retailers and restaurants you would find in a mall.
• Luna from The Loud House loves rock music, especially classic British rock. At least once an episode she will reference a 60s-80s rock song, usually by its title.
• Succulentus from the OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode "Know Your Mom". Almost every line he says during a fight is a reference to a Nu-Metal song, culminating with him chanting "bloom-cactus, bloomin' in the plaza" to tune of the scatting from "Freak on a Leash". To top it all of, he's voiced by Johnathan Davis.
• In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, "Elephant Issues", which partially parodies very special episodes, in the segment, "C.L.I.D.E. and Prejudice", the titular robot C.L.I.D.E.^note Which stands for "Cybernetic Laser Ionized Digital Entity". speaks in game show shout outs, with a dash of the HAL 9000 computer added in.^note He refers to everyone around him as "Dave", and speaks with a similar voice.

Real Life

• During the Heian period in Japan it was in vogue for the aristocrats to know as much classic poetry as possible, and private conversations could well be held entirely in poetry quotations.
• In Real Life members of the Baker Street Irregulars fan club often hold conversations exclusively in quotes from the Sherlock Holmes Canon.
• In some social media sites, particularly ones with character limits (Twitter, Imgur) where some users practically do nothing else but quote their favorite movie lines or songs.
• Many subreddits seem to have the main purpose of attaching quotes from its subject matter franchise to as many contexts as possible, such as r/PrequelMemes for the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.

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