Skip to main content
Urban Dictionary Merch
Your favorite words on things you can wear, drink from, read, or give to a friend.
The Urban Dictionary Store sells gifts you’ll have to explain.
Sometimes, you're wrong.

"Rule Fifty-One" was the title of the 7th season finale of the TV show "NCIS," referring to Special Agent Gibbs' established 50 rules for being a special agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. At the end of the episode, in which he needed a lawyer, he went through a box with pieces of paper on which he'd written his rules, and one said, "#13 NEVER, EVER INVOLVE A LAWYER." He turned it over and wrote, "#51 SOMETIMES YOU'RE WRONG." A major admission for Gibbs, even to himself. If he can admit it, we all can.
DiNozzo: "Well, Ziva, it's like Ben Affleck said in 'The Hunt for Red October'... "

McGee: "Tony, Affleck didn't start playing Jack Ryan until 'The Sum of All Fears.' Alec Baldwin played Ryan in 'Red October.'"

DiNozzo: "Seriously, McGeek? YOU are challenging ME on a movie reference? I'm always right about these things, especially when Sean Connery is in the movie!"

Gibbs (slapping DiNozzo on the back of the head): "Rule 51."

DiNozzo: "Ow! Oh yeah: 'Sometimes, you're wrong.'"
Rule 51 by UncleMikeNJ July 7, 2011
Related Words
Rule 51 • Rule 34 • Rule • Rule 35 • rule 1 • RULE #1 • rule 2 • Rule 11 • rule 43 • rule 69
A rule stating that any swear word or phrase can and should be be replaced with DragonBall Z characters, when in the presence of siblings.
1: My printer just died!!!!1!1111!!!1!! NAMEK!

2: What?

1: Little sis is in the room, rule 51.
Rule 51 by Mottman August 23, 2010
Rule 51 states that there will always be even more screwed-up things on the internet than anything that you had just seen.
Rule 51 basically means there will always be something worse than what you just saw, no matter what it is, there will always be more.
Rule 51 by BURZELTH January 19, 2020
An internet rule which states: For every act of nature or man there will be someone within a short period of time that will attribute that act to a conspiracy theory.

Terrorists kill someone? False Flag! Clouds look weird? Conspiracy to poison us all! Another school shooting? Never happened! Just a conspiracy to take our guns! Government says it is a weather balloon? Alien cover-up!

Corollary: If you can think of it, there's a conspiracy theory about it somewhere online.
Do you think Bowie is really dead?
Rule 51!
Rule 51 by Theogenes July 4, 2016
More from Urban Dictionary

Oblication 

A vacation, feeling more like an obligation, that involves visiting or staying with family.
So Joe where are you taking the kids for spring break vacation? We are going on an oblication to Boca to visit my mother-in-law.
Oblication by kimmerr May 5, 2011
Word of the Day on October 25, 2026

Surf Dracula Syndrome 

A phenomenon in film/television series, most notably streaming series, where the main premise is drawn out to such a point that it takes an entire season or more to get the parts of the series the audience is actually interested in seeing.

For example, if a series is titled "Surf Dracula," a majority of viewers would tune in expecting to see Dracula surfing by the first or second episode. However, the entire first season would instead be tedious padding and backstory before finally ending with Dracula surfing in the last five minutes of the season finale.
I watched "Smallville" on Netflix the other day. Dude, it was ten seasons of filler before he finally flew! Major Surf Dracula Syndrome!
Word of the Day on October 24, 2026
Load more