Film / Dumb and Dumber

aka: Dumb And Dumberer When Harry Met Lloyd

For these guys, every day is a no-brainer.

Harry: Hey, Lloyd.

Lloyd: Hey, Harry.

Harry: So, how was your day?

Lloyd: Not bad. Fell off the jet way again.

Dumb and Dumber is a 1994 comedy film starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, directed by the Farrelly Brothers (though Bobby Farrelly was uncredited). Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) is a friendly, though somewhat sadistic and more than somewhat dimwitted, limo driver who lives with his Heterosexual Life Partner, Harry Dunne (Daniels), a friendly, less sadistic than Lloyd, though still dimwitted dog groomer, in their Rhode Island apartment.

Lloyd's life is turned around when he falls in Love at First Sight with Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly), a rich female client headed for Aspen, Colorado, who leaves her briefcase at the airport. After trying unsuccessfully to return the briefcase to Mary at the airport, Lloyd talks Harry into going on a road trip to Colorado to return the briefcase. Thus, they hit the road in Harry's dog-shaped dog grooming van, unaware of what the briefcase is actually full of: ransom money, which means that Lloyd and Harry are being trailed by two hitmen, along with anybody else they piss off along the way.

Gained a short-lived animated series in 1995 and a Prequel in 2003, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, which details the meeting between the two during their high school years.

In 2012, it was announced a sequel would be filmed with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels returning along with the original directors, but the project stalled multiple times and was passed up by Warner Bros. (who owns New Line Cinema, who produced the original) in June 2013. The next week, however, Universal picked up the project, Dumb and Dumber To, which was released 20 years after the original in 2014. Please list tropes for the sequel in that page.

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Vis film provides eggzampulls of:

• The '90s: The 80s-holdover fashions and soundtrack (a mix between early alt-rock and synth-heavy easy listening) clearly show it was made in the early years of the decade.
• Accidental Murder: Lloyd and Harry try to help Mental with his ulcer problem after pranking him with hot peppers. Instead of giving Mental his medication, they inadvertently give him the rat poison he was intending to kill them with.
• Actor Allusion: After scamming Seabass to pay for their bill, Lloyd says he saw it on a movie. The movie he is speaking of is Something Wild, wherein Jeff Daniels does the same thing to Ray Liotta.
• Aerosol Spray Backfire: Not an aerosol, but in the movie there's a running gag where Lloyd tries to spray breath freshener into his mouth only to have the nozzle pointed the wrong way, inadvertently spray someone next to him by accident.
• Aesop Amnesia: The prequel, which recycles several of the original film's gags, has Harry and Lloyd vow to never let a woman come between them again.
• And Show It to You: In an Imagine Spot, Lloyd gets into a fight with a bunch of waiters in a fancy restaurant, followed by a fight with a ninja chef, wherein he plunges his fist into the chef's chest, pulls out his still-beating heart, dumps it into a literal doggie bag, and hands it to him. He's alive until he hits the ground.
• Animated Adaptation: The Hanna-Barbera-produced Dumb and Dumber cartoon, which aired on ABC for the 1995-96 season, which featured a female beaver named Kitty as the Straight Animal to Lloyd and Harry. Notably, this was the final H-B series to air on broadcast television; prior to this and after it, H-B's output had been slowly moved to TBS (SWAT Kats, 2 Stupid Dogs) and then Cartoon Network.
• Answer Cut: When Mary is watching A Current Affair, where a report about a blind boy who was duped into buying a dead parakeet, Mary ask "Who are these sick people?". Followed by Mary answering the door to Lloyd.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  Lloyd: We've got no food, we've got no jobs, our pets' HEADS ARE FALLING OFF!
• Asshole Victim: The guy outside the phone booth who gets knocked out by Mentalino. It's a surprisingly giant asshole who engenders less sympathy than a contract killer.
• Attempted Rape: Sea Bass attempts it on Lloyd.
• Bad Omen Anecdote: Lloyd tricks Sea Bass and his friends into picking up Lloyd and Harry's tab at a restaurant. They rush off in their van before Sea Bass can catch them. While on the road:
  Harry: That was great! Did you come up with that yourself?
  Lloyd: No, I saw it in a movie once.
  Harry: Let me guess, they get away scot free?
  Lloyd: No! Even better, they catch up with the guy a few miles down the road and slit his throat. It was good...
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The ending, in which Harry blissfully gives a bus full of supermodels in need of men to oil them up while on tour directions to the nearby town for their search. Lloyd does a Double Take, screaming into Harry's face "Do you realize what you've done?!" before chasing the bus down.
  Lloyd: You'll have to excuse my friend. He's a little slow. The town is back that way!
  • Late in the movie we see Harry and Lloyd crying their eyes out at some sad movie on tv which turns out to just be an ad for Pacific Bell.
• Bathroom Stall Graffiti: "For manly love, be here March 25th at 2:15am SHARP." And of course, Lloyd happens to be there at March 25th, 2:15 am. Seabass shows up, just about ready to beat the living daylights out of Lloyd, until Harry bursts in, putting out his leg after he accidentally set it on fire.
• Black Comedy Pet Death: The two hitmen break into Harry and Lloyd's house, and decide to send a message by killing their pet parakeet. But when Harry sees his dead bird, he thinks its head fell off on its own, spontaneously (Lloyd: "Well, he was pretty old."). Then Lloyd makes a little extra money by selling the dead bird to a blind kid.
• Blind Shoulder Toss: Lloyd tells Harry that, in order to get rid of bad luck, he should toss some salt over his left shoulder. Harry, without a thought, tosses an entire salt shaker over his right shoulder. This, of course, beans "Sea Bass", a very large and angry gentleman.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
  Lloyd: We've got no food, we've got no jobs, our pets' heads are falling off!
• Beat Still, My Heart: During his dream sequence, Lloyd rips the Kung-fu Chef's heart out of his chest and shows it to him (before putting it in a doggy bag and giving it back).
• Big Damn Heroes: Harry has two of these moments: in the gas station bathroom where he foils Sea Bass' Attempted Rape of Lloyd and again in the hotel near the end when he's accompanied by the FBI. Although the first was unintentional.
• Bittersweet Ending: Harry and Lloyd are alone, being forced to walk home as their motorcycle broke, but happy about it. Even after their idiocy prevents them from getting a ride... in a bus full of supermodels who need someone to oil them! They had planned on shooting an alternate endinginvoked where they got on the bus, but Jim Carrey disagreed, arguing that Lloyd was too stupid to consider it.
• Book Ends: Lloyd grabbing Harry by the head and saying "Do you realize what you've done?!"
• Briefcase Full of Money: The plot is driven by Lloyd and Harry trying to return one to Mary. However, they don't know it's full of money until an argument when the briefcase accidentally pops open.
• Brick Joke:
  • The woman that Harry unintentionally offends at the gas station^note (Because she kept dilly-dallying to give him her phone number while his leg was on fire) shows up later in the film and reveals herself to be a FBI agent.
  • The blind kid Lloyd sold the dead bird to appeared in tears in a news report on TV much later in the film.
    Mary: Who are these sick people?
  • In one of the alternate endings, the blind kid-dead parakeet joke would have been taken even further: in this ending, it turns out that the blind kid is the nephew of Lloyd and Harry's butler at the hotel in Aspen and Lloyd and Harry were asked to babysit him.
• Bulletproof Vest: When Harry is shot by Nicholas, it's revealed that he's wearing one of these. Lampshaded by Lloyd when he asks, "But what if he shot you in the face?" Then again, Boom, Headshot! is not very reliable in real life.
• Captain Obvious:
  Harry: Skis, huh?
  Woman: That's right.
  Harry: They yours?
  Woman: ...Uh-huh.
  Harry: Both of 'em?
  Woman: ...Yeah.
• Bully Turned Buddy: Turk in Dumb & Dumberer. He calls Lloyd "assface" which Lloyd takes as a compliment, thinking Turk is member of a Mowhawk Indian tribe who thinks Lloyd has the strong face of an ass (donkey) and his gang has Harry and Lloyd sturng up a flagpole by their underpants. He is caught perving on girls through a keyhole on the locker room door but Harry and Lloyd save him from a metric butt-ton of trouble by claiming he's part of their special needs class. Turk figures he owes them a favor and joins the club.
• Bullying a Dragon: The jerk pestering Mental for the phone booth should have known better than to make idle threats at a ruthless hitman. That wasn't his problem, he didn't know.
• Check, Please!: Lloyd says this after (accidentally) killing Mental with rat poison, mistaking it for his ulcer medication.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The woman Harry flirts with at the gas station. She also appears at the bar with Lloyd. It turns out she's an FBI agent that were following them.
• Childish Bangs: Lloyd sports a very juvenile fringe that adds to his overall childish nature.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Both Lloyd and Harry count as a variant of this. While they have good intentions at heart, they are inept, incompetent morons, completely oblivious to the world around them, and they only manage to succeed through dumb luck and by being directed by more intelligent people.
• Cock Fight: Happened twice to Harry and Lloyd throughout their friendship, once a long time ago with Fraida Felcher and now with Mary.
• Comedic Sociopathy: A few times. For instance, the duo accidentally kill a man for comedy's sake, and after a laxative-spiked Harry unloads all he has, the scene goes from Toilet Humor to this once Mary reveals the toilet is broken.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • One of the most famous examples in film. Lloyd is with Mary, who he's infatuated with, and asks:
    Lloyd: What do you think the chances are of a guy like you and a girl like me... ending up together?
    Mary: Well, Lloyd, that's difficult to say. I mean, we don't really...
    Lloyd: Hit me with it! Just give it to me straight! I came a long way just to see you, Mary. The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?
    Mary: Not good.
    Lloyd: (crestfallen) You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?
    Mary: I'd say more like... one out of a million.
    Lloyd: (processes it for a second, before a huge ecstatic smile forms on his face) So you're telling me there's a chance? YEAH!
    • When Lloyd finds out that she's married, he incredulously asks "What was all that "one in a million" talk?!"
  • At the final scene, as Lloyd and Harry are on the road out of Colorado on foot, a bus pulls up filled with hot bikini girls and... Look, just read the exchange:
    Bikini girl: Hey, guys. We're going on a national bikini tour and we're looking for two oil boys who can grease us up before each competition.
    Harry: You're in luck... There's a town about three miles that way. I'm sure you'll find a couple guys there.
    Bikini girl: (weirded out) Okay... Thanks.
    (the bus starts leaving)
    Lloyd: (upset at Harry) Do you realize what you've done?! (starts running after the bus) Hey! Wait!
    (the bus stops as they get to the door)
    Lloyd: Y-you'll have to excuse my friend. He's a little slow... The town is back that way! (points at the opposite direction Harry pointed to earlier on)
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Lloyd is using a random gas station toilet when he notices some graffiti promising "manly love" to whoever is there at that exact date and time. And the man who shows up is none other than Sea Bass.
  • While waiting in a bar for Mary, Lloyd meets the very same woman Harry was trying to chat up back at the gas station. Although she turns out to be an FBI agent tailing them.
• Cool Car: Harry's Sheep Dog "Mutt Cuts" van a.k.a. "The Shaggin' Wagon". They even somehow reacquire it in the cartoon. They also buy a very sleek Lamborghini when they discover the money in the briefcase.
• Credits Gag: The opining kredits r deliburutly misspeld az part of thuh moovy's moeteef.
• Daydream Surprise: Lloyd, in a jealous rage, shoots Mary's husband. Then suddenly, Mary snaps him out of it to introduce him to her husband.
• "Dear John" Letter: Harry alludes to getting one from Fraida Felcher, although he calls it a John Deere letter. It's obvious to everyone, even Harry himself, that she was cheating on him with Lloyd, although he pretends not to know until the end.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: In Dumb & Dumberer, one girl is a Chinese foreign exchange student who does not understand English since she does not respond to Harry telling her about their Special Needs club. Lloyd points out that she dosn't speak English and attempts to talk to her in Chinese... by saying "Ching chong chingy ching chong ching." Unlike usual uses of the trope, Lloyd is too stupid to know how racist and offensive Ching Chong is.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Not only does Mary have a husband, Harry and Lloyd stupidly turn down the job opportunity of a lifetime that involves rubbing oil all over supermodels.
• Diner Brawl: Averted. Sea Bass just spits in Harry's burger, and then gets conned.
• Disney Death: Harry appears to have been shot dead by the Big Bad near the end, but it turns out he was wearing a Bulletproof Vest.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Lloyd believes Harry has "taken" Mary from him, so he spikes Harry's tea with an excessive amount of laxative.
• The Ditz: Lloyd and Harry personify this trope. They don't seem to realize basic social interaction, don't even have rudimentary knowledge of how the world works, and never think to try and contact Mary before going to Aspen. However, this allows them to be a Spanner in the Works to the conspirators who kidnapped Mary's husband, as they foil the plan by being so stupid that things fall into chaos by their mere presence.
• The Dragon:
  • Mental is this to Nicholas.
  • Shay is this to Mental.
• Dumbass Has a Point: As stupid as Lloyd is, he wasn't wrong when he says that Mary should have simply told him that she was already married instead of trying to let him down gently by saying there was a "one in a million" chance of ever becoming a couple.
• Dying Declaration of Hate: The duo accidentally poison Mental when his ulcer flares up as a result of them putting a bunch of atomic peppers on his burger and then mistakenly giving him rat poison instead of his medication, and he dies after screaming "You son of a... bitch!" at Harry who gets sad for being at the receiving end.
  Harry: [the duo are headed down the road after fleeing the diner] I can't believe it...
  Lloyd: Life's a fragile thing, Har; one minute, you're chewin' on a burger, the next, you're dead meat.
  Harry: But he blamed me... you heard him, those were his last words.
  Lloyd: Not if you count the gurgling sound.
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: Attempted; Harry and Lloyd get pulled over by a cop who thinks they're drunk driving and decides to intimidate them by taking one of their beer bottles. Unfortunately said bottle was just used as a Jar Potty.
• Epic Fail: The ending of the movie is this for both Harry and Lloyd. For one, they never realize the briefcase is full of money until they manage to force it open.
• Establishing Character Music: Lloyd and Harry are introduced driving to their respective jobs to "Boom Shack-A-Lak" by Apache Indian.
• Even Evil Has Standards: "You don't kill people you don't know. That's a rule!"
  • That line can also be interpreted as Pragmatic Villainy, Mental wants to make sure they don't bite off more than they can chew by killing someone with mob connections.
  • Nicholas and Shay are also horrified at the death of one of the rare Snow Owls, caused by Lloyd with Shay doing a Spit Take.
• Evil Laugh: Lloyd's sadistic laughter after exacting revenge on Harry. Bonus for having the Wicked Witch theme playing at the same time.
• Evil Vegetarian: Nicholas pauses to make sure that he can get a vegetarian meal on his getaway flight to Amsterdam.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Some people have found that, rather than being funny, the movie is just...dumb.
• Extreme Doormat: Harry. Throughout the movie, he comes off as a little smarter and more sensible than Lloyd but for the most part goes along with everything Lloyd does partly because he's just very passive.
• Fanservice: Jessica, Harry and Lloyd's crush, in the prequel. Almost every shirt she wears is see-through.
  • Mary during Lloyd's dream sequence. Visual pun aside, that is still Lauren Holly's nearly-nude torso getting a front view.
  • And the Hawaiian Tropic bikini models at the very end of the film.
• Fell Asleep Driving: Played for Laughs when Lloyd has a lengthy daydream about Mary while driving. It cuts back to reality when she takes off her shirt and reveals the headlights of an oncoming truck.
• The Fool: Both Harry and Lloyd. Harry comes off as the more innocent and nice one as well because of his Extreme Doormat status.
• A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: After Harry and Lloyd discover that the case they are carrying has several million dollars in it, they decide to spend some of it to bolster their extremely meager funds... spend it in such things as very stupid-looking but expensive outfits, purchasing Lamborghinis, spending the night in Aspen's most expensive suite, and even blowing their noses with dollar bills. When Nicholas opens the briefcase three days later at the climax, it's completely full of I.O.U.'s.
  Lloyd Christmas: Listen, Mr. Samsonite, about the briefcase, my friend Harry and I have every intention of fully reimbursing you.
  Nicholas Andre: Open it up. Open it up!
  Lloyd Christmas: [Motioning to Mary] Go ahead, open it up. Do what he says. Hurry.
  Nicholas Andre: [sees the case is full of slips of paper] What is this? What is this? Where's all the money?
  Lloyd Christmas: That's as good as money, sir. Those are I.O.U.'s. Go ahead and add it up, every cent's accounted for. [picks one I.O.U.] Look, see this? That's a car. 275 thou. Might wanna hang onto that one.
• Foreshadowing: There’s a reason why Beth keeps telling her long-winded breakup story to Lloyd at the bar in Aspen, even after Lloyd outright tells her that he doesn’t care.
• Frozen Body Fluids: While traveling through wintertime Colorado on a scooter, Lloyd and Harry are so cold that, when they reach Aspen, their nasal fluids have frozen into icicles hanging from their nostrils.
• Funny Background Event: In the scene where Harry and Lloyd are escaping the "gas man", when they are running out to the dog van, there is a guy in the background urinating against a wall.
• Funny Bruce Lee Noises: Lloyd himself and the ninja chef he fights when he fantasizes (while driving) about taking Mary to dinner.
• Gilligan Cut: Harry asks Llyod to spend the last dough they have left on essentials only. Cut to the next scene with Lloyd running around with a new-bought cowboy hat and other useless stuff.
• Greasy Spoon: The truck-stop choke-and-puke where Harry and Lloyd meet Sea Bass. There is also "Dante's Inferno", which prides itself on having the spiciest food around.
• Groin Attack: Lloyd's dream sequence includes an extremely exaggerated one.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Harry and Lloyd.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Mental dies after accidentally taking rat poison pills that he intended to spike Harry and Lloyd's drinks with.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Harry and Lloyd usually don't pick up hitchhikers, but decide to make an exception for a guy who's planning on killing them both.
• Hostile Hitchhiker: Mental (one of the hitmen that are pursuing Harry and Lloyd) pretends to have car trouble and hitches a ride with them in order to find out what they know about the Briefcase Full of Money MacGuffin that they unknowingly carry and to check out if the Mistaken for Badass beliefs that he and his employers have are actually well-founded. He nearly becomes a straight use of this trope when he almost pulls a gun on them because they are annoying him so much (but their picking up some Mexican immigrants prevents him from doing so) and then it (accidentally) becomes the inverted version when Harry and Lloyd pull a prank that makes his ulcer act up and they give him some pills he had in his pocket, not knowing that it was some rat poison that he was planning to sneak into their food.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Mental and Shay. Also, Shay and Nicholas, the latter who is even bigger than Mental.
• invokedHumor Dissonance: A deliberate example: In Lloyd's dream sequence, the crowd at Aspen finds all his stupid, childish humor (such as lighting a fart and throwing food at someone) hilarious, as he's too dumb to realize that most people would just roll their eyes and think he's an idiot. He also tells some joke which we only hear the end of but has something to do with a guy in a ski mask. While everyone laughs their asses off in the dream, given what we know about his sense of humor, it was likely either an extremely dumb joke, or one that doesn't even make any sense.
• Hypocritical Humor: "Can't be too careful, lots of bad drivers out there."
• I Ate WHAT?!:
  • The scene where a cop pulls Lloyd and Harry over. He asks for them to give him their "beer", which is actually Lloyd's urine. He drinks it, much to his displeasure after doing so.
  • Mental after Harry and Lloyd force a bunch of pills into him when his ulcer flares up... and then sees Harry holding the black pill container containing the rat poison he was intending to use on them.
  Lloyd: Tic-tac, sir?
• Iconic Outfit: The paired blue and orange tuxedos.
• Idiot Hero: Harry and Lloyd are Trope Codifiers to say the least.
• Ignorant About Fire: This movie had a bit like this. Harry was filling up his car and accidentally spills some gasoline on his pant leg. Just then, a woman pulls up to the pump next to him. As they're chatting, she begins to light up a cigarette (hey, it was The '90s) but can't get her lighter to light. Harry graciously offers her a match; after she gets her cigarette lit, Harry nonchalantly flips the still-lit match behind him...only to set his leg aflame.
• I Like Those Odds:
  Lloyd: I want to ask you a question... straight out, flat out... and I want you to give me an honest answer. What do you think the chances of a guy like you and a girl like me... ending up together?
  Mary: Well Lloyd... that's difficult to say... you really don't...
  Lloyd: Hit me! Just give it to me straight! I came a long way just to see you Mary. The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?
  Mary: Not good.
  Lloyd: (gulping) You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?
  Mary: I'd say more like... one out of a million.
  Lloyd: (Beat, then grins happily) So you're telling me there's a chance. YEAH!!!
• I'll Kill You!: When a freezing Harry sees that Lloyd brought extra gloves with him and never told him.
  Harry: I'm gonna kill you.
  Lloyd: What?
  Harry: I'm gonna KILL YOU! I'm gonna kill you, Lloyd! Right now, I'm going to kill you!
• Imagine Spot: Lloyd has two: one while driving, which causes him to almost crash, and one at the end in a faux-Twist Ending, wherein he blows away Mary's husband.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Harry, Faking the Dead, suddenly springs to life firing at Nicholas who was about to shoot Lloyd. Justified since he's likely never had any formal training with a firearm nor how to even aim properly.
  Lloyd: Harry! You're alive! And you're a horrible shot!
• Improperly Paranoid: When Lloyd sees Mary at the Preservation Benefit, he is hesitant to talk to her, afraid she’ll think of him as a psycho for driving 2000 miles just to see her. The following evening, he brings her to his hotel room to give her the briefcase. Her response: “You drove 2000 miles just for me? That is so sweet, Lloyd.” Although, since the briefcase contains her husband’s ransom money, it probably wasn't actually on Mary's mind at the time.
• Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Near the end when Lloyd imagines killing Mary's husband.
• Innocently Insensitive: Lloyd and Harry both on occasion, though the former is more frequently a deliberate Jerkass.
• Inside Job: Nicholas, family friend and advisor to the Swansons, is the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Bobby Swanson, Mary's Husband.
• Intimate Lotion Application: Subverted and Played for Laughs. At the end of the movie, Harry and Lloyd comically stumble into a boy's fantasy scenario: a bus filled with supermodels going to a bikini competition who flirtatiously tell the pair they need to hire two guys to be in charge of rubbing oil into all of them, clearly offering the job to them. At first, it seems like they are giddy at the ludicrous opportunity, but then they simply give the women instructions on how to get to the nearest town where they'll be able to hire the men.
• I Resemble That Remark!: Harry talks about a girl who dumped him.
  Harry: Yeah I called her up. She told me she can't see me anymore because I don't listen to her or something like that. I don't know, I wasn't paying attention.
• Jar Potty: Lloyd is forced to do this with beer bottles in the van... which a state trooper finds out the hard way.invoked And he fills about ten bottles in one go. Much to Harry's bewilderment.

  What are you, a camel?!

• Jerkass:
  • Both are stone stupid, but while Harry is well-meaning and even kind in his own bumbling ways, Lloyd comes off as rather sadistic and highly mean-spirited, and not always obliviously.
  • Mental and Sea Bass.
  • The highway cop who pulls them over is extremely rude and aggressive.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Lloyd. While he does come off as quite insensitive and careless, he does genuinely care about Harry in his own way.
• Karmic Death: Mental plans to put rat poison in Harry and Lloyd's food. When he gets a bad case of heartburn due to his ulcer and some hot peppers, Lloyd gives him what he thinks is his medication, only for it to actually be the rat poison.
• Kindhearted Simpleton: Harry. Downplayed with Lloyd, due to how thoughtless and destructive he tends to be most of the time.
• Large Ham: The two main characters. Mostly Lloyd as it comes with being played by Jim Carrey ("No way! We landed on the Moon!"), but even if Harry is more composed he will start Chewing the Scenery when the situation calls for it ("FOR GOD'S SAKES, JUST GIMME THE DAMN NUMBER!!").
• Laxative Prank: Whose results are left in a broken toilet, no less. (And the extended cut has Harry cleaning the thing...invoked)
• Lethally Stupid: Harry and Lloyd inflict much fatal and near-fatal damage multiple times throughout the entire movie. For starters, Lloyd, whilst giving a lecture to Mary about bad drivers and not keeping his eyes on the road, causes several cars to swerve out of the way, crash into each other, and even blow up a gas station. On the road, Lloyd zones out to a dream and nearly crashes into a truck. Then, they feed Mental hot peppers in his burger without being aware that he has ulcer problems, and Harry ultimately kills him by accidentally giving him rat poison (intended for them) instead of his pills. Later, at the gas station, Harry sets himself on fire with gasoline and a cigarette lighter, and knocks out Sea Bass with a stall door. At the gala, Lloyd uses a cork from a bottle of wine to kill the rare snow owl. As revenge for Harry "stealing" Mary from him, Lloyd also poisons him with intense laxatives. And, he shoots Mary's husband with a pistol (although that one is a jealous afterthought).
• Line-of-Sight Name: When Harry and Lloyd get to Aspen, they decide to look Mary's name up in the local phone book (never mind she was vacationing there). Since Lloyd can't remember her surname (only that it starts with S), Harry suggests he check her briefcase. He looks at it and immediately shoots, "Samsonite". What makes that scene extra funny is that Lloyd had correctly deduced her last name as "Swanson" before Harry told him to look at the case.
• Long Song, Short Scene: "2 Ft. O'Buttcrack", which briefly plays in the diner scene and would not be heard in its entirety until the song was rediscovered in 2015.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Not that he was very bright to begin with, but Lloyd falls for Mary and causes an awful lot of trouble.
• Malaproper:
  • "I have a rapist's wit."
  • "She sent me a John Deere letter."
  • "If I know Mary as well as I think I do, she'll invite us right in for tea and strumpets."
• Manchild: There's a lot of words to describe Lloyd and Harry, and maturity is most definitely not one of them.
• May It Never Happen Again: At the end of the prequel When Harry Met Lloyd, Lloyd and Harry promise each other not to let another woman jeopardize their friendship again after their relationship nearly comes to blows over Jessica. Subverted, as the previous movie had shown that the same thing would happen again years later when Lloyd became envious of Harry's relationship with Mary.
• Medication Tampering: Done accidentally. Joe joins up with Harry and Lloyd with the intention of killing them with poison pills. After they stop at a diner, they trick him into eating spicy food and irritate his ulcer. He asks them to give him the stomach medication he's carrying to fix the problem. After they give him the pills, he sees they gave him the poison by mistake and dies.
• Megaton Punch: Mental knocking out the jerk that is bothering him while he's on the phone. He does it with a single blow, completely disregarding the plate-glass window of the phone's booth that he punches straight through.
• Messy Hair: Harry's mop of tangled hair.
• Mistaken for Badass: This happens to Harry and Lloyd. Especially when Lloyd accidentally kills one of the endangered Snow Owls with a cork.
• Mistaken for Gay: When Lloyd and Harry stay at a honeymoon hotel on their cross-country road trip, Mental mentions it to Nicholas.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Rachel Nichols in the prequel.
  • Lauren Holly whose shapely bare bottom is briefly exposed during Lloyd's power fantasy dream.
  • The bikini models at the end of the first film.
• Nature Tinkling: While Mental and Shay wait on Lloyd and Harry as the former two feign hitchhikers, Shay tells Mental she has to "squeeze a lemon" and is shown pulling her pants down and squatting.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The DVD/Blu-ray special editions feature two fake trailers for the film; one paints the picture as an emotional drama of platonic love, while the other portrays it as a tense action thriller. Appropriately, both are listed on the DVD menu as "Dumb Trailer" and "Dumber Trailer", with the "Actual Trailer" also included.
• Not Where They Thought: Lloyd gets distracted while driving and takes the wrong exit at a highway interchange, and winds up thinking he and Harry are in Colorado when they're actually driving through Kansas. They look at the completely flat plains surrounding them and wonder why the Rocky Mountains aren't rockier, before realizing the mistake.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • Mental and Shay think Harry and Lloyd are doing this — Mental thinks their letter to the gas man is to him because of his stomach problems, and so on.
    • Although Mental eventually finds out that they're just a couple of idiotic Stalkers With A Crush trying to return Mary's briefcase...just before they accidentally poison him.
  • Mary thinks Harry is purposely doing this during their day on the slopes (wearing his skiis the wrong way, getting his tongue stuck to a pole, placing a carrot and coal where they shouldn't be on a snowman, pelting her with snowballs, and knocking her down a hill).
  • Harry knew Fraida Felcher had cheated on him with Lloyd all along.
  • The talkative, bubbly lady Harry and Lloyd both encounter turns out to be one of the F.B.I. agents tracking them from Day 1.
• Off with His Head!: Mental rips Harry and Lloyd's parakeet's head off. When the two of them get back, they don't realize it was meant as a message and just assume the bird's head fell off for no apparent reason.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When Lloyd is in a gas station bathroom, he looks at some graffiti left by Sea Bass, then at his watch, and realizes he's right on time for "manly love".
  • Harry suffers the effects of Lloyd's Laxative Prank and discovers that Mary's toilet is broken.
  • The look on Lloyd's face when Harry told him that he thinks his ex-girlfriend Freda was seeing another guy...
• One of the Kids: Harry and Lloyd. They are just so moronic that only kids would stand them.
• Only Sane Woman: Mary. Be it Harry or Lloyd, she just winces at their antics and tries to pretend everything is normal. She also calls the situation with the beheaded bird (Harry's) to be the work of a "sick bastard". Ironically, one of those bastards is in her bathroom.
• Only the Leads Get a Downer Ending: While Mary is reunited with her kidnapped husband, both Lloyd and Harry end up having to walk back home, worse off financially than they were at the beginning. Then when given a chance to ride back home by a bus full of Hawaiian Tropic models, their stupidity prevents them from taking up the offer.
• Orphaned Punchline: During Lloyd's Aspen dream: "So he said, 'do you love me?' and she said, 'no, but that's a real nice ski mask!'"
• Pity the Kidnapper: A sort of reverse example. At one point Mental plans to follow Harry and Lloyd by posing as a hitchhiker so they will pick him up, and then stealing back the briefcase, and possibly killing them. They prove so annoying that he almost murders them after riding with them for less than an hour.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Happens after Lloyd takes a wrong turn and drives almost 1/6th of the way across the country in the wrong direction.
• Plot-Sensitive Latch: Lloyd says the briefcase is locked really well, but it still opens up in the middle of his fight with Harry.
• Pop-Star Composer: Todd Rundgren for the first movie. Empire Of The Sun for the sequel.
• Potty Emergency: Happens twice. Once to Lloyd, which leads to the "I drank what?" incident, and again with Harry, when Lloyd spikes his drink with laxative.
• Prequel: Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.
• Profane Last Words: "You son of a bitch!", from a poisoned Mental to Harry.
• Rage Breaking Point: After finding out that Lloyd drove several hours in the wrong direction, Harry gives Lloyd the silent treatment until Lloyd says they've "backtracked a tad". This causes Harry to blow up at Lloyd that they're not only in the middle of nowhere, but they don't have enough money to get to Aspen, get back home, or even eat and sleep.
  Lloyd: I'm only human, Harry! Anybody can make a mistake. Come on, stop being a baby! So we backtracked a tad!
  Harry: A tad! A tad, Lloyd! You drove almost a sixth of the way across the country in the wrong direction! Now we don't have enough money to get to Aspen, we don't have enough money to get home, we don't have enough money to eat, we don't have enough money to sleep!
  Lloyd: Well, it's not gonna do us any good to sit here whining about it. We're in a hole! We're just gonna have to dig ourselves out.
  Harry: Okay, all right, you're right, you're absolutely right, Lloyd.
  Lloyd: Where ya goin'?
  Harry: Home! I'm walking home!
  Lloyd: Oh, well, pardon me, Mr. PERFECT! I guess I forgot that you never, ever make a mistake!
• Rags to Riches: Harry and Lloyd go from a couple of unemployed losers to high-society snobs after finding out what's in Mary's briefcase.
• Ransom Drop: When the woman he loves, Mary, drops off the briefcase with the money, Lloyd sprints through the airport to grab it to give it back to her. By being a Spanner in the Works, he prevents Mary's husband from getting his money and the movie's plot is triggered.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Lloyd is the red and Harry is the blue. The tuxedos that they wear to the Snow Owl Benefit even reinforce this.
• Revised Ending:
  • An alternate ending scene was filmed where Barney the bellman offers Harry and Lloyd the job of babysitting his grandson, who turns out to be the blind boy to whom Lloyd had sold his dead parakeet.
  • Jim Carrey refused to shoot an alternate ending of Harry and Lloyd getting on the bus with the Hawaiian Tropic girls, as he reasoned Lloyd was too stupid to realize it was an offer.
• Riddle for the Ages: Which one is dumb and which one is dumber? Harry appears to be capable of more common sense and can read, but the poster listing Lloyd's actor first implies that Harry is the dumber one.
• Road Trip Plot: The first half of the film involves the long drive to Aspen, Colorado. Once Harry and Lloyd actually make it to Aspen, the plot changes to involve the briefcase and why Mary dropped it off in the first place.
• Rule of Funny: The whole film. Seriously. It's the only reason idiots this colossal manage to survive, let alone make people believe they are actually badasses.
• Secret Test of Character: Judging by his facial expressions when Lloyd stays silent, Harry seems to be giving Lloyd one when telling him about his suspicions of Fraida Felcher cheating on him.
• Seemingly Profound Fool: Nicholas, Mental, and Shay, at first, think Harry and Lloyd are incredibly skilled Feds or mobsters hired by the Swansons to retrieve the money.
• Shout-Out:
  • The protagonists Harry and Lloyd are named after silent film star Harold Lloyd.
  • "I'd like to eat her liver with some fava beans and a nice bottle of Chianti!"
  • The Mockingbird song Harry and Lloyd sing after picking up Mental is the same song the Griswolds sing when they begin their road trip to Wally World in Vacation.
  • After Harry learns that Mary's toilet is broken, the scene dissolves to Lloyd on their bike cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West, complete with music from that film.
• Schmuck Bait: Lloyd asking "Want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?" Technically a subversion, since he just makes it without waiting for Mental to answer, as who would ever answer "yes" to that?
• Shag Wagon: Harry thinks that the van he owns for his mobile pet-grooming service is this, and even calls it a "shaggin' wagon" when he tries to pick up women with it. He's too stupid to realize that a van modded to resemble a dog's head, complete with fake fur, won't get him laid.
• Simpleton Voice: Downplayed with Harry who can sound like this at times.
• Spanner in the Works: Harry and Lloyd end up as this to the conspiracy that has Mary's husband hostage. By taking the briefcase, going across the country, and showing up to Aspen, the two of them end up allowing Mary to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Harry also gets the police alerted to what's happened, Lloyd provides a convenient distraction, and Mary's husband ends up rescued.
• Spit Take: Shay does one when Lloyd kills one of the Snow Owls with a cork.
  Lloyd: Boy, this party sure died.
• Stalker with a Crush: Lloyd to Mary.
• Stalling the Sip: Harry and Lloyd put lots of very hot peppers on Mental's burger when he is out of his seat. He takes a long time to take a bite when he returns, leading to Harry interrupting the conversation by loudly asking, "how's your burger?" Ultimately, the peppers trigger his ulcer, Mental asks them to get his pills, while they accidentally give him rat poison he meant for them, and he dies.
• Stealth Pun: Lloyd's last name is Christmas. If he and Mary got married, her name would be Mary Christmas. The unrated version explains the joke.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: When Lloyd finally confesses his feelings to Mary and asks what the chances are of them ever forming a relationship, she mostly seems confused and put off before telling him they're practically non-existent. Even if Mary wasn't already married, Lloyd is, after all, a person with whom she only had one prior interaction.
• Tacky Tuxedo: Harry and Lloyd don a pair when they attend the Snow Owl Benefit.
• Tampering with Food and Drink:
  • Lloyd spikes Harry's coffee with a laxative in revenge for Harry taking Mary out on a date.
  • Mental's plan to kill Harry and Lloyd was to put rat poison in their food. He ends up on the receiving end instead when Lloyd and Harry decide it would be funny to sneak hot peppers into his burger.
• That Came Out Wrong:
  • "Mary... I desperately want to make love to a schoolboy!"
  • "Come on Joe, let me do 'em! Let me do both of 'em! You don't even have to worry about it!"
• The One That Got Away: Fraida Felcher to Harry. Makes an appearance in the sequel.
• Toilet Humor: So much of it in the entire film, one of which actually involves a (broken) toilet.
• Tongue on the Flagpole: "Oh, look, frost."
• Too Dumb to Live: Ultimately averted with Harry and Lloyd, but it's really a wonder how they get themselves into so much crap and yet have managed to have survived for so long.
• The Tooth Hurts: The only role for which Jim Carrey has removed the cap that usually hides the damage one of his front teeth took when he fell off his bike as a kid.
  • Prequel Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd accounts for this in-universe with a scene where Lloyd breaks it on Harry's forehead when they walk into each other.
• Trailer Spoof: Since it was from New Line Cinema who had also recently produced the Lord of the Rings films, the trailer for Dumb and Dumberer disguised itself as a trailer for The Hobbit, leaving every member of the audience sorely pissed. This was nearly ten years before it was actually filmed.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Despite their part in taking down Nicholas and saving Mary's husband's life, Harry and Lloyd are given zero on-screen thanks by the Swanson's and are last shown making their way back to Rhode Island... on foot.
• Unintentionally Karmic:
  • Mental plans to poison Harry and Lloyd with rat poison pills. When he goes to the bathroom, the latter two, not knowing of his stomach ulcers, play a seemingly harmless prank of putting hot peppers in his food. When it triggers the ulcers, the rat poison proves to be Mental’s demise when Harry and Lloyd mistake them for medicine and give them to him.
  • In the prequel, Harry and Lloyd misinterpret a tape of their corrupt principal creating the Special Ed class to use the funding money for a lavish vacation. Still thinking he has their best interests at heart, they "thank" him create a float of him and play the recording of his confession at the school parade for the whole school and school board to hear.
• Visual Pun:
  • During Lloyd's Imagine Spot when he's driving a car, he's about to have sex with Mary and opens her bra, but instead of a pair of breasts, she has a set of blinking car lights, which Lloyd stares at for a while until he wakes up just in time to avoid crashing into a truck on the opposite traffic lane. Another word for boobs? Headlights.
  • When Harry spills the gasoline all over himself, it looks like the Sheep Dog van is "urinating".
• Vomit Discretion Shot: When we last see the Pennsylvania State Trooper who unwittingly drank Lloyd's urine, he is dry-heaving on the side of the road. The scene ends before he starts vomiting.
• Wham Line: "I hope you're not using the toilet, it's broken."
• What Happened to the Mouse?: When the duo is driving with Mental they start singing a particularly annoying rendition of the old pop song "Mockingbird", right in each of Mental's ears. He gets so annoyed that he's about to just murder them then and there, when they suddenly see a family of Mexican hitchhikers by the side of the road and pick them up, at which point they resume the song (with the family singing along in Spanish). After they get to the restaurant in the next scene, the family is never seen again, although they could have just been dropped off at some point between scenes.
• You Answered Your Own Question:
  Harry: Yeah I called her up. She gave a bunch of crap about me not listening to her enough or something... I don't know I wasn't really paying attention.

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