Someone’s standup bit? A movie I haven’t seen? Some internet shtik? The SD itself?–though I don’t think so.
I could also ask where “I don’t think so” (as a way of saying “No, dumbass”) but that’s a whole 'nother GQ. (And where did “a whole 'nother” start, anyway?)
“I don’t think so, Tim” was Al’s tagline in Home Improvement when Tim Allen was suggesting doing something particularly stupid. Don’t know if that was where it originated.
I believe that this a 4chan meme.
Thanks. “The police have nothing to go on” totally cracked me up.
Thanks for starting this thread; I’d also wondered what this phrase was referencing.
(Nott smacks himself for considering a lame Freud joke…)
Found as early as 1996 on Usenet.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.tom-robbins/browse_thread/thread/112b5253fbd6dcb2?hl=en&q="saw+what+you+did+there"
As a related followup, I see this usually on FARK with an image of Fry from Futurama:
“Oh! I see what you did there!”
I have to say that it confuses me, (the handles in the panels over his head make a funny shape?) Is that from an actual episode and referring to what?
I’m pretty sure I picked it up from reading rec.arts.sf.written on Usenet (I used the phrase in Cafe Society just yesterday to acknowledge a pun)
The first time I saw “See What I Did There?” was at Hissyfit, around the year 1999, and that seemed to be a reference even then.
I thought “See what I did there?” was a different meme. “See what I did there?” always makes me think of House, though it obviously predates that.
Billy Crystal’s character in Mr. Saturday Night (1992) often used the phrase “Did you see what I did?” following his gags, and David Paymer (playing his long-suffering brother) nods and says “I saw” at least once. No doubt Crystal and the other co-writers of the film were referencing some well-known bit of comic schtick.