History Main / CannotTellAJoke

* The English dub of ''KeroroGunsou'' has Koyuki act like this in episode 18. She tells a condensed, G-rated version of TheAristocrats, apparently not knowing the point of the joke is to make it [[ShaggyDogStory as drawn-out]] [[RefugeInAudacity and vulgar]] as possible.
* Tien in ''DragonBallZ''. He ''did'' manage a joke. Once.

* Brennan from ''{{Bomes}}'' as part of her general social incompetence.

* If she hadn't been {{Jonas Quinn}}ed after one season, this would probably have been a bigger part of Kate in ''NotGoingOut''. I only remember her attempting to actually tell a joke once, and it did indeed go horribly, but Lee asked her at one point if she ever gets jokes. They just seems to be something she struggles with in general.

* Ferguson from the Nickelodeon sitcom ''Clarissa Explains it All'' was generally a straight-laced, snobby know it all. Later in the series, he spent an entire episode practicing the delivery of a cliche joke (A homeless man walks up to me on the street and says he hasn't had a bite in...) for some event that he was participating in. The humor came not from the joke itself, but from the ludicrous attempts at telling it, which eventually started including ridiculous stresses on random words of the punchline, a la "I bit '''him'''. '''I''' bit him. I '''bit''' him."

** Hatton also told the Ikea cabinet joke ("The Cabinet is like an Ikea cabinet; a couple of loose screws and it falls to peices") to utter disdain. When Cherie Blair told the same joke in a speech, ''HIGNFY'' replayed the clip, and to everyone's surprise, it got a rather more positive reaction. (Paul's reaction was something like "It's a matter of timing. Fifteen years later, it's funny." It's also possible they were laughing at how cheap the set looked, and Ian Hislop with hair, rather than the joke.)

* The King from the Muppets special The Frog Prince.

* Harriet Hayes (''{{Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip}}'') is depicted as incapable of either remembering the text, structure or delivery of a joke.

* Jake from {{Animorphs}} can snark with the best of them, but when it comes to telling outright jokes, he inevitably summons the crickets. Even Ax, at one point, gets a big laugh just by repeating a joke that Jake had told earlier. Nobody laughed the first time.

* On at least one occasion, Kitt of KnightRider tried to entertain Michael with pre-programmed jokes. He ended up completely messing them up, which wasn't too surprising ... but as it ended up, [[spoiler:it was his badly-told jokes that saved Michael's life.]]

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* One of the [[ThatGuywithTheGlasses Nostalgia Critic]]'s minor running gags is starting off a bad joke, failing, [[DiggingYourselfDeeper desperately trying to keep it afloat]] before suddenly switching to an expressionless face and pulling an offscreen lever, at which point the words "'''[[LampshadeHanging JOKE ABORTED]]'''" appear on the screen.

** It's a translated Jaffa joke; apparently if you get the context it's hilarious.
** This troper thought it was pretty funny. A forum he used to frequent had a thread dedicated to making up more.
** It's really more that it's an ethnic joke about an ethnicity we're not familiar with, making it incomprehensible.
*** From memory: "Three Jaffa meet on a strange planet: a Horus guard [worshipper of a hawk-headed Egyptian god], a Serpent guard [worshipper of Apophis] and a Setesh guard [worshipper of a doglike god, long-lost and considered sort of like mythical bumpkins by the others]. It is a tense moment. The Horus guard's beak glistens. The Serpent guard's eyes glow. The Setesh guard's... nose drips!" And Teal'c bursts out laughing. It's a lot funnier to Jaffa with their own culture and tropes, but you can still get the idea that he's mocking a race so foolish, even their god isn't all that intimidating.