Best Dialogue Facepalms

[Proto Taco]

You know'em, you love'em, those really awkward moments when a character in a book, film, or game says something that makes you Scooby Doo your head to the side and wonder where the logic went.

I want to hear yours. Your favorites, from any movie, television series, book or game. Get unconventional, and don't spare any of the dirty details, we want it all.

I'll start it off with one of the all time classics from a veritable gold mine of dialogue facepalms, Star Wars Episode III.

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes..."
~Obi-Wan Kenobi

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

"Pain don't hurt" from Road House. Teehee.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I suppose my most recent facepalm was when I started up Sengoku Rance the other day and i'm now all but certain it's an eroge built to take the piss out of itself and eroge games in general. Every H scene in the game (so far but I have no reason to believe this will change) has his dick referred to as a "hyper weapon"

You might think i'm being too generous when I call it a parody and it's just generally cringeworthy writing but like... This is the music reserved for H scenes.

Spoiler: That guitar solo 20 seconds in though...

It's totally absurd and I love it.

Also pick any of Tomoko's lines in Watamote and you'll probably facepalm over it. Oh god how is that anime tagged as comedy when it could be labelled a psychological horror without much effort.

 

[happyninja42]

Amy Pond, in Doctor Who, pushing Rory away, and being a ***** to him. Then in an episode where they were losing their memories, Rory tells her to let him face the mind wiping mist, because he's got the stronger emotions, since she obviously doesn't love him anymore, meaning he had the best chance of resisting it longer than her. She gets furious and insulted at him, suggesting that he loved her more than she loved him. (This being a guy who stood guard over her for nearly 2000 years, because he loved her)

And this was her wonderful logic as to why she loved him more, and why she pushed him away.

"Don't you DARE say that you love me more than I love you, I GAVE YOU UP!! You wanted children, and I couldn't have children anymore, so I pushed you away because I love you, because you couldn't be happy with me because I couldn't give you children!!" ......
just.....I.....wuh....gah!! *headdesk* So much stupid with this statement, and so much crazy, I can't unpack it all without making my brain melt!

I remember turning to my wife when she said that and saying "See! If this is even remotely accurate to how a woman rationalizes shit in her head, THIS is why guys think women are fucking insane!"

 

[Euryalus]

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes..."
~Obi-Wan Kenobi

Get it? It's ironic because that's an absolute! XD

OT: I don't have one from a book or a movie. I have one from a guy in real life.

"Can you imagine if they took capitalism to space? Can you imagine how destructive that'd be? No one has the right to that much wealth. You worked hard? YOU DIDN'T WORK HARD ENOUGH TO OWN A STAR!" *slams fist on the table*

There wasn't even a lot more context than what you have here. XD

 

[cojo965]

I suppose my most recent facepalm was when I started up Sengoku Rance the other day and i'm now all but certain it's an eroge built to take the piss out of itself and eroge games in general. Every H scene in the game (so far but I have no reason to believe this will change) has his dick referred to as a "hyper weapon"

You might think i'm being too generous when I call it a parody and it's just generally cringeworthy writing but like... This is the music reserved for H scenes.

Spoiler: That guitar solo 20 seconds in though...

It's totally absurd and I love it.

Also pick any of Tomoko's lines in Watamote and you'll probably facepalm over it. Oh god how is that anime tagged as comedy when it could be labelled a psychological horror without much effort.

Wow. Oh, wow. Once I pictured a rough approximation in my head of such a scene, it was hilarious.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Back before I made my first professional fiction sale in 2000 and had to stop reading fanfic, there was a Diablo fanfic somebody wrote with a line of dialogue that I remember to this day: "I'm the Duke of Darkness, but y'all can call me Mr. Duke!"

 

[happyninja42]

Back before I made my first professional fiction sale in 2000 and had to stop reading fanfic, there was a Diablo fanfic somebody wrote with a line of dialogue that I remember to this day: "I'm the Duke of Darkness, but y'all can call me Mr. Duke!"

Curious, but why did you have to stop reading fanfiction simply because you published a book?

 

[Hazy992]

"I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain". - This was a line written and then approved by actual humans.

 

[Casual Shinji]

"I hate bad dreams." - Ellie from The Last of Us. Uhm... yeah Ellie, that seems rather obvious.

 

[GabeZhul]

"I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain". - This was a line written and then approved by actual humans.

What's the problem with that? It's called hypocritical humor. It's actually pretty amusing.

As for my top quote... I cannot remember the exact wording and I don't have the time to find it in the book, but my absolute biggest head-desking moment induced by dialog was in one of the Belgariad books (I can't even recall which one, it was a while ago when I read them).

For some much-needed context: Polgara is an immortal sorceress and a semi-mythical figure in-universe. Garion is your stereotypical royal-scion-raised-as-a-farmboy-and-now-has-to-save-the-world-because-destiny-says-so male lead. He is around fifteen at this point, and he was raised by Polgara in secret not only without any knowledge of his heritage but artificially kept in the dark as much as possible (She didn't even teach him to read, for god's sake!) Note that throughout the series Polgara is repeatedly described as oh-so-loving and motherly and the perfect woman who loves Garion as her own flesha and blood. Then when his destiny raises its ugly head he gets dragged around half the known world, gets repeatedly assaulted by the minions of the local evil deity of evil, faces life-or-death situations on a daily basis and everyone keeps berating him for his inexperience and his lack of knowledge, including Polgara, the very person who refused to educate him.

At last he gets fed up with this treatment and chews her out for only raising him to be a pawn in her game and not caring for him, something which I considered to be the beginning of a well-deserved The Reason You Suck Speech... Then she comes back at him with this gem: "I have spent hundreds of years grooming your ancestors because of the prophecy. If not for me, you wouldn't exist today. You have no right to question me." And then she walks away sulking.

So, again: She gets accused of only caring for the protagonist as a pawn on her cosmic chessboard, and her reaction is... Shut up, I spent to much time grooming you for you to talk back to me, pawn. And then, to make this truly infuriating, the rest of the cast then badgers Garion about saying too much and being unfair, when Polgara obviously loves him sooooo much as a son and then he PROCEEDS TO BELIEVE IT AND APOLOGIZE.
...
On second thought though, that was more of a book-walling than a face-palming moment, I suppose. Oh well.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Back before I made my first professional fiction sale in 2000 and had to stop reading fanfic, there was a Diablo fanfic somebody wrote with a line of dialogue that I remember to this day: "I'm the Duke of Darkness, but y'all can call me Mr. Duke!"

Curious, but why did you have to stop reading fanfiction simply because you published a book?

It's to avoid something called "creative contamination." Basically, in reaching the professional level, you come to an understanding that even if two authors try to write the same plot, they get very different stories. Occasionally, something gets duplicated (Ed Greenwood and I nearly had that happen accidentally with an upcoming Eternity Quartet story and the pilot of Crossbones - which led to me watching the pilot of Crossbones for the first time, and good God, that pilot had some bad storytelling), but it's generally an accident - deliberate plagiarism is VERY rare.

Fanfic writers sometimes don't understand that, and it's a potential nightmare to write a story set in a world you created, and then have a fanfic writer point to a story of their own based on your work and accuse you of stealing their ideas. If you haven't read the fanfiction story in the first place, however, you can't possibly have deliberately copied anything. It happens enough that it's usually taken as a given that once you start selling stories on a professional level, you stop reading the fanfiction.

 

[Asclepion]

"I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain". - This was a line written and then approved by actual humans.

What's the problem with that? It's called hypocritical humor. It's actually pretty amusing.

So you don't have enough time to give a brief identify (even a name) but apparently, you had enough to espouse "mysterious" exposition and act snarky for the better part of 3 minutes.

 

[The Floating Nose]

"Too bad YOU...will die !"

A line delivered by a completely lost actor which was a proof that nobody gave a shit during the filming of this fascinatingly (is that a word ?) bad movie. Seriously Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is a textbook example of how NOT to make a movie and should be a required viewing for film students. I just want to take it, look at it and study it. What are you ? Why are you this way ?

There's also one from a Doom fan story that ends with "And then i became a zombie" which is pretty funny.

 

[FalloutJack]

Latest one from cap in Avengers 2: "Every time someone tries to win a war before it starts, innocent people die. Every time."

Just... About the stupid line I'd expect from idiots who don't know what war (that you can lose in) is. Besides the fact that in regular wars innocent people also die, usually trying to win a war before it starts means your side has more chance to win and if it goes well enough it ends the conflict early with less waste of resources and less civilian casualties.

It's probably because they really didn't have the time to explain that they meant MORE innocent people would die than usual, because of the boneheadedness of trying to deal with something fast instead of smart. Movie-making is all about time constraints and flow, so I can see why that might've happened. I understood it right off, so it couldn't be universally bad.

OT: Let me just say 'Every called-out problem in a movie played on MST3K' as my entry.

I want to also point out one just from a Godzilla movie (Godzilla VS MegaGuirus, I think). Okay, so Japan has this satellite dimensional gun, Dimension Tide (Which has TOTALLY been approved by the UN, right?), for use in the killing of Godzilla by shunting him into another dimension, assuming it doesn't just obliterate him. I just want to go on record to say that the idea that they {A} couldn't get a positive lock on the GIANT LIZARD because there was a swarm of giant insects around and {B} that they missed...WITH A DIMENSIONAL CANNON...is positively ridiculous! Sometimes, Godzilla is made of more magic and plot armor than Mothra AND Gamera combined.

 

[maninahat]

There is one from the movie Street Kings, in which Keanu Reaves says some po-faced gobbledygook like: "This thing you want that you think you want, you don't want."

 

[springheeljack]

I know this is a really easy one but I have to include it

Johnny: I did not hit her, it's not true! It's bullshit! I did not hit her!

[throws water bottle]

Johnny: I did *not*. Oh hi, Mark.

Mark: Oh, hey Johnny, what's up?

Johnny: I have a problem with Lisa. She says that I hit her.

Mark: What? Did you?

Johnny: [sits down] No, it's not true. Don't even ask. What's new with you?