Talk:1687: World War III+

The mouseover text mentions stripping a quote of its context... although this kind of makes the point of the context can often dilute the meaning, it seems that a counter point could be made by pointing out an example where the context is the source at least two major quotes (such as "No man is an island" and "Ask not for whom the bell tolls" both coming from John Donne).

Or I could just be being frivolous here?

Joshupetersen (talk) 04:15, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

or maybe a good example could be Darwin's qoute on the eye, which many creationist nutjobs take out of context and annoy everyone else in the same way Randall shows annoyance in the rollover text

JMR (talk) 02:03, 30 May 2016 (BST)

Hey, Randall skipped World War XIII. --XndrK (talk) 04:20, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Of course! We couldn't have a World War XIII. The customers wouldn't go for it. XIII is an unlucky number.162.158.38.76 07:52, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Maybe World War XIII is just sticks and stones again, considering XII? 173.245.56.71 05:14, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Sticks and stones underground!! 141.101.98.43 10:23, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

I swear that I've seen this exact joke somewhere before. Not just the general idea, but I mean down to the text. Can't find anything in searches though -- does anyone else remember seeing this before?--108.162.220.221 05:22, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

It may be a memory of the black Cards Against Humanity 'question' card, that leaves a blank regarding what WW4 will be fought with so as to be answered with a non-sequiter white card? 141.101.98.43 10:23, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

There's a practically identical joke in The Onion's Book of Known Knowledge. [[1]]

Comics released within the United State Memorial Day weekend. The unknown VIII-IX could reference Star Wars movies with their unknown scripts. 141.101.98.15

I made this misreading too, but it's VIII-XI, and I do not know of that many star wars movies planned. Could it be a final fantasy reference? --PsyMar (talk) 09:17, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

When I was a kid in the early/mid 80s, I heard that Star Wars was originally written (before any movies were made) as a trilogy of trilogies. When I noticed Empire and Jedi as Chapter 5 & 6 (and when they were remasterd Star Wars being retitled A New Hope and numbered 4), this seemed confirmed. Then when the prequel trilogy was later made, this seemed doubly confirmed. So I think 9 movies is the most we'll ever see. - NiceGuy1 108.162.218.77 06:03, 1 June 2016 (UTC) I finally signed up! This comment is mine. NiceGuy1 (talk) 10:21, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

That's how I took it (as Final Fantasy). I think this would be unprecedented for Randall, but hilarious if so - it certainly reads like a riff on the FF series wildly varying levels of technology and war. 108.162.219.5 19:42, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Adding the black background to the transcript just makes it hard to read and kind of defeats the purpose of a transcript (since now it just looks like the comic in a different font). Can we keep this to the standard of all the other transcripts? 141.101.98.80 08:44, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

How is it harder to read? It is the standard to let the transcript reflect the comic with colors etc. See for instance: 1168: tar, 1685: Patch and 1684: Rainbow. --Kynde (talk) 09:54, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Quote taken out of context

The current text says: "He implies that this is actually a full quote by Einstein and that all other occurrences using only the "original" version of this quote are misrepresenting it. In this particular case it is a much stronger quote than the long version from the comic, but it is often the case that quotes taken out of context seem to have an entirely different meaning than originally intended." I completely disagree.

What Einstein is saying is that he is horrified at the weapons that are being developed; and that he fears that if World War III ever breaks out, we will bomb ourselves back into the Stone Age. He is not actually making a prediction about fourth and subsequent world wars.

The longer "quote" as lengthened by Randall says, instead, "Hey, I'll try my hand at being Nostradamus (or St Malachy) and predict specifically which weapons will be used to fight a long series of upcoming world wars!"

This, of course, does entirely change the meaning of the quote. The Einstein quote is to prompt thoughtful contemplation of how we use the powerful weapons we develop. The lengthened quote would prompt either incredulity at the speaker's naivety, or possibly wonder at how he came up with these predictions, if one believes them to be accurate.

In other words, lengthening the quote does change it to an entirely different meaning than originally intended. The original meant, "Hey, be careful!" The lengthened quote simply means, "I think I'm Nostradamus!" Jsharpminor (talk) 00:58, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree, that's what that block of text means, and that's part of the joke. The short, original quote is much stronger than the long version this comic offers, and quotes taken out of context have a different meaning that originally intended ("The end justifies the means", anyone?). You're invited to make it clearer, but I don't see the issue. Phineas81707 (talk) 04:00, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Right now the reasoning of how this explanation is incomplete states "There seems to be more to this comic than so far explained. Maybe a reference to all the Star Wars movies now planned...?". I vehementally disagree. I am completely convinced that there is no reference present or intended to the Star Wars franchise. The closest connections are the Roman numerals (which were being used for the World Wars long before even the first Star Wars existed) and the mention of warring with lasers (when laser weapons have appeared in countless other fictional places, it is far from unique to Star Wars). I actually find the explanation complete as is. PLEASE stop bloating the explanations with a load of unrelated information! Save the over-analysis for the comment section (and don't get me wrong, I LOVE over-analysis, just that the explanations should stick to explaning the comic, nothing more). :) - NiceGuy1 108.162.218.77 05:55, 1 June 2016 (UTC) This comment is also mine! NiceGuy1 (talk) 10:21, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

One of my friends said that here's a plot hole: the term "LASER" first appears in public in a 1959 paper, but Albert Einstein died in 1955. --108.162.222.130 14:39, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Does World War IV as "sticks and stones" prefigure the use of homemade weapons in the war against militant Islamists since the fourth quarter of 2001? In this interpretation, World War III was the Cold War, and World War IV is the ongoing War on Terror, first against the Taliban and al-Qaeda and then against ISIL. --Tepples (talk) 13:13, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

That did not age well. 172.69.33.187 17:28, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Seriously. 172.69.79.191 11:26, 2 July 2024 (UTC)