Okay, now that I have access to this wonderful international community, I have a question for any UK person who would care to answer: In BG, several 'commoners' and sometimes shopkeepers will say 'Wife's been gettin' prickley on me arse'. Is this a common phrase on the other side of the pond? Being a wife, I intuitively know what this means, but I've never heard it spoken by anyone. (Never heard 'So I kicked him in the head till he was dead' either, thankfully.)

i can honestly say no, it isnt. we would infact probably laugh and ridicule the offening individual were they to say that :)

I suspected as much. The phrase was just so goofy it stuck in my head. I guess the designers had a lot of fun coming up with those NPC quips.

I noticed a few phrases that NPC's say in BG1 & 2 which I've read recently in Bram Stoker's Dracula. The only one that immediately comes to mind is when a noblewoman says "Well, I never!" b/c when I read it in Dracula I was laughing b/c I knew where I read it before!

(BG2 SPOILER ahead)

I'm sure that Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms, is the uncredited true author of the BG series for PC. And given the amount of funny Dracula quotes found in BG1 like the one I mentioned, as well as the circus performer's finishing off Nosferatu's story at the Nashkel fair, it appears as though he was reading Dracula while writing the BG series, in order to ensure he got his vampire lore perfectly done for the key plot in BG2:SoA. Having read Dracula recently & being a BG veteran, I think he pulled it off flawlessly.

Blade: When I hear the phrase "Well, I never!" I think of the Marx Brothers (A Night at the Opera?), and Groucho's snarky reply (which I can't remember exactly, but it was something like "I'm not surprised").

I've never seen the Marx Brothers, but I'll tell ya, the exact quote "Well, I never!" was said in Dracula by the zoo caretaker's wife, when the newspaper reporter is interviewing them! I was laughing b/c it wasn't the first time I had seen something I've seen before in the BG series, popping up in Dracula. Juss funny simple things like that.

Also, while reading Dracula, I've noticed a whole bunch of quotes we use today as expressions, seemingly having their originations in Dracula:

- "Stranger in a strange land" is a popular phrase; I first heard it in an Iron Maiden song!

- "Back to the drawing board" too seems like it originated in Dracula, as in the book, they really do go to back to the drawing board, instead of using it as the phrase we do today!

- "Prig of the first water" may or may not have originated in Dracula.

- "If looks could kill" is a popular phrase today, and I think it originated in Dracula when Dr. Seward is describing seeing an animated vampire.

I'm sure there are others within the book too, which I can't recall off the top of my head nor search right now. Suffice to say Im quite confident that Ed found neat stuff in the novel's lexicon, and so honored it here & there in the BG series. That's not to say he didn't honor the Marx Brothers or other classics in the same way. Do you remember how the wolfweres in the Windspear Hills were talking? That's EXACTLY the same diction that Mary Shelley used on each page in writing Frankenstein! At least, that's what I thought throughout the whole time I was reading it some yrs ago! :OD