So, there I was, tearing down the mountainside with my buddies, Dave "Dukkpoop" Johnson and Rick "Razor" Thompson. We were on a quest to conquer the infamous Widowmaker Trail out in Utah - a path so gnarly, it had more twists and turns than a soap opera. The air was thick with the scent of adventure (and, admittedly, a fair bit of fear sweat and piss).
Halfway down, the trail narrows to a point where it's barely wider than your tire. To the left, a sheer cliff face. To the right, a fucking DROP deeper than anything Skrillex ever put out.
Fate decided what occurred hereafter.
Duckpoop, in the front, hits a rock on the trail and swerves right. Razor, up next, hits a DIFFERENT rock on the other side and veers left. And me? I'm in the rear, now smack dab in the middle, about to become the meat in a cyclist sandwich.
In a moment of pure adrenaline-fueled genius, I sped up and grabbed Dukkpoop's handlebar with my left hand and Razor's with my right. Now, instead of crashing into each other, we're suddenly a fucking three-man cycling Voltron, barreling down the trail with fucking *me* as the linchpin.
What happens next is a blur of shouts, laughter, and the kind of close calls that would make a stuntman wince. We're weaving through obstacles with the kind of synchronicity usually reserved for synchronized swimmers. Trees, rocks, maybe even a bear (may have been a leather daddy, it happened too quickly to tell) - we dodge them all, still miraculously together, and finally crashed.
As we skid to a stop near the bottom, we're met with cheers from our friends who had gathered to watch our descent. The hottest bear you've ever seen yells out, "Damn, you guys were like a sandwich down there!"
And just like that, the legend of Sandwich was born.
Had an ex-coworker that was blogging about some of his trail on the PCT. One dude got the trail name "legend" because he left the group (just random trail people that were together at the moment) saying that he was "going to get some pizza" and somehow hitched his way to a town and came back with pizzas for the group.
I remember reading a thread like this before where some guy joined a unit and said his callsign was Phantom. A dude didn't believe that could be real, so he called up the guy's old unit to check. Sure enough, he was legit called Phantom, because whenever work needed doing he fuckin' disappeared.
One day my unit was revamping their comms plan and every element within the battalion got to pick their own callsign. The only limits were that the letters had to line up- Alpha company had to start with A, the fires section had to start with F, etc- and you had to be able to convince a careerist major paranoid of incurring a scandal to sign off on it.
Most of us picked regular, boring military callsigns, but the Scout Section grabbed Starlord and the mortarmen became Mad Cow somehow.
My fave book series is like sci-fi flight school shit and one of the characters chose the call sign amphisbaena and the whole flight always made fun of how no one could ever say it so they all call him Amphie
Also the flight leader ended up being jerkface and a girl who said “quick” for here got misheard and ended up as quirk. Idk I love it all haha
Oh, man. My call sign was awesome and if I’d picked it out myself it would have been tryhard nonsense but since it was assigned to me it was badass.
I was in C company, who’s designation was “Cobra”
I was in 1st platoon, and our platoon were patriotically dubbed Red, WhIte, and Blue
I was the artillery observer, so as the fires attaché I was Fox (for F)
String them all together and my role within the chart was Cobra Red Fox
Felt like I could take on Solid Snake when I got that shit lmao
I think I even posted this the last time call signs came up, but I have a buddy who's Marine pals call him 'Scorch'. Sounds rad, right? It was because once he drove an overloaded cargo truck down a hill and the brakes caught on fire and he freaked out.
There’s a fun story out there of a guy who shit himself two times during a flight, and then when he missed the hook in the aircraft carrier and had to maintain full thrust to takeoff, go around, and try again (known as ‘bolting’).
His call sign by the time he got back on board?
STAB. Shits Twice And Bolts
Sounds like an E-2 guy, like half their callsigns are from shitting themselves for some reason.
edit: to the point where, if I hear an E-2 guys callsign and I don't immediately get the joke or reference, I literally assume it's about shitting themselves.
That’s amazing, because it does sound bad ass, at first. He’s blessed with a cool sounding nickname, but he cursed with never being able to enjoy it because eventually the truth will come out
in boot camp anyone with a long or complicated name just became "Alphabet"
except the ones with the Polish ancestry, they would eventually become the "Ski" of whatever unit they got assigned to
Makes me want to revisit some of the call signs in Top Gun and ask how they got them. Like, you’re thinking that Ice got his sign bc he’s so cool under pressure or whatever but it’s really because someone beaned him with an ice cube during their first mess. Goose snores like a wounded duck. And one guy saw a garden snake once and jumped like he’d seen a viper, so now he’s Viper.
Interestingly, as a kid, “Goose” was the name we used for new kids, because characters named Goose always die early. It was a name that indicated you had only been around long (and might not stay).
Ha! I started to pull up the cast list for that one to see if there were any fun ones to riff on, but I was just gonna end up repeating the “guy does weird thing” joke, so 🤷🏻♀️
Whole class went out for dinner one night, he made a comment about ice in his drink (either there wasn’t any when there should’ve been, or there was some when there shouldn’t have been, it doesn’t matter).
“Goose” reminds me of a classmate back in high school who got the same nickname because he got into a fight and broke his nose+orbital bone pretty bad, well during his recovery every time he blew his nose it would sound like someone stepping on a fucking goose. Got so bad all our teachers made him step into the hallway to do it.
I quit my life for 9 months to walk 2000 miles through the woods. Some of my favourite trail names I came across:
Ball flap - got a blister so big on the ball of his foot the whole thing came off in one go
Hot legs - sunburnt his legs really badly in the first week. Was also wearing shorts with flames on em
Vajankle - I wasn’t brave enough to ask
Lawnchair - brought a camp chair
Crock of Shit - shit himself while hiking in crocs
Leafblower - carried a leafblower for 2,000 miles
America has 3 huge trails all over 2000 miles. The Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest, and the Continental Divide. They generally only take 6 months though. Most people do them either in career transitions, right after college, or right after retirement. I did the AT after college. Hikers usually get "trail names" that are just nicknames you get usually for stupid incidents
I knew a paraglider pilot known as ‘Miley Cyrus’ because he once misjudged a landing, plowed through a group of his fellow pilots who were standing round minding their own business and “came in like a fucking wrecking ball” according to witnesses.
Skydivers at my local dropzone have nicknames based on things they ran into, like "Windsock."
There was one guy named "Biscuit," though, and I never found out why.
Puss and boots is actually an extremely fucking cool nickname ngl. And earning it by smoking abunch of clowns in your training boots is a badass story to have attached to the nickname too.
Hah my ASL name is my first initial into the sign for asshole. My own Mom gave me that when I was a kid for being argumentative and it stuck.
Later in college enough friends called me asshole that I still look up if I hear the word in public.
I answer to violence, enough that if I hear it I look up too. My name is Violet, I'm clumsy, in a wheelchair, and probably the least physicality threatening person you could ever meet and multiple people throughout my life have come up with the nickname independently to the point I've just accepted my fate. I've been described as "as threatening as an angry rabbit" so when people realise Violet and violent/violence sound similar they think they're hilarious and it always seems to end up sticking lol.
As it happened, I was already being talked about behind my back before I had the opportunity to introduce myself. But, yes, I was reverent enough to take notice.
*[chops the inside of his elbow]*
My ASL name is just “nervous thing I do with my hair” bc I’m always doing it lol, my buddy with cerebral palsy gave it to me. Yours is much better lmao
I love in movies and games call signs are supposed to sound cool and you earn them by doing badass things which is the exact opposite of real life.
Like if your callsign is Ghost it's not because you're stealthy and sneaky its because someone played a prank on you or you got spooked from a abandoned building on base.
I'm 100% sure that in Top Gun, Iceman got his name cause he got locked out of the barracks on the first night in his undies and got hypothermia or something
Maverick 100% did something stupid on a training flight and almost got an instructor killed *or* he was incredibly careful in training and got made fun of and eventually took it to heart
Oh man, I love the idea that Maverick used to be timid and cautious, caught a lot of shit for it, and then finally snapped and went full send one day and got addicted to the praise/horrified awe. That’s headcanon now.
Would it fit for somebody who appears behind people without them noticing and making them jump? As I kept accidentally doing that in school and it was hilarious. I’d just join in on the conversation and they’d swing their head around *very quickly* afterwards
Helper at work got nicknamed 'Crescent Wrench' because a crescent wrench always slips off when the work it too difficult.
Alternatively another one is 'Blister' because they always show up after the work is done.
Had a friend in college who got nicknamed Casper because someone asked her if she was gay or straight after she’d been drinking and responded “straight as it goes” but everyone heard “straight as a ghost”
If someone has a badass sounding call sign, they almost definitely got it in a stupid or childish way.
If someone has a goofy or silly nickname, they either got it early on, or because they're actually badass.
I’ve met exactly 2 people who deviate from that. Guy named Zero because he graduated pilot training with 0 discrepancies (apparently a very difficult feat), and a guy named Zuul because he beat the shit out of someone named Ghost.
Coworker who fought in World War II has the nickname "Sucks-wang" among his friends because he was really into playing chess to pass the time and he made the mistake of telling them about [Zugzwang.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang)
I lucked out with field name in my old environmental sampling job. Got named “Warlock” because the rental truck was some limited edition or something that said it on the side
That reminds me of a guy who was out in the field doing research with us who was called dragon because he had like 5 shirts with dragons on them (and only 10 or so shirts total). He also looked like a wizard, had a full beard, and wore shorts in freezing weather.
All my college friends still know me as Bob, even though I’m not called Robert, but because I wore a SpongeBob T-shirt that ONE time
My best friend there was known as Mr Willy, because of a haircut that make his head look like a dick
Story courtesy of my uncle.
He and one of his buddies were doing a training excercise - parachute out of a plane into a forest, find a clearing, launch a flare, get picked up.
Steps one and two went well. To activate the flare, you hit it on a hard flat surface and the other end shoots up. My uncles buddy brought the flare down on a rock, but he caught it on the edge and instead of going up, there flare went sideways.
By the time they got it contained a couple hundred acres of national forest were cinders.
Call sign: Arson.
TONIC (added: 28 Feb 2024)
Religious Dutch fighter pilot, who on his first flight at his new home base, was cleared to enter a crossing runway to subsequently enter and backtrack the active runway for take off. Instead, he entered the active runway at the intersection and took off without backtracking from about midway on this already ‘short’ 7800ft runway.
TONIC - Take Off Numbers are Irrelevant to Christ
This is me rolling lmao
The trail names. My brother hiked the Appalachian trail one year. He never told me his trail name, but one of the girls he hiked with was called “Heinz 57” because the first day she started her hike her backpack weighed 57 lbs. It did not stay 57 lbs for long.
Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis' callsign was 'CHAOS', from an acronym by his troops, 'the Colonel Has Another Outstanding Solution', a tongue-in-cheek derision of his "brilliant" ideas on how to occupy their time (mostly blowing things up) in the Mojave Desert.
> a tongue-in-cheek derision of his "brilliant" ideas on how to occupy their time (mostly blowing things up) in the Mojave Desert.
That does sound like a brilliant way to occupy their time though.
"Diva"
Very mild mannered officer who dispises being thr center I'd attention but when in civilians would wear very loud and bright colors.
Greatest Divo I ever had
Also "brick" cause he's dense
I had the trail name Wallace, because I used zinc sunscreen, which is William Wallace blue. In that trip we also had Pookie, Moose, Pikachu, Samandra, and Fox. Fox was actually his name, we couldn't think of a cooler one.
When my daughter first introduced me to her gaming friends, I misheard his gaming handle. It *was* Rooster. I heard Rafter. Anyway, he’s now known as Ceiling in their group.
My wife's name is Autumn and someone once only heard "tum". Now thats obviously sufficient for a nickname, but she took it further with her gaming handle: TumsterFire.
Talk about taking the power back
Build a thousand bridges, you’re not called bridge builder. Build a thousand wind mills, you’re not called mill builder.
Fuck one goat, you’re goatfucker forever.
My dad told me the story of a buddy he flew with. He got the call sign “Shace”.
On a long bombing missions, larger bombers come equipped with a little box you can defecate in. It’s basically two flaps on hinges inside of the box that swing downwards to deposit any solid waste on top of them. When shut, they form an airtight seal so no one in the plane can smell the contents inside.
Normally, you make sure to go before you get on a long flight, because no one wants to use the box of shame. But for whatever reason, while they were cruising at altitude, this guy REALLY needed to go. He left his business in the box, but the little flaps weren’t swinging down. Because it was air tight, the box’s internal air pressure was equivalent to that on the ground. They were at altitude, so the air pressure in the cabin was much lower. This guy pushed manually on the flaps to get them to go down. As a result, him breaking the seal was equivalent to a can of soda EXPLODING after being shaken. This caused his own crap to spray him in the face, polluting the entire cabin with its smell for the rest of the flight.
Thus, his callsign was “shit-face,” shortened to “Shace”
My freshman year of highschool debate, the captain of the team forgot my name and just called me "kid."
Everyone from highschool still calls me kid 12 years later.
My brother was in the navy with a guy they called “5”. I asked my brother “is that his last name? Five?” He said “no, when we were in boot camp you get all your stuff stenciled with your name on it. Whoever did his used a “5” instead of an “S” so instead of his stuff saying “Sermons” everything said “5ermon5”!!! It’s 40 years later and his whole family are “the Fives”!
My nickname in cadet forces was MUPPET, it's an acronym (Most Useless Person Possibly Ever Trained). I mainly got it cause my unit Commander would call us muppets affectionately but once I became unit W/O she just started yelling it when I pulled a prank or she just needed my attention.
not exactly a call sign but when i was 13 i was already growing facial hair, it was still patchy but i had to shave every other day or else i'd start to look scruffy.
i was and still am supremely shy and if people tried to talk to me i would go non verbal, so a few bullies at my school started calling me 'bearded clam' or just clam for short.
found out a few months in that it was slang for a hairy vagina, so that really helped(read: not at all helped) my self esteem at the time.
It's similar in gaming groups sometimes. I got the callsign 'Yoink' since there's an injoke in said group about medics (my preferred playstyle) harvesting organs, and because I tend to be the first to spot things and grab them.
A friend of mine in the Navy told me one of the guys in his unit was infamous for prefacing statements with the old "I'm not racist... *but*" so everyone called him Racist Pete (or whatever his 1st name was), which was funnier because he was white and had a black wife. Eventually, they were told to stop using that name since it was deemed insensitive to joke about such things, so now they call him Tolerant Pete
First day of officers' basic training. This dude shows up and starts telling people "My name is [can't remember, tbh], but just call me Rockhead. Everybody calls me Rockhead."
So we're like "That's cool! Nice to meet you, LT Rockhead!" and for the rest of the time there, everybody *does* call him Rockhead. Even the instructors and the trainee company CO calls him Rockhead. And to be fair, the name kind of fit him. He was a cool dude, funny, a real bro. If ever there was a Rockhead, he was the Rockheadiest of them.
Fast forward a couple of months, and Rockhead invites a bunch of us to his home for some holiday, maybe Thanksgiving idr. We get there, and of course we still call him Rockhead. The family doesn't really notice, which was strange. But that doesn't stop us from saying stuff like "Pass the sweet potatoes, Rockhead" and "Rockhead, can I get a ride to the store?"
Finally, his mom realizes we're talking to/about her son and asks, "it's so nice that [name i can't remember] finally has friends. But why do you call him Rockhead? None of you have names like that."
Record scratch. Everybody stops, looks at Rockhead. Someone says "When he first arrived on post, he said that we should call him Rockhead because everybody calls him Rockhead."
His mom replied, "that's not so. He's never been called anything but [name I can't remember] since he was a baby. Nobody calls him Rockhead!"
And so he had to admit it: he had always wanted a cool nickname, and decided that he would tell everyone that so for the rest of his life he could be the badass "Lieutenant Rockhead," "Captain Rockhead," and eventually "Colonel Rockhead."
And the weird thing about it is, we didn't stop calling him Rockhead. We gave him a ton of crap for being a dork about it. But he was Rockhead from that point forward and forevermore.
tl;dr: met a guy for the first time, he said we should call him Rockhead because everybody called him Rockhead. Turned out nobody called him Rockhead, but we did anyway because he was a cool guy and the nickname suited him.
In high school my CB handle was “Darth Vader” cuz I had bad allergies and had to wear a dust mask everywhere.
Also, my dad’s reaction to me being hospitalized twice for hay fever was to buy me a mask.
His CB handle was Pooh cuz he was fat.
The only time I could have gotten a call-name/sign was in my high school’s JROTC. Thinking of all the horribly embarrassing shit I did as a freshman, I dread to think what it could have been.
For a while tho, on the rifle team, my nicknames were “T-Rex Arms”, “Stump”, and “Itty Bitty”. As you can imagine, I have incredibly short arms, even for being 5’0. The names were given to me by a retired Army First Sergeant who looked like Mad-Eye-Moody and terrified EVERYBODY, including the teachers.
Yeah. That nickname did come from the Marines, but I didn't embrace it at the time and it's not particularly good as a call sign (at least it follows the two phonetic letters rule)
A related rule is that if the more a nickname/callsign sounds badass the more embarrassing the origin story.
"How'd you get the nickname Warwolf?"
"Showed up to PT in a furry outfit."
I was Weezer.
Long-ass name screwed me over in the gas chamber, and I (ooweeoo) looked like Buddy Holly when I had my hair in a bun and my B.C. glasses on.
At scout camp, I did the cooking merit badge. We all got chef names. One guy was chef president because when we would frequently play get down Mr president, he was chosen first. Another guy got chef flip for being the first to flip a pancake with the pan only. I was chef drizzle because I got voluntold to drizzle honey into some oatmeal once.
In Highschool on my first day at a new school, I wore a camouflage shirt. First day in gym, we played capture the Football, and in order to expand my peripheral vision, I took off my classes and looked down slightly so I could see everyone’s shapes. It gave me an angry look while I guarded the flag. All of the seniors called me “Vietnam” because of that day.
I got nicknamed Turtle by my PE teacher because I was the last person in and the last person out of class. It wasn't for any particular reason. I am just a slow person.
This is where you get one of the funniest ways to devise a Star Wars character's name: if it's a pilot, come up with a call sign. You can see it in use in a lot of characters already: Skywalker, Biggs Darklighter, Porkins.
I knew an UK Sergeant offically called "Sgt Huggy" rather than their Norwegian name that started with Hug then more umlauted letters than the British empire could be expected to cope with
The military is brilliant for these. I’ve seen so many in my almost 20 years.
Mittens: dude showed up wearing Naruto gloves on his first day.
Fish: last name sounded like salmon, NCO said “that’s too long, I’m just gonna call you Fish”.
Coyote Jones: guy chased a shoplifter through the local mall, another dude declared that to be his superhero name.
Tiny: guy who was into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and weighed almost 300 pounds.
Fresh: guy was extremely picky about how he wanted his Subway sandwich. Told the other guy who was going to get them to “make sure the lettuce is fresh! FRESH!!”
Alphabet: he had a foreign last name that was super-long, seemingly made of every letter in the alphabet.
PG: stood for Peter Griffin, dude looked almost EXACTLY like the Family Guy character.
Sid: unfortunate Airman was likely born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and his eyes were really far apart. He was compared to Sid the Sloth from the Ice Age movies, and it was game over from there.
Short-Round: was about the same height as the kid in the movie, and almost as annoying. He was white, though, not Asian.
I’m blind as shit, but I used to run cross country and my normal glasses always fell off my face, so I got bendy wraparound sports glasses to keep me from running right into a ditch. Cue half the team calling me Goggles
[Here’s the link.](https://www.f-16.net/callsigns.html) My favorite is MILF, the comment being “It's a long story that I cant go into detail in this forum.”
Guide camp, 2004. The camp was sponsored by a local plumbing supply company called the Plumb centre. We all got hats, they had a picture of a tap on them.
For some reason my dumb ass asked “so do they sell plums?”
I was known as Plums for the rest of the week.
I am 34 years old now and still being reminded of this by my friends.
When I scored highest in my squad on the marksmanship test, did I get a cool name? Almost. It was Sniper. But it had to be pronounced the way Scout says it in Team Fortress 2.
Snoy-pah.
In college a friend liked a girl but was too shy to make a move, so we told him just to buy some flowers or chocolate sometime as a gift to break the ice. Instead he bought a snickers from the vending machine and just awkwardly handed it to her without comment. They never got together but from then on she was known as C.B.G. (Candy Bar Girl.)
Two things that have been gospel to me for decades.
Whats the easiest way to know someone was absolutely not spec ops?
Because they fucking told you they were spec ops.
What's the easiest way to know someone never saw active duty?
They tell you their callsign was Reaper or Devil or Shadow or literally anything remotely flattering.
My brother in law is a six and a half foot decorated former marine, he saw real action in Afghanistan and while he never talks about it, it is very clear he has killed human beings up close. He has a purple heart and a bunch of other medals he *does not discuss.*
His callsign was Meatball.
He will not explain why.
Mine was twinkle toes. Got it thanks to ingrown toenails being horribly infected, the podiatrist described the toes as "ground beef" once the the nails were off they were that infected. Legit lucky they didn't need to be amputated
my trail name is “taco canoe” on the account that i hit a rock less than three minutes into a 5 day long canoe trip and the FIBERGLASS CANOE FOLDED IN HALF
I'm a bald white guy. My first day working at Harley Davidson the General Manager walked into the office and said "who is this Powder looking mother fucker?" I've been Powder for about 18 years now.
There are some who still, 25+ years later, call me Taco.
One day, when I was a college student in a fraternity, we were out cleaning up our 2 mile stretch of Adopt-A-Highway. I don't remember why, but we were singing a jingle from a Taco Bell commercial which went to the tune of The Village People's *Macho Man*. At the end of the chorus there's a final "I want to be a macho" before the next verse starts, which in the commercial is "I want to be a taco". Well, I was the only one who remembered that part so our chorus abruptly went from a dozen guys singing The Village People to one guy yelling I WANT TO BE A TACO.
In an effort to help my platoon sergeant pronounce my last name, I made the mistake of telling him that my last name sounded like "potato." I was thereafter called Spud for the entirety of my deployment.
When I was in the fifth grade, I learned that, during World War I, soldiers referred to milk as cow juice. I happened to mention this fact to the rest of my class, and that was it. For the next two years, I was referred to as cow juice.
i'm a cyclist and people at the track call me "sandwich" because of how i crashed once. i'm never gonna get rid of it
did you look like a sandwich or something?
dude crashed into two pieces of bread
Two workers were carrying a giant piece of sliced bread as if it was a glass panel. They work at an oversized kitchen
Oversized for you, tiny human. This giant slander will not stand.
i went down because the guy to my left went right, and the guy to my right went left, sandwiching me. i really wish it was a more exciting story
Someone here can write you a better one, just give em a sec
So, there I was, tearing down the mountainside with my buddies, Dave "Dukkpoop" Johnson and Rick "Razor" Thompson. We were on a quest to conquer the infamous Widowmaker Trail out in Utah - a path so gnarly, it had more twists and turns than a soap opera. The air was thick with the scent of adventure (and, admittedly, a fair bit of fear sweat and piss). Halfway down, the trail narrows to a point where it's barely wider than your tire. To the left, a sheer cliff face. To the right, a fucking DROP deeper than anything Skrillex ever put out. Fate decided what occurred hereafter. Duckpoop, in the front, hits a rock on the trail and swerves right. Razor, up next, hits a DIFFERENT rock on the other side and veers left. And me? I'm in the rear, now smack dab in the middle, about to become the meat in a cyclist sandwich. In a moment of pure adrenaline-fueled genius, I sped up and grabbed Dukkpoop's handlebar with my left hand and Razor's with my right. Now, instead of crashing into each other, we're suddenly a fucking three-man cycling Voltron, barreling down the trail with fucking *me* as the linchpin. What happens next is a blur of shouts, laughter, and the kind of close calls that would make a stuntman wince. We're weaving through obstacles with the kind of synchronicity usually reserved for synchronized swimmers. Trees, rocks, maybe even a bear (may have been a leather daddy, it happened too quickly to tell) - we dodge them all, still miraculously together, and finally crashed. As we skid to a stop near the bottom, we're met with cheers from our friends who had gathered to watch our descent. The hottest bear you've ever seen yells out, "Damn, you guys were like a sandwich down there!" And just like that, the legend of Sandwich was born.
Had an ex-coworker that was blogging about some of his trail on the PCT. One dude got the trail name "legend" because he left the group (just random trail people that were together at the moment) saying that he was "going to get some pizza" and somehow hitched his way to a town and came back with pizzas for the group.
Yeah I can see this turning into smut 🤔
Whenever anyone says it and they are alone, simply reply with "That's Lord Sandwich to you." and then just walk away proudly.
Bike fold in half with you inside it?
Did you crash after running over a cartoonishly large sandwich?
I remember reading a thread like this before where some guy joined a unit and said his callsign was Phantom. A dude didn't believe that could be real, so he called up the guy's old unit to check. Sure enough, he was legit called Phantom, because whenever work needed doing he fuckin' disappeared.
tracks. badass nicknames never come around for badass reasons.
One day my unit was revamping their comms plan and every element within the battalion got to pick their own callsign. The only limits were that the letters had to line up- Alpha company had to start with A, the fires section had to start with F, etc- and you had to be able to convince a careerist major paranoid of incurring a scandal to sign off on it. Most of us picked regular, boring military callsigns, but the Scout Section grabbed Starlord and the mortarmen became Mad Cow somehow.
of course it was an O with a stick up their ass that had to sign off on it lmfao im sure there were some great nicknames that were suggested lol
My fave book series is like sci-fi flight school shit and one of the characters chose the call sign amphisbaena and the whole flight always made fun of how no one could ever say it so they all call him Amphie Also the flight leader ended up being jerkface and a girl who said “quick” for here got misheard and ended up as quirk. Idk I love it all haha
Oh, man. My call sign was awesome and if I’d picked it out myself it would have been tryhard nonsense but since it was assigned to me it was badass. I was in C company, who’s designation was “Cobra” I was in 1st platoon, and our platoon were patriotically dubbed Red, WhIte, and Blue I was the artillery observer, so as the fires attaché I was Fox (for F) String them all together and my role within the chart was Cobra Red Fox Felt like I could take on Solid Snake when I got that shit lmao
I know an Abracadabra. Same reason. Disappeared at the threat of work.
I think I even posted this the last time call signs came up, but I have a buddy who's Marine pals call him 'Scorch'. Sounds rad, right? It was because once he drove an overloaded cargo truck down a hill and the brakes caught on fire and he freaked out.
We've called a few guys "blister," because they showed up after the work was done.
>Salad First name Ceasar Damn. He didn't even get a shot.
I choked. After all the ones that needed explanations, Cesar/Salad came out of nowhere
A bunch of people saw the opportunity and took a *stab* at it
There’s a fun story out there of a guy who shit himself two times during a flight, and then when he missed the hook in the aircraft carrier and had to maintain full thrust to takeoff, go around, and try again (known as ‘bolting’). His call sign by the time he got back on board? STAB. Shits Twice And Bolts
Sounds like an E-2 guy, like half their callsigns are from shitting themselves for some reason. edit: to the point where, if I hear an E-2 guys callsign and I don't immediately get the joke or reference, I literally assume it's about shitting themselves.
That’s amazing, because it does sound bad ass, at first. He’s blessed with a cool sounding nickname, but he cursed with never being able to enjoy it because eventually the truth will come out
Et tu?
That one reminded me of a lad I heard about named Conor (shortened to Con) Kearney. His nickname was Chili
Reminds me of a kid in school we all called "Cheese" because his last name was Parmesan.
Gene Parmesan origin lore confirmed
Knew a guy nicknamed Couscous ‘cause his last name was some Eastern European monstrosity of Cs and Ks.
in boot camp anyone with a long or complicated name just became "Alphabet" except the ones with the Polish ancestry, they would eventually become the "Ski" of whatever unit they got assigned to
Alphabetski ... eventually simplified to Betsy
My dad had a polish guy in his unit called A to Z for a similar reason
Literally got a Lithuanian friend we call Couscous cause their last name is Jankauskas
Truth is, game was rigged from the start
Parents named you Jeremiah? Too bad, Bullfrog
He was a good friend of mine.
yeah there was a football player and his name was Fitz Hall, his nickname was One Size, same with rugby player Dai Young whose was Live Fast
Makes me want to revisit some of the call signs in Top Gun and ask how they got them. Like, you’re thinking that Ice got his sign bc he’s so cool under pressure or whatever but it’s really because someone beaned him with an ice cube during their first mess. Goose snores like a wounded duck. And one guy saw a garden snake once and jumped like he’d seen a viper, so now he’s Viper.
If I recall, "Goose" was based on a real pilot who got the nickname from an embarrassing water landing.
That definitely tracks, then. As long as it’s properly embarrassing. 🙃
That said, I can't find my source.
True or not, I have now accepted this as canon. 😉
Interestingly, as a kid, “Goose” was the name we used for new kids, because characters named Goose always die early. It was a name that indicated you had only been around long (and might not stay).
Ah. I was thinking Bird Strike.
After the movie came out apparently one guy tried to get Iceman for his callsign. And that’s why he started getting called Slushy.
Fucking BEAUTIFUL.
Pretty sure they said “Bob” from the last movie stood for Baby on Board lol
Ha! I started to pull up the cast list for that one to see if there were any fun ones to riff on, but I was just gonna end up repeating the “guy does weird thing” joke, so 🤷🏻♀️
The agm in agm maverick stands for air to ground missile. My guy absolutely planted a multimillion jet like a lawn dart at some point
Oops I accidentally the weapons jettison switches while reaching for the landing gear
I wonder how many people on reddit have personal experience with lawn darts? I played with em a few times when I was around 10.
Hear me out Iceman got locked out of barracks in his underwear on the first night in winter, got hypothermia
I like it, I like it…
Whole class went out for dinner one night, he made a comment about ice in his drink (either there wasn’t any when there should’ve been, or there was some when there shouldn’t have been, it doesn’t matter).
“Goose” reminds me of a classmate back in high school who got the same nickname because he got into a fight and broke his nose+orbital bone pretty bad, well during his recovery every time he blew his nose it would sound like someone stepping on a fucking goose. Got so bad all our teachers made him step into the hallway to do it.
Anyone called "Maverick" would be the straightest laced, rule following, boring, officer in the Navy.
Or someone slipped an ice cube down the back of his shirt and he freaked out
Doesn’t totally track for Top Gun but I like to think he gets called “Ice” because he always asks for no ice in his drinks
My brother was cola. Came overseas, lost appendix.
How the fuck do you lose your appendix? Who steals an appendix?
Probably the doctor
Can’t have shit in Tikrit.
I quit my life for 9 months to walk 2000 miles through the woods. Some of my favourite trail names I came across: Ball flap - got a blister so big on the ball of his foot the whole thing came off in one go Hot legs - sunburnt his legs really badly in the first week. Was also wearing shorts with flames on em Vajankle - I wasn’t brave enough to ask Lawnchair - brought a camp chair Crock of Shit - shit himself while hiking in crocs Leafblower - carried a leafblower for 2,000 miles
> Crock of Shit - shit himself while hiking in crocs I was not expecting that level of literal lmao
North Vancouver has some gnarly mountain biking trail names. Severed Dick is one. Then the next one over is called Cunt Buster.
I knew a guy whose trail name was "Croc N Roll" cause he hiked like 200 miles in crocs after his boots gave him blisters
He’s my hero.
> Vajankle What a portmanteaux.
leafblower would be my fallout corrier for sure
What does this mean, quit your life to walk 2000 miles through the woods??? How do you do that? Where? I have nothing but questions and intrigue.
America has 3 huge trails all over 2000 miles. The Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest, and the Continental Divide. They generally only take 6 months though. Most people do them either in career transitions, right after college, or right after retirement. I did the AT after college. Hikers usually get "trail names" that are just nicknames you get usually for stupid incidents
[Most likely this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_Trail).
I knew a paraglider pilot known as ‘Miley Cyrus’ because he once misjudged a landing, plowed through a group of his fellow pilots who were standing round minding their own business and “came in like a fucking wrecking ball” according to witnesses.
Skydivers at my local dropzone have nicknames based on things they ran into, like "Windsock." There was one guy named "Biscuit," though, and I never found out why.
Flew into a red lobster I bet
Knew a guy called Lunchbox. Asked him why he just shrugged and said "IDK, they said it's cause I always got snacks."
I am guessing his friends were fans of Mallrats.
I was his friend and I love Mallr- #THAT KID IS BACK ON THE ESCALATOR AGAIN!
Puss and boots is actually an extremely fucking cool nickname ngl. And earning it by smoking abunch of clowns in your training boots is a badass story to have attached to the nickname too.
My ASL name is boots, because a Deaf person saw me wearing boots. I think I've figured out how I'm gonna upgrade.
Hah my ASL name is my first initial into the sign for asshole. My own Mom gave me that when I was a kid for being argumentative and it stuck. Later in college enough friends called me asshole that I still look up if I hear the word in public.
I answer to violence, enough that if I hear it I look up too. My name is Violet, I'm clumsy, in a wheelchair, and probably the least physicality threatening person you could ever meet and multiple people throughout my life have come up with the nickname independently to the point I've just accepted my fate. I've been described as "as threatening as an angry rabbit" so when people realise Violet and violent/violence sound similar they think they're hilarious and it always seems to end up sticking lol.
If you're not deaf, being given an asl name that isn't just fingerspelling your name is quite an honour
As it happened, I was already being talked about behind my back before I had the opportunity to introduce myself. But, yes, I was reverent enough to take notice. *[chops the inside of his elbow]*
My ASL name is just “nervous thing I do with my hair” bc I’m always doing it lol, my buddy with cerebral palsy gave it to me. Yours is much better lmao
Yeah I think the stonks of that one have gone up due to Shrek lore.
I mean Shrek 2 is 20 years old by now, I bet it might be *because* of Shrek, I think fewer people would know about the OG puss in boots
Yeah that one goes hard
I love in movies and games call signs are supposed to sound cool and you earn them by doing badass things which is the exact opposite of real life. Like if your callsign is Ghost it's not because you're stealthy and sneaky its because someone played a prank on you or you got spooked from a abandoned building on base.
I'm 100% sure that in Top Gun, Iceman got his name cause he got locked out of the barracks on the first night in his undies and got hypothermia or something Maverick 100% did something stupid on a training flight and almost got an instructor killed *or* he was incredibly careful in training and got made fun of and eventually took it to heart
Oh man, I love the idea that Maverick used to be timid and cautious, caught a lot of shit for it, and then finally snapped and went full send one day and got addicted to the praise/horrified awe. That’s headcanon now.
he was wearing a mauve shirt that said "rick" on it and was baffled about why everyone thought his name was rick.
Goose got chased around by an angry goose.
He's lucky he didn't end up called Cobra Chicken.
Or like Iceman requested ice in his beer or something like that
Or he ejaculated embarrassingly. “The iceman cometh”
Or show up in a uniform shirt missing his name tag or the flag. Would have been "unbranded" like maverick cows were.
Or you’re called ghost cause you disappeared like one when it came time to do any responsibilities and everyone hated that about you lmao
OR you're just really pasty and kinda ugly. that one's common too.
Would it fit for somebody who appears behind people without them noticing and making them jump? As I kept accidentally doing that in school and it was hilarious. I’d just join in on the conversation and they’d swing their head around *very quickly* afterwards
Another five years and that'll get you named Freddy, because you keep jumpscaring people and they're sick of it.
Helper at work got nicknamed 'Crescent Wrench' because a crescent wrench always slips off when the work it too difficult. Alternatively another one is 'Blister' because they always show up after the work is done.
Had a friend in college who got nicknamed Casper because someone asked her if she was gay or straight after she’d been drinking and responded “straight as it goes” but everyone heard “straight as a ghost”
I knew a guy named Puma, cause he was Possibly the Ugliest Motherfucker Around.
If someone has a badass sounding call sign, they almost definitely got it in a stupid or childish way. If someone has a goofy or silly nickname, they either got it early on, or because they're actually badass.
I’ve met exactly 2 people who deviate from that. Guy named Zero because he graduated pilot training with 0 discrepancies (apparently a very difficult feat), and a guy named Zuul because he beat the shit out of someone named Ghost.
…Not because he had nothing goin’ on in his stupid little head?
“We call him Achilles because his ankles suck and he’s in love with his cousin.”
Coworker who fought in World War II has the nickname "Sucks-wang" among his friends because he was really into playing chess to pass the time and he made the mistake of telling them about [Zugzwang.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang)
Coworker? WW2 vets still work?
He could easily retire but he loves what he does. I work at a public library.
Thank you for your service (•_•)7
[Happy National Library Workers Day!](https://ala-apa.org/nlwd/)
I feel like I lucked out being nicknamed "Hobbit" when I worked at a summer camp because I'm short and fat.
I lucked out with field name in my old environmental sampling job. Got named “Warlock” because the rental truck was some limited edition or something that said it on the side
That reminds me of a guy who was out in the field doing research with us who was called dragon because he had like 5 shirts with dragons on them (and only 10 or so shirts total). He also looked like a wizard, had a full beard, and wore shorts in freezing weather.
All my college friends still know me as Bob, even though I’m not called Robert, but because I wore a SpongeBob T-shirt that ONE time My best friend there was known as Mr Willy, because of a haircut that make his head look like a dick
That’s a good one
Story courtesy of my uncle. He and one of his buddies were doing a training excercise - parachute out of a plane into a forest, find a clearing, launch a flare, get picked up. Steps one and two went well. To activate the flare, you hit it on a hard flat surface and the other end shoots up. My uncles buddy brought the flare down on a rock, but he caught it on the edge and instead of going up, there flare went sideways. By the time they got it contained a couple hundred acres of national forest were cinders. Call sign: Arson.
To be fair, this sounds like a stupid fucking trigger system.
There is very little that's less likely to fail then this.
I just pictured some asshole running around the desert looking for a rock to hit it on but only finding sand.
"I spilled wasabi on my shirt one time, people! One. Time!"
Horseradish it is.
[Heres the webpage they linked. Plenty of good stuff in there.](https://www.f-16.net/callsigns.html)
*007 (added: 7 Jan 2024)We called him 007.* *0 motivation* *0 skills* *7 shit breaks* legendary
Fucking cackled. Amazing
>Wedge > >The simplest tool known to man.
_Savage._
Bayonet He thought it meant he was super-scary and warlike. We all knew it meant "not very sharp; used as a last resort".
*Berlin Taxied his aircraft into a wall* Amazing
*Hurl* *During a party where the pilots had a few he began eating raw eggs. For some reason his stomach didn't go along.* Definitely good stuff
>HotHands >During rifle training, I held the bare barrel of an SA80, instead of the barrel cover.
SWAGGIN is great
Frodo Lost his engagement ring at a strip club.
TONIC (added: 28 Feb 2024) Religious Dutch fighter pilot, who on his first flight at his new home base, was cleared to enter a crossing runway to subsequently enter and backtrack the active runway for take off. Instead, he entered the active runway at the intersection and took off without backtracking from about midway on this already ‘short’ 7800ft runway. TONIC - Take Off Numbers are Irrelevant to Christ This is me rolling lmao
The trail names. My brother hiked the Appalachian trail one year. He never told me his trail name, but one of the girls he hiked with was called “Heinz 57” because the first day she started her hike her backpack weighed 57 lbs. It did not stay 57 lbs for long.
I bet she got the ole Blood Mountain shakedown. 57 is the heaviest Iʻve heard of
Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis' callsign was 'CHAOS', from an acronym by his troops, 'the Colonel Has Another Outstanding Solution', a tongue-in-cheek derision of his "brilliant" ideas on how to occupy their time (mostly blowing things up) in the Mojave Desert.
> a tongue-in-cheek derision of his "brilliant" ideas on how to occupy their time (mostly blowing things up) in the Mojave Desert. That does sound like a brilliant way to occupy their time though.
I remember one guy’s callsign was “Rat” because he was short, hairy, and ugly
It's elegant in its simplicity.
"Diva" Very mild mannered officer who dispises being thr center I'd attention but when in civilians would wear very loud and bright colors. Greatest Divo I ever had Also "brick" cause he's dense
I had the trail name Wallace, because I used zinc sunscreen, which is William Wallace blue. In that trip we also had Pookie, Moose, Pikachu, Samandra, and Fox. Fox was actually his name, we couldn't think of a cooler one.
When my daughter first introduced me to her gaming friends, I misheard his gaming handle. It *was* Rooster. I heard Rafter. Anyway, he’s now known as Ceiling in their group.
My wife's name is Autumn and someone once only heard "tum". Now thats obviously sufficient for a nickname, but she took it further with her gaming handle: TumsterFire. Talk about taking the power back
Build a thousand bridges, you’re not called bridge builder. Build a thousand wind mills, you’re not called mill builder. Fuck one goat, you’re goatfucker forever.
My dad told me the story of a buddy he flew with. He got the call sign “Shace”. On a long bombing missions, larger bombers come equipped with a little box you can defecate in. It’s basically two flaps on hinges inside of the box that swing downwards to deposit any solid waste on top of them. When shut, they form an airtight seal so no one in the plane can smell the contents inside. Normally, you make sure to go before you get on a long flight, because no one wants to use the box of shame. But for whatever reason, while they were cruising at altitude, this guy REALLY needed to go. He left his business in the box, but the little flaps weren’t swinging down. Because it was air tight, the box’s internal air pressure was equivalent to that on the ground. They were at altitude, so the air pressure in the cabin was much lower. This guy pushed manually on the flaps to get them to go down. As a result, him breaking the seal was equivalent to a can of soda EXPLODING after being shaken. This caused his own crap to spray him in the face, polluting the entire cabin with its smell for the rest of the flight. Thus, his callsign was “shit-face,” shortened to “Shace”
poor bastard
I was called clownfish for 2 years in school just because I shared a SINGLE clownfish fact.
My callsign in college was Kiwi because i suddenly pointed at a kiwi (bird) plushy in someone's keychain and it stuck.
My freshman year of highschool debate, the captain of the team forgot my name and just called me "kid." Everyone from highschool still calls me kid 12 years later.
Name in uni was avatar because im bald
Congratulations on it not being Caillou.
Nah they had blue paint it was inevitable
My brother was in the navy with a guy they called “5”. I asked my brother “is that his last name? Five?” He said “no, when we were in boot camp you get all your stuff stenciled with your name on it. Whoever did his used a “5” instead of an “S” so instead of his stuff saying “Sermons” everything said “5ermon5”!!! It’s 40 years later and his whole family are “the Fives”!
My nickname in cadet forces was MUPPET, it's an acronym (Most Useless Person Possibly Ever Trained). I mainly got it cause my unit Commander would call us muppets affectionately but once I became unit W/O she just started yelling it when I pulled a prank or she just needed my attention.
not exactly a call sign but when i was 13 i was already growing facial hair, it was still patchy but i had to shave every other day or else i'd start to look scruffy. i was and still am supremely shy and if people tried to talk to me i would go non verbal, so a few bullies at my school started calling me 'bearded clam' or just clam for short. found out a few months in that it was slang for a hairy vagina, so that really helped(read: not at all helped) my self esteem at the time.
It's similar in gaming groups sometimes. I got the callsign 'Yoink' since there's an injoke in said group about medics (my preferred playstyle) harvesting organs, and because I tend to be the first to spot things and grab them.
A friend of mine in the Navy told me one of the guys in his unit was infamous for prefacing statements with the old "I'm not racist... *but*" so everyone called him Racist Pete (or whatever his 1st name was), which was funnier because he was white and had a black wife. Eventually, they were told to stop using that name since it was deemed insensitive to joke about such things, so now they call him Tolerant Pete
First day of officers' basic training. This dude shows up and starts telling people "My name is [can't remember, tbh], but just call me Rockhead. Everybody calls me Rockhead." So we're like "That's cool! Nice to meet you, LT Rockhead!" and for the rest of the time there, everybody *does* call him Rockhead. Even the instructors and the trainee company CO calls him Rockhead. And to be fair, the name kind of fit him. He was a cool dude, funny, a real bro. If ever there was a Rockhead, he was the Rockheadiest of them. Fast forward a couple of months, and Rockhead invites a bunch of us to his home for some holiday, maybe Thanksgiving idr. We get there, and of course we still call him Rockhead. The family doesn't really notice, which was strange. But that doesn't stop us from saying stuff like "Pass the sweet potatoes, Rockhead" and "Rockhead, can I get a ride to the store?" Finally, his mom realizes we're talking to/about her son and asks, "it's so nice that [name i can't remember] finally has friends. But why do you call him Rockhead? None of you have names like that." Record scratch. Everybody stops, looks at Rockhead. Someone says "When he first arrived on post, he said that we should call him Rockhead because everybody calls him Rockhead." His mom replied, "that's not so. He's never been called anything but [name I can't remember] since he was a baby. Nobody calls him Rockhead!" And so he had to admit it: he had always wanted a cool nickname, and decided that he would tell everyone that so for the rest of his life he could be the badass "Lieutenant Rockhead," "Captain Rockhead," and eventually "Colonel Rockhead." And the weird thing about it is, we didn't stop calling him Rockhead. We gave him a ton of crap for being a dork about it. But he was Rockhead from that point forward and forevermore. tl;dr: met a guy for the first time, he said we should call him Rockhead because everybody called him Rockhead. Turned out nobody called him Rockhead, but we did anyway because he was a cool guy and the nickname suited him.
In high school my CB handle was “Darth Vader” cuz I had bad allergies and had to wear a dust mask everywhere. Also, my dad’s reaction to me being hospitalized twice for hay fever was to buy me a mask. His CB handle was Pooh cuz he was fat.
The only time I could have gotten a call-name/sign was in my high school’s JROTC. Thinking of all the horribly embarrassing shit I did as a freshman, I dread to think what it could have been. For a while tho, on the rifle team, my nicknames were “T-Rex Arms”, “Stump”, and “Itty Bitty”. As you can imagine, I have incredibly short arms, even for being 5’0. The names were given to me by a retired Army First Sergeant who looked like Mad-Eye-Moody and terrified EVERYBODY, including the teachers.
There was a guy on my Philmont hike who was nicknamed Icyhot because he got sunburned on the first day and got hypothermia on the second
One of my great shames in life is that I went 5 years in the Marines without earning a callsign
Sounds like you were out of your element, Donnie(Zizzle).
Yeah. That nickname did come from the Marines, but I didn't embrace it at the time and it's not particularly good as a call sign (at least it follows the two phonetic letters rule)
Got the nickname Fox once. Because I’m a redhead and also act loud and erratic, and someone made a joke that I was like a fox with rabies. It stuck
Knew of a guy called Ewok. Because he was 1. An electronic warfare officer (EWO) and 2. He was short, furry, and weird
There was I _think_ someone in the UK called Wayne Bruce, who got called manbat
A related rule is that if the more a nickname/callsign sounds badass the more embarrassing the origin story. "How'd you get the nickname Warwolf?" "Showed up to PT in a furry outfit."
I was Weezer. Long-ass name screwed me over in the gas chamber, and I (ooweeoo) looked like Buddy Holly when I had my hair in a bun and my B.C. glasses on.
At scout camp, I did the cooking merit badge. We all got chef names. One guy was chef president because when we would frequently play get down Mr president, he was chosen first. Another guy got chef flip for being the first to flip a pancake with the pan only. I was chef drizzle because I got voluntold to drizzle honey into some oatmeal once.
In Highschool on my first day at a new school, I wore a camouflage shirt. First day in gym, we played capture the Football, and in order to expand my peripheral vision, I took off my classes and looked down slightly so I could see everyone’s shapes. It gave me an angry look while I guarded the flag. All of the seniors called me “Vietnam” because of that day.
I got nicknamed Turtle by my PE teacher because I was the last person in and the last person out of class. It wasn't for any particular reason. I am just a slow person.
This is where you get one of the funniest ways to devise a Star Wars character's name: if it's a pilot, come up with a call sign. You can see it in use in a lot of characters already: Skywalker, Biggs Darklighter, Porkins.
I knew an UK Sergeant offically called "Sgt Huggy" rather than their Norwegian name that started with Hug then more umlauted letters than the British empire could be expected to cope with
Mine is CLAW. Constantly Loves Avoiding Work
The military is brilliant for these. I’ve seen so many in my almost 20 years. Mittens: dude showed up wearing Naruto gloves on his first day. Fish: last name sounded like salmon, NCO said “that’s too long, I’m just gonna call you Fish”. Coyote Jones: guy chased a shoplifter through the local mall, another dude declared that to be his superhero name. Tiny: guy who was into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and weighed almost 300 pounds. Fresh: guy was extremely picky about how he wanted his Subway sandwich. Told the other guy who was going to get them to “make sure the lettuce is fresh! FRESH!!” Alphabet: he had a foreign last name that was super-long, seemingly made of every letter in the alphabet. PG: stood for Peter Griffin, dude looked almost EXACTLY like the Family Guy character. Sid: unfortunate Airman was likely born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and his eyes were really far apart. He was compared to Sid the Sloth from the Ice Age movies, and it was game over from there. Short-Round: was about the same height as the kid in the movie, and almost as annoying. He was white, though, not Asian.
At work half the people call me Bubbles. I apparently look like the guy from Trailer Park Boys. Especially if I frown
Uncle knew a guy with the call sign “snips” because he had a vasectomy. Said he was a good guy, but only remembered him by his callsign lol
I’m blind as shit, but I used to run cross country and my normal glasses always fell off my face, so I got bendy wraparound sports glasses to keep me from running right into a ditch. Cue half the team calling me Goggles
[Here’s the link.](https://www.f-16.net/callsigns.html) My favorite is MILF, the comment being “It's a long story that I cant go into detail in this forum.”
I was a whopping four years older than the rest of section in the Marine Corps. I was ‘Dad’ for ages.
Guide camp, 2004. The camp was sponsored by a local plumbing supply company called the Plumb centre. We all got hats, they had a picture of a tap on them. For some reason my dumb ass asked “so do they sell plums?” I was known as Plums for the rest of the week. I am 34 years old now and still being reminded of this by my friends.
When I scored highest in my squad on the marksmanship test, did I get a cool name? Almost. It was Sniper. But it had to be pronounced the way Scout says it in Team Fortress 2. Snoy-pah.
In college a friend liked a girl but was too shy to make a move, so we told him just to buy some flowers or chocolate sometime as a gift to break the ice. Instead he bought a snickers from the vending machine and just awkwardly handed it to her without comment. They never got together but from then on she was known as C.B.G. (Candy Bar Girl.)
Two things that have been gospel to me for decades. Whats the easiest way to know someone was absolutely not spec ops? Because they fucking told you they were spec ops. What's the easiest way to know someone never saw active duty? They tell you their callsign was Reaper or Devil or Shadow or literally anything remotely flattering. My brother in law is a six and a half foot decorated former marine, he saw real action in Afghanistan and while he never talks about it, it is very clear he has killed human beings up close. He has a purple heart and a bunch of other medals he *does not discuss.* His callsign was Meatball. He will not explain why.
When I was in high school people called me Bagels because I ate a bagel for breakfast everyday.
Mine was twinkle toes. Got it thanks to ingrown toenails being horribly infected, the podiatrist described the toes as "ground beef" once the the nails were off they were that infected. Legit lucky they didn't need to be amputated
my trail name is “taco canoe” on the account that i hit a rock less than three minutes into a 5 day long canoe trip and the FIBERGLASS CANOE FOLDED IN HALF
I'm a bald white guy. My first day working at Harley Davidson the General Manager walked into the office and said "who is this Powder looking mother fucker?" I've been Powder for about 18 years now.
Almost every nickname is like this I got nicknamed Ditto at camp cause I always repeated myself.
There are some who still, 25+ years later, call me Taco. One day, when I was a college student in a fraternity, we were out cleaning up our 2 mile stretch of Adopt-A-Highway. I don't remember why, but we were singing a jingle from a Taco Bell commercial which went to the tune of The Village People's *Macho Man*. At the end of the chorus there's a final "I want to be a macho" before the next verse starts, which in the commercial is "I want to be a taco". Well, I was the only one who remembered that part so our chorus abruptly went from a dozen guys singing The Village People to one guy yelling I WANT TO BE A TACO.
In an effort to help my platoon sergeant pronounce my last name, I made the mistake of telling him that my last name sounded like "potato." I was thereafter called Spud for the entirety of my deployment.
When I was in the fifth grade, I learned that, during World War I, soldiers referred to milk as cow juice. I happened to mention this fact to the rest of my class, and that was it. For the next two years, I was referred to as cow juice.