I am actually trying to get further away from profanity. I was always pretty fluent in swears, but working here, where everyone swears so much it’s like a second language, I really have forgotten that not everyone talks like this (just ask the flabbergasted moms at my neighborhood playground). The only other job I could work after here without getting fired is as a sailor or some sort of dockworker, although sadly, I lack the necessary upper-body strength. So this is just yet another reason I greatly admire and Kimmy’s ability to get her message across without actually cursing. For Lent this year, the only thing I’m giving up is swears, trying to adapt to Kimmy-isms like “what in the ham sandwich” and “fudge that sugar! fudge it to heck!” Unsurprisingly, so far I’m failing miserably, as my kids recently rolled their eyes at my efforts: “Mom, you’ve already used the F-word three times. This morning.” [Gwen Ihnat]
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I’ve been using this one for decadesLike the Kimmy Schmidt one it manages to be profane without using profanity
I always liked on The 100 the cast using some variation of “float you” or “go float yourself,” referring to the punishment on the arc of being expelled from the airlock to die in space (which they had all been sentenced to, when they turned 18). It sounds kind of innocuous but the cast really sold it.
Came to post this exact thing.
You beat me to it. I use that phrase on a daily basis.For Malcolm Tucker – I would choose “Fuckity Bye” instead of the “F-star-star” line, but of course his catalog is quite extensive.
Even the “best of” cursing video of that show, “The Thick of It” is still like eight minutes long. Full of a bunch of really short yet devastating clips. So damn funny.
My fave:
Good call.
You and I should be friends.
Also that Jackie Brown TV edit reminds me of a thing Mr Show did
You mother father Chinese dentist *thumbs up*
Top fecking notch.
For all of BSG’s many flaws, I find “frak” endures.
I was once in a hotel reception in London where a Firefly con was in progress. Apparently Joss Whedon had turned up unexpectedly at the disco the previous night, and some girl was telling the story to a friend on the phone with an “I frak you not!”
BSG had a lot of flaws in its last few seasons, but so much of the show was so amazing, and beautiful, and heart breaking, and transcended almost everything that came before it that I find it easier, and easier to forgive those flaws as time goes by.
The 1978 original was the best.
Wow! Check this one out! This is the original ABC Movie of the Week Trailer for Battlestar Galactica from back in 1978. You have no idea how huge this was back then! This is long before cable TV, or satellite TV or the internet or streaming TV. This is long before VCRs or video tapes or DVDs. You either saw it when it happened or you missed it. And we didn’t have 100 or more channels to choose from. There were 3 networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) and maybe a few independent stations AND THAT’S IT! This was so huge back then! This still gave me a chill down my spine watching it and remembering back to those times!
I contend that BSG was goof troop banancakes shlock trash from the get-go, and the only people that were disappointed by the way it really leaned into the nonsense toward the end were people that for some reason didn’t realize it had been nonsense all along (and thought “sexy sex robot with LED spinal cord orgasm” == “serious, political sci fi drama”).
Frak is the only substitute/made up swear word which actually works as profanity.
No. It’s seriously the laziest stupidest phrase ever uttered on television.
I don’t know, I’ve always been fond of “Drokk” from Judge Dredd, it works in the comics at the very least.
I frellin’ disagree.
Indeed, and I use it almost daily.
[Spoilers]Although, the show’s ending creates some nerdy issues with everything surrounding “frak.”The show not only explained everything with “god did it” but also implies English is the original language brought by the colonials, and it somehow survived/was rediscovered to the point everything about it is the same except for one word.
Fuck frak. Farscape did that shit first with “frell,” BSG just copied it and got all the credit.
OG BSG used “frack” in 1978.
“Frell” is too soft-sounding. It needs a hard consonant at the end to give it the right explosive punch.
I do like Frell, also, but Farscape didn’t invent fake cursing. I think Frag was around for decades before BSG used Frak- I don’t remember if original BSG used Frak, though.
Red Dwarf did you smeghead.
For me it’s been ruined by all the sci fi dilletantes who get really into using it.
I name “The Monster Fuck” as the winner of this Q&A, but if I may add two of my favorites to the list…David Hyde Pierce in Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp:And Harvey Keitel (as Dennis Farina) in Get Shorty:
And the best non-swearing swearing has to be the “Tenement” sketch from “The State”. Unfortunately I can’t find the clip online anywhere, but here’s just one beauty of a Ken Marino line from a skit that’s chock full of them:“Poopy. Another poopy day. I took number two from every dumb-dumb in this mickey-fickey neighborhood today.”
“Let’s get milk-faced and hum like rabbits.”
My wife and I have quoted “you fuck dick of a shit butt” to each other at least weekly since First Day of Camp came out. There’s something really amazing about the violence with which Pierce spits out those four words.
Hercules Mulligan, I need no introductionWhen you knock me down I get the fuck back up again
Not a swear, but a response to it: Flanders’ “no bible stories for you tonight” is one of the most evergreen methods to shutting derailing an angry tirade that I’ve personally come across.
“But how does that help the Basque separatists?” from MST3k is the one in our house.
I love this line and know I saw that episode but which movie are they riffing on? Can’t recall it for the life of me.
Space Mutinty and Hobgoblins, niether of which help anybody.
“You can go suck a fuck!”
Because I feel like they have a similar feel I’ll add it here. The choices in swearing in Doom Generation is excellent.
Those posts made me want to look up “Doom Generation” and watch it immediately. Thank you. I haven’t seen it, though I was only five when it came out so I’ll let that be my excuse.
It starts out pretty rough and you’re gonna think it’s too awful to watch, but it gets better. It’s still Araki and low budgety and weird ridiculous, but it’s fun.
Don’t watch the edited version. No point.
There is but one answer:
This needs more stars.
… and a whole article could be written titled “what is your favourite expression of profanity?” based on that show alone.Mine are: “Go fork yourself, you mean giraffe!” and “What a condescending bench!”And special mention goes to:
Props to bad Janet in the background just playing on their phone and not giving a fork.
I was about to ask “Why are you referring to Janet as they and not her?”, but then I just got that visual of Janet leaning forward and smiling while saying “I’m not a girl” …
Yeah I had to catch myself!
My favourite is when Eleanor calls Janet a “messy bench”. Also I’m sure at least one of those “Dereks” was a cuss.
Sure it’s not technically profanity, and only by a bit of stretching counts as pseudo-profanity, but “Eat butt, ya ding dongs” is TGP perfection.
I just finished watching Ricky Gervais’ ‘Extras. I almost popped a button when Andy Millman’s lady friend yanked on the back of her costume and said “these bits are crawling up me clange.” That was some British slang I’ve never heard before:D.
“This needs more stars.”
I would, but it’s already at 69.
LOL! Noice!When I made that comment that it needs more stars, it only had 4 stars and was way at the bottom of the list of comments – now it’s up at 78 and counting!
Exactly. Not one of these a-holes mentioned The Good Place or Battlestar ‘Frackin’ Galactica! Feldercarb!
That’s because Battlestar Galactica is a flaming pile of shit.
Forget BSG, how could they ignore the OG of schlocky sci-fi-channel TV space operas with fake f-bombs, frelling Farscape?
Exactly. Not one of these a-holes mentioned The Good Place or Battlestar ‘Frackin’ Galactica! Feldercarb!Or Farscape. They had a whole frelling lexicon of profanity.
Felgercarb.
Bullshirt.
I see your “holy mother forking shirt balls” and I raise you a “yippee kayak, other buckets.”
The one I probably use the most is “smeg head.”
you can thank Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO for coining that one
‘Smeg’ is a great one. An inventive sci-fi ‘swear word’ that sounds like it could be a real one without sounding anything like actual real ones, so they can just do whatever they want without tripping any censors.
It helps that the definition of smegma is so utterly revolting, too.
Are you aware of just what ‘smegma’ actually is?
Sort of related, but has anyone ever used “santorum” in movies or TV?
I’d be surprised. It’s a bit too forced, and definitely too time-specific. It’d be a surefire way of dating your movie or show in a hurry.
Yes, but that’s really only a bonus, and for most of the time since the show’s airing it wasn’t known for sure if that was the source (Kryten’s actor confirmed it in 2015, apparently).Apparently the actual source was from a Devo movie, so that’s interesting. I heard growing up that the Red Dwarf writers landed on it because it had the right ‘shape’ to be a swear word; it’s one syllable, has that hard consonant at the end.
Frak, I can’t think of a frellin word.
“I’m a mushroom cloud laying motherfucker, motherfucker!”
One of the few instances of a clean version of a song being better than the original: -d
Needs more motherfucking Samuel L Jackson. Him and Capaldi need to do a movie together where it’s just them swearing at people for two hours.
Yes! Jackson, Capaldi, the ghost of Gandolfini, and maybe Gregg Popovich to have a barbershop quartet of people you don’t want to piss off or they will just intimidate you into a puddle of quivering less than. I’d watch that movie.
Oh, man. There are so many.But if I had to pick two, they’d be:and
HOOPLEHEAD COCKSUCKER
My vote would have to go to Richard Jenkins losing it at a bunch of cheering Japanese schoolgirls. I’ve tried, ever since I saw Cabin in the Woods, to match the inflection, the raw fury, he gets on the first f-bomb, and it can’t be done.
This scene, by itself, is funnier than most whole comedies.
“How hard is it to kill 9 year olds?!?!?”
Jenkins and Whitford absolutely killed in that movie (no pun intended, no, really).
Fargin Icehole! Johnny Dangerously was a favorite in stifling hyper-moral Christian Colleges where you couldnt use any Fargin’ languages.
OK, this is weird I know – but even though it wasn’t a swear word but a minor character’s name, and even though Buffy has been off the air for almost 2 decades, I still find “HALFREK!” a more satisfying expletive to mutter than “Dammit!”
“This is what happens, Larry, when you FIND A STRANGER IN THE ALPS”….Big Lebowski TV edit…Classic.
“Holy shit snacks” or GTFO.
Brad Neely is a savant when it comes to thisI’m particular to “the weather had just turned into bullshit”, “body by Zeus ass”, and “Unholy Fucker of Mothers”
“House-cat, fuck-sucking rat dicks” is another amazing one
Also Odenkirk
non-profanity profanity is “Great Googlymoogly” from that one Snickers(?) football commercial, and I’ll also throw out a “feck you” once in a while in traffic.
A favourite of Mojo Nixon!
The first time I heard “great googlymoogly” was a Nick Jr. show called Maggie and The Ferocious Beast (it aired in the late 90’s, so I think it predates the Snickers commercial). I have no idea where it actually originates, though.My favorite type of swearing isn’t actually from fiction, it’s from real life. My parents once got into a fight, and my mom called my dad a “fucking ding-dong”. Just the juxtaposition of swear words with “words typically used to avoid swearing” is hysterical to me.
I’m an old man so I still throw out a “Shazbot!” now and then.
Or if you’re even older, “Up your nose with a rubber hose!”.
Or even older, “Sit on it!”
With respect, Malcolm Tucker called Linton Barwick an “F, star, star, KUNT!”
Any scene with Al Swearengen and Mr. Wu conversing.
“I promise I won’t say no more bad swears.”- Vern Tessio
Richard E. Grant is the best at swearing……tho I’m happily waiting for the day that Alex Borstein usurps the fucker.
I’m overjoyed that someone else has seen this. The best days for cinema.
Withnail and I has perhaps the richest and most effective use of profanity in all of cinema. If someone in my friend group hasn’t been heard from in a while, one of us can generally be counted on to remark “bastard must have died”.
Coming to America: “Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you! Who’s next?”
“Yes! Fuck you too!”
Any time Sharon says “For FUCK’s sake” on Catastrophe. Swearing always sounds better with a British accent.
In a what accent now?
I would hope that’s a reference to Game Night, where she keeps being mistaken for British.
I’m with you: “fir FOOOOKKKKSSSSSS sake” as enunciated by Franco Begbie gets my vote
Yippie ki yay mister falcon!
Well, apropos of today’s news, there’s really only one candidate: Cartman’s final malediction as he sends Satan back to Hell:“Fuck, shit, cock, ass, titties, boner, bitch, muff, pussy, cock, butthole, Barbra Streisand!”Aside from that, Dennis Farina’s muttered “What a bunch of fuckin’ bullshit” in Get Shorty is my actual favorite pop culture profanity.
*Saddam Hussein
/facepalmYou know, I was thinking Saddam’s name when I wrote that, and then typed “Satan” instead for some reason.
i think of myself as a fairly seasoned swear word user and hear-er, but when i saw In the Loop in the theater i straight up gasped like a schoolmarm upon hearing “allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock”.
LOL same. I was like “god damn, Peter, seriously?”
I’ve always appreciated the “foetus boy” bit that precedes it.
No, not that motherscratcher. M. Emmet Walsh talking about Bill Parker in Raising Arizona.
“Baldercrap.”
– Professor Farnsworth, Futurama.
Clarence Beeks. End of.
As a kid I drew a lot of inspiration from the scene in Sister Act where she says “bless you” with the exact intonation of “fuck you.”
‘Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off’ is a Malcolm Tucker classic, too.I laughed heartily at ‘Enjoy sucking Jeff Bezos’ dick, ya bunch of cunts’ from the Father Christmas, of all people, in the latest series of South Park.Interest word, that. I see William says he doesn’t like it, which I understand. Here in the UK it’s still basically the ‘worst word’ outside of racial abuse, but it’s far more common than in the US. And while it has the same connotations, it’s far less gendered an insult as far as I can see. Men get called cunts all the time.In fact it’s one of those observations that if you’re on a night out, you likely to call one of your pals ‘cunt’ and any cunts you encounter ‘pal’.
That’s how I always viewed that word, cunt, different meanings in different cultures. I’ve not actually called any woman I know a cunt, but I’ve definitely said that a famous person, like an news personality or an athlete, was being a cunt whilst in mixed company. Also, something about Tucker and Jaime being Scottish makes their cursing just +10 effectiveness.
That’s how I always viewed that word, cunt, different meanings in different cultures. I’ve not actually called any woman I know a cunt, but I’ve definitely said that a famous person, like an news personality or an athlete, was being a cunt whilst in mixed company. Also, something about Tucker and Jaime being Scottish makes their cursing just +10 effectiveness.
That’s how I always viewed that word, cunt, different meanings in different cultures. I’ve not actually called any woman I know a cunt, but I’ve definitely said that a famous person, like an news personality or an athlete, was being a cunt whilst in mixed company. Also, something about Tucker and Jaime being Scottish makes their cursing just +10 effectiveness.
The Hound on GoT is the bard of “cunt”
Bran’s “There’s no cure for being a cunt” remains my favourite line in all of GoT.
which episode is that from? i can’t recall the situation, but that line broke me when i first heard it.
It’s some point in the second season when he’s talking to Tyrion about Joffrey. Garden of Bones, I think.And it was, of course, Bronn, not Bran. Bran wishes he were that cool.
yup, i recall it clearly now. Bronn is great. i’m going to be mad if he doesn’t make it through the series alive (see also: davos and tormund)
Glen Bateman from Stephen King’s The Stand with his talk of Jesus’s various vehicles. Pony and sidecar, but my favourite is ‘Christ on a carousel’. I love the alliteration and the natural progression from horse, and also the way that progression implies the escalating circumstance that is motivating you to use the phrase. I use it frequently, as I do Homer Simpson’s ‘Crap on a crutch!’
In the recent K-drama ‘Radiant’ there was a scene where the grandma heroine remembers back to the early 1970s, her attempt at her first innocent kiss from her first boyfriend. She leads him into the woods, but instead of getting the kiss slips on a pile of poop. Her dialog the next scene: “This f***ing ****, how dare he s**t here? I will rip you as***le with an acorn.” The boyfriend just stands there horrified at the string of expletives.
Frack (Battlestar Galactica)Frell (Farscape)Case closed.
This one is even better because it’s from an actual person, but the most recent season of Last Chance U introduced me to the joy of calling people “fuckstick”:And sadly I can’t find it online, but Malcom Tucker’s line from The Thick Of It about “being as useless as a marzipan dildo” has always stayed with me.
The culture war montages in Do the Right Thing and The 25th Hour.
I’ve used Private Hudson’s “rat-fuck son-of-a-bitch” as an epithet of weary contempt ever since first seeing Aliens.
Oh, hands down its ‘AF’. Works with anything. I’m hungry AF. That’s stupid AF. I’m OG AF.
As TV Edits go, does it get any better than Die Hard 2’s “Yippie Ki Yay, Mr. Falcon!”For legit profanity in all its glory, Joe Pesci in Casino is a Jedi Master.
I saw Casino on cable once and the hoops they had to jump through editing that scene were unbelievable.
I’m pretty fond of the Pineapple Express TV edit where they switch asshole to casserole.
I feel like this needs to be put in for consideration.
The Scottish do have the best grasp of swearing in the English speaking world, I gotta say.
BSG was good at this.
They were actually the worst at it. God that show sucked ass.
In terms of shear breadth, no one beats this guy when it comes to the swears. I mean, really, what a mouth on that guy:
I’ll just leave this here.
Oh I miss this show. So underappreciated.
“Stop, please! Let us stop this mindless violence. Nicholas, my son. You may not be a man of God, but surely, you’re a man of peace.”“I may not be a man of God, Reverend, but I know right and I know wrong, and I have the good grace to know which is which.”“Oh. Fuck off, grasshopper.”
Only correct answer!
Mothercussers.
Idk if it counts, but I’ve always found it hilarious when Butters on South Park says things like son of a biscuit
Me too. I think it’s because of his accent and cute voice.
Mr. Stotch yelling, “Fuck you, son!” at Butters in the Amazon episode is a pretty great example of actual SP swearing.
It might be a bit too long-form, but seriously, how is this scene not even mentioned?
Fuck, you’re right.
Much as I love The Wire, I’ve always found that scene overrated. I get that it mostly stems from the writers’ commitment to realism, but to me it comes off too “nudge nudge everybody, we’re doing a bit in this scene” to fit in with the general tone of the show.
I liked Sepinwall’s take on it, which is it’s teaching us to pay close attention to what’s on the screen and stop doing your laundry or whatever, and that its payoff is in the S4 (?) bit where Kima’s investigating the shooting scene.It’s also really, really funny.
It’s similar to Omar jumping out the window and surviving, in that it’s based on real events yet still complicated the overall verisimilitude. I mean, it’s nitpicking, though. Obviously it was unbelievably well made TV.
I’m amazed none of the writers mentioned this, or that this isn’t the top comment from The Wire:
He does it in “The 25th Hour” too
He does it in BlacKkklansman too, only to get interrupted after a couple of seconds.
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit.
“Kiss my piss!”God bless you, Richard Hendricks.
Well fuck my donkey
You haven’t heard anyone swear until you’ve heard Ernie Anderson swear. Not only is it so surreal to hear the Loooooove Boooooooat guy unleash tsunamis of profanity, Ernie was especially gifted at it.
I always liked Elliot from Scrubs’ “Frick.” “Frick on a stick.” “Frick on a stick with a brick.”
Also, for real profanity, there’s always, “What the shit?!” from Archer.
‘Frick’ is probably my favorite to actually use, in large part because Sarah Chalke showed that it’s possible to pack more ‘profanity energy’ into that word than perhaps most real profanity.
Dexter’s sister on Dexter used to have some creative profanity, but one I always thought was so stupid was “Fuckballs!”My husband tends to mutter, “fuck me” when he goofs, and it started slipping out from me, too. I would struggle to not to say it because I hate it, and one day while trying to stop in mid-sentence, “Fuckballs!” blurted out instead.It felt right. Now I use it on a regular basis, and I kind of like the weird looks I sometimes get.
Funny you should ask that now. I was just reminded of it last week while watching Colm Feore in The Umbrella Academy. I couldn’t find a clip, I’m afraid, but in Bon Cop, Bad Cop he let loose with a delightful, bilingual string of expletives. My memory may not be perfect, but I think it was,
“Merde! Shit! Merde! Fuck! TABERNAC!”
I think one of the reasons I love it so much is that it came from the mouth of one of my favorite Shakespearean actors, and I love incongruity more than almost anything.
And, of course, when Huard is teaching Feore how to swear in joual… 😎
Anything from Gavin McInnes
Whose Get off My Lawn is a Great Podcast.
I recommend him to anyone thinking that they’re some kind of person who likes profanity while policing our language
Judas Priest.
I’m honestly surprised nobody brought up Bojack Horseman. Despite being a Netflix show where they can use as much profanity as they want, “Fuck” is only used once per season, giving whatever scene they use it in a lot more emotional impact. They did sort of use it twice one season, but it doesn’t really count because of how they did it: [Spoiler] finds out she’s pregnant, and says “Motherf-” before it cuts to credits. The next episode starts right where the last one began, with her saying “-ucker!”
It’s this:It’s just so pure.
Pretty much all of these.
EitherOr one of the many many “Goddammit”s on It’s Always Sunny. I can’t find a clip but I particularly love how Kaitlin Olson delivers a drawn out “GOOOD Damn it!”
No one has ever said ‘Goddammit’ better than Kaitlin Olson. In so many ways, too!
Respectfully disagree:
It’s all about the 2-second pause Adam Reed puts in there – supposedly, it let him get the word in around Turner Broadcasting’s notoriously religion-averse censors (The same ones who struck “Sweet Zombie Jesus” from Futurama reruns for years,) but it simply works as a nonverbal intensifier. Like a windup before the pitch.
Ok, that is pretty good. The pause really lets you savor the whole thing. I still have to give the nod to Olson, though this is a strong contender.
Kaitlin Olson calling someone a “white stain” is my favorite thing.
One of my absolute favorite workarounds is Cuba Gooding Jr saying “I’m all heart, [pause] my brother!” in the tv edit of Jerry Maguire. It’s the pause that does it for me for some reason. So ridiculously amusing.
From the underrated Killjoys:“That guy’s the dickiest dick who ever dicked.”
This basically, but especially the “clustercuss” line reading.
Really, you have to ask?
No mention of the classic scene from The Wire where the entire dialogue consists of the word “fuck” and it’s variants?
I’ve always been fond of Col. Potter’s profanity substitutes on MASH. Particularly fond of ‘Horse hockey!’, but they’re all good.
Billy Connolly is sadly missing from this discussion, since he is an expert and master in the use of swear words. I give you his short description of ‘fuck off’:
If we’re talking TV edits, growing up we had Congo taped off TV and with such lines as describing the CIA as a “loveless bunch of rotten stinkers” and calling Tim Curry a big bag of DIRT.But one of my favorite PG swears is “cheese n’ rice” instead of Jesus Christ:
Every so often, I’ll find myself using King Kaiser’s (Joseph Bologna) “Jiminy Cricket Pest-Bastard” from My Favorite Year. It’s fun to say.
Anything from Malcolm Tucker, basically. “NOMFUP”, “Fuckity Bye!”, and “Just another day at the fuck office” being some of my favorites. The Thick of It turned profanity into an art. What kills me is that real-life people at Number 10 says that there isn’t enough swearing.A good runner up is Mrs. Doyle’s description of the language used in the books of the author Father Ted fancies.“Bastard this and Bastard that, It’s wall-to-wall BASTARDS!”And of course I love Father Jack’s “FECK!” “ARSE!” and “GOBSHITE!!”I remember this one bit from a Rowan Atkinson live show in which he plays an actor who lost an award to a costar. When the costar’s name is announced the way he says “Oh shit!” just friggin’ floors me.
All respect and apologies to Mr. Samuel L Jackson, but the best utterance of “Motherfucker” on celuloid HAS to be when Ving Rhames’s Marcellus spots Bruce Willis’ Butch bwhind the wheel of the car in front of him in “Pulp Fiction”. Truly exquisite.
Halelujeuh, and holy shit!!Where’s the Tylenol?
I’ve been watching NYPD Blue the last few weeks. It’s a joy to see them moving the line a little farther every week. My favorite so far where one week the lady DA asks, “Am I squeezing your shoes?” The next week Andy mumbles “squeezing my balls” but later in the show makes it louder, “squeezing your shoes!” It’s like kid learning how to swear!
Hell yeah “The Thick of it” and also all the swearing Capaldi did on “Skins” in such a brief role. It was fun seeing him on a family-ish show like “Doctor Who” where he can’t curse, but they still referenced “The Thick of it” once or twice with some of his less profane slang from that show.
Also, “The Good Place” wins.
no recent use of profanity has delighted me as much as Cadet Sylvia Tilly’s earnest proclamation of “this is so fucking cool!” on Star Trek: Discovery. It’s the first instance of the F-bomb in Star Trek history
Was it as shocking as when Biessman bro’d out “this sucks!” on Star Trek: Elite Force? Wow, I should revisit that game…
Not actual profanity but Spongebob muttering “Tartar sauce” as a swear never fails to make me chuckle.
Mother forking shirt balls! You guys forgot all about The Good Place!
I will never get over Kevin Nealon calling an old woman a “cock-juggling thundercunt” on Weeds.
This doesn’t count, but when I saw the Last Jedi, when the Resistance ship goes light speed through the First Order, it was dead silent when one dude let out an Ohhhhhh Fuuuuuucccckkk.
This guy:
Ectoplasm! Sea gherkin! Australopithecus! Fuzzy-wuzzy!
“In the form of words like ‘twat’, and later ‘fuck nut’ and ‘arse candle’”
RAT FARTS!!!!!!
Swear-master Joe Pesci should get a shout-out. One moment I like is in Casino when he’s threatening the banker and says something like “you fuck — don’t you make a fuck out of me.” I’ve always wondered if it was an accident.
“Kinja” literally the most vulgar and obscene word I know.
I wish people called me “dumbass” more often because I love saying, “double dumbass on you!” a la Captain Kirk in Star Trek IV.
motherforking shirtballs
There’s so many in this movie, but here’s a good start:
“Oh, Belgium man, Belgium!”- Zaphod Beeblebrox
Johnny Drama…… Suck It, Dickbag
I have two very different scenes.Funnier than any of the wacky dialogue whedon put in JL. Just a guy realizing how totally outclassed he is. Batman being forced out of broody mary sue mode pretty much never doesn’t end up being awesome.
The second is from an early episode of american dad.Normally i find bleeps funnier. South park was far more entertaining when they had periodic beeps instead of just being allowed to say whatever. Your mind fills in whatever the funniest response will be.
But just something about Seth Macfarlane’s explosive delivery of “Fuck you!” gets me every time. I don’t even know what it is.
There are no areas where Gremlins and its sequel don’t outshine all of their murderous imp imitators.
Except this one.
I’ve always been a big fan of fictional curse words in science fiction. Frakking smeg heads! Belgium!
That bizarre MPAA policy about allowing PG-13 movies to include exactly one f-bomb has been used creatively in many movies over the years. The best one though has got to be in Spaceballs when Dark Helmet discovers the self destruct cancel button on the ship is out of order. “Fuck! Even in the future nothing works!”
Not just PG-13, but Spaceballs is straight PG. Both of its precision profanities are great.
“We ain’t found SHIT”
Kelly from Ash vs Evil Dead and her signature f-bombs
Since The Good Place has already been mentioned (holy forking shirt!) I’m going to go with The Tick: “Eat a dick, Derek!”. Yara Martínez’ delivery is forking perfect.
One line that I’m particularly partial to is pretty recent, not truly profane, and yet nearly perfect:“Is that all you got? You gonna fight or you just bumping gums, you hard-boiled turtle slapper?” – Spider-Man Noir
Not a single mention of Ryan Reynolds’ wonderful Blade 3 line ‘Cock juggling thundercunt’
Gonna go with the Thomas Jane character in the most recent Predators movie. Startled, he proclaims, “FUCK ME IN THE FACE WITH AN AARDVARK!”
This is what happens…when you find a stranger in the alps
I once worked with someone who grew up in Mexico City. She laughed at Americans’ stunted ability to cuss. We tend to recycle the same 4 or 5 over-used expletives at random and place them randomly into sentences. She was not impressed. Highly inflected languages are able to insult your whole family going back five generations simply by changing one letter on the end of a word.
My personal favourite is a simple, heartfelt ‘cunt’. It’s a beautiful word: every single sound is, ironically enough, hard.
The ‘C’ goes the k option instead of the feeble s;
the ‘U’ is solid and guttural (it carries _weight_ dammit!);
The ‘N’ is through exposed, clenched teeth;
And the ‘T’ is quick, sharp, and snaps the word off with alacrity.It’s marvelous. Really.
Give your balls a tug!And of the hockey chirps from Shorsey are pretty amazing to stumble across.
Kevin Bacon in Tremors after they kill their first Graboid:
extremely difficult to choose on account of being such a great question. probably trump talking to billy bush about his preferred method of sexual assault.or maybe stephen fry: “It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what.”
No appreciation for the coach on Letterkenny?
Love this bit.
Has anyone mentioned Derek and Clive?Jason Schwartzman’s tirade at the start of I Heart Huckabees also comes to mind.
I’m just glad no one mentioned the intolerable non-swearing of Battlestar Galactica. It was so cheesy and stupid. Also “jolly green jizz face” has to be the winner here.
“Smeg” from Red Dwarf is pretty amazing, because smegma is pretty gross and so it’s a plausibly disgusting swear word which isn’t just pretending to be another word.
“Well, double dumb-ass on you!”- Admiral Kirk, San Francisco, 1986
For those who know Swedish:
I win.
TBS, when they bizarrely showed Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, replaced “motherfucker” with “mucky pucky”. Why? Why bother showing a movie that requires you to replace a swear word that’s constantly used, with an insult to people’s intelligence?
Since every normally used curseworSince every normally used curseword is now heard somewhere, I find it more amusing when substitutes are employed. My favorite example is from The Christmas Story where the facial reactions and Jean Shepherd’s perfect narration, along with the garbled words from the basement say it all….
It’s hard for me to pick anything else besides Kevin Kline as Otto in A Fish Called Wanda doing what is perhaps the most hilarious profanity ad-lib in my memory:ARCHIE LEACH: You’re a true vulgarian, aren’t you?OTTO: You’re the vulgarian, you fuck!Absolutely glorious.
Honorable mention to anything from Slap Shot and Goon.
Malcolm Tucker is indisputably the Shakespeare of swearing.I am very surprised that no one has mentioned this scene from In Bruges yet,
Whatever it is the Old Man is yelling when he fights the furnace in ‘’A Christmas Story.’’Also ‘’melonfarmer’’ in the sanitized ‘’Repo Man.’’– Stroke
I like the word “Frak.” Especially since it spilled over from BSG into other nerdy genre shows, like the Arrowverse.
I love all the cursing in “A Fish called Wanda.” Some of them are pretty creative, like, “You’re the vulgarian, you fuck!” Okay, I just plain love the movie. One of my favorites, forever and ever.
“Funky Buttlovin’” from Rookie of the Year of course
I mean, yeah.It’s gotta be Malcolm Tucker.
If you don’t chew Big Red, then Fuck You!
I’m extremely fond of Kim Jong Il in Team America yelling “You want inspection? Well INSPECT THAT YOU BUTTFUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!”. Trey’s delivery of that line is flawless.
Also this one is much more about the response to the profanity than the profanity itself, but also from Veep:
Smeg! It’s the biggest smegging comment of them all.
For shame, AV Club!
(see also, “F Murray Abraham!”)
I have to admit, I’m old school and always loved this!
Shout out to Nick Cave’s version of Stagger Lee, motherfuckers
“Zarking fardwarks!”- Zaphod BeeblebroxThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I enjoyed Killing Eve, but the only part of the show that really made an impression on me was their use of the word, “dickswab”.
How the shit is “Shiiiiiiiiiiieeet” not answer #1?
Here are my top 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7HoSUZSHWk
Nobody FUCKS with the Jesus!
My dad convinced me to watch Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, a fairly dated and campy caper movie even by the standards of the time, purely on the strength of the scene where George Kennedy responds to an overly curious child by telling him to go fuck a duck:Apparently the scene took a long time to film because Kennedy kept cracking up on the delivery. My favourite expression of profanity, however, is the last line in Graham Chapman’s wonderful Sermon In The Hole from Life of Brian. The pure frustration projected into every syllable, especially considering John Cleese’s response, is golden.
No love for Beverley Goldberg?
“Sphinctertingle”
I never understand how people have a hard time not swearing. I very rarely swear.
Not sure if it counts as “pop culture”, but I always found this commercial to be hilarious.
My favorite is the line I like to use at the end of a work day. Old man that runs the bar in Boondock Saints.
The TV Edit of this scene does a great job of covering up both the racial epithets and the phrase “mother fucking”.
All these comments and no mention of the car rental scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
norm macdonald saying 9/11 will never be anything but god damned fucking hilarious to me. i think about it at my low points and my high points.
“You stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder!”
HOW THE FORK DID THE GOOD PLACE NOT GET ON THIS LIST?!?!?!
Samuel Jackson’s Pulp Fiction bit in the Kahuna Burger scene…maybe it’s too mainstream or I’m too old? But it’s pretty great and I can’t believe nobody so far has mentioned it. “English, motherfucker, do you speak it?” is pure poetry.
And, Benicio del Toro in The Usual Suspects…like, all his lines.
“Looks like a fuckload of China white”or him (Fenster) reading the line at cops’ request in the lineup:Fred Fenster (heavily accented & slurred): Give me the keys, ya cocksucka.Arresting Officer: In English, please?Fred Fenster: Excuse me?Arresting Officer: In English.Fred Fenster: Give me the fuckin’ keys, you cocksucka. What the fuck?
This is my most recent favorite, just wow… plus bonus laughs when I figured out that it’s delivered by Roseanne’s uptight neighbor Cathy from the early seasons of Roseanne (before it sucked)
https://tenor.com/view/letterkenny-squirrely-dan-pissed-gif-13051156Letterkenny 4evah
How are “frell” and “farbot” not here?
“Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, do I look like Mother Teresa to you?”
Anything with Eddie Izzard or George Carlin standing on a stage.
I mean, not presently for Carlin. Though, Zombie Carlin would probably be pretty great.
How has this not been mentioned?
No love for the bowdlerisms in The Good Place? Holy motherforking shirtballs, that’s a shame.I dunno if the seemingly endless stream of abuse from Full Metal Jacket is too old to constitute ‘pop culture”, but I’d still rate it a close second despite its age.Legend has it that R. Lee Ermey’s audition tape – when he was hired to instead advise the guy cast as Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, who later played the door gunner in the helicopter scene – involved screaming a non-stop and non-repeating stream of profanity at the camera, at high speed, for a full 2 minutes, while being pelted with oranges from off camera, with no breaks, stuttering, or so much as odd pronunciation. I’d really love to see that tape someday…
Regarding Katie’s pick;I was watching a TV Edit version of Desperado and during the bathroom fight right after the “Piss Warm Chango” scene a thug walks into the bloodbath and originally says, “What the f@ck?”…here though he says, in a completely different voice, “What the frijoles?!?”.
I’m really surprised that got through and made it to broadcast.