I don't think it's "uncharacteristically". Most of the things I hear about him is kissing up to people he wants to be more like, like dictators, for example.

My wife's family has had a ton of Goldens. One of them apparently didn't want to swim at the start. Her father had the bright idea to tie its collar to their other golden at the time. Threw a toy into the water and naturally the one that knew how to swim ran in to fetch it and yanked the other one in with him. The one that didn't "know" how to swim proceeded to attempt to sit on the other to stay afloat and almost drowned the poor pooch. Thankfully my father in law did manage to rescue them, but I don't think he tried that again.

I feel like non-canon CAN work, but with the main character being the Chief and not acting very Chief-like, it was doomed to fail from the start. Other Spartans could work. I mean, they made a new one for Dead or Alive, FFS.

One would hope that a message THAT tone deaf wouldn't have even made it to the keyboard before realizing what a catastrophically bad idea it was.

Spoiler warning

I never played it, but the second Jedi Survivor game has a fight against Vader, but not at your main character. You win in the fight, then the cutscene makes you lose. It's played off as a "close loss", but it's disappointing when you can no-hit the boss and lose for story reasons.

And that man will wear that name with pride for the rest of his life.

That's a thing for many of these comics. They usually incorporate some (often stereotypical) flavor to the characters, usually writing the text as though they were speaking English but with an accent from their native tongue.

As someone from the east side of the state, it definitely fits. Friends joke that I live in West Idaho.

As a parent, sometimes it's a hope, not a lie.

I don't remember the show (or even if it was a show) but a guy went to the doctor to complain about his back pain. Doctor said that it might clear up in several thousand years. Confused, the patient asks for clarification. Basically, humans went bipedal too soon, and our spines weren't made to be upright for so long at a time. The doctor's analogy was that we "turned a clothesline into a flagpole".

What's the little girl looking at?

I remember a clip from a McCain rally and he was going around, asking people questions, letting them talk to the microphone, etc. One lady said she didn't like Obama because he was Muslim. McCain shut her down and said something to the effect of "he's a good man, we just have different opinions on how to run the country". That stands out a lot to me in hindsight.