Your Updated Red Dwarf Gags

[Dave]

Red Dwarf jokes updated for the modern era.

Topic

[Dave]

For fuck’s sake Dave, I thought of that one the other day while not in front of my computer, and then forgot. The exact same reference.

I couldn’t decide between that or Confused Travolta. But the Travolta meme is probably older than I’d like to think.

[Ian Symes]

[Warbodog]

Unless it has one of those already.

[Nick R]

[Ian Symes]

[Nick R]

[Ben Saunders]

Can I sit in the boobs chair?

[Dave]

[Unrumble]

[Dave]

[Dave]

[Ian Symes]

[Warbodog]

[Flap Jack]

[Dave]

[Dave]

[Rudolph]

[Technopeasant]

ChatGPT it surely?

[clem]

[RunawayTrain]

ChatGPT it surely?

Steady on, they couldn’t risk being seen to endorse that kind of behaviour.

[Technopeasant]

Photoshop is a contemporary reference though. The first versions came out alongside Red Dwarf.

[Unrumble]

I did wonder about Photoshop not being up-to-date enough, but nothing else sprung to mind. 

[Warbodog]

[Warbodog]

The old-school reference archive is still handy: https://www.red-rose.com/www.cobalt.demon.co.uk/alt.tv.red-dwarf/reflist-tv-255.html

[Warbodog]

This line can never escape seeming euphemistic, it seems.

I don’t know if people have generally started Americanizing these, it just stood out when I heard an otherwise British-sounding fellow in the Post Office use both in the same sentence.

[Nick R]

[Podey]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_meat_shower

Learned about this this week. Maybe not so much an update, but its all I could think of

[Technopeasant]

Maybe not so much an update, but its all I could think of

800 years is arguably the biggest update so far.

[Nick R]

Let’s update it further: 

[Ben Saunders]

[Technopeasant]

I don’t think you can vaccinate for radiation.

[Flap Jack]

Not with that attitude.

[Ben Saunders]

I don’t think you can vaccinate for radiation.

You just need the right anti-radiation gloves.

[Ridley]

Four thousand, six-hundred and ninety-one irradiated 

[Warbodog]

I just saw this jarring, non-ironic insertion in a 2021 revised edition of a 1996 book, because we can’t have tragically dated references in an otherwise timeless chapter where a teenager tries to locate a mysterious girl by looking up her surname in the telephone directory and dialling all the numbers.

[Ben Saunders]

Modern references feel so much more dated than actually dated ones, it’s painful to be reminded of the real world and actual events while watching something, like Kryten mentioning the then-recent FIFA scandal. But obviously that problem goes away with time, and there are plenty of references to stuff that actually was then-relevant in the 80s and 90s, I just didn’t notice because I was stupid.

[Rudolph]

[Moonlight]

Modern references feel so much more dated than actually dated ones

My stance is that any pop culture that was actually current during my life or was at least recent enough to still be in the zeitgeist feels dated in a fundamentally different way to anything from before. The pop culture that “always was” vs. something like Pokemon which I was there firsthand for.

[Ian Symes]

it’s painful to be reminded of the real world and actual events while watching something, like Kryten mentioning the then-recent FIFA scandal.

On the other hand, there have been about ten FIFA scandals in the years since, so it’s fairly timeless as far as references go. There’s always a recent FIFA scandal. Like Rupert Murdoch being namechecked as inherently evil in Cured – the phone hacking scandal may have been fresh in the mind at the time the line was written, but everything else he’s done before and since stops the joke from being linked specifically to that. Both of those examples pale into insignificance compared to the Ishtar and Run For Your Wife references.

[Unrumble]

At least this guy’s still knocking about.

[International Debris]

The difference between Run for Your Wife / Ishtar and FIFA / Murdoch is the former are mocking naff pop culture while the latter feel like they’re trying to make slightly more serious points. Saying a crap product is crap explains itself, even if you don’t know the product, but controversial events can lead the viewer to think “wait, what happened?” or “what did they do?”

[Dave]

I guess it’s a question of how well known they are. Murdoch is maybe on the line, but it’s obviously easier to justify the inclusion universally-known evil figures like Hitler, Caligula or Kevin Keegan.

[Ben Saunders]

Both of those examples pale into insignificance compared to the Ishtar and Run For Your Wife references.

[Podey]

[Rudolph]

[Dave]

[Nick R]

I can’t do this as a screenshot because it’s not from an episode. You know that bit in the Red Dwarf Night version of Smeg Ups, where Lister says the outtakes need to be hidden somewhere no one will ever see them, and Kryten suggests putting them on Channel 5 at the end of the 20th century?

Well, an updated version of that would be: “Suggest we place them on My5, sir, early in the 21st century.”

At least, that would have been an updated version a few years ago. Since then, Channel 5 have done a Channel 4 and given their streaming service the same name as the channel. So the latest updated version would be:

“Suggest we place them on 5, sir, early in the 21st century.”

… And that just sounds silly.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I can’t do this as a screenshot because it’s not from an episode. You know that bit in the Red Dwarf Night version of Smeg Ups, where Lister says the outtakes need to be hidden somewhere no one will ever see them, and Kryten suggests putting them on Channel 5 at the end of the 20th century?

Well, an updated version of that would be: “Suggest we place them on My5, sir, early in the 21st century.”

At least, that would have been an updated version a few years ago. Since then, Channel 5 have done a Channel 4 and given their streaming service the same name as the channel. So the latest updated version would be:

“Suggest we place them on 5, sir, early in the 21st century.”

… And that just sounds silly.

And that’s just updating the name, the joke remains accurately the same still to this day.

[Dave]

[Author]

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