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Despite being a gritty mob movie, GoodFellas does have its fair share of genuinely funny moments.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.


  • The violence, obviously. Also, when Henry gives Karen a huge wad of shopping money, and she immediately drops to her knees, and his response is, "Oh, alright..."
  • Young Henry shows his mom his new suit. Her response? A horrified look and, "You look like a gangster!" Though the camera cuts before we can see Henry's reaction, you can bet he took that as a compliment.
  • The "youth" sequence's Running Gag of a sudden freeze-frame as the narrating Henry gives the punchline.
  • "You mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you?"
    • "I almost had him!"
    • "You really are a funny guy!"
      • "OH, THAT'S IT, HENRY!"
  • And Tommy's story about how he got picked up (and knocked out) by a cop in Secaucus is...well, funny:
    Tommy: He pulls me in, starts asking questions. You know, this and that. He says, "So what are you going to tell us, tough guy?" I said, "My usual. Zero, nothing. Why tell you, you fuck?" He says, "No, you're gonna tell me something today, tough guy." I said, "Okay, I'll tell you something: go fuck your mother." (laughter) Bing, pow, boom, bing! You saw the paper, Anthony? My head was open like this. The prick. I'm coming around, and who do I see in front of me? This big prick again. He says, "Oh, what do you want to tell me now, tough guy?" I said, "Bing, what are you doing here? I thought I told you to go fuck your mother!" (more laughter) I thought he was gonna shit! Pow, ping, boom! You fuckers! I wish I was big just once!
  • Jimmy and Henry are in Morrie's wig shop, trying to get back some money they lent him while a commercial he made (apparently with said money) is playing on a continuous loop boasting about how his wigs never come off. While Henry pleads with the poor guy, Jimmy stands back and quietly watches the commercial, slowly getting more and more pissed off. Finally he explodes and begins to strangle Morrie with the telephone cord... causing his wig to fall off! Henry bursts out laughing.
    • The commercial itself is very blatant about how bad Morrie's wigs are with his 'demonstrations' involving a lot of jump cuts.
  • Tommy asks Henry to accompany him on a double date— right when they're in the middle of burning down a nightclub. They spend so much time arguing that the place goes up in flames at the point where they should have driven off. Also, during this argument, Tommy expresses disbelief that a 'Jew broad' is prejudiced against Italians.
  • "They must really feed each other to lions down there because the guy gave the money right up."
  • "[Tommy's] so jealous. I mean, if I even look at anyone else, he'll kill me." "That's great."
  • After kicking Billy Batts to kingdom come, Jimmy still complains that the "fucking mutt dented my shoes", and Tommy apologizes to Henry: "I didn't want to get blood on your floor" . Some aggravations next to a guy half dead. The look Henry gives Tommy is priceless, like "yeah, that's the least of my worries right now, Tommy".
  • The reburying of Billy Batts. The whole scene is Black Comedy at its finest. After six months of decomposition, one can imagine how horrible the smell and state of the body is. It proves to be too much for Henry, as he pulls himself out of the grave and bends over coughing, on the verge of throwing up. Seeing this, Tommy and Jimmy get the hilarious idea to troll him into puking.
    Tommy: Hey, Henry, Henry. Hurry up, will ya? My mother's gonna make some fresh peppers and sausage for us!
    Jimmy: Hey, Henry, Henry, here's an arm!
    Henry: Very funny, guys.
    Jimmy: Here's a leg!
    Tommy: Here's a wing! (the two laugh at the witticism) What do you like, the leg or the wing, Henry? Or do ya still go for the ol' hearts and lungs?
    Henry: (throwing up) Oh, that's so bad!
  • There’s a bit of black comedy in the scene where Tommy kills Spider. Tommy says that he is a good shot and another mobster replies: “How could you miss at this distance?”.
  • Shortly after getting married, Henry returns home drunk late one night only for Karen's mother to start nagging him for staying out all night, and he immediately turns around back to his car only for Tommy to start repeating all the nagging.
  • At his son's birthday party, Jimmy - the hitman, thief, and extortionist - is wearing a little conical birthday cap. Better yet, he's the only adult wearing one.
  • During Henry's narration of what each wiseguy was responsible for during their dinners in prison, he mentions that he felt that Vinnie's sauce, while good, had a little too much onion. Immediately after, Vinnie gets into an argument with the others regarding how many onions he's put into the sauce.
  • Jimmy is scolding a fellow thug for buying a Cadillac just after the big heist, even though Jimmy explicitly told everyone not to buy anything big. The scene is pretty tense, until another thug comes in with his girlfriend, who is wearing a very attention-grabbing fur coat. Jimmy's reaction is priceless.
    Jimmy: I can't believe this. Are you stupid or what? Excuse me, excuse me. Take it off. (He strips the coat off the girl)
    • What REALLY takes the cake is, after Jimmy reminds Henry to be discreet with the money and don't spend it right away, the Gilligan Cut shows Henry proudly telling Karen he'd bought the biggest, most expensive Christmas tree possible. To make it even better, that expensive Christmas tree is hideous.
  • During the first Spider scene, Tommy asks what movie was the one with Humphrey Bogart as a cowboy, looking for an opening to make Spider "dance" by shooting at the floor. One of the guys correctly states "Oklahoma Kid?" while Jimmy absentmindedly suggests "...Shane?" Tommy excitedly shouts, "OKLAHOMA KID!" as he starts to pull his gun out, but then stops to look at Jimmy and goes, "Shane...", almost disappointed that Jimmy would say such a dumb answer. To Jimmy's credit, he laughs it off.
  • The casual dinner that Tommy's mom gives to the trio while Billy Batts is dying in the trunk of his car (and she's unaware of this, of course). Particularly amusing is Tommy praising his mom's painting of a hunter and his two hunting dogs:
    Tommy's mother: Look at this.
    Jimmy: It's beautiful.
    Tommy: I like this one. One dog goes one way, and the other dog goes the other way.
    Tommy's mother: One of them is going east, and the other one is going west, so what?
    Tommy: And this guy's saying, "Whaddaya want from me?" The guy's got a nice head of white hair. Look how beautiful. The dog. It looks the same.
    • Then it gets funnier because Jimmy and Henry look at the old guy in the painting with the beard and says "he looks like somebody we know [Billy Batts]!", and then Tommy joins in, saying "It IS him", and then the camera moves over their shoulder to look at the car in the window where we hear Billy Batts making noise in the trunk.
    • What makes the whole thing even better is that it's 3:00 in the morning when the trio shows up at Tommy's mother's house— and rather than question why the three of them are still awake at this hour, Mama DeVito insists on sitting them down and whipping up a full-on feast. It's not clear which would be funnier: that she had all of that food waiting to heat, or that she made it all fresh right then and there!
  • During Henry's last day as a wiseguy, Sandy yells at him for being antsy to leave with the coke she's mixing. He settles her down with some sweet talk, then quietly asks "Is that the last one?" She says yes and he grabs it, stuffs it in a bag, makes a break for the door... then stops to cackle at her before running off.
  • The scene of Henry being berated by a narcotics detective at the precinct after getting arrested for drug trafficking is priceless.
    What, were you guys grocery shopping? What, are we going to make a cake? Gonna make a fucking cake?
  • Some of Frankie's interactions with Tommy are pure comedy gold.
    Tommy: [after killing Stacks] What the fuck you looking at? Come on. Make that coffee to go. Let's go.
    [Frankie mumbles something and goes to the door with the coffee pot in his hand]
    Tommy: What the fuck are you doing? It's a joke! A joke! Put the fucking pot down! You're gonna take the coffee?
    Tommy: Hey Frank, let's chop him (Morrie's corpse) up.
    Frankie: All right. [starts to get out of the car]
    Tommy: Where you going? Where you going, you dizzy motherfucker, you?
    Frankie: I think you said to chop him up.
    Tommy: Up at Charlie's, not here! Where the fuck are we gonna chop him here?
    Frankie: Charlie's! [mumbles to himself in Italian]
    Tommy: Come on, what are you doing? Get the fuck outta here. I got a better shot letting him fucking drive. What are you waiting for?
    Frankie: The car's cold.
    Tommy: Get the fuck outta here! What fucking warm enough?! Get outta here!
  • Jimmy trolling the napping FBI agents assigned to track him:
    Jimmy: [knocking at their window] Come on, fuckos, let's go for a ride.
  • At the end when Jimmy and Paulie are getting arrested, one mobster can be heard saying to the FBI agents: "whoever sold you those suits has a wonderful sense of humor".

  • Real Life examples:
    • Even when he was in witness protection, Henry couldn't resist breaking the law in relatively minor ways, and in the early '90s he was expelled from witness protection. He collaborated with writer Nicholas Pileggi on the book Wiseguy, which was the source material for Goodfellas, and even made good on his long-term ambition to publish a cookbook, bringing out The Wiseguy Cookbook in 2002. His celebrity grew to the point that he was indeed tracked down by mobsters, but they weren't looking to kill him: they wanted to ask his advice about book and movie deals.
    • One of the very few mafiosi whose name wasn't changed for the film finding out too late about it, as in already in the theater. You can see their reaction here.

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