Snappy Expressions

The Middleman, having sworn a vow of cleanliness in mind, body, and deed, almost never cusses. In place of profanity, he uses a variety of what Wendy Watson calls snappy expressions to express shock or vexation.

The Snappy Expressions

• "Oh phooey."
  • The Middleman's most common expression, used often, and believed by Wendy Watson to be "a polite way of saying f*ck".

The Pilot Episode Sanction

• "Specificity is the soul of all good communication."
• "Lets kick the tires and light the fires."
• "Well dag-diggity."
• "Jeepers!"
• "This is re-gosh-darn-diculous!"
• "Self-knowledge is the gateway to freedom."
• "Not a gosh darn chance in Heck."

The Accidental Occidental Conception

• "I’m as serious as a hefty bag full of rottweilers."
• "Grapes of Wrath, Dubbie!"
• "Gob smackit!"
• "What in the gosh darn heck?"
• "Sands of Zanzibar!"
• "Dag nabbit!"
• "Guns of Navarrone!"

The Sino-Mexican Revelation

• "What the monkey?!"
• "Jumping bananas, we’re in Dutch."
• "She and Sensei Ping are in a pig trough of trouble."
• "Sweet mother of Preston Tucker!"
• "Hot flaming pork buns, I knew it!"

The Manicoid Teleportation Conundrum

• "Lord love a duck, Dubbie, what would you have done?"
• "Great hearts of palm, that is grotesque!"

The Flying Fish Zombification

• "Flowers for Algernon!"
• "Hot diggity dog."
• "Well that’s just a humdinger then, isn’t it?"
• "If we don’t find an antidote, her heart's going to explode like a sausage casing full of weasels."

The Boyband Superfan Interrogation

• "I will not have this escalate into a donnybrook."
• "Chocoholics Anonymous!"
• "Hawks of the Luftwaffe!"

The Cursed Tuba Contingency

• "Great Barrier Reef!"
• "Sweet Molly Brown!"

The Ectoplasmic Panhellenic Investigation

• "Ghosts of the living!"
  • Both a snappy expression and a statement of the problem at hand
• "Great Caesar's Ghost!"

The Obsolescent Cryogenic Meltdown

• "Story of O!"
• "Fragments of moonrock."
• "Ripley's Believe it or Not!"

The Vampiric Puppet Lamentation

• "Transylvania 6-5000, Dubbie."
• "...really smokes my skillet."

The Clotharian Contamination Protocol

• "Son of a monkey's uncle, Wendy Watson!"
• "We've got a ten-foot manure hoagie on our hands!"
• "It's coming in hotter than the Devil's wedding tackle!"
  • I'm as serious as a German film festival."

The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome

• "Eyes without a face!"
• "My Little Pony!"
• "This old fishin' line has reached its breakin' strain!"

The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse

• "Sweet crispy won-tons, Dubbie!"
• "In a gadda da vida!"
• "Sweet mother of Hello Dolly!"
• "I pooped the woobie today, Dubbie..."
• "Prophecies of Orac!"
• "Jeepers, Dubbie! That was one humdingingly weird day!"

Not Yet Sourced

• Holy Cheese and Crackers
• Criminy
• Mutual of Omaha
• Sweet tarnation, this one's a pickle
• Chutes and Ladders
• Holy Onions
• That really steams my clams
• Fire and Brimstone
• Halls of Montezuma
• Shores of Tripoli
• I'll Be Godfather to an Aardvark

Exceptions to the Rule

The Middleman is known to have cussed three times:

• In "The Pilot Episode Sanction", when Spanky the gorilla escaped into a gorilla preserve. (Censored)
• In "The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse", when Wendy repeatedly badgered him about his former love life. ("Dammit, Dubbie!")
• Again in "The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse", out of frustration at failing to anticipate the ambush at Kerr-Avon Labs. ("Dammit" again)

Trivia

• The snappy expressions are such a dominant element of the Middleman's character that, at the 2009 ComicCon table read of "The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse" by the cast, the audience burst into applause at the first one read.