Auto-Incorrect - TV Tropes

"So I scroll back to read what she read, and apparently, my stupid iPhone has this memory spell-check feature, and it didn't recognize the word 'Cinebar'. It flipped it and turned it into 'Cinnabon'. So apparently, at 10 o'clock at night, my girlfriend thought I was having cinnamon rolls with my friend Martin."

• When promotion for Avengers: Infinity War told fans that #ThanosDemandsYourSilence, Ryan Reynolds riffed on it for Deadpool 2 with #WadeWilsonDemandsYourSisterSorryStupidAutoCorrectSilence.
• A radio ad for the Motel 6 chain features Tom Bodett using his smartphone to type up the ad. His phone's auto-correct feature takes things further by replacing correctly spelled words with other correctly spelled words that sound similar.

  Bodett: ...Try to follow along as I say that, at Motel 6, you can get still get a clam, comforter roam for the loamiest rice of any national chin. Huh, that last port sounded a brittle bit foamy. Anyway, you can brook by carving 1-800-4-MOTEL-6, online, or with our new mobile applesauce on your smartphone or toilet. Yelp, after all these yarns, you can still get mortar for what you trowel for. Well, that made no sentence at all. Man, I hate this docking thong. I'm Tom Bordeaux for Motel 6, and we'll heave the bright on form you. Oy. Close enough.

• In Frazz, Caulfield's 2015 literature-inspired Halloween costume was inspired by running "Jabberwocky" through autocorrect.

  Two Brillos on his silly toes
  did gyrate nimbly in the water
  All mimes bourgeoisie
  And Mom roots adorably

• Madam & Eve: Done in this comic.◊

  "Time for my gym and tongue it!"

• Phoebe and Her Unicorn: In this Sunday strip, Marigold transports Phoebe onto a mountain, claiming that Phoebe texted her to bring her mountains. Phoebe is confused, since she recalls asking Marigold to bring her mittens, so she checks her phone and realizes her phone autocorrected the word Mittens to Mountains.
• On the Fastrack has a character named autocorrect (she's an anthromorphic bee — a "spelling bee"), and is married to the Y2K bug.

• In Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024), Dr. Robotnik asks his nanotech suit to "set up defense" against his grandfather. He instead gets a white picket fence, causing him to yell "Damn you, autocorrect!" in response.

• A priest, a minister and a rabbit walk into a bar. The bartender says to the rabbit, "What'll you have?" The rabbit says, "I have no idea. I'm only in this joke because of auto-correct."^Explanation
  • A variation: a priest, a minister and a rabbit walk into a blood bank. The nurse asks the rabbit, "What's your blood type?" The rabbit says, "I think I am a type O."^Explanation
• The person who invented autocorrect should burn in he'll.
  • The person who invented autocorrect has died. Restaurant in pieces.
  • The man who invented predictive text died last night. His funfair is next Monkey.
• Autocorrect has become my worst enema.

• Alex Rider: Deliberately invoked by the Nebulous Evil Organisation Scorpia in Scorpia Rising, who plan to lead MI6 into a trap by sending Alex to investigate a college in Egypt. They arrange for a former member of the organisation's executive board to be found dead in London with various pieces of evidence linking him to the college; one of them is a phone with a text message referring to a vicar. MI6 eventually work out, in conjunction with several of the other clues left for them, that if you type the college's initials (CICAE, Cairo International College of Arts and Education) into an iPhone it autocorrects to "vicar", leading them to believe the college is the target without being aware they're being set up.
• In arc 37 of Heretical Edge, while Flick and company are attempting to rescue Avalon from Manakel, Koren interrogates a pixie who might have information about him, then sends Flick a text that ends with "Manakel's decorating". It turns out Koren had learned something significant about Manakel, but she'd made a typo in the message, her autocorrect had assumed she meant a different word than she did, and Manakel had captured her before she could resend the message she meant to send: "Manakel's security", as in "Manakel is possessing the head of security".
• In Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels, Jade tries to text her boyfriend Luke Martin that his adopted brother Trey could use some brotherly tips. Autocorrect turns it into "brotherly chips," "lobsterly tips," and "lobsterly lips" before Jade gives up.
• The Word Is Murder: Played for Drama and related to Not Quite the Right Thing. Diana sends her son Damian a final text that says "I have seen the boy who was lacerated and I'm afraid". When Horowitz and Hawthorne see the description that Diana ran down a boy and left him with severe brain lacerations, they assume she's referring to him. She isn't. She meant to type "the boy who was Laertes", which identified both the murder and his motive for murder. Her phone autocorrected it to "lacerated".

• Death in Paradise: In "Murder Most Electric", Neville is replying to a follower of his blog and types "I try to be as evocative as possible". However, just as he hits Send, he sees that autocorrect has changed it to "I try to be as erotic as possible".
• The Good Wife: Played for Drama in "The Deep Web". Lockhart & Gardner defends a teen accused of starting the Silk Road black market sales site. Their client uses speech-to-text software because of a disability, and Kalinda realizes he's lying about his innocence when she finds a typo in an email from Silk Road's mystery founder that only makes sense coming from a mistake in speech recognition. The firm is forced to drop him as a client because they now know he perjured himself.
• Hollywood Game Night: Jane Lynch once returned from commercial with (paraphrased) "Welcome back to Hollywood Game Night; I'm June Launch. Damn you, autocorrect."
• The Muppets Mayhem: In the episode "Virtual Insanity", Dr Teeth's fondness for Perfectly Cromulent Words results in the Mayhem accidentally starting a feud with the whole of music when his tweet "To our fellow music makers. You're absotively tremendulous. You are all truly talenticious with stupenderous fans" gets sent as "To our fellow music makers. You're absolutely terrible. You are all truly talentless with stupid fans."
• The Order (2019): The show uses Pop-Up Texting, since most of the characters are millennial college students. In one episode, main character Jack is having life-threatening complications, his Love Interest Alyssa is elsewhere trying to help, checks in via text (fellow werewolf Lilith answers Jack's phone).

  Alyssa: Haven't heard from you in awhile. Everything alright?
  "Jack": Everything's fixed.
  "Jack": Everything's FUCKED!
  "Jack": Fixing autocorrect.

• A 2021 episode of Press Your Luck asked the contestants what feature would have failed them if they meant to text "You look so good" but instead texted "You look so food." The answer, of course, is autocorrect.
• Rizzoli & Isles: Angela sent Jane a message that said "Homie, I need a boner." She really meant "Honey, I need a loaner."

• The Gregory Brothers: The song "Penguin On Me (Autocorrect Love Song)" features two lovers attempting to communicate through text, but are thwarted by their phone's autocorrect feature, which changes all of their messages into random nonsense, none of which resembling anything similar to the original messages.

• Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me:

• Gabriel Iglesias once recounted a story where he and his girlfriend got iPhones and started texting each other, eventually leading to this trope when he got drunk. Knowing he's too drunk to keep a lie straight, he insists on telling the truth, and mentions the name of the locale, "Cinebar". Autocorrect didn't recognize it, and turned it into Cinnabon, a brand of cinnamon rolls.
• On one of his Australian tours, Ross Noble (who is a motorcycle fan) told a story about going to Philip Island to see the Superbike World Championship (often abbreviated to 'WSBK'). He texted his friend in the UK "Going to Philip Island for WSBK", only to get back a confusing message. When he reread his original text, he discovered that autocorrect had converted 'WSBK' to 'WANKS', presumably leading his friend to assume he has a bizarre sexual interest in penguins.

  Ross: And to make it worse, it was plural!

• Be More Chill: During "The Smartphone Hour," where all the students are texting each other about Rich setting Jake's house on fire, Brooke remarks that Rich is "flecked," before clarifying that she meant "fucked" and her autocorrect changed it. The ensemble then sings, "Always be aware of autocorrect!"
• Mean Girls: When Cady sends a text to Aaron about Regina cheating on him, the first half of the message is "regionals is chewing on you". The second half of the message involving a "lion costume" is thought to be this by Aaron, but was actually sent correctly.

• In Ancient Domains of Mystery, there's some kind of an autocorrect for typing in wishes so that you don't miss a wish because of a misspelling. If you wish for "mindcraft" (a class ability only for Mindcrafters), you instead get Woodcraft (a skill that can be acquired by anyone).
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location: The elevator from the start of each night has a glitchy keypad that makes proper inputs impossible, so the system will try to auto-correct to what it thinks you meant to type. On the first night, it will auto-correct your name to "Eggs Benedict" regardless of what you try to enter, and the second night's request for you to hit a number (on a keypad with no numbers) to select a companion voice auto-corrects to "Angsty Teen" when that wasn't even one of the listed options. More amusingly, the keypad lacks the letter "B", but all of the auto-corrects except for the aforementioned Angsty Teen include a B.
• Happens in one of Cassie Cage's intros in Mortal Kombat 11.

  Daddy (Johnny Cage): I did LAUNDRY, no Lauren! OMG!!
  Cmdr Cage (Cassie Cage): Watch the autocorrect, Dad. ;D

• Despite the fact that Nancy Drew: Ghost of Thornton Hall is a very dark game in general, the messages on Jessalyn's phone are really funny — mostly because Clara's autocorrect is acting up:

  Clara: did y
  Clara: ou get the INVERTEBRATES^note 
  Jessalyn: What?
  Clara: INVERTEBRATES
  Jessalyn: Mom... that does not clarify things.
  Clara: INVERTEBRATES!!!!
  Jessalyn: Yes?
  Clara: NO INVERTEBRATES!!!!
  Jessalyn: I'll make a note of that. No invertebrates.
  Clara: I am sending this PHOTOGRAPH BACKWARDS!@!!!
  Jessalyn: Ok. I hope that works out for you.
  Clara: I am typing slowly, and angrily.

• Hacking people's phones in Watch_Dogs will occasionally show a conversation where this happens.

• Doc Rat has a zorilla show up at a vaccination clinic when he was expecting a gorilla instead thanks to this trope.
• Sluggy Freelance
  • In "The Isle of Dr. Steve", Bun-bun tries to take over a part of an evil scientist's computer-controlled system and installs a voice recognition software to interpret what he's saying. It's really bad at it.

    Bun-bun: "This is going to be a long night."
    Software: "Thesis gong tubby a long island."

  • In "Magic Flap: Day Jobs", Riff receives a memo from his boss saying he's being transformed into a gnome. It's actually a spellcheck error from "transferred to Nome," but Riff takes it literally because he's much better aware that he's living in a World of Weirdness than he is of what kind of things normally happen at a day job.
  • One strip has Zoe write a tweet advertising her radio station's show as superior to another. The autocorrect accidentally turns it into a racist rant because the (uncapitalized) last names of the hosts, Whelt and Balkmin, are changed to "whites" and "black men".
• Referenced in Twin Dragons, where Nate's plan to deal with Larissa involves texting some contacts; the panel where he types the message includes the term "autocorrupt". (Incidentally, Robin admitted that this is based on a conversation in the comments a couple pages prior regarding a real-life example.)
• Spoofed in this strip of The Unspeakable Vault (of Doom). Apparently, computer-generated pentacles aren't that great an idea.

  Cthulhoo: For once, drawings are good, but using "Childhood" unstead [sic] of "Cthulhoo" and "Feting" for "Fhtagn" is more than a beginner's mistake.

• On The Nonadventures Of Wonderella Twitter page, the heroine once shared:

  Help! I accidentally turned on erotocorrect and I dong know whore to get it off in the sextings

• The Angry Video Game Nerd: In his review of My Horse Prince, the Nerd gets messages on his phone from The Damn Bunny, who is none other than Bugs Bunny. When the Nerd tries sending a message that says "Fuck you", his phone autocorrects it as "Duck you" twice. He then responds with "Fuck you, you ducking fuck".
• Autocorrect Fail is an entire website dedicated to collecting funny autocorrect errors. One safe-for-work example:

  Alice: where is granny I thought she was going to be here for thanksgiving?
  Bob: Grandma is in the grave.
  Alice: what grave? what are you saying?
  Bob: Oops sorry garage
  Bob: Oh autocorrect

• Danny Gonzalez: In one video, Danny mocked a post that claimed mistakes made by politicians "become new laws" with a skit about a politician texting his wife about wanting to kiss her, only for it to auto-correct to kill. Thus, it became legally obligated for everyone to kill their wives.
• In this YouTube video by Matt Rose, he reads out examples of this trope found on the internet.
• Smosh: The whole premise of "AUTOCORRECT FAIL" is Anthony trying to text Ian, only for autocorrect to mangle everything that he says into something inappropriate. This results in Ian mistakenly thinking Anthony is trying to hit on him.
• Something Awful: An amusing depiction of the Cupertino Effect, a character called "Jeff K!!!!" who attempts to spellcheck his aggressively incorrect English.

• The Amazing World of Gumball: The Running Gag in "The Bus" has Mr. Brown receive instructions from his phone, but they're auto corrected. When it turns out to be Rob, a.k.a. Dr. Wrecker, he complains how autocorrect never works.
• Mickey Mouse Works: In the episode "Computer.don", Donald orders a modern computer with voice recognition software. When he says his name, the computer addresses him as "Dewald", due to Donald's status as The Unintelligible.
• Family Guy: In "Quagmire's Dad", Quagmire introduces Peter and Joe to his father. As he tells a story overflowing with homoeroticism, Joe texts Peter a message saying "How gay is he?", and Peter texts back "So ducking gay."^note 

  Peter: That's my auto spell correct. But yeah, he's super gay.

• Phineas and Ferb once had a series of shorts called "Doof's Daily Dirt" which featured an episode titled "The Dangers of Auto Correct." In this short, Doofenshmirtz claims that this happened:

  Doofenshmirtz: So It texted her back without thinking "Ugh no no, I'll buzz you at noon from my car." But what she read was "Ugly one, you shall pay for your hubris, pay in blood!" Exclamation point. Exclamation point? What kind of autocorrect is that? I mean how did you get "pay in blood" out of "car?"

• Regular Show: In the episode "I Like You Hi", Mordecai is texting CJ that he likes Yuji, but the autocorrect causes the sent message to be "I like you hi". He tried to cancel the message since he wasn't ready to start a relationship with CJ due to still missing Margaret. Yuji himself complains that the autocorrect always changes his name to "You Hi".
• The Simpsons:
  • "Lisa on Ice": When Martin Prince praises the school's new "Academic Alert" system, Kearney tells Dolph to take a memo on his Apple Newton (a device known for its autocorrect fails) "Beat up Martin" but it transcribes it into "Eat up Martha." Kearney then chucks the Newton into Martin. This scene was infamous with Apple employees during the development of the iPhone's keypad, with "Eat up Martha" being a nickname for screwing up inputs within the company.
  • In "Moho House" when Moe texts Marge.

    Can you come alone to Mono House?
    I mean Mohair House
    Milhouse
    Stupid autocorrect