History Main / CannotTellAJoke

* Ryrare from ''WebVideo/WeTheYou''.

->''"Know the joke. Know it cold. Know it. Know it. Anyone who gets halfway through a joke and says, 'And then, ah...let's see...I think he says something like...' should be [[DisproportionateRetribution stabbed with a dinner knife.]]"''

->''"Know the joke. Know it cold. Know it. Know it. Anyone who gets halfway through a joke and says, 'And then, ah...let's see...I think he says something like...' should be stabbed with a dinner knife."''

* Armando from ''Series/TheArmandoIannucciShows'' is this; when he is asked to do a speech to a group of corporate executives on the grounds that, as the writer of ''Series/ImAlanPartridge'', he must be funny. Armando's speech consists of PowerPoint explanations of various jokes, including "My Dog's Got No Nose".

* In ''Series/LittleLunch'', Atticus thinks he is an excellent joke-teller, and continually attempts to tell his father's golfing jokes, which he doesn't understand. In "The Joke Competition", Melanie's attempts to tell a joke initially fall apart fall apart because of her shyness. When she does manage to tell a successfully tell a ToiletHumor joke, things[[GoneHorriblyRight go horribly right]].

** The opening to "Arthur the Unfunny" depicts Arthur as a stand-up comedian. He tries to tell a joke, but messes up telling it and walks away in disappointment after he accidentally gives away the punchline. The conflict of the episode is that Arthur isn't very good at telling jokes, but he finds a different way to be funny by playing the piano in a silly manner.

** The opening to "Arthur the Unfunny" depicts Arthur as a stand-up comedian. He tries to tell a joke, but messes up telling it and walks away in disappointment after he accidentally gives away the punchline.

*** How is that not funny? It's the absurdity of it all. It's a tense situation. The Horus guard does something impressive, the Serpent guard does something else impressive, and the Setesh guard [[RuleOfThree does something]]...less impressive. Setup, further setup, and Subversion.

* Anya in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''
-->"Quiet, you'll miss the humorous conclusion!"
** Perhaps you should introduce her to her insect reflection.
*** It still isn't funny.
** It's worth noting that this was in a dream Giles was having while the First Slayer stalked his dreamscape, based on the fact that the real Anya is funny without meaning to be, with her oddities of behavior.

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* Reed from ''Series/AdamTwelve''. He spends a good portion of the finale of season one trying to tell Malloy a joke about ... a dog... and paint... or something, suffering constant interruptions from calls (not his fault) and his own disjointed retelling (totally his fault), and then he's crushed when Malloy doesn't laugh.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' gives us Fluttershy. The season 3 finale shows how her stand-up skills just aren't there.

** SAM, being an emotionless AI, cannot tell jokes. Usually, at least. Sometimes SAM does try to tell jokes, and they're ''awful''.

* The eponymous character of the ''Literature/SebastianDarke'' series has this problem, which is unfortunate, because he works as a [[TheJester jester.]]

--> '''Luann:''' So...do any of you like the holidays?
--> ''(People applaud)''
--> '''Luann:''' Uh, yeah, me neither. [[DontExplainTheJoke I'M ONLY FOOLING!]]

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'':
-->'''Calvin''': OK, this guy goes into a bar. No wait, he doesn't do that yet. Or maybe it's a grocery store. OK, it doesn't matter. Let's say it's a bar. He's somewhere in the vicinity of a bar, right? So anyway, there's this dog, and he says something odd, I don't remember, but this other guy says, um, well, I forget, but it was funny.
** Then there was the time he tried to tell Hobbes this hilarious story he heard at school. When Hobbes tried to get him to, you know, ''actually tell the story'', Calvin concluded that the story wasn't all that funny in-and-of itself, but the kid telling it thought it was, and it was pretty hilarious when milk squirted out his nose when he laughed.
* Porkypine from ''ComicStrip/{{Pogo}}'' fundamentally doesn't get humor.
-->'''Porkypine''': This is a humorous anecdote. A goat lost his nose -- the first man says, "What will he smell with now?" The other replies, "As bad as ever." Haw haw haw?
[[/folder]]

-->"...the first two provided sensible answers, while the Irishman responded in a foolish manner."

* DeadpanSnarker Varric struggles to teach Cole how to tell jokes in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition''. By the last bit of party banter between them, Cole's gotten a little better about it, but not much. The resigned disappointment in Varric's voice indicates he's all but given up on the idea.

* ''VisualNovel/GrisaiaNoKajitsu'' established in a flashback that Kazuki, Yuuji's dead sister, could not tell a funny joke to save her life. Building on that in ''VisualNovel/TheEdenOfGrisaia'', we see more flashbacks with her and another attempt to tell a joke [[spoiler:during the afterstory when she's not only been discovered to be alive but also not just a computer (long story) and she still can't tell a joke. The entire time the main story was going on, she pretended to have an artificial arm that everyone was too polite to ask about and the she just pops it off like a glove in front of a side character because she'd figured it would be hilarious.]] Okay, the audience might find that hilarious, but there's nobody in the story who would actually laugh at that barring maybe Yuuji.

* ''VisualNovel/GrisaiaNoKajitsu'' established in a flashback that Kazuki, Yuuji's dead sister, could not tell a funny joke to save her life. Building on that in ''VisualNovel/GrisaiaNoRakuen'', we see more flashbacks with her and another attempt to tell a joke [[spoiler:during the afterstory when she's not only been discovered to be alive but also not just a computer (long story) and she still can't tell a joke. The entire time the main story was going on, she pretended to have an artificial arm that everyone was too polite to ask about and the she just pops it off like a glove in front of a side character because she'd figured it would be hilarious.]] Okay, the audience might find that hilarious, but there's nobody in the story who would actually laugh at that barring maybe Yuuji.

** Also Prinicpal Skinner. It takes him less than 30 seconds to screw up the WhosOnFirst routine he is doing with Superindentent Chalmers by explaining that he doesn't mean the pronoun 'who' but rather that there is a player with the unlikely surname of 'Who' playing first base.
** After being appointed interim principal of Springfield Elementary, Ned Flanders stated his policy to put the 'pal' back in 'principal', which everyone finds hilarious. Straight away, Chalmers adds that he'll put the 'super' back in 'superintendent', to which the room responds with silence.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'':
** Squidward in nearly every episode where he tries to entertain.
** Spongebob in one episode tries to tell jokes, but is so unfunny that he only hears a cricket chirping. It eventually gets so bad that the ''cricket quits''.

In some cases, this trope comes to play, but it can come across as {{Adorkable}}.

--->'''Toph:''' [[DeadpanSnarker Leave the jokes to us, honey.]]

* After spending the morning being processed, he is taken to the huge mess hall for lunch. He finds a seat at a table full of inmates who look like they have been behind bars for years. Suddenly, an inmate stands in the middle of the room and yells, "41!" As he sits down, the room erupts in laughter. Then another prisoner stands and yells, "123!" Again, there is laughter throughout the room. Puzzled, Fred asks the inmate sitting next to him what's going on. "Well," the older inmate says, "Most of us have been here so long that we have heard all the jokes. So we just number them and use the number." Fred says, "I love to tell jokes! Give me one." "Okay," says the older inmate. "Everybody loves old 72. It always gets a big laugh" Fred stands up, waits for the laughter to die down from the last joke, and yells, "72!" There is nothing but silence as hundreds of inmates just turn and stare at him. Fred sits down and looks at the inmate who gave him the number. "What happened?" he asks. The older man shrugs and says, "Some people just can't tell a joke."
* [[RussianHumor Lieutenant Rzhevsky]] attends a ball. At a certain point he notices his servant and says, Ah, Stefan! I am pleased to find you here. Pray tell, have you any new rhymes for me? Ah, yes, ''[[GratuitousFrench monsieur]]'', here's one I heard this morning: Adam and Eve, on the very last eve in the wonderful Garden of Eden... Wonderful, wonderful! Ladies and gentlemen, ''écoutez-vous''! I just heard a wonderful new rhyme from my personal waiter... It went like... Y'know, Adam and Eve, like, in the Garden of Eden, and they f... I mean, it was their last night, so they fu... Oh, but it sounded so much better in verse!

* A joke told among comedians [[PlayingWithATrope plays with this]]. The teller says "Do you know what the most important part of a joke is?" and then ''as the listener says'' "No, what?" the teller says "Timing." [[DontExplainTheJoke The joke is that the timing is wrong]].
** Alternatively, there's "What's the difference between a good joke and a bad joke timing" or "Why can't [[DumbAndDrummer drummers]] tell jokes timing".

* Granny Weatherwax of Literature/{{Discworld}} doesn't quite 'get' humour. In ''Literature/WitchesAbroad'', Granny keeps trying to tell a joke that goes "A man walks into a sandwich shop and sees a sign that says, 'We make all kinds of sandwiches'. So he says 'I'll have an alligator sandwich -- and make it snappy!'" Only she keeps giving the punchline as "and make it quick!", or "and I want it right away!", or "and don't be a long time about it!"
** Pratchett said this about it: "It is (I hope) obvious that Granny Weatherwax has absolutely no sense of humour but she has, as it were, heard about it. She has no grasp of how or why jokes work -- she's one of those people who say "And then what happened?" after you've told them the punchline. She can vaguely remember the one-liner "Give me an alligator sandwich -- and make it snappy!" but since she's got no idea of why it's even mildly amusing she gets confused... all that she can remember is that apparently the man wants it quickly."

* Talmanes from ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' makes some spectacularly bad attempts at humor. Mostly they fail because he's so straight-faced that his attempts at {{deadpan snarker}}y fall flat. He does manage to be amusing in a [[TheComicallySerious meta way]], though.
** Though some of his quips are fairly funny, albeit [[GallowsHumor rather darkly]].

* ''Series/ILoveLucy Lucy'': Lucy Ricardo was apparently unable to tell a joke. In one episode, she tried to tell about the lady who went to a butcher and asked for pork chops "and don't leave too much fat on them." The butcher replied, "Yes, ma'am. Which way?" Fred Mertz had heard the joke before and explained that the lady was supposed to say, "Be sure you make them lean." Lucy thought this was only a minor detail, when it was in fact the point of the joke. A mental health crisis followed when she felt isolated and rejected by the others.

* Creator/AndyKaufmann in his Little Foreign Man character would do a stand-up routine with deliberately incomprehensible, unfunny 'jokes'.

** After Michael is the face-slapping butt of Dwight's [[http://www.noob.us/humor/the-office-kgb-knock-knock-joke/ KGB knock-knock joke]], he argues with Dwight about answering Jim's "door". Of course, more [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking face-slapping]] ensues.
*** That's because the KGB waits for no one.

* In ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', one of Data's many attempts to become more human involves him trying to understand the nature of humor. He enlists the help of a holodeck comedian program, and memorizes all the jokes...then proceeds to completely botch the delivery of every one. [[SoUnfunnyItsFunny It's hilarious to watch.]]
** In one of the last episodes ("Journey's End"), he actually pulled a joke off ''perfectly'', then explained that it wasn't a serious statement, killing the joke.

* Zapp Brannigan from ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' - He breaks out a sexist joke to Kiff when Kiff's being followed by Amy's pet buggalo.

* A variation in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''; Homer fails at humorous limericks. He tries to disprove this by saying "There once was a man from, I think it was Nantucket. And anyway, he had this interesting characteristic..." At this point he can't remember the rest, and Lenny and Carl just snicker at him. (There is a RunningGag throughout the series of Homer never being able to finish the "man from Nantucket" limerick, which is ''extremely'' vulgar.)

* Squidward in nearly every episode of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' where he tries to entertain.

* There have been a number of examples of guests like this over the long history of ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'', but special mention has to go to trade-unionist Derek Hatton, whose joke about a ministerial lovechild ''bombed'', and most of all Piers Morgan, who attempts to copy a joke from a previous week, tells it badly, and then '''attempts to bully the audience into laughing at it'''. It fails miserably, and best of all, Ian Hislop manages to tell the joke later, to much laughter. (Of course, when Hislop told it the audience were laughing purely to make Morgan's failure more personal).
** Hatton also told the Ikea cabinet joke ("The Cabinet is like an Ikea cabinet; a couple of loose screws and it falls to pieces") 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.

*** And nonsense bordering on the surreal:

*** And of course, attempts at ToiletHumor:

Compare and contrast with NoSenseOfHumor.

[[folder:Truth In Television]]

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* The attempts of ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'''s Dee Reynolds to get her standup career off the ground inevitably fall into this. Most of the time, she starts retching out of stage fright halfway through her first joke. When she can get one in, it's inevitably rambling observational humor or references to her vagina, delivered either in a halfhearted drawl or while stammering profusely. Yet somehow, it's still better than her non-standup [[{{Blackface}} "character work."]]
* In ''Series/LittleLunch'', Atticus thinks he is an excellent joke-teller, and continually attempts to tell his father's golfing jokes, which he doesn't understand. In "The Joke Competition", Melanie's attempts to tell a joke fall apart because of her shyness.
* ''Series/ILoveLucy Lucy'': Lucy Ricardo was apparently unable to tell a joke. In one episode, she tried to tell about the lady who went to a butcher and asked for pork chops "and don't leave too much fat on them." The butcher replied, "Yes, ma'am. Which way?" Fred Mertz had heard the joke before and explained that the lady was supposed to say, "Be sure you make them lean." Lucy thought this was only a minor detail, when it was in fact the point of the joke. A mental health crisis followed when she felt isolated and rejected by the others.
* ''Series/StElsewhere'': In "Once Upon a Mattress", the notoriously taciturn Jack Morrison attempts to cheer up Fiscus, who is recuperating after being shot, by telling him a joke. This well-intentioned effort fails miserably as Jack changes the names of the characters in the joke several times and forgets several parts of it.
* [[HonestCorporateExecutive Aruto Hiden]] of ''Series/KamenRiderZeroOne'' aspires to be a comedian but because his routine is all about [[IncrediblyLamePun half-baked puns]] and [[LargeHam excessive overreacting]] even by Japanese standards, no one laughs at them, save for [[TheComicallySerious Isamu Fuwa]].

* ''Radio/OurMissBrooks'': Mr. Boynton is rarely if ever able to tell a joke in a way that would be funny. The humor comes from the lameness of his attempt, and Miss Brooks' [[DeadpanSnarker response]] - [[OfficialCouple although, Miss Brooks once mentions she loves his terrible sense of humour.]]

* In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', Edelgard's sense of humor is horrible because she fails to make any joke sound funny with the way she says it. People often mistake she's serious about everything she says, often making her look confused as to why no one saw the humor. This also extends to how often she likes to mention the idea of her Empire going up against the other factions in a real battle to the death, which makes both Dimitri and Claude think she's doing a bad joke in poor taste that she rarely ever feels apologetic about. [[spoiler:[[OhCrap Except she was totally advocating to make that happen, plunging all of Fodlan into chaos for years]].]]

* Apollo Justice from the ''VisualNovel/AceAttorney'' series often falls victim of this, albeit not for the reasons stated in the introduction blurb. The reason, at least according to Trucy and Ema, is because it's impossible to tell if Apollo is being serious or not. As such, people either take his jokes as [[BrutalHonesty blunt, tactless commentaries]] or takes his commentaries as [[DudeNotFunny rude, ill-timed jokes]].
* Natalya from ''VisualNovel/MissingStars'' loves telling jokes and [[PungeonMaster saying puns]]. The problem is either her jokes suck or she tells unoriginal ones.

* One of the WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic'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.

* Near in ''WebVideo/DeathNoteTheAbridgedSeriesKpts4tv'' as demonstrated when prank calling Light:
-->'''Light:''' (''*sighs*'') Do yourself a favor. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis Hang up. Now.]]
-->'''Near:''' Okay. (''*hangs up*'') Hey guys, wasn't that hilarious?
* [[Website/{{Cracked}} Cracked]].com's "[[http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-no-one-can-teach-you-about-being-funny/ Things Nobody Can Teach You About Being Funny]]", the first entry is "How to be funny (if you aren't)". Essentially saying that some people just ''aren't funny'' and there's not much anyone can do about it.
* ''WebAnimation/DSBTInsaniT'': Martha can't tell one, at least not in terms of insult comedy, as seen in [='VRcade'=].

* One time, okay see, one time there was a character in ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' who was a small boy who told stories that had happened to his friend Randy Beaman and the stories were always told in a near-monotone and in one long run-on sentence and at the end he'd recite the punchline in the same way and you wouldn't be sure if he'd reached it or not. Okay, bye.
* Numbuh 2 of ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'' always is making puns and telling jokes which draw nothing but groans from his fellow agents. In "Operation: P.O.O.L.", the agents meet their negative universe counterparts which exhibit the opposite traits of the normal agents; Negative Numbuh 2 is a good comedian who always makes people laugh, leaving positive Numbuh 2 unable to figure out what he said.
-->'''Negative Numbuh 2:''' ''(of Negative Numbuh 4)'' Check it out, a ''cow''ard with a ''goat''ee! Either there's a farm around here or you stink!\\
''(everyone laughs)''\\
'''Numbuh 2:''' ''(perplexed)'' That's not funny. That's not funny at all.
* Humorbot on ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': "And I said 'Supercollider? I hardly know her.' Then they built the Supercollider. Thank you."
* ''WesternAnimation/TheBatman'': Donnie, the who becomes the Joker's sidekick Prank in "The Apprentice", suffers from this, and manages to empty an entire comedy club with his lame material. The Joker seems to like his stuff, however.
-->So the mathematician says "X equals P.U.!"
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'': Beast Boy is often telling jokes that make everyone else groan, especially Raven.
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'': Here in the followup series, Robin takes the unfunny ball in the episode "Uncle Jokes".
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'': Stumpy. Not only are his jokes incredibly lame, he also laughs very hard while telling them and half the time he's laughing too hard to finish talking.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gasp}}'': In "Funny Fish", Gasp works on the same joke, telling it over and over in numerous ways, until the pets have to laugh just to get him to stop.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/ReadyJetGo'' episode “[[Recap/ReadyJetGoS2E15MyThreeSunsMagnetPI My Three Suns]]”, Face 9000 takes up comedy, but fails due to not being funny.