Comic Books
"Okay, I'll admit this cover has nothing to do with the story this month... But I've got to do something to sell this book!"
"Featuring: No Scene Even Remotely Like This Inside!"
"Doctor Doom does not appear in this story! We just felt like drawing his face!"
— Strange Tales #122
◊
◊"I stopped reading X-Men about the same time they started putting Wolverine on the cover of comics in which he didn't actually, technically, appear."
— Lore Sjöberg, The Book of Ratings, "Marvel Supervillains (Part I)"
Film — Live-action
Ted: (upon seeing Hell) This is not what I expected.
Bill: Yeah, we were totally lied to by our album covers.
Bill: Yeah, we were totally lied to by our album covers.
Web Comics
"This MIGHT not depict events which literally occur in this chapter."
Web Video
"What does an old guy playing a banjo with his dog have to do with spaceships!?"
"The cover of the game - which I really wish I'd brought, actually - features a medieval knight shooting lightning out of his hand. The game is about turning up to somebody's party late and not being able to find where it starts. There are no knights in it or lightning. It's the most inexplicable cover I've ever seen."
— Stuart Ashen, on Surprise, Surprise, during a presentation for Norwich Gaming Festival.
for Norwich Gaming Festival."The poster shows Godzilla fighting Megalon on the World Trade Center, something that never happens in the movie. There's not even a single scene that takes place in New York City, so how the hell did they come up with that? Also not to mention, it would be physically impossible given the size of the monsters. Sure, King Kong could do it, but Godzilla is taller than the building itself!"
"The main focus is an old man playing a banjo. Because isn't that the first thing you think of when you think of a hyper-speed shootout in space?! But, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this guy is in the game. Yeah! In fact, he's a major part of the game! You just never unlocked that part yet."
"Apparently getting Mark Hamill was a big deal for these guys. I guess they were huge Star Wars fans and wanted to get the Star Wars guy in their film, that's what I've heard from what few interviews I could find. And so, they put his face on the cover and his name is right there at the top. Here's the thing though: You see that image there? It probably makes it look like he's the Guyver. Well, he's not."
—'SF Debris on The Guyver
Real Life
"I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers... this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted."
"In fact, I support this kind of thing wholeheartedly: fact is, sometimes you got to lie to a motherfucker. If showing a dude holding a giant spine with an aftermarket scythe affixed is what it takes to get young men to read a single page of the classics, than so be it. I hope these shenanigans work like gangbusters. We've got your backs on this thing."
— Tycho, Penny Arcade, "A Trend We Wholly Endorse"
"