Un-Paused

"May I speak now?"

When somebody is frozen in the middle of an action, they will always resume right where they left off in the middle of the action, often with hilarious results. May be a Brick Joke.

When something is paused in the middle of a physical motion (as by magic), it sometimes retains its momentum when it's unpaused and sometimes loses it, usually depending on what would be funny or cool.

Often a result of Time Stands Still. Can overlap with Waking Non Sequitur and may happen with Offscreen Inertia. Can also be invoked with a Time-Freeze Trolling Spree.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Used extensively in Code Geass, where Rolo's Geass stops time (or close enough). Once unpaused, characters continue to fight in their mechas, monologue, or beg intermittently for Rolo to stop using his Geass.
• Used in the short term in Kill la Kill, where Aikuro briefly paralyzes Mako in the middle of one of her rambles with an acupuncture needle to give Ryuko some advice. She continues to ramble after he removes the needle and re-dons his disguise.
• One Piece:
  • A variation occurs with Foxy's Slow-Slow Beam, which allows him to slow down people/objects for 30 seconds. While slowed down, the target will appear to be doing the same thing, even if, say, a huge, powerful fist flies right into their face.
  • When Hancock first appeared, she used her powers to turn a bunch of marines to stone as they were calling her name. A few episodes later she turned them back, resulting in them calling out "-cock-sama".
• In SD Gundam Force, people who are revived from petrification are this, especially if they were moving when petrified. Princess Rele in particular needs a few minutes to adjust, thinking that it's still the moment she was turned to stone when it was actually two years.

Comic Books

• Captain America's first words after being freed from the ice by The Avengers were "Bucky! Look out!", as to him no time had passed since 1945.
• In an issue of Excalibur, the team is fighting a team of interstellar mercenaries when two other characters show up and temporally freeze the mercenaries so they can conduct some unrelated business with Excalibur. The freeze wears off about five minutes later... by which point Excalibur has moved them around such that their unpaused attacks are aimed at each other.
• Not played for laughs in an issue of Planetary where a dead woman is successfully revived, and finishes what she was doing when she died: screaming.
• In Secret Wars, Doom has Ultron disintegrate Kang as punishment for betrayal. Kang says, "You'll need me later, you fool! Don't — arrrgh!" After obtaining the Beyonder's powers, Doom restores Kang, who says, "— you realize that Kang is essential to... your... plans... Where am I?"

Fan Works

• Like the Planetary example above, but this time Played for Laughs, in Dragon Ball Abridged, when Krillin is revived, he's screaming just like he did before Frieza killed him.
• Happens to George in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World when he's paralyzed in the library basement, having been mistaken for the aggressor. He was trying to explain that he was actually the one who saved the day, when suddenly he finds himself lying on a table upstairs. His explanation shifts into an expression of angry surprise.
• In the Star Trek: Voyager Slash Fic "The Relevance of Discretion", B'Elanna Torres switches off the holographic Doctor so she can shout at Seven of Nine, who keeps switching the Doctor back on, with the Doctor demanding to know "What the—" "—hell is—" "—going—" "—on!"
• He was caught this way in With Strings Attached as well, but he was just standing around when it happened, so this trope doesn't apply in that case.

Films — Animated

• In Rango, Beans has occasional catatonic fits. When she snaps out of them, she continues with whatever she was saying as if nothing had happened. Sometimes it's entirely different topics, such as Alien Abduction. More specifically, she doesn't pick up where she left off, but rather continues her rant as if she wasn't "paused", but more like she was "muted".
• In Trolls, Poppy passes out at the end of the song she was singing after one too many bumps on the head. When Branch finds and revives her, she sits straight up and sings the next verse of the song.

Films — Live-Action

• In The 6th Day, Talia is accidentally and suddenly killed by fellow henchman Wiley. Her last words would have been "GODDAMMIT SONOFABITCH!", something that her clone says as soon as it receives the previous iteration's full memories.
• Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid: When an anaconda carries Cole away, the others run after him and find it crushing him against a tree branch. After killing the snake, they administer CPR. Upon awakening, Cole starts right in on the terrified yelling he was presumably doing when crushed unconscious.
• Batman: The Movie. The United World Security Council members are dehydrated while they're arguing with each other around a conference table. While dehydrated their molecules were mixed together, separated and thoroughly scrambled. When they're rehydrated they immediately pick up where they left off — but each speaking the language of one of the other council members.
• In Click, Adam Sandler's character can pause reality and things will continue as if nothing happened when he hits play... but if something does happen — if he interacts with the world while it's paused — it will take effect as soon as he unpauses it. Example: pause, kick ex-wife's boyfriend in the crotch, unpause, watch poor bastard hit the ground with no idea why he's in so much pain.
• In Ella Enchanted, Ella is frozen mid-leap, and when she's unfrozen she falls and crushes the barrel beneath her, drenched in wine.
• In The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, Sir Osric is about to kill the Sorceress for slaying yet another hapless peasant when the monk paralyzes him. Flynn happens to walk in front of him just as he unfreezes and completes his swing.
• In Jurassic Park, Tim is in the middle of counting to three before getting zapped unconscious by the perimeter fence. Upon waking up, he finishes: "...three."
• In Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, the movie freezes just as Betty is about to hit Master Tang with his claws. Tang then narrates:
  Master Tang: Okay, so here were my options. a) quickly duck left, dodge the claw and take him out with a spinning back kick, or b) take the claw in the face, roll on the ground and die. [unpause] Hmm, should've gone with a.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Thor: Ragnarok: After years as the Champion of Sakaar, the Hulk is shaken into turning back into Bruce Banner by Thor playing a recording of Natasha in the Quinjet. The confused Bruce immediately asks if they saved the city, referencing the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, and is surprised to hear it was two years ago. His consciousness had stayed entirely subsumed all the time Hulk was in control. (It's two years from Thor's viewpoint, but who knows how long in reality for Hulk, given how weirdly time works on Sakaar.)
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp: After Janet has taken over Scott's mind from the Quantum Realm, Scott has no recollection of it. At first he reacts as if no time went by, and then he gets confused about how they left the control room and why Hank Pym is holding his hand.
  • Avengers: Endgame: Per Peter's description after being undusted, the passage of time was nonexistent for all victims of the snap. He just felt dusty and then found himself after being brought back, presuming he must have passed out. All the dusted and un-snapped return at the same age and same state they were at that moment while the surviving half of the universe have aged five years ahead of them (with Doctor Strange the only one immediately aware of how much time has passed). This at least is useful for distinguishing who were "snapped" and who weren't. Since Spider-Man and his supporting cast at the end are the same age, they were among the dusted while Cassie Lang has gone from pre-teen to teenager.
  • From Endgame, it is further explored as a gag in Spider-Man: Far From Home, where the school's marching band got dusted while playing in the basketball court, only to be brought back 5 years later exactly in the same court during the middle of a match.
• In The Mask, the title superhero responds to a order to "Freeze!" by doing exactly that — stopping dead in midair, covered in icicles. When told by the exasperated cop to "Unfreeze" (because otherwise he can't obey a further order to put his hands up), he finishes his leap and gets tackled by the cops.
• From La Soupe aux choux, when Le Bombé comes back to his senses after being paralyzed by the alien, he does not realize that any time as gone by and is still screaming about the flying saucer he saw, despite it having already departed.
• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. C-3PO is damaged by Imperial stormtrooper fire. When he's repaired and reactivated, he replays what he was saying and thinking when he was attacked.
  C-3PO: I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean to intrude. No, please don't get up. (Stormtroopers? Here? We're in danger. I must tell the others. Oh, no! I've been shot!)
• In the film Support Your Local Sheriff, James Garner escapes a brawl at a restaurant by yelling "Hold it!" and quietly stepping to one side, taking his food with him. Once he's out of harm's way, he says "Okay, go ahead on!" and the brawl resumes exactly where it stopped.
• This happens a few times in the X-Men Film Series, thanks to Professor X's ability to "pause" people with telepathy.

Literature

• Older Than Radio: In the Brothers Grimm's "Briar Rose" (a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty), when the princess pricks her finger the entire castle falls asleep instantly; the cook in the palace kitchens falls asleep in the act of boxing the kitchen boy's ears, and finishes delivering the punishment one hundred years later when the castle wakes up.
• In Chrono Hustle, Aphrodite at one point freezes a bunch of the heroes in time. It wears off after some time, although at different rates for different people, and has them continue saying or doing whatever they were in the middle of, before realizing that they've since been moved.
• Discworld:
  • Near the end of The Colour of Magic, Rincewind and Twoflower's current captor uses a spell to freeze in midair a bottle hurled towards him, arresting its momentum. Eight hours later, when the spell wears off, he happens to be standing in the same spot... (Note that in TCOM this is intentional; the deity that the protagonists are speaking with specifically manipulates the laws of chance so that the bottle just happens to be in the exact place and time to hit the guard and allow them to escape.)
  • In Thief of Time, the scene transitions are all marked with "tick", until the Glass Clock is started and there's a "ti-" as time comes to a stop. After the clock is destroyed, we get the "-ck".
• Happens to the narrator in H. P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time, in a way. After suffering an odd "attack" during an economics lecture he was giving followed by over five years of strange behavior, he eventually appears to return to his senses (though with no memory at all of that time)... and the first words he utters are clearly a reflexive continuation of that very interrupted lecture.
• Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. When Johnny Rico is put to sleep via post-hypnotic suggestion and then woken up again, he doesn't realize he's been asleep for more than an hour. He continues talking to the commanding officer who put him to sleep as if it hadn't happened. The topic of conversation? Rico's refusal to get some sleep.
• One trait of the aliens in Harry Harrison's story "The Streets of Ashkelon" is that they resume interrupted conversations in mid-stream even if days have passed since the interruption. Obviously, they have better (or at least differently-wired) memories than humans.

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. does a variant. Coulson and Ward are tossed off a train, and the bad guys throw a grenade after them, then the train disappears in front of their eyes. It's only in a flashback from another character's perspective that we discover the grenade actually paralyzed them for about an hour; the train rolled away at normal speed.
• The Benny Hill Show: In one sketch Benny is lurking outside a woman's bedroom window when a policeman grabs him by the shoulder and says "You are under arrest for being a Peeping...". Then the woman starts undressing and both men can just stare at her in wonder. After the woman finally closes the blinds the policeman grabs Benny's shoulder again and completes the arrest by saying "... Tom!"
• Spike dies in the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then is brought back to life on Angel, screaming in agony as if he's still being burnt up in the sunlight.
• One Season 6 episode of Castle has the titular character called to hostage situation because the hostage-taker refuses to negotiate with anyone but him. Before he goes in, Castle dons his "Writer" Bulletproof Vest and is told to work the word "cheeseburger" into any of his phone calls in case he wants SWAT to storm the place. The whole things ends with the hostage-taker (accidentally) shooting Castle in the chest, knocking him unconscious for a minute or so. When he comes to, the first thing he does before he even opens his eyes is to scream "Cheeseburger!" at the top of his lungs, which he was probably about to do right before he was hit. As with most things in this series, it's completely Played for Laughs.
• This was the entire schtick of the paralyzing horn in El Chapulín Colorado. El Chapulín would often exploit this to make his opponents hurt themselves or one another (most of the paralyzing horn episodes involve two bad guys).
• In Charmed, this is Piper's primary witch power, to Freeze and Un-Freeze things and people. While useful for combating demons and warlocks, she uses it mostly to get a handle on various arguments between people or just to get a breather.
• In The Dick Van Dyke Show episode "My Husband is Not a Drunk", Buddy is in the middle of explaining that he can't be hypnotized, then gets hypnotized. When he gets snapped out he continues his sentence about being unhypnotizable. Subverted though, in that Buddy was only pretending to be hypnotized.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Ark in Space", the Fourth Doctor attempts to talk Noah into shutting down the stack before the creature feeding off its energy is strong enough to break out, causing Noah to blast him unconscious with a stun pistol ("If you'd been down there with me, Noah, y—"). After several minutes of plot has elapsed, Sarah wakes him and he announces, "—ou wouldn't find it so amusing." He then complains he was "cut off mid-sentence! I could have been saying something important.... I was saying something important."
  • Played for laughs when the Doctor has to leave Rory to take The Slow Path guarding the Pandorica. The Doctor warns Rory about various perils, concluding with "and however bored you get, stay out of—" before he's abruptly transported away. Rory must have spent almost 2000 years wondering what the Doctor was warning him about. However the last word was only "trouble", which the audience hears when the Doctor arrives at his destination in the present day.
• Done hilariously in the notorious train episode on Due South. An entire train car full of Mounties is gassed and pass out while singing early in the episode. Right before the climax, every single one of them wakes up simultaneously, at which point they resume singing the chorus.
• There's a scene in Eureka where Beverly is hypnotizing Fargo. She gives the standard end-of-hypnosis "when I snap my fingers, you will return to normal and forget all about this" speech and snaps her fingers, causing him to finish explaining to her exactly why hypnosis is impossible.
• Farscape. In the Season One episode "Throne for a Loss", Aeryn wants to go and rescue Rygel from the trigger-happy mercenaries holding him prisoner, and volunteers Crichton to come along. Crichton is nowhere near the badass he'll become in later seasons, so naturally he suggests they negotiate instead until Aeryn knocks him out with a "Pantak Jab". He wakes up in her Prowler on the way down to the planet trying to continue his conversation.
• The Goodies. Graham Garden is working on an antidote to his New Improved Snooze, a sleeping draught that's so effective it's put most of Britain to sleep. Deciding to test the antidote himself, he takes a swig of New Improved Snooze, then goes to drink the antidote only to fall asleep. Hilarity Ensues as he then goes sleepwalking across the country, but Tim revives him and pours the antidote down his throat. Graham wakes up and immediately goes to take a swig of New Improved Snooze as part of his experiment, only to be stopped by an alarmed Tim.
• There is an early (season 1 or 2) episode of House where a patient is having seizures. He will stop in the middle of a sentence for a few moments before going right back to what he was saying, unaware that he lost any time.
• In the The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Brain Killer Affair", Illya is zapped with some kind of hypnosis device just as he's about to make a call on his cigarette-case radio. When Napoleon snaps him out of the resulting catatonic state hours later, he immediately starts talking into the radio.
• Moon Knight: In the first episode, Steven has no recollection of what happens whenever he "blanks out", reacting as if no time at all has gone by. For example, when the "nightmare" of being pursued by cultists in the alps suddenly ends, he wakes up in a panic on his bed in London, as if just coming out of it... despite it being a day or two after these events, as discovered later.
• In the first episode of Pushing Daisies, the first thing Chuck does after Ned brings her back to life is grab his tie and bang him on the lid of her coffin in self-defense against her killer.
• Red Dwarf:
  • Episode "Pete: part 1". Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat come upon a team of Canaries frozen by the Time Wand. When Kryten tries to fix them, they instead intermittently unpause.
    Canary: Don't mess... [long pause] with that thing, it can re... ally screw... ew-ew-ew... you up!
  • Later, they use the Time Wand to freeze the entire crew, including a pair playing ping-pong who, when later unfrozen, suddenly find the ball they had in mid-air was suddenly missing because Lister had taken it away while they were frozen.
• Saved by the Bell has a Running Gag where Zack would say "Time out!", causing the other characters to freeze in place. Although this was normally only used only to address the audience, Zack wasn't above occasionally messing with the scene while it was frozen, such as using it to escape a punch (Mr. Belding, who had been behind him, got hit instead).
• Stargate SG-1:
  • At the beginning of the episode "Urgo", the team is going through the Stargate while O'Neill is making some joking aside. When they emerge from the event horizon, O'Neill is pursuing his monologue... except they're back at the SGC after a three-hour timelapse, and have no memory of visiting another planet.
  • There is also the running gag of someone (usually O'Neill) being teleported mid-sentence by the Asgard. Upon arriving on the alien ship or back on Earth, they usually conclude whatever they were saying before looking around in annoyance. A very funny instance is of Carter yelling at Thor to not teleport her, only to pop up right back at the SGC in General O'Neill's office, who is quite puzzled by the sudden, shouting apparition.
• The holographic Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager always gives his Catchphrase "Please state the nature of the medical emergency" whenever he's activated. In "Imperfection", however, someone activates the Doctor only for him to appear shouting, "—I'll have to sedate you!" It turns out that Seven of Nine had switched him off in the middle of a sentence.
• The episode of The Twilight Zone entitled "A Kind of a Stopwatch" has this in it, until the stopwatch breaks.
• In the "Art Museum" episode of The Upside Down Show, Shane has a moment of artistic inspiration when he sees Mrs. Foil standing behind his transparent drawing complimenting it, and has the viewer use their Universal Remote Control to pause her mid-word to add to his art. He then has the viewer unpause her when he wants to hear her input, with her picking right back up where she left off.

Music Videos

• In the clip for "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" by Eiffel 65, the singer is abducted by aliens in a stasis sphere during a concert. When he's released on their planet, he immediately resumes singing, although his audience is now entirely composed of blue aliens. Lampshaded in the Literal Music Video remix.

Pro Wrestling

• Player Uno of CHIKARA uses this as part of his gimmick, as shown in these clips.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The time stop spell stops time within a limited area. When it ends, the creatures inside have no idea any time has passed and continue acting as they were before.
  • Rod of Inertia, the precursor of Immovable Rod back from Basic D&D (Companion Set) stops at one command and continues its movement on another. It also doubles as a spear +3... and yes, pre-set ambush/trap item was one of suggested uses — another being fall-stopping perch.
• Paranoia supplement Acute Paranoia, adventure "Me and My Shadow Mark IV". Markie (the Mark IV warbot) is talking to the PC's when a piece falls off of him, sending him into a catatonic state. When the piece is re-attached, Markie continues talking right where he left off. (It's a barometer. Having a piece missing messed with his superiority complex.) If they call him on it, he makes up a story about cosmic rays or something. If they keep pushing the issue, he blows them away with a tacnuke.
• Star Fleet Battles. Some Klingon ships have a stasis field, which causes time to stop for other ships placed in it. When the field lapses the ships don't know that time has stopped and continue maneuvering as they were before the field took effect. The game's intricate energy management system requires extensive adjustment to deal with the missing time.

Video Games

• In Borderlands's fourth DLC, the Claptrapped version of Commandant Steele, who died at the end of the main game, finishes the speech she was giving before being impaled by the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere Final Boss.
• In The Curse of Monkey Island, Elaine is gearing up to punch Guybrush right before she is turned into a statue. Once revived, she floors him. (Granted, he had it coming, since her petrification was kind of his fault).
• Babs gets turned to stone while dancing in Dragon Quest Builders 2, and they continue to do so for several seconds after being unfrozen before they notice the sudden change in scenery.
• In Genshin Impact, if a player or NPC is frozen by combining the effects of Hydro and Cryo, then upon breaking out, they will resume whatever actions they were performing and dialogue they were saying before being frozen.
• Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando:
  • The frozen Gadgetron scientist. When broken free from his ice block, he's still celebrating the success of his Thermanator (which froze him in the first place). "It worked! It worked!"
  • Also Dr. Nefarious, who picks up where he left off like nothing happened whenever he gets knocked out of one of his glitches.
• Sonic Generations opens with the villain apparently destroying time and space, banishing Sonic into a white limbo, kidnapping most of the extended cast, and blasting a chili dog out of Sonic's hand. Upon restoring the world, Sonic's first action? Catch the falling chili dog.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: In the very first scene, some unknown calamity freezes the world around Noah. At the end of the game, we find out that this was the moment the two worlds collided. The worlds were frozen into Aionios, an "Endless Now" where no one had to confront the unknown future, for hundreds if not thousands of years. Once the Origin system is started again, separating the worlds as originally intended, the last scene has the world unpausing without anyone seeming to notice that anything happened.

Webcomics

• Darths & Droids uses this when Han gets frozen in carbonite (well, alcohol). For context, Boba Fett wants vengeance on Obi-Wan, who he last saw boarding Han's ship.
  Han: Hey, Fetta, guess where Obi-Wan is! He's- (gets frozen)
  [111 strips later]
  Han: -dead!
• In El Goonish Shive, within Sarah's simulated timestop spell she can unpause people by being them which results in anything she says while switching bodies starts out coming from the first body and finishes coming out of the second body.
• In Everyone Is Home, in Dinner Despair when Cloud realizes that Sephiroth didn't perform a Heel–Face Turn and that he was Properly Paranoid, he begins to say "You...S-son of a-" before dying. Come Final Revival, his first words after being revived are "-bitch!"

• In Girl Genius, when Andronicus Valois, the first Storm King is freed from the Time Stands Still effect of Prende's Chronometric Lantern, he doesn't realize that two hundred years have gone by. For him, it was mere seconds ago that Van Rijn betrayed him.
• In The Order of the Stick, Haley is petrified mid-sentence, then finishes the sentence when she's restored 30 strips later.
• In Swords, the hero Quillion was turned to stone by a Blade of Sealing centuries ago. At first it looks like Quillion's statue is in the middle of screaming from the blade embedded in his chest, but when removed it shows he was about to sneeze all this time.

Web Videos

• Double Subverted in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. The title doctor freezes Captain Hammer right before his song's big finish. When he's unfrozen, he punches the doctor in the face, and then finishes his line.

Western Animation

• In the first episode of Futurama, Fry pushes Leela into a stasis pod mid-lecture, and sets the release time for later that day. When she comes out later she's still yelling at him.
• The Garfield Show: In "Jon's Night Out", Jon is hypnotized to fall asleep and wake up whenever Odie barks, and he complains that he can't be hypnotized before going to sleep mid-sentence. Later, when he Jon is sleepwalking through a construction site, Odie barks again and he wakes up, continuing his earlier rant until he realizes where he is.
• Played with in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. In a spoof of the old Birdman cartoon, Phil is frozen mid-sentence: "A madman is freez—". When Birdman unfreezes him: "Ha ha ha, —ing!"
• In the pilot episode of Hazbin Hotel, Alastor the Radio Demon shows up at the titular hotel because he wants to help Charlie run it. Since Alastor is The Dreaded, Charlie makes an Oh, Crap! expression when she sees it's him. Alastor then says "Hel-" before Charlie slams the door in his face. After a moment, Charlie opens the door back up and he says "-lo!" before she slams the door in his face again. After deciding to let him in, Charlie opens the door for a third time, prompting Alastor to say "May I speak now?"
• In the Justice League episode featuring Deadman, Superman gets possessed mid-sentence while talking about a restaurant in Smallville where "the milkshakes are so thick..." When he regains control of his body, Supe's first words are "...you have to eat them with a spoon! (glances around) What am I doing in Africa?" What makes the exchange even funnier is that, at the moment of possession, the first thing Deadman uses Superman's body to say is "I need your help," prompting odd glances from Batman and Wonder Woman. That's pretty thick, indeed.
• The Simpsons: In the "Bartificial Intelligence" segment from "Treehouse of Horror XVI", Bart jumps out of a window yelling "COWA—", then hits the ground and goes into a coma. When he later wakes up, he jerks upright yelling "—BUNGA!"
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "F.U.N.", Plankton closes the door on SpongeBob in the middle of saying "We could go jellyfi..." When he returns sometime later, SpongeBob finishes where he left off: "...ishing at Jellyfish Fields."
• Steven Universe: In "Catch and Release", Peridot is Poofed Mid-Sentence ("Wait! You need me! I'm the only one who knows about the—") and taken back to the Crystal Gems' temple. When Steven frees her to find out why she's suddenly so desperate to escape back to Homeworld, she finishes her exclamation ("—the Cluster, you insufferable half-formed traitor mega-clods!") before realizing the change of locale.
• In an episode of the eighties Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Donatello has invented a device that will freeze a person mid-action. Michaelangelo, skeptical, offers to test it out. He takes a leap into the air, and Donatello freezes him in mid jump. Donatello then tells the others that when Michaelangelo is unfrozen, he'll have no idea that any time has passed, and will probably say something like "See? I told you it wouldn't work!" Which is exactly what happens when he's unfrozen.
• During an episode of Voltron Force, King Lotor, hopped up on haggarium, declares that "This is the day that I—" and gets blasted by Voltron's new guns. When he is later revived back at his castle, the first thing he says is "—destroy Voltron!" ... and smacks face first into a wall.
• Wander over Yonder: When Wander is constantly interrupting Hater from getting his once-a-millenium wish from a celestial building, he shuts him up in the middle of saying, "You always have to take a silly one, 'ca—", leading to the Wasteful Wishing. Once the wish ends, Wander resumes right where he left off: "—'cause a silly photo shows you're havin' fun."

Real Life

• It is often said that when the BBC resumed its television broadcasts again after World War II, it picked up from the same place in a cartoon where it had stopped. The TV transmitter was shut down in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon. However, this isn't exactly true; the television service did resume with the exact same cartoon after the war ended, but played it from the start.
• Jack Paar left The Tonight Show on-air to protest the censoring of a joke. He said,
  "I've made a decision about what I'm going to do. I'm leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way to make a living than this, a way of entertaining people without being constantly involved in some form of controversy. I love NBC [...] But they let me down.

After he was convinced to return almost a month later, he began his monologue with...

"As I was saying before I was interrupted... I believe the last thing I said was 'There must be a better way to make a living than this.' Well, I've looked... and there isn't."

• One of the better-known variations of a Flashmob involves everyone showing up at a certain time and pretending to freeze for a few minutes, after which this trope is invoked.
• The children's game of "Red Light, Green Light", where participants have to freeze in place for "Red Light" and move freely during "Green Light". If they're caught moving after the controlling player says "Red Light", they have to go back to the starting light.
• Urban legend holds that a professor in a Central European university was interrupted in the middle of a lecture by the onset of World War II. Years later, after the war ended, the professor returned to the university and began his first lecture with "As I was saying...".

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