Corpsing in live-action TV, titles Q-Z.
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R
- Red Dwarf: At the end of the episode "Backwards", just before they take off at the end, Cat goes behind a bush to do his business, before realising that, on a planet where everything happens in reverse, his droppings would go into him. As a result of the face
◊ and walk that Danny John-Jules was using, both Chris Barrie and Craig Charles were finding it hard to keep straight faces. - The Rise of Phoenixes: Zhi Wei starts to giggle for no reason as Ning Yi talks about the dinner at the Crown Prince's palace.
- Happens a few times during Roseanne, usually thanks to Laurie Metcalf. One instance comes during the episode where Roseanne and Jackie's father dies, and Jackie is forced to call their extremely old and deaf Auntie Barbara and break the news to her. It goes about as well as expected ("HE'S FINE. HE SENDS HIS LOVE."), and Roseanne hangs her head at one point to hide her face, though her shoulders shake visibly.
- Another episode has Roseanne, Dan, and Jackie smoking some old pot they found. Cut to Roseanne and Dan in the bathroom, stoned out of their gourds, when suddenly Jackie speaks up from behind the shower curtain. Repeated a few seconds later when Jackie goes off on an emotionless rant about how her life sucks and holds up a joint: "It's just me. Just me and my ganja." Cue Roseanne and Dan cracking up. Fortunately it fit the situation enough to keep the take.
- Roseanne eventually gets Laurie back. In one episode, Roseanne is punishing D.J. for lying to her and skipping school, which entails walking him to school while wearing a fabulously embarrassing outfit, and kissing him goodbye in front of all of his friends. In preparation for the smooch, she applies what is probably 30 coats of lipstick, and you can hear Laurie Metcalf absolutely losing it in the background.
- See also the episode in which D.J. gets his head stuck in a drawer, and has to be freed with salad dressing. Roseanne and Laurie both corpse, avoid eye contact, take a deep breath, and Roseanne nails her punchline: "He's GIFTED, Jackie."
- Also the episode where Jackie gives birth and she and Roseanne are discussing mucus plug while working at the restaurant (don't ask) and Leon chides them about being gross and then asks Roseanne "Why not use one of the hamburger buns to loofah your butt?", which causes both women to begin to laugh and making little effort to hide their laughter.
- Very frequently on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, and it usually got left in (much like what would happen on SNL years later). Most spectacularly when Dan Rowan was playing a Mexican and Sammy Davis Jr. cracked up laughing, saying "That's the worst accent I've ever heard!" then got back into character and carried on with the skit.
S
- In the Scorpion Christmas Episode "Dam Breakthrough", the Toby/Cabe/Happy Helium Speech rendition of the chorus from "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" is capped by Jadyn Wong's cracking up at the end (made even funnier by Happy being the most sardonic of the regulars).
- Seinfeld:
- Julia Louis-Dreyfus was heavily prone to corpsing based on the out-takes, Jerry almost as bad, with Jason Alexander occasionally breaking. Michael Richards, on the other hand, is practically immune and pretty much never breaks first, and is extremely focused on getting his lines out, while playing the hardest character on the show, and he gets quite frustrated with the other members of the cast.
- After getting stuck in a parking garage in "The Parking Garage", the car refuses to start. You can see Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus cracking up inside. This is because the car failing to start was unplanned, but, seeing how funny the scene turned out to be, the producers figured to keep the scene in the episode.
- This trope is also seen in "The Contest" with Elaine after George explains how his mother ends up in the hospital (hint: she caught him masturbating). Staying in character, Jason Alexander (as George) ad-libbed, "It's not funny, Elaine. She's in traction," making Julia (as Elaine) laugh even more.
- The penultimate scene in "The Little Kicks" had Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jerry Stiller arguing in a police station. Stiller made her laugh so many times that the crew was starting to think they'd be there all night by the time they got it done.
- In "The Library", any scene with Jerry and Detective Bookman results in Jerry visibly trying not to laugh at Philip Baker Hall's deadpan delivery.
- Look closely at Jason Alexander in the scene in "The Merv Griffin Show" where Kramer "takes a break" by munching a handful of chips and taking a sip of Diet Coke. It's Michael Richards' little burp that sets him off.
- Shaun Micallef of Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell is prone to this, both when delivering his own jokes (a standout example is a Bait-and-Switch Comparison between Prime Minister Tony Abbott and a ventriloquist's dummy), and when performing opposite Stephen Hall as Darius Horsham.
- From the December 19, 1992 episode of Siskel & Ebert: Roger Ebert actually started laughing while describing the plot of Forever Young because he found it so ludicrous. As the film was not a comedy, this was a total insult on Ebert's part.
- In one episode of Sliders, Professor Arturo gets more and more irritated at being mistaken for Luciano Pavarotti, until he finally loses it. In the scene in which he grabs someone by the shirt to deliver a rant on the subject, Jerry O'Connell can be seen in the background not even bothering to hide his laughter.
- All the time in Smallville judging from the special features videos. Allison Mack (Chloe Sullivan) especially mentions a kissing scene in which Tom Welling (Clark Kent) would keep bursting out in laughter and they had to do it over and over again.
- During taping of the Small Wonder episode "Runaway Jamie", Tiffany Brissette supposedly laughed spontaneously when, as Vicki, she had to be lying inert on the ground.
- Vic and Bob frequently broke down laughing during their shows (notably The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and Shooting Stars, among others), and usually just kept going, often improvising around it.
- Squid Game: In the first episode, Gi-hun collides with Sae-byeok, then hurriedly picks up her coffee from the ground, puts the straw back in, and hands it to her before running off. The coffee part was ad-libbed, and it caused the actress playing Sae-byeok to laugh. The director liked that take because it was a good example of Gi-hun’s kindness, so that’s the one they ended up using, and in the actual show you can see Sae-byeok shaking with laughter for a moment as Gi-hun flees.
- In Stargate SG-1:
- In "Urgo", Dom DeLuise guest stars as the titular character, and ad-libbed most of his lines. Few scenes in this episode show Urgo and Teal'c in the same frame, because Christopher Judge could not keep a straight face around Dom. If you pay attention you can also occasionally see the extras trying not to crack up. In the infirmary scene, the guard behind Urgo cannot keep a straight face. It got so bad that several scenes had to be rewritten to have Urgo be invisible to everyone but SG-1 because no-one could get through a scene with DeLuise without laughing.
- In the Cold Open of "Demons", an earlier episode in the same season, Richard Dean Anderson pulls an amusing face while saying "Someone... or something." As he moves out of camera, you can see Amanda Tapping suppressing a very un-Samantha Carter-like fit of giggles, and she breaks out into an enormous grin right before the camera cuts away.
- In the episode "Tin Man", towards the end of the episode as the two Colonels are talking, you can see Teal'c on the left side of the screen. As real O'Neil is telling robot O'Neil to get the damage to the side of his face looked at, as he vaguely indicates, you can see the corner of Teal'c's mouth rise up in an unmistakable attempt to hold back a grin.
- Star Trek examples:
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- In "The Return of the Archons", William Shatner and DeForest Kelley both seem to be extremely amused during a scene wherein McCoy has been brainwashed and become over-the-top nice as a result. Shatner also grins during a later scene where McCoy flips out when he realizes Kirk isn't "of the body" (i.e., also brainwashed).
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- In "Masks", there is a scene in which Picard and Riker discuss how to address the corruption of the ship's main computer by an alien archive. For part of the scene, you can see actor Jonathan Frakes has an inappropriate grin on his face and is apparently attempting to resist laughing at the fact that Patrick Stewart is holding a prop, and the way he emphasized the word 'enormous' in his line.
- Riker can be seen on the verge of cracking up in several other scenes, such as in "Menage a Troi" in Picard's declaration of love for Lwaxana Troi, or in "Deja Q" over Worf's request that Q die to prove his mortality. However, this fits with Riker's personality as a fun-loving guy, who can switch from "serious and stolid" to "not at all" in a moment.
- In "Qpid", when Worf smashes Geordi's lute in homage to Animal House, you'll see in the far background that Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) visibly struggles to not laugh, covering her face with her hand.
- In "The Survivors", when the Enterprise takes a serious hit from the Husnock warship, a random crewman goes flying much harder than everyone else and you can see Patrick Stewart visibly wince and turn to look at the stuntman in concern as it wasn't supposed to be that bad a fall.
- In "Up The Long Ladder", when Picard and Riker are looking at the Bringloidi, Patrick Stewart is visibly laughing even though Picard's supposed to be incensed. Fortunately, Jonathan Frakes remained in character and Stewart ad-libbed the line "Sometimes, Number One, you just have to... bow to the absurd.".
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- In "Return to Grace", Major Kira is demonstrating the differences between the Starfleet and Cardassian phaser rifles, concluding that the Cardassian rifle is the better field weapon. That's not hard to believe, because midway through the lecture the prop's power pack falls out and dangles by a wire for the rest of the scene. Nana Visitor visibly struggles to keep her game face.
- And in DS9, Nana Visitor related the story of how in the episode "Forsaken", the actors could just not keep straight faces when she (as Major Kira) had to give the line "If he doesn’t make it to his pail on time", so the director ended up resorting to some very fast cuts and reaction shots to complete the scene.
- An in-universe version occurs in the episode "One Little Ship". Although the experiment they're working on has great scientific value, Kira can't quite keep a straight face at the idea of three members of the crew being shrunk to about half the size of a comm badge. Sisko initially chides her, but as soon as Kira loses it, he cracks up too.
- In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Elogium", Tuvok — a Vulcan — has to utter the sentence "It appears we have lost our sex appeal, Captain" in complete seriousness. For a brief moment, a giant smile can be seen on Captain Janeway's face, but she quickly hides it. It's hard to tell whether this is actress Kate Mulgrew corpsing or the character herself failing to keep her composure.
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- In the third season episode of Supernatural, "Bad Day at Black Rock", Sam and Dean had just been swindled by Bella, and you can visibly see Jared Padalecki (Sam's actor) trying to hold in laughter. It's when Jensen Ackles (Dean's actor) yells "SON OF A BITCH!", that Jared had to look away from the camera so he could laugh.
Saturday Night Live
Very common on Saturday Night Live due to the live comedy nature of the show. A handful of performers, including producer Lorne Michaels, were virtually immune to it and any time they do corpse is a rare treasure.
on Saturday Night Live due to the live comedy nature of the show. A handful of performers, including producer Lorne Michaels, were virtually immune to it and any time they do corpse is a rare treasure.- On a sketch from the original cast era (1975-1980), Gilda Radner plays a dumb woman who embarrasses her friend played by Candace Bergen. Bergen then calls her "Fern" (which is actually her character's name) instead of "Lisa" which is Gilda's character's name. Bergen completely cracks while Gilda turns the sketch around and makes it look like "Fern" is the dumb one in the sketch.
- Chris Farley was a master at inspiring this in his castmates. This was the most enjoyable part of the Zagat's sketches. Adam Sandler plays a grumpy Deadpan Snarker husband, and Farley is his over-enthusiastic wife. His performance is so over the top that watching Sandler try to keep his miserable expression (and fail) is far funnier than a straight take would have been.
- The "Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker" sketch had the other actors in the skit rolling, especially David Spade, who tried (and failed) to hide his smile by cupping his face with his left hand(as his left side was facing the audience). Episode host Christina Applegate was reduced to pulling some of her hair out of her ponytail and draping it across her cheek to try and hide her laughter. In particular, the rehearsal had Farley say the "living in a van down by the river" in a fairly normal tone of voice. In the live performance, he made it legendary with "living in A VAN...DOWN BY THE RIVER!!!" and that is what killed the others in the skit.
- In his autobiography, Jay Mohr talks about how it was often impossible not to laugh in Farley's presence. He notes that in one scene, Farley simply crossed his eyes whenever he knew the camera couldn't see it, prompting his co-stars to crack up.
- Another element that makes the skit so legendary is how Farley breaking the table was completely unscripted. You can see how shocked the other actors are before they make a valiant effort to keep straight faces.
- The "Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker" sketch
- After leaving the show, Spade would later host SNL. He was featured in a sketch with Will Ferrell, who played a Drill Sergeant Nasty. Ferrell apparently tried his damnedest to make Spade crack up during the sketch. It worked.
- Another sketch with Ferrell, known as "The Bad Doctor" or "Dr. Beaman". The setup is that a couple of recent parents are consulting a dubiously qualified doctor, and it only goes downhill from there. Right around the time Ferrell says "we misplaced your baby", he and Molly Shannon are both cracking up.
- The final installment of "Janet Reno's Dance Party" had Reno herself break through a fake wall at the skit's conclusion, wearing an identical dress to the one that Will Ferrell, playing Janet, was wearing. Ferrell isn't completely successful in keeping his composure
- In the famous Phil Hartman sketch where he visits a McDonald's as Bill Clinton, he starts eating the customers' food as he talks. At one point, he literally chokes for a second and needs Tim Meadows to supply him with water. Being the professional that he is, Phil plays it off.
- Another Phil Hartman crackup here when he is playing Frankenstein's Monster. There's actually a story with this in which Phil was sitting there and suddenly realized how absurd the situation was and then giggled a bit. He stopped for a few and then thought about how Frankenstein's Monster would've sounded laughing, which set him off all over again.
- Horatio Sanz often couldn't keep a straight face and neither could Jimmy Fallon. On the 2011 Christmas episode hosted by Jimmy Fallon, he even stated that his cracking up on-camera ruined a lot of good sketches.
- Tracy Morgan said in an interview with Penthouse that Fallon's tendency to corpse wasn't always appreciated among the cast, adding that Fallon knew better than to do it in a sketch involving Tracy.
- On the Family Guy episode, "Don't Make Me Over", Peter beats up Jimmy Fallon for his constant corpsing, stating that he hasn't earned the right to do it like Carol Burnett (and apparently forgetting the fact that Fallon had sex with Meg as part of the show's cold opening).
- Jimmy Fallon’s corpsing was so bad, that at one point, he was more famous for that than he was any impression he did or character he played.
- In the first Debbie Downer sketch, nobody could keep a straight face.
- Perhaps the only person in this particular sketch who didn't break down into hysterics was Fred Armisen, who was clearly doing all he could to keep from corpsing along with his castmates. He was successful... kinda.Debbie: By the way, it's official... (visibly straining to not laugh) I can't have children! (Immediately breaks down into suppressed giggles)
- So prevalent was this in the sketches that the syndicated version of the Downer sketch with Ben Affleck (from season 30) contains the dress rehearsal version in which the cast corpses; it comes with a disclaimer that it was funnier than the original live version in which everyone kept it together.
- Perhaps the only person in this particular sketch who didn't break down into hysterics was Fred Armisen, who was clearly doing all he could to keep from corpsing along with his castmates. He was successful... kinda.
- Ever since Bill Hader's Stefon character (who was originally a One-Scene Wonder in a sketch about a screenwriter whose effeminate, deranged brother reunites with him to pitch a family-friendly sports movie on the season 34 episode hosted by Ben Affleck) became a Weekend Update character (the segment's "city correspondent"). Hader, who tried to conceal his corpsing through covering his mouth in an almost geisha-like fashion, has not gotten through a segment without laughing note . That Other Wiki and many a late-night talk show interview confirm (from both Hader and SNL writer, John Mulaney — Hader's co-writer for the Stefon segments on Weekend Update) that this keeps happening because John Mulaney changes jokes at the last minute (not out of malice; just to be funny) and Hader doesn't see them until he's actually on-camera. Also not helping is the absurdity of the descriptions (which have grown with every passing segment) and Hader seeing the cue-card man and others behind camera cracking up first. According to Hader, it's gotten to the point where even the man putting on his mike has told him, quote, "You are dead, buddy. You're gonna laugh first thing out of the gate."
- It got to the point that by the time Bill Hader left SNL, it had become not only permissible but an expected part of the sketch, for him to corpse.
- Seth Meyers is also usually ready to crack the moment Stefon rolls in.
- Hader developed the "mouth-covering" character quirk to hide the laughter.
- Another Bill Hader example happened during an SNL skit The Californians, which managed to mildly crack up Fred Armisen and Kristen Wiig. Granted, that was the dress rehearsal, but this fit of giggles made its way into the skit during the live taping as well.
- There's the famous "I have a ''fevah''! And the only prescription...is '''more cowbell'''!" line delivered by Christopher Walken, which made everyone in the scene crack up.
- According to interviews, Will Ferrell changed shirts between rehearsal and taping, going with one that was hilariously undersized for the live take. As a result, Jimmy Fallon spends most of the sketch completely unable to hold a straight face.
- Speaking of Jimmy Fallon and Christoper Walken, their performance of Potato Pohtatoh has Jimmy on the verge of laughter the entire time, but he completely loses it when Christopher lovingly strokes his belly.
- For all this, SNL also has the über anti-corpsing example: Alec Baldwin, Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, and Schweddy Balls.
- It has a sequel in the skit Schweddy Weiner. Ana Gasteyer at one point slips up and says "peener", and for a few seconds, all three actors—even Alec Baldwin who is notorious for not doing this—are clearly struggling not to lose it.
- It has a sequel in the skit Schweddy Weiner
- Alec gets another near-miss moment in a skit where he parodies his famous Glengarry Glen Ross character and his equally famous speech. When he tells the characters to "always be cobbling", he slips and says "always be closing", thus revealing that the speech is basically imprinted on his brain. The audience loses it, and for a moment, he almost does too.
- In a season 3 episode, during Weekend Update, John Belushi was reporting about a recent oil spill complete with a toy boat that's filled with oil. Belushi accidentally tilts the boat over causing his hand and the desk to be covered with oil. Belushi sees Dan Aykroyd, who was beside him, miserably trying to hide his laughter and takes advantage of it by making Aykroyd laugh, teasing Aykroyd that he's gonna put oil on him, causing Aykroyd to corpse more.
- Don Rickles went Off the Rails and broke Joe Piscopo within 20 seconds into their sketch. Piscopo's giggles were infectious enough to break Rickles in return.
- For a more recent example, check out Weekend Update from the Lady Gaga-hosted episode in season 39. Taran Killam as Jebediah Atkinson just kills Seth Meyers the entire time he's on-stage, eventually cracking Killam himself. As the Update segment ends and the camera zooms out, Meyers can be seen still laughing like a jackal with Killam.
- One Will Forte sketch example was a skit with guest star Peyton Manning. Forte is a coach trying to inspire his team, and it culminates in Forte dancing like a complete idiot for almost the entirety of the the main theme from the original Casino Royale while the team including Manning stare and cover their mouths.
- The 40th Anniversary special had a Digital Short with Sandler, Samberg, and Hader singing about this phenomenon, poking fun at the tendency to do so when the skits don't "work" and how many cast members do so.
- In Maya Rudolph's return to hosting, she and Kristen Wiig utterly break during the Super Showcase sketch, with Bill Hader holding it together by a thread.
- In one of Ferrell's famous sketches, "Space: The Infinity Frontier with Harry Caray", he slowly breaks Jeff Goldblum into fits of giggles, until a joke about Mad Cow Disease ("Gee, I hope I don't get it!") causes Goldblum to finally break, forcing the camera to stay on a one-shot of Ferrell while Goldblum works it out to the crowd's delight.
- A sketch featuring Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, and Ryan Gosling as alien abductees broke all the participants, with the normally-serious Gosling getting the worst of the giggles. While the cast began to break into fits of laughter as the running gag of McKinnon's crude treatment at the hands of her captors got progressively weirder, Gosling broke so much after Kate explained that her pants were thrown out separately from her ("I had to climb up with my damn coot-coot and prune chute hanging out!") that he was unable to get his next line out, causing Cecily having to stall time with an ad-lib before Gosling had enough wherewithal to speak again.
- A sequel to this sketch has Gosling sporting a cap, which was given to him to help hide the giggles - it didn't help, as he was shaking in laughter.
- A sequel to this sketch
- A sketch that is supposedly a deleted scene from Black Panther (2018) (featuring Kenan Thompson, Leslie Jones, and host Sterling K. Brown) features Thompson's character attempting to get the others to eat lion meat burgers he has grilled. After he held one up while singing the opening chant from "Circle of Life", Jones and Brown lost their composure and Jones had to pause for several seconds before she could say her line.
- This sketch, featuring Bill Hader as an old man confined to a wheelchair and Cecily Strong as his wife trying to get pregnant with him managed to break almost everybody. As Hader later recollected on Late Night with Seth Meyers, the main gag of the sketch (Strong taking advantage of Hader's sciatica when it kicks in, even during a girls' game night) was so dirty that the censors made sure he was very careful not to even move in a way that violated Standards and Practices. So, he couldn't move anything besides the motorized wheelchair, and he could barely see where he was going with Strong on top of him. Therefore, while the usually-unflappable Strong was already having trouble keeping her composure, the kicker was when Hader rode back into the room backwards, pushing Melissa Villaseñor, her chair, and the game table a few feet unintentionally. He only knew when to stop when Villaseñor squeaked "I'm back here!" under her breath, and by that point she, Hader, and Strong had all given up any pretense of keeping a straight face. Heidi Gardner and Aidy Bryant just barely managed to keep it together.
- Eddie Murphy's return episode saw him break at least once per sketch, but the biggest was his return as Gumby for Weekend Update. He giggled a few times, which only made Colin Jost and Michael Che, who were already resigned to cackling through the entire sketch, completely lose it.
- When Dana Carvey played "Massive Headwound Harry" in Season 17, he had to cover his face to hide his laughter when a dog starts eating away at his massive headwound makeup. Carvey then ad-libbed the line, "he probably smells my dog!"
- The season premiere of season 45 featured a segment with Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, Kenan Thompson, and host Woody Harrelson as political pundits, with all but Thompson optimistic that Trump's impeachment trial will lead to him being ousted. The sketch had a series of flashbacks that required rapid-fire quick changes between past and present. Aidy's dresser accidentally ran into help her change too early, in full view of the audience, thereby causing her and all the other actors to dissolve into laughter when they cut back to the present.
- Adele may have had the most epic bout of Corpsing in SNL history in the closing sketch of her episode, in which she, Kate McKinnon, and Heidi Gardner play British housewife types advertising Africa as a paradise for them to meet cute guys. McKinnon and Gardner's melodramatic delivery gave her the giggles, and since they were facing the camera for the whole sketch, there was no way for her to hide her face before continuing!
- Dave Chappelle's return appearance opened with a sketch about controversial stereotypical Black advertising figures (including Maya Rudolph as Aunt Jemima and Kenan as Uncle Ben) being fired. Chappelle, playing the AllState Man, is already laughing when he starts talking and his voice is pitch-shifted to sound deeper. Soon after, when Pete Davison enters as Count Chocula, Chappelle ad-libs, "America - look at Pete Davison's lips." This makes both of them laugh, and when the camera cuts back to the boardroom members (Alec Baldwin, Heidi Gardner, and Mikey Day), you can see Day and Gardner trying to cover that they were just laughing.
- Jason Sudeikis's return features the recurring Science Room sketch, where he plays a teacher who grows increasingly frustrated with two unintelligent students, played by Cecily Strong and Mikey Day. Near the end of the sketch, Sudeikis's character calls up the parents of the students, but when Melissa Villasenor's character mispronounces Loni (Cecily Strong's character) as Low-ni, both Strong and Day crack up.
- In a "Weekend Update" segment, Alex Moffat as his "Guy Who Just Bought a Boat" character reported the (true) news that Colin Jost and Pete Davidson had purchased an old Staten Island Ferry. As usual, Moffat made a series of boat-related innuendos, leaving Davidson laughing helplessly. Eventually Pete managed to choke out "So, it's like your penis!"
- When Adam Sandler hosted SNL, he did the "Sandler Family Reunion" sketch that had him dealing with SNL performers playing his old characters, e.g. Melissa Villaseñor as Bobby Boucher, but it was Jimmy Fallon playing the Excited Southerner who successfully cracked Sandler up.
- When Seann William Scott hosted SNL in 2001, there was a sketch where Will Ferrell walked in wearing a red-white-and-blue thong (this aired about a month after the 9/11 attacks). In the dress rehearsal, Ferrell wore short shorts, instead, so the other actors actually were shocked to see him wearing the thong, leaving them visibly struggling to not break character.
- When Pedro Pascal hosted in Season 48, he broke during two different sketches: One in which a coma leaves him mumbling like an "LA Mushmouth," to quote Kenan Thompson's character, and one which stars Ego Nwodim as Lisa from Temecula, a smart-mouthed lawyer who loves eating "extra, extra well-done" steaks. None of the actors in the latter sketch could contain themselves, thanks to Lisa's sass and her messy meat-cutting techniques.
- When Adam Driver hosted in season 44, there was a sketch where Driver played an eccentric elderly oil tycoon speaking at a school's career day. Pete Davidson, who was playing Driver's son, was already struggling to stay in character because of how hammy Driver's acting was. But, at one point, Driver's character takes out a dead bird and throws it on the ground, and while he was speaking, he inadvertently impaled the bird with his walking stick, leading everybody else to crack up.
- In season 49, Mikey Day and Ryan Gosling dressing up like Beavis and Butt-Head lookalikes in an in-sketch audience caused the normally stone-faced Heidi Gardner to completely lose it. She cracked a bit at the sight of Ryan's Beavis but Mikey Day's Butt-Head completely broke her.
T
- Taskmaster: Alex typically tries to remain The Stoic when he's in his role as the Taskmaster's assistant, but sometimes a contestant's attempt at the task will be sufficiently ridiculous that he cracks up and has to cover his face with his clipboard. A good example of this is in series 14, where he's visibly trying and failing to hold back laughter while watching Munya aggressively try to pop a roomful of balloons by attacking them with a frying pan.
- Taxi: The scene where Reverend Jim tries to fill out the questions on his driver's test provoked this reaction with his castmates; Marilu Henner evidently had to stab herself with a pen to keep from laughing.
- That '70s Show:
- In an early season 1 episode, Ashton Kutcher jumps over the couch in the basement to greet Laurie, but he accidentally trips on his way over. Fortunately, Kutcher was able to recover quickly and land on his feet, but not without banging hard into the table. Kutcher tries to go on with the scene, as it does fit his character, but it took a bit for the rest of the cast to recover. Debra Jo Rupp even stops on her way up the stairs to make sure Kutcher is alright, but keeps going back up once she sees the scene is proceeding apace.
- In the episode where Hyde comes to live with the family, the final scene see's Kitty giving Hyde and Eric cookies like a doting Mom, all to Hyde's frustration. Hyde's irritation along with the act along with him gently asking for more cookies causing Topher Grace to completely lose it and burst out laughing before the scene ends.
- Kitty, Donna and Jackie go to a male strip club. Kitty enthusiastically starts dancing along with one of the strippers and slowly everyone loses it, especially Mila Kunis, who's howling next to Debra Jo Rupp. It reaches its boiling point when the stripper himself can't keep dancing and collapses on the stage.
- In another episode Donna is interviewing her dad for career day. Bob takes off his circus ringmaster top hat (because his store is having a circus-themed sale) and his perm has molded to the shape of the hat. Laura Prepon is facing away from the camera, but you can see her shoulders shake and see her look down to stifle a laugh, and Don Stark has to give her a moment.
- Basically, the producers figured they kept about 85% of the corpsing the cast did during the show as it made the scene a lot funnier.
- J-Rock on Trailer Park Boys is infamous at sending his cast members into corpsing fits. Jonathan Torrens, the guy who plays him, goes off-script often and comes out with truly hilarious statements that the cast just isn't ready for. If you're looking for it, you'll frequently see Bubbles or Julian abruptly duck out of frame to keep from having a laughing fit on camera. For one of many, many, examples, keep your eyes on Bubbles in this clip; Patrick Roach (who plays Randy) barely manages to keep his composure with only a bemused "what?!"
U
- The cast of NBC's Undateable frequently throw in strange line readings and ad-libs to try and get the others to break. The corpsing is often included in the final cut because it works for the scene.
- It's increased with the show switching to a live format and the cast unable to keep from cracking up at a botched line or a sudden impromptu move (like an actress kissing guest star Scott Foley).
- The actors and writers have constantly tried to trip up Chris D'Elia (Danny) who never breaks on camera. It finally happened, however, when D'Elia's former co-star Whitney Cummings played Danny's new flame, ad-libbing a dick joke and through gritted teeth and laughter, D'Elia hissed "don't get us canceled twice!"
- Unsolved Mysteries: Host Robert Stack can be seen obviously corpsing when he tells the story of a bank robber nicknamed “Fumbles” due to his clumsiness.
- The Untamed: During the scene where Lan Wangji gives Wei Wuxian a piggyback ride, upon a closer look the audience can see that Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo are already laughing.
V
- In Veep, in the episode Nicknames, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss breaks at the end of the line "That's like trying to use a croissant as a fuckin' dildo" and can barely get her next line out with a straight face.
- On the Comedy Central show Viva Variety, Michael Ian Black as Johnny Bluejeans and Kerri Kinney as The Former Mrs. Laupin spend the entirety of a fake sponsored advertisement for a doll called Baby Needs a Shave fighting laughter.
W
- The Weather has this happen twice in "Spooky Fog":
- One scene had Alan pinching and prodding Ben's "corpse". Ben spent almost the entire time visibly laughing, which made Alan start giggling as well.
- The final scene, where Alan was speaking to himself in a mirror, ended just as he was starting to laugh.
- A Norwegian comedy duo known as "Wesensteen" (Rolv Wesenlund and Harald Heide-Steen Jr.) once did a sketch about "The Norwegian Soup Council". The whole point of the sketch is that Harald Heide Steen jr. is unable to keep a straight face. Here it is. Subtitled in English.
- They had actually managed to nail this skit while drunk (or at least tipsy).
- The live episode of Will & Grace featured plenty of breaking, with Debra Messing being the worst for it.
- During the flying lesson in The Worst Witch's first episode (1998 series) Mildred interrupts Miss Hardbroom to tell her what her mother's pet name for their car is. As Miss Hardbroom then says that broomsticks don't have cuddly personalities, she can be seen grinning as she says "unlike Mildred's mother's car".
X
- The X-Files:
- The corpse coughs and the film crew cracks up while Scully delivers her lines: "It's true, John. She's gone. There's no measurable electrical activity in her brain."
- This happened a lot, particularly when props didn't work. One outtake reel includes what's supposed to be a burning book failing to catch fire three times. When it finally works, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson try really hard to keep straight faces, but when they look at one another they both burst out laughing.
- The Hilarious Outtakes are available online and 75% of them are Gillian Anderson giggling when she flubs a line.
- The corpse coughs
Y
- By the end of the "Who reads the papers" scene in Yes, Prime Minister, Sir Humphrey is attempting to make his giggling look like one of his 'very droll Prime Minister' dialogues and Bernard is laughing his head off following his brief yet hilarious one-liner.
- Sid Caesar did From Here To Obscurity, a spoof of From Here to Eternity on Your Show of Shows. Parodying the famous beach scene], Caesar and Imogene Coca exchanged romantic dialogue while being intermittently splashed with buckets of water. However, the stagehand didn't know that the water was supposed to be warm, so the pair were being soaked with ice-cold water. Coca kept burying her face in Caesar's shoulder to hide her giggles, and when Caesar ad-libbed, "Kinda rough tonight?", she just lost it.
Z
- A sketch of Brazilian TV show Zorra Total had a drunkard psychiatrist. He always opened the window to check the "no health plan" patients' line outside, which even had a barbecue salesman. Said salesman was always shot from the back to hide his corpsing (in one episode, the psychiatrist dragged the salesman inside the office, just to show he was laughing his ass off).
- The psychiatrist was also part of the show with the most corpsing ever in Brazilian TV, Sai de Baixo. It was performed in a theater, with plenty of Ham-to-Ham Combat and improvisation, and thus the cast were frequently losing it (and the editors always kept the takes with flubs and corpsing, even after a Hilarious Outtakes reel was added for every episode). An actress, whose career that far was mostly of dramas, even complained to the director that she thought of leaving because she couldn't keep a straight face - and the reply: "If you want to laugh, laugh!"
- The psychiatrist was also part of the show with the most corpsing ever in Brazilian TV, Sai de Baixo. It was performed in a theater, with plenty of Ham-to-Ham Combat and improvisation, and thus the cast were
- An episode of Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger has the team stalling for time by convincing Kyoryu Gold to pretend he has a Dangerous Forbidden Technique… which involves a lot of butt-wiggling and chanting "Nin nin nin!", made even funnier by Gold being a dorky Fish out of Temporal Water. While he's doing it, Kyoryu Black's actor doesn't even bother trying to hold in his laughter, but obviously, his character has a perfectly valid reason for busting a gut.
