“Don’t worry… this doesn’t affect combat… Just every other aspect of your whole life.”

From: South Park: The Fractured But Whole

Genre: Cartoons, Television, Video Games

Who said it?: Eric Cartman

The story behind the quote: This week’s quote comes from the 2017 strategy-RPG game, South Park: The Fractured But Whole. Based on the animated series on Comedy Central and a sequel to The Stick of Truth, South Park: The Fractured But Whole puts you in control of The New Kid. This time around, the kids are playing superhero. The kids start fighting on whoever should get a multimedia franchise akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This leads to them splintering into two rival groups. While this is happening, a new notorious criminal element is pulling the strings in the town, causing various crimes to happen in the hopes of kicking out South Park’s mayor.

The quote comes near the very start of the game during the Create A Character process. Although there are a lot of ways to customize your character, there is no way to select your character’s skin color. That is, until you get to pick the difficulty setting, wherein the darker skin tones supposedly makes the game more difficult. However, Eric Cartman delivers the quote, saying combat won’t be more difficult but other aspects, such as the amount of money enemies drop, will.

Geek wisdom: People will treat each other differently. However, sometimes that treatment can be unfair because of things like race, skin color, culture and whatnot. Although it is there, being able to identify and admit it is the first step in trying to make the world more fair and treat people equally.

“There’s a platypus controlling me!”

From: Phineas and Ferb

Genre: Cartoons, Television

Who said it?: Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz

The story behind the quote: The quote comes from the Disney animated series Phineas and Ferb. The show revolves around Phineas and Ferb, two brothers who, thanks to their inventive minds as well as engineering skills, manage to create and build various fantastical object in order to enjoy themselves during their summer vacation. Their sister, Candace, always wants to “bust [her] brothers” by telling on them to their mom. However, Phineas and Ferb’s creations usually vanish before their mom arrives. This is usually due to some mishap, usually caused by their pet platypus, Perry, who also a secret agent, and his nemesis Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

The quote comes from the episode Brain Drain. In the episode, Dr. Doofenshmirtz puts a mind control helmet on his nemesis, Perry the Platypus, and he is able to control everything he does. Later, as they goes to pick up his daughter at a junk yard where a party is being held, a mishap happens and Phineas, Ferb and their friends are able to control Perry the Platypus with their gaming controllers. Thinking Dr. Doofenshmirtz is the final boss of the game they’re playing, they attack him while controlling Perry. While escaping, Dr. Doofenshmirtz falls down a hill, gets his hands covered with glue and gets records attached to his fingers. Perry then puts the mind control helmet on him and controls him to do rap called “There’s a Platypus Controlling Me” in front of his daughter and his friends. He delivers the quote (in song) which the crowd believes is a metaphor instead of being literal.

Geek wisdom: Although Dr. Doofenshmirtz was using the quote literally, the metaphorical way of thinking of it is also true. We all have something that is telling us what to do, both literally and figuratively. It can be hard to find that balance between these outside forces and what we want to do but that’s just the way life is.