"And behold, out of the mists of time, the legendary Esquilax! A horse with the head of a rabbit, and... the body of a rabbit!"
— Chief Wiggum in "Lisa's Wedding", The Simpsons
"...it seemed simpler and more desirable to use these familiar terms... (than) to invent a long series of wholly (alien) terms. In other words, we could have told you that one of our characters paused to strap on his quonglishes before setting out on a walk of seven vorks along the main gleebish of his native znoob, and everything might have seemed ever so much more thoroughly alien. But it would also have been ever so much more difficult to make sense out of what we were saying..."
"But the fact is that any fantasy world is, sooner or later, our own world. ... However towering the local mountains, however dwarf-haunted the local woods, any character wanting to eat a piece of zorkle meat between two slices of bread probably has no other word for it than 'sandwich'. ... The builder of fresh worlds may start out carefully avoiding Alsatian dogs and Toledo steel, but if he or she has any sense will one day look up from the keyboard and utter the words "What the hell?"
— Terry Pratchett, "Introduction", The Unseen University Challenge
"This jackass just said that something can go 'through a ferrocrete bunker like a neutrino through plasma.' I get it, man. It says Star Wars on the cover. I know I'm reading about Star Wars. It's like, do they not have butter in space? Or hot knives to cut it with?"
As our story opens young Grumdrig has returned to Horbug following a trying stint in Spilwaer Spond where his laconic disposition and fertile mind bred a series of misadventures which had landed him outside the good graces of the Jordref there, Welham, who had secretly begun a long term course of slow but disaccomodating illpeel in the lad's morning fanwael. Meanwhile, though scarce a tuft of mansefur had yet made its appearance on the boy's manssach, a number of visiting Roilwachhs have begun to exhibit a discreet and seemingly inexplicable interest in the boy. Strange indeed, as he would not reach his krouchensterm for another harvest or more...
— Progress Quest Manual
Danny: Oh, Keese!
Arin: Yeah! Well... in this one they're called "bats", like they're supposed to be.
Danny: (laughs) Yeah... that is kind of, fucking... funny of The Legend of Zelda, to just create bats and then call them something different. Like, "Ooh look, we creatively made a monster!"
What do you call that? A rabbit's head? [buzz] Wrong, a "Pol's Voice". What's that, a mummy? [buzz] "Gibdo". What's that, a ghost? [buzz] "Ghini". What's that? Well it's kinda, like, like... [ding!] What, it's called a "like like"? Yeah, I'm not making this up, this is all coming straight from the manual. What do you call that, a snake? [buzz] Wrong, it's called "rope". Yeah, really, if you can't tell the difference between a snake and a rope, you're in trouble. What's that, a bat? [buzz] It's called a "keese". What do you call keys then, "bats"? What's that, a knight? [buzz] A "darknut". Well then what's that rock called, a... "Geiger counselman"?? [buzz] Oh, it's just called a rock.
Sipping a steaming mug of qujadin, she stared out across the lush pelki with its gambolling flocks of varelse. Before another quantch had elapsed, she would have to make her move and tackle the menace of the rown. Adjusting the strap of her periboob and pulling on her webbies, she pondered the terrible situation of this entire fratrin. Could diplomacy save humanity's deodand even now, or must everything be abandoned to the glotch? Already the dread sipstrassi were massing for their attack....
'Oh derg,' she swore, 'I can't understand a word of this. It must be an early Cherryh novel.'
'Oh derg,' she swore, 'I can't understand a word of this. It must be an early Cherryh novel.'
— A drabble by David Langford
"... animals which the Númenóreans called lopoldi. These existed in large numbers and multiplied swiftly, and were voracious herbivores; so that the foxes were esteemed as the best and most natural way of keeping them in order ... The lopoldi would appear to have been rabbits, animals which had been quite unknown before in the north-western regions of Middle-earth."
Garrus: Hey Shepard, you ever played Quasar?
Shepard: No?
Garrus: You just add random numbers. You have to try to get as close as you can to twenty without going over.
Shepard: Oh, you mean Blackjack.
Wrex: (punches her in the head) NO. It's the FUTURE. It's called QUASAR.
