I started this topic so that we can post things we thought we heard on our favorite shows but we hadn't quite heard it correctly. Some are funny and some are just sad.

The latest one to happn to me was on a rerun of CSI, I have only seen a few CSI shows. But the character played by George Eads was interrogating a young man and said "so, you wear an ear piece?" For the next 10 minutes I was sure he had said "So, you wear a hairpiece." It didn't have anything to do with the story and boy was I confused. Okay, I'm blonde, I admit it.

A fews years back I was sure the Naked Gun movie was titled "Naked Gun 2 1/2- The Smell of Beer"

I know, I need help.

My number one, "man, I thought I heard something, there," moment from t.v. was in the X-Files episode that aired just after season eight's "Dead/Alive," in which a very pregnant Dana Scully tells Mulder (of his disappearance), "I prayed a lot--my prayers were answered," and Mulder, noting her gestational form, replies, "In more ways than one." I still swear that Scully then mouthed in return, "it's yours," after Mulder looked away.

How about when translators hear wrong? I don't know if this applies at all to the US, but in countries with subtitles, you get so many bad ones. One of the most famous ones was in NYPD Blue when one of th guys says "I'm going to take a dump". It was translated as "I'm going to be dumped", and so many ppl complained about that, it was all over the TV magazines etc.

Another good one is "I'm just asking" translated as "I'm just an ass king." Yeah, that's likely.

My favourite is the "CLEX!!!" heard 'round the world in the Smallville ep "Zero".

This is from a Larry King interview and someone had posted the above line and a few others. I was reading the post way to fast and thought it said "Tammy Faye called Jesus ugly..."

I'm going straight to hell.

On last week's Battlestar Galactica, while Doc Cottle is giving Baltar a brain scan, he says something when Baltar moves and screws up the process. I had to watch it four times at progressively higher volumes to convince myself he was saying "fart" and not... well, ya know.

Along the same lines, on the "Spring Breakout" episode of Arrested Development, George-Michael tells Maeby, "I hate to see you get plucked by someone who doesn’t even care that you’re blossoming." The 'p' was so soft it was hard to tell if he said 'plucked' or, you know...

I mean, it was on a network primetime show and G-M is much too innocent to say something like that, but it still caught me off-guard.

I caught that on Arrested Development, too. Made me stop dead in my tracks.

I'm not sure if this counts because it's more what they wrote than what I read into it, but one day I laughed until I cried when a news channel's crawl reported, "Nelson Mandella buries last surviving son." If you think I'm callous for laughing, at least Nelson could have waited until the poor kid died.

There's a Maalox commercial where the Maalox bottle says "I'm new and I'm a chew." And at first I thought it said "I'm new and I'm a jew."

I was half-listening to the news the other day, and the headline they kept repeating before every break was "New Photos Of Saddam Hussein." I couldn't figure out who in their right mind would want to see Nude Photos Of Saddam Hussein.

Oh my gosh, I can't stop laughing at that. And I totally understand, so many times I will be walking by the TV and hear " Shocking nude photos of so and so." Thank god I realized it was NEW photos cuz the last time they were talking about Barbara Walters.

Maybe the same folks who wanted to see pictures of him in his underwear?

gadje, that's hilarious. Thank you!

I think the most famous example of mis-hearing thing is the infmaous "We/There are [no] survivors of flight 815"

Oooh, yes. Was the correct interpretation ever actually confirmed by anyone? I remember the line was a lot clearer on one of the promos, but I can't remember which one it sounded like.

I mentioned this elsewhere, but if you hear someone on your TV tell you that someone named Baker is inbred, it's actually an ad for Baker's Inn Bread.

For the people in the Commercial thread:

"That's AllState, Stan."

FEMA director Michael Brown.


Oh, wait, he really did say that.

Never mind! [/emily litella]

Edited to fix tags

In the new Desperate Housewives commercial, in different segments they all mouth the word "juicy."

I thought they were saying "Tuesday" and was mad no one on these boards told me they changed the night the show was on.

I thought they were saying "Tuesday," too!

Every time I hear them talking about Coast Guard VA Thad Allen, I think they said "Fat Albert."

There is a brand of soup called "College Inn." I always think they're saying "COLLAGEN!"

Ewwwwwww....I don't WANT Collagen Soup!

Ditto on the collegen soup. You mean that's NOT what they're saying? (Hee.)

Ah well, that's Allstate, Stan.

When I hear the Collagen Soup commercial, I just picture everyone's lips getting big & puffy as they eat it.

Has anyone mentioned the "All in the Family" theme song yet?

"Gee our love was sour and great!" I spent years wondering what the hell that meant!

ETA: Yes, I know now that it's really "Gee our old LaSalle ran great" -- LaSalle being a car.

OMG, that's hilarious!

Ok, someone clue me in since I don't frequent the Commercial thread, what's "That's AllState, Stan" all about? Cuz I don't get it.

He actually says "That's Allstate's stand"

Oh. My. God. I can't believe I couldn't figure that shit out on my own.

There was recently a big debate on the "Supernatural" thread about a line in the pilot. Dean, played by Jensen Ackles, was caught by some cops after pretending to be a federal agent. The cop looked at Dean and said,

"Fake ID, fake credit card...you got anything real on ya?"

Well, I (and several others) swear that Dean deadpanned, "My boots?" before breaking into a grin (and then getting slammed onto the hood of his car while being arrested). However, others on the thread say that the Closed Captioning said Dean's line was:

"My boobs?"

Both are hysterical because of Jensen Ackles' delivery, but it made me laugh out loud when the debate went underway. Boots or boobs? You decide!

Except that I swear he really, actually says "That's Allstate, Stan." It's not just the missing D (which he actually put back in the most recently-shot spot, but it's not enough); it's also the mini-pause after "Allstate," and the up-in-the-air inflection of the end of the sentence, not declarative but adding your name to the end of his sentence. It's one of the oddest things I know on TV these days.

And don't call me Stan!

This is kind of the same, only I read it in a magazine: When the first season of Survivor was about to begin, I read a promo for it in a magazine. I thought (to my horror!) that I read that they were going to kill the people that were voted off rather than just have them eliminated from the game! Ha!

OK, I'll bring this over from the Commercials thread...

There's this Christian music CD commercial, in which white youth throw their arms straight up in the air, and then jump straight up and down in place, which I guess is their version of ecstatic dancing. Anyway, one of the featured songs is "I Can Only Imagine."

Which the male singer renders as "Ah c'n oly 'magiiiiii..."

Which I, therefore, hear as him extolling the virtues of Italian pastry: "Ah, Cannoli Magic!"

How about Shirley?
I swear Comedy Central doesn't even try. The typist types like a chimp.

I used to think it was something about "all the salad rate."

It took me years to figure out what the words really were.

I didn't even have any pretend words to fill in,, I had no clue what that line was.

Regarding the All in the Family theme, when I was a little kid and would hear that, I could swear the first line was "By the wakeling miller plain". So, of course, I had no idea what that was all about. The actual lyric, "Boy the way Glenn Miller played" makes much more sense.

One this summer that cracked me up everytime I saw it was for the 'Worlds of Fun' theme park (in Kansas City). There's this young girl doing the voice-over, talking about all the fun her family has at Worlds of Fun. She's talking fast, so when she says "And my brother really loves the new Peanuts Playhouse" I always heard it as "And my brother really loves the new Penis Playhouse".

Now that's a theme park attraction I'd be curious about...might even pay the $20.00 admission fee to see.

The one that made me wonder is the Best Western commercial where the guy sang "wait 'til the warmup's underway", and I heard "waitin' in women's underwear".

On Sunday's "Rome," young Octavian goes to a brothel (on his mother's orders) and loses his virginity to a heavily accented prostitute. When his tutor asks, "How was he?", she replies, "Like bull" ... which I heard as either "like wool" or "like wood." (Mr. Sanveann clarified for me!)

I have a peculiar one that haunted my childhood...

When I was young (gradeschool), I can remember hearing about an "air embargo" constantly on the evening news. This always made me stop dead in my tracks, because the words "air embargo" sound EXACTLY like my full real name. It really used to creep me out.

(I suppose I must have been a nearly pathalogically narcissistic seven year old to have thought that Walter Cronkite was intoning my name on the national news. Sheesh.)

I always misheard the Reading Rainbow theme lyric "I can do anything" as "I can't do anything." I figured it out fast, but now I'll spend my life with a catchy, inspirational line of music telling me about my inability to pursue my dreams. It gets stuck in my head a lot too.

This isn't so much a mishearing as a little mental tic, but my brain always wants to interpret the Friends theme as "I'll be therefore you." I don't think they meant for the lyrics to be that deep.

On the second episode of Prison Break, Lincoln's angsty teen son refers to his father as "that guy at Fox River," which a few people in the forums heard as "that guy that fucks her," since he was somewhat gesturing to his mom as he said it.

On Big Brother 5, they had an endurance competition where they all had to stand there and hold a button down for hours on end, last one standing wins. Marvin, who was standing behind Adria, proclaimed, "They put the big-booty girl in front of the brother!" but the closed captioning read, "They put the big Buddha girl in front of the brother!"

I don't usually use close captioning but I bet there are alot of funny things on there. I may have to check it out.

On Jack of All Trades, a short-lived but funny series, a comically accented frenchman asks Bruce Campbell, "Is it true George Washington has wooden teeth?" The closed captioner heard, "Is it true George Washington has a wooden dick?"

To which Campbell should have answered, "Yes. Is it true Napoleon has splinters . . . "

*nerdy triva alert* Many viewers complained about the All in the Family theme. In later seasons they strained to pronounce the words.

That reminds me of the Family Guy theme. Many people think Stewie's "laugh and cry" is "f'n' cry." I don't know if it's ever been established what exactly he said, but apparently they redid the theme in later seasons to make it clear that Stewie sings "laugh and cry."

That's exactly what I thought. But they shouldn't have changed it..."effin cry" is so Stewie. "Laugh and cry"? No.

Why yes, it sure did!

I always thought Stewie said "laugh and cry", too. But my closed captioning quickly corrected that view. Blast!