13 Terrible Movie Lines So Bad They Became Iconic

Cinema is full of iconic lines. “You complete me.” “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” “Go ahead, make my day.” There are few things better than a piece of dialogue that makes you sit up straighter in your seat, in awe of what you just heard, fully convinced that movies are the greatest art form there is. There are plenty of great movie lines that achieve this effect, lingering long after the credits have rolled. There are plenty of terrible ones, too.

We might argue that the only thing better than an unforgettably great line is an unforgettably bad one. In fact, we are going to argue that. Once you get over the initial gag reflex that comes from being forced to listen to someone deliver a badly written string of words with even worse inflection, it’s so fun to collectively cringe at a terrible bit of dialogue. Maybe they’re gross, maybe they’re insulting, or maybe they’re just weirdly worded, but the worst movie lines often become iconic in their own right, just because we’re so obsessed with how bad they are.

Here, we have gathered thirteen of the best-worst movie lines that are more than just bad: they’re so bad, they’ve transcended mere badness and reached an entirely different plane of so-awful-we-kind-of-love-them-anyway. Some of the movies on this list are great, marred only by the few seconds it takes for an actor to deliver a cringey sentence or two and then get on with the scene. Some of these movies are about as bad as their dialogue—a few are so bad, it was hard to choose one out of a multitude of terrible one-liners. These lines will never be good, and, honestly, we love them for that.