History Main / ExpospeakGag

* From ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory'', Buzz Lightyear uses quite a few of these: He refers to tape as "unidirectional bonding strip," pizza delivery as "jettisoning food supply," and seatbelts as "restraining harnesses."

* In Spark's origin issue of ''Legends of the [[Comicbook/LegionOfSuperheroes Legion]]'' the villain Slopp talks entirely in phrases like "Undifferentiated from pilfering confectionery from a suckling!" Amusingly, his boss, High-Brow, who prides himself on his intelligence, hasn't a clue what Slopp is saying.

* In ''Comicbook/TitansRebirth'' #24, Miss Martian says "The fecal matter has just intersected with the spinning blades of the cooling device". J'onn tells her she needs to work on her Earth idioms.

* In chapter 22 of ''FanFic/EarthAndSky'', when Twilight asks Doctor Insanity [[MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate what exactly he has a doctorate in]], he responds with "osculate-my-rump-onomy". "Osculate my rump" means "kiss my ass".
* In the ''FanFic/PoniesOfOlympus'' series, Shining says he didn't forget to tell Twilight he was participating in the Atlas Strongest Tournament, he just "failed to mention due to cognitive flatulence" (read: he had a brain fart). Twilight says that she's too smart for using big words to confuse the issue (though she admits she used to do the same thing to Cadence).

* In ''[[http://www.iamnota.net/ff:comes%20the%20cold%20dragon Comes The Cold Dragon,]]'' most of the second half of Chapter 2 is an [[OverlyLongGag overly long ]] ExpospeakGag going into great detail about Happosai triggering a bar brawl in order to prevent the interruption of a waitress performing certain [[{{Squick}} services for the old lecher]] and using a very drunken Soun and Genma as distractions, which lead toward Happi being tossed in jail, Genma tossed in the panda cage at the zoo, and [[ItMakesSenseInContext Soun passed out with the waitress's drunken exboyfriend who Soun used as a]] [[ImprovisedWeapon makeshift ]][[GrievousHarmWithABody naginata]], passed out next to him.
* In ''FanFic/StepByStep'', Spock tells [=McCoy=] that ''"[the ship] needed to be unable to receive any further communications"'' from the admiralty before he could get Kirk off the bridge. Kirk asks him if he means that ''"You and Scotty sabotaged the comm system so [the admiral] won't realize [he's] not up there."''

* From ''FanFic/TheAristocatsIsland'':

-->'''Beldar:''' It is time for mid-day cessation of activities for carbo-protein intake.\\

-->'''High Master:''' Ford Lincoln Mercury Sable? \\

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' spinoff ''Literature/TouhouKourindouCuriositiesOfLotusAsia'', one chapter deals with Rinnosuke finding a device he describes as "a grey box, small enough to be held in the hands, made of... plastic, I believe it was called? [...] On top of that, this one has several differently-shaped buttons and switches on it." He's worried it's an ArtifactOfDoom because his NameDar says it can "control just about anything. For example, manipulating people, making them fight, starting wars and, depending on the circumstances, even destroying the world." After spending most of the chapter trying to keep it from falling into the wrong hands, it gets stolen by [[TheChessmaster Yukari]], the '''last''' person he wanted to have it. [[spoiler:She explains that the device is harmless -- it's a UsefulNotes/GameBoy.]]

** Taken UpToEleven when Creator/SamuelJohnson turns up.

** In "[[{{Recap/FireflyE02TheTrainJob}} The Train Job]]":

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine}} The Doomsday Machine]]":

** Episode "[[{{Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E11FairHaven}} Fair Haven]]"

** Episode "[[{{Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E9TheVoyagerConspiracy}} The Voyager Conspiracy]]"

** From ''VideoGame/{{Fallout3}}'': Liberty Prime's take on "Better dead than red":

* ''StarCraftIIWingsOfLiberty'' features a one-off Protoss character named Karass. One of his StopPokingMe quotes is this little gem...

* [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] in ''[[VideoGame/DontStarve Don't Starve]],'' where Wickerbottom the Librarian will often talk this way. Carrots are ''daucus carota''; an axe is "a dual inclined plane attached to a lever;" if she gets caught in the rain, she might "wonder what [her] body's saturation point is." On the other hand, many of Wickerbottom's lines are much more reasonable (when asked to examine a flower she'll just say it's a wildflower, and admit she doesn't know what kind) or even sympathetic (when examining a collapsed rabbit hole, she simply says that she hopes the small animal inside is still okay).

* Used in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'''s "[[{{Recap/FuturamaS2E16AnthologyOfInterestI}} Anthology of Interest I]]":

!!Examples:

* This exchange from the ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' episode [[Recap/PhineasAndFerbDayOfTheLivingGelatin "Day of the Living Gelatin"]], after the gang finishes making their pool of gelatin:
-->'''Phineas:''' There's only one thing to do now.\\

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' uses this in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E11HomersTripleBypass Homer's Triple Bypass]]":
-->'''Hibbert:''' Homer, I'm afraid you'll have to undergo a coronary bypass operation.\\

** Then, we get the reverse:

--->'''Grandpa:''' "The Doctor says she died of a burst left ventricle, but I know she died of a broken heart!"

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': In "I Had an Accident", where [=SpongeBob=] shatters his butt, we have this following conversation when [=SpongeBob=]'s butt gets fixed.
-->'''Doctor:''' Well Mr. [=SquarePants=], it looks like your gluteus maximus has made a full recovery\\

** Not surprising in the least, as Jess Winfield is one of the uncredited writers. They're called "rennie jokes".
* ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'': Velma's description of a fog bank in [[WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooWhereAreYou "Hassle in the Castle"]].
** Being the token genius of the group, Velma does this pretty regularly. Another gem would be [[ItMakesSenseInContext Dick Van Dyke asking for volunteers for his magic show:]]

* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'': Peridot is prone to doing this. She does [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fU5Uh73Q2M&t=20s a whole string of them]] that greatly amuses Amethyst in "Too Far".

* In ''Manga/DetectiveConan'' File 131 or so, Yukiko, Shinichi's mother, manages to cover for Shinichi in front of Ran by saying Conan (her secretly de-aged son) is really her distant relative -- in fact, he's the nephew of the grandfather of the cousin of the daughter of the brother of her uncle. Or for short, her grandfather's nephew (thus, her first cousin removed once, also known as her uncle removed once).

* The infamously difficult AdventureGame adaptation of ''VideoGame/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' features a puzzle where the player has to use a "buffered analgesic" (i.e. take an aspirin tablet).

** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2412-j SCP-2412-J,]] [[spoiler:SantaClaus, his sack of presents, and all nine of his reindeer, including WesternAnimation/RudolphTheRedNosedReindeer.]]

** ''Series/PennAndTellerBullshit'' used this same trick to convince attendees at an environmentalist rally to sign a petition to ban it to illustrate that as long as they mention something in scientific terminology, environmentalists will automatically assume it's bad and sign petitions to ban it. However, it didn't work for everyone at the rally, but the majority of the people they showed were happily signing the petition.

** "I'm sending troops to fight in a foreign war" tends not to poll well, so politicians throughout history have invented expospeak terms for war. Examples include "police action" and "kinetic military action".

* Combined with GettingCrapPastTheRadar in ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'':

->'''Sir Humphrey Appleby:''' Prime Minister, I must protest, in the strongest possible terms, my profound opposition to a newly instituted practice which imposes severe and intolerable restrictions upon the ingress and egress of senior members of the hierarchy and which will in all probability, should the current deplorable innovation be perpetuated, precipitate a constriction of the channels of communication and culminate in a condition of organisational atrophy and administrative paralysis, which will render effectively impossible the coherent and coordinated discharge of the function of government within Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland!\\

See also SesquipedalianLoquaciousness, SophisticatedAsHell, LaymansTerms, BluntMetaphorsTrauma, NarrativeProfanityFilter, SpockSpeak, TechnoBabble, CallARabbitASmeerp. BuffySpeak is the opposite. If a character forces someone else to expospeak, that's InsistentTerminology.

* Vaarsuvius of ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' tends to do this as part of his/her general SesquipedalianLoquaciousness.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFRbGppLaUI Thermal Discouragement Beam]] -- a [[FrickinLaserBeams laser]]

*** It is, however, justified in this case for two reasons. First, it's an accurate description of what the condition is, in that it's a mental disorder that appears after the sufferer suffers intense trauma and/or stress, and therefore can also appear outside of war.[[note]]It's highly common in abuse victims and is known to show up in survivors of natural disasters.[[/note]] Second, Shell Shock was a big stigma a long time ago, being seen as a weakness on the soldier's part and something they need to just get over. Rephrasing it as a medical condition helped the public understand what it actually is, a mental condition that the sufferer has no control over, which made them more sympathetic and more likely to seek treatment for it.

* Many Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} page's were used by some rogue authors to transfer this to articles with risqué topics, e.g. for ''Baby Got Back'' the lyrics were summarized this way. It began with expospeaking "I like big butts and I cannot lie" as "In the opening verse, Sir Mix-a-Lot professes his affinity for large buttocks and his inability to disguise this fact from others" and only got better from there.