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Lopsided Dichotomy
- 168 statements
- 32 feature instances
- 17 referencing feature instances
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Either you're hallucinating after eating too much radioactive pizza last night, or you're reading a trope page about rhetorical comparisons like this one. Sometimes, as a means of humour, or simply to argue for one possibility through ridicule of all possible alternatives, someone will frame a description or explanation as "either it was X highly unlikely set of circumstances, or it was Y straightforward apparent conclusion." Often associated with Deadpan Snarkers and/or First Person Smartasses. Most often "Y straightforward apparent conclusion" is obviously the truth and the dichotomy is employed as means of snark or lampshading. However on occasion, this trope will be subverted to comic effect when the more bizarre conclusion turns out to be precisely correct instead, perhaps sometimes as An Aesop about not being too sure of yourself about what is possible and what is not. If the characters decide that the mundane explanation is actually less plausible, it may be an Impossibly Mundane Explanation. Sometimes also overlaps with False Dichotomy, when the ludicrous explanation isn't really the only alternative to the implied one. Talks Like a Simile is related. See also Occam's Razor. Not to be confused with an Asymmetric Dilemma, which is also about mundane things being contrasted with extreme things, but in more of an "and" way than an "or". When a translator provides translations of this nature, it is the Either "World Domination", or Something About Bananas subtrope. See also Is the Answer to This Question "Yes"?. |
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Dropped link to ItMakesSenseInContext: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
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DBTropes | |
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| Lopsided Dichotomy / int_168c4727 | comment |
In Guild Wars 2, while looking for an infiltrator who is apparently stealing people's uniforms and able to paralyze with a touch, Rhytlock comments | |
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Madagascar: "Did that just say 'Grand Central Station', or 'my aunt's constipation'?" | |
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| Lopsided Dichotomy / int_2101f81a | comment |
In the Mad Magazine parody for Charlie's Angels, the angels are given "costumes" to wear, namely skimpy bikinis. One of them quips: | |
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From House, where House talks about the iPhone someone bought himnote in a "secret santa" exchange with a $25 limit: | |
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| Lopsided Dichotomy / int_22d87fc9 | comment |
That '70s Show: In "Kitty's Birthday (That's Today?!)", Red and Eric forget Kitty's birthday, then try to pretend it's a Not-So-Forgotten Birthday, buying her a few balloons and a funnel from the gas station at 11:40 P.M.. However, she sees through it. | |
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From The Simpsons "El Viaje Misterioso De Nuestro Jomer", when Homer stands in front of a lighthouse, causing his silhouette to be projected onto the clouds... note (This is entirely accidental on Homer's part.) | |
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Parodied in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal — a scientist tells a reporter "Either we had a slight measuring error, or all of physics is wrong." Again, she says this to a reporter, a profession notorious for misleading attention-grabbing science headlines. You can probably guess the result. | |
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The page quotation from Scrubs, of course. | |
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Dilbert: In "The Dilbert Principle", Scott Adams describes the two possible results of a career in engineering: At the end of a Dilbert arc, Dilbert wonders why he's sitting naked in a trash can, and Dogbert explains, "Either you were killed by wild deer and we cloned you back to life from your old garbage... or... you saved a lot of money on an aboveground pool." |
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Cracked does this in one of their articles on video game fan theories, referring to a line in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask about Clock Town losing tourism. | |
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Calvin and Hobbes: The page image, is of Calvin's detective alter ego commenting why a room was trashed. Calvin saying "either mom's cooking dinner or someone got sick in the furnace duct." |
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Subverted in a strip from The Order of the Stick, when Roy (as a spirit in the Afterlife Antechamber) attempts one after his father hands him copies of Frankenstein, I, Robot, Promethean: The Created and Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Your Dead Body Being Used To Make A Bone Golem (But Were Afraid To Ask) to "help [him] come to terms with the bad news". He tries to make this snark but it is so specific he cannot come up with a joke. | |
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In Dead to Rights, Jack Slate uncovers the villain's secret gold-smelting plant beneath Grant City, and snarks to himself "That's a lot of gold, and I doubt Fort Knox was having a yard sale!" | |
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| Lopsided Dichotomy / int_63230cb | comment |
Dragon Ball Z Abridged gets in on this during the Cell saga, after the inhabitants of Kame House witness the ocean being parted down at the beach: | |
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Phineas and Ferb: "Ask A Foolish Question": "Meatloaf Surprise": "One Good Scare Ought to Do It!": |
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Garfield and Friends episode, "Wonderful World": | |
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| Lopsided Dichotomy / int_9004922f | comment |
Ridcully thinks he's doing this in Hogfather when he asks Ponder Stibbons "You mean the whole world has gone wrong or your machine is wrong?" after Hex produces figures that don't seem to make sense and requests "PLEASE REINSTALL UNIVERSE AND REBOOT". Ponder replies that Hex is tested every day and the universe isn't, which Ridcully is forced to concede is a good point. | |
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| Lopsided Dichotomy / int_90c73dda | comment |
In Animorphs, Aximili ("Ax") says one time, while in flea morph, "He's welcoming the Visser back aboard the Blade ship. Or he may be telling him his brother is a meteor fragment. I understand Galard, but this morph's hearing is very uncertain."note smaller creatures generally have less sensory acuity than larger ones, and are sensitive to different wavelengths, both for size reasons | |
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Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain: Based on the number and variety of mad science devices Bad Penny has been shown to use, the Audit concludes that either Bad Penny is exponentially more powerful than any other mad scientist in human history, or she's a relatively weak mad scientist who steals other people's inventions out of jealousy. It's the first option. | |
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Happens once in Daria when pop music starts playing. | |
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In Tales of Graces, a Traveling Beastmaster concludes from Sophie's acrobatic tricks that she's either from the circus, or she's an assassin. | |
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Groucho Marx in A Day at the Races: | |
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From Duckman: | |
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In Person of Interest "Allegiance," Root confronts Greer about some of the things he's recently acquired: | |
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During the "Inspector" sketch of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Inspector Lookout sees the body of Inspector Tiger. Lookout surmises that either the murderer is someone in the same room, or else he had 40-foot long arms. | |
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At the end of Quest for Glory IV, the hero is surrounded by the thankful people of the land after (like the past three games) completing yet another heroic quest. Cue Erasmus and Fenrus taking that moment to scry on the hero, with Fenrus commenting that "It's either an award ceremony or a lynch mob." | |
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Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger: Somehow, Miss Mush comes to the conclusion that either Kathy has suddenly turned nice, or Mr. Gorf is secretly a mean teacher who has stolen the class's voices, and she needs to smash a pepper pie into his face to make him sneeze them all out. Since she just can't believe Kathy would be nice, she decides it must be the other option, which is exactly correct. | |
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In the Pearls Before Swine treasury "Pearls Freaks The #%*# Out", one strip taking place in a supermarket had about three box-things lying on a shelf in the background. Pastis comments "Either the store had a huge run on that particular item, or a cartoonist I know got tired of drawing them.". | |
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A Buckles strip from 5-29-13 had this: | |
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Star Trek: Voyager: In "Waking Moments", the crew is put through dream manipulation by mysterious aliens. In one shared dream, there's a warp core breach that Janeway fails to stop, who is still unharmed in the explosion. | |
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Penn & Teller: Bullshit! used this in the college episode in response to a college rally organizer who told a counter-protester to move away from the crowd. | |
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Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Remember Me", when Crusher realizes nothing makes sense because she's trapped in a bubble universe. | |
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