Metaphorgotten / Web Original

Bad analogies in Internet media.

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• The Angry Video Game Nerd gives us this little gem:
  If there's any game that puts you in a bad mood, it's Castlevania III. Putting this game in your Nintendo is like running open-armed out into a rainstorm of piss! You wanna go balls to the wall? Well, there's one way to go balls to the wall and that's to stick your dick in an electric outlet! You wanna play shit tennis with an orangutan while shoving your head up a hyena's asshole? Well, good luck.
• Running gag at Cracked. Some, but by no means all examples include:
  • "Richard Lawrence blazed his own trail as the first person to attempt to kill a U.S. President while being crazier than a bag of agitated cobras injected with some sort of... crazy serum. For cobras."
  • "Hollywood filmmakers like their women like they like their coffee: shrill, stupid and submissive. And usually not black."
  • [Steve Bucholz on gay marriage] "On the Internet, people have gotten so gay for gay marriage, that things have even gotten a little gay, if you know what I mean. (Do you? I'm seriously asking. I've kind of lost track.)"
  • This video, a parody of science documentaries that get too carried away with their analogies, is made of this trope.
  • From a Cracked article describing World of Warcraft like a girlfriend: "Over time, the relationship gets stale because you're just doing the same old shit. So you either call it quits or you grit your teeth and fight through it because the idea of finding another game to fuck is just mentally exhausting. And then one day you log in to find that it's gotten a boob job and lets you do anal. Wait, I think I got my analogies crossed somewhere."
  • From 3 Despicable Internet Behaviors (That Are Really Your Fault): "The Internet allowed for the creation of a fast food version of information that's not particularly good for you but still triggers that same pleasure zone in the brain. You're essentially fattening yourself up with information obesity, because the news outlets, in the end, are businesses that know they can stay in the black by feeding you what you want as opposed to what you need. Meanwhile, reason and rationality rot like neglected teeth. Or maybe it's journalism that's rotting like teeth. I don't know anymore, that metaphor kind of got away from me."
  • From an article about Glee's theft of Jonathan Coulton's version of "Baby Got Back": "It's like getting a PS3 for Christmas and then suing your parents because they stole your song and didn't give you credit. Sorry, our analogy guy is on vacation."
  • From 7 Women Who Put Their Lady Parts to to Horribly Practical Uses: "Christie Harris was arrested after a drug-sniffing dog signaled to her car. A search found meth and a loaded gun. Christie may have been ready to go Thelma and Louise, only without Louise and with meth instead."
  • From 6 Unexpected Things I Learned From Being a Drug Dealer:
  When all drugs are lumped together, kids start to think of them as different flavors of ice cream, when in reality they're more like different species of snakes. Weed may be as harmless as a garter snake whose heart is filled with love, but meth is more like a king cobra whose venom sacs are filled with meth.
• From Creative Juices' D&D PHB PSA's comes Steven of Tyler's description of a dragon:
  Steven of Tyler: Well it was this dragon! This goddamn dragon. As large as a... as large as a tree. A tree that was at least three times a normal tree's height.
• In Lights, Camera, ACTION!, Destine Enormity's Aidric Carter has a problem with finishing his metaphors.
  Aidric: The vents... *gestures dramatically* OF JUSTICE ...wait, that... doesn't work because it's a building of evil, so I guess it's... more like vents of sodomy and villainy and... *pause* ...okay, this is getting away from me now.
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog has several examples.
  • For example:
    Penny: You're not really interested in the homeless, are you?
    Dr. Horrible: No, I am, but... it's a symptom. You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on, consumes the human race. The fish rots from the head, so they say. So I'm thinking, why not cut off the head?
    Penny: [pause] Of the human race?
    Dr. Horrible: It's not a... perfect metaphor.
    • Arguably, he WAS talking about cutting the metaphorical head off of the human race (by overthrowing the government and society in general) but just didn't want to tip his supervillainous hand.
  • In the same work, the lyrics of "Everyone's a Hero".
    Cpt. Hammer: It's not enough to bash in heads/You've got to bash in minds!
  • And:
    Captain Hammer: It's curtains for you, Doctor Horrible. Lacy, gently wafting curtains.
    Dr. Horrible makes a sound that can only be described as a Flat "What".
• The "Doc Brown vs. Doctor Who" Epic Rap Battles of History episode has the parody of the Tenth Doctor do this in his typical manner.
  Calm down, will you? Everything is going to be fine!
  You're not going to tear any wonky holes in any fabric of space and time
  Actually, it's a lot more like a rug really, well, never mind
• This piece circulating around Facebook:
  A relationship is like a house. If a light bulb goes out, you don't buy a new house. You fix the light bulb. Unless of course, that house is a lying whore. In that case, you burn that fucker down and buy a better house with good light bulbs.
• This interview of Fallen London and Sunless Sea creator Alexis Kennedy, discussing how Sunless Sea was Failbetter's first foray into full videogame territory after a career heavy on browser-based offerings:
  So although it wasn’t our first rodeo, it was… um… our first fish rodeo. I don’t really know how rodeos work. We don’t have them in the UK. This metaphor’s not working out.
• Jonathan Pie is a spoof journalist who says what he's really thinking between takes. Inevitably he falls into this trope.
  Pie: There's no point crying over spilled... Brexit... Tory majority...
• JonTron has one of these in his review of Star Fox Adventures^note the first anniversary of his YouTube channel:
  Here I am, a whole year later, still truckin' along like a sack of potatoes on a long open road, wishin' he'd stopped for gas at the last rest stop, and then, on the interstate 12, he gets hijacked and murdered by a bunch of Quaker ghosts. [Beat] That haven't moved on from the war of 1723 - ffffffffffuck, what even-
  • Another in his Turducken Chef video, again lampshaded:
  Hey, if the sun don't rise in the east, then that ain't a beautiful filet. If the sun does rise in the east, then... [Beat] I don't know what kind of metaphor I'm goin' for here, what I'm tryin' to say is that's a beautiful bird.
• In an episode of Klavin on the Culture about racism, Andrew starts comparing celebrities to BioShock splicers and completely forgets where he was going with it.
• This example from lonelygirl15 episode "Go For It :)", when Emma and Sarah are at the Grand Canyon:
  Sarah: Welcome to the world's biggest metaphor. See, the, uh, cliff, it's like your power thingie (if it's real) and the canyon is your life, if you choose to accept it.
  Emma: So you're saying I should jump?
  Sarah: Um, bad metaphor.
• My Life Is A Goddamn Mess: "Social links are like Pringles. They come in a can and they don't taste good."
• The Nostalgia Critic compares obscure Disney Afternoon cartoon The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show with its obvious inspiration, The Ren & Stimpy Show:
  Nostalgia Critic: It's like watching a kid dance well, and then another less-talented kid says he can do the same thing, and then ends up copying a terrible cartoon show.
  • He also gives us this gem from his review of Eight Crazy Nights
    Nostalgia Critic: You know how with the Grinch, you kinda Love to Hate him? Well, Adam Sandler movies are worse than cancer.
  • The Nostalgia Critic is quite fond of these. Another example from his review of Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland:
    Nostalgia Critic: This whole movie is like watching someone else's kid at Chuck E Cheese's. You're happy they are having fun at first, but soon you get bored by it. And when you realize you're stuck there for another hour and a half, you begin to hate that little kid, and his birthday. And Chuck E Cheese's. And the idea of celebrating birthdays altogether. I hope you're happy, movie. You got me to hate birthdays!
  • In his Catwoman review, when discussing how he is embarrassed to look at how the film turned out considering all the time it spent in Development Hell:
    Critic: It's like that kid that joins the football team even though he's like that big (holding his hand up to his chest) and you show your support anyway, but that turns out you shouldn't have because he's in the hospital with five fractured ribs and he's like, "Why'd you support me? Why'd you show your support?" and it's like "I don't know, I saw a movie where a woman sniffed catnip and it fucked me up!"
• A fairly common occurrence, for somewhat obvious reasons, on Overthinking It.
  Occupy Wall Street is kind of like Newsies, only with less singing and dancing. And vastly different historical contexts.
• Let's Player raocow occasionally has these.
  raocow: "Sometimes, you just have to look a gift horse in the mouth and say 'What the hell am I look at here? I'm not a dentist.'"
• In an episode of the podcast Reasonable Beef commemorating the tenth anniversary of Spider-Man 3's release, Dom Fera has this to say:
  Dom: Dude, it's a letdown. It really is a letdown and it's heartbreaking and it's... they had a platform to dig deep man, they had a lot of threads — no pun intended — set up at the end of that movie, you know even Mary Jane y'know we end the movie not thinking it's Happily Ever After in the second one, we see MJ look off and be like "Fuck what am I gonna do?"
  Jack Howard: Yeah Spider-Man 2 ends like the fucking Graduate
  Dom: Yeah, like "what have we done, what am I signing up for?" Then we don't see that shit at all! That movie — Spider-Man 3 is not an extension of the two movies that came before it. It's a fucking swerve off the road, off a bridge, he breaks his hands, he can't do surgery anymore and then he goes to fuckin' Tibet and becomes Doctor Strange.
• The following exchange from episode 39 of Red vs. Blue:
  Caboose: I know where you can find O'Malley! He lived inside my helmet for a while, maybe he left an address to send his mail. We were like roommates.
  Sarge: Sounds like he took some of the furniture when he left. And the carpet. And the drapes. And I wouldn't expect to get that deposit back, if you know what I mean.
• Josh Sundquist makes one of these in one of his vlog posts, "Hot Girl on a Silver Platter:"
  Josh: A hot girl walks up and she's like "Here is a silver platter! I am on the silver platter! I am the sil-" I...I don't know, this metaphor's breaking down.
• Multiple times in Scott The Woz:
  • "I tried being Activision once, and it was hard. Nobody liked me, I was too scary, and I laid off over 800 people."
  • "We all have a Chicken Shoot in our lives - somebody who released on the Wii for $20 and is sh*t."
  • "Not only is this a very odd group of friends at a house party, but imagine if those friends ran like sh*t on a Game Boy Advance."
  • Justified in 2D to 3D because Scott accidentally read from the wrong script:
    Scott: The transition from 2D to 3D is a process of physical changes through which a franchise's 2D roots mature into a 3D one capable of sexual reproduction- this is the Wikipedia article for puberty.
• SCP Foundation: In the epilogue of the Stealing Solidarity canon, Cat Girl Momoko comes out with this:
  As had Buddha severed himself from worldly desires and reached enlightenment, so had Momoko.
  If Buddha was a woman with cat ears and a tail who stood six foot seven inches tall, with a flame-patterned bikini and a beach towel bearing cute little clownfish tied around her waist, and a huge shank of barbequed…something in her hand, and a conceptualization of enlightenment based entirely upon enjoyment of earthly desires, because they were awesome.
  The comparison had made sense at first, though Momoko admitted that it might have gotten away from her.
• Seanbaby loves these. For example, taken from a review of a video game version of Jenga:
  Seanbaby: Buying a virtual version of Jenga is a lot like purchasing a video of a man making love to a fish; why pay to simulate something that you could actually do for less money and really shouldn't be doing in the first place? Maybe I'm getting lost in my own metaphor here, but I find it disgusting that all Jenga players simulate fish sex.
• The Something Awful article "Girl. Your Body Is Like A Metaphor" is a series of metaphors that try to be compliments but all fall apart in strange ways.
• This Very Wiki, from the Vitriolic Best Buds page.
  Like a beautiful and delicate snowflake, no two friendships are alike. Unlike the beautiful and delicate snowflake, some friendships break out the flamethrowers in the face of this sickening sweetness.
• Todd in the Shadows: In the Mardi Gras episode, Todd guesses that some of the lyrics of "Door to Door" (a song about being a door-to-door salesman) were supposed to be an innuendo, but the writer forgot what he was doing.
• Buzzfeed comedy writer and YouTuber zefrank1 creates a series of videos called True Facts where he very loosely discusses facts about various types of animals, such as the octopus or the sea pig. His analogies and metaphors usually start reasonable and then very quickly go downhill.
  zefrank1, regarding armadillos: ...the armadillo is like a tiny gladiator, with only one weak spot: its entire belly. Yes, it can take a downward blow but is vulnerable to the leg sweep, or stepping on a tiny land mine, or falling into a pit of boners—all right, that doesn't exist.
• In A Very Potter Sequel Ron attempts to cheer up Hermione, who's worrying that she's too much like Umbridge, by comparing her to Spider-Man. It's pretty clear that's not what he's really talking about when he mentions Spider-Man's 'enormous breasts.'
• In Vision of Escaflowne Abridged:
  Dornkirk: (to heroes) Look, you can't bake a cake without breaking a few eggs.
  Hitmoi: Yes, you can. My grandma used to make me vegan cake all the time.
  Dornkirk: You can? Hold on a second.
  Dornkirk: (to Falken) Falken! Did you know you can bake a cake without breaking any eggs?
  Falken: Yes, my lord, yes you can.
  Dornkirk: Do you think that means we should stop killing people?
  Falken: No my lord, I think you just need a better metaphor.
  Dornkirk: Oh, right.
  Dornkirk: (to heroes) Look, you can't test cosmetics without killing a few bunnies!
  Hitomi: Yes! Yes, you can!
  Dornkirk: (to Falken) Falken! Did you know—
  Falken: Omelet, my lord.
  Dornkirk: Falken says you can't make an omelet without killing a few bunnies.
• "Vulvas are much like snowflakes. No two are identical and when it gets really cold they flutter down from the sky, getting caught in your eyelashes."
• Wizard People, Dear Reader made extensive use of these. Professor McGonagall's voice, for instance, is described as "chilling, like a piano made of frozen Windex".
• This YouTube video starts out with an apple and an orange representing two gay people who want to get married, and the potato representing someone who doesn't want them to do so. Then the guy says "But the potato is also a closet homosexual....," and turns the whole thing into a "Shaggy Frog" Story with fruit. And a potato.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series has a few.
  • There's:
    Joey: Remember, you treat a duel disk just like a woman. You fasten it to your arm and place trading cards inside it at regular intervals.
  • Yugi's grandpa also gave us this disturbing example in a flashback:
    Grandpa: Playing card games is Just Like Making Love. You do it on a table, and you feel deep shame after it's finished. Also, the older you get, the less fun it is. So remember, always wear a condom when playing card games.
    [end of flashback]
    Yugi: [looking at deck] Hmm...I should probably wash my hands after using these.
• This blog post about comic book science contains a particularly glorious passage about how un-subtle infrared spectrometers are by comparing them to crude, drunken uncles.
  I like the image of a loud, asshole IR spectrometer eating a mountain of mashed potatoes saying, "DID YOU KNOW THAT CARBON IS GAY? HE'S TOTALLY GAY." And then everyone at the table says, "Yes, IR, we know. And since we are all made of carbon, perhaps we're all a little bit gay..." and then a conversation about how we are all equals in the eyes of atoms and how we should all just get over who people fall in love with or are attracted to because we’re all just bags of chemicals anyway and chemicals just react. It’s what they do.
• Just a meme on the Internet: "There are two wolves inside you. One is Virginia Woolf. The other is Beowulf. You are an Introduction to English Literature syllabus."

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