Quotes / Alternative Character Interpretation

Character name: Complicated and nuanced, with good intentions, or multilayered and complex, with evil intentions?

— This Very Wiki, almost every Alternative Character Interpretation entry

The hell kind of plumber...?

I'm writing your union, tell you what.

I bet they'd love to know you're doing mushrooms,

And blowing up landmarks,

And setting the wildlife on fire.

— Rob Balder, Still Annoyed

Barney: Hey, The Karate Kid is a great movie. It's the story of a hopeful young karate enthusiast whose dreams and moxie take him all the way to the All-Valley Karate Championship. Course, sadly, he loses in the final round to that nerd kid, but he learns an important lesson about gracefully accepting defeat.
Lily: Wait, when you watch The Karate Kid you actually root for that mean blonde boy?
Barney: No, I root for the scrawny loser from New Jersey who barely even knows karate. When I watch The Karate Kid I root for the karate kid, Johnny Lawrence from the Cobra Kai dojo. Get your head out of your ass, Lily.

— How I Met Your Mother, "The Stinsons"

She'd outpester any pest
Drive a hornet from its nest
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl
She is gentle, she is mild
She's a riddle, she's a child
She's a headache!
She's an angel!
She's a girl!

— "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?", The Sound of Music

I wanted to find an escape too, but every word I'd heard confirmed my fear that Heather had somehow allied herself with a ghost. What I wasn't sure of was the danger — was Helen as wicked as Heather made her out to be, or was she merely a lost child looking for someone to love her?

— Molly, Wait Till Helen Comes A Ghost Story

"A fastidious pigeon-worshiping felt tyrant whose draconian Shari'a law allows for neither loud noise nor rubber duckies!"

— Bert, as imagined by Jon Stewart in Glenn Beck-parody mode

"This was a world where orcs were used as target practice by elvish communities. The elves loved that shit. Sauron put a stop to that by offering all the underprivileged creatures a place in his non-race-exclusive army (the only nonsegregated force in Middle-Earth except for the Fellowship) with promises of their own country and a future. After what he did for the orcs and goblins, Sauron was just some towering mace-wielding folk hero."

—Cracked, "9 Famous Movie Villains Who Were Right All Along"

"Applejack, with her lovably inconsistent accent and mannerisms represents the Element of: The Alternate Interpretation"

—Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Camaraderie is Supernatural, "The Elements of Parody"

A discussion about the nature of eternity, set against a blank, featureless void: behold the beginning of the transformation of The Family Circus into Existential Despair Comics.

— The Comics Curmudgeon

"Kind of unrelated, but the fact that Ulfric has been compared to both Adolf Hitler and William Wallace just goes to show what an awesome job Bethesda did of making a complex, realistic character."
"Or that the Skyrim fanbase consists of over-generalizing trogs with small reference pools."

—Discussion on the WMG page of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

...In any case, the only reason this stratagem [giving Persephone the pomegranate seeds] worked was because the seeds were so little that Persephone thought they wouldn’t count. …Or at least that was the excuse she gave her Mom. My money says she ate them because Hades had just finished explaining to her that if she stayed with him she could be undisputed Queen of one of the three realms of existence. And she — clever young divinity that she was — immediately realized how to finesse this situation so that she could, quite literally, have the best of both worlds. If she then claimed to the Olympians sent to fetch her home that “he pressured me into eating them”, well, they’d be predisposed to believe that anyway…)

— Diane Duane discussing the story of Persephone

Varric: So, that's it. That's the whole story.
Cassandra: Then Meredith provoked the Circle. She was to blame... (for the Mage-Templar war)
Varric: Or that damned idol was. ... Take your pick.

—Dragon Age II

"Exacerbating the situation, Mario said, is the seemingly arbitrary placement of the hazards. "I could see why, if you're in a factory, you might find yourself jumping around on dangerous conveyor belts moving in different directions," he said. "But why would you have conveyor belts in a castle? Or in the middle of a forest? Nintendo and these other companies are always talking about how realistic their graphics are. Well, what's so realistic about killer turtles shooting out of clouds and such?"

Added Mario: "It's-a me, Mario!"

—The Onion, Video-Game Characters Denounce Randomly Placed Swinging Blades

"Hettie Muskrat is the most evil woman in Waterville. She talked Ma into entering the contest; now she’s totally jinxing her in the next scene. This is a soap opera. Just look at those beady little muskrat eyes. What’s her SCHEME?"

— ToughPigs writer Kynan Baker in his and Danny Horn's review of Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas

"One moment, I see heroic Wardens lighting the fire and a power-mad villain sneering as he lets King Cailan fall. The next, I see an army overwhelmed, and a veteran commander refusing to let more soldiers die in a lost cause."

— Solas, Dragon Age: Inquisition

The Orks are the pinnacle of creation. For them, the great struggle is won. They have evolved a society which knows no stress or angst. Who are we to judge them? We Eldar who have failed, or the Humans, on the road to ruin in their turn? And why? Because we sought answers to questions that an Ork wouldn't even bother to ask! We see a culture that is strong and despise it as crude.

—Uthan the Perverse, Eldar philosopher, Warhammer 40,000

Right now I'd like to show you one of my favorite cartoons. It's a sad, depressing story about a pathetic Coyote who spends every waking moment his life in the futile pursuit of a sadistic roadrunner, who mocks him and laughs at him as he's repeatedly crushed and maimed! I hope you enjoy it!

— George Newman, UHF

Imma lay it out for you. Rich dude has a corporation, has state-of-the-art equipment, and he uses this to beat up on street-level crime. He doesn't mess with the industrialists or the super-capitalists, the Murdochs or the Trumps — he really just fuck with the purse-snatchers on the corner. Batman is a conservative's wet dream. Fuck Batman.

— Reginald D. Hunter, Have I Got News for You

Chet: I partially decided on my name due to the tales of the old hero Chet Cannister.
Spensa: Oh, those are good. But I like the older ones best. Heroes like Odysseus.
Chet: Or Hercules.
Spensa: Yeah. Or Satan.
Chet: [blinks] Excuse me?
Spensa: Satan? The hero?
Chet: The... hero.
Spensa: Yeah. Gran-Gran told me the story. Satan got thrown into a place of fire, but he was like, "Hey, everyone. It doesn't matter, so long as we have each other. We can make this place as good as any paradise." Then he volunteered to infiltrate the enemy's world and went on this big quest through the Abyss.
Chet: Now, my memory—as I've warned you—isn't great. But that sounds like the old poem Paradise Lost. I... think you might have misinterpreted it.
Spensa: What? Who do you think was the hero of that story?
Chet: Adam and Eve.
Spensa: Those losers? They didn't do anything but sit around! Everyone else had flaming swords and dramatic battles!

— Cytonic

Forty [on the hydroelectric dam in Mount Wario]: All of these tracks have bits that suggest that Wario is this like, super-rich, environmentally-minded entrepreneur, and I really like that take on Wario. It's like yeah, he's fat and greedy, and goes and steals treasure all the time, but then he invests it in like, environmental projects. That you can race in. Like, "Yeah, I built this dam in this mountain. It provides electricity for thousands; for all of New Donk City."
Lee: "WAAAAAAht am I gonna do about this energy crisis?"
Forty: Waluigi ain't gonna build no dam.

— Lythero, "Mario Kartastrophe 6 DELUXE"

"The Commissioner is nevertheless irritable and rude. It is unclear if this is the way she just normally is or the pressure of having a potentially fatal illness is causing her to snap."

— Jeremy Perron on Star Trek: The Original Series, "The Companion's World"

Now take Sir Francis Drake.
The Spanish all despise him.
But to the British, he's a hero,
And they idolise him.
It's how you look at buccaneers,
That makes them bad or good.
And I see us as members of,
A noble brotherhood.

—"Professional Pirate", Long John Silver, Muppet Treasure Island

Doug: "Maybe he is crying because the baby is scared."

Green Bear: "Or maybe because the baby doesn't wanna leave the beach just because it's raining, because we're all wet anyway, so why do we have to go?!"

Eileen: "Or both?"

— Kid Time Story Time on Sand Between My Toes

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