If You Only Speak English, You May Have Missed These Jokes

Comedies nowadays need to find different ways to get their jokes across. Luckily, there’s at least five languages in this world (that we know of). Here are some of the jokes you could have missed if you only speak one. (If body language is more your speed, Casually Explained has you covered.)

Cracked has access to Google Translate, and discovered what movies are saying behind the watcher’s back. By using multiple languages, comedies can slyly slip jokes past their audience. This includes films like the 40 Year Old Virgin, Heathers, The Princess Bride and more. But if you or a friend speaks German, French, or Japanese, and were cracking up in a theater alone, now you know why.

In The Princess Bride, for example, the joke comes in the form of wordplay. When the English knight approaches Inigo Montoya while he’s getting drunk, the knight says “ho there”. Montoya, being Spanish, interprets this as “joder”, Spanish for “to f*ck.” Another instance of this is in the film Heathers. When J.D. (Christian Slater) tells Veronica (Winona Ryder) of the “Ich Lüge” bullets, Ich Lüge means “I lie” in German.

Sometimes, though, the movie uses another language in less subtle ways. Speakers of Japanese and/or Korean may have noticed references in the films the Kentucky Fried Movie and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. In the Lost World, as Japanese businessmen escape the T-Rex, one of them says “I left Japan to escape this”. (In case you missed it, it’s a Godzilla reference.)

In Kentucky Fried Movie, Dr. Kiahn, played by Bong Soo Han, is speaking to his court in Korean. Because the film is American, he’s able to speak the language as if nobody will understand, as the audience largely won’t. He says:

“Sorry to our Korean fans, that we’re saying random things in Korean. But someone asked me to speak in Korean, so I just have to.”

And in The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is going to the hospital. He takes the Lamborghini, which Alfred (Michael Caine) says is much more subtle. It is much more subtle, because the model of the Lamborghini is the Murcièlago. That’s bat in Spanish.

Our favorite which didn’t make it into this video has to be the name of the Mexican restaurant in Anchorman:

In case you’re not fluent in Spanish, that means “we spit in your food.” Nice.

What do you think? What jokes in other languages did this video miss? Let us know in the comments or @WhatsTrending on Twitter.