Instances of Actually Pretty Funny in literature.
- Accidental Detectives: Ricky and his friends' pranks, deliberate or otherwise, towards each other can inspire this. Notably, in The Disappearing Jewel of Madagascar after Ricky accidentally mixes in some real worms with fake licorice ones Mike was eating for a carnival.Mike paused "Unfortunately, this puts you one trick up on me. And you know how long it's going to be before I find this the slightest bit funny?" I shook my head. Something hard to do with someone's hands around your neck. "At least five more seconds" he muttered. Then Mike sat down and howled with laughter.
- Anastasia Krupnik: In the introduction to an edition, author Lois Lowry describes a time when she visited a traditional Catholic school to do a reading from the book. She read the section where Anastasia considers converting to Catholicism (and has some funny, over-simplified ideas about how that religion works). Lowry mentions that at first the students were nervous that they might get in trouble if they laughed, but after a while they stopped worrying about that because the nuns themselves were bent over laughing.
- Angela Nicely: In “Tiger Trouble!”, Laura dresses as a tiger upon Angela and Maisie’s request so that she can pretend to be scared away by Miss Darling and Miss Darling can win Teacher of the Year. However, Miss Boot isn’t fooled and Laura is made to reveal herself in front of both her and Miss Darling. When the girls explain what they did, Miss Darling tries to look stern, but at the same time tries not to laugh.
- Anne of Green Gables:
- After Anne has told off Rachel Lynde for calling her a homely, freckled carrot-top. Marilla gives her a talking-to and makes her apologize, but she feels guilty about wanting to laugh (which may be why she fails to object when part of Anne's apology is "What I said about you was true, too - but I shouldn't have said it.").
- Also notable is the incident where Anne breaks her slate over Gilbert Blythe's head in school. Marilla initially scolds her but it's obvious she found it funny - she decides Anne gets to stay at Green Gables immediately after.
- One adaptation displays this with this particular scene. When Marilla is taking to Anne about it, she asks if Anne smashed the slate over his head hard - and smirks when Anne says "very hard, I'm afraid".
- This bit from Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex:Orion: Oh, I'm crazy, all right. I do have plenty of psychoses. Multiple personality disorder, delusional dementia, OCD. I've got them all, but most of all, I'm crazy about you.
Foaly: That's not a bad line. He is definitely not Artemis.- In the Artemis Fowl Files, one story features Holly Short undertaking a training mission with Julius Root and Trouble Kelp, the goal being to tag Root with a paint gun to pass. After some unanticipated issues with Turnball Root holding Julius Root and Kelp hostage, Julius is berating Holly for her actions in saving them. Her response is to peg Julius three times at point blank, citing his exact phrasing of the challenge. Kelp laughs uproariously at this.
- Turns up several times in A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away, mostly to new English teacher Raymond Ash. Best example? He'd set his class a short essay on A Midsummer Night's Dream, and they'd been busy beavering away at it all lesson. When he collects them in at the end of the lesson, every single student hands in a crudely drawn cartoon penis, complete with ejaculate. Ray was desperately trying not to show how hysterical he found that, while thinking it wouldn't be the last time he'd set an assignment and receive a pile of wank.
- The Callista Trilogy: When Durga learns that one of his top subordinates is an incompetent imposter who has spent months lying to his face and getting away with it, he can't help but chuckle after hearing about some of the man's past gaffes, and admits it's his own fault for not doing a background check on the guy after first hiring him.
- A Chorus of Dragons: When Kihrin meets Lady Alshen D'Mon, she introduces herself as his stepmother and his birth father's wife. He mutters "my condolences" under his breath in reply, and is surprised when she finds that worth a laugh.
- Sara Bergmark Elfgren and Mats Strandberg's The Circle (2011): When the circle meets in Linnéa's flat, Linnéa can't help snickering at Ida's first comment:Pretty cozy ... if you're a serial killer, that is.
- "Clockpunk and the Vitalizer" features villain The Vitalizer letting out a small chuckle upon realizing he's been beat.
- Cradle Series: In the last book, Mercy tells her mother Akura Malice, the Queen of Shadows and one of the most powerful people in the world, that she sounds evil. Not as a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, just that she sounds silly. Malice can't help but laugh and admit she went overboard.Mercy: Are you listening to yourself? "I should have taught you a more lasting lesson," "You should have begged for my forgiveness," talking about how no one should stand up to you... Mother, I feel like you're going to toss me into an active volcano. I'm afraid the next words out of your mouth are going to be "Guards, seize her!"
- Curious George: Towards the end of Curious George Goes to the Hospital, the curious little monkey climbs aboard a go-cart that a boy in a cast has been using and can't resist taking it for a spin. He loses control, crashes headlong into a food cart, and ends up thrown directly into the arms of the visiting city mayor. After an initial shock, a little girl named Betsy—who had been suffering severe depression—begins to laugh, which inspires the other staff members, and even the mayor himself, to start laughing too. George fears he'll get in trouble, but after Betsy thanks him with a smile, the head of the hospital tells him that while he did make a mess, he also managed to make Betsy happy again — which none of them could do — so they let the matter go.
- There's some sort of variation in the book Deadline by Chris Crutcher. The main character gets into an argument with the teacher about his school project. His teacher ends up saying "I think now's a good time to take your leave, Mr. Wolf." This causes his brother to stand up and say "Okay, but I don't see what I did." Even someone who hated his brother thought it was funny, but the teacher's opinion was never directly stated.
- In the fourth book of The Demon Princes, the villainous Lens Larque has been given the cold shoulder by a bunch of racist snobs on a certain planet. He has accordingly come up with a plan to etch his face on the planet's moon so that they'd have to look at him forever. Just before he can execute this plan, he's killed for unrelated revenge reasons by the novel's protagonist, Gersen. Since Gersen has also suffered similar humiliation at the hands of the planet's citizens, he decides to carry out Larque's plan anyway, as it seems to him like a very amusing comeuppance (although he allows Larque to die disappointed in the belief that it will not be done).
- Discworld:
- In Unseen Academicals, the Comically Serious orc Mr. Nutt prepares to help the remnants of the Evil Empire's orc armies, who were magically engineered and driven into battle. When his mistress instructs him to "teach them civilization," he cracks up The Stoic Vetinari by asking, "And who would you send to teach the humans?"
- In Feet of Clay, Vetinari tries to feign disapproval of all the trouble Vimes caused (even though he wanted Vimes to cause trouble), but it's particularly unconvincing since he's apparently struggling to keep a straight face at Vimes' smart-ass replies.
- In Chapter 9 of Dream of the Red Chamber, Jia Zheng, Bao Yu's father, questioned Li Gui, a servant, about what Bao Yu had been learning in class, and spoke of punishing him for allowing Bao Yu to neglect his studies. Li Gui nervously reported that Bao Yu was in the middle of learning the third volume of Shi Jing (Odes of Poetry) and quoted a line. But he messed up the second half of the line really badly. Everyone present laughed, even Jia Zheng who couldn't help himself.
- The Dresden Files:
- In Death Masks Harry gets apocalypse-averting information from Quintus Cassius by mercilessly beating him with a baseball bat. After getting the info, Harry gives the broken mess a quarter and directs him to the nearest payphone so he can drag himself there and call an ambulance. Afterwards, Michael remonstrates with Harry over how Cold-Blooded Torture is wrong, even though they were in a textbook "ticking bomb scenario" and the victim was an openly unrepentant mass-murderer even without the Fallen Angel pushing him to commit evil. When it becomes clear that Harry has accepted the condemnation to some extent (he feels bad about having to do it, though he still holds that it was the right decision under the circumstances,) Michael can't help but think how much he enjoyed the look on Cassius' face when he realised Harry was not the sort of Incorruptible Pure Pureness who would let him go, and he laughs even more when it's pointed out that nowadays, a quarter isn't enough to use a payphone.
- In Dead Beat Marcone orders Gard to rescue Harry from the ghoul Li Xian, over her objection that Harry is fated to die in that alley. Marcone found Harry's sympathetic comment amusing enough to almost smile:Gard: Hubris. Mortals never understand.
Harry: Tell me about it. Everyone makes that mistake but me. - In White Night Harry is engaged in a duel in front of the assembled White Court of vampires. He manages to get a laugh from a bunch of them (the faction that stands to benefit if he wins) when he knocks his opponent into the audience and declares the resulting kerfuffle "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you bowling for vampires!" Unusually, this actually creeps him out more than anything else.
- In Small Favor, Harry manages to evade an otherwise-unstoppable, if reluctant, Summer Court hitman... by cashing in his big favor to ask him for a donutnote . In the next book we find that the entire Summer Court has been laughing about the incident for months.
- In the tense standoff with said hitman, the hitman asks Harry what Mab is really up to. Harry just shrugs and responds that he is still trying to figure out human women, and Fae women are way beyond what he could hope to comprehend. The hitman bursts out laughing and the situation is defused.
- In Turn Coat, Morgan recounts when he had to deal with a Skinwalker, an immortal, incredibly powerful shapeshifting bag of evil from the American west. He says he got rid of it by luring it into a nuclear testing site and popping into the Nevernever as the bomb went off. Harry's response is to stare at him a moment before admitting that's actually really cool.
- Another one from Turn Coat has Rashid, the Gatekeeper, confronting Dresden about the latter's presence at a number of world-shakingly important events in recent years and asking him if he doesn't have some secret master plan going on behind the scenes. In response, Dresden just points at his own head (which is swathed in bandages) and says "Dude." The Gatekeeper, who up til this point has been The Stoic, promptly breaks down laughing.
- In Cold Days Harry must meet with Queen Titania, Queen of the Summer Court, and who has a deep hatred for Harry because he murdered her daughter with iron to save the world - she knows it was necessary, but... it was still her daughter. Even with that baggage hanging over their meeting, she nearly smiles when Harry gives an honest but snarky answer when she asks him what Mab, her sister and Queen of the Winter Court and mortal enemy, believes in. Flashy entrances.
- Basically Dresden's speciality is getting The Comically Serious, the Physical God, and even the occasional villain to crack a grin. If he fails, it's because Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor.
- Dungeon Crawler Carl: Carl does manage to get a laugh out of one guard after he remotely stabs a Naga with a pen for getting in his face and making threats, but another guard quickly silences him.Carl: Come on. You have to admit, that was pretty awesome.
- The Fairly OddParents! chapter book "Timmy Turner, Action Hero!" ended with Tootie throwing a water balloon at Timmy. Unlike the episode the book is a novelization of, he ends up laughing with everyone else.
- In the Father Brown story "The Blast of the Book", when the whole thing turns out to be a practical joke at the expense of the occult investigator, he not only laughs, but acknowledges that it's taught him a lesson.
- The Hardy Boys: One Undercover Brothers book features a hotel employee who does stand-up comedy mocking the unsatisfiable customers he has to deal with. Two of those customers are in the audience for one of his shows and can't help but laugh themselves silly.
- Harry Potter:
- In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry doesn't mind Fred and George endlessly mocking him for supposedly being the heir of Slytherin - he's actually glad that at least they're obviously not taking the rumors seriously.
- The twins finally get their mother to crack in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where she's accusing them of doing something wrong. Fred says "suppose the Hogwarts Express crashed tomorrow and we died, how would you feel knowing the last thing we ever heard from you was an unfounded accusation" - the narration says even Molly couldn't help but laugh at it.
- In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry makes a joke about Madame Pince the librarian being secretly in love with Filch the caretaker. Hermione sarcastically says "ha ha" at first but when they get back to Gryffindor Tower, they've apparently been giggling about the idea for a while.
- When Harry tests the Levicorpus spell on Ron one morning, abruptly waking him up, Ron is appropriately freaked out at first. Once Harry gets him down and explains what happened, Ron finds the whole thing amusing.
- Decades before the series started, Voldemort applied to be made the school's Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher to help prepare for his rise to power. When Dumbledore (predictably) said no, Voldemort put a curse on the position out of spite, and ever since no Defence Against The Dark Arts professor has lasted more than one year. After a few decades, Dumbledore admits he's come to find the series' Running Gag to be darkly amusing.
- Help I Am Being Held Prisoner: Everyone in the group of prisoners, except maybe Phil, is amused once the truth about Harry being the practical joker who was sabotaging them comes out.
- The Hunger Games:
- In The Hunger Games: Effie after Katniss described the Gamemakers' reaction to her firing at the apple in their roast pig's mouth. While everyone else (Katniss, Haymitch, Peeta, Cinna, and Portia) is laughing outright, Effie is suppressing a smile. After that she agrees that the Gamemakers did deserve that.
- In Mockingjay: After Katniss kills the last enemy of the war - Coin. Snow, despite knowing he's about to die as well, cracks up laughing.
- I Funny: Even though Jamie regrets making fun of his friends and Uncle Frankie in the second round, they forgive him since his comedy allows them to laugh at themselves. As Uncle Frankie tells him, being able to laugh at himself keeps him young.
- In the Fandom Nod chapter of Jo's Boys (third book in the Little Women trilogy), "Jo's Last Scrape", Ted Bhaer's response to the reporter who showed up at Plumfield's door uninvited:Reporter: If you could tell me Mrs. Bhaer's age and birthplace, date of marriage, and number of children, I should be much obliged.
Ted Bhaer: She is about sixty, born in Nova Zembla, married just forty years ago today, and has eleven daughters. Anything else, sir?- And Ted's sober face was such a funny contrast to his ridiculous reply that the reporter owned himself routed, and retired laughing.
- William Johnstone westerns often have the bad guy or a henchmen feel this about some bold and/or humiliating trick pulled by The Guile Hero in the build up to the final showdown. Two examples (both of which followed a Heel–Face Turn) come in the books Gunsight Crossing and War of the Mountain Man. The first has gunmen Pen Masters and Bam Ford barely being able to keep from laughing after the good guys steal the whole town that the Cattle Baron they work for owned (none of the buildings had any real foundation so they were just hoisted up into wagons and spirited off) and mockingly repeat the claim by the good guys it was done by a tornado. In the second, when Smoke Jensen forces a group of henchmen (at gunpoint) to clean all of the windows they dirtied galloping into town, one, Pete Akins, takes a little humor in the situation.
- In Junie B. Jones Has a Peep in Her Pocket, Junie B. is hot-and-bothered about an upcoming school field trip to a farm because she's scared of ponies. Reason? An unscrupulous babysitter let her watch a cable television program titled When Ponies Attack. Junie B.'s mother is not amused and wishes she would get over it, but when the father hears the title of the program covers his face, then bursts out in loud hoots of laughter, leading the mother to sarcastically comment that he's being a huge help. He ducks out of the room for what Junie B. calls a "time-out" and when he comes back apologizes to her, saying the show she saw was so ridiculous, he couldn't help it.
- Keeper of the Lost Cities: In Flashback, when Sophie tells Keefe about Silveny being stubborn and evasive and he points out that that sounds like Sophie herself, Sophie admits that he's on the mark."Still being weirdly stubborn," Sophie corrected. "I'm worried she's hiding something. But I'm hoping I can wear her down."
Keefe laughed. "Sounds like what I'm always saying about you."
"Oh—that was a good one!" Ro said, raising her hand for a high five.
"It was," Sophie had to admit. - The Last Hurrah: Meta-example. Mayor James Michael Curley, who was the real-life basis for the main character, crooked machine politician Frank Skeffington, was supposedly asked what his favorite part of the book was. He is said to have replied "The part where I die!"
- The Long Way to A Small, Angry Planet: At some point before Rosemary was hired, Jenks stole Corbin's scrib and replaced his lab notes with over three hundred pictures of Jenks completely nude. He didn't say it to Corbin's face, but Captain Ashby thought it was really funny (especially the one with the flag).
- In Lord of the Flies, Jack does an impersonation of Piggy in the middle of a heated argument with Ralph. Ralph couldn't help but smile, much to his chagrin.
- In The Lord of the Rings:
- Farmer Maggot recounts that he met the Ringwraith Khamûl the Easterling, and, not knowing who this mysterious cloaked stranger was, just told him to get off his property before he called the dogs. Khamûl then let out a hiss that might have been a laugh, and left—presumably, the Ringwraith was so amused by the sheer gall of a farmer threatening a Nazgûl and one-time king that he decided to let him live.
- Frodo meets Gildor, an elf, as he travels out of the Shire. Concerned about Gandalf not meeting up with him, he asks Gildor whether he thinks it would be wise to wait for Gandalf or go on without him. Gildor replies that this is a concerning course of events, and the choice lies with Frodo alone. Exasperated, Frodo declares: "It is also said: Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes." Gildor cracks up at this.
- Lumbanico, the Cubic Planet: When Risperim finds out that the kids exploited his own biases and prejudices to fool him completely, he...starts laughing, admits the children are very clever, and calls himself "an old fool".
- Macdonald Hall:
- He tries to hide it, but Headmaster Sturgeon finds many of the boys' pranks and schemes amusing, especially when they target his Sit Com Archnemesis Ms. Scrimmage. He frequently laughs about them behind closed doors.
- In The War with Mr. Wizzle, Ms. Peabody's Worthy Opponent dynamics with Cathy cause her to take plenty of amusement from some of Cathy's antics (such as sending Mrs. Peabody a fake job offer asking her to move to Siberia).
- The Malloreon: The chief elder of an assassin society forcibly recruits Sadi as an agent and allows him whatever spending money he can hold in his hands. Sadi complains of an illness and asks that his servant carry the money instead... cue The Big Guy Toth scooping up a bucket's worth of gold in his hands. Jaharb laughs, compliments his agile mind, and muses that he might survive to spend it.
- The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds: In the "Skin Deep" story, Stephen has been cornered by an assassin who has been ordered to kill him, since his actions have made her parent company increasingly unstable, and they are convinced that he will stop at nothing to destroy them. Then she gets a call informing her that with all the bad publicity, the company's stock price dropped enough that Stephen was able to buy a majority share, nominate himself president, and gain immediate authority over her. The assassin finds this hilarious.
- Marvel's Spider-Man: Hostile Takeover: When Spider-Man tries talking Echo down, he remarks on how inconveniently enormous Fisk's hands are, going on a tangent about how he could unwrap a stick of gum with hands "like bowling balls made out of ham." Despite herself, she laughs at this.
- In Oryx and Crake, Jimmy is shocked when he hears that MaddAddam have been genetically engineering mice that eat electrical insulation, parasitic wasps that spread disease, asphalt-destroying microbes, etc., but when he hears about the neon-coloured herpes, he thinks it's "pretty funny".
- Rai Kirah: Seyonne demonstrates his penmanship by writing generic praises to his master, the cruel Prince Aleksander. Aleksander's reaction is the first sign that he's anything more than The Evil Prince.Aleksander: Not very original.
Seyonne: But safe.
Aleksander: [pauses, then breaks out laughing and gives him a Smack on the Back] Indeed! - Roys Bedoys: Roys is initially angry when a seagull poops on him in “Let’s Go on a Road Trip, Roys Bedoys!”, but he later sees the funny side of it and asks for a photo of it.
- The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong: When Su Xiyan runs into Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang again, she tells the former that he still owes her twenty silver from last time they met. Tianlang-Jun flirts and says that he can repay her by offering a service which she declines, stating that he clearly has no idea how to function and do normal tasks. But when he asks if his face alone wasn't worth twenty silver, she actually pauses before seemingly trying to hide a smile as she agrees.
- One of the Soup books opens with Rob bringing a note home saying he made a rude remark to the school nurse. She had asked him "Did your bowels move today?" and, in accordance with a lesson earlier that chapter, he answered "Yes, thank you. Did yours?"note Once he confesses that he and Soup drew straws to see who would ask, his mother gives him only a halfhearted whipping.
- In The Thick of It book The Missing Do SAC Files, this is revealed to be the reason why Malcolm Tucker gets away with the wider media despite being The Dreaded and The Svengali - the show itself holds to Tough Room, but apparently the UK media considers his amazing verbal fluency and pitch-black sense of humour to be hilarious. One instance of this is a newspaper magazine interview in which the journalist admits he's terrified by the thought of meeting him, and was completely disarmed to discover how funny he is. Another instance of this is a very stupid suggestion from a BBC commissioner for Malcolm to run a chat show in which he can "give celebrities a bollocking".
- The Eric Flint book Time Spike is a Time Travel story where a maximum security prison is sent back to ancient times. By the end of the book, the surviving prisoners who are deemed too dangerous to parole remain locked up and rely on the natives' crops to feed them. In order to get those crops, one of the main characters spreads a rumor that the prisoners are demons who need to be placated with food. Some of the prisoners find this funny and put on a big show during food deliveries.
- This trope ended up saving the lives of the Winged Monkeys in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The tribe initially lived in a forest near the palace of Gayelette, a powerful sorceress and princess who chose a man named Quelala to be her husband. The King of the Winged Monkeys, who is stated to have "loved a joke better than a good dinner," once saw Quelala out for a walk and decided to play a prank on him by commanding the apes to scoop him up and dump him in a nearby river, after which he swam out. The furious Gayelette tried to punish the Winged Monkeys by giving them the same treatment—binding their wings and being thrown into the river—which would have surely killed them all...save for the fact that Quelala himself thought the joke was hilarious ("he was not in the least spoiled by all his good fortune") and spoke on their behalf, which (along with the King's pleading) convinced the sorceress not to go through with the execution. Instead, she magically bound them to follow the commands of the wearer of the Golden Cap, her wedding present to Quelala; the Winged Monkeys hastily agreed to the deal, and the rest was history.
- In Worth the Candle, Juniper Smith is knocked out and captured by a magical pipe after being drawn into a game of "dumbest magical artifact names". When he wakes up, he realises it was called a "pipe dream" and laughs.
