# Your favorite "that man behind the curtain" moment.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-that-man-behind-the-curtain-moment/838231>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [August 6, 2019, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-that-man-behind-the-curtain-moment/838231 "2019-08-06T12:41:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2019, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-that-man-behind-the-curtain-moment/838231/21 "2019-08-11T09:29:44Z")

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> [@jackdavinci](#):
>
> Going with the size trend…
> 
> The episode of Buffy where the fear demon turns out to be itsy bitsy.
> 
> The bit from various incarnations of Hitchhikers Guide wherein some careless word (Belgium!) uttered by a human makes its way through some spatial anomaly at just the right moment to start a war. The aliens eventually figure it out and come to attack Earth in a campaign for revenge, only for the entire fleet, not anticipating issues of scale, to be swallowed by a dog.

Douglas Adams wrote a pastich or every SF idea ever put in print. That idea always reminded me of

> [@We Can Remember If For You Wholesale"](#):
>
> “Unlike the fantasy of wanting to be an Interplan undercover agent,” the psychiatrist continued, “which, being relatively speaking a product of maturity, had a certain plausibility to it, this production is a grotesque dream of your childhood; it is no wonder you fail to recall it. Your fantasy is this: you are nine years old, walking alone down a rustic lane. An unfamiliar variety of space vessel from another star system lands directly in front of you. No one on Earth but you, Mr. Quail, sees it. The creatures within are very small and helpless, somewhat on the order of field mice, although they are attempting to invade Earth; .”

A lot of original ideas in SF/Fantasy seem to start with Philip K Dick…

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**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2019, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-that-man-behind-the-curtain-moment/838231/22 "2019-08-11T13:55:22Z")

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**The Good Place** (End of season 1)

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**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2019, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-that-man-behind-the-curtain-moment/838231/23 "2019-08-11T18:49:54Z")

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> [@Grrr](#):
>
> **The Good Place** (End of season 1)

I have never seen that series, but reading the Wiki page, that is an interesting variation on the theme.

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**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2019, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-that-man-behind-the-curtain-moment/838231/24 "2019-08-11T19:14:04Z")

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Katherine Maclean wrote “Pictures Don’t Lie” in 1951 about aliens who turned out to be microscopic.

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