Quotes Fit for a Trailer

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Let's say at some point in a show, a character said "What a great deal!" Or midway through a film, the Plucky Comic Relief exclaimed "Wowza! I'm in awe."

Well, the producers and editors responsible for promotion have noticed that moments like these can be used in a trailer in a way that Breaks The Fourth Wall. A comment about the value of the Mineral MacGuffin can be repurposed to plug The Complete First Season; a cry along the lines of "The World Is Just Awesome" can, in a promotional context, sound like "The Box Set Of The Trilogy Is Just Awesome".

This may combine with a Say My Name Trailer. And like a Say My Name Trailer, this is rarely done only once in an advertisement — expect to hear the narrator say something, followed by a character's "reaction", followed by the narrator saying something else, etc.

This is distinct from trailers with wholly original material that includes the characters explicitly telling you to buy the DVD or go to the theater. This trope is about the editors finding clips which were originally filmed as part of a show… but also seem to kinda work for selling the show.

A variant/inversion is the Review Ironic Echo, in which the out-of-context, now-it's-self-referential quoting is done by a reviewer.

Examples of Quotes Fit for a Trailer (sorted by the media that's being advertised) include:

Film

  • A 1988 trailer for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? had the narrator announcing that a new cartoon character was about to appear on the scene. This is then followed by a minor character (in the context of the movie) dismissively saying: "It's just Dumbo!" - which is then followed by the narrator going: "No, it's Roger."
  • The 1967 reissue trailer for Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs had the scene where the announcer is introducing Happy and Dopey in which the announcer apparently interacts with the characters (it was really Snow White speaking to Happy).

Live-Action TV

  • An ad for a DVD of The Brady Bunch did this.
  • A Saturday Night Live parody of Disney's Sequelitis and its Dark Secrets began with, by all appearances, a genuine trailer for Bambi 2 which used a line from that film: "Better hurry!"
  • A commercial for ABC's Wednesday Comedy Lineup recently[when?] used a line from The Middle, with someone saying "Let's do this every Wednesday night!".
  • The Big Bang Theory: ads using individual words out of context to say "New night, new time, same Theory. This fall, only CBS."
  • NBC: a similar thing for their Thursday night block, "Comedy night done right. All night on NBC."
  • An ad for the ITV adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Secret of Chimneys had the announcer suggest that the audience could try solving the mystery before Miss Marple, followed by a clip of one of the characters snorting in disbelief.
  • There used to be a Polish TV channel Minimax, which showed a lot of shows aimed at children and teenagers, and regularly has trailer-like teasers for its own programs in between ad breaks. These always ended with a line from somewhere in the show repurposed like this; for instance, the one for Doug ended with a line "Very funny" grabbed out of one of the episodes.
  • The trailer for the second half of Doctor Who series 32 (new 6) featured a voiceover of Madame Kovarian describing the Impossible Astronaut killing the Doctor ... followed by the Doctor turning to the camera and saying "Haven't you figured that one out yet?" This is a scene from "Let's Kill Hitler", and he's talking to Amy about how River tracks him.
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