"I go to my friend's place, open the door - but it is closed! I ring the bell - but there is none! So I didn't go there in the first place."
"Wacky is filling your car's gas tank with 3-octane gasoline. Absurd is filling your car's gas tank with a ferret."
Tropes about
dadaism, nonsense,
non sequiturs, the surreal and the bizarre. But not the
Bazaar; that's something else.
Tropes:
- Abstract Scale
To measure the immeasurable.
- Acid Trip Dimension
A space-time rift that looks like an LSD trip.
- Ad Dissonance
An advertisement in a work is ironic or otherwise inappropriate to the action.
- Appeal To Audacity
Something is declared true because nobody in their right mind would make up such a ridiculous story if it were false.
- Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?
A female expected to be assaulted is ignored, and becomes insulted over it.
- Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?
A non-sequitur answer when a more obvious solution is expected.
- Bathos
The lofty or serious juxtaposed with the ludicrous or commonplace.
- Big Lipped Alligator Moment
A totally random event is inserted into a serious story, then never referred to again.
- Bizarrchitecture
Buildings built in impossible or nonsensical ways.
- Bizarro Episode
A Big Lipped Alligator Moment that takes up a whole episode, though the episode itself is internally consistent.
- Blessed Are the Cheesemakers
Cheese is funny.
- Breathless Non Sequitur
- Calvinball
The game's rules are whatever you feel like.
- Camp
Completely tasteless, over-exaggerated, theatrical style, usually So Bad, It's Good.
- Chewbacca Defense
You pretend you can win the argument if you get the other guy to shut up by any means.
- Cloud Cuckoolander
A character who is just plain out there.
- Companion Cube
An inanimate object treated by characters as a real person.
- Contemplating Your Hands
Fascination with hands while on drug trips.
- Crazy Awesome
A quirky character is more effective and/or awesome because of his quirkiness.
- Crazy Memory
A character remembers an event so ridiculous it couldn't possibly be true.
- Crazy-Prepared
Prepared for any and all situations.
- Cue the Flying Pigs
If something impossible is said to only happen if X will happen.
- Cutaway Gag
Non sequitor humor tossed in.
- Dada
Confusing anti-art movement.
- Dada Comics
Comics consisting of surreal, non-sequitur humor.
- Dancing Pants
Clothing that moves around by itself.
- The Dead Can Dance
Although they probably smell funny doing it.
- Deranged Animation
It's animated and totally not made on drugs, we swear.
- Digging To China
Tunneling straight through molten core?
- Disney Acid Sequence
A music sequence in a strait-laced film enters through a sudden Art Shift into Deranged Animation territory.
- Dream Land
A world comprised of dreams..
- Le Film Artistique
Indie True Art film that most people don't bother even trying to understand.
- Giant Foot of Stomping
A big foot comes out of nowhere and stomps someone to death.
- Happy Place
Troubled people curl up and go away in their heads to places where everything is warm and fuzzy and candy corn.
- A Hat

- Hitler Ate Sugar
Just because someone evil did something doesn't make that thing evil - but people treat it like it was.
- Implausible Deniability
A character consistently denies doing something even through incontrovertible evidence.
- Improbable Antidote
Anything can cure poison if the plot requires it.
- Indecisive Medium
- Inventional Wisdom
Standard, evil plot-critical machines have that one lever/function that seems to be totally unrelated to the rest of it.
- Is It Always Like This?
A normal person wanders into a crazy place.
- It Runs on Nonsensoleum
A "scientific" device that runs on something impossible or nonsensical.
- Makes Just as Much Sense in Context
It doesn't. The Epileptic Trees remain epileptic unless you possess Fridge Brilliance.
- Mind Screw
When things just make no sense.
- Mushroom Samba
Ingesting something hallucinogenic results in trippy visions.
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant
An innocent character who constantly creeps out those around them.
- Non Sequitur Thud
Saying something random after being clobbered.
- Noodle Incident
An event in the past that's referenced but never explained.
- Noodle Implements
Talking about an un-described complicated act by describing a long list of things used in it.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer
We know this sounds ridiculous, but we are not making this up.
- Oddball Doppelganger
An unholy dead ringer of an often sane character.
- Offer Void In Nebraska
Void where prohibited.
- Once Killed a Man with a Noodle Implement
A Badass Boast of having killed somebody with something nobody would consider a weapon — and then not explaining or showing how it was done.
- Organ Autonomy
Body parts that have a mind of their own and can influence their owner's brain.
- Oxymoronic Being
Someone or something that is innately self-contradictory.
- Personal Dictionary
Change the definition of a word to suit your purposes.
- Poor Communication Kills
An implausible and out-of-character misunderstanding.
- Puff of Logic
When a convincing argument causes something to stop existing.
- Reaching Between The Lines
Sending anything other than sound down the phone lines.
- Reality Is Out to Lunch
An area where the laws of physics or reality just stop applying.
- Refuge in Audacity
Doing something so outrageous that everyone is too dumbfounded to try and stop/punish you.
- Scaled Up
Turning into something reptilian.
- Serial Escalation
A consistent escalation in whatever the heck a work is doing.
- Still Fighting The Civil War
Some people just can't get over the fact that "their side" lost some conflict long ago.
- Surreal Horror
It's scary and it makes no sense.
- Surreal Humor
Rule of Funny meets Da Da.
- Surreal Symbolic Heads
Not the face of someone trustworthy. Not really a face at all.
- Surreal Theme Tune
A theme tune with random lyrics that has little connection to the show.
- The Treachery of Images
This is an image. But it doesn't exist.
- True Art Is Incomprehensible
Anyone can understand this tripe, it can't possibly be artistic!
- Unsound Effect
A visual sound effect for something that doesn't actually make that sound
- Wackyland
A place where the laws of physics and logic no longer apply.
- Waking Non Sequitur
A strange outburst from someone who is waking up.
- The Walrus Was Paul
The creator of a work outright admits it was deliberately made to confuse the audience and poke fun at their attempts to find meaning in it.
- Wave Of Babies
A wave comprised of infants.
- Weird Aside
A person mentions something utterly weird in passing as if it were quite normal.
- Weirdness Coupon
If someone is "weird", it's acceptable that they do things that normal people couldn't get away with.
- What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?
There's no way someone could have come up with this when they weren't high - oh wait, they did?
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?
A city or place whose location is never revealed.
- Why Don't You Marry It?
When someone is so attached to a hobby/inanimate thing it may as well be romantic.
- Widget Series
Weird foreign series.
- Word Salad Humor
Take Inherently Funny Words and try and combine them to make a funny sentence.
- Word Salad Philosophy
"I believe in Meaningless Meaningful Words."
- World Gone Mad
Nothing makes sense in this place.
- World of Chaos
World Gone Mad doesn't begin to describe this place.