History Main / PardonMyKlingon

** We ''supposedly'' got the meaning of the [[{{Fictionary}} Tantalog]] term "Meega, nala kweesta!" later. However, while "Meega" was firmly established by ''Lilo & Stitch: The Series'' to be a personal pronoun (like "I", "me", "my", etc.) thanks to several other spoken uses in that show, the full phrase was believed for years to be literally translated as, "I want to destroy!" which doesn't really sound vulgar. It wasn't until February 2022 that Creator/ChrisSanders stated in the comments of [[https://www.tiktok.com/@chrissandersart/video/7062525036485299502 a TikTok video he posted about the phrase]] that it does ''[[{{Jossed}} not]]'' mean "I want to destroy", but instead is a phrase so bad that he "could never say it."

** In [[WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitch the original film]] and [[WesternAnimation/StitchTheMovie its]] [[WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitchTheSeries sequel]] [[WesternAnimation/LeroyAndStitch works]], Gantu is fond of using the oath "Oh, blitznak!" Stitch himself, when brought before the Galactic Council and asked to prove his intelligence, utters a string of words that is left untranslated from "alien" gibberish, although its profane content is clear from the shocked gasps of the hearers. Stitch's statement is so vulgar, a ''robot'' vomits. This trope probably was used to leave what Stitch said deliberately to the imagination, as there isn't much in the way of utterances left that would inspire such reactions from contemporary 21st century viewers.
** We do get the meaning of the [[{{Fictionary}} Tantalog]] term "Meega, nala kweesta!" later. "Meega" appears to be a personal pronoun (like "I", "me", "my", etc.), "nala" is a statement of wanting, and "kweesta" means "to destroy". So the quote is literally, "I want to destroy!" That isn't really vulgar to us, but it is to the aliens who were dismayed at Stitch's then-destructive nature. Or the phrase itself is fairly mundane but Stitch used some sort of inflection that is obvious in-universe but is undetectable to we the viewers that renders the phrase obscene. Another possibility is that the obscene aspect of the phrase is cultural, not its literal meaning.

* Played straight and subverted in ''A Clockwork Orange''. On one hand, the Nadsat swearwords Alex and his droogs use are incomprehensible to English speakers (though the context makes them obvious). On the other, Nadsat is made up of Russian that Burgess either anglicised or used for his own purposes, as in "khoroso" to "horrorshow". Thus anyone with an even basic knowledge of Russian would be able to work out Nadsat in a second, though they'd probably be irritated by the spelling and somewhat puzzled by the Cockney rhyming slang.

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', a member of the WizardingSchool's GirlPosse calls the other members "you witches", which is what they all literally are, but the way she says it makes it seem like a stand-in for "you bitches".

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', a member of the WizardSchool's GirlPosse calls the other members "you witches", which is what they all literally are, but the way she says it makes it seem like a stand-in for "you bitches".

* In ''Fanfic/WhatTomorrowBrings'', Andalites use "rot" as an expletive.

** There's also Chopper, who is heavily implied to be a SirSwearsALot in [[TheUnintelligible Binary]]. Unlike R2, he almost never gets [[BilingualDialogue direct translation]] of what he's saying, and another droid says that the language he uses would get him disintegrated in some systems.

* In [[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aIgPDwjXjj8ExP56dVjGjX5nbdN0QufAbeAKarV8C68/preview this]] ''WebOriginal/ProtectorsOfThePlotContinuum'' mission, an agent native to an NPC empire in ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'' speaks a StarfishLanguage, and the UniversalTranslator renders his swearing (untranslated) into human phonemes as "Kogec mjaaš." ([[ItIsPronouncedTroPAY "KAW-getch MYAAHSH"]], with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch-accent_language pitch accent]])

* At the end of the pilot video for ''WebAnimation/ButtonsAdventures'', [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic Button]], who has just been grounded for staying up all night playing video games, shouts "Zeikamif," ("[[ItIsPronouncedTroPAY ZAY-ka-miff]]") a word in the video game's ConLang which is subtitled with SymbolSwearing.

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', a member of the WizardSchool’s GirlPosse calls the other members “you witches”, which is what they all literally are, but the way she says it makes it seem like a stand-in for “you bitches”.

* Doubly subverted in TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}, with the term [[SuperiorSpecies Eldars]] use to talk about the humans: "[[SonOfAnApe mon'keigh]]" (pronounced mon-k-aye), a racial slur for species deemed inferior. Its literal translation is ''those who must be killed''.

* The multipurpose swearword of choice in the ''Literature/TheShipWho'' series is "fardle" and its variants- fardles, fardling, fardled, etc. There's also "nardy" which is a surprisingly effective insult of unknown meaning, and "shellcrack" which is an expletive that only seems to be used by salespeople, who probably invented it on the first place.

* Jim Shooter introduced this to the ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}} during UsefulNotes/{{the Silver Age|of Comic Books}}.

* In ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'', SelfDemonstrating/{{Lobo}} repeatedly shouts “keezy fem!” during a fight with ComicBook/WonderGirl, which appears to be a stand in for “crazy bitch!”

** "Belgium" is the most obscene word in most of the Universe, the only exception being Earth, which is so [[InsignificantLittleBluePlanet isolated and oblivious]] that it innocently named one of its countries after the word[[note]]although Earth is [[spoiler:actually a supercomputer built by aliens]], it may be a prank by [[spoiler:the mice who built it]][[/note]]. It's actually a little WriterRevolt from Creator/DouglasAdams, who when doing the [[Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy original radio version]] wanted a bit about the "most gratuitous use of the word '[[PrecisionFStrike fuck]]' in a serious screenplay" but, as they weren't allowed to say "fuck" on the radio, he changed it to "Belgium" and got an even funnier bit out of it. It actually creates a dichotomy between the British and American versions of ''Literature/LifeTheUniverseAndEverything'' -- the British version just has a straight "fuck", while the American version has "Belgium" and the radio show's explanation of its significance. "Belgium" has since migrated to other adaptations as a hard swear (''e.g.'' Ford exclaiming it during the Vogon attack in the [[Film/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy film version]]), and even to other works, like ''Series/{{Neighbours}}''.
** In [[Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1 the first book]], Arthur's offhand comment, "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle" is picked up by a freak wormhole, which transports the comment right in the middle of a diplomatic negotiation -- where it sounds [[InMyLanguageThatSoundsLike exactly like one side's most vulgar insult]], accidentally starting an interstellar war. The gag makes it to [[VideoGame/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy the text-adventure adaptation]], which will pull a certain input from the parser to fill the role of the offending phrase (and gives you [[EasterEgg extra kudos]] if you type in the book's original phrase at the right time).

* In the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' fanfic ''[[Fanfic/{{Eleutherophobia}} Ghost in the Shell]], Tobias uses the Hork-Bajir swear word "hrthesthr", which literally translates to "one who is so careless in cutting the bark from a tree as to damage the wood underneath, causing the entire tree to become diseased and rot". Tom mainly heard it used to refer to Yeerks.

* Mork, from ''Series/MorkAndMindy'', used "Shazbot" most noticeably; despite it being an alien language, it bears enough resemblance to an English expletive that the audience recognizes it. This has been parodied on ''TheSimpsons'' by Kang and Kodos, who use curse words with even more resemblance to English ("Holy flurking shnit!")
** "Shazbot" has been lovingly re-used in other situations: Bart says "Oh shazbot!" once, and it's one of the voice chat options in ''VideoGame/{{Tribes}}''.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Kang and Kodos occasionally use expletives such as "Holy flurking schnidt!", parodying ''Series/MorkAndMindy''.

* From the Literature/StarTrekNovelVerse, we have ''Vikak'' (A curse among the Payav), ''krught'' (a Tellarite curse), ''Frinx'' (the all-purpose Ferengi sexual euphemism), ''Grozit'' (the Xenexian all-purpose curseword), ''kyeshing'' (among Pacifican Selkies), and many more.

* ''Literature/WatershipDown'': Silflay hraka, u embleer rah. [[spoiler:Literally, 'eat shit, you lord of stench!']] This is an excellent example, because by this point in the novel, we have already seen all of these words (in different, innocent contexts). [[spoiler:Shit is a pretty important consideration in your life, if you're a rabbit.]][[note]]Yes, rabbits do have to chew their cud, or rather caecotropes, masses of undigested fibre and nutrients that their digestives systems couldn't break down the first time through. To be fair, caecotropes do exit the body the same way as droppings, but one assumes that a sentient rabbit would think of them as entirely different from ''hraka''.[[/note]]

* Liska in ''Webcomic/TailsFromTheMynarskiForest'' once shouted "O EMBLEER FRITH!" -- a reference to ''Literature/WatershipDown''.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Holy flurking schnidt!

* Inverted in ''Literature/AHerosWar''; whatever summoned Cato to Inath also altered his mind to use the local language, but since Inath has no religion, his friend Landar doesn't know what "hell" means.

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', a member of the WizardSchool’s GirlPosse calls the other members “you witches, which is what they all literally are, but the way she says it makes it seem like a stand-in for “you bitches”.

* In ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'', SelfDemonstrating/{{Lobo}} repeatedly shouts “keezy fem!” during a fight with Wonder Girl, which appears to be a stand in for “crazy bitch!”

[-[[caption-width-right:184:That was [[IncrediblyLamePun R'lyeh]] unnecessary.]]-]