There are always going to be some riffs which go over a viewer’s head. Nothing wrong with that, since they intend spread the humor around to a number of different niche areas which would appeal on different levels to different audiences.
If there is a riff which went over your head, chances are it went over somebody else’s head too. This is a thread to post the things you had to look up because you knew the gang was making a witty reference to something, you just had no idea what.
Let’s keep this judgment free please. No one can get every reference, so please let’s avoid any “How could you possibly not know that?” kind of responses.
I venture forth first with one from Munchie.
“I will diminish and go into the West and no longer be Gage Dobson.”
Apparently it’s a riff on a line from Lord of The Rings, something which I have less than zero interest in so no surprise I didn’t get it.
Any one else wish to share what you learned by looking up a riff from MST?
I had no idea what a Hamdinger was for years. Until I looked it up and found that it’s basically a Spam patty. Until then, I just assumed it was something like a Hostess Ding Dong.
Maybe it’s just because of my age bracket, but I had to search up “Pons and Fleischman” (which until I looked it up I thought they were saying “Hans and Fleischman”)
I remember Kevin Murphy once throwing out a riff that referenced ‘Guggenheim Grotto’. The person I was watching with got it – I eventually had to look it (turns out it was a them) up because I was unfamiliar with the Irish folk-pop duo.
I knew about Paper Chase being a Showtime series but I had no idea Robert Ginty was on it so I looked it up on IMDB. Before that, the first thing that came to mind was a bunch of action movies like The Exterminator.
I mostly struggle with the relatively recent, pop culture stuff. The older things that I grew up with, no problem, and it makes me chuckle when I see people ask about those types, not because I’m teasing y’all, but just because it puts into sharp focus how terribly old I am. It’s like, “Oh, this fan wasn’t even born when the TV series Mod Squad came out, of course they don’t automatically know what “I don’t fink on soul brothers” means.”
But like the Blue song in Mordrid, no clue what that was about, had to look that up. And that was released in '99, so there’s my window I guess, late 90s to now pop culture references.
My own contribution. You might wonder if there’s some significance whenever Dr. Forrester or Frank proclaims, “I’M THE GOD!!! I’M THE GOD!!!” I believe this is from the Twilight Zone episode “The Little People” (which co-starred Claude “Nice Butt” Akins), in which a misanthrope astronaut (not Akins) comes across some ant-sized people while on another planet and sets himself up as a malicious diety.
I also remember getting a laugh out of that Exodus trailer years back. I think you could create a funny Youtube montage video, a loop of Twilight Zone Astronaut, Frank/Forrester, and Ramses saying “I’m the God”, one after the other.
I just thought of a riff I had to Google. Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk. I’m still not sure why they kept repeating ‘tusk’ though. They don’t do it in the song.
I looked it up but I still don’t really understand this riff from Tom in Future War: “It’s liberation theology vs Opus Dei!”. I get that they might be opposites based on philosophy, or maybe they differ on one central point? I tried reading the Wikipedia article for each but my ADHD kicked in and was like “Nah, not interested. SLEEP!” So yeah, I don’t understand it and my brain is actively fighting me understanding it.
