Sorry, Force Of Habit

About

Sorry, Force Of Habit is a line from The Simpsons, said by Marge Simpson to her son Bart after blaming him by reflex for something Lisa did. The scene became the source of multiple object labeling memes to display cases of a party doing something negative that another party is usually known for.

Origin

On October 15th, 1995, episode 5 of season 7 of the animated series The Simpsons, "Lisa The Vegetarian," first aired on Fox.^[1] In a scene, Lisa abducts a spit-roasted pig with the use of a riding mower, prompting her mother to yell at her to stop; however, as Marge is far more used to Bart committing such incidents, she accidentally yells his name instead.

- Bart, no!
- … What?
- Sorry, force of habit. Lisa, no!!

The line "Sorry, force of habit" was also famously used in another context, in episode 12, season 6 of How I Met Your Mother, False positive, on December 14th, 2010; this scene has also seen some, although much less, use in memes.

- I'm pregnant.
- I've never met this woman before in my life! Sorry, force of habit. Congratulations!

Memes using the scene started spreading in 2018. One of the first was posted on April 15th, 2018 to Reddit's /r/TheSimpsons^[2] by greg_focker, gaining over 6,000 points in five years (shown below).

Spread

Over the following years, the format was used across the internet to make various points. For example, on March 28th, 2022, a member of the Classic Motorsports forum^[3] named Wally posted an example referencing the Will Smith Slap (shown below, left). On November 15th, 2022, Tumblr user morphimus^[4] reblogged an example talking about websites following in Tumblr's lead, gaining over 58,000 notes in one year (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References