Alternative Joke Interpretations in Western Animation.
The Simpsons has its own page.
- Adventure Time: In part one of the Grand Finale "Come Along With Me: The Ultimate Adventure", Uncle Gumbald destroys a lemon (since he couldn't find a banana) to demonstrate the might of his military weapons. Lemongrab's response is to wordlessly hand Princess Bubblegum a piece of paper that says "Unmake me." Was he trying to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here via assisted suicide, so he wouldn't have to fight Gumbald's army? Or was he offering himself up so that Bubblegum could destroy something bigger than an ordinary lemon to prove her might?
- The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Worst," the family is discussing which demographic has it worst, and Nicole describes being a woman as playing a video game without the joystick (or the "stick of happiness," as she calls it before Gumball corrects her). Is she saying that she has no control over her life, or is it a joke about how joysticks look phallic? Or is it both?
- Animaniacs:
- Yakko's teacher asks if he can conjugate and he replies, "Who, me? I've never even kissed a girl!". Does he believe "conjugate" has a dirty meaning because conjugal rights are ones related to sex, or is he confusing it with a sex-related word like "consummate" or "copulate"?
- The Hercule Poirot parody's infamous "fingerprints/finger Prince" exchange was probably intended as a sex joke, but since it happened in the context of a mystery, Dot's "I don't think so" could also be read as her not wanting to blame him for the crime.
- Katie Ka-Boom's shtick is that she's a teenage girl who turns into a monster whenever she's angry, which is a lot. Is this a cartoonish exaggeration of PMS, or is it playing on the stereotype that teenagers, or teenage girls specifically, are moody?
- The theme song has the lyric "There's baloney in our slacks". Is this a pun on "baloney" being slang for "nonsense" and that they're so full of nonsense even their clothes are full of it? Is it saying that they're so crazy that they carry food in their clothes? Or is it because "sausage" is sometimes used as a euphemism for "penis"?
- In "The Pun for Hire", Dot says to the viewer, "This is a zany episode!" after an appearance from Freakazoid!. Does this mean that the whole episode was scripted and Dot was telling the viewers there's more zaniness to come? Was it just a silly line that had no other meaning? Or (considering the line "The writers flipped, we have no script, why bother to rehearse?" in the theme song) was she letting us know that the episode is unscripted so she finds it no less zany than us? Or was more like "Wow, this episode is turning out to be very zany!"?
- Arthur:
- One episode has Francine insult Arthur by telling him to "go eat an ant sandwich". Is this a typical "eat something that isn't food" playground taunt, or is she comparing him to a non-anthropomorphic aardvark?
- In "Arthur's Baby", Arthur is talking about his acquaintances' infancies, and then we see his parents as babies and the infant Mrs. Read says, "Clean your room!", implying that she's always been a Neat Freak (or at least, Arthur thinks she has). Some viewers interpreted her as Breaking the Fourth Wall and telling the viewer to clean their room, while others have thought she was talking to an offscreen character.
- Beavis And Butthead had the title pair go into town during a blackout and end up in the middle of a riot. A pair of looters run past with the television they just stole and Butthead calls out to them. We hear two gunshots and Butthead says "Uh, never mind." Were the looters shot or did they fire the shots as a warning?
- Bluey:
- In "Bingo", Bingo puts together a jigsaw puzzle of a world map, only to find the piece that depicts New Zealand missing. When she tells her father Bandit that "New Zealand is missing", he says, "Not again!". Is this referring to another time the puzzle piece went missing, or is he complaining that many world maps don't depict New Zealand?
- In "The Creek", Mackenzie (an anthropomorphic Border Collie) compares something to jumping on sheep. This was intended
as simply a joke about Border Collies being sheepdogs, but some viewers thought it was a joke about New Zealanders liking sheep too much, since Mackenzie also comes from New Zealand. Some viewers even thought both options were true. - In "Ice Cream", the Heeler sisters' ice creams melt during an argument over whether to share them, leaving them sad. Bandit tells them that they learnt a "valuable life lesson", but the oldest one, Bluey, tries to retort, "But I don't want a valuable life lesson; I just want an ice cream!". However, she mispronounces "life" as "lime" — is this because she doesn't know the actual phrase due to her young age, or is she making a Freudian Slip because she wants ice cream?
- In "The Show", Chilli says that she didn't remember the Queen being at the party where she and Bandit allegedly met, but Bandit replies, "Well, you wouldn't.” Is the joke that Chilli was drunk at the party, or that she just forgot?
- In "Bumpy and the Wise Old Wolfhound", Bandit's character in the amateur play claims to have "bum worms", then when he goes out-of-character, he scratches his butt. Does this mean that he really does have worms, or, seeing as Muffin scratched her butt in the next scene, that the underpants everyone's wearing for the play are itchy and he ad-libbed the "bum worms" line to vent his annoyance at the itch? Stripe later says to Socks, who is biting Bandit's butt, "Be careful, he's got bum worms!" but is this true, or (especially since Bandit and Stripe are brothers) is Stripe just teasing Bandit?
- In "The Sign", Chilli mentions that she and Frisky used to go to a lookout as teens. She says they went there to think, but the line is delivered in a way that suggests she is lying. This was intended as a Shout-Out to an episode of The Simpsons where Homer says he plans on doing some "serious thinking", and Bart says, "I'm sure he meant to say serious drinking", and thus, the implication was that Chilli and Frisky drank at the lookout. Some viewers misinterpreted it, however, and thought it was a reference to smoking (often specifically smoking weed, since being stoned can make you introspective) or that it was a Make-Out Point and Chilli and Frisky went there to kiss and/or have sex, either with each other or their boyfriends.
- The 1947 Classic Disney Short Wide Open Spaces has Donald Duck angrily refuse to pay the then-outrageous price of $16 dollars for a motel room. Decades of inflation since the cartoon's release have rendered that price an absolute steal, so today's viewers are more likely to interpret the gag as Donald being a massive cheapskate.
- Close Enough: At the beginning of "Josh Gets Shredded", Candice tells her father that she watched King Kong at school and that Jack Black was in it. We don't know if she watched the 1933 film (and mistook the ape for Black), or the 2005 remake (which indeed had Black in it).
- DuckTales (1987): In "Duck in the Iron Mask", Launchpad takes offense only to "knaves", the last insult in Ray's list. Is this simply a case of interpreting an unfamiliar word negatively or did Launchpad know what it meant and objected more to a knock on his and the others' character than one on their intelligence?
- The Fairly OddParents!: In "Spaced Out", Cosmo shares Good News, Bad News: the good news is that he found a nickel and named it Philip, but the bad news is that "it's a girl nickel!" While the intent is likely that Cosmo gave it a boy's name that's now unfitting since he found out it was a girl, some have taken it to mean that Cosmo thinks girls are "bad news", which actually would be in-character with some of his other lines (like "Who cares what you think? You're a girl now!" and "You have a perfect civilization! Why would you want to add a woman to it?")
- Family Guy:
- A Cutaway Gag from "Fifteen Minutes of Shame" has Ronald McDonald chiding his daughter for wearing too much makeup for a night out, despite her looking fairly plain. It can be interpreted as either Hypocritical Humor, given who's talking, or implying that the daughter naturally has a clownish complexion and put on makeup to make her skin look normal.
- In the episode "Mr. Saturday Knight" in the scene when the trainees meet the Black Knight and Maid Madeline, the shot of Madeline's cleavage gets the trainees excited, and one-by-one there's a sound of each trainee's...parts hitting against their armor. When the line gets to Mort Goldman, there's a silence, a beat, and Mort awkwardly shouting "Ding!" On the DVD commentary, Seth Macfarlane asks the others in the room, "I forget, was that a small penis joke or an erectile dysfunction joke?" For the record, no one else could remember, either.
- The episode "A Fish Out of Water" introduces the character of Seamus, a grizzled old sailor who has peg-legs for all four of his limbs. When pressed by Quagmire on whether it was the result of some kind of accident, Seamus dryly responds "No, me father was a tree." To this day, fans are still split on whether Seamus was being sarcastic or not, and considering a later episode reveals that even his torso is also wooden, with Peter expressing disbelief on how he's even alive, it probably wouldn't even be that implausible if Seamus was sincere (at least where Rule of Funny is concerned).
- In "Quagmire's Dad", Brian throws up and takes a shower after learning that the woman he slept with, Ida, is Quagmire's trans mother (his father post-transition). Did he react that way because she's trans and he's transphobic (which lines up with other jokes in the episode), or because he hates Quagmire and thus didn't like the idea of sleeping with a parent of his (which lines up with Quagmire beating the crap out of him when he finds out)?
- In "Ready, Willing and Disabled", during the Rolling Courage: The Joe Swanson Story trailer, Peter is briefly shown being played by Bea Arthur. Is this a joke about Arthur's famously husky voice, or was the film so inaccurate they couldn't even get Peter's gender right?
- In "Baby, You Knock Me Out" Peter is drunkenly watching anime and wonders why everyone in the show is either a ten year old girl or a monster. It's a Shallow Parody no matter how you slice it, but is it an All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles joke or is it an "All Anime is Pokemon" joke?
- In The Flintstones, Fred suggests Barney get another head and Barney responds, "What would I need three of them for?". Is the joke that he can't do math and thinks one plus one is three, is he talking about the head of his penis, is it an inside joke about how cartoon characters are measured in heads and he's two heads tall, or is he saying that Betty follows him around so much that her head is like a second head?
- Futurama:
- Before getting frozen, Fry is asked to deliver a pizza to "I.C. Wiener". This is definitely meant to be a Punny Name, but is it on "I see wiener" (because the participants are stripped naked before being frozen) or "Icy wiener" (either because the frozen people are losers/idiots, because their 'wieners' will get frozen with the rest of them, or just as a reference to frozen hot dogs)?
- In the episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", when Melllvar berates the cast of Star Trek for being actors who merely played heroes, Nichelle Nichols responds back by claiming they've done plenty of heroic things — "In the third season, I kissed Shatner!" On the base level, this reads as a crack at her colleague's kissing skills or possibly a reference to the supporting cast finding Shatner arrogant (punctuated by Shatner giving her a rather betrayed look), but this could also be read as a reference to the fact that said kiss (from the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren") was one of the first, highest-profile interracial kisses on TVnote , considered a watershed moment for the depiction of interracial relationships in any form of media for decades to come.
- In the episode "The Sting", Leela, crying after Fry's death, picks up a tissue, rips it in half, and uses just one piece. Is the joke that she's crying so much, she needs to save up on tissues? Or does she only need half a tissue because she only has one eye?
- In "I Second That Emotion", when Nibbler is flushed down the toilet, the crew thinks he's dead. Farnsworth's eulogy says that Nibbler has "gone to a place where I too hope one day to go — the toilet." This is clearly a Toilet Humour joke of some sort, and related to the stereotype that old people ramble about their ailments, but is Farnsworth saying that he's constipated, or that he's incontinent? Or is Farnsworth just expecting them to flush his ashes down the toilet when he dies?
- "Proposition Infinity" has a bit where Hermes is suffering an illness called circus-itis, which makes him turn into a clown. Leela states that she thought circus-itis only affected children, to which Hermes clarifies that the disease affects "children of all ages". Some interpret the joke as Hermes admitting that he's immature at heart, but the joke can also be interpreted as an Exact Words gag (since one after all technically doesn't stop being someone's child upon reaching adulthood and/or outliving one's parents).
- In "A Tale of Two Santas," when Robot Santa asks Bender to help him "save" X-mas, Fry yells "Don't do it! He's evil!" Robot Santa responds with "I know he is." Depending on who you think Fry was talking to, the joke is either that Robot Santa doesn't realise that he's evil, or that Bender is more evil than him.
- In "A Bicyclops Built for Two", Leela dumps Alcazar after finding out that he's a shapeshifting adulterer. She insults him with "If you can change form, why didn't you change it in the one place that counts?!". Is the joke that no matter how many times he changes, he's still a bad person, or that he has a Teeny Weenie?
- In "Bender Should Not be Allowed on Television", Bender mispronounces several Spanish words when putting on an accent. Does he actually not know the pronunciation, or is he pronouncing the words the way he thinks they should be pronounced?
- In "Bender's Game", Zoidberg calls his tentacles his "testicles". Is this actually true, or is he getting it wrong as part of the Running Gag of him being anatomically ignorant and stupid?
- In Green Eggs and Ham (2019), Gluntz tries to use a technique to put The Goat into his happiest place. The Goat quickly screams, "AGH! NO!" in response. Did the technique fail or did Gluntz accidentally trap him in a traumatic memory instead? Or does the somewhat psychotic Goat actually find being in a happy place unpleasant?
- In Gravity Falls, upon seeing a man lying motionless on the floor of a Bad Guy Bar, Mabel says "He's resting". Is that a dead body, or is he just passed out drunk?
- Jackie Chan Adventures: In "The Eighth Door", Tso Lan quips, "Age before beauty" towards Po Kong when the Demon Sorcerers are fighting over each other to escape through the Demon Portal. This can be read one of two ways: it can be read as indicating he deserves to get ahead of Po Kong because he's older than her specifically, or it can be read as him indicating he deserves to be the sole demon who escapes through the portal because he's the oldest of all the imprisoned demon siblings.
- Johnny Bravo: One episode has a primitive tribe sacrifice Johnny to their volcano goddess, who wants virgins. Johnny is rejected almost immediately. Whether this is another joke about how obnoxious he is or an indicator that he's not actually a virgin is debated.
- Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie: In the song "A Message from the Lord", during the end of Jonah's Long List, one of the characters says "This is quite a lot of rules!" This could be interpreted in two ways: it's either an acknowledgement of the massive number of rules mentioned in the song, or a rib-poking reference to how the Old Testament had hundreds of specific rules to follow, in which the New Testament of Christian faith states that the need for those rules is absolved.
- Kamp Koral: In "Sugar Squeeze", Narlene mentions having a "Cousin Grandma". Is this a joke about how she tends to nickname everyone "cousin", including those she is not directly related to, or a joke about Hillbilly Incest?
- When Kim Possible falls in love with Ron Stoppable in the episode "Emotion Sickness", Ron says, "It's not like I haven't thought about this, I mean, who hasn't?" Some thought Ron meant that everyone thought of Ron dating Kim, while others thought he meant that everyone thought of themselves dating Kim.
- The Looney Tunes Show: In "Bugs and Daffy Get a Job," Daffy refers to Bugs brushing his teeth as a little quirk. Is this because Daffy wouldn't need to brush his teeth (being a bird), or does he simply have poor hygiene? Daffy is a Toothy Bird (and his teeth become rather prominent after his beakjob), but they aren't mentioned in the episode.
- In The Loud House:
- In "Washed Up", the boat sputters and Leni blushes, thinking it's one of her bodily noises. But does she think she's gassy, or that her stomach is rumbling? The former would be more embarrassing, but the latter makes more sense when she tries justifying it by saying that she "only" had yogurt for breakfast.
- In "Come Sale Away", Lily's blanket is unaccounted for, so she starts crying and her older siblings, believing they'd sold it, run off to buy it back. However, they're less focused on cheering Lily up and more focused on competing to see who buys the blanket first, then Lily looks at the camera with an unamused face. Is the joke that Lily actually knew all along that her siblings didn't sell her blanket and was feigning sadness to guilt-trip them, or was she genuinely sad but just offended at their Skewed Priorities?
- In "Change of Heart", when Lola gets a scare just before entering the bathroom, she says, "I don't think I need to tinkle after all." Is the joke that she wet her pants, or that she's changed her mind about needing to pee?
- In "Ties That Bind", Rita calls her children "the best ten things that ever happened to [her and her husband Lynn Sr.]". Lynn Sr. says, "There's eleven, honey," and Rita awkwardly says, "Oh, right." Some see this as meaning one of the kids is adopted and the parents are keeping it a secretnote , while others think that Rita was just embarrassed she miscounted and that she miscounted because either A.) there's just so many of them, B.) she accidentally counted the number of times she was pregnant instead of the actual number of kids, since two of them are twins, or C.) she's forgotten that Lily, who at the time was only a year old, has already been born.
- In "Suite and Sour", when Rita and Lynn Sr. remember why they were kicked out of the hotel and decide to wait until their kids are older to tell them, we see them taking off their clothes and jumping into the pool. Were they Skinny Dipping or having sex?
- Martha Speaks: In "Martha's Thanksgiving", Martha (a dog) says that her brother is a Neat Freak and she thinks he's been "spending too much time with cats". Is this a joke about dogs hating cats, or is it about how cats clean themselves a lot?
- The Patrick Star Show: "Now Museum, Now You Don't" has a Badge Gag where Cecil's museum security guard badge has him half covered in syrup. While he's eating pancakes and it's possible he just spilled some, the fact that the syrup is only covering his image and not anywhere else on the badge could imply that he actually was covered in it when he got the photo taken.
- The Penguins of Madagascar: Kowalski questions how Marlene could talk to Skipper through the radio in "Best Laid Plantains". The most obvious interpretation is that Kowalski is simply lampshading how is this possible. However, if one pulls Shipping Goggles, the fact that Marlene is the only animal besides the penguins that Skipper has contact through the radio, that Skipper isn't weirded out by this and dodges the question immediately when Kowalski asks it and it was planned to be the last message Marlene would leave before skipping town and never coming back, the joke could be hintting at something else.
- The Real Ghostbusters:
- At the end of "Elementary, My Dear Winston", an apparition of Sherlock Holmes poorly plays the main theme on the violin while imprisoned in the containment unit, and the other inmates yell at him to stop. Is it because his music was bad, or because he was playing the Ghostbusters theme?
- In "Chicken, He Clucked", as the demon Morganon leaves, he tells the Ghostbusters that he'll see one of them again, which Ray, Egon, and Winston assume is Peter. Is Morganon saying that he'll see the other Ghostbuster in Hell, and the others assuming it was Peter was in reference to him being told to "burn in Hell" in the first movie? Or is the implication that Peter made a deal with Morganon offscreen?
- In "Spacebusters", Winston says that "unfortunately", his bed is downwind of Peter's. Is the joke that Peter farts in his sleep, that he has bad breath, or that he just smells bad in general?
- In Rick and Morty Rick describes a Fantastic Slur as being "if the N-word and the C-word had a baby, and it was raised by every bad word for 'Jew'". Is the "C word" a certain slur used against Chinese people, or Country Matters?
- Rudolph's Shiny New Year: Rudolph visits 1965 in his search for Happy, but he says the island "was too noisy". Among the events that defined 1965 were rock music from bands such as The Beatles (not to mention girls going crazy for those bands) and Vietnam War protests, so what Rudolph encountered there is widely left open for the viewer. Given that it's the most recent year mentioned, it could just be a joke on modernity.
- Rugrats:
- In the episode "The Smell of Success", Chuckie gets a blocked nose and it's so bad that he forgets what things smell like. When he gets his sense of smell back, he observes that Phil and Lil smell bad and Tommy says, "You'll get used to it." Some people think that it means Phil and Lil always smell bad because they play in the mud and trash but other people think that it just means they need to be changed.
- In "Naked Tommy", the babies are walking around naked and Didi thinks she and the other grownups should let them be as it's likely just a phase, while Betty thinks they should make them keep their clothes on. At one point, Betty tells Didi that "the 60's are over and we lost". Does that mean that in their youth, Didi and Betty tried to be hippies, or nudists?
- In "Chuckie vs. the Potty", Lou says that it took so long for him to potty train Stu that he nearly didn't get him into the boy scouts. Is this true, is Lou making it up, or was Stu simply a bed wetter?
- In "Hand-Me-Downs", Angelica messes with the babies by lying that giving away hand-me-downs makes you disappear. At the end of the episode, she screams upon learning that she herself will need to give away hand-me-downs. There's lots of debate (even edit wars on the Rugrats wiki) over whether she screamed because she now genuinely thinks she'd disappear, or (because she's a Spoiled Brat) she's just being greedy and screaming because she doesn't want to give anything of hers away.
- At the end of "The Case of the Missing Rugrat", the wealthy women who had taken Tommy bid him goodbye, addressing him as "Botswick", which is the name of a guy in their painting. He then makes a posh expression — is he implying that he enjoyed being in the lap of luxury, or is he imitating the painting of Botswick?
- In Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Aquaman asking Batman if he lost another Robin depends on which Robin he's talking about: either Dick Grayson (who has become Nightwing) or Jason Todd (which depends on if his death is carried out like in the comics)
- Sonic Boom: "Mombot" has Eggman say "I've done what no other scientist has ever been able to do", to which Cubot replies "Prove climate change is real?" Were the writers taking a jab at climate scientists, or did Cubot say this because he's stupid and/or evil?
- South Park: In "Jared Has Aides", Chef says that every women he's married has gotten fat. Is it because he's a chef and he feeds them a lot, or is it implying that he impregnates them?
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- In "Pickles", Squidward abruptly stops writing down Bubble Bass' order and tells him "we serve food here, sir". Was Squidward unable to continue following the Hash House Lingo Bubble Bass used, or was he being judgemental about his order (which if followed right would result in an absurdly unhealthy and generally absurd Dagwood Sandwich)?
- In "Hooky", Squidward gets out of doing work by quickly proclaiming "wastebasket inspection". He puts a wastebasket on his head and says "uh-huh, there's one..." Is the inspection checking for wastebaskets, or is he referring to something he saw inside that should or shouldn't be there?
- In "Club SpongeBob", SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward have a toy conch shell that has a pull-string that can only say "yes" or "no". However, it seems to only say yes to SpongeBob and Patrick, and only say no to Squidward. Is it because Squidward just has terrible luck, or is it sentient and offended at him calling it "just a toy" earlier (or just hates Squidward)?
- In "My Pretty Seahorse", two fish mistake SpongeBob's new seahorse for a kiddie ride, and one of them ends up being kicked into the distance after trying to put a quarter in her "coin slot". Did he try to stick the coin into her anus, or (since she's female) a certain other hole?
- In "Ghoul Fools", Patrick asks a ghost pirate for some pizza. He gives it to SpongeBob and Patrick, only it's covered in living, talking anchovies. SpongeBob and Patrick scream in horror. Is it because the anchovies are alive and they're expected to eat them, or is it a more of a Faux Horrific joke about anchovies being an unpopular pizza topping?
- "Ghoul Fools" also contains a gag where Squidward is convinced to look for pirate treasure because, with the money, Krabs can buy him "that break room he's always whining about." Cue a brief Imagine Spot of Squidward sitting in a small room and microwaving popcorn. Is the gag that this is an incredibly mundane reason for him to go, that Krabs needs to steal a chest of ancient pirate gold just for a small room with little furnishing, or that Squidward's such a lazy worker (to the point of regularly sleeping on the job) that he wouldn't even need a break room in the first place?
- In "What's Eating Patrick?", when Patrick wants to back out of the eating competition, Krabs threatens to make him pay for all the patties he ate during training, and pulls out a long bill. Is the joke that Patrick is a Big Eater, or that Krabs is cheap and charged a lot for each patty?
- In "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V", after Barnacle Boy's turn to the good side, Mermaid Man says "Good to have you back, Kyle!" Is this implying that Kyle is Barnacle Boy's real name, or is it just Mermaid Man being senile? "Mermaid Man Begins" later says his name is Tim.
- In "Walking Small", after hogging all the sun at the beach, SpongeBob's skin is covered completely brown. Plankton asks "Is that an all-over tan?", and SpongeBob says, "Well, not all of me!" Either it means that only what's covered by his swim trunks (like his butt) didn't get tanned, or he's being Literal-Minded and referring to something silly like his insides not getting tanned either.
- In "Something Narwhal This Way Comes", Mrs. Puff's Boating School is renovated into a mule-riding school. We see an outhouse with a single toilet labeled "Hillfolk Gas Station". The squicky interpretation of this is that people are feeding mules their excrement, but another is that a hillbilly gas station would be just a bathroom since they don't drive cars and have no use for gas anyways.
- In "Karen for Spot", SpongeBob and Karen have disgusting-looking chum for dinner. SpongeBob, disturbed, says that he doesn't really eat chum. Karen swats hers away and says, "Neither do I!" Is she just turning it down because it's gross, or is it because she's a computer and doesn't need to eat anyways?
- In "The Algae's Always Greener", Plankton complains about being served holographic meatloaf again. Did Karen serve him holographic meatloaf because some kinds of plankton can feed on light, or because she's an AI and thus doesn't know how to cook real food?
- "Born Again Krabs" has a Double Subversion of Ambulance Cut — Mr. Krabs goes to eat an expired patty, then an ambulance drives by... but then Mr. Krabs just says, "Oh, look! An ambulance!". He then takes a bite, and then an ambulance does take him to the hospital. Was the first ambulance a completely unrelated ambulance, was it the same ambulance driving past for something unrelated and picking up Krabs along the way when he got sick, or was it the same ambulance, and the paramedics somehow knew that Krabs would eat the expired patty and get sick from it?
- In "The Two Faces of Squidward", a woman declares, "Handsome!" and then collapses with a groan, to which Squidward asks, "What did she call me?", and SpongeBob replies, "Handsome, but I think she spelled it wrong." Is it an inside joke because the script writer misspelled "handsome", was it just a Non Sequitur, is it because the "D" in "handsome" is silent, is he treating the groan as part of the word and saying she mispronounced it, does SpongeBob think the woman thinks Handsome is Squidward's name, is it the old "you spelled ugly wrong" joke, or is he saying she wasn't emphatic enough?
- In "Sailor Mouth", Mr Krabs's mom is seemingly caught swearing, only for her to reveal the censor honk was an actual car horn. Is this just a fourth wall breaking gag, or does it mean that all the various "censor" noises are actually the swear words?
- In "That's No Lady", is Squidward's shocked reaction when Patrick reveals the truth because he realized he was attracted to a guy or is it actually because was hitting on Patrick specifically, a neighbor who has annoyed and harassed him for years? Given how Squidward has shown some attraction to men in the past, particularly Squilliam, the latter interpretation actually has some credence.
- In the Steven Universe crossover episode with Uncle Grandpa "Say Uncle", after Pearl points out that Steven's "Uncle Grandpa" would be Greg's father and brother, Garnet notes, "That would explain a lot." While supervising director Ian Jones-Quartey claimed Garnet simply meant that Uncle Grandpa being a relative of Greg would explain Uncle Grandpa's wackiness, a lot of viewers interpreted it as Garnet implying that Greg is inbred.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): In "The Big Blowout" when Bebop convinces Rocksteady to save the world so his mother can live, Steranko has a Imagine Spot where he's standing behind a woman holding a Russian flag and a baby. Does that woman was a personification of Russia, and Rocksteady is such a patriot that it calls his home country "mother"? Or that woman really is Steranko's mother? Or both of this guesses are somehow true, and Steranko mother is as patriotic as her son, explaining why she holds Russia flag?
- What A Cartoon! Show: In "Podunk Possum in One Step Beyond", Podunk's chickens freak out when some mysterious federal agents knock at the door, shouting "It's the government!", and Podunk replies "The government? That's a fairy-tale!" Is he saying The Men in Black don't exist, or the U.S. government doesn't exist?
