A Brick Joke is a particular type of Chekhov's Gun (or its variants) for which the payoff, but not necessarily the set-up, is a joke. Named after an old joke, which seems at first brush to be a pair of unrelated jokes. At the end of the first joke, a brick is tossed away, leaving the confused listener without a punchline. At the end of the second joke, the brick returns and the listener falls on the floor laughing. For bonus points, the teller can tell an actual unrelated joke in between. Sometimes, the Brick Joke structure—introducing a seemingly irrelevant feature only to return to it much later, after the audience has largely forgotten about it—can be used for drama as well as comedy.
Popularized in early 20th-century Newspaper Comics by Krazy Kat. (Not to be confused with The Cat Came Back, which is nearly the opposite of this trope.)
Overlaps with any type of Chekhov's Gun. Often this can also be a Chekhov's Gag, if the set-up is also a joke.
Compare and Contrast with the Overly-Long Gag, where the humor is in how long it takes to get to the punchline. The Flying Brick, however, refers to something else entirely.
Examples:
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Advertising
There were two different "The World is Just Awesome" ads run by the Discovery Channel. The Mythbusters make an appearance in both of them. In the first, Adam lights Jamie's arm on fire (at about :50). In the second, at about :32 in, Adam's tied up in a cauldron, which Jamie has just lit a fire underneath.
One ESPN commercial about Shaquille O'Neal and Scrabble premiered when he was playing for the Phoenix Suns, in 2008. In October 2009, after he had signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers, this commercial aired. The videos are filled with other gags if you notice them, such as different analysts in the commercials suggest that he plays Scrabble the same way every game.
In a Swedish women's magazine, there was an ad for "Mini-baguettes", baguettes you baked in the oven. It said: "If you put six mini-baguettes in the oven now..." About ten pages later, there was another ad for them, saying "...they'll be done by now."
Recently in the US they aired a commercial for a phone service that had the announcer start flipping through postcards of places they cover and then ends. You think that's the end but three or four commercials later it cuts back to the man who is still flipping the postcards!
The original Digimon Adventure has one between Joe and Gomamon. It starts in episode 7 with Gomamon offering to lend a hand when things get too hard, to which Joe replies he kind of...doesn't. Cut to the season finale, where Joe offers to shake Gomamon's hand, and jokes when he actually pulls it off.
A bit of Lull Destruction actually put this one in Digimon Adventure 02. Early in the episode of "His master's voice", the principal says, "Would the person who put the jelly donuts in teh swimming pool please report to the office?" Later in the episode, someone runs by Kari and says "...And then I put the Jelly Donuts in the swimming pool."
Comic Books
In Invincible objects Mark tosses across the world with his super-strength will occasionally crash down several issues later, with humorous results. For example, when Mark's powers first manifest in issue 1, he is throwing a bag of garbage into a dumpster; it lands in issue 6, in another country, with no explanation. And then we return in issue 20, and...
In Transmetropolitan #1, a toll booth operator calls Spider a hillbilly. Spider responds, "I'll be back for you, shiteyes."
Five years, 60 issues, a renewed career, two assistants, an impeached president and some brain damage later, he comes back and has the guy beaten with bricks.
In Astonishing X-Men #5, when Kitty confronts Colossus who's apparently back from the dead, she warns him, "If you're some shapeshifter or illusionist that's just watching me twist, I will kill you, I will kill you with an axe." In AXM #17, when she is being Mind-screwed into thinking that Colossus had betrayed her, she phases an ax-handle through his head and threatens to let go of the handle, causing it to fuse with his brain, killing him. A different way of killing someone with an axe, but it still works.
Film
In A Guy Thing, Paul gets beat up by Becky's ex-boyfriend. His fiance insists on calling the cops but Paul doesn't want to tell the truth so he gives them a completely ridiculous description. In the last scene of the movie Paul and Becky get into a cab and the driver matches Paul's description exactly.
In Airplane!, Stryker leaves a passenger behind in a cab to catch his plane in time. At the very very end, after all the plot has happened, the guy gets the girl, everybody is rejoicing and the credits have rolled, we cut back to his passenger, still in the cab: "Well, I'll give him another twenty minutes. But that's it." And the meter's running, too.
While the joke is lost on audiences today, the guy in the cab was Howard Jarvis, who pushed for California Proposition 13 in 1978, an initiative which made massive money saving cuts to public services.
In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the opening credits are botched, and the audience is told that the people responsible were sacked. At the end of the film, there are no closing credits, just a blank screen with music.
Another well-known example: Shortly after assembling, Arthur and his knights are spurned by a castle populated by Frenchmen. Their lord is uninterested in the search for the grail because "he's already got one". It turns out that this is where the grail was all along.
In another Rowan Atkinson project, Johnny English, gets two in one. Johnny invents an assailant to explain how the crown jewels got stolen. He uses things in the room as inspiration for his description, leading to an incredibly implausible appearance. At the end of the film he accidentally ejects Lorna from his car. Roll credits. Halfway through, Lorna lands in a hotel pool in the ejector seat. Sitting on the side of the pool is a man who matches the imaginary assailant's description perfectly.
In Spiceworld when a movie producer is pitching ideas about a movie involving the girls (intersperced with clips of the girls actually acting out what he says) he says "and that's when they find the bomb". The manager rejects that idea. During the end credits Mel C suddenly says "what happened to the bomb on the bus?" and it goes off.
In a Russo-Finnish film Jack Frost (later made into an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000), the superhumanly strong hero Ivan, when facing a band of thieves, throws a bunch of clubs into the air. Months later, when he wins the heart of Nastinka, he and his love are attacked by the same thieves. At which time the clubs fall down on the thieves' heads.
The King's Speech is filled with these, from the shilling that Bertie owes Lionel for much of the film to "When waiting for a king to apologize, one may wait a rather long time."
In She's All That the main plot is a bet between Zack and Dean to make Lanney the prom queen. When she finds out about this, the bet is forgotten. The second to last scene has Lanney asking what the bet's outcome was. We cut to graduation where Zack accepts his diploma stark naked.
Around the start of Cabin Fever, a store owner causes an awkward reaction when asked about a gun, saying only that it's "for niggers". At the end, three nig...black people (two men and a woman) are walking along, seemingly unaware that they're in the middle of Hicksville, Nowhere. The store owner frantically reaches for the gun...the visitors enter..then the store owner places the gun on the counter, greets the visitors and says "I got it all fixed up just like you wanted!"
The western spoof Support Your Local Sheriff starts with some pioneers burying a man named Millard Frymore. The funeral is permanently disrupted when gold is discovered in the grave. Later in the film, it's mentioned in passing that the resulting mine was named after Millard.
Literature
There's a picture in The Last Straw, the 3rd Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, that reveals that Greg once turned in a book report 4 pages long (cover included), and only a few sentences long because he took up more than half of the last page writing "THE END" in big letters, using the excuse that he was running out of paper.That spoiler-tagged part comes up at the end when Greg admits that he was ending his story on sort of a generic happy ending note, but he admits that he's running out of paper...
At one point in the first A Song of Ice and Fire book, Shagga threatens to "cut off [a man's] manhood and feed it to goats." In the next book, Tyrion tells him to do this to a prisoner, despite not having any goats nearby. Shagg obliges, and takes his axe to the prisoner's beard.
When Louis gets all the cows out of the school, someone comments they can still hear a moo. 19 chapters, later, it's revealed there's a cow in Miss Zarves's class.
When they test the theory of gravity showing that objects fall at the same speed despite different masses, they throw a coffee pot out the window. Much later, Mr. Kidswatter asks where the coffee pot went.
When Benjamin reveals he's really Benhamin Nushmut, Mrs. Jewls gives him the lunch that was on her desk from the first day of class.
In a story with a disappointing ending, Paul is hypnotized not only into not pulling Leslie's Pigtails, but into eating her ears whenever she says "Pencil". About ten chapters or so after this, Leslie mentions they need a new pencil sharpener.
Live Action TV
In Malcolm in the Middle, Dewey releases the hamster in a ball full of food so he has a chance at survival and won't be taken care of by the class bully. Throughout the rest of the season, you can spot the Hamster Ball rolling in the background. By the end of the season, you can even see it roll by as Francis and Piama leave Alaska.
Father Ted, "Speed 3", has a literal brick joke - twice. Father Jack has become to be affectionate to a brick, which later Father Ted trips on because Jack left it in the middle of the room. This, however, gives Ted the inspiration to use the brick to hold down the accelerator of a milk trolley (rigged to explode if the trolley falls below 4 miles per hour) to keep it going. The trolley, of course, explodes. Post-credits, Father Ted is taking out the trash when he spots something in the sky — and is struck head-on by a charred and smoking brick.
Friends "The One With Frank Jr" has Ross consider adding Isabella Rosselini to his list of celebrities he can sleep with but eventually bumps her because she's "too international". At the end of the episode, guess who walks into the coffee house?
M*A*S*H: Near the start of the episode "It Happened One Night", Hawkeye puts a can of beans on a stove in post-op, to heat it up. At the end of the episode, after a busy night dealing with patients, and shelling, and other things, just as things are settling down, the can of beans explodes.
My Name is Earl: While Randy is fishing treasure out of the river that a storm drain flows into, he says, "Another dolls head, Earl! That makes four." Eight episodes later, in the next season, an orphan girl tells Earl, "I used to live in a storm drain, rain washed my doll heads away."
In one episode of That 70's Show, Jackie has Kelso reading Cosmo magazine, hoping that it would give him insight into women (specifically, Jackie, and what she wants at any given moment). A bit later, Eric is griping about Donna to Kelso, and Kelso spouts off some helpful wisdom, and, when Eric is incredulous, Kelso explains that he's been reading Cosmo, and offhandedly mentions that there are some diagrams to womens' internal organs that look like a map to Six Flags. This isn't mentioned for the rest of the episode, until the very end...
Fez: Oh look! Six flags!
Doctor Who had a particularly long lasting one. At the end of the serial The Hand of Fear, The Doctor is forced to drop Sarah Jane Smith on Earth. When last we see of her, she realizes she isn't in her home city of Croydon. Cut to 30 years later, we find out that she'd been left in Aberdeen, Scotland instead.
The Dick Van Dyke Show did this in the third season premiere episode, "That's My Boy??" Mel's sister-in-law has just had a baby, which prompts Mel to make a Switched at Birth joke. Laura prods Rob into a Whole Episode Flashback retelling of how, a few days after Ritchie's birth, he became convinced that they took the wrong baby home from the hospital. They contact the other parents — who have the similar last name of Peters — and invite them over to discuss the possibility. The doorbell rings, Rob opens the door and is stunned at the sight of them. Then he invites the Peters in. Their entry is the brick joke. They're African-American.
Newspaper Comics
Once◊ in Garfield, Garfield kicked Odie into next week for eating his food. Odie was absent in the strip for the remaining◊ two◊ days of the week (and in the Saturday strip, Garfield comments that "Lunch isn't the same without Odie"). Sure enough, on the Monday of the next week, Odie came crashing down◊ into the strip. Onto Garfield.
In Pearls Before Swine's 10-Minute Retirement, Stephen Pastis was sent to court and sentenced for life, due to the fact that Rat advocated the overthrowing of the government. He convinced the judge to run one more Croc Story Arc. Said arc was about Zebra building a wall to keep the Crocs out, and eventually they strap tons of dynamite to a Croc named "Melvin", but he goes in the bathroom to read the newspaper and do the crossword. So, to keep their house from blowing up, two Crocs drag him out of the house, and launch him a great distance with Junior's see-saw. Where did he land? The courthouse Pastis was in. The dynamite then exploded, blowing it to smithereens and freeing Pastis.
There was a short arc at the very end of 2003 where Pig teaches his army men toys to be Oprah-loving hippies, much to Rat's annoyance. It heavily influenced the Viking characters that would appear a few years later. 3 years later, there was a strip where Rat gets a bunch of girl magazines in the mail, and says they had better not be for The Vikings. He then enters the house to see that Pig is reading a magazine about guns with them. Rat says "Uhhh...Nevermind." and leaves. After a Beat Panel, we see that the same army men are next to him, with one saying "If that Cosmo's not here today, I will just SCREAM."
In an old Baby Blues strip, Wanda thinks she should wean Hammie off of the pacifier because she read a magazine article that says babies could become too attached to it. In a recent strip, Zoe learns that Hammie still sucks his pacifier in secret, at six years old.
In For Better or for Worse, a doll named Naked Ned is flushed down the toilet. Years later, and I mean years later, it's removed from the pipes.
The January 15, 2012 Brevity featured a pair of kids stepping out of a box. The boy points at something, and says "It worked!". Many readers were perplexed, others thought it to be a reference to the 2011 Doctor Who Christmas special. Come January 22... The same pair stand in front of the closed box, which reads 'Time Machine'...on the 15th, he'd been pointing at the strip's date.
Professional Wrestling
In one episode of WWEMonday Night RAW, The Hurricane was trying to teach his sidekick, Rosey (an over-300-pound Samoan), how to be a superhero. His lesson for the day was how to change into his costume in a phone booth. Roughly an hour later in the show, we see Steve Austin walking backstage... and he happens across the phone booth, in which Rosey is trapped by his own girth.
Rosey: (pleading) Can you let me out? Please? I'll pay you!
In 2009, Edge mocked Sheamus, comparing him to Beaker. Two years later, when the Muppets appear on Monday Night Raw, Sheamus tells Beaker that he "can't make it to the family reunion this year."
During the three-way John Cena, CM Punk, and Alberto Del Rio feud for the WWE Title, Cena and Punk would frequently mention mullets and skateboards to new General Manager John Laurinaitis for seemingly no reason. After the jokes became less frequent, CM Punk played a montage of Laurinitis clips from the early 90s, during his time wrestling in the Dynamic Dudes with Shane Douglas, complete with skateboard and mullet.
Real Life
On July 8, 1958, New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel gave testimony before the Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee. During the mid-20th century, Stengel and Yogi Berra were both thought to be Baseball's premiere Cloudcuckoolanders. However, with his Stream Of ConsciousnessJabberwocky-liketestimony, Stengel revealed that he was really The Wonka of baseball. And the brick joke? That would be Mickey Mantle's One-Liner at the very end.
The second game features the joke as an Idle Animation; Jim throws a brick into the air, and it hits him in the head whenever he next begins to idle.
A sad one happens in Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2. Early in the game, Roxas gets a stick from an ice cream bar that has "Winner". He's waiting until he can get another one to give to both his friends Axel and Xion. When Roxas defects from the Organization, he leaves the stick for Axel.
In the first act of Curse of Monkey Island, Elaine is about to punch Guybrush when she finds out the engagement ring he gave her is cursed, when the curse kicks in and she turns into a gold statue. Near the end of the game, Elaine is freed of the curse and finishes punching Guybrush.
In "Homestar Ruiner", the first episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, the episode begins with Strong Bad getting an email asking why he hasn't "beat the snot" out of Homestar yet. Strong Bad thinks it's a good idea, but he gets sidetracked by his plan to beat Homestar in the big Tri-Annual Race to the End of the Race. In the endgame, after Homestar is knocked out of a window along with a number of other uninvited guests in Strong Bad's house, he yells "Ow, my snot!"
In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, early in the game the bridge across the river is blocked by a group of women chatting about how they dislike housework. One of them comments on how she's bad at cleaning her house and wishes there was someone to do it for her. A while later - after you find your Loftwing, race in the Wing Ceremony, fly with Zelda, wake up after she falls into the tornado, find Fi and get the Goddess Sword, you're finally able to go across the bridge, and if you go in her house you'll find that it's completelycovered in dust and spiderwebs. Much later in the game, you finally get an item that is able to blow the dust out, so you do actually clean the house for her.
After she pays you for cleaning the house, if you come back later at night, you'll hear her son yelling at her for wasting the money he saved for knight school. He comes outside and talks to you, wondering aloud what kind of jerk would help his mother with her money-wasting endeavors. Not sarcastically; he really doesn't know it was you. Link, apparently, does not tell him.
Near the beginning of the storyline of AdventureQuest Worlds, a skeletal minion by the name of Chuckles is one of the very first victims of the Big Bad, Drakath. The player base, who rather liked the little guy, launched a "Save Chuckles" campaign that ultimately succeeded in bringing back his skull. Two years and eight Chaos Lords later, Chuckles returns in a manner most awesome during the Doomwood saga. At the end of the Shadowfall War, just when things are looking grim for Empress Gravelyn and the heroes, Chuckles, who is revealed to have been Gravelyn's very first creation, knocks Noxus right off the Shadowscythe throne and frees Gravelyn, who promptly takes back control of her undead army from him so that the heroes can kick Noxus' ass. And in the aftermath of Noxus' defeat, Gravelyn gives Chuckles a promotion — by switching his skull with that of Noxus!
At the beginning of the Team Fortress 2 short "Meet the Medic", Medic finds his pigeon Archimedies digging around inside Heavy while he is operating on him. At the end of the short, after Medic operates on Scout and gives him his new heart, we find out the pigeon got stuck inside him.
Scout: Oh man, you would not believe how much this hurts!
8-Bit Theater deserves a trophy for this kind of thing, containing several throwaway gags that get brought back years after they were first told.
In the 7th strip, Black Mage is reading a Nintendo Power magazine. 9 years and over 1,200 strips later, the joke is referenced in the biggest Anti-Climax of the series (CAREFUL, MASSIVE SPOILERS ON THIS).
The Armor of Invincibility, something mentioned in the very first strip, is brought back up again in the very last strip, a grand total of 1,225 strips later.
Dave created his first UNREAL AIR in Act 4, after which it promptly floated away. Six months pass and it's mentioned in a conversation between Dave and Davesprite as probably winding up on Skaia eventually. Six months after that, it finally does.
01/09/12 gives us the longest Brick Joke in the comic. On page 32 John talks about a book of his that is so heavy, it could kill a cat if dropped. Cut to 01/09/12, almost three years later, and Alpha Mom attempting to prove to Jane that she has an appearifier by appearifying the very same edition of the aforementioned book. Right on top of her pet cat.
xkcd. In addition to the two strips that provide the page image, there's also the SuperSoaker.
Also, a Cleric realizes his mistake far too late. A blink and you'll miss it gag.
In thisSuper Effective strip, the old man who teaches you how to catch Pokemon falls asleep. 5 strips later, he wakes up and finishes what he was saying.
In a VG Cats strip focusing on tabletop RPG, Leo ties a dead rat to a stick and dubs it a "rat-flail", which annoys Dungeon Master Aeris enough to tell him that the dead rat gave him plague and he died. The rat-flail returns in a Bleach parody some time later. Aeris-as-Byakuya is not amused.
In El Goonish Shive, Dan Shive will often include links to prior strips whose subject matter was referenced underneath the new chapters. As can be expected, several of these point out Brick Jokes, while some of them are Bricks of the Invoked variety.
Nearby the beginning of "Strong Bad is in Jail Cartoon", Strong Sad says in a letter that he and Marzipan have a bakavla in the oven. At the end of the cartoon, Marzipan serves it to the other characters.
At the beginning of "Drive-Thru", Strong Bad is using an air compresser to launch a toy rocket to Europa, in the hopes that it'll return to Earth and bring him back some lobsters. At the end, sure enough, it falls back to Earth and cracks open, revealing a space lobster. The Drive-Thru Whale asks it to sever its leg, which it does, and the whale eats it and flies into outer space. ...Yeah.
In sbemail #38, titled helium, we discover that Strong Mad's voice doesn't change at all when he sucks helium, to his annoyance. Exactly 114 emails later in sbemail #152, isp, we find out that Strong Bad's internet connection is so slow because Strong Mad is siphoning his bandwidth through a garden hose. Apparently bandwidth acts like "super helium" and Strong Mad finally gets his helium voice.
The short "The Luau" begins with Homestar peeing behind Marzipan's gazebo. Later on in the short, when Homestar visits Strong Bad's party, and finds out that he can't get the wood to start on fire, Homestar then asks if Strong Bad got the wood from behind the gazebo, in which Strong Bad answers "Yes, why?". Homestar then explains "Well it all started when I drank 32 glasses of melonade..."
In short "Play Date", Homestar calls Bubs, who tells him that he's in federal prison. However he shows up in two scenes throughout the cartoon. In the Easter Egg Homestar asks why he's not in prison and he says he got time out for "snitchy behavior".
In Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series there are many of these. One particularly late starts in episode 14 Atem warns the man attacking Tea that he looks damn good in a tutu. A few years later we get episode 53. Kaiba is forced to admit it: he does look damn good in a tutu (we even get a card/photo to prove it).
In Stupid Mario Brothers "The Interactive Adventure," Luigi ended up inheriting amansion. In the first episode of Season 4 he sold it for a life supply of USB flash drives, So he could never run out of memory. In Episode 53, Mario returns after he gains his memory back prompting Luigi to suggest a flash drive.
Western Animation
Phineas and Ferb has a literal one. At the end of "Toy to the World", the creatively bankrupt toy executives are frantically trying to think of an idea for a new toy to follow up Phineas and Ferb's "Perry the Platypus Inaction Figure". They settle on marketing a brick to children. In another episode, Doofensmirtz wants to destroy the billboard that blocks his view of the city skyline. The billboard advertizes the Brick.
Futurama: At the beginning of an episode, Fry entered the game show "Who Dares to be a Millionaire?" and the first question was about which instrument is used to hammer a nail. Option A: a hammer; Option B: a nail. Before Morbo had a chance to say what Option C was, Fry answered "nail". Near the episode's end, Fry tried to destroy an invention by hammering a nail on it... with another nail.
In How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back, we see an old man waiting in line at the Central Bureaucracy for his birth certificate. Cut to Lethal Inspection, aired 10 years later, the old man finally gets to Central Bureaucracy, only to have a heart attack right there.
Sponge Bob Square Pants: In what is possibly a parody on the Trope Namer, "The Two Faces of Squidward" has a fish gain the ability to fly out of seeing handsome Squidward, and then proceed to lose his untied shoe. Later in the episode, the shoe falls through the roof of the Krusty Krab, causing SpongeBob to push Squidward into a pole to save him from being hit on the head with it.
The Great Snail Race has one. SpongeBob, who's training Gary, calls him a lady to "humiliate and demean him". Cut to Sandy, who says "I don't know why, but I think I'll kick SpongeBob's butt tomorrow.". The next day, at the end of the episode, Sandy comes out of nowhere, kicks SpongeBob off screen and yells "That's for yesterday SquarePants!".
In the beginning of The Smoking Peanut, Mr. Krabs is seen abusing the concept of Free Day, taking everything he can. At the end of the episode, it's revealed that the oyster got upset because her pearl was stolen. Guess who stole it?
In the Garfield and Friends episode "Attack of the Mutant Guppies", Garfield & Nermal contend with mutant guppies, who they defeat by tricking them into stomping each other down a sewer hole. Said guppies then appear in a subsequent US Acres Quickie out of a well; after scaring that show's cast off, one guppie turns to his fellows and says "Come on, lets see if we can get a spot on the Muppet Babies" (which aired opposite the show on CBS at the time).
The first episode of My Life as a Teenage Robot has a scene where Jenny is playing hacky sack and accidentally kicks her sack into space. Later, she gets an alert about an asteroid about to crash into Earth. Normally it's the sort of asteroid that just burns up in the atmosphere, but this one can make it through because its mass has been slightly increased...by a hacky sack.
Also in one episode, whilist auditioning for the cheerleader squad, Jenny accidentally throws a cheerleader up so high, she doesn't come down. At the end, after the Iris Out, said cheerleader falls onto the black screen and asks "What did I miss?".
In the The Simpsons episode "Replaceable You", while Homer is talking to Roz, a beach ball falls out of nowhere into screen and Homer hits it off screen. A scene or two later, when they are in another room and Roz is meeting Mr. Burns, it falls back on screen in the room they're in, and Burns hits it off screen.
During "24 Minutes", Bart makes a phone call that accidentally gets crossed with that of Jack Bauer, so he leaves him a prank call. At the end of the episode, Bauer arrives to arrest Bart for the call.
We get a triple-whammy in "Hello, Gutter, Hello Fadder." In the opening, Moleman is seen being hassled by a pushy New Yorker, and is seen as defenseless. When he reappears later in the episode, he is revealed to be the king of the Mole People, and about to use an earthquake machine. His CMOA and Pre Ass Kicking One Liner, "No One Escapes From The Fortress Of The Mole People", is immediately dashed, as the bungee cord both Homer and Otto were on rebounds and sends them back to the surface, to which Moleman dejectedly says "Well, except for that."
Often common in various Pinky and the Brain shorts, typically as the means of Brain's plan failing out of control. In the first short, "Win Big", Pinky confounds Brain with his Ralph Kramden antics, which Brain ignores. Eventually getting onto the game show to win money to fund his plan to take over the world, he gets to the final round, upon which the question involves — Ralph Kramden. Brain loses. (The episode is a Shout Out not only to The Honeymooners episode where this happens, but a Cheers episode that was inspired by The Honeymooners one, all with the same approach to the brick joke.)
A season 2 episode of Avatar The Last Airbender involved Sokka losing his boomerang after getting ambushed. He spends the first portion of the episode depressed over it and then seemingly forgets about it until during the climax he's randomly united with it, excitedly yelling "Boomerang, you do come back!"
In the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode Swarm of the Century, one of the many instruments Pinkie Pie gathers is a trombone. It was NOT part of the parade Pinkie drove the Parasprites out of Ponyville with, but at the very end, when the ponies return to Ponyville and discover it's now in ruins, Pinkie plays the stock Losing Horns on it.
The stop-motion animation film A Town Called Panic plays it straight when Cowboy and Indian try to order 50 bricks to build a barbecue for their friend, Horse. They accidentally order 50 million bricks, and the day wears into evening as truck after truck deliver loads of bricks, until there is a pile as large as the house. Horse returns home to a brick-free yard, except for the newly constructed barbecue. His birthday party runs well into the night, and it is not until the lights are out at bedtime that we find out where the 49,999,950 other bricks have gone. They are neatly stacked on the roof, forming a cube larger than the house.
In the Dreamworks movie Megamind, snarky Damsel In Distress Roxanne complains early on that the titular villain's gimmicks are getting old, and he needs to make things more exciting. The thing is, Megamind has a habit of mispronouncing and misinterpreting words. So later in the movie, she opens a door in Megamind's lair marked "EXIT" to reveal a deep pit full of alligators, some random toys on the ground, and a disco ball hanging overhead. Not an "exiting" room, but an "exciting" room, as Megamind later explains.
In the 1994 Disney movie The Lion King, During Scar's little self-righteous speech at the beginning of the movie, Zazu casually comments about the villain lion that "He'd make a very handsome throw rug." Three years later in the 1997 Disney movie Hercules, a short clip of a stresses Herc shows him tossing a familiar lion's pelt onto the floor in frustration. One of the many shout outs to previous movies.
