You Get Nothing! You Lose! Good Day, Sir! — Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka shouting angrily with arm raised in his office

You Get Nothing! You Lose! Good Day, Sir!

1971catchphraseclassic

Published October 8, 2026

A biting dismissal delivered by Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka at the climax of the 1971 film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, where he denies Charlie his promised chocolate reward. The line's gleeful cruelty made it a staple quotable for decades before mid-2000s YTMND and YouTube users turned it into a remix engine that produced some of the site's defining Wonka edits.

movie quote memes ytmnd memes dismissal memes mashup video memes catchphrase memes

Overview

The quote is Wonka's final verbal thrashing of Grandpa Joe in the 1971 adaptation of Roald Dahl's book, delivered after Charlie admits to swiping Fizzy Lifting Drinks3. Online, it works as a verbal reaction image, a nuclear-level kiss-off deployed when someone wants to end an argument with maximum theatrical disdain. The shortened form 'good day, sir' later picked up a second life as a recurring catchphrase for the character Fez on That '70s Show starting in May 20013.

The format that made it a proper meme was the YTMND page: a looping still of Gene Wilder's furious Wonka, usually paired with the audio clip and some incongruous caption or crossover gag2. Later YouTube users built mashups cutting the clip into other properties like Star Trek, SpongeBob, The Shining, and Sparta Remix edits3. The appeal is the mismatch between Wilder's precise Edwardian diction and the cartoonishly petty refusal underneath it.

Origin & Background

Platform
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (film) / YTMND (viral spread)
Key People
Gene Wilder
Date
1971

The line comes from the climactic office scene in Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971), where Grandpa Joe presses Wonka for the promised lifetime supply of chocolate and Wonka explodes, telling him he violated the contract by stealing Fizzy Lifting Drinks3. Gene Wilder's reading, calm, then screaming, then icily polite, is why the moment stuck.

Online, the earliest archived YouTube upload of the clip was posted on June 4th, 2008 by user Fayroe1. The phrase had already been documented on Urban Dictionary on October 3rd, 2005 by user Glinda, who glossed it as a way of telling someone to shut up and leave3.

How It Spread

The meme's first real wave happened on YTMND in 2005, where remixers built pages around the loop of Wonka's dismissal and iterated hard on the gag3. Spinoffs piled up fast, with YTMND pages reworking the line through Star Trek: First Contact, courtroom scenarios, email flame wars, drunk driving PSAs, and Sonic the Hedgehog crossovers3.

YouTube inherited the format once the YTMND wave cooled. Fayroe's June 2008 upload of the raw clip gave later remixers a clean source to pull from1, and the clip became a common ingredient in mashup channels crossing it with The Shining, SpongeBob, and WTF Boom edits3. The video 'YOU GET NOTHING!' and other reupload-style edits kept racking up views across the late 2000s and 2010s45.

As a verbal meme, the shortened 'good day, sir' slot was reinforced by Wilmer Valderrama's Fez using it on That '70s Show from 2001 onward, giving the phrase a sitcom beachhead well before the YTMND era3. The combined effect is that the line functions as shorthand across generations: boomers and Gen X remember the film, millennials remember Fez and the YTMND edits, and the clip itself still floats around as a reaction video.

Timeline

1971

Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory releases, with Gene Wilder delivering the line in the climactic office confrontation.

2001-05

Fez's 'good day, sir' catchphrase is introduced on That '70s Show, cementing the shortened form in sitcom usage.

2005-10-03

Urban Dictionary user Glinda documents 'I said good day!' as a dismissive phrase.

2005

The first Wonka YTMND remix page appears, kicking off a wave of spinoffs including Judge Wonka, WonkaMail, and Soniclegaladvice.

2008-06-04

YouTube user Fayroe uploads the earliest archived video of the film clip.

Frequently Asked Questions