Creator / Penn & Teller

The tall guy (Penn Jillette) distracts you so you won't watch the little guy (Teller)...

"One of the things that Teller and I are obsessed with, one of the reasons that we're in magic, is the difference between fantasy and reality."

Penn & Teller are an American double act, comedians and stage magicians, with a regular gig at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Penn Fraser Jillette (born March 5, 1955) is the tall, talkative one with dark hair and glasses. Teller (born Raymond Joseph Teller, February 14, 1948) is the short one who never speaks and makes amusing facial expressions on the frequent occasions when Penn exposes him to danger. They were introduced to one another by a mutual friend in 1975. Ever since then, they've done most of their work together, developing their own rather quirky style of magic.

The pair have a wide fraud-busting streak, which got its widest exposure in their Showtime TV show, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!. A running theme in their work is truth, lies and deception, with many parts of their stage magic routine built around lampshading the fact that magic is all about deceiving the audience. Many of their tricks also play on the audience's visceral reaction to tricks that appear dangerous but are in fact completely safe, celebrating the fantasy that two guys can shoot guns into each other's mouths and emerge from it completely unharmed.

Aside from their various stage shows, Penn & Teller's body of work includes:

• Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends, a 1987 straight-to-video release including punchlines for seven different tricks to play on one's friends and instructions for performing them.
• Penn & Teller's Invisible Thread, a 1987 Showtime made-for-TV movie about how a stupid magic trick saves the human race from being wiped out by aliens for being redundant.
• Penn & Teller Get Killed, a 1989 Black Comedy film directed by Arthur Penn (no relation to Penn Jillette) in which fictionalized versions of Penn and Teller perform tricks, play practical jokes on one another and try to escape from assassins.
• Behind the Scenes, a 1992 PBS show that aimed to teach young children about art. Each episode focused on a different technical theory and featured lessons from renowned artists. Through it all, Penn and Teller provided explanations while incorporating their trademark sense of humor and plenty of tricks.
• The Unpleasant World of Penn and Teller (on-screen title: Penn and Teller), a 1994 UK TV series where the pair perform many of their best-known tricks in front of a studio audience, with several British celebrities including John Cleese and Stephen Fry appearing as guests.
• Phobophilia, a filmed 1995 stage show where Penn and Teller perform various tricks and skits exploring Primal Fears. Noteworthy for including a full version of their famous double Bullet Catch trick.
• Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour, a three-part 2003 documentary miniseries where they travel to China, Egypt and India to study the traditional culture of magic. Notably, Teller talks twice in the Egypt episode.
• Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, a Showtime series that ran from 2003-2010, where they call out various pseudoscience and political causes they consider to be bullshit.
• Penn & Teller: Fool Us, a 2011 ITV series, hosted by Jonathan Ross, where a variety of magicians attempt to fool Penn and Teller with tricks of their own. Those who succeed get to perform on their stage in Las Vegas. Though canceled by ITV in 2012, the CW in the United States reran the ITV episodes in 2014 and, finding success, commissioned a second season that began airing in 2015. A third season premiered on July 13th, 2016, now hosted by Alyson Hannigan, who continues to host the show to this day.
• Penn & Teller Tell a Lie, a 2011 Discovery Channel show where each episode presents six or seven unbelievable stories, one of which is a lie.
• Tim's Vermeer, a 2013 documentary film that follows the efforts of Tim Jenison, a tech entrepreneur and personal friend of the duo, as he tries to prove his hypothesis that Johannes Vermeer painted with the help of optical devices by painting his own version of Vermeer's "The Music Lesson".
• Three jointly written books, Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends (1989), Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food (1992), and Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic (1997). They feature both instruction in simple magic tricks and practical jokes and various stories and anecdotes from the two of them.
• Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors, a 1995 video game that was never formally released but got leaked by a reviewer who had received an advance copy of the game. It is most famous for its "Desert Bus" minigame.
• Lots and lots of talk show appearances and many cameos all over the place, including:
  • The Simpsons episodes "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" and "The Great Simpsina" (Teller speaks in both and acted as magic consultant for the latter)
  • The Futurama movie "Into the Wild Green Yonder"
  • The Babylon 5 episode "Day of the Dead", as Rebo & Zooty, the 23rd century's greatest comedy duo.
  • Two episodes of The Drew Carey Show as lawyers Fenn and Geller.
  • One of the Celebrity Fear Factor episodes (as one contestant; Teller performed all the stunts while Penn stood around talking and betting on the outcome)
  • In the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas movie Penn makes a cameo as a carnival barker (an out-of-focus Teller can be seen behind him).
  • The West Wing, where they performed one of their stage tricks, involving a flag-burning, in the White House.
  • Fantasia 2000, where they presented the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch, with various appearances from Penn as Drell, head of the Witches' Council, and some from Teller too.
  • Penn appeared As Himself on NUMB3RS season five episode "Magic Show', helping out with investigation of a magic trick gone wrong.
  • Bill Nye the Science Guy, in which they helped explain light optics (Teller got to say "SCIENCE!"^note  This was a bit of ventriloquism on Penn and Teller's part, as Penn did the actual speaking. )
  • Semi-regular appearances on The Hollywood Squares during the Whoopi Goldberg era, including the infamous "YOU FOOL!" episode; Penn said it first, then Gilbert Gottfried borrowed it and things escalated from there.
  • Spider-Man/Deadpool #11, written by Penn, in which Wade and Teller switch places.
  • Toy Story features Penn in a vocal cameo as the Large-Ham Announcer of a Buzz Lightyear commercial.
  • Space Ghost Coast to Coast: Both guest starred in the episode "$20.01".
  • ¡Mucha Lucha!: Yes really. They end up being the henchmen to the main villain of the Grand Finale movie, "The Return of El Malefico" since the final battle takes place in Las Vegas, fighting and losing to the main characters, though they pull a Heel–Face Turn at the end.
  • Borderlands 3, as Pain and Terror. Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford is a known friend of Penn.
  • They guest starred in episode 7 of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, where they work with the gang in solving the mystery of the ghost of Professor Madds Markson, a scientist magician who's haunting a casino in Las Vegas. It was all a scheme by Teller, who speaks at the very end, who wanted to impress Penn with a genuine scare.
  • World's Greatest Magic 2 TV special - the duo are the final act of the show, performing the Magic Bullet trick.
  • Penn guest stars in the T.O.T.S. episode "The Itsy Bitsy Baby" as an owl magician named The Great Who Who Dini.
  • The duo competed on season 7 of The Masked Singer as the Hydra.
  • The duo appears in Young Sheldon "A Clogged Pore, a Little Spanish and the Future" as an Anthropomorphic Personification of Sheldon's pimple. Amusingly, Teller played Sheldon's father-in-law on the parent show, The Big Bang Theory.
• Their own haunted house at Universal Studios Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights event in 2012: Penn and Teller New(kd) Las Vegas. The basic premise is: Penn and Teller try out a new trick involving a nuclear warhead...which predictably fails. Guests now have to travel through the mutant filled husk of a city that was Las Vegas while Penn and Teller (through various videos placed throughout the maze) try to convince the guests that everything is ''perfectly fine''. Penn and Teller had a significant role in the development of the house and even flew to Orlando to greet guests, hand out 3D glasses, and finally walk through the house during one set and spent part of the night standing in the finale scene. Takes extreme artistic license.
• Penn & Teller VR: Frankly Unfair, Unkind, Unnecessary and Underhanded, an upcoming Virtual Reality game for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR, slated for a Summer 2019 release.
• Borderlands 3, together as a duo known as Pain and Terror (with Pain as an Enforcer and Teller as a Tink) who look just like they do if they were given a Borderlands-style makeover.

Works by Penn & Teller with their own pages:

• Penn & Teller Get Killed
• Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors
• Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
• Penn & Teller Tell a Lie
• Penn & Teller: Fool Us

Otherwise, Penn & Teller and their work provide examples of:

• Alter-Ego Acting: Penn & Teller each have a consistent on-stage persona which is not the same as what they're like in real life. For instance, Penn does not raise his voice at all in real life, and Teller, being a former classics teacher, is an extremely articulate conversationalist.
• The Announcer: Penn was Comedy Central's announcer for much of The '90s.
• Badass Adorable: Teller to a T.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Penn is, in his own words, "stupid tall" (6'6") and Teller is average height (5'9"). He explained this once by saying that "Teller and Art Garfunkel are normal. Penn Jillette and Paul Simon are waving to each other from opposite ends of the Bell Curve."
• Black Comedy: Used in several of their tricks. The "Water Tank" trick, where Penn attempts to do a card trick while Teller is supposedly holding his breath in a tank full of water, is a great example. In the fictional narrative of the trick, Penn botches the card trick and Teller drowns in the tank as a result, which is pretty horrifying. But the way the entire trick is put together around it, including Penn's various lines ("No, screw it, he's braindead"), the audience volunteers who just don't know what to make of the whole thing, Penn's mock eulogy for Teller (where he claims to be planning a solo tour to be entitled simply "Penn"), and especially the final punchline (Penn reaches into the tank to turn Teller's limp body around, revealing the audience member's signed card inside Teller's face mask - "AND IS THAT YOUR CARD?"), is priceless.
  • Then finally, at the very end... "That was amazing Teller. 'Let him out'. Ten minutes and thirty-one seconds. You would have loved this, Teller. TEN minutes, thirty-ONE seconds before the FIRST PERSON bothered to yell 'Let. Him. Out.'"
• Bloody Hilarious: They are rather enamoured with this trope.
• Bullet Catch: One of their most famous tricks is a double bullet catch, where Penn and Teller appear to each shoot a bullet into the other's mouth.
• Butt-Monkey: Teller is most often the one put in the "dangerous" situations and the one who has the bulk of the acting duty. Well, It's not like he can say 'No'...
• Burning the Flag: They burn an American flag wrapped in a copy of The Bill of Rights, as one of the tricks in their Las Vegas show. They do the trick to make a point about how Americans have the freedom to burn their own flag if they wish. Additionally, the Bill of Rights is unaffected by the conflagration symbolizing how it is unharmed. No, they don't actually burn the flag. Teller has removed the flag before they ignite the flash paper. In one version, they follow up the trick with the explanation, where they burn a flag wrapped in the "Chinese Bill of Rights" — a clear plastic sheet. The trick is a minor plot point in one episode of The West Wing where the real life Penn & Teller perform it for the fictional President Bartlett
• Cool Old Guy: They remain fairly active in performing at the respective ages of 68 and 75.
• The Cutie: Teller has earned this title by fans due to his silent and meek stage demeanor, his goofy expressions, and him being the "little" half of Big Guy, Little Guy.
• Decon-Recon Switch: Integral to several of their magic routines. See The Reveal/The Unreveal below.
• Disappearing Box: One of their stage routines.
• Don't Try This at Home: One of their TV specials is actually titled Don't Try This At Home! — and consists almost entirely of them doing things you couldn't do at home if you tried.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Penn and Teller have been told they will never be offered membership in The Magic Circle, a century-old society of amateur and professional stage magicians, because they reveal the secrets of some of their tricks. That many of these are tricks they themselves invented, specifically to show how they're done (and they have dozens of others they've never revealed) doesn't seem to matter.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Some of their earliest appearances, notably Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends, have Penn trying to hide his accent. To someone familiar with his distinctive voice, this can be very jarring. Penn would also tend to explain to the audience that Teller will never speak during a show, when generally, it doesn't get commented on, unless they can make a joke out of it.
• Embarrassing Old Photo: One of the tricks in Penn & Teller's How to Play With Your Food warns children that, once they start dating, their parents will be sure to embarrass them in front of whomever they're interested in by bring out stupid photos of them dressed up in Halloween costumes. It then proceeds to teach them how to make sure their parents will never want to remember Halloween.
• Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo: Taken to the logical extreme. On stage, Penn basically never shuts up, while Teller never says a word. Teller is, however, very sarcastic and such with his body language.
• Escape Artist: Penn and Teller engage in this on occasion. For instance, their stage show in the eighties opened with Teller hanging upside-down in a straightjacket hanging over a bed of spikes while Penn read the poem Casey at the Bat.^Explanation The rope keeping Teller suspended is tied to the chair that Penn is sitting in. When Penn finishes the poem, he leaps upright, which would cause Teller to fall into the bed of spikes unless he can escape beforehand. Penn starts out reading the story slowly, but as the trick progresses, he talks faster and faster, significantly decreasing the amount of time Teller has to escape.
• Facial Dialogue: Teller's status as The Voiceless forces him to convey a lot of information through facial expressions and body language. He said this part of his act developed because he felt magicians narrate too much of the trick when you can do a lot more by finding other ways to keep them engaged. Because a big part of magic is the audience fooling themselves, forcing them to pay attention helps make the final reveal far more impactful. He also got started doing small college parties and found it's difficult to get heckled when you don't talk.
• Fat and Skinny: Penn and Teller, respectively, at least until 2015, when Penn lost over a hundred pounds to resolve health issues related to his weight and high blood pressure. He's had to assure people multiple times that the weight loss was intentional and he's not dying or anything like that.
• Fun with Acronyms: The title of their VR game, Frankly Unfair, Unkind, Unnecessary, & Underhanded, can be shortened to ''FUUU&U''.
• Gentle Giant: Penn. Growing up, he was far bigger than any of his classmates, but instead of being a bully, he was soft-spoken and reserved.
• Genre Shift: While their three books all teach tricks, there is a noticeable shift from the somewhat mean-spirited practical jokes of Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends (1989), largely revolving around humiliating the target, to the more lighthearted How to Play in Traffic (1997). How to Play with Your Food (1992) is intermediate and, interestingly, features a story where Penn describes a spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a random guy at a restaurant a red Jell-O, after which he came to the realization that being randomly nice to people was actually quite fun. Their TV and film work also reflects this, with practical jokes, pranks and swindles being central to Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends, Penn & Teller Get Killed and Penn & Teller's Invisible Thread, while in later years their stuff is much more political and principled.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: A somewhat unusual case. They famously only socialize outside of work once or twice a year and their relationship developed as a strictly business one built on mutual respect rather than friendship (or, as Penn puts it, "cuddly feelings"). However, as they've spent their entire adult lives working very closely together, they've inevitably come to be sort of best friends anyway - when their parents died, for instance, they went to each other. When Penn's children were born, Teller was the first person to see them and is considered an honorary uncle. Plus, when Penn's daughter, Moxie, started showing an interest in magic, Teller was entrusted as her mentor.
  • The versions of themselves they portray in Invisible Thread own a magic shop together, and Penn matter-of-factly states that Teller can talk, but will only talk to him.
• Hidden Depths: Because Teller is mute and the Butt-Monkey, often a lot of magic skills aren't called out or noticed - it can even seem like he's a different take on a beauty assistant that other magicians have. (Assistants are also trained and an important part of their acts while trying to look like they're not.) But he is in fact a very talented magician in a great deal of magical disciplines. Penn has stated on multiple occasions that Teller is a much better magician than he is. He's also noted with perhaps questionable seriousness that about two-thirds of the acts on Fool Us get past him, and it's fooling Teller that's the real feat.
  • Hilariously INVERTED in some of their tricks...where the goal is to get everyone to pay attention to Teller...while Penn does the move, since Penn is the "Obvious" distraction.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • A story element in the "Water Tank" trick; after the trick starts apparently going wrong, Penn tries to call it off and let Teller out of the tank, but Teller insists on continuing because he gave his word not to come out until the trick is finished. During his mock eulogy, Penn says that you have to respect a man prepared to die for what he believes in, even if the thing he believes in is just a dumb card trick.
    • Truth in television: The first time they performed this trick live (on SNL), there was an issue with Teller's mask and he was actually holding his breath for the last two minutes or so. Penn described the incident years later on his podcast, and said they both knew if they signaled for help, the crew would pump out the water and do a ton of expensive damage to the set, and their careers would be over. So Teller didn't give the signal. Penn noticed the problem but also didn't call for help, and didn't even hurry through the rest of the trick, because "It was Teller's call." At the end of that performance, several crew members rush the stage to open the tank.
  • The nail-gun trick is mostly a discussion from Penn to the audience about how the two avert this in reality, refusing to create or perform any trick in which someone could get seriously harmed under any circumstance.
• Hypocritical Humor: They enjoy this. In one of his shows, shortly after voicing his dislike for camera tricks, Penn runs an entire credit scenes with shoddy jump cuts of them making their cast and crew (including a cameraman and his camera) appear and disappear verifying that no camera tricks were used.
• Ironic Name: The man named Teller doesn't speak during performances.
• Manipulative Editing: Inverted with Penn & Teller: Off the Deep End as some spectators are told that their scenes will receive Manipulative Editing and give some impressive reactions to non-existent tricks; they are actually shown unedited.
• Momma's Boy: Penn self-identifies as one in the "Talking to the Dead" episode of Bullshit! He cites his deep love of both his parents as one of the main reasons he commits so strongly to busting psychics and mediums. Similar to one of his great inspirations, Harry Houdini, nothing makes him more upset than seeing someone desecrate the memories of a passed loved one by pretending to talk to them for a buck.
• No Indoor Voice: Penn's on-stage persona. Even when speaking quietly, his voice has a pronounced rasp, since during his younger days doing street magic, he never warmed up his vocal cords and regularly blew his voice out, to the point where he would mix Coke and Chloraseptic throat spray just to keep talking.
• Only One Name: Teller. His parents gave him the usual number (he was born Raymond Joseph Teller), but he changed it at some point — all of his official documents, including his passport, identify him only as Teller. He likes to joke that it's "like the bank clerk."
• Overly Narrow Superlative: Inverted. Penn Jillette has said, "I'm not the best magician in the world — I'm not even the best magician at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, or the best magician in Penn & Teller."
• Pick a Card:
  • Penn & Teller have done several deliberately over-the-top variations, such as the one where the number and suit of the card are revealed to be printed on Teller's eyeballs◊^note well, on opaque shells that slip over them. They also, as habitual highlighters of the fraudulent nature of stage magic, have a favorite card (the three of clubs) to make their marks "randomly" select.
  • One variation featured giant metal playing cards that the duo manipulated using forklifts.
  • In Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food, they give instructions for making an arrangement with your favorite pizza place so that when you order a "P&T crust", you would receive a pizza with the three of clubs made of pepperoni on it. You would then use this to pull a "was this your card?" switcheroo on your friends: "Was your card the four of diamonds? No? Oh well, I'm only learning. Let's order pizza." The pizza then arrives and your friend opens it to discover their card on the pizza.
  • There's also the Penn & Teller Cenotaph, a monument to them at Forest Lawn Mortuary Hollywood Hills with the three of clubs and bearing the quote "Is this your card?" "Oh well, still need practice. Wanna go for a walk?"
  • It's revealed in one of their books that their road manager is also in on the joke; among his many tattoos is a three-of-clubs drawn on the palm of his left hand, which he has to get re-inked every five years or so.
  • In their Masterclass, Penn recounts how they once did a trick for Steven Spielberg, who abruptly picked one of the cards before they could go through any of the stuff used to force which one he took. Except by pure chance, he actually picked the one they were going to force him to, which meant the trick looked even better as there was clearly no way they directed him toward that card.
• Plot-Based Voice Cancellation: One trick has Teller speaking... after he turns on a woodchipper loud enough to drown out his voice. Another trick has him speaking... with a helium voice.
• Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat:
  • In a 2015 appearance The Tonight Show, Penn talked about realizing that although it's a cliché, neither he nor Teller had ever seen an actual rabbit produced out of an actual top hat during a live magic performance, only watered down versions like a fake rabbit being produced from a handkerchief with a top hat printed on it. While Penn spoke, Teller produced a fake rabbit from a handkerchief with a top hat printed on it, then a real live rabbit from a real top hat.
  • They also infamously did this in a David Letterman performance in 1985, knowing Letterman would consider it a cliché... so they topped it by then dumping hundreds of cockroaches out of the same hat.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Penn is the excitable and talkative red, whilst Teller is the silent and reserved blue. This is sometimes reflected in their neckties; Penn wears a purple tie while Teller wears a blue one.
• The Reveal: They're widely known as the magicians who actually show everyone how their tricks are really done, and for the most part they do^note though in respect of intellectual property, they only reveal tricks they have developed themselves specifically to be revealed, or very old and simple tricks or elements of tricks such as the card force, cups-and-balls trick, and methods of sleight-of-hand or misdirection that can be found in any beginner's how-to book... ...only to introduce more complicated and impressive elements or variations, none of which they explain in advance. They are magicians, after all. Their rendition of the Cups and Balls trick (possibly as old as ancient Egypt, you can find it in nearly every magic kit) with clear plastic cups is so smooth that at full speed you still can't see well how it's done without repeated study.
  Penn: [juggling three of the balls in mid-trick] This is NOT juggling. This is called MISDIRECTION.
• Rule-Abiding Rebel: Penn likes to play up that all the other magicians hate him and Teller, that they've been banned from the Magic Castle because they reveal all their tricks... in fact they're held in very high esteem by other magicians, both because of their consummate skill and showmanship, and also because (unlike, say, the Masked Magician) they only reveal tricks they themselves have developed for that purpose (or tricks so old and basic you can learn them in any beginner's magic book).
• Saw a Woman in Half: With a large buzzsaw, with the addition of making the audience think it's gone horribly wrong. Bonus points for doing so immediately after explaining all the safety measures in place.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: They did a trick once where they produced 100,000 bees, without using gloves or masks. The producing was a trick, but they really did handle all those bees without protection; they just made sure they weren't allergic to bee stings so they wouldn't suffer any permanent ill effects and sucked it up. Penn still got stung in some nasty places (Teller escaped with only three stings, mostly because he poured all the bees on Penn).
• Self-Deprecation:
  • They're rather fond of it. Most notably, Penn has always been extremely vocal about Teller being the better magician of the duo, a compliment Teller receives gracefully. Teller, for his part, has said on multiple occasions that he believes Penn is the better showman.
    Penn: I am more than half of Penn and Teller by weight. I am less than half of Penn and Teller by talent.
  • One of the tricks in How to Play in Traffic is about choosing between two potential sex partners and opens with a lengthy disclaimer about how, since magicians are socially awkward nerds who are the antithesis of sexy, the trick is pure Speculative Fiction as far as they're concerned.
  • In one TV special, when they were about to perform the Bullet Catch trick, they told an anecdote about how when Harry Houdini planned to attempt it, the magicians' guild sent him a letter imploring him not to try it, because it was too dangerous, and if anything went wrong it would be a horrible loss to the profession. Penn then reveals that the guild, when hearing they would attempt the trick, also sent a letter, reading, "Go for it."
    • This is notable when you actually see their Bullet Catch trick, and pay close attention to how extremely careful they are. Teller will not let the gun out of his hands for even a moment, and checks it carefully multiple times while Penn is talking. Penn will not let go of the (dummy) bullet period, even when an audience member marks it. If they try to take it from him in order to write on it with the marker, he very firmly tells them that he is going to keep holding on to it and they will write on it while he holds it. Teller does not take his eyes off the bullet when Penn walks over to give it to him, and both of them carefully observe Teller loading the bullet into the gun before Penn takes his position in order for Teller to shoot at him. There's a reason that the Bullet Catch is considered legitimately dangerous by magicians and only performed under the most rigorous of conditions. Magicians have been killed performing it, and the precautions they take are to ensure that they don't fall prey to the same mistakes (such as an audience member substituting a real bullet for the dummy bullet they use, or an object lodged in the gun being launched at their partner).
  • When beginning a demonstration of a card force trick, Penn asks Teller, playing the part of the mark, "Wanna see a magic trick?" Teller immediately turns around and starts to walk away.
• Shell Game: They are very good at this. Teller is so fast at three-card monte it's a good thing he doesn't try to scam people. In the music video "It's Tricky" by Run–D.M.C., Penn & Teller are running a three-card monte con game. One of the victims calls up Run-DMC, who arrive by helicopter and handle the situation in their own unique manner. Interestingly, Penn and Teller do their homework into how this scam runs. If you watch closely, there's someone wearing a hat and overcoat, who's encouraging the mark to keep betting money. When the scene opens, you can see the person looking around, watching for the police. When the police do arrive and Penn & Teller make their escape, you can see the person quickly leave in the opposite direction. That's how the scam works in Real Life.
• The Silent Bob: Teller never says a word but Penn always knows what he's trying to communicate, because this is an act.
• Silent Partner: Teller never talks but Penn is verbose enough for both of them.
• Silent Snarker: Teller is expressive with his face and body language.
• Stage Magician: Penn & Teller like to point out how they are basically distracting the audience from the inner workings of their act, and then show them how the magic happens.
• Stolen Good, Returned Better: Played with in this segment from The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller. Stephen Fry reluctantly parts with his expensive watch, which Penn & Teller proceed to ... improve.
• Take That!: All but one episode of The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller had Penn aim one of these at British magician and non-fan of theirs Paul Daniels ("This trick is so simple, Paul Daniels could do it!"). The only exception? When they had that week's guest Dawn French do it ("Welcome to The Paul Daniels Magic Show. I am, of course, (his wife and partner) Debbie McGee...").
• The Team: As Penn puts it, "I do stuff on my own. Teller does stuff on his own. The stuff we do together is better."
• The Television Talks Back: A Penn & Teller variation of the old "is this your card?" trick is designed to be done with the TV on in the background. The person doing the trick holds up a card — "Is this your card?" — and it isn't... and then a moment later the person on the TV stops what they're doing, holds up a card, and says "Is this your card?" — and it is.
• Three-Way Sex: A trick in How to Play in Traffic revolves around playing a Knights and Knaves-esque game supposedly to choose which of two potential sex partners you have a better "connection" with. It ends with you supposedly reading both of their minds (courtesy of the trick, of course), concluding that you can't possibly choose, and inviting both of them to your hotel room together. (This is followed by a parenthetical note that you could in theory just pick the one you like better instead, but who in the world would do that?)
• The Teetotaler: Penn claims to have never had a drop of alcohol in his life.
• Vocal Evolution: Years of shouting without proper warm up have rendered Penn's voice deeper and raspier than it used to be. Teller's voice has hardly changed if one watches videos of the rare times he speaks on camera.
• Voice for the Voiceless: Teller is very skilled at communicating with facial expressions and body language, but sometimes Penn steps in to speak for him. This applies to both the real Penn and Teller, and some fictionalized versions (written and performed by themselves).
  • On Fool Us, the audience can see Teller speaking, but usually only to Penn, as they discuss the tricks. Penn will then speak to the contestants, communicating their guesses and usually some compliments.
    • This was subverted in one episode when Penn did a trick to try to fool Teller. They brought out their friend and fellow magician Piff The Magic Dragon after the trick, ostensibly to be Teller's voice. Piff immediately took advantage of this position to lie about Teller's intentions. It's blatant enough to be funny, while also quietly highlighting the fact that Penn never does that. Penn himself then calls Teller up on stage, and Teller whispers his guess in Penn's ear.
  • One episode of Fool Us had contestant Richard Turner, a card mechanic. Richard is blind. He had Penn and Teller participate in his trick, and asked Penn to relay Teller's answers to some questions.
    Richard: Have you ever played in a private game where it's your deal, it's Penn's deal, it's my deal?
    [Teller starts to shake his head, then nods instead.]
    Penn: Yes he knows what you're talking about, no he doesn't play cards.
  • In Invisible Thread, Teller is summoned by government agents for a mysterious errand. Penn gets himself brought along by insisting Teller only speaks to him, and will "just pout" if they try to question him alone. Penn also rattles off a food order for both of them.
    Someone Important: Nine years ago, Dr. Teller left Oxford, became a magician, and stopped talking.
    Penn: He talks to me.
• The Voiceless: Teller's on-stage persona^note developed because he began his career performing in front of drunk students and staying silent helped with his nervousness. He does actually speak on stage and on camera, albeit very rarely, but it's usually hidden one way or another, to maintain the illusion that he never does. Offstage is a different story, as he and Penn have meet-and-greets after every show for anyone who wants an autograph or picture, and Teller talks to people quite openly, since the act is over for the night.
  • On a celebrity edition of Fear Factor; Penn and Teller maintained their stage personas over the course of the competition, but after Teller completed the final stunt and Joe Rogan told him that he had taken the lead, a happy Teller pumped his fist and whispered, "Yes!" rather audibly.
  • While he takes a lot of effort to maintain it, there have been a number of occasions (even specials and shows) where in a non-professional environment, he'll speak. Teller also speaks to guests at the meet-and-greet after their shows in Las Vegas.
  • Teller largely maintained his silence during Magic and Mystery Tour but he found an encounter with an Egyptian magician to be so moving^note the magician was performing the cups and balls trick but, knowing that Teller was a fellow magician, threw is twists and played with Teller's expectations, which Teller enjoyed and appreciated that he had to speak on camera to share his thoughts. Teller can also be heard (and seen) talking on the phone about the Sphinx in one episode of the show.
  • Played with at times; when Teller got "volunteered" for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge by Penn, he let out a whole series of expletives when Penn dumped the ice water on him, every one of which was bleeped over.
  • During Penn & Teller's card knife trick in an episode of Fool Us, Teller audibly says to Penn "Will you shut up?"
  • One of their acts is called "Teller's Salute to Recycling" in which Penn says that the monologue will be done with Teller speaking. Teller speaks but is drowned out by a wood chipper so you can never hear his voice.
  • Of course, this is subverted any time he does an interview on his own. He actually has a rather nice speaking voice, and a lot deeper than you'd expect from someone of his build.
  • At the end of Penn & Teller Get Killed, after Teller accidentally shoots Penn and kills him.
  • Teller's acting gig in The Big Bang Theory has him playing the mousy, downtrodden father of Amy Farrah-Fowler, a man rendered largely voiceless by his shrewish domineering wife, who glares at him every time he tries to open his mouth. ^note He does get to speak - when he is away from Amy's mother.
  • Another acting gig has him play a CAT. As in, a human dressed as a cat who acts exactly like a cat. Teller milks it for every bit of physical comedy he has learned over decades.
  • His character on Babylon 5, Zooty, has a machine speak for him.
• Wingding Eyes: One of their card tricks involve this. Teller's eyes are covered by shades until The Reveal. Performed on The Hollywood Squares.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Seriously. Teller did a series of short very low-budget videos called simply "& Teller" in which he records his solo experiences following a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas.

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