Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,950
edits
m (remove image pickin/quotes page inline comments) |
No edit summary |
||
(13 intermediate revisions by 6 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|"Alright! I caught a {{
Out on a fishing expedition, and the fish aren't biting. Suddenly, there's a snag on the line. Someone's taken the bait; hook, line, and sinker. A quick flick of the rod and a frantic reeling in reveals your prize to be... an old boot. Dammit.
Line 8:
Several false alarms and several boots later, you start to wonder. [[Fridge Logic|Why are there so many boots]]? Fish don't wear boots, hell, they don't even have feet. Yet there seems to be more boots in the water than there are fish. And it's not just boots, either. Spare tires, tin cans, other useless junk... why does it seem like you're fishing in Lake Erie?
Well, you're just having a bad run of luck. The bane of fishermen in old cartoons and [[Fishing Minigame|fishing minigames]] alike,
Compare [[I Got a Rock]] and [[My New Gift Is Lame]] for similar lucklessness in receiving gifts.
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In an episode of ''[[Pokémon (
** Not to mention the first episode where she hooks Ash. "Aw, it's just a kid!"
* Taken to [[Refuge in Audacity|ridiculous extremes]] in one episode of ''[[Detective Conan]]'': fishing in a rain-swollen river, Kogoro hooks something huge...and discovers to his horror that he has hooked his rental car, which was swept away in a flash flood.
** Episode 352 has a straight example where the Detective Boys participate in a fishing tournament and catch a boot.
* The fisherman Ai sits with in the OVA series ''[[
* The cover of Volume IV of the Mag Garden [[Comic Book Adaptation]] of ''[[Breath of Fire]] IV'' depicts Ryu catching a boot when trying to fish. This is actually an inversion of a ''very'' long-running trope in the series where the various Ryus are depicted as expert fishermen (''[[Breath of Fire]]'' as a series is famous, nearly ''infamous'', for its [[Fishing Minigame
* Official ''[[
== [[Comic Books]] ==
Line 28 ⟶ 27:
== [[Film]] ==
* Happened in ''[[Forrest Gump]]'', when they were shrimp fishing; only with a greater variety of junk, including a toilet seat.
* In the folktale ''The Fisherman and the Genie'', the title fisherman pulls up several useless items(including a dead donkey) before finding the genie's jar. ▼
== [[Literature]] ==
* In the children's book ''[[The Family Under The Bridge]]'', the protagonist, a Parisian hobo, keeps a shoe he found because he might come across its mate someday. As it happens, he sees a man fish it out of the river.
== [[Live
* In ''[[Samurai Sentai Shinkenger]]'' episode 7, the blue ranger has to go fishing for his mecha. He's shown pulling up a boot, which he adds to a pile of trash.
** And in the ''[[Power Rangers Samurai]]'' episode "Runaway Spike", Bulk and Spike end up finally getting some work helping [[Sixth Ranger|Antonio]] fish. They actually manage to bring in a fair few fish, while it's ''Antonio'' who ends up reeling in a boot.
* Almost invoked in ''[[
* On ''[[Deadliest Catch]]'' this is the basis of many of the pranks that crab boat crews try to pull on each other. This comes in two flavors:
* The prologue for ''[[Young Hercules]]'' episode 16 has Iolaus catch a boot fishing, complete with a pun about "filet of sole".
== Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends ==
▲* In the folktale ''The Fisherman and the Genie'', the title fisherman pulls up several useless items (including a dead donkey) before finding the genie's jar.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
Line 52:
* It can happen in the ''[[Animal Crossing]]'' series. You can get boots, cans, and tires. It's impossible to know that they're junk ahead of time, since they look and fight back just like real fish. (No idea how or why they fight, but they do.) In City Folk, some villagers may end up locked out of their houses, leaving you to fish for the key.
** The fisherman in [[The Movie]] has increasingly bad luck.
* Every [[Suikoden]] game since the second have included a fishing-game, and the 'Boot' has always been a possible alternate catch. Two amusing details: Those Boots are actually equippable an an Accessory item, which is somewhat odd unless they always come in pairs. And you actually have a 'biggest size caught' listing for the Boot as well as the various types of fish, only instead of being measured in centimeters, it's measured in boot size...
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
** The game even seems to imply that fishing up an Empty Bottle is a more valuable treasure than any fish and snagging it helps with the litter problem since you're recycling the bottle.
*** Actually a [[Chekhov's Gun]] back to a comment made about the first bottle you receive.
** And ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
* ''[[Ultima Online]]'' had this happen and decrease in likeliness as you gained more skill. Due to poor balancing the boots were a far better catch then the fish; food was in abundant supply and boots sold for more.
* [[Under the Sea|Maraqua]] from [[Neopets]] has "Underwater Fishing", where boots, tin cans, driftwood, broken fishing poles, and other pieces of junk are frequent catches.
* Occurs in some of the ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' games that feature fishing, such as ''Friends of Mineral Town''.
** In Harvest Moon DS, you actually have to catch a Bottle so you can {{spoiler|propose to the mermaid, Leia.}}
* Happens also in the fishing minigames at [[Gaia Online]]. Interestingly enough, you can trade your garbage for special hats at the fishing shop, which in turn managed to create a market for lake garbage. Like the saying goes, one man's rubbish is another man's treasure...
** The short-lived minor meme: "Johnny K. is a litterbug", referring to the amounts of trash that could be dredged up by Gambino Island.
* There's actually a special enhancement exclusively used to invoke this trope in ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'', although the situation is reversed compared to ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', as most items fished up really ''are'' junk, and most of the fish will result in a better profit(Although the junk was more valuable before, but it got heavily nerfed due to massive RMT exploiting).
* In [[
* In ''[[
* The "7Seas" [[Mini Game]] in [[Second Life]] has a variety of boots you can catch with your fishing pole. Like the [[Suikoden]] example above, these are wearable items and often have shiny [[bling]].
* In ''[[Golden Sun: Dark Dawn]]'', you can provide a fisherman with a sturdy wooden pole. Then you can go outside and [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|set fire to a Djinni that did you absolutely no wrong, just so it'll hop into the pond to cool off and get hooked]].
{{quote|
* Happens constantly in ''[[Rune Factory 3]]''. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that they don't ''stack''. Hopefully you wanted that entire inventory of boots and cans.
* In the text-based MMORPG World of Hollow, fishing can net you various fish, a boot, or even a new fishing pole. It's a bit of a game to see if you can fish new poles out of the lake faster than you break them on fish that get away.
* The drakeskin boots in ''Blades of [[Avernum]]'' (the best boots available among the predesigned items) are obtained in one of the predesigned scenarios by fishing at a particular spot after achieving a high [[Luck Stat]]. The message prompt is exactly as follows: "You have a fantastic stroke of luck! You fish out a pair of boots."
* [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]] ''[[Video Game]]/Mabinogi'' has a fishing skill and minigame. Aside from fish, catches include any number of different items, including quests, clothing and armour, crafting items, etc. Some items can only be found via fishing. The higher the player's rank, the more valuable the items (and fish) that can be caught.
* ''[[
** The really funny part is when you get an [[Grid Inventory|eight-grid-cell]] artifact shield [[Fridge Logic|out of a one-cell fish]].
* Happens in ''[[The Sims|The Sims 2: Seasons]]''. Not only do you catch boots, but you can put them in your blender and drink them and watch your Sims have wacky reactions to boot smoothies.
* Averted in ''[[
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* In ''[[
* ''[[Awkward Zombie]]'' with "[//www.awkwardzombie.com/awkward-zombie/tiring Tiring]" ( ''[[Animal Crossing]]: New Horizons''). In a lake on a deserted island, seriously?
== [[Web Original]] ==
* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20131002072607/http://shirtoid.com/58655/oceans-outcasts/ Ocean’s Outcasts]'' by Glenn Jones.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Parodied extensively in the ''[[
* Parodied in ''[[
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]
[[Category:Just for Pun]]
▲[[Category:Trope]]
|